Longmont Council approves 2022 city budget
The Longmont City Council approved a $391,770,717 city budget Tuesday night for 2022.
The council votes to give final adoption to several budget-related ordinances and resolutions needed to be enacted to authorize next year’s spending package were unanimous. No council members — who had already had several reviews of the staffproposed budget after City Manager Harold Dominguez unveiled it in late August — made any final comments before casting their votes Tuesday night.
Nor did any members of the general public march to the microphone to indicate support for, or opposition to, features in the budget.
The council already had two public hearings on the overall 2020 budget proposal. No members of the public testified at a Sept. 28 hearing, and only one person spoke at an Oct. 5 hearing — Noami Curland, who suggested the city could be spending more on solid waste diversion efforts.
The budget, which has undergone a few changes since unveiled by Dominguez and the Finance Department, represents a 5% increase from the $372,936,292 budget the council originally adopted last November
for the current 2021 budget year.
Also on Tuesday night, council members voted unanimously to approve ordinances that will increase the city’s electric and storm drainage utility rates, effective Jan. 1.
One of those ordinances will set a two-year rate increase schedule for Longmont Power and Communications’ electric utility customers, hiking current residential monthly basic rates by 2.5% in 2022 and another 2.5% on Jan. 1, 2023.
The resulting charges will on the rate category a home is in and the amount of kilowatt hours of electricity the home uses.
A typical residential household using 700 kilowatt hours a month could see its average electric bill increase from a 2021 rate charge of $72.03 a month to $73.82 a month in 2022 and then to $75.64 a month in 2023, city staff has said.
Under the other measure, residential customers’ current monthly storm drainage utility charges will increase 14.2% next year, another 12.1% in 2023, and another 12.9% in 2024. That would raise a Longmont residential utility customer’s current $13.05 monthly storm drainage fee to $14.90 on Jan. 1, to $16.70 on Jan. 1, 2023, and to $18.85 on Jan. 1, 2024.
Current storm drainage rates are based on an ordinance adopted in 2013.
City staff told the Council during utility-rate presentations earlier this year the storm drainage charge needs to be increased to upgrade or replace the city’s aging storm drainage infrastructure, which includes storm drainage pipes, culverts, manholes and inlets needing rehabilitation, and to improve undersized drainage facilities along with enhancements at areas prone to recurring flooding.
No members of the general public took the opportunity during Tuesday night’s public hearings on the electric and storm drainage utility rate proposals to comment about those rate hikes.
Those won’t be the only utility rate increases headed to Longmont residential and commercial customers in 2022.
On Sept. 14, the Council gave preliminary approval to a two-year rate increase schedule for Longmont Power and Communications’ electric utility customers, hiking current residential monthly basic rates by 2.5% in 2022 and another 2.5% on Jan. 1, 2023.
Also on Tuesday, Council members gave their unanimous approval of yet another ordinance related to utility customers’ rates — one that would increase some electric utility rate rebates available to qualified low-income households under the Longmont City Assistance and Rebate System and would establish a rebate program for part of what such households otherwise would have to pay under the soon-to-be-higher storm drainage rates.