When government officials offer a grab bag of reasons for a big policy change, you should be suspicious.
Often what it means is that there is no single good reason.
That’s true of the city of Tucson’s ongoing campaign to raise rates on most Tucson Water customers who live outside city limits.
The city has offered a variety of unconvincing reasons to raise water rates by up to 50% on the 29% of Tucson Water customers who live in the unincorporated county. The City Council will consider the proposal June 8.
Among the top justifications presented:
It would encourage residents of the unincorporated county to incorporate or be annexed into a municipality.
County residents use more water than city residents.
Tucson Water does not get back in effluent the water that goes into county septic tanks.
County customers use more water infrastructure than city customers.
If they were being upfront about their reasons, the city would also list one more big reason for raising county water rates: Because they can. They can soak the county residents they perceive as rich and spend the money how they want.
The water customers in the unincorporated county make up a minority of users and have zero vote in city water decisions. So the city can do what it wants with them, even though, in a hypocritical twist, at the same time city officials are claiming to be treated unfairly at the Pima Association of Governments because the city has too little voting power.
Costs unclear
The weakness of the city’s argument is evident in their leaning on the idea that the 29% of customers in unincorporated Pima County use 36% of the Tucson Water “infrastructure.”
I asked Tim Thomure, the assistant city manager in charge of pushing the new rates, whether that disproportionately high use of infrastructure means it costs more to serve those customers. In an email response, he said:
“The 36% figure translates to higher costs per customer for the utility, since it serves only 29% of the customers. The utility is constantly repairing and replacing all its infrastructure over time. The more infrastructure there is, the more it costs to maintain.”
So, basically, it takes more pipe to serve people in the Foothills and that pipe has to be repaired and replaced once in a while.
Notice that the city does not dive into the details of exactly how much more this costs. It could be a tiny amount.
As Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said in a memo, that 36% figure “is not a substitute for a cost of service study and the City has yet to demonstrate that it is more costly to serve unincorporated areas.”
That’s one of the reasons the Citizens Water Advisory Committee voted 10-5 to oppose the differential rates. As chair Mark Taylor told me, “I think cost of service is sacred. I think it’s important to have all rates be based on cost of service.”
Of course, even it it does cost more, that should make you wonder why the city has excused its customers in incorporated Oro Valley and Marana from the rate increase. Presumably the same infrastructure differential exists in those far-flung suburbs.
‘Inequity’ in water usage
The city has also explained that county residents use more water than city residents, but the city gets back less of the water because of the relatively large number of septic systems used in the county. (Water used by city customers tends to be treated and reused.)
Thomure has cited this among several “inequities” that justify the new water rates: Water customers in the unincorporated county use, on average, 43% more water than city users — 1,000 cubic feet on average versus 700 in the city.
But that doesn’t mean there’s an inequity — those people who use more pay more for their water.
If you use 100 to 700 cubic feet of water per month, you pay for it at a rate of $2.07 per hundred cubic feet. From 800 to 1,500 cubic feet, you pay at a rate of $3.82 per hundred cubic feet, and so on, up to $12.93 per hundred cubic feet for those using more than 3,000.
If you use more, wherever you live, you pay more per volume. That’s equitable.
Among the named reasons for increasing rates, the biggest one is the longstanding frustration that the lack of incorporation in much of the Tucson metro area costs us a lot of money. Thomure has repeatedly estimated the cost in state-shared revenue at $40 million to $50 million.
That is an absolutely justified cause of frustration, especially with Huckelberry and Pima County officials, who have maintained this unincorporated area as a sort of power base, rather than encouraging incorporation, which should have happened long ago in suburban areas like the Catalina Foothills.
“I really want this to be about annexation, and about the county providing municipal services,” said Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham, who has led the push for differential rates.
As Cunningham notes, municipalities, not counties, should be in the business of providing normal city services.
He’s right, but there’s little or no reason to think that increasing people’s water rates will convince them either to be annexed into the city of Tucson or incorporate as a city. In fact, it’s more likely to be the opposite.
In the Citizens Water Advisory Committee letter to the city, they noted they’ve seen no evidence that increased water rates have incentivized annexation elsewhere.
Committee members also “generally agreed that differential rates would create a breach of trust between the utility and a large percentage of its customers.”
It should create a breach of trust. These are people who have no alternative water source they can turn to, and they have no vote on whether to increase their own rates.
What makes the city’s effort especially galling is that city officials are simultaneously arguing at the Pima Association of Governments that the city is underrepresented on that board. Mayor Regina Romero is arguing the city should have voting power on that board proportional to the city’s power, instead of just one vote among many.
Imagine — if what she is asking for at PAG existed in the management of Tucson Water, customers in the unincorporated county would have 29% of the voting power. This rate proposal would probably be doomed, and rightfully so.
