First Name | Ralph |
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Last Name | McIntosh |
Email Address | ralphmcintosh@rmwd.org |
Affiliation | Ramona Municipal Water District |
Subject | ARB On/Off Road Diesel Regulations |
Comment | To Whom it may concern: I am sending this short email to express my concern over the ARB On/Off Road Diesel Regulations. Currently we are in what I believe to be the perfect storm. Drought, declining water sales, declining property tax revenues, increasing water costs, a bad economy and the ever increasing amount of new regulations is hamstringing all public agencies. Asking us to conform to these standards with all of the above mentioned issues just makes a bad situation worse. The state and federal government are not the only beneficiaries of the bad times. Every branch of government is impacted in the same manner. No one is immune. To keep passing this type of thing on to us will only worsen the situation. This is the trickle down theory at its worse. Although we are a small agency staff wise, we serve a farily large community of about 45,000 people and basically provide city services such as water, parks & recreation, sewer, recycled water, fire, paramedic, rescue, etc. Over the last year I have had to eliminate jobs and cut programs within this organization in an effort to cut costs and lessen the burden of the rate payer. To date this regulation is taking up the time of one employee full time. We can't afford that being we have such a small staff. Don't get me wrong, we are all very concerned about environment and our childrens and grandchildrens future. This plan should have been implemented much in the same manner as are passenger vehicles and light trucks. Make the industry comply with the new regulations by a certain time period to meet certain regulatory requirements. Don't just take a vehicle and say that it doesn't comply so if you can't get it into compliance you must replace it. This has been done in our case. We have a 1987 International 10 yard dumptruck with approximately 70K miles on it. There is nothing wrong with this vehicle other than the fact that it doesn't meet your standards when it comes to diesel particulate requirements. We have tried to retrofit it at an enormous cost but we still can't meet your regulation standards. These regulations will hit us hard in the next few years as well with our off road fleet. So now I am forced to expend $150K of taxpayer/ratepayer funds to purchase a replacement vehicle. This alone will cause a 1-2% increase in our water rates. Water rates are skyrocketing at historical paces. With rates projected to incease by 20-30% in the next year I don't know how much more I can ask of our customers. I have no more positions I can cut. The only thing I guess to look at would be to consider closing fire stations, or cutting safety personnel. These regulations are also very complicated and hard to figure out due to the differring deadlines. I believe that if you want a certain vehicle off the road then state the date that it is required to be off the road. Don't just string along dates that are all over the place to meet a requirement for one vehicle vs. another. I would very much like to be in attendance for this weeks public meeting, but I don't even have the funds to fly to Sacramento to attend. I believe these regulations will drive the states economy further into the tank. I personally know of five local construction businesses that have gone belly up due to the economy, but mostly because they know they can't afford to comply with these regulations and stay in business. I feel that this will drive private business to leave this state, further compounding our economic crises. So I emplor you to look at for this requlation a little harder so that government agencies and private companies can stay in business, and keep this state the greatest state in the union. Ralph McIntosh General Manager Ramona Municipal Water District |
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Date and Time Comment Was Submitted | 2010-04-19 09:02:27 |
If you have any questions or comments please contact Clerk of the Board at (916) 322-5594.