By Mark Siegler
I returned home recently to find my analysis strongly criticized in The Davis Enterprise headline story, “Q&A About Davis Water Rates.” Reporter Dave Ryan used a one-way question-and-answer format to proclaim both “fact” and “fiction.” However, he had not undertaken the minimal amount of background work required of journalism, let alone adjudication. Although he mentioned me by name nine times in the article, he never contacted me. Not once, and I am not hard to find.

This was concerning, and as I read on, my concern was more than justified. Ryan did a lot of insinuating and used derogatory words such as “mathematical fiction.” He misrepresented my examples, and took off on circuitous and irrelevant tangents, illustrating in the process that he did not understand the new rate structure, and, in the end, presented as fact only his own personal opinions masquerading as front-page “news.”

The first question Ryan posed was whether I was correct when I calculated that the typical single-family home will be charged 40 percent more per gallon than the typical apartment building account under the new consumption-based fixed rate structure. This is a simple calculation anyone can do. My evidence is directly from the city of Davis Proposition 218 notice identifying “typical” users, as determined by the professional consulting firm Bartle-Wells.

In 2015, according to the Proposition 218 notice sent to every ratepayer in town, the estimated monthly bill of the median single-family home will be $52.31 for 11 ccf (100 cubic feet) for a monthly charge of $4.76 per ccf ($52.31/11 ccf). The typical apartment building account examples will pay an average monthly charge of $3.33 per ccf ($489/147 ccf for a “small apartment building” and $1,360/408 ccf for a “large apartment building”).

If you divide $4.76 by $3.33, you get a ratio of 1.43, a difference of more than 40 percent. You can find a copy of the Prop. 218 notice on the city website and do the arithmetic for yourself.

While the median, which represents the middle or the 50th percentile, is a common and useful statistic, it does not tell the whole story. I also have examined the actual water use patterns of all 16,433 water accounts in the city of Davis, and I would have been happy to meet with Ryan to explain my findings using actual water consumption patterns to show him that there is nothing “false” about my conclusions.

I can document thousands of examples with disparities of more than 40 percent within each user class and across user classes, based largely on the timing of when water is consumed (and I can show him thousands of cases where the gap is less). I can show him two actual single-family accounts, both of whom used nearly the identical amount of water throughout the year, but where one account will pay almost 2.5 times as much per gallon as the other solely because of the timing of when that water is used.

There is simply no evidence that the cost of providing water during the summer months justifies the huge penalty on summer users that the new rate structure will impose in both peak and non-peak months. By 2018, the marginal charge of a ccf in a peak month will be $7.80 compared to only $1.32 in a non-peak month.

Ryan’s entire “analysis” focuses on one hypothetical example I provided to explain how the timing of water consumption could matter under the six-month CBFR structure, and he even gets this wrong. I compared two accounts that both use the same annual amount of water. One account consumes the same amount each month, while the other has higher use during the summer and lower use during the winter.

At no point do I say that one is a single-family home and the other an apartment building, but this is what Ryan erroneously assumes. Instead, I envisioned this as a comparison between two single-family homes, but this example in no way depends on the type of account.

However, it also could represent a single-family residence and a multi-family residence. What is Ryan’s big complaint? He writes, “This is false … (because) the vast majority of apartments are smaller than single-family homes.” True, but not relevant. What Ryan does not understand is that multi-family accounts, by definition, consist of more than one unit, ranging from two units (duplexes) to a huge 456-unit apartment complex.

I can assure Ryan that even if each unit has one bedroom (and the majority actually consist of two bedrooms or more), the average multi-family account has more bedrooms (and more occupants) than the average single-family home. Not only are the consumption patterns in my example possible, they are also realistic. However, as I said before, my conclusions do not depend on this hypothetical example at all.

My analysis compares differences in the charges per unit of water across accounts, and it has nothing to do with the number of bedrooms per unit. The largest discrepancies in the actual data occur (whether those accounts are commercial, single-family, multi-family, irrigation, etc.) where there are large differences in total annual water use and where there are large differences in the timing and ratio of peak to non-peak use between users.

Ryan’s article contains many other inaccurate statements. He writes, “At the peak of summer, Siegler points out that the scenario has the single-family home paying 40 percent more for the same amount of water.” In truth, the 40 percent applies to the entire year, and not just during the summer.

He also writes, “If there was a gallon-by-gallon cost, the water system would go bankrupt because water use would plummet during the winter and not bring in enough money to run the system, especially during the summer.” In practice, no water utility in the state or country has ever used a summer-based CBFR, and water utilities routinely charge by the gallon each month, without going bankrupt, even though water use always falls in the winter.

On Nov. 15, 2012, I voted for, and the Water Advisory Committee recommended, a 12-month CBFR with an inclining-tier variable charge, but the City Council changed this to a six-month peak CBFR with a uniform variable charge. Returning to the WAC recommendation would greatly improve the equity of the rates, encourage conservation throughout the year and more closely align charges to costs in a proportional manner. It is also simple to change the CBFR supply fee from a backward-looking one to a pay-as-you-go charge to eliminate the problems associated with basing the majority of the bill on the previous year’s consumption.

With water costs skyrocketing, an accurate and balanced examination of the distributional implications of any rate structure is crucial so that Davis voters can make informed decisions, and I am sorry that The Enterprise seems incapable of providing this analysis. I expected more of our local newspaper. Baseless, personal attacks on the credibility of private citizens have no place in our community. I hope that The Enterprise can do better in the future.

— Mark Siegler is a resident of Davis.

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