Council narrowly approves fee schedule changes, keeps and caps senior utility discount

By LYNETTE SOWELL 
Cove Leader-Press 

The Copperas Cove city council narrowly approved fee schedule changes for the upcoming fiscal year, including setting a discountcap of 5,000 gallons for senior citizens over age 65. 
Councilmen James Pierce Jr., Dan Yancey, Jay Manning and Charlie Youngs voted in favor of the fee amendments, with councilmen David Morris, Kirby Lack, and Marc Payne voting against the amendments. 
During the discussion prior to the vote, Charlie Youngs spoke out from his personal perspective on seniors who consumer larger quantities of water receiving any sort of a discount at all.
“I got my water bill and for whatever reason, I used 48,000 gallons of water. I have not turned my house into an aquarium, I swear, and I’m going to pay for it…I don’t think it’s right that I get a 48,000 gallon discount. I should pay for what I use. I think that’s only fair and right,” Youngs said.
Councilman Kirby Lack called for the city’s attorney, Scott Osborn, to give legal input on the measure once again. 
“It looks like we’re still giving a discount, and we’ve been advised that that’s absolutely illegal. That’s why we were talking about the senior discount to begin with. If we set a different baseline and we’re still giving a discount, are we continuing to break state law?” Lack questioned. “Not everyone understands, giving a senior discount, picking a group of people no matter who it is, we can’t give a discount to a group without giving everybody. It’s totally against the law.” 
Osborn told Lack and the rest of the council that any discussion they had in closed session was subject to the attorney-client privilege, but if the council was willing, they could discuss it again, potentially in another closed session. The council then entered an executive session with Osborn, and then emerged to take their vote and pass the 5,000-gallon discount limit for senior citizens. 
Councilman David Morris said he voted against the ordinance because of the senior citizen discount, stating the current structure did not present a fair and uniform rate as required by the Texas government code. 
“There are more users younger than 65 than users over 65, and that creates an unfair class which the Texas government code states you cannot do,” Morris said. “We are more legal now with the cap than we were prior, but I voted no because I don’t  want to put our city in that position. When you’ve got some seniors who are receiving a discount using 48,000 gallons, which is being subsidized by those younger than 65, that’s not fair.” 
The impact on the city’s Water & Sewer fund due to the senior citizen discount is $221,000 annually, with the impact being $91,000 on the Solid Waste fund. Also, 1,469 accounts receive the 20 percent discount, according to information provided at the city council’s August 7 meeting. Of those 1,469 senior citizen accounts, 806, or 55 percent, use less than 4,000 gallons of water, which amounts to a total of 1,600,425 gallons of water per month. At the other end of the usage spectrum, 43 utility accounts use more than 23,000 gallons per month. For those 43 accounts alone, the city discounts 1,713,175 gallons of water on a monthly basis.
The fee schedule changes approved on Tuesday also include an increase of base water rates for all customers, with residential going from $11.77 to $12, water consumption from $4.50 to $4.75 per 1,000 gallons, and the solid waste fee going from $17 monthly to $18. 
Other fee schedule changes include eliminating the public hearing UPS fee, the public hearing legal notice fee, the public hearing publication fee, and the voluntary annexation fee, with councilman Jay Manning making the motion to remove those fees from the schedule for the planning department.
“I understand there are fees. It doesn’t seem to me like we should be turning people down who want to become part of the city.” 
Manning also proposed that the meter accuracy check fee of $25 remain the same while waiting for things to get “clarified” with FATHOM, and increasing the replacement fee for damage, lost, or stolen solid waste containers from $15 to $25, instead of the proposed $50. 
“There’s something basically wrong to change rates with more than doubling them. I kind of expect that the menus are going to change at restaurants, but they don’t change that much. I would be very upset and wouldn’t go back if we more than double it,” Manning gave as an example. “We have one on here, $15 for a damaged or lost container to $50. I may understand why that may cost that much to do it, but making that change in one jump along with a lot of other ones does not seem like you know what you’re doing in business. The $15 wasn’t enough before, but it sure doesn’t show much about our ability to do business when we make price changes that more than triple. I’m not laying that on anyone’s doorstep. Those things bother me when we have so many of them.”