Only two months into the new fiscal year, the Laurel City Council’s budget committee met Wednesday to discuss the need to change the city’s garbage and water collection fees.

For the past several months, residents in the City of Laurel have come to the council meetings and expressed their concerns about the city’s decision to reduce its garbage collection days.

Since the changes were implemented in August, several residents have expressed concern about the changes.

On Oct. 21, the council voted not to increase garbage collection fees in the city.

Earlier this month, the council delayed actions that would have increased the residents’ water and sewer rates.

Councilman Tony Wheat, chairman of the budget committee, said because the council voted not to support the rate increases that had been included in the city’s 2009 Fiscal Year Budget, the budget committee needed to meet to discuss how to make up the anticipated deficit in rate collections.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Ralph Gorenflo, project manager with United Water which operates the city’s water and sewer systems, gave the Budget Committee a detailed breakdown of water and sewer rates for residential and commercial users.

Gorenflo said the city has 8,163 water users. Of that number, 6,936, or 85 percent, are residential and 1,227, or 15 percent, are commercial users.

“The majority of the city’s users are residential, but the majority of your revenue is generated by the commercial users,” Gorenflo said. “In September, 5,631 — or 69 percent of the users — used less than 9,000 gallons of water.”

Under the current ordinance, residents have a minimum of 4,000 gallons of water at a rate of $10.

Under the original new proposed schedule, the minimum would be 8,000 gallons of water at a rate of $10.30

Under the new sewer rate schedule, the minimum cost would increase from $15 to $15.45.

Under the plan presented by Gorenflo Wednesday, users would not have a minimum water usage amount and will be charged for the number of gallons of water used.

“If you use 1,000 gallons, you will only be charged for 1,000 gallons,” Gorenflo explained. “Under the current system, a person using 4,000 gallons of water would be billed $25 a month for both water and sewer. Under this proposal, they would be charged $22, which would be a savings of $3 a month.”

Longtime Laurel resident Barbara Page, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, again asked the City Council to revisit its garbage collection changes.

Page in September presented the Laurel City Council with a stack of petitions from residents opposing the change without ample garbage storage bins to accommodate the garbage under the city’s garbage collection changes.

Following the meeting Wednesday, Page requested her petitions back from the city.

Officials said the city’s new garbage plan, which took effect on Aug. 4, is designed to reduce cost.

Residents in the city, who once enjoyed two days of garbage collections, began receiving one-day a week collection.

Based on a four-day work week, the city went to a two-day garbage pickup schedule instead of a four-day pickup schedule. With this change, the city has projected that there will be a $61,568.52 savings per year.

Under the new plan, residents whose garbage was picked up on Monday and Thursday are now having Monday only pickup. Those residents who were on the Tuesday and Friday schedule now have Tuesday only pickup.

Also as a part of the change, the city’s Public Works Department went to a four-day work week.

Officials said because it is a utility fund, the garbage collection fund must pay for itself.

“We are already working two months into our fiscal year,” Wheat said. “We have a $330,000 shortfall in the sanitation fund that needs to be addressed.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, one citizen asked officials “where is the shortfall?” No one answered.

Laurel Chief Administrative Officer Gary Suddith said the high gas cost was “only a small portion” of why the changes were necessary. He said the four-day work week for public works was designed to also cut overtime.

However, city council members said something needs to be done to resolve the water and sewer issues.

“We’ve heard the cry of the citizens. We are listening to what you are saying,” Councilwoman Willie Evans said. “We, as a city, have got to do something. ... We need to come up with something to stop costing the city money.”

Suddith gave the council a breakdown of the cost for a one-day pick up, a two-day pickup and the cost for providing containers for the residents.

Suddith said to provide garbage containers to the city’s 8,000 customers would cost more than $300,000.

Several residents at the meeting continued to express concern about the city going up on fees and reducing the number of garbage pickups.

Officials said the fund ended with a positive balance for the 2008 fiscal year because the city’s general fund loaned the garbage collection fund $150,000 prior to the end of the year.

Wheat said the new water and sewer rate schedules proposed in August were designed to allow the funds to operate and the garbage collection fund to repay the general fund the loan while also breaking even by the end of the 2009 fiscal year.

Council president George Carmichael said since the budget committee did not vote on the matter Wednesday, it will be addressed at Tuesday’s council meeting.