By KEVIN NEVERS

By a rare split vote, the Chesterton Utility Service Board has endorsed a 14-percent sanitary sewer rate hike which would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.

At their meeting Monday night, members voted 3-2 in favor of a motion to schedule a public hearing on that single-phase increase at their next meeting, July 21. President Larry Brandt and members Andy Michel and Scot McCord voted for the motion. Members John Schnadenberg and Jim Raffin voted against it.

Schnadenberg and Raffin, while conceding the necessity of a 14-percent hike, prefer to see it enacted in two phases: a 7 percent increase in 2009, then another 7 percent increase in 2010.

After the public hearing in July, the matter will go to the Town Council, which has the sole authority to enact any increase.

According to a biennial rate study prepared by H.J. Umbaugh & Associates, the Utility’s contracted rate consultant, under the proposed increase the average residential household currently paying $66 every two months would pay $75.25, a hike of $9.25 or about $4.63 per month.

Schnadenberg—who is predicting a likely increase, also beginning on Jan. 1, 2009, in the refuse and recycling fee—argued for “easing the burden” of residents already paying higher gas and food costs. He also expressed doubt whether the Utility will actually complete next year every capital project whose cost the rate hike is largely intended to defray.

For his part Raffin noted the possibility of the Duneland School Corporation’s building a sixth elementary school in the not-too-distant future and the impact which that project would have on residents’ property-tax bills. “I think we should phase it in,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot about it.”

Schnadenberg and Raffin, however, were outvoted. “I can sympathize with (Schnadenberg) and I can see where he’s coming from,” Michel said. But, noting that the Utility just dropped $44,000 to replace 175 feet of blocked gravity main beneath Porter Ave., he advocated instead for “biting the damn bullet.” Chesterton “is 100 years old and Lord knows what’s going to happen to the infrastructure under the ground.”

Michel added that, between 1992—when the Town Council enacted a 21.5-percent hike on the Service Board’s recommendation—and 2005, the Utility held the line on increases but in doing so watched its revenue stream dry to a trickle. “Being the good guys in the long run has probably hurt us more than it helped us,” he said.

McCord agreed with Michel. He too, McCord said, will pay the rate hike, any increase in the refuse and recycling fee, any hit in property taxes due to a sixth elementary school. “But we need to go the 14-percent now, since in keeping rates stable for 13 years “we stuck ourselves because we don’t have the money we need to do the projects we need to do.”

Brandt broke the tie in favor of the single-phase increase. “We’re running in the red,” he said. “We haven’t started large projects we need to do because we’re fearful we’ll need that money for emergencies.”

Brandt did express confidence in residents’ willingness to accept another rate hike. “We expect our community to be a good one to live in,” he said. “We need good infrastructure. I think people in the community are prepared to pay for it.” And while Brandt acknowledged that fuel and food costs are rising, that it’s more expensive to maintain a quality of life, he also insisted that quality of life must begin with Chesterton’s infrastructure. “We need to provide our community with a really nice infrastructure. Then you can decide where to spend your disposable income.”

In any case, Brandt said, Chesterton is right now poised on the cusp of “an incredible economic expansion.” That boom “we need to support with first-class facilities, and we need to spend money to make them first-class.”

A 14-percent rate hike would follow a 34-percent increase which took effect in 2007, under which the average residential household’s bimonthly bill rose from approximately $49.30 to $66, or around $8.35 per month.

That 34-percent hike, in turn, followed a two-phase increase, beginning with a 5.8 percent hike in 2005 and then a 5-percent increase in 2006. Under the two-phaser, the average residential household’s bimonthly bill rose from $44.30 to $46.91 in the first year; and to $49.35 in the second.

Brass tacks: in 2004 the average residential household was paying $44.30 every two months for sanitary sewer service; in 2009 it could be paying $75.25. That figure would represent a total increase of nearly 70 percent in just five years.

Posted 6/17/2008