Residents in Eureka Springs will soon see higher rates on their water and sewer bills.
At its regular meeting held Monday, Oct. 28, the Eureka Springs City Council approved a third and final reading of an ordinance that will implement a 25 percent rate increase “across the board” for water, and a “little bit higher” increase for sewer so the two will now match, according to city finance director Michael Akins. The council invoked an emergency clause that will make the ordinance effective immediately.
“We figured it’s almost a $10 [increase] for water and sewer on the base,” Mayor Butch Berry said. “That comes to $4 [increase] on water and $6 on sewer and that’s on the first 2,000 gallons.”
Officials said the rate increases are needed to help pay for repairs for aging systems and to help the city recoup the costs of regular recent rate increases by Carroll-Boone Water District.
“For the longest our water rates matched our sewer rates,” Akins told council members, adding that the last water increase didn’t include a sewer rate increase. “Now, that’s really hurting us. So, what we want to do is bring them back to equal like they were before.”
The city is currently in the middle of a rate study, including what is needed to pay for equipment repairs, and is working to comply with Arkansas Act 605.
“Act 605 is stating that you as a water department needs to be self-sufficient and that you need to pay your normal expenses,” Akins said. “You need to be able to pay your normal expenses to run your water department and not have to have the city loaning the water department money.
“Then, when you do these big projects, like what we’re looking at doing, you want to show that the city can afford that kind of debt or that kind of bond or whatever you’re going to do to finance it with.”
The ongoing rate study shows the need for raising water rates in future years as well.
“A city our size, we should have about a year or two years to be able to get to where this rate study says we need to be,” Akins said.
Research is ongoing regarding how to set rates for residents versus businesses, council members were told, along with different programs that other cities are using to increase profits. Examples include adjusting rates based on the size of meters and possibly lowering the base rate of minimum water usage billed from 2,000 gallons to 1,000 gallons.
“Those are all ideas that are going to be coming out of this rate study,” Akins said. “Ultimately it will be a management decision of what the city council and the city wants to do. What they’re doing with this rate study is they’re saying, “OK, here’s where you kind of need to get to, and then here’s different avenues to be able to do that. Do you want to go by meter size? Do you want to lower the amount of your minimum usage? Do you want to raise just your rates overall?’ ” Raising the rates now won’t affect any outcome of the rate study because of how far the city is from where it will eventually need to be, Akins said.
Council member Harry Meyer said the city is unique with so many tourists taxing the water and sewer systems.
“Our industry is through tourism, and other places that have industry, industry is well aware that if they’ve got a meter of a certain size, they’ve got to pay for that for the availability of that water,” Meyer said. “Right now, there’s absolutely no difference between a citizen’s minimum bill and the Crescent Hotel that has a big ol’ meter, and we’ve got to provide a lot of water and a lot of sewer plant to them. So, yeah, they need to pay for that.”
All options for future plans are still on the table and are being researched, Akins said, keeping in mind the costs of projects that the city is facing.
Akins was asked how many times Carroll- Boone Water District has raised rates without the city passing those increases on to for customers.
“I came in 2022 and they raised rates in 2023 and 2024…,” Akins said, adding that Carroll- Boone has been regularly implementing the increases each January. “…We raised rates in 2023, but prior to that, I believe it was 2019, 2022, somewhere along then. It had been three or four years since we had raised the rates.”
Carroll-Boone Water District has been raising the city’s rate “about 25 cents per thousand gallons,” with each increase, Akins added, saying the city has been absorbing those costs.
“Over the course of the last two or three years, there’s just been a lot of resistance at us raising rates,” he said. “A lot of people have come out and said we can’t raise rates, we don’t want to raise rates, we don’t want to do that. We had a really hard time getting the last rate raise through and we only raised water. We didn’t raise sewer. Now, we don’t have the money to pay for our sewer so now we need to substantially raise our sewer rates.
“…That’s one of the things that [Act 605] is going to do is require us to stay financially stable in our water department.”
Berry told council members that many cities, including Berryville and Green Forest, have ordinances in place that allow automatic rate increases each time Carroll- Boone Water District raises their rates.
“But we’ve not done that,” Berry said. “For several years we’ve just been absorbing the cost to help our citizens. In the long run, it’s hurt.”
8 WASHINGTON keeps CUP
A bed and breakfast located at 8 Washington St. will be able to maintain its Conditional Use Permit after the council approved an appeal from owners Jonas and Jamie Funston.
The CUP was recently revoked by the city’s planning commission after the Funstons, who live in Arizona, failed to join an Oct. 8 meeting by Zoom to provide evidence that they were meeting all the required guidelines.
The owners were present at the council meeting and said that not joining the Zoom was because of a technicality, including having the meeting start time set in the wrong time zone.
The council voted 4-1 to approve the appeal. Meyer cast the lone dissenting vote.
WATER/SEWER UPDATE
Public works director Simon Wiley said additional water leaks have been repaired around the city, and as repairs are being made a database is being established that will show where the most “problematic areas” are located.
“With this Act 605 we will have the funds to replace some of these bad sections of water lines,” Wiley said. “If I could identify these areas that are more problematic now, and when we end up having the funding to replace it, I could put it on our priority list.”
On the wastewater side, Meyer mentioned a recent incident were rats were getting into sewer pipes.
“There’s a hole someplace where they’re getting in?” Meyer asked.
Wiley responded: “We’re not exactly sure where that’s at.”
Infrastructure improvements for the future will likely include a priority of having a company come in and do a “smoke test” so the entire sewer system can be inspected for leaks, Wiley added.
Berry said he thought the last smoke test for the city was 20 to 25 years ago.
“Yeah, late ’90s or early 2000s I think,” Wiley said. “…It was quite a while back.”
A recent estimate for a smoke test for the city came in at around $180,000, Wiley told council members.
OTHER ITEMS
The council unanimously OK’d the planning commission moving forward with developing an “area development plan,” something that planning commission chair Susan Harman said is long overdue.
“Our ask is for us to take the next step, which is to develop an area development plan that allows us to look at future areas of growth outside the current city limits,” Harman said.
Information from the Arkansas Municipal League said the commission can look at future growth areas up to one mile from the current city limits.
“We want to create a plan, but we decided that it would be in our best interest to get a buy-in from all of you first,” Harman said, adding that there would be some expense in developing the plan, including filing it with the county clerk’s office.
Any future plans for changing city limits first have to be on record in the clerk’s office, Harman said.
“We’ve got to have a legal description for what areas we think we want to expand the town,” she said. “…I don’t know why there was never a plan like this put in place because the city had the ability to do it. Planning had the ability to do it for years after they had the area map that was established. Nothing’s ever been done.
“It is for future growth. So, do we think there’s the opportunity for future growth in Eureka Springs? Berryville has expanded their city limits quite a few times by doing this area development plan, and saying ‘we’re going to look at this area, we’re going to look at this area’ and see if that’s something that makes sense for the city to grow.”
Harman said a plan may “sit in a file” for five, 10 or even 20 years, “but at least that area has been established through this process.”
Meyer said while future growth was a good idea, he questioned the city’s current ability to expand water and sewer services.
Harman, however, said the Municipal League said the city would only be required, at a minimum, to provide police, fire and waste management “for those areas if that moved forward at that point.”
Council members liked the idea.
“I think this is absolutely so important and so imperative for the city to move forward,” council member Autumn Slane said. “If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going anywhere, right?”
Berry agreed. “This is something Susan and I have talked about for quite a while, but I think it is important and this is the first step,” he said.
Council members also approved the first reading of changes to the bed and breakfast ordinance, including that those sold in residential areas will now be required to have an owner living on site.
“If a bed and breakfast is sold … it must be owner-occupied,” said Ann Tandy-Sallee, a member of the planning commission who has been spearheading the project. “There will be no more managers. Once its transferred, no more managers.”
Current grandfathered properties will stay as it is, as will current Conditional Use Permit properties.
“If they have a manager now, it stays that way,” Tandy-Sallee said. “If they sell the property, it can only be owner-occupied.”
Another change is that before a property get transferred, an owner has to be current on all taxes with the city advertising and promotion commission. In addition, business licenses will have to be listed on the descriptions of advertisements and the city can revoke a CUP for violation of any condition of the permit, Tandy-Sallee said.
The final change defines a unit as “one bedroom which sleeps two people,” she said.
“The reason for this is we have parking requirements here in Eureka,” Tandy Sallee said. “So, if you have a one-bedroom house that is a tourist lodging that has a parking space and you decide to convert the dining room to a bedroom, then you would need another parking space, which you would not have. We are actually defining the unit, which we never have before.”
The council approved the second reading of a proposed ordinance that revamps requirements for a position on the parks commission.
The proposal will make one of the current seats a position that can be held by anyone in the Western District of Carroll County. Meanwhile, the ordinance states that the chair of the commission must live within city limits.
The second reading was approved 4-1 with Slane the lone dissenter. A third and final vote is needed for the proposed ordinance.
As it has done in previous years, the council also voted to eliminate the second meeting of the month for November and December because of the holidays. The final two regular meetings of the year will be held Monday, Nov. 11, and Monday, Dec. 9.
MEYER TO MAYOR: ‘STAY IN your LANE’
During council member comments, Meyer didn’t shy away from his displeasure at a recent email sent from Berry to council members regarding ongoing work at the sewer treatment plant.
“We all got a message from the mayor about staying away from the sewer plant,” Meyer said. “It was kind of condescending, talking about how there’s dangerous things down there. I’ve been down there a lot. I think we all need to go down there because this is a big deal. There’s a lot of money being spent and our guys that have been working those 12hour shifts sure appreciate when people show up and show interest in their efforts. It’s a stinky job. I even went and got inoculated for hepatitis and tetanus to make sure that I was going to be safe when I went down there. But there certainly isn’t any reason not to keep up with the progress. And, you know, to say that we have to contact someone to get us to hear about what’s going on down there and get it second-hand. … We’re intelligent enough.
“We don’t need to wait for somebody to tell us. And besides, when the mayor said last meeting that the reason we don’t have a decent sewer plant is because a one-cent sales tax failed, it’s kind of hard to tell the citizens right now that we got a $12 million budget, but we’ve neglected the sewer plant for 20 years, damn near 20 years. I know 15 years at least … So I thank you, Mr. Mayor, to stay in your lane. We don’t need to be micromanaged. That’s it.”
Berry responded during his comments to close out the meeting.
“Regarding Mr. Meyer’s comment about the sewer plant, I’ve been saying that, and I sent that email around because it’s not only hazardous, but also people are down there working on a job,” the mayor said. “And if we’re going down there, it is micromanaging for somebody to come down from city council to interrupt people working in their job.
Meyer interrupted Berry, leading the mayor to say “I’ve got the chair. I’ve got the chair, please.”
Berry then continued by saying: “I would just ask that people contact somebody at the sewer plant if you’re going to go down there because it is hard. And the same thing with contacting engineers who are being paid for a service. They’re not being paid to answer questions individually. If we’ve got comments, that’s why they’re here, and they’re here almost every meeting. So, that was the reason for that email.”
LETTER FROM HOSPITAL COMMISSION At the beginning of the council meeting, city clerk treasurer Ida Meyer read a letter into record that Berry said was from the Eureka Springs Hospital Commission.
“To Butch Berry and members of the city council and public, [the] commission desires to notify the city that we have received a draft of an article about the hospital to appear in [the] Eureka Springs Independent soon. The article is not completely accurate. However, we cannot comment on the article as we are conducting an investigation relating to potential personnel matters.
“We will be completing our investigation soon, at which time the commission will hold a special meeting for the purpose of making a decision on any actions to be taken.”
Meyer said the letter was signed by Kent Turner, chair of the hospital commission.
The hospital commission held a regular meeting Monday, Oct. 21 and then called a special meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 22, where they quickly voted to go into executive session to “discuss a personnel matter.”
According to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, “the specific purpose of the executive session must be announced in public before going into executive session.”
No mention of having the letter drafted on behalf of the commission by Turner, or any other member, was mentioned during either of the past two hospital commission meetings.
