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.