It’s easy for discussion over the region’s population loss to feel as if it has no stakes.

That’s because population loss tends to happen more like a trickle than a burst pipe. But it’s there nonetheless, our population dripping away like a leaky faucet. Jamestown’s population in 1930 was 45,155, according to the 1930 census. It’s now estimated to be 27,731. The 17,424 people lost over 94 years looks like a huge number, but it’s only about .4% a year. Because we haven’t seen a population flood, the consequences of our dwindling population aren’t always as easy to see as something like inflation, which we have seen ravage our checking accounts over the past few years.

Population loss is coming for your checkbook too, if you’re paying attention to our reporting on recent Board of Public Utilities meetings. BPU officials have worked hard over the years to bring in outside money to help pay for infrastructure upgrades. The utility has also expanded its service territory over the years in an attempt to increase its user base. While each of those expansions comes with an up-front cost, they also have brought a greater ability to keep users’ rates low by spreading the cost of doing business over more households.

But as the city and the county around it continue to lose residents, it’s getting harder and harder to grow the utility’s user base. One of the key long-range concerns raised by Kevin Karr, BPU finance and customer accounts manager, has been how the city’s declining population is going to affect BPU rates. He’s been more focused recently on water rates, but electric rates are likely to face a similar discussion.

It’s simple math. It costs money to administer a water, wastewater or electric system. If the number of users goes down, then those fixed costs are spread amongst fewer users – resulting in higher costs. That’s especially true when those costs aren’t fixed, as is the case with the BPU. There are constant capital needs needed to keep the power on, the water flowing in and out of your house and the garbage picked up each week. Add in state regulations and mandates and those costs grow even higher.

Much of the buildout of Jamestown’s infrastructure came at a time when the city was growing – or was closer to its population peak than it was to 2024 levels. In order to provide service at a cost many city residents have come to expect, the utility finds itself having an existential crisis. Should it expand its service territory as it has over the years to boost its number of users and keep costs lower, or serve its existing shrinking user base while increasing rates to cover costs? Growing means additional investment – like is being proposed with a possible overhaul of the district heating system – and a cost to users to pay for that growth. Keeping the status quo is less costly to the utility but hits your pocketbook because rates will go up.

Either way, the population loss just got a whole lot less theoretical and a whole lot more practical.