By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Peogress

The Moapa Valley Water District Board, in a meeting held December 2, reversed a long held policy that has charged a higher monthly base rate to residential customers with two homes sharing a single meter on their property. The move came only two weeks after a number of local residents showed up to a board meeting to complain about being placed on the higher rate structure.

In early November, about 90 local residents received certified letters confirming that each had been paying what the district called an R-3 rate.

District officials said that the letters had not been sent to notify of any increase in rates, but rather to notify customers of their rate status and open up discussions in seeking to update that status if appropriate.

But many residents misread the notice as a proposed rate increase. When they were told that this was not the case, many then went on to question the fairness of having their residence on an R-3 rate in the first place.

The R-3 rate is designed for situations when a residential meter is servicing a parcel with commercial characteristics such as small apartment buildings or trailer parks connected to the water grid through a single commercial meter. But the R-3 rate has also been applied to single residential parcels where two structures were sharing the same meter.

At the November 17 meeting, board members were sympathetic to the position of the residents in attendance. There was some question among the staff of whether the practice was actually an offiical district policy. So the board instructed staff to do some research and report back on the existing policy and any financial impacts associated with such a policy.

At the December 2 board meeting, Acting General Manager Joe Davis reported that the practice of applying R-3 rates to parcels with dual residences had, in fact, been a matter of policy. A board directive was found in the minutes of a board meeting from June 13, 1979 wherein staff was instructed to charge increased rates in cases where a dual residence existed through a single residential meter.

Currently properties with two homes are charged a base monthly rate of $45.01 which is $15.22 per month over the regular residential base rate, Davis said.

Davis added that it was the staff’s recommendation to do away with the policy.

“We feel that it is really not something that we should be policing,” Davis said. “We have rate classes for larger meters serving commercial properties. In the recent years, there has been an increase in the number of travel trailers that people have; and if they hook them up to water on their property, I don’t think we need to be policing that at all.”

With little discussion from the board, a motion was made to reverse the policy and change the rate code on parcels where two homes were being served by the same residential sized meter from an R-3 rate back to R-2. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.