On October 23, the Los Angeles City Council will consider approving a 1,000% increase in their Street Damage Restoration Fee (SDRF) ordinance. This is a fee that companies or utilities pay when they must cut in to a street in order to fix or build new infrastructure like internet cables, gas lines, or water pipes. A 1000% increase will make it more expensive to build housing that need these kinds of services and more expensive to repair our already crumbling infrastructure.
Developers, utilities and infrastructure providers pay when they excavate a city street. This fee increase will eventually equate to a $114 million per year increase in new costs for property owners and ratepayers; to which it’s being approved with little to no public notice or input.
LADWP ratepayers will get hit the hardest since they’re projected to pay $37 million per year for their infrastructure improvements. The City of Los Angeles cannot guarantee that all the money will be used for repaving.
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