Riviera Beach utility district adopts new water and sewer rates, approves $23.7 million wells GMP

Riviera Beach, Fla. — The City of Riviera Beach Utility Special District on Wednesday adopted a revised 2024 revenue sufficiency and rate report and approved new water and wastewater rates intended to support construction of a replacement water treatment plant, and later authorized a guaranteed-maximum-price work order of $23,695,058.17 for additional production wells.

The rate resolution (No. 00125 UD) was adopted by unanimous vote of the district board — Shirley Lanier, Todrick McCoy, Teshava Miller Anderson, Glenn Spiritus and Chairperson Douglas Lawson — after presentations from the district finance director and the district’s rate consultant. The board later approved GMP No. 3 for the water-supply wells project; that vote recorded four yeses with Vice Chair Todrick McCoy absent.

The revisions matter because they are intended to generate the revenue required to issue bonds and pay for a full replacement of the city’s water treatment plant, which the district and consultants said has reached the end of its useful life.

Robert Dorey, executive vice president of Raptellus Financial Consultants, described the water plant as the primary cost driver behind the recommended rates. “The real objective here is to develop a rate evaluation that fully funds the cost of the water treatment plant,” he said during the presentation, and added that rates must be set to enable the district “to issue bonds, to finance that,” and to support required deposits to renewal-and-replacement funds.

The district’s materials and consultants cite an estimated cost for the new water plant of about $356 million, plus roughly $43 million of additional projects in the five‑year capital plan. The consultants’ financing plan shown to the board anticipates a series of bond issuances with total bond proceeds modeled at about $455 million (including capitalized interest and…