Oceanside residents will see a trifecta of utility rate hikes in 2024 under water, sewer and trash fee increases approved unanimously Wednesday by the Oceanside City Council.
Water rates will go up 6 percent on Jan. 1, 2024, and another 6 percent in January 2025. The hike reflects higher rates passed along by the Metropolitan Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority, who import the supply to Oceanside, and higher costs for labor, materials, supplies and utilities.
The increase will add $8.96 a month to the average bill for a single-family home in 2024 and $9.04 a month in 2025, or a total of $18 in two years, according to a city staff report. The amount will vary based on usage.
“People don’t realize the high amount of energy needed to treat and distribute water,” said Lindsay Leahy, water utilities director.
Higher utility rates and inflation increase the cost of delivering the water, she said. Customers only pay the costs of supplying it, not for the water itself.
Also, the city is investing in efforts to diversify its water supply and is on track to produce 50 percent of its supply locally by 2030. Much of that local supply will come from injecting purified, recycled water into the ground and later withdrawing it from wells, a project for which the city has obtained millions of dollars in state and federal grants.
The higher rates also reflect future capital costs, Leahy said. The city plans to spend more than $154 million on construction projects.
“We have a lot of projected spending over the next few years,” she said.
Jimmy Knott, who often addresses the City Council on issues related to seniors and mobile home park residents, said residents of the park where he lives were not notified of the increase and asked the council to delay a decision.
“Thousands of Oceanside residents had no prior knowledge of this,” Knott said. “We were left out of the loop.”
Social Security recipients will only get a 3.2 percent cost-of-living increase in 2024, he said, so the rate hike will be hardest on them.
Ratepayer assistance is available from the city, including up to $2,000 for a one-time payment of past-due bills.
The city’s water department has about 45,000 customers within 42 square miles. The last rate increase was in January 2021.
Notices were mailed in advance of Wednesday’s meeting to all city residents whether or not they are water customers, Leahy said, though there could have been problems with delivery in some cases.
Utility rates are going up all across San Diego County. In September, the San Diego City Council approved a 20 percent increase over the next two years, the first comprehensive rate hike there in nearly eight years.
Oceanside trash rates, as customers of the national company Waste Management, will go up about 25 percent, in part because of the addition of kitchen scraps and other organic materials to composting, as required by state law.
The rates vary slightly by the size of the container, but the average residential customer will see a $6.47 monthly increase for solid waste disposal, according to city officials.
Sewer rates will increase 4 percent in 2024 and 2.5 percent in 2025. All the water and sewer rates are projected maximums, so they could be lower if any of the passed along fees or other costs go down.
The sewer rate increase will add $1.24 a month to single-family home bills in 2024 and $1.45 a month in 2025.
Recycled water rates also are going up, although those rates don’t include the increases being passed along by the two regional suppliers.
The recycled H2O is mostly used by the city and businesses for irrigation and industrial purposes, and usually in larger quantities than the tap water used by most residential customers.
