MAD AS HELL … I don’t know if it was the topic at hand (water rates), the sting of his fourth-place finish in an Assembly race he was once optimistic about winning or the fact that this was his last full meeting with a gavel in his hand, but whatever the reason, I liked the Joe Krovoza I saw in action at Tuesday night’s Davis City Council meeting …

Our outgoing mayor was in rare form as his council colleagues debated everything from Dan Wolk’s 100 percent volumetric rate to Brett Lee’s “plain vanilla” 60-40 split between variable and fixed rates to stealing water from Woodland by dark of night … at one point Krovoza looked directly at one city staffer and pointedly scolded him and other unnamed city staffers for not working in good faith with Matt Williams and Donna Lemongello to see if their “87/13” proposal was workable … maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but Krovoza wasn’t satisfied that the Williams-Lemongello model had been given a fair hearing …

“For weeks and weeks,” he claimed, “they’ve been stonewalled from working with staff. I am terribly disappointed. I think this is decision-making at its worst.” … several city staffers, presumably, will not be terribly disappointed that Krovoza will formally hand the gavel to Dan Wolk next Tuesday and officially exit the council for good …

WORTH A LOOK … whether the Williams-Lemongello proposal will pass muster with the mysterious “experts” the city relies so heavily upon remains to be seen, but Matt Williams and Donna Lemongello deserve our thanks for spending countless hours attempting to respond to the spirit of Measure P, which, incidentally, neither supported …

DEAD AND GONE … no matter which way the City Council eventually goes with the Great Rate Debate, it seems that punitive tiers are a discredited thing of the past, as is the concept of charging more for summer water use than winter water use … also headed for the landfill is the dreaded “look back” provision of the old rates that required new tenants and homeowners to pay for the water use of previous tenants and homeowners …

And finally, the creative and confusing mathematical machination known as the CBFR has been buried under six feet of concrete at an undisclosed location north of Zamora, never to see the light of day again … may they all rest in peace …

OH DANNY BOY … mayor-in-waiting Dan Wolk was the only councilmember courageous enough to suggest the city sell water the same way ARCO sells gasoline – by the gallon to all comers … citing a similar plan in beautiful Paso Robles, Wolk polled his colleagues in earnest to see if anyone wanted to jump on the pay-as-you-use bandwagon … sadly, there were no takers, but give Dan points for boldness, if not victory …

CHANGING THE RATIO … while the council will apparently consider a 60/40 split between variable and fixed rates, plus a 70/30 split and the Williams-Lemongello 87/13 split, no one has proposed a 100/0 non-split that would basically take us back to where we were before we had water meters …

Since too much conservation scares the dickens out of the bean counters who must pay for this massively expensive water project, a 100/0 non-split does have the advantage of guaranteeing an exact number of dollars every month to pay the bills … if you need a million dollars a month to finance the project and you have 10,000 ratepayers, everyone pays $100 a month and the piper will be paid each and every time, no questions asked … now let’s see if anyone has the guts to bite on that one …

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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