Dear editor:
I am trying to follow basic arithmetic formulas to arrive at the logic our town employees, councillors, and mayor are following to arrive at in costing out and charging for the use of water and sewer, but having no success in arriving at a logical answer.
There are more than 3,000 individual residential property owners assessed at a minimum rate of usage paying at the highest rate per cubic metre of water.
There are almost 50 commercial users paying at a lesser rate, and it is a fact that even though they could be using more (i.e., car washes, hotels, motels, etc.), it costs them less.
Why should the residences subsidize them? I guess no one realizes that costs of operation are deductible from taxable income. Why should residential users subsidize the taxing government?
Industrial users, eight in all, receive an even larger discount? Why so?
It has been pointed out that residential users water their lawns and gardens, fill swimming and wading pools, and occasionally wash driveways and cars. This puts an overload on the system so the powers that be want to see water meters on every residence or user station.
I guess they think this will alleviate the problem. Do you think so? I don’t.
To begin with, the problem only happens during a few short months. The rest of the year, the water system sits back recovering its wounds and taking kudos for its splendid job and tasty Rainy Lake water.
Since the overage has been calculated in the minimum rate, what is the big deal?
Don’t you think we can do without water meters at $1,000 apiece (estimated) for the some 3,000 users that already are paying the actual or high estimated usage? Maybe the system should purchase and install 20 or 30 a year, at their cost, and get the facts of annual usage straight before their assessment and arithmetic formulas are applied.
Not every one of the 3,000 residential users even use the assessed rate. So why should they pay the highest rate?
Now for the 100-year-old piping problems. Ever since I arrived in town some 60 years ago, I have been paying some sort of municipal tax at some six different addresses. Every one of them had frontage costs for installing municipal sewer and water piping.
I haven’t met any 100-year-old ratepayers that had those cheap and poorly-installed sewer and water lines. In other words, the 100-year-old lines users haven’t been paying for quite a while.
In order for them to continue using our great system, they should expect to face the same frontage costs that everyone else has to deal with.
If you live in a non-municipal operation area, you are responsible for the total cost, not only of installation but maintenance and/or replacement.
So if you are concerned about this “situation,” as I have demonstrated, please contact the mayor and councillors to do something about this—on a fair basis.
Before more statements or comments are made by them, let’s see some action on the basis of user pays!
Thank you,
John Steinke
Fort Frances, Ont.
Note: The user numbers are taken from the Tuesday, April 5 article headlined, “Residents facing 2.5% tax hike.”