so i'm i want to welcome everybody to the september thirtieth special water commission's commissioners meeting you all should see an agenda and you what you don't see is an opportunity for public comment that's  poor we need to be able to discuss things and that at the end will allow public comment if time if time allows so so that you can't you can't go in fifteen minutes with a talking once a month you know we're not getting anything done to it that we just look at each other and smiling and sends me e mails back and forth during the week you know and it doesn't amount to a whole we go we've spoken about some of the ideas and we're going to be speaking more about the other ideas that other people have brought to us in a public forum i mean we're not ignoring you we are responding to public comment not necessarily into specific individual needs we have to balance individual needs with the need of the entire system so you know if if you have concrete specific ideas and not just i don't like how high my bill is and then send them in  contact jeff and he'll email it to you or if you come by town offices printed out any rates on the water the anticipated revenue is roughly one hundred seventy five thousand dollars the anticipated expenses for two thousand and thirteen is roughly two hundred seventy thousand dollars so that's just water on the s the estimated revenue exclusive of sept and revenue is roughly two hundred sixty thousand dollars and into subpoenaed expenses is roughly five hundred thousand dollars again so we have or the combined for anticipated revenue for the combined system was roughly four hundred thirty thousand dollars that was based on old rates and and usage in two thousand and twelve so that was assuming that usage didn't the interest of heated expenses is roughly seven hundred sixty seven thousand dollars add in there a separate revenue of one hundred thousand and you get you get again a difference of roughly two hundred thousand dollars two hundred twenty thousand dollars in increases in expenses from two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen is anticipated debt payment of half of the one point five million dollars project is from the water and sewer commission on the water and sewer side and that's  eighty thousand dollar a year loan payment split between water and waste water the other half the town pays so that's eighty thousand dollars a year we had a contribution to capital just ok we have to make a correction it's we have to make a correction and maintain it for the next policies and for deliberations for law for legal issues but just to talk amongst yourselves it has to be in a public forum you know we have to actually avoid each other side of literally i mean we can't we can't have more than two of us get together at any one time right so we talk on the i could come here and campbell just really committee is where these things need to be done because people are going to come here bill you know dozens of different ways and i can't just bring them to the board one by one meeting at a time there's got to be a group of people that can look at different rates and answer questions and say this is why we don't do it that way if you do it this way you're making these people happy but these people are going to be upset and frankly jeff i mean that's what the last water and sewer commission did and the commission made recommendations in the board when in a different direction i mean the working group yes the work group i personally would because if i feel like it's reinventing the wheel if the waters are task force works on something has to explain it to the select board the select board has to take time to then explain it to the public i would rather personally i would rather have sorry the commission i would rather have the commission be discussing these these issues in a public forum because the the task force is not a public meeting because we only have to want to answer commissions on it so it's not there's noone minutes taken there's no it's not it's not in a public forum so that the public can hear that we are taking these into consideration i mean i there is a value but but i think in the current situation it's it's at the cost of public transparency i think is is at issue here and i think the public wants to see that we're we're taking things into level at some point we need to make a decision on what we're doing with the rates and we need to allow it time to work itself out we can't we can't be constantly redoing the rate strongly every quarter every month because it's not getting a time to  mine exactly and especially when we make a change right like we just did we should revisit it at the end of the year and see yeah that how when i feel like we do we stick with it because we did just change things i you like changing things in the next couple of weeks or couple of months is premature we haven't let we haven't let the market bear fruit to use an economic term i mean it's we made some changes the last meeting that will go into effect this coming pit billing period and we intend to make changes tonight at this meeting to also taken effect during the next billing period that i personally would like to committee even if it's not a public committee because there's also a lot of of information that comes out and there's a great variety of levels of understanding amongst the users and to the extent that people are willing and able to step forward to the people that spend the time with it and have had a longer term interest in and helped to explain things to your neighbors and to the other users it helps us at this table everybody's an unpaid volunteer three of us also serve on the slike board some of us have day jobs i'm a small business owner you know the amount of time that i can spend it and i'm not saying that  it's that in any way wrong for people to ask me for time that that comes with the territory it's just a practical issue of what we can do to the extent that that people can educate themselves and bring their their meeting it's meeting twice a month and and i thought for those of us how to select part it would be it would be easier i think to me prior to the select board meetings so we don't take up another weekend night so it would be first and third monday starting at six pm going from six to seven and i think i think bruce i think you have a great idea and i don't know if you guys feel the same way but the first meeting maybe we have our discussions about policy and the things that we need to get done and then the second meeting we take care of regular business like warren says here in the superintendent's report discussing the business that we need to get through because previously to this meeting once a month for half an hour just doesn't cut it so we have things that we need to do and it's a great idea the only thing i would ask is that we be strict about stopping at some sort of like we're concerned it's meeting on time you've got the work was yeah you know and i think being it being able to meet twice a month hopefully will be able to get us so that we can have very clear agendas on what we are to accomplish and  will give also the public an opportunity to understand what what we're trying to do ok so for the next meeting which would be monday the seventh monday the this is the seventh  specifically about the fire protection and the fire rating so that we can all get a better understanding of why the tank needs to be the size that it needs to be and and we can all learn about it together  and but for the so it's six o'clock we're actually going to be doing an executive session to be discussing real estate matters so for the first fifteen minutes of the next so essentially with that word with the policy is right now is you get your quarterly bill and you have to pay it within forty five days or you get a penalty and there was some discussion in the tent in the once or taskforce about moving the monthly billing that we decided that the admin costs on that would be triple our admin costs because you're doing three or four times as many does you know three times as many bills and i'm sorry i don't think we wouldn't be that expensive pulling well this is kind of the compromise this is that instead of that something out twelve bills is you send out still for bills but you get essentially people twelve months to pay those four bills so right now right now it doesn't allow for paying on a monthly basis because if you pay if you get your bill for three months you pay the first month fine you pay the second month fine but if you pay the third month you're paying an interest penalty because you've painted essentially late but by doing it to ninety days you could pay it monthly without any penalty as long as the bill is paid in full by the next billing cycle i i never stand that but this is one would relate to get some feedback is would that be useful for people or how do you pay bills i mean i know the way i do is that i'm sort of dependent on the bill coming in having the piece of paper that i can see in the knowing at the pit that e and i and i don't know if we i feel like we can change the policy to say the water bills are due after ninety days and however we set up the bills we just change the policy so that interest won't be will be charged until after the nine ninety day or you know whatever we decide so then we can work out how the bills actually get we've tried to make some we've we've trim the budget a little bit we've we've worked on recalculating the e r use we're we're we're working with with what we have but we still have bills that we have to pay w suggest we we were discussing changing the billing policy to allow for ninety days of payment with penalty or interest payments not due until the ninety first day or whatever it was and then do a little bit of research to see how we can if it's possible to break late payments will be a sas one percent interest entry interest each of the first three months of each quarter and want to have each month following the build quarter percent pouncey will not be assessed until after the the whatever for you're in one per month so if they pay late on the three months it would be three percent that is what year is what you're saying what do we think ye to the the folks i mean delinquencies are handled i feel it kind of separate from the ongoing and if and if somebody is is a quarter delinquent or a month delinquent past the quarter then that's different than the new years and that's a different kind of interest level i do i think that on the long term delinquencies i would be willing to negotiate on interest payments on that not a limi negotiate on them so that we can make sure that we that we get everybody on the track because we don't want to see your water shut off but we need to make sure that we maintain the solvency of the system the fact the financial solvency of the system  on the quarterly belle's i i think that keeping an interest penalty if the current bill is not do i think is still prudent i think that that is i think that's why i think s rate i have no preference whether it's one or three but i still think we should keep a penalty i understand the rationale behind the three percent because it's one percent a month but but i'd be willing to go to one for that for the three months and let's see how it goes it's kind of where i feel like we're in a we're in a let's trial basis so we go to one percent and we have a lot of people who are just taken advantage of to not take advantage of who will take away the incentive if we take away the incentive to not examine end up with the past is exactly we're just going to hold a whole different days do what is your interpretation of what the interest penalty would be on that then if they paid on the ninety fifth day right well you're you're going to change the policy to make it  you get one percent for the past three months you could say that specifically you could say no interest penalty at all for going after ninety days it's one percent per book pro grade it yes i think not one it seems logical you know it's practical i mean i think we're getting there so some of the times we really cover you know from book perspective really complicated really i don't think it's any different in the forty five days if they pay on the fiftieth day they pay one percent on those five yes i think it would be it would be for the next billing cycle i think we'd have to i mean because the people who are really well the people who are late today are already late right because they ha forty five days from the last from the last bell so they're already late exactly so it's the clock starts to when everything the next billing cycle starts yes  yes what happens if somebody gets just for purposes of an example a three dollar bill the beginning of the quarter and they pay one hundred dollars after the first month one hundred dollars at the beginning of the second month and then they are the yeah ok well i mean it's the current policy applied but once you're past do us change it to change anything right because they should have already banned the ones that came out in july should have already come in so anything that we change been the policy still still is in effect for the for the last billing cycle so they should have been charged if they're not if they ever paid within forty five days they should have been charged interest on what  insert for the dollar and some of the changes your see on the dollar could come out so how about we do it for the next quarter the follow up not this one coming up next week but the next one yeah because ever and then the january first will implement our new policy is that is that so and then they'll be essentially or effectively the two quarter grace period so we're not we have not we have not charged interest penalty for these two quarters yes ok i move that we interest penalties on on currently do as in not  what's the proper terminology so as to separate the recent bills from the from the people that are seriously in arrears jeff i'd say you're going to waive interest on  the prior inter quarter billing that's really well actually give states let's let's put actual date from there well the full hour spilling was from april first of july or june thirtieth ok right and the next  will be from june thirtieth to september thirtieth september thirty or so that is up to her first so i move that we waive interest charges on overdue bills that were issued on june decision on all right so the next the next thing is approve the waste water bill so in the past the waste water treatment plant never actually paid a budgets that we've been working from amongst ourselves i did have a line item for water under the waste water section but we never formally added that to the budget now this doesn't change the  because the rates have been based on that figure being in there we just need to formally add it to the budget like we formally reduced budget items last time into the budget for the waste water to pay a water bill and then the line item is about sixteen thousand dollars years ago it's going to go into waste water expenses so here it's go take the money from i mean we could we could say that the set the sewage part of the bill is revenue to the sewage treatment plant and then everything gets paid out of it i mean simply what we're doing is relatively making sewage treatment more expensive and water treatment less because and that's why does that mean packed on rates but that's reflective of reality that's that's what it actually costs to do that to a lot cheaper to get good clean drinking water for people that is to clean up after so i am not in favor of this i got to tell you because i think that what we want to do is make sure that the amount of sceptics that we're counting on for the budget is not so high that we get caught in the in the bind that we have got caught in the last few years and if we start pushing it for whatever reason you know higher i think we're going to run into trouble yet i don't want us i don't want to get into that like robbing from peter to pay paul i think we need to think we need to again see how this is going to play out and and works it works let it let its let it work itself out so at the last meeting that we talked about what the the final kind of rate would would look like is it was that figure was already in the sixteen thousand dollars was already endured a ship to ship to yeah yeah so we need a motion to treatment plant water usage fees into the wastewater treatment budget to be offset and i think we're doing that it's already built into that it's already built in back to the agenda here is it gender ok frequency of evaluating e r years quarters i guess my concern about going to quarterly is given the small size of the system and if harrington harrington's is in there slow season that impacts everybody else's course nothing to do with that individual's usage it has everything to do with the overall systems usage which is why averaging it sort of levels are out levels of the pla feel yeah no i mean this is a tough one because because you do want to be responsive but at the same time i think one of the things that we've heard from from everybody is that the uncertainty is an enemy want the billing to be reflective of people people who have you know a seasonal really whether it's water in the pool or whatever but you know we don't we don't have the we don't the ability ability technologically i don't know how this works administrative leave but do commercial based on your early averages then recalculate residential on a that and frankly the fluctuation is in seasonal granted harrington's and the schools are probably the single most seasonal fluctuation harrington's being the most but with the it's all the single family homes who are feeling had tubs and swimming pools in the warmer months that are causing the that that are causing bears to go up in the summer so i think the recommendation to the folks who have that is to hire a pool contract you know like hire somebody to come in and fill your pool or know that if you fill it up through the tab that that that that that that's going to that's going to count towards you i mean the only other option and this is something that we've discussed  is having all single family family homes speak one not two or three or four but one and then have that have that flow rate the based on what the water that they consume but we decided against it because we were recognizing that there are worse and single family homes that either used significantly more for whatever reason and that there were those that actually used a lot less and that  are and it does mean that certain options are not available to us and again i feel like we need to we need to let this rate structure play out we need to we need to see how it goes and and go from and and then make changes next year once we've gotten a couple of quarters and on the ball we can do some analysis we get quarterly we can see how much things fluctuate you know we know what who's bill it billing user report i mean the at the end of the day the amount of money that that we brought in and was what we filled out for pretty close we do have some people who have not paid yet but for the most part everybody's paid on time so i would propose that we stay with what we've got for an annual average annual area average for this year use t annual and we can always reopen this again in the future rank to be reevaluated for next year right and so when we would when we would do the redo is once we've finalized our budget we would dan go in and recalculate the e r use to figure out what the new rate would be so if we determined and that may mean we need to have our annual meeting in april or early may so that we can then finally as our budget have it approved and then and then do the math with what the extension speeded expenses are and then use the last the most the most current four we would have our budget established and let's say so at our at the end of april we would have our budget established we would then look for the previous four quarters so it would be whatever previous four quarters we would do our averages we do our calculations and for the june bill it would be that new one let's make sure we get the word out that people with pools that they're cheaper are definitely going  they didn't always do that instead they reported what they called funds available which looks to me like a simple division of the checkbook balance between water and sewer  so it makes things a little difficult to explain exactly what the into the year balance  we have that day off so i think about six years ago they changed the difference but the what was reported in the accounting system now reflects a lot of zero balances from money exactly sure what the contingency funds were but we did a major set of bigger projects we did west main street for one hundred fifty thousand dollars they purchased a pick up and they inspected the reservoir out of these funds and i hear later in two thousand and four the contingency funds were still about where they were but the reserves are starting to be depleted and then we did church street for sixty thousand dollars greed to do green mountain engineering's first study for thirty thousand dollars and we took money out of it out of the contingencies and then we start the phosphorous upgrade which exhausted the remaining contingency funds in the following year they didn't do a whole lot they bought a ford escort they probably spent a little bit of money on repairs also because the balances went down slightly then two thousand and six most of the contingencies were exhausted you were left with the water and sewer service and at that point they did the thomson road water line for thirty thousand dollars the west main sewer project for fifty thousand another reservoir inspection for fifteen thousand and the sewer force main replacement but i'm not sure where that was was that the bri ok when they did repairs on the bridge i was another fifty thousand dollars and at this point it's showing the sewer reserve has two hundred sixty four thousand dollars which is not true i think that was just what they called two thousand and seven they did the clarifier upgrade for thirty thousand dollars that again the sewer says a sewer reserve went up to three hundred twenty three thousand but again that was cash available that was never recorded the true reserve fund so we only appropriated forty nine thousand dollars of water reserve into the water reserve account the rest of the money was just recorded as fund balance so we still have a fund balance right  use your reserves as you fund them and pack your not going to say cash avail and that makes sense yeah yeah ok and we have cash on hand of roughly five hundred thousand to pay our ongoing expens right and then the following year the reserves were not transferred in for some reason i don't know why that may have been a lapse when due to changing personnel was never transferred over so using in two thousand and nine we did not make any contributions to capital reserves right ok in two thousand and ten we had a while main break for forty five thousand dollars repair and we transferred the balance into the water reserve used browns court water line use fifteen thousand of water reserves we transferred the rest over we also took a no doubt for the balance of that so this year we have a plan to use of sixty one thousand two hundred fifty one dollars of water reserves plus we're going to we have more than trees you can take a look by to see what we have so that's a brief history of haven't gone into upgrading the system we've also taken on a lot of debt i'd say prior to two thousand we didn't do a lot of major projects at all kendall can correct me if we did do wind replacements we didn't do probably the mid eight was the last time we did any major line so there was a period of time there fifteen to eighteen years were no major projects were done so we've started using a combination of kanchan borrowing  done quite a few things we were replacing part of that of infrastructure and of course for the debt it's starting to come due and we're paying for that right and so again i mean prior to two thousand and ten we had no debt on either systems and we were using capital funds to do upgrades to the system which that's what that's that's great it was great that we had that money available to us and now  it just there was no money left over at the end of the year to put in there and that's kind of why we're here where we are is we want to get to a different place where we're contributing gand so we can pay cash for the projects that we need to do and not take on debt for those small ok that helps i was i was really like wondering where that three hundred thousand he's had and is it still there it's just calculated differently ok now this this is been really helpful of useful information was provided in that and i think that the discussion at the last meeting is why don't we have them frequently asked questions that can go in with the bills or it can be put on line so i took a stab at drafting this is not been released to the public why were their rates changed my rate is so much higher than my neighbor also might my recent bill was less in the last quarter was that a mistake i think one of the things we haven't communicated very well is that about fifteen percent of our what are what is the commission doing to to either reduce spending or are control spending or reduce our rates or you know something like that because at the last meeting we did cut i and that's where next year when we do our annual revisit of it we say wow we brought in more than we thought let's either put put less into capital in the budget or six major wastewater treatment plants went that except waste that except sector which went down due to pump failures he had extra yeah he had extra parts through good asset management he had extra parts that he was able to fix his pump so that he could accept septa into that the other people couldn't so that's why august is off up significantly in the previous month was up a little bit because of all the rain is people were able to thirty six and a half thousand half of that would be eighteen to five zero but around into the nearest half which means you can go up to point seven four and still round down to point five so that means that if you use up to twenty seven three seventy five that juice so yeah and i don't i that doesn't make any sense to me be perfectly honest with you i would this was assured us the previous this is the two meetings ago so if we if base the base single family home is still three six five zero zero thirty six and a half thousand gallons ok that's one let's just let's let's just play it out we decided that if that was one five in this point seven five it runs up ok if you divide if you take your usage so if somebody is using somebody is using if the base is thirty six five zero zero ok that is a fraction of one running to the nearest half that comes point five ok so for running to the nearest half you can you can have a fraction all the way up to point seven four and still trying to wrap my head around how we present will because what it would result in is it would result in some people looking at their bill and saying now i'm for what the heck happened i was one and a half or i was one before now i'm for rent in reality they should be three point five or three and so without changing the you know what it's based on the change what it's in the back to back to what point five one one point five and so one equals whatever the annual old the annual bill is you know is say it's five hundred dollars for one unit of water if you're if you're at a point five if you use up to twenty seven three seven five your point five so you pay two hundred fifty for this new rate structure and then it's going to be hard to compare to i think having it in house will be we'll show the especially those folks who use a lot less water the difference because maybe they were one or maybe even two before and now they're potentially point five that to me sends the message that we did something that we that we listen and here's what we did candle that's one that's one and then if you use the greater then five four seven five zero you're less than seven and less than seventy three thousand year one point five per year  the old allocation billing then there will would have tripled just and a lot of people in the communities bill would have also tripled its that one point six seven ok it was the one point six seven for a single family home that would have tripled and now with our new way of doing it there potentially point five now so they're going down we had to balance it was it's the  of water that you they're using proportional to what they were being billed for didn't make sense now they're the proportional bill makes sense to what they're using this week because we did we did two things like the final like what they pay at the end of the day is pretty much the same this corner as it was this time last year  i think because he was assuming under the what they would have been paying had we not recalculated the base charges yes  ted but at the risk of the bet pundits water under the bridge but believe me i'm still going to use it you know in town meeting when we have this discussion because the schools did not we talk about oh well rates go up again soon will they go down i i want to manage expectations and i don't want to say it is not likely the rates and i won't say with changes made can't keep but can we and i and i think that's why it's one thing i would like us to be able to say no belongs in the f a q or in a in a statement of objectives is is great stability is something that we're striving for and do our plans reflect that and i think i mean everything that i've been voting for i think the answer to that is yes yes we obviously can't promise it right right but but the point of doing all of this is so that we don't have to do we don't have to raise rates on everybody well again i think the goal is to have modest increases to account for necessary expenditures is is you know the goal is to keep the grades as stable as we can but i don't want to say we're not raising them we can't we can that's not that's not appropriate that's right that's where we got i'm talking about goals and not not commitments so inherently i don't think the goal should be not to raise rates i mean the goal should be to charge appropriate rates for the expenses we need i think i actually disagree and i think a good goal is to say that we will try and have the water system  increase at the rate of flesh and up we are and that we're putting the structure in place the rate structure in place that allows us to do that by properly funding the reserve again and now i would be comfortable with but saying that we're not increasing yet now you expenses and so that's the sustainability part is that we don't have these these big jumps over again yeah yeah i mean i think i think control spending or control increases just have a table and then have somewhere we also have with what the average use is or what it's based on so how we came up with that how we came up with that yet also gives people a sense of how much their neighbors are you right now and to maybe they take another look at how much water they're using e of like an emergency fund you know and there's there's a number of different ways to do that is one way to help one in the extremist actually increase everybody's rates fit so that you create a pool to help people that's fine not appropriate  system the small but one thing that you see the systems do since have a round up you know where you can be here's your bill let's say it's you know one hundred seventy five bucks rounded up to one hundred eighty and five dollars goes to the community chest you know in that way so way to crew funds and then people in the uber process for people to apply when they're in crisis you know to get part of their are all their water bill covered and i just think it's was low enough that europe was always higher taxes were always high you know is that other things were up for water well it's no longer the case anymore and and frankly that i don't know where that came from the you know the pink ok but i still think it's important in general that we are studious with collecting on our delinquent accounts and our current accounts because maureen as you pointed out a couple minutes ago it affects everybody and while i am a pathetic and i understand the situation we have others who are who are saying it affects everybody we need we need to get on that so if we can find what works for everybody then that's what and that's what we need to do