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Water bill increases, more user fees possible

Water could be going up by $3.52 a month for the typical flat rate bill, if North Bay council approves a recommendation by city treasurer Brian Rogers.
Water could be going up by $3.52 a month for the typical flat rate bill, if North Bay council approves a recommendation by city treasurer Brian Rogers.

The increase would be necessary to accomplish a breakeven budget for the city’s water and sanitary sewer operations, Rogers told council at a budget meeting Thursday night.

Last March the previous city council approved a long-term capital funding policy that calls for a funding increase of $800,000 per year until 2007 to pay for water and sanitary sewer capital projects.

This would result in $4 million more in base funding for infrastructure, said Rogers, pictured above.

Terrible shape
Included in the policy is $10 million for the water filtration plant.

About $2.60 of the $3.52 monthly increase would be used to fund the higher level of infrastructure spending.

“The best way we can do this is to keep going with a pay as you play system,” said Mayor Vic Fedeli following Thursday night’s meeting.

Fedeli said the sewer and water infrastructure in North Bay is in “terrible” shape.

“In a six inch pipe for example, there’s maybe an inch left to transfer water, and the only way to correct this is to be able to up the amount we spend every year by $800 thousand,” Fedeli said.

Less than one-fifth
Rogers also talked about a policy that would see reserve funds bolstered during the year “from relatively short term one-time sources” such as land sales and building permit fees from large projects.

The reserves could then be used to offset one-time expenditure impacts in 2004 such as the resumption of payments to the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.

On the revenue end of things, Rogers said the $16,611,000 provincial Community Reinvestment Grant to North Bay included an increase of only $30,000. “which is less than one-fifth of one per cent.”

Drastically under-funded
To try to address anticipated shortfalls in revenue, city staff will be preparing a report for council on user fees.

Some options that could be looked at include per-bag charges for garbage, or parking charges at the waterfront.

“Why do we have to look at things like a user-fee policy, why do we have to look at things like a one-time bolstering of our reserve policy in a way that we might not want to,” Coun. Mike Anthony said.

“Because we’re drastically under-funded and all we got was an extra $30,000 from the province to deal with all the things that we have to take care of that have been shifted down to cities.”