Moving Oxnard Forward

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.

This week we finally learned what wastewater rate increase City Hall wants to recommend.

One proposal is a rate increase of over 96%!

So much for their claim that they had listened to you…

With the recent release of Oxnard’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for fiscal year 15/16, it became apparent that the city management had previously given the city council and the public some grossly incorrect information during its campaign against Measure M.

We need your help again.

As we all know, the city had enacted an outrageous 87% wastewater rate increase in January of 2016. You helped us fight back, and together we qualified Measure M for the ballot to repeal the rate increase and make the city try again to be more reasonable. Measure M won overwhelmingly, and now the city must try again to set rates that cover their actual costs ... but don’t abuse the ratepayers.

Please attend a very important meeting on February 1, starting at 6:00 pm at:

Oxnard Performing Arts Center, Ventura Room
800 Hobson Way, Oxnard, CA 93030

Here’s what’s going on.

Today we were back before Judge Rocky Baio to schedule a trial for the City of Oxnard's lawsuit against Measure M, which 72% of Oxnard voters adopted in November to repeal an excessive 87% wastewater rate increase.

The judge has tentatively scheduled the trial for late June, 2017.