Voters in Hallsville will decide whether to allow the city to sell its wastewater utility in its election Tuesday This question comes as City wastewater debts have totaled $1.32 million according to the City’s 2018 Annual Water Quality Report. Hallsville City Administrator, Kenyetta Ridgway-Sample said the vote will not directly result in any transaction by the City.
“If the measure passes we will have some public meetings to get input from the citizens on who to the sell the system to,” Ridgway-Sample said.
Private companies have already made the City bids of $1.7 million and $2 million. Ridgway-Sample says many of these offers would work to limit increases to wastewater rates for Hallsville residents, and also lift the burden of refurbishing the existing infrastructure for the growing city. Some community members have expressed concerns of potential rate hikes that could be implemented if the wastewater utility is purchased by a private company. Ridgway-Sample said that shouldn’t be a concern, as future changes to wastewater fees would still go through an approval process by the city.
The $1.32 million debt mostly resulted from improvements made back in 2013 which brought the wastewater utility into compliance with regulations set by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. According to Ridgway-Sample, keeping the wastewater utility under city control could be expensive if the measure doesn’t pass.
“We would have to get an engineer to in, hopefully with a grant, and they would tell us our best options for us to keep the sewer and how to improve it and enlarge it. We would have to possibly double or triple our rates in order to pay that debt plus the 1.3[million] we already have in debt,” Ridgway-Sample said.