Here we flow again - water rates to rise

At this rate, it’s going to be cheaper to drink beer.
The New York City Water Board has come up with a proposal to raise Water and Sewer bills by a whopping 14.5 percent, starting July 1.
Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn took credit for avoiding a rate increase of 18 percent, by giving the DEP the right to cut-off service to water-bill-deadbeats, and put liens on properties with long-standing delinquencies.
With that announcement, the Water Board had projected the “likely need for a double-digit increase of 11.5 percent in fiscal year 2009 [which begins on July 1 this year]” according to Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Emily Lloyd.
By offering a Payment Incentive Plan, which can forgive some of the charges added to old bills, cut-off threats, automated meter reading, cutting expenses, and creating “a safety net program,” the DEP has gone a long way to reduce the need for increases, according to Lloyd.
“A few key factors, however, have contributed to the need for (the proposed) increase of 14.5 percent, or three points higher than predicted,” she said.
Lloyd blames a number of factors, like “a more than $118 million increase in non-discretionary operations and maintenance costs,” which includes higher fuel and energy costs, salaries and benefits.
She also blames debt service on “Federally mandated projects that constitute two thirds of DEP’s capital budget.”
Councilmember James Gennaro, Chair of the Environmental Protection Committee, blasted the proposal after a public meeting of the Board on Friday, April 11.
“This is a terrible blow to New Yorkers at a time when so many are having trouble just making ends meet,” Gennaro said, calling the hike, “a regressive, backdoor tax used to bolster the city’s general coffers.”
He blames Bloomberg for the size of the increase, saying that much of the rate hike is caused by “The administration’s practice of diverting significant amounts of money collected from water bills to the city’s general coffers to pay for city government operations unrelated to the city’s water and sewer system.”
Gennaro claims that the new proposal would send $89 million collected from water bills to the city’s general coffers. “This amount represents about one third of the proposed water rate increase,” he said.
According to his figures, by 2010 water rate payers would subsidize the city’s general fund by $145 million. By the 2015 fiscal year, the amount would surpass $300 million, according to Gennaro.
City Comptroller William Thompson and several members of the Council, including Finance Committee chair David Weprin, have long been calling on the mayor to recalculate the payments from the Water Board to the city, which are technically rents for the water infrastructure.
In an op-ed piece in The Queens Courier last June, Thompson said, “If one-half of the excess rental payments were applied to rate relief and the other used as pay-as-you-go capital, we could achieve close to $278 million in savings for ratepayers over the next four years.”
The Water Board will be holding a public hearing in Queens on Tuesday, May 6, at 11 a.m. in the sixth floor training room at DEP headquarters, located at 59-17 Junction Boulevard in Corona.
Gennaro is really steamed at what he calls “A backdoor tax used to bolster the City’s general coffers.”
Through a spokesperson, he promised to “definitely” be at the Queens hearing, and intends to make his case at hearings in all five boroughs.
“This is like liquid congestion pricing,” he said.