Maintaining Affordability

The City is committed to keeping costs as low as possible for sewer customers. Ultimately, this project will take money.  The total amount is unknown at this time, but we need to prepare for one of the biggest investments this community has ever had to make.

There are two ways to reduce impacts on rates:

1. Reduce overall costs
2. Optimize low-interest funding sources.

City staff are aggressively pursuing every available avenue to reduce costs and obtain funding. After completing the sewer planning that identified improvement needs, we completed a value engineering study to look at reducing overall costs. During final design efforts, the City’s engineer will be packaging the improvements to optimize grant funding.

Our success in obtaining outside funds will help us accommodate the next wave of growth.  Unfortunately we will still have some growing pains that will be felt through our users’ monthly bills.  The current proposed fee structure attempts to balance these pains evenly based on the treatment needs for different users.  This attempt at equity means that residences are not being asked to pay for businesses, industrial users are not footing the bill for residents, and future growth will have to pay its own proportionate share of the current improvements.

With these solutions and rate structures, we hope we have struck the right balance to keep our community viable, thriving, and increasingly successful.  However, if you have any questions, concerns, ideas, or guidance, please share them with City staff and the decision makers on City Council.  Their goal is to treat the waste that comes through our system in a way that is best for our community, and they are approaching that goal with open eyes, ears, and hearts.  Contact them at (509) 427-5970, utilities@ci.stevenson.wa.us, or citycouncil@ci.stevenson.wa.us.