Reserve Policy

The Bear Valley Water District considers careful fiscal planning essential to the long term, sustainable delivery of its core services, specifically the collection, treatment and disposal of waste water for all of its customers as well as the careful stewardship of the public’s financial and environmental assets.

The District has determined that a key part of the District’s financial preparedness rests on sound reserve policies and guidelines. This policy is intended to provide for the prudent accumulation and management of designated reserve funds to achieve the District’s long term, stragetic financial goals.

Managed and allocated effectively, reserves ultimately provide stakeholders a variety of benefits.  In addition to financial policies established to guarantee that the District can meet the future financial requirements of customer demand and system reliability, reserve policies are also considered essential to ensure stable rates for ratepayers in the District, well-maintained public assets, emergency preparedness, capital improvement and replacement of assets, savings to balance budgets and the proper allocation of funds for the future growth and expansion of facilities.

This Reserve Fund Policy was developed to clearly identify specific designated reserve funds and govern how they will be managed. It is the intent of this Reserve Fund Policy to clearly identify types of reserve funds as well as define the purpose, target balance, use and funding mechanism of each fund.  The adequacy of the target reserve year-end balance ranges and/or annual contributions will be reviewed annually during the budgeting process and may be revised accordingly as necessary.

The Board of Directors establishes the following reserve funds with this policy:

1. Sewer Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Emergency Reserve Fund 

2. Sewer Capital Improvement & Replacement Program (CIP) Reserve Fund

3. Sewer System Capacity Fee Reserve Fund