Factoid of the Week
Did you know that low-income Portland residents get a break on their water and sewer bills? Well, now you know.
| Posted at 9:30 AM | Permalink |
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 3, 2007 9:30 AM.
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Comments (8)
Well, good. Water being pretty much a necessity of life.
Posted by SP | November 3, 2007 12:18 PM
Good...I sure would not want to live on $25,000 a year...again!
Posted by Anne Kilkenny | November 3, 2007 1:35 PM
For once city actually is doing someth ing for citizens rather than against citizens.
Posted by KISS | November 3, 2007 5:42 PM
Rather than a from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs approach to running the city water and sewer billing program, I'd much rather see a nonprofit that assisting people in paying these bills when they can't do it themselves.
Posted by Zeb Quinn | November 4, 2007 7:45 AM
My experience is that " Non_Profits are more crooked than government.
Posted by K | November 4, 2007 9:33 AM
Well, good. Water being pretty much a necessity of life.
It's not the water that's expensive - it's sewage and stormwater. But I suppose that these are necessities as well - if you ever had a broken sewer line, you'll know what I'm talking about here.
Here's my latest quarterly bill to illustrate:
$ 34.51 Water volume (1900 cu ft)
$ 73.66 Sewer volume (1300 cu ft)
$ 16.61 Stormwater off-site
$ 0.00 Stormwater on-site (8.95 but cancelled by clean river rewards)
$ 1.52 Portland Harbor superfund
$ 20.12 Base charge
$146.42 Total
My point? Most of this bill is not for water use, but for debt retirement to pay off the CSO-reduction project. But we are in the habit of pricing the rest of our municipal services of this nature as Zeb noted - "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" - in other words, the assessed valuation of your home / apartment, which is (loosely) coupled to ability to pay, determines price for municipal services.
I therefore have no issue with this program.
Posted by john rettig | November 4, 2007 1:05 PM
Most of this bill is not for water use, but for debt retirement to pay off the CSO-reduction project.
no, most of the bill is for water *system* use. it costs money to handle the stormwater that our concrete and steel jungle diverts.
Posted by ecohuman.com | November 4, 2007 2:20 PM
...it costs money to handle the stormwater that our concrete and steel jungle diverts.
Per the usual funny accounting at the water bureau, yes. Per a true incremental cost model that only looks at the operations to dispose of the stormwater and sewer, no.
Come on, even the cost of the bureau's computer fiasco is built into these rates.
Posted by john rettig | November 4, 2007 2:55 PM