Manatee County proposes multi‑year user‑rate increases to finance $1.7B utility CIP

Manatee County staff and consultants presented a draft monthly user‑rate plan at a Nov. 5 work session that aims to fund a larger capital program and higher debt service while keeping utilities as an enterprise fund supported by user charges.

“We have about 84 million gallons a day permitted water treatment capacity and about 3 and 3 county owned wastewater treatment plants combining for about 33.5 MGD of capacity,” the consultant said in laying out system scale, and later added that the county’s original‑cost utility asset base of about $1.6 billion equates to roughly $3.2 billion in today’s dollars. The consultant described a five‑year CIP of about $1.7 billion and projected roughly $1.0 billion in new debt issuances to help fund that…