By Edgar Garcia
On March 1, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board will resume their service disconnections for customers who have overdue bills. This will resume their typical function after freezing disconnections last year in Oct.
Brownsville suspended disconnections on Oct. 25 until Feb. 28th to ensure that people would have utilities during the increase in gas prices during 2022. However, should bills not be paid or there is not any type of contact or payment plan made with BPUB, the services of water, electricity or wastewater will be shut down.
In a press release on Feb. 15, BPUB announced the resuming of their service disconnections.
“The Brownsville Public Utilities Board (BPUB) will resume service disconnections for customers who have overdue electric, water and wastewater bills in March. On Oct. 17, 2022, for the purpose of aiding customers, BPUB recommended suspending service disconnections until Feb. 28, 2023 to the City of Brownsville Commission. The City Commission approved the recommendation at a Special Meeting of the City Commission on Oct. 25.”
Communications and Public Relations Manager, Ryan Greenfold explained the reasoning behind the freeze of disconnections last year.
“Essentially when the disconnections were halted, it was a time when bills had been significantly higher. A lot of that was driven by the price of natural gas at the time. It was causing a lot of bills to go up and it was something that we saw was able to cause some relief to costumers,” Greenfold said.
There are still things that anyone with outstanding balances can do to avoid having their water and other utilities shut off.
Lead Communications and Public Relations Coordinator for Brownsville Public Utilities Board Cleiri Quezada spoke at length on the multitude of ways that people with outstanding bills or financial issues can avoid being disconnected.
“I’d encourage everybody to reach out to our customer service department. Reach out to us and We’re available from 8 to 5pm and they can call us at 956 983-6121. They can ask us about our assistance program because we offer those as well. If anyone is having any financial hardship, we do offer assistance through CCRGV (Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley) and CACOST (Community Action Corporation of South Texas). They are organizations, state organizations that receive funds from the state and these funds need to go out to customers in need,[1] ” Quazada said.
She also spoke on the dangers of letting BPUB send the disconnection letter to qualify for the assistance programs.
“A lot of the time what ends up qualifying the customer is receiving that disconnection notice. So if you receive that disconnection notice, that might speed up the process of you qualifying for these programs. But we don’t encourage you that you wait because by that time you might be disconnected”.
Quezada assures that if anyone is unable to do it online, they are encouraged to make contact with BPUB, and come into the building as soon as they can to pay their bills, go to their website or download the app and send their forms in that way, including trying to qualify for CACOST. (Note this does not work for apple products but the app can still be downloaded from their website on those phones).
For more information please visit their website, call at (956) 983-6121, or go in person with an appointment from 8:00am-5:00pm Monday through Friday at the BPUB main building at 1425 Robinhood Dr, Brownsville, TX 78521. Additionally, contact Cacost or CCRGV at (956) 435-0379 and applications@cacost.org or (956) 541-0220 [2]
