Fort Stockton held a special City Council meeting Tuesday night, with the agenda highlighted by the discussion of a possible raise in utility rates.
City Council discussed raising city utility rates by 12% and council members say this week’s meter reading errors played a factor.
An error to the last utility billing cycle in Fort Stockton, coming at the same time as the proposed utility rate increase, is one of the reasons why Mayor Chris Alexander said the proposal has been tabled for now.
“Why they’re seeing some higher bills right now is we did have faulty meter readings going on for several months,” Alexander said. “When we figured out that we had a problem going on, we sent the team out to go do a check of everything.”
Mayor Alexander said the 12% rate increase will be brought up again at a later date, after city officials have time to get the meter issue fixed.
“What we’ve done is gone across the city and taken out ten randomly selected meters and pulled them out and we’re having them tested to see if they’re working efficiently or if they need to be replaced,” said Alexander.
Fort Stockton resident David Neyland is one of the victims of the recent water bill spike.
He said his bill went from $120 to $645, but that’s not as high as others in town.
“I’ve had friends that it’s gone up to $1,000 and $800,” Neyland said. “People on fixed income and they’re just really in a state of panic.”
Neyland said he’s happy the issue is getting resolved by the city, but it’s still something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
“My preacher told me poverty is good for the soul, but I’d rather be poor over something I actually owed, rather than some misinformation or somebody making a computer error,” said Neyland.
Mayor Alexander said the error in the last utility billing cycle is being resolved, and for the rate increase, City Council plans to discuss it again, but not until the meter issue is completely fixed and everything’s back to normal.
(Information from YourBasin.com)
