Monday night’s City Council meeting was the first demonstration of the significant difference between new Park Ridge 6th Ward Ald. Marc Mazzuca and his predecessor.

Former 6th Ward ald. Tom Bernick’s approach to City business, when he showed up at all, often consisted of a recitation of everything he had inspected and everybody he had talked to, culminating in several disjointed observations that usually produced more heat than light.  And, most of the time, no Council action.  

Despite being on the job less than a month, Mazzuca stepped up Monday night to challenge the water rate increase recommendations of the City’s water consultant, Baxter & Woodman.  He produced a five-page report promoting an amendment to the water rate ordinance that had already passed its first reading two weeks earlier, and even the consultant’s representative acknowledged that the report was very detailed and well done, even though it’s proposals defied conventional industry analyses based on the standards adopted by the American Water Works Association.

By the end of the evening, Mazzuca’s amendment was adopted by a vote of 4 (Alds. DiPietro, Smith, Knight and Mazzuca) to 2 (Alds. Sweeney and Raspanti, Ald. Maloney absent).  Which goes to show what even an inexperienced alderman can accomplish when he doesn’t mistake mere activity for achievement – to paraphrase an axiom of the late, legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden.

That’s not to say, however, that we’re in agreement with Mazzuca’s conclusions, or the Council’s action in passing the rate hike with his amendment. 

As long-time fans of user fees and cost recovery, we most definitely applaud the Council’s water rate increase to the extent it passes through to the users the full cost to the City of the water it purchases from the City of Chicago.  We also applaud the City’s imposing an additional charge on that water to help fund the cost of maintaining and improving the City’s water-delivery infrastructure.

Where we differ with Mazzuca and the Council, however, is on the new “fixed charge” based on the size of the water meter(s) servicing local homes, businesses and institutions. 

Under that new fixed fee structure, accounts with meters less than 1” – characteristically smaller/older single-family homes – will be charged $8.94 per bi-monthly billing period, while accounts serviced by larger-sized meters will be charged from $21.64 for 1” meters to $865.43 for 6” meters.  That translates into a commercial property owner with a 6” meter paying the City $5,192.58 per year just in meter fees, irrespective of its actual water usage, while a residential property owner with a 3/4” meter will pay only $53.64 in meter fees, also irrespective of water usage.

Why such a big differential? 

Beats us, other than it might be more of a political decision than a policy-based one – a suspicion aggravated by our inability to find any hard data showing that a 6” meter is $5,138.94 per year more expensive for the City to maintain, repair or replace than a 3/4” meter; or that the 6” meter causes $5,138.94 per year more wear and tear on the City’s water infrastructure than a 3/4″ meter.  

And, sadly enough, we can’t seem to find one shred of evidence that anybody – the City staff, consultant Baxter & Woodman, or Ald. Mazzuca himself – considered, or even possessed, any such hard data to support these meter-based charges.  

That raises the specter of political pandering, especially when Mazzuca punctuates his report in several places with references to the “shifting” of those fixed water charges from one group of users to another as a “better, more equitable allocation of fixed costs” based on some unidentified “best practice”; and when Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) invokes the populist-sounding rationale that “[s]ome will pay more, but 81 percent will be paying less.” 

Given the significant changes contained in Mazzuca’s amendment and the fact that he completed it only 3 days prior to the meeting, we think the Council might have been wise to have deferred a vote on it for two weeks, to give the public a chance to read, digest and comment on its recommendations.  

Interestingly enough, however, the water users likely to be hit the hardest by the new rate structure – Lutheran General Hospital, the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the Park Ridge Country Club, and both local school districts – were notably absent from not only Monday night’s session but from the previous meeting at which the Council passed the first reading of this ordinance.  And as we understand it, only the Park District voiced its opposition to the increase via letter.  So expediting the vote on the amendment might not have been all that bad a decision.

Despite the apparent size-shouldn’t-matter arbitrariness and possible politicization of the meter size-based fees, this new water rate ordinance is a big step in the right direction of pay-as-you-go funding of water usage and infrastructure maintenance.  

And it also marks the new 6th Ward alderman as a potential force to be reckoned with on the Council.

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