The Columbia Board of Aldermen voted 4-1 Tuesday to raise water rates 3 percent in 2018 after voting down the price hike at its previous meeting.
Aldermen Wendell Hammond, Jason Stringer, Mike Smith and Ed Hough voted for the increase, and Alderwoman Anna Evans voted against it.
The base rate will rise 57 cents per month, and also the sewer and water use above the first 2,500 gallons will go up by 3 percent. Mayor Justin McKenzie said it would have increased his water bill by $1.90 last month.
Aldermen said the city has many expensive repairs to its infrastructure and that not raising the rates a little bit each year eventually causes a huge increase all at once.
There was a question whether an ordinance called for the water rates to automatically jump 3 percent annually, but a reading of the text showed it said it would only do so with board approval.
Evans said following Tuesday’s vote she wasn’t against it being done but just wasn’t comfortable doing so at this time.
“I know what it’s going towards and I know that the money is there in water and it is helping more things in the city, but I’m one of these that I don’t like to overwhelm people with a lot of money things right at one time. It could be spread out,” Evans said. “But we are the board that is getting slammed with a lot of raising because of the previous board not raising.”
Those include property tax and garbage rate increases the board has implemented since it took office in July. The city’s garbage collection lost more than $150,000 in the year ending Sept. 30, 2017, and the city raised garbage rates from $10 per month to $15 per month starting Oct. 1 along with cutting costs. Property taxes went from 22 mills to 26 mills, the first increase in at least a dozen years, with McKenzie saying then the city needed it to bring the budget in line and pay for projects like paving and purchasing equipment.
On Dec. 5, the board had voted 4-1 to not raise the water rates with Smith, Evans, Stringer and Hammond against raising rates and Hough wanting to increase them.
Hough brought the issue back up Tuesday and said it’s something the city needed to look into again. He said there are five water projects coming up with a total cost of $495,000.
Hough said the Water Department, which is contracted to MD Electric, assumed the annual 3 percent rate would be in its budget. He said it faced an 18 percent increase in chemicals that comes out to $3,000 a month more.
“When I made the motion (not to raise rates), I had good reason for that, and Wendell had a real good reason for his, too,” Smith said. “But we’re a board that gets along and we make good decisions and I think we make good, commonsense decisions. And I didn’t say we wouldn’t ever go up on it; I said I thought we should postpone it.”
Smith subsequently added, “I said a later date, and this is a later date.”
Hammond said increasing the water rates 3 percent every year is best for the public because it keeps the city from having to greatly increase rates when a problem arises. He also said Columbia has many old, clay pipes that cause a lot of water and sewer problems.
Hough pointed out how expensive repairs can be:
• Broken main near Piggly Wiggly, $75,000
• Church Street extension sewage collapse during tornado, $75,000
• Jones Lane sewage problem, $200,000
• Citizens Bank relining and new pumps, $1 million
“When it comes to water and sewage in an old town like Columbia, a million dollars won’t go very far,” Hough said.
Michael McDaniel of MD Electric, the water contractor, said the city had to almost double water bills in one motion when he first came in because it had not gone up in so many years.
“Nobody likes to be hit that hard. If we don’t implement the 3 percent yearly, it’s going to hurt the citizens,” Hammond said. “One thing that (former mayor) Harold Bryant always said, ‘People here want good drinking water; they want their sewer flowing; they want their garbage picked up.’ You know, a couple of those categories we’re slacking.”
