GEORGETOWN, Texas — The Georgetown City Council voted on Tuesday, October 27 at its regularly scheduled meeting to accept recommendations for water, wastewater and solid waste fee increases. New rates to residents for water and wastewater go into effect on January 1, 2021. Solid waste fees will increase on November 1, 2020.
The city’s website notes that a cost-of-service study was done this past summer by NewGen Strategies and Solutions. The group looked at costs incurred to operate, maintain and expand the water utility over the next five years. The average residential increase will be $1.50 on the base rate charged each month. 
This means that for households which use up to 10,000 gallons per month, the cost per gallon will increase to $1.85 compared to the charge of $1.75 per gallon. The more water used at a residential building, the higher the cost per gallon, as is typical in charging for services. The city’s chart shows that use of 60,000 gallons of water per month will not have an increase, but stay at $8.50 per gallon of water used.
The residential cost for wastewater flow will increase from $32 to $34.85 per month come January.
City Council voted to implement a $1.37 increase for solid waste disposal fees effective November 1. The reason for the new fee, according to the City of Georgetown, is due to an increase in costs from Texas Disposal Systems and the expansion of the city’s transfer station.
A study is undertaken every three years to determine if existing fees cover the actual costs of operation of the utilities. In this case, the last study was completed in 2018, and done again in 2020. The City of Georgetown states it was done a year early this time around because it needed additional revenue to fund projects which were fast-tracked because of customer demand. Water rate increases were last made in 2014, nonresidential rates hiked in 2019, with wastewater rates for residential and nonresidential rates increased just last year.