City to take closer look at water rates

A special committee has been appointed to discuss Iola’s water rates and explore the most painless means of erasing a worsening water fund deficit.
City council members Beverly Franklin, Steve French, Ken Rowe and Joel Wicoff will investigate ways to drum up revenues while mitigating rate hikes for local residents, commercial and industrial customers.
The council rejected earlier this month a request to increase industrial water rates by 30 percent, 25 percent for other businesses and 24 percent for private residents, vowing instead to explore every other avenue to balance the water budget.
The city has averaged a $300,000 annual deficit over the past several years, a shortfall made up by transfers from Iola’s other utility reserves.
Rowe said he had visited with plant managers from Gates Corporation and Russell Stover Candies, the city’s two largest industrial customers. Both indicated they would be vehemently opposed to a double-digit percentage rate hike for their water.
Still, Wicoff said the city must balance its water budget, noting that the city has deferred maintenance projects because of a lack of funding.
Wicoff noted that Iola last adjusted its water rates in 2005.
“We can’t expect the city to continue to supply good, clean water at the same price,” Wicoff said, noting that in the subsequent six years, the rate of inflation was about 18 percent.
Failing to account for inflation since 2005 was the equivalent of giving customers a substantial discount on water, Wicoff said.
French suggested the special committee look at water rates as part of a “brainstorming session.”
“I want our constituents to know that when we vote yes to increase water rates, we’ve done so after looking at every possibility,” French said.
The committee was appointed by Mayor Bill Shirley.
In a related matter, Shirley also announced the appointments of Donald Becker, Kendall Callahan, Jim Kilby and Scott Stewart to a committee charged with reviewing all of Iola’s city ordinances.
The ordinance review committee will determine which if any ordinances must change now that the city is governed by an eight-member council.
Those ordinances will include whether to reshape the mayor’s responsibilities. The same state law that prescribed an eight-member council for Iola also assigns a number of added powers to the mayor’s position. Some of those responsibilities mirror those given to the city administrator.