Managing Your System into the Future: Assessing Utility Financial Health and Rate Setting Objectives

Event: Tribal Utilities Forum

Presentation Description:

This session will discuss how to consider a water and wastewater system as a financial entity and examine the key financial indicators that allow these systems to make informed decisions in planning and investment. Specifically, we will cover operating ratios, debt service coverage ratios, and other financial metrics that may be influential in assessing long-term financial sustainability. Additionally, we will present the basics of rate structure design and how these structures may affect revenue generation, help or hinder various utility objectives, and support affordability initiatives.

Presenters:

Hope Thomson, Project Director at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (EFC)

Hope Thomson joined the EFC as a project director in April 2022. She focuses on providing technical assistance to utilities and researching barriers and solutions to increasing water service connections in underserved areas. In 2021, she completed her master’s program in environmental public health. She spent time during and immediately following her degree as a research assistant with the North Carolina Collaboratory and the Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems. She earned her B.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2015, after which she worked as a statewide outreach educator and program manager with Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and the North Carolina Science Festival.

Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi, Associate Director at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (EFC)

Dr. Ahmed Rachid (AR) El-Khattabi is the Associate Director of the Environmental Finance Center (EFC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His background is in applied economics and urban planning. He earned his Ph.D. in 2020 from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. El-Khattabi’s expertise is in policy-oriented quantitative research and data management. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of economic development and environmental planning, mainly urban water management. Before joining the EFC, he was an ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow and then an Economist in the Water Economics Center at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water. At the EPA, he co-developed an environmental justice batch screening tool (EJSCREENbatch), contributed to the development of support tools for regulatory benefits analyses, and conducted research to support national rule-making related to Waters of the United States.

Who should attend:

Tribal Leaders, Tribal Utility Board members, Utility Managers, Tribal Infrastructure and Planning Directors, Financial Directors