Here’s how Bellingham is changing billing for water, sewer, stormwater utility customers
Bellingham residents will see twice as many utility bills next year — but the price of water, sewer and stormwater service isn’t rising.
Their utility bills will begin arriving every month in 2022, rather than every other month, so the average monthly bill will decrease, said Forrest Longman, deputy director of the Finance Department that handles billing.
“We currently bill folks every other month for their water, sewer and stormwater,” Longman told the City Council in a July 12 committee session. “That can result in relatively large bills and this will get the actual bill amount smaller but it comes more often.”
To accommodate the new monthly billing process, two employees will be hired and trained before the end of the year.
Calculating the amount of an average monthly utility bill is difficult because there are different levels of service — including single-family, multi-family, commercial, industrial and institutional users, said Amy Cloud, spokeswoman for the Public Works Department.
Base rate for a single-family home with a 5/8-inch meter inside the city limits is $192.61 every other month.
That includes $46.43 for water, $93.36 for sewer, $23.70 for stormwater (medium-sized home), and a $29.12 watershed fee.
Monthly billing was first considered several years ago, driven in part by customer demand, said Eric Johnston, director of the Public Works Department.
“It seems to be more consistent with how most of the world bills for services, monthly rather than bimonthly,” said at the July 12 meeting. “From a perspective of water conservation, it should give our customers a better perspective of how much water they’re using when they’re using it.”
And as rates are expected to rise in the future, especially for sewer services, “it helps customers plan for billing purposes. We’d much prefer to send customers a smaller bill rather than a large bill every two months.”
