Chestermere petition on utility rates gets traction with city and province
Posted Sep 14, 2016 8:40 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A third party review is now underway within the city of Chestermere, assessing their process as to how they review their utility rates.
It comes after a petition made its way to council and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
Mayor Patricia Matthews says it’s something they’re taking very seriously.
“The province’s observations about regulatory rates setting process is something that we took to heart when we heard from residents earlier this year,” said Mayor Patricia Matthews. “And we undertook a rigorous move forward to do that mandate review and the regulatory process review.
They’ve hired a third party firm, Stack’d Consulting to undertake the review.
Matthews was referring to a letter they received from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs Danielle Larivee at the end of the month.
In it, she writes:
“The preliminary review suggests that the municipality’s oversight of the utility rate-setting process from 2013-15 may have lacked appropriate rigour. In order to confirm or dispel the observation, a more in-depth review would be necessary.”
Larivee says she is deferring her decision on the utility issue facing Chestermere until after Stack’d finishes its review.
“Anytime we hear concerns from residents whether it’s 1, 20 or more, we take them very seriously,” said the Mayor. “We always have room for improvement, so we wanted to make sure we took the message that was being sent to us and we did.”
Matthews says they’re taking as much time as needed to consider everything, in hopes of being as thorough as possible.
They’re hoping to have the final report to council at the end of October, early November.
“There is always room for improvement and their observation that more work may have to be done on the regulatory process is something we heard as well and that’s why we decided to move forward.”
A pair of petitions circulated earlier this year, one to dissolve the private utility corporation in response to what some saw as their skyrocketing bills, another asked for a provincial review of their “broken council”.
