Frequently Asked Questions

City Council normally votes on water and sewer rates every year.

Following industry best practices, the city periodically reviews how it sets rates to cover the costs of providing service. The city conducted a Rate and Fee Cost of Service Study (PDF) in 2018 to determine the amount of rate revenues that must be recovered from each customer class. A new Cost of Service Study is being planned for 2025.

January 1, 2024

The city has been charging tiered, increasing block rates since 1975. At that time there were three tiers implemented. There were also different tiers and rates in the summer and winter seasons. All the tiers cost more the more a customer would use. In 1993, the city got rid of the winter/summer split and went to year-round tiers and rates.

Charter section 14.4 authorizes City Council to fix rates for public utility services. Rates shall not be discriminatory within any classification of users.

Charter section 14.6 requires that utility rates be fixed so as to at least meet all the operating costs of the utility.

No. The rate proposal is designed to meet the operating costs of the utility, so that the utility breaks even.

The city's water, sewer and stormwater utilities are considered as an Enterprise. City Council adopted an ordinance in 1994 establishing the water and sewer utility, and in 2015, amended and restated the ordinance to include the stormwater utility. A Utility Enterprise receives its funding from the customer charges and fees that are needed to pay for the costs of performing services. Because the utility is an enterprise, and the funding is from fees charged for the services provided to our customers, City Council has the authority to adjust the rates and fees charged by the utility, and to issue debt to fund utility projects.

No, the city does not offer any sort of waiver, rebate or reduction for water and sewer tap fees. Our staff specifically calculates the tap fees for every new development to ensure that development is paying for its fair share of access to the city's water and sewer infrastructure, and for access to the city's water supply. Once a tap fee is paid, that new property pays water and sewer rates just like all other customers. For redevelopment projects, credits for tap fees previously paid are part of the calculation, but tap fees are not waived or otherwise reduced; they are essential to ensure growth helps pay for growth.

Because the utility is considered an Enterprise, City Council can adopt the rates and fees needed to fund these services. While City Council has the legal authority to subsidize the Utility Fund with the General Fund up to a certain amount, staff believes the financial management of the city is best served when rate payers directly fund the services they receive. In addition, the General Fund has its own infrastructure needs, and the use of the General Fund to offset Utility Fund needs would limit the resources to address those needs.

Because we don't have sewer meters, the amount we charge our customers for sewer service is calculated based on the water used in the winter months and billed the months of January, February, and March. That is our best gauge of how our customers are using water indoors, since there is typically little outdoor water use happening in the winter months.

The city has built and maintained a sewer system that stands ready to serve all city customers at any time. While the average single-family residential customer uses 4,000 gallons of water in the winter time, some customers have little or no water use in these months. Staff recognizes that even though some customers may be gone from their homes during a portion of the year, and others may use very little indoor water in the winter, the city must operate the wastewater system to provide that service at any time.

To ensure that each customer pays an appropriate amount to keep the sewer system ready to provide service, all customers, both residential and commercial, pay a minimum monthly 'readiness to serve' charge that is set at an amount equivalent to a 2,000 gallon monthly charge. With water revenues, all customers pay a fixed fee to cover the operation of the water system, regardless of water use. In the wastewater system, a minimum charge provides a similar level of equity.

Tiered rates are an established method of recovering costs to the city's system caused by users of all usage levels, and they have been used in Westminster for more than 40 years.

Westminster is an irrigation-season peaking utility. The water plants are sized to meet the water demand on the highest water use day in the year, generally that day is in the first half of July when about 1/3 of the demand is indoor and 2/3 is outdoor irrigation. During most of the year, that plant capacity is not required to meet demand. If there was no outdoor irrigation, the city's plants would only need to be 1/3 of the size that they were built. The more irrigation you use, the bigger the plants, water storage and pipes Westminster had to build to meet demands and greater level of service to equipment such as pumps, motors, valves and controls.

Duplexes using one water meter will have water allotment for two houses. For example, Tier 1 rates are up to 8,000 gallons for a single house, but for a duplex Tier 1 rates are up to 12,000 gallons. Tier 2 rates are up to 40,000 gallons for a single house (40,000 for a duplex) and Tier 3 rates are 41,000 gallons and over for a single house (42,000 and over for a duplex).

The city charges more for outdoor watering (Tiers 2 and 3) for a few reasons.

• Outdoor water is discretionary water. While we all like having healthy landscaping in our yard, our highest priority water is the water we use to cook and clean.
• It costs us more to produce water in the summer for outdoor watering. You might think that it costs the same to provide you water no matter how you use it, but when we have to produce more water for everyone who's watering their landscaping, and usually all at the same time, we need to have enough treatment plant capacity, storage and pipelines in place to get that water to you when you want it. Most of our water use is by our residents, so our utility system is built to accommodate that use. In this way, the costs for the higher water use are paid by those who are using it. Said another way, having 3 tiers of water-use pricing ensures that the costs for higher water use (e.g., the water use in Tiers 2 and 3) are not paid by those who are not using it.