Sewer bills to decline

Residents should start seeing a decline in their estimated sewer bills within the next few months.

Interim Public Works Director Mark Clark told City Council during a work session on the Wastewater System Expansion Program that city staff should have a much more accurate estimate for projected sewer bills by about May 2010. Clark made the statement after council members questioned why sewer bill estimates had not fallen after the city saved about $78 million in projected costs. The average residential sewer bill is projected to be about $65.63 in 2010-11 more than the November 2001 published estimate of $59.28.

Councilman Brian Wedemeyer said citizens should know why their bills have not dropped yet.

“In the name of public communication, these things need to be spelled out for the citizens,” he said. “Because we keep patting ourselves on the back talking about how much less the sewer costs, then they’re going to want to see that their bills are less or we’re going to need to explain to them why they’re not.”

City staff explained that about 10 percent or 4,500 fewer sewer connections than originally expected contributed to the higher bills. Mayor Mark Nexsen added that the city must be positive of the change before adjusting bills.

“The last thing we want to do is reduce the rates and go oops, we made a boo-boo and we’ve got to raise them back up,” he said. “So as soon as we can firm up that number … hopefully what we’re able to do, as we did in 2008, we can adjust those projected rates down again.”

City Engineer Greg Froslie highlighted the previous eight-year history of the sewer project during the work session.

“We’ve completed work on just under 14,000 homes and we’ve got about 7,000 in remaining projects,” Froslie said. “We’re also saving about $78 million and should complete everything about two years ahead of schedule.”

Nexsen said he wanted to add that while residents may focus on their monthly bills, that as a matter of perspective, the estimated $65.63 average bill in 2010-11 will be much lower than a May 2007 projection of more than $82.

“I specifically remember the (2011-12 projection in May 2007) where now we’re down to $73, it was darn near $100 average bill,” Nexsen said. “So while we have reduced the number of connections that has not allowed these numbers to drop as much as we want, we have nevertheless through the reduction in costs … we have been able to do reduce the projected rate by nearly 25 percent.”

Froslie also mentioned challenges such as the double-digit inflation in 2004, various lateral failures, water service replacement costs and construction staging yards. Clark said he believed the challenges and difficulties did not outweigh the successes of the project.

“Just to give you a feel for an order of magnitude, the project has come in millions and millions of dollars less through innovations and savings through the economy,” Clark said. “And some of these aw shucks’s are in the neighborhood of several hundred thousand dollars.”

Several members of city staff said work will continue on attempting to lower monthly bills through possible grants, negative interest loans and other various projects.

“Just because the project is over doesn’t mean we’re going to stop fighting to lower these rates,” Nexsen said.

Cassens said rates would be consistently reviewed to keep bills as low as possible.

“As we close out the project and we get a handle on exactly what the flows are going to be and the operational maintenance costs are going to be, then we’ll be able to really polish this number down to get it as low as it can be,” he said.

Nexsen agreed, attempting to sum up the sewer project.

“The idea is to try to get some relief for this community,” he said. “What we view this as is an unfunded federal mandate. We were told in pretty certain terms of what would happen if we didn’t do what we were told to do but no check. As I continue to get sympathy in Washington, I’ve told them I can’t write a check with sympathy. I want to write a check because there’s real dollars coming from Washington D.C. to help this community.”

You can contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com