proposed a five year schedule of two five and a half percent rate increases for two years followed by three five percent rate increases the following three years and so this is the second year of that plan and we are proposing for what this means for the average santa brbara household single family residents is that they would see a five and half percent rate increase in their average bill for a regular family that's using something on the order of twelve hcf per month water this would result in a forty five dollars and thirty six and per month fee and it's up basically a little over two dollars per month for that family for low users the rates would be slightly less and we'll talk about that briefly in just a second and so in conclusion our fy recommendations are for five and a half percent wastewater rate increase for all customer classifications now we've talked about this last year and we are continuing to update users with higher strength sewage additional service charges based on the strength of their sewage so we're going through a few steps we have a consultant working on a local limits analysis for the wastewater treatment plant we're we're gonna correlate that information with the raft ellis wastewater rate model that we have and then we're gonna once we have that data and result we're going to coordinate with commercial external stakeholders and discuss the outcome of those studies with them so we can accomplish all this and we would be looking potentially at altering the industrial waste and commercial user rates  fy we're not proposing that for the current fiscal year so this five and a half percent rate increase will be for all classifications across the board and then lastly what we're starting to look at is the effects of the drought on wastewater rates i believe everybody's heard about the impacts of the drought on water rates they are having an impact on moi's water rates as well we're not proposing any special drought wastewater rate increases fiscal year sixteen but we're going to continue to evaluate the impacts of the drought on the revenues that are coming in for wastewater and potentially if the drought continues and water users continue to become rather than average users low volume users then we may need to address that in fiscal year seventeen so that pretty much concludes my presentation any happy to answer any questions thank you mister hart any question  for for single family residences there aren't but there's a fixed charge like for fy sixteen proposed the proposed monthly fixed charge for all users single family residence users is sixteen dollars fifty cents per month and then there's a variable charge that's based upon their our water use and the caps at ten hundred cubic feet per month and so the average user bill would be forty five dollars and thirty six cents per month however the the the low user who's using about six hundred cubic feet per month would be more like forty three dollars and so it would be less and so the whole question is if if users are going to become as a whole more low end users then the revenue that we're projecting on getting will not a will not occur we won't we'll be short on revenue and the question is how much i mean there are some families that are going down to four hundred cubic feet or less they're just not irrigating outside hmm and so what's the impact of the wastewater rates well we're gonna assess that this coming year and then based upon what we're seeing we'll make recommendations for fiscal year seventeen so i assume you are seeing revenue declines based on lower usage because people are using less water that that's correct but it's not as direct it's not as direct as the water rates because there is outside landscaping as the first thing people are reducing we we are seeing a reduction in revenue we are currently absorbing it in our budget we are we have seen or are projecting to see by the end of this year that there may be as much as four hundred zero dollars or more and in less revenue coming into the wastewater fund based on reductions in water use what is that a percentage of the annual revenues to four hundred thousand dollars i would say roughly on the order of three percent something like that okay and then the analysis of the commercial rates that is intended to better understand what percentage of overall revenue is generated from commercial rates as opposed to residential rates what is the nexus of that analysis the study of commercial rates is more based upon a broader cost of service study that that a utility public utilities should charge its various classes fairly based upon not only the flow of their wastewater but also on the strength of it and and commercial entities restaurants grocery stores have a tendency to discharge much stronger wastewater streams to the sewer system then does a single family residence and so it costs more to treat that wastewater at the el acero wastewater treatment plant and so to be perfectly fair we should charge those commercial classifications a higher cost because it costs more to treat their wastewater that's based and that's just a step that hadn't been analyzed yet but would that will be done next year and that will result it sounds as though in a differential rate for commercial for cross and they will thus absorb a larger percentage of the overall burden of the facilities so would that mean that but that wouldn't necessarily be rate or revenue neutral under prop two hundred and eighteen right so all it is is going to lower potentially residential rates raise commercial rates all within the same but we would still have the same revenue problem of reduced revenue from conservation of water yes and that there is no opportunity to fix that with that because of prop two hundred and eighteen and the limitations on cost of service and revenue generation yes i mean as we talked with in a residential rate structure itself as i said there's a component of fixed  revenue and then variable rate revenue and so for residential use maybe maybe it's just one option that the fixed rate percentage increases the commercial rates do you have a minimum charge but most all the commercial users are are using more water than that minimum so they're they're primarily based on their water usage itself and the cap on the residential side has to do with the fact that there's the only certain amount of water consumption on property there's an assumption that a large percentage of that is for outdoor landscaping not everything's going into the wastewater system so there's a there's a cap on the amount of water that somebody would use that would translate into its to a wastewater charge because of that recognition the outside landscaping is not part of the system yes as based on historic water use and also i think it was set up originally to to  to be an incentive back in the day when ten hundred cubic feet per month was not that much water to use but in today's world it is and so we might need to just revisit the whole concept of residential rate structure and how it should be what limits should be set which would be the cap and then what should be fixed and what you variable you know probably this year we should take a look at it again if the drug continues and the cat is does the cap apply to commercial properties as well it i yes i believe it does looking to see that right now our charts show that our multi family residential for example uses approximately sixty one hundred cubic feet per month and the lower level commercial classes are using a similar amount i believe those are those are capped for multi family residential but i can't remember  it okay thank you mister toth with the with the idea of charging extra to commercial customers based on the strength of the discharge with those commercial customers be divided into different categories with different rates for those categories yes yes councilman that was set up actually this current fiscal year with with our rate approvals this year we created for commercial classes in lieu of the two i believe that we had and the first two are fairly low in strength the third class is for like a commercial strip mall commercial mall area where you have multiple uses within that one building or structure and then the last group or the class four would would typically involve restaurants and or industrial waste type discharges mostly restaurants and and and we're sensitive to the cost impacts of that that's by willing to take our time and we want to do it correctly sure okay thank you very much do we need to recommend anything to the council on this well okay all right well we'll wait till the end to do any of that yeah there there was a council agenda report and i think it briefly states that  that that you provide direction to us regarding any changes to the proposed fiscal year sixteen utility rates okay thank you sure okay good afternoon mister chair council committee members matt for environmental services manager i'm here to talk about the proposed rates this one so i always use this as a gauge for when i need to go to the optometrist that's harder to see every day okay so i'm here to talk about the proposed of fee adjustments to the trash recycling rates for fiscal year sixteen what you will see is that we are just simply continuing what we've done in the past couple of years as with previous years we are including a cpi increase which we are contractually disposal and processing facilities that accept the city's waste and then thirdly i want to talk about a continuation of a rebalancing of some rates that we began a couple of years ago specific to the multi unit residential sector so to take the contractual fee increases first the cpi that we use is that you'll see is essentially flat this year and we provide marburg with seventy percent of the cpi for the index that we use on a december to december basis and the thinking there is that about seventy percent of the customers overall bill is related to the collection of the material at the curbside and the delivery and about thirty percent represents the disposal portion and then we have put in a small increase to the tipping fees that we are estimating at the tehy gross landfill and also at our other  processing facilities that we use so the overall revenue adjustment that we are forecasting for this year is about a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars or about about point eight percent any questions on this the contractual stuff okay the second piece that we are continuing or we're proposing to continue this year is to continue to adjust the cost per yard of material cost per yard of service between carts and cans and dumpsters in the multi unit residential sector and just by way of background historically for any number of reasons that precede me here service and carts and cans has always been substantially less than that in dumpsters and so when we negotiated the new contract with marburg back in two thousand and thirteen and those rates became effective july st of two thousand and thirteen we were able to adjust those rates to so that service in a carton can was within ten percent of equivalent service in a dumpster so if i took a yard of material stuck into carton can it was ten percent less expensive than equivalent dumpster service last based and you know when we brought the contract forward we we had explained the council this is one of the things we wanted to incremental e continue to correct and we were given direction to do that so last year we took that ten percent we shrunk it to six percent and this year we're proposing to do to make a similar adjustment a couple of reasons why multi unit residential properties are the most unique in the city the needs of the customer are extremely varied from a diversion standpoint diversion at the multi unit sector is the high hanging fruit and we don't want our rate structure to channel a customer to one type of container when dumpsters for example would meet their needs we can consolidate a lot of carts and cans into a small dumpster and relieve space constraints unlike carts that have to be pushed to the curb for collection dumpsters are serviced in place so it's a customer service issue really and we feel that we can better serve the customers by not having a differential pricing structure so the solution is to continue to rebalance the rates and as i said last year we brought that rate differential to within six percent under the proposed fy sixteen rates we would close that to within three percent and then next year we would make one final adjustment and there would be a one to one relationship similar to last year  are we've imposed a threshold of two percent so that no single customer will experience a rate increase it'd be a carton can customer with a large bank of carts and cans we've set a threshold so that no single customer will will experience more than a two percent increase because of this adjustment and we were able to do that similar to last year the overall increase on dumpsters if we're raising the price of  carts and cans we're doing this on a revenue neutral basis we are similarly decreasing the cost of dumpsters the net impact is zero eight percent and that's with the cpi and tipping fees really we we raised the cost of carts and cans by about one six percent we're similarly lowering the cost of dumpsters by one six percent so what do the rate increases look like in the single family residential sector where we have a free standing home with sixty five gallons of trash you'll see that their rate increase is zero eight percent with a multi unit residential customer that has lots of carton cans service and they have eleven cards and cans on this property the total rate increase is two four percent which is still less than last year and then for a multi unit residential customer that has dumpster service where we've lowered the price their rates are actually going to go down by zero point eight percent in the business side because we're not doing any rate restructuring it's the same as the single family residential and they would see an adjustment of point eight percent and with that i can take any questions ok yes as the as time has gone on and these rates have been balanced or getting closer to balance have you has there been an increase in the number of customers who are switching from carts and cans to dumpsters yes there are it's i don't have the numbers for you but i can tell you that empirically because i've gone out and talked to them we have seen that we're removing a barrier and it's i'll give you an example it's very hard as you recall there was a state law that was passed two years ago and forty one it requires multi unit properties of five units or more to have some level of recycling what's very hard to go out to a multi unit property and say we'd like to bring you recycling over by the way you're going to pay more right when conversely i can consolidate those carts and cans and into dumpsters that not only do they have to not push to the curb but i can give them a price break so we've seen you know that there are other there are other factors but just one the multi unit property owners is oh my gosh this is great i don't have to push these to the curve anymore that's wonderful it seems like the only barrier is physical constraints you know if do you have the space for a dumpster or not right as i think you're right it from a convenience