by Dan Schroeder
On June 2, 2009, the Ogden City Council voted to raise sewer rates by another $3.92 per month. Being a numbers guy, I took this opportunity to try to put this increase into context and help everyone understand whether or not our utility rates are too high.
First I dug up my own file of utility bills, going back to when I bought my house a little over ten years ago. I added up the bills for each calendar year, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, and plotted it as a bar graph:
So, for example, my total city utility bill (water, sewer, storm water, and refuse) increased by 50%, over and above inflation, between 1999 and 2008. Much of that overall increase came from a sharp increase in sewer rates that began in 2006 and has continued each year since then. The graph doesn't yet show the newly approved sewer rate increase, which will add another 8% (compounded) to the total.
I should explain that my utility rates are about as low as they can be for an Ogden homeowner. I use very little water (usually less than 1000 gallons per month), and I've opted for the smaller, cheaper, trash barrel. For sewer and storm water I pay the same flat rate as nearly everyone else. (Ogden's utility rate schedule is linked here.)
On the graph I've also included my property tax payments to Ogden City, which have increased a little faster than inflation over this time period. Notice that the city has always collected more from me in utility payments than in property taxes--and the relative share from utility payments is growing.
Mayor Godfrey periodically brags that he has lowered Ogden's property taxes since he took office in 2000. Perhaps that's true in some abstract mathematical sense, but it's simply a fact that my property tax has increased by 11%, above inflation, since 1999. In any case, unless you live in a very expensive home while using relatively little water, any change in your Ogden City property tax has been small compared to the increase in your city utility bills.
After I presented these facts to the city council at its meeting on June 2, the mayor fired back. He said he found it "ironic" that an environmentalist such as I would complain about sewer rates when the cause of rising sewer rates is "outrageous" federal environmental laws that put stringent requirements on discharge of pollutants such as copper.
My initial response regarding copper discharge standards is printed in the news article linked above. The article also points out that the current rate increase is to fund a major increase in the sewage treatment plant's capacity--not to improve the quality of the discharged water. But one of the anonymous comments under that article mentioned utility rates in Salt Lake City. Time for more digging.
It's easy to look up Salt Lake City's rates for utilities and refuse collection. Based on these rate schedules, I determined that if I lived in Salt Lake City I would pay the following monthly amounts:
Water: $9.75
Sewer: $5.60
Storm water: $3.00
Refuse: $8.25
Total: $26.60
For comparison, my total monthly bill in Ogden is now a little over $51.00. In the graph above, the rightmost column shows my hypothetical Salt Lake City utility payments for 2008. I also looked up Salt Lake City's property tax rate, which is 6% higher than Ogden's, and included the hypothetical SLC property tax for a house of the same assessed value as mine. (You might object that my house would be worth more if it were located in a typical SLC neighborhood. True enough, but if we include that effect we should also factor in SLC's higher average wages, which enable people to pay higher housing prices...)
All four components of SLC's utility bills are lower (at least for a customer like me) than Ogden's. But the biggest difference by far is in the sewer rates: $5.60 compared to $18.49 (and rising). Why?
The explanation has nothing to do with onerous environmental regulations, as Mayor Godfrey would have us believe. Salt Lake City is subject to the same federal regulations as Ogden.
Part of the explanation may be that SLC's sewer system is run more efficiently, or that their customers aren't being forced to subsidize a major expansion to accommodate growth on the suburban fringe. Someone should look into these possibilities.
Much of the difference, however, is simply because Ogden charges a flat rate for being hooked into the sewer system, while Salt Lake's sewer rates are based on average winter-season water use. (They ignore summer use because irrigation water doesn't go into the sewer system.) So in Salt Lake, if you flush your toilet fewer times, you pay less on your sewer bill. This only seems fair. And for a customer like me who uses very little water, the benefit is substantial.
Unless you believe in socialism, there's no reason why Ogden shouldn't also adopt a sewer rate schedule that's based on winter water use. Besides being more fair, this would give everyone an incentive to use less water--and reduce the need for even more upgrades to our water and sewer systems in the future. I therefore suggest that the city council and administration begin working now to revise our sewer rates in this way.
