Bakersfield City Council rescinds proposed 297% sewer rate hike<\/a><\/p>\nEvette Roldan, assistant water director for the city of Bakersfield, emphasized the importance of reliable systems for public health, stating, “This gives us an opportunity to make sure that those systems are reliable.” <\/p>\n
Roldan also said all revenue gained from the rising costs would go towards improving infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have any other source of revenue for this operation,” Roldan said, “It’s solely that that that rate that we have on our tax rule, so that’s it. Whatever funding we have, that’s what we have to work with. There are no real other alternatives for us.” <\/p>\n
Monday’s meeting, intended as an open conversation with City Councilmember Ken Weir, did not include the Ward 3 representative. <\/p>\n
Weir did not respond for comment on his absence. <\/p>\n
Mayor Karen Goh denied Eyewitness News’ request for comment at the meeting and sent over a statement later.<\/p>\n
“The sewer rate issue will be coming before Council for a decision,” Goh stated, “As elected officials, it\u2019s our responsibility to listen to all public input before voting . Therefore, it wouldn\u2019t be appropriate for me to comment at this time.”<\/p>\n
Roldan noted that the Prop 218 notice authorization would restart in January, with the council expected to decide on a rate to advertise to the public. <\/p>\n
She said the goal is to have a new rate adopted by March and in effect by July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
The next community meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 21, at the Kern City Civic Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK\/KBFX) \u2014 Bakersfield residents have a chance to voice their concerns about potential sewage rate hikes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,1610,13350,8076,4720,13351,13349,1786],"class_list":["post-15481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-city-council","tag-community-meeting","tag-infrastructure","tag-public-health","tag-public-input","tag-rate-hikes","tag-sewage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}