City staff returned to the council on Nov. 25 for a follow-up on corrections to the consolidated fee schedule (CFS) in the water section, focusing on a category of fire-line fees that had been omitted from published rates.

Public Utilities explained state code requires full rate details to be transparently set by the council; because the title and description for fire-line fees were missing from the published table, fees charged after July 1 could lack the required noticing. Staff presented three primary options: (1) adopt the corrected fee schedule now and make fees effective upon council approval (which could require refunding fees charged between July 1 and adoption); (2) keep the rates as originally intended, effective July 1; or (3) approve a phased in implementation over two or three years to mitigate customer impacts while recognizing multi-year debt service and project needs.

A financial analysis presented two phasing examples: a two-year approach that stages increases at 75% and then an additional step the following year, and a three-year approach that starts at 50% of the proposed rate and phases further increases in subsequent years. Staff recommended credits be applied to accounts that already paid full rates prior to an effective date.

Officials corrected earlier arithmetic in the briefing: an initial projected shortfall figure of $700,000 was updated to $1.7 million when detector checks were included; a six-month implementation partial would imply an $875,000 shortfall to the department. Staff emphasized that public utilities projects are typically debt-funded and require predictable multi-year revenues to support capital obligations.

Councilmembers debated equity concerns: spreading the cost across all ratepayers would reduce the immediate burden on customers who hold fire lines (including some HOAs and small multifamily properties where a single meter serves many residents), but staff warned that such a spread could violate cost-of-service rate-setting principles. Staff gave analytics showing about 3,453 customers pay the fire-line charge and that impacts vary: while the average percent impact for the class could be around 1.4% of a customer's total utility bill, some commercial accounts may see 3035% increases in total utility bills because of concentrated use.

Council requested options for additional consumer protections, clearer communication to affected account holders and time to study equity impacts; staff agreed to return with ordinance language and refined phasing options based on council direction.