# Pflugerville Water Rate Design Problem

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Water & Utilities
January 10, 2026

# Pflugerville's Water Rates Have a Design Problem

High fixed charges mean low-usage households pay more per gallon than heavy users. That's regressive by design. I've been pushing for a rate study that includes affordability scenarios and a hard look at how multifamily residents are classified.

**Current status:** [FY27 water and wastewater rate status](/issues/#water-rates)

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: fixed charges are too large a share of the bill, and that's what makes it regressive.

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's 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, that debt is roughly $1 billion, taken on in recent years for major water and wastewater projects. When the fixed charge gets too dominant, the result is regressive: the people using the least water end up paying the most per gallon.

A simple way to see it: 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 added problem. Many apartment complexes are metered as a single commercial account, so residents effectively pay under a rate structure built for commercial use, not ordinary household consumption.

I've been pushing for a rate study that includes affordability scenarios, like 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.

Related: see the priority on [lower water bills](/priorities/#water-bills), read the [water and utility bill FAQ](/faq/#water-bills), or [share your bill experience](/contact/).

What I’ve done on this

I've been pushing to move this out of the anecdote stage and into a formal study and workshop process: pressing for affordability scenarios to be part of the work, raising concerns about how the fixed-versus-variable split affects low-usage households, and calling attention to how multifamily residents end up bearing costs through a structure not built for normal household use. I want real numbers on the table instead of general impressions.

**Related priority:** [Lower Water Bills and Fairer Rate Structure](/priorities/#water-bills)

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## Questions about this issue?

Reach out directly or keep reading the council updates for the bigger picture.

[Contact Jonathan](/contact/)

[Read Council Updates](/updates/)