It takes a full-blown investigative commission to understand that the CMUD rate plan approved a couple years ago by Charlotte city council effectively exempted low-usage ratepayers from paying the full cost of their service. How perfectly Charlotte. Together with the revelation that at any given time, due to malfunctioning water meters, CMUD is essentially guessing on 10,000 bills a month should send city council back to the drawing board.
There are a couple of principles to keep in mind. One, water service needs to reflect its cost at all usage levels. You can build in conservation incentives with higher tiers only after that point. Water is not a luxury good and should not be priced like one on the high end — and essentially given away on the low end. Two, CMUD’s revenue streams exist to fund water service, not cross-subsidize infrastructure improvements in transit corridors, as has been the case.
As you can see both notions mightily conflict with what city council and city staff want to do. For that reason I am not very optimistic about a happy resolution for ratepayers.
Bonus Trainwreck: The 311 system. The task force also suggests that customer questions about CMUD bills be cut out of the 311 system as 311 operators are useless in resolving any issues. At this point the time has come to ask exactly what good does come from the multi-million 311 system — other than relieve city staff of the need to interact with the messy public. But as the system was the brainchild of City Manager Curt Walton, who thinks that question gets asked, let alone answered?
