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City Council approves increased water use rates |
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By Katelyn Gendron
Reminder Assistant Editor
AGAWAM -- Conservation is the key to avoiding the town's latest increase in the water use charge.
The City Council approved the 54-cent hike -- by a vote of eight to one, with two absent -- proposed by Mayor Susan Dawson and Department of Public Works Superintendent John Stone at a special meeting on May 12.
Dawson told Reminder Publications the increase is necessary to cover rising costs within the Water Enterprise Fund.
"[This increase is a byproduct of] the trickle down effect of the water rates increasing in Springfield, where we get our water from, and the new legal mandates [imposed by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)] made this an impossible task to cover these expenditures any other way," she explained.
Consumers that exceed 4,000 cubic feet of water use within the six-month billing cycle will be required to pay a new rate of $1.90 per hundred cubic feet of water. Households using under 4,000 cubic feet of water within the six-month billing cycle will maintain the previous rate of $1.36 per 100 cubic feet.
Stone explained that the average Agawam household uses 10,000 cubic feet of water each year, totaling $200.80.
Dawson noted that the town must also comply with the DEP's Performance Standards for Residential Water Use, which limits water consumption to 65 residential gallons per capita per day.
In a letter to City Councilor Robert Young, chair of the council's Finance Committee, Stone noted that the water rates were last adjusted in 2006.
"The rate adjustment is necessitated by several issues: increased expenses ... the need to make improvements to our water infrastructure to ascertain we will be able to provide water to the entire community should any of the Springfield transmission main (or portions thereof) be taken off line for repairs or maintenance; and a water income following below estimates due to economic contraction and high rainfall," he wrote.
"As the water division is an enterprise operation, it has to look within its own operations to generate funds to cover its operations," Stone continued. "It cannot look to the general fund to provide help; the necessary revenues needs must be met by users of the water system."
Dawson noted that the resolution approving the new water use rate does offer financial assistance to elderly citizens who qualify for certain tax exemptions.
City Council Vice President Cecilia Calabrese, also a mayoral candidate, was the only councilor present to vote against the increase; City Councilors George Bitzas and Young were absent.
"I just could not vote to increase water rates: not in this economic climate and not at a time when so many family budgets are stretched to their breaking point already," Calabrese said. "So, I voted no to increasing water rates. My no vote was my statement against the lack of will on the part of the current administration to tighten the financial grip on the Water Enterprise budget and limit their discretionary spending."
The new water rate will take effect at the beginning of the next fiscal year on July 1.
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