UTILITY rates for residents in the City of North Vancouver will continue to ratchet up next year, and Mayor Darrell Mussatto is warning ratepayers to expect bigger hikes in the future.
"I cannot reinforce enough what the costs are coming down the road," he said at Monday's finance committee meeting. A new sewage treatment plan will be built on the North Shore in the next decade and Mussatto said the federal government told him "very clearly there is no money for you. There's no money."
If the province also refuses to help, he said, "that could be a half a billion dollars over 185,000 people on the North Shore."
Metro Vancouver will also be looking to fund an expensive new waste-to-energy facility.
"We've got some big numbers coming down the pipe," Mussatto said.
At the Monday meeting, councillors unanimously approved an 8.06 per cent increase for single-family houses, bringing a homeowner's total 2012 utility bill to $978.40.
Multi-unit homes will see a 3.36 per cent rise and a $456.30 bill. Houses are getting a stiffer increase mostly due to the city's policy of shifting drinking water costs away from apartments, which use a good deal less water than houses, according to city staff.
Coun. Pam Bookham asked how the city could compare a house with a large family to one with a single senior.
Houses use "quite significantly more," said Tony Barber, engineering and planning design manager. "It's not a perfect system by any stretch. It's based on averages. But given that single family has much more uses, for irrigation and such, that's a big factor regardless of the number of people who live in the home."
Crews have installed 121 water meters in the city so far, but they aren't yet being used for residential billing.
City engineer Steve Ono said that residents' use of water and waste management services are actually falling, but that actually translates into a higher per-unit charge from Metro in order to cover its fixed costs.
Also on the rise is the Eco Levy, introduced this year. It rises from $32 to $36 for homeowners and from $17 to $19 for multi-unit buildings. The fee helps fund enhanced recycling and composting programs, part of Metro's goal of diverting 70 per cent of the region's waste away from landfills. Ono said he hopes to see curbside food waste collection up and running by the spring of 2012.
