Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 30/02) - Did you know that businesses are paying too much for water?

Or that most residents are paying too much to get rid of their trash?

The city does. And it's trying to balance the scales by creating fees that allow users to more closely pay for what they use.

Any change is still theoretical: city staff are working through new rate plans, and nothing will become official until city council has a look and votes on the matter.

Even so, the new rate structures could be dramatically different if they are passed.

For residents, water bills are currently split four ways -- fees for access, demand and consumption, plus an infrastructure replacement levy. The way it works is factors like the number of bathrooms in a house can have more impact than how much water is actually used.

A new plan could see two charges -- one fixed access fee and a consumption fee, which could be split into different levels. That could work by having different per-litre rates for different levels of use. For example, one rate for usage could be up to 15,000 litres, while a higher rate of usage would be above that.

Robert Charpentier, city finance director, said initial studies of the reworked rate structure came up with substantial increases for residential customers.

"So we're still monkeying with the rate design to minimize rate shock," he said.

His studies have found that residential ratepayers underpay for water, but overpay for garbage services. So he hopes to roll out restructured rate plans for both at the same time, to help minimize the sticker shock that might come from just introducing one at a time.

"We feel our businesses subsidize our residential users and we feel it's the reverse on garbage," he said.

For businesses, garbage rates are currently charged per thousand square feet. That doesn't make a lot of sense, when a hangar -- which may produce almost no garbage -- is paying the same amount as a grocery store, which has a tremendous output of cardboard waste.

On the residential side, the new plan might also charge users per bag of garbage.

Charpentier said he is aiming for "a fairer pay per use model." The new structures could be presented to council as soon as April.

"The ones we have now -- I wouldn't want to try to defend them as the best practice rates," he said.