Jeffersonville residents can now receive a fixed rate for wastewater, or sewage, bills until the end of summer.The city’s three-member sewer board adopted the policy Thursday to alleviate the high costs from extra water usage during hot days. Customers that sign up for the new wastewater billing program will pay $61.04 a month.“If people don’t come down and sign up for this they won’t get it. So people have to come down and sign this piece of paper in order to get the relief," said Mayor Mike Moore.Moore and the city council were in contentious conversations earlier this year when the council approved an ordinance that disposed of the city's wastewater summer relief program that had been in place since 1991, he said. That program averaged a customer's bill from the first four months of the year to determine the summer months' bills.The council did compromise on a plan to provide an alternative to the former summer relief program. Customers can purchase a water meter that calculates the amount of water not traveling through the sewer system and they can receive a discount based on that reading, but those customers cannot also be signed up for the flat-rate program.Moore said June bills will likely be higher than the flat-rate because the program was not in place at the time bills were mailed. But customers are encouraged to visit the Jeffersonville Sewer Billing Office to have a deduction made to the bill, said Moore.Moore's administration calls the new program good policy because "customers will not be charged for water that does not go into the city sewer system."“People will see probably about a $40 per month savings by coming down and signing up for this program which I think is extremely fair because otherwise we’d be charging somebody for something they weren’t receiving," said Moore.
