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Rowlett consultant: shifting costs to commercial meters could add hundreds monthly for larger businesses
Summary
The consultant told council that increasing wastewater base charges by meter size (scenario 6) would raise some commercial monthly bills substantially while generating about $200,000 in revenue; council members flagged concerns for small businesses and multifamily pass-throughs.
Jason Gray presented meter-size examples to show how a restructured wastewater base charge would affect commercial accounts and noted the change would raise revenue for the utility while unevenly affecting larger meters.
Gray gave specific FY27 commercial base-charge examples: a 0.75-inch commercial base charge would be about $34.53 per month, a 1-inch meter about $57.67 per month (up from a current baseline of roughly $26.60), and larger meters scale up from there. He told the council that the meter-size approach would produce roughly $200,000 in additional revenue but warned that only a minority of commercial accounts (roughly 307 of ~800) hold larger meters and would shoulder most of the increase.
Several council members expressed concern about small businesses and multifamily housing bearing higher costs and asked staff for meter-size average-bill tables to illustrate how the changes would affect storefronts versus larger users. The council directed staff to produce those examples for public outreach and the FY27 proposed budget materials.
