by JONATHAN YORK
The Kyle City Council has called for a public hearing Jan. 3 on rate hikes by a water company with a troubled history in the Amberwood subdivision.
The company, Monarch Utilities, wants to raise its meter rates by 62.3 percent, according to the city. It will raise its tap fee for new customers by 92 percent.
City Councilwoman Diane Hervol, who lives in Amberwood, said these are ridiculous increases in a slow economy. It’s not as though her constituents have seen a 62.3 percent increase in their wages, she said.
“In this day and age it’s going to create a hardship on many people,” Hervol said.
In a draft resolution that will be considered by the council, the city is also asking whether Monarch can legally raise its prices now while it’s waiting on the outcome of a regulatory decision.
That pending decision will come from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It will grant or deny permission for Monarch to acquire seven other water utilities.
How this state agency will react is an open guess, but the company has not found itself in favor with the state Legislature. State Sens. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, spoke sternly to a Monarch representative at a hearing in July because he could not tell them what the company’s profit margin was.
Neither has it made friends among suburban governments. Kyle, Buda, Pflugerville, Blue Mound (near Fort Worth) and Ivanhoe (in East Texas) have organized to oppose Monarch’s plan to take over more small water systems.
“I think our resolution fighting Monarch’s rate increase is extremely important to the city,” said Kyle Mayor Lucy Johnson. She called this fight “one of the top priorities of the council.”
In a statement, the spokeswoman for Monarch’s parent company repeated what the company told the senators: We need more money to pay for improvements throughout our water system.
“Monarch has invested nearly $70 million to tap new water sources and replace aging water and wastewater treatment plants,” the spokeswoman, Janice Hayes, wrote in an email. “These environmentally responsible upgrades allow us to provide our customers with clean, abundant water and to protect our streams and waterways.”
Monarch is owned by SouthWest Water Co., which also owns and operates utilities in Alabama, California, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Monarch itself comprises a group of small water systems that may not have been built to age with grace. Raising rates to pay for necessary repairs could makes sense, as much as it may aggravate the customer.
But Kay Rush of Amberwood would like to know just where those repairs were made. Are Kyle customers about to pay the tab for projects that were finished hundreds of miles away?
She recently compared bills with her friend Linda Freeman. Freeman also lives in Amberwood and gets her water from the same line. They had used exactly the same amount of water.
Rush’s 3,000 gallons cost $56.13.
Freeman’s 3,000 gallons cost $51.73.
What?
“We all have the same pipe, and we’re under the same contract, so why aren’t our base rates all the same?” Rush said. “This company is as shady as the day is long.”
Their bills also were on different cycles: Freeman’s for 26 days, Rush’s for 28. Hayes did not answer an email question about the discrepancies.
“I don’t mind paying my bills,” Freeman said, “but you know this is basically a rip-off.”
