(A) The City Council has determined that not all classes of users of the system cause the same costs of service. Based on the recommendations of independent engineering consultants to the city, City Council has determined the following:
(1) The commodity costs of water supply and some portions of the costs of sewage disposal are uniform among users in accordance with the volume of use;
(2) Indirect costs of water supply and sewage transportation, including size of service pipe, materials used, locations of meters, size of storage and treatment facilities, and maintenance, billing and collection costs vary according to the size of meters;
(3) While all users benefit equally from capital improvements to the system, users taking possession of previously undeveloped properties, and users changing the nature and amount of use of the system at renovated or expanded properties would not bear equally the cost of those capital improvements unless required to pay a system equity charge;
(4) Certain types of property uses require a reservation of a greater capacity of the system than others;
(5) At least 50% of the costs of service to all customers is related to the indirect costs of service;
(6) Current technology does not support the efficient and cost effective metering of sanitary sewage discharged into the sanitary sewage disposal system. As a result, the city has determined that the most equitable measure of the volume of sanitary sewage discharged into the system is the amount of water consumed;
(7) The city will offer service to properties located outside the city limits only pursuant to city-township contract.
(B) The City Council has therefore developed the following classes of users.
(1) For meters of the following sizes, the following meter equivalency ratios for purposes of allocating the base amount of the indirect costs of service and calculating the quarterly base rate per meter size:
Meter Size (inches) | AWWA Meter Capacity Ratio |
Meter Size (inches) | AWWA Meter Capacity Ratio |
5/8 and 3/4 | 1.0 |
1 | 1.6 |
1-1/2 | 3.3 |
2 | 5.3 |
3 | 10.0 |
4 | 15.5 |
6 | 33.3 |
(2) All classes of users shall pay the same rate per gallon of metered water for water supply and sewage transportation services.
(3) For purposes of calculating the system equity charge, City Council has decided to use a table of unit factors, a copy of which is on file with the Director, based on a unit equaling 250 gallons of water consumed per day per year, as recommended by the city's consulting engineers.
(4) The base charge shall be calculated so as to produce no less than 50% of the annual budgeted expenditures of the system.
(5) The amount of water consumed is generally an appropriate and fair indicator of the amount of sanitary sewage discharged into the sanitary sewage disposal system.
(6) Where a user discharges sanitary sewage into the sanitary sewage disposal system but does not use the water supply system, or where a property uses large quantities of water that are not disposed of through the sanitary sewage system, the Department shall propose and the City Council shall adopt, methods of allocating the costs of service to those properties based on the estimated use of the sanitary sewage system.
(1993 Code, § 68-100) (Ord. passed 1-22-2001; Ord. 2014-01, passed 1-27-2014)