Payson holds first budget work session; water system, public safety staffing and finance take center stage

The Town of Payson convened a budget-focused work session in which department directors briefed the mayor and council on operating budgets, capital-improvement projects and staffing needs across the town. Presentations by the water department, finance staff and public-safety leaders drew the most detailed discussion and prompted council requests for follow-up briefings.

The session matters because several departments described multi‑million‑dollar capital programs and ongoing obligations that will shape the 2025–26 budget cycle. Council members asked for deeper briefings on the public-safety pension liability and on how the town manages invested reserves, signaling potential priorities for upcoming budget hearings.

Water department director Tanner told council the water enterprise has a roughly $10 million operating budget and an $18 million capital budget for large projects and said the utility is operated as a self‑sustaining enterprise fund. He described the system’s scale and age — roughly 200 miles of distribution pipe, production wells, two treatment plants and about 9.3 million gallons of storage — and said the town still relies on both groundwater and the CC Cragin source when available. Tanner said it currently costs about $20.30 to produce 1,000 gallons and that the town should be replacing roughly 3.3 miles of mainline per year to maintain the system, a level he estimated would require about $8 million annually.

Tanner highlighted several capital priorities: replacement of older mains in town (one project covering Ridge Street and a corridor near Arrow Drive), a Hillcrest storage tank replacement planned for spring, a remote…