Please delay the $400 million water infrastructure plan, given the pandemic on our hands, the community health risks of having a large homeless population in every nook and cranny of our city, and the ~$500 million of contingent liabilities that residents are already on the hook for (to pay city employee benefits and pensions). We do not need it, we do not want it, and we cannot afford it without doubling household water costs and taking on a massive amount of debt.
We have a water supply that works and is not particularly expensive. Spending $400 million to replace the existing water supply with a recycled/re-used supply was not supported by any neighborhood association when you, against all of our objections, recently approved this plan.
If you want to tax us further [note: we already have the highest state & local taxes in the country], please tax us to: provide masks and other essential equipment for our first responders; pay for HVAC in every school classroom; actually build affordable housing. But please, do not spend $$$ we do not have on something we neither need nor want. Nothing "sustainable" about that.
Jeremy K. Rogers
Santa Monica
