Andrey_Kuzmin
SNOHOMISH — The average Snohomish homeowner’s bimonthly city utility bill will exceed $300 next year, and $350 in 2026, in proposed increases the city is doing to play catch up.
A public hearing will be during the Sept. 17 City Council meeting. It starts at 6 p.m. inside the Carnegie Building at First and Cedar.
The average resident currently pays $279.98 every two months for their water-sewer-storm bill. The proposed increase for the total bill would be approximately 12.5% for next year.
Utility rates have stayed flat since 2019, when the council voted to hold off taking any rate increases.
City officials said operations costs have grown during the same time. These include inflation and the cost of buying water serviced from Everett. It’s put the city on the back foot.
The City Council will be asked to approve a schedule of a 21.25% increase in water rate for 2025 and 15% for 2026, and a schedule of 10.25% rate increases for sewer each in 2025 and 2026. The plan has further rate increases through the next 20 years to keep up with costs.
Storm drainage rates, the third component of utility bills, will be studied in 2025. Those rates will likely be adjusted after the study, including potentially adding a fee toward improving city sidewalks.
At last week’s council meeting, no council members spoke out in opposition. Council members David Flynn, Judith Kuleta and Felix Neals were not in the meeting.
City public works director Nova Heaton mentioned last week she felt like “the ‘doom and gloom’” person to bring these increases, “but we have a responsibility to keep the system up.”
The city has millions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades to plan for to keep its system in good shape.
The future fire station and city hall at Third Street and Pine Avenue will specifically need water and sewer infrastructure upgrades, rate study consultant Sergey Tarasov said.
The rate increase plan also allocates money to replace the city’s unused water transmission line northeast of town unless the city can shake off its ownership. Snohomish had been using the line to bring drinking water from the Pilchuck River near Granite Falls until it shut that service off in 2017. The 14.7-mile line currently serves about 75 customers in the Machias area that tap into it. Replacing the water transmission line will cost $80 million.
Five years ago, the revenues to keep up the sewer system were above the amounts needed to cover costs and debt financing, a 2019 study showed. At the the time, the cost to run the system was around $2 million a year. Now it is $3.6 million.
In 2019, the City Council took the option to hold rates at zero percent. An alternative option endorsed by Councilwoman Karen Guzak to raise rates by 2% annually to keep up with inflation did not pass.
At the time, city administrator and utilities manager Steve Schuller in Mayor John Kartak’s administration proposed temporarily reducing water and sewer rates from 2020 to 2022, which the council declined.
