A motion and vote to increase water rates by the Brown County Water Improvement District (BCWID) on Tuesday came to a halt after a plea from Brownwood City Manager Bobby Rountree not to make the increase.

“I understand the difficulty of budget; the City of Brownwood has reduced its budget the last two out of three years,” Rountree said.  “We have done that without increasing our utility rates or our taxes.  I am here tonight to ask you not to increase the water rates to the City of Brownwood; it’s a pretty simple request.”

The BCWID board of directors was scheduled to vote on approval of their 2011-2012 budget and set rates for treated and untreated water.  The district’s General Manager Dennis Spinks said that the proposed budget showed an increase of 3.57% over last year which would require an increase of 2.05% in treated water rates and 3.47% in untreated water rates. 

BCWID Board President Jay Timmins called for a motion to approve the 2011-2012 budget and increase the water rates, but the Board of Directors took no action after hearing Rountree’s request.  

Spinks said that since no action was taken by the board and the budget needs to be approved before September 1st, a special meeting of the BCWID board will have to take place to approve the budget and possibly another budget workshop.

Spinks said that one of the reasons the BCWID needed to increases rates was for the operation of two water treatment plants working at high capacity during the hot summer.

“Operating two plants at one time – the extra time involved and the extra chemicals involved in that – we just had to increase that budget because, in essence, the cost of treating the water has gone up,” Spinks said.

Spinks also said that the cost of the chemicals to treat the water and cost of electricity to run the plants had a big impact on the proposed budget.   He also indicated that the proposed budget was cut back to this level after several early drafts and was at a point that it could not be cut any further.

Rountree previously reported that the City of Brownwood is working on their budget for 2011-2012 as well.  He had said that the new budget would not require any tax increases or utility rate increases unless their wholesale water rate increased from the BCWID.

The Brown County Water Improvement District sells treated and untreated water to several municipalities and resellers in Brown County including Brownwood, Early, Bangs, Brookesmith SUD, and Zephyr Water Corporation.