Riverton City Council Work Session – March 17, 2026: Water Rate & Budget
Riverton City Council Work Session – March 17, 2026
The Riverton City Council held a work session on March 17, 2026, from 4:07 PM to 5:58 PM at Riverton City Hall. The meeting focused on a water rate study presentation by Shawn Koorn of HDR, followed by a budget discussion led by Administrative Services Director Nick Geer. Councilmembers present: Johnson, McDougal, Pierucci, and Smith. Councilmember Haymond was excused. Mayor Tish Buroker presided. No public comments were taken.
Water Rate Study Discussion
Shawn Koorn (HDR) presented the water rate study, explaining that current culinary and secondary water revenues are insufficient to cover operating and capital expenses over a 10-year horizon. He projected a need for rate adjustments, with culinary water requiring a more significant increase than secondary. Koorn recommended establishing differentiated customer classes (residential, PUDs, non-residential) to better reflect system usage. He outlined three alternatives:
- Alternative 1 & 2: Phased rate increases over three years, with Alternative 2 having a higher fixed base charge ($12 vs. $7) and lower consumption charges, both generating the same total revenue.
- Alternative 3: A larger one-time increase in year one (base charge to $15, higher consumption tiers) followed by annual inflationary adjustments, ultimately reaching the same revenue target in five years.
Councilmembers discussed tradeoffs between fixed base charges and consumption-based charges. Councilmember Pierucci emphasized that Alternatives 1 and 2 provide greater conservation incentives because residents have more control over their bill through usage. Councilmember Smith noted that 90% of users fall under 10,000 gallons, so conservation could reduce revenues. Councilmember McDougal argued for a one-time adjustment to avoid prolonged pain. City Manager Kevin Hicks clarified that all options assume borrowing for the capital funding gap, but that bonding decisions would be separate. Staff recommended that the council decide on a one-time vs. phased approach first, then refine the rate structure.
Consensus: The council agreed to pursue a one-time rate adjustment (similar to Alternative 3), but with a lower base charge and higher usage charges to better align costs with consumption and incentivize conservation. Staff will bring back several options with different base rate/usage combinations for further discussion. The council also supported separating residential, PUD, and non-residential customer classes.
Budget Discussion on Water Rate and Operational Budget
Nick Geer presented an updated budget overview, noting the general fund balance is at approximately 23%, slightly above the 20% target. He outlined revenue and expenditure changes, including:
- Adding $16,500 for printed calendars.
- Moving animal control funding from general fund to police.
- Moving street lighting to the C-roads fund.
- Creating a new 455 fund for police vehicle fleet self-funding.
- Staff recommendations: remove IT and fleet wage allocations from police operations, defer hiring an animal control technician, implement a flat 3% COLA (no step/merit increases), and pause the police vehicle rotation for one year to pay off remaining leases (saving $263,000).
The council discussed the possibility of using the excess general fund balance (above 20%) for capital transfers. Councilmember Pierucci noted that approximately $600,000 could be transferred to general CIP. The council will continue CIP discussions at the next meeting on April 7, 2026.
Key Outcomes
- Water Rates: Council directed staff to develop options for a one-time rate increase (similar to Alternative 3) with a lower base charge and higher consumption charges, to be presented at a future meeting. Bonding is to be considered separately.
- Customer Classes: Council supported establishing separate customer classes (residential, PUDs, non-residential).
- Budget: Staff will refine the budget based on the water rate direction and bring CIP proposals to the April 7 work session. The council acknowledged the need to discuss the general fund target reserve level.
- Adjournment: The work session adjourned at 5:58 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Can you know Spencer's not coming tonight? I do know that, but thank you for reminding me. No, he had to go to Atlanta for work at the last minute. And they asked him if he was gonna jump in online. He's like, he told me that's when they're doing all their stuff and so, which I totally get. All right, good evening, afternoon, everyone. Sorry for the delay. Apologize to you, Sean. But I can still tell you that we have been working and preparing, and that's what we were doing before. So thank you for your patience with us. We do not have a council member Heymond with us. He had to go to Atlanta on emergency business, so he will not be attending tonight. But the good news is he was able to attend one of our two-on-two meetings, so he does have the information. So it's just a work meeting. So you're welcome to come up. I've already opened up everyone's mics so they can ask questions as we go along. And um, we will start with Mr. Geer. I bet you'll be glad when it's July. That's actually what my wife says. Yep, she says, Are they sick of you yet? I said, I don't know. I guess we'll find out in July if I come back and next year or not. So thank you, Mayor. Um what I want to do really quick is just level set as we've talked with you guys. Um our our objective today is to talk about the water rate study that we've we've performed. And we're also here today to really kind of get feedback from council specific as to the path we want to go in terms of revenue for for culinary water specifically. Um we've talked about, and as I I emailed you guys uh yesterday, we have a couple different alternatives. Several of them kind of go down a path of a specific revenue and and dealing with revenues over three years and phasing in rate changes over three years. The other alternative is more of a we take it all at once, right? We go ahead and we make that that big adjustment now. Um and that's the direction that we need to get from from council denies which way we want to go. Now, obviously, we can still talk about if we pick a a path, we can still talk about whether we want, you know, to alter this, change that, maybe we want commercial this way, maybe we want um you know, PUDs this way. We can have that conversation, but we can do it within we understand here's the revenue that we're going to receive, right? And we can then alter and and smooth things out, right? So if we decide we make an adjustment here, that's gonna make these changes here ultimately to still reach the same revenue goal. And part of that is a to help us move on in the budgetary process. We need revenues to be able to move on from that that that structure and to be able to set what we're going to do and have the rest of the conversations we need to. But the second piece of that is also to allow you know us and Sean to really hone in on what kind of changes we need to make because right now there's a there's a a lot going on. So I'm gonna turn the time over to the Sean Korn. He'll go through his presentation. You'll obviously have questions. A lot of this um we we did send out on Monday, so I know it's still really fresh for you guys. Um, but we'll we'll turn it over to him and let him kind of walk through the analysis and answer questions, and then we'll be here for questions as well. Um so we'll go to there. Thank you, Nair. Mayor Council, good to be here with you all. So many of these slides are repeat what we talked about. I'll go through those rather quickly, but if you want me to stop, please stop me. As Nick said, really, as we go through this, our goal here this afternoon is to come back and look at the results of the rate study for both culinary and secondary water, really focused on the overall adjustment to revenues.
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