The City Council Tuesday night approved moving forward with a plan to fund upgrades to the city’s aging wastewater infrastructure, citing fears that without the improvements Longmont could face catastrophic problems in just a few years.
“The bill is coming due,” Councilor Tim Waters said during a council worksession. He said if replacement work is not done now, the city could be inflicted with contaminated water or no water at all as some communities are dealing with now.
“... We don’t ever want to become another Flint, Mich., or Jackson, Miss and people read about and are aghast at how a municipality can let that happen,” Waters said.
Councilors agreed to a proposed rate ordinance that will raise the monthly cost of the volume of water used by customers while keeping the metered service charge at current levels through 2025.
That translates to a metered volume charge per 1,000 gallons would move from $5.38 a month in 2020 to $6.29 in 2023, $7.02 in 2024 and $7.82 in 2025. The metered monthly service charge would remain at $11.50 a month through 2025, according to the proposal.
Councilors agreed the rate structure is most “equitable” especially for lower-income residents. The first reading for the ordinance is scheduled for Nov. 15 and a final vote is slated for Dec. 20.
City Council also agreed to bring back a proposed ordinance prompted by the Platte River Power Authority’s move to hike electric rates an average of 2.3% in 2023. This is in addition to the 4% rate increase already approved in October 2021, according to the city.
The proposed rate hike would be 2.1% on most homes in Longmont, on top of a 2.5% rate increase planned for next year.
The average home in Longmont uses 700 kilowatt-hours a month of energy, which produces a $73.82 monthly electric bill in 2020. The proposed rate hike would translate to an average residential household paying $3.43 a month for electricity in 2023, according to the plan presented to the city council.
The rate hike proposal would bump electric rates for businesses between 2.2% and 2.6% a month. That is on top of the nearly 5% increase approved for commercial use in 2023, according to the city’s proposal.
The move for higher rates is largely because the Platte River Power Authority in 2018 moved to provide a 100% non-carbon resource mix by 2030, Scott Rochat, spokesman for Longmont Power & Communications said recently.
“Platte River has accelerated its investments in renewable energy sources, and we’ve had to cover those costs,” Rochat said.
The Longmont City Council in 2018 approved a city-wide goal of using 100% renewable energy by 2030.
To help defray the cost of the increases on local families, the city will also boost electric and wastewater utility rebates through the Longmont CAReS program, officials said.
