reasons good morning board members my name is william just seem to i'm a lifelong resident of culottes and a fourth generation rancher farmer with the with another egg related while my wife works the farm full time i'm also the president of the association as well as a number of other agriculture related organizations i've had the opportunity to discuss my concerns with council member fichter in several occasions and he has been very understanding of the livestock concern i'm here today to represent the many people who are unable to be here to testify about this and the issues and i must say we farmers on the bottom need representation these are the beginning farm ranch or the family farm yes the one that's trying and the one that's trying to pass it on a farmer is a farmer where the full time or part time they still produce with good intentions the cheats are cheats and too often small farmers automatically get thrown in that category a very unfortunate position to be in if what you grow is all the market will take or a limited space to grow crops or livest according to the u s d a away exited sticks molly has one hundred sixty five registered farmers that make between twenty five hundred and five thousand and four three hundred seventy eight registered farmers that make  stand twenty five hundred dollars i do believe these are legitimate farmers and ranchers if there needs to be a dollar figure then a thousand dollars is what the u s d a uses to determine a far programs and most farmers are used to accepting that number no matter what number is selected the cheats who cheat to figure it out and it's not fair to the small farmers to put a number that is and it's very hard to absorb when you're trying your best not to waste and to turn a profit as well as compete with much larger growers who get the bigger via discounts regarding water rates if someone wants to call the six  a thing go for it remember six proprieties on a required x gallons of water a capable of trained educated inspector came easily determined that with the data available through agencies such as seat are other universities and fire services and they should or shall only be allowed to claim that much in a water a little bit of initial work for the inspector but i bet the along to the system with the water rate meter further down the pipeline to think that's not going to happen is wishful thinking you will never be able to see where very pipes are connected that we are pappano and i'm here today representing the views of the agriculture working through the and working group as a group of about fifteen farmers and ranchers which was formed about two years ago to help provide input from the community to the council we have representatives from the farm bureau the farmers union county iowa coffee growers cabins association and several community associations with one requirement that you are personally engaged in agriculture egg working group was made aware of your agenda items relating to qualifications for water department inspectors and water rates only late last week so we have not been able to discuss your specific item the egg and sectors possess that ever cultural qualifications to the general the highest priority for the egg working group has then to move the county to a single definition of every culture used by all the partners and a single process for farmers to apply for permits and have rates moet county has legislated right now the farmer has to apply with the farm plan and be inspected by three different departments water real property tax and plan county ends up sending out three inspectors to the same property and unfortunately by their own admission none of the departments have inspectors that are knowledgeable they every working group can tell stories for hours of inspectors who had no idea what they were looking at as farmers and ranchers the working group is very concerned with water in ensuring water is available we're always told about the cheaters those who think a thousand dollars in concerned that the beginning farmers are small operations you know we have good margins and i get squeezed out by higher rates the answer is for farms to be inspected by someone who knows what they're looking at we've had meetings with the department directors and deputies to recommend that the county hire qualified ever culture inspectors i think they are favor of this and it remains to be figured out where these inspectors step in the administration water r p t and planning could all use the inspectors ideally we'd like to see farmers local to submit one farm plan to the county and have it shared by all departments for myself i think there inspector second it's the water being used for the farm and inspector would be able to see if the irrigation mines are going to wind speed in the long run currently we have nothing in the law that says that water cannot be used to would constitute a good boy for someone who has some back rather education and parents or somebody who's been farming and has had some education about current farming methods i had to get ready for this meeting i looked up online what other places do to hire and inspectors and there's all kinds of lists out there of what they should have so i don't think this is something where we would have to invent a new set of thousand dollars that was consistent the pound we've shared with the board in the council to eventually get those closer to twenty thousand dollars to pay for the power traded down to fund about seventy percent of their council approved doubling bills and the other larger meters also went up by the same ratios than last year in the fiscal year fifteen budget we had we had proposed to increase those t fourteen dollars and that was our primaries another two thousand dollars a year towards roughly that twenty thousand dollars or so last year in the fiscal year fifteen budget the council opted not only not to raise them from the twelve thousand dollars to fourteen thousand but they lowered them back to the six thousand and thirty so this year and the advice sixteen proposed budget we get meet our proposal to raise it to fourteen thousand dollars basically the same goal last year and again the council opted to leave them at six thousand and thirty dollars so the water system developed and fees have been you know two years in a row the council has opted to agricultural use or using more water or more houses or that some increased water starts with us for there is certainly enough funds to operate the system because that is in system operations it's basically system expansion so the question is how do we generate revenue for system expansion how the county financing for large capital projects tends to work is we borrow money through either state revolving fund world or generalization b and we use some sort of future revenue to pay back the debt so the issue is more of a long term one the short term problem there will be enough revenue next year to pay next year's operations and next step the question is going to continue to borrow a lot of money to do a lot of infrastructure improve where is the future revenue come from to pay for the debt and that's something that doesn't necessarily get answered in any given year because it's more of a long term item that the future counsels have to wrestle what we've been trying to do is get some community sort of bite from some strategy whether it's raising rates at roughly ten percent a year for having higher system development fears for property property tax general fund infusion but just that every level of government including the feds the state and the county this is a strike you're if you read the national news right now the federal highway funds i think it's called got extended for only six months that's how many roads and bridges across the country  so we'll continue to try to work with the council board to come up with a i'm going strategy but i don't have any answer for you about what will the department's primary concern is that we have clarity when we were view whenever we review there are a lot of them and they don't all get reviewed in detail by myself or the deputy a lot of different members of staff so our number one concern is if the rules are clear enough so that what one staff member does is the same decision that another staff member under similar circumstances makes that there's not subjectivity  that clarification because out of courtesy to the board if the board votes for something that they want to send it through i will certainly pass it through to the board like this or by the council the department has set up any type of actual costs have to be on your budget the big can't be somewhere else whether it's bus passes or property taxes in the budget that the council houses every year so we really can't put a dollar value in other words whether it's for bus passes or water rates or anything else and so what this is it's really just a multiplier to whatever that that value mr meyer mentioned that one dollar so i think whatever you're going to do really follow ups but just just by way of reminding ourselves i recall when we talked about this last time that there were there were people on this board who thought that  structure it also gets back to the ordinance about saying what is required so all that's required is this dollar value in real property tax in the plan unless there are some subjective criteria that the hoping that there there could be maybe some internal criteria that just verify you know what this person is looking for order to qualify or this fall in operation because that didn't seem to come through