The day of reckoning has come for Monroe water, sewerage, and waste customers, with hopefully the delay induced by a penny-wise, pound-foolish City Council majority won’t end up costing ratepayers over time more than the amount of money they were able to retain over the past year.
At its last meeting of the year, councilors sent out a warning that customers of city water, sewerage, and water services could expect to see a rate hike by May. Democrat Chairman Rodney McFarland likened the increase to halt a “kicking the can down the road” on rates and said he would vote for whatever the independent Mayor Friday Ellis Administration determined was necessary. While it’s good practice to ensure these services pay for themselves and leave a healthy balance in reserve for future needs, practically speaking the fund can’t go too low because of stipulations attached to bonds issued for capital items, and as well as the lower the reserve, the higher interest rates on bonds issued will be. Indeed, existing debt was dropped two notches in quality by one of the big ratings firms because of this repeal.
It was a remarkable turnaround for McFarland, who along with fellow Democrats Verbon Muhammad and Juanita Woods blew up the mechanism that would increase rates in line with inflation. Previously, the city had an ordinance with that escalator clause to back the bonds but not long after McFarland and Muhammad joined the Council, they repealed that, saying they should look at this on a periodic basis and not forced into anything. Early this year they did take a gander and kicked the can down the road by denying an Ellis request to move rates higher by 2.7 percent.
