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Special council meeting today for sewer rates
(Clinton) -- New efforts delay sewer rate increases & council will not be asked to approve immediate increase at meeting today
With some debt restructuring the Clinton City Council will NOT be asked to immediately increase sewer rates at their special meeting today.
A memo from Finance Director Jessica Kinser,for the council, says they have been working since the immediate increases were proposed a couple of weeks ago to bring forward a workable solution for handling immediate needs of borrowing to make repayments to the DOT for Liberty Avenue work, improve cash collections and look at ways to pay for future projects required by the consent decree for sewer improvements.
Kinser explained that they requested and received a debt restructuring from the Iowa Finance Authority for the 62-million dollars in loans for the new treatment plant and related work. That loan will be restructured from the current 20 year to a 30 year repayment plan and the IFA will waive some restrictions on bonding for at least 2013. But she cautions that overall spending must be closely monitored.
Those adjustments and the new analysis combine to mean the council can forego an immediate rate increase, but the plan still includes a 25 percent increase in July 2013 and a 15 percent increase in July 2014.
In her memo Kinser also stated the new proposal will also give the city more time to track cash flow in sewer collections and more time to implement new billing and collection methods. The Finance Director says the rate increases can be part of the budget discussions in February 2013.
She also said that current calculations indicate that in addition to the sewer rate increases in 2013 and 2014 there would need to be 3 percent annual increases for July 2015 and beyond to being the city a positive cash by the end of fiscal year 2015.
The council will consider the report in a committee of the whole session at 11 o’clock this morning.
At the meeting September 25th the Clinton City Council was faced with the proposal for a 25-percent sewer rate increase by the first of the year and another 15 percent by mid-year 2013 just to fix today’s issues with the sewer fund.
Written 10/18/2012 by Dave Vickers - KROS News
