HANCOCK — The Hancock City Council is looking to modernize its water and sewer ordinance.

The council voted Wednesday night to reintroduce Ordinance 313, which governs water and sewer in the city, to amend three chapters.

With Wednesday’s vote, the city will write a summary of the proposed changes and publish them for public comment. A public hearing will take place at the next council meeting on Feb. 19. At the same meeting, the council would decide whether or not to approve the ordinance. If approved, it would go into effect 30 days after the vote.

The changes cover 51 (sewers), 52 (waste collection) and 54 (water and sewer regulations).

The revised language includes recognizing the switchover to sheets of stickers for garbage pickup, rather than special bags. Newly inserted language will also specify that the city will have no water and sewer connections outside of city limits, “which has been done in the past and caused us some heartache,” said City Manager Mary Babcock.

The changes will also align the water and sewer ordinances to reflect that both cover the area from the city main to the property line. By doing so, the city council will be allowed to set costs and fees by resolution rather than changing the ordinance, Babcock said.

“When we do our ordinance, it’s thousands of dollars, and sometimes those fees should be looked at earlier,” she said.

Other language would add clauses allowing for rates to increase at the rate of inflation, if the council approves.

“Right now, we have not raised the water rates in at least three years, and we have gotten an increase from our supplier for the last three years that we’ve just absorbed,” Babcock said. “That is something that makes it pretty tough to keep up the assets the way they should be kept up … if it is approved, there will be a resolution set before you to look at our rates and set the rates for the connection fees, out-of-city rates, the city rates, the garbage, those types of things.”

Babcock said she would have a public works meeting to talk about the rates in the next six weeks.

Residents will be informed of the hearing through newspaper notices, the city listserv, the city’s Facebook account and potentially the next city newsletter.

In other action, the council:

Scheduled a joint meeting of the Downtown Development Authority, Planning Commission and City Council for March 5. Monte Consulting, which has been working with the DDA, will deliver a presentation on their findings from resident and business focus groups over the past two months.

The combined groups will also hear some highlights from the recent completed master plan.

Heard a year-end report from Police Chief Tami Sleeman. Last year, the city responded to more than 2,000 calls for service, made 86 arrests, and responded to 175 accidents.

The department also issued 204 traffic tickets, more than 1,100 warnings for traffic stops, and 144 parking tickets, while also making 294 suspicious vehicle contacts and responding to 178 medical calls. The department’s school resource officer also responded to 300 situations at the school from September to the end of December.

Approved the purchase of the bus garage at 395 Franklin St. at a price agreeable to Hancock Public Schools. The council went into closed session to discuss the purchase and acted on the resolution upon returning. The city did not disclose the exact purchase price.