Fairfield set to increase fees on utilities

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield City Council is poised to approve increases to residents’ gas, water, sewer, recycling and solid waste fees, as well as a reduction in its total property tax levy.

On Monday, April 8, the council was set to consider the third and final reading of a series of ordinances to increase fees, as well as hosting a public hearing and resolution to approve the Fiscal Year 2025 budget. Electric and gas franchise fees were set to rise from 1 percent of a resident’s bill to 3 percent. The monthly base rate for solid waste – garbage pickup – will rise from $9.09 to $10.16. The monthly recycling charge will rise from $4.95 to $5.62. Water and sewer base rates will rise by 2 percent each year on July 1 through 2026.

Fairfield City Administrator Doug Reinert said these increased fees are necessary to cover the city’s growing expenses in all those departments. In the case of garbage and recycling, the city contracts with Waste Management to provide those services, and because the city is having to pay more to Waste Management, those additional costs have to be passed on to the residents.

Reinert said he wanted residents to remember that Fairfield is still under a consent order from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which is requiring the city to fix its sanitary sewer overflows into creeks by building new infrastructure, something the city has been doing for at least a decade.

“We do everything we can to keep our costs low, but we still have to be able to collect fees in a way that we can continue to operate efficiently,” Reinert said.

Turning to the new budget, the total tax levy for residential property in Fairfield would fall from its current rate of $16.90 per $1,000 of taxable valuation to about $16.69. Total expenditures would fall from $43.5 million in the current re-estimated Fiscal Year 2024 budget to $36.8 million in Fiscal Year 2025.

When asked how Fairfield was able to lower its tax levy, Reinert replied, “The state forced us to reduce it. There was no achieving.”

Reinert said next year’s budget is lower than this year’s because the city is paying off debt. He noted that he and the other city employees are also looking for ways to save money, without hurting employees or cutting services.

“I can say that in my 30 years of public service, I have not been in a position where we’ve had municipal furloughs or lay-offs,” he said. “All that does is make us less efficient. And I don’t want to cut services, either.”

Reinert said certain departments may need to go through a hiring freeze, where a position is intentionally left vacant for a while. He noted that the police department is seeking an administrative assistant to help get documents ready for court and other tasks, so the department might go through a hiring freeze before adding a 14th officer to ensure there’s enough money for the other position.

Other ways the city has sought to save money is by closing the Fairfield Rec Center early when it’s not used as much so that employees can clean the building, instead of having a contractor do that. The streets department is trying to do more concrete paving of roads instead of contracting that work out, too, where a private contractor would charge two or three times as much as what city staff could do it for.

“We’re always thinking about cost-saving measures, how we can do things effectively and efficiently,” Reinert said. “We are reducing overtime. We buy used equipment rather than new. We’re trying to make us as financially healthy as possible.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com