Graphic organizer Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics
Three Ways Hollingford Could Own Its Water System
A grade 9 three-column organizer comparing a city department, a regional authority, and an investor-owned utility on who decides, who pays, and who can object.
Objectives
- Students will compare three ownership forms for a water system across eight governance questions.
- Students will identify where a resident's objection goes under each ownership form.
- Students will state the trade-off between local control and rate-setting by rule.
Vocabulary
- Special district
- A local government created to do one job, such as delivering water. It has its own board and its own budget, separate from the city or county.
Also: public utilities commission, revenue bond, rate of return, service territory
Teacher overview
American water systems are not all organized the same way. The same town can be served by a department inside city hall, by an independent regional authority with its own board, or by a company whose rates a state commission approves. This organizer is a three-column comparison frame that holds those three forms side by side across eight governance questions, ending with a single trade-off statement. Ownership is easy to mistake for a technical detail that changes nothing a customer would notice; the rows on complaints, surplus money, and outside-city customers show that ownership determines where an objection goes and whether it has any force when it arrives. The fictional town of Hollingford is used only as a frame so that students answer for one place rather than in the abstract.
Organizer
Hollingford is a fictional town choosing among three ways to own and run its water system. Fill in every cell.
| Question | City water department | Regional water authority | Investor-owned utility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the pipes, plant, and reservoir? | |||
| Who sets the rates, and who must approve them? | |||
| How are the decision-makers chosen? | |||
| Where does a resident take a complaint the utility will not fix? | |||
| What happens to money left over at the end of the year? | |||
| How are customers outside the town limit represented? | |||
| Who borrows for a large project, and who repays that debt? | |||
| What does a change of control require? | |||
| Trade-off: what does Hollingford give up under this form? |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Question | City water department | Regional water authority | Investor-owned utility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the pipes, plant, and reservoir? | The town owns everything, and the system is one department among many. | The authority owns the assets in its own name, separate from any member town. | A company owns the assets and serves a territory the state has assigned to it. |
| Who sets the rates, and who must approve them? | The town council sets rates by ordinance, usually after a public hearing. | The authority's own board sets rates, without needing a council vote. | The company proposes rates and a state public utilities commission approves them in a formal case. |
| How are the decision-makers chosen? | Voters elect the council, and the council or manager appoints the department head. | Board members are elected by district voters or appointed by the member towns, depending on the charter. | Shareholders choose the company's board; commissioners are elected or appointed by the governor, depending on the state. |
| Where does a resident take a complaint the utility will not fix? | To the department, then to the council, and finally to the next election. | To the authority's board at a meeting open under the state's public meetings law. | To the company, then to the commission's consumer division, which can order a remedy. |
| What happens to money left over at the end of the year? | It stays in the utility fund, though some towns transfer part of it to the general fund. | It stays with the authority and cannot be moved into any town's general budget. | It becomes a return to shareholders, limited by the rate of return the commission allows. |
| How are customers outside the town limit represented? | Usually not at all; they often pay a higher rate and are protected only by contract. | Through seats allocated to member towns, so representation depends on the charter. | The same as every other customer in the territory, through the commission rather than a local vote. |
| Who borrows for a large project, and who repays that debt? | The town issues revenue bonds repaid from water rates, sometimes with a voter-approved general obligation. | The authority issues its own bonds, repaid from rates charged across all member towns. | The company raises money from investors and lenders, and customers repay it through rates that include the allowed return. |
| What does a change of control require? | A council vote, and in many states a referendum before a system may be sold. | Action by the member governments or by the legislature that created the authority. | Commission approval of the sale, and in some states a local vote or a right of first refusal. |
| Trade-off: what does Hollingford give up under this form? | Rates are set by people facing an election, which keeps them low and can defer needed work. | Distance from the council makes rates steadier and makes the board harder for one town's voters to reach. | A regulator enforces a rate case record, while the return paid to investors is a cost customers carry. |
Differentiation
Support
Give students the exemplar's first two rows already filled in and ask them to complete the remaining seven. Provide a word bank containing "ordinance," "charter," "commission," "shareholder," "revenue bond," and "referendum," and let students place each term in the column where it belongs before writing full answers.
Extension
Ask students to add a fourth column for a customer-owned cooperative and to fill all nine rows for it, marking any row where they are not certain and naming the document they would need to check. Students then write two sentences on which of the four forms gives a resident of the fictional town the fastest route to a decision-maker.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "department," "authority," "commission," and "shareholder" with three simple org charts showing who reports to whom under each form. Allow students to complete the organizer in short phrases rather than sentences, and provide the frame "Under this form, my complaint goes first to ___, and then to ___."
Extensions
Students find out which of the three forms serves their own address, using only the utility's published website or the annual water quality report, then fill in a fourth column of the organizer for that real system and note any row the published documents do not answer. A second option is to write the one-page recommendation a consultant would give the fictional Hollingford council, naming a form and the strongest objection to it.