(A) (1) The City of Harris provides a variety of public services to residents, businesses, and property owners in the community, including public utilities. Municipal water, wastewater services, stormwater management, and street lighting are basic public utilities and among the services provided by the city.
(2) The purpose of this chapter is to establish equitable fees for the provision of public utilities to properties.
(3) The City Council periodically reviews the costs for the provision of these services and adjusts the fees for services accordingly. Fee adjustments, that are not established in this chapter, will not occur without review and analysis by the City Council and will require amendments to this chapter.
(B) The fee structure for each utility is identified separately and includes provisions for the reimbursement of core facility expenditures and operating expenditures. The fee structure includes existing expenditures (including debt service) and planned expenditures (including anticipated debt service) within the public utility systems. Core facility expenditures include but are not limited to items such as water wells and related equipment, trunk water distribution lines, water treatment facilities, water storage facilities, wastewater treatment plant, sanitary sewer lift stations, trunk sanitary sewer lines, stormwater management facilities. Operating expenditures include but are not limited to labor and capital expenditures associated with the delivery, monitoring, maintenance, repair, replacement, upgrade, and administration of the public utility system.
(C) (1) The fee structure for core facilities is based upon a Residential Equivalent Unit (REU), and the fees collected are referred to as connection charges and area charges.
(2) Connection charges are collected at the time of building permit issuance and area charges are collected at the time of subdivision or development approval.
(3) The core facilities REU is established for all land uses as follows.
Single-family detached dwelling | 1.0 REU |
Single-family attached dwelling (< 11 units/building) | 1.0 REU |
Multiple-family dwelling (> ten units/building) | 0.8 REU |
Commercial/Industrial/Public/Institutional/Other | 1.0 REU for each Metropolitan Council Service Availability Charge (SAC) unit assigned to the use (see Appendix A) |
(D) The fee structure for operating expenditures is based upon utility usage and is collected through quarterly billings to utility users.
(Ord. 2006-6-1, passed 6-6-2006)