Editorial:

Perception is 90% of reality. It is even more so within the context of politics. This is some-thing that the Otay Water Board must not have considered when they voted 4-1 to extend lifetime retiree health care benefits to a large group of district employees, their spouses, and dependents. These same incredible benefits were given to a group of managers last month. Otay Water District residents are incensed.

   Water customers for all intents and purposes are at the mercy of their water provider. There is no alternative to your service provider, nor is there much that can be done when water boards vote to raise rates. Rate increases seem to go up every year, despite heavy rainfall years, conservation efforts, and the use of recycled water. Water rates keep going up, gas and electric rates continue to climb, gasoline prices yo-yo up and down, just about everything is going up with the exception of salaries. If you are lucky enough to have a job (and not working for the Otay Water District) your salary has most likely remained stagnate or you have had to suffer cuts to your take home pay.

   While most everybody else has to do more with less, tighten the proverbial belt to afford to pay for basic living expenses, ratepayers in the South Bay find it incredulous that the Otay Water Board is so cavalier with their money. As they have learned, it is apparently easy to be generous with other people’s money.

   Board members Jaime Bonilla, Gary Croucher, Jose Lopez, and David Gonzalez showed no empathy for the ratepayers in the Otay Water District. They were not swayed by the standing-room-only crowd that came out to protest lifetime healthcare benefits for District employees and their dependents. Instead, the four board members plowed ahead and voted to be more generous than this economy and community can afford. It is these types of arrogant actions on behalf of local government agencies that fuel the fire for folks to join Tea Party political groups.

   If the lifetime benefits package is a good deal today, and the jury is still out on whether or not it is a good deal, then it would still be a good deal a year from now. If the Otay Water Board majority did indeed represent the ratepayers who elected them to office to represent their interests, and if the board majority had listened to the community, they would have, should have deferred, this vote on benefits to a later date, a better time when the economy may be in a better situation. But no, this board shut out the ratepayers, claiming a political movida, and moved forward.

   Perception is 90% of reality and the perception of the Otay Water Board is that they are arrogant! Fuel for the fire, come election time!