HOUSTON, Texas – The nine water bill ordinances, which were supposed to bring instant relief to Houstonians struggling with high water bills, were placed on hold Wednesday during a city council meeting.
The new proposals addressed the ongoing billing problem caused by the city’s water system.
After discussing the ordinances for more than an hour, and council members were ready to vote, councilmember Michael Kubosh asked to tag Item 31 due to him not being able to properly review all of the nine ordinances.
“There are nine items here and I did not get them until yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon,” Kubosh said.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who was determined to push the ordinances through in the final weeks of his term, questioned Kubosh’s motives.
“Councilmember, you mean to tell me that people are looking for help like yesterday and you are going to deny them from getting help like tomorrow?” Turner asked before officially tagging the item until the next council meeting.
Investigator Amy Davis warned early Wednesday that the voting process may not happen. Typically, council members get more advanced notice of proposed ordinance changes. Like Kubosh mentioned, they only received the details late Tuesday afternoon.
List of water bill relief ordinances councilmembers were supposed to vote on:
1. Remove the ordinance that only allows customers to get two leak adjustments in a year
2. Allows customers to adjust their water bills at 100% of their rate if they repair the leak within 30 days
- Customers may receive a 75% rate adjustment for repairing the leak within 60 days after it began
- Customers may receive a 50% rate adjustment for repairing 60 days or more after the leak problem started
3. Customers would get 100% credit on wastewater charges
4. Officials want to reduce the leak balance remaining amount from $2,000 to $1,000 and from $250 to $100 for those who qualify
5. If someone receives a huge bill, the customer responsibility percentage will decrease from 150% to 125% of the monthly average water usage
6. For an exceptional circumstance adjustment or bill reduction, people’s bills would need to be two times their average monthly bill. The account may be reduced by up to $10,000.
7. Offer customers a less expensive option to remove monthly base charges
- The customer would have the option to have their meter locked for a one-time fee of about $150, then all base charges would be removed from the account
8. Customers will save 50 cents on each monthly bill once they sign up for monthly electronic bills.
9. Want to codify the current practice that does not permit officials to look back and charge people after three months have passed since the bill was received. This applies to single-family residential customers.
Although the ordinances did not pass Wednesday, Houston Public Works Officials said they are continuing to replace aging reading devices on meters through a $38 million city of Houston contract that was passed in 2019.
Due to the pandemic and several supply shortages, Houston Public Works said it has only replaced 71,000 aging reading devices but currently has 125,000 not working. Moving forward, Houston Public Works plans to replace 60,000 reading devices a year for the next seven years.
Investigator Amy Davis, Producer Andrea Slaydon, and the team will continue our ‘DRAINED’ Investigation into water bill issues. Fill out this form if you need help.
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