FLORENCE — Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela and three city council members were present during a special meeting for an overview of the fiscal year 2009-2010 water, sewer and stormwater utilities budget Wednesday afternoon.
Florence City Manager David Williams said the utilities budget includes a scheduled increase in water and sewer rates for 2009-2010.
The increase was approved by ordinance three years ago in anticipation of the construction of a $100 million wastewater treatment facility. Construction is expected to begin later this year.
“That’s the only increase we’ve included in this portion of the budget,” Williams said. “We will have another budget session on May 21 where we will discuss the general fund, which is where most of the fees are.”
Among others, the $68 million 2008-09 budget included a 6-percent increase of water and sewer rates for city residents and a 9-percent increase for out-of-city water and sewer customers.
“The bottom line is, we’re projecting increases in revenues fairly conservatively for next year because we don’t know what effect the economy will have on it,” Williams said. “We’ve already seen, for whatever reasons, some declines in water revenues this year.”
Williams said he thinks the declines have a lot to do with the fact that “the drought we’ve been through is over” and “people aren’t using irrigation water as much as they did.”
And residential and commercial construction is down, as well.
“When that happens, we don’t sell as many taps or have as many new customers come on,” Williams said, “and that part of our budget remains flat. So I don’t know if that trend is going to continue.
“It’s going to depend on economic conditions in general in Florence and the state and nation. We’re just being conservative in our projections for next year. We’re not going to be too aggressive in what we anticipate receiving. We’re keeping expenses under control as much as we can.”
Williams said there are a number of items the city can’t control, including the costs associated with electricity, gas and oil.
“Things like that and health insurance for our employees represent significant parts of our budget,” he said. “All that plus the uncertainty of whether we’re going to collect revenues at the level normal trends would indicate you would, make it very difficult for us to put together a budget this year because there are so many question marks.”
But Williams thinks the city has a good, solid budget in terms of its utility systems for next year.
“I believe we’ll be able to meet that budget and we’re going to do everything we can to keep expenses under control,” he said. “We will go into much more detail May 21 when we get into the general fund. That’s where the meat and potatoes of the city’s budget are discussed.”
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