(4/8) At the April Town Council meeting, the council approved, on a 4 to 1 vote, an increase of water rates by 36% per year for the next five years and thereafter an annual increase of 3%. If fully implemented, the five years of increases will increase the cost of water to residents by 363%. The Council also approved a 3% annual rate increase for the sewer system.

Prior to approving the rate increase, Commissioner Amy Boehman systematically walked here fellow Council members and members of the public on how she came to support the rate increase. She called a meeting with the town staff a "light bulb moment on why the rate increase was necessary and how all the pieces fit."

The new water rates, she said, will allow the water system to not only rebuild its 90-day cash balance to cover short term potential emergency expenses, but also cover its yearly expenses. While the 90-day cash balance is not a mandatory requirement, Boehman said, it is a critical ranking factor in awarding of grants by the USDA to communities seeking help in funding water system improvements – as is the ability of the town to demonstrate that the water rates are covering yearly expenses of the water systems. Combined, the two factors will enhance the ability of the town to receive grants for necessary system improvements.

Frank Davis, in justifying his vote for the rate increase, said he would "sooner vote to do the 5 year rate now, and after three years, hopefully we will have enough money we can come back and say we don’t need to do the last two rate increases … I’m hoping that within the next 3 years we will be able to get help from the county or state. But if we don’t, I think people have forgotten what we went through four years ago with the brown water. It’s still there … we have to do something before it rears it’s ugly head again.

"It’s our job, our responsibly, to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We can’t kick it down the road anymore," Davis said, "We have to act. Now I’m hoping there will be ways for us to help people if this is a hardship, that we can help them figure this out. But it’s kind of tough when you see people walking around with $1,000 phones. Water is essential to everything we do from the time we get up to the time we go to bed. WE need to make it a priority."

Davis pleaded to those in the room that if anyone had a better idea on how to address the problem, to come to him, that he was, and is always happy to hear their ideas. "We need your help, we want your help. Everyone has said they don’t want it [the rate increase] to happen, but they haven’t given us any other option." Davis forcefully reiterated that the town needed to act now and could no longer "kick the can down the road."

Commissioner Joe Ritz, in casting the dissenting vote, said that while he understood the need for the rate increases, he had hoped for an option where quarterly bills would be based upon actual usage, citing the fact that not everyone uses 6,000 gallons per/month, upon which the minimum quarterly payment is based. Ritz said that charging people for actual water usage could help soften the rate increase, which was going to hit those on a fixed income "in a bad way."

Residents who chose to attend the April 3rd pubic hearing were unanimous in their opposition to the rate increase, expressing concern over the negative impact it would have on those living on a fixed income and the ability going forward to both attract new development or for those seeking to sell their homes to attract buyers who would be turned off due to the high cost of water.

The rate increase was recommended by the town staff following an exhaustive analysis of the situation of the Town’s water system, and various options for water rate increases designed to address current and future water system needs, while acknowledging the concerns of the Town Council on the impact of any rate increase.

Because of the 2014 sewer rate increase, the sewer system has been able to keep ahead of maintenance and necessary upgrades, allowing the proposed increase in sewer rates to be a more modest 3% per year.

Water rates, however, have not been increased for the vast majority of users in 14 years. In that time, the water system has not been consistently covering its day-to-day operational costs, let alone having any money to carry out necessary improvements, or to fix failures in treatment & distribution systems, such as those causing brown water issues.

Considering the urgency of these concerns, town staff’s original suggestion in October was to immediately raise water rates by 150%, or spread the rate out over 3 years, in order to conduct repairs. However, the Council rejected that request citing concerns then that such a swift raise would hurt residents who are on a fixed income. Commissioner Frank Davis said, "given that times are tough for many, he didn’t want to make things worse for the residents by imposing the full rate increase all at once."

Davis expressed frustration that he had expected to see the town hall parking lot full. ‘We got five people out of 12,000 homes, only five people, who showed up to voice their opinion. It crazy that people are not more concerned about something this important. That helped me make my decision."

Instead the Council directed the staff to provide them options to spread the rate increase out over multiple years. The requested options were presented by the staff at December’s public hearing. However the options did not sit well with residents who showed up to voice their concerns. So the Council asked the town to sharpen their pencils one more time and return with the best-case path forward to address the deteriorating water system, while not unduly burdening the pocketbook of residents.

The staff’s third go at the numbers and the path forward seems to have hit both marks for the council.

While a 363% increase may seem huge, only the water use portion of the quarterly utility bill will be subject to the rate increase. For an average resident with, for example, a current water bill of $35, the 36% rate increase will result in their quarterly bill rising to $47.60 in 2024, $64.74 in 2025, &c, until the 36% increases stop in 2027 when the average quarterly water bill would be $163, or slightly over $1.50 a day.