of the feedback we've received from customers over the past couple of months so what we're going to do is the commission is going to be discussing the budget and we're going to be discussing potential changes to the budget and then we're going to discuss revenue how we get those revenues changes to the rate structure and then we'll we'll then take some public comment and then go on to some other issues go down to where there are specific issues as they come up and dark sort of conceptually i can say this i give myself this credit for at least six months as the newest person on the board where i can keep saying i'm the newest person on the board and explore it you know something i didn't pay a lot of attention to this i'm assuming there are many members of the community didn't pay a whole lot of attention to this budget until fairly doesn't work and number two when you get the bill so that applies to electricity when your literacy doesn't work or when your bill goes up and gas when it doesn't work or the it goes up that's what tends to get people's so i thought we might start with it at five level like what are the general issues and you know again if you've just been looking at your overall bill and you write one check at the end of the quarter and whatever it is to talk  a little more detail about water versus sewer because they are separate so i guess we can just the budget has four five main sections the first section is is administrative expenses and these are shared they're split because we have the water resources department which is made up of three full time employees one part time they operate both the water and the waste water system twenty four seven three sixty five  the administrative expenses are things like salaries insurance liability office equipment travel safety safety expenses  advertising things like that those budgets have to handles credit have not asked for increased significant increases or even modest increases over the past number of years they've asked for almost level funding in those areas for a number of years the only wildcard in this one and this is a wild card and where it's health insurance is is we have a big number in there this year because we don't know what it's going to look like and we anticipate still offering health insurance so in my opinion that's that's something that has to stick you know the only the only negotiating room potentially is how much the water system pays the town for the services that are provided and that's at fourteen thousand dollars a year and what we get for that the water system users get the town employees sending out the bills processing payments sending out notification and things of that nature just time is that water sewer versus something i've never seen that i didn't i wouldn't be ok so that's one section of the budget the second section of the budget is for waste water expenses and again expenses are for plant maintenance for operation electricity disposal of biosolids fleet maintenance collection system repairs everything related to the waste water system and that  and on the on the expenses on the wastewater side you know it's it's a lot of fixed expenses but also a lot of variable expenses so the variable expenses are electricity permit biosolids disposal things of that nature that are dependent on the amount of sewer that gets processed so room for modification and there is and this is after fire as they come back next april i'm saying need more than sixty thousand dollars space this last year would be because the tipping had gone up and i taken one more step that same and so in theory we could then say all our separate revenue edge because they want to know how much the budget and i can't really tell you that because it's more that i take the more they spend but the more they take the more money makes the revenues there so we basically just kind of pick the number and said we'll there so i don't i don't know if there's much room to adjust those numbers and that the net value for something relatively small right four thousand dollars versus how much does it cost us which is surgery to the business plan if we make more money than it cost to treat it that's a good thing but the driving variable wouldn't it be also gas and mileage i mean dollars or so that is mostly fixed costs shockingly to provide water to the community it's just getting it out of the well and and treating it and that's not a lot of money at them and the majority of the expense is on the water side effects meaning we have to repair lines we again have to heat the building we have to maintain the vehicles  amounts for debt and capital reserve spending is roughly two hundred forty five thousand dollars now that can be kind of broken up into two the one things that we have to pay which is debt and things that we it would be prudent for us to consider some amount of money and that is capital reserves so the debt the debt payments on an annual basis are on sixteen thousand dollars a for the next four or five years for brown's court that's a low interest five you know to do that for his court bottom line we have the jericho road debt service which started this year and goes until twenty thirty two and that's roughly seventy eight seventy nine thousand dollars split between the water and the waste water the dad to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant is roughly twenty two thousand dollars a year and be twenty twenty six and then there was on the lining of the sanitary sewers on bridge street which happened in two thousand and ten and that's thirteen fund based on water resources department in their proposed budget and in the capital plan is on the water side twenty five thousand dollars for the distribution system and forty five forty nine say we're going to save money to replace small structures a distribution system you know pumps that need to be replaced on a ten fifteen year basis they're going to be for building maintenance they're there are things that you don't know i've said it i've said it a number of times put the floor clear well here you know fixing that in hauling water costs thirty forty thousand dollars and we didn't have to do anything to greece because we have the reserve and you can pay for it and fix it without saying now we need to raise we need to do a one time surcharge everybody for fifteen hundred dollars or whatever or that is the reserve that's what reserve is there for it to absorb to cushion the question and then to dead and reserves are there both tools which ideally enable you over the long term to not have big changes year to year in rates because the daedalus would pay for big audits of the long period time in be fair there also were prudent rate increases to account for the sizable debt payments that were coming due of knowing whether they were incurred that they were going to come in five years there was that the commission turned a blind eye to the to the money in the back if we have more research than we had we're going to tend to spend it on things that we might not actually need to or that we might not spend it or they might spend it sooner that we might actually need to  it's you know that's that's certainly a possibility i have to say i haven't seen them sitting on the and we sat on them for together for four years ago yes and i think that this is it's a i'm not going to call it a lean system because obviously it's expensive to keep it all running but i there's not there's not a lot of fat and there's and there's no frills so i don't in order to be able to avoid the kind of bumps that we've had now it seems to me to be worthwhile to have greater reserve some we've had the past but but other great reserves are good however we have to so basis he spends five to ten thousand dollars fixing leaks over there so are we going to the town spend a hundred whatever thousand dollars putting in a brand new parking lot handle two months later dig it up because there's a hole in the one inch copper not the case that it down it decides to do these projects and then the water and sewer commission has the option but not the requirement to replace the water and sewer lines underneath the water and sewer commission has decided that it is good fiscal policy to replace those old outdated and constantly needed repair lines when the town is doing the work because it's cheaper we don't do it there ok but the idea that somehow the town is forcing this fire side of things the entire project was one point something million so so we either pay it in debt over twenty years or thirty years depending on where you get funding from or you have to say th why don't we talk about that later we did we need to keep going with the principle that we should look at the relative cost the relative value of a system improvement or investment something we would all agree on this now and how we afford it which might be a combination the kind of death and reserve gets back to this principle i mean what you're saying is you don't want to spend to save so much other people's money you just start throwing out the window when you want to save enough merely contributed to the twenty five thousand dollars and last year when we did contribute forty nine thousand dollars to water capital reserves and we're closing to do forty nine thousand again this year we have any think this is not totally open to just it's definitely up for discussion or reduced distribution system reserve by ten thousand bring that down to fifteen thousand and reduce water capital reserves by nine thousand and bring down the forty thousand that's a combined twenty thousand on water so now we've got an overall budget savings we've got a twenty thousand dollars line item on biosolids that we can reduce and potentially opinion is on that planet i would be nine thousand dollars a year that doesn't make up for the cuts we were proposing on the on the capital so now open it up for  s and you don't want to go down deep so my question is what is that flow been in terms of the reserve so what are we generating versus what are we spending year to year terms of a pear tree much whole system this is this is it is that you know there's always something that needs to you know be deprived of every year that we are at the point where everything about forty fifty years old so we have to replace a lot of it but at these smaller structures of distribution taking from your capital and you don't have to plan like prior to last year the water system had no debt no debt the only debt that's on the water system is from the asking for a little bit more to make sure that when the pump goes and the well house we have the money in reserve to pay for that fifteen thousand dollars pump so i'm not going to go for along with the benefit of hindsight we might have here and even the pool since ninety two the commissioners of really all take an active war and putting in the reserves and understand the value of the reserves it's just there's been so much over the main with an older system that you get your reserves and you would i mean we had this discussion with the foster subgrade with the plan they had three hundred fifty thousand plus and waste one of these or the state paid for ninety percent of their three point three million dollar really help well anybody's bill and once we kind of get to do it i can tell you what it will do to the overall under revenue discussion because we still have to talk about revenues so so let's just see what happens candle if we take ten thousand down to bring one line down to fifteen and nine thousand now to bring down to forty so on the wastewater side we have two lines for capital  proposed reducing the collection system by ten thousand or fifteen thousand to bring it down to ten and the waste of our capital reserves reduced by five to bring it down to ten so that would be a twenty five thousand dollars savings in theory overall now on the wastewater side the conversation it because a little different but i think he's going to will tell you and jeff also this the waste water systems actually in really good shape we did we did the sewer line in bridge street which saved all the pain without having to rip up the room and so that was a really good investment plus we got fifty six percent grant funding because of the stimulus money so that was a great investment we bought the lines when the roads were done additionally because we've made a decision not to put one hundred percent of anticipated septa drive in your two raids there is hopefully going to be extra more than one hundred thousand that we all are in but i believe going to the days of two hundred thousand dollars yeah i mean just you just can't predict it i have to tell you based on the callers that it left  you know we should be trying to find the reserves you know in you know in a proactive for looking manner but i think we need one thing i think we've heard it again and again it's can't we face this it can't be faces and  i think that you know it takes a little well on our part to you know be sitting here a year from now and say ok now we're going to you know taking that next step forward it certainly makes it easier think for for everybody on the system if it can be stepwise opposed to just all you know p r like we get so i would i would be in favor of that so if we did those five changes thirty or more if we do if we do modest increases and i mean you know two to three to four percent a year like inflation like inflation a year we will be on track first payment is not two until two years after construction and if we work off of a timeline of construction completing in two thousand and sixteen that would make our first payment not due until twenty f y nineteen just twenty eighteen twenty nineteen projected maybe take payment would be and so you've already built half of it and so increasing just a little bit more we can either pay it down with reserves or take it from someplace else so is it reasonable to shoot for do we get to fractional base units if you have ones and twos and threes oh no it was based on a three bedroom house with three bedroom houses one a four bedroom was one point three three a five bedroom is one point six  seven and i have six bedrooms two that type of thing and that and then the commercial units were you would take the potential use of that and divide it by seventy six to five zero or something like that to kind of give the bedroom unit more relationship to the gallons which would then have an equitable formula across both residential units and business which is the direction that we are going i would go further live coverage first i think i think that's that's a whole other it might not be but do we have to do something about the situation we have now can i observe the purity of your logically one unit would always be mine the unit no it's not you know it could be to you than less per gallon and something flattens out the per gallon cost that people end up paying when i look at this and look at the people who pay the most per gallon is by far the single old lady with in their own  and it just to add to discussion so the now that we actually have computers will be some people and spreadsheets the task of recalculating dividing an amount of money by a number of units david with the most recent data so close to twelve to thirteen and indeed the average single family home user and i also got a better reading on who are actually single family homes meaning one meter to one living in it and the average enrichment is now thirty six and a half thousand gallons so we had better meter data it went down so identified it that whatever thirty six and a half thousand units if if we used one it's five thirty versus four ninety four and an interesting little bit of trivia that is before july first the number of ear use was five hundred thirty four so when we are off by very much if it's one ok if it's half it's four hundred eighty only waterson and four hundred forty four and a half in the water in the wastewater side and the difference is we have three connections that are water only the wastewater treatment plant the farm and the whole rosie salmon grocery cemetery so that's the difference in the waste water treatment plant is like twenty are use because they use over a million gallons a year so that and for some people it would result in a much lower overall bill but for other people especially for some who have already complained that their bills too high it would go even higher because you're you still have to make up the same amount of revenue because these a long way because they use a lot of water so and the downside with a thousand gallons is is we are not highly variable system we are a system that is predominantly fixed become much harder doing that just because we are the revenues would be much less predictable back then that's the trade of their last critical it's more like gas prices where you hear quite figure out what happened at the so with the with the changes in the anticipated revenue excuse me but the changes in proposed for water her charge would be three hundred forty plus four fifty per thousand gallons per hole if we didn't change anything if we we kept he our use the way twenty two hundred fifty gallons per year they would pay a point five other base charge and it would be twenty five one one point five two etc etc the base charge would be three seventy five and the float charger before fifty on the water and on the waste water it would be five seventy five base and six forty flow time compared to  hundred thirty units of water running to the nearest whole number and we went to four hundred eighty units of water running to the nearest half number so we reduced the overall number of units but some people  loser and the liberally for ten or twelve thousand gallons a year i think we should have a flatter fee structure and i think when i look at this the half units achieved a flatter he structure fluctuating expenses and revenues still so it's a predictability of it on an annual basis that i think it's important to the bigger point though that in the individual bill even though you didn't do anything differently your bill will go up and down as a function of what it the units are the philosophy behind it is you take what an average single what the average single family homes in richmond uses an annual basis and use that as the basis for unit calculations going forward so it's  using real time what's going on in this community as opposed to what was being used before which is state calculations that are higher than what's actually happening  know i think the short answer is that if we just charge by the variability in the system would make it so that we can't we can't predict who will be able to cover all the systems costs of your by your basis because the costs are really linked to the amount of water that goes through the system not very much it's a very small percentage of the total cost and most of what we have to spend to run the system every year is stuff that's fixed it's concrete in the ground that it's it's plates and things like that so it has to be that that's why get so confusing because we have to have this this system that on one hand responds the amount of water their body uses but on the other hand has enough part three part question the first was on who's paying for it and in order to take yes because in order to take advantage of the possible grant funding is is it would be significantly lower than the town which opens up bigger doors for grant funding and if the town were to pay for it we wouldn't be able to offer that grant funding costing us three times as much money so in and that's the second question was why did it have to be bigger and has to be bigger to account for fire protection so we're hearing yeah yes soon you know the town provides fire protection to people living in the village but the tanks can also trucks to come up and pump at the tank at the hydrants and so in order to account for i also fire ratings our engineers done all the calculations based on where we need to be is it says we need  seven hundred some odd thousand gallons the third is the reason why we're looking for an offsite place so we considered three different locations currently there are two tanks there's the two hundred two hundred thousand other gallon steel tank and there's a fifty thousand gallon concrete reservoir or engineering firm evaluated those two places for her sights for the tank but also consider a higher higher off site location sign a construction loan application so that we can get that money to have our engineers evaluate that site and make sure it's still the best site for us at the last meeting that  fun for the canucks would go for the town this is considered planning and planning looms only they were crucial for that but we need to do this in order to get to the next step meeting the first phase of it is eleven thousand dollars and that was for serving work and to finalize the preliminary engineering and then the second stage based on that with the final design of the loan and then the state is going to put disbursement holds on the fines were heartless if we did the state has already said we're only going to disperse eleven thousand dollars for the survey work now once that's completed and lot numbers were probably thirty thousand dollars to heart so we are likewise will go back and redo some of the quantities discussed with the low bidder but there he would be willing to reduce the scope of the work  oh this is just me any discussion well there's a favor i got through the agenda thank you everybody for coming thank you for everybody's feedback  never saw until they got got from behind a van and i was taking a corner so they need to have at least a kensington period were all lights are red so those kids can go because that is so dangerous we have had two years of terrible weather which of sex is tremendous and and we're looking here right now not having enough money to pay for the final works which we have to pay for february first seed money because it seems like you know when we get a little bit of extra money we have to buy equipment and as the economy economy's been so badly the people just don't have the money to spend trying to keep people there and try to keep the cost low we're doing a lot with seven volunteers and our families so we're asking if we can take  might have some more to say last year we lost our tents and stuff part of it was covered by insurance from a big storm came through and though they are you know this year obviously we're all set up ready to go when the park is closed save everything back down we've lost some of our food stock that we couldn't save and we only had half the turnout that we usually have heard we basically now we have three fundraisers we have the  did what they could do with just one boy or they were spending a lot of money food consumption was way way down and traditionally you know we have everything in place of pay for next year now first or whatever it is to have your first ever first and we can't we just don't have the money and so either we have a lesser firework display put it down who or i mean not try we're reasonably close we're just a little bit sure fifteen hundred dollars worth plus we have we pay for a food you know and that's another twenty five hundred dollars so in the past it happened with a number of years ago that two of our members paid for the rest of the fireworks and somebody paid for the food and we don't want to we don't want to go down that road and we don't want more fans but i don't want your money we like doing it without having to die you know we do this all ourselves it we feel self sufficient no i can't fathom coming in say i mean can you help us can you give us a moment you know my taxes are high enough you know all i get is more important things but this is important to us in our time you know and we're strong town and this was i think that's true but i also think you should look at this clown scene and not have it be if you never if you don't use it you lose it forever i think we it's good policy to be of land that fire department come back when they say we'd trying to get him to move the structures or you would probably want to be out and set back and they went back and forth for a few months and mr ryan applied for a permit in  tracking system for a zone of the plates he's looking into purchasing software which will be in there but he's got an excel spreadsheet set up there is trying to become a workstation and being able to get people to comply so no reason to change what you've been doing yet i mean in light of the supporting evidence that this is not something there will still stand with we shouldn't be wheeling penalties  bridge a driveway cover plugged in popped out of the ground pavement was shoulder loss the bridges been repaired the driver covers been reset repayed the stones been added to the shoulders this is small work up there but it's basically about thirty feet deep five feet wide and six five but by thirty that has slid down need a large wedge put into that it's out of the trap of course it's almost more critical but it needs to be done that's on her to do serious thing because there's several houses down and have a flat plane and now we don't have as much that we feel room for water so it's something we need to deal with pretty quickly it's going to require a steep permits and require permits sixteenth weather permitting sure would force he's still right on schedule the roads are ready to be paid even though we had some small damage that's been repaired street is going to get paid the state also they were very pleased the work that we have done in their actually going for cadillac repairs they actually want to see more stone put it in some places they think need more stones or some of the sites that i've already pared back to what they you know we could probably use another guy we could probably use a couple trucks only two materials but all of them only not got the big stuff or the contractors the big ticket stuff so we're down to you know a quarter mile over here in th so it's the year that we'd be close again so i think it would be how can we start looking at the permanent budgets where there is overage by seven hundred or four thousand percent some explanation so we know that that's a one time thing or that's something that we're going to have to look for each year  justice to the office but there might be something wrong now can so many of those that are really out of whack with the budget just an explanation of why that is and if that's something we're going to be looking at for the coming year that's  dollars i mean i i think that what the capital plan calls for we should start with that and then limit other expenditure dollars make adjustments and if we say three percent are we saying that right in three percent even if you don't need it i mean because i do think if they're in line items they could probably stay the same so keeping in mind that we're not we're not necessarily looking for an overall three percent increase we're looking for savings but if there's a three percent increase in a particular line and i'm having your  documentation of why that's what you're putting in for that's my thought and yeah i know that yeah except that we did three last year and me go back down to two to three the company you know one thing that's big and out of our control out of a lot everybody's control you know and to be able to sort of do this analysis so that there's good things within the realms of the department heads control control and look at that separately from policy with appropriate time for everything stay the same you would not be spending work on a plan basis circumstances may change with employees which has a big impact on the rest that i actually have a concern about one employee who's been working more than thirty hours for the two there may have to be a change the hundred percent and then i think that's kind of the cap where everyone get back and then we can work with the message you have no more but this is just the start  them to look closely at the budget and the situation where we've got control of health care side we've got low inflation we don't you know we didn't increase to a lot of the big ticket items last year i just don't see why we can't that's been approved by the development review board it's got not going to waste water permitting there's no building on top there there's no design for access that sort of things things that are professionals either  subject where she explains that it's such a way true that if nobody's going to perfect the why we're never going to use the technical review it's not necessary for us to hold on to  t we have been holding onto them for other applicants but we could refund the fee and then require subsequent owners of these warrants to pay the fee again to be able to perfect the  there has to be clear that somebody pay them in some point and then there'll be a practice change for the government view board on what they require and the other hand if the decision was made to give it back how is that recording where is that going to be that information can be kept so that if someone else does buy a property and comes forward we know that they and that's when the fees get charge so what you're saying is they're not going to do that somebody else is going to do that so they want their fees back that means somebody else will have to pay more care saying that aren't done that see and our past the past history and the information that kathleen has given us when you to keep the money and it's a cost of doing business and making a subdivision and selling it and developing  honey able to do so right preston when i have both been out there recently and no progress has been made on cleaning up the property back right continues to get complaints about the owner still visiting and putting out brought food for animals there continues to be a profit so i sort of put together a scope of work to bring the property into two bids back dollars to one eight hundred got will take a look at the information in your packet you'll see the original bit in the revised big quantities for mike weisel went through and read up a few things on the bit because the original bit was about thirty thousand dollars to operate and what we did was eliminate the bar and we reduced the scope of the concrete curbing along the side of the room and that's plus some reworking  concrete pavers were able to be included under the radar for it so i've broken now where all the money is going to come from and we've got to be able to fit into our current budget previously the water and sewer commissioners ordered the depot street water line part of this under a separate purchase order and there was a change to that we had originally split the twelve thousand dollar not this other block of junk that i would see in a lesser town in richmond i think we owe it to the taxpayer to we need a party we know we need a parking lot which is why this project is on the table if we do not have enough parking need to get better to you know have the alternative to occur then not expanding this parking lot because we need the parking lot yeah and that i think to me that the vacant buildings and which dollars hall to richmond and another item they discussed was asking the planning commission to look into ordinance changes for use of reading the article but i think it means to make it easier for businesses to commercial for commercial use make it easier to change use like john shoe shop change into a dance studio i think has had to go through the d o b change of use process so is there an easier way if it's you know the similar  but yeah so that they'll still be talking to you and that's what i capital spending and then there are there are some other things that we've looked into just one possible so you guys can discuss that at the next meeting tell you all about the partner might just their findings it could be a substantial presentation perhaps a half an hour so i would like to know how you'd like to handle them just make it part of the regular meeting if you like to hold a special meeting at some point of it's very important that i'm speaking to to the microphone that people are going to get to say after the meeting that if you have flood insurance or you may be required to have flood insurance you tend these meetings are going to explain a lot about at the end of last week i got confirmation from fema that they agreed with the state's determination that for the hazard mitigation bio there was no viable alternative other than acquisition demolition and it and like i work in the finance report that it's ridiculous to me that there are no so injections we've got some difficulties in the back to try to work through them if you see something that you know we can't explain or