From: Patrick Cuda
To: Kimberley White; Alex Stillman; Stacy Atkins-Salazar; Meredith Matthews; Sarah Schaefer Cc: Rhea Varley; Moore, Heaven@Waterboards; Jennifer Kalt; Aerin Monroe Subject: SUBJECT: Urgent Public Comment: Request to Pull Item 3 (Resolution 267-04) from the Consent Calendar Regarding Stormwater Fee Accountability
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 4:53:17 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Dear Arcata City Council
I am writing to formally request that Item 3 (Resolution No. 267-04) be pulled from tonight’s Consent Calendar and moved to the regular business agenda for further study. Because this resolution directly authorizes a $277,963.19 annual assessment levied on local rate-paying citizens, the item should be reviewed openly to clarify the current state of our aging stormwater system. This study might save you from having to come back again to ask citizens for even more money after having just raised the water bills.
Specifically, the report leans on a general narrative tracing back to actions from 1993, while completely glossing over the fact that the city's localized Stormwater Management Program (SWMP) has not seen a comprehensive administrative update since 2005. It is unacceptable to ask property owners to absorb ongoing fees when the structural planning documents governing those fees are more than two decades out of date. This administrative neglect directly contributes to a lack of clear performance metrics and hides real infrastructure failures from public oversight.
This lack of transparency becomes an active legal liability when reviewing unresolved field assets. The Water Board and municipal staff are already fully aware that the City continues to use an unpermitted, 75-year-old, 30-inch legacy stormwater pipe running roughly 700 feet directly underneath Jacoby Creek Charter School. This infrastructure is a defective 'hot potato' that daylights untreated urban runoff straight into protected state wetlands and North Jacoby Creek. Treating this asset as a known regulatory blind spot while continuing to pass automated maintenance levies on the public is completely unacceptable.
By sending this notification, the city is formally placed on notice regarding specific obligations across three distinct regulatory frameworks:
Phase II MS4 Prohibitions: Under California’s Phase II Small MS4 general permit, cities are strictly prohibited from maintaining illicit connections or unpermitted infrastructure that dumps urban pollutants into active wetlands and salmonid streams like Jacoby Creek.
Misallocation of Fund 666: The city justifies tonight's Resolution No. 267-04 by stating that Fund 666 is used for the "operation, maintenance, improvement, and replacement of City stormwater drainage facilities." If property owners are being continuously charged, why is a high-risk, defective legacy asset left underneath an elementary school to pollute state wetlands? Proposition 218 Violations: Proposition 218 legally mandates that fees cannot exceed the proportional cost of providing the service. By neglecting major infrastructure failures while continuing to charge automated rates, the city is failing to provide the comprehensive drainage maintenance required by law.
The City Council cannot continue to rubber-stamp the collection of property fees on autopilot while relying on an obsolete 2005 master plan and ignoring major environmental risks under our local schools. I urge the Council to pull this item from the Consent Calendar and initiate an immediate multi-agency infrastructure review of the legacy pipe network at Jacoby Creek School.
By copying state regulators and local waterkeeper advocates on this communication, I am requesting that an independent environmental verification be initiated regarding this unpermitted discharge.
Sincerely,
J Patrick Cudahy
Arcata Resident