Broomfield officials say they must decide whether or not to increase utility fees to all residents by a possible 50% to to maintain aging water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure.
City government staffers propose utility rate increases of almost $40 per month on resident bills to fund a backlog of repairs. The increases would bring a resident’s estimated total monthly bill to $119.90 and would be split between water, sewer and stormwater services.
City and County Manager Jennifer Hoffman said at a meeting on Tuesday that Broomfield was built in a way that didn’t “have the future in mind.”
“We kept banking that things were going to continue to be really stellar for a long period of time … and then we hit the recession,” Hoffman said of Broomfield’s early rapid growth.
In 2008, Hoffman said the recession should have been a moment for government officials to plan for the future. Instead, Broomfield continued to grow more, and more quickly.
“Tonight is about an ideology that served Broomfield well for decades — until it didn’t,” Hoffman said.
Graham Clark, interim director of finance, said that Broomfield has long had the least expensive water on the Front Range. The price was the least expensive because workers did not take care of infrastructure.
“It’s not an enviable spot, because it just proves that we haven’t taken care of what we have,” Clark said.
Ken Rutt, Broomfield’s director of public works, said that the ideology of focusing on new development let critical infrastructure repairs and maintenance fall to the wayside.
“We cannot minimize or overstate the need to invest in our utility infrastructure,” Rutt said. “Without immediate action, Broomfield’s aging infrastructure will continue to deteriorate.”
Rutt said that in 2004, past council members chose not to establish a separate stormwater fund and instead pulled money from the general and sewer funds for stormwater needs. He said that the majority of Broomfield’s stormwater ponds are past needing maintenance.
“We have currently identified 52 water quality ponds throughout our community and over 116 detention basins without funding to maintain,” Rutt said.
As an example, Rutt said that the maintenance of removing cattails from a single pond in the Anthem neighborhood would cost the city and county $35,000. To maintain a pond by dredging it costs $50 to $300 per cubic foot of water, with one pond’s dredge estimate sitting at more than $225,000, he said.
Rutt said that Broomfield has $3.428 billion of infrastructure in water utilities alone. That infrastructure includes potable water, wastewater and water reclamation systems, all of which need to be maintained soon, or Broomfield could face a litany of risks including inadequate water supply and pressure for fire protection and increase in contamination events that could cause adverse public health outcome, he said.
To avoid those risks, Rutt said that his staff recommends an increased investment into sewer infrastructure of $6 to $8 million per year to chip away at the maintenance backlog, which sits at $23 million.
The council directed government staffers to move forward with a proposal to increase monthly utility bill fees. A proposed ordinance to increase monthly fees is expected to be discussed in October.