Charleston Sanitary Board customers will see an increase in their sewer bills next year.
City Council voted on Monday to raise rates, which will be effective after March 28, 2016.
The decision increases rates from $21.87 to $26.06 for the first 2,000 gallons of water used each month. An additional rate for each 1,000 gallons used after that would increase from $11.97 to $14.26.
No one spoke against the proposal at Monday's meeting.
Mayor Danny Jones said during the Finance Committee meeting that not giving raises is going to be problematic for employees.
"If our employees get raises and your employees don't get raises, you're going to have a shut down," Jones said.
Council voted earlier this year to give a 4 percent raise to city employees.
The revenue from this would create an additional 4 percent in the sanitary board's budget, making it possible to give employees raises.
Those pay increases are not guaranteed, though. Sanitary Board Director Larry Roller said Monday evening that the agency gives raises based on merit, not to all employees across the board.
But pay has become an issue for the sanitary board. Roller said it has lost five plant operators to Dow Chemical.
"They offer twice what we can pay. And we'll never get there, but we have some benefits that Dow can't offer," Roller said.
The sanitary board's current rates are based on 1.5 percent of the area's median household income from the 2000 Census. But since that time, the city's median household income has increased 40 percent, from $34,009 in 2000 to $47,582, according to 2008-2012 U.S. Census data.
The sanitary board was last granted a 33 percent increase in 2011. It will likely come back to Council with another proposal in 2019, Roller said.
City officials repeated Monday that the Oakwood Road fire station is structurally unsound. City Manager David Molgaard estimated it needs $1 million for property acquisition and rebuilding or renovating the station.
"We're going to have to come up with a replacement or another way of servicing that area," Molgaard said.
Molgaard said the city would "turn our attention" to the station in 2011 after a study of the Charleston Fire Department revealed deficiencies in its operations.
Jones said the city plans to move "the apparatus that's in it" to the fire department's training center on the West Side until it figures out what to do.
Reach Rachel Molenda at rachel.molenda@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5102 or follow @rachelmolenda on Twitter.