ON THE AGENDA: City Council, December 12, 2023

The treacherous currents of wastewater and presentations on the State of the City and Joshua Tree National Park top the final agenda of the year.

Alternate wastewater plant locations from the NV5 report included in the agenda.

What better way to conclude 2023 than with another discussion of wastewater? Not only is Council faced with a difficult decision on proceeding with a wastewater plant, it appears that City Hall’s system has sprung a leak leading to a $35,760 repair of the leach field.

This is our selective review of what promises to be a lengthy meeting. We encourage our readers to view the entire agenda on the city website. On Tuesday, the day of the meeting, a link will also be available to view the live stream.

Public Comment
You have an opportunity to comment on agenda items and issues important to you at every City Council meeting. Please use the opportunity to question your City Council members on the issues affecting our City. Comments on agenda items take place during the discussion of that item. Comments on non-agenda items take place near the end of the meeting. The Brown Act prevents Council from commenting on non-agenda items.

To comment, pick up a green (or occasionally gold) form at the entry desk, fill it out, and hand it to the Clerk, who is usually sitting in front of the Council bench on the right side. The public can also send comments via email to City Council Members and the cc Cindy Vasquez, the Council secretary. We suggest requesting that comments be read at the meeting.

INVOCATION
A local resident had been scheduled to give the invocation, following on the precedent of a secular invocation set by Karalee Hargrove at the November 14 meeting. However, the agenda lists Rev. Casey Orndorf as giving the invocation—no affiliation is listed in the agenda—we found him listed as belonging to the First Assembly of God Church in Twentynine Palms.

AWARDS, PRESENTATIONS, APPOINTMENTS AND PROCLAMATIONS
Two items stand out in a lengthy list of year-end presentations: Newly appointed Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent Jane Rodgers discusses the State of the Park and outgoing Mayor McArthur Wright gives his take on the State of the City.

CONSENT CALENDAR
The Consent Calendar usually consists of routine items approved with a single vote. The public is given a chance to make public comment on these items prior to the Council motion. Again, fill out a comment form if you wish to address one of the 13 items on this meeting’s Consent Calendar.

Highlights include second readings of ordinance revisions on Land Use Tables, Joshua Trees, and non-conforming buildings; the submission of a block grant, consideration of bids for unsignalized intersections, auditing, and the aforementioned leach field repair. An $853,014 warrant register includes $18,750 to Probolsky Research, which may be related to an October survey querying residents about a sales tax increase.

Detail of October 23 Probolsky Research survey

DISCUSSION AND POTENTIAL ACTION ITEMS

Item 20: Selection of Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem

At the May 9, 2023, meeting, Council decided to rotate the positions of Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem by district. In previous years, the positions were selected based on highest vote counts. 2024 is the first year the new system is being used.

Since the current Mayor, McArthur Wright, represents District 5, the next district in rotation is District 1, represented by current Mayor Pro Tem Steven Bilderain. Following the new system of rotation, Bilderain will step into the Mayor's seat for 2024 and District 2 Council Member, Joel Klink, becomes the Mayor Pro Tem. Interestingly both of these districts are up for election in November 2024. While Bilderain intends to run for re-election, the position of Klink is less clear. He has publicly said he does not intend to run. Will he want to go out serving as Mayor Pro Tem or pass those duties along to the next in line, Council member Daniel Mintz? Stay tuned.

Alternative wastewater plant locations with site flows from the NV5 report included in the agenda.

Item 21: Wastewater Alternate Sites and Cost
The treacherous crosscurrents the City now faces around wastewater come to a head at this meeting.

Some 29 Palms residents have long contended that a sewer system for the City should be driven only by proven need: threats to groundwater quality.

In the absence of concrete evidence on this question either way, last year the City commissioned a wastewater and aquifer study with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a process that takes five years once funded.

Since last summer, when the City disclosed proposed treatment plant locations, some City residents loudly advocated moving the site of the proposed system's wastewater treatment plant farther east—we covered one of the more contentious meetings here. These alternate locations would be farther from the populated areas that produce the wastewater and add significantly to the project cost.

Two months ago the City learned that the state grant for new sewer would total just $50 million, a far cry from the once anticipated $75 million or more.

At their October 24 meeting the Council voted to fully fund the USGS groundwater study and also funded a quick analysis of just what $50 million would get the City based on three different wastewater treatment plant locations. The estimate was to include the costs of ongoing operation.

The Council agenda report contains this analysis, done by engineering firm NV5

Connections analysis per the NVS report included in the agenda—the top chart listing parcels, the bottom listing connections.

The good news?
Even with a reduced budget and moving the plant farther east, a wastewater plant remains feasible.

With the reduced budget, the various plant location scenarios would provide sewer services to between 772 and 713 equivalent residential connections¹. Between 437 and 394 parcels would be served—a mix of single-family residential, multi-family and commercial. It’s unclear why the parcels served by the current Project Phoenix system are not included in this analysis.

Between 215 and 192 vacant lots would also be served. Presumably with sewer service, these now-vacant parcels would become far more likely to be developed into urgently needed new housing than they would have been without sewer.

Finally, a smaller sewer system like any of these three scenarios would meet the state grant criteria of accomplishing a minimum of 383 septic-to-sewer connections.

Then comes the bad news
To begin with, for all three site scenarios, NV5 estimates the actual construction cost at $70.8 million not $50 million. So the City would have to quickly find additional funds from grants or other sources to make up this sizable shortfall. It's unclear where such additional funds might come from.

Second, owing to the reduced budget, the City would get a far smaller treatment plant. The original plant was spec'd to handle 900,000 gallons per day, but this plant would handle just 150,000 gallons per day—one sixth the capacity of the originally planned plant. By itself, a plant this size would have little capacity to accommodate future growth.

Third, do the current NV5 estimates include the subsidized connection costs promised by prior City Manager Frank Luckino? In Yucca Valley, the biggest complaint from residents was that each resident had to pay their own sewer connection cost, sometimes with assistance from the City.

To cap it off, there's the cost of ongoing operation. NV5 estimates the unsubsidized yearly cost per customer at $2974 (for the closest site) to $3300 (for the easternmost site).

That said, NV5 suggests that in actual practice, sewer customers would be highly unlikely to bear those kinds of raw costs. NV5 cites other comparable cities, including Yucca Valley, where the cost of sewer is substantially subsidized by sales taxes, impact fees and grant funds.

FUTURE COUNCIL INITIATED ITEMS
This section was blank on the agenda, but here’s a reminder of what was listed on the November 14 agenda. Items are not usually removed from this list until they have been addressed as an actual agenda item.

1.  Seasonal Banners throughout the City.

2.  Identify ten lots to start a self-help construction program.

3.  Discussion of forming a Youth Advisory Commission.

4.  Discussion with the Homeless Committee on the possibility of hotels housing the homeless for short periods of time.

5.  Assess and examine pedestrian and street safety around the schools.

6.  Discussion on the peacock issue and creating an Ordinance to consider them wild animals and prohibiting them from being fed.

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1. Equivalent residential connection or “ERC” means a number that corresponds to the equivalent usage requirements of an average Individually-Metered Single-Family Residential service class connection, i.e., one residential Dwelling Unit. The ERC is used as a factor to convert a given daily water, wastewater and/or irrigation quality water capacity requirement for a particular property to the equivalent number of Individually-Metered Single-Family Residential connections, and serves as the baseline factor for establishing Connection Fees and other charges for the various service classes as provided herein.

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