Are Wasilla ratepayers getting soaked?

WASILLA — City residents will pay more for water and sewer service beginning this month unless Wasilla City Council approves an ordinance to freeze the last installment of a five-year rate increase.

City residents already pay the region’s highest water and sewer rates, and with the final piece of a five-year plan to increase rates by 100 percent set to take effect this month, a pair of city councilwomen think an 85 percent increase is enough.

“Other cities do not impose these types of sharp increases — 100 percent over five years — on their residents,” said deputy mayor Colleen Sullivan-Leonard who, along with councilwoman Leone Harris, is asking the council to freeze the final 15 percent of that 100 percent increase, set to go into effect July 1.

“We could see the city of Wasilla had more revenue coming in at the end of fiscal year 2013 than anticipated,” she said. “We’re looking to re-invest part of that back into our infrastructure.”

A public hearing on Sullivan-Leonard’s and Harris’ ordinance is set for Monday’s regular city council meeting.

The move comes four years into the five-year hike approved by the city council in 2009. Then water users were charged $6.83 per 1,000 gallons with a minimum monthly charge of $34.13. That rose to $8.48 per 1,000 gallons and a minimum of $42.39 in fiscal year 2012. This current fiscal year, the rate is scheduled to increase again to $9.12 per 1,000 gallons with a minimum charge of $45.57.

“I say hold the line, freeze the rates this year and really gauge what’s happening in the economy and how it’s affecting those on the water and sewer system,” Sullivan-Leonard said. “My hope is to freeze this permanently.”

Even so, Wasilla water and sewer system users are paying significantly more than other cities in Southcentral, she said. Combined with sewer charges, Wasilla residents now pay a minimum of $84.83 per month. Without a rate freeze, the minimum would increase to $97.55.

According to information from the city’s Public Works Department, she said that in comparison in 2012, Palmer water and sewer users paid a minimum of $50, Anchorage $83 and Homer a flat rate of $20 per 1,000 gallons. Factored in at the minimum usage of 5,000 gallons of water a month charged in other cities, that averages out to a minimum of $20 for Homer.

When enacted in July 2009, the increases were sold as necessary to offset losses, depreciation and capital improvements with the city’s water and sewer infrastructure, as well as build a reserve fund. Sullivan-Leonard said she wasn’t on the council at that time, but in the years since, those facilities have received other funding besides from ratepayers.

“They’ve been expanded with money we’ve gotten from the state, federal government and grants to expand it out,” she said. “We just got $3 million from the state of Alaska for expanding our sewer system.”

Although she was on the council that passed the increase, Harris says in a Spectrum piece in today’s Frontiersman that she didn’t like the hike then, and doesn’t like it now.

“I did not support and did not vote for this plan,” she wrote.

Council notes

Monday’s will be the first city council meeting since councilman Steve Lovell was killed in a heavy equipment accident June 30. The council will be asked to act on a recommendation from the city clerk and city attorney to put Lovell’s Seat A on the ballot for the Oct. 1 general election, with the winner to serve the remaining two years of Lovell’s term.

Contact Greg Johnson at 352-2269 or

greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.