By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats Public Works and Streets Commission may be closer to discovering how much the city might be undercharging some businesses for water use – but is apparently no closer to deciding what to do about it.
The commission got a report Tuesday from chairman Bob Bennett who spent the several weeks studying if the city has been undercharging its biggest water users.
The issue came up in March when Tom Lauritzen, a Yachats resident and former finance consultant for the city, told the commission that he had found a 3-year-old mistake in the city’s water rates for its largest users totaling about $24,000.
Bennett and commission member Tom Fisher then spent the last few weeks studying rates, use and charges. Based on five months of 2018 water bills, they found that the city had undercharged 10 larger water users by $10,580 and had over-billed two large users by $411. The under-charges in Bennett’s study ranged from $38 to $3,421 for the five months.
“It isn’t working still,” Bennett said of a 2016 effort to recalculate water rates in the city.
The problem originated in 2014 when the city decided it needed a new utility billing system. As part of that the city began looking to update its water and sewer rates, which had been unchanged for eight years. Among the goals was to establish new base rates for water with additional base rates for high-volume users. The city also wanted to start charging hundreds of second homes and vacation rentals a monthly minimum.
The new rates went into effect in February 2016.
The names of the businesses were not made public, but they are motels, restaurants, an assisted living facility and a large apartment complex.
Lauritzen told the commission Tuesday that he – through a public records request – was able to find the original rate calculations from 2015 made by then-city recorder Nancy Bachelder for large water users. The base used for those calculations were “erroneous” and “not done correctly,” he said.
Lauritzen told YachatsNews.com after the meeting that while his and Bennett’s studies “are going in the same direction” that his calculations of undercharging seem to be about half the size of Bennett’s.
Both studies indicate the problem is with only the handful of large users and that rates for individual households – there are 850 water customers in the city — are correct.
Lauritzen said he thinks the solution is simple – fix the rates for those being under-charged and move on.
“We’re talking about nine customers,” he said. “There’s no need for a $24,000 water rate study.”
The commission Tuesday left it all up in the air.
“The question is what to do from here,” Bennett said, wondering aloud if the commission needs to go to the City Council to see if and how they want to correct the problem.
But after Bennett’s presentation there was no discussion of what the commission wanted to do or what it might recommend to the City Council.