The City of Georgetown plans to look at other options to incorporate portions of the Chisholm Trail Special Utility District service area into the city's water utility system after the SUD's board voted to deny an agreement that would have merged the two utilities.
The Chisholm Trail SUD board of directors voted 4-3 on April 18 to deny an agreement.
The Chisholm Trail SUD provides water to about 6,300 customers, about two-thirds of which are in or near the Georgetown extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. The district incorporates northwestern Williamson County as well as a portion of Burnet and Bell counties.
Dead deal
The board's vote effectively ends the possibility of a merger between the two utilities, said Keith Walker, Chisholm Trail SUD interim general manager.
"Right now [we are going to] just kind of step back, let the dust settle from this and move forward from there," he said. "But the old agreement is dead, yes."
The two utilities have been discussing the proposed merger for about 18 months, Georgetown Utility Manager Jim Briggs said. In December 2011, City Council and the Chisholm Trail SUD board of directors each approved $100,000 to complete a feasibility study that considered consolidation.
The agreement was expected to help ensure water supplies for future growth and keep water rates stable, he said. Briggs said he has reached out to the SUD for future options for consolidation but has had no official response. The city had set a deadline of April 22 for a decision on the agreement.
Walker said the complexity of merging a large, spread-out service territory with the city was one of the reasons the board voted down the agreement.
"It's a difficult process; it's a complex process especially with a city utility. A city has several thousand customers packed into a tight area, and we have a few thousand customers spread across 377 square miles of territory," Walker said. "They are two completely different systems, so merging them was going to be a challenge."
He also attributed the board's denial to the lack of customer voting rights once the agreement was in place and the board was dissolved.
"Initially the board couldn't get the enforceability written into the agreement that they wanted," Walker said. "The issue being that the district would have been overseen by the Georgetown City Council, and they would have final say on whatever happened with the district going on operationally, and none of the district's customers would have any voting rights in the city of Georgetown. That was one of the biggest concerns, having no representation and no enforceability once the district was dissolved."
Walker said the board would most likely continue as an independent organization.
"I think we all have to remember that the city was requested to take [the consolidation option] on at the request of the [Chisholm Trail SUD] board," Briggs said. "That's what we did. The city was accused of trying to take over the district, which is what it was asked to do."
Next steps
City Council approved moving forward with discussions to transfer portions of the SUD's service territory into the city's utility at its regular meeting April 23.
"We've still got issues that we have to resolve that go back to 2011," Briggs said. "If we didn't do consolidation, we still have two other options that are out there that we were authorized to pursue."
In 2011, a number of Chisholm Trail SUD customers, including residents in Shady Oaks, Cimarron Hills, North Lake, Gabriel's Overlook and several other neighborhoods, reached out to the City of Georgetown to request a transfer into the city's water service area, Georgetown Utility Director Glenn Dishong said.
"We've got to look at those for exchange of service territory," Briggs said. "The issue's not dead; it's that the consolidation could be dead, and it's most likely not moving forward, but I still have two other issues on the table that have to be resolved."
Briggs said the city will continue to look at options to transfer some of Chisholm Trail customers into the city's water utility.
