Q:  Why is my water bill so high?

A:  There’s a short answer to that and a long answer.  Here’s the short answer:  From 1992 through 2005, the Town Council kept water rates the same (except for out-of-towners).  Then, when it came time to pay to expand the water plant, there was not enough money saved up.  So we had to borrow a lot.  We now pay about $5,000,000 each year in debt service (loan payments) for the utility department.  To pay all that off, we needed to raise rates quite a bit.

Q:  Yes, but why did my bill jump up SO MUCH??

A:  In late 2005, the Town Council, based on consultant’s estimates, voted to raise rates slightly from FY2006 through FY2010 to pay for the extra loan payments.  It wasn’t enough.  So last year, the Council voted for the following:

1.       Raise water and sewer rates slightly for each of the next five years;

2.       Increase the “summer use” surcharge from 35% to 45%;

3.       Change the way that sewer is charged.

#1 is pretty straightforward.  #2 kicks in if your summer water use is more than 35% greater than your winter water use.  #3 is the big one for people that water their lawn a lot.  In the past, the town charged for sewer, all year, based on how much water you used in the winter.  This made some sense because it was assumed that extra water you use in the summer is for lawn watering and is not going down your sewer pipes.  Starting January 1^st, sewer is now charged on your actual water usage even in the summer.  This has caused the summer water bills to be much higher if you water your lawns a lot.

Q:  Why put the entire burden on those of us that water our lawns?

A:  We didn’t.  Remember that there are water and sewer increases for 10 straight years from 2006 through 2015.  So everyone is paying.  We could have just increased water and sewer rates more to cover the entire deficit, but the Council felt that given the choice between charging even more to the people that use water for cooking, cleaning, and bathing, or charging more for people that water their lawns a lot, we chose the latter.

Q:  But why was the deficit so high?  Didn’t you fix it in 2005?

A:  There were two reasons why the 2005 decision was not enough to cover the entire deficit:

1.       Growth slammed to a halt.  A lot of the developments that we anticipated that would use, and pay for, water and sewer just didn’t happen;

2.       The consultants in 2005 assumed we were already charging for sewer the way we are now.  This caused them to overestimate our revenue.

Q:  How about if you lower our water bills and raise our property taxes instead?  At least then, we can deduct it from our income tax!!

A:  Can’t do that.  The Utility Fund is an “Enterprise Fund”.  This means that it has to be separate from our General Fund where we put all the property taxes.  We can’t raise the property taxes to subsidize the water rates, and we can’t raise the water rates to lower our income taxes.

Q:  Well this just stinks!  What is the Council doing about it??

A:  I agree, it stinks.  That’s why the Council has started up the Utility Rate Advisory Committee again to see if there’s any better ways to deal with this.  They were formed a couple years ago to try to work out a compromise regarding the surcharge for the out-of-towners, and they haven’t met since then (until now).

Q:  Aha!  This is all because you lost in court and had to reduce the out-of-town surcharge, isn’t it?

A:  No.  The rate water bill increases that you are seeing have nothing to do with the out-of-town surcharge.  The timing was certainly driven by the judge’s ruling, but the amount is all because of the deficits we have been seeing since 2006.

Q:  The legal fees, though, have to have had an impact.

A:  Well, yes, a little, but we’re comparing numbers like a one-time cost of $100,000 vs. $5,000,000 each year.; too small for you to see in your bill.

Q:  Why can’t you just reduce expenses?  Quit letting the Utility Department live so “high on the hog”!

A:  We did reduce expenses about $250,000 per year.  And we brought in a consultant to see if/how we could reduce even more.  The consultant told us that we were actually somewhat understaffed in our utility department.  The Council has no intention of increasing staffing per the consultant’s recommendation, but we’re concerned that more reductions will have the potential to affect water quality and that’s the last thing we want.

Q:  So what can I do?

A:  Don’t water your lawn so much.

Q:  So my next bill will be smaller?

A:  Maybe not.  The bills lag the usage so even if you stop watering today, it may only affect the bill after the next one.

Q:  If we all stop watering, won’t that create another deficit?

A:  Yep, so that’s not a great answer.  There are two possibilities for hope, however:

1.       If the economy improves and we get more customers, that will help drive down rates;

2.       The new power plant going in south of town is interested in taking a LOT of our treated sewer water (also called “gray” water), which we would charge them for.  That could help our situation a lot.

Q:  I’m still angry!  Someone has to pay!

A:  Well, it fell to this Council to make the hard decisions and make up for the last 20+ years.  If you want to prevent something like this in the future, impress upon your candidates that they should not look just at the short-term, but the long-term as well.  If the previous Councils has just raised water and sewer rates 1½% each year (far below inflation), not only would you have lower rates now, but we wouldn’t have had a deficit to deal with at all.