The San Antonio Water System said in a proposed budget that residential water rates for San Antonio customers were not expected to increase next year, despite the anticipated budget rising by $60 million.
The utility’s budget for 2025 would be just over $1 billion – an increase of about 6% from this year. That increase could be partially offset by increasing chilled water and recycled water rates, which commercial customers use for cooling.
SAWS officials met on Tuesday to discuss the 2025 budget for the first time.
The utility also planned to hire more staff, increase pay, and beef up its capital improvements.
SAWS Chief Financial Officer Doug Evanson suggested roughly 80 new employee positions would be added across water loss reduction, capital improvement projects and IT.
He also proposed an increase to minimum wage for SAWS workers. “Currently it’s at $18.25 to an even $19 with employees and entry-level pay grades,” he explained.
Evanson also spoke about capital improvement programs (CIP) and how they could impact an increase to the budget.
The proposed budget planned to spend $600 million on CIP. Of that, $260 million will go toward preventing water loss. In 2023 alone, 20 billion gallons of water were lost due to leaks from aging infrastructure.
He added that this record spending budget for water mains would help reduce water loss and increase revenue simultaneously.
More key components of the CIP include $89 million in water production improvements, $80 million for sewer mains, $78 million for treatment master plan projects and more than $6 million in chilled water improvements.
Next month there will be another meeting with the board of trustees and a plan to vote sometime in November.
