City Council approves SAWS rate hike

Beyond that, Council should direct staff to include in the rate-increase ordinance some accountability measures targeted at immediate cost-cutting within SAWS. Finally, before City Council approves future rate increases, the SAWS Board should first present a credible restructuring plan for SAWS, execute the plan, and present their results to council. The previously comments posted are those of Councilman Carlton Soules Posted on February 6th on The San Antonio Government Site. Thank you Councilman Soules for your Courage most of all, and for your Leadership on Council, and for standing up for what is right for "The People" of this City! It is written in the Bible, Proverbs 31:8; "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up for and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy." Thank you Councilman Soules for bringing Integrity and Moral Character to the San Antonio City Council, and thanks to Council Woman Elisa Chan, and Councilman David Medina Jr. for doing the same. The City Of San Antonio needs great leaders like this to lead our city...."Leaders with Character and Integrity Beyond Reproach" !!!! And shame on Mayor Castro and the rest of City Council who decided to stick it to all San Antonians. Going to the bathroom needs not be a luxury!!! How many more San Antonio Citizens will be faced with either eating or paying for their outrageous and ridiculous water bills. San Antonio rate payers should not have to Manage our water system on their backs and fixed incomes!!!

City Council approved in December 2011? Why was this not brought to Council’s attention much earlier? How could they have dropped the ball this badly? My belief is that the SAWS Board and senior management deliberately chose not to make this potential billion-dollar problem their top priority. Instead they focused on other items and pet projects that took precedent over the sewer emergency. Politically correct rate restructuring, conservation campaigns, EPA negotiations, increased salaries and benefits, and the construction of a hugely expensive but marginally productive desalinization plant are just a few that come to mind. These leaders chose to do what they wanted to do rather than what they needed to do. They knew eventually a day would come when the EPA would force a consent decree. That day is coming soon. This leads us to Thursday’s City Council meeting, where we will vote on an 8.4 percent rate increase. My position remains consistent with 2011. I will support the portions of the increase that deal with capital improvements and the contract cleaning of the sewer lines. Though I, like you, would prefer no increase at all, we have a problem we must address. Consistent with my vote last year, I will still not support any increases to salaries, benefits, and overhead costs at this bloated organization. More than $5 million of the proposed $24-million increase for 2013 is slated for this category and it includes, among other things, a host of new positions in the “conservation department” to enforce watering restrictions. Yes, more water police. If SAWS needs additional personnel on the sewer system, they can certainly fund this by eliminating nonessential positions.My specific recommendation is that on Thursday, Council approve a lower increase of 6.5 percent by removing the $5 million slated for salaries and benefits.

and “SAWS is asking for more time to show the EPA its solution will work.” Apparently the EPA agreed to this delay. Commenting on the hope that SAWS could prove in 2011 that it could be as clean as San Diego – which has the lowest number of spills per 100 miles for any large U.S. city – SAWS Senior V.P. Steve Clause stated, “We should be at that level.” It is now 2013, two years and three months since Puente’s infamous “child support” analogy. Looking back, how well did SAWS execute its plan to look better before the judge? The easiest measuring stick we have is to look at is how much SAWS spent on line-cleaning from 2007 to 2012. At the January 16 Council B Session, I asked SAWS staff that exact question. Their response? “We are going to get back to you on that.” The same leadership that told the EPA and their ratepayers that the single most important thing we can do is increase line cleaning is unable to answer how much they have spent on it. The SAWS executive team may not know how much they spend on line cleaning alone, but they were able to tell us how much they spent on both televised monitoring and line-cleaning operations, which they lump together. The answer is not much. Out of a $500 million budget, spending on these efforts has been a paltry $6.5 million or less per year since 2009. Far from quadrupling pipe-cleaning, SAWS actually decreased spending on this function from 2010 to 2011. In essence, the SAWS leadership team failed to implement its own plan. Worse, through this most recent rate-increase process, we have learned that SAWS still does not have the staff or expertise on hand to fix the sewer system. By its own admission, SAWS needs to hire an additional 20 people to manage this issue. This is frightening. Remember, they have known about this problem for more than five years. Only now, with its back against the wall, do we learn that SAWS wants more resources. Where was this information during the 2012 rate increase,

Taken from: COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS: 207-7234 PUBLISHED ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2013 : How should a utility respond to the Environmental Protection Agency when negotiating a potentially disastrous billion dollar consent decree? Consider SAWS CEO Robert Puente’s answer. “It’s like when you are $10,000 behind in your child support and your ex-wife sues,” Puente said. “The best thing to do is start paying so you look better when you go before the judge.” The above quote was published in the Express-News November 23, 2010, in an article titled "SAWS faces $1 billion sewage fix." Puente’s comment speaks volumes about the leadership of an organization tasked with the critical job of providing clean water and a topnotch sewer system to more than 1.5 million citizens. It says even more about that leadership’s cavalier attitude toward a looming crisis. In 2010, the EPA proposed a plan for SAWS that focused on line replacement. SAWS estimated the cost of implementation could top $1 billion and argued that because of the young age of the sewer system, they could fix the problem by focusing on aggressively cleaning and maintaining its pipes. According to the Express-News article, “SAWS thinks it could solve the problem for $255 million.” This action plan was simple and had merit. It does not take a rocket scientist or a high-priced consultant to figure out that clogged pipes back up and overflow. SAWS’ frequently claims that 75 percent of its sewer overflows are caused by clogged pipes. Despite the fact that SAWS has more than 200 people on staff in their engineering department to figure these things out, SAWS' leadership went ahead and hired a very expensive consultant for advice. What was the consultant’s advice? Quadruple the amount of pipe SAWS cleans and inspects annually. According to the 2010 Express-News article, SAWS “told the EPA its new sewer line cleaning and monitoring program will negate the need to spend a lot on replacing pipes.

These cowards that sit on "Our City Council" and profess to be there for the people are pathetic excuses for leaders. They voted yesterday to stick it to the people of San Antonio.In May it's our turn to vote and we should stick it to....Mayor Julian Castro, Councilman Diego Bernal, Coucilwoman Ivy Taylor, Councilwoman Leticia Ozuna, Councilman Rey Saldana, Councilman Rey Lopez, Councilman Rey Lopez, Councilman Cris Medina, and Councilman W.Reed Wiliams! Let's send them all packing and put them out of the job that they are "not" doing. "IT'S TIME TO FIRE THE MAYOR" so that he can stop using the Mayor's Office for his own self promotional platform as he tours through NBC, CNN, Washington D.C., The Today Show and so forth. We need leaders with "courage" who can stand up and say "NO" when they are faced with challenges such as this outrageous Rate Increase as our rates have gone up over 50% in the last 10 years with our sewer charges leading the charge up over 300% in the same period! San Antonio needs leaders not "figureheads" to put "Mismangers" at SAWS in their place and who are not afraid of EPA threats. SAWS has created our sewer problems through their operational mismanagement of San Antonio's Water System, while they operate "In The Lap Of Luxury" of a 75 Million Dollar Former Fortune 500 Corporate Headquarters Building on Hwy 281, and operate with Texas' Highest Paid Utility Executives with over 15 employees there making over $150,000! SAWS is a Water Utility Company....not a Fortune 500 Company!!!. And our "Cowardly San Antonio City Council" has allowed them to do just that at the rate payers expense. The interesting thing about this whole rate increase vote is that almost half of those that voted for the rate increase stated in the meeting that they did not have confidence that they were operating "Effectively or Efficiently" with the San Antonio Tax Payers Money! Duh! Cowards! And props to Council members Soules,David Medina,and Chan for their courage!

Good Lord...Do they have no shame! Spend, Spend, Spend....Our man child mayor and his city council democrat lambs. When are the people of San Antonio and this country going to finally get smart and see that these folks are only out for themselves and whoever is giving them kickbacks. Themselves meaning the vote. Stupid fools.

brownkdk1 - No kidding. And this Stupidcrat wants a new term. For those of you that voted for him the last time vote for him again you are only putting nails in your own coffin. Thank God our "Commander In Chief" can only go for two terms (BTW how is that working for you - those of you that voted him back in). That should go for the mayor of San Antonio too.

This is what the people voted for(Castro), now live with it.

Go to http://www.sanantonio.gov/ and find your District reps e-mail address and let him or her know how you feel about this latest money grab. They like to throw averages out there like nly $3.50 on an aveage bill a month, what if you are above their average,which they failed to publish. Just like the pre-k tax will only cost you a few dollars more a year, per average. Again, whose average? Bunch of greedy Democrats, the majority of yea voters in this case, looking for more funds to mis-manage.

Ivy Taylor - I will remember this when you come up for reelection. I didn't vote for you the last time and I certainly won't vote for you on the next election. You keep confirming the rightfulness of my decision. Enjoy your county seat while it's still there! This vote you made just confirmed the fact that the council is in the back pockets of special interests, CPS and SAWS.