The rate increase varies depending on the type of account the customer may have, and include the average residential bill increasing by 1.4 percent, Small commercial and industrial bills increasing by 2.6 percent, public authority bills increasing by 2.4 percent, and large commercial and industrial increasing by 2.8 percent.

These changes will affect 2,788 customers, comprised of 2,578 residential customers, 168 commercial customers, 3 large industrial customers and 39 public authority customers. 

Carlos Libson of Texas State Natural gas explained that the rate increase was a result of a cost of sales adjustment. 

“We adjust every year. so it doesn’t increase all at one time. When I got here 17 years ago they hadn’t done a tariff increase in 20 years,” said Libson, adding that the drastic increase in cost was hard on consumers.

The county, however will not be seeing an increase at the moment.

The possibility of altering a 2011 ordinance to replace rotting pipelines was also discussed.  

“In the downtown area we’re losing a lot because of the decay of the lines,” said Libson.” Older people that really like to use gas, when they haven’t replaced their pipeline in 30 or 40 years, we immediately have to cut them off no questions asked.”

Libson added that the price for customers to replace pipes on their own was not exactly affordable. 

“What happens with elderly people on social security checks is they call a certified plumber that comes in there and says ‘We want  $1000 to replace it.’ So one of the things we wanted to bring up to council was to allow us, the utility, to be able to replace the yard line with polyethylene which is a more modern type of line that won’t rot,” said Libson. ”We could probably do a lot better price wise than a certified plumber because we don’t want to lose the customer. We’re looking into that.”