Many people in Brownfield have recently received their October city utility bills, and there was a lot of confusion. During the September 21, 2023 city council meeting, the Council approved the 2023-2024 fiscal budget, which included a 2.6% electricity rate increase each year for the next five years, plus a 13% rate increase on water and sewer. On Friday, October 6, 2023, the City of Brownfield sent out its first round of monthly utility bills to the customers and the second round went out on Friday, October 20, 2023. On those bills, there were two new line items added. One line is the “Power Cost Adjustment” amount and the other is the “Meter Fee”. Some customers were confused about these two new items and felt their bills increased. However, according to City Manager Jeff Davis, that is not true.
During the last city council meeting, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2023, Davis explained that the City was trying to be more transparent with the bills. He told the Council and audience that the “minimum bill”, also considered the “meter fee”, was $15.03, but is called the “service availability charge” which is now $15.42, a 2.6% increase. On commercial rates, the meter fee was $20.39, now with the 2.6% increase it is $20.92. The cost per kilowatt hour (KWH) was $0.1503 for 400 KWHs, then after the 400 KWHs the rate was $0.1196 per KWH, and over 500 KWHs, the rate was $0.1036. Now the new charges are $0.0539 per KWH and the power cost adjustment is $0.0604 per KWH, totaling $0.1143 per KWH. Davis also explained that all the electric charges and fees were lumped together and not itemized like it was on the October bills.
Davis also said, “Currently we are doing everything on the postcard that everybody gets in the mail. Here next month we’re gonna send out a paper, an envelope with everything broken down with an explanation. It was just kinda hard… you know we adopted this (budget) on the first, and the bills went out on the 5th and we just didn’t have time to do everything we needed to do to explain this right. I feel like we probably dropped the ball as a city. I think next month everybody will understand.” Davis also went on to say, “I would like to say that I’ll take the blame as far the public not knowing… we should’ve done better. We can’t look back now and so we gotta move forward. This is something that should’ve been done years ago… we should’ve been on paper bills years ago.”
The City of Brownfield is putting out an example of how the new utility bill will look like. The new utility bills will begin in November 2023 and will be mailed in an envelope. Here is an explanation and example of what the new bills will look like.
New bill explanation and key
Example of new bill with explanation and key
