Biased survey of Montara Water customers yields predictable result

The results of survey of Montara Water and Sanitary District customers by an anti-public ownership think tank [PDF of survey] are in and they’re pretty much what you’d expect.

At the end of 2004, residents of Montara Water and Sanitary District received a mysterious survey in the mail. The survey, from the libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute, explained that property taxes had increased as a result of the purchase of the water system from California-American Water Company (owned by the German utilities conglomerate RWE), and then asked them "Would you vote for this measure again knowing what you know now?" At the time, some Coastsiders characterized it as a "push poll".

The researcher, Adrian Moore, has made a career of arguing that private ownership of utilities is better than public ownership. And a number of private utilities, including the former owners of Montara’s water, contribute to his employer. Moore provided an pro-privatization FAQ to something called Coalition Against a Government Takeover which was fighting a public takeover of RWE-owned Kentucky-American Water Company.

If the survey was designed to make public ownership look bad, it has done its job.

By a two-to-one margin (62% to 31%), respondents said that would not vote to buy the water system again [PDF of survey results].

After that, the rest of the results are an anticlimax:

• 62% said the quality of the service was unchanged.
• 67% said the quality of the water was unchanged.
• 47% said the cost of water bills is "worse".
• 71% said the cost of property taxes is "worse".
• 76% said they were aware that Montara and Moss Beach homeowners are paying an additional $169 in property taxes since the bonds were issued to buy the water system.

There are plenty of cautions that should be observed before interpreting this data. The survey was released between Christmas and New Year’s Day—timing that is guaranteed to reduce response rates.  89% of Montara and Moss Beach residents who received the survey did not respond. Also, the survey was clearly biased against public ownership. I strongly recommend you read it for yourself. It focused out the negative (the cost of the bonds) without pointing the positives (local ownership and control of rates) of the acquisition. This could certainly have influenced those opposed to public ownership to respond in greater numbers.

However, because the survey didn’t ask people how they voted in the election, only how they would vote if they could do it over, we’ll never know if the sample was biased. In 2001, 81% of Montara residents voted to issue bonds to buy their water system.

Meanwhile,  Felton in Santa Cruz County is gearing up for an election on whether to buy out their own Cal-Am system.  This data should be very useful to Cal-Am their fight to keep Felton voters from buying them out.