Worksheet Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

Where the Rate Dollar Goes: A Weller Falls Water Budget Worksheet

A grade 10 worksheet where students read a fictional city water budget, compute each category's dollars, and judge a proposed shift toward pipe repair.

Grade: Grade 10
Subject: Social Studies & Civics
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

D2.Eco.1.9-12 C3 Framework

Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.

How this material aligns: Items 6 and 7 have students quantify how adding money for pipe repair raises the yearly cost each ratepayer carries, a budget policy choice whose costs and benefits fall unevenly across current and future ratepayers.

All materials for D2.Eco.1.9-12 →

D2.Eco.2.9-12 C3 Framework

Use marginal benefits and marginal costs to construct an argument for or against an approach or solution to an economic issue.

How this material aligns: Items 7 and 8 have students set the marginal cost of a larger repair share, about $30 per household, against its marginal benefit of fewer main breaks to argue the budget choice.

All materials for D2.Eco.2.9-12 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-17.

Objectives

Students will calculate the dollar amount of each category in a utility operating budget from its percentage share.
Students will explain how a shift in budget priorities changes the average household bill.
Students will evaluate why some budget categories are difficult to cut in the short term.

Vocabulary

Debt service: The money a utility must pay back each year on loans it took out to build big projects, much like a family paying its mortgage. These payments come out of customers' water bills.
Ratepayer: A person or business that pays a utility bill. Ratepayers provide most of the money that keeps a water system running.

Also: operating budget, revenue, fixed cost

Teacher overview

A water utility publishes a budget every year that shows where the money from bills is spent. This worksheet uses a fictional utility so students can read a full budget and do the math a city council would do. Students find each category's dollars, convert the total into an average bill, and test what a proposed shift toward pipe repair would cost each household.

Where the Rate Dollar Goes: A Weller Falls Water Budget Worksheet — Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Use this budget for every item. Suppose the fictional town of Weller Falls runs its own water utility. Its yearly operating budget is $6,000,000, and it serves 10,000 households. The budget is divided like this:

Staff wages: 30 percent
Pipe repair and replacement: 25 percent
Treatment chemicals and power: 20 percent
Debt service (payments on past projects): 15 percent
Administration and billing: 10 percent

How many dollars does Weller Falls spend on treatment chemicals and power?
How many dollars does it spend on pipe repair and replacement?
Which single category takes the largest share of the budget?
If the utility must cover the full $6,000,000 from bills alone, what is the average yearly amount each of the 10,000 households must pay?
Convert your answer to item 4 into an average monthly amount per household.
The council proposes adding money for pipe repair equal to 5 percent of the current $6,000,000 budget, without cutting any other category. How many more dollars would go to pipe repair?
If that increase is spread evenly across all 10,000 households, how much more would each household pay per year?
Weller Falls has many old pipes. Explain why the council might add repair money even though it raises every household's bill. Name one benefit that could outweigh the added cost.
Debt service and staff wages are hard to cut in a single year. Choose one of the two and explain in a sentence why the utility cannot simply remove it.
A resident claims that cutting administration to zero would make water free. Use the budget numbers to explain why that claim is wrong.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Every figure below is drawn from the fictional Weller Falls budget stated in the worksheet.

Answer: $1,200,000. Treatment chemicals and power is 20 percent of $6,000,000, and 0.20 x 6,000,000 = 1,200,000.
Answer: $1,500,000. Pipe repair is 25 percent of $6,000,000, and 0.25 x 6,000,000 = 1,500,000.
Answer: Staff wages. At 30 percent it is the largest share, ahead of pipe repair at 25 percent.
Answer: $600 per year. Dividing $6,000,000 by 10,000 households gives $600 per household each year.
Answer: $50 per month. $600 per year divided by 12 months is $50 each month.
Answer: $300,000. The addition equals 5 percent of the current budget, and 0.05 x 6,000,000 = 300,000 more dollars for repair.
Answer: $30 per year. $300,000 divided by 10,000 households is $30 more per household each year.
Answer: Answers will vary. A strong answer names a benefit such as fewer main breaks, less lost water, or avoided emergency repairs, and states that this benefit can be worth more than the $30 added yearly cost per household.
Answer: Answers will vary. Debt service is a legal payment owed on money already borrowed, so skipping it risks default; wages must be paid to keep operators and repair crews on the job.
Answer: Administration is only 10 percent of the budget, or $600,000, which is about $60 per household each year. Removing it would leave the other 90 percent of costs, so water would still cost most of what it does now.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the budget with the dollar amount already filled in for two categories, so students see the percent-to-dollars method modeled before item 1. Allow calculators and give a worked example using a made-up 10 percent category.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite the fictional Weller Falls budget so pipe repair becomes the largest category without raising the $6,000,000 total, state which other categories they cut, and explain the tradeoff each cut creates for service or staffing.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "operating budget," "revenue," "fixed cost," "debt service," and "ratepayer" with a simple pie-slice image of the five categories. Allow items 8, 9, and 10 to be answered in short phrases, and provide the sentence frame "The council might raise repair spending because ___."