Water Rate and Sewer Fee increases are inevitable, and they will most likely impact your bill this April.
Milliken owns its own water; however, we have others process it for us, half from Central Weld and half from Greeley. Both Greeley and Central Weld have increased our processing rates for bulk water this year as the cost of water and processing have both increased. Greeley has increased our rates by 16% and Central Weld by 4% along with notice of 4% additional per year till 2023. For the last couple of years, we have had to pay a little more for the water than what we received back from our water billing so we knew a change would have to be made. Milliken has not raised sewer rates for several years.
Your Board of Trustees has been very reluctant to raise water and sewer rates until we could get the RO plant back online and we could determine actual costs. We do produce some of our own water from our Reverse Osmosis Plant (RO) which has been closed for a little over 4 years. We now have several months of operational costs that we have worked into our plan. Our rate increase will take into consideration the disclosed increases we have received from our suppliers. Currently, I anticipate a base rate water increase of about 9%. (Base rate is considered 7,000 gallons of use per month). With the sewer calculated into the mix, an average bill of $100.00 will now be about $106.00.
Fortunately, we have received a temporary Mil Levy credit this year that will result in a lower Milliken calculated property tax, and should help offset the added expense. Our average home should get about a $45.00 lower tax this year. While no one likes price increases, we have taken very conservative measures to identify our costs, thereby keeping the increase of your water bill to a minimum.