East Hope looks at water rates
EAST HOPE — The several years’ long process of metering all residential and commercial properties in the city were completed late last fall and now the council is prepared to bring proposed new water rates to the residents.
A public hearing will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14 at City Hall will reveal the council’s plan.
“The simpler you can make it for the common man, the better off you are,” said council member Tom Grimm at a special council meeting in March during discussions about rate and fee structures. The council agreed that property owners would be charged a base rate and a per thousand gallon rate for usage.
Discussions about the ordinance that would provide fees for hook-ups and penalties for late payments became lively when council took into consideration all the different scenarios possible. For instance, a fee for seasonal residents to turn water service on and off possibly may have been more expensive than keeping the service on and paying the monthly base rate.
City Clerk Christy Franck showed council copies of the reports the meter-reading equipment generates for each property. This report can identify whether water usage is in the normal range or if there’s a leak present. In order to avert leaks going undetected for a lengthy period of time, the city commenced billing for water monthly, rather than quarterly, with the April cycle.
At April’s City Council meeting, officials were presented with a recommended rate plan that was developed by Franck and a representative from Idaho Rural Water Association.
“We will have more expenses now,” Franck said. “We will have more payroll costs because we will have to read the meters each month and will add processing time to bill each month. Postage alone will cost us $1,200 per year. We’ll also have to post the incoming checks each month which also takes time.”
Franck estimates the increase to the city’s budget will be substantial. She said that in the fiscal year 2013 the city budgeted $35,000 for water, and that they’re looking at almost $57,000 for 2014. The recommendation for the base rate is $28.45 plus $1.91 per 1,000 gallons of water used. Franck told council that the average household will use 6,500 gallons of water each month.
The bombshell that dropped was the news that almost half of the water filtering through the system is being wasted due to leaks in the archaic lines. Frank recommended to the council that they hire a leak detection service to evaluate the entire city calling this a “huge, huge issue.”
“I hate to see us set a budget when we don’t know how many leaks we have to fix,” Council member Jerry Clemons said questioning if Franck knew what fixing the leaks may cost. “But, we can’t keep losing 600,000 gallons of water each month.”
Franck said that the long-range water facility study that’s currently being conducted by a local engineering firm will address repairing the infrastructure. She told council that most of the water lines in the city are more than 60 years old.
“For now we can patch lines with small leaks and focus on repairing the big ones,” Frank said. “We just need to know where they are.”
Council member Eileen Klatt said that the city should look at the fee schedule regarding property owners’ responsibility for fixing leaks in order to encourage people to do so.
“The more we tighten up the system, the lower the rates will be,” Grimm said.
“We can talk about this at the public meeting.”