Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Some residents said they had concerns after hearing Portales City staff proposed a 30 percent increase in residential water rates per year for five years at the recent council meeting.
The city had scheduled a special council meeting for Friday to provide more information to residents, but it was cancelled due to a lack of a quorum, said City Manager Sarah Austin. The city plans to address this at its next council meeting on Wednesday.
The proposed rate increase is across the board and would include residential, commercial and industrial usage both inside and outside the city borders. The rates vary.
City Public Works Director John DeSha said the city needs to raise the rates to pay for providing its services. Currently, the department is in deficit. Also, the rate increase would incentivize water conservation.
Julie Rooney is the owner of the gift shop The Happy Place and is in partnership with the Courthouse Café, both located in the building she owns at 109 S. Main, Portales.
Rooney is one of the residents who contacted the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, when it sent out an alert this week to its members about Friday’s special council meeting, which has since been cancelled.
In a later interview, Rooney spoke to The News and said: “As a business owner, increasing utility costs on a small business in a recession following COVID closures, which devastated many businesses – this will be the final nail in the coffin.”
The electric company Excel “almost doubled” its rates in the past six months, she said.
She said she renovated her entire building on Main, which had been abandoned for years.
“The city fought me on permits, in my opinion,” she said.
She said she thinks “Portales is business unfriendly. The city does not do business promotional activities…nothing to promote tourism, for example.”
“A 30 percent increase in the commercial water rate will be difficult – (we’re) still scrambling to pay the increases in the electric bill,” she said.
Another person who responded to the meeting alert with concerns was Wanda Graham, broker and owner of Kiva Realty in Portales.
Graham said she had a concern that the city did not explain in any detail on what it needs to spend the money from the rate increase.
“Thirty percent – that’s a lot and I’m a small, home-owned business, and it’s going to make it tough,” she said.
“I want Portales to succeed – when Portales succeeds, Kiva Realty succeeds,” she said. “I’d like to see where all that money will go before it is taken out of my pocket.”
City Manager Sarah Austin said in an email on Thursday “that 30% will not be what the city council will approve. I have been directed (by council) to bring a lower number and I am working on that now. 30% was a start but was not even a percentage I planned on the council approving.”
Another business owner, Wade Fraze, owner of Happy Wash Laundromat in Portales, said his water bill at the business would increase from an estimated $766 a month to about $2,846 a month over the five-year period, if the council were to approve the commercial rate increase proposed at the last council meeting.
“We would pretty much have to close down,” Fraze said in an interview. “Our customer base is pretty much low-income, and I can’t raise my prices—I would go out of business.”
He asked, if businesses close as a result of the rate increase and the gross receipts taxes decrease, what effect would that have on the city?
The city should consider raising the rates a smaller percentage and “cutting expenses in other areas,” he said.
Chase Gossett, president of the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, said: “I completely understand the need for conservation of water.”
“I just hope that whatever decision the council makes, it strikes a balance between the need to conserve water in the area” and “the needs of residences and businesses in the area,” Gossett said. He wants the council to consider the need to attract new business into the area.
He said he encourages people to provide input on the issue, he said. “This is a very big decision, and it will affect a lot of people.”