Monday, December 16, 2024–9:40 p.m.

-David Crowder, WRGA News-

The Rome City Commission voted Monday to increase water and sewer rates by five-and-a-half percent in 2025 and 2026.

Rome water and sewer customers have been enjoying a rate rollback for the past 14 months.

However, with increasing costs, an increase in rates is seen as necessary to meet future needs.

Rates were rolled back to where they were in December of 2018 after the City of Rome settled a lawsuit regarding PFAS contamination in the Oostanaula River.

Rates hikes would have been at 9 percent for the next several years if not for the settlement funds that are paying for the construction of a new reverse osmosis water treatment facility to eliminate the chemicals from the water supply.

Commissioner Mark Cochran was the lone “no” vote.

“The calculation used assumed a 60 percent capital improvement project completion, which historically we haven’t met,” he said. “Secondly, although it’s difficult to say, our revenues this year look as though they may exceed what we are asking for in complete revenues next year, which would negate a rate increase entirely. Thirdly, we have $30 million in the bank for a rainy day fund—a general fund balance—and we don’t particularly have any debt to speak of.”

Bill Zieburtz with Stantec shared the results of a rate study during a recent water and sewer committee meeting and recommended that the city raise water and sewer rates by five-and-a-half percent over the next two years and then take another careful look at rates once the final implications of the new reverse osmosis treatment facility are known and other pressing capital needs are understood.

You can read that story here.

You can view the water and sewer rates approved by the commission here.