The City of Galveston’s (City) Sanitation Department (Department) provides solid waste collection services to approximately 22,000 households, which is required by local ordinance, and 500 commercial accounts. The majority of commercial and large multi-family services (> 4 units) are served by private haulers. The City owns a transfer station and a recycling drop-off facility, which is contractually operated. The City receives a rebate for commercial tonnages that are processed through the City’s transfer station. The City had raised user fees in 2022 and went to an automated collection service; however, before this, it had not raised fees since 2012. Raftelis was engaged to perform a detailed cost of service and revenue sufficiency analysis. Raftelis developed a dynamic 10-year financial model to assess the revenue sufficiency of the adopted rates and support rate recommendations through the cost of service and rate design. Key findings from the study included recommending significant near-term rate adjustments to address a structural funding deficiency and recommendation for further study of the City’s recycling fee, which is currently only applied to customers on a per water meter basis. Specifically, residential single-family and larger master metered multifamily accounts pay the same recycling fee.
