CROWN POINT | Instead of voting on a proposed 61 percent sewer rate increase Monday night, the City Council referred the issue to a joint meeting between the council's utilities committee and the city's Board of Works to further discuss the issue.
A meeting date has not yet been set.
At last month's City Council meeting, Greg Guerrettaz, the city's financial adviser, said the increase is necessary, in part, because the city has lost $1.1 million in sewer tap-in fees due to fewer buildings connecting to the city's system. Also at issue is a $35 million clean water mandate from the state the city must begin tackling in a few years.
Mayor David Uran said Friday calls have flooded his office about the proposed increase the council unanimously adopted on first reading last month. He said the increase is too drastic and is in favor of a stair-stepped increase. He said if council were to adopt the increase, he would veto it.
At Uran's request, Guerrettaz said he reviewed the city's financial information over the weekend and gave council an updated report about the utilities' finances. He said if the council used its cumulative sewer fund to pay its debt service, the proposed increase could become a 40 percent increase with an additional 30 percent increase in six months.
"You do not have enough money to make your mortgage payments because of a decrease in revenues and a decrease in connection fees," Guerrettaz said. He said as is, the city does not meet state statutory requirements regarding the sewer utility.
In the report given out Monday night, Guerrettaz showed the connection fees had dropped from $1.3 million in 2006 to $283,000 this year.
"Do you think if we didn't need this we would be up here tonight? No way," he said.
In other business, the council received a letter from the attorney representing the development team responsible for the proposed Preserve at Beacon Hill development, asking that the rezoning be taken off Monday night's agenda. The council unanimously voted against approving the development. The letter also stated the development team plans to make changes to the proposal and present a new plan in the "not too distant future."
The Preserve at Beacon Hill development included 572 apartments, 34,300 square feet of retail space and two commercial outlots adjacent to the Beacon Hill shopping center at the southeast corner of Summit Street and Broadway. Last week, Uran announced that because of the negative public feedback on the project, he would not support it.
