CITY OF LOCKPORT
Decrease seen in water, sewer budgets
LOCKPORT — The city’s water and sewer budgets for 2009 were completed Wednesday by the Common Council, with small spending reductions in both funds.
The water fund will be $3.77 million, a decrease of $21,219 from this year’s budget. The reduction was achieved after the Council decided to take $70,000 for two new trucks out of the operating budget. Instead, the city will try to buy them next year with borrowed money.
Mayor Michael W. Tucker said the Water Department trucks — a one-ton dump truck and a utility truck — will be combined with vehicles the city plans to buy for other departments.
“Some of the equipment we’re driving around is, I don’t want to use the word ‘dangerous,’ but it’s not safe,” said Alderman Patrick W. Schrader, D-4th Ward.
He also said the city intends to spend $70,000 to buy new water meters. That’s $15,000 more than this year’s meter purchases.
The city’s eventual goal is to equip every home with water meters that can be scanned by an employee in a passing vehicle, instead of that worker having to walk up to every meter and copy down the numbers.
“We have approximately 20 percent of the city metered up with the automatic reads,” Schrader said. “We have 200 more in the shop, and with that $70,000, we’ll buy more.”
The Council made plans to hire two laborers for the Highways and Parks Department, so two workers there can be transferred to the new water and sewer infrastructure repair crew — one salary each to be budgeted in water and sewer.
The city is to receive about $50,000 in county property tax breaks on its raw water supply line from the Niagara River, but it has to prove the savings are being spent on water line repairs. However, the Council decided not to split that money out into a separate repair fund.
“I don’t know how much more we can prove it. We cut the street open,” Schrader said, referring to the infrastructure crew’s first job, now under way on Massachusetts Avenue.
The sewer fund budget totals $4.1 million for 2009, a drop of $64,130 from this year.
As in the water budget, some savings were achieved by converting short-term borrowings for projects into long-term bonds.
“If you’re not adding new debt, the numbers go down,” City Clerk and Budget Director Richard P. Mullaney said.
