welcome to the U April 10th meeting of the for civil commission um before we get started I got to do the open meeting law pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an
audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and
permissible mr furl will you do the roll call please yes member Susa here member Elves here howak here and President Alita here okay okay I think we've all been
sent the uh the agenda and it's I believe we all have a copy of it so we'll proceed to u item number one which is um citizens input it's my understanding that there will be no citizen input today nobody has signed up
for it okay um item number two the minutes of the previous meeting of February 26th um we've all been sent the um the happenings from that meeting um unless anybody has any questions with
respect to the uh content of it or wants to make a change uh if not I'll entertain a motion to amend to approve the minutes of uh February 26th 2025 make that motion to approve minutes
i'll second it all in favor i I I All right i'm not sure if I need to abstain from that one cuz I wasn't Yeah you weren't here that's fine as long as As long as you didn't make the motion to approve it that's fine um items number three um and
this is what we're here for uh the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 in the amount of $32,785 $785,387 mr ferlin go uh so thank you uh board members for coming tonight again
uh so in front of you you have a revised budget uh as some of you may know I've uh brought the budget that was previously approved by this uh by this body down in front of the city council
uh there was uh some um questions in in and uh posed by the city council which uh made us go back and take a look at this budget uh when the budget was constructed originally uh we work from the uh program that was developed last
year by our outside consultant that came in did a financial analysis uh rate study of our budget and our rates uh their recommendation was the rate increases that we uh went forward with last year in the FY25 fiscal year uh as
well as 5% increase uh for the next four fiscal years following that uh so the budget that you originally proposed that you originally approved was a 5% increase from the uh current existing uh rate in uh the budget to support that uh
what I did after the last city council meeting was I went back with the uh with the CFO uh we went through the budget and uh again line by line uh and we remove some things from the budget primarily uh we reduced the amount of uh
uh capital expenses within the budget right uh so that was a reduction so in other words that just means that any large equipment or large issues that we have throughout the year that may go underneath those cap expense portion uh we may not have the funding to do within
this fiscal year uh and also uh some other lines that we took from uh other personnel costs uh which is typically used for interns or co-op students that we hire uh that perform services through us work in the utility for us uh we
wouldn't be able to uh move forward with those uh there was some other minor uh line item cuts uh throughout the budget so it was roughly about a $210,000 um cut to the budget uh what that did to the rate it took the uh rate increase uh
what was uh proposed originally was uh increase uh was to $851 uh what's proposed based off the budget that's uh provided to you tonight uh is $843 increase so that's a
32 increase uh from prior fiscal year at the current fiscal year FY25 uh so 32 cent increase um I think just prior that year before that we we
were looking at a much to get to 25 we had a much bigger increase yes than what we had than what we're talking about here i think it was what was over a dollar yeah we we were we were almost uh $2 I believe it was $26
yeah it was a substantial increase again that we had last year uh and that was due a lot to the loss of uh retained earnings we had zero retained earnings to use in last year's right in the current fiscal year's budget which we were coming off of using over a million
dollars of retained earnings uh I believe in the in the fiscal year prior to that so we didn't have those uh those retained earnings plus then uh increase on debt service and other operational uh expenditures that have increased um so
after all these cuts again storm water there's no change to the storm water within within this proposed budget there wasn't originally it was still not proposing to change storm water um overall the average impact to a uh
average household uh is $16.96 uh per year uh so that on the uh that on the sewer rate is a uh
3.95% increase so originally the original uh rate in budget that was proposed uh that was approved by this board was a 5% increase uh we're down to this brings us down to a 3.9% increase on just the rate alone again no no
increase on the storm water fee um so uh that's like I said that's roughly uh 16 uh 96 per household per year increase to the average customer on just sewer
uh again you know I know sewer and water two separate boards two separate commissions but uh we did the same thing with water and we'll be meeting with the uh with the board after this uh after this meeting uh and just overall the overall increase uh on the average
household for water and sewer rate increases is $25.97 uh so that's just about 6.6 per day increase 25 for a year you said that's $16 per year
16 uh just under 17 for sewer and a total of 20 26 per year per year per household correct for the average household what that does to the actual bill though too so even though it's it's
a 3.9% change on the rate on sewer and it's a 3 uh it's a 4% increase on the water um the actual change on the average household bill is only a 2.9% increase on the average household bill
uh there's a lot of people out there that are saying we were going up 12% before those numbers are untrue they're not correct um currently what's proposed in front of you with this rate increase as well as the water in rate increase
the average household increase is 2.9% bills haven't gone out yet no bills yeah these bills have not gone out quarterly bills go out on a regular basis basis yes so so there was a bill on on this last ring that we not not on the No no not on the one
that was proposed yet all these rates that you're voting on now go into effect July 1 yep yep okay um I think I think we've got a pretty tight budget
yeah judge judging from what I've gone through and having made having made over a $200,000 change to what we originally proposed just on a suicide we're going to have a pretty
tight budget yeah no this is a very tight budget again there are some things in here that are concerning uh just with the uh e economic uh the volatile market that we're in just in the past week uh definitely concerns me with chemical
cost and other you know variables that may come from overseas or other countries uh that's you know that could unknown that's an unknown that would that isn't even in this budget but even stuff that we took out of this budget we
were planning for if it's determined that it's needed throughout the year we're going to have to come back and we're going to have to find out where we're going to get that funding from possibly midy year uh if there were things that come up that aren't that we had to cut from this budget or that we're unprepared for uh we may have to
come back to the sewer commission as well as the council for whether it's a rate adjustment whether it comes from the general fund whether it comes from other some other funding source we may have to do that well I know the climate out there is is
right now very tentative um but with respect to things that might be affected by tariffs um are there anything to say in the raw materials inventories that you know of that could be affected by tariff may be
coming in from but by you know I don't know if uh boarding remington or any of the other providers of uh chemicals that come into us um you know I don't know if they're bringing stuff in from China like like a a lot of other people do and
so forth but I think that's something we're going to have to keep an eye on you know no without a doubt again this this past week uh uh definitely concerns me as it is now we're under contract uh for the rest of this fiscal year uh I
hope that uh any providers will you know maintain those contracts we're out to bid uh going out to bid for chemicals for the next fiscal year right now um where those prices come in at cuz there's going to be bidding for the whole entire next year again those
that's one of my concerns are there you know cuz yeah raw materials you know a lot of the chemicals may be formulated in this country whether it be by Jones Chemical or B Remington or one of our other providers uh they may be formulated but the raw materials to make
the bisulfite or the sodium hypocchlorite or the polymer may very well come in as an export you know import into the US yeah and we can't buy in both because we're running quarterly anyways you know so we can't buy ahead right so Right so we bid we bid out for
the full year but we only Yeah we only have so much tankage to be able to keep stuff on site you know that's what we're really limited by is our take on site see these contracts come in but you know Yeah it's going to be interesting yeah definitely something we're going to have
to stay on top of and I'm sure everybody else respect to what goes on in in the city in terms of buying and so forth but um in looking at the budget it's tight but on the other side of the
coin it's just about a 3% increase and and I think you know I can understand how uh you know this the city council wants to
um you know make sure that we're dotting our eyes crossing our tees and and have looked at things very carefully and so forth but um and it's in a sense uh one of the reasons why we've gone back and and even
tightened up even more and some of it's pretty tentative in a sense of being close to the vest but um I would hope that the um citizens of Far River would uh look at the fact that
we're we got a combined rate increase between water and so of just under 3% so um I hope um I'm hoping that the U administration and the city council
looks at it favorably and u lets us move forward having said all that I guess we're at the point where um any of you gentlemen have any questions about this or want to make any comments about what you think
is right wrong or indifferent if not I'm going to ask someone to make a motion to um approve the budget for fiscal year 2026 at an amount of
$32,785,387 anybody any anybody have any comments about this if not like I said I'll uh entertain a motion to approve it can I make that motion to approve i'll second it all in favor i call
I I Okay now we have to go ahead and improve the rate the rate now do we also have to improve that rate sheet that you have here that uh reflects I guess the different rates
that go out to the uh neighboring communities and so forth yeah yes typically the uh what you approve is the uh rate um and right based on the rate sheet that's provided because you have uh the standard residential rate uh
which will be increased to $843 from $811 per cc okay you have the SIU uh significant industrial user rate uh which is going from
$3.87 to $42 under the proposed increase uh and then you have the increase to the uh individual households uh that do not have a water meter uh and that's based on the number of residents in our
household how they're built uh those go up the same percentage that the actual rate goes up okay um so let's let's deal with the rate for the um for the um homeowners in the city
of forever first uh with respect to um the budget that we just produced on the sewer side um it equates to a rate of $843 per CCF correct correct
okay would someone please make a motion to approve the rate of $843 as a sewer rate that that per CCF that that is uh relative to
homeowners in the city of Fargo i'll make that motion for the uh new rate of $843 per CCF i second that all in favor i I I I thank you gentlemen okay that
takes us to the the sheet that Mr furin just um gave us a little bit of um of information on that shows all the rates that deal with people that do not have that are not meeted and there are a
number of them so I'm going to I'm going to request if it's okay with you Paul that um we refer to the outline that's been provided to us okay okay uh having said all that
then uh we have that outline in front of us these rates reflect the um the decreases that we've um we've just imposed into the new budget so unless anybody has any
questions about what these are all about and what they're for and so forth u I'll entertain a motion to approve the rates that are um that have been provided to us on the schedule i'll make that motion i'll second it
all in favor paul i I I I thank you gentlemen i think that completes the um the process what we've been asked to do here uh the next item is other business unless anybody has any other
business they want to talk about I'll entertain a motion to adjourn anybody have anything else they want to bring up just anything on that last appeal that got scheduled or got cancelled the the what the last appeal
from last meeting uh they did come in they want to come in again i didn't want to put them on this meeting just because I wanted to kind of keep it to the budget but I will I am planning on having them on a future meeting they did contact us wondering what our next meeting was going to be so yeah put them
on the next one if you can any other business nope anybody want to make a motion to adjurnn i'll make that a motion to adjurnn second all in favor i Thank you gentlemen thank you