going to be the moderator for the evening this is the water great meeting public hearing on a few minutes earlier if you are here with the intention to ask a question or to make a comment or to describe your situation and you would like to speak in you came here with the intention of speaking if you could indicate that on the list in the back so that we can be sure that everyone who intends to speak has the opportunity to speak out if you're not sure if you want to speak or not and at some point during the meeting you decide you would like to speak we all open up to raising children questions but i wanted to make sure that we have from six to eight pm and i want to make sure that everyone who is here with something to say has an opportunity to say so this is the water rates public hearing and we are going to start the meeting with  presentation that will do it sort of setting the stage about the water and sewer system and the rate that will just be ten or fifteen minutes and then we will move into questions for the board who are here and as i said i'm going to start with the people who have indicated that they have questions and i'll just call your name if you can stand and ask your question and then we'll we can move into server general that people have think the core of my point is the people that got hit with more than one yard you definitely have the larger issue that a lot of people are going to see that can i ask the question at it in the last month but seventy percent of the revenues generated on those here user base units and then thirty percent is per gallon use so what we just heard that to excrete is where it can read all the revenue per gallon or generate all the revenue per unit and there are winners or losers depending on which method you use right now it's sort of a balance we can tweak the balance it strikes me that one of the points to be asking for volunteers for the watery task force is to help and gauge in their conversations because really i think it's a balancing act based on one of the principles that we want to achieve in our rate structure recognizing that there are costs that we have to try to cover so what what are the spreadsheets we want to use fundamental issue that we talked about within the context of the commission and certainly interested in hearing from everybody tonight there have been attempts in the past to have to bring to the to the town some of the costs of the water and sewer district they've been have been successful i personally speaking for myself agree with the points that you've made there are services that i believe are appropriately borne by the by the town as a whole the amount of those and and how that gets handled politically is going to be a very major issue in the town as you can as you can all  imagine we can talk about it tonight could you see there's only so far we can go in this room in this room here but i think that is part of what we're going to be looking at going forward but but again you know it it would be something that w need to be approved by all the voters in the town so i think we need to think about is how to how to present that in a persuasive way to say ok this is all i'm going to i'm going to do my best to keep this short and focused and i'll probably fail which point i may have to past is over to actually that this is a fundamental problem in utility rate design such as for water but also for electricity f a natural gas and the problem is is that gallon of water that you have at your home costs basically nothing for us  to get from from several hundred feet down in the well right we're getting it for free everything that cost to deliver to your house when you turn the spigot is the pumps the tank you know the pretreatment and then afterwards the sewage treatment so it's you know it's actually all of the delivery system not the water itself and it's exactly as you say whether you use that water or not the system still has to pay for it so if we put everything as this gentleman said on a per gallon basis which frankly has some attraction to it because it encourages people to be to conserve right but when they do less money comes and so what do we have to do increase the rates again which which encourages further conservation which which means that we have to go back increase the rates again it's what they call the death spiral in the utility business i'm sorry i'm going to just  process here now and i look forward to having a chance  to read the question and why there's like four members sitting on the water and sewer system is that the the town signs for the debt incurred by the water and sewer system and that's because that's by statute believes that that's required by law  frankly because the water and sewer system gets money can borrow money more cheaply that way but whether all of that debt is approved by the town select board so that members of the town as a whole do have standing in those decisions what has not been the case as i think correctly said this that up to this point the town as a whole has not contributed to the it's the ongoing operating cost of the water services and i forgot to clarify earlier i'm not on the system myself i live in jone stop in my office and take a look i've got a file here and i can show you there in ways that you know it was built in keep in mind we also do the schools free water wind the same time which was in additional thirty thousand dollars in that project and john it is this is a very good question and it's certainly valid to to take a look at that at that division of cost but the thing that i want to make sure people don't lose sight of his whenever possible we try and the necessary maintenance of the water system when the town needs to repave the street because it's cheaper ok because it lowers costs to the water system it does create the accounting problem ok where did which column does this cost go into but overall it's because we believe it lowers the cost to the system because you're not digging up the street just to replace the the water pipes country as you probably know sir living in ten different states is populations vary significantly sources of water very significantly subsidize rates very significantly and local policy to ship decisions very significantly so to compare richmond to a wilson is you know comparing apples to apples it would be more fair to compare richmond to another community of richmond size for system is regulated by the public service board and so the users on the system actually help redstone make a profit that wouldn't be tolerable here and the sewer system so they're right for water i believe is around six hundred fifty they just did a couple million dollar investment in their system and they still have more to do on their waste water side of their waste water is like eight or nine hundred so they're pretty comparable to us but the big difference is that that in order to get rate increases they have to go through a lengthy process through the public service for that's onerous and litigious and it's it's not fair to the users of the system where here we don't make a profit we we we build what we need to build to to meet our bills and the increases in the spending is due to is due to debt and it's due to prudent saving for small water projects and wastewater projects that need to be done the bill that you're looking at is made up of  wastewater i know at the end of the day you see one bill and and so you know that's that i get that that's what you see but the reality is you're paying for two different types of distribution collection treatment system we'll it would it would likely take the next billing cycle unless there was compelling evidence to re evaluate the rate structure as a whole but it should be as i think stated in the frequently asked questions that should be the policy of the ones who are commissions on an annual basis to review the rate structure and how units are reallocated or calculated that hasn't been the practice the commission in past years and and i think we're seeing that failure and in the way that the units were allocated previous we are playing like we've said some some single people living in a five bedroom home and they're paying they were paying almost two units and they were using ten thousand gallons a year and you have somebody living in a two bedroom using one hundred thousand gallons a year so it would likely take a billing cycle ok which would be one year and people were you know i think for the first couple of years that we get through this i think it would be prudent to do more frequent a valuation while people are saying gosh if i can immediately impact my building it would be prudent for us to do it and honestly i have a spreadsheet that's all set up it just because i've been working a spreadsheet for a couple of years it would be it would be and i say painless because it twelve through june twelfth two thousand and thirteen and your usage for the past year has remained consistent including the last quarter of this year which was a prologue me in june so if if you do have a week and not not outdoor water use which can be the source of all of many people's water use then the next billing cycle or the next rate review we would capture that but as it stands right now the the usage stage consistent about thirty thousand gallons of thirty thousand gallons during the summer months of usage and the wind and then the winter it goes down so if it is it the water is being used this is that's that's the reality that we're working with here is is that that is the usage at this property is three times the usage of an average single family home and for whatever reason and you're entitled to fill up your swimming pool but understand that the way that the rates for recalculate the billing units are recalculated to try to make things more equitable paying paying the fair share of the usage that's how it should  out and and if you use less if you choose not to fill up your swimming pool through your garden hose than then it will go down it and when that happens it will happen ok so toward solutions windows point she hears people coming into this house and there are many circumstances where people with billed on one unit because you're a three bedroom home i'm assuming and your sewer was also based on it being a three bedroom home and at the time the rates were thirty four something a quarter for water  and excuse me forty three sixty five for water and thirty nine b for sewer plus a float charge and and then when we say when we switch from when we recalculate of the base unit again because of your usage being over one hundred thousand gallons for the for the year and we since we divide it by forty one and a half thousand it went up to it went up to three and it's because of the amount of water that you're using that goes through your meter however you're using it like you know during the winter it's clear that it goes down to a reasonable amount that would bring you back in with a single family home it's the summer usage with filling your pool and and if you choose to have  cool tank call or come in and fill it then your rate will be reflective of that so it was a combination of two things for you guys it was a combination of your your base units going up based on the amount of water that you used and also because well breaks one up because we had we need more revenue so that's that's the answer for for yours yours was a very interesting when i when i read the note that you sent to lend i was like well that explains why you're three and and if you choose to not fill your swimming pool then it off there's sort of three big things going on here three big discussions and all of them need to focus attention yes the way rates are charged has changed and i'd say for some people that way that's has gone up people that prompted this latest change not because of that came to the slight to the water sort commission said hey i'm a single elderly person in my house i barely use any water why is my house to charge so much the board is responding to that the second piece is the actual costs are costs have gone up and our revenues have gone down i think to get it i would discuss that separate from the way it's allocated because either way we all have to pay our bills and then third is this other piece about all the ways we might cover our costs such as the discussion about getting other broader town to pay and but that's not even on no one's proposed that other than our discussions here that's not been done by the board slightly above average for the state we they were really low before they're slightly above average so i think you know before you get up and move or sell your house because of that you know it still sucks and i mean i am not all that happy you know i've spent the last many months still trying to work on rebuilding my house after a flood and paying a bunch of bills it's not like i got the money to spare or leslie feel great about it but we're slightly above average on eye in the time before i got on the stool on the water and sewer commission i remember going to those meetings in the select one meeting hearing people say oh we still can't fix millway until then because we don't have the money to redo the lines there or east main street and that that and i've heard that discussion was going on for years a few years or like two thousand and eight or so we thought that no we got i got on the board and with the rest of the board through commissions and a select board we said we have to do something about it because the roads are calling for the water winds were were you know just it was being go as far as wit or you spin the wheel and see where there would be a break so we hustled and got a bunch of money from federal money which we had to match with our own money to pay for some big improvements that were decades at a day some of the lines were sure lines were placed were put in the eighteen hundreds may have a clay for decades and we did not invest in the infrastructure and the day to day cost of patching them was a big problem we started and took some big steps on that and yeah that's cost them a lot that's something that you don't mess around that's that's the biggest reason i think why the cost curve is going up we're paying for stuff that wasn't paid for years ago now i remember someone writing to the whining poor bill those people in the past well that didn't happen but every year when this when the water and sewer commission tries to set rates people are saying no a we just want the barest barest increase in budget and the water the staff have accommodated we have not put any money aside for these big improvements so now we got a pay i'm not happy about having them pay but we got to pay and i'm just sorry to get on a bit of a soapbox here i'll just say one more thing that ashley locke who was one of our water and sewer commissioners she works at this stuff professionally for the agency of natural resources she helps towns throughout the state deal with and figure out how to deal with and provide clean water she has put countless hours into evaluating what we've got and coming up with solutions and checking it against tot other other systems in the state and how they do lot of great support advice and guidance on this and give them a little credit and i'm sorry i'll stop the commissioners most of the pain i think it's been self inflicted that we vote for these projects like jericho road and then we're surprised that we have to pay for a year later i took a look at my built utility bills over the last ten years my property tax went up twenty two percent and water and sewer was twenty four percent so if you allow for a few p inflation every year i think we have been level funding for the last ten years even with my new bill which doubled i break it up by the day and it's four dollars and seventy five cents and  globally how much of the world would be happy if they could pay you know fifteen minutes worth of wages every day to get good water sewer i think is a lot of money it's painful to get the bill but about how we shouldn't you know who pays for whose roads or maybe we should go back and have something billets controlled in some things or a town controlled we did merge the two governments but maybe if no one outside the guards wants to help us out maybe we should just do highway in the village and i think we'd save some money because we have a lot of population in the businesses and we have a short road so reserve and step it up a little slower to see if that does the same has the same effect one thing i think we could do it would help me is that now that one wire bills are looking more like  property tax payment it's a shift the payments so they don't fall in the same are thought of money to come up with that that one four times a year and last is i do think the solution the result is that we're going to end up passing some zoning that will destroy the quality of life in richmond in hopes of getting our water bills down a little better and i think in the end it won't really lower the water bills but it may really wish we foot and water and waste water and then you're starting to talk about well as a gravity we're putting pressure stations the cost really starts to start starts to mount for two three dozen connections at most and  unless there's a large commercial development which i certainly would love to see one close to the village that we could connect to this connecting single family homes is not going to solve our problem and that's really what's what's at the periphery of the villages just a pencil of single family homes so that's it's it starts to get like why are we doing this why are we spending where we turned good money after bad and then you have to maintain that i mean even if a developer said are you know what i'm going to pay to connect perfect well what's going to happen in thirty years and that to me it's to be maintained that then goes on the backs of the users of the system and while we should prudently be planning for that thinking about doing because you're right it is right there on the right there in terms of infrastructure is not necessarily right there in terms of driving a car so telling us what his water bill is how many how much how hard he makes his prices to compete with other restaurants in the area are you going to pay forty five dollars for a meal fifty dollars for meals seventy dollars for  we bought our house it was the garage originally for green up our and the last we paid fifteen thousand dollars for it and over the last forty years we've made it into a decent home that's part of our retirement selling that at some point so i'm going to go to somebody and say oh by the way here's your mortgage payment it's going to be five hundred dollars a month oh and every three months you need to come up with another my bill is transforming media dollars or to just living here you have to come up with another five hundred dollars every three who's it's not that you know everything is it's gold on the quality of the water living on children and the we don't buy we don't drink our water i buy water and i look at it and part of the it's a few years ago and looked through our neighborhood and so i how many people have cancer how many people in this village have had cancer but look we cured it or have died of cancer it it's under ten dollars that is the actual use if i want to reduce my logic bill i don't turn on the light i don't watch television i don't do this i don't do that if i want to reduce my eating cause i put on more children in the wintertime i adding in the no debt payment so that we know where we are and the increases in budget we only have one future debt payment due in two thousand and fifteen and that's frankly a modest amount so going forward the rates will be very stable considering where we've come over the past couple of years because the jericho road and some of the improvements on bridge street came due in the same year and the choices of previous water and sewer commissions have been to not necessarily increase rates to keep up with inflation and known future debt payments it was now keep it this keep it this keep it this we don't see that other stuff and well now we see it now it's do something about it and  unfortunately i mean i know we hadn't really separate revenue is a significant loss for this community is a homicide one hundred thousand dollars that we're losing that went to the sewer rates i mean that in addition to the front to the to the debt payments is constant significant a significant hole even if we didn't have any documents to that loss of one hundred thousand dollars revenue would have cost your water rates are gone up regardless so that it's just it's a perfect storm and  it's it's frustrating as the person who's looked at this for years to try to figure out the best method and to calculate different alternatives that hasn't then the easiest it hasn't been the easiest year and a half  knowing that knowing this and it's difficult when you look to see the comparison among the people if we tweak this then it's really going to affect this person and if we tweak this gosh that person is not going to be very happy so it's it's who are we trying to because the rates have to go up regardless we have a revenue deficit it's how are we going to do it in the most equitable and sustainable fashion and that's what we thought we were doing and there are definitely improvements that can be done to it but as far as going forward it looks pretty safe pretty pretty good going forward not to get into too many details but there's you know there's some tweaks that we can probably make to capital there's some tweaks that we hopefully we're going to we can get more savage revenue there are some loans that we're going to be paying off in the next couple of years and yes there is some improvements that do need to be done but but it can be managed know taking down three phone calls and burying them underground for i know it's you know something in the future that might be necessary but also to put in another road that really isn't an emergency right now right assessing and just start all projects at this point that they are really vital to what we need to things you know financially get a little bit better for everybody because  on it's it this is this is a challenge and and frankly i don't have a good answer for for you to try to to to compel us to make the right decisions because what what we think might be a right decision another person may be like why are you doing this and that and know that you don't need to do it you do that thirty years ago or whatever i mean i think i think that if we if we put together plans based on expected useful life and based on real information like how many breaks there's been on the line how much it's cost to repair that that's justifiable but to just say oh it's twenty five years old it's time to replace it i don't think it's a good plan but but i think that it is definitely the the goal of this commission to that's ok so that's part of funding the capital reserve finance is that is that you have money available for when you need to do the projects so then you don't always have to be bonding because frankly sometimes on a it's on for something like depot street is that it wouldn't it wouldn't be a good idea to to bond for a forty thousand dollars project it's better to use capital for that and those are the types of things that this board is considering is what should we be saving for short lived assets or things that we can pay for with that or small amount of money that are going to last a long time or there are things that it's prudent more prudent to bond for like a new tank that's going to cost one point two million dollars but last seventy years we're only going to pay for it for thirty like those are the decisions that we need we were meeting for half an hour once a month kendall telling us how wonderful everything is and then we leave and that's we need to spend more time on the system than that this is an important asset to this community and we need to give it  hundred fifty thousand dollars to do that so that we would like so the bond refinancing for existing debt we're getting a great deal going forward there are some really good opportunities for the change that  that i don't want to get into because it's not a sure thing and it's a very complex equation but it looks good for the tank to be affordable for this community within the rate structure that already exists and saying we can we're going to be paying off my debt in five years and the tank hasn't even been designed yet so we're five six years out from paying for it so we have we have room to plan and countless amounts of information about that and i'm convinced that yes that's true  thank you see in my opinion we're like yeah this is really tough and this is this sucks you know and nobody likes it but but we're not bankrupt you know but is there i fixed incomes and wondering you know how they're going to pay their water pay their of their heat and heat and i think you know in the same way that we did after i read this is this is a different kind of disaster but it's a real  people who made those polls in the past i don't think they were the great policies either but everybody until now would say i believe a well intentioned volunteer and i just don't think that that kind of is helpful meeting for the water commission is on august nineteenth at six pm every time you turn thirty one day of the month of each month and that whole meeting will not be a big public meeting that there's a portion at the beginning of the meeting for ten or fifteen minutes for public comment and so i would say that i feel confident with the fact that our town is problem solving this together because it's a big crisis