Purchase Water Truck for $74,000 - YES

With California deep in the grip of a historic drought, use of potable water for tasks like landscape irrigation and sewer line flushing has been restricted by the Marin Municipal Water District board. These two uses represent some of the Town's biggest water needs, and since April, the Town has been renting a water truck for $2,619 per month that allows us to pick up recycled water from the Central Marin Sanitation Agency and use that for our maintenance needs instead.

With the drought showing no sign of ending, and knowing that this won't be California's last drought, I voted to purchase a 2,000 gallon water truck for the Town's use. While this investment will start paying dividends in a little more than two years, we will achieve further return on the taxpayer dollars spent by renting the truck to neighboring cities for their use, since we don't need it 24/7.

For what it's worth, drought notwithstanding, using potable water to water plants or flush sewer lines never made sense to begin with (not to mention flushing toilets), and I'm hoping these changes will be part of a permanent and broader shift in how we use our precious drinking water, and toward using recycled water for uses where potable water is not necessary.