Significant water rate hike anticipated in Vaughan

YorkRegion.com
Feb. 3, 2016
Adam Martin-Robbins  

The cost of drinking a cold glass of tap water, washing a load of laundry and flushing your toilet is slated to spring up by nearly 10 per cent this year in Vaughan.

City council is poised to approve a combined water and wastewater rate increase of 9.8 per cent.

That works out to a hike of about $89 a year, just more than $7.40 per month, bringing the total bill to $994 for the average homeowner who consumes roughly 267 cubic metres per year.

“Our objective is to ensure financially viable and sustainable water, wastewater and storm water services in both the short term and the long term,” City Treasurer Laura Mirabella-Siddall said during a special finance committee meeting held Tuesday night.

“Really, this means making sure that we have safe drinking water; that we have effective wastewater collection and that we’re managing out storm water well.”

The overall increase is largely driven by the Region of York, which gets 73 per cent – $93.7 million — of the funds generated through water and wastewater bills, she noted.

That goes to purchase drinking water from Toronto and Peel as well as sewage treatment costs, maintenance of watermains and reservoirs, among other things.

To cover those costs, the Region pumped up its portion of the bill by 9 per cent.

The remainder of the increase is driven by the city, which is responsible primarily for the distribution of drinking water to and collection of wastewater from 78,000 homes and 3,100 businesses as well as water quality testing, operating and maintenance costs.

Similar rate hikes by the Region are slated to continue until 2020 then decline to near 3 per cent in 2021, Mirabella-Siddall said.

With this year’s rate increases, the water and wastewater bills are expected to generate $128.9 million this year.

About $16.2 million of that will be poured into a reserve fund at the city to cover future replacement costs of aging infrastructure, she noted.

But Vaughan still has a long way to go to build up enough money in its reserves to cover the full long-term replacement costs.

“We should have close to $100 million in our water reserve and we currently have about $40 million,” Mirabella-Siddall said, adding the city plans to increase its contributions to reserves over the next few years to make up the shortfall.

City hall watcher Richard Lorello implored councillors to seriously consider reviewing and changing the pricing model used to set water and wastewater rates, arguing it’s becoming unaffordable for some residents.

He pointed out that rates have increased between 8 per cent and 10 per cent every year since 2009.

“The total annual increase in 2016 over 2009 is a whopping $556… and that is a lot of money,” he said. “For someone making minimum wage, or between $10 and $20 an hour, trying to sustain a family these kinds of rate increases are huge.”

Council is expected to approve the new water and wastewater rates Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 1 p.m. If that happens, the increase will kick in April 1.