New York, NY – New Yorkers will get soaked with a 12.9% jump in their water rates and tough new penalties for broken water meters, a city board ordered today.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The rate hike takes effect July 1, making it the third double-digit rate hike in a row – and creating an issue that could rile middle-class homeowners in the months before the fall elections.
“Enough is enough,” City Council Finance Committee Chairman David Weprin (D-Queens) told the Water Board, saying the city needs to do more to cut costs. “These water rate hikes have amounted to nothing more than a backdoor property tax increase.”
Department of Environmental Protection Acting Commissioner Steve Lawitts said the agency was able to trim the rate hike from 14% to 12.9% because fuel costs are falling and more people are paying their bills on time.
“Proposing any rate increase isn’t easy,” Lawitts said. “We’re especially sensitive to it in these times when the city and many of its residents are very financially constrained.”
He said the agency cut $16 million in operating costs – including 74 jobs – and saved another $29 million in borrowing costs for its massive construction program.
However, the rate hike also pours $194 million from water customers into the city’s general operating budget – a behind-the-scenes transfer that the Bloomberg administration has done nothing to change.
“We are legally obligated to make this payment,” said Water Board Chairman Alan Moss, saying any change is up to Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials. “It’s not a matter that lies within the board’s discretion.”
The Water Board also approved penalties for building owners who have broken or tampered water meters, or who refuse to allow inspectors in.
Bowing to complaints from building owners, the rules include an appeals process, stronger notifications, reduced penalties and a 120-day grace period.
They are going to have to raise rates by a lot more to pay for the costs of replacing the city’s aging water pipe system, some of which are over 100 years old…
So what is the difference between Bernie Madoff and Mr. Bloomberg.
Madoff was after the rich and wealthy, and Bloomberg is after the middle class and poor.
A vote for Bloomberg is a vote to have your wallet emptied!
BLOOD SUCKERS!!!!
And of course, once again we are looking at a case of he said/she said. The board says its up to the city council to make savings, while the council points fingers at the water board.
Its time for a complete overhaul of the city government, including the mayor and city council!! Time for the middle class to take back New York.
When will this end? Living in NYC has become a Luxury
1. fire administrators
2. collect from deadbeat real estate owners
3. fire administrators.
why are there so few comments on this article? we should be screaming and yelling ENOUGH!!!! they raise all these things, ex. gas, electricity, water etc.. year after year and we all take it calmly. we need community outrage!
Get out of this city!
They are after evry single home owner in this city. Please see reality, fellow New Yorkers!
If you won a house, they will get you with real estate tax hikes and with santitation tickets and with water rate raises and with school taxes and with parking tickets for your car. It’s time to leave the city the way Bloomberg wants it. Only the extremely rich and the extremely poor can live here because the rich can afford all Bloomberg’s taxes and fines and the poor don’t pay the taxes because they don’t own the houses. If they are smart, they also should not own cars. Then and only then will the poor get away with all of the Bloomberg fines and tickets and taxes. Yet, Bloomberg has already dumped 18 million dollars trying to get himself elected again at the same time he fiddles while Rome burns.
Sorry, Mr. Bloomberg, I am not impressed; rather, I am being squeezed out and you know it, because you realize that you will not get one cent from the poor, andf that means you have to get all your funding from the middle class and the wealthy.