The Brown County Water Improvement District #1 unanimously approved their 2015/2016 fiscal year budget at their board meeting Tuesday, and set water rates for both treated and untreated water that they sell to local municipalities and retail water providers.
After recent floods, Lake Brownwood was at a level of 0.8 foot above spillway level as of Tuesday afternoon, according to BCWID General Manager Dennis Spinks. Board members came to an agreement that the current Drought Contingency Plan trigger points for water restrictions had worked and now it was time to lift all water restrictions as called for in the plan.Spinks initially introduced a 2015-2016 fiscal year budget of over $3,000,000 which would have given an increase of over 4% on treated water rates. He explained that the budget is figured based on formulas which rely on the past 5 years of water sales. These formulas, with the current abundance of water and no restrictions, may not be accurate in estimating the coming year’s water sales because the past 5 years were during water restrictions that resulted in limited water sales. This proposed budget also included a $50,000 repayment of the water well project cost (which is spread out for the next 20 years in such repayments), the addition of a fourth lake patrolman at $56,999 (salary and benefits) and the purchase of a new pickup truck for the BCWID fleet at $40,000.
To ease the need for the increase in water rates, Spinks suggested elimination of the pickup truck purchase which was followed by a suggestion by board member Bert Massey to delay the repayment of the water well project for one year.
“I don’t want to penalize the district but I don’t want to penalize the customer either when their budgets have already been penalized these years that they have been in the drought,” said Massey. “They have two choices, they can either pass that cost along to their customers or they have got to absorb it into their budget numbers. That’s their choice. People hopefully are going to be buying more water. I think it is going to be a significant impact to all of our budgets if we go up 4.18% on our water rate.”
After a lengthy discussion between board members and consideration of comments from Brownwood City Manager Emily Crawford and Early City Administrator Tony Aaron, trustees led to cutting items in the budget to ease the cost passed on to water customers and their citizens.
Crawford stated that the City of Brownwood is projecting a 12-14% increase in water sales. She explained that with water restrictions lifted in the City of Brownwood, that they had hoped to see how water use would increase; however, with the recent rains, water sales have not increased and have made estimating water revenue for budgeting purposes a difficult task. Related to the initial increase in BCWID’s proposed rate, Crawford argued, “If this increase is 4.18%, I think it is impossible to think the City of Brownwood would be able to absorb that cost, we will have to pass that either in its entirety or a great deal of it onto our customers,” said Crawford.
She explained that the past five years do not give a good baseline on what to expect and given the actual increase in sales that may occur, the formula is “just not realistic.”
Massey also addressed the possibility that water sales may increase enough to actually raise funds in an amount that could possibly allow for a later budget amendment to repay the scheduled $50,000 to the fund balance while keeping rates from increasing.
Aaron agreed with Massey and Crawford and commented further on the problems with the proposed water rates. He encouraged the board to think of the reserve fund that they have on hand, which is still a good amount and to put off the one time repayment in order to reevaluate water sales with more accurate numbers. “Water revenue does not supplement much of our general fund, so we (City of Early) want to be able to hold the rates where they were last year. They were increased last year as a result of that (Early) water pipeline project.”
BCWID board members unanimously agreed to delay repayment of the water well project for one year, taking out the $50,000 repayment planned in the proposed budget and cut the purchase of a new pickup truck to lower the budget to $2,925,490 which is a 0.17% decrease from last year’s budget. This resulted in the board setting treated water rates of $1.4713/1000 gallons, a 1.08% increase and untreated rates at $0.8593/1000 gallons, a 1.62% reduction. The untreated rates apply only to Thunderbird Bay Water Service, which is the only untreated water customer of the district according to Spinks.
The Cities of Brownwood and Early continue to have budget workshops and will decide their local water rates to their citizens in future meetings of their city councils.
Pictured above is Brownwood City Manager Emily Crawford as she addressed the board Tuesday afternoon.
