Pittsfield is looking to formalize its approach to water and sewer rates by enshrining an annual adjustment every February tied to two factors: the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, and an Operational Sustainability Factor, or OSF.
“The reason that we're actually moving in this direction is, every time that I have been a member of the city council, when we get our water and sewer rate increases, they don't come on a yearly basis. They come when people are starting to get nervous that the retain earnings are not to the level that they need to be," Mayor Peter Marchetti told WAMC. “I was looking for a way of developing a formula to be able to provide those increases on a more consistent but also more realistic level, so that you're not getting a 25% to a 50% increase when rates increase. And the underlying factors behind most of those, and this goes to the formula that was delivered, is the CPI index for water and sewer, but then also, all of the employees that work under the water and sewer enterprise funds are entitled to pay raises by union contract on a yearly basis, and any projects that are water and sewer related, the debt service is funded from that budget as well.”
Marchetti says the new system would work to keep any increases under 10%.
“The increases that will happen on a yearly basis will keep in touch with employee pay raises, new debt that's coming on, old that's going off," said the mayor. "So, looking to be fair with our increases, and not have them be a major impact of a couple of years or so.”
For now, both water and sewer will rise by 8% starting in July.
“If we are talking sewer, the existing is $378.80 per year for the first toilet," said Marchetti. "That would go to $409.12. On the water side, it's $298.52 going to $322.44. So basically a $20 to $30 increase per household.”
In a year where the city council has pressed the mayor to present as close to a level funded budget as possible, Marchetti is readying himself for opposition to news of rate hikes.
“We know that water and sewer enterprise funds have expenses, and that mostly our water and sewer systems are paid for through water and sewer bills," he said. "And so, I think if we look at where we're at, knowing that there was employee pay raises, and there's new proposed projects, and there's current debt service, that we are doing exactly that. And I also think that from a homeowner's perspective, to know that I might expect a $20 to $30 a year increase on water and sewer rates is easier for me to manage my budget rather than whenever city council happens to pass the water and sewer bill increase.”
The city says rising costs across the board are contributing to the rate increases.
“There's chemical increases, or costs for buying the chemicals we need to do treat water and sewer, there's increases in maintenance, there's increases in salary, as the mayor mentioned. There's projects that we have taken on that we need to pay. That goes up or down on an annual basis. We have new projects that we need to implement if we want to have our operations sustained and the ability to treat water and deliver water, clean water to the residents and clean water to the river," Commissioner of Public Utilities Ricardo Morales told WAMC. “We know, as a community, we know that we have an aging infrastructure, and we need to put an effort to upgrade our infrastructure and not let it sit idle and expect that in a few years, it won't need to be updated. The opposite is true- It's going to be more costly if we just defer maintenance and think that it's going to go away. It won't go away. We need to upgrade our systems, we need to maintain our systems. And that's what we're doing.”
The city council sent Marchetti’s proposed changes to the water and sewer rates – both the structural shift as well as the 8% increase for fiscal year 2025 – to the Committee of the Whole on Tuesday.
