Four months, 12 meetings, and countless hours of deliberation and investigation later, the Water and Sanitary Sewer Review Committee has delivered on their mandate.
City Council adopted the committee’s recommendations with a majority vote at Monday’s council meeting, clearing the way for yet another change in the way residents are billed using water meters.
For just over a month now, the city has been charging users based on the recently installed water meters for the first time ever.
But starting January 1, 2016, that system is set to change already.
In the new New Year, every property owner will pay the same amount for a cubic meter of water on top of a monthly flat rate based on the size of their water meter, reflecting a 60 per cent fixed - 40 per cent variable cost recovery model for the city’s water and sanitary sewer operating budget.
Property classes will be ignored for billing purposes, but when using the 2015 budget numbers, most residential homes that have a 5/8-inch or 3/4-inch fixture will be charged somewhere around $30.40 in fixed fees per month for the water portion of their bill.
Moving up, a one-inch connection can expect to pay approximately $79 each month in fixed fees, while a six-inch connection would be paying $1,575, with all other connections falling in that range, which is likely have a big impact on large industrial and commercial users.
And while the exact cost per cubic meter of water won’t established until the 2016 water and sewer budget is pegged, the committee estimates a cubic metre of water will cost $0.99, down from the current $1.46 for the residential user and the $1.33 per cubic metre that the ICI/multi-residential sectors are paying.
“There’s no question that we are shifting some of the burden from the residents to the other sector; that was part of what we were charged to do and it was our mandate to try and approach equity,” said committee chairman George Maroosis. “What we’ve come up with isn’t rocket science or a new, innovative idea; this is generally what every other community in this province does.”
The other recommendations that were accepted include approving a process for customers to apply for meter size adjustments, calculating the water filtration debt surcharge based on meter size, re-affirming the frozen water and brown water policy, implementing a conservation rebate program for installing low flow toilets and the consideration of other assistance programs in the future.
Their initial mandate was to level in the inequality in the billing burden between the residential sector, who are currently paying 73 per cent of the cost recovery revenue for 51 per cent of the water use, and the ICI/multi-residential sectors, who use the other 49 per cent, but only pay 27 per cent of the revenue.
But even though property classes will cease to exist, the residential sector is still forecasted to pay the lion’s share of the revenue even under the recommended model approved by Council for January.
In the city’s models, what are now considered residential properties will still be paying 64 per cent of the cost-recovery and the ICI/multi-residential the other 36 per cent under the committee’s recommendations.
Council will review the numbers each year and can adjust the fixed-to-variable ratio annually.
City staff previously told the committee that the closest they could expect to get to true equality would be under a 30 per cent fixed, 70 per cent variable cost recovery model, which would come with significant risk because of the city’s high fixed costs. Even then though, the residential sector would expect to account for 57 per cent of the revenue.
Despite the remaining inequity, Maroosis said he and his council colleagues expect some repercussion from the ICI/multi-residential users with bigger pipes.
“The concerns we are going to hear from in the future between now and the first of January are going to come from the multi-residential, industrial and institutional sectors, who have larger pipes,” he said. “Although we have up to 6-inch pipes in the city, there are not many of those around.”
On Monday, Coun. Tanya Vrebosch echoed the statements of some ICI/multi-residential property owners in the public meeting two weeks ago by suggesting that council widen their equity investigation beyond just water rates.
During those presentations, some members of the community said they recognize their time has come to pay a more fair share of the burden. However, if equality across the board is the goal, they said, then the other areas of the tax rate should reflect it too.
“They have three months to prepare for a potentially larger bill; from the information I saw, some of them will be substantially higher and I hope that, as a council, we realize that we may be getting some backlash,” said Vrebosch. “I look forward to having the discussion with my fellow councillors at budget time when we talk about the equalization among classes for property taxes as well.
“This is something where the ICI/multi-residential may have been paying less for water, but they are paying substantially more when it comes to taxes,” she added. “We have easily passed the buck every budget time because it’s easier to not talk about tax ratios and reduce them, because if you reduce the multi-residential you have to increase residential.”
Beyond the changes for 2016, the committee is also calling for council to review whether certain capital and fire fighting costs should be transferred to the property tax budget.
During last week’s public meeting, local resident Gary Gardiner, who was largely responsible for bringing the original disparity to council’s attention in the first place, said of the city’s $21.3 million water and sanitary sewer budget, 36 percent, or $7.8 million, is attributed to non-capital growth and expansion, such as the ongoing Pinewood Park sewer project.
Maroosis and his committee said that will be a big consideration come budget time.
