The East Point City Council delayed rolling back city water bills this week after officials warned that the rate plan favored by the mayor would leave the water department without cash for repairs.
Roy O. Barnes, who heads the Water and Sewer Department, outlined several scenarios for possible rate reductions, though he lobbied for one that added an extra $1.5 million for operating expenses but did little to curb the water rates that sparked a political firestorm last fall.
Barnes said the department has been using bond money intended for replacing aging clay sewer lines — some of which date to the 1920s — to make repairs. He said the department could not continue to dip into the bond money for ordinary repairs. “If a line breaks right now, there isn’t money to fix it,” he said. “In our operating costs, there are no funds for emergencies or repairs.”
It wasn’t a message the council looked like it wanted to hear. Two new members, Latonya Martin and Alexander Gothard, won election pledging to roll back rates after the monthly base rate jumped from $19 to $48 last summer. Others, such as Councilmen Myron Cook and Marcel Reed, have said the water rates are a political problem that has to be addressed.
Mayor Earnestine Pittman used the water issue to help elect Gothard and Martin and create a council majority more supportive of her positions.
Pittman said she favored a plan that would reduce the base rate to $32 a month for the remaining four months of this fiscal year. The rate would go to $39 in July, when the city’s fiscal year 2013 starts. The plan favored by Barnes would have the base rate at $46 in July — or just $2 under the rate that created the controversy.
The council voted Thursday to delay acting on the rates until March 5 in order to have time to get more information from the staff. Until that is resolved, the council won’t be able to adopt its amended fiscal year 2012 budget, which has a projected shortfall of $7 million.
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