Managing Your System into the Future: Assessing Utility Financial Health

Presentation Description:

This session will discuss how to think about a water and/or wastewater system as a financial entity and will examine the key financial indicators that allow these systems to make informed decisions in planning and investment. Specifically, this session will cover operating ratios, debt service coverage ratios, and other financial metrics that may be influential in the assessment of long-term financial sustainability and introduce a financial health checkup tool that can be used to compare a utility fund’s actual performance against desired goals.

Presenters:

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 with a particular focus on urban water management. Prior to 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 rulemaking 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