Everyone needs clean water. There’s no debate there. And if you live in Wheeling, we all understand the desire to have the water pollution control plant in Center Wheeling smell … well, like anything but what it usually smells like, particularly given its proximity to some businesses and homes.

But those necessities come with an increasing price, as city residents learned earlier this month when Wheeling City Council’s public utilities committee proposed a combined 38% increase on water and sewer bills for residents. That means the average household using between 4,000 and 4,999 gallons per month will see what is now a combined $73 monthly bill go to about $100.

That increase — again, this is for users in the 4,000 to 4,999 gallon range — amounts to $27 a month. For what the city considers the typical user, that amounts to $324 a year.

That might equal for some a monthly car payment or car insurance payment. That could be a couple weeks’ worth of groceries. For some, it could be the difference of being able to put some additional money aside each month for a college fund.

Of course this proposal comes at a time when costs are rising fast. We’re experiencing American Electric Power finding just about every possible reason to propose electricity rate increases. The cost of food has skyrocketed. Car and home insurance is rising. And residents and businesses are stuck in the middle trying to juggle how to deal with these increases while still providing for their families.

This is not an indictment on those council members that put forth the proposal. The city of Wheeling has to upgrade its systems; the city still remains under a mandate from the federal government to separate all of its combined sewer overflows (that work will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and is not part of this proposed increase). The total investment into the system being sought now– not including the interest paid on the bonds the city will issue for the work — is estimated at $65.34 million. About one-third of that is for the water system and the remainder for water pollution control.

“It will take us probably three years to complete everything,” City Manager Robert Herron said of the scheduled work. “In order to do these projects as proposed, it would require a rate increase. In order to accomplish all that, we are proposing a 38% rate increase.”

That’s where things stand. But perhaps the increase didn’t have to be so severe.

The city could have opted for smaller, annual increases of 5% or so that would at least have given residents and businesses a chance to work that into their budgets. Lumping it all on at once — the reasoning to rationalize this doesn’t matter — is unfair to those paying for the system. It’s that simple.

Another factor to be considered is how city council spent the tranche of COVID-19 rescue dollars over the past five years. Those funds — Wheeling received $30 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds and other federal relief dollars — could have been used more directly to upgrade the water and sewer systems. In looking through the expenditures approved by council ($5 million of which did go to the water pollution control system), another $10 million could have been directed to water and sewer projects that would have lessened the burden residents and businesses soon will be asked to carry.

Was it nice to give nearly $2 million to the Capitol Theatre and WesBanco Arena? Sure, but those facilities already have dedicated revenue sources. Giving money to private businesses to expand child care? Or to homeowners to improve their homes? Or $1.2 million for playgrounds? Again, good ideas, but those projects benefited only small segments of our population. A 38% rate increase that realistically could have been less?

That impacts everyone.

While the need to modernize and upgrade the city’s water and wastewater systems is something that can’t be avoided, the timing couldn’t be worse. Infrastructure improvements should not collide with affordability. In this case, smarter fiscal decisions over the past five years would have been more beneficial to all city residents.