SOUTH GATE CITY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA
Monday, November 20, 2023 at
5:00 p.m.
SOUTH GATE COUNCIL CHAMBERS
8650 CALIFORNIA AVE
SOUTH GATE, CA 90280
DIAL-IN-NUMBER: 1 (669) 900-6833
MEETING ID:897 6151 7174
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Call to Order/Roll Call
CALL TO ORDER:
Maria del Pilar Avalos, Mayor
ROLL CALL:
Yodit Glaze, City Clerk
City Officials
MAYOR CITY CLERK
Maria del Pilar Avalos Yodit Glaze
VICE MAYOR CITY TREASURER
Gil Hurtado Jose De La Paz
COUNCIL MEMBERS CITY MANAGER
Joshua Barron Chris Jeffers
Maria Davila
Al Rios
CITY ATTORNEY
Raul F. Salinas
1 Meeting Schedule
The regular meetings of the City Council are held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, closed session business will usually commence at 5:30 p.m., when scheduled, and general business session will commence at 6:30 p.m.
Brown Act
Agendas are drafted to accurately state what the legislative body is being asked to consider. The legislative body can take action on "all items" listed on the agenda and be in compliance with the open meeting laws. Under the Brown Act, no action may be taken on a matter unless it is listed on the agenda, or unless certain emergency or special circumstances exist. The governing body may direct staff to investigate and/or schedule certain matters for consideration at a future meeting.
City's Vision Statement
We envision a thriving, safe and inclusive community where everyone has the opportunity to access exceptional services, education and support to be resilient and live full, vibrant lives.
Public Communications
Public Comments on agenda items are limited to three (3) minutes. All comments are to be addressed directly to the Agency Members not to the members of the public.
Meeting Compensation Disclosure
Pursuant to Government Code Section 54952.3: Disclosure of compensation for meeting attendance by City Council Members is $790 monthly regardless of the amount of meetings.
Open Session Agenda
1. Water Customer Billing Discussion
The City Council will consider giving Staff direction on possible remedies relating to water customer bills. (CM)
Documents:
Item 1 Report 11202023.pdf
Special Meeting Adjournment
I, Yodit Glaze, City Clerk, certify that a true and correct copy of the foregoing Meeting Agenda was posted on November 16, 2023, at 11:55 a.m., as required by law.
Yodit Glaze
City Clerk
2 GENERAL NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC
The City Council adopted new rules relating to the conduct of the public meetings, proceedings, and business in the City of South Gate on July 12, 2022, (Resolution 2022-38-CC) and go into effect on August 1, 2022. Resolution #2022-38-CC is available at the City Clerk’s Office.
MEETING SCHEDULE
Regular meetings of the City Council are held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, closed session meetings will commence at 5:30 p.m. unless posted otherwise on its agenda. The regular City Council meetings will commence at 6:30 p.m. Agendas are available at the following locations:
City Clerk
Office,
Public Notice Boards at City Hall, and on the
City’s web page at https://www.cityofsouthgate.org
The Public can sign up to receive automatic notices of postings of agendas for the City Council or any other Commission or Board of the City of South Gate. Visit the City webpage and click on the Agenda & Minutes icon. That will take you the page where an individual can enter their email in the “Email Updates” box to register.
PUBLIC COMMENT/PARTICIPATION
Any person may request to address a legislative body during a public meeting. The Presiding Officer will call upon those present in the Council Chambers first. After all speakers in the Chambers have spoken, the Presiding Officer will call upon those participating via zoom or teleconference.
Speakers are limited to three (3) minutes on any item listed on the agenda, including public hearings.
Under Comments from the Audience portion, speakers are also limited to a single three (3) minutes time limit. Comments from the Audience is initially limited to 45 minutes at each meeting. Any speaker still wishing to speak, that did not speak, will have an addition Comments from the Audience opportunity after the last business item is finished. The Presiding Officer may extend the time limit as long as there is no objection from the City Council as a body.
To ensure that the public is able to participate, the City provides the opportunity to submit their comments in person, virtually, email, phone call, mail and any other method which may become available. Methods of participation may be subject to change during other such times when a State of Emergency, Health Order or State Executive Order limits in-person participation.
CURFEW
In absence of a motion duly adopted by majority vote of the City Council, the Presiding Officer may adjourn the City Council meetings at 10:30 p.m. The Presiding Officer may ask the City Council if any agenda items listed should be continued or dealt with during the meeting. For those items to be continued, the City Council can direct the item be placed on the next City Council agenda or the current meeting may be adjourned to a time certain at which time the meeting shall be reconvened as an Adjourned Regular Meeting of the City Council and action upon the published agenda continued.
STAFF REPORTS
As a general rule, staff reports. or other written documentation are prepared/organized with respect to each item of business listed on the agenda. Meeting agendas and staff reports are available at least 72- hours prior to the scheduled regular City Council meeting and a minimum of 24-hours prior to a Special City Council meeting. There are times when the City Council receives written material. revised material after the posting of agendas, these materials are become a public record and will be available for public view within 72-hours after the meeting in which they were received. Those materials and any other public 3 document can be inspected in the City Clerk's Office located at 8650 California Avenue, South Gate.
SERVICES TO FACILITATE ACCESS TO PUBLIC MEETINGS
In compliance with the American with Disabilities Act, if you need special assistance to participate in the City Council Meetings, please contact the Office of the City Clerk. Notification 48 hours prior to the City Council Meeting will enable the City to make reasonable arrangements to assure accessibility. For further information, please contact the Office of the City Clerk at (323) 563-9510 or via email at [email protected]
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4 Item No. l
C'Uy of South Gate
CITY COUNCIL
AG-3fDA BULL
For the Special Meeting of: November 20, 2023
Originating Department: City Manager's Office
SUBJECT: SELECTION OF WATER BILL REIMBURSEMENT REBATE/CREDIT PROGRAM AND AUTHORIZATION FOR THE DIRECTOR OF Al)MINISTRATIVE
SERVICES TO APPROPRIATE NECESSARY WATER FUNDS AND ADMINISTER
THE REBATE/CREDIT PROGRAM FOR ELIGIBLE WATER CUSTOMERS PURPOSE: On November 14, 2023, during the regular City Council Meeting, the City Council received a report from staff on the investigation regarding customer concerns of high water consumption billing. The City Council requested a Special City Council Meeting to be held on Monday, November 20, 2023, to discuss potential direction for Staff as it relates to customer water bills.
RECOMMENDATION: The City Council will consider:
a. Receiving a report on options to address water customer bills; b. Giving direction to staff on the prefeired option along with any criteria to qualify for any billing adjustment;
c. Authorizing the Director of Administrative Services to approve the disbursement of funds to qualifying water customers and appropriating the necessary :tunds from the Water Fund to implement the preferred option selected by the City Council; and d. Directing the Director of Administrative Services to file a report with the City Council on the total cost of the Water Bill Reimbursement Credit Program within 12 months.
FISCAL IMPACT: The Water Bill Reimbursement Credit Program will have a fiscal impact to the Water Fund Revenue; however, without knowing the preferred option and/or criteria attached, the exact amount cannot be calculated at this time. It will depend on the number of water customers that qualify based on criteria, if any, decided by City Council. Since the data has to be manually worked up and we don't know the criteria filters being applied, the likely exposure is between low 6-figure to a 7-figure revenue adjustment ultimately being incurred.
Additionally, any program established by the City Council would also require staff to engage some temporary help to process the program efficiently without disrupting the normal billing process that would need to continue. The more complex the criteria the more time needed to manually review accounts and retrieve data. We would expect the time needed to implement a new program to be upwards of 120-days from the point a decision is made by the City Council. 5 BACKGROUND: Since late August 2023, the City began to notice an uptick in customer inquiries about water charges on their utility bill. That was further confirmed as several residents over the last several City Council meetings also expressed disagreement with charges on their utility bill and asked for the City Council to investigate. In September and October, residents contacted the Water Customer Service Division expressing similar complaints about the bills for the August, September and October billing cycles.
The City Manager's Office, Public Works and Administrative Services Departments collaborated to complete an investigation of the complaints. On November 14, 2023, staff presented the findings during the regular City Council Meeting. The presentation included an overview of how residential customers use water, the process for reading water meters and billing customers, and factors that could impact water consumption. It also presented the factors that could impact water billing such as operational issues, software, human error, leaks and changes in season. The presentation included an overview of financial assistance available to water customers. Finally, it included recommendations for improvements.
The City Council expressed the need for the City to take a greater level of responsibility for the water billing concerns and provide payments/credits to customers. To allow the City Council an oppoitunity to discuss and provide direction to Staff, a Special City Council Meeting was set for Monday, November 20, 2023.
There are many program options that the City Council could adopt and the size of the potential pool of benefactors will be determined by the option and any criteria applied to it. These options can be reduced to two types.
Option l- Simply directing staff to automatically rebate/adjust customer accounts based on a set of defining filters. Those filters would be items like:
a. Accounts with a percentage determined to be viewed as an abnormality. For example, any customer with a bill that was 30%; 50%; 100% or greater than the point in time at which we are being asked to compare to.
b. The point of time measure is a critical element as well. It could be same time period of prior year (August 2022 versus August 2023) in which the high bill occurred. Other examples could be a season period (Summer 2022 average versus high bill month).
There are many other time periods which could be looked at to determine how to measure a high bill. There was initial talk of using the prior six months to a high bill and averaging to determine a base to apply for figuring the difference.
Option 2 - Mailing a letter to all residential customers notifying them they may qualify for a rebate/credit relating to their August, September, and/or October water bills. To see if they qualify, they would simply have to sign and return this letter by mail, email or drop off at City Hall. The customer would be provided with the option of setting up a meeting with staff to review their account or staff could review to determine qualification.
Criteria would need to be established as in Option 1. Staff recommends the option as manner to allow customers to engage staff with the situations. We would suggest the quali'fying criteria 6 standards to be:
a. We compare the customer's August, September and/or October bill to the same period in 2022. If the 2023 billed usage was a minimum of 50% higher than the same time period month in 2022, they would be eligible to receive a payment/credit for the difference. b. The 50% threshold difference has to be at least 5 HCF or greater. If a customer had used 8 HCF in August 2022 but was billed 12 HCF in 2023, they would not qualify. c. If the customer has received an ARPA or LIHWAP payment for either the August or September 2023 bills, they would not qualify. A concern has been raised by the City's Auditors that those entities may successfully argue that their funds were used to undertake the rebate/credit.
The simpler the criteria applied, the easier it will be to explain to a customer how a rebate/credit was arrived and its rationale for being applied. Any program approved by the City Council will take time to implement without seriously disrupting current billing operations. In addition, determining the applicability of a customer is being done manually, given the limitations within the current software.
ATTACHMENT: None
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