Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board of directors introduced an ordinance last week that would be used to form a voluntary Community Facilities District in the Amador Water System.

The Board voted 3-0 to introduce the ordinance needed to create the CFD and to approve an agreement property owners would sign. Director Paul Molinelli was absent and Director Don Cooper recently resigned from the board. The amount of the special tax and district boundaries are still being defined and will be presented to the Board at a later meeting.

Amador Water Agency General Manager Gene Mancebo said the CFD will “speed up revenue from developers” and “increase revenue to the Agency by collecting infrastructure costs from developers who plan to connect to the system in the future.” He said it benefits current ratepayers, because “future customers can pay their fair share today, instead of tomorrow.”

Participation in the Community Facilities District for the Amador Water System is voluntary. Property owners will pay a special tax which will be used to pay debt service on the Amador Transmission Pipeline. Property owners can also elect to pay a special tax toward future water treatment capacity improvements. Mancebo said: “In return for paying in advance, those in the CFD can’t be denied services based on lack of capacity.”

In public comment, Bill Condrashoff said it was “just another way to reserve water,” and a single project or “large developer could buy up all of the capacity and pay 1 percent a year until they are ready to build.” He said a 100-acre property with a single house could not buy 100 Equivalent Dwelling Units (EDUs) because the ordinance allowed it only for “unimproved property.”

Regarding a “theoretical landowner tying up all of the capacity in the Amador Transmission Pipeline,” AWA Counsel Stephen Kronick said there are two things that are certain in life: Death and taxes. And this is a third thing: “No developer is going to be tying up all of the capacity of the Amador Transmission Pipeline… It will be made evident when we move through the process” and the landowners form the CFD.

Kronick said two components of paying special taxes would allow CFD membership, for either the existing pipeline, or incremental expansion, and it was a misstatement by Condrashoff that landowners will get a “free ride” because each landowner will pay the full buy-in component when they get a conditional will-serve.

The accusation that it was unfair, for a house on 100 acres was not true, Kronick said, and “we would welcome their participation.”

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.