The Westlock Regional Water Services Commission held an emergency meeting last Thursday, Dec. 19, to change the wholesale water rate.
The new rate will be $2 per cubic metre of water, effective March 1, 2014. This is up from last year’s rate of $1.90 but down from the $2.10, effective Jan. 1, 2014, the commission approved at their Dec. 12 meeting.
Commission chair Clem Fagnan said the emergency meeting had to be called because the commission had violated its own bylaws with their earlier motion to raise the rates without sufficient notice to the three member municipalities: the town, Westlock County and Clyde.
“For the town to change the water rate, the administration has to change all the billing. You can’t do that in a week or two,” he said. “The agreement says we have to let them know by Oct. 31 to have it done by Jan. 1.”
Fagnan added it was something both he and Van Doesburg should have caught before the commission approved the rate change, but they didn’t.
“Our manager should have caught that. He didn’t catch it,” he said. “I read that (bylaw) once in the last three years, and I should probably go over that more often but I didn’t. When I got back home I looked it up and found out it was Oct. 31.”
Hence, the emergency meeting had to be called.
Commission manager John Van Doesburg explained to board members at the meeting that because of the election in October, as well as because of a storm causing the commission to have to cancel a budget meeting in early December, it wasn’t possible to get the rates changes by the Oct. 31 deadline.
He suggested moving the effective date for the change to March 1, 2014 would be the appropriate solution, and also suggested that $2 would be a more appropriate rate considering the town has a three-year bylaw that had already set the rates for 2014 — if the commission raised the rate to $2.10, the town would have had to change its bylaw as well.
“This would give the communities time to do whatever adjustments to their water rates and their bylaw,” he said. “It would also give the commission enough money to balance its budget and put a few dollars into reserves by the end of the year.”
The commission voted 6-1 in favour of the change, with Westlock County reeve Bud Massey opposed. He explained that while he was at commission meetings he was there to make decisions that were best for the commission, not the county, and wanted to see financial reserves built up more quickly with a higher rate.
“One day the warranties are going to go off the equipment, and then we don’t want to sit here and try to pass a $1 increase,” he said. “We should be keeping our house in order as we go.”
Van Doesburg said he felt the reserves were being built up quickly enough, as any large-scale fixes wouldn’t be needed in the short-term.
“We’ve put $42 million into this system, so it’s a good, new system,” he said. “Overall, it shouldn’t be taking big hits.”
Fagnan said Van Doesburg’s contract to manage the commission expired Nov. 31, 2013, but that contract has been extended for one full year with a 90-day termination clause.
That decision was made to give Van Doesburg more time to complete all of the paperwork related to the government grants under the Water For Life strategy, which have paid for this project. There is a 10 per cent holdback of government funding until all of the appropriate paperwork has been submitted and approved.
Fagnan said the commission is in kind of a tough spot, depending on Van Doesburg to finish up the paperwork while at the same time having concerns about the overall management of the commission.
“We’re depending on him to do that, but when he misses things like that you wonder,” he said. “You start losing confidence in a person when they start making little mistakes.”
At this point, however, Fagnan said he’s willing to give Van Doesburg the benefit of the doubt.
