Third party consultants have completed a review and made recommendations on Chestermere City council’s process for reviewing and approving utility rates.
The review began in July after more than 5,000 Chestermere residents signed a petition asking for a municipal inspection into the actions of council in response to rising utility rates.
Residents delivered the petition to Minister Danielle Larivee in March and Municipal Affairs (MA) deemed the petition sufficient for a preliminary review in May.
The review process conducted by MA included analyzing information the City is required to submit annually to the ministry, interviewing City employees, councillors and the petition holder.
The third party review was conducted by Stack’d Consulting from Calgary and Larivee asked council to provide her with a copy of the final review no later than Nov. 30, along with council’s proposed actions in response to the recommendations from the report.
The report was presented at the City’s Nov. 21 council meeting and included a review of the mandate of Chestermere Utilities Incorporated (CUI), which is a municipal utility corporation operated as a subsidiary of the City.
Recommendations in the report include updating policy documents to ensure consistency, establishing appropriate communication and reporting protocols respecting council’s role as both shareholder and rate regulator, developing an interim rate-setting process to support 2017 rate-setting and evolvement towards the desired process, as well as reviewing and updating key administrative and operational processes supported by CUI and the City.
Chestermere Mayor Patricia Matthews said council is working on implementing those recommendations and is currently focusing on an interim rate-setting process to prepare for 2017 utility rates.
City administration officials have been collecting feedback from residents on 2017 utility rates and plan to present their findings to council at its regular meeting Dec. 19.
“The recommendations represent the culmination of several months of work to strengthen our processes with CUI,” Matthews said following the Nov. 21 meeting.
“We are eager to move forward with the actions, which help create a more transparent environment and are aligned with Alberta Utilities Commission principles.”
Stack’d Consulting officials gathered input from surrounding municipalities, industry organizations and experts to prepare their recommendations for the City of Chestermere, she said.
“We wanted to make sure we were adopting best practices in the industry, to address the concerns expressed by residents earlier this year.”
