Water, Sewer, Solid Waste Rate Study and Development Impact Fee Study – City of Redding, CA

The City of Redding has a population of over 90,000 people and hundreds of businesses. Their basic services of water, sewer and trash were perhaps taken a bit for granted. For a number of reasons, some of them political, the City had not conducted cost-of-service or rate studies for these basic services in over 15 years.

This resulted in an unsustainable fiscal environment. It was imperative that the finances were studied and robust rate structures put in place. NBS was hired to do that very thing.

The project team completed an extensive and highly visible cost-of-service study of water, sewer, and solid waste rates as well as overall system capacity charges. Given the length of time since previous studies had been conducted, our approach first addressed City policies and overall community objectives in developing rate structure alternatives for consideration. A key part of this study was working with a City Council-appointed Citizens Advisory Group that reviewed rate alternatives and provided recommendations to the Council. The key tasks supporting the effort included preparing financial and rate setting policies, developing financial plans, projecting net revenue requirements, conducting cost-of-service analyses, and designing rate alternatives.

In the end, the City and the community came together, implementing sustainable rate structures that support both the services themselves and the infrastructure necessary for them.

“As expected, both you (Greg Clumpner) and Kim Boehler displayed the superb technical knowledge needed to complete the study. Further, the willingness of each of you to go above and beyond most expectations by grinding through multiple iterations of the study as requested by the City on short notice was exemplary.” * – Brian Crane, Assistant Public Works Director

* This testimonial is not related to any municipal advisory services performed by NBS.

For more information, please contact: Greg Clumpner, Financial Consulting Group – Utilities Director, gclumpner@nbsgov.com.