The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners can’t delay a vote to increase water and sewer rates to 2025 without it adversely affecting a series of projects that are planned over the next seven years, and costing ratepayers even more, according to county staffers.
DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond has proposed raising rates by more than 19% over three years to fund improvements to the long-neglected water and sewer systems.
If the board approves the rate increases this year, DeKalb could issue bonds worth about $200 million, said Maria Houser, the county’s director of consent decree and environmental compliance. If commissioners wait until January, when incoming CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson is sworn in, the value of the bonds will be cut in half because the delay will add another year that existing bondholders need to be paid, staffers said.
“We pay now or we lose the system,” Watershed Management Director David Hayes said. “This is something that cannot be deferred any longer.”
DeKalb’s fiscal year is the same as the calendar year. Delaying a vote until 2025 will make some of the projects more expensive if the county is still paying for them in 2033 instead of 2032, Chief Financial Officer Dianne McNabb said.