The Lodi City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing Nov. 4 on an ordinance amending Municipal Code section 13.12.181(C), the part of the sewer-service code that sets how metered customers' sewer charges are figured from their water use. The item, F.1 on the posted agenda, asks the council to conduct the hearing, waive the first reading and introduce the ordinance. The staff item that set the hearing went to the council's Oct. 21 consent calendar; the city's legislative tracker had not posted the council's Oct. 21 action as of Nov. 2, but the hearing appears on the city's posted Nov. 4 agenda packet. Introduction is not adoption.
The ordinance text says all moderate-strength users, a category that can include residential, commercial and industrial customers as classified by the public works director, are billed on average winter water usage. It would base the monthly sewer bill for the year on water use in the preceding December, January, February and March, dropping the highest-use month and averaging the other three. High-strength users are billed separately, on the actual flow, BOD and suspended solids they discharge. The Nov. 4 staff report from Public Works Director Christina Castro says the amendment changes only the method used to determine sewer billing volume, does not modify adopted sewer rates, and that any revenue impact depends on customers' water consumption. Neither the October nor the November staff report estimates what individual bills would be.
City documents differ on what the current method is. The Oct. 21 staff report said the current code bases bills on December through February and proposed adding March. But the city's undated Wastewater Averaging FAQ says a customer's wastewater bill is calculated from average water use in December, January, February and March, with the highest month dropped, and says the months are specified in Municipal Code section 13.12.181. A 2023 Water and Wastewater Rate Study posted on the city's website, marked as a draft report, likewise describes a winter-quarter average of December through March, excluding the highest month. The documents reviewed do not say which method is applied to bills today, whether the ordinance would change billing or align the code with existing practice, or when any change would start. The city has not been asked to explain; the pre-amendment code text was not available for this report.