Town council set to raise water and sewer rates

By Rob Vogt, Local Press Writer

People in Claresholm will soon be paying more for water and sewer, if proposed increases are approved by town council.

At its Feb. 11 meeting, council gave first reading to an updated water and sewer utility bylaw that will see rate increases starting on May 1, 2019, and every year after that on Jan. 1 to and including 2022.

Blair Bullock, the town’s director of corporate services, prepared a report for council and was there to discuss it.

He said the current bylaw has been in place since 2008, and rates have been increased once in that time, in 2013.

In this same period, the inflation rate in Canada has been 1.51 per cent, totalling 16.21 per cent. There have been increased costs in running the utilities, but rates have not been changed to reflect those increased costs.

Bullock stated in his report that rates since 2008 were set to cover operational costs, with no provision for replacement costs of infrastructure.

Consequently, the town has depended on federal and provincial grants to cover a significant portion of capital replacement costs.

This has meant borrowing money for large projects such as the water treatment plant upgrade and a sewer line from the airport to the lagoons.

Using grant funding for these projects, also takes it away from other capital projects such as recreation, roads and other projects that do not have fee charges to recover costs.

Funding has also been reduced over the years and has become more and more uncertain for the future.

Bullock stated the federal and provincial governments really want full cost recovery on utilities as well as conservation of water, so practices are required to ensure that. Otherwise, the town may not qualify for grants.

Currently, the town’s estimated infrastructure deficit on water and sewer infrastructure is $1.8 million, not including inflationary costs for inflation.

Bullock went on to explain the rate restructuring.

The new bylaw institutes rate changes each year for the next four years with fairly significant changes in the first three years, then inflationary increases in the fourth year.

However, there is no increase and even some decrease in the water basic rate. Changes are primarily to consumption rates and consumption policies.

He noted a common complaint received from residents is someone who uses five cubic metres of water per billing cycle pays the same as someone who uses 50 cubic metres.

One of the most significant changes to the rates is decreasing, and eventually eliminating, the basic consumption allotment provided as part of the basic rate.

Bullock said this not only addresses this complaint of residents but improves compliance with the higher levels of governments’ policies and grant conditions for encouraging water conservation by billing for every cube of water consumption.

Water consumption rates are also increasing. Current residential consumption rates are $0.80 per cubic metre, after basic consumption.

Continued on page 2 of the newspaper…