Cedar Rapids Today

The Belle Plaine City Council has been addressing utility and service rates. At a recent council meeting, city officials received a presentation from Republic, which is the current garbage supplier used in the city. 

Matt Pivit from Republic addressed the City Council with some proposals for how to continue their relationship. The city’s contract with the company is up for renewal, and Pivit gave the city two options for the next contract. They currently pay the gate fee, which they could continue doing, or they could switch to having Republic pay the gate fee and have the city pay a higher rate to the contractor. 

"Well from this side of the table, we appreciate the working relationship we’ve had with Republic," Belle Plaine Mayor Dave Fish said. "And I don’t think some people in the community realize what you’re drivers do for some of our elderly people when it comes to taking care of them in the wintertime. And that means getting out of the truck and moving [the bins] back up closer to the house or going up to the house and pulling them down for them, that kind of stuff."

The new rates would be about 20% higher than they currently are, at 14.04, and would have approximately 4.5% annual increases over the five-year contract. They have had annual increases in their expenses throughout their current five-year contract. Part of the swing is because of increased costs of recycling material and rising inflation. The council will decide if they will take one of the options or put the contract out for bid at the next meeting. 

As a part of their presentation from the fiscal year 2022 audit, Fish asked the auditor what rating he would give the city in terms of its financials. The city would receive somewhere in the C or B range, mostly because of the state of its water and sewer funds. Both of the funds have had a bad run of years, and are in the positive for the first time in a while, which is definitely progress. Some lean water and sewer funds are pretty common in municipalities now, and the only way to fix that is to raise the rates. The city has fairly low utility rates compared to levels throughout the state, however they are hesitant to continue raising rates for residents.