By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Members of the board of trustees for the Moapa Valley Water District (MVWD) voted unanimously last week to maintain status quo on current policies regarding rates for water meters being held by customers in ‘stand-by’ status.
According the MVWD policy ‘stand-by’ status entails a meter, installed and approved by the district, but through which no water has ever been provided to the assigned parcel. Usually, those meters are locked and out of use.
Because the district has committed to hold water resources in its portfolio for the eveny that the meter is ever activated, a monthly base rate is charged to owners of those stand-by meters to cover the retaining of those unused resources.
According to MVWD policy, the standard base rate of $29.79 is charged to those ‘stand-by’ customers. This is the same base rate as any other meter in service.
But the policy has a grandfather clause for a group of about 200 ‘stand-by’ meters which were purchased before March 2006. It was around that time when the district’s water dedication ordinance went into effect. The grandfather clause freezes the base rate of meters purchased before that time at a monthly fee of $9.38 per month. But if any change of ownership takes place on those meters, policy dictates that the rate immediately revert back to the current standard base rate going forward.
In last week’s meeting, Board members decided to leave the current policy unchanged, despite receiving pressure from customers on both sides of the issue.
On the one side was Logandale resident Billy Mildice, who complained to board members that the grandfather clause was fundamentally unfair and that rates should be levelized across the board. He advocated for a five year limit for the grandfather clause meters to be phased out and returned to the current rates with everyone else.
But board members generally had no appetite for such a sweeping change.
“I have no reason to support eliminating the grandfather clause,” said board member Randy Tobler. “The district made an obligation to those people years ago. There is a mechanism in the clause to eventually sunset those meters out. I see no reason to change the terms all of a sudden at this point.”
On the other side was Overton resident Bob Behmer. Behmer had owned a grandfathered meter on a parcel which he had sold to another party. Later he had to foreclose on the property and take it back. He felt that this should not constitute a change in ownership since he was the same owner and the meter had never actually been put into service.
In addition, Behmer had three other grandfathered meters which were held in a family trust. Because the trust was listed as owner before the March 2006 date, these meters were in no danger of being taken out of grandfather clause status. However, Behmer felt that if an owner of a grandfathered meter decided to later put that meter into his/her own trust, it should not constitute a change of ownership triggering the grandfather clause. Behmer felt that an exception should be made in the policy to these circumstances.
But board member Lindsey Dalley said that he had no interest in granting exceptions to the grandfather clause as written in the policy.
Dalley said that he had recently spoken to Overton resident James Robison on this topic. Robison had served on the board at the time that the grandfather clause was established. Dalley said he had asked Robison about the original intent behind the clause.
“The long and the short of it was that they were in a predicament,” Dalley said. “There was a group of people who had come in and bought up water meters and there was something of a gray market going on in the meter business. The board was understandably concerned that they might never directly sell another meter in the community.”
Dalley said that the intent of the policy was to honor the commitments that had already been made to customers, but also to create a mechanism where the grandfathered meters would eventually phase out and disappear.
Dalley said that the issue of transferring to a trust could run afoul of that original intent.
“Usually a trust is just for estate planning to avoid probate; and they are dissolved at some point after by the trustee’s heirs after he passes away and when everything has been settled,” Dalley said. “But there are cases where the family trust can exist in perpetuity. In that case, the grandfather clause might never go away. It could go on for 100 years or more. And that just wasn’t the intent here.”
Dalley made a specific motion that the board should NOT modify the policy in order to allow for exempting trusts as a change of ownership for grandfathered meters. The board adopted the motion with unanimous vote.
In other business, the board approved the staff recommendation to accept a bid from Holbrook Asphalt Company in the amount of $25,327 for a one-time asphalt seal coat for the entire Valley Heights subdivision. District staff has been busy repairing defective pipe which was installed in the subdivision. All replacement work as well as the asphalt repair is being paid for through a legal settlement with Vanguard Pipe, the manufacturer of the faulty pipe.
The board also approved a recommendation to accept a quote from Ferguson Waterworks in the amount of $25,900 for parts to be installed in a small main upgrade project proposed for Catherine Avenue in Overton.
Finally, the board approved a tentative budget for fiscal year 2016. The budget document projects a total of $3,679,000 in annual revenues for the district and total expenses of $3,674,500 for the year. The largest operating expense category for the district is wages and salaries where $1.1 million is projected to be spent for the year.
