St. Joseph City Commissioners have approved a water rate increase, and there’s another one likely coming.
At a meeting this week, commissioners approved a 5% rate increase that will be applied systemwide, including in surrounding townships served by the city. The rate hike works out to about seven cents per day, or about $6.73 per quarter, for the average user.
However, City Engineer Tim Zebell tells us another, and larger, increase will be sought at the next commission meeting. That’s to apply to the water distribution system and sewers and will only affect customers within the city.
“Those increases are required just essentially to keep up with the rate of inflation and also improvements that need to be done at the water treatment plant and some of the shared system assets like painting the water towers, keeping those up, basically in order to provide safe drinking water for our customers,” Zebell said.
Zebell says that second increase will be about 20% for sewer and 11% for water. This is all to pay for required improvements.
“We have some big regulatory requirements to meet on the city side on for drinking water. We have lead service line replacements that we have to do and that’s costly for the number of customers we have for our customer base.”
And there’s also sewer work coming up. Zebell says that involves a storage tank needed to reduce runoff.
Zebell says the city has applied for extra state help paying for some of the upcoming projects, but it’s been turned down for two years running, and it seems unlikely the support will be approved this year.
The new rates will take effect in July, when Fiscal Year 2027 begins.
