great discussion but we also will be touching on a number of other items today wellcome like to open it up to public comments knowing that we may get to a lot of your  reflecting is it's reflecting the investment that has been and needs to be made in the system that maybe hasn't been made for many years is that i don't want to call it deferred maintenance but you know much the of the skun trees infrastructure was put in fifty seventy five one hundred years ago under federal grants and the cost to replace that infrastructure was not included in the operations budget money was not set aside to replace this infrastructure when the useful life comes due when and that's what we're facing and it's not just richmond it's every every community in the state of vermont and every  community across the country is facing this where where developers put in infrastructure at their expense deeded over to the town and then the town was like well now we have to maintain it and that may have been twenty thirty forty years ago so the  on looking towards the future of a future debt payments future infrastructure improvement projects that need to come due of even inflation there has not been the the marginal predictable increases that should have occurred over the past x number of years and and now we have to make a significant correction and unfortunately there is no there is no easy decision here and there is no easy choice and the goal with the goal moving forward is to make it more equitable so you mr graef pay your fair share of the water today if you send the least water that you contribute it's if you use ten percent of the water rate structure and but yes that does mean that the rates are going to go a lot because as we'll get into there are there are a number of factors that are contributing but that should have been dealt with five ten years ago  knowing that this is an issue in this community and knowing that there's only so much i could do on the outside so me as a member of this water and sewer commission well for at least the time that i plan to be here so long as the voters choose to have me here it will be it's the responsibility of the water and sewer commissioners to ensure that the rates are raised in an appropriate fashion and and frankly that's that's up to the commissioners they need to make the difficult decisions is is we need to look at the numbers and say ok this is what we have to do about it and sometimes those decisions are very difficult and sometimes people choose not to make them and kick the can a lot of the questions that you asked ok brief presentation here and with schooling to explain the background of what we've been doing for the past year and the recommendations that have twenty nine and their future meetings plan still there are seven members on the committee made out of residents a business owner water superintendent the town manager and the water commission member and chair which was being currently ongoing outlays the key factor in determining costs was distribution of billable units treatment of allocated units in application of septa drive  all every water account in town has something called an allocated unit for every sewer account also for a long time we base that off of a number of gallons that are according to a state table most single family homes have one allocated view that if you have four bedrooms it's one point three a lot of businesses have more than one but some businesses have many more than one and a lot people have more than what they use and they've begun to realize that they can turn that back in since they're not using it and lower their bill but that does is reduce the number of allocated units which increases the base charge for everyone else we also have something called septa drive you know for those of you that don't know the septic revenue is when somebody goes and pump septic tanks out in the countryside they have to dispose of that waste somehow so one of the ways they would dispose of it still bring it to us and we charge five cents a gallon to take that sewage and we treat it for them and that's a significant source of revenue that we've discovered in the past fifteen years and it's also it's been a big moneymaker and it's helped offset the amount of money that our customers so why are these rate changes needed for one thing we've been misallocat towards water revenue separate revenue is a function of the sewer department not the water department but we've been using about ninety thousand dollars a year to offset water rates state statute says we can no longer do that not only that but we're facing declining step to drive a new do to increase competition many of the surrounding sewer departments also make money by treating accepted some of them have started to lower their costs or lower their charges below what we charge so we're losing volume to call our competitors we also have new debt payments coming due we have more funding for capital reserve projects for future projects and in the past years rate increases were not keeping pace with projected debt payments or increases not rationing me so we had to look at what are the solutions we had to properly and legally drawn had fewer accounts to divide it by increasing the per account charge we just want to just want to interject one one little bit here though the the recalculation of the billable units on the the water side actually didn't result in that many fewer billable units it was it was marginal once once we worked out the calculations and pulled out the people who aren't receiving water out of the out of the calculated tables i think right now we have there's five hundred twenty three billable units for water and we're proposing five hundred ten so it's not a significant difference so we pull out pulled out allocated units f so we have to calculate fees differently we're going to also put money into capital reserve funds to the water and waste water system who are paying allocation fees so you are proposing a family home or proposed business that you're not getting the benefit of the service you're still getting a bill because you you're saying i want to reserve this amount of water for my project and you got a bill right now that revenue is going into our revenue stream to pay our expenses it's not going into capital city need is not paying for future use which which is it's not that is not sustainable so if somebody drops their allocation saying you know what i decided not to develop the creamery property i'm going to give back my reverie i'm going to give back my allocation that source of money means that at the end of the year we have to make that up with higher rates so what we're proposing to do is treat the allocated unit separately similar you know many other communities in the statement do it this way they charge them a different charge in a different fee and that fee goes into capital reserve funds so that when that future need needs that water we can guarantee that they have service whether it is in updating upgrading the water line to them or just replacing infrastructure to ensure that the entire community has water on this like board on the commission and i'm not a user i signed up to be on the select board so i could be on the water and sewer commission because i'm i don't live in the village i wish i did because i'd have water when the power goes out debt service so bonds and loans that we've taken out to make infrastructure improvement projects namely the jericho road project brown's court and it is also made up of capital reserve in past years we've not been able to fully fund it because expenses have outstripped the revenue on the wastewater side it's the same thing you have when i'm costs and you have debt service  you have capital expenditures and approximately ninety percent of the water systems budget is fixed costs you have to pay it were hard this of how much pressure is pumped the variable charges on the water side are very small it's essentially electricity and chemicals so when the pump clicks on from down here comes it up to the water tank and then it flows by gravity so it's it's very small portion of the costs are variable in the wastewater side it's more of seventy percent of the costs are fixed and that's because a wastewater treatment plant is energy intensive it takes a lot of energy to pump and treat the water additionally we pay for disposal of our biosolids and that again is dependent on how much biosolids there are you pay by the pound or the yard or some some amount so that the less vile solids we have the the last that cost is but again seventy percent of those costs are fixed we have to pay regardless of whether you flush a toilet or not and so that's what makes some of these great structures challenging because if we want to make it sustainable and equitable we need to get weak it's not going to help the system to use loss water because the cost to produce that water is such an insignificant portion of the overall budget that using less water especially the way it's set up now actually hurts us we'll get less revenue but we'll still have to pay the same amount of money and so really the driving factor here are fixed costs it's its capital improvement and it's debt service and it's it's just the cost of doing business  and actually the water resources department for this year has not asked for an increase in their overall budget what's really driving it is capital and debt service that's what's driving that that's what's driving the costs so you agree plus you b resources department is is water and waste water there are some costs that are shared costs those are the administrative costs and then there are some costs that are specifically water and some costs that are specifically waste water and when when we were going to win the water a task force was going through and looking at the rate structure i broke it out between specifically water and specifically waste water and then based on information that i got from kendall he said about thirty percent of his time about thirty percent of the admin costs are for water and about seventy percent are in wastewater so that's how i split it up and came up with the individual budgets that answer your question so dat for the water system is for twenty fourteen when our debt when our debt payment comes due on jericho road is roughly sixty thousand and brown scored is roughly sixteen thousand the interest rates on those it's a bond for jericho road so it's like three four on the interest rate varies each year goes revolving loan to do an upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant add briefly twenty two thousand dollars a year at two percent we have the balance of the jericho road project on the wastewater side at roughly twenty thousand and that's going to be the same for whatever percent the variable percent and we have the projects seventy the sanitary sewer sewer debt that was the lining of the sanitary sewers that happened in two thousand and ten that's roughly thirteen and a half thousand dollars twenty year loans except the browns court which is a five year  court water line was seventy thousand the project sanitary sewer was  yeah and this is important because obviously there's two ways to pay for these kind of projects one is to save money ahead of time so that you have it when you need to spend it on projects or to borrow money and and paper projects that way we've done the second thing and that part of the reason for that is because we haven't been collecting enough money to save it to the habit we need to spend on the capital projects and you'll hear more about that and the system has been you know for years it was doing a combination where you know and this is a funding decision that a community needs to make is is how do you want to fund a infrastructure project does it make sense for a million dollar project to go out for a band well yeah it does because you don't want to save a million dollars because the you can pay for a fifty year asset over twenty years you can pay for a water line which is going to last fifty years over twenty years but you know for some of the other infrastructure improvement projects like a small line extension like esplanade was a very small line very small pipe we had money in capital to pay for that in cash so we don't want to take out a loan for a twenty or thirty thousand dollar line when we can save capital but we do want so we've there's three components of our budget there's there's debt which we just talked about about hundred fifty thousand dollars there's capital which we need to be reinvesting it's just like your business you're constantly reinvesting in your restaurant you you're buying new glasses and you're buying your silverware and you're buying your tables and you know you're constantly reinvesting in the system so that's another component is we are putting money away to reinvest in the system on the smaller projects that we can pay for out of capital that we don't have to bond for because we don't want to be on for everything we don't want to put on for a pump that cost five thousand dollars we want to have that in our capital reserves so we can replace it we need to fix it need fix what we need to replace it and then the other side is operation and maybe it's just general functioning keeping the lights on keeping our our operators pay keeping our buildings insured paying the mortgage on the buildings doing the tasks that are required by the state that's and that's the third and that's the biggest component of the of the budget is it's keeping keeping the systems functioning keeping the lights on and electricity beside the electricity i mean the proverbial keeping two biggest customers of the school yeah and a roundabout way yes everybody is contributing but not directly there is no there is no line item in the general fund that contributes to recreate to the water and or the waste water department and and  and and you told me that over the past couple of years the commissioners a said eighty percent no more period that the rates can go up but but again sometimes eight percent or ten percent or one hundred percent doesn't necessarily take into account the expenses that we have been and had had proper planning been done knowing that some of these debt payments were coming due this year we could have we could have more gradually increased the rates to account for it and you know i mean i know we get it we have a lot of conversations about well what does other towns pay and and what is shelburne pay or williston pay and and i did a little bit of digging on that and i am reluctant to compare us to other towns because the population of richmond versus the population of williston is they have ten times as many people as we do they have ten times as many connections i'm sorry so the village is served about a thousand people and with three hundred roughly three hundred thirty connections so if next closest size system to us every other system i mean the city of burlington serves forty four thousand with two colleges in a major hospital you know comparing the rates of this small community is it's challenging and it's not it's not  fair the challenges that we'll stand has versus the challenges that we have are not similar they're not the same they've made different decisions they have different pressures they have different source of water it's we need to deal with what we have discussion points and arguments for sharing it among the entire among all town residents and i certainly think that that should be part of the discussion going forward but the the obligations or the commitment that was made to the bonds that were passed were that they would be paid for by the users and of the water system only by the use of the water system and then whoever vote the people who vote on the water budget are the five that you see sitting here and frankly the rates are the five who speak who said here are who vote on it it's this board with input from from people who come to the meetings but raaz you know you know why it's done that way is that you know speaking as somebody who does live live outside the village if the thousand users in town went get a loan you were not going to get two and a half three percent if you were just going as a you know an association of water used to the town of richmond it's because the town of richmond puts its full faith and credit behind the l contract with them for essentially time and materials and they're going to money make a profit on it so you're going to be paying the same thing that we pay salaries insurance overtime health insurance  we have not and i honestly i don't think that that kno you're right i speaking for myself i i don't think that we would be i don't think it would be doing a disservice to to this community to contract out well i mean  did there to be x number of people there for running the plant but but but that's we can't do anything about that now we have we have bills that we have to pay now and so going forward we can have these conversations but the reality is that we have commitments that we've made that we need to that we need to manage and i want to be sensitive to time so i i think there are there may be some questions that will be answered if we continue to go if we go back to the presentation freight task force committee that is once we get past this that they're going to we're going to be getting together and putting a proposal to the to do cautionary among the entire town because it's you're right it is getting to be unaffordable for the users of the system to continue to support the investment that needs to be made in the system and i i can promise you that a proposal will be brought to the town to the people to the people all ways of doing that whether it i think you know i'm not going to speculate because i want to make sure that we do this legally and we did was appropriately today appreciate your input because that's good information it's good information for the task force in the decisions that they will make  probably one or two times a year to the tune of five or ten thousand dollars each life and if we if we make a commitment to contribute to capital like like we're proposing we won't have to take out a loan for it it'll be it'll be and i feel i think that the parking lot has become kind of the whipping boy on this issue and not nothing is is forcing that water line to be replaced because the parking lots going in it because it was felt by water and sewer commission that it was the smart economically fiscally responsible thing to do it's bleeding us every year because it's old and it's broken down if we wait five years let's say put in the parking lot now and wait five years to replace it and it needs to be replaced it'll cost every year until then it will cost twice as much to dig the parking lot of to replace the dep going you can't just not replace it well the the parking lot bond that was passed the town meeting was did not include the water line again because historically speaking the the water is the responsibility of the the water rates i  know it's we don't nobody likes it i'm telling you that we're looking to change that but we but we didn't in addition in advance of town meeting so either we fixed either one we're doing the parking lot which the voters approved it was a democracy the majority of the people who voted voted it yes either we replace said when we do the parking lot and the street as part of the paving project and or we don't do it and we spring a leak and now we have a big hole in our nice new and our nice new road that's patched and paid for still by the water and sewer users because water in syria users are scuse me water users always pay for break in water lines unless it is hit by an excavator who's digging up a person's front yard or gas company or whatever they like regardless fixes to the system are always going to be the responsibility of one of the other two members of the commission that's not on the system there's pretty much unanimity on the on the commission that there needs to be a new deal with the town about paying for at least part of the water system i support that i think ashley has told you she does too that's going to be a meeting of its own i mean obviously it's going big big deal and i think it's you made a good point there's a political job there to do also to to help the rest of the town understand what it is that they are getting by helping to pay for that we can't really do that tonight ok and i think we we've got some more important information for you to hear and actually you know you know you're right i mean i think i can we can't spend two hours talking about deeper street waterline we i hear you it's on our radar but but but we can't do anything about that today  sort of say what legally can we do and what legally can we do and then let's yeah that's where we are yeah i mean we haven't the courage to what has been built yet so if we were not in a crisis like we don't have to make a decision today  o where the reserves at the level requested by the want to resources department our current reserve balances have been depleted by several projects over the past  years and they've also been ignored in the recent past to account for deficiencies and revenues and we had wanted to contribute more but weren't on able to we want to review the rate structure annually including the billable units expect a proposal for cost sharing with the community at large that's what we just talked about ninety percent of water and seventy percent of waste water is budgets are fixed therefore the fixed charges that we charge you must make up a larger percentage of rates that's why rates are going up so much we continue to have a base charge in a flow chart so it's still going to be two parts to bill what do expect water and wastewater rates for most homeowners are increasing roughly one hundred percent so they will double some businesses may see different increases depending on previous allocated build more units versus proposed build more units meaning some of the largest water users the increases may be a little bit more than one hundred percent more or less than one hundred percent based on how they their new bill their new allocated units are calculated rates would continue to increase but modestly to account for reinvestment in the system which is our reserve funding growth of the system with new users increased operations and maintenance costs and debt payoffs people on them than i i i'll take full credit for for the bullets here what i was trying to show is the balances it is rates is rates will continue to increase the cost of doing business continues to increase we have investments that we need to make in the system and regardless of whether it's shared by the entire community or not cost go up but those cost can be balanced by debts being paid off some of them will be paid off in less than twenty years  so every connection and use a certain amount of water run and we're not we're not looking to treat every connection the same because that would that would increase the breach even more because there's only three hundred thirty connections if you do it based on billable units right so like we've mentioned before delp development within the village will help spread expenses out over more users and we can add accounts that will help everyone in the water a taskforce which is going to be ongoing will be proposing ways to share costs among all richmond residents we did take a look at some of the rate structures for the task force considered many other rate structures but most of the challenges if you took if you build on a per thousand gallon charge it wouldn't be sustainable because most of our expenses are fixed it so if you have a very good if you're building on one hundred percent burble break and most of your expenses are fixed you're likely to have a revenue shortfall and the reason why other communities and our surrounding area do build straight on a thousand per thousand gallons is because the majority of their their costs are variable they purchase water from champlain water district which is the largest portion of their budget and that's variable that depends on how much water is flowing through their meter so having our rate structure based on a thousand gallons of variable rate would it it would invariable it would it would cause significant fluctuations in our right we have a very risky revenue structure if you treated each connection equally save you had one want to address one account he pulled one base unit it wouldn't be equitable because some significantly more water than others for instance the schools versus a single family home that also result in a much higher user rate than propose because everybody would basically be charged almost two thousand dollars just for the a camp on top of the water that is if you counted bedrooms square footage employees etc there are several different ways to do it it's essentially how we don't do it now there's a lot of inconsistencies or a lot of complaint it's inapplicable so we tried to develop a rate structure based on consumption or no if you didn't develop a variable rate structure based on consumption  ere a small community with a limited resource this is the type of structure found in large or diverse communities like stuff bears mentioning that we do have future capital needs that currently not affecting the rate structure although i will say that we have a healthy water capital reserve that would be used to pay for some of the expenses of these first and foremost what we should be aware of is that the replacement of the water reservoir is necessary for a variety of reasons it's over forty years old the condition is deteriorating significantly the system itself has pressure and capacity deficiencies that state has mandated that we solve so you have to replace the reservoir it's going to be about one point three million dollars it's a very big expense and if we're going to ask the town for any assistance this would be the project asked for we also have the depot street water line that we've talked about the next largest project behind the reservoir feast main street water line which is another eight to nine hundred thousand dollar project the bridge street water line which is a little bit less than half a million and the pleasant street water line which is that one line is fine but it's scheduled to be poker and we've talked to people the street silver blue in the face right what we're doing but well but but we haven't made a decision we're not voting on it right now we we have not chosen to do it and it may come to the point where we can have a discussion about if and when and how we're going to do that and that's where another big week stand up with them exe and you're right we're this way but that's not that's not what we're dealing with right now i needs to be on the horizon because it needs to be part of the of the recognizing that the system needs needs investment it's it's an old system and we need to we need to recognize that there are projects that we would like to do and that we need to do but we're not proposing to do them right now or be equitable for some of us using right or is using a lot or is volume a positive thing because we pay for it therefore there's money coming in or is it a negative thing or is it charge based on the number of accounts we'd go from five hundred ninety day three hundred fifty four yeah plus that all of that base charge that we're that everybody's paying for some of three hundred percent and what i think of here and now or i should just come right out ask what can i expect in the future for my business and get where is here with abilit past just water and just speaking just water not your entire bill but just your water bill has been artificially lower because we've been taking a significant amount of suck to drive a new and applying that to their to the rates so so as todd liberty called it it's been smoke and mirrors and and so the largest increases on the water side are not necessarily become coming because of reallocation of billable units it's it's coming because we're taking away the sub to drive a nail and now adding in debt service so it's a double whammy but put your portion of impact on the system while you're not while the cost to produce that water is very small the cost to deliver the water to you through through the infrastructure is expensive and so you use six times as much water as a single family home in the average single family home in this community so your in theory impact on the system is six times greater than a single family house so when you have your when you have your meals you need a lot of water to wash the dishes to do the prep it set or et ground is the majority of it and it's the same with the schools the schools have a significant impact on the system because because of the water because of how they need the water they need it all at once all day  long and so they have a a much greater impact on the delivery of water harrington's needs a lot of water all day monday through friday to work to produce their product and so they need to rely they have  hundred fifty thousand this year but there are we're not having that mark and what the water was forced did to be conservative was they decided to use only a hundred thousand dollars of the anticipated revenue towards a bit sceptical revenue and have that go towards sewer rates so essentially keeping at the same as it was last year and taking whatever extra we get into capital reserves because again because we don't want is we don't want to say all right we're going to put a hundred fifty thousand dollars a septic revenue into excepted rates sewer rates and then come up with one hundred ten thousand dollars at the end of the year then we're going to somehow have to make up forty thousand dollars at the end of the year ahead of your pockets so instead we used a conservative number of one hundred thousand and the balance would go to capital so that if we did come up short all we're doing is less in capital so what this means in the future is maybe we'll be able to contribute less to capital in the future which means your rates will reflect that it will reflect a lower contribution of capital which in theory will lower your brain the it didn't make sense  to talk about cars sharing among all of the residents of the community but you're right i mean if the residents of the village of the water system are going to go on this put the kybosh on certain development then they need to know that the consequences of the consequences are higher water and sewer rates that that's the bottom line i mean if if nobody knows about it you can't do anything about it but we were tasked with doing what we have to do now based on the budget that based on the bills that we have to pay and we need to do it in the most home in the community uses about forty one and a half thousand gallons of water here so there's about one hundred seventy two single family homes out of three hundred thirty connections plus or minus i took i added that up and i divided and it came to forty one thousand gallons we used we then use that as the as the what's called the equivalent residential unit so we took that forty one and a half thousand and divided it by all connections so so if a connection  sixty thousand gallons a year they would be divided by forty one and a half thousand rounded the nearest whole number that would be one so you would now be one billable unit if you used eighty four thousand gallons a year you'd now be two billable units because it's roughly forty one forty one and a half air eighty one eighty four thousand divided by forty one and a half thousand is to around roughly to run to the nearest number so it's going to be more closely based on consumption and not on number of bedrooms or square footage or i mean i think the best example of of of the discrepancy of the way the units have been divvied up is is harrington's and i and i feel comfortable sharing this because todd harrington the general manager to scuse me todd liberty the general manager or manager irishman's operation managers at harrington's was part of the water task force and his raid is actually going to be the one that's the most significantly impacted by this great restructure so right now harrington's uses roughly six hundred thousand gallons a year that's almost as much as camel's hump medill school they're building right now at four point four units of water camel's hump middle school is built at thirty seven point nine units of water when they do is almost the same amount of water so the goal is to get that more in line and the reason why harrington's is so low is because they counted the number of employees in the building you have fifteen employees working one shift five days a week it's this much water they didn't account for them out of water that was used in the production of their material so soon this this is an example of the discrepancy that we were dealing with is is we're trying to bring it more in line with what's actually going on in this community and so harrington's is now going to be at fifteen units as opposed to four point four their water reads going to quadruple or triple todd knows this he he  one of the ones who said it's got to be done we have been fooling ourselves for years on the situation that's going on in this community and now we have to pay for it and it sucks skews my language but it's happening all at once it's not funny it's not pleasant you know i again this is one of the reasons why i wanted to be here is because this is a very difficult decision and it needs to be made or else we're not going to pay our bills and it is painful but i promise you there is there we hear you and we are we will propose an alternative way to share some of the at least the capital costs among all of the community so that it doesn't continually lie on your shoulders or twelve accounts that are delinquent right now some couple hundred and some a couple of thousand and it's it's a problem certainly  i mean this is these are not easy these are not easy choices and it's where we're not there there's not there was not much fight to trim we have we have bills we have to pay and if i know it was and our last special meeting we had there was a recommendation by i believe and cousins that similar to what they do with like fuel of fuel assistance and electricity assistance that maybe there is a fund set up to help low income or help assist with water and waste water bills and if somebody wants to work on that please do it but it would be in a philanthropic it would be a  nonprofit charity or somebody want to pay extra on their bill community fund i mean that short of that i mean i i don't know what to do because we have bills that we have to pay and we have we have things that are affecting the  revenue stream that we don't have much control over like production and septic trap and you know it would be great if suddenly everybody stopped started bringing their sect it's just me had one hundred thousand dollars that we could then say all right sewer rates are going to go down are going to go down because we have all this we're flush we're not good i think i'm an intended somebody brought up the point earlier in the traditionally there's been a much larger component of this paid for both by federal and state funds and so part of what's happening now is that that money is all gone away but as we know the state budget seems to be coming back some so you know one of the things that we can all do is look to the state level and talk to you and o'brian and see whether there might be some money available to help us out with this going forward hopefully that will that will come back in the tube to tracy out of the water course not so much the state as even the the inspector in the insurance company i mean we're at the point now where where nobody is willing to stand behind that think anymore well and it also comes down to a point where if if it was an emergency situation or if it was a public health problem or if it was something that caused by a quote unquote act of god like irene then there probably would be money out there but if it's just and i certainly don't want to use the word negligence but if it's if it's improper planning or if it's if it's not replacing infrastructure on a on a rate with which you should be doing it then it's it's not i don't think it is the federal government or the state's responsibility to pay for that it's it's the decisions of the community that they made not to replace it twenty years ago wanted to reach the end of its useful life but hoped it would last another twenty years and again kicking the can down the road like we need to take the bull by the horns and take responsibility for our own actions and that's what we're that's that's the yankee mentality right let's not rely on anybody else to do our work for us let's do it ourselves right mr bailey ok actual consumption is that this is something that will get looked at annually for the first couple of years and then once we once if we see that usage begins to remain the same that it will extend to potentially three years and certainly if there is a significant development in the community the billable units would get re evaluated but that would be the responsibility of the water and sewer commissions on an annual basis to do that and there are certainly communities out there that do that on an annual basis it's in a spreadsheet it constantly updates the end of the year they look and see what the new billable units are and everything just magically happens on a quarterly priority for the economic development committee there are some big cleanup issues there and but really we're trying to support anybody that wants to do something there and definitely heidi re i don't know if it would come directly from the town but there are different yeah and there are different partnering options that we're looking at whether it's a nonprofit or a for municipalities working with a private underwater so the only reason why it kept we kept going was because kendall turned the switch to the compound it overrode the system and just pumped and pumped in pumps so that's why you had water during irene so the question is does it have to be done at this moment touch that with the five thousand divided by five hundred ten users and then there is a rate there seventy five percent of it is on the base and thirty percent of it it's it's not it's not that easy but yes in theory the rates would go down the following year because you're not putting as much towards capital yeah i imagine that some of you know i don't know i'm going to i'm going to that's above my pay grade i'm going to think it's time but it but it certainly would be would make the sense of the reason why we want to make sure that we have enough in capital reserve is is for emergencies a couple winters ago we had the clear well at the well house blowout and that cost almost fifty thousand dollars to repair that came out of that came out of capital reserve and fixing a water break on cochran road for twenty five hundred dollars that came out that comes out of capital reserve that you need operating reserve and you need i don't i don't want to say we should have millions of dollars in capital reserves but we need to have ten or fifteen percent of our operating budget in there and we're nowhere near it do we have a minimum  i don't there's no minimum end state statute certainly spells out and i could talk at nazia about reserve funds because i've done a lot of research on it because this is what i do for my day job but certainly a reserve fun cannot exceed the costs for which the asset it was set up to to replace but this is a general one so in theory there is no maximum because because the cost to replace our infrastructure is infinite it's  constantly it's conk you're constantly replacing your infrastructure you know statute also limits certain reserve funds to fifteen percent of the operating budget plus debt service that's as that's as much as you can put in every year max again not to exceed the cost to replace the asset but there is no minimum and certainly i work with systems that have nothing linden bill has nothing lynn and bill is huge and they have no capital reserve and no operating reserve year and it might not be this much because there might not be that much cash on hand to put in and this is this is the whole sort of conversation about contribution to capital and septa engine and so on and so forth this is if we don't have enough cash  not getting the money that we need for people to use less water or myriad reasons or maybe yeah so so we're committing to we're committing to this bottom line here in the rates the reality is is that because of the link one sees or people use less water or people shut off their water and move out we might not get there which means of the things that go these are the things these are the these are the things that get  unfortunately the way to go though the reason why the reason why none of this is being proposed to be put on the town is the town budget for twenty fourteen is done it's established it was passed on town meeting day and putting an additional hundred thousand dollars or whatever some arbitrary number into it we could do right now but but again the discussion for the water task force that has to that is number one priority is to say how do we get how do we get the town to help pay for this is it going to be you're going to pay for capital or is going to be there is going to be a line item that gives x number of dollars to the water resources or are admin costs going to be on the on the town there are there are all sorts of ways that it could be done and it's going to be up to the task force in consultation i feel like at that point with lawyers with our with our town council to really see what's what's legal and what's not and to look and see what other towns  do this is going to be a politically really difficult question and we want to make sure that when we broach it that it's in the right way because it is a thing we just open with a why does and everybody help pay for the water system we're going to the same answer that we his town can pay for once you know of particularly the tank i think is what people are thinking of because then you don't you know finding the political battle every year and two it's the things that you said but it's also what having a water system allows you have is a concentration that creates a village you know it's not just a library it's everything here for you if we didn't have a water system people wouldn't be able to live this closely together healthily and have a a thriving billet center that we all connecting to sewer but it would be a force main across miles of corn fields that he would then give us that we would then have to maintain at one hundred dollars a linear foot plus a pump station grinders etc it would cost us more than we would benefit from and it's just it's not it's just not reasonable and also getting water from champlain water district is not feasible either we've we've talked about that at the last meeting but i'd be happy to talk with you a little bit more about it afterwards last comment jeff lead me in the in the manner with which we're doing this we should have a brief explanation of the structure that we're proving  and then there can be a vote on that structure centrally how we're going to build so we're not proposing the way that were effectively billing you're still going to get to every connection is still going to get a base charge that is going to be some it's going to be based on some multiple of the number of units of water that you use and there still going to be a flow charge or you are a usage charge so your meter will still be read on a quarterly basis and there will still be a charge for usage of water so that that is not changing what's what's changing is is that the amount affectively so the proposal is for water for a base charge to to be four  double the flow charges roughly the same and on the sewer side the proposal would be just when you're finished writing if you go to the next slide would be would roughly be increased to five hundred seventy dollars for the base charge and six dollars and forty cents per thousand gallons the base charges increase and i believe the flow charges actually reduce slightly and again this is to make things more sustainable so that we're getting the majority of our income from fixed costs and not variable costs and you'll see the difference in the what's called the e r you count are the equivalent residential unit count between residential was five ten and waste and sewer is for eighty two the wastewater department is now going to pay a water bill where they haven't paid a water bill before and they use roughly a million gallons a  that's the difference they added another twenty or so units of water on the water side i know i know we've been through this but we are now fully including their use fully representing lower it yes fifty thousand and only brought in one hundred twenty five thousand at the end of the year we would have to come up with another twenty five thousand dollars and in money and so basing it on a hundred thousand we have the ability to have some fungibility and expenses are  revenue stream so that in future years maybe we can reduce the amount of money that we're putting towards capital because we've built up our savings account understand all that but you put thirty percent in that's a that's a big joke that's a big job and it was the right three to four