Underground Construction - April 2018 - 2

EDITOR'S LOG
Robert Carpenter | Editor-in-Chief

The Lesson of Delay

They still haven't learned.
To paraphrase an old saying, you
can't keep putting off until tomorrow what is needed today. When it
comes to user fees for sewer and water systems, the inadequacy of rate
structure price maintenance is rife
with political interference.
A recent news item explained how
a long-time mayor of a small Northeastern town arbitrarily decided to
delay a water and sewer rate hike,
despite the advice from his public
works director.
Initially, I could see where the
city council would be reluctant to
raise rates, since there had already
been two significant rate hikes over
the previous 18 months equaling
roughly 15 to 19 percent. But based
upon the volume of work that the
city was being forced to tackle, currently and in the future, the public
works director had announced he
would propose another 5.5 percent
increase to both water sewer rates in
July. That would represent a raise of
24 percent in less than two years for
sewer, and 20 percent for water.
The mayor quickly stepped forward, apparently after mounting
complaints, and announced there
would not be additional raises in
July. He said the city would continue
with its infrastructure program that
was "compatible" with current revenues. Further, the mayor stressed to
the press that since he's been mayor,
he had not increased rates for seven
years and that "businesses appreciate the lower water and sewer rates."
I've no doubt the citizens of this
town liked lower rates - don't we all.
But the reality is that with inadequate or absent rate hikes, the city is
woefully behind in its infrastructure
upkeep and needs. The public works
director was absolutely correct in
proposing another raise. Odds are,
to accomplish what is needed (and

APRIL 2018 | UConOnline.com

We need more city
leaders to embrace
their fiduciary
responsibilities and
address infrastructure
challenges with a plan
for the future, and
reject the "hold-theline-on-rate-hikes"
club.
to keep state and environmental
authorities at bay), a 40-to-50-percent raise may ultimately be necessary. Not keeping up with costs and
allowing the unseen infrastructure
to erode and dissolve into disaster - all in the name of obtaining
public favor for holding the line on
spending - is a common, near-sighted and selfish game too many public
officials play.
Can you imagine if this city - and
thousands of others scattered across
the U.S. - had simply implemented
annual, slight user fee increases (1
or 2 percent, just enough to keep up
with inflation), what a difference
it would have made in the maintenance of sewer/water systems? That
small percent would hardly have
been noticed, yet would have been
extremely helpful for the infrastructure budgets. Instead, the city will
continue to face major jumps in the
sewer/water user fees, but still lack
the spine to do anything about it.
As part of its exclusive sewer and
water survey published in February,
Underground Construction has been
tracking the time between user fee
increases. Our most recent survey

revealed that time has decreased to
3.1 years. It has fallen considerably
over the past decade, as pressure has
been amped up by federal and state
authorities to bring systems into
compliance with health, environmental rules and regulations. But a
small raise every three years is still
not adequate to keep up with costs.
Heck, that probably doesn't even
cover the cost of the health-care premium hikes we've all had to suffer
through in recent years.
Rate hikes are never pleasant and
often do cause extreme suffering for
some people. I have nothing but empathy for folks whose slim budgets
get hit with major user-fee increases
like a ton of bricks. Baltimore has
been forced to raise bills at approximately 9 percent a year since 2009.
The city is under a negotiated consent decree with the Environmental
Protection Agency (like so many are
these days) to address out-of-compliance, and even dangerous, sewer
and water infrastructure problems.
Baltimore agreed to invest in a 13year program and spend $1.6 - $2
billion to fix its dilapidated systems.
A 9 percent annual raise in user
fees does cause hardship. But whose
fault is that? It represents a failure
of leadership. A small, incremental
increase would have permitted lowerincome people to better adjust.
The frequency and amount of
user fee increases has grown tremendously across the country over
the past 10 years, primarily out of
necessity. We need more city leaders
to embrace their fiduciary responsibilities and address infrastructure
challenges with a plan for the future,
and reject the "hold-the-line-on-ratehikes" club.

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Underground Construction - April 2018

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