The City of Trinidad has partnered with Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) to conduct a water rate study to evaluate the City's financial ability to operate and maintain the public drinking water system for the next five (5) years and collect the necessary reserves for emergencies and capital improvements.
The industry standard is to conduct a rate study every five years to ensure revenues are covering expenses and costs are being applied to customer classes in a manner consistent with Proposition 218 case law. The City's current water rates were established in January 2012, through the adoption of Resolution 2012-01, setting annual 2.5% CPI increases through FYE 2017. Since the last water rate increase in 2017, inflation has increased approximately 25%.
Several factors complicated the City's ability to conduct a rate study in a timely manner following 2017 including several historic drought years, a management transition in 2018, COVID-19, and staffing challenges that came with the loss of nearly 30 years of water system institutional knowledge. The difficulty of recruiting a licensed in-house certified T-3 Water Operator forced the City to hire an outside consulting firm to operate the Water Plant. Rising costs and staff instability made predicting fixed costs nearly impossible until a stable horizon could be anticipated, so the City turned to a strategy of recruiting and training in early 2023 to turn the tide. The City successfully developed several Operators-In-Training nearing their T-2 Certification benchmark as of May 2024.
A once healthy Water Fund Reserve, however, was depleted in just under 3-years. Emergency budget stabilization measures have been strategized to support the Water System Operation budget until the new rates are established.
Beginning on May 28, 2024, the City Council was introduced to the draft rate options developed by RCAC. Follow-up hearings were scheduled June 11 and July 09 that eventually lead to the Prop 218 process implemented to legally adopt the new rates. The Prop 218 hearing date was held on September 24, 2024, with the new adopted by resolution and implemented beginning October 01, 2024.
This page, along with the City Council meeting date links archive the documents used to justify and understand the proposed rates, identify the option selected by the Council, and notify all customers as part of this process.