Water and sewer bills inside Denison are set for another scheduled step up on Dec. 1, and on Monday the City Council will vote on rewording the rate ordinance behind them, mainly to spell out how properties with several homes or businesses on one meter are billed.
The item is listed under the consent agenda for the 6 p.m. meeting at City Hall, 300 W. Main St., where routine business is normally approved together without discussion.
What would change
According to a staff report from Finance Director Laurie Alsabbagh, the amendment rewrites part of the city code covering apartments, strip centers and other properties where more than one household or business draws water through a single existing meter.
Under the proposed wording, all the water that runs through such a meter would be billed to the building closest to it. Each additional home or business on that meter would be charged its own minimum base charge, and each of those base charges would come with a 1,000-gallon credit, until the units are metered separately.
The ordinance would also add definitions for a commercial user, an industrial user, a property and a residential living unit. Staff say the goal is clearer and more consistent billing, and the ordinance states the changes are not expected to raise anyone's bill. The rate charts themselves are not being changed.
The Dec. 1 step
Those charts come from the five-year plan the city adopted to pay for water system improvements. The ordinance says rates rise each Dec. 1 without another council vote, and its tables run through a final column dated Dec. 1, 2026.
