Onset Water Department customers could see another increase in water rates, depending on what happens at a Special Meeting scheduled for October 29.

Earlier this month, the Onset Water Commissioners voted to raise water rates by 19 percent to allow revenues to cover costs after experiencing a shortfall for the previous three years.

Peter Murphy, the most recently elected commissioner of the Onset Water Department, said this week that, if two cost-cutting measures are not approved at the Special Meeting, rates may need to go up again.

Two proposals -- one that would rescind an article passed last year to begin funding  Other Post-Employment Benefits” (OPEB) to retired Water Department workers, and another that would decrease employees' medical benefits — were finalized October 14 and will be voted on by Onset Fire District residents at the Special Meeting.

“We are now waiting to see if the proposed articles pass,” said Murphy. “If they do not, we will have to set the increase at a higher number.”

“I think the way the whole board has figured it is that, if they don’t pass, they’re going to go back to the drawing board and recalculate everything and see if there’d be an additional rate increase,” said Water Department Superintendent Paul Bokoski.

For the past three years, including this year, the cost of providing water to Onset Water District residents has exceeded the revenue collected from water users.

“In order to balance the budget, they need to rescind a couple of articles that were approved at the annual meeting” last spring, said Prudential Committee Chairman Charles Klueber earlier this month. “It was voted on by the district to start funding that [the Other Post-Employment Benefits], but the funding is going to cause them to be short of their commitments.”

“If they don’t pass, the rates will have to increase to cover those,” said Brian O’Hern, clerk of the Onset Water Commissioners.

Murphy said that, if revenues do not meet the $1,214,600 the department budgeted for this year, state sanctions could be handed down. He said that, in its current financial state, the Water Department wouldn’t be equipped to handle an emergency such as a water main break. He noted that the department was not sanctioned by the state for falling short of revenue projections for the previous two years.

Murphy also said that, last year, the Water Commissioners voted to hire a third full-time employee for the Water Department but, after a meeting with the Fire District's Prudential Committee, they were advised to only hire the employee part-time.

Since then, the position has remained a part-time position. Murphy said that, recently, a group of citizens and a majority of the Prudential Committee voiced their opinion that there is no need for a third laborer. He said a petition is being circulated to cut the roughly $50,000 budgeted for the full-time job, essentially eliminating the position. That would reduce the Water Department’s payroll from $337,000 to $287,000.

That petition, along with two other changes proposed by the Onset Fire Department, will be presented at the Special Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the Dudley Brown VFW Post on Gibbs Ball Park Road.

According to Kleuber, another item on the agenda will be funding the contract negotiated between the district and recently unionized Onset Fire Department full-time employees. The other would disband a previously existing exploratory committee in order to formulate a new committee.