A Resolution By The Board Of County Commissioners Of Pasco County, Florida, Revising The Water, Wastewater And Reclaimed Water Rates, Fees, And Charges; And Providing An Effective Date
What the county recorded
Staff recommendation
Approve
DispositionApproved
Approved Staff’s recommendation.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Sep 3, 2025
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Sep 3, 2025
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
This case, across meetings
UT-25-0689 in full →Heard once. UT-25-0689 appears on no other agenda in the archive.
- Sep 3, 2025BoardP48▶Approvedthis item
What was said
Machine transcription of 28m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 96% of 154 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Okay, P forty eight.
P-48 was advertised in the Tampa Bay Times August 20, 2025.
Good afternoon, Commissioner's Tracy Overturf, Public Infrastructure, Fiscal and Business Administration, Interim Director. Item P forty eight is a resolution revising the water, wastewater and reclaimed water rates, fees, and charges, and providing an effective date. This is the second public hearing on this item with the first being in New Port Richey on eight nineteen. And we have our consultant Justin Grant here to present the finding and recommendations of the study. And we also have the utilities team here to answer any questions you may have.
Have right here.
Good afternoon. Great to see you all again. All right, Justin Grant, Stantec.
Um Justin, are you thinking you're gonna do that presentation that you did last time?
You know what? Thank you so much for interrupting me because I was gonna ask the board if they would like to see the presentation again, right? Uh given it's the second public hearing, but certainly I'll take direction from the board on whatever they would like to do.
What I'm gonna check and see is there anyone here that wants is here to speak to this utility rate study public hearing. One person? There's two? I can't see the other hand.
Not solid waste, utilities. Is that you here for So what the water and sewer utility, yes, correct. So do the procedure. That's forty nine. That's the next item.
Okay, um but before you start, let me have him um do the procedures.
Well, I mean we can do that. This one I was I was gonna let you go through forty eight and forty nine and then do them at fifty,
but we're not it's up to you. No, she she just thought we had to do it now, so I was following what she said. Um Okay, do we want the full presentation?
Okay.
Yeah.
Um I don't need the full presentation, but I did have some people from uh The Trinity or Wintry that wanted to speak. I don't know if they were online.
I do not have any one on one.
Oh they're here. Okay, all
right.
So this is the item you want to speak to. Okay.
Okay. Well why don't you go ahead and give your presentation and that may answer some of those questions.
So you'd like me to give it once more?
How long was it? We have all day though.
I've only got about ten slides in the base, right? Uh and a couple in backup, depending on if the board would like to see them.
Very quickly. It's my regular
test.
You have a synology.
Justin, do you have like
a high level
You know you know what's probably good is is you're right, Commissioner. What I can do is I can probably do kind of slides one and two, why are we here, what do we do, and go right to the recommendation slide that summarizes everything we've got. And that maybe will be a shorter version if the board likes that.
And then if we hear from the public and we haven't you know gone over the parts, we
can
have you come back up and answer the hows and whys and all that.
Absolutely. Happy to do it. Okay, so we'll do the abbreviated. As we talked about, uh this one was given in full on eight nineteen, and so walk through and get our clicker working here. Okay, perfect. So why do we do this? This is every four years. So this is kind of just the overall of why uh the board's considering this item. They do it through two public hearing, but ultimately they take a look at uh the utilities rate structure and kind of dump the bucket out. Look at four major pillars, right? Look at those revenue requirements, how much, what are your operating costs, your capital costs, your financial policies and things that you need to adhere
to for rating agencies, so on and so forth. How do you allocate Costs across your different customer groups, residential, commercial, industrial, etc. How do you design your rates? Why do you have certain block structures? Why do you have certain rates, fees, and charges, and how do those things compare to other utilities? And then ultimately how do you reset, you know, you take this opportunity here for other fees and charges when the utility decides to roll trucks and things for specialized services like meter installs and others, and including your environmental lab. cost recovery is the game for the utility and so the utility
takes this opportunity to to look at all the resources it expends to do those things and reset those fees to that. And so ultimately, let me go down right. This is your timeline. And so we're here in September 2025, right, where we're doing the second hearing. And so this will be the board board meeting where the board will consider adoption for the next four years. And then there in October, it'll implement implement for your residential or regular customers. And then in December, because of noticing requirements, those bulk rates will go into effect on 12.1. This
is where I'm going to skip through a lot of the other slides and we're going to go right here to the end and kind of summarize what those recommendations are. So the financial management plan for this one is a four-year plan that begins with a 375 increase in 26 and a 475 increase starting in 27 through 29. There's a slide in here that talks a lot about the major capital pressures for some large wastewater plants that are occurring starting in 27 that require that. And then you go through a retail rate, so there's no structural changes to water sewer. We have a few changes here for reclaim that adjust some
things on the residence. Initial side adds in two tiers, changes consumption, and then ultimately indexes it moving forward. It also links your connection fees with the rate study. Bulk rates are also addressed, water and sewer and reclaim, and then other fees as we mentioned are reset using that reconciliation method. And I'll pause there for public comment if that's what you desire, ma'am.
Yeah, is that good? Okay, let's uh let's have the public comment on this and then we'll see if we can help answer any questions. Co just go ahead and line up whoever has questions on this.
Good afternoon. My name is Margaret Walker and I live in Wintree Subdivision. As you know, it was one of the first subdivisions in that part of Pasco County. We're right off East Lake Road. I'm very proud of w it says Welcome to Pasco and there's Wintree and it's beautiful. And our water, you know, we had major problems with it. And they've been they've been resolved and we're happy about that.
You're in Aloha. We were.
Can you give
your
specific address to
[address removed]? And we're grateful that the water was resolved. But I think back in about two thousand and ten we went to FGUA I recently sent to Jack and several others copies of our invoices for water. During the dry season most are seeing between three hundred or two seventy five to three fifty a month in water. During I mean, during the rainy season. During the dry season people are seeing bills close to five hundred dollars a month. So we're asking
s for some oversight in that because since we made that change, we don't know what's happening. We don't know how long we're gonna have to live with these rates. Um And We're proud of Wintree. It's really, if you haven't driven through it, it's very well maintained. The people there have been there for 20, 30 years. They love Pasco County. They take pride in it. But as people are aging, it's getting harder and harder for our homeowners to afford these
rates. And so again, we'd like to see some oversight on that. We're right now sitting wondering how long are we going to see these bills this high and especially when we talk to other people who've been moved off. um, what was aloha? And when they hear our bills they're it's they're like, Oh, we're paying a hundred dollars a month even with watering our lawn so We'd just like some attention to this if we could. Thank you.
I I I used to live near there and actually my good friend um Gunther flag he developed WinTree and you are on Aloha. Um what was Aloha, now part of FTUA, and we have talked here about buying You have that system out. We're not there yet, but we're gonna be talking about it.
Well and that's what we've heard that others are having blown out. And we'd like to be on that list and maybe possibly expedited since we're fifteen years in and I just wanna make a comment. I have been living there since nineteen ninety. And when the first when the water issue f first started I was pregnant with my second child who's now almost twenty nine. So we've been pretty patient all these years and grateful for what was done, but many of us are approaching
retirement and five hundred dollars a month is just way too excessive. We just need some help. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Mm-hmm.
Hi, my name is Leisha Spencer and I live at [address removed]. Morgan and I are neighbors and We built our home in 1992 there and we've loved living there. We love Pasco County. It's been great for our family. We've raised our daughters and now our daughters and grandchildren also live in Trinity. Um and I I thought maybe it would be helpful. I know that um Commissioner Mariano maybe has been able to
share some of the invoices, but I did do uh a a quick overview to give you an idea. We're I'm a family of two now, just my husband and I, and we live on a corner lot, but in a a community, a neighborhood division subdivision. And since the um first of this year, just to give you an idea, um In January of this year our bill was three hundred and twenty dollars and eighty-three cents. Then in um February it was two hundred and seventeen
dollars and fifty seven cents, and then it went to two ninety five twenty, then three eighty nine sixty three Then in April it was $423.41. And then in May it was $472.95. And June, we must have had a little rain because it was $275.46. And then in July it was $303.93. So again, any attention you can give us to help with this matter would be so much appreciated.
We appreciate it. Thank you.
Did anyone else want to speak to this? Didn't didn't you raise your hand over there?
No one else? Okay. Um well that's not anything you can go ahead. You can try and address it.
I'm not sure anyone is no normal line either?
There is no one online.
Uh can I make a comment?
Yeah.
Of course. So uh I've known Margaret Walker now for many, many years. Family's uh kids went to school the other day. So she called me up and uh was we were talking about it. And from years ago when we first took it over, how bad the water was, it did get a lot better. When she told me her rates of like five hundred dollars a month, I go, that's absolutely absurd. Uh and I told her that what the board had talked about looking at taking and we've taken over Aqua, took over Lindrick. I thought this one should be next just because of the timing of was one of the first
four to be taken over and looked at anyway. Uh I know it's the most expensive, but uh I talked to Administrator Carbeller about this. And he he thinks a good approach, and Mike, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but to do kind of like what we did with Lindrick and Aqua, let's go to take a look at the system, find out what it takes to if we have repairs to make, uh, they've got the uh money they had for separate sewer program. Let's go take a look at what it takes to take the system over. then go put a legislative ask together along
with some numbers and facts and then go try to get funding for it like we did with the other two to keep
the cost up and make it happen.
So
Well actually it wasn't legislator money, it was um It was that other money we got. Sprinkle? No, it didn't come from the legislature. It came from the Feds.
What was the money that we got?
It was the CARES Act.
That's what we used to buy Landry County. We did get a three thousand three million dollar sprinkle from when um uh House Speaker Sprouse was in, but we used that to sleeve the Gulf of Harbor's um neighborhood to stop the water intrusion that was affecting the w wastewater state.
Thank you, thank you, Eric. Uh Commissioner Oakley, it was actually ARPRA, the American Rescue
Plant Act. Yeah.
I
know
CARES was right around that same
timeframe, but thank you. Okay. Well we we talked Mike won't show Okay Mike go ahead Mike.
Yeah I just want to add to the conversation. I I've asked uh utilities to implement the um study of both systems uh similar to that. And so the idea the idea behind those systems is to do kick the tires, I guess if you will, see see what works, what doesn't work, and come up then with uh an implementation plan. I will tell you that when we originally reported this to the board, we started doing this back in, I don't know, 16, 17, we were talking about this, you
know,
the allocation system was was to be last. Because it was the largest, the most debt saddled, and had the largest customer base. Um, I do think that, you
know,
whatever direction the board wants to give, it's important that we do these studies because otherwise it's the operational takeover is is also a complicated maneuver. You have the Aloha systems, which are about 16,000 customers, versus the consolidated system sitting around 6,000 customers. I think Lindrik, uh was around three and if I'm not mistaken the aquas were were around three to five. So much much smaller. So there is a heavier lift there. But we have a lot more people. Well and and I have I have had discussions too with utilities. We
do have a seat on the FGOA board uh to be extremely cautious of how much debt these systems potentially will will take on in the next couple of years. And so those conversations are being had. So what I would like to do is complete those studies and then we could bring something back to the board for direction on to implement because the next step will be then how to handle the financing. You got about eighty million dollars worth of debt still sitting on uh this particular system, the aloha system. I don't know what consolidated is, just
I do. Yeah, consolidated uh is about thirty-seven plus
million. That's that actually very high uh debt per customer. But regardless, we would we would need to seek that. And then we could seek legislative asks for individual projects if if that's if that's the case and that works. That's what we did with with Flintrick. It was a it was that particular one, but the overall buyout of the debt actually was using the ARPA funds. I do recall that now. So I'd like to bring that back to the board probably I mean I'll I'll set a timeline of six months and then we'll see with utilities comes back with and then we can set the priority but then we will have to discuss um implications
to the existing rates.
Yeah, because everyone's rates in the county will go up. When we take on the debt. From that neighborhood's From Aloha and uh Madhatter I think it was.
Is sea forest in that uh study as well? Thank you.
I believe Seaforest Falls would would already be on our
So if you like Mike what I can do is I can go right past this and let me go back. I think last meeting we uh we looked at the two service areas for the two systems, so maybe that'd be a good refresher to add to this discussion. Here's consolidated and so the two large terms, right? Consolidated a number of smaller areas, right? The most commonly known here for Matt Hatter, right, east and west. you have a bunch of smaller systems within it uh that are put together and then I'll let that digest for a moment and I'll go to Pasco so you can see the individual individual areas
there as well. And so Pasco a little bit smaller here, but uh you heard my Aloha. Yeah, so Aloha, you see down there in that bottom left corner, right, as I'm standing uh approaching it here, and then seven Spring Service Area is that larger box on the screen, and then of course you have you know the names of those areas above.
So is that i is that in New Port Richey or no?
The aloha system. Um I don't want to speak out of turn whether that's in or outside of city limits. Right. That I believe I'm I'm hearing folks here in the room say outside, um but we'd have to double check the map but I don't want to speak out of turn.
That is looks like uh t uh Southern Oaks and Riverside Village and I know Riverside's in FG right. No, the one
on the water, Aloha Gardens.
Oh no. No, that's in Holiday.
Oh Holiday, okay.
'Cause there's Gulf Harbor's up at the top.
The one I'm talking about, what it's um by the car dealership.
Cross by you.
Cross by you.
There are some small privately owned ones that are not part of FGUA around
the county. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So the the and I think we we remarked on this a little bit last time. The the key difference between the two systems, and certainly this board had outlined its intentions to walk through the FGUA acquisitions. There are four systems, two of which are done. The other two we've discussed here is there's a predefined process for completing those acquisitions. transitions, which is basically take over the mortgage of the system, right? So it's the debt, Mike talked about it, you know, how much leverage there is. So there is a whole definition outlined in a transition that you have out would do a transition agreement. Per the interlocal
agreement between the county and the FGA that dictates how they these things get taken over. What gets a little bit more complicated with some of those private systems is the biggest thing right on the the very front end is how do you value it, right? And so you're gonna have a private entity that will be used a certain way and will certainly probably have studies done and will name its price. The county will probably have differing feelings and you'll have to go through a heavy l level of analysis to ultimately get to to something that is agreed upon. Whereas the FGA stuff, that part of it's done. It's a known element. So that's just a key difference for the board to
consider as they talk about those smaller utilities.
Okay. Um but that's a separate subject from what we're dealing with today.
Well Madam Chairman Mariano.
Yeah.
The reason I wanted to bring it up is we're we're looking at rates all the way through twenty-seven, so I just wanted to make this part of something to think about that if it does come back, we are looking at this and
trying to do it.
Doing it again.
Yeah, and Commissioner, you you outlined it correctly, right? And so I'll reframing what we talked about two weeks ago was that you know, this measure here, and certainly the county attorney could provide clarity for your rate structure. So what we're asking the board to take a look at as a part of the measure that utilities is bringing forward today is to adopt the rate structure for twenty-six through twenty-nine. And so ultimately that would dictate that right there in that top left corner of this slide, three seven five and four seven five. For 27 through 29, those actions you're you're mentioning about these FGO acquisitions, when those things are completed,
the tire kicking, as Mike says, right-the further evaluation of those systems, and then ultimately they go through uh what ends up being a diligence process that's required through state statute that has to find those acquisitions in the public interest. The utility would need to come back to this board and find that it's in a public interest via public hearing and And at that time the board would be able to, you know, consider whatever offsetting financial measures would be required. So Commissioner, to your point, right, that's where you know they consider a revised capital plan and and the amount of leverage that's
on the system and whatever that separate rate increase that the board would like to consider to take that on. That's separate from the measures that you're looking at today.
I I do think for me that's where we need to end up personally. I'd like to even keep going after the other ones, like that one I have, uh it's very small that Amskills is on. It's owned by that company out of Canada. But it's all it's really polluted water that they're delivering. Um, did you wanna say something else?
Yes. Justin, you're gonna cover like part of the reason for these rates uh as far as what the state mandates are as far as water quality standards that's make us too higher treatment of the s
of of water down. Are you talking about the current rates that are being proposed in the utility or are you talking about the the rates that were being described for the FGUA systems? Uh I'm just talking for the regular system. For the for the current system? Yeah, so we certainly work closely with with the utility now and and and certainly you know there's a lot and and I'll go back to this slide here. I know we didn't cover it today. But right here, so we talked through a lot of the key expansion projects and some of those added costs, right, that come in with you know latest regulation and the
additions of a number of different treatment requirements and things like that that go into the design of these plans. Whereas when you were looking at some of these things four years ago, you know, uh inflation notwithstanding, right, you have additional regulatory requirements that are placed on the design, some of these things that have inflated that. Slide you're seeing here is over $400 million, right, just between two points.
And Madam Chair, that that was why a a a lot of this big rate increases here, because not only just the expansion of the system of one of 'em, but the improvement of the water quality that the state's m making us do, which I'm not opposed to doing, it's gonna make the water quality better, but that's what's driving it. So if you wonder why the rates are going up three seven five, four seven five. It's it's not for what we're doing just running the system, it's just mandates being put on this.
This slide is your wastewater treatment plant. So it's while you're delivering potable water, it has to go someplace. Yeah. System only has so much capacity. What's it, eighty ish percent that the the D E P makes you do a Bumps up the you have to do a you have to do an expansion of your plan. Usually it's before you're
five. You've got to be a two-thirds you're already building or an active plan.
Um, could you put one more slide up that shows our rates once raised compared with our communities around us? Sure.
This slide has a little timing in it, so give it one second. Here we go. And very next one. Okay, so this is the current bill comparison, right? And so we're going to find.
Little hard to see for those in the room here. But the orange bar highlights Pasco County there in the middle, and it looks at other communities right in the region that have multi-year rate plans that are that are highlighted here. So you see Pasco County with a 375 and 475. And then you see Hillsboro County, large neighbor directly to the south. That's got a multi-year plan at 5%. Tampa has some higher rates there at the bottom of the graph. St. Pete, you know. looking at six, two, five, and sevens across the board. And so what's interesting, and I'd like to highlight some
of the commentary from this board right two weeks ago, you know, it kind of speaks to the affordability slide that was back on this slide right before this. uh that had the uh the timing in it. And so let me go back right here. And so the delta here is Pasco County typically or historically has taken an approach that has been kind of a steady eddy approach that has had you know nominal rate increases consistently over time that avoids some of those rate shocks that you see in some other communities where you know they may choose to you know delay
rate increases and things like that that ultimately right some those costs, right? And Commissioner Mariano, you referenced it, the inflation, the additional regulatory costs, they come to roost at some point, right? They have to be paid for. And so right now you know Pasco County, as compared to water and sewer CPI for the nation, right, represents almost a thirty percent delta over the past ten years on how they've chosen to do the rate increases.
You know, let me throw an idea out there that just came to me and we can Take it up or throw it out. Um but if we wanna prepare ourselves to start buying those other water Yeah. utilities from FGUA Do we want to put a little bit in here so we start building our match? that we would ask from the le you know, we're gonna have to match whatever we asked from the legislature. We're gonna have to say we have some. So uh does it make sense to just increase
this just a tiny bit and start building a kitty to prepare ourselves to buy this? 'Cause this does not contemplate that, right?
No ma'am, this is uh like I said, they're they're separate measures.
It might be fiscally responsible to start
preparing ourselves for that. Well I mean I think I would do that as a separate action. I think these are the advertised rates. Yes sir. They're public published four
year rate study, yes. Yes, sir.
Ah, we should have done that last.
But that can be addressed as we learn more about the systems and then we can actually see what the true cost is going to be and that you can build that in potentially if you have to make great adjustments to acquire a system. Well
we we know
we're gonna have to
make rate adjustments. Um you did it, you've been through it. Yes ma'am. Twice before we're gonna have to have rate adjustments. Yeah but we could soften the
blow, that's what I'm saying. Certainly. And I think Mike Mike speaks to it well, right? Having gone through those first two acquisitions, the um the kicking of the tires approach, right? The ul ultimately it's a condition assessment, engineering assessment of all the assets within the system, how they're functioning. Really letting utility staff and their representatives get in there and really take a look at how things are working. Because the prescribed CIP plan on how FGA may be handling and running the system likely doesn't exactly align with the way that the county would like to do it, right? And I speak from that from a historical basis on the
revisions that this county took to do the first two systems, made significant investments into those things and the capital plan and the way they were going to operate. Yeah was significantly different than FGA did. Now a lot of that is inner ties and things like that that would connect it to the larger system. So that's that is the part that is not currently completely vetted out that sounds like the county administrators already provided direction for county staff to begin that process.
Okay, I'm gonna throw something else out there and I know um it's like the catch all, but our C D B G D R money. Um Uh um look like looking I I don't know if in any of these areas it was affected by the hurricanes and there's um things that need to get fixed in those areas. Um You know, we're partnering with FGUA in Riverside Village with uh Representative Yeager and getting fifty
people, fifty homes off of septic. Um I'm wondering if there's an opportunity within any of these systems to help um fix fix them or do something with that debt, you know, just use that any of that money to help us when we come down the road to buy it.
I'm not entirely sure if acquisitions are part of it. I'm certain that there's probably mitigation dollars that projects could qualify for to whether that's hardening or things that can make the system better. We would have to research that.
Yeah, I think it I think it's worth it to take a look and see if there's anything we can do to chip off some of the cost of it with some of that money.
You know, I I I don't know the grant off the top of my head, but I do know and and Commissioner Oakley referenced it b previously is that there was some cooperation in Lindrick, right, where you got some you know state funding where there was kind of that cooperative capital program. That's
FGUA.
That could be something. Yeah, I think I believe it was procured under FGUA. I know the county was involved in some of those things, some of those cooperative efforts for offsetting CIP, you know, costs that the FGUA system would otherwise
It
was allowed for
our argument better.
Well we we we paid some bills and it freed up some other money. Um I just know that when when and for the residents that have that water, when we came in and took over Lindrick And Typically FGUA is just putting band-aid on issues. They're not fixing it. Um they're doing, you know
they're subject to heavy rate pressure.
Yeah, yeah. Because they don't want to raise your rates yet anymore 'cause you already have probably some of the highest in the state. Um so they don't go in and like really fix it. So when the county came in and took it over and fixed it Oh my gosh, the water uh you know, it was everything got so much better, um rather than just fi fixing one little thing. They were tearing up my roads all the time. Um so if we can just be creative, that's all I'm asking. Okay, I'll take a
motion. There's no more discussion.
Move approval. Second.
Uh all in favor? Aye. Okay. P forty nine.
All right. P forty nine was advertised in the Tampa Bay Times July thirtieth, twenty twenty five.