Traverse City staff outline major billing, metering and collections changes for water and sewer

Traverse City staff on Feb. 10 laid out a package of proposals to change how the city bills water and sewer customers, upgrade aging meters and endpoints, and update collection and shutoff policies. The study-session presentation covered residential and commercial rate design, irrigation-meter billing, technology upgrades that would give customers near-real-time reads, and options for dealing with unpaid accounts where the city no longer can rely on Traverse City Light & Power for shutoffs.

City officials said the changes are meant to align rates with industry standards, provide fairer treatment across customer types and enable faster leak detection. "This is part 2 of the water and sewer rate discussion, which is a review of metering and overall policies and practices," said Janna Robinson, deputy treasurer and finance director, who led the presentation.

The proposals before the commission are largely policy and procedural; no vote was taken at the Feb. 10 study session. Robinson said the city will return to a formal commission meeting with ordinance language and rate comparisons for the coming fiscal year after staff incorporate feedback.

What staff proposed - Rate methodology: Staff proposed moving away from the current monthly base rate that bundles a first 6 hundred cubic feet (CCF) of usage and instead charging a “ready-to-serve” fee that recovers budgeted operational expenditures (less customer-accounting costs) and a separate constant consumption charge. For residential customers staff proposed a discounted consumption rate for the first 4 CCF, then a single uniform consumption rate thereafter; commercial customers would be charged a single consumption rate for all usage.

- Out-of-city customers: The city serves a small share of non‑annexed customers (about 2.4% of accounts). Robinson said staff is not proposing to change the existing premium for out‑of‑city accounts (currently 1.5 times the in‑city base) because those rates were negotiated with townships and do not duplicate city property taxes.

- Solar energy credit: The wastewater solar-plus-storage project contractor (Jacobs) estimated about $100,000 per year in energy savings. Applied to the sewer ready-to-serve fee, staff estimated that would lower the sewer ready-to-serve fee by roughly 2.8% and could equal about $1.09 per in‑city customer per month under the scenario shown; staff…