Rate Increases Likely Coming

(Las Animas, CO) -- An engineer with a firm hired to do a rate increase study stood before the Las Animas City Council and explained the inevitable, a rate increase would likely need to happen soon.

GMS's Dannah Koeniger explained to a near silent room that those increased costs to Las Animas residents could be as much as 24% more for water, 20% more for sewer and 28% more for sanitation services. In addition to those costs that residents would absorb, the city would also need to fund up to $50,000 a year for pay for samplings due to new regulatory protocol required for municipalities.

Koeniger said they would need to re-evaluate those increases again within the year to see if they would need to increase more or reduce rates. With repairs and updates needed, those costs would likely not go down.

This doesn't take effect right now. Council was reminded by the city attorney that a resolution would need to be drafted and there would need to be a public hearing.

There's no timeline set for action on a rate increase as of right now.

In April, the city voted to approve a five dollar an hour pay increase for city workers. It wasn't made clear in the meeting if they would need to raise rates as suggested in the study to help fund the raises. Earlier, the city decided they had enough in the budget to handle the pay increase.

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