From KOAA.com (Andy Koen):
Water bills will likely get more expensive in Monument this year. Under a proposed rate schedule, customers could end up paying nearly double what they did for water last year.
The largest increases will be applied to base rates. For residential customers, the base rate would increase nearly 5 fold from the current $8.80 per month to $40. Commercial customers would see their base rate grow some 789% from $9 per month $71.
The Town of Monument uses a tiered water rate structure that increases the price depending on the volume of water consumed. Rates would also be increased at each of the four tiers under the proposed schedule.
Factoring for water usage of between 3,000 and 6,000 gallons per month, the Town calculates a sample residential bill increasing from $28.76 per month to $46 in the winter. With a usage at 31,000 gallons per month, that same bill increases from $214.49 to $329.75 during the summer.
The worksheet also shows winter bills for commercial customers growing from $430.42 to $651.50 per month and from $805.95 to $1,267.25 in the summer.
The board is also proposing an additional 8 percent increase to the base rate every year through 2021.
Mayor Pro Tem Jeff Kaiser said previous Boards of Trustees kept water artificially low for too long.
“For the last 20 years, there has not been a water rate increase for a small subset of our population who are serviced by the town’s water district,” said Jeff Kaiser, Mayor Pro Tem.
He said the water enterprise has run deficits each year since 2012. Trustees have paid the bills by redirecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the general fund. Kaiser said that is unfair to citizens who get water from other utilities such as Woodmoor Water and Sanitation and the Tri-View Metro District.
“Those citizens who are paying their fair share for the water, yet are being asked to in addition to that, subsidize 20 to 30 percent of our citizens such that they can enjoy extremely low water rates,” Kaiser said.
But business leaders warn the new rates are jumping too fast.