Beginning Oct. 1, Petal residents will see a slight increase on their water/sewer and garbage bills, by a total of about $4 a month.
Members of the Petal Board of Aldermen voted Tuesday night to raise each service by $2, which would bring the average minimum bill from about $59 to $63 per month.
“We (raised) sewer because we have people who aren’t on our water system, and the money really goes into our water/sewer fund,” Mayor Hal Marx said. “So it’ll be used for line repair, upgrades to lift stations and things like that.
“The garbage fee goes up because we are having more and more debris that we are needing to get picked up that people are putting out by the road, and we also have a lot of people who are not paying for the service. Now, when we find those people, of course we do collect from them, but our collection is lagging a little bit behind what our costs are.”
City officials are also looking into funding their own truck for picking up debris throughout the city, and installing an incinerator on Katrina Lane to burn garbage.
“We’ll need a permit from the (Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality) to do that, but we can buy one of the incinerators – I think it’s about $80,000,” Marx said. “We can do that cheaper than taking (the trash) over to Lamar County, where we have to take it now to dump it.
“So if we can get that up and running, it’ll actually help save some cost on it, but there will be some initial cost in having to buy the incinerator and having a person down there to run it and things like that.”
In other action Tuesday, board members voted to:
• Approve a request to auction, sell or trade one 2003 Pierce KW pumper truck in the Petal Fire Department.
• Approve a request to advertise for and make final payment to Southeastern Asphalt in the amount of $59,341.60 for base repairs in the Trailwood subdivision, per a request from engineers from Shows, Dearman & Waits.
• Approve a request to send two Canon copier/printers to auction.
• Approved a request to hire Will Lewis full-time in the fire department at a rate of $12.65 per hour effective Sept. 17.
