In some respects, the introduction of consumption-based billing for water and sewer services in Thompson, which began in 2011, has been successful. Most, if not all, properties have had water meters installed, the cost of providing water has gone from being a hidden component of property tax bills to a separate and easily measurable cost, and consumption has dropped every year since billing began, an indicator that people have begun treating water as the precious resource it is, rather than something that can be wasted without consequence.
In other ways, it has been disastrous. If you’ve been following the water utility saga over the past five years, you know that numerous residents have come to city council to complain that their water meters were inaccurate after receiving outrageously large bills that it seems could not have possibly come from anything short of just leaving taps on for hours at a time or continually flushing the toilet 24 hours a day. Anecdotes about water bills that never arrived, in some cases for as long as a year (four billing cycles) are even more plentiful. It wasn’t until 2014, three years after the city began charging residents for water, that it first sent out letters to property owners regarding unpaid bills dating back to 2011 and 2012 before moving on to the next step of adding 720 unpaid bills to property owners’ municipal tax bill. Then-councillor Dennis Fenske said at that time that those bills totalled more than $700,000. A year later, more letters were sent out advising that unpaid amounts would be added to owners’ property taxes. The cumulative outstanding amount of those bills was nearly half-a-million dollars, with more than 100 accounts having unpaid bills in excess of $1,000, including one for more than $18,000 and another for $27,000.
Not being diligent about ensuring that people paid their water bills came back to bit the city when the Public Utilities Board (PUB)ordered it earlier this month to remove some outstanding water bills from Grey Wolf Bay from the property owner T.E. Holdings Ltd.’s tax bill after finding that the city had not followed its own policies, passed by council, outlining the steps to be taken before adding unpaid bills to municipal taxes. The city will have to pay more than $6,500 of the PUB’s costs for adjudicating the dispute between it and T.E. Holdings in addition to determining which of the unpaid accounts that it tacked on to taxes date from before March 6, 2014.
It may not be easy to ensure that water bills get paid, but it isn’t impossible. T.E. Holdings managed to collect about $12,000 of the combined $70,000 in unpaid bills that Grey Wolf Bay’s tenants had racked up. If the city had the same rate of success, the $487,000 it added to property taxes in June 2015 would have been about $80,000 less. Unfortunately, when you know that you can indirectly collect overdue amounts down the road, it gives you less incentive to ensure that other means are successful. Private businesses don’t have that option and the city would be well-advised to treat the water utility as such in order to reduce the number of people who ignore their requests for payments until, in many cases, they become somebody else’s problem.
Given that water rates are likely to continue to rise because consumption will continue to fall, the city should follow the example of those residents who stay up to date on their water bills by making sure that it fulfills its responsibility of ensuring that all bills are paid.
