Moving Oxnard Forward

We tracked down Ken Ortega, the former Oxnard Public Works Director, to get his opinion on the city's proposal to increase utility rates for water, sewer and garbage by 60%, or $750 per year for a typical household.

It's difficult to find someone on the outside with his expertise and knowledge of the inner workings of utilities in Oxnard.

It turns out he largely agrees with our position that these rate hikes cannot be justified. We asked him to write a letter stating his position.

Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the facts.  When we dug into a two-word phrase in the city’s cost-of-service study, we were surprised to learn what kind of digging Oxnard’s ratepayers might soon be paying for.

The City of Oxnard intends to charge some ratepayers less and expects you to pay the difference.

Oxnard wants to raise your city utility rates by 60% so that they can spend $1.23 BILLION on capital improvement projects.  Many of these so-called “improvements” will not provide value to ratepayers.  

For example, according to pages 14-15 of the cost-of-service report produced for the city by outside consultants, $254 million of that is proposed to be spent to expand the water recycling facility, dubbed by the city as the “GREAT Program”.

Oxnard’s government is going all out to sell you on proposed 60% utility rate increases that will cost the typical household an extra $750 per year. 

But can you trust their sales pitch?

Here are some things Oxnard hopes you won’t notice about the proposed increases to Oxnard’s water, wastewater, and solid waste rates… 

The City of Oxnard is proposing very large increases for the utility services they provide.  If the city council approves it, for a typical single family household in Oxnard:

• Water rates will increase by 66% over the next four years
• Wastewater rates will increase by 88%
• Garbage collection rates (solid waste) will increase by 23%
• It will cost about $750 extra each year for these utilities combined

And that’s not all.  The city is also proposing automatic annual increases without a requirement that they give you future opportunities to protest those future increases.

The Ventura County Star is covering our effort to organize protests against Oxnard's proposed 60% utility rate increases.

Click here to read the full article on the VC Star website.