Sewer Commission - Regular Meeting

All right welcome, this is the town of Darien sewer Commission agenda Which starts with a public hearing on today, which is Tuesday September 8th at 4 30 p.m. And although the agenda incorrectly notes September 9th I will point out that the legal notice that was published and posted in the town clerk's office does in fact say September 8th, so Public hearing on those terms We are in room 206 at Town Hall, calling the meeting to order at 4.30 p.m. And the first item on our agenda is a public hearing to discuss setting our sanitary sewer user fees for the next fiscal year. I will start this by reading the legal notice, which notice of public hearing on proposed amendments to sanitary sewer regulations. Darien Town Hall, room 206, September 8, 2026, the Town of Darien Sewer Commission will conduct a public hearing at 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, in room 206 of Darien Town Hall, 2 Renshaw Road, Darien, Connecticut, 06812, with purpose of affording property owners and residents within the Town of Darien an opportunity to be heard concerning proposed amendments to the Darien Code of Ordinance Appendix C administrative regulations. amend sewer user fees article 11 sanitary sewer regulations section 1000-6 service charges subsection amendments in relevant part are proposed up to the following rates 6-2.1 effective October 1, 2026 the standard charge shall be at a rate between $7.40 and $7.55 per 100 cubic feet of water. And Section 6-3.1, effective October 1, 2026, the minimum service charge shall be $291.43 per annum, 0% change. All members of the public are invited to participate and will be given an opportunity to be heard regarding the proposed changes. By order of the Darien Sewer Commission, Greg J. Flaherty, Chairman. With that, I will ask if there is any public comment. Did we get anything in by email? Any anecdotal information or conversations? okay any comment by the Commission if not I'll ask for a well I guess did we have a motion to open the hearing all those in favor of opening hearing okay does anybody want to talk to this matter nobody's in the room does anyone want to make motion to close the hearing do we have to set the rate No, we do that in our regular meeting. I'll make a motion to close it.

I'll second that.

All those in favor? All right. The public hearing on the sewer user fees has been held. We will decide the matter under our regular meeting agenda later this afternoon. Our second thing on the agenda is a public hearing number two. related to sanitary sewer regulations and proposed amendments to the Code of Ordinances, I think having to do with making appeals conditioned upon appropriately and up-to-date filled out sump pump compliance form.

I'll move. We open the public hearing.

Okay, there we go. i'll second all those in favor of opening the program all right the public hearing on amendments to the sanitary regulations is open i will read the legal notice that was published in the newspaper and posted the town clerk's office uh town of darian sewer commission will conduct a public hearing at 4 30 p.m on tuesday september 8 2026 in room 206 of durian town hall to renshaw road darian connecticut 0620 for the purpose of affording property owners and residents within the town of darian an opportunity to be heard concerning proposed amendments to the darian code of ordinance appendix c administrative regulations Amen. Article 13, sump pump removal regulations concerning the abatement of illicit discharge into public sewers, section 1013-9, violations and penalties, semicolon, enforcement. And in that... title add subsection C sewer user fee appeal no sewer user shall be allowed to appeal their annual sewer user fee if colon one the town has not received a completed sump pump compliance statement for said property or to the property sump pump discharge is connected to the sanitary sewer system and no substantial progress has been made to disconnect all members of the public are invited to participate and will be given an opportunity to be heard regarding the proposed changes order of the darien sewer commission chairman all right uh i have read the legal notice and now i will ask if there are any members of the public that would like to comment on this public hearing do we get any emails matter of fact oh okay i haven't read it okay the first one or the second one first i will let the chairman read it to himself okay see if it's Okay, I think it is a public comment that is related to the public hearing that is currently open, and it was received before 4 p.m. today, which is our request, so I'm going to read it into the record. uh the email is from alexis sweet uh dated this morning uh tuesday september 8 2026 at 9 56 a.m to the durian sewer commission regarding the sewer fee appeal potential ordinance change dear sewer commission i saw the proposed ordinance change on your agenda for today i'm guessing the idea behind linking The right to appeal a sewer user fee to sump pump compliance is to give people an incentive to comply, but I question the choice of incentive. My understanding is that state law already gives someone who is aggrieved by a sewer charge the right to appeal to superior court. What is the town accomplishing by taking away the local appeal process other than potentially forcing a resident to go to court? Costing both the resident and the town time and money over something that might otherwise be resolved locally. Respectfully, Alexis Sweet, 20 Beverly Place. Okay. Any other public comment? All right. Any comments by the commissioners or else I'll take a motion to close the hearing. okay move to close second to close all those in favor of closing okay public hearing is closed we will now get on with the business we are getting on with today okay let's start with the minutes from the meeting that I did not attend but I did watch the video we have to do August 11th okay

Yeah, literally the only thing I saw was where Susan's letter is written. Read into the minutes. I have reviewed and read your, I have reviewed your numbers and vote to leave, not votes to leave.

Got it. Okay. But that's as.

Pretty minor. Minor as. Good stuff. Minor could be.

Well done. You out petered Peter.

I think Peter first Reese second to approve the minutes with the minor knit called out by Commissioner Hill all those in favor of approving the minutes okay the minutes are adopted

On page 2 of 5, where it says Mr. Hill read the following email into the record by Susan Cameron. Hi Ed, I reviewed your numbers and vote

to leave the rate. Strike the S. Get rid of the S. Vote.

Thank you. It's a big deal. No, no, I mean, we might as well. I'm not saying anything bad, but, you know.

If I catch a grammar error, then... We're going to cheer you.

You get a gold star. It's very rare.

I hate gold stars.

Not my forte. Yeah, should we have gold stars? Bring the gold stars back. Let's get the Don Scout, too.

Let's get the Don Scout.

Well, we're going to need the whole voting system for who gets to wear that. Don't get it too complicated.

I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah, that was edited. Okay. That's a good edit. That was really it? Yeah. All right. Next item on the agenda is setting of the sewer user fee pursuant to public hearing number one. I think we've all made our... opinions clear on this at the last meeting you know I'll just say I think Ed is doing a great job with this department being a steward of not only our physical infrastructure but our sewer user fee dollars have been used thoughtfully and well and we are making necessary investments in our sewer system to recover, maintain, improve its health and function in the long term. So I like where the numbers are headed. I like that we're projecting a slight, a little more than a slight surplus this coming year. But we have a long list of things that we need to do to the system and are looking forward to investing that money which hopefully is going to produce a return on investment over time, which is what we're seeing in the numbers. Anyone want to make a motion as to what we do with the sewer user fee for the coming fiscal year?

I'll make a motion that we keep the sewer user fee at $7.50 per CCF, which is a 0% increase.

And same motion for the minimum service charge?

Yes.

No change. The no change in the minimum service charge.

Great.

I'll second that. Or the well rate. All right.

Bob first, Reese second. We have a motion on the table. Any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion? All right. Motion passes. The rates will be unchanged in the next fiscal year. Hopefully, this is number two in a row. Isn't it three?

I thought we had at least three.

Is it three?

Just one small point.

Yeah.

The well rate's actually going to be determined by the average of the usage from the year before.

In accordance with the regulations. Yes. So it does not need to be revised. The method by which it is calculated does not need to be revised. But the number will change. Yes.

It may go up or down.

Got it. That's all I'm saying.

Oh, a little bit.

All right. But we're not. But the minimum won't. Yes. You're not changing the rate. We're not changing that. Okay.

Protocol. That's public, water, private, septic. Could be a well septic. Yes. Or a well sewer.

Could be a whole bunch of things. Yes, you're right.

Private water. Private water, public sewer.

Private water, public sewer. Yeah, you could have that. Because if it's septic, they're not paying us. Right. We find ones every once in a while. All right, that's it for that one. Item number four, sanitary sewer regulations, proposed amendments to the Darien Code of Ordinance, public hearing number two. And that is, that's more kind of in the back here.

Here we go. Greg, before you jump off, there were a few things I did add under that. Yeah, yeah, let's take a look. I don't know if you wanted to discuss that or do the other piece. It's up to you. I didn't want you to skip over it.

Yeah, go ahead. Under the item we're talking about now? Or do you want to go over some of the numbers from our prior act?

No, the handout was to just supplement one page to update it, and I threw that graph in here so you could see the uptick in not only the revenue, but our reserve balance. So now they coincide. I wanted you to see that. Now, the other piece was the graphs that you had put together at one time. You updated them. I put them in the packet. I didn't know if you wanted to talk about that now while you were on that topic.

Yeah, that's fine. I was going to go to superintendent's report, but that's cool. You've got it under item three. so we've seen these five graphs before and I just put in data for the last 12 months up to June 30th so item 3 page 4 of 8 you can see that the last two years the amount of water we've been sending to Stanford has been going down and these are the collection of meters on the discharges that end up going across ultimately the Narendra River into Stanford so we're down the last two years then page five of eight is the data we get from Aquarian on how much water use there is in town now this is this is going to be think we're seeing that little downtick between the with the month change right between 2025 and 2026 right so I think the methodology that methodology change between 2025 and 2026 yeah it we most likely would have been more more level and flat yeah yeah but we're still trying to get irrigation water out of there so that you know there may be a little bit of an apples to oranges comparison here because the methodology changed a bit from five months down to four or a different five months i forget what we did okay different five different five months um chart three which is on page seven of eight, is Darien's I&I portion of flow to Stanford. So this is basically what are we sending to Stanford minus how much Aquarian water use we have. This relates heavily to actually chart number five. I'll go back to chart number four in a second. Chart number five is on page 88, which is comparing the INI flow, or estimated INI flow, to rainfall. Rainfall is the red line. Going up and down as rainfall goes up and down each year. Did I get that right? No, I'm sorry. Wait, no, wait. Yes, rainfall is the red line.

Rainfall is the red line? Yes, rainfall is the red line.

Thank you. I keep trying to label those series, and I have trouble.

They kind of correlate, don't they?

You think? They kind of correlate. So we had another dry year. We had another relatively dry year, and therefore we had another relatively low year for I&I, still high, but relatively low.

But if it's a percentage of water use, and you have a dry year, and people over-irrigate, and the irrigation system, vis-a-vis the measuring of natural sewage flow, that's inaccurate.

Well, except... Well, I think we're doing it a lot better now than we were with the shift into five months.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. It should be.

Yeah.

It's more towards fair.

Yeah. And it doesn't pick up commercial, which could be irrigating 12 months a year. It's true. Yep. We have some sub-meters on that that we take out. So it's good that I think I&I is going down. I'm still waiting to see the wet year. uh without ini going up as much as it has in other windows so that that really is the proof yeah you look at 2019 or 2024 uh you know when you get 60 inches of rain you get a whole ton high and i and so that'll be in my mind rainy years aggregate because there's less irrigation

Could you put that chart in there too?

Probably not because people have irrigation systems that run when it's raining.

Yeah, but they have rain sensors. The new systems are supposed to have rain sensors. So maybe as time goes by, that's got to skew the graph season more.

But this is, okay, so here's the rain going up and down. Here's our water use. So we're doing a pretty good job. What that tells me is we're doing a pretty good job of getting irrigation out of dry years, for example, because we're only using, you know, whatever November to March or December to April.

The last year, there's two years that there's been a spike. Yes, there was.

Well, we had. November. It was the decision we made because the November water bill captures October water use, and they were late dry seasons. And so people were still irrigating in October, which caused that little bump. Yep. That's really what led us to change our system.

But it didn't happen in 2019.

But it didn't happen in 2019. Well, that was a wet year. So it would have been less irrigation. You would have to pick out a drought. Like this 2023.

This wet year didn't see any decrease.

So if it was a dry year, you would expect a pop in irrigation. It didn't really happen. But again, we're still using the winter months primarily, right? So we're still doing a good job of keeping irrigation out. Maybe we're doing a little bit better job then. That's the whole. Yeah. I guess the only one I didn't talk about is chart four. which is just looking, is just Stanford and how much, if you take Darien's flow out, what does their trend line look like? And their trend line actually is going down slightly. Now, last two years have been dry years, so if they have I&I, that's why their last two years are down too, because it's been dry, so their I&I is lower. So again, you kind of got to wait for the response in the wet year to really see what's going on.

What neighborhoods in Stanford are still older, less developed, prone to sump pumps, and how is the development creeping towards that? Because it does seem like the new buildings, even though they have more density, don't have the problems with sump pumps and issues that we've seen in the legacy houses here in the low-lying areas.

Just on a per capita basis, it's a much tighter system, you know, much less mileage underground per capita.

Yeah, and most of it's new.

Most of it's new. But there are old areas, but it really has nothing to do with us unless we're talking about the denomination.

What are they doing about I&I? What are we doing? Because we're in a competitive race with them.

They also have an I&I abatement program.

How are they working on it? How are they doing it? No idea.

No idea. In my opinion, looking at the numbers, it's very small in comparison to what we're doing. But they may have done a lot before I got here or while I had just started. The big numbers we're looking at is when they're done, finished building all those buildings, we should see their flow go up. If all stays the same.

A lot of those buildings are finished, right? Like, yeah.

you add another five to the 500 there you're only adding one percent right west broad broad street summer i mean just finished one summer but two on broad the old burlington property, the one by the Bell Street Garage, or not Bell Street Garage, Downtown Garage. They're all just during construction right now, but there are quite a few units going down.

It's not just units, it's population, and when you're building one- and two-bedroom units, you're not necessarily building to the same population as single-family homes. So, you know, they've done plenty of building over the last 20 years, and that graph hasn't really all changed that much. So I don't

That's interesting.

I mean, it can't not at some level add to the denominator, but I'm not waiting for that. I think it's easy to see the development, but I think when you put it in context for how many housing units are being added to the total, it's like 1% or 2%. It's not a big deal.

If they're going up and we're going down, it's that percentage every year that I'm shooting to see. I know you're trying to get that number.

That's the number I'm looking at. We're doing pretty good. We got 12.5 this year? 13.16.

13.16? 13.16. Okay. Let's just keep pushing.

I mean, look, even if all we did was get from 15 to 12, we saved a ton of money. That's huge. Okay, so item number four is this regulation edit. Well, there we go. C. There they are. Sewer user fee appeal. No sewer user shall be allowed to appeal.

Any comments on the edit to the regulations?

Shall we have a motion?

I'll make a motion.

I'll second it.

What is your motion?

That we accept the new language from the old language. That would be better.

Okay. All right. We have a first and a second. Motion on the table to adopt the amendment to regulations. Do we have any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor? Okay. Motion passes. Amendments are updated. Regulations are amended. And my paperwork is all out of order now, but I'll get it back in a second.

Well, I was okay until we got to those graphs, and then .

Oh, yeah, sorry. I didn't have a choice. It wasn't like I was being nice. I mean, let's just hope that.

Subsection snarky.

It keeps trending in the same direction.

I lost my agenda. Do you have the agenda?

Yeah. Now we're up to number five, table of appeals.

We're up to this. Here we go. This is what I need. We're up to this. Table of appeals. Oh, yeah. We're going to look at the table of appeals. Thank you. Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So I think leaks overtook irrigation this year. I have to agree with you on that.

Ed, just as a snapshot, what's your reaction? Are we being too lenient, not lenient enough, just right? I mean Goldilocks here, where are we in terms of, should we be a little tougher?

Three months?

I'm pretty tough, so that's probably not a question for me. Well, you just answered the question, didn't you? But you folks have always been fair. Anyone asks me about an appeal, I said, they are fair. Come and present your case.

Then he looks at me.

And there's five of you. If you guys as a group did not agree on something, you will figure it out. That number looks big to me. But if you go case by case and the thought process that you used, the discussion you had, the lengthy discussion on some of them, you folks got to where you felt comfortable. So I'm comfortable with that.

Let's hope we have fewer than 14 irrigation appeals next season. That's the goal. Yes. Get those out of here.

Well, there won't be any repeat performers.

But I don't think we're going to ever change the number of leaks or the number of other issues, right? So getting to 30 appeals would be a win.

I mean, I think our goal of being fair and equitable with the leaks, we are reasonably close. I don't think you can ever be perfect. Yeah. I think we're pretty good, if not better than that. And I also believe we put in the effort to do that.

I think we have a good standard. I think the needle, and this is going to be me saying it, the needle is probably on the side of accommodating versus heavy-handed. And I think that's a fine place for the needle to be.

That's fair. Yeah, it's a nice time to be able to see all this and just step back and say, all right, we did this all year. Yeah, what's the total? We had a whole lot of people come in. Sort of a game recap. And there's 18 leaks. That's one and a half every month.

Yeah, and we're splitting the difference on the period of time, so it's not a full forgiveness in many situations.

And despite that, those two on the graph are going the right way.

yeah how are we year over year we went back all the years are we about this number every year well this one jumped up that's kind of why we did i think this is the second one i gave you this had everything for the fiscal year yeah so you can see it i think last year was 45 okay or 40-ish and the year before that was 31 32.

We had one here of $6,500.

Well, you get a leaking pipe that's in February and cranks for two weeks. It can pump out a lot of water and skew the overall build quite precipitously.

Thank you so much to Joanne for keeping this. This is great.

It's helpful data. Sure. That's a good scorecard. We good with item number five? Yeah, six. Okay, it turns out item six on the agenda, which is a phase two engineering presentation by Arcadis, is going to be tabled. And the question is, do you guys want to hear this presentation at our meeting in October, or do you want to set a special meeting to hear this presentation?

Any idea how long it's going to be? I know in October we have appeals, so that's why I asked.

for October 1st. We don't have time to put together the information. We don't usually take appeals in October. We've asked her to keep it to 15, 20 minutes, just enough to give you a play to what we're doing and have an opportunity to ask questions if you'd like. So October is a good month to get.

If you feel the need to get different sooner, you might have to join another meeting, as long as the consensus is that we can wait And you're going to tell us about the building for 88 Paratree Point Road.

Yes, I am. They subdivided that property. It used to be a school. Yeah, I got that one. At which time they issued parcel numbers, lot numbers, whatever you'd like to call, list numbers, if you will. They mistakenly gave this piece of property the wrong list number. So there was water usage tied to it, as you see in the graph. But there is a sewer lateral connection to our low pressure force main in front of the property. which gives it a little, which is why I'm here, basically, because I don't know the feeling about that piece of it. But the other part of it is I don't give money back unless you folks tell me it's okay.

So those are the two pieces I have right now. So they are using water and not discharging to the sewer? There's no use of water on this property.

The use was another part of town that had no business being on this list number, so it was a mistake. But it just started, and these bills have been paid.

So we sent out bills, the bills were paid, but there was no water use. It was an error on our end for sending out the bills.

And we only go back three years. We're only allowed to collect three years, or we only go back three years. But it brought to our attention when they were selling the property.

Okay. Is the other property on the other side of the town up and correct?

It's not even tied to the sewer from what I can find. We're looking into that right now to make sure. But as of right now, this is the one I have to clear up and then I have to go out and check that. But from what I can find, the location of the house and property, there's no sewer in the street. So it would be difficult.

I would make a motion that whatever the last three years.

so just before we go there so this property has been disconnected from the sewer or never was connected when they put the low pressure force main in they put a valve box or three of them valve boxes in front of the parcels that had school had one big parcel there was somebody that knew what they were doing a couple connections out in front for them to use But never been used. There's no water going to them.

So there's no need for a disconnect. There's a house in one of those lots now.

Yeah. We tied it in with a wet tap two years ago.

Okay. So this is for one of the vacant properties.

Yes, it is.

Got it.

Okay. Just making sure there was no need for a disconnect permit, but there is not. There is not. Okay.

I'll make a motion whenever the last three years that you can possibly refund them. Go ahead.

That's that graph that's in front of you? $11,124.62. Okay. I'll make a motion that we refund them for those three years in the amount of $11,124.62. I'll second that.

Who are we refunding? Whoever paid it, the owner selling it.

It'd be the previous owner.

Oh.

All right. They just sold it. They just closed on it.

Oh, they closed it already? Yeah. I'll go with the previous one.

We'll get the money in the right hand of the right people.

We have a first and a second. We have a motion on the table. I have a question. Should they be at least charged the minimum charge because they have the ability to hook up to the sewer?

That's up for you folks.

That's why I asked. No. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought people that had a sewer connection out in front of their house. But if they don't even have. They absolutely don't. Oh, they don't. Just pay the assessment. Because they're disconnected. Because they're not hooked up yet.

Yeah, that would be like you filed a, in my opinion, it would be like you filed a disconnect permit. So it wouldn't, it's not like the house is vacant. The lot is vacant. To me it's a little different, but I think it's almost semantics. I agree. Okay. But there's a really good question. It made me think for a minute.

All those in favor of Reese's motion, Susan's motion. I'm excited. All right.

Why do I get excited?

Bob? Yes, I'm for it. Okay, so I'm sorry. Sorry. I just want to make sure. I was trying to shove him out the door.

All right, item number eight, sump pump removal policy. We have an update or we don't have an update?

We have an update?

Quick update for you.

Okay. As of right now, we have 3,450 responses. Okay. Of the 5,432, it's about 64%. 150 additional since the last meeting a month ago. No sump pumps are about 1,800 of those responding. Yes to sump pumps are 1,645. Of the sump pump ones, 112 have sanitary sewer connections.

So we went up 13.

Last month, we went up 13. A lot of people are correcting it before they send the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really good. Stealing my under hair. We will never know how many got removed because of this action. Yes. But that's okay.

But those are all the good news. And this isn't bad news. This just means follow-up for us. Some of them that require photos, there's over 1,000 that we didn't get any. So we're going to have to follow up with them. And ones with no signatures, there's about 150-ish. So we can send them out. We're trying to figure out a way to do it where we send it to you, you sign it, and you just send it, you email it back to us where it's simple. We put it with your file and it's put away. We're working on that. So the last piece to research. Turns out that's going to be the long-tail follow-up is getting all these folks.

It is. It is. I think the other 2,000 might be a problem too.

Well, yeah. So far we have almost 10 people that disconnected and told us they did before they sent in the form or were about to. I just got one today as an email and a picture and the sump pump with the water running outside onto the ground. Great. And when I say running, it was like they turned a two-inch faucet on. It was coming out of that pipe. Wow, that's exciting. There's some good stuff coming out of it.

And it's just going right into the lawn now? Yeah, I heard.

What's that?

It's just going straight out into the lawn?

Onto the pavement, onto the lawn.

Wow. Future wetland.

Now, he may have filled it up with water just to show me it was running.

Yeah.

I doubt it.

Okay. That's the update.

Are the ones that are connected coming from the same part of town?

I haven't identified that yet. But I can tell you they're the ones where I expected. We did get a neighborhood, let's say, that I was... I won't talk about it right now because I need to look at it a little bit better. The answers that I expected are the ones I'm getting. Okay. So...

And have any of them felt that they needed help with a new pipe in the street or something like that?

One of them did. One of the very first gentlemen that I met with before we even got it approved through the RTM came to me and we talked about it. I met him out on his property on the roadway. And that's the one I looked at that has quite a few sump pumps.

Can you share what street that is?

Pleasant Street.

Pleasant Street. Okay.

I've heard more or less of it.

I'd say a lot of them are already discharging to either the ground right behind the catch basin or, you know, it's making its way. But there are a couple that were connected.

We want to help if we can.

All right. So now we have time on 8 to discuss revisions to the compliance statement. I thought after monitoring the discussion from the last meeting, most of the changes to this were reasonably well received. No? Huh? Okay.

To the affidavit, to the statement itself.

Didn't you watch the meeting?

I did. I thought the compliance statement was like, oh, yeah, it makes sense to have a date. Oh, it makes sense to tell people where the list number can be found by the list number request.

Oh, those kind of change. Yeah, but I just like the font and making it one page and changing. Let's put it this way. I will do this in a quick... One sentence thing, perfection is the enemy of progress.

Okay. I like that statement. I read documents all day long, and they are constantly edited. I have a contract document that we put on every proposal every year, and once a year I read through that again. Even though it's me reading it year after year, I end up making changes to it. I don't have any issue with anybody else saying, hey, what about this? What if you did that? Would it look better like this? I receive all of those comments with an open mind, and we can decide to accept them or not. So that's my standpoint. And currently with our first draft, we're at a D, which is what 64% is. No, no, no.

That's not.

Do you think it's because of the documents that we've sent out, Chris? The way it would be reflected. Excuse me, wait a minute. Where are we going with this? They were talking about grades last time. Like, oh, we got a good.

Are you relating that? The forms?

How many people do that?

Forms to how many people?

No, I was making it. Data is good, but when you're trying to add. That relation, if you look at the video, that relation was made last time. And I was making a joke about it.

Are you kidding? Well.

Okay.

You're too funny.

Missed that one.

I like the improvements to the sump pump compliance statement, especially if they help the people tracking the data. As far as the letter is concerned. Let's deal with this first. Do one thing at a time?

Okay. You like the statement? I don't really care either way. Somebody wants to knit or not, it's not a big deal to me.

I just think you need to get through the first, you know, out and in before you start changing it you cannot mid this is too much midstream and it's too much just trying to reinvent and perfect the wheel does it mess you up at all okay so i'm going to try to make some uh organization out of this so we can move forward not just talk back and forth

Of the commissioners here today, and I'm talking just about the sump pump compliance statement, raise your hand if you are willing to consider edits to the sump pump compliance statement.

Yes.

Okay, so four of us are willing to do so. Okay, so now let's consider the edits, each one, to the sump pump compliance statement.

I first want to ask Ed, does it mess you up by changing the form?

I'm going to say it doesn't. It would be easier to look at everything on the front page of one page for you, but I know the numerous, numerous iterations that we went through and Susan's helped to kind of reorganize it and add more pumps because we're finding out people had five. That whole thing brought us to where we were. Getting it to fit on one page I thought was a Herculean effort and it was done. I think it would make it easier for our folks just to have that one sheet in front of us. That's my first test.

Maybe you'll get more signatures that way too.

Who thinks it's a good idea to put the date on the compliance statement?

Wasn't it always on the compliance date?

I don't know. It's highlighted, so that's why I'm asking that question.

Just for me, I added it to it because it wasn't there. This is a version that I doctored so that it met what we had previously on the statement. Okay. So it always had a date. I put the date on it and highlighted it. that's my head just to not lose it so are these yellow highlights your edits yes oh okay yep or if i couldn't move it i say move up to list number because i couldn't manipulate the document and i tried but other than that the text in here is consistent with the text in the initial version the data that's asking for is consistent with the data that was asked for on the original statement. So it's all there now. And the text is all there, yes. Just not twice, let's say. There's a couple things that were repeated.

Do folks have an opinion as to this being on one page or two?

All right. So people got the one in May. Yes. So now you're going to be sending the people who haven't filled it out this one.

Whatever version we decide to go with.

Okay. I'm just speaking theoretically. So now you're going to send them this one.

Maybe.

Maybe. They're not going to remember May.

Exactly.

They're not going to remember the old one?

No, because they didn't give a crap.

I think the merger of those probably just got thrown out.

And the fact that we've improved it and made it one page should be commended.

Well, anyway, so I'm just saying, like, do we like one page? Because one page is a smaller font. One page is very tiny margins. Do we like one page, or did we like two pages? Didn't we already vote on that? What did we just vote? The straw poll that I had.

Shall we talk about it? Oh, my God.

Okay. What are we going to talk about?

I'm sorry, you want to do this differently?

No, no, I'm just, I'm confused. I thought we had voted, the four of us thought that this one page was good. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I misunderstood your vote.

My question was who is willing to consider changes to, because I was trying to decide if we had enough of a vote of people that were even willing to change it. Okay. So that we could then discuss if there were any nits or nats or revisions or changes, and that's what we're discussing now. Okay. Okay. So do people like the one page versus the two? Susan?

I like the one page.

Reese likes the one page. Peter? I'm cheap.

I like one page. You like one page.

Me too. All right. Ed likes one page. It was one page. Okay. I assume he's a no no matter what we do.

One page? I am against changing it, yes. Okay. Plain and simple.

Understood. That's why I wanted to make that clear.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

Before we started. Okay. So then I'll ask a broader question because maybe we're already there. If we're considering the one before us labeled 8B plus C, 3 of 3, does anyone have any changes to what's here to make?

How about something where I jump up with a blind statement in red?

I mean, whatever.

I don't care. I really don't care.

We do already have actions required on the letter in red.

There's a lot of ink in doing it in red.

That is true. If this is the way they're going to get printed, I think this is blurry.

Yep.

and it should be more clear.

Why not flip it? Do the white black and the black white. Yeah, something like that. Use less ink.

Make sure the title of the form in the top right is bold and clear and easy to read.

I don't think it needs to be filled in. I think we could box it. Yeah, and just do a bold letter or whatever.

Box it, flip it, yeah.

Okay. Is there anything else on the form? that people might want to change in the next draft. Okay.

With that, can I get a motion? I'll make a motion to accept this form and send out for the second round. Okay. We're going to get such better results.

Second? I'll second it. Okay. First and second on the table. Any further discussion on the changes to the form? All those in favor? All right. We have our authority. We already know. All those folks, you're right. I do have to say that out loud. Thank you. One. Four to one.

No, I'm going to be consistent. There's nothing else.

Okay. Then with that, we're going to do the same kind of process with 8.C, the revised cover letter. First, just straw poll. Commission members that are willing to consider changes or edits to the cover letter. Okay.

I'll consider it.

You'll consider it. Okay. But you're a little more skeptical on this one. I don't know if you hear what I say. Okay. And again, these, we basically got a cover letter

That was the original that we sent out. The one of three is the original? Yeah.

Okay.

No, one of three is the second notice.

Oh, okay. One of three is the proposed version, and two of three was the original. Okay.

um put on a new header that looks funny but uh the second one added a sentence you haven't filled in no and neither of these can be the original the font on the top is not correct well that was one of my my items that that are we now changing our our logo to be an oval no i think there's something wrong with the graphic that they put in this file some somebody somebody tried to fit it all on one page with it yeah um

and adding all these that would have been me okay okay and i just squished it up to show you what how much room it was needed and it showing it on there but so the first thing we want to say i'll have that fixed let's make sure that looks the way it's supposed to when it gets printed out okay okay uh fix header okay uh picking up on bob's comment from the last meeting i agree that sewer commission is in too small of a font on that header, and I think the sewer commission should be enlarged.

Well, that's the new, that's the new, even though we're not using it yet on our, on these things, on our legal notices, isn't that the new way of Town Hall putting out their stationery?

Only if you say it. This is your, this is your letterhead.

Don't we have to comply with what they're, do we doing everything in the person electing's office?

With regard to?

I think everything is a recommendation.

But if we look at the way the sump pump compliance statement is, if you look at it there, it's all the same font at the top. All the same size, all the same font. That's the way it should be. This, to me, looks .

Look, again, I think it's as easy as us saying, we'd like it bigger. We don't have to argue about it or question people's motivations and why they did it. If we want it bigger, we can say, let's make it bigger. Do people want sewer commission bigger?

Yes. The same size as Town of Darien?

Oh, I wouldn't do that.

I would at least get it to the end of the T and the N. Yeah. Unnecessarily the same.

Oh, you're just going to stretch it sideways? No, I wouldn't stretch it sideways.

I'd increase the font size until it got to the same space between T and N. Stretching is what got us into the problem here with the oval. Okay.

Got to love graphics.

so with that uh the one of the substantive changes is uh as of the date of this letter the sewer department has yet to receive a response to the original request for information dated may 11 2026 i i thought i heard peter at the last meeting say uh yet to receive a response from you a little more pointed like please pay attention if you've read to the second sentence of the first paragraph all right does anybody else have any edits or other changes to this letter our general comments yeah but how do you feel about the letter I don't think it's gonna matter

Because the people who called the first selectman's office, which is what prompted this, either don't know how to read, they're idiots, or I'm sorry, Craig, go back to any of the previous letters, go back to the things we sent for five years. Where in those documents did it say, call the first selectman if you don't understand this? or else they're people who just want to complain. So I don't think it matters what letter you sent. If you add more verbiage, I don't think they're going to read it. The same people who didn't read the one we sent, didn't read the one we sent for five years, they're not going to read this one.

They're smoking pot.

Whatever. I'm not. You can pick one of many different reasons as to why.

Whoever is going to ignore or defer or choose not to respond or be offended by this letter is not going to change by the edits that we make. But if there's small things that we can do over time to make this letter that's going to get sent out probably a lot more than twice, a little bit better each time, I'm all for it.

Be more wordy for people who don't read? Okay. I think that's a good goal.

So one sentence is more wordy.

Maybe we should make it two pages. One sentence. And then we can give them two pages not to read.

One sentence is more wordy.

No.

No. Okay.

cares i think it's i'm saying who cares who cares what it says they're not going to read it the summer compliance statement which is stuff that they need to fill in that's more important the letter whatever one more time and perfectionism is the enemy of progress doesn't matter anyway so so we can change it we cannot change it my feeling is that the people that are going to call the first selections office are not reading it.

You have no idea how many calls I get for stuff you wouldn't even believe.

Well, Peter and I can make a list.

I was going to ask John, what's your latest call? It almost hit the ground.

I know. It's amazing. So anyway, that's my comment. It doesn't matter.

OK, does anybody else have any other changes that they would like to make to the letter? Should we put Ed's cell phone number on it?

weekend somebody's got a good start we know it is interesting now that I'm looking at this letter there's no phone number for the sewer department all right that's a good ad good catch did it get removed by where oh no it's something from the right Do you want to put it right under Sewer Commission? Put in the phone number?

That's probably a good spot for it. Top or bottom.

Or the email. That Sewer Commission phone email.

I think we opted not to put it on. I know I didn't want it on there. It's on the compliance statement. Here's the email. At the top. We didn't put it in the letter. Yeah. I would have preferred to get it in writing, your emails and your requests. How about more call?

You like people sending emails because you've got a record of the conversation. That's one.

Two, it's easier to track. It's not overwhelming. Yeah, yeah. And easier to follow up and follow them through. And we've been storing and saving them too as we go through it.

And if they get a call over there, they're going to send it over to you, right? And they did.

They did. It's just some of the comments that were being made with regards to the letter and the compliance statements seemed more of a misunderstanding on what they were reading or what they were looking at. All right.

Any further discussion on the letter?

Okay, can I get a motion? I'll make a motion with your amendment to make sewer commission fit Town of Darien, T to N. T to N. And from you.

Peter's from you. From you. And then make sure the header displays properly.

Yep, this is great. I think we're going to leave that out.

There are people who don't have email. But they can call the First Selectman's office. They're in the First Selectman's office. Because they can apparently find their phone number, whereas they can't find the Sewer Commission phone number. But, you know, I think that in this day and age, there's plenty of ways to get in touch.

I do agree with that. Plenty of ways. All right. So do we have a second on Reese's motion? All right. Mr. Van Winkle makes a second. Any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor? All right. Letter is edited. And opposed? Oh, yeah, all those opposed. Sorry, 4-1.

That's fair.

It's a worthy... No, no, no, I just forget. So it's all good. Superintendent's report.

Superintendent's report.

Very good. We're not getting that.

Just a little update on the rehab, Phase 3 rehab. You know, the lining has been... are substantially completed. There's one or two small sections that are left. Service connection routing has been ongoing. It's about 45% completed this time. They'll be here this week and I believe into next. Lateral cleaning and CCTV work has three more days remaining on their list. Some remaining lateral lining is to be scheduled, so we have to go back and do a couple more of those.

So we're done with the pipes. We just have to go back and fix a couple laterals.

Yeah. And then the manholes, making sure there are any welding or epoxy lining. Pipes is the big one. Pipes are the big one. Or what we're finding with some of the service laterals is... um sometimes we're blowing out some of our lateral lining so a couple backups that we had to look at we'll have more information on that at our next meeting with regards to Damages or anything like that.

Oh So we tried to do a lateral lining and then there's flow coming in anyway. Yeah, and people aren't flushing one.

Yeah one was a washing machine that was after a time that they gave him the window they and the other one was a sump pump that was Discharging. Yes. Yes. And that's another one that we got disconnected. Okay All right, so that's phase three phase two engineering is as you um they're just the reason that she wasn't here there's some data that they want to go back and refine it happened to do with the area down the road in bay multiple meters down there they're close together i think that what they were worried about was the turbulent flow giving them some some readings that were giving them negative flows when they started doing the calculations. So they're going to go back and do a little bit more research on that before they come to you and present to you. Not something that occurs all the time, but it's happened before in smaller areas.

Save that special meter. Maybe Craig will need it on one of his jobs.

Number C. I just wanted to bring you up to speed on 4 Seagate Road. As you see, it's noticed it's never been billed. Don't know why. The house has been there for a while. But I give you the good news when we get money back. I give you the bad news. I give you the good news when we got it collected. So they are out there. Every once in a while, we do come across them, especially with house sales, when they do find out that it's still unseptic. So we will be billing them that amount.

When was that hooked up?

It's one of the original houses.

So it's always been on sewer.

It's always been on sewer.

Someone got a deal.

They did.

How did you discover it sold?

A sale. On the sale of the house. So we made them camera the line, developed an as-built from it, created a lateral file, and created a bill that goes back three years. Yeah, that's a question that we'll find out as we get the reports back. And the last item I just want to mention is Joanne provided me the final numbers on the connection fees. Just so you folks know, for this past fiscal year, just over $290,000 of connection fees that we got. One or two, one large, large development and a couple developments included in there, but... Just wanted to point that out to you.

Ten years ago, that would have been zero, right? Five years ago.

Five years ago. You just started connection fees about five years ago. Cool. Just to mention it, that's all I have. Darren, anything?

No, sir.

Any questions for the superintendent?

All right. Any new business? All right. Peter, you're up.

All those in favor?

Second. No second? I'll second. Thank you, Channel 79.

We're all set.