Corpus Christi claims top spot for most expensive utility bills, according to study
This article originally appeared on Caller Times
Corpus Christi residents pay some of the nation’s highest utility bills, according to a study conducted by doxoINSIGHTS.
Corpus Christi claimed the top spot for areas with the most expensive utility bills.
The city’s average utility bills add up to about $630, according to the study. Other cities that have high utility bills include Yuma, Arizona; Watertown, New York; Fairbanks, Alaska; and Vineland, New Jersey.
Doxo is a website people can use to pay their bills. It describes itself as the largest bill pay directory in the nation. The study was based on more than 3 million users in 900 cities who make payments to more than 60,000 local and national business.
Roughly 3 percent of Corpus Christi residents use doxo to pay bills, said Jim Kreyenhagen, the company’s vice president of marketing and consumer services.
“We see the total amount being paid by consumers across multiple bill types as opposed a consumer based survey,” he said.
Kreyenhagen said bills for water and waste water, along with those for trash and recycling, are high in Corpus Christi, compared with other cities.
The study broke down a Corpus Christi resident’s average utility bill:
- Electric — $139
- Gas — $60
- Water and sewer — $215
- Waste and recycling — $216
The city is skeptical
City Manager Peter Zanoni questioned the study’s conclusion. Comparing utility bills across cities can be complicated; some communities have different ways of billing for their services, he said.
For example, Corpus Christi’s water bill includes the fee for storm water embedded into it.
Other cities, such as San Antonio, separate their storm water fee. Corpus Christi officials are working to separate residents’ storm water fees from their water bills. City Council will consider this during the budgeting process for 2021.
“Ours is going to be higher already (because) we have storm water embedded in it,” Zanoni said. “(A study) has to be done with careful analysis. You can’t just grab that bill and that’s it. There has to be some type of dialogue with a human.”
Corpus Christi is also at a disadvantage when compared with larger cities for a study like this, Zanoni said.
Corpus Christi has fewer customers than cities such as San Antonio to cover costs for new equipment or operations.
“In some cases our customers may pay a little bit more because the distribution of costs is over a smaller population,” Zanoni said.
The city is also working to lower its utility bills by calculating wastewater rates from a customer’s average use during the winter months. The change already has been implemented and should be appearing in customers bills in late May and early June.
“When people this last year used their water to fill their pools or watering or gardening, and the sewer is based on water usage — that was higher as well,” Zanoni said. “That compounding impact had a big-rate shock for customers.”
Zanoni did say residents’ waste fees should be lower than those of other cities, because the Corpus Christi owns its landfill.
Other study elements
Regarding all bills, Corpus Christi residents pay an average of $1,165 a month, or 12.3 percent higher than the national average, according to the study.
Corpus Christi ranks 85th out of 916 cities based on the most expensive total bills. The city also ranks eighth out of 67 Texas cities tracked by doxo, Kreyenhagen said.
The company tracks about 1 million Texas residents who make payments to more than 12,000 companies.
The average total monthly bills for other nearby cities are listed below:
- Kingsville — $1088
- Alice — $1,070
- Beeville — $1,021
- Port Lavaca — $1,232
- Victoria — $1,101
Past issues
In December 2017, the city converted to a new utility billing system. This caused software issues. In 2018, roughly 10,000 residents were billed incorrectly for their utility services.
Many residents were not charged for some months. Thousands of other households were overcharged or undercharged because meters weren’t transmitting correct usage information.