FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Fort Myers City Council voted 5-2 to approve a until 2031.<\/p>\n
Council members explained the increase is the best way to maintain the utility fund without passing on a large unexpected rate to customers down the road. The utility increase impacts potable water, sewer and irrigation water rates.<\/p>\n
According to the city, the average annual cost of operating utilities has gone up by almost 8% since 2024. If a customer’s current monthly cost is about $107, the increase brings the bill to around $112, a little more than $5 a month.<\/p>\n
The increase will generate about $4.4 million in additional revenue for the utility fund. WINK News talked to city staff last month about the proposal and spoke to neighbors.<\/p>\n
“If we don’t do this rate increase, we’d have to make decisions on cutting out certain programs,” Jason Sciandra, city of Fort Myers public utilities director, said.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers neighbor John Stuart shared his thoughts on the increase.<\/p>\n
“Obviously not so great,” Stuart said. “So you know, I wouldn’t. It probably wouldn’t hurt too many big families right now. But I mean, you know, for our generation, not good.”<\/p>\n
Fort Myers utility users can expect to start seeing the increase on their billing October 1st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Fort Myers City Council voted 5-2 to approve a until 2031. Council members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3816,117991,209,211,210,28,897,11736,161637,161640,161639,161638,38979],"class_list":["post-406853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-players","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-fort-myers","tag-fort-myers-city-council","tag-fred-jackson","tag-jason-sciandra","tag-john-stuart","tag-public-utilities-director","tag-wink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}