Prince George city staff are recommending utility rate increases for water, sewer and garbage collection in 2012 that could cost the average household $87.48 per year.
In a series of reports to council, staff recommended a 15 per cent rate increase for water, a 14 per cent sewer increase and a three per cent garbage rate increase in 2012 to cover operating costs and repair aging infrastructure.
Council members considered the reports on Monday at a committee of the whole meeting.
Results were not available as of press time.
In a report to council, city financial planning manager Kris Dalio and superintendent of operations Bill Gaal said an estimated $7.36 million per year in capital spending is needed to renew the city's water and sewer infrastructure.
"In the past few years increases in the cost of materials such as copper as well as asphalt resulted in material cost increases in 2008 of 52 per cent," Dalio and Gaal wrote. "While the cost of new service installations are balanced through a change in bylaw rates to accommodate the increases in materials and higher equipment costs, repairs of water main and service breaks do not have any cost recovery mechanism and therefore we have not been able to have the same full cost recovery apply as with new installations."
The city's water and sewer utilities ran operational deficits from 2007 to 2010, depleting operational reserves, the report said. In 2009, the city was required to do 219 excavations for water and sewer repairs.
In 2010 that number was 228 excavations.
"Plastic services were installed in some areas of the municipality in the 1980s and 1990s as a way to reduce the costs associated with copper services. We are now experiencing failures of those services," Dalio and Gaal wrote. "When plastic services pull apart they saturate a large amount of surrounding soils due to lack of detection (leaking copper connections make a considerable amount of noise, the plastic connections do not and thus go undetected for longer periods of time). The resulting excavations can result in costs of up to 10 times what would be experienced on copper services."
In their recommendation to city council, Dalio and Gaal said further increases will be needed to the water and sewer rates from 2013 to 2016 to cover capital spending and build reserve funds.
"The City of Prince George participates in the National Water and Wastewater Benchmarking initiative with municipalities and regional districts from across Canada," Dalio and Gaal wrote. "Even with a 15 per cent increase in 2011, Prince George is still among the lowest rates in the benchmarking."
Of 36 communities benchmarked, Prince George had the 10th lowest sewer rates and seventh-lowest water rates in 2010.
City director of corporate services Kathleen Soltis said further three per cent increases to the garbage collection rate in 2013-2016 would allow the city's fleet of garbage trucks to be replaced over four years.
In addition, it would build up a reserve fund equal to 25 per cent of the total annual operational budget.
"The accumulated operating surplus would provide funding in the event that unexpected operating costs were incurred," Soltis wrote in her report. "The surplus could also be considered as a source of initial funding for enhanced curbside collection programs."
Other options presented to council included one-time increases to water and sewer rates of up to 55 per cent.
For more coverage, see Wednesday's issue of the Citizen.
