Despite rising costs in two areas, the Mt. Carmel City Council has decided not to pass those increased costs on to residents. The first area the council dealt with at their regular meeting on Monday was extending the current trash pick up contract with Republic Services for two more years. With the extension comes a 79 cent a month increase for each trash customer in Mt. Carmel by the end of the second year. The city will, for now at least, not raise the garbage rate on to residential customers that now stands at $19 a month. But, Mayor Joe Judge said the issue may be revisited at some point down the line. But it wasn’t the cost that drew comments from finance commissioner Eric Ikemire….
The second area the council dealt with Monday was spending $190,000 to fix an issue with over 1,800 of the city’s water meters. As we previously reported, the issue deals with the automatic reading of the water meters and not their accuracy. City workers will replace the faulty part on some 2,000 water meters at a cost of $91.50 each. Water Commissioner Justin Dulgar said the city has been looking for a way not to pass another burden on to water customers…
It’s expected the new parts will arrive early this fall. In the meantime, city workers will continue to manually read water meters that aren’t working properly.