New Water Treatment Plant site, cleaned for construction.
Council decided to give the New
Water Treatment Plant Project three million dollars of our ARPA funding for a
down payment on our new water plant. You
also plan to give ratepayers a small break on our rates in return.
At first, the City and The Daily Courier said that the City would cancel the last two years of base rate raises
that are supposed to help pay the loan.
But they also said that the unit rate raises for the new plant would
continue, as well as inflation and raising the separate new plant debt payment
fee. Lately, Courier articles and City staff have become less specific about which rates
would be curtailed.
If you stop increasing base rates, but keep increasing unit rates, as
unit rates rise, ratepayers will collectively cut back further on water use,
decreasing revenue. This will make the City
raise unit and base rates to cover the overhead, the monthly cost of having a
water plant, clawing back our expected $8 savings on the base rate. Or the City might dip into the ARPA $3,000,000
to cover it, decreasing our future down payment and increasing our interest.
If you stopped the new plant unit rate raises instead of base rates, we would be paying more from base rates and no more for our use,
and our rates might stabilize.
When you passed the new plant payment fee, we were told that it would not
rise by inflation and would go away when the debt was paid.
We were not told then that the fee would not cover the whole loan. Twenty-two percent of eighty million dollars is
being put on our base and unit rates, increasing by 5.28%, plus inflation,
yearly for five years, will never go away, and will rise by inflation, every year until this rationing rate system is
reformed.
You, our Council, can set base rates to cover all overhead: debt
payments; operations; administration; maintenance; and actual inflation of
plant costs. You can lower all unit
rates to one rate, paying for only unit costs, which rise and fall with our water
use. This was the way we paid for our
plant and the cost of
producing and delivering clean water with it, for over fifty years. Grants Pass was watered; rates were low and
stable. To return to that rate system
would be a real and permanent improvement in our health, wealth, safety, and happiness.
Speech
to the Grants Pass City Council, 12-1-2021, shared with the Josephine County
Commissioners, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.
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Rycke
Brown, Natural Gardener 541-955-9040 rycke@gardener.com
