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Gardner City Council Raises Water and Sewer Rates

Posted on Dec. 8th, 2010

Peter Solie
GardnerEDGE

Gardner Water and Waste Water Rates will Increase for 2011.

In action at their Council meeting on Monday evening, the Gardner City Council voted unanimously to raise Water and Sewer rates for 2011. Water rates will increase by 5% and Sewer rates by 8%. The City estimates the impact for the average household will be $27.00 per year for water and $46.00 for waste water. The monthly increase for both will be $6.08 for the average household.

The increase is primarily due to the lack of new housing and industrial permits have been issued over the past two years. Fees associated with those permits pay for bonds issued in the past to construct water and wastewater facilities. City Administrator Stewart Fairburn predicted that rate increases will also be necessary next year. Fairburn was pleased to announce that residential housing permits are up over last year’s total, sales tax receipts are running 3% over last year’s level and some commercial prospects are talking to the city staff about locating facilities in the City of Gardner.

Many other items were on the agenda Monday evening:

• The January 17, 2011 Council meeting will be moved to Tuesday, January 18th to accommodate the Martin Luther King holiday.

• An escrow account of $1.64 million will be established to pay the bonds for the former Public Safety Station #2 on 183rd Street. Fire District #1 will be selling bonds to purchase the station and paying the City of Gardner for the building on December 15th of this year. The bonds sold by the City in May of 2008 may not be called immediately, necessitating the establishment of the escrow account. The bonds will be called at the first opportunity and the funds remaining in the escrow account will be used to pay them in full.

• The City entered into an agreement with the Kansas Energy Office for the Take Charge Challenge. The City will receive a $25,000 grant to implement the challenge which will earn the highest ranking city an additional grant of $100,000. Items such as energy audits, educational events, refrigerator magnets, weather stripping kits, LED Christmas lights, CFL’s, power strips, and rebates for Energy Star appliances. The City of Gardner will be in competition with 3 regional cities. A total of 16 are participating across the state. The competition will run from January 1, 2011 through October 2011.

• The Council approved adding an addendum to the real estate listing contract on the old city hall at 112 South Elm Street to consider a lease of the building in addition to the sale of the building.

• The Council approved changes to the City Code that will prohibit the parking of any vehicles other than cars, passenger vans, motorcycles and pickup trucks on city streets. Loading and unloading of other vehicles, along with service and construction vehicles will be exempt from the ordinance. Police will issue warning for the first 30 days that the new ordinance is in effect.

• The Council approved new design standards for commercial, industrial and residential buildings in Gardner. Melissa Mundt, Assistant City Administrator and Community Development Director , said, “we have received many requests to make our design standards clear. Developers do not want to design a project that is unacceptable and then have the time delay and added expense of redesigning the project. They just want to know the standards up front.” The new design standards can be found on the City’s website.

• Mundt presented a Social Media Policy. The Council approved the policy which resulted in the establishment of a City of Gardner Facebook page. The council liked the use of the Facebook technology, but they were concerned about anyone being able to post on the City’s page. The Facebook page is up and City staff will be posting information to it, but there will be no questions or responses from the public at this time.

• The Council tabled an agenda item for an executive session.