recently or so we've been fairly consistent it's been fairly steady beside the expected loss of that one all or yes ok so i see that there is that there are a decreasing block located to bring you but you're also all the good to take the set and lot of times sometimes those two don't mesh so you can run into a problem if you have a set fee based on the volume and you side we get a call from our tank cleaning company liquid engineer in montana we are scheduled under contract to do another came cleaning this spring due to the aging condition of our tank the contractor has offered to not do the cleaning this spring and do warranty inspection of our new tank it's flakes the new tank could be said here it could be a couple of years ye sure where it's going to be a whole pops up all right the seams and understood and i think we i think we recognize that we're not looking for any guarantees but but i think what we need to know is that if something is imminent i think that many strengthen the case and if we can pass something even if it's a short term patch to get to bridge us i think i mean you have twenty eight score but we have we have green mountain doing an engineering design correct what that actually is all completed and there's includes a waterline and everything will just be construction  e cost is right up front is to twenty five hundred dollars if the idea that i would look at this is that i would say go ahead mike do the right away work in the design work and everything for the whole project and then put it out the bid even though you're spending another two thousand dollars for the town engineer to do this work it's for it's kind of fortunate it's not wasted because there are some right away issues up that yeah i mean i think we need to look at ways that we can get a good quality product at a reasonable cost and if we were happy with what happened with brown's court and this is the approach and it's a similar type of project i say  a lot cheaper a good deal and some of it may be construction phase engineering i mean you know not to not to harp on green mountain but you know there are a larger part of the larger cost per hour for engineer sent letters out to a number of residents in the valley view road area that fit a map that was prepared by green mountain engineering of an area that was close to  got two responses we met with one of the residents of staff to noon that shows some promise there is a little light at the end of that tunnel that there might be a way to work that we haven't talked to the second president ye t but at this point we're still exploring whether or not this is a real possibility we're going to walk up and do a little more in the field observations to see if the site is going to be suitable for us and  so i guess we can move on to kind of talk about a capital plan and how it relates to the overall budget so when we finally see the capital plan which you guys have can be out of the water and wastewater section of the capital budget we left everything the way it was for our town meeting so that we could put the budget the waterways of our budget into the town meeting or but knew that there may be some adjustments to this capital budget and without having the full board here i'm leery about having any steadfast and and lasting conversations about the capital plan because i would like to have the input of the entire board personally but i guess we can have some preliminary discussion about  year and also you know we're going to be suggesting some restructuring of rates to help pay for that i think that it would work well for us if we  could identify some of those items that might be able to wait a year or might be funded in another way such as you know we had a discussion today that the chlorine contact time might actually get funded by the state which it would be planning so we wouldn't have to put out her own cash right away but then again that load would be paid back over a different term and it would hit later on also during that payback term can which can be quite boring will be trying to do other projects so one of the choices how do you attack that project do you how much cash do you put down to pay it off in the sort of right now i think or foreign contact time we have another twenty five thousand dollars in there this year i think are we going to use that are we going to use state funding and waste water budget you know we have proposed seventy four thousand dollars to go to water capital reserves and you know portion of that is the chlorine contact on its distribution system and i don't know if we put debo straight into that i mean if you add up all of the water capital items that we've proposed for twenty fourteen it doesn't come near seventy four thousand it's way over that  reserve doesn't have a lot of money and so so this is the kind of fine tuning that presents an opportunity like that wall will essentially have in effect on the rates yes so if we are able to find the car in contact i'm through and it's a rough loan then the money that we have allocated to that in the budget can either be taken out or it can be reallocated to another capital project like deeper street or so some other or just go to capital so that every we can keep i mean so personally from a budgeting standpoint and i know we've talked about this before is i would rather see what the rates look like based on a budget that you've approved that we've proposed that we've worked on using you know what we've big capital improvement items on we see with the rates look like based on based on what i like to call it work the other systems as worst case scenario what does it look like when you put in all the capital that you need all the debt that you have and all of the expenses you have see what it does to the grades and then work backwards if the rates are unpalatable at that at that proposed level then you don't then we work backwards we look at ways of spreading the cost out where we do longer term loans or we don't do a capital thing in one year but but we have not been contributing to capital and therefore we do not have capital reserve we do not have money in capital and we have not been keeping up with with the maintenance items that we need to keep up with and sell at some point we need to just bite the bullet and do it quickly prior to this budget you know if what i think this comes after that actually is rigs i'd like to get your feedback on this a little bit it's all about strategy for how we want to handle what seems to be an inevitable need to  minimize the increase in the short term with the danger that in the medium term we're going to do it yet if we don't really love money or if another item comes down a lot rents need to reach need to be adjusted in my opinion in italy to keep up with inflation really but but but that would be but my earlier yeah absolutely you know we don't want these giant or sick seemingly giant increases happening every five to ten years because that's not that's not the right future and and do we get instead we start working towards a proactive role or do we continue to be and reactive for all and that and that and that's a fundamental question that that the water answer commission needs to answer is is right now we're still going to react if we were an absolutely reactive position and we need to be pro more proactive and that and that includes changing philosophy and changing our approach contact i feel like a piece of meat that my state has on the priority list is going to be finalized by the end of this month i feel like funds availability letters are going to go outs in the next month or application and to say that we want to use the money but once we get that times availability letter that starts the talk that starts the clock ticking because if we miss that we miss it for a whole nother year and then yeah bigger users on the system yeah i mean but you still have to do maintenance regardless of how many people are regardless of whether there's a brewery on the system or not i mean the existing users deserve a well functioning system period and they have it but we need to make sure that we keep it that way and so how that having a big user or not should not drive our priorities that journalism in your easier like can we kind of push on for a the function of the system as a whole if i was a potential commercial customers and they've never been usage i'd be looking into that before or since so you know i think it's it has an economic development mission and i mean the relative cost of some of these especially if you plan for them if your capital should not i mean the development cost is is is relatively small compared to the replacement projects doing the storage tank and these are these are things that if we were doing this properly we would be building it in every year we would be putting away seven thousand dollars every year for ten years so that when we didn't do the re soon we'll have to talk about this at the next meeting and like you said a lot of this will depend on if i'm going to assume that we're going to be able to get us or something before for the corning contact tower which will take that out the capital budget which will then and i want to keep it in base every time and then go from there yeah although on page two line fifteen i'm not sure that i talked about the elevation how much higher it had to be because i honestly have no idea how much higher really is having her meetings in the middle of the month working better for paying bills we should be yeah you know i saw this with the select board warrants two is there are a couple of bills and it may just be because of their billing cycles that were and i understand why as we repay the current balance due but there may be a prior balance due and so at some point i'd like to get it so that we're paying the full said at the last meeting that we would be discussing the outcome of the water task force and his grades now that you're back in town i have three people from the economic development committee who would like who would like to be on the water task force and i do we have now that i have other people would you like to participate in have talked about a water taskforce water a task force a couple of months ago but it's sort of the hammer of the rubber is meeting the road and i have a couple of folks from who are interested in being part of it and so i wanted to know if you were interested again now that you're back in town to be part of the conversation i would i would like to meet two to three times before the next water and sewer commission meeting in april it would be the three folks from the economic development committee candle jaf myself and potentially another member from the water and i can contact her and see if she'd like to be part of that too yeah things just didn't get going because of whatever reason but it's like i said the rivers meet in the road so are you are you interested in being part of that  it was said that we would that there would be something to present to the committee service of the commissioners could then have something to present at the annual meeting which is proposed in may which you were a man of the second so so that will be a big discussion and capital items on the next at the next meeting of the april meeting and jeff for the main meeting because that's going to be our annual meeting chris and i were just chatting before our before this meeting and i'm thinking that we may we may need more than an hour and so that it may be appropriate to have it on a different night so that it doesn't go into the slack board meeting because i feel like there's going to be some discussion about the rates among the losers so i think it would be appropriate to look for another day that week or thursday as america tours and thirza thursday that's going be a big water day for me there's the green mountain water environment associations trade show that day and i'm presenting at that that  mean i love water and i love talking about it but that may be on the line for the thursday before the sixteenth i'm fine with that works for me amy may sixteen so we'll have the monthly water and sewer commission meeting on the sixteenth of may that will be the in one meeting which means we won't have it on the twentieth laid out kind of what the issue with the rates and the units and the allocation and kind of the big picture and the fact that you know we have to kind of accepted revenue we have payments that are due the water resources that's full of funding all the all the stuff we know about and sort of some good questions that i had was especially as it relates to to t cost sharing was there was you know should should be sharing in capital items or payments or general support and and the there seemed to be kind of consensus of the group that they thought that was a good way to go that certainly will be something that we discuss in the water task force because i we can decide that i think that needs to come from from a community wide and then of course there is the question of what do other communities pay for water you know what's what's the average single family home in vermont ok and and you know i can give a i could give a range but every community is different needs and different  pressures so you know but to answer the question it's about four fifty to five hundred for a single family home in vermont there are some that as high as twelve hundred there are some as low as one hundred fifty but the ones who are one hundred fifty are on our priority list to do lots and lots of work so you know there was just there seemed to be a consent is that that something needed to change because there seemed to be a consensus that there was in equitability  lot of the people who were there that they felt that that they were getting charged for far more than what they were actually using like their units were often we don't really use that much water but don't get charged this much this other person doesn't get you know i mean there was a lot of that there was a lot of if a useless water does my bill go down and of course as we've talked of that the variable costs of running this water system are pretty low it's a lot of fixed cost it's ninety percent fixed costs so using less water doesn't necessarily equate to it costing less to run the system so you know there is just any i just want to keep going back to the same old point because it's not necessarily the costs that are driving the increases in the water has to do with or revenue instability and the restructuring of the base charges and the number of players here and any potential charges beyond that have to do with the fact that right now we're relying on unrealistic predictions on water revenue so i think it's important for the public to understand that it's not that you can years last quarter cup system it's the fact that our revenue structure really has to be changed to be able to stabilize yeah i mean between the septic revenue in and the fact that we were getting a significant income from allocated units that are actually using any water that could drop their allocation at any time that's that significant  out ok and i think they were surprised to hear that allocated units that aren't actually using water go into the revenue stream they don't go into a separate pot of money to go and pay for future improvements so i think that the group the group got that and something needed to change  and that was really good i was i was really hurt by that so so yeah it was i thought it was productive and i was glad to get up at seven thirty more district is what's called a wholesale water system is that they just sell water to people is so they sell water to like south burlington and williston but willesden still has their own water system they still have a water superintendent they still have a water operator they still fix all the pipes they still test all the meters they still do all of the maintenance and and they still have bonds that they pay to fix the infrastructure so basically all they're paying for and i shouldn't minimize that they're paying for is water and in a situation like that it's significant but in our town if at this point we were say sure let's hook up the champlain water district first of all they'd have to be willing to sell us water and that may involve a booster station or another storage tank to manage the flow we'd have to connect all the way up to williston which is a couple of miles away and at one hundred dollars a linear foot to connect all the way into the village that's a lot of money and that's our bond that would be our bombing that we would have to flow we would then have to continue to have a water resources staff we would then be paying on a bond to connect to champlain water district we would be paying existing bonds to maintain our infrastructure here we would have to still continue to maintain our infrastructure which means more bombs and we would have to pay for water at a whole celebrate that is variable that just like any other water system would it changes on an annual basis as opposed water which we all know that there is a significant controversy over chloramines in drinking water and we've barely put chlorine in our water there's there's a lot of things to think about c w t is the quality and quantity in access so it would it would not be in our economic best interest to connect to champlain either district and it would be a it would be a bad move to even consider it