Providence Water estimates $396,000 in contractor costs for 72 private-side lead service line replacements in its proposed Lead Service Replacement Fund budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027.
The estimate assumes $5,500 per replacement, Providence Water public information officer Yvette Jaquez told Six State Signal in an Oct. 28 email. She said those construction costs are repaid through customer loans. The figure is a budget estimate, not a count of completed replacements.
A service line connects a water main to a property. The utility describes private-side work as replacement of the customer's part of the line. Its program page says property owners outside a planned construction contract under its accelerated replacement program can seek a 10-year, zero-interest loan. The accelerated program uses federal and state funding for free replacements, as funding allows.
Jaquez also clarified a separate $550,000 line labeled "New Customer Loans" in the proposed ordinance. It is Providence Water's estimate of what customers will repay this year on loans it has already made to them. "The entry is not revenue from new debt," she said.
The ordinance would appropriate $6,621,264 to the fund, including $5,941,264 carried over from the prior year, $130,000 in interest income and the $550,000 in loan repayments. That total is not the amount the budget proposes to spend on construction this year.
Planned expenses total $701,587: the $396,000 for contractor work and $305,587 for debt service, meaning payments on debt. The budget projects $5,919,677 remaining after those expenses. Jaquez's reply did not establish how much of the carryover is already committed or whether the 72 estimated replacements would be additional work funded by this appropriation.
The ordinance appeared on the City Council's Oct. 15 agenda. City Clerk Tina Mastroianni said Oct. 21 that it had been referred to the Special Committee on Ways and Means, without a vote on the budget. At that point, she said, a committee meeting had not been scheduled.
She described the remaining steps as committee approval and two full Council passages. The mayor would then have 10 days to sign or veto; an unsigned ordinance would take effect without his signature.
The Council's meeting calendar, checked Oct. 29, lists no full Council meeting after Oct. 15 and before its next scheduled meeting Nov. 5. The posted Ways and Means agendas for Oct. 20, Oct. 21 and Oct. 27 do not list the fund proposal.
If enacted, the proposed ordinance would take effect retroactively to July 1, 2026.