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Ottawa residents face a proposed 10-per-cent increase in their 2010 water and wastewater charges as the city continues to try to catch up with aging infrastructure.
The increase works out to about $56 for the average Ottawa home. The draft budget includes money aimed at preventing flooding in Ottawa’s west end, reducing sewage overflows into the Ottawa River and improving metering and billing.
“The investments are where they need to be made,” said Alta Vista Councillor Peter Hume, chairman of city council’s planning and environment committee.
Ottawa residents already face a municipal tax increase of 3.77 per cent, or $138 for the average home, after council passed the 2010 budget last month.
Hume said the city must catch up after holding the line on infrastructure spending in past years.
“For a long time, we kept everything flat. We absorbed those increases, we used our reserve fund, we didn’t fund our infrastructure and now we’ve got problems, mostly on the capital side,” Hume said. “We can’t continue to pump sewage into the Ottawa River, that’s not acceptable to residents.
“We can’t continue to have basements flooding on an ongoing basis. We’ve got to make those investments.”
Dixon Weir, the city’s general manager of environmental services, said more than 70 per cent of the infrastructure investments contained in the proposed budget are for “renewing assets.”
“Maintaining this infrastructure is a very expensive thing,” Weir said.
The city is in the final year of a three-year plan to increase water rates by nine per cent, but had to bump up the 2010 rate increase to 10 per cent after council approved shifting $735,520 from the tax budget to the water and sewer rate budget during budget deliberations last month.
The move came as several councillors tried to keep the municipal tax increase under four per cent, but Hume said council shouldn’t make a habit of shifting parts of the tax budget to the water and sewer rate budget.
“Financial plans need to be realistic. You shouldn’t be relying on the water rate to fund costs that aren’t related to the provision of water service,” he said. “It’s not so much that it’s a problem this year, but if it starts to become a trend … you’re not making decisions in the best interests of the water system.”
The planning and environment committee will debate the draft budget on Feb. 23 before it goes to council for a final vote on March 24.
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