Taunton mobile home parks on one water meter are set for a 30% lower water rate Jan. 1

TAUNTON Taunton mobile home parks that buy city water through a single master meter are set to start paying a water rate 30% lower on Jan. 1, city officials told a City Council committee in August. Council President Barry Sanders called the cut part of the rate package the committee approved Aug. 11 and the full council adopted Aug. 18. The Legislature gave the city the power to set a separate rate for those parks in May.

Everyone else on city water is in line for increases. The council approved a 5% water rate increase for July 2027, which consultant Ben Levesque of Tighe & Bond laid out as the first of four yearly 5% increases through fiscal 2031. The parks would see no increase through fiscal 2031, Levesque told councilors, and Chief Financial Officer Patrick D. Dello Russo Jr. confirmed in July that the discount is set to last five years, 2027 through 2031.

Why the parks pay more now

Manufactured home communities on a master meter have been paying the highest possible rate, Sanders said at the Aug. 11 meeting of the council's Committee on the Department of Public Works. Water Superintendent Michael Arruda told a park resident that night that one meter for a whole park lands it on a higher tier because it uses more water. The resident, Nancy Craven, said her park has more than 140 homes.

The city charges for water by the hundred cubic feet, about 748 gallons, in three tiers each quarter. This fiscal year, which began July 1, the first 30 units cost $6.34 each, the next 220 cost $9.39 and anything more than 250 costs $11.22. Sanders said the 30% cut was meant to make the parks' rate consistent with what single-family homes pay on the lowest tier.

Chapter 80 of the Acts of 2026, approved May 14, lets the city set a uniform, separate billing rate for city water supplied to manufactured housing communities. It covers only communities, or parts of them, that get one bill for all their water through a master meter, and not homes the city meters one by one. The law does not address how a park passes water costs on to the people who live there.

What it means for everyone else

At this year's rates, a home on the smallest, 5/8-inch meter that uses 20 hundred cubic feet in a quarter, about 15,000 gallons, pays $150.17 for water: a $23.37 quarterly connection charge plus $126.80 for the water itself. Raising both by 5% would add about $7.51 a quarter, or about $30 a year. If it is on city sewer, the same home pays $210.60 a quarter for sewer, a $146 connection charge plus $3.23 a unit.

Sewer customers face their own 5% increase on July 1, 2027, which the council approved Oct. 13 after debate over when it should start.

Levesque told the committee July 14 that the rates in place since July 1 raised the typical customer's combined water and sewer bill 2.7%, about $36 a year.

Why rates are rising

Water and sewer run as enterprise funds, paid for by the people who use them rather than through property taxes, committee Chairman Scott Martin said. Levesque said most water capital spending has gone to replacing old mains, along with work at the treatment plant, dams, storage tanks and pump stations. The plan assumes $5 million a year in water capital work.

Dello Russo told the committee in July that if ratepayers do not cover the cost, property taxpayers end up covering it through the tax rate.

How the vote went

In July, councilors worried that the water and sewer increases then proposed, roughly 33% over four years, would hit residents already struggling with costs. Dello Russo and the consultants told them the 30% discount had been calculated on the revenue from the 5% water and 12% sewer increases proposed in July and that the vote could not be split. The committee tabled it to Aug. 11. Councilor Debra Botellio said in August that she supported the water increase but called the 12.5% sewer increase proposed by then a lot of money.

With Councilor Deborah Carr absent, the committee approved the 5% water increase Aug. 11 on a motion by Councilor John McCaul, seconded by Martin. McCaul said he would support the water increase but not the 12.5% sewer increase, and asked to wait a week to discuss sewer rates with Carr there. The full council adopted the committee's votes Aug. 18.

When Mayor Shaunna O'Connell listed the city's relief programs at the council's Oct. 13 meeting, she cited efforts to lower water rates for manufactured housing communities.

Help with a bill

The city's water ordinance gives a 25% senior citizen discount to residents 70 or older under income and asset limits it lists as $23,497 in income and $36,278 in assets, not counting the house, for a married couple, and $19,291 and $33,860 for a single person. It also allows partial payments or a payment plan, with the water supervisor's approval, to avoid a shutoff, which carries a $25 fee and a $50 turn-on fee.

Water and sewer bills more than 30 days overdue gather interest. Questions go to the Water Division at 90 Ingell St., 508-821-1045.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.