By Andrew de Souza

Council stops water rate increase for now

Aug 9, 2011 | 6:30 AM

City councillors have taken a stand against increases to the cost of living in Prince Albert by voting down a rate increase to residential water and sewer use.

For the last few weeks, council had been wrestling with how much the water and sewer rates needed to go up, but on Monday decided it shouldn’t increase at all.

“People are getting very upset that everything is going up—landfill, water, sewer,” said Coun. Darren Whitehead.

“I know we can’t go broke serving water … so there is going to be some increase, but somehow we’re going to have to level it off … either reduce it or keep it the same because I know people are getting upset.”

Water conservation vs production cost

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One of the issues that irked some councillors was one of the paradoxes of water treatment.

The city has to pay to treat water whether or not it ends up getting used or wasted. Because they base their budgets on five-year consumption models, that can mean that when people use less water because of heavy rains or conservation attempts, they end up having to pay more per unit to make up for money the city lost having to produce the water in the first place.

Coun. Cheryl Ring was unhappy about that concept and what it meant for residents.

“In the last couple of years, the amount of water has been reduced due to the amount of rain and wet years,” she said.

“Is that reason that we have to increase rates, because we didn’t sell enough water to make our budget?”

City manager Robert Cotterill said that was just one of several factors in the rate increase.

“That is part of the reason. Our volumes were down and so we did not bring in the revenue that we were hoping for,” he said.

“Certainly water breaks are a problem. We don’t sell that water, but we have to bill for it.”

He said that even though it might make water cost more temporarily, conservation was still the right thing to do.

“We should never stop water conservation. Water conservation is a good thing because future growth of our system can be stalled for years if we find way to keep volumes down.”

At the end of the debate, Councillors Charlene Miller, Lee Atkinson, Cheryl Ring, Darren Whitehead and Ted Zurakowski voted against the proposal, with Mayor Jim Scarrow, and Coun. Martin Ring voting in favour. Councillor Greg Dionne was not present for the recorded vote.

Some things unavoidable

While council was able to delay an increase in fees, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to stay low forever.

The increase in fees was tied to the city’s water and sewer utilities budget. That essentially means that something somewhere will have to be cut to make up for the lost revenue.

Mayor Scarrow said the least council could do was to reconsider their options and what the decision to keep rates low could mean for the city

“It’s OK for council to defeat what was presented to them but I think we need to take a second look and leave it city administration to bring it back with more supportive reason or show us the options of where we’re going to end up,” said Mayor Jim Scarrow.

“Maybe council would be interested in a lower increase and I think administration should be given an opportunity to bring that back to us.”

Because the city still needs to approve the utility budgets, administration will be bringing back an updated budget to reflect the frozen prices. As well, they’re expected to create a report with more information justifying any increase.

adesouza@panow.com