Tools · September 30, 2026

The rate ordinance, written as a monthly bill

By Ryan Standley, Publisher / Authorized Officer, Record of Sale, LLC

A water or sewer rate change is a base charge plus a price on what the meter measured. This page turns the old charges and the new charges into two monthly bills and the gap between them.

The rate hearing talks in ordinances. The refrigerator talks in bills. An ordinance says the base charge shall be so many dollars, and the volumetric charge shall be so many dollars per unit. A bill says you owe a number, due on a date, with a usage line you may or may not recognize. The distance between those two documents is where people get surprised. This page closes that distance for a simple bill: one base charge, one volumetric rate, one month of use. If your utility uses tiers, seasonal rates, or a separate sewer charge pegged to winter water, the page will be a sketch of one piece, not a replica of the envelope. A sketch of the piece they are voting on is still worth having before the vote.

Two charges do the work. The base charge shows up even if you shut the house and leave. It is the price of being connected: pipes, meters, debt on the plant, the crew that answers when a main breaks. The volumetric charge is the price of what passed the meter. A board can raise either one, or both, and the speeches will not always say which. A raise in the base charge hits the small user and the empty house harder, as a percent, than it hits the household that irrigates. A raise in the volumetric rate hits the heavy user harder. If you only hear “rates are going up 18 percent,” you do not yet know which households are carrying that percent. Type the two old numbers and the two new numbers and look.

The boxes start with a made-up month so the arithmetic is checkable. Seven ccf of use. Old base $22.40, new base $26.15. Old volumetric rate $4.10 per ccf, new rate $4.85 per ccf. Seven times the old rate is $28.70, plus the old base, is $51.10. Seven times the new rate is $33.95, plus the new base, is $60.10. The monthly gap is $9.00, which is 17.61%. Over twelve identical months the old bill is $613.20, the new bill is $721.20, and the year is $108.00 heavier. Your real year is not twelve identical months. Summer irrigation and a winter leak will move it. The identical year is here so you can see the rate decision without the weather mixed in.

The unit toggle is not a decoration. Ccf means hundred cubic feet. One ccf is about 748 gallons. Some ordinances price by ccf. Some price by thousand gallons. If you type gallons into a ccf rate, or the reverse, you will invent a bill that belongs to nobody. Pick the unit your ordinance uses, and type the usage in that unit. In gallons mode the rate box means dollars per 1,000 gallons. The page will not secretly convert. Conversion is how a careful person checks a bill. It is also how a tired person multiplies twice. One path per run.

The bill is a base plus a flow

Write the structure on a scrap of paper before you touch the hearing packet. Monthly bill equals base charge plus usage times rate. That is the whole model. Everything else is a reason the model might be too small for your utility: a second base charge for sewer, a stormwater fee that does not care about the meter, a tier that changes the rate after a threshold, a power cost adjustment, a tax on the bill, a leak adjustment the utility may or may not grant. If your packet is truly one base and one rate, you are in luck, and this page will track it. If your packet is a stack, run the page on the piece that is changing, and add the pieces that are not changing as a constant in your head. A constant does not change the dollar gap. It does change the percent, because the percent is the gap divided by the old total. Leaving a constant out makes the percent look scarier than the envelope.

The base charge is the part people call unfair when they use very little water, and the part the utility calls survival when the town is full of seasonal houses. Both descriptions can be true. Pipes do not shrink in February because you left for a month. Debt service on a treatment plant does not shrink because you took a short shower. A board that shifts the increase onto the base is deciding that connection, not consumption, should carry more of the year. A board that shifts the increase onto the volumetric rate is deciding that heavy use should carry more. You can disagree with the decision. You should not describe it as a single percent if the two charges moved differently. Type your own usage. A neighbor with a pool is living in a different percent.

Usage is the number on the meter for the period you care about, in the unit you selected. If you type a winter month into a fight about a summer rate, you will understate a volumetric increase and you may misstate the base, if the base is monthly and you only wanted a quarterly picture. Match the period. If the utility bills quarterly, either type a quarterly base and the quarter’s usage, or type a monthly base and remember that the page’s “monthly” is your invention. The annual line multiplies the monthly result by twelve. That is right for twelve equal months. It is wrong for a quarterly bill you forgot to divide. Labels matter more than the multiplication, because the multiplication is easy and the label is where the hearing gets slippery.

Ccf, gallons, and the 748 that people quote

A hundred cubic feet of water is one ccf. In gallons, that volume is about 748. Utilities round. Some say 748, some say 750, and the meter still measures cubic feet or gallons depending on the hardware. If you are checking a bill that shows both, use the utility’s own conversion, not a number you like better. This page, in ccf mode, never converts. The rate is per ccf and the usage is ccf. In gallons mode, the rate is per 1,000 gallons and the usage is gallons. Six thousand gallons is six billable units. Seven thousand four hundred eighty gallons is 7.48 units. The page divides by 1,000 and multiplies by the rate. It does not divide by 748 unless you are in ccf mode and you already converted the usage yourself before typing.

Why refuse the automatic conversion? Because an ordinance that says “$4.85 per ccf” and a household that knows “we use about 5,000 gallons” are one step apart, and the step should be visible. Five thousand gallons divided by 748 is about 6.7 ccf. You can type 6.7 in ccf mode if you did that division on purpose. If the page did it invisibly, a person who already had ccf on the bill would convert twice and then yell at the council about a calculator. Yelling at a council is a civic right. Yelling at them about a double conversion is a waste of the right. Do the unit once. Write it down. Then change the rates.

Sewer is often tied to water, and often not one-for-one. Some cities bill sewer on winter-average water use so that summer irrigation is not treated as sewage. Some bill sewer at a percent of water. Some have a sewer base and a sewer rate that the packet lists ten pages away from the water rate. If both are changing, run the page twice and add the monthly gaps. If only water is changing and sewer is pegged to an old winter average, do not type this month’s irrigation as if it were sewer. You will frighten yourself with a bill the ordinance is not sending. Read the sewer paragraph in the ordinance before you reuse the water usage number. The paragraph is usually short. It is also usually the one the slide deck skips.

Walk seven ccf until the percent behaves

Old volumetric piece: 7 times $4.10 equals $28.70. Add the old base of $22.40. The month is $51.10. New volumetric piece: 7 times $4.85 equals $33.95. Add the new base of $26.15. The month is $60.10. Subtract. $9.00. Divide the gap by the old month and you get 17.61%. The percent is not an average of the percent change in the base and the percent change in the rate. The base went from $22.40 to $26.15. The rate went from $4.10 to $4.85. The bill’s percent is what a household feels. The pieces’ percents are what the board changed. Report the one you mean.

Twelve copies of the old month would be $613.20. Twelve copies of the new month would be $721.20. The difference is $108.00. I say “would be” because nobody’s tap runs at seven ccf every month. If you want a better year, average your last twelve bills’ usage, or add them, and think in that usage. You can type an average month. You can also type each month’s usage, write down twelve gaps, and add those. The second way catches a tier if you do the tier by hand outside the page. The first way is enough when the rate is flat per unit. Flat is the assumption painted on the boxes. Do not bring a flat-rate result to a tiered fight without saying you ignored the tiers.

A small old bill makes a loud percent, just as it does on a property-tax notice. A household that uses two ccf and pays mostly the base can see a percent that looks like an emergency when the dollar gap is the price of a dinner. Print the dollars beside the percent. A large user can see a modest percent and a gap that is a car payment. Print the dollars there too. The ordinance’s “average customer” may be an average you are not. If the packet says the average customer uses a certain volume, type that volume once, to see the packet’s claim, and type your volume once, to see your life. Both runs are legitimate. Mixing them into a single sentence is how the packet’s average becomes a story about your sink.

What the hearing is actually deciding

A rate ordinance is a price list. Adopting it is a government act, often by a council or a utility board, sometimes after a notice and a hearing, sometimes with a consultant’s cost-of-service study underneath. The study may say the utility needs a certain amount of revenue to pay operations, debt, and capital. The ordinance decides who among the customers hands over that revenue. This page does not test whether the utility needs the money. Need is a question about the books, the leaks in the mains, the debt covenants, the plant that inspectors are writing up. The page tests a narrower thing: given these prices, what does this usage cost, old versus new. You can believe the utility needs the revenue and still dislike the way the ordinance assigns it. You can believe the assignment is fair and still think the revenue request is padded. Those are separate votes inside your own head. The bill calculation serves both.

Cost-of-service studies love customer classes. Residential, commercial, industrial, irrigation, wholesale to a neighboring town. A class can have its own base and its own rate. If you type a residential rate into a question about a factory, you will get a residential answer. Factories also hit demand charges this page does not have. Stay in your class. If you are a renter and the landlord receives the bill, the ordinance still reaches you if the lease lets the landlord pass water through, or if the rent moves when the landlord’s costs move. The page will not read your lease. It will tell you the bill that is being passed through, if the usage you type is the usage on that meter. A building with one meter and many apartments is a politics of its own. The gap on the master meter is real. How it is divided among apartments is the lease, not the ordinance.

Notice matters, and this register cares about notice, but the calculator is not a notice. Many states require a utility or a city to advertise a rate change, to hold a hearing, or to send a paragraph with the bill. Whether your town did that correctly is a legal question about dates, newspapers or websites the statute names, and the text of the proposed rates. Ryan Standley is not deciding that question on this page. If you want the hearing found later, the hearing notice has to be placed where the law requires and, if you want it on Notice Nearby, placed here as a paid Public Register Placement. A calculator essay does not satisfy that requirement. Do not skip the hearing because you ran the numbers. The numbers are what you bring. The hearing is where the price list is still a proposal.

Leaks, irrigation, and the month that lies

A toilet that runs can use more water than the rate increase. Before you spend political energy on a gap of nine dollars, look at the usage line across a year. A sudden doubling is a leak, a new occupant, or a meter problem until proved otherwise. Utilities sometimes adjust for a concealed leak and sometimes do not. Their policy is a paragraph in a customer-service manual, not a line in the rate ordinance. This page will cheerfully multiply a leak by the new rate and show you an alarming year. That alarm may be the leak. Fix the leak or challenge the meter, then rerun the page with a sane month. You will see the ordinance more clearly when the meter is telling the truth.

Irrigation is the other liar. A household that waters a lawn in July is not the household the winter rate study pictured, and a sewer charge based on winter average is an attempt to stop the lawn from being billed as sewage. If you type July usage into a sewer rate, read the ordinance again. If the sewer base is flat and the sewer volumetric rate uses winter average, type the winter average, not July. Water and sewer can move in opposite directions in the same month: water up because of the lawn, sewer steady because of the average. The page has one usage box because it is one bill structure at a time. Two structures means two runs. Add the results on paper. Paper is still allowed in a utility fight. It is often clearer than a spreadsheet nobody else can open.

Estimated reads are a third liar. If the bill says estimated, the usage is a guess the utility will true up later. A rate increase applied to an estimate will be reapplied to the actual when the actual arrives. Do not march into a hearing with a single estimated month as if it were a year’s fate. Average a few actuals. If the utility has not actualized in months, that is a customer-service problem sitting next to the rate problem. Mention it. Do not let it replace the price-list question. Both can be true: the reads are sloppy, and the proposed rate is still a number you can multiply.

How to speak at the hearing with the bill in your hand

Bring two bills if you have them, or one bill and the proposed price list. Say your usage and your unit. Say the old base, the new base, the old rate, the new rate. Say the monthly gap and the percent, and say that the percent includes only the charges you typed. Then say what you want the board to do, if you want something. “I use seven ccf. Under the proposal my month goes from this to that. The base is doing more of the work than the rate. I am a low user, and this shift lands on me.” That is a coherent comment. “This is outrageous” is a mood. Moods are human. The board has heard the mood. They may not have heard seven ccf. Give them the seven.

If you are the clerk or the utility director, run the packet’s example customer through this page before the meeting and see if the slide matches the ordinance. Slides drift. An old base gets copied forward. A rate gets rounded for the graphic and then the graphic is what the room remembers. If the page and the slide disagree, fix the slide. The room is entitled to one arithmetic. Publish the usage assumption in the slide. “Average residential customer, 7 ccf” is a sentence people can test against their own meters. “Typical bill” is not a sentence. It is a fog.

If you write about the ordinance, do not headline only the percent. Headline the dollars for a stated usage, and say whose usage. A 17 percent headline on a $51 bill is a different story from a 17 percent headline with no bill under it. The first story can be checked. The second story can be worn as a costume. Also say whether tiers were ignored. Honesty about the simplification is part of the simplification. Readers can decide whether a flat-rate sketch is enough. They cannot decide if you hid the fact that it was a sketch.

What this page will not bolt on

No taxes on the bill, unless you gross them into the rates yourself and accept the blur. No stormwater, unless you add that flat fee to both bases so the gap stays honest and the percent gets diluted on purpose. No connection fees for new buildings. Those are not monthly bills. No wholesale rates. No fire-line charges. No private-well household that only pays sewer. If you are wells-and-sewer, type the sewer base and the sewer rate and the usage the sewer ordinance uses, and do not type a water rate you are not charged. The page does not know you have a well. You do.

No future inflation. The new rate is the rate you type, not a rate that grows for five years because a consultant’s table said “and then 4 percent annually.” If the ordinance adopts a multi-year schedule, run each year as its own pair of rates. You will see whether year four is doing the quiet work. Multi-year schedules are where boards put the number they do not want to vote on again. Looking at year four is allowed. Pretending year four is tonight’s bill is not, unless tonight’s ordinance actually adopts it.

And no moral grade for the utility. Water systems fail in public. Boil orders, main breaks, a plant that cannot meet a permit: those facts sit beside the price list and do not enter the multiplication. A fair price on a failing system is still a failing system. A harsh price on a system that is finally replacing its pipes may be the replacement. This page keeps the price list in one hand so the other hand can hold the condition of the pipes. If you only hold the price, you will sound like a customer. You are a customer. You are also, in a municipal system, an owner. Owners look at the pipes. The bill is how the pipes ask for money. Read the ask in dollars, at your usage, before you answer.

The seven-ccf bill in the boxes is a teaching example, not a utility’s adopted ordinance and not your meter. Ryan Standley wrote this page as Publisher / Authorized Officer of Notice Nearby. Notice Nearby is a paid public-notice register operated by Record of Sale, LLC, an Oregon limited liability company. This is an educational illustration. It is not a tax bill, not an appraisal, not a levy certification, not official debt math, and not legal, tax, or financial advice. Nothing here is Legal Publication, and a calculator does not satisfy a newspaper statute or any other notice statute.