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Spotsylvania County's utilities customers may soon pay more to turn on their faucets and flush their toilets.
The county's financial advisors want the Board of Supervisors to raise water and sewer rates and hookup fees to help finance long-term system improvements. No specific amounts for the increases have been mentioned.
The supervisors plan to spend more than $129 million by 2010 to maintain, upgrade and expand water and sewer facilities. Fast population and business growth, new regulations, and wear and tear are driving the expenditures.
For example, the county will spend $12.8 million to improve water flow in the Five-Mile Fork area. Another $5 million will finance improvements at the Ni River Water Treatment Plant.
The utilities capital improvement plan also calls for spending more than $28.7 million to improve wastewater facilities at Massaponax and another $12.4 million for similar projects at Thornburg.
Spotsylvania's utilities are supported by hookup and user fees, not the county's general fund budget.
The county raised utility rates by a whopping 94 percent between 1994 and 1998, according to an analysis provided by the county's financial advisors at Davenport & Co.
Since then, water and sewer rates have risen by only 2.5 percent.
Supervisor Gary Jackson said the previous board wanted to balance the sharp rate hikes of the early '90s.
"I thinkit was felt we could give the rate payers a break for a few years from these massive increases," he said.
As a result, Spotsylvania's average customer now enjoys lower bills than customers of Henrico, Prince William, Loudoun, Stafford and Hanover counties.
Nearly 1,300 new water and sewer connections annually for the last five years have helped subsidize those lower rates.
Tim Slaydon, Spotsylvania's director of utilities, suggested continuing such a pattern could affect the system's solvency.
"I think the numbers speak for themselves. The rate of growth in our utility system has provided a a convenient cash flow to allow us to avoid a rate increase with respect to monthly water and sewer user fees," he said. "However, sound financial planning would certainly suggest that a reliance on growth, financially, may not be wise."
Davenport representatives offered an identical analysis during their May 25 briefing for the supervisors.
Reliance on connection fees will grow more difficult as the supervisors try to meet their eventual goal of limiting residential growth to 2 percent annually.
Jackson said he's not happy about the prospect of raising fees but argued residents must pay for the public policies they say they want.
"There's no free lunch," he said. "To some extent, if the community wants us to embrace a slower, managed approach to our growth, then there will be some economic dislocations associated with that. If we're going to back off and slowly and carefully manage our growth, we recognize those connection fees won't be there.
"The money's got to come from somewhere, and that's going to be the rate payers," Jackson said.
Supervisor Chris Yakabouski agreed, saying the supervisors shouldn't put off tough decisions.
"We need to get away from basing the utilities budget on connection fees," he said. "Either we do it now by slowing growth and raising those rates, or we just keep building out and let future boards or generations deal with the problem. That's not a responsible way of doing things."
County Administrator Randy Wheeler said he hopes the supervisors can hold a public hearing on possible rate increases and the next phase of the utilities construction plan during their first July meeting.
To reach GEORGE WHITEHURST: 540/374-5438 gwhitehurst@freelancestar.com