The City of Vancouver, WA is the fourth largest city in the state and largely recognized as an extension of the greater Portland, OR metropolitan area. The city has experienced significant growth in recent years and has taken steps to dramatically redevelop its downtown and waterfront amenities along the northern bank of the Columbia River. Our team has performed nearly 30 individual financial consulting engagements for the city including water, wastewater, and stormwater rate development; utility rate model updates; policy paper development; transportation fees; and park fees. Most recently, our team:
- Developed a 100-year forecast of main replacements that estimated the need for the city to fund $5.1B in water main replacements, $1.1B in sewer main replacements, and $786.7M in stormwater main replacements (in 2023 dollars).
- Devised a funding plan for the city’s 20-year capital program that included $484.8M in water projects, $528.6M in sewer projects, and $194.5M in stormwater projects.
- Provided policy recommendations for the role of debt and cash funding sources in the city’s capital funding strategy, in recognition of the significant long-term capital needs identified.
- Updated water and sewer system development charges to ensure their consistency with system costs, mitigating the impacts of the capital plan to ratepayers by enabling the city to recover an equitable share of costs from development.
- Forecasted revenue needs for each utility, projecting revenues and expenditures over a twenty-year period.
- Evaluated miscellaneous utility fees to assess the level of cost recovery achieved, benchmarking the city’s charges against other cities in Washington.
- Prepared a tiered water rate structure alternative to encourage customers to conserve water, evaluating the relative advantages and disadvantages of such a structure and discussing options for promoting conservation to multi-family tenants that are not billed directly for water service.
- Assessed the relative affordability of the city’s utility rates using several industry metrics, outlining potential ways to improve affordability for low-income customers.
- Considered potential changes to the city’s policy for charging customers outside city limits for water and sewer service, in response to recent case law in Washington.