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Residents press City Hall to highlight cut-off notices, clarify senior discount and explain commercial water rates
Summary
A Port Arthur resident urged clearer bill formatting and an explicit ‘senior discount’ label after complaints that discounts appeared only as a miscellaneous line on bills; water officials said turn‑off notices are printed in red and staff will pursue a billing-system change.
Port Arthur residents asked council and city water officials on Feb. 25 to make water bills clearer and to show senior-service discounts explicitly on monthly statements.
Joan Jones, a resident of East 10th Street, told the council many older customers miss the cut-off notice and are charged a $25 penalty because the past-due or turn-off information does not stand out. “When you have a cut off notice, could you please find some kind of way to highlight that so it would come to us?” Jones said. She also asked why commercial rates are higher than residential rates and whether refineries and motels are charged differently.
A water-department representative told the council the utility separates customer classes: residential accounts are billed at household rates; nonresidential accounts — including motels, refineries and businesses — are charged under commercial rates and sometimes an outside-city surcharge when located in the extraterritorial jurisdiction. City officials said the difference reflects rate structuring by customer class, not water quality.
On the senior discount, Jones said the discount appeared only as a “miscellaneous” entry on bills and made it hard for customers to see the credit. City staff said they would work with the billing software vendor to label the line item “Senior Discount” rather than “miscellaneous.”
The staff also noted turn-off notices are printed in red on mailed statements; the city can also send electronic alerts and text messages for customers who have enrolled in those notifications. City officials pledged to revisit the billing layout with the vendor so cut-off notices and discounts are clearer to customers, especially the elderly.
Ending
Council directed staff to pursue billing‑system changes to make senior discounts and past-due/turn-off notices more visible on customer statements and to report back to council on progress.
