User manual · Model 0.2.0 · Scenario schema 2.0

Explore the plan, inspect the assumptions.

This guide explains five-year scenarios for Suburban Water, Suburban Wastewater, and City Division, covering 2027–2031. The public evidence cutoff is November 7, 2026, America/New_York. The financial model works separately within each division; selecting another division changes the operating boundary, tariff, receipt mix, capital plan, and financial starting point.

1. Run your first scenario

1. Open the dashboard and select the division you want to analyze. Begin with the Central planning estimate preset.
2. Read the selected fund's budget anchor, future-plan assumptions, bill scope, and financial status. The central case uses detailed project capital and a 25% blend of historical operating-cost growth; it is a derived scenario.
3. Inspect the Planner annual ledger. Compare coverage and liquidity: a division can have positive operating cash after debt service while spending its reserves on capital.
4. Save a comparison, then change one control. The result recalculates; a manually edited preset becomes Custom.
5. Open Scenarios to compare named alternatives. Use the same division, household usage, and service scope when comparing bills.
6. Inspect Capital plan, Customers & trends, Evidence & assumptions, and Rules & agreements before interpreting the result.
7. Export the scenario JSON and cash-flow CSV to retain the settings and calculation record.

Resetting or selecting a preset replaces driver settings. An in-session comparison is a convenience; export anything you need to reproduce after a refresh. The source and methods pages provide context even when the dashboard is not open.

2. Understand starting tariffs and annual uplifts

Planned tariffs start with the exact published proposed 2027 components, followed by the selected division's declared future path. Freeze 2026 tariffs holds modeled components at actual 2026 values before any user uplift. This is a literal tariff-component freeze, including City capital and administrative-order charges.

There are five annual entries, one for each year from 2027 to 2031, for fixed and usage uplifts. City also has a separate capital/AO add-on series. 0% means use the selected starting path with no extra uplift. It does not mean that published or assumed tariffs stop increasing. An uplift changes that year and compounds into later years. For example, a 2% uplift on a component already scheduled to rise 3% creates 5.06% total growth for that component, before bill rounding.

Fixed charges and volume prices can change independently. The fund receipt response uses explicit assumed fixed, variable, and add-on revenue shares. A household's fixed/variable bill split does not determine those fund shares. Changing the illustrated usage, meter, income, bill type, or EDU count changes the bill illustration; it does not create a new customer allocation for the entire fund.

Suburban monthly volume boundaries are 40,000; 1,000,000; 9,000,000; and 58,000,000 gallons, with prices $4.26, $3.85, $3.36, $3.12, and $2.90 per 1,000 gallons. For quarterly accounts the model uses three times those boundaries, continuing the published 2026 period convention. Each block price applies only to water within that block. Larger meters generally have monthly fixed charges; small meters generally have quarterly charges. The displayed monthly bill is an equivalent.

At 5,000 gallons/month (15,000/quarter), one ordinary residential EDU, and a 5/8-inch meter, proposed 2027 annual examples reproduce $408.40 Suburban water, $387.00 Common Rate 1, $727.20 Common Rate 2, and $1,212.32 City combined. The engine rounds each bill line to cents, sums the billing-period total, then annualizes. Different rounding order produces cent-level discrepancies.

3. Financial and customer controls

Invalid, empty, nonnumeric, or out-of-range values are rejected; the last valid calculation remains the reference until inputs are valid. Fixed plus add-on shares cannot exceed 100% of exposed receipts. Only City has a separate add-on revenue bucket.

4. Read the financial bridge

The annual ledger follows this identity: closing cash = opening unrestricted cash + operating receipts + capital receipts + grants + borrowing + disclosed investment conversions − operating expense − lease payments − other capital payments − debt service − capital spending. The next year begins with the prior closing cash. Restricted balances are not available simply because they appear elsewhere in a financial report.

Cash days equal closing unrestricted cash divided by annual operating expense times 365. Coverage proxy equals operating receipts less operating expense and lease payments, divided by debt service. It is a planning measure and may differ from a reported covenant definition. The source-reported ratio and model proxy should retain separate labels.

Receipts are separated into fixed retail, variable retail, City add-ons, residual contract/cost-sharing receipts, other operating receipts, investment income, and capital sources. Borrowing is financing. A grant delayed outside the five years cannot support cash within them. Terminal debt and grant information prevents the horizon from hiding later obligations.

The displayed cash and bill comparisons use a consistent division and bill scope. Suburban Water's source budget closes 2027 at $7,546,095 under its budget anchor. Later outcomes are derived and can differ from the original CIP. The central scenario's historical blend and detailed capital basis are explicit choices, not a claim that LCA published this exact forecast.

Read the financing charts in four steps

1. Annual cash sources: distinguish customer and operating receipts from capital receipts, grants, borrowing and conversions of investments already held. Opening reserves are not counted as new receipts.
2. Annual cash uses: inspect operating and lease payments, other capital payments, base and additional debt service, and capital spending. Positive columns represent outflows that the cash bridge subtracts.
3. Capital and identified funding: compare annual spending with planned and additional borrowing, planned and additional grants, and capital receipts. These are aggregate timing totals, without project earmarking. A residual can use operating surplus or reserves; it is not automatically a cash deficit.
4. Remaining cash: expand exact tables and reconcile opening cash + sources − uses = ending cash. The open five-year bridge also shows how operating cash generation and reserve draws support capital. Chart amounts are millions; tables show nominal USD to cents from unrounded rows.

The additional-debt share controls additional borrowing. A 0% setting still retains the published planned borrowing. The summary labels both separately. Loans are financing with later repayment obligations; grants have different award and eligibility conditions. Neither is customer operating income.

For plain-English definitions and model-specific formulas, use the financial glossary, including coverage proxy, cash days, principal, CCRC and scenario priors. Chart keys and input definitions link directly to the relevant terms.

5. Compare disclosed possibilities

The Scenarios view offers Central planning estimate, Published drivers, Condensed capital table, Freeze 2026 tariffs, Historical trend, Industrial demand −20%, Cost pressure, Grants delayed two years, Additional borrowing, and lower/higher retail exposure. Descriptions identify the changes. Choose an alternative to inspect it in the Planner; manual edits change its label to Custom.

Named scenarios are judgments, not calibrated probabilities. The historical-trend preset uses observed account and water-volume growth separately where available; wastewater retains stated plan proxies where matched observations are unavailable. A passing case does not prove that its cost, demand, and financing assumptions will occur together. Export the settings used for an important comparison.

6. Use optimization as a finite search

Select a lever: Retail changes fixed and usage uplifts together; Balanced retail + contracts also sets the residual contract drift to the path's highest uplift; City add-ons changes only the capital/AO uplift path. The selected financing, costs, demand, and other assumptions stay in force. Balanced contract drift is an explicit scenario lever, not an assumed agreement entitlement.

The engine checks level, earlier, and later uplift shapes on a 0.1-percentage-point grid up to the maximum uplift, removes duplicates, and simulates every candidate. Lowest peak annual bill increase minimizes the highest modeled household bill change, then total five-year bills, then variation between years. Lowest five-year bill prioritizes cumulative nominal bills, then peak increase and variation. This is the best result within the tested family, not a global optimum.

A candidate must satisfy every implemented financial test. For City, core growth must also fit the selected CPI-plus-margin proxy unless the explicit amendment assumption is enabled. Add-on growth has separate planning status. The optimizer cannot make its own grant award, remove required work, or create an executed agreement.

7. Inspect capital scope and timing

The Capital plan view connects the selected division's annual program with project categories, timing, funding, and source notes. Distinguish direct project costs from the condensed cash-capital table and from separate capital payments. Detailed versus condensed capital is a documented modeling choice; do not silently use the smaller City 2029 value.

Cost-overrun and funding controls change cash consequences. They do not provide authority to defer mandatory or regulatory work. Capital cost recovery on customer bills is separate from the year's cash capital spend and requires its own eligible-project and allocation assumptions. See Model methods for the calculation bridge and capital reconciliation.

8. Read customer and operating history

Customers & trends distinguishes customer units, connections where reported, water sales, industrial concentration, and service-area scope. The ACFR's Western Lehigh series is not the entire authority; City and other service areas have different boundaries. Historical observations, forecast values, budgets, and proposed rates keep their statuses.

Customer counts and gallons are different drivers. Growing accounts with falling use per account can produce a different receipt pattern from growing industrial gallons. Published industrial/commercial revenue shares are historical context; they do not identify the exact variable-revenue response. Industrial wastewater additionally depends on flows, allocation, load, and permit terms. The ordinary household calculator does not add industrial sampling, strength, and permit fees automatically.

9. Use evidence and agreement flags

Evidence & assumptions identifies source documents, page locations, units, dates, and whether a value is verified, derived, or assumed. Source attachments and links let the reader inspect the underlying budget, tariff, financial report, capital plan, and rule documents. Inputs are versioned rather than silently refreshed during a presentation.

Rules & agreements distinguishes a known rule from an assumed application. The City core escalator uses CPI-U Northeast Region, not seasonally adjusted, annual change through June 30 of the previous year, plus 2.5 percentage points through 2032, with a zero floor. The model uses CPI assumptions [4.3, 3.3, 3.3, 3.3, 3.3] for 2027–2031. The 2027 value is implied by published 6.8% core growth; later CPI values are assumed.

Core ceiling flags do not limit the combined City bill or all receipts. Capital/AO and municipal contracts are separate. Selecting Assume lease amendment allows an above-ceiling scenario to qualify under the implemented checks while retaining a visible assumption; it does not establish an executed amendment. The posted 2020 final execution form has blank signatures and conditional effectiveness terms. See the constraint register for the exact evidence and remaining replacement documents.

10. Save, import, export, and share

Export scenario saves schema 2.0, model 0.2.0, the evidence cutoff, exact dataRevision SHA-256 fingerprint, selected fund, complete settings, calculated annual rows, source URLs, assumption notes, financial/check status, and terminal information. Import accepts only matching model, schema, cutoff, baseline fingerprint, and validated settings, then recalculates. Older one-fund model 0.1 scenarios are rejected; there is no silent migration.

Cash-flow CSV exports the annual ledger, including separate base and additional debt service, for Excel or Power BI review. Keep the scenario JSON beside it: a CSV does not contain every control or agreement assumption. Source data and downloadable attachments provide the context needed to reproduce the analysis. The Model methods page and associated guides explain the equations and refresh boundaries.

This static site can be opened directly or embedded by an authorized page using an iframe with an accessible title and a full-page link. Provide sufficient height for the controls and ledger. Browser printing can save this manual. A local file: opening may prevent module/data loading; use a static HTTP server or the deployed site.

11. Validate the isolated synthetic extract

Data connections demonstrates a separate synthetic schema 1.0 validator for a 2027 Suburban Water fixture. It checks allowed fields and metrics, explicit synthetic flags, unique mock identifiers, fund and year, USD/cash basis, valid amounts and date, and independent control totals. The three-division planning model does not turn this old fixture into a three-division ERP integration.

Validation does not connect to Munis, authenticate an interface, certify source completeness, or reconcile a production ledger. Use public and synthetic information in this demo. A production pilot requires an approved aggregate extract or licensed interface, reviewed fund/class mappings, control totals, restricted-cash definitions, and finance reconciliation before model refresh.

12. Associated guides

Full financial glossary explains cash, revenue, borrowing, grants, principal, interest, capital, tariff terms and model assumptions. Quick abbreviations: CIP: capital improvement plan. CCRC: capital cost recovery charge. AO: administrative order. EDU: equivalent dwelling unit. Exposure: assumed share of receipts responding to a modeled lever. Uplift: incremental change on the selected tariff path. Feasible: passes the stated numerical tests under selected assumptions.