Save Money & Water with Tips from City of Titusville
By Maureen Phillips, Water Conservation & Public Outreach Manager, City of Titusville Water Resources // November 1, 2015
You may have heard a lot of talk lately about Titusville water bills and rates, but have you ever taken a really good look at your monthly water bill (formally known as your Water/Sewer/Solid Waste Services bill)?
You will see a lot of fees included on your bill that have nothing to do with your water or sewer services. Most of these fees are for your garbage and recycling services.
The fees related to water and sewer services include water fixed monthly, water usage charge, sewer fixed monthly, sewer usage charge, and, finally, public service tax.
WATER & SEWER CHARGES
Fixed monthly charges. These charges are based on the actual cost to provide you with water and sewer service. These costs include billing, meter reading, debt service, system maintenance, and future water supply needs. This charge should stay the same from month to month.
Consumption/Usage charges. These charges are based on variable costs to provide you with water and sewer service, such as the amount of electricity and chemicals used in treating, collecting, and distributing water. This charge may vary each month depending upon how much water you use.
Public service tax. This is a 10 percent utility tax. It is applied to the water charges, not the sewer charges on your bill. This tax also appears on metered or bottled gas bills, electric bills, and fuel oil bills.water &sewerchargesmeters &readings
METERS & READINGS
There are 21,700 water meters in our system. Titusville uses two different methods for reading meters: radio read and manual read. Radio read meters can be read by the meter reader just driving down the street; while manual read meters required a meter reader to open the meter box and input the consumption into a handheld device.
On the average, only 0.39 percent of our water meters have estimated readings on any given month due to adverse conditions such as the meters are inaccessible, meter failure, etc. Estimated readings are based on a previous six-month average for the account.
Meters are read in thousands of gallons and are read down. What that means is if you used 3,995 gallons of water in one month, your consumption will only be billed at 3,000 gallons. If next month, you used 6 gallons more than your usual 3,995 gallons, your consumption would be billed at 4,000 gallons. The consumption shown on your bill may look like you somehow used a thousand more gallons than the previous month, but it just means that you used enough more water to bump you to the next thousand gallon mark.
Your sewer consumption will always match your water consumption because we do not meter the wastewater flowing from your house. So if your water consumption drops, the sewer consumption also drops and your bill will reflect reduced charges for both.
RATES & INCREASES
The City of Titusville is proposing a 3 percent increase in both water and sewer rates beginning October 1, 2015. Titusville’s current rates and proposed rates are about average for utilities in our area.
To see a comparison of Titusville’s rates with 17 other utilities, as well as a sample bill showing how the proposed rate increase will affect a typical single-family residential customer in Titusville who uses 5,000 gallons per month, visit the City of Titusville’s Water Resources web page, Water and Sewer Rates – What You Should Know.
• Utilities increase their rates because the cost to provide water and sewer service continues to increase. Some of the reasons that Titusville is proposing a rate increase include the following:
• Inflationary increases in the cost of operations such as chemicals, insurance, personnel, etc.;
• Renewal and replacement costs associated with maintaining an aging infrastructure;
• Preserve a 90-day cash balance for operations and maintenance;
• Debt service coverage requirements and credit rating maintenance;
• System projects such as water line replacements;
water plant pump and motor replacements; sewer pipe and manhole lining; wastewater plant upgrade/rehabilitation/refurbishment projects; water tank rehabilitation; sewer upgrade (SR 405); emergency generator retrofit; telemetry replacements and upgrades; and south area water main.
For further information about water or sewer rates, please contact the Water Resources Director, City of Titusville Water Resources Department at 321-567-3855.
CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT TITUSVILLE WATER RESOURCES
