Bella Vista POA water rates questioned
Resident says prices are higher than cities
During budget time each year, Mike Taggart, the POA’s director of Maintenance, Construction and Water, submits a recommendation for the price of water in Bella Vista. The POA Board of Directors has the final say, but, Taggart admitted, they usually accept his recommendation. For the past eight years, the price has remained the same.
But Bella Vista has a reputation as an expensive place to live, resident Bill Henderson argued, and water is part of the reason. His summer water bills for two months totaled more than $700. Surrounding communities don’t pay that kind of money, he said.
Henderson said he spoke with Water Superintendent Charlie Holt, Taggart, then finally Property Owners Association General Manager Tom Judson, but no one would admit that Bella Vista’s water rates are out of line.
“Water is a profit center,” he said, questioning why the POA did not sell the water utility to the city along with the Street Department and emergency services.
POA Director of Finances Dwain Mitchell said that as long as he has worked for the POA, the budget for water has been kept separate from the budget for the rest of the POA. He’s not sure exactly when the budgets were separated or why. In places where the budgets overlap, such as human resources and information technology, an allocation is made based on an average number of hours. For instance, if human resources hires a water meter reader they can expect to spend a certain number of hours on the process, so those funds are moved from water to the general POA budget.
“We’re a private nonprofit,” Holt explained. No one can
take any profit out of the water utility. Instead, excess funds go into cash reserves which can be spent on large projects or it can be rebated back to customers. There was a rebate earlier this year.
It can be spent on trucks and buildings, Henderson argued, pointing out the number of vehicles the POA owns.
If Bella Vistans pay more for water than other residents of Northwest Arkansas, part of the reason is historical, Taggart said. When Beaver Water District was formed back in the late 1950s, Bella Vista did not exist as it does today, so it didn’t need water. Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale and Fayetteville formed Beaver Water District, and each of the large cities sells water to smaller cities. No other cities have been admitted to the original water district, so — as Bella Vista started to grow — the POA bought water from Bentonville.
Later, a new water system — the Benton-Washington Regional Public Water Authority, commonly known as Two-Ton — was developed. Bella Vista buys some water from Two-Ton.
Because Bella Vista has a contract with Bentonville, Taggart believes the rate paid by the Bella Vista Water Department is less than the city’s residential rate, but it’s still more than Bentonville pays to buy water from Beaver Water District. Bella Vista has to cover the cost of the lines that run from Bentonville into Bella Vista.
Other considerations Taggart must keep in mind is the amount of water pipe in Bella Vista. Bella Vista has fewer customers for each mile of pipe than other cities in the area. For example, Taggart said, Bentonville has an average of 71 households for each mile of pipe compared to Bella Vista’s 22 households.
Topography makes a difference, too, he said. Because of the peaks and valleys in Bella Vista, there are multiple pressure zones in the area and that means more equipment and more maintenance costs.
The type of customers is also a factor, he said. The larger cities have commercial customers that buy large quantities of water and mitigate the costs for the small customers. Bella Vista has few large commercial customers.
In many ways the Bella Vista Water District resembles the rural districts in the area which all charge more than the city districts. That’s the only fair comparison, he said.