9-12% Increase In Water Rates Justified

BUT ONLY if the monies collected go directly to the upgrade of the infrastructure; ie: watermain and sewer replacement or rehabilitation. It is obvious that Mayor Miller's minions can't wait to get their sticky figures on this money for things other than infrastructure.

$40 a drop in the bucket

By SUE-ANN LEVY

I suspect most Toronto residents wouldn’t mind the idea of council hiking the city’s water rates by 9% this year — and by the same amount for the next four — if only this crew didn’t spend the proceeds like water.

After all, the City Hall mantra has been pretty loud and clear: The hikes are sorely needed to tackle a nearly $900-million backlog in repairs to, and replacement of, the city’s crumbling sewer infrastructure.

Yet again yesterday during the launch of the city’s water and wastewater budgets we heard that 50% of the city’s water and 30% of the wastewater network is at least 50 years old.

No wonder Toronto currently has the highest number of watermain breaks per kilometre compared to all other Canadian cities. Toronto Water general manager Lou Di Gironimo says they’re dealing with 1,500 to 1,600 breaks per year.

Add to that a series of reserve funds drained almost dry in recent years, to a dangerously low $101-million. In fact one fund — the water rate stabilization reserve — dipped to a negative balance last year and will need a cash infusion of $6.2 million from another reserve just to break even.

We also heard that revenues from the city’s commercial customers are on the decline as Toronto loses business to the more tax-friendly GTA regions. Typically, there were no complete figures available but Di Gironimo told me when Labatt’s left the city last year for London, the city lost $2 million in much-needed revenue.

So on the surface a rate hike of 9% or about $40 more on a typical water bill of $429 seems like a drop in the bucket.

If only the dire predictions would sink in with this fiscally-challenged crew. But no. It was clear yesterday the new talent on the budget committee — all beholden to Mayor David Miller — don’t understand the city is struggling to stay afloat. They probably never will.

They didn’t question why only $250 million of the backlog will be reduced (leaving $580 million) by 2011 even with successive 9% water hikes for the next five years. Perhaps that’s because only $143 million of next year’s $410 million capital budget is actually being spent on watermain and sewer replacement or rehabilitation.

Party line

They swallowed the party line hook line and sinker that another $1 million must be spent to increase the city’s tree canopy and $40 million will go to various green and global warming programs that are part of the mayor’s mandate (i.e. to make the mayor more like his hero Robert Kennedy.)

Most wouldn’t have the slightest clue that even as the water rates were being hiked to deal with the infrastructure three years ago, at least $33 million was yanked out of the water capital reserve fund to loan to Enwave. Not one dime of that money has been repaid.

Only a few would also know — not that they would care — about the “Works Best Practices” program which was supposed to bring $36 million in efficiencies to the water treatment plants and cut 650 unionized jobs by 2004.

Huh, that’s a laugh. That program abruptly ended after the mayor came to power. Di Gironimo could not tell me how much money has been saved. But he did say they’re down only 250 workers because they added back staff for new programs like the Wet Weather Flow Master Plan.

In fact, works committee chairman Glenn De Baeremaeker said he didn’t feel the money spent on green programs was enough “by a longshot.

“We are the most wasteful and gluttonous consumers of water on planet Earth ... cost is a very effective way to promote conservation,” he preached. “We have to have the water rate increases ... to get people to turn their taps off.”

If only he and his socialist pals would use the same principle on the City Hall spending tap. If only they’d understand that a city drowning in debt can’t entertain anything beyond the basics.