While no final decisions have been made, Kamloops council is moving ahead with plans for sizeable hikes in utility rates next year.

Council has voted 5-4 to direct staff to bring back bylaw amendments to increase solid waste, sewer, and water rates for 2024, which would see the average homeowner pay an extra $129 on their bills a year.

Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson and Councillors Kelly Hall, Katie Neustaeter, and Mike O’Reilly were opposed to the 25 per cent increase to waters rates, the most contentious of the three increases that was debated at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I think the steady as you go, zero-based budgeting, three-year cost average got us into a predicament,” Councillor Stephen Karpuk, said during the meeting. “We already made a decision. Whether you thought about it before or you didn’t, this is a cost we have to pay some how.”

Hall meanwhile wondered if the 25 per cent increase in water rates could be spread out over multiple years.

“We need to evaluate the financial sustainability of water, sewer, waste and recycle. Evaluate and look at recommendations that might come from that rate review so that we can apply it moving forward in a more holistic way,” Hall said.

Speaking Tuesday, Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman said the planned increase in water rates will help maintain a healthy reserve in the event of an emergency.

“I wouldn’t be comfortable going with much less than a 20 per cent rate increase this year, just based on where we want our reserve to be to make sure that we’re in a place where we can absorb some of the things that can happen in a large system like ours,” Wightman said.

Wightman says the 25 per cent increase in water rates is to cover the $3.2 million in decommissioning payments going to users of the Noble Creek Irrigation System. It is also needed to offset development cost charges for new home construction approved earlier in the year.

“This wasn’t an accident, this wasn’t something that has just come up that we didn’t know about,” O’Reilly said on NL Mornings. “These were purposeful decisions made by council to help with the affordability of housing.”

“This council is very intent and wanting to help with housing affordability and by doing that, its spread it out over the utility instead of directly going to a brand new build.”

If approved by council by the end of the year, the average home owner in Kamloops will see their water bills increase by $95 a year. Solid waste pick-up fees would jump by 7-per cent, or $22 a year, while sewer rates would rise 2.5-percent, or $12 a year.

“We need to have a bit of money in reserves,” O’Reilly said. “If we don’t have reserves and we need to borrow money to fix something if there is a repair that needs to be done, unexpected as we all know happens, we’d be borrowing at close to ten per cent.”

City Council will have to adopt its new Solid Waste, Sanitary Sewer, and Water Amendment Bylaws before Dec. 31 of this year.