Opinion

Pay the piper

TBO.com
Published: February 16, 2013

In general, no one likes paying more for anything, so we imagine some of the customers of the Port Richey municipal water and sewer system won't relish the though of a series of rate increases. Given the state of the city's increasingly leaky utility infrastructure, doing nothing isn't a viable option.

On Tuesday, the Port Richey City Council will discuss a proposal to increase the city's utility rates. Under the plan the city would raise rates by 3.5 percent a year, for perhaps five years. While 3.5 percent is not huge, over the course of a number of years things add up.

The rate increase plan the council will review Tuesday is based on a study that consulting firm Burton & Associates conducted for the city. The 3.5 percent rate increase is expected to generate an additional $550,000 in revenue a year, according to Burton. If there were ways to generate that extra revenue by shifting spending within the utility system budget, we trust the consultants would have suggested them.

City Manager Tom O'Neill says the money is needed to overhaul the city's water and sewer pipelines, some of which date from the 1920s. In addition, O'Neill wants to "wean" the utility system from the subsidies it has been getting from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency. He is right that CRA money should pay for redevelopment, not utility system operations.

If anyone has a viable alternative to the proposed rate hikes, we're sure council members would be happy to hear it Tuesday night.