1987-1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MINUTES OF THE SPECIAL MEETING OF THE UTILITY RATE STUDY COMMITTEE September 28, 1995 The Utility Rate Study Committee met in special session, Thursday, September 28, 1995, 3:30 P.M., onference room, City Hall Annex West, Paris, Texas. Chairman, Eric Clifford, called the meeting to order with the following members present: Councilman Richard Hunt, and Councilman Charles Fulbright. Also present was City Manager, Michael E. Malone, City Attorney, T. K. Haynes, and City Clerk, Mattie Cunningham. Chairman Clifford announced that the meeting would adjourn and reconvene at the Municipal Court Building, 811 Bonham Street, as there was not adequate seating for those attending the meeting. Chairman Clifford reconvened the committee meeting at 3:55 P.M., and advised the purpose of the meeting was review information regarding the water /sewer rates furnished by the consultant. Chairman Clifford advised that this committee realizes that there is a problem with the current method of the water and sewer rates, and this committee was appointed to study the rates and hear what the rate consultant has to recommend, and make a recommendation to the City Council next week. On a question from a member of the audience regarding the hiring of a consultant from Dallas, City Manager Malone explained that the City of Paris has certain contracts, and when you are dealing with large industries such as Campbell Soup, Merico, and Kimberly Clark these are major companies, and they purchase an enormous amounts of water. If they have rate consultants in their own employment, and in these contracts with the City of Paris, they require that the City have outside independent consultants come in and do a rate study. Our rate study is scheduled every three years, it is a design in the study, and it is done by a recognized methodology and there is various ways to study and apportion rate, and what the City of Paris is doing is cost of service type study. City Manager Malone advised that our rate study was done in 1994, and our consultant that is here today is a member of that firm, they are not charging the City for this additional service. City Manager Malone said that today we are going to address residential wastewater and what has affected the customers bills is when this last rate study was done so much attention was focused on the lower volume user that when they started looking at unit of measurement the cost was forced to allow those people in such a way that was watering their yards are paying for sewerage that is not coming back to the system, so it is going to be reorganized and go back to the system similar to what we had when we had a cap, in whole, utilizing an average method of measurement. City Manager Malone also explained that there are two thing that have changed in the last two or three months that has had an affect on customers bills, one is that we had a meter reader out for more than