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Mayor. and Council March 1, 1974

of charges which would be based entirely on the customer's charge for water.
This system would be simple and would eliminate the list of flat rate amounts
that are set out in our current by-law. Single family rates would remain the
same because these units are not on a meter basis for water however all apart-
ment and commercial sewer billings could be applied directly to their water
bill. The system is based on relating the amount of sewer revenue required to
the amount of water revenue presently received and this works oit to a factor
of 1.28, in other words, in order to raise enough revenue to operate the sewer
system, we could apply a factor of 1.28 to the present water bill and bring in
a satisfactory amount of revenue for the sewer system. The sewer bills would
therefore be included with our bi-monthly water bills and sewer would no longer
be charged on an annual basis for commercial and apartment properties. This
basis of billing is actually a refinement of our current method as the present
flat rates have been based on water consumption however to swing fully over to
a system of charges based on water consumption would bring about further adjust~

ments on all categories of users but would be easier to calculate and would be
air.

If you will refer to the pink pages attached you will see a list of charges that
are based on factoring the present water charges and these rates have been
converted to monthly amounts for ease of comparison with our current flat rate

method of billing. (in actual fact they would be bi-monthly billings as mentioned .

above if this system was adopted). The charges as shown in the right hand column

‘are not too far out of line with the presently proposed flat rate charges.

Rather than swing over to a totally new system of billing this year it might be
better to stick with our flat rate menthly billings as suggested in the suggested
revisions attached to the by-law and prepare a report for Council on the alter-

native method of billing sewer charges based on water consumption. If this method

appears feasible we should work on a by~law during 1974 so that it could becom,

effective on January 1, 1975 to avoid the problem of having our sewer rates
change in March of each year.

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