GREEN RIVER — Green River residents could see their utility bills increase by roughly 25% a month under a draft fee schedule presented to the city council Tuesday.
The increases are part of the city work to pay for its new $56 million wastewater treatment plant.
Finance Director Chris Meats, serving as acting city administrator at the meeting, presented the draft rates. The proposal would raise the monthly residential sewer base rate from $25.80 to $28.80 per connection and increase the water consumption rate from roughly $0.059 to $0.06962 per cubic foot, an 18% increase.
According to Public Works Director Mark Westenskow, the average Green River resident uses between 600 and 750 cubic feet of water per month. For those users, the change amounts to roughly $10 more on their monthly sewer bill.
“It’s a 25% increase on your sewer bill this year,” council member Ron Williams told Meats.
Water rates would see a smaller increase, with the standard residential base rate rising from $26 to $27 — about a 7% increase in rates and adding roughly $2 per month.
Combined, the average customer would pay about $12 more per month.
A slideshow Clevenger presented to the council the week prior estimated the average customer would pay between $3 and $8 more per month. However, based on the draft fee schedule and Westenskow’s usage estimate, the math suggests the average sewer bill alone would increase by roughly $10 per month. Meats did not specify what consumption baseline the earlier estimate used.
Williams pressed Meats on whether the city was doing enough to soften the impact on residents, noting his own bill had risen more than 100% over the past four years, from around $30 to more than $80 per month.
“We’re starting to hit the retirees and lower income people pretty good,” Williams said. “We’re almost pumping the well dry here.”
Meats said the city has worked to keep increases manageable by spreading the cost over multiple years rather than imposing a single large jump. Without that approach, he said, a one-time increase could have reached 150%.
“Granted, 18% doesn’t seem like a great percentage for anybody to increase, but it’s a lot better than doing 30% a year,” Meats said.
He pointed to several efforts to hold costs down. The city secured $16 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the treatment plant, reducing the financed portion to just under $40 million. Working with State Loan and Investment Board, the city negotiated the loan’s interest rate down to a quarter percent, keeping the annual debt service payment near $1.4 million.
The city’s six-penny road program has also helped, Meats said, by bundling water and sewer infrastructure replacements into street projects. That has eliminated between approximately $500,000 and $1 million per year in capital replacement costs that would otherwise be charged to utility ratepayers. Without it, the city’s roughly 4,200 customers would each be paying an additional $10 to $20 per month he said.
Additional increases are expected. Meats said the city is likely looking at another 15% to 18% sewer increase next fiscal year, with a goal of moving to every-other-year rate adjustments after that.
The fee schedule will be discussed further at a finance committee meeting next Wednesday before a formal budget presentation to the full council in two weeks.
