City leaders vote to increase sewage rates in Pacific Grove

City officials in Pacific Grove have voted to increase sewage rates to help pay for a 10-year plan to fix the city’s failing system. Protesters against the sewage rate increase needed more than 3,000 letters opposing the rate hike but fell short by 970 letters. Now residents in the city can expect a higher bill.

“There is still a lot of work to do for our sewer system, and so we’re moving ahead to institute the new rates,” Mayor Bill Kampe said.

New rates will help cover the cost of fixing old pipelines that date back to the early 1900s. Pacific Grove residents will now see a 5 percent rate increase on their monthly sewer bill, totaling about $42 a month, and some residents in the area aren’t too happy.

“It’s another dollar out of the pocket, another dinner we don’t have, the questions are do we want something to occur here,” resident Stephen McCullough said.

McCullough is referring to the sewage spill back in May. When roughly 50,000 gallons of raw sewage poured out onto residential streets and into the ocean.

“We need to keep our oceans safe, and I understand that the more people we have here, the more we are going to have to upgrade our systems, and the more we upgrade our systems the more it costs,” McCullough said.

Public Works Superintendent Daniel Gho said the plan is to work on nine different sewage projects over the next 10 years.

“We cannot have our sanitary sewer system infrastructure fail; it causes immediate hazards, health and safety issues to our residents,” Gho said.

“Keeping up with these things is a good thing. A negative would be if we don’t bring the price back down after the purchase of the new equipment and the new overhaul,” McCullough said.

The good news is after the first two years of a five percent rate hike, the city plans to drop that to 2.6 percent the remaining eight years.

“I hope for truth, we did vote for these people and we trust them,” McCullough said.

The city said the sewage rate increase will bring in more than $800,000 over the next couple of years. City officials said the sewer fund is separate from the general fund and can only be used for sewer maintenance.