To accommodate a larger water meter going in at the new Moe and Gene Johnson High, the Buda city leaders approved a change to the base monthly charge for meters larger than eight inches.
Johnson High will be using a 10-inch water meter once it is completed in 2019. Previously, the largest size of water meters used in the city was eight inches.
According to a chapter of Buda’s Code of Ordinances, the water demand charge did not specify rates for meters larger than eight inches, which meant Buda would not have been able to charge the high school for water usage.
As a result, city staff approved a change in language to include the larger meter size.
The price for sales of water meters inside the city remains $596.92 and outside the city $746.17 for meters eight inches, and would be the same for meters eight inches or larger.
“We have never had a meter larger than eight inches, but the high school going up has a meter of 10 inches, so we decided that there’s not that much difference between an eight inch meters and 10 inches,” Assistant City Manager Micah Grau said.
The high school will be Hays CISD’s first three story high school and will need the larger 10 inch water meter to get the right pressure needed for the sprinkler system to serve the three stories, according to Hays CISD Public Information Officer Tim Savoy.
By comparison, some of the elementary schools in the district use 4 inch meters.
“What drives that size is the capability of the fire system, and what drives that is the code that the engineers had to follow,” Savoy said.
