Why did the Utility Rate Working Group recommend flat rates?
That’s the question newly elected commissioner Ed Chrzanowski raised two days ago when he asked, “Why did a group of city employees and residents recommend what they did?”
Well, this key question leads to a series of troubling questions that we the citizens of Rehoboth deserve answers to:
1. Where is the actual report documenting the URWG’s analyses and numbers? The URWG released only an executive summary, which basically outlines its recommendations for the commissioners and mayor to approve. As early as May 7, the URWG noted the need to explain the rate-structure shift, as documented in their minutes.
“There is confusion among some of the public attending the meeting questioning why we no longer will have peak and nonpeak rates. We need to be able to better explain how peak and nonpeak periods are accounted for in our analysis but then combined into one rate.”
No such effective explanation happened. In fact, one URWG member actually said at the July 13 town hall that the combination of peak/nonpeak into one rate was probably too complicated for attendees to grasp!
2. Why is the Abrahams Group July 17 draft report the only report - and presumably justification for flat rates - we’ve been allowed to see? Read it yourself. You’ll find no justification anywhere in it for a flat-rate approach. The report says “The Working Group sought to recommend a leveled rate.” And the consultants built their recommendations from there.
In fact, if you check out the Abrahams Group website, you’ll see they’ve done a great deal of water/wastewater rate work throughout New England, with the large majority of it focused on peak/nonpeak and/or tiered rate structures. In fact, in Provincetown, another coastal town with high seasonal usage (and where our city manager was city manager for nearly seven years), the Abrahams Group consulted on their implementation of not only a peak/nonpeak structure, but one that also has tiered layers.
3. Why have the URWG and the administration insisted that the rate increases will be a wash or minimal to most users, when their own consultant admitted at the July 13 town hall that the “Proposed rates do put a little more of a burden on the year-round users”? And then he proceeded to show a “Seasonal Comparison” slide identifying meaningful savings for heavy seasonal users at the expense of year-round users. None of that work made it into their July 17 report.
4. Why did the URWG meet in secret until a FOIA decision forced their meetings open to the public? This administration came in promising transparency. Why was the public intentionally kept out of the process from the very beginning?
5. Why were the members of the URWG appointed by the mayor with no input from anyone else? Again, a question of transparency.
6. And why, after all the resounding reaction against the flat-rate approach for four months, did this administration offer no alternatives, compromises or changes to address our concerns? Why did they shut down the public at last Friday’s meeting, enforcing a three-minute public comment rule, which was obviously too limited for such a complicated issue? The administration even chose to bring in a show of force in the form of a uniformed officer. And we learned Friday that the administration had developed an analysis and response to the constituent input that was marked “privileged and confidential” and is unavailable to us - why?
Again, where is the transparency?
The vote has happened. It’s a done deal. The administration has moved on. And we’re meant to move on, too. But these questions (and Ed’s question) still remain unanswered. This has not been democracy in action, and we the people of Rehoboth deserve better.
Marie Hatkevich
Rehoboth Beach
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