Without rate increases, Willard Utilities would likely be insolvent in 2026
Potentially requiring the utility be sold to a private company
From the December 9, 2024, meeting of the Willard Board of Aldermen:
[Italics added for emphasis]
City Administrator Wes Young: “We have some challenges ahead if we don’t [pass water and sewer rate increases]. . . . [Proceeding with the] infrastructure work that we need to do just accelerates our insolvency. . . . I really have to express serious concerns at this point about our ability to maintain solvency into [2026] if we don’t do something soon.”
Mayor Troy Smith: “If we don’t get something passed, can you paint the landscape of what 2026 may look like?”
City Administrator Wes Young: “I’d assume [by June we’d] be negative. . . . Once [the water and sewer fund] is depleted, we can either prop it up with [the general fund], which then causes a problem for general operations, or we start [addressing] the questions of cuts, austerity, [and] how to keep the system alive, with a potential sale of [the water and sewer systems] to a private company. June might be too generous; it might be early in ‘26.”
They then discuss what a sale to a private company might look like.
Discussion begins at the 39:00 minute mark:
An independent study of water and sewer rates was completed in August. The study recommended rate increases that would have dramatically raised the rates of rural customers vis-à-vis in-city customers (unjustifiably so, in my opinion).
After rural customers expressed concerns, several subsequent revisions were made to the study to try to strike a closer balance between in-city and rural rates, similar to the existing ten-percent premium that rural customers currently pay. Subsequent Board votes to raise rates have either failed to reach a consensus or been delayed due to Board absences.
The Board will again consider implementing rate increases at their meeting on January 13, 2025, at 6:30 PM.
