City to raise water, sewer rates
BONNERS FERRY — The Bonners Ferry City Council voted to raise water and sewer rates for the upcoming year after a public hearing at city hall Dec. 2.
Water rates will be raised five percent, which will add just over $2 to the base rate for each residential customer to make the base charge with a 1 inch feed $44.26 for fiscal year 2015.
Commercial rates will be raised six percent, to make the base charge $44.68 on a 1 inch line. The rate changes will be applied to the billing cycle that starts in January 2015. Sewer rates will be raised 15 percent, which amounts to $3.21 on the base rate, raising it to $24.84 for the base rate. The same percentages will be applied to overage rates.
Although the city has laid out rate increases for every year over the next five, the city council was only able to change rates for the immediate upcoming year, said city attorney Andrakay Pluid.
“Next year we’ll have to have another rate hearing,” she told the council and Bonners Ferry citizens, “We’re not talking about setting in stone a five percent increase or a 15 percent increase over the next five years, we’re only talking about this year.”
The rate changes will address needs for the city water and sewer systems identified in an earlier Cost of Service Analysis (COSA) study by EES Consulting.
Both the water and sewer departments have much lower reserve funds than the COSA study suggested, with $0.5 million in each fund, short of the $1.4 million needed for the water department, and $1 million needed for sewer. Other than the northside water tank and associated water line replacement, the water department is fairly up-to-date on capital improvement needs.
The sewer department, on the other hand, is looking at $3 million in waste treatment facility needs and $3.75 million in other fixes over the next 20 years, EES Consulting told the city.
Citizens came out to testify at the hearing, none in support of rate raises.
“Sewer at 15 percent is a little high,” Dave Gray told the council. “People who receive raises receive maybe one, two or three percent.”
People were concerned primarily about the effect on people with fixed incomes, and asked if the city had looked into the kinds of cuts they could affect in order to pay for capital improvements.
“Everything limps along for several years, then all of a sudden we need this money,” said councilman Rick Alonzo. “So we have to put a bigger raise into effect than if we had just done it gradually a little bit every year. That’s part of what we’re looking at doing here. After one year we can look at it and see if we need to continue it or reduce it down. If we can’t keep up, it will cost us a lot more in the long run.”
“We have put off raising rates for so many years that we don’t have any reserve,” said councilwoman Connie Wells. “There are a lot of problems in the sewer system that need to be fixed that we have neglected for years because we don’t have any money.”
Another meeting will be held to change the Equivalent Dwelling Unit or EDU that sets sewer rates for commercial customers. Currently at 6,000 gallons, reductions in usage prompted EES to suggest the EDU be set at 4,500 gallons.
This will most dramatically effect commercial users, who pay multiples of the EDU depending on usage. In order to change the EDU, a change will have to be made to city ordinance No. 372.