By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
As the City of Burlington Common Council held its public hearing Tuesday night for the 2014 budget – for an audience of one, who wasn’t there to comment – one part of the budget got batted around heavily.
A week after directing city staff to pursue a 10 percent rate hike for city sewer rates in order to increase revenue during a budget workshop session, the council debated that situation again.
“The impression I got walking out of that meeting was that everyone went along with the 10 percent increase,” said Mayor Bob Miller as aldermen spoke up to discuss the sewer rates.
But with the council set to approve a sanitary sewer ordinance change – which it did, unanimously – Tuesday night, the questions remained about just how much to increase the sewer rates.
City Attorney John Bjelajac said that the revised ordinance will allow the city to properly set the rates – both fixed rates and usage rates – now that contracts have expired with large users (such as Nestles and Echo Lake Foods) that were put together to fund the new wastewater treatment plant 20-plus years ago.
Those contracts expired at the end of 2011, and part of the questions raised last week was how much revenue the city missed out on by not having industrial user fees set up for the large users.
However much the city missed out on, the fact remained at Tuesday night’s meeting that rates would have to be raised so revenue could meet expenses.
In addition to the 10 percent sewer rate hike, water rates will rise 3 percent as well.
Department of Public Works Supervisor Craig Workman said the two rate increases work out to roughly a 6 percent overall hike on the bill. For example, if an average user is paying $100 now for water and $100 for sewer, the water bill would go up to $103 and the sewer bill to $110.
The combined increase of $13 is 6.5 percent of the total utility bill.
More pressing to the council, though, than numbers and percentages, was making sure the large users did their part, and that residents wouldn’t be footing a larger bill to subsidize them.
Bjelajac assured the council that the new sewer rates in the ordinance would allow just that.
“Those original contracts are gone,” he said. “We’re going to rely upon our ordinances to set the rates. We don’t need the contracts.”
After the meeting, both Bjelajac and Miller said that none of the utility’s customers would bear an unfair burden.
“Nobody is subsidizing anybody else in the system,” Bjelajac said, which Miller echoed.
The city budget will come in front of the council next month for approval.
-
-
-
-
-