City Council approves water, sewer rate hikes
PORTLAND, Ore. - Water and sewer rates for Portland residents will be going up after the City Council approved hikes for both Wednesday.
Residents will likely pay a few more dollars a month for both water and sewer service. The typical customer now pays about $22.02 a month for water. That is expected to go up to about $24.66 a month - a $2.64 increase.
For sewer rates, it’ll be a 6.35 percent increase, which means the typical bill will go from about $50.15 to $53.33, which is a $3.18 increase.
City officials said they got contract surplus money - about $20 million dollars for sewer construction projects that came in under budget. So some customers wondered why fees need to go up and why the city is spending that money on things like bio-swells, tree maintenance and college scholarships.
“It may well be illegal to do so. In light of the fiscal year 2009 surplus this is not the time for any sewer increase,” said Linda Winning before the City Council. “And I would like an opinion from the city attorney - it can be in writing sometime later - using sewer funds that have been collected from sewer users for use for the sewer department, allocating those funds to other activities.”
“Remember the Bureau of Environmental Services requested a 6.9 (percent) increase in rates and we cut that back to 6.35,” Adams said. “The forecast last year from the Water Bureau was a rate increase of 18 percent. This year it’s 12 percent.
“We were able to bring the rates down and save the taxpayer approximately $8 million in what would be even higher rate increases,” he said.
He said the work the city is doing with the rest of the money will also help save lives.
The City Council also approved a $450 million general fund budget which included about $5.5 million in cuts. Adams said they were able to do it without cutting sworn officers but police staff positions instead.