SANTA CRUZ >> City residential water customers will see mandatory water rationing begin, for the second consecutive year, on May 1.

Commercial businesses also will be asked to cut back water use, though without fines or specific allotments, as the state enters its fourth year of drought.

“We eventually had more people asking City Council to ration water than the converse,” Councilman Micah Posner said, commending the smoothness of the transition back into the city’s water emergency status. “It just shows that we’re serious about conserving, we’re serious about living within our means, as far as water, and that puts us in a unique and enviable position in the state of California.

Councilman David Terrazas said that water conservation is the “new normal,” and urged more attention to monitoring the city’s commercial bulk water sales, which is highly visible, if only representing a small fraction of the city’s overall water use.

The Santa Cruz City Council unanimously approved the Stage 3 Water Emergency, which simultaneously implements the water rationing, at its meeting Tuesday afternoon. One member of the public, the city’s Water Commission chairman, spoke on the issue and voiced his support for the move.

Vice Mayor Cynthia Mathews asked why the city was going all the way to a Stage 3 emergency, with a goal of a status-quo 25 percent water use reduction, if the state was only mandating a 10 percent cutback for the city.

City Water Conservation Manager Toby Goddard said that though the state was acknowledging the effort Santa Cruz has already put in over the past several years to conserve water, its lower mandate had nothing to do with the city’s long-term responsibilities. Unlike other communities across the state, the city is dependent on its local surface water sources, not the Sierra snowpack or other large regional reservoirs.

“It’s about us managing our resources and calling for the cuts and … to conservatively and wisely manage our resources in light of what is going to happen next year,” Goddard said.

The water emergency has no set end date, and will continue until water conditions improve or the state modifies its own mandates, Goddard said.

Later in the meeting, the council discussed and approved the $2 million purchase of a downtown property, formerly housing a thrift store. Funding to purchase the site, at 521 Front St., will come from the city’s Public Trust Fund, which also provided the loan to the Santa Cruz Warriors to build its Kaiser Permanente Arena.

Council members briefly discussed the possibility of using the space for uses like parking facilities, affordable housing and mixed commercial use. They ultimately opted not to prematurely determine the site’s future, but will look to pay back the Public Trust Fund.

The city’s more than 1,5000 volunteers in 2014 also were honored in time for National Volunteer Week, and city Green Business and Green Building awards also were issued. The council unanimously voted in support of the countywide Youth Violence Prevention Strategic Plan after a presentation on the report.