Paying for growth

Biblical foundation

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?" Luke 14:28

For me that verse settles how a city should build: counting the whole cost, the upkeep along with the construction, and knowing who is paying before the first shovel goes in the ground.

Constitutional foundation

Oregon's home-rule provision lets Albany run its own water, sewer and street systems and set the charges that pay for them (Oregon Constitution, Article XI, Section 2). A system development charge, or SDC, is a one-time fee a city collects on new construction to pay for that construction's share of the water, sewer, street, park and stormwater systems. State law sets its limits. It may recover the cost of capacity a city has already built or the cost of capacity that growth will need, it may be spent only on capital improvements and the debt behind them, and it may never pay for operations or routine maintenance (ORS 223.297 to 223.316). The same law requires an accounting of that money every year (ORS 223.311). In Albany, long-term borrowing requires a vote of the people, with narrow exceptions for local improvement districts, emergencies, refinancing that saves money and loans a state statute exempts (Albany City Charter, Section 44), and the city's capital plan notes that this includes revenue bonds, the kind repaid from utility rates. The council sets every charge and every utility rate by its own vote. The mayor has no vote except to break a tie (Section 18); the office comes with a veto over ordinances (Section 38), a gavel, and the standing to put the books in front of the public.

Facts, data, numbers

• What a new home pays. The city's fee guide lists about $20,205 in SDCs on a new 2,000 square foot home: $6,020 for sewer, $5,005 for streets, $4,760 for parks, $4,000 for water and $420 for stormwater. A 400 square foot accessory dwelling unit pays about $10,029 (City of Albany fee guide, revised July 1, 2026). The charges already rise with the size of the home, and since 2025 a residential builder may defer payment until final inspection (Ordinance 6066).
• Where that money goes. The city's capital plan says of both water and sewer, "SDC funding is used to cover debt payments and is not available to fund capital projects based on current and projected revenues" (2026-2030 Capital Improvement Program, pages 90 and 112). From fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2025 the sewer improvement fee, the part of the sewer SDC meant to pay for new capacity, sent $4.65 million to payments on sewer debt and paid for no capital project, and the water SDCs sent $2.18 million to payments on water debt (the city's open finance ledger). The current budget sends another $2.8 million of sewer SDCs and $1,255,600 of water SDCs to debt payments (2025-2027 Adopted Budget). That debt built the plants a new home connects to: about $77.2 million borrowed for the Water Reclamation Facility and the Talking Water Gardens wetlands, and $40.5 million in water bonds sold in 2003 for work that included the Albany-Millersburg Water Treatment Plant. When sewer SDC revenue falls short of its share of the yearly payment, the Public Works Director wrote in April 2025, "rate revenue is used to make up the difference."
• Who pays for the work ahead. The city has $81.8 million in funded projects for 2026 through 2030. Water, sewer and stormwater rates pay about $55 million of that, roughly two thirds. SDCs pay $2.3 million, under 3 percent, all of it from the transportation charge (Capital Improvement Program, page 7).
• What is unfunded. The same plan lists as unfunded $249.9 million in transportation projects, $189.4 million in water, $136.1 million in stormwater, $111.7 million in parks and $60.6 million in wastewater, $747.8 million across the five. The plan calls a project unfunded when no source of money has been made available or when it falls outside the five-year window. In the plan's own words, "there is not enough money available for all the projects the city needs to do" (Capital Improvement Program, page 6).
• How steady the money is. SDC revenue across all five systems was $5.7 million in fiscal 2022, $2.3 million in 2023, $3.2 million in 2024 and $5.5 million in 2025 (the city's open finance ledger). Albany permitted 28 homes in 2025, against a state production target of 488 a year for the Albany urban growth boundary (U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey; Oregon Housing Needs Analysis, 2026).
• How the charges are set. Albany phased the water SDC up to the full amount its methodology allows and reached it in July 2024. The sewer, street, parks and stormwater charges are set below their maximums; the parks charge is 49 percent of its maximum, and the stormwater charge is being phased in over five steps (City of Albany Resolutions 7326, 7327, 7328, 7420, 7291 and 7426).
• The budget around it. The city's budget book for 2025-2027 totals $494.2 million over two years, including $134.2 million carried in from the prior budget. Current revenue is $328.3 million, and the city says 69 percent of it is dedicated to a specific program, activity or service. The other 31 percent, $100.7 million, is discretionary (2025-2027 Adopted Budget). About 78 cents of every general fund dollar goes to police and fire (the budget as amended by Resolution 7506 on June 24, 2026).
• The water Albany holds. Albany's municipal water rights total 57 cubic feet per second, or 36.83 million gallons a day. About 32 million gallons a day of that supplies the two treatment plants, and the rest is assigned to the city's lakes. Millersburg holds another 14.22 million gallons a day that can be used in the Albany service area. The two treatment plants can produce 16 and 13.9 million gallons a day. The system's busiest day in 2022, with Millersburg counted, used 12.2 million gallons, and the plan projects a busiest day of 20.3 million gallons in 2045, which will take both plants. That projection already sets aside 3 million gallons a day for future large commercial and industrial customers, who the plan says "will likely need to pay to offset the effect of their demand on the City system," and the plan found existing water rights "more than adequate through 2070" (City of Albany 2024 Water Master Plan).
• The accounting. State law requires a city to complete an accounting of its SDC money by January 1 of each year, showing what each charge collected and the projects it funded (ORS 223.311). The law does not say where that accounting must be posted. The city publishes the numbers in its budget, its annual financial report and its open finance ledger, and the figures in this paper come from those documents. The campaign did not find them gathered in one report on the city's website.

Plan

1. The city decides Show the books. Albany should publish in one place, every year, each SDC dollar that came in and what it paid for, by system and by project. State law already requires the accounting. The level of each charge should be judged against that record, and I am holding my own view on the level until that record is public.
2. The city decides Count the upkeep from the start. No street, pipe or plant should be approved without its lifetime maintenance cost, and the source that pays it, written beside the construction cost.
3. The city decides Review all five charges together, in public. The five charges were adopted in different years and are set at different shares of their maximums. The council should review them side by side: what each recovers, what each has bought, whether a home on an existing street should pay what a home needing a new main line pays, and what any change would do to the bill of a household already here. A charge that mostly repays old debt is a different thing from a charge that builds new capacity, and the public should be told which one it is paying.
4. The city decides Bring in a third payer. Today two groups pay most of the cost of Albany's water system: the households and businesses already on it, through their rates, and new development, through SDCs. Albany holds rights to more water than it uses. A water right is permission to draw from the river. Treating and delivering that water takes plants and pipes, and the water system has $189.4 million in unfunded projects. I believe the rights may be able to bring in a third payer to help build them, and I want that question investigated in the open, with real numbers. If the engineering and the law hold up, the city should offer reserved water capacity above its own projected need to large Oregon employers and to neighboring communities, who would pay for it up front. Their money would build the capacity they reserve and fill the funds set aside to maintain and replace it, and what remains would go to water projects that have no funding today.
5. The city decides Sell it in the open. Capacity should be sold by public auction, with the terms, the winning bidders and the prices all published, and the city should sign no non-disclosure agreements and entertain no code-name projects. Data centers should not be eligible buyers, no single buyer should be able to reserve capacity at data center scale, and the limit on what one buyer may hold should be set in public before the first sale. The capacity Albany's own growth will need should not be for sale, and in a drought buyers should be cut back before residents are.
6. The city decides Protect the money. Buyers' payments should sit in escrow and be released as construction milestones are met. The funds set aside for maintenance and replacement should be filled before any money left over is spent, buyers should pay the full cost of treating and delivering their own water and of treating the wastewater it becomes, and the money left over should stay in the water system. This idea reaches the water system only. Sewer, streets, stormwater and parks still depend on the review of the five charges and on outside money.
7. The city decides Prove it before selling it. Nothing should be sold until the city attorney, bond counsel, the city's finance and public works staff and an independent engineer have confirmed how much capacity can be sold, what it costs to build and what the law allows. That work should include recycled water from the reclamation plant, which may be able to serve industrial users without drawing on drinking water. What the capacity is worth would be settled by the bids, and the decision would be the council's to make.
8. The mayor has a seat Outside money first. State and federal infrastructure dollars should be pursued for every project that qualifies before the cost reaches a new home or a utility bill, and I would carry that ask to Salem. The city's capital plan cautions that grants are one-time money and that the city typically has to put up part of the cost, so the rest of this plan has to stand without them.

Summary

A new 2,000 square foot home in Albany pays about $20,205 in system development charges, the one-time fees on new construction, and the city's own capital plan shows the water and sewer share of that money going to debt payments, utility rates carrying two thirds of the funded work ahead, and $747.8 million in projects on its unfunded lists. State law limits what those charges may buy and requires a yearly accounting, the charter requires a public vote for most long-term borrowing, and the council sets every charge and every rate. Albany should publish what each charge has paid for, count upkeep from the start of every project, and review all five charges together before changing any of them. Albany also holds rights to 36.83 million gallons of water a day, used 12.2 million on its busiest day in 2022 and projects 20.3 million by 2045, and I believe the capacity above the city's own future need, once the engineering and the law confirm it, should be sold in the open to Oregon employers and neighboring communities, with data centers excluded, so that those buyers help pay for the water system. A safe, stable, sustainable Albany for the next fifty years counts the whole cost before it builds and knows who is paying.

Luke 14:28, as quoted in the statement of faith at warkformayor.org/faith.html. Oregon Constitution, Article XI, Section 2. Oregon Revised Statutes 223.297 to 223.316, on system development charges, including 223.299, on the two kinds of fee, 223.307, on what the charges may be spent on, and 223.311, on the annual accounting. Albany City Charter, Sections 18, 38 and 44, as codified at ecode360.com/AL4334. City of Albany, "Fees Associated with Development," revised July 1, 2026, the table of typical permit fees for a single-dwelling home, for the charges on a 2,000 square foot home and on a 400 square foot home built as an accessory dwelling unit. The city rounds most lines in that table up to the next five dollars. Albany Ordinance 6066 (2025), adding Albany Municipal Code 15.16.110, for deferral of the charges to final inspection. City of Albany 2026-2030 Capital Improvement Program, adopted June 11, 2025 by Resolution 7427: page 6, for "there is not enough money available for all the projects the city needs to do" and for the caution that grants are a one-time source of money; page 8, for the statement that revenue bonds in Albany also require a vote of the people; page 7, the Funding Source Summary, for the $81,820,000 in funded projects, sewer rates of $24,516,000, water rates of $16,160,000 and stormwater rates of $14,275,000, which add to $54,951,000, and transportation SDCs of $560,000 and $1,750,000, which add to $2,310,000; pages 90 and 112, for the statement that water and sewer SDC funding covers debt payments; and the unfunded totals of $249,906,500 for transportation, $189,375,000 for water, $136,126,600 for stormwater, $111,749,000 for parks and $60,642,000 for wastewater, which add to $747,799,100, with the plan's definition of an unfunded project. City of Albany Open Finance dashboard and its budget ledger, linked from albanyoregon.gov/finance, data as of May 12, 2026, for SDC revenue of $5,749,411 in fiscal 2022, $2,292,966 in fiscal 2023, $3,235,976 in fiscal 2024 and $5,497,264 in fiscal 2025, and for the transfers to debt service from fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2025: $4,650,000 from the sewer improvement fee program and $2,180,200 from the water SDC programs. City of Albany 2025-2027 Adopted Budget, adopted June 18, 2025 by Resolution 7432, and the Budget Review Committee packet of May 22, 2025, for the transfers of $2,800,000 in sewer SDCs and $1,255,600 in water SDCs to debt service, the budget book's total of $494,167,975, which counts $7,317,800 in transfers inside funds that the adopting resolution leaves out of its own total of $486,850,175, beginning balances of $134,172,100, current revenues of $328.3 million, and the statement that about 31 percent, $100.7 million, is discretionary and the remaining 69 percent is dedicated. Resolution 7506, the supplemental budget adopted June 24, 2026, for public safety at $97,015,781 of a $123,596,903 general fund, 78.5 percent; the share was 77.6 percent as adopted in 2025. Albany City Council work session packet, May 12, 2025, memo from the Public Works Director dated April 28, 2025, "Utility Rate Adjustments for the 2025-2027 Biennium," for the statement that rate revenue makes up the difference when sewer SDC revenue does not cover its share of the debt payment, the approximately $77.2 million borrowed for the Water Reclamation Facility and the Talking Water Gardens wetlands, and the $40.5 million in water revenue bonds sold in 2003. City of Albany Resolutions 7326 (water), 7327 (wastewater), 7420 and 7328 (transportation), 7291 (parks) and 7426 (stormwater), for the charges as adopted against the maximum each methodology allows; Resolution 7420 sets the current transportation charge, and Resolution 7328, which it replaced, states the maximum. U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, 2025 annual file, for the 28 homes permitted in Albany; Oregon Housing Needs Analysis production target for the Albany urban growth boundary, Oregon Department of Administrative Services Office of Economic Analysis, 2026, for the 488 a year. City of Albany 2024 Water Master Plan, adopted by Resolution 7347, for municipal water rights of 57 cubic feet per second, or 36.83 million gallons a day, of which 50 cubic feet per second supply the two treatment plants and 7 are for the city's lakes; Millersburg's 22 cubic feet per second, or 14.22 million gallons a day; the treatment capacity of 16 and 13.9 million gallons a day; the 2022 maximum day demand of 12.2 million gallons and the projected 2045 maximum day demand of 20.3 million gallons, for Albany and Millersburg together; the 3 million gallon a day reserve for non-residential demand; and the finding that existing water rights are more than adequate through 2070.