By Angel Perkins Staff Writer
BOURBON — When Bourbon Town Council members learned results of a report from Umbaugh and Associates of Plymouth, they agreed something had to be done.
Eric Walsh and Steve Carter, representing the CPA firm, gave a detailed narrative of Bourbon’s utility accounts showing gathered data and comparison results and suggested a five-year plan to encourage the town not be regularly working “with a negative cash flow.”

    The company used a process of a three-percent inflationary trend, looking at operation costs but not including rising fuel and chemical costs, or the latest government requirements. They looked at past and future capital improvements, outstanding bonds and water utility collections (payments received) to get a fair perspective.
    “We looked at rates for a population of your size and compared them to 120 like towns,” said Walsh. “On the wastewater alone you would need a 20 percent increase to bring you up to where they’re at.”
    And the utility company, while also a service, is a business that must be run with a regular profit, not a building amount of loss. “By raising the base rate and the usage rate, by 2010 you could be operating (the water utility) without depleting cash reserves,” Walsh added. “How aggressive you want to be about that is entirely up to you.”
    Town Clerk-Treasurer Kim Berger noted that the average family’s water (and trash) bill runs about $60 to $80 and that there has been no increase in water (usage) rates since 1996. “And this is our last year in our five-year trash contract,” she said. “I can guarantee that rates will go up with some type of fuel surcharge.”
    The last time the storm water rates were raised ($3 to $6 a month) was in 2005 and the last sewer water increase was  in 2006; it went up one dollar a month. Council president Larry Wattenbarger, who has had 10 years on the council said, “We had a board member that simply would not raise water rates; it’s wonderful not to raise rates but that just isn’t realistic. Now we have an issue on our hands.”
    Council member Tim Perkins suggested raising rates only 15 percent and then progressing smaller increases in consecutive years in the future. “Then it might wear off the immediate ‘sticker shock,’” he explained.
    Umbaugh’s Carter said, “If you wanted to go 10 percent (for either sewer removal or water usage) and then next year, another 10 percent you could.” He explained that often with smaller towns, the raises in rates are conducive to improvements and capital project needs.
    “Trends show smaller towns don’t raise rates as often but when they do, it’s a larger amount,” he said. “Your rates structure hasn’t changed in more than 30 years.”