PORT ANGELES — The City Council has approved a seasonal water consumption rate for residential customers in 2015 to encourage more residents to water their lawns and gardens in the summer.
The council on Tuesday voted 4-3 — with Brad Collins, Lee Whetham and Mayor Dan Di Guilio opposed — to incorporate a flat summertime consumption rate into an ordinance establishing next year’s electric, water, and wastewater rates.
The council then voted 5-2, with Collins and Whetham opposed, to adopt the ordinance itself, Di Guilio said.
In addition to water rates, the ordinance sets higher rates for electricity and wastewater.
Under the seasonal structure, residential water customers next year will pay $2 per 100 cubic feet of water used in June, July and August regardless of consumption.
They will pay more in other months.
“What I’ve heard from seniors and people who have been in their homes a long time, people would like to water their landscape, their lawns, their gardens, but they feel that financially their water bills are too high so they’re reluctant to do so,” said Councilwoman Cherie Kidd.
“This would give us an opportunity to try it, again, as a living document, and then staff can report on the success and how financially stable this is. And next year we will revisit this.”
Under the approved seasonal consumption rate, non-commercial customers will pay more next year than they are paying now from January to May and from September to December.
The seasonal water consumption rate is a hybrid of the existing three-tier, consumption-based system and a proposed $2.60 flat rate for residential water users.
The existing water consumption rate is $2.19 per 100 cubic feet for customers who use less than 1,000 cubic feet of water per month.
Ninety-one percent of residential customers fall into that low-consumption tier in the fall, winter and spring.
Those customers will be billed $2.37 per 100 cubic feet of water they consume in the non-summer months under the seasonal rate structure.
Second-tier consumers who use between 1,000 and 1,500 cubic feet of water will pay $3.53 per 100 cubic feet in the non-summer months, up from the $2.27 they are paying now.
Residents who use more than 1,500 cubic feet of water a month will pay $5.03 per hundred cubic feet, up from a current rate of $3.34.
Staff will scrutinize the seasonal water rates in the coming year to ensure that it delivers on council’s intent to encourage water consummation in the summer, said Phil Lusk, deputy director of power and telecommunication systems.
“Because this is a living document and this is an experiment, I am willing to test it out,” said Councilwoman Sissy Bruch.
“If it doesn’t work out, we can always change it. It’s not my favorite, but the fact is that nobody subsidizing anybody.
She added: “I don’t like the fact that folks are going to be burdened a little bit more during the winter months, but it isn’t substantial. It’s less than a dollar (per month).”
Said Collins: “I’d like to be able to support this (proposal), but I firmly believe that we’ll sell less water with 88 percent of the people having to pay a higher water rate.
“So I just don’t think it’s going to work,” Collins said.
“I can’t support it. It’s not that I don’t want the seasonal rate, I just think this will fail.”
Three options considered
At the direction of the City Council, staff developed three options for residential water consumption rates.
A staff-proposed structure, which failed by 4-3 vote, would have charged low-volume water consumers $2.27 per cubic foot, medium-tier consumers $2.87 and high-volume water users $3.46 for every hundred cubic gallons.
The $2.60 flat rate option was calculated from a predetermined revenue requirement.
“We have a revenue requirement of about $3.5 million from residential water customers that’s projected for calendar year ‘15,” Lusk told the council.
“About 65 percent of that is projected to come from fixed charges, which left the balance of about $1.2 million that needed to be recovered through the variable charges based upon consumption.”
Only the residential water consumption rates were debated at Tuesday’s council meeting.
The council directed no change in previously-discussed electric and wastewater utility rates.
Here are the highlights of the other rate increases:
■ Monthly residential electric rates will increase from $104.39 to $113.52 for average customers next year, an 8.75 percent increase.
■ Average monthly commercial electric rates will increase from $226 to $231.34, a 2.36 percent increase.
■ Monthly residential wastewater rates will increase from $46.70 to $51.35 for average customers in 2015, a 9.96 percent increase.
■ Average monthly commercial wastewater rates will increase from $42.02 to $47.84, a 13.85 percent increase.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
