Some Greater Vernon politicians are concerned certain user groups are unfairly drowning in their water fees. The discussion of water rate equity came up at a Greater Vernon
Advisory Committee meeting Thursday in the context of recently raised
water fees and looming changes to the Master Water Plan. The district breaks water users into four categories: agricultural
customers, domestic users, industrial/commercial/institutional (ICI)
users, and "other" users, including golf courses and nurseries. The Regional District of North Okanagan's general manager of
engineering, Dale McTaggart, says each group pays a different fee—or
combination of fees when you look at base rates and added consumption
costs. He says the group treading the deepest financial waters are the
high-user residential customers. "But then again, those are often the ones over-watering their lawns,
and we have to think about conservation," McTaggart says. "If you want
to use that much water, you have to pay for it." Zee Marcolin, utilities engineer, says raising water rates is one way of encouraging people to use less water. "You set (consumption rate) tiers to punish the higher users," Marcolin says. But rates aren't just set by how much you use, and GVAC director Catherine Lord wonders why that is. "Everyone gets the same water, why have we set different rates for different groups?" Lord says. Lord is especially concerned about the impact on small businesses that
fall under the ICI category, while GVAC chair Mike Macnabb questions
the relatively low rate paid by golf courses and nurseries that
generally chug a lot of water. New rates went into effect April 1, and they too are contested.
Director Bob Spiers says when the hiked rate was passed by the RDNO
board in March, everyone thought they were agreeing to a 3% rise. "But the average user went up 8%," Spiers says. "When we left, everyone
thought it was 3%, but did anyone know what they were voting for?" Director Bob Fleming led a motion for all future rate changes to be
preceded by a report on the actual financial impact it would have on
user groups to better inform the decision. Director Gyula Kiss alone opposed the motion, saying the root of the rate problem still hadn't been addressed. "We need to look at taxation to pay for (infrastructure), we can't keep raising the rates," Kiss says.
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The Table shows the effect on 4 different types of residential customer. The first one is a relatively low user (226m3) who shows a 14.98% increase, the 2nd one is the GVAC average consumer (350m3) - 11.4% incrase (Not 8% in story), the 3rd one is a high water user (584m3) -- 8.51% and the last is our poor old 20m3 per quarter (80m3 annually ) who checks in with a 20.97% increase.
By contrast the commercial user saw a 5% increase when consumption rates were upped from 1.09/m3 to 1.15m3. The agricultural user saw a 2.9% increase. The 6 customers who get a special non-potable rate charge saw an increase from .33/m3 to .50/m3 - (A 50% Increase)
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