City street access to CR33 will be closed to traffic Wednesday, October 1st Thursday, October 2nd, weather permitting.  CR33 will remain open to through traffic.  In the event of a weather delay, work will take place on the next working day.

After discussion and review of community comments and recommendations, the Rockford City Council voted to make the following changes to the Water and Wastewater Utility Rates at the Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Council Meeting:

• Property owners will have the ability to choose between having wastewater bills averaged based upon winter water use and being billed wastewater based upon their monthly water gallons used. Properties have been preliminarily assigned to a billing method based upon which method produced the lower utility bill on the August billing. Property owners may contact City Hall to change their billing method at any time prior to December 31, 2014 of this year, and may change their billing method during the month of December every year moving forward.
• Retroactive to the August 2014 utility bills and moving forward, there will be a base fee of $4.95 each for the Water and Wastewater Utilities.
• Also retroactive to the August 2014 utility bills and moving forward, the water rate will be set at $4.54 per 1,000 gallons and the wastewater rate will be set at $5.40 per 1,000 gallons used.
• As of January 1, 2015, the wastewater rate will increase to $6.45 per 1,000 gallons used.

The city will be sending a letter providing more information on these utility billing changes and the attached spreadsheet will assist property owners in calculating the approximate cost of future utility bills based upon their water use. We will be resending the August billing with the updated rates shortly. If you have already paid your August utility bill your account will be credited with any applicable overpayment based upon the utility rate change. Please contact City Hall with any questions you may have.

Thank you,

City of Rockford, Minnesota

Requested Town Hall Meeting Information:

2013 Final Annual Financial Report

2014B – $4 795M GO Water Sewer Revenue Bonds

The City of Rockford will be holding a Town Hall Meeting Thursday (tomorrow), September 4^th, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. at the Rockford Fire Department Fire Hall (6700 Main Street). City staff have prepared proposed revisions to our current and recently enacted rate increases which would apply retroactive to this past billing sent to our residents and businesses. The new proposed rates, in most cases, provide immediate reductions in the bills that were sent in late August and step in the increases over the next two years. A description of the new proposed rates and a spreadsheet showing cost by gallons used are posted here for your review. We have also attached information from the Met Council regarding water conservation called the “Water Conservation Toolbox.”  Additional copies of all of these materials will be available at the Town Hall Meeting.

Town Hall Rate Description Hand-out

Town Hall Hand-out Utility Rate Estimates

Met Council Water Conservation Toolbox

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We will still discuss the process used to get to these rates and all other aspects of this process at the Town Hall Meeting. We will also do our best to answer questions that you may have regarding the old rate increases or the new proposed rate increases.  For information on water conservation techniques that may help reduce water use, please visit the Met Council’s website: http://www.metrocouncil.org.