The Board of Public Utilities will consider a proposed water rate increase at the August 17th Public Hearing. Do you have any feedback for the Board?

I also believe that rates must address and reward those households that conserve water. I'm especially confused why my base rate for the sewer is so high despite all our water conservation efforts, certainly those that use more water also use the sewer system more. There appears to be no correlation between those that conserve and those that ignore how precious water is in this environment. Constant rate increases really hurt those on limited incomes.

A ten percent increase in water rates seems perfectly reasonable. Other districts have needed to make similar moves as customers use less water. However, increasing the fixed rate is probably not best practice. Better would be to increase only the per Mgal rate and actually reduce or eliminate the fixed rate. There are always questionable arguments for assigning fixed charges as compensation for fixed costs, but this works against conservation -- which should be our main goal. If the board thinks it needs to charge at least some minimum amount per meter, it would be easy enough to assign a minimum charge per month that applies toward usage (but does not carry forward).

I do not support this proposed increase. The rates recently changed, then sales dropped... welcome to basic economics. Increasing the rates again will just cause less water use and therefore less revenue for the DPU.

I support this rate increase.

I would like to see higher penalties for those who waste water trying to grow grass in the desert, and meaningful credits for those who conserve.