Scottsdale City Council version 2026 has been fractious \u2013 battling over an Old Town parking garage, the format for public comment, funding for water recycling and much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At its May 19 meeting, the city\u2019s elected officials again engaged in prolonged, fiery debate: When Mayor Lisa Borowsky leaned to allowing citizen Dan Ishac to play a recording for his public comment, councilmen Adam Kwasman and Barry Graham threatened to overrule her.<\/p>\n
A rocky compromise was reached, with Ishac summarizing how the recording was of Councilwoman Jan Dubauskas criticizing Borowsky to county detectives. This was during the \u201cParkingate\u201d saga of early 2025.<\/p>\n
Just before that squabble, City Council showed it had something it could unanimously agree on: raising rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Borowsky and the six council representatives joined forces to approve sweeping increases, from parks and library space rentals to garbage collection.<\/p>\n
And the big ones: city-provided utilities.<\/p>\n
Water rate increases of 4.5% will start Nov. 1, with wastewater rate bumps of 3.5% effective July 1<\/p>\n
Those two increases will give the city an extra $8 million.<\/p>\n
Though the average resident would pay an extra $5.21 per month starting this fall, Scottsdale\u2019s water and sewer rates are second-best in the Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only Chandler, at $71.32 per month, beats the $129.79 \u2013 a $5.21 increase \u2013 Scottsdale will charge its average water\/sewer user.<\/p>\n
Peoria ($134.47), Tempe ($147.31), Phoenix ($154.70), Glendale ($167.84), Mesa ($169.56) and Gilbert ($180.82) all charge more for 16,000 gallons of water and 11,000 gallons of wastewater, according to Scottsdale staff information.<\/p>\n
Council also approved raising residential garbage collection by 2%, from $31.78 to $32.42 monthly.<\/p>\n
According to a memo from Sonia Andrews, Scottsdale\u2019s treasurer, \u201cThese increases were determined by the Water Resources Department using a five-year rate model to calculate revenue requirements for upcoming water and sewer operating and capital needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rate increases, Andrews noted, \u201cdo not include funding for capital projects that do not have accurate cost projections and capital projects that are still being defined.\u201d<\/p>\n
The water increase presentation cited \u201cSignificant increases over the last four years in:<\/p>\n
Raw water, 6%;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Personnel services, 8%;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Electricity, 34%;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Chemicals, 8%.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottsdale City Council version 2026 has been fractious \u2013 battling over an Old Town parking garage, the format…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":825119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[179695,5229,5643,1587,166900,5310,138901,12176,1589,7600,46683,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-825118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-adam-kwasman","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-az","tag-barry-graham","tag-city-council","tag-lisa-borowsky","tag-mayor","tag-phoenix","tag-scottsdale","tag-scottsdale-city-council","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116645568728414969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}