Moving Oxnard Forward

One week AFTER the May 1 recall election, the city of Oxnard finally revealed to the public the financial audit results that they’d been hiding since March.

We had noticed that the report was running a couple of months late.  With a recall election threatening to remove four of the council members, they certainly didn’t want any negative news to get out. 

When the draft agenda for April 24 (one week before election day) was posted to the city’s website, it said the audit would be presented then -- but that was pulled from the final agenda, and the public didn’t actually see it until May 8 (a week after the election) instead.  So what were they hiding?

The opponents of the May 1 recall election can’t justify the management failures of the current council.  Instead they are urging the public to vote against the recall because they allege it to be a waste of resources…after the city itself caused the cost to double.  Let’s talk about that.

As our followers well know, the City of Oxnard has been suing Moving Oxnard Forward President Aaron Starr personally for the past two years to overturn the public vote on Measure M – which rescinded the City Council’s 87% sewer rate increase.

On February 23 the court heard final closing arguments in the case, following trial dates in December and January.

Facing a recall election for their approval of excessive utility rates, the Oxnard City Council on December 12, 2017 voted 4-1 to approve an interesting new financial agreement under terms designed to tie the hands of a future council from lowering utility rates.

This is a shameless effort to preserve their bad policy even if the voters recall them from office for it.

On December 29, 2017 the Ventura County Registrar of Voters announced that all four of our city council recall petitions had a sufficient number of valid signatures to require a recall election.

In mid-November we filed over 68,000 signatures on four petitions to recall Mayor Tim Flynn and Councilmembers Carmen Ramirez, Bert Perello, and Oscar Madrigal from office for their votes in favor of abusive wastewater rate increases.  We needed 12,043 valid signatures on each, and we had so many extra signatures that the county stopped counting before they checked them all.

“It’s déjà vu all over again.”  -- Yogi Berra

Last week, the Oxnard City Council started the process to raise our wastewater rates again. That process, which involves mailing out notices to residents and a 45-day protest period, will culminate in a public hearing on May 16.

Last week, a bare majority of the Utility Ratepayers Advisory Panel (URAP) embraced a recommendation by city staff that the Oxnard City Council raise your sewer bill by a whopping 74%.

The plan calls for 5.25% increases for each of the next five years on top of the 35% increase already implemented last year. Compounded, that works out to over 74%.

When a city nearly doubles its utility rates and sues the political opposition, it’s time to take a hard look at how the utility is spending its money.

When we studied the finances of Oxnard’s wastewater utility, one giant red flag was an expense called the Infrastructure Use Fee (IUF).  Oxnard charges this fee to each of its three utilities, and the combined $7 million goes to the general fund to pay for city services other than the cost of those utilities.  This type of scheme has been declared by courts to be a violation of the state constitution as amended by Proposition 218.

After intense public pressure, city staff – finally! – agreed to release the secret rate model being used to develop new wastewater rates … or so it seemed.  They sent it after the close of business … on a Friday evening … before a three day holiday weekend … and it was locked down with passwords to prevent anyone from being able to generate their own what-if scenarios.