As we consider our water rate structure I thought it would be helpful to outline a few ideas/theories that might underpin the structure we proceed with. 1. Our annual budget requirements are well understood. We require about $670k to cover our expenses. This is comprised of generally fixed costs, not being strongly tied to the amount of water produced. As such, I believe this cost should be born equally among the customers of the district. The way to achieve this equitable sharing of the fixed burden is to update the base fee paid by each household. Increasing the base fee to roughly $62 for in-district customers and $182 for out-of-district customers gets close to covering our fixed costs. 2. Our monthly water supply is finite and we must encourage customers to conserve. In reality we must price the rate tiers as to inhibit excess usage, which our supply can't keep up with. It's possible to adopt a fee schedule as follow: 0-20K gallons - $1/1000 gallons; 20-30k gallons - $14/1000 gallons; 30-40k gallons - $64/1000 gallons; 40k+ Gallons - $70/1000 gallons. This rate structure will do 2 things: 1. Shares the fixed burden equitably across each household 2. Provides strong incentive to cap usage between 20-30k gallons. The impact of this on monthly bills: Low water usage months would see an increase in water bills by about $20. High water usage months would see a decrease in water bills varying by amount. The average household that uses 15,000 gallons in a month would see a bill $1 higher than today's rates. Theoretically this would average what are today's higher bill across the year. Households with consistent low usage will continue to enjoy low bills, but they would now be carrying their fair share of the operating burden. These are just thoughts put to paper, the numbers can be modeled and fine-tuned but the approach of equal sharing of the fixed costs and inhibiting extreme usage creates a more equitable fee structure. Thoughts and feedback are welcome and encouraged.