VP residents voice concerns over water rate increase

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Although the agenda of Tuesday’s Ville Platte City Council meeting seemed innocuous enough, an informative presentation about potential increased water rates blossomed into a contentious two-and-a-half hour meeting that shuffled from water rates to the police budget to internet antennas and back again.
The meeting started with Councilman Bryant Riggs setting the tone, questioning Mayor Jennifer about the cost of hiring janitors to clean the community centers.
“Can’t we do that in-house?” Riggs insistently asked. “We’d come out cheaper to pay one of our employees to do this work.”
Vidrine responded that the clean-up at the facilities usually occurs at 2:00 or 3:00 am, once functions have finished and before the next day’s functions begin. If current employees were asked to take on that job, she said that it would cause an increase in pay due to overtime.
Riggs pushed back, noting that the city’s employees don’t get overtime, but earn comp-time instead.
“It wouldn’t cost us anything,” to have the employees do the work, he said.
Vidrine had another answer for Riggs, saying instead that the time frame of the duties would cause the city to run afoul of labor laws. However, Vidrine promised Riggs that she would examine the issue, checking on the labor laws and doing a comparative study to see whether it would be cost efficient.
As the meeting moved into the heart of the agenda, Todd Abshire, a water circuit rider with the Louisiana Rural Water Association, told the Council that drinking water systems (as well as waste water, gas, and other public utilities) are under pressure to find funding sources for routine maintenance and upgrades.
“The days of getting grant money” to fund repairs and maintenance “are at an end. The days of the (federal and state) government passing out money are over,” Abshire said.
Complicating the matter is the fact that most municipal water systems are old and in need of repair. Ville Platte is currently in the last stage of such maintenance, as it is replacing all the old water lines. The project is in Phase 4, which includes Main and LaSalle streets.
In order to fund repair and maintenance projects, Abshire said that loans and matching the sources of funding will be used more and more frequently going forward.
And the key to qualifying for the loans is sustainability.
“Being sustainable means that the system makes ten percent more in revenue than it pays in expenses,” he explained. “This means that water rates need to be set at least ten percent above expenses.
“It’s been 15 or 20 years since Ville Platte raised its water rates,” he said.
Abshire stressed that the water system must be sustainable on its own. It cannot be propped up with funding from other sources in order to appear sustainable.
Vidrine has asked the LRWA to do a rate study for the city. Abshire, who is responsible for the rate calculations, said that he will report his findings back to the mayor, noting that the study could take anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks.
As part of his presentation, Abshire also reminded the Council that it is against the state constitution to forgive outstanding balances on water bills or to fail to cutoff a delinquent customer. Additionally, any resident who tampers with a meter (water or gas) is committing a felony.
If someone has a broken water line on his property, Abshire said, it is not legal for the city to forgive the debt of the huge water bill.
Abshire, who is a city councilman in Port Barre, said that municipalities must do what it can to collect outstanding balances, even if it means pulling out the meter and plugging up the main water line.
Community activist Arthur Sampson responded to the presentation by urging the Council not to raise rates.
“The city has decided it wants to raise rates,” Sampson said. “We are a poor community, the second poorest in the United States and the poorest in Louisiana. Rates are high already. Many of our citizens are on fixed incomes. They can’t afford it.”
Sampson reminded Vidrine that she came into office by promising to lower rates.
“Mayor,” he said looking at her, “in 2010, when you ran, you said you wanted to cut rates 20 percent.”
Sampson said that the city needs to find other ways to address the problem.
“Cut salaries. Cut the budget. There is a lot of unnecessary spending in the City of Ville Platte,” he said.
One example of cuts that the council could make, Sampson said, was to cut the salaries of the councilmembers, telling the crowd that, according to an auditor’s report he received, they make more than $11,000 per year. He also noted what he said was an increase of the salary for the mayor, from $40,000 to over $100,000 a year.
Several councilmembers took exception to Sampson’s comments.
“You think we don’t realize that we’re a poor community?” an incredulous Mike Perron asked. “We know that. We have family members who are on fixed incomes. We don’t want to raise rates. This is something that we have to do.”
Riggs fired back at the assertion of how much his salary is.
“I don’t make $11,000 a year. I’ll show it to you,” Riggs said. “Get the facts right.”
Riggs eventually went to his vehicle and came back to the meeting with paperwork showing his salary, which he offered to show to Sampson. Sampson declined to look at it, citing his figures from the state auditor.
Riggs said that the salary figure from the state auditor conflates both salary and reimbursements for expenses. He said that, for example, part of the figure includes travel expenses due to attending out-of-state conventions.
“You gotta watch out for the information you’re putting out there,” Riggs told Sampson.
He also noted that he donates “33 percent of my salary to bingo games and charitable activities” in his district. Other councilmembers, like Perron, Faye Lemoine, and Lionel Anderson, also responded that they use their salaries to help constituents do things like buy groceries.
“We could all give our salaries back to the city,” Lemoine noted, “and it still wouldn’t cover the rate increases needed for our system to show sustainability.”
During this back-and-forth, Sampson and other members of the audience were allowed to make comments from their seats, without having to identify themselves and without regard to time limits.
After Sampson, who dominated the discussion from the floor, brought up the salaries of the councilmembers and the mayor, Vidrine told him, “Mr. Sampson, you can sit down. You’re done.”
Niki McKinney, who once served as manager of the Gabriel Villa apartments, asked if there was some program to help soften the rate increases for elderly people and people on a fixed income, similar to a program that CLECO has.
“Many residents of Gabriel Villa don’t get more than $700 a month,” she said.
Vidrine told her that there is a way to help defray the costs, but the beneficiaries “have to be a certain age and show six months of regularly paying on time. It’s a program that we will be looking into.”
Another resident, who only identified himself as a pastor of a church on N. Dupre Street, said that the current water system is worse than inadequate.
“We feel like the water we’re getting is unsafe to drink,” he said. “If we drink it, we’ll be like Flint, Michigan, with cancers and illnesses.”
He said that the water coming out of his taps is dirty. Mud came out of the faucet recently, he claimed.
“There is dirt in the line when they do repairs,” he explained. “When I asked about the dirty water, I was told to let the water run until it clears up.
“They drained a fire hydrant and it took and hour and a half to clear it up,” he continued. “If I have to let my water run until it clears, who’s going to pay for that?”
Ultimately, Vidrine said, rates were not being raised until the results of the study were completed by Abshire; and that any claim on social media about how high the increases were going to be were without merit.
“Facebook is not the gospel,” Vidrine said. “We’re not raising rates right now. We’re talking about it. It’s not decided yet. The study is not complete. Don’t believe the gossip out there.
“When it’s done,” she continued, “a rate ordinance will be introduced. At that time, there will be a public hearing. Everyone will have the ability to speak about it.”