June 23, 2026
At the June 2026 Town of Farmville Board of Commissioners meeting the FY 2026-27 budget was approved. Customers will pay an additional $5 per month per utility as a flat rate increase for water, sewer, and electric (an additional $15 per month) plus, according to the town manager, a little less than an added $5 for GFL trash pick-up per month. A household using Town of Farmville water, sewer, and electric plus GFL trash pick-up through the Town will pay maybe $18 or $19 extra per month on their utility bill or $216-$228 additional per year. As someone noted in the citizen’s presentations, seniors on a fixed income will have no opportunity to use less air conditioning or less heat in order to lower that $5 monthly fee. Even if they lower their water usage, they will still incur an additional $5 monthly fee for water. Unless this extra $18 to $19 per month would be less than almost every TOF customer would pay for an appropriate usage increase, this flat rate would be considered regressive. It would disproportionately hurt lower income residents. If you think this flat rate increase would be too difficult for our seniors and/or for others, please sign up by 5:15 in the courtroom at Town Hall on Monday, July 6 in order to give a citizen’s presentation.
In previous years, the Town of Farmville has raised our rates on most, if not all, utilities. For example, the proposed Town of Farmville budget beginning July 1, 2025 included a 3.5% increase for water rates, 3.3% increase for sewer rates, 3.5% increase for electric rates, and a 2.4% increase for solid waste collection. When the cost to the TOF is increased, it makes sense for the customer’s bill to go up by that percentage of THAT PORTION of the water or electric rate. The entire rate does not necessarily have to go up by that percentage.
With the Pitt County revaluations which took effect January 1, 2024, and the Town keeping its property rate the same, we property owners paid the Town of Farmville an additional $850,000. in property taxes for one year. That is quite a sum as a yearly increase to the Town funds! How has this money been spent?
I have heard of landlords increasing Farmville rents in order to pass along these rising costs. So, renters and property owners have faced significant rent or property tax increases, as well as rising utility bills. The cost of living in any city or town is often a key consideration for people deciding where they will move. It is extremely unwise for any municipality to use its Enterprise Funds (electric, water, sewer, etc.) to prop up its General Fund. In other words, it really hurts a town or city to overcharge consumers for utilities in order to pad the General Fund.
Our water and sewer rates in the Town of Farmville have been comparably high for years. According to the latest figures on the UNC School of Government dashboard, if your household in the Town of Farmville used 5,000 gallons of water per month for 12 months, you will have paid $43.85 more per month or $526.20 more per year in water and sewer than households using 5,000 gallons per month from the Greenville Utilities Commission (GUC). Farmville’s $121.31 per 5,000 gallons is far above Greenville’s $77.46 and Winterville’s $80.49, and quite a bit more than the state median of $94.82.
This gap has widened dramatically since July 1, 2021, when the Farmville household paid $28.18 more per month for water and sewer for 5,000 gallons than a GUC household, or $338 more per year. Even then, the gap was significant.
Use this UNC School of Government dashboard to compare Farmville’s water and sewer rates to those of other municipalities around the state.
https://dashboards.efc.sog.unc.edu/nc
If your family is like ours, most months you have paid the Town of Farmville surprisingly more for your water and sewer than for your electricity.
In 2015 the Town of Farmville entered into an agreement to become a wholesale customer and to buy water from the Greenville Utilities Commission. The cost per 1,000 gallons would go up by 10 cents for four consecutive years. The starting rate was $1.61 per 1,000 gallons, then it went to $1.71, $1.81, $1.91 and $2.01 in the succeeding years. The agreement was that starting in 2020 there would be an annual rate analysis.
Quoting the increase of the cost of the actual water as only a PERCENTAGE compared to the PERCENTAGE of the increase in our total water bill is misleading. The cost of the actual water we get is only portion of our residential water bill. The Town has to maintain infrastructure, run operations and pay personnel in the water department and in billing. Just because the cost of the actual water might go up by 3%, it does not mean that all of the other costs of parts of the water bill have increased by that same percentage. We customers deserve a more thorough explanation of increases than someone saying, for example, that Greenville Utilities Commission increased our water cost by such-and-such a percentage. That would tell only a small part of the story.
celiastone 