because gary if you talk to candle about the allocation that i'm assuming we have enough capacity oh the microphone is for the benefit of the camera it doesn't doesn't project into the room basically he was asking for another connection so yes we want to approve more connections this is a special meeting in that water and sewer taskforce has been meeting over the past month pretty much weekly to sort of talk about the water rates and the commissioner scuse me the task force spend and cousins come to a meeting or two she is not present tonight catherine cardio harriet reg's todd liberty bruce family myself jeff and kendall have been looking at what the we we need to make a decision the decision will be made on on our annual meeting on may sixteenth and i invited lunches versus idea to invite the one answer commissioners to a meeting in advance of the annual meeting so they could understand sort of the genesis in the process that we went through to kind of come up with with with what we're proposing for the rate structure it has not been an easy conversation we've had to make difficult decisions and if you ever have a chair for you so i'm not wasn't really prepared for this type of scenario so i would w we yeah i mean i think i don't want to start a public conversation but what i what i might want to do is maybe talk about some of the things that we've talked about that many many answer some of the question the goal of the water task force the water answer task force was to provide input to the water commissioners so that they could decide we put a call out on time meeting day and subsequent column front porch forum in addition to talking to the neighbors and i got very little response the people who are sitting here with the folks who did respond to that so those are the folks who essentially are are making the decisions and making the recommendations  his team have done a great job in going after sept it waste haulers as a way to supplement our income and there's competition competition is taking that revenue away from us and as a result we're seeing a thirty plus percent decline incepted revenue and that directly impacts our i mean even if we even if we didn't have any other pressures on the system that directly impacts our rates because it has been applied in appropriately fifty fifty to water and waste water so one hundred thousand dollars in septa drive and he was gone to offset your water rates on one hundred thousand dollars is going to offset your sewer rates according to state statute we have been doing it right  a dish so the declining revenue we're expecting one hundred fifty thousand dollars this year incepted revenue as opposed to two hundred thousand is we've enjoyed in past years so we're already off the bat down that's another well you have correction you have a fixed operating cost every year that are going to increasingly go up and it is it's unbelievable i've learned a lot of that pumping twenty four million gallons a year through this system only cost about eighteen thousand dollars for the water you have cost pushing two hundred some thousand dollars every year this issue that's going on here in richmond is the same thing that's going on in a lot of the communities nationwide you have increasing operating loss and you're not getting more users you're not getting more revenue because you're correction that that's basically how did somebody that to be the bad guy here and i'm not a tax fairness now you know i managed a seven and a half million dollar operation over there on the second biggest user and this is what's going to affect us and if this had occurred incrementally over two percent three percent over the last number of years you would be over there with a pain in the butt because this is how it is this is a slap in the face i'm going to back to the mine owner that i'm going to spend fifteen thousand dollars a year probably for water when i spent eight thousand dollars share that's that's a serious amount of money but if that had occurred and been managed in a way that you weren't taking fifty thousand dollars or more every year out of the revenue for multi piece are sort of over there in the heart of the ins and putting it towards artificially keeping the know what the what is that what's in the reserve account for ten fifteen thousand dollars should be a balance out plus we've got but there's another forty five this year so under twenty five and drinking water systems i do this from my day job and i do go through hoops for community community and i look at these situations and i would say that it's difficult to compare from town to town because we have different pressures but on average the average vermont single family home for water has between four fifty and five hundred dollars a year right now the current rate for richmond is about three fifty so we're we're love right now you're scuse me you're below the average you're where you were and we're proposing where we need to be so cantle did some research for area chipping county towns for significant treatment plant upgrades and their bonds have not come due yet so it will significantly impact those rates and will push us even lower on the average but you know and for industry wide  it's recommended that water separate from waste water utilities spend approximately one percent of the median household income every year on their or their water rate and their sewer rate and that's to keep up with existing operation and maintenance costs in addition to future improvements it means this infrastructure was put in thirty forty fifty years ago using largely federal and state grant money and the communities have not been putting in a way an appropriate amount to account for that and now loans are the only thing that's available so you have to pay an interest rate on top of you're on top of your principal and towns and right i would say on the large scale like the majority and i mean high majority it's paid for by the users there are there are some communities that do spread out capital costs among all members of the community so for example in asics work and the lives the capital costs are borne by all taxpayers but most communities that i work with all infrastructure improvement projects future past and present are borne by the users that's just typically how it works some you know throughout the country it may be different but but my experiences in vermont that's that's the way it is now the water answer a task force the next step after we got past kind of the immediate issue is to have discussions about sharing the wealth  spreading the pain so so chairing the costs among all richmond residents but that we haven't gotten to that conversation yet because we had to deal with the more pressing issue of how do we pay our bills on july first  eight dollars and sixty three cents as if four hundred forty seven dollars and twenty three cents colchester fire district number one in five twenty three colchester fire district over three hundred three twenty three forty five those are all part of the champlain w didn't do all the calculations because taking square feet of shit this mess where that's not what you said you didn't say you were so everybody knew what channel gave me that's all i can tell you go by go i just was repeating what i what was what i was given but i do know that for i've i've done my spreadsheets i've done my calculations for the dollar bonds to fix the road which fortunately is facts and also do that under the infrastructure that goes underneath around though the water and wastewater portion of that it was roughly half the bond almost eighty thousand percent i'm sorry sixty sixty eight percent ok so that to the tune of an annual payment of roughly eighty thousand dollars and then that split seventy five twenty five water and waste water so seventy five percent of the eighty thousand dollars a year is is on the water side and twenty five percent is on the wastewater so you have a bond payment for work that's already been done for a bond that we passed however many years ago that that's todd said should have then incremental corrections incremental increases in the rates to address that knowing that we have a bond payment due on june thirtieth and that we need to pay our bills the the are so there you're already at a negative we have set lower subject revenue we have separate revenue that we can apply to water anymore and we have increased debt payments and this isn't even talking about doing deeper road miscues media by street this isn't talking about own the property they pay and allegation and a water and sewer allocation fee and that currently goes into our revenue stream and the problem again with with with this is that that revenue stream is not tenable somebody they have already dropped their allocation in past stick which means we get less revenue to pay the bills so so what should've been done is that allocation should have gone to capital reserve to boost up our capital reserves so that we could pay for the tank that we could pay for the infrastructure improvement projects that we need so part of this correction is taking those allocated units out of the revenue stream and putting them into capital where they belong but as far as sharing the cost among all  again that's part of the future conversation of the task force the problem is that we can't do anything about it today the reason is is one the the town budget for this upcoming year has already been passed it's already been established the tax rate is already based on it we can't suddenly put in an arbitrary amount of money into the budget to say ok now everybody in richmond know you're going to pay we also that can't take our debt payments and saying all right town you are now responsible because that's not how they were bonded to begin with it was bonded so that the the users of the system are going to be the ones to pay so we we have we have to deal with what we have now we have bills that  due we have to keep the electricity on we have to keep the chemicals that keep your water safe and we have to pay our staff we have to fix our fix our pipes we're not talking about spending millions of dollars on another town's infrastructure we're not talking about giving money away we're not talking about giving ourselves raises we're judged not paying our bills and we're this task force looked at the best way we could do it given given the situation the unfortunate situation i mean i the those of us who have sat around the table at these at these meetings have been it's been a difficult conversation and you know i'm glad todd's here being the second largest user on the system to understand what this is going to do to to his community i'm glad to have somebody from the economic development group here so that they represent the business interests i'm glad i have a single family home owner in the on the on the board because we need to we need to have a serious discussion we need to make the difficult decisions and these are difficult decisions that have not been made over the past four years plus you know for too wanted to keep the rates low you know i mean here and everywhere keep the rates as low as possible this is what happens when you keep the rates as low as possible and you don't make the difficult decisions that are needed to be  disposal and some of these are big customers accountable and one time he was generating two hundred thousand dollars with the revenue for that service that was offset in the sewer drakes in against last actually subsidizing and now the anticipation of decreased revenue is coming to light and how much of that dissipated revenue do you want to use to subsidize the sewage rates you can't subsidize the water rigs anymore that's possible that's against the l that they can't do that anymore and we've had a lengthy conversation and bill seen and i think just seen revenue decline substantially and i was one of the ones that proposed well let's assume that maybe safely if we get one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of revenue let's use one hundred thousand so offset the sword raids let's not go that dissipating a perfect perfect hundred fifty docs at one hundred fifty because this is a declining think there's more and more of these hollers that are getting permits to put it on the fields and it's it's just and there's so many competitive business so maybe anything in excess of one hundred thousand dollars goes back to the capital reserve for these infrastructure repairs and that was another thing that that actually didn't elaborate on is every year that people only cheese plant and some other people in town pay for the right to use the river water sewer that money was not going into reserve fund kendall games examples of other noosa pallies that say ok mr builder you got five blocks you you're dissipate using this and years we're going to charge you a thousand and fifteen hundred dollars a year to stay on the program that money was going into this revenue offset in your rates that wasn't going into the bank over here so when that development comes into that business opens up there's twenty or thirty thousand dollars in the kitty to go ahead and extend his life and improve his service offer him something that money was going into the operating expenses out there that are costly increasing their customer base are yards ahead of the town of richmond in in regards to expansions and modernization and upgrades and in general meetings i mean you know as you drive through town every day how little upgrades  haven't been some of these communities have upgraded and have doubled their expansion i mean how long how long can go has this number of three hundred thirty customers i believe is the number in the town in richmond meters that jury has to read was the stands that that we were starting from a complete blank slate here you know inflation happens cost rise over time you have a set number of people on the system it's going to cost more over time and those costs of being the system are going to go up the only way that that it goes down or even holds constant is by bringing more people on the system and expanding expanding the base we've been going the other direction i mean the cheese factory leaving with the big the big chunk but to to be able to that that is the main mechanism we have to bring those costs back in line with what people are currently paying now when you when you lay it all out on paper that that is the leverage that we've got so we need to keep that in mind when we think about  revamping zoning in town because the the mismatch between the template and zoning is real but also when it comes to discussions about the specific development that we do with that cheese factory parcel it's not appropriate talk about that tonight because there's a lot going on and i'm not directly involved in that but the good news is that we may have that in the near term we may have a very different perspective you know two years from now i certainly hope we do because we'll have a different number of users on system but what actually has been able to bring to this process and which i'm so grateful for is to set our planning on a path so that you're not wondering from year to year what's going to happen what you much rather you know the saying is coming to a meeting like this and hearing well yeah i'll be like the rich to be lower but then i can change for next year and by the way we've got a cash reserve of you know hundred thousand dollars so that when we have a major run yes we wanted to be low but but the uncertainty can be as difficult as it is just the level itself if you don't know from year to year whether you're a homeowner  put in in nineteen sixteen i think it is a single walled steel tank welded steel has a life expectancy of about twenty years we are thirty years beyond that ok so that's that's number one number two is the people who do our tank inspections on a regular basis no longer guarantee that the tank is going to last they say we can't guarantee that it's going to last they patch it it fall the patch doesn't hold number three it is too small for the system that we have so we have fire protection that we offer the community the school the town buildings the businesses the homes in addition to the fire department it is too small to adequately sustain pressure and and and slow and the fourth and this is probably the biggest one for the state requires a minimum of pounds per square inch of k s i during all flow conditions and there are a number of connections including schools that do not have under normal flow can be under all flow conditions do not have do not have that normal flow is thirty five p s i in all flow conditions is twenty p s i i so if there was a fire in the village the school's pressure and harold's pressure would drop below twenty p s i and that's that's a violation of the water supply rule for the drinking water groundwater protection division so we need to we need to go higher why i am asking because i'm ignorant of it yeah i mean so so those are for you have no insurance you have to do it it's just it's there so i walked away and i certainly you know this is something that will that the water taskforce has struggled with i mean aside from the notification that is absolutely something that as soon as we make a decision was was to get to this decision this is what can we do and so we we did talk about ways to soften the blow and when and when you know it came down to it it says this one's that this was the soft blow and that as far as increase billing frequency and we've talked about increasing billing frequency to monthly what that would do was that would what triple our admin costs because the  on your usage i'm still don't have you don't have a central bureau you might have one paper werman such like that because it's every month but instead of quarterly what's the difference she's working eight hours whatever someone there are two hours a month to do so that can be work down it could be an option for people did was we took all the single family homes in richmond and we took what their average usage is because nationally pretty pretty standard unit of measurement is a single family home that's that's the basis it's called an equivalent residential unit so it's the basis for for billing we took all of the single family homes which there's about one hundred seventy two in this community  and figured out what their average usage was their average uses was about forty one and a half thousand gallons a year some were some were one hundred fifty some were six six thousand so if there was a great range but the average was forty one and a half thousand we then took all connections so all three hundred thirty connections or three hundred twenty eight or whatever it is and divide that by forty one and a half thousand rounded to the nearest whole number and nobody gets less than one so that resulted in roughly five hundred ten because of one residential units right now it's about five hundred twenty eight equivalent residential units so so for example right now ms riggs is considered one point six seven units because she has five bedrooms and her house four was used before so you're one point three three but i not based on actual usage so going forward she will now be one because she uses less then forty one and a half thousand plus half ok so that's it seems to be the most fair approach unfortunately the biggest in the in biggest person is impacted is harrington's currently there are four point four units and it's based on the number of employees that they have not necessarily the fact that are many a faction goods their future number of units is going to be fifteen because years six hundred thousand gallons of water a year that's as much as the schools use or one of the schools  so we're getting it more on par with what with what people are actually using more representative of of what's going on in this community as opposed to numbers that are based on unitized daily flows that are listed in some outdated table that the state has that's that's that's really what it's been based on all these years and it's not again it's not an actual representation of what's going on and in there are some people who've been playing paying grossly over what they actually use for many years and there are some people who've been paying significantly under and so you know when we looked at it when we looked at this redo it was it was equitability sustainability and dependability those were the three things that we needed to make sure that we were doing we needed to make sure that it was at a ball and we needed to make sure it was sustainable so that as as ted said there's going to a lot of smoke and mirrors and we're doing a reset so that going forward we know that were put in the appropriate money a way to capital that we're there we're planning for future improvements of this community desperately needs a number paying their bills that's all we want to do to solutions the float out there one i don't i think you underestimate what that will do to the when you increase the price you know one of the solutions are going to float out there because the water the ever thought about going into chapter eleven or chapter seven just think about it and the second and i understand that they don't want to work but every water table in these towns that i work with share play water district owns those tapes the water tax they don't want to build and that's what i'm told they don't want to whether they would do it for us or not but the so those are the two things sell you water it's yours it goes to the master meter you do with that wind when you need to the reality is that we would have to we would have to put in a significant line from the top of the french hill until that duplex  salaries and fixing stuff and paying bonds and taking and getting chemicals and insurance and taxes on the taxes but the fixed costs of the water system are roughly ninety percent of the operating budget it's it's amazing and it's that's pretty much how it is around the northeast because you can pump it to a higher elevation and have it go by gravity down down south you have to pump across flat ground and there their costs are exorbitant for electricity but i digress sue if you are not currently connected to the water system but have purchased allocation we're going to be treating you differently than we have up until now haven't quite figured that out yet because that's that every community is different on how they treat not connected but purchasing water like an allocated user like the care you guys own a couple of allocated units and so right now you're paying into the revenue stream to lower water rates you're still going to have to pay for that allocation it's just going to be calculated differently then then it is then it will be for everybody else and your money will go into capital fund on existing basically we have meters we have good meter data for the past twenty plus years we're going to be using the meters to determine what your rate will be and if you need more water like if you're going to completely change your use of you're going to go from a single family home to a restaurant at that point we may need probably going to need to ask and also do is there enough capacity or  there enough capacity for me to expand my business right now the answer is yes and then you will you will have your water metered and it will get recalculated what you're here use will be so if you suddenly use four times the amount of not you're not actually receiving water at that site here you'd be considered one of those going to be taken out of the current calculation and it'll be calculated differently so when when you know i'm going to duplex you'll come in a can get by can i know how much i'm going to use and we'll have a calculation for how we calculate what you should pay until you're connected we don't have that yet it's that it is are difficult is are those are difficult numbers to purchased allocation that's going to be a different congress that's going to be a conversation down the road and i imagine it will be some percentage of what the base rate is or what the flow rate is for current customers but i need to do a little bit of research more it's you know i don't like it's not fair but it's not it's not even close and i have to look and see how we hire bill now to give you good to give us and honest answer i i don't know right now it's if you have one meter you pay every month or every quarter every year it's just a mind of mine less people well i think the goal which you stated beginning is a lot of sense to have an actor michael system and to me and then i just i guess the question i had is you know i know there state statute but do we have to go cold turkey or can we really should go cold turkey it was illegal back when the commissioners did it they did it anyway but it's illegal a triple quadruple septuplets edged sword where you have declining separate revenue you know you have increased costs and we're actually proposing to contribute to capital we we have because costs have continued to increase as an anybody yet as in your home budget your costs increase so you contribute less to your savings account it's been the same thing here costs have continued to increase so we've contributed less to our capital reserve funds to the point where people connected to the other system that are connected to the waste water additionally because the water the waste water treatment plant never got a water bill but they use almost a million gallons of water here we added in the going to the water side but not waste water side because they don't they don't actually generate that much waste water and if we put all the stuff that revenue into the bill theoretically put in less and capital to begin with and that may increase over another years and i am sensitive that there are people who are going to have a hard time saying here representing business but i still sensitive to those people there is one that is the type of thing that happened in communities like these fifty and sixty years ago is is that funding was available but an almost one hundred percent grant so that communities didn't have they just had a video interested in then operators and then everybody just that it's a signal to big shock and so so what if we did try to take as much know you soon so we did a percentage and not an actual numbers hoof we do a percentage of anticipated revenue s for the past however many years it hasn't been done the rates have been increased there's just been an elimination of capital contribution at the end of the year last thirty years to offset the increased so that we haven't been increasing it but we so we've been making sacrifices and those sacrifices have been capital that's that's where we are so so commissioner our task force to have a recommendation on where we should move forward with with separate revenue because we need to understand i need to run some final frequency that they're going to continue to come in the probabilities are going to come in as i said earlier there's a lot of these companies of gut feel permits up north now that was never there and the transportation cost you know fifty percent decline is pretty steep decline you know if you go from that into the from the two hundred thousand dollars and we're expecting to get a minimum one hundred towards your operating expense nothing above that i'm with kendall i mean ken what i think you sort of agree on one hundred thousand dollars money here in town the people in the people even paying the rate water the water it's ok it's costing us a lot more than it is the individual people in the in the tough ok a lot more about ten times as much reserve accounts and excess perceptive revenue that had been earmarked for the budget for the raids and said well we can find ten thousand here we can find any thousand here here we go as to the water and sewer street but it's all torn up in allocation was calculated it is it is calculated currently some people are going to be affected more than others so and it's interesting i'm going to twenty one point eight three units i don't i can't explain how has been calculated the schools schools are actually going to go down a little bit because of the at least on the wastewater with it is it's still hard because of the way because of the discrepancies between the water and waste water allocations is not a one to one you know i mean there's there's some single family homes that are on the water at one perspective on expense and is expenses from two thousand ok so the expected revenue for two thousand and twelve on the water side is about one hundred seventy five thousand dollars water on the us wastewater side the anticipated revenue again based on bill's and current rate is two hundred roughly two hundred seventy five thousand the estimated expenses are roughly four hundred eighty five thousand so two hundred thousand dollars increase so so you understand where you've got to get the money somewhere and again that's all capital or skews making its debt and and committing to contributing to capital in christie i do hear what you're saying and that means we may need to make some sacrifices but but again the capital is there for for emergencies for for fixing these little water lines that are on side streets that we are doing paving projects on there so we don't have to bonds we don't have to put into service so that we're not paying interest on on money that we could have sweet could have put a little away here and there  increased expenses that we have regardless of whether it's recalculated on the areas in which it's a difficult situation i am not i am up keeps me up at night knowing what these conversations are going to so i do i just do want to do a quick time check i do want i would do want to be sensitive to everybody schedule so we do have fifteen minutes left and i would like to have a decision by the water insert commissioners excuse me the water and sewer task force as a recommendation to the commissioners on the amount of two point six seven units of water and two point six seven well just wait why are two point six seven units of water that's what your bell syrup there are there's a base rate times two point six seven going forward you will be two because your consumption based on last year's meter data was seventy five thousand seven hundred pounds which it was two units so yours is your your you count is actually going down that doesn't necessarily mean your rates going to go your bill is going to go down again there are so many tough to stop talk to citizens at every point you have to make a decision to go one way or another if we were early into we could put in a year in every building in every connection because they have they they have the resources to do that were small community people you were were on the margins community more than half of the connections are single family homes you know we don't have the resources to spend to put in some metering and the amount of money that it would take to put that i just adding more infrastructure adding more cost so you know we need to focus on the things that we we can that we need to do not the things that we want to work well i will say one thing to me i think  that kind of thing and to me that's the fair part and i did do calculations based on that and it was even higher because ninety percent of our costs are fixed what we're facing at this moment you know in in here maybe maybe we're going to be having a different conversation in rates can go down because maybe we share the cost among the town but but but snapshot in time this is what we have to deal with so contribute to the to the water system to that obviously will need to happen at the level of the select board and should probably involve exactly the things you just mentioned but you know what part of the town water system now because the thing that makes me this is incredibly difficult the thing that makes me feel positive about this and see the late in the tunnel is that i believe that if we go the direction that i  think that the committee wants to go and it's going to make though the water system sustainable it's going to remove a significant amount of risk an uncertainty from it's gonna lay a foundation for economic growth and for for people to be secure in what they're paying into the future in a way that you know hasn't been there in the past even if we haven't known that it's been risky and i think the incredible amount of credit goes to the  to happen but it is going in the right direction i think nobody's happy about the way it's going but all right so so what what's what's the opinion on ninety percent dollars eighty percent would be one hundred twenty five thousand dollars so which would be so if it was ninety six percent it would be one hundred fifty so if it was one hundred forty thousand dollars that would be you know roughly eighty right so the number that we're going to put towards except their interest rates is it going to be one hundred thousand dollars which is roughly sixty four percent of interested remember now is it going to be one hundred twenty five thousand dollars which is roughly eighty percent of anticipate incepted revenue having a boom and then we say all right we're going to take twenty five thousand dollars and add it which means that your next quarter bill is going to be lower back but i think you know when when we really do this this is not a one and done this is not a set and forget it this needs to be  reevaluated in the beginning probably every six months to read here to see what's going on and then once you start to stabilize it then it can be longer terms or if there is a significant water user coming to town then we really do things i be there so that we can probably answer very similar questions at that meeting i want to get through that meeting before we before we get into cautionary on the town