Starting this month, the price of water and sewer services will go up in Palos Park.
That’s no surprise. The village has been bracing for it for a while now due to factors that include infrastructure costs and raised prices from Oak Lawn, which helps bring Lake Michigan water into various suburbs.
“It’s important for people to know what that bill actually represents and how that money actually gets portioned out,” Commissioner Dan Polk said at the June 9 village council meeting. “You are paying for the water, but you are paying for a hell of a lot more than what’s dripping out of the faucet.”
“The stuff’s gotta go somewhere when you flush the toilet or the water goes down the drain,” added Mayor Nicole Milovich-Walters.
With that in mind, the council hired Baxter and Woodman Consulting Engineers to come up with a water and sewer rate structure that would address all of the costs, plus be fair to those who use less water.
The council voted to go with Baxter and Woodman’s game plan, which is an outline of costs that will run through fiscal year 2031.
Baxter and Woodman representative Mark Siefert said there will be a rate structure based on usage. Those who use 0-10,000 gallons will be grouped into Tier 1, those who use 10,000-30,000 gallons are in Tier 2 and those who use 30,000 or more will be in Tier 3.
The average user will pay roughly $188 bi-monthly for water and sewer operation and maintenance. That will increase each year with a $286.48 bill in 2031.
Small residential users will start out paying approximately $74.75 this year and increasing to $116.74 in that timeframe.
Large residential users will start at $416 in 2026 and go to $640 by 2031.
“We’re not in the water business,” Commissioner Mike Wade said. “This is not something that we want to do. It’s something that we have to do.”
Milovich-Walters said that even though it’s tough on residents to keep paying more each year, there are other communities that are paying big prices for the right to have Lake Michigan water.
“Joliet is spending something like a billion dollars to bring water from Lake Michigan,” she said. “Thank God we’re not in that situation.”
Siefert also provided an estimated sample of surrounding communities and what they pay.
For an 8,000 gallon bi-monthly user, Alsip is at the low end of 12 towns sampled with the community of 18,583 paying $87.20.
The high end of the group is Olympia Fields, a community of 4,734 that is paying $277.54.
