Saskatoon water rates might be going up.

I answered a telephone survey tonight.  The survey was done for the City of Saskatoon and they asked lots of questions about water outages.  The focus seemed to be on how many outages people would put up with to repair leaky water mains and how much more we would be willing to pay to actually replace water mains thereby reduces outages.

Some of of the questions were so obviously slanted that I actually laughed out loud.  “Do you agree that it is more important for hospitals to have water mains replaced before residential areas?”  Who would say “no” to that question?  Why bother asking?

Other questions were difficult to answer.  “How long would you tolerate an unannounced water outage before speaking to the workmen or calling the city?”  They wouldn’t let me answer “it depends” even though it really does depend on the time of day and what I’m doing at the moment.  If the water is shut off while I’m in the shower with shampoo in my hair, I’m going to be a tad bit more impatient than if it goes off while I’m at work.

So, basically, water bills will go up and supposedly this will fund new water mains and better water pressure.  Any guesses on how much they will increase?