Deferred maintenance and higher prices for government water

“Deferred maintenance and higher prices for government water,” was sent to the Carmel Pine Cone on Oct. 17, 2023, was never published

David Henderson’s letter last week presented an excellent layout of why water bills will increase with the ongoing move to public (government) water.  One aspect he mentioned was the possibility of deferred maintenance to achieve lower costs.  Sounds rather unlikely, doesn’t it?  On August 22, this year, my wife and I attended a Monterey One Water forum (a government entity) on placing their bills onto the County property tax bills.  But this isn’t about that bad notion.  I asked the spokesperson why our M-1 Water bills had risen so precipitously from $33.87 every two months in 2008 to $121.04, a mere 15 years later. The hesitant response was that deferred maintenance was the main factor.  These costs, by the way, are for Seaside.  A couple of other nearby locales are considerably cheaper and Monterey is slightly higher.  Thought government was supposed to level the playing field?  How’s that for vaunted government equity?

These revelations illustrate that government is not without its own devious methods to gull and fleece the public.  At that forum, I pointed out that this deferred maintenance of a necessary government service was nothing but incompetence.  There was no argument to that fact.  As some readers may recall, Monterey One Water was previously known as MRWPCA, and it was they who incompetently dumped 4 million gallons of raw sewage into Monterey Bay, and then effected the name change.  Deferred maintenance, a quick name change, and jack up the cost.  Slick as the proverbial passage through a goose.  Now, one can smugly engage in that old saw of “government good, corporation bad”, but don’t be surprised when the new bills arrive.

Richard S. Hellam, Seaside