Following approved increases implemented in October 2025, the Graham City Council will consider a first reading this week for additional raises to both the water and sewer rates.<\/p>\n
The city council will meet Thursday, May 14 to consider an ordinance amendment to add a 7% increase to base and volumetric water service charges and a 3% increase in sewer volumetric charges beginning with the Thursday, Oct. 15 billing cycle.<\/p>\n
During the same meeting, the city council will consider setting a public hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 9 to receive public comments on the ordinance which proposes increases to the water and sewer base rate and volumetric charges.<\/p>\n
If approved by the city council, the public hearing June 9 will also serve as a special-called council meeting to serve as a budget workshop for development of the 2026-2027 annual budget.<\/p>\n
Last month, the city council approved contracting with Willdan Financial Services for a water and sewer rate study to determine a rate needed for future debt payments, studying the outside of the city rates and causes of decreases in revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s look at three things that are very important. How much we need to increase the sewer rate to cover the debt. (We need to) take a look at the outside the city water rates to be compliant with Texas law. And then the third one is to see if they can come up with a different answer on why we\u2019re not getting this much from the water revenue,\u201d City Manager Eric Garretty said.<\/p>\n
The first task will seek to validate a base rate increase to service the city\u2019s anticipated debt payment for the wastewater treatment plant renovation project. The city manager previously gave estimates for this amount for phase one of the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been saying we are probably going to increase the sewer base rate somewhere between $20-25. In order to do that, we need to have it validated by people who are experts,\u201d Garretty said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to look at our past history. \u2026They\u2019re going to come up with an exact figure that we\u2019re going to need to raise the sewer rate in order to service the debt.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October 2025, the city implemented new 7% increases to water and sewer rates after adoption \u00a0by the Graham City Council in August 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rate increase came following a 2024 water rate study that recommended a 7% per year increase in the rates through 2029.<\/p>\n
When the council approved rate increases in August 2025, residents spoke out during the public hearing with one resident asking the justification for pushing the rate increases through 2029 as recommended by the 2024 rate study.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes us until 2029 before we\u2019re not having to use savings, that cash reserve, to be able to balance revenues and expenses of the water fund,\u201d Garretty said during the hearing. \u201cThat\u2019s based on those projected revenues and projected expenses. We\u2019re trying to do better planning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The water and sewer funds are enterprise funds for the city that are supported solely by the rates that are charged for those services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council Member Jeff Dickinson spoke in August during the public hearing and said that the city needs to make water a top priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not here without a water supply. I don\u2019t know how we rationalize that against the police force, the fire department, everything else that we enjoy in this community, but water is absolutely essential to sustaining any community, and our infrastructure is poor, it\u2019s been neglected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following approved increases implemented in October 2025, the Graham City Council will consider a first reading this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-189472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}