(file photo/paNOW staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Water matters

Utility bills to rise in P.A.

Nov 22, 2019 | 1:47 PM

Pending final approval, monthly utility bills for the average Prince Albert household will increase by between $2.65 to $3.55 in 2020, or $31.80 to $42.60 per year. A homeowner with an average consumption will now pay around $109 per month.

That was the outcome of a key phase of annual budget deliberations Thursday night as councillors met to discuss funding for city utilities.

Though councillors lamented the cost of the water bills in Prince Albert, they were ultimately unable to find many savings in the budget proposed by administration.

Director of Financial Services, Cheryl Tkachuk, noted water in P.A. is cheaper than several other cities in the province including Regina, Saskatoon, and Moose Jaw.

In Humboldt, a household using the same amount of water that would cost $106 in Prince Albert would pay $191, based on last year’s rates. A bill for the same consumption in Meadow Lake would be $98.

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“I keep hearing our rates are very high. I think everybody’s water is costly,” Tkachuk told council.

Mayor Greg Dionne said he would bring a motion to an upcoming council meeting to review the utility to see if cost-saving could be found in the way the finances are administered.

“To me it has never performed since the day it started, it was supposed to be self-sufficient and self-funding. That’s never happened,” he told the meeting.

Water security

On another matter, council voted to transfer $35,000 from one fund to another to urgently improve security at the water treatment plant and associated buildings.

“We’ve had a really tough year down there with break-ins and vandalism,” water treatment plant manager Andy Busse told the meeting. “We need to make sure our staff are secure, we need to make sure the water is safe and secure.”

The new system will likely use card access as opposed to the keyed locks that are currently in place.

Pump house talk tabled

Council decided to put discussion on the new raw water pump house on hold until early in 2020 when they receive a final estimate on the price. Councillors were shocked last week when they learned the project would likely cost $10.1 millon instead of the $4.5 million estimated to them by an earlier initial assessment. That $10.1 million figure is based on detailed design drawings that are two-thirds complete at this point.

To avoid potentially being surprised again, they will finalize funding for the project once they have the definitive estimate.

“Some crew out there didn’t know what they were talking about and gave us that figure,” Coun. Don Cody said, referring to the initial estimate. “Is this crew here now equally as bad and isn’t going to tell us the truth?”

Construction on the two-year project will likely begin in Spring 2020 with the first year funded with the money council had initially thought would cover the entire job. In the 2021, they will have to find the remaining $3.8 million, potentially from federal gas tax funding.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom