HERMITAGE Officials: Sewer rates to increase at year's end

Residential customers have seen their rates drop twice in the past nine years.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- City residents can expect to see an increase in their sewer bills around the end of the year, but just how much rates will go up hasn't been determined.
Revenues haven't been keeping pace with rising operating costs and the debt service on a $3.5 million loan borrowed last year to repair and improve the sanitary sewer system, said City Manager Gary Hinkson.
City commissioners learned at a work session Wednesday that, at current revenue and spending levels, the sewer fund will show a $700,000 deficit by the end of 2003, he said.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the city is looking at borrowing another $4.6 million next year to make improvements to the sewer system in the Golden Run/Sample Road area and to the treatment plant on Broadway Road, Hinkson said.
The commissioners have instructed the city administration to look at user fees and come up with recommendations for raising them, Hinkson said, explaining that an increase could come in either the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2003.
Rates
The city has actually reduced the fee for residential consumers twice since 1993.
The rate that year was a flat $73.25 per quarter and it was cut to $68.20. The city cut it again to the current flat rate of $66 per quarter in 1995.
Nonresidential customers, whose rates are based on water usage, also got a reduction in 1993 but didn't get one in 1995.
That group can also expect to see its rates rise, as can non-Hermitage customers who live or operate a business in a surrounding community but are tied into the Hermitage sewage treatment plant because of topography, Hinkson said.
Current sewer fees produce about $2.6 million in revenues annually, he said.