This is an opinion column.

The Birmingham Water Works is gonna make you pay more. Always.

Which is not a news flash. The water works wanting more is as sure a thing as death or tax breaks for people who already have too much money. What I should have said is…

The water works is gonna make you pay even more. And it’s gonna care even less about what you have to say about it.

Ponder this:

If your water bill was $100 a month in 2015 (you probably ought to bathe more, but that’s another issue) you’d pay about $144 for the same water today.

But last week – props to my AL.com colleague Joseph Bryant for keeping tabs – the water board cut your ability to complain about it, or anything else, by a third.

Water up 44%. Check. Ability to complain down 33%. Check.

They don’t want to hear you. So they cut public comment time in their monthly meetings from three measly minutes to two even measlier minutes.

Maybe you want to ask why they pay lawyers 9% more this year than last. You’ll get a third less time than you did last month.

Maybe you want to question why the board spent 25% more on consultants this year. You get two minutes for your two cents on their $6 million.

Maybe you just want to reminisce about the history of indictments, infighting, overspending, lavish travel, mismanagement and general buffoonery. You get two minutes. But only if you are lucky.

Because now, to talk at all, you have to wait like a vulture – or a water works lawyer – for the meeting agenda to be made public. Then the countdown begins. You have 24 hours from the moment the agenda drops to get on the list. Like it’s a Taylor Swift concert or something.

It’s enough to make you want to get on the list. If only to ask why they keep spending your money to figure out why you don’t like them.

That’s something I could actually explain in two minutes. It’s worth remembering.

This board was so concerned after years of playing the Washington Generals’ role in J.D. Power customer satisfaction surveys that it paid Southeast Research $69,000 last year – you can buy a six bedroom home on Oporto-Madrid Boulevard for that – to do its own survey. Then it paid $37,500 to join J.D. Power, hoping to skew the results.

And still, after flushing six figures to figure out why people think they are awful, they again ranked last in customer service in J.D. Power’s survey of comparable utilities.

And then – oh my god – they raised rates by 4.9% this year, the biggest increase in more than a decade. And then – look out, Elizabeth, I’m coming – they cut public comment time.

The board, in a statement, said speakers with “an agenda” had misused the comment time. But then, anyone with something to say has an agenda.

I’ll be honest with you. I get tired of writing about irony and hypocrisy and stupidity in government at all levels. It is draining.

Maybe I’ll just let Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson say it.

“So, who the hell do they think they are to change the policy where the public, who pays their bills, can’t complain?” she said.

Damn. Maybe not everybody needs three minutes to get to the point after all.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner at AL.com.