the appropriate hour is here and gone and uh call this meeting of the Wampa Water Board to order um Mr clerk would you call the role uh President Terry here member Ferrer here thank you
uh okay pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or visual recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are
um I can't what is that oh apparently advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledgeable and
permissible sorry but my copy is getting getting old okay um item number one on the agenda is citizen input and having none we can move to item
number two minutes of the previous meeting um want to take a minute to review um and after review chair entertain a motion to accept the minutes as presented
motion seconded all in favor i I Okay um I promise not to pontificate but I wanted to say something in case someone um is wondering what's going on
um the city council um the Watupa water board uh is subject to any ruling of the uh powers vested in the city council and the city council
has informed the water board and the water board has informed the administrator of public utilities that the previously approved budget is not acceptable and so here we are this
evening Mr clark yes without a doubt so based off of their comments uh from the uh from the previous meeting uh they did move the budget uh on and uh rates are still in ordinance uh as have been proposed but
uh based on their conversations and the president uh was there with me as well presenting uh to the council uh we decided to go back and take a look at the budget uh the original budget that was uh proposed uh to uh this uh this
committee and the council was based off of the recommendations that were provided uh by our consultant that we had last year that came in and uh reviewed all of our rates budget funding and everything like that uh their recommendation were the rates uh was
actually higher than the rate that was uh that was used that was uh used last year so the one that's in this current fiscal year's budget uh it their proposal was higher uh last year the
council did reduce that uh by using the amount of free cash that we had available within the budget to red reduce the rate increase last year um so um we didn't go with their
recommendation last year uh that's not what we're using right now uh their recommendation for years after that was to uh and that was about a 3% uh difference uh that was that was cut off from the use of free cash last year 3%
on the rate increase and it was 28% rate increase um the uh what was proposed for the four years after that was 5% increase uh on both the rate and also the base meter fee uh this year the original proposal was that
5% increase as well as uh no increase to the base meter fee uh that's how the budget was originally constructed this year that's how it was built uh when the uh council you know after the last council meeting uh went back we took a
look uh and took a look at the budget uh and uh went through the budget uh there are some things we were able to reduce uh capital capital improvements so uh we cut that down so uh potentially uh if
there's large issues that occur or uh equipment that's needed we may not have the funding to be able to purchase that within this year's budget um other things that were reduced were some uh uh some uh
uh other personnel cost uh those were people that those were costs that we would use for either interns or co-op students uh that we would bring in uh to the to Bah use in m multiple divisions
uh so we we may not have the funding to do that uh do those programs this uh that's a shame this coming year um and just some other minor cuts throughout uh throughout the budget as well um so that's uh that equated to uh
roughly a um about little over two $280,000 uh decrease $290,000 decrease uh in the overall uh budget uh once we went through we looked
at uh the uh rates so the original proposed rate increase was 34 uh so it was from $4 uh 34 up to uh $4.58 uh when we revised the budget that was
uh that was decreased the one other thing that we did do too seeing that the council is trying to minimize the rate increase as much as possible uh we do have the settlement with Westport that we're expecting to uh
receive those revenues in fiscal year 26 yeah so we'll we plugged in as a revenue source $200,000 of the $293,000 uh that we'll be receiving uh from
Westport on the settlement uh as a revenue source within this budget uh that again also decreases uh the rate increase so with those uh with those changes that were made uh we were able to bring the uh rate
increase um down to $441 uh for this coming year that's a 17 cent increase from the current uh from the current rate um effects on the average household is
$91 uh per the average household again that's 53 CCFs single household is one potentially single uh home three family that may be multiplied by three or a little bit less than because you don't
have multiple fixed fees yeah and based on that you're looking at a $224 increase per quarter yep uh yes yes yes it just was of the the
average bill that we're using would go up only $224 on a quarter on a quarter without a doubt in relation to water yeah and just you know I just want
to you know talk with the board sewer sewer we did the same exact thing too because a lot of people talk about you know well water so they interchange the two for you know it comes up oh it's always the water goes it's usually referred to as water they're synonymous
always but when they say water they're usually talking about water and sewer which is two totally separate rates two totally separate budgets two totally separate but the uh the sewer we did do the same thing with adjusting it and stuff like uh adjusting the budget and
adjusting the rate so the total impact to a customer for water and sewer increase annually the average household is $25.97 so that is 2.9% increase on the total bill for the
average household that's that's incredible yeah well done well done in this day and age that's extremely well done the question comes out you know are how close are we
to the safety edge you know again it's it's a tough thing you know the way that the rate increases were structured uh by our consultant was to be able to build up our stabilization build up our retained earnings make it so that we
have uh money to be able to uh self- sustain and be a sustainable enterprise fund moving forward not following their advice and reducing uh the amount that we increase definitely puts that in jeopardy yeah I've always referred to
long-term debt as sins of prior fiscal years because what we're looking at is is the neglect that didn't go into the system in the 30s 40s 50s 60s when no system improvement systemwide was
done and only in the 80s and 90s did we begin to edge back on that um and now we're we're slipping you know my my big concern is using up
your your your Westport settlement money is is that um you just returned from Washington um and you shared with me that the uh FDA and other federal
agencies are just telling you um in your discussion group that these cuts are just that's it they're they're coming yeah you know we've seen we've seen a number of grants uh get cut uh one that
we just applied for a month ago they came back and said "Nope programs done we're not it's not all the great the whole all the funding for this program is being cut uh so um I think it's going to be uh an interesting stent you know
as you know we've been grant funded between water and sewer we're probably $75 million in the past 6 years 7 years that we've gotten $75 to $80 million uh to do a lot of the projects that we've been able that we've done between ARPA funding separate grant funding FEMA
MIEMA uh you know uh hazard mitigation state funding and stuff like that SRF program principal reduction um that totals a big chunk of change that our rate payers have not had to pay back uh uh with a lot of those programs drying
up uh either you know we're going to have to uh you know start shutting down in infrastructure or funding it all ourselves and and that's how the slippage starts
and that's how it started the last time and then it was every year no no no until it built up to you know it's the little molehill in the mountain um so to so to speak it just builds up one of my
concerns is is that losing um losing traction um losing traction will endanger us applying for grants assuming there is some around we're not
going to have the uh the means we're just not going to have it yeah no it's definitely tough you know and again we're going from what was originally proposed was an 8% increase uh what's proposed in front of you is a four 4% for sure yeah you know so it's it's a
big reduction and some of these line items some of the things that we that we had to cut again you know if we have major issues throughout the year uh we may have to come back to this board and may have to go back to council to find out where to get that funding to be able
to plug shortfalls that's the problem with using your savings account to balance your budget and that's why the auditors you know everybody talks about they need an audit you know a fiscal forensic audit well the first
thing they tell you is your rate is too low so you know where do you go from there you know it's an interesting number i was playing with the the rate before and Tom's revenue estimates and everything and it it came down to
something that we've been talking about for a long time is the average daily metered consumption is approximately 6.4 million gallons of water that's not much at all and the
problem is once again it comes right back to we don't sell enough product but I mean when your revenue stream is $6.37 million uh average pumping
metered I mean my god yeah the you know we've had this conversation multiple times that we we have the waters to to sell we need the customers y And the customers are going to be in our surrounding communities they're not going to be in Fall River it's going to have to be it's going to have to be they're not going to be in Fall River
they're going to be in the surrounding communities uh neighboring communities uh that uh you know that either us or the communities are going to have to expand out to to get those customers yeah well we know the council is in
favor of um presenting a resolution um I received an email from them today so that's a good thing well all right let's not beat a dead horse um the um Gerald proposed or
chair would entertain a motion to now we we previous to this had approved um so what we should do here let's just adjust a motion to
adjust the the budget at this time and resubmit it to the council um so the chair would entertain a motion to um resubmit the budget at the figure of 16 million571,442
reluctant yes seconded all in favor i I and to support that budget of 16,571442 the chair would entertain a motion to approve a water rate proposed of
$441 per 100 cubic foot seconded all in favor i so moved any other business to come before the board not seeing any board entertaining a motion seconded all in favor i good
night Irene