Berwyn City Council authorizes 3% water rate hike

The Berwyn City Council unanimously approved a 3% hike in water rates at its March 23 meeting.

The approval wasn’t precisely what Public Works Director Robert Schiller and Finance Director Benjamin Daish recommended in the ordinance codifying and detailing the hike.

Following questions by Alderwoman Alicia Ruiz (5th) and Alderwoman Jeanine Reardon (3rd), the council voted 8-0 to approve that ordinance, but only after striking a paragraph that would have allowed additional hikes without council approval.

According to the ordinance, from 2018-20, residents paid $57.05 for the first 1,000 cubic feet of water used over three months and $7.34 for every 100 cubic feet over that. This year, those fees will increase to $58.76 and $7.75, respectively. In 2022, the ordinance calls for the fee $7.75 fee to rise to $8.10.

According to a white paper on the water industry, the average four-person household uses about 36,000 gallons every three months, which works out to slightly over 1,600 cubic feet.

Berwyn gets its water from Chicago. Schiller and Daish told council members that Chicago has increased its water rates 3.6% over the past two years.

“We regretfully are forced to pass these water rate increases to the users of the water system,” Daish wrote in a March 18 memo to the council.

Schiller told the council that in the spring of 2020, Chicago raised its rates 2.5%. This year, Chicago increased those rates another 1.1%, he said.

“We’re technically not even passing through everything that the city [of Chicago] forward to the city [of Berwyn], just a three percent increase,” Schiller said.

Ruiz said that her concern wasn’t with the 3% hike, but with a paragraph in the ordinance stating that beginning in 2021, Berwyn water rates would be “automatically adjusted upward” without council approval when Chicago raised its rates. The council would be informed of rate increases by the finance director, the ordinance stated.

Mayor Robert Lovero and Alderman Cesar Santoy (5th) responded to Ruiz’s concern.

“If we don’t do it automatically, we’d have to pass an ordinance every single year,” Santoy said.

“It’s a legal thing,” Lovero added. “Instead of us having to come back to council here, it allows us to do it automatically when the city of Chicago [passes] increases. When we do get an increase from Chicago, we normally pass it on to the residents by coming to council every year. This just says you don’t have to come to council all the time.”

“So it’s an efficiency measure?” asked Reardon.

“More or less,” Lovero responded. “It’s a legal thing.”

“I understand the efficiency,” Reardon said. “But accountability is a good thing for us to pay attention to. By removing that vote, our accountability would be reduced.”

Questioned about how the city kept the community informed about water rate increases, Daish said residents and businesses were notified of them on the city’s website and via mailers. Schiller said that Chicago could raise its water rates up to 5% annually.

Ruiz moved to pass the ordinance authorizing the increase after striking the paragraph allowing automatic increases. “I’d like [increases] to continue to come before council for approval,” she said.