Tiered water rates put off again — this time until mid-summer 2010
Raleigh City Council just voted 5-3 to increase water rates by 13.5 percent while also postponing the effective date of tiered water rates — a major conservation initiative that would’ve resulted in a rate cut for low-usage residential customers — by another seven months.
(Update: Raleigh’s rules require that a second vote be held in November since the rate hike did not pass by a super-majority of 6-2 or better. A city press release is copied below the fold with some additional information.)
Councilors Russ Stephenson, Thomas Crowder and Rodger Koopman — a lame duck since he was defeated for re-election on October 6 — were the dissenters. They and Nancy McFarlane have been pushing for tiered rates since the drought of 2007-8, which began more than two years ago. They were put off a year ago when City Manager Russell Allen persuaded the Council to wait until this December 1, when a conversion of the city’s database software was supposed to be finished and ready to handle the change in billings. But Allen reported today that the system’s not ready yet and won’t be until next July 5 — right in the middle of the summer watering season.
Koopman, a software techie himself, argued a year ago that a “patch” could be made to the old software, allowing tiered rates to take effective much sooner. He lost then, and said today that the Council should’ve insisted. Stephenson, too, said he wasn’t convinced that a “Plan B” didn’t exist in one of Allen’s drawers to initiate tiered rates on time (on December 1, that is) if the Council refused to move the date.
They got Crowder’s vote, but not McFarlane’s, and not Mayor Charles Meeker’s either. Meeker moved to put a “blended’ rate hike into effect December 1 instead of the planned tiered-rate schedule, while also asking Allen if he couldn’t get the latter in place quicker than July 1. McFarlane, Mary-Ann Baldwin, James West and Phillip Isley (another lame duck since he didn’t seek re-election) backed Meeker — and Allen.
The tiered-rate schedule called for rates of $2.09, $3.09 and $4.09 per 1,000 gallons of water consumption, with the break points at less than 3,000 gallons a month, 3,000-7,500 gallons a month, and over 7,500 gallons a month. The current rate for residential users (commercial customers wouldn’t be effected) is $2.14 per 1,000 gallons; the “blended” increase voted by Council is to $2.43, a 13.5 percent hike.
Allen, and Meeker, argued that the Council has no alternative to raising rates in order to meet debt-service obligations on past water system capital projects. The water system is supposed to be self-funding; the Council could use property or sales tax revenues to subsidize it, but it’s never done so, apparently.
Allen apologized for not getting the job done on time, but he also minimized the problem, saying that a rate hike now isn’t a big problem since it’s the off-season for irrigation. On the other hand, Koopman and Stephenson worried that next July will be primetime for watering, and people will get a nasty surprise when their (giant, irrigation-inflated) bills arrive in August for water they unwittingly used in July.
Allen’s memo to the Council is copied below the fold: Continue reading »
