Vandalia Mayor explains City has to treat Water & Sewer Rates differently to keep up with increased costs

The City of Vandalia received their annual audit report on Monday, and it was a clean report and shows the city is in good financial shape.

Normally, the meeting when the audit is presented is also the meeting when the City of Vandalia will look at their water and sewer rates, but with the audit a bit delayed in coming out this year, the city moved forward with their increase in water and sewer rates back in September.  At that time, the City Council allowed the increase of 20.04% for water rates and 7.54% for sewer rates to go into place.  One thing mentioned at the time was to “soften the blow” with the increases for the new Water Treatment Plant.  But, speaking this week on our podcast “Talking about Vandalia,” Mayor Doug Knebel says they have to treat water and sewer rates differently to keep up with the increased costs.

And, he says a current survey being worked on for the City of Vandalia will shed light on where their rates line up compared to other area communities.

One other part of the audit is a historical analysis of the city’s water department gallons pumped versus gallons billed.  In FY ’25 that was 254,081,182 gallons pumped and 225,092,761 gallons billed, which is 88.59%.  That is up from last year’s 85.72% but below the better than 92% figures in both 2023 and 2022.