Are you ready to save yourself some money? It is almost time for the Water Department to set the sewer usage rates for 2010. For those of you who do not already know, your water consumption during the months of December, January, and February will be the basis for what the Bonham Water Department will implement as your sewer usage costs for March 2010 through February 2011.
So for those of you without a separate meter for irrigation (such as sprinkler systems) and have only one meter for all your watering needs, avoid as much as possible non-domestic uses such as irrigation or replacing too much evaporated pool water during these months. The bottom line is that all lawn watering and spring planting (which requires heavy watering) should be delayed until after the averaging period has passed and your monthly sewer charge has been established for the next year. It is your money, plus it just makes sense always to conserve where possible.
As for those who do have an irrigation meter in addition to a domestic meter, remember this: you will be paying a water and sewer cost for any water used for outside use through your exterior outlets, despite the water not returning back through the waste water system. So, for washing the family car; supplementing the sprinkler system; spring planting; or frequently replacing evaporation from one's swimming pool, make sure you use an outlet attached to the irrigation meter for those purposes. If you do not have a water outlet attached to your irrigation meter to prevent paying unnecessary sewer costs, get one. This will enable outside non-irrigation domestic uses while avoiding sewer charges for these uses. What I recommend is that customers document their meter reading no later than mid-November and reconcile it again in March to validate the average.
On the good side, the City Council used the zero interest Water Board loan to replace the City’s manual water meters with an electronic meter that automatically transmits water usage to a central location. This will save the expense of a person manually reading the old-style meters.
Speaking again of saving money, another month has passed and another $5000 of your tax money has been wasted by BEDCo’s failure to control expenses. The savings are there; look at the budget; BEDCo just needs to act and stop wasting your taxpayer money. How long are you, the Taxpayer, going to tolerate this waste of your money? Creating or attracting much-needed jobs for this area would be a far better use of that money.
It looks as if the Bonham Area Chamber of Commerce will need to start looking for a new home. The vote at last night’s City Council meeting was two to five against the Chamber’s continuing to operate the Visitor’s Center. John Burnett and Ruth Ann Thomas voted for the contract to allow the Chamber to operate the Visitor’s Center. Regardless of how you feel about the Chamber, someone has to keep the Visitor’s Center open or return the state and federal grant that the City received to build the Visitor’s Center. I would like to have seen a plan for the operation of the Visitor’s Center in place before the Chamber contract was denied. The cost of the Chamber operating the Visitor’s Center was about $25,000 annually to the city and BEDCo. How are we going to operate the Visitor’s Center for the $25,000 now? The least expensive plan that I have seen is for more than twice that amount. It matters not to me who operates the Visitor’s Center, but how we successfully operate it for the least amount of taxpayer money.
There was a large crowd at last night’s City Council meeting. This shows that citizens are interested in what is happening in Bonham. We encourage more citizen participation in city government. Remember, we are determining how and where your taxpayer dollars are spent.
