A10 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
Water rates
Continued from Page A1
“We said, it’s crazy that we don’t have
enough money for these basic things,” he
said.
So the city worked with its engineers from
Anderson Perry & Associates to revamp its
rate structure entirely, basing the system
more heavily on usage so that the people
who put the most strain on the system pay
the most. The change applied to both water
and sewer rates.
“Probably from a percentage standpoint,
peoples’ sewer cost went up higher than
their water, but nobody ever calls it their
sewer bill,” Morgan said.
The median Hermiston water customer
— the one in the middle of a lineup from
largest to smallest user in town — used
3,600 gallons of water in January 2019 and
32,400 gallons in August, which makes it
hard to talk about the “average” amount a
customer’s bill went up, even before factor-
ing in that people also use different amounts
of water in different years depending on
weather.
Looking at just water, not sewer, the
median user would have paid $46.57 for
32,400 gallons of water in August and
$20.72 for 3,600 in January under the 2018
rates. Under the March 2019-March 2020
rates, the same user would pay $98.40 for
32,400 gallons and $31.80 for 3,600.
Flattened out over the course of a year,
Morgan said they paid about $16 per month
more for water and $20 more per month for
sewer. Another dollar or two will be added
to their monthly bill now, as a built-in auto-
matic increase for infl ation bumped up water
and sewer rates 1.8% at the beginning of this
month.
When residents fl ocked to city hall last
summer to protest the increased water and
sewer rates, however, the ones who testifi ed
in front of the city council often told sto-
ries of much higher increases than average
— sometimes double or triple what they had
been used to paying. They shared how the
increase had taxed their budget and turned
their lawns brown.
“Seniors are having to choose between
medications or water,” resident Larry Smith
told the council at the time.
Morgan acknowledged that in a usage-
based system, the people using more than
the median user would have seen their bills
increase more than the calculations above.
He also said it was important to take anec-
dotal evidence with a grain of salt, highlight-
ing one example where he said he checked
a customer’s public claim their bill had tri-
pled from July to August, only to fi nd that
the customer had not paid their July bill and
therefore that amount had been added to
their August bill.
NEWS
As water and sewer rates increased, usage
in the city went down. July is the city’s
heaviest water usage month, and in July
2018 customers used 262 million gallons,
while using 219 million gallons in July 2019
after the rate increase.
Morgan said some of that was residents
conserving water in their own homes. In
other cases, some organizations and govern-
ment entities with large fi elds and lawns had
switched from using potable city water for
irrigation to using water rights they held but
had not been using.
When customers came in to city hall to
complain about the rate increase, Morgan
said he and other city staff often sat down
with them to analyze their hour-by-hour
water usage on the EyeOnWater app, which
is free to all customers. He said in many
cases, they were able to show the customer
how to greatly reduce their irrigation costs in
the summer by being more strategic.
Some people didn’t realize their sprin-
klers were running more than once during
the night, he said, while others were water-
ing shaded “zones” in their yard for the same
amount of time as the areas in direct sun-
light needed. One customer hadn’t noticed
a sprinkler head had been broken so that it
fed straight into their crawl space instead of
watering their lawn.
“A lot of folks weren’t familiar with their
automatic sprinkler system,” Morgan said.
“The EyeOnWater app would show they
were running their system the exact same
in August when it’s 100 degrees as in April
when it’s cool and rainy.”
He urged people to get to know their sys-
tem and their lawn to avoid such water-wast-
ing mistakes. If people “stress” their lawn a
little in the spring, and then slowly turn up
their watering over the summer as the heat
rises, Morgan said, then the grass will need
less water in August because it grew deeper
roots in the spring.
“Don’t fl ood your lawn in April,” he said.
The EyeOnWater app can also help catch
leaks, by alerting people if they have a cer-
tain amount of water running 24/7. Morgan,
for example, had a spigot that hadn’t quite
been turned off all the way, and the app noti-
fi ed him that he had an 8 gallon per hour leak
somewhere.
“Those add up to hundreds of gallons a
month,” he said.
Now that the city has a year of bills under
the new water rates to work with, custom-
ers can sign up for a budget-billing plan. The
plan doesn’t give a discount on water, but
makes it easier for a customer to budget by
giving them a fl at rate per month to pay, cal-
culated by their average usage over the past
12 months.
For more information about water and
sewer rates, customers can call the utility
billing department at 541-567-5521, visit
their temporary offi ces at 215 E. Gladys
Avenue or visit hermiston.or.us.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
The foundation for a yet-to-be-completed house awaits further construction along East
Newport Avenue in Hermiston on Friday morning.
Housing
Continued from Page A1
2008, out of 359 homes sold in the west
Umatilla/north Morrow market, sold to list
ratio was an average of 94%. In 2019, for
459 homes sold, the ratio was 98.7%.
“There are people that are overpricing
houses that are not selling,” he said. “We
have astute buyers.”
It can also go the other way. Members
of the Columbia Basin Board of Realtors
obviously have a bias toward people using
a real estate agent — particularly those
who can call themselves Realtors after
getting certifi ed by the National Associa-
tion of Realtors. But those interviewed for
the story said they had seen “for sale by
owner” cases where people had signifi -
cantly underpriced their homes.
“People are leaving $10,000 or $20,000
on the table, basically,” Barak said.
One thing sellers can do to get the most
value out of their home is to fi x it up before
they sell it. Hughes said people feel too
busy these days to put a lot of time into
fi xing up a new house, and many of them
aren’t coming into a new home with extra
cash on hand to immediately start remodel-
ing or putting in new carpet.
“Most people just want a house that’s
put together and move-in ready,” she
said. “It’s ‘condition, condition, condi-
tion’ where it used to be ‘location, location
location.’”
Hunter said she encourages clients to
drive by a home before they schedule a
tour, and so something like the condition
of the home’s exterior paint can make a big
fi rst impression.
Over time, the things buyers value have
changed. Hunter said as more households
have multiple vehicles, a three-car garage
has become a more important amenity.
Hughes said she sees a lot of clients look-
ing for a shop, while Rebman said a big
backyard used to be a big selling point.
Now, homes with tiny yards often don’t
have trouble selling, as people fi gure it’s
less upkeep and watering, and their chil-
dren could play at the park or school down
the street. Barak said nationally, two top
things people are looking for is a utility
room and a pantry.
While the housing market in the area
continues to do brisk business, pressure
could be eased by new homes coming in.
In 2019, according to Barak, Hermiston
issued 62 building permits for new, stick-
built homes (not including apartments,
manufactured homes or townhomes). It
issued 69 permits in 2018 and 44 in 2017.
Pendleton issued 16 in 2019, 27 in 2018
and 18 in 2017.
The pace of new homes in west Uma-
tilla County isn’t expected to slow. New
subdivisions representing hundreds more
homes are in the works in Umatilla, Stan-
fi eld and Hermiston. Hermiston locations
where developers have gotten annexations,
zoning changes or other actions by the city
include Elm Avenue, West Theater Lane,
East Theater Lane, Diagonal Road and
East Punkin Center.
We invite the community to attend the
GROUNDBREAKING
CEREMONY
of our new Rogers Toyota of Hermiston Center.
Thursday March 12th - 11 AM
80364 N. Highway 395 in Hermiston
30,000 square feet building on a four acre lot, including
showroom space, service department with additional
service lanes and parking.