See all posts in the Mayor & Cities Corner series
(Mayor’s Corner is a regular feature where Carver County mayors share updates, insights, and messages with their communities. Carver City Mayor Courtney Johnson is providing this week’s edition.)
In Carver, utility bills are always a popular topic. This month I want to do a deep dive (no pun intended) on this topic.
Utility bills play a crucial role in funding essential services to maintain our community’s utilities infrastructure and services such as water, sewer and stormwater. You may not know that property taxes are not used in any way to operate the utility system. Property taxes pay for services like fire, police, parks maintenance, snow plowing and more.
Your monthly utility bill supports essential services, including:
- Water supply and treatment: Utility bills help fund the infrastructure needed to provide safe drinking water. This includes the costs of sourcing, treating and distributing water to homes and businesses, as well as maintaining the water supply system.
- Wastewater management: Funds collected through utility bills are also used to manage wastewater (sewage) treatment. The city of Carver utilizes the Met Council for wastewater treatment, which is a charge of nearly $459,000 in 2025 and will increase to $481,000 in 2026.
- Infrastructure maintenance: Regular maintenance and upgrades of water, sewer and stormwater systems are crucial. Council has made the strategic decision to start saving for these needs now, to reduce total bonding costs later, saving money on interest payments.
- Regulatory compliance: Cities with water treatment facilities must adhere to a myriad of federal and state regulations, including testing and reporting.
Carver’s 2025 – 2034 Long Term Financial Plan (LTFP) models the next 10 years of growth, revenues, expenses, capital improvements, debt and utility rates needed to support all of those activities. The LTFP also serves to model the utility rates we anticipate in the next 10 years.
As you’ll see in the LTFP, the top three largest projects by anticipated cost that are planned for the next 10 years, along with the years we’re anticipating needing the improvements, include:
- Water treatment facility #2 (2031) $18M
- Forcemain (2029) $7.5M
- Well #7 (2028) $1.8M
It’s also important to note that new growth in Carver pays its own way for new water and sanitary sewer infrastructure. This is done through trunk fees, water availability charge (WAC) and sewer availability charge (SAC) fees, which are paid when new homes and businesses are built.
Future projects like the extension of utilities to the southwestern part of the community and a new sanitary sewer crossing under 212 will be funded exclusively by new development fees. Monthly utility bills don’t fund this work.
Finally, I will occasionally hear from residents who are new to Carver with questions about their utility bill because it doesn’t correspond to the bill from the larger city they used to call home. Water rates in Carver, with roughly 7,000 residents, are not going to compare favorably to Eden Prairie, Plymouth and Edina, all of which have more than 50,000 residents and the reason comes back to infrastructure.
Those cities are essentially fully developed suburbs which made investments in infrastructure, similar to what’s listed for Carver above, many decades ago. For perspective, Eden Prairie’s population was 7,000 around 1970. Plymouth hit 7,000 residents in the 1950s and Edina in the 1940s.
As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns about your utility bill or anything that’s going on in our community, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Stay connected, be informed and get involved.
Mayor Courtney Johnson: CJohnson@CityOfCarver.com; Cell: 612.702.7703
