During a Wednesday meeting about a proposed rate hike by San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS), Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran said her constituents should stop wasting water if they can’t afford higher bills.
“The customer has the power to keep their bill the same if they conserve and if they take really good look at where they’re using water and how they’re using it,” said Viagran, whose District 3 includes some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. “If you decide to put a certain grass in your yard, and that’s what you want to keep alive, it’s going to cost you more. Or do what I did and let your grass die.”
Viagran’s comments came during Council Council’s B Session, where City of San Antonio Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott got a lukewarm reception as he discussed SAWS’s requested rate changes. Officials with the city-owned utility have said it must charge more so it can afford to make costly infrastructure upgrades.
SAWS’s latest proposal, water bills for the average household — which consumes 6,300 gallons of water and produces 5,000 gallons of wastewater monthly — would increase by $3.91 per month. That compares to a $4.47 average monthly increase SAWS officials proposed earlier this year.
By 2029, average rates would climb to $14.80 monthly under SAWS’s current proposal. That compares to $18.51 monthly under its original ask.
Members of council remained divided on how to move forward on SAWS’s revised request.
Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) said she’s not sure a hike is necessary, adding that leaks in her district suggest SAWS could save money by better looking after its own operations.
“When a business hemorrhages its inventory to this scale, the answer cannot be to charge customers more. It needs to fix operations,” Gavito said.
Council members Marc Whyte (D10), Sukh Kaur (D1) and Misty Spears (D9) also said they’re hesitant to approve the plan.
Spears asked why SAWS wants a four-year increase when one conducted over two years would allowing time to revisit the matter and make adjustments as needed.
Meanwhile, Kaur warned higher rates cut into the bottom line of small businesses.
Even so, rate-hike proponents, including Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, a member of the SAWS board, argued it will be cheaper to address infrastructure issues now rather than continuing to slap a Band-Aid over them. That also could leave utility open to state and federal fines, Jones argued.
“We don’t want to be in a predicament where not only is infrastructure not performing what it needs to do, it is now a public health risk, a public safety risk, [and] our federal overseers or state overseers have now applied very costly fines,” she said.
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) said she’s alarmed that council is balking at taking care of infrastructure basics while showing an eagerness to write checks to cover a new Spurs arena and a minor-league baseball park.
“We can talk about nice-to-haves like baseball and basketball, and the financial arguments that everyone has a newer arena, but when we’re talking about the old and aging infrastructure for water quality and access, we ask for audits, we ask for so much more than we do when we’re talking about the nice-to-haves,’” Castillo said. “In fact, we say, ‘Here’s the credit card, here’s the public funding, no questions asked.’”
Council will vote on the proposed rate increase on June 18. If the council pulls together the six votes needed, the new rates will go into effect July 1.
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