Camanche City Council faced several issues surrounding the city’s utility services during its Feb. 6 council meeting, including a plan to increase garbage service rates to keep pace with increases by Republic Services.
During the meeting, which was streamed on YouTube, council noted that it didn’t make any changes to the fee in 2022, but announced that trash service fees would increase from $17.32 a month to $18.71 a month on March 1. The fees will be revisited next year and another increase could occur on March 1, 2024, should Republic, the contractor for the city, raise its rates. While the billing is done monthly, it is considering converting to quarterly billing. Councilman David Bowman voted for the measure, but expressed concerns about monthly billing. City council also looked at enacting monthly billing for the water utility cycle.
“I am on a fixed income. I'm retired. I don't mind paying a quarterly bill,” he said during the meeting. “I don't see a benefit for us. We're raising our costs, and not that I would recommend raising our rates, but we're raising our costs and there's no benefit back to the city.”
Council has had quarterly billing for water utilities for several years and several residents expressed opposition to the proposed change at the meeting, noting that it also could not see any benefit for the change to monthly billing. It also noted that there would be increased costs for billing, labor for mailing the bills and more frequent meter checks. Bowman said he he didn’t support the change.
“I recognize I'm outnumbered here and that's fine,” Bowman said during the meeting. “I'm just expressing my opinion, telling my thoughts. I don't support this change because I don't see any reason the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't think its broke, what we do now.”
According to council, quarterly billing was started years ago when the process was done by hand and the city had to streamline the process to reduce time for billing and meter reading to be able to calculate bills.
City Administrator Andrew Kida told council during the meeting the city would change its billing process to correspond with the increased number of bills created by the change.
According to Kida, rather than sending out separate delinquent notices, a notice would be sent with the second monthly bill, and if a customer fails to pay for two consecutive months, a shutoff notice would be sent. The process, he noted during the meeting, would save the city money in additional notices.
Kida also noted during the meeting that late fees would remain the same as they were with quarterly bills. The city also would not permit customers to pay a $25 deposit unless the bill was 150% more than their usual monthly bill. This could indicate a leak, and the city would investigate this and make any repairs, he told council during the session.
Council approved a first reading of the ordinance, changing the billing cycle with Bowman casting the only dissenting vote.
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