Nelson city council is proposing to raise residential water rates for 2017 by two per cent and sewer rates by 1.5 per cent.
The new rates for a single family home, compared with past years, are shown in the box below.
The proposed 2017 rates passed third reading at council’s meeting on Monday and have yet to be finally approved at a future meeting. The background materials considered by council are attached at the end of this article.
The increases are smaller than in past years. Last year water went up by three per cent and sewer by two per cent.
Other changes associated with the increase include:
• Increasing the water and sewer discount for legal secondary suites from 50 per cent to 75 per cent. There is no discount for suites used as short-term rentals;
• Continuing with Phase Two of the Hall St. project, with the water and sewer work coming from the existing budget, but only undertaking the project if grant application to the Build Canada fund is successful;
• Preparing to use the lake as an emergency water source;
• The Stanley Street water system pressure reducing station is to be upgraded.
In 2005, council made a plan for annual rate increases over a 25-year period to pay the cost of gradually replacing its aging and deteriorating pipes. The rates at the time weren’t high enough to pay for massive upgrades that were needed, and rate increases for 2007 and 2008 amounted to about 50 per cent and then were reduced to about nine per cent for a few years after that.
Since then, Nelson residents have become accustomed to seeing streets being dug up in a different part of the city every summer.
The materials presented at Monday’s council meeting state that this year’s increase is lower than was anticipated but that it will still be sufficient to “pay for operating and capital costs as well as build adequate reserves to fund future capital expenditures.” The materials are attached to the online version of this story at nelsonstar.com.
The tax increases in question will fund water and sewer for homes, not businesses and institutions, which are billed according to the number of sinks and toilets, or in the case of restaurants, by number of seats.
But the city’s chief financial officer, Colin McClure, told the Star in 2016 that the city does not know how much water businesses and institutions use, and therefore does not know what the rate should be, so for the past few years the city has been doing some experimental metering of some properties.
It was expected that this budget year there would be some results from that metering, but the materials presented at council on Monday state that the data is still incomplete and that the rate increase for businesses and institutions will be the same as for residences this year. When the data collection on business and institutional use is complete, it is expected that there will be a larger increase for them and this is now scheduled for 2019 and 2020.
Materials presented at the meeting about the past year’s activities include:
• The city was successful in replacing 1.15 kilometres in water lines in 2016 with the plan in 2017 to replace two kilometres.
• The Mountain Station UV disinfection system was completed and is operating as expected.
• Upgrades to the HVAC and ventilation system at the sewage treatment plant were completed.
• The city replaced or relined 2.9 km of sewer lines in 2016 with the plan to replace or reline 3.5 km in 2017.
• Council is in the process of renewing its 2006 Water Master Plan and a final document is expected this spring.