Cumberland County supervisors took no action on staff-recommended increases in water and sewer rates on Feb. 9, hikes that could potentially alleviate the $420,000 loan debt from the water and sewer fund balance owed to the county’s general fund.

Only one speaker, Roger Hatcher, participated in the public hearing on the rate increases recommended by County Administrator and Attorney Vivian Seay Giles. Hatcher is the chairman of the county’s water and sewer advisory committee.

In a letter to Giles, Hatcher said that the committee “could not support the proposed rate increase from you,” citing the potential that the increase would fall disproportionately hard on “fixed-income individuals who make up the minority of the county budget.”

“There is a certain percentage of ratepayers who have sewer and water or just sewer or water,” he said in the letter, “who have taps into the water and sewer lines and are not connected to their houses, but they do pay the monthly minimum of $25 each for water and sewer. Disproportionately, these are elderly fixed-income persons living along U.S. Route 60 west of the courthouse area.”

Hatcher also cited in his list of concerns that there was no way to

calculate the income just from the numbers in Giles’ proposal.

“The utilities fund, it’s not in the black. It’s not self sustaining at the moment,” Giles said. “It needs to generate additional revenue for just normal operations and repairs.”

Giles said the fee proposal could be discussed at the next board meeting in March.

Increased fees proposed by Giles include taking the monthly administrative fee for customers who only have sewer or water to $4 from $3.50 and increasing the monthly administrative charge on all accounts from $6 to $5.

Giles’ proposal also includes taking the monthly wastewater and water fee residents pay to $29 from $25. The water fee stays the same until a user exceeds 2,000 gallons.

The water fee for the first 2,000 gallons for government and education entities would increase to $115 from $100.

The non-user service charge for customers required to connect but choose not to use county water would increase to $29 from the current $25.

Bulk water charges, bacteriological tests for new construction fees, meter reinstatement fees and meter testing charges would also increase under Giles’ proposal.

“The design of public water and sewer systems is for user fees to cover all expenses,” said District Two Supervisor and Board Chairman Lloyd Banks. “When the fund fell short of the resources necessary to complete needed repairs and upgrades, a loan of several hundred thousand dollars was requested from the county. Since receipt of the loan there has been resistance to raising user rates to the level required for collections to meet all expenses.”

Banks said he was disappointed “by the posture that the general taxpayers on a well and septic are now being called upon to subsidize residential users and business users, such as Bear Creek Lake.”

District Three Supervisors Kevin Ingle, who sits on the water and sewer advisory committee, says that Giles’ proposal was a step toward fixing the system’s fund balance issues.

“But, we as the board, want to make sure that any increases are going to be fair to all people who are paying to have the services, whether it’s government or a private household.”

He said the board didn’t want to “hit people with a serious increase for the same services they’ve been getting just to try to fix it all at one time.”

“Those numbers were brought to us in the meeting the other night …The debt was actually higher,” Ingle said. “Our monthly expenses were higher if you consider what it would take to repay that previous debt.”

Ingle said that the county needs to stop the loss of revenue from the system first, “then try to figure out a way to get our momentum going in the other way … The system needs to be able to pay for itself.”

He said the water and sewer committee is looking at the original structuring contracts as part of the water and sewer system, including “how the cost should be spread, how much government, business and residential. And we’re going to try to work with that …We’re going to try to look at everything. We’ve got three or four different formulas we’re working on,” he said.

Ingle said he and other supervisors and the committee wanted to make sure that citizens are informed of everything “and the process in which we’re going to try to come up with the numbers for the proposal that we will be making either next month or the following month.”

According to Hatcher’s letter, the committee suggested the fees be based on the fixed amount on the fee schedule, which is currently 2,000 gallons per household, “a separate base fee for businesses, schools county government and Bear Creek State Park (and) the base fees have to fully support the cost of maintaining the utility department.”

Businesses and the state park are “in a better position to bear higher rates,” Hatcher said.