Aqua 7's loan has been amortized over a longer period of time, though, and the payments are far less than we had before. Thus, the price of water to Beiseker (and other communities) from Aqua 7 has dropped by a small amount.
I made a motion in Council to pass some of that saving on to the water users here in the village, but my motion was defeated by council. Other councilors felt that the decrease would be insignificant and lower the user-pay amount for water in the village.
Right now, it costs the village more money to provide water services than is recovered through the sale of water. That shortfall is drawn from General Revenue. Leaving our water rates where they are, will allow more money to be applied to our water services - and therefore less money taken from general revenue.
To put this whole thing in perspective, though, we're paying just over three dollars per cubic meter for water. That means a tank full of water 1 meter high, by 1 meter long, by 1 meter wide, cost just over three dollars. A cubic meter of water is about 1,000 litres, or over 260 gallons - so that works out to just a little over one cent a gallon.
But, it is true that many other communities in the province are paying far less than we are.
Maybe the Village could use a graduated system for water billing, like some cities do? It would charge higher rates for those users consuming larger amounts of water, but allow those users consuming less (most people) to save some money on their bills.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I think Edmonton charges a 6 cent increase for each additional 60 cubic metres.