Another Water Rate Hearing Jan. 3
The Bristol County Water Authority will pitch its double-digit rate hike proposal again next week in Warren.
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A second public hearing on a proposal to raise water rates in Bristol County by 12 percent this year and 31 percent over five years will be held next Thursday, Jan. 3.
The meeting will be held in the Warren Town Hall. It will start at 6 pm.
The first public hearing was held last Thursday, Dec. 20, at Mt. Hope High School in Bristol. Only a handful of people turned out, according to a story in eastbayri.com.
Still, the BCWA board of directors reportedly got an earful from the few people who did attend the hearing, according to the eastbayri.com story. Among the attendees were Barrington Town Councilor Bill DeWitt and Bristol Rep. Raymond Gallison.
DeWitt repeated a contention he made at the most recent Barrington Town Council meeting that the timing of the water rate hike is not good.
Board members plan to vote on the rate hike on Jan. 9, less than a week after the second public hearing, to accommodate several anticipated vacancies on the board in February when it typically votes on rate adjustments.
The vote will undo any goodwill the authority has acquired since hiring its new executive director, Pamela Marchand, said DeWitt, and while trying to improve the reputation and outreach of the often maligned authority.
“As positive an accomplishment as (the community program) is, you’re going to lose all that you gain by jamming (a rate increase) through” to accommodate vacancies, he said.
Gallison said: “With this meeting tonight, to me, you’re the Grinches that stole Christmas. Look at the ability of people to pay in the Bristol County area. They can’t afford it.”
Click here to see the complete story on the first public hearing.
The rate hikes are needed because the Bristol County Water Authority reportedly is in bad financial shape. Marchand delivered that message to the town councils of Barrington, Warren and Bristol on Dec. 19, in Barrington Town Hall. See the Patch story on that meeting.
“We’re not in a good financial situation right now,” Marchand said. “We will run out of cash by the end of next year” without a significant boost in revenue to pay for operating and capital expenses.
Marchand spent most of the meeting outlining the water authority’s new strategic plan, which was crafted based on a “situational analysis” that shows an aging infrastructure, a single water source, declining demand for water, and outdated management systems.
The board has set goals, therefore, to maintain a secure source of high-quality water, address infrastructure that is 100 years old in some cases, improve management systems, ensure financial stability, and improve customer relations.
“Those goals are all interrelated,” Marchand said. “They must be met together.”
All of the above requires a boost in revenue, which has been dropping because rate payers have been conserving water.
@RightInRI
8:59 am on Thursday, December 27, 2012
Perhaps there will be some representation from Warren at this meeting...unlike the last one. Malik ? Felag ? Town Councilors ? Where does our Representative & Senator stand on this ? Oh...and don't we have a new Rep as well...Mr. Marshall ? We can certainly see that this is not an election year already....
Gary Morse
9:58 am on Thursday, December 27, 2012
BCWA does not deserve this rate increase without rate payers finally getting financial oversight by the Public Utilities Commission.
I had hoped that BCWA had turned a corner, but their recent action to reappoint their long controversial attorney, Sandra Mack, in an apparent illegal meeting last week under the cover of the last minute Christmas rush, left me with visions of old BCWA.
If there are financial problems at BCWA, I found most of the fingerprints leading directly to poor, or non existent, legal advice.
A board of unqualified volunteers, even volunteers with impressive credentials as some now have, does not work on behalf of rate payer interests. They work on expediency factors as was the case with Ms Mack's reappointment.
The East Providence Water Authority is now a mirror of BCWA where we both have a similar number of customer hookups, distribution pipeline miles, and buy 100% of our water from the Scituate Reservoir.
But our monthly bill is about 60% higher due in large part to the sins of BCWA's past, not because we are still paying off the debt of the East Bay Pipeline.
We need the financial protection of the PUC.
mohamed j. freij
6:56 pm on Thursday, December 27, 2012
I would like to thank Bill Dewitt for attending the last meeting and I would respectfully ask that all Town Council members make an effort to attend the next meeting. This issue could be the most important issue facing the town right now, it is not about being able to afford another $40 a year it is about having a bankrupt water authority that hasno problem asking for a rate hike every year while paying Sandra Mack $475/ hour for a bad legal advise that just landed the bristol county residents in the middle of a legal mess worth $300,000!
This is what the Water Authority needs to do to fix this problem;
- Abandon the watr treatment plant in Warren and stop providing drinking water from the cesspool pit in Warren, it is highly contaminated and it costs a lot of money to purify and treat to bring it up to potable standards.
-Provide 100% of the water supply from the scituate reservoir, the pipeline is up and running and there is enough water for the demand.
-Fire the $475/hour lawyer and hire a full time lawyer if you think you need one since you have a legal action filed against the Authority.
- The last sentence of this article indicated that we need a boost in revenue because Rate Payers have been conserving water! Why cannot the water authority understand a simple Rule of economics, the higher the cost of water is the less water the consumers wil use.. a structural change must be taken ASAP as outlined above.