Santa Barbara’s water and wastewater rates are rising.

The City Council voted 6-0 on Tuesday to support increases of up to 40% over the next four years.

“I can’t think of another time when we are considering something that has quite the real measurable impact on people,” Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said. “It’s not a good day.”

For water users, the rates are expected to go up 12% in 2025, 12% in 2026, 9% in 2027 and 9% in 2028.

For wastewater users, rates are expected to rise 10.5% in 2025, 10% in 2026, 10% in 2027 and 9.5% in 2028.

According to the city, several factors are requiring an increase in funding, such as higher than anticipated inflation, revised methodologies for allocating costs for internal services, lower than anticipated water sales, and increasing policy reserves to keep pace with increasing capital costs.

Among the most significant infrastructure costs is replacing the city’s old water mains. The city experiences about 80 main breaks a year.

“The cost of main breaks are significant,” said Joshua Haggmark, water resources manager.

The city tries to replace about six miles a year. In 2020, the cost to replace a mile was about $1.2 million. Today, it costs about $2.7 million per mile.

“This is what we are battling right now, these escalating costs,” Haggmark said.

City officials said they have little choice but to raise the rates.

“We’re talking about water and wastewater,” Councilman Eric Friedman said. “Those are the most important in terms of your ability to do anything. A person cannot go more than a day or two without water, and if our wastewater system fails, that is probably the quickest way to make a community unlivable.”

The matter still must go before the Water Commission and Finance Committee, and the City Council is expected to make a final vote in July.

Santa Barbara Council Disagrees with City Experts

The City Council once again got tangled over State Street and what to do with the configuration of the 1300 block.

The City Council voted 4-2 not to reconfigure the 1300 block of State Street, despite direction from the city administrator, in consultation with the traffic engineer, fire marshal, chief of police and city traffic engineer.

Those city officials want to revise the configuration of the 1300 block of street to create a two-way protected bike lane along the southwest curb, a passenger drop-off area in front of the Arlington Theatre, 26 angled parking spaces and two-way vehicle lanes.

The configuration also would require the removal of the outdoor dining areas at Opal
Restaurant & Bar and Carlitos Cafe & Cantina. The plan was for the business owners to receive formal notification by this Wednesday and the outdoor dining areas removed by May 1.

The city experts said the current configuration of the 1300 block creates safety concerns with motorists backing out of parking spaces and potentially hitting bicyclists.

A majority of the council, however, thought the revisions were too complicated and possibly more dangerous, opting instead for a configuration that allows parallel parking and keeps the outdoor dining.

“Sometimes I think simpler solutions are more elegant and can get us to a better place of balance,” Harmon said.

In the end, the council voted 4-2 to direct the city administrator to come back with different options for how to reconfigure the block and let the parklets remain.

The council’s hands are tied a bit because the panel in 2023 gave the city administrator full power to decide the configuration of State Street so that it wouldn’t be a political matter. Now, City Administrator Sarah Knecht is in a tough spot because even though she can legally do what she wants, a council majority indicated that they didn’t agree with her choice.

The council’s Harmon, Mike Jordan, Kristen Sneddon and Oscar Gutierrez voted in favor of reviewing other options, while Alejandra Gutierrez and Friedman agreed with the city administrator’s decision.

Mayor Randy Rowse was absent. He was in Washington, D.C., as part of a lobbying trip in his role as a member of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments.

Natural Gas Construction OK

In a 6-0 vote, the City Council rescinded its 2021 vote to ban natural gas construction for new building projects.

The ban is not legal.

On April 17, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a City of Berkeley ordinance requiring all-electric new buildings was pre-empted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, and was, therefore, invalid, according to the City of Santa Barbara.

The Santa Barbara City Attorney’s Office issued a memorandum directing the temporary suspension of enforcement of the natural gas infrastructure prohibition ordinance until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined whether it would rehear the Berkeley ruling. On Jan. 2, the court denied Berkeley’s request to rehear the case, according to the city.

The city initially banned the construction to help meet its climate change goals.