Broomfield officials consider 50% price increase to utilities for infrastructure costs

BROOMFIELD, Colo. (KDVR) — The city of Broomfield’s Public Works department has proposed a 50% utility increase to help cover the cost of infrastructure maintenance.

However, some restaurant owners still recovering from inflation said this is a concerning number.

At Broomfield City Council, employees with the public works department showed council members their plan to maintain Broomfield’s most critical infrastructure assets, rather than focusing on new infrastructure. They also demonstrated costs to maintain what they currently had were on the rise.

“Construction costs have gone up 50% over the last two years, three years,” said Ken Rutt, director of Public Works. “So, a lot of that plays into the fact of the increased cost to maintain our infrastructure.”

The public works department then proposed a 50% rate increase in utilities to increase their funding.

“As communities grow and they age, the infrastructure also ages, and you need to maintain it and keep it in working order so that we don’t have issues with not being able to provide water to the community or take away their waste water so it doesn’t back up into their basements,” Rutt said.

Some of the infrastructure in Broomfield is around 80 years old.

“We have approximately, about 11% of our water distribution system that’s greater than 50 years old at this point,” Rutt said.

Broomfield residents worry price increase is too much

Some in the community said a 50% increase in utilities is not sustainable for residents.

“I just don’t know if they’re going to tier anything or take that into consideration, but wow. It’s scary,” said Steve Bauer, owner of The Northside Tavern in Broomfield.

The Northside Tavern has been in the community for nine years. Bauer said they survived COVID and inflation, but increasing the rate of a resource that they use for almost everything, will be very difficult to maintain.

“All of our costs are going up right,” Bauer said. “Insurance, cost of labor, food, beverage, everything you touch, the salt and pepper that goes on the table. Everything. And just to take another hit like that puts us one step closer to either having to raise prices again, and we don’t want to do that anymore.”

He said because they use water so much in their restaurant, including making sure guests get full glasses of ice water the moment they sit down, it might lead to him having to make adjustments.

“Every guest that comes in here off a 90-, 100-degree day, we immediately pop two ice waters in front of them and we’d have to reconsider how we do that, you know, we might have to just, on request only,” Bauer said.

Rutt said he understands how big of a deal this is in the community, but he added so is public health and safety, which could be on the line.

“It’s really about protecting your water supply, making sure that our water quality, that we’re treating our water before we discharge it into the receiving streams to protect the public health. That’s the bottom line,” Rutt said.

Nothing has been finalized yet and this is still in the discussion process, but Rutt noted how critical it is they secure funding for their infrastructure maintenance.

“If you don’t maintain your infrastructure, it starts to fail just like anything else does,” Rutt said. “As water systems and sewer systems begin to fail, you have what you call waterline breaks which then requires a certain percentage of the public to be without service until that line is repaired.”

There will be a community forum at 6 p.m. on Thursday to receive public input. Community members are encouraged to go over the public works fact sheet to learn more about the utility rate increase.

If this does move forward, it will go before city council for a first reading on Oct. 1.

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