Westport is raising water rates 15 percent.

In a 4-1 vote Monday evening, select board members approved increasing the rate to help reduce a $50,000 deficit within the water enterprise fund, and to bring the town back in line with a rate structure approved by the select board 22 years ago but seldom followed in recent years.

Westport currently pays Fall River $7.21 per 100 cubic feet of water, or CCF, but is only charging rate payers $7.28 per CCF — “this is a very, very small margin,” Maury May, of the infrastructure oversight committee, said. “The margin should never have gotten that small.”

Under the new structure approved by the select board, with Jake McGuigan opposed, that rate will rise to $8.30, an approximately 15 percent increase authorized by the 2003 policy.

Bob Daylor, of the town’s infrastructure oversight committee, said the increase “won’t bring the investment fund totally solvent. But it’ll reduce the deficit we now have.”

The town is working to expand water access in the north part of town, and will bring the Macomber School online with Fall River water. While town administrator James Hartnett continues to work with the Spindle City on a new agreement, May said he hopes the new rate will drop as the town purchases more water and presumably, pays less per CCF as a result.

“We’re going from 168 customers to at least 200,” he said. “Along with the Macomber School and several of the businesses along Route 6” tying in, “we’re hopeful that we can grow the system a little bit — there’s better finances in growth.”

In any case, select board members said, Westport ratepayers are currently paying less than what they could be under that 2003 policy, which authorized the town to charge 15 percent more than what Westport pays Fall River per CCF.

Yet that rate structure has not been followed consistently in recent years. Between the 2019 and 2022, the town held the rate steady at $7.04 before increasing it in 2023 to $7.28, where it has stood since. And as recently as 2018, rates substantially higher — between 2015 and 2018, the cost per CCF was $8.80.

So in actuality, board chairwoman Shana Teas said, “the residents have been benefiting from a reduced rate.”

Teas said she hopes the town’s rising water usage along the Route 6 corridor will help keep rates low. But regardless, she said officials need to do more to keep on top of enterprise fund expenses, water usage and the rate, after keeping them relatively steady for the past six years.

“We should have been revising the water rates more frequently in the first place,” she said. “The more volume of water we purchase, the lower the per unit cost we have from Fall River, so I think that’ll help people.”

“I think it’s going to be incumbent on us to stay on top of the rate changes so that we can go back and lower the rate when we need to.”

Jake McGuigan was the only select board member to vote against the plan. Noting that 60 percent of residents voted against the $30 million Greater Route 6 water and sewer plan, “I don’t think Westport should be getting into becoming a utility company.”