Yuma City Council to vote on water and wastewater rate hike

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - The Yuma City Council voted to increase the water and wastewater utility rates at Wednesday's city council meeting.

“Like any business as costs go up you have to pass those costs through to your rate payers but importantly the city needs to have sufficient funding to provide a level of service that is going to be acceptable to the community,” said Dan Jackson the vice president of Willdan Financial.

The possible rate increase would be about 3.5% each year over five years.

The average customer would see a water rate increase of about $2.50 to their utility bill each year.

“No one wants anything wrong with the utility, no one wants questionable water, something wrong with their wastewater service so this will ensure that we have the revenues to invest in that so we keep the high-quality water that we expect,” said the Director of Utilities, Jeremy McCall.

The new rate increase will begin August 1 of this year.

Jackson was able to explain why, in his opinion, Yuma has a good water utilities system.

“The city of Yuma has one of the best quality water services in the state and one of the reasons why it has is that the city has been willing to make the difficult decisions to pass through these cost increases to their rate payers… I think the city should be commended and the rate payers should be commended,” said Jackson.

The last water and wastewater utilities increase was in 2019.