City council votes to table decision on utility rate changes

By BRITTANY FHOLER 

Cove Leader-Press 

Following comments by concerned citizens and one city council member, the Copperas Cove city council voted to table amending the city’s fee schedule for the next fiscal year, until a September meeting. 

The council was set to take action on amending the fee schedule during its regular meeting Tuesday evening, as part of the budget process. 

Changes to the fee schedule included proposed changes to utility rates for customers as discussed during previous meetings and workshops. 

The changes included raising base rates for water and sewer and lowering the volumetric rates for residential customers. 

Specifically, the residential base water rate would increase to $25, up $11 from $14, and the base sewer rate would go to $26, up $12 from the current base of $14. 

The volumetric rates for both water and sewer would decrease, with the water volumetric rate going down from $4.75 to $3.10 per 1,000 gallons. The volumetric rate for a sprinkler would be $2.80 per 1,000 gallons. The sewer volumetric rate would decrease from $5.75 to $3.71 per 1,000 gallons. 

During the citizens forum portion of the meeting, multiple people spoke against the rate changes. 

Tom Francis called in to the meeting and expressed his concerns. 

“When I found out in the newspaper last week that council had come to a consensus to go with Option B that raised the combined base rates to $51 from $28, I was disturbed,” Francis said. “I understood that the decision to raise the base rates was based on the understanding that a large portion of the water and waste budgets is for fixed cost expenses, but there are two problems with that decision. 

“The raising the base rates with decreasing the volumetric rates has the effect of causing the households who use less water, usually that would be the retirees with small households and the poor people in the area, they would have to be subsidizing the people who are using more water, because anybody who is using more than 6,300 gallons of water, their actual bill will go down, whereas anybody using less than 6,300 gallons of water, their bill will go up.”

Francis again called in to the meeting when council members were discussing the fee schedule and voiced his opposition to the Option B rate increases mentioned earlier. He said he was in favor of the Option A increases discussed during a previous meeting, which would have increased the base rate from the current rate of $14 to $16 and lowering volumetric rate for residential customers from the current $4.75 to $4.70 per 1,000 gallons for water, and the current sprinkler from $4.75 to $4.50. It also increases the sewer base rate from $14 to $16 and keeps the volumetric rate at $5.75 per 1,000 gallons. The solid waste rate would remain at the previously proposed $19.83, an increase from the current $19 but a decrease from the initially proposed amount of $19.95. This option also reduced the senior discount by five percent, down to 15 percent.   

“As this was agreed to by most of council last meeting, I’m not in favor of this larger amount,” said Councilmember Marc Payne about Option B. “I’m under the impression that there is a smaller amount that would be more equitable, to more evenly distributed across the board and still pay our bills on a regular basis, and I’d like to see more information on that, please.”

Haverlah explained that if the city council would like to consider a rate change not in the proposed ordinance, he recommended tabling the current agenda item in favor of a workshop to further discuss the different rate options. 

The council would have a deadline of the second scheduled meeting in September in order to allow staff to work on implementing the changes in time for the next fiscal year beginning in October. 

Payne made a motion for the item to be tabled, which was seconded by council member Jack Smith. 

Payne said he wanted to come up with something that is “equitable for citizens” and works for the city as well. 

Council agreed to have a workshop meeting on August 18 to discuss the utility rates again but to delay any action on an ordinance until the meeting in September. 

Council member Jay Manning issued a comment in response to comments made about the rates being equitable. 

“A great deal of this base rate that we’re looking at has to do with providing sufficient water for firefighting. That is on a per individual basis,” Manning said. “It may not be that some people want to hear that but because the cost of providing water is tied to fixed costs, the size of the lines, the size of the tanks, those things are driven by fire demand, and we all share in that, so if we’re talking about being equitable, it’s actually more equitable the direction we’re headed than where we’ve been from, and I just think that ought to be stated and thought about.”

Mayor Bradi Diaz said she thinks that is why this should be a workshop item so that it can be better explained. 

“If everyone shares in the cost of the base rate than the volumetric rate, it’s actually more equitable to all the residents than the reverse,” Diaz said. 

Manning added that he wanted to discuss the solvency of the water fund during this future workshop. 

“When things are tailored so that it meets the customers where they use the goods that we’re providing out there, not hold back on using, which is caused by the process that we’ve been going through the last few years, the fund will become more profitable which will allow us to either pay off debt or to reduce the price in the end,” Manning said. “Everybody’s going to be a winner in that direction and whether they trust that or not, I don’t know whether they can determine that, but it can be shown that that’s what’s going to happen.”

Councilmember Dianne Yoho Campbell agreed. 

“I would just make the comment that probably one of the most important if not the most important things we provide for our citizens as a body is water, and we have to get that right, and we have to make sure that we have the funds in place to replace pipes and drains and systems and things like that, and that’s all part of what drives that cost, because we have some very old infrastructure that has to be replaced, so we can either go into debt and pay more money for it or we can start accumulating money now to be able to pay for it with less debt and less costs,” Campbell said.