> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://websterledger.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Webster's sewer rate falls $8.89 a unit for 2027 - URL: https://websterledger.com/webster-sewer-rates-2027-fairlife/ - Published: 2026-08-10T15:22:23.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-10T15:22:23.000Z - Description: Webster's sewer plant brought its 2027 budget to the Town Board on Thursday. The combined per-unit charge falls $8.89. The revenue that makes that possible is not contractually guaranteed, the department told the board. - Author: Morgan VanDerLeest - Tags: Government Webster's sewer plant brought its 2027 budget to the Town Board on Thursday, at the second and last of the town's 2027 budget workshops. The sewer fund is the only one presented Thursday that a resident pays through a bill rather than a tax, and it is the only one where the combined charge is falling. > "For O&M we're at a rate of $141.36, which is down about $23 from the previous year. But you'll see that the capital rate went up about $15\. Overall, the rate is down about $8 when you combine the two." The worksheet matches those figures. Combined, a unit is billed $249.54 for 2027 against $258.43, a decrease of $8.89\. That decrease rests on the Fairlife revenue described below, which the department told the board is not contractually guaranteed. Behind that, the amount to be raised by operations and maintenance charges falls $350,181, or 13.8%. The amount to be raised by capital charges rises $235,532, or 15.8%. Across both, ratepayers are asked for $114,649 less than in 2026\. Total expenditures fall 1.4% to $11,118,232. A budget workshop is department heads explaining their own numbers to the board that oversees them. There is no public comment period and no adversarial voice in the room. These are departmental worksheets, not the compiled tentative budget the supervisor files with the town clerk, and that filing is still to come. The rest of Thursday's presentations are covered in [a separate piece](https://websterledger.com/budget-workshop-2027-flat-levies-zoning-line/). ## The largest revenue growth is not contractually guaranteed Fairlife is the largest reason the operating side can fall. G210.02118 Fairlife Sewer Rents goes from $590,400 to $851,620, and the worksheet shows the billed unit count rising from 3,600 to 6,083\. G210.02129 Fairlife Capital Charges nearly doubles, from $331,200 to $650,881. The plant built its revenue assumptions on that relationship, and said so plainly while walking through the hauled-in waste lines. > "We were banking on five or six trucks a day, which was 65,000 gallons a day... But we didn't want to talk about any other haulers, that was just going to be upside. So we were going to be conservative because we knew Fairlife was pretty much guaranteed." Fairlife brought one truck a day for the first several months and brings two now. The department budgeted $1.98 million for the current year across the hauled-in lines and expects to land near $1.8 million. "First year is tough. We have no history to go on," the outgoing chief plant operator said. A board member then asked whether Fairlife was guaranteed. > "I have a question about Fairlife, because you said Fairlife is guaranteed. Is Fairlife guaranteed? Do we have a contract that it's guaranteed? Because I thought they had options." The answer: > "Guarantee was a strong word. They have that much, and we're the closest one. It will save them to bring it to us, and our price is very competitive with around the area." The outgoing chief plant operator then corrected the word: "Not guaranteed, I'm sorry. I wish it was guaranteed." On the sewer rent side the estimate runs the other way, and the department said so. "We have currently collected $871,000 in the first two quarters, and we were only budgeted for $590,000\. Again, very conservative on that." The 2027 request for that line is $851,620, below what two quarters of 2026 already brought in. One 2027 revenue line is new and describes a service the plant has not started performing. G210.02124 Septic Waste appears at $260,000 against nothing in 2026\. "Septic waste, we haven't taken any in, and we are projecting at about $260,000, but I think that's a very conservative number," the department told the board. The rest of the customer base is not shrinking. Commercial sewer rents fall 14.6% on a unit count that is flat at 1,500, and Penfield's fall 11.3% even though its billed units rise from 1,220 to 1,268\. Both are billed less because the town cut the per-unit rate, not because they sent less. Xerox is the one class that loses units, from 600 to 550, and its rents fall 21.7%. A second industrial customer is on the way. Industrial pretreatment rises from $5,000 to $7,000, because Fairlife has been added to the sampling schedule and because the plant expects McAlpin online at some point in 2027\. That is the only place McAlpin appears in the sewer fund. It carries no revenue line, and the department made no estimate of what it will send. ## Where the costs moved Chemicals are the largest cost pressure among the plant's supplies. Polymer rises $64,850 to $194,850 on the plant's new processes, and ferric chloride rises to $213,750, partly because outside waste brings in more phosphorus. Sludge hauling moves the other way, down $110,000 to $250,000, which the department credited to its new sludge dryer. In June the plant ran the belt press alone for the first half of the month and added the dryer for the second, and hauling cost in that second half came in 80% lower in dollar terms. That is one half-month against the one before it, offered as an early example rather than a settled result. The department also brought a list of reductions it worked out with the finance director and the board's sewer liaison, including cuts to repairs and cleaning and a shift of several capital items into an already bonded project contingency. Telephone costs fall from about $21,000 to $4,000, after staff replaced copper phone lines at the town's 22 pump stations with cellular connections on the existing alarm keypads. Plant staff put the saving at about $12,000 a year, and said the copper was not pulled until the cellular connections had run for a test month. The plant is also facing a permit change. Its total residual chlorine limit is being cut to 0.25 milligrams per liter from a current 2, and the department has a study before the state Department of Environmental Conservation on how to get there within five years. The options it is weighing range from repurposing the old village clarifiers as a contact tank to ultraviolet disinfection, which it called very expensive. ## Staffing On staffing, two salary lines move. G8130.10147 Chief Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator falls 19.8%, from $157,443 to $126,197\. That is the retirement the board handled in June, when it [appointed Dwayne Hilfiker](https://websterledger.com/town-board-meeting-june-18-2026/) as chief plant operator effective July 4 and set him to cross-train with outgoing chief Rick Kenealy. Hilfiker rose internally and is not at the top of the scale. Kenealy told the board the line falls "with me leaving and Dwayne stepping in at the lower scale." G8110.10150 Deputy Commissioner of Public Works goes from $117,730 to $0, and that change was proposed months earlier. At an April 2 workshop, Kenealy and the town's personnel director presented the board a reorganization that would put the chief operator at the top of the plant's structure, un-fund the deputy commissioner post and use that money to create an additional full-time operator position, keeping overall staffing at the same number. The minutes record a presentation and a general discussion, not a vote, and note that several of the changes require Town Board approval while others must be negotiated with the union. Kenealy described the same change on Thursday as a new organization chart that defunded the position. The worksheet's arithmetic does not support reading the two budget lines as one job merging into the other. Sewer debt service is close to flat overall, with bond anticipation note principal up 55.4% against interest down 25.4%. The finance director said the town sold a note at a net interest rate of about 2.8%, against 3% budgeted, and expects to roll it into a serial bond in 2027\. Sewer debt service is part of Webster's [$132 million in outstanding debt](https://websterledger.com/how-websters-town-debt-reached-132-million-and-who-pays-it-back/). ## Sign up for Webster Ledger Independent local journalism for Webster, NY. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. --- *AI tools were used in drafting and research.*