Following a largely attended Public Utilities Board (PUB) meeting about the City of Flin Flon’s proposed water and sewer rate hike, local leadership is considering different options.
When asked at council’s Sept. 3 meeting about the recent PUB meeting, Mayor George Fontaine said he was pleased with the turnout and public interest in the situation, expanding on some points brought up from the public during the PUB meeting.
“I’m going to tell you that I thought the turnout was excellent. I thought the behaviour of most of the people presenting was excellent. I thought the points that were made by most of them were clear, lucid and very good and that we understood them very well,” said the mayor.
“I think it was a very good meeting and all the points were taken and considered very seriously by all of council. We are not finished with talking about where this is going to go - as a matter of fact, we’re going to be speaking about it a bit after this meeting.”
The City’s original application to the PUB was in two parts - first, to approve two years of incurred operating deficits, combining to around $1.46 million, then to apply for revisions to the City’s existing water and wastewater rates. The deficits were incurred in 2018 and 2022, with no extra deficits added on in either 2023 or forecasted to be added this year. Manitoba municipalities have to break even on their utilities as per the Manitoba Municipal Act - if they don’t, they can either pay the deficit off with surpluses or petition PUB for rate increases. The City has no utility surplus, forcing the second option into play.
To pay off those deficits, the City has proposed a fee schedule for water and sewer payments that would include increases in each of the next five years. The plan to pay those costs will come from a rate rider on water and sewer fees, starting in 2025. The rider is planned to stay in effect for either five years or when the extra costs owing are paid off - whichever comes first.
According to the proposed rates and rider, an unmetered home using 5,500 gallons of water each month would see an increase of $9.30 a month starting next year, for a total of $140.96 in charges per month.
Those increases will see that same home pay more in each of the coming years - $154.50 a month in 2026, $168.04 a month in 2027 and $181.58 in 2028, more than a $40 per month increase over the proposed 2025 level.
“We would like to make a statement to the public, because there’s a lot of interest on this - I want to make sure that we’re in agreement as a group about how we all feel,” said Fontaine.
“None of us like the proposal, but we have to make it. That has to be clear to everybody. None of us wants to have to live like that. We’re going to have to see what’s available to us to mitigate some of the things we’ve talked about.”
The PUB is tasked with overseeing utility rate increases in Manitoba, including those set by municipal governments. The board can ultimately decide to approve a full rate change as suggested, deny it or approve a smaller increase instead. The board did that back in 2017, when Manitoba Hydro proposed a fee schedule that could have meant five years in a row of 7.9 per cent rate increases. Instead of approving those fees, the board instead approved an interim fee schedule that included smaller increases over a smaller period - a one-year, 3.36 per cent hike.
“We’re looking at discussing what the proposal is, waiting to see what the response will be from the PUB, then seeing how we respond to their response. It’s not a closed book yet,” said Fontaine.
“We have to put a lot of thought into it and we understand the feelings of our residents - they’re the same as ours, but we have to see what is it we can do and what we’re allowed to, what position we’re actually stuck in.”
If the proposal doesn’t pass with the PUB, Fontaine said the City is willing to try again to find a deal that passes muster with the board, the City’s own coffers, utilities and taxpayers.
“We’re going to do the best we can to make sure that we can make it as affordable as we can. We’re not done yet,” he said.
“This is not something anybody in council wants to do. When you're raising prices or considering raising costs at the level that we're talking about, none of us wants to put it out there. None of us wants to pay those bills. We're right in line with the people that we're representing, but we have to see what our options are.”
Another issue brought up during the PUB meeting was how much water ends up being lost through leaks in Flin Flon’s water supply system and whether costs incurred for utilities can be offset by fixing major leaks. A consultant hired to do a water rate study by the City earlier this year suggested that, at one point, over 50% of the City’s water supply ended up being pumped out of the system through leaks - though having a lack of water meters made exact determinations nearly impossible.
The mayor also said there was interest in a campaign to promote water meter use, both as a way to track water usage and to give relief for any future rate hikes - but the City wouldn’t be able to eat the cost alone.
“First of all, we need to know the exact cost of metering. We can't cover the cost of metering the whole community right now, just by ourselves, just willy-nilly walk in and do it - it's very expensive,” he said.
“If we decide to go in that direction, then there's going to have to be some cooperation by the province to make sure if there's any granting available. Then we'd have to decide what part of that the municipality could cover and what part the individuals might have to cover. It might be worthwhile for the individuals to cover part of a meter if they thought that it could save them from getting into a scenario where water prices go out of hand.”
Fontaine said fixing leaks had been a City priority in recent years, mentioning a statistic shared by City assistant director of works and operations James Reitlo at the PUB meeting that the amount of water lost by leaks had been reduced by half. Fontaine still thinks too much water is being lost, but said the amount is going down.
“I think it was pointed out of the meeting very clearly that when we came in here, we had huge issues. It was very dangerous. We were overloading our system. If anything had gone wrong, we would have had to shut down the water system. We couldn't do anything, or else we’d have to start running water right through without filtering it or all that kind of thing, because our system could not handle it at the rate that we were leaking,” he said.
“We've reduced it by, I think half, from what we were pumping through our system to what we are now. We were really working with those staff that were cooperating to do that, to find the leaks, to fix the leaks, to shut those things down.”
