The Auburn City Council on Monday adopted new utility rates for its water, sewer and stormwater customers.
The upshot is the retail water rate in the 2019-2022 time frame will increase by about 3.4 percent each year, sewer by about 2.4 percent and stormwater by about 1.7 percent each year across the existing customer classes.
Most of the increases proposed reflect the capital needs of each utility, and the city’s goal of getting its customer classes closer to paying 100 percent of the cost of their service by 2022.
One point of controversy.
For decades, the City of Auburn maintained a constant price for residential water meters of five-eighths, three-fourths to 1-inch, but the 2019-2022 utility report prepared by the FCS Group, a consultant, and on which the council relied, muddied the waters by proposing the City impose an additional charge for the 1-inch water meter.
During public comment period of the meeting, former City Councilmember Wayne Osborne found a flaw in the reasoning.
“Flow rate is one of the reasons why they want to raise rates for the 1-inch, but most of the flow rates are determined by fire flow rate, not the utility flow rate,” Osborne said.
As Osborne noted, when the City completes repaving of streets it many times increases the size of a water main, not because utility customers are using any more water but because of fire flow.
On Monday, city leaders dropped the additional charge idea and decided that residential customers, and residential customers only would be charged the same base rate, regardless of the size of the line.
“The council-directed philosophy is they want everyone paying their cost of service. That is the appropriate take on recommendations proposed over the four-year period: that we get to fixing those particular cost of service inequities by 2022,” FCS Principal and Vice President Angie Sanchez said during a study session last week.
“Our analysis did show the need for some re-calibration between single family and non-single family rates, as single-family was paying a little bit higher than cost-of-service, and non-single family was paying a little bit lower,” Sanchez said.
The adjustment contains news for Auburn’s two wholesale water customers, the City of Algona but especially for Water District 111.
“We did base the charges on meter size, same as the retail rate,” Sanchez said of Algona. “If they have a 6-inch and an 8-inch (pipe), whatever that rate schedule is for the retail customers, that is what Algona would pay for the particular charges.”
The rates established will likewise cover the same 2019-2022 time frame as retail, and the rates will continue to recover the cost of service.
Water District 111 will realize a new, interruptible wholesale, water-rate structure, reflecting a change in water service from “continuous,” to “ready-to-serve” upon request,” Sanchez said.
The standby charge per month for Water District 111 will be $1,139 in 2019, the usage charge per 100 cubic feet will be $1.95 and the water surcharge per 100-cubic-feet-of-water purchased from the City of Tacoma will be $3.31. The adjustment will recover the whole cost of service.
