A proposal to raise sewer rates 16 percent for many commercial customers was rejected on a 4-1 vote by the Pima County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Ramón Valadez, the sole supervisor who supported the measure, said the current rate structure results in residential customers subsidizing commercial customers.
That’s because for residential customers and the vast majority of commercial customers the same so-called “strength factor” rate is applied to their user fees, even though the sewage commercial customers are sending into the system on average is significantly harder to clean.
“All of our analysis … shows that commercial strength of sewage is higher than residential. ... It’s not fairly distributing the cost of what it takes to treat sewage in our community,” Valadez said about the strength factor rate.
Supervisor Richard Elías, who voted against the measure, said the study that formed the basis for the proposed change was “flawed,” and that not enough additional information had been brought to the board since they previously considered the increase late last year.
If the measure had passed, half of the more than 15,000 county commercial customers would have seen a monthly bill increase of around 11.8 percent or less, according to a memo from Jackson Jenkins, the wastewater department’s director.
The rate increase would have also brought in an estimated $3.5 million in additional revenues, according to a December summary of the policy change.
Those additional revenues may have reduced the need for additional rate hikes for all users, according to an October memo from County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.
