Richland Hills · issues
Civic issues
Topics getting the most attention in Richland Hills public meetings, ranked by how frequently they come up.
Utility rate increases from Fort Worth
Your water bill goes up a bit this year — about $2 a month for a typical 2,000-gallon customer, more for heavy users — because wholesale costs from Fort Worth and TRA rose. It's far less than the 2024 study projected, and the city is adopting a tool to model rates in real time.
IT Infrastructure Replacement Package
The city was considering a broad replacement of aging network and server equipment — a Fortinet purchase of up to $210,000 from oil and gas reserves, Dell servers and storage up to $500,000 from the General Fund, and a seven-year meter network subscription of up to $43,763 per year.
Aging city IT network replacement
The city's 16 network switches — some dating to 2018 — are aging out of support, and replacing them piecemeal would cost roughly $99,000 up front. Staff propose a Meter "network as a utility" subscription at about $27,118 a year for five years, covering hardware, monitoring, firewalls and Wi-Fi with free upgrades. Council wants longer-term pricing and a cost comparison before signing anything.