I am writing in response to Mayor Murdoch’s recent explanation of our residential water bills in the Jan. 2 edition of the Oak Bay News. Our water bills should be easily understood by all who receive them however, in reality as Mayor Murdoch has so eloquently demonstrated, very few of us do.
What the mayor and his council should understand is that the only charges that most people would expect to find on their water bill is a minimum charge for water connection and usage and an actual charge for the water we used. It should be that simple. If this kind of transparency were in place we wouldn’t require assistance from any elected official to explain our bills to us. While I am not suggesting that all of the other money collected on our water bills is not necessary it should be collected and itemized on our property tax notices not our water bills.
I would suggest that our current water billing system was designed by previous councils to be as convoluted and misleading as it is for a reason, councils desire to avoid explaining higher property taxes to it’s constituents. It would be nice to see our newly elected council put an immediate end to this practice.
Bruce Cline
Oak Bay