Change the rates

Kate Bouey - CASTANET Dec 11, 2015 / 5:00 am
Coldstream councillor Gyula Kiss wants everyone in Greater Vernon to pay the same amount for base rate water. “Nobody should be subsidizing anybody,” Kiss told the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee Thursday. “Everybody should be paying the same amount.” “We encourage people to save water. The less they use, the higher the rates go. My point is, we should all know what we should pay for our water.” In a presentation to the committee, Kiss called for a less complicated system than what is used now by Greater Vernon Water. “If you look at the current situation, everyone has a different rate,” said Kiss. “I don't know. It's difficult to understand.” He also said residential customers are overcharged. Kiss suggested $2.59 per cubic metre of water and a rate based on the first 10 cubic metres used per quarter. Anyone using more water than that would pay higher fees. “Then you just pay the base fee and the cost of borrowing,” Kiss said. The water utility's debt would be covered by taxes, reducing water bills by $29.73 per quarter, he said. When his Coldstream colleague Doug Dirk asked who would be paying more under the proposed system, Kiss pointed to commercial and industrial users such as Vernon Jubilee Hospital and Okanagan Spring brewery. Vernon councillor Bob Spiers, who would also like a different payment system in place, said $1.3 million would be shifted from residential class to commercial/industrial class. “The base fee would be the same for everyone and the consumption fee the same for everyone,” said Spiers. “It should be the same for washing cars, watering lawns, or producing beer.”
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Don Quixote Note: Councillor Kiss' rate structure is basically to lower the base fee to $55.59 per quarter ($25.86 base + 29.73 for borrowing outstanding) and charge everything above the first 10m3 per quarter at the rate of 2.59m3. Everyone in the non agriculture class would be charged the same base fee per connection and the same consumption rate. (Residential, Commercial, & Institutional)

How would this affect the different classes can be ascertained by using the online calculators . Just click in your average quarterly consumption (in the yellow box) to see the effect on your water bill when compared to the 2015 rates. Note there are separate calculators for residential and Commercial/institutional.

Remember that this is an alternate rate structure proposal that will be discussed at the rates workshop that will be held in January or February of 2016.

Commercial/Institutional  Calculator:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FgwH8iYm8oRsvp2KsIs70yG4ipyhy1RYHu-a08mgzT8/edit#gid=0

Residential Calculator
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HMfaBLo5llptiYVNIxMhGKhVVHpPcPXKcpav5Ecvn7k/edit#gid=0