BY KEN FRANCIS, STAFF WRITER
The Clearwater City Council last week amended the city’s fee schedule to reflect a lower sewer availability charge (SAC) from $5,607 to $3,295.
The water availability charge (WAC) remains the same at $1975.71.
WAC & SAC fees were established for the purpose of paying costs associated with the installation of additional facilities to the city’s water and sewer system.
Last month, as part of the discussion about providing economic assistance for Progressive Builders to build potentially 30 new homes, the council voted to look into lowering the WAC & SAC fees on the fee schedule.
They felt lowering the fees for everyone was more equitable than entering into a specific agreement with Progressive.
Last week, Administrator Kevin Kress presented the council with a few scenarios and explanations.
He said one option was a “buy-in” method, where a new development would pay its share of the current capacity. Under that scenario, the fees would increase from $5,607 to $6,916 (SAC) and from $1,975.71 to $2,036 (WAC).
The second option, the updated debt rate, was based on calculating the current sewer debt ($5,103,763) divided by the number of sewer capacity units (1,549) remaining.
The third option was to lower WAC & SAC a total of $5,000, which was the amount discussed when Progressive originally asked for an incentive last November. Under that scenario, the WAC would be reduced to $500.71 and SAC would drop to $2,082.
The final option was no change - keeping the rates the same.
Kress said the current rates really weren’t tied to anything, but there were pros and cons to each option. He said the council would have to decide what they wanted to accomplish when setting the rates.
“You can shift the way you charge for either one of the funds,” he said, “but at the end of the day, the goal should be either break even or have a sufficient enough cash reserve that when we decide to do another project, or something happens, that we don’t have to bond for it.”
Members of the council agreed to go with the updated debt rate, which would be added to the fee schedule at $1,975 for WAC and $3,295 for SAC.
The council then continued the discussion on the Progressive Builders request to lower the fees by a total of $5,000. Mayor Pete Edmonson asked whether the council would consider re-opening the discussion from last month, when the council was split 2-2 on signing a developer’s agreement. Edmonson said with the lower fees, a new agreement would only need a reduction of $2,688. He said that would be more palatable than a $5,000 cut.
They voted to re-open the discussion, but couldn’t come to a consensus about entering into an agreement. Council Members Andrea Lawrence and Kris Crandall, who had voted against the agreement last month, said they wanted to review the revised agreement and economic assistance policy at next month’s meeting.
Kress said he would draft the documents for the June 11 meeting.
