Council tackles one-meter issue

Last week, the Moorcroft Council met with Town Attorney Pat Carpenter to discuss an ordinance to create a definition for commercial property within town limits.

In their continuing efforts to create a more equitable meter system, Moorcroft's council is exploring dividing water rates between residential and commercial regarding multifamily units; currently, this specifically means, mobile home parks and apartment buildings.

Generally speaking, commercial is everything not residential... It's too difficult to define commercial by category so we just say if it's not residential, it's commercial," said Carpenter.

Multiple rental units on one meter are considered part of this category.

A concern the town has long held about the one meter for multiple units is the possible necessity of shutting the water off to one and subsequently shutting it off for others. However, by making the entire situation the problem of the owner, who collects the money from the tenants, the town has no legal responsibility to the tenants, according to Carpenter.

Considering the possible criteria, the mayor shared his view of the simplest rate design: "I would like to see it structured as the meter size is one base fee and you pay X amount per gallon. It's cut and dried that way."

The issue arises, though, of the financial obligations connecting the investment fees to the loans over the years. With this plan, these fees will not be recoverable, thus not feasible, according to calculations conducted by Councilman Dale Petersen.

The mayor advised setting the meter fee high enough to recoup the funding the town currently receives.

Carpenter agreed with Glenn's suggestion, stating, "From the enforcement perspective, that is way cleaner. I love the idea of getting away from what we've got set up, right now. We all know what issues that's created...Anything we do with our ordinance is going to be better than what we've got right now."

Glenn answered concerns expressed by Humpal regarding the increase to businesses with this change, "If it's commercial, It's commercial. My bill's going to go up and I understand that... But it's fair."

After further discussion, the group plans to revisit the subject at the next regular meeting, on Wednesday April 24, at 7 p.m. They hope to have further input from rate analysist Carl Brown, who had provided a study for the town a number of years ago.

The Ellis Mobile Home Park is exempt from this discussion because each lot is already metered and the tenant pays their own utilities.