No Break for Hancock Winter Water Bills

No Break for Hancock Winter Water Bills – May 22, 2014 – Todd VanDyke
The City of Hancock will not be offering any additional relief to those who ran up high water bills in an effort to keep their pipes from freezing this winter… at least, not for now. Water customers who are authorized to let water run during a hard freeze are permitted to use up to 11,000 gallons per month without being charged extra. However, this winter, many customers used much more than that. At least one residential customer ran more than 120,000 gallons in a single month. At last night’s City Council meeting, a proposal was floated to revise the water bills of let-run customers back down to the amount of their average water bill… but council member John Haeussler said that would simply shift the cost from the citizens who ran the excess water to other citizens who didn’t. Council member Ted Belej noted that it’s not just the water that the city has to pay for – the city’s sewer treatment bill is also based on the amount of water processed through the system. In the end, the council tabled the idea… and asked city staff to provide them with some idea of what it would cost to make the water bill adjustments. City Manager Glenn Anderson said the city has already absorbed nearly 100,000-dollars in unbudgeted water costs because of the deep freeze.