The proposal was originally slated for the April 20 city council meeting, but voting was continued until April 27 to allow the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce to solicit opinions from its members.

After the Chamber reported statistics from only 4 percent of the businesses it polled, and after city staff only received one inquiry, the council moved ahead with the planned rate hikes—5 percent for water and wastewater, and 4 percent for solid waste.

While Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzi Blackman agreed with members of the city council that the low response wasn't demonstrative of a negative reaction, she said she's concerned that area businesses had less than a week to consider the proposal. "We have to draw the same conclusion, that [the increases] didn't cause an outrage," she said, "but it's not a fair way to have an increase."

Sunnyvale Public Information Officer John Pilger said that notices about the possible increases were sent with utility bills and in the form of postcards that went out approximately two weeks before the original April 20 meeting date, but at that time, specific rate information wasn't available.

That's the issue that concerns Blackman. The rate information wasn't available to the public until 5 p.m. on April 16, the Friday before the meeting. "The city cannot put out a report after 5 p.m. on Friday and expect us to hit the ground running on Monday," she said.

After receiving a continuance at the April 20 meeting, the Chamber of Commerce worked to notify its members over the next week. The Chamber sent out a survey via "E-Blast," an email notification service, to 478 members. Approximately 700 businesses belong to the Chamber and, according to Councilman Fred Fowler, there are about 9,000 businesses in Sunnyvale altogether.

At the meeting, Chamber Board Chairman Arley Marley reported the survey results. A majority of the businesses that responded were not in favor of the utility-rate increases, and 93 percent said that they weren't given enough time to respond to the proposal. But those results reflected only 19 businesses of the 478 that received surveys.

To Marley and Blackman, this indicates that more time was needed to gather responses, especially since Chamber members only had 20 business hours to reply to the questions in order for the data to be presented at the city council meeting. But Fowler said that this is a common problem when soliciting feedback. "We always wish we had more time," he said at the meeting.

Blackman said that the utility rates aren't the issue—compared to nearby cities, Sunnyvale's commercial utility rates are above average for solid-waste collection, but below average for water and wastewater. "We know these rates are competitive with the surrounding community," Marley said at the meeting.

But it's the short notice that's the problem. Pilger said the city will likely look into extending the noticing period for certain agenda items.