Where Charges for Service Are Used

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Updated on Tuesday, October 2, 2012, 7:33 pm

This is an area where you pay directly for a service rendered. The two biggest items are utility bills for sewer and water that virtually every city property owner pays. This amounts to over 80% of this revenue area, and that money goes directly to Water and Sewer operations.

On the other hand, for most of the rest only a small portion of people pay service charges. If you don't go to the swimming pool, or don't take a Parks & Recreation class, you don't pay any fee. If you don't use the ambulance, you don't pay the ambulance fee, and so on.

There is also a special one here that may get your attention: Equipment Replacement. This is a revolving reserve that the city uses to replace equipment like vehicles that wear out. Each operation that has this equipment gets a monthly "charge for service" that goes into the individual equipment account. Since cities go on for centuries, this conservative approach means we save in advance, rather than scrambling to find money when covered equipment goes bad.