Water and sewer rates will be increasing 10 percent with the February utility billing.  The City buys the majority of its water from the City of Westminster and the 2007 water purchase contract has meant more expensive water costs. Similarly, sewage treatment is a service the City buys from our neighbor Thornton.  The contract has not changed, but the rate changes are now annual and much more significant.   Additionally, the City is addressing an expensive water and sewer line replacement program.

The City is now digging into savings for the annual operating expenses, primarily water purchases and sewer service, and the capital expenses needed to maintain the water and sewer line reconstruction program.  Many of our older water and sewer lines are now thirty and forty years old. The City’s infrastructure is simply aging.  The lines are being replaced relying on a scheduled capital replacement program that is expected to cost $1.25 million per year.  This year, the budgeted deficit is $680,000.  It is hoped that with very competitive bidding on the capital construction projects, due to the depressed economy, that the deficit will be less than $500,000.

Current reserves are adequate for the City to transition to the new Westminster water rate structure, handle the Thornton sewer rate changes and faithfully follow a needed water and sewer line replacement schedule.  The average single family residential water and sewer billing will increase $3.72 per month from $37.27 to $40.99. With this increase, our rates in Federal Heights will be similar to the average water and sewer bills in our neighboring cities.

The 2009 Budget is available for viewing at the following link.

To download the PDF file to your local hard drive, right-click the link and choose "Save As ..." from the context menu.  (Mac users use Control-click instead of right-click.)

 2009 Budget - City of Federal Heights (2.98 Mb) 

The 2007 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the City of Federal Heights is available at the following link:

 2007 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (922.61 Kb)