Green Bay increases price on water offer By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle Is the price right? Or has Green Bay overbid? The closed session Monday of the Green Bay City Council raised the price of the city's offer to sell water to the suburbs to a price it had offered before: 25 percent above bulk rate. That's higher than the 17 percent of the city water utility's original proposal to the council. It's also a rate the utility had proposed several months ago. And it isn't necessarily a deal breaker, says president Roy Simonson of the Central Brown County Water Authority. "It's been positive (recently) and I'm going to continue to look at it that way," he said. "You can read all sorts of stuff into this - I choose not to." The offer came in a letter from Tim Nixon, vice chairman of the Green Bay utility, to Simonson, who released the letter at the authority's Wednesday meeting. Other members of the authority did not want to give an immediate thumbs up or down to the offer, saying they wanted to see how the numbers compared to the two other proposals on the table. One would see the authority buy treated water from Manitowoc and send it north on an authority-built pipeline from that city. The figures on that deal are expected Feb. 11. The other is for the suburbs to build their own pipeline to Lake Michigan, at an estimated $145 million. If all the numbers are crunched by Feb. 11, the authority will have two weeks to decide on an option. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has set a Feb. 25 deadline for a decision. The new offer is based on a bulk rate of $1.48 per 1,000 gallons, the price Green Bay sets for industrial customers. The original offer had been to sell water to the CBCWA members and Ashwaubenon at $1.78 for 1,000 gallons; the new offer is $1.85 for the amount. In his letter, Nixon said the charge would be used to pay for future capital expansion as proposed in the earlier offer with the additional money going toward rate stabilization. "It is an insurance policy for all the communities involved," wrote Nixon, who said the fund should be revisited annually and lowered if it became too large. It also offered to discuss the Green Bay utility becoming responsible for meter testing, cross connection inspection and billing. "We want to again emphasize that the city of Green Bay is now on record authorizing the commission to bring back an agreement to the City Council. This is an historic event," Nixon wrote. - The CBCWA has started talks with Ashwaubenon about rejoining the suburban group. Simonson said he had discussed the issue of voting with Ashwaubenon officials, who had expressed concern about being the biggest community in the authority but only having one vote. Simonson said he had reminded Ashwaubenon that on major issues, including real estate purchases, bonding and contracts, it would take a two-thirds vote to pass. With or without Ashwaubenon, it would take three votes to stop such a measure.