El Paso Water Utilities explains decision to impose fee on residential customers

Get ready for your water bill to go up again.

Next month, residential customers will pay an $1.94 more every month. That’s to help pay for the $3.5 million bill the City gave the Public Service Board for street repairs.

Since September, only non-residential water users were paying that bill, so they may be getting a refund.

El Paso Water Utilities President John Balliew explained why residential water customers ended up paying this fee, against City Council’s wishes. The fee came about when last minute add-ons put a balanced city budget proposal in the red.

“We feel if there is going to be a franchise fee, that we need to apply it based on standard rate practices, which through some means, has to be tied to the meter size or amount of water used,” Balliew said.

ABC-7 asked Balliew if he thinks this will send a message back to City Council, if they are going to impose these types of fees, then EPWU is going to have to pass them on to residential customers, even if that’s against their wishes?

“I think the message to go back is we want to do things the best way possible for our customers,” Balliew said.

City Rep. Cortney Niland had this to say after a City Council budget session back in August: “We need to either increase the El Paso Water Utilities franchise fee or the El Paso Electric franchise fee to balance this budget.”

City Rep. Dr. Michiel Noe said despite voting for it, he did not want to impose the franchise fee on EPWU.

“If you go back to the very beginning, the whole thing shouldn’t have happened to begin with,” Noe said. “We had a balanced budget to begin this thing.”

Noe said he and others who voted for the fee were left no choice when others on Council added things back into City Manager Tommy Gonzalez’s balanced budget.

“You can’t say I want this service and this service and this service put back in the budget and not budget for it,” Noe added. “We have to come up with those fees.”

Noe said the franchise fee could disappear in September during the next budget session.

“The fee can go away,” he said. “We can make cuts or we can place those fees on taxes, instead of the fees, or even it out across the board.”

While Noe did not blame EPWU for imposing the fee on residential customers against Council’s wishes, another member of council did. Rep. Claudia Ordaz said she was “disappointed” the change was not communicated with council ahead of time.

Niland told ABC-7 she was stuck in meetings all day Thursday and she didn’t have time to comment.