Your utility bill has two main parts: a fixed monthly charge and a usage-based charge. That structure is common. The problem in Pflugerville is the balance between the two, which causes equity and fairness problems.
Our fixed charges are high relative to the variable portion of the bill. That means households that use very little water still pay a large share of the total cost before usage even matters. A senior living alone, a renter in a smaller unit, or a household that has already cut back is often paying a worse effective rate per gallon than a higher-usage household.
Cities rely on fixed charges to stabilize revenue and pay debt regardless of weather or conservation trends. In Pflugerville's case, it's the roughly $1 billion in debt taken on in recent years for major water and wastewater projects. But when the fixed charge becomes too dominant, the result is regressive. The people using the least can end up paying the most per unit.
A simple way to see the problem is to compare two households. If one household uses 1,000 gallons and another uses 6,000, both still pay the same base amount. Spread that fixed charge across fewer gallons, and the low-use household pays much more per gallon for the same basic service.
Multifamily residents face an additional issue. Many apartment complexes are metered as a single commercial account, which means residents effectively pay under a rate structure designed for commercial use, not ordinary household consumption.
I have been pushing for a rate study that includes affordability scenarios, such as a low-usage or lifeline-style tier, and a re-examination of multifamily classification. When the study comes back with real scenarios, I want those tradeoffs discussed publicly with numbers.
I have been pushing to move this conversation out of the anecdote stage and into a formal study and workshop process. That includes pressing for affordability scenarios to be part of the work, raising concerns about how the current fixed-versus-variable split affects low-usage households, and calling attention to how multifamily residents can end up bearing costs through a structure not really designed for normal household use. The goal is to get real numbers on the table rather than relying on general impressions.