Highland water customers will see annual rate increases for the next three years

Highland residents will pay a little more for water bills in coming years, as the city tries to cope with rising costs.

The city council voted in favor of increasing water rates by 3% effective January 2024 at its last council meeting. Rates will go up another 3% in January 2025 and January 2026.

The previous rate increase schedule was 1.5% per year from 2019 through 2023.

Joe Gillespie, director of public works, said in a memo to city manager Chris Conrad that the department has made small, incremental adjustments over the past five years to keep up with inflation and necessary improvement to the city’s water system.

“However, the cost of doing business has made it difficult to keep our water treatment expenses in check,” Gillespie wrote.

Over the last couple of years, the cost of chemicals required to operate the water system have gone up from 25 to 200%. While the pandemic-era shortages of materials seem to be subsiding, he wrote, prices have not dropped down to pre-COVID rates.

“As the nation’s supply chain crisis happened, most of our regularly purchased items easily surpassed the typical 2 percent increase from the previous year in our budget,” Gillespie wrote.

According to the city records, capital projects have averaged $430,000 a year for the distribution system, including meters, water main replacements and equipment; and $225,000 a year for the water plant. Older water mains have not been replaced since 2020, and the water plant has not been upgraded since 1993.

Capital projects were kept to a minimum during the pandemic and improvements need to get back on track, Gillespie wrote.

“When you stop maintaining your system you have more breaks and stops in service,” he told the council. “There are several sections of main that need to be replaced … we have seen just with the short term that we’ve been falling back on those projects, we’re noticing an uptick in water main breaks.”

Highland has experienced 15 water main breaks in 2023 alone, Gillespie said.

The estimated charge for a family of four will be about $39.26 a month, up from the current $37.19. That will generate another $148,116 per year for public works, whereas the old 1.5-percent would have caused a nearly $65,000 loss, according to city documents.

Most of the council agreed it was an unpleasant but necessary step.

“We’d rather do small annual increases than a big 15% jump,” said City Council member Peggy Bellm.

Council member Richard Frey said he didn’t see that they had any choice.

“We see the high prices now,” he said. “They’re going to keep going up for the next 3-4 years.”

However, Councilman William Napper voted against the increase. He said it was too steep an increase for residents to pay.