A proposed 50% increase in water utility fees to support failing infrastructure has left Broomfield residents wondering: how did it get this bad?
The increase in fees, proposed to the city council in a study session last month, includes raised water and sewer charges and a new wastewater service charge, totaling to a $39.85 increase on the average resident’s bill. The 50% increase in charges will be followed by an additional 15% increase in 2026, and 7% increases in 2027 and 2028.
Broomfield staff has said that the sharp increase in fees is necessary to maintain the city and county’s $3.428 billion in water infrastructure, which will continue to decline without maintenance. With residents asking why systems haven’t been maintained properly, Broomfield staff have pointed to an overarching culture and a “run to fail” maintenance strategy.
Director of Public Works Ken Rutt explained that run to fail is a maintenance strategy in which equipment is allowed to run until it collapses and is then repaired. This reactive strategy defers maintenance until a system is nearing or reaching a breaking point, and the strategy feeds into the larger culture of Broomfield’s development.
The culture and identity that leads into needing the increase in water utility fees can be traced back decades to the founding of the city and county. Staffers have characterized Broomfield’s identity as a community that went “from zero to Mach 5,” with rapid development quickly becoming a core part of the culture.
“(Broomfield was) banking that the future was going to always be golden, and we were going to have one golden egg in our basket after another, after another, because that’s what history had indicated” City and County Manager Jennifer Hoffman said in a July 16 study session.
For years, the city and county has focused on new developments — the Flatirons Crossing mall, the now defunct 1stBANK Center, dozens of corporate headquarters — while maintaining existing infrastructure was pushed aside.
“What’s embedded into our DNA becomes a practice, and a practice becomes an ideology of how you do business — not just the enterprise funds, but financially as a whole,” Hoffman told the Broomfield Enterprise.
An enterprise fund is a fund that operates as a closed loop, where rates and fees within the fund are set to cover the cost of providing services. Legally, an enterprise fund cannot be funded through taxes or monies borrowed from the general fund — it must remain a closed loop.
Within Broomfield’s rapid growth culture, focus remained on new infrastructure, but staff has spent years investigating a reckoning with the county’s decades-old ideology.
The list of previous actions to secure water in Broomfield is long, from million dollar reservoir projects to independent studies into best practices. One question residents are asking is why the increase needs to be so sharp: why can’t Broomfield increase water utility fees slowly over time? The answer is that they’ve tried, but it wasn’t enough to maintain the infrastructure.
Water rate increases have been passed multiple times in the past four years, with a total 9.2% increase in rates overall since 2021, but it never amounted to enough to make a dent.
Now, staff says that the infrastructure is reaching a tipping point, with the backlog of maintenance and repairs sitting at $23 million. The proposed increase will chip away at that backlog, and aim to prevent catastrophic failures.
For some residents, it feels like the city isn’t doing enough of its part to foot the bill.
“(In 2020) they reduced their spending, but the year after COVID, it went right back up … almost like the amount of sacrifice they’re trying to do on the city and county side is minimal, if non existent, while citizens are continuing to to bear the brunt of it,” Rick Fernandez said.
Fernandez runs the nonprofit Broomfield Taxpayer Matters, which aims to educate voters on policy in the city and county. Fernandez has been following the increase closely, and worries the state of the enterprise funds should have been brought up sooner.
“It took seven months (this year) for them to bring this up — this year they’ve talked about charter changes, about raising their pay as council — they’ve worked on every other possible issue while this real big problem has been in the room all along,” Fernandez said. “It’s a priority issue for them — are they focused on the right priorities, or are they focused on things they deem appropriate now that they’re being … forced to face this and deal with it now that it’s a crisis?”
Broomfield City Council has indicated support for the increase, but will not vote until later this year. A full list of upcoming forums, workshops and next steps has been provided by the city and county at broomfield.org/4213/Broomfields-Utility-Enterprise-Funds.
Originally Published: