TEMPLE TERRACE — Water bills are going up in Temple Terrace, and the city’s newly adopted budget makes it easy to see why.
Of the nearly $24 million Temple Terrace has budgeted for capital projects in the coming year, $18.3 million — a whopping 76.4% — will be directed to water and sewer improvements.
It’s the beginning of an enormous undertaking to upgrade the city’s aging water plants and remove PFAS and excess hardness from its drinking water.
That includes $8 million for water plant rehabilitation, $3.9 million in electrical upgrades and $5.5 million budgeted for a temporary carbon filtration system.
And that’s just this year’s budget.
The city’s five-year forecast anticipates another $5.25 million a year potentially needed just to replace the carbon used in a temporary PFAS filtration system beginning in 2028. Looming beyond all of that is a permanent water-treatment overhaul currently estimated at roughly $73 million.
Ultimately, much of that bill will find its way back to the city’s water customers.
The City Council unanimously approved a 15% increase in water, wastewater and irrigation rates beginning Oct. 1. For a typical residential customer used in the city’s example, that means a monthly bill of $91.89 becomes $105.68.
Or, as finance Director James Ingram explained it at the budget hearing, someone paying roughly $100 now should expect to pay about $115.
The increase is likely just for starters.
A five-year financial projection prepared for the city by Stantec says additional increases of 9%, 7%, 5% and 3% could be coming the following four years.
Those increases, however, aren’t approved. Ingram said they’ll have to be revisited annually as the city gets a better handle on the water costs.
“They could change next year,” he said. “Could go down, go up. It just depends on unknown variables at this time.”
There are plenty of unknowns.
The $5.5 million budgeted for a temporary granular activated carbon, or GAC, filtration system designed to bring PFAS levels down while the permanent treatment system is designed and built, will be available Oct. 1.
But Temple Terrace doesn’t know yet exactly when that temporary system will arrive.
The money was put into the budget so it’s ready if the project is.
“If we have the ability to put that in place in this fiscal year, that’s great,” Ingram told council.
The city doesn’t expect the really expensive part of maintaining that temporary fix to hit until fiscal year 2028. That’s when the financial forecast begins carrying $5.25 million a year to replace the GAC media, up through fiscal year 2030.
Meanwhile, the permanent solution is moving forward.
The budgeted $8 million for water plant upgrades and $3.9 million in electrical work was needed anyway because of the age of the plants, Ingram said, but it also must be completed as part of the larger treatment overhaul.
The city is preparing an $11.9 million interim financing package to get the initial work moving while it preps a larger revenue-bond to pay for the remainder of the project.
Temple Terrace is hoping grants and money from PFAS litigation will soften the blow. Ingram isn’t counting on a windfall, but every little bit will help.
But, he said, “the lion’s share of the cost has to come from the users, and that’s why … we have to start raising rates.”
All of that made putting together this year’s budget unusually difficult. And with so much about the water projects still unknown and evolving, this probably won’t be the last time the numbers change.
Ingram called it the most challenging budget process in his nine years with Temple Terrace. Water was a big reason. So was, after years of growth, a relatively meager 1.7% increase in property values, which squeezed the General Fund.
Still, the city kept its millage rate at 6.455, and avoided layoffs and maintained its existing workforce, something Ingram said wasn’t a certainty when budget work began but definitely a point of pride about this process.
And despite water swallowing up most of the capital budget, it didn’t swallow everything.
The budget includes $1.5 million for street resurfacing, and another $1.54 million in Community Investment Tax-funded projects. Of that, $899,228 goes toward public safety equipment and $525,000 towards parks and recreation.
Some of those improvements will be easy for residents to see, particularly at the Family Recreation Complex.
The rec center will get $300,000 for air-conditioning replacements, the Fun Pool and Plunge Pool will be refinished, the playground fall-zone will receive improvements and the clay tennis courts will be relined and resurfaced.
Outside of CIT spending, another $1 million is budgeted for construction at Riverside Park, the long-planned redevelopment along the Hillsborough River.
Public safety gets some toys, too, including a $525,000 rescue vehicle, new police vehicles, a drone system, night-vision equipment and thermal-imaging cameras.