Sewer utility rate options hashed over at council
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
In the past council and administration have talked in great length about sewer rates and what options are available, and at the June 19 regular council meeting five options were presented.
“We’ve put a lot of time on this looking at various alternatives. Mel and myself have looked at all of these options, trying to figure out which would be the easiest, which would be the best,” said Chief Administrative Officer Dwight Stanford.
“We’re saying that none of them are perfect, none of them are even close to being perfect, but probably the way we’re doing it right now is probably the best.”
“The best for who? Certainly not the people,” said Councillor Earl Best who wanted to have options three and four looked at further.
“If we’re not sewer averaging, what we’re doing during the summer (is) when people are watering their lawn, we’re billing for services not rendered.”
Option one is to have a second meter installed to measure the water used for outside irrigation. The water used then wouldn’t have a variable sanitary sewer levy applied on the monthly billing, but the home owner would be responsible for the cost of the new meter, $284, plus the plumber and cost of installation.
Option two would be to bill customer a flat monthly rate. The rate would be $41 for residential, and would not provide any incentive to conserve water. The flat rate would not include commercial services.
Option three is to provide the customer with the opportunity to make an application for a summer water sewer averaging credit in the fall, after the watering season. For example, the customer would receive $25 if they can prove they practiced water conservation through the use of low flush toilets, rain barrels and an energy efficient front load washing machine.
Option four would be implementing sewer averaging, and option five would be to maintain the same method being presently used, which is a fixed rate up until a certain amount of water is used.
“I have been a proponent of lower sewer rates…I don’t know where to go with this, I would still like to see our sewer rates lower but when we look at this it indicates we should be increasing it. I’m at a loss as to what to do,” said Councillor John Rempel.
Currently 51 per cent of residential billing revenue is from the fixed monthly charge, and approximately 60 per cent of the sewer expenses are of a fixed nature.
The 2013 sewer utility budget has expenses of $3,769,614 but a revenue of only $3,391,190. If sewer averaging were implemented it would be a financial cost to the town of $130,000 to $140,000, depending on the weather for the months of June to Sept.
If 100 per cent of the amount were applied to the flat rate portion the monthly billing flat rate would need to increase by $2.58 per month to offset. If the cost were applied to the variable rate then the cost for m3 water would increase by $.19 per m3 of water.
“What bothers me is any other system we go to is going to penalize the low users of water and that’s something that I cannot support,” said Councillor Bob Sobol.
“We have to continue in our efforts to conserve water and having our sewer services hooked to use of water is the best way to do that. It’s not perfect, and no I don’t like it, but it’s the fairest in my opinion and I would certainly be supporting option five in this issue.”
The discussion was accepted as information for now, and council and administration will continue to look at all the options.