Balancing the budget on drinkers?

I just found this interesting, and need to have my memory jogged here.

Salisbury City Council passed a $50.6 million budget this evening, which according to the Daily Times has a rate increase in store for city water and sewer users. The increase is 13 percent for water and 15 percent for sewer.

As I recall from two years ago, we tried to roll back a proposed property tax increase that was about that same percentage, and the petition drive fell just a little bit short. Perhaps I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but where is the outrage over the large water and sewer rate increase? It doesn't affect me directly since I don't use city water or sewer but you have to wonder how much more local businesses can take.

And again, this is a case where the budget went up by about 6% over last year's model, apparently without a large increase in the outlay for labor costs. More to the point, what input was made by our newly-elected mayor and can much of the increase be laid at his feet or was it his trimming of extragavance that made it "only" a budget larger by 6 percent?

In either case, the city certainly made out much better than either the county or the state - only the federal budget has grown at a larger rate than the city's and Salisbury can't print its own currency.

Late update: Muir Boda has a good meeting wrapup on his ESL site.