LAWTON – Millions of dollars collected on local utility bills a re diverted to the city’s General Fund to subsidize other departments.
A Lawton resident whose monthly utility bill covers 6,000 gallons of water and 3,000 gallons of wastewater is billed $58.75, Public Utilities Director Rusty Whisenhunt informed the City Council recently.
Almost $20 of that bill “is fees,” he said. They include:
• Water-inside residential: the charge for the treated water the customer used during the month.
• Pumping fee: the customer’s share of the cost of pumping and maintaining pumping equipment to move water between the city’s lakes and treatment facilities.
• Sewer-inside residential: the charge for removing and treating the sewage from a customer’s home for the month.
• Sewer rehab-residential: a customer’s share of the cost of the federally mandated repairs to the sewer system.
• Refuse-curbside: the charge for removal and disposal of garbage and trash from your home once a week.
• Refuse-state fee: a customer’s share of the fee that the state charges for the city to operate the sanitary landfill.
• Capital outlay: a customer’s share of the cost to p urchase wheeled equipment such as graders, fire trucks, police cars, trash trucks, etc.
• Drainage maintenance: the customer’s share of the cost to trim, mow, and clear drainage areas, as well as the cost to c lear and maintain municipal storm drains.
• Stormwater charge: the customer’s share of the cost to im plement an EPA-mandated water quality program.
• Waurika water purchase: each customer’s share of the cost for the city’s portion of the water storage, right to withdraw water, and capital improvements at Waurika Lake.
Besides the fees, almost $20 million of the annual receipts from water and sewer bills “are being transferred to the General Fund,” Whisenhunt said. “We need to start thinking about how we should fund our water and sewer systems.”
Whisenhunt, a city employee for 34 years who has a master’s degree in civil engineering, recently received the lifetime achievement award from the state chapter of theWater Environment Federation.
Mayor Stan Booker noted that the City Council raised Lawton’s utility bills – water, sewer, and solid waste collection/ disposal – by 15% in Fiscal Year 2023.
The City of Lawton has approximately 30,000 utility accounts, 26,500 of which are residential customers, according to Deputy Finance Director Kristin Huntley.
Councilman Bob Weger asked whether that $20 million in utility collections now going into the General Fund could instead be halved.
“I don’t think that’s practical,” City Manager John Ratliff replied.
The City of Lawton is under a consent order from the state Department of Environmental Quality to rehabilitate 191,000 linear feet – 36 miles – of failing sewer lines to reduce Infiltration and inflow. Lawton also has been mandated by the DEQ to renovate the city’s 47-year-old wastewater treatment plant.
Additionally, the city is building 26 miles of new water lines with revenue from the 2.125% capital improvements sales tax voters authorized in PROPEL 2019. Another 26 miles of new water lines are in the design stage, the city’s Communications Manager Caitlin Gatlin said.