City Council - Regular Meeting

Council. Uh to order. in time and place as advertised. Our first order of business is pledge of allegiance and council. We've asked our wastewater treatment supervisor to lead us in the pledge of allegiance today. If you please stand and join us. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Nailed it. I'm gonna be asking that sing last laugh laughing the loudest back there has to do it next. I think that's all right. It's not me this time. Next up is citizen comments. This is an opportunity for citizens wishing to comment on agenda items. Uh they may do so. I don't see any citizen students here. So, I'm going to stop reading that paragraph and we'll move on to room number four, budget items. Item eight, enterprise funds, water, wastewater, sanitation, and storm water. Um, Director Johnson, are you up?

I'm up. All right. Welcome. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. Dustin Johnson, public works director. Uh, I'm the only thing on the agenda, so hopefully we can be engaged and I don't have to be up here talking the whole time. So, um, kind of some housekeeping. So, not only does public works do the pledge of allegiance, but we also do a lot of work out in the field. And so, we've got a good portion of our team here today. Um, so if there's specific questions that I can't answer, uh, we can call in the experts for you. Director, could you introduce them? Oh, sure. Right here. All right. Ask questions.

Uh, okay. We're gonna just start up the front. So, this is Jeff Wymer. He's the storm water manager. Um, and then Elena Bailey. So she's an engineer an Atlanta McCabe. Sorry, first time I've done that actually. So Lana McCabe, she does uh she's in engineering. So her specialty is transportation and water. Uh then Jason Thompson, so he's our streets manager. Uh back behind him is Luke Antinich, who is the city engineer, so kind of jack of all trades. And then you've already met Nate Smith, but Nate uh does wastewater tours uh pledge of allegiance, but also manages the the wastewater uh enterprise fund utility. So those are the people that have walked in now. We may have a few stragglers that may show up later, but I think that's the key uh part of our public works team that will help answer any questions you have today. Uh so today uh our goals uh for this discussion I guess this is our first uh budget workshop for the FY27 budget. So today is very is driven by the capital projects and so I'll get in the definition of what capital is uh the difference of utility uh or enterprise funds and the only thing that isn't an enterprise fund that we'll discuss today which is transportation. Uh I'm going to get into the specifics of the finance components uh and basically give you uh what I'm going to call the state of the union. So where we are financially, where we are on future projects, what we've completed um and and kind of where we're transitioning in each enterprise fund uh and why each enterprise fund is a standalone account and kind of the health uh and projection moving forward. And then of course the one that everybody wants to get um you know that they skip forward to is where are we at with uh utility rates. Uh and so we'll we'll build the whole story of where it is and then we'll get into utility rates and get some feedback from the council

as to what we've what we've laid out and what we've proposed. And I think it's important to say right now this there is a lot. I mean, I I did for anybody who happens to be in the audience today or come down here while I'm talking, I printed off the full-size packet, so you can follow along. Some of these numbers may be small on the screen. You may want to come back and have some questions later because this is a really wide swath. We could basically take any one component of what we're talking about today and dive into two hours of details of finance, uh, utility rates, uh, user rates, um, uh, grants, allocations, there's a lot of money. And when you say how much money is in that account now, it it depends. Are you talking encumbered money? Are you talking about cash on hand? Uh, how much is going out the door? because, you know, we're spending money at literally right outside our door right now paving some water lines. And so this this conversation is dynamic. It moves and it and it it's hard to tell you as a snapshot in a two-hour workshop, which I hope to be less than two hours today, but in a concise manner uh and get you all the information you need to to know to make these decisions. And same goes for the public as they're trying to understand what goes into water rates, what goes into the wastewater rates, and why this is all out. And so, um, I'm I'm hoping for some questions. Uh, most of the time, including this presentation, I'm hoping if there's something I'm talking about and you have a a question, just blurt it out. Um, because that's that's a better way. Uh, because oftentimes I get going on a roll and I start talking faster and pretty soon I'm not seeing any engagement. So please uh I I will do my best to speak uh concisely, deliberately uh and get the points across but bid it out. All right. So generally public works uh

as our funding uh or funds go is broken out into five components. Uh those four water, wastewater, sanitation, storm water are called enterprise funds. So those are independent utilities. No general funds, go into those enterprise funds. No enterprise funds, leave those uh those funds and go into the general fund. I I think that's really important to drive home. Uh because a lot of people, you know, even when we created the storm water utility. You're just you're just trying to get more money to pay for your police or your fire or your parks. That that is not the case. Every cent that goes into those utility funds goes specifically for those utilities. Uh and then the red one, transportation, that is the redheaded stepchild that Uh the funding comes from multiple different, you know, it's grants, it's federal allocations, it is property taxes, uh and it is a it's a booger to track because you'll get a grant, it's for specific project, you'll get an allocation, uh state, uh allocation, it's for pavement preservation. And so we lump those together and we'll get into that, but it's hard to show you again how much money do we have in transportation? Well, what do you want to know about it? Is it for pavement preservation? Is it for capital? Is it for specific grants? Is it for matching funds? And so that it's difficult to track. It's we track it. We have finance. We have financial folks in public works, but it's difficult to communicate to somebody who doesn't do this full-time to say how much money are you spending on your streets. Well, give me a little bit more qualifier on that. So, I'll spend most of today into enterprise funds. Um, and I kind of already hit on a lot of this stuff. uh enterprise funds go into these utilities. They are specifically for um maintenance upkeep. Uh the part of the billing goes into that. Anything that you could imagine, the water meters, the the pipes, the staffing, the chemicals

to treat the water, uh the electricity, anything that use uses that, that is a specific fund that goes for that. And th that is paid for by the consumers. Uh again uh Lewon has a water district and city of Lewon water. So Lloyd uh Lewon Orchards irrigation district that is separate from what we operate with. Uh we have two sewer districts, Central Orchard Sewer District, uh Lewon Orchard sewer district. They are our large customers. They pay us, the city of Lewon, for the treatment of the waste, but they handle all the collection of that waste. And so that's split separately, but we charge them for the treatment of that waste. So it gets a little convoluted but again these are enterprise funds that are uh kept separate. Uh additionally in the more recent times uh the city of Louisw has set up a depreciating fund and so uh just like a house or a car as a popular analogy when we start talking about public works if all you do is put gas in your car and you drive it eventually something's going to break down. And so a responsible car owner, and I'm not saying I'm one of them, but a responsible car owner will have a separate account to say, "I'm going to need to buy new tires. I'm going to need to have oil changes. I'm going to need to have all these things that go into the long-term maintenance of this car. Maybe a fuel uh fuel pump, something like that. That is what we pay for these depreciating funds for these enterprise funds because uh you know, the city of Lewon uh was operating a water plant uh that was built in 1924 up until 2020. um you know and that and that was not a way you know they ended up getting a bond to fund that forward and that's and we'll get into the details of that bond um it it's much more uh uh I don't want to say responsible but it's easier if if you just pay into this depreciating fund so as things break down you have the reserves to pay off these larger capital projects that could really um you know

handcuff uh the rate users because you just had a spike of 10520 million ion dollar project that you got to get done and you don't have the money on hand. And so that's where having some of these depreciating funds you're going into and you're just paying a small portion each year that go into these uh and and that goes into capital. And so we talked about capital cash. What is capital? Yes. On the depreciating uh funds, do we have it in something that's earning interest? Uh that is a finance question. All our all of our money earns interest.

Yep. Um so what is capital? Uh a question you know because I get up here and I start throwing out these terms. Capital is something that would be a significant investments as I said. So like a reservoir uh even pipeline replacement something that's not a standard um day-to-day maintenance issue. Um and so in the recent years we've replaced wastewater treatment plants, lift stations, reservoirs, pipe um you know types of that. Uh, and so when I start talking about capital, I'm not talking about um operational things or even, you know, like water meters. I'm talking about significant million-dollar projects. So, what are user rates go towards? Uh, and this is kind of a recycle of of past slide, but we've inverted the triangle, the pyramid. So, uh, operations, you have, if you're a water utility, you have to provide service. You have to provide water to your customers. That's the number one goal. It's got to be safe drinking water for your customers. Uh and so that is paying your your labor to come make the water, keeping the electricity, buying the chemicals and all of the the supplies that go for it. Uh wastewater treatment, same deal. Keeping that plant running, keeping the pipes clean. That is the key component because if you're not making water, you're not selling water. and that is how you're generating money to uh fund these utilities. The next tier down below that is your debt service. So there's two current um state revolving fund loans. One to wastewater, one to water. Uh I'll get into what that debt service is. So again, just like your day at your house, if you're not paying your bills, somebody doesn't come and turn your lights out or impound your car. And so we have to keep that debt service. So all of your enterprise funds, all your utility bills go in for those two primary functions. what's left over

again is that that uh capital improvements. So when we start talking about uh you know cutting rates or not not funding the the utility at its full extent, the first thing that get cuts is that you is the capital improvements. Um, and so, uh, not not throwing any people under the bus that predate anybody in this room, but I think you could do an assessment and say possibly maybe Water didn't invest in their capital improvements previous to us. And it's unfortunate now that, you know, that that we're identifying some of these deferred maintenance issues that need to be addressed. And it's unfortunate that we need to recoup those those monies to make those capital investments. Uh but that is that those are the cards that we've been dealt. Uh and that's why we need to invest in these capital improvements, write the ship, get it moving forward and and we have some pretty drastic examples of how these utilities could operate differently. Uh so we talked about where the money goes. How do we decide how much money is necessary uh in the in the past? So let's go back to like 2018 pre-COVID uh both water and wastewater we're looking in roughly 2018 pre-COVID 2019 um identifying a facility master plan. So these uh these are twofold. One it's required by the state and two uh it also allows you it it basically evaluates your entire utility. It says okay your waste your water plant is built 1924. Uh so that's a that's a uh expressed area of need. Uh your pipes are also from 1910. So those are areas of need. But then it prioritizes and says here's where we think you need to invest your money. Uh and then and so those master plans that were done in that era were primarily focused on the

plants. So wastewater plant, water plant uh because of their age. We are now in the process. Wastewater is wrapping up and water is uh probably a quarter of the way through it. uh and evaluating where um where the those utilities are. Uh and I'm thinking the bulk of it is now outside of the the plants and now more of into the the collection and distribution the pipe networks that are out in the city. Um and so that that allows us to apply for grants, stay in compliance with the state department of environmental quality and also prioriti prioritize the budgets. And so every utility, Lloyd, Moscow, Pullman, Clarkston, we all operate under these master plans for these utilities. This is not something specific to Lewon. This is how these utilities operate. And it's kind of the the industry standard. So you take that master plan, you have a capital improvement list, a CIP. You'll hear us talk about CIPs um that say, "Okay, here's all your projects." And it's always way expensive. and you think I can never afford all this and and it it is uh overwhelming when you start looking at some of these capital improvement plans and you just understand you're going to eat that elephant one bite at a time. Uh but that's when you start uh putting together your financial model of how much money is in the bank, how much revenue are you taking in, how much debt service are you do you have, and you you put together you structure a financial model of where your rates need to be. And I I don't know how to share this more than uh utilities don't go down in price. Anybody who goes grocery shopping or gets gas knows values fluctuate. Cap uh the um what is it? Consumer price index CPI. Every year you're shooting for about two and a half% inflation. And that's where we would like to keep our utilities at generally that electricity is more expensive, labor is more expensive,

insurance is more expensive. And so we have to build that into our financial model. And our goal is to come to the council and say pretty flat year. We completed these projects. These new projects are coming in based off of inflation. We expect a one and a half to four and a half% rate increase for X, Y, and Z. just to because if you lock in a single rate and you carry that for 10 years, you're losing money every single year incrementally and then you have to do this large spike. I think I've shown the model from 2004 to 2014, city of Lewon did 10 years of uh budgets and I think three of those years they raised water rates like three and a half% and then went zero the other years. And so then you saw this massive spike around 2014 or 15. And so that that is what we're trying to avoid. We want predictability and stability in these rates. And so that's what these utility rate studies are are do they they accomplish. Um we have we have completed our utility rate study. You feed those master plans. So the hope is once we complete the wastewater and the water master plan, we'll come back to you probably next year's budget requesting a re-evaluation. They they look at you know financial models of all the utilities specifically like sanitation where are you know maybe we're not recouping enough money on a certain tote size or service. uh look they they out they you know it's a it's a it's a a Excel spreadsheet that is massive that builds up all of these things and then obviously the last part is implementation adopting the utilities investing in the capital and implementing the the what we're talking about I will say these are goals anybody who would be watching this presentation and looking at their water bill and seeing that first bullet point saying keep

rates low to the consumer that is what we do I think the council and even staff hear from people in the community saying your your water rates specifically your utility rates are too high. You need to match uh Lloyd or Sotton County PUB. Each one is a financial separate. We cannot just reflect what our neighbors are doing. Um each each utility is in a different condition. Uh and and I guess I am the public works director telling you here's here's the health of the system. Here's where it's at today. If you don't invest in X, Y, and Z, you can expect eminent failure on that. And I'm not here to tell you there's eminent failures, but I'm telling you there's some cracks in the foundation that need to be addressed in some of these issues. Some of these issues we'll talk about today are okay. Um, but I will tell you at the end of the day, we recognize the costs that we're talking about and the investments in these these these improvements are borne by the rateayers. They are the people amongst this community. And I I hear it. I understand water is expensive. And so it is my my job to talk to you as the council to say here are all the things that we need to fix and here's what the cost is. Here's what it would be to put to to have the community the rateayers carry that burden. And so I'm not trying to tell you uh that we ignore that we don't care. But it that is, I guess, falls upon you as a responsibility of listen to the rateayers, listen to the taxpayers, listen to the the the the the public works department to tell you here's where we're at right now. It it's not an easy task, especially as we see construction costs skyrocket, energy costs skyrocket, yet you know, the pipe hasn't gotten any better in the last 120 years. So, um, that's that that's just the truth of the of the situation. Beyond that, we want to maintain safe, reliable service, keep clean drinking water, keep the dirty drink dirty water out of the clean drinking water, treat

it, and get it back out there. Uh, and then plan and budget for future needs and get get this on a financially stable, predictable model moving forward. Okay, I'm going to take a quick dive off into the weeds uh that is somewhat tied to what we just talked about. One of the areas that gets some attention, or at least it has in the past, I don't know if it's getting any attention today, are equity buyin fees. And so, all of our rates, as I talked about, are based off of operations and all the things I already just laid out earlier, and future capital. Uh if you're a rateayer, let's say, and you moved to Lewon in 2010 and you were paying your bill, you're paying your bill, you're paying your bill, all of these improvements that you're you you were invested into the system. And so if somebody came in tomorrow and said, "I'm in." The person that's been here since 2010 has already paid for everything that this new person is getting credit for. Uh, and so there's a I mean this is there's state law on it's based off the value of the system. Uh, and it goes to a very specific revenue account. So again, it's a specific revenue account to a specific utility. So I can't spend equity buyin fees on pipeline replacement for downtown because it is based off of capacity expansion. So if somebody's building, oh yeah, we've got more service and so we got to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant. We will take those to expand the capacity of that plant, not fix what's broken. It's not a maintenance issue. It's a capacity expansion. And so it recovers the cost uh and it it it uh fairly equalizes across all the user classes. Uh and it's specific to only capacity expansion and demand. Um,

you know, typical ones would be upsizing a lift station. So, a new subdivision came in, uh, and we have the equity buyin fees to upsize. It used to be 14 houses on this lift lift station. New subdivision, now it's 60 houses. So, we got to upsize the wet well. That's what that would be going towards. uh city of Lewon did a study in 2021ish adopted in 2021 uh and found that Lewon was not recouping all the uh equity buyin fees they could based off of this system and the investments they were making. We were way behind in other communities in Idaho. Uh so the study uh recommended up, you know, increasing the equity buyin fees. I think it was roughly about 10% each year for the last five years. last fiscal year was the end of that study. So it it brought us back in line but of course I haven't looked around the the the rest I did I think last year um you know it used um Postfalls Celane Pocutello um somewhat comparable cities other cities that you know Pocutello is kind of in a similar growth pattern in us but Post Falls is growing Celane is growing um there was one down in the Treasure Valley u but those towns that grow faster and have these you know where they're just subdividing farmland. That's where you your equity buyin fees are turning pretty quickly. Communities like Pocutello and Lewon, you're not having that so much. So, you're having this dedicated fund sitting there. When the capacity expansion is there, we we spend the money on in smaller ones. And I'll show you the fund fund balances and you'll see it's not as much money as one might think. Long story short, I don't have a study. I don't have any justification. I haven't spent any time looking at where we are at in equity buyin fees as far as the balance of the system and even the rest of the communities in Idaho. So there are no proposed changes for those equity buyin fees. So they'll stay flat proposed for

FY27. What about efficiency improvements in the money spent on that? Yeah. Um I mean it's better pumps, more efficient pumps. Yeah. Yeah. That would all go part of you know um I'm trying to think of what we've do we what we spent in the last any equity buyin fees projects recently as far as putting it towards a project. I don't think we separate out for project specific stuff. Okay.

Yeah. So, yeah, efficiency. Um, yeah, better pumps. Uh, a lot of it is just capacity. So, maybe upsizing a pipe. So, a trunk line that used to be 12 in and it's it's close to capacity. We could upsize that to an eight 18 inch pipe and go with that. What about you know uh software as we start using better software to improve flow and controlling pumps? We could like that.

I could I'm not sure. I mean because usually what we do is like what Atlanta was saying we you know we look at the improvements that need to be made into the the system and a lot of what we do in like downtown water lines obviously there's nothing really there. Maybe upsizing the pipes we could use something like that but that was co dollars. Um and then we look and say okay what what is something that is uh expanding capacity and addressing you know demand and so something like that would be maybe something we could consider looking into the efficiency on looking at the overall project does it qualify for this money to be used and then you can allocate some of that money.

Yeah. Yeah. areas. You know, the the really easy ones are like a lift station. That's flat out. We don't have capacity to serve that, but hey, look, we have funds that are dedicated for that capacity expansion. Whereas, you know, some of our projects, especially what we've been working on, a 1920s water treatment plant, we had capacity, it just was antiquated. And and you can't justify using equity buyin fees to just replace a treatment plant because it wasn't ever replaced in the last hundred years. So, um, you know, it's very specific to what what the use is for. Okay.

All right. Um, in your packet, you received there was a spreadsheet included that had these projects listed by uh critical, high priority, moderate, minimal. Uh, kind of your standard color coding. So, if they were red, it was critical. If it was high priority, it was orange and then it got to moderate yellow and then low and and blue and green. Um I'm not going to go through each individual project. I've called out some very specific ones in this. Um but when you go through that, you can see um exactly how each utility um kind of tabbed their their criticality of their projects. I'll get into each specific enterprise fund as to how critical they are. Um, but that's that's kind of the justification as to the priority. All right. So, now we're going to get going to get into the financials. Um, I think we'll come right out of the gate uh talking about reserves. So, I think there's been I have some questions from some p members of the public, some counselors. Why do we carry so many res so much reserves? I think this that's that's what we're here to talk about. Um, going down the water reserves account. Uh, you've got operating reserves, capital reserves. I think Amy provided you a spreadsheet uh or not a spreadsheet a memo last week or maybe two weeks ago that kind of outlined general you know what why you know operate on you know how many days of operations in reserve uh and then capital as we just kind of outlined is based off of projected need for capital improvements um real quick so here's you know for water the current balance is $332,000 for the equity buyins in reserve um and the big one of the bigger reasons is

the bulk of the growth, you know, the subdivisions that we're experiencing are out in East Orchards and they're Lloyd and so they're not hooking up to city water. So, we're seeing a lower revenue stream coming into water. Um, and we try and we don't want these funds to just grow stagnant. So, as we have the opportunity, we try and spend them on capacity expansion. But you can see that's not a large amount of money regarding some of these larger capital projects. uh these bottom two for the debt fund. So these are the conditions of that loan that we have for the SRF project. Uh so that was the waste or the water treatment plant, the well uh the reservoir, the intake and some pipeline replacement. the con the one of the conditions of the loan was we had to carry a a dedicated fund and so uh I can't remember how is it every month we put money into the fund and then as the payment comes due we zero it out and send the payment in so that's where this is one of the other conditions is at by I think 10 years we have to have a full payment in reserves and so Amy's crew has just been putting money into this reserve and these are these are conditions of the loan so we don't really control that that's again kind of the the finance component of of having a a debt service and it's through the state revolving fund. So those are the conditions of that. So right off the bat those aren't I mean the s the equity buyin fees are very specific use and these are for the debt service uh that we carry for the the projects that we've already completed. So, I think I said it in the beginning, these are snapshots and depending on the the specifics of the question you have, like we could draw it, you know, we could have a payment for this and it could go to zero. And so that that particular day when you asked, we went from a million dollars to zero dollars. Um, you know, that that's just kind of the operational

of how how how finances and big enterprises operate. Uh, so operating capital as operating builds up, we move the money into the capital. And so now, you know, moving over to to revenue. This is the revenues over here. So these are projections. So just based off a historic consumption of water, uh this is kind of what we're expecting. This is a concerning figure right here. This is, you know, when your revenue is $9.3 million and you're basically uh have enough to put away $35,000 a year, that's that's not enough to get you to where you want your capital. Um, and your your revenue here. You So, this is how much we've put in capital and our expenses exceed capital. So, you can see that our balance is basically negative $2 million. Some of that is built into you build your reserves. So we build these capital reserves up to a point to where we can afford this a project. And so I think for the last three years we've been putting a million dollars a year away for the recoding of two reservoirs. They were reservoirs that were built in the 70s. One in North Lewon, one in South High. And so uh I can't remember what the exact price tag was. We're doing a design build on that, trying to get to a point where we needed to recode that. Unfortunately, um, another issue popped up. So, this is kind of our forecast. Uh, I'll get into the issue that popped up on the next slide. This is our forecast out. So, I've only called out these are the the the big uh headline projects. That doesn't mean the low reservoir is $7.1 million or the alkalinity addition is is 6.3. That's just that's the that's the flagship project of the year. Um, yes.

Back up a slide. Yep. Now, can you explain when you you look at the revenues, you said that once the operating kind gets to a point, you move it to capital. Is there a certain number that you want to keep in the operating should be at a certain number, the rest goes into capital? Is that what you meant?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. there's a there's a certain op I mean because what AB provided I mean generally best practices 60 to 90 days uh and that's for these specific um enterprise we'll get into sanitation which is a little bit different because it's all contracted out but 60 to 90 days uh and again it it it's the snapshot so there may be a period where this money exceeds then that 60 to 90 days or it may be below that 60 to 90 days but that's the target of what we're looking for and that's based off of that was that last rate study recommended had recommendations called out for each utility of how much you wanted to have in those operating reserves a as you know and that's kind of a a little bit different between Amy's team and my team I look the reserves are always comfortable I mean especially the operating reserves are comfortable to have because we've had instances where uh a spike in chemical prices far exceeded what we had budget. We had reserves to kind of supplement that that wasn't in our original budget. We have to obviously get a budget amendment, but that allow because we have to treat the water, you know, that that's one of those things. So, we've had instances where that happens or uh you know, one where uh the high reservoir erupt, we used a lot of that operating reserve uh and then later into the capital reserve. So, instances like that help you sleep better at night. Um but I'm not losing too much sleep of a if it's at 3.8 8 or 3.6 or or where it's at because inevitably if you're holding your head above water, you're able to put money into capital and that's where you're making making your, you know, progress in keeping your utility healthy.

And you can move it back if you had to. Mhm. Reserved to operating. Yeah.

So, I I did reference low reservoir. So, we had originally planned to do some investments on um those other two steel 1970 vintage reservoirs. This is low reservoir. So, this is the top of the reservoir. So, this one is in um Sunset Park kind of right there off to the side. It's sunken in. Uh also built the same construction time period as High Reservoir. So, this is an earthn berm uh that was open to the to the elements in the 20s. At some point environmental laws came in and said you got to keep the birds out from uh getting into your drinking water. And so I'm not quite sure when this roof was built, but I'm thinking somewhere original roof maybe in the 50s7s

I think late 50s

late 50s. So um and when we demoed the high reservoir uh that's that was one of the re that was one of the drivers that getting us putting into that floating cover. Um it was it it's it's dry rot. It you can see in this picture this was taken I think last winter. Uh the the the trusses are starting to sag a little bit. And then luckily we didn't have a lot of w uh snow this year. That could have made a a bigger issue. Um but evaluating this this roof uh it's not we did some we asked the the because we had the reservoir consultant here with the engineers. They ran the scenario of what would it cost to basically um bring this reservoir up to current standards, new roof, um you know, stabilization, overflows, all the other things that go with rebuilding it. It was essentially 3/4 of the cost or 80% of the cost of a new reservoir. This reservoir, both of those reservoirs were built obviously 105 years ago. The demands of the system are way different. The pumps are significantly stronger. we can move water around the system like we couldn't back then. Um we don't need this much water sitting in that spot in in town. And so our request for this FY27 is to basically demolish low reservoir and put in a new modern steel tank reservoir for at Sunset Park. Um and that that is our um we call it critical that is our most critical uh need for basically anything that we're talking about today. This is the one that um it's in dire shape. Uh so we've bumped our reservoir upgrades from 27 to 28. Um and in the rest Yes.

So D on the list I didn't see the inlet. So that's all covered now. No, no, that is not. So, going back to the original question back here about reserves, capital reserves today, snapshot is roughly $8 million. The al some of some of this is grant money, low reservoir and other upgrades within the system. Those other reservoir upgrades, you can start seeing this is $30 million. This does not include the transmission line from the the new treatment plant to the uh high reservoir and it does not include the upgrades to the intake. So those are I wouldn't call those critical items, but those are significant issues and they're also I think somewhere between 15 to $25 million a piece,

but they're not on your list. They're not on the list. Why?

Because I can't charge $7 a unit for water. I I it's just not financially feasible. And so that that go that's a I mean I'm glad you're asking these questions because when we get you know this is this $30 million for those those issues that we're identifying as critical you still I mean those two other items the transmission line and intake we're hoping that we can get participation from the feds on the intake but the the transmission line we built the brand new transmission line we have a a repurposed uh high reservoir but that transmission line when I walked in the door 5 years ago I was told the biggest piece that we need to invest in is the water treatment plant and right behind it that's 1 A. 1B is that transmission line. So, uh, and it's not identified in any of this just because if I plugged it in here, our rates would skyrocket. And I I can't I we we can't pay for all of that with with the user rate money. That's why, you know, the mayor and and some of us have been pushing really hard on the Army Corps and our federal delegation to try and help us. Um because that one's a little bit easier conversation to say, you know, when they built the dams and they put the levies in, you built us a new intake, it never worked. You know, that that you know, that's a breach of contract thing. So that that's a different conversation. But um you know that and that water uh master plan that we're working on right now, I'm not looking forward to the the the capital improvement plan when it rolls out because it it will it will have it will have those details and they have not gotten cheaper since since I got here pre-COVID. So yeah, started with the thundercloud or the storm cloud here of of water that it it it gets better from here, but water is not um not an easy topic. Um I and I do want to kind of keep you guys are the council of today. You control the rates, you control the

investment, you control the direction of where the community is going. It is not your fault that we have 50 to $80 million in deferred maintenance in the water utility. Um it's up to us to try and find a way out of it. We're also not going to fix it with this one fiscal year. It's it's going to take a while to to to build out of this. Any other conversations, questions when it comes to water? I just got one on the the formula that we're that we're using for the capital improvement. Are are we looking at things like the you know system replacement value and then what's the life of these assets and helping us get at and what's the risk of them failing of course.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's what we we when we take those capital improvements and unfortunately the original like I said the the the current adopted master plan the low reservoir which we know what happened with low or high reservoir and low reservoir they weren't identified in that they were kind of considered they knew they were you know it's a it's a giant bathtub um they knew they were 100 years old they knew they had roof issues um but it wasn't really part of the consideration back in 2019. Well, obviously times have changed and now they are. Um, you know, and so trying to program these in it's it's it's a challenge because just like the transmission line and the intake, I don't want to feel like I'm doing a disservice to you to say I'm I'm not going to include them because because we did this exercise a couple years ago where you know the we we showed you what it would take and we would need $20 million of basically instantaneous money to start funding these within the next four years and you're not going to generate that that much revenue. and have water be anywhere close to be affordable. And I I mean I I go to uh associate uh Idaho Association of Cities. I go to American Public Works Association conferences. I talk to other public work directors. I talk to other communities. We're not alone. This is not unique to Lewon. um you know some some communities and you'll see um some of our other utilities are in better shape and but you know just right now um America is kind of coming off um a period of time where we need to invest in our public infrastructure. All right. Uh sanitation sanitation is the in opposite of what we just talked about. Um the only real um capital uh facility that we have is this transfer station with a little bit of

equipment to operate that. We don't have a fleet of garbage trucks. That's all contracted out. Um and so you'll see the capital is significantly smaller. We we'll move a little bit money in there because we have some larger investments coming. I'll talk about um but this operating reserve is large. There's that's we're not we're not kidding. Uh that we know that that's a large reserve, but we also knew um you know SDI Sunshine Disposal their contract was actually built into the current budget. It's been taken a while to get to the decision that will tonight will be the third reading. Um so that may sway the direction of of where we recommend for rates. Um but the bigger one is uh Aoten County Landfill. They we signed a 10-year contract with them 10 years ago. It expires at the end of this calendar year. Their rate is going from $48 a ton to 60some a ton. So whatever that percentage wise is every scrap of paper, every dirt, every garbage goes to a soap county landfill. So we will feel that. So this was somewhat built up over the course of the last probably three or four years in such a way that the rates never really got revenue has stayed up um ever since co you saw uh sanitation revenue stay consistently up. City never really had to raise rates like they did with water. It's stayed fairly level. But moving forward now that we know where Soten County is going to land on their um tipping fee that was not known up until probably last year and we we will after tonight hopefully know where we are with the sunshine disposal contract so we can project forward where those rates are. We don't want to say just refund all of this money out and drop rates you know to or you know set rates

at whatever it is because rates continue to you know climb. We we want to everything just kind of compounds on top of each other over time. And so you want to let we're going to run in a deficit as operations. We will continue to run an op in a deficit as this reserve operating reserve gets eaten down. Uh and so the customers will not experience a rate increase uh of you know double digits or 8% or five whatever it is. we can keep those again consistent and predictable that your garbage rates will will fluctuate. You know, maybe we don't have to use a rate increase, maybe it's one and a half, maybe it's two and a half, but it's a very simple um rate increase.

So, on your uh operations expenses, that 8.3 million, what's that's projecting the increase with the landfill and everything? That's only sunshine. That does that's not this. Oh yeah, you're right. You're right. It does. It does. So what what what was that last year's number? I'd have to go pull that number for you. Whatever that percentage is. Yeah. Yeah. So whatever 48 divided by 60 is Yeah. It would be

and that's roughly I want to say I can't remember percentage of our budget. I think it's roughly 40% of our budget in sanitation. But I can I can go back and pull those numbers and give you the specifics on that. As I said for capital um that that was the picture of our road improvements. So those were done this month last month. Um so the road is is completed. Culac up there at Wild Dove Way is completed. Um so these are those were completed this year. Uh the transfer station floor is under design in this year's budget. The goal is to fund the construction in FY27 and our hope is that we can the budget or the fiscal year starts October one. We can go out there and rock and roll October first week of October. Um because the biggest thing is you don't want to do a transfer station floor uh uh you know tear out and construction in the spring or Christmas or any of those busy seasons when people are out there. we find that kind of that Labor Day late after post Labor Day before the holidays weather's still decent. People are still out, but our uh volume's down a little bit. So, that's probably the best time uh to do it. You know, you could probably do it in February. Uh but the weather would be more ideal for October. So, our goal is to get that floor done in um October. These figures here are projections. I don't we have some equipment replacement I think is built into this one. The the backhoe that tamps the the garbage in is I think part of this number. Um these are just placeholders. You know, knowing a large metal building, it's pretty rough environment. Um you know, a roof, uh some patching, some gutter, something. I don't expect to spend this money, but if it's not projected out,

um, you know, we can if we don't spend $250,000 in FY29, that just that just sits in those funds. We project forward our capital improvements. That just means that's another $250,000 we don't have to budget in capital going into FY30. Uh, so then that that makes the rate projection even smaller. That's the floor. That's the backhoe that I just talked about being replaced. This floor was replaced I think in 2010ish, maybe 2012. Uh it was a partial floor replacement. We're going to do a full replace well not mostly full uh upgrade the the push pit. There's a there's the wall right here. We're going to do some minor um upgrades to that just because you push against that. It's if you've ever been up there and look at that floor, it is a hard environment. Anything that comes out of a truck, it's acidic. It's it's it breaks down the the the concrete and over time it it just starts falling apart and the last thing you want is some cracks in that because then it gets really bad. So, um it's it's time to replace the floor.

You planning to do that all at the same time or are you going to peace meal it? Uh is it going to get shut down?

It will be shut down. Yes. Um I think what they want to do is what's called a mono slab. Um so it would be a single pour. Um, I'm not real crazy about it, uh, because I think they said it was three weeks, uh, 3 to four weeks for that. Um, which is that's a long time to have a transfer station at a commission. Um, I've been in contact with Sen County Landfill because that means all that traffic's you direct hall. Um, when we get kind of the the design back and the projection of what their construction schedule looks like, you can add chemicals to make that cure faster. And it's faster, but it costs money. So you you basically we have to pay Sunshine to do direct hall. So they get a it's in the contract instead of taking it to the transfer station, we pay Sunshine to go over there because it's it it it eats into their their trips because you there's only one scale over in Soten County. And so if it's a Friday afternoon and there's 50 people in line, those packer trucks get stuck in that same line. And so it it it really wrecks their routes. And so they they charge a premium. It's not an exorbitant premium. just covers their cost to go there instead of the transfer station. Um, and so if that cost is less than what those additives would be and we can save a week, we'll we'll do that. Um, but that it becomes an econ economic decision. But I we don't have that design back. And so I don't want to project of giving you this date will close and we'll be this close this far out. But once we lock in the budget, we lock in the design, I'll have more information probably uh July, August to have a have a better idea on the schedule. One of the things when I was I was talking to the guys up there because I go there quite often. Uh they said the last time that floor was replaced there was like these containers set up so people could dump it in the containers but they said that was really hard on the equipment and there was some concern about doing that again.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I'd like to talk about somehow um you know that you have the convenience of rolloff containers. It we we can't because Yeah. It's hard if you're talking about we get a lot of commercial, a lot of heavy stuff that it wouldn't fit for that, but you know, mom and pop cleaned out the garage and we'd have, you know, a pickup truck full of bags. That's easy. Um, but yeah, try and find a way to make it easiest for the customer is what we would try. And yeah, the funny, it's not funny, but uh, you know, when they did that, it was apparently like 110 degrees. So, nobody likes, you know, demolishing a concrete floor and and pouring concrete when it's a 110 and keeping that slab cool. Okay. Sanitation. Storm water. So, storm water is the newest one. Um, uh, you can see, uh, it's it's the reserves operating in capital are not quite where they want to be. um mostly because you know you've got it's it's not not much different. The scale of it is somewhat different from wastewater, but it's kind of the same thing. You're digging up pipes, you're excavating, you know, replacing pipe networks, you're digging uh retention ponds or, you know, whatever underground stuff. So that it just doesn't come cheap. Uh some of these projects that were in the original master plan are far, you know, far excess of of, you know, $1.4 million that are in the reserves today. Um, you can see the revenue expenses. Uh, you know, we'd like to build the capital. It's kind of walking the tight rope because, uh, you need full construction drawings and designs for these projects and so you got to get out in front and design them, but then you're you're eating into your capital. So, you're you're slowly getting your designs built up, but then you don't have enough money to actually build them. Um this is the pond that was um dug out

expanded on capacity up by Stewart in Fain. Uh so yeah this again forecasting out um this year we finished the Steuart Avenue pond. Uh a lot of rock came out of that one. Um the next one is powers in this year's uh budget. These again these are not just for those specific projects. I should have done a little bit different of how how I labeled these. These are just parts of those, you know, these numbers match what's in your packet. So, that $1.1 million matches that um bottom of what was called out in in that uh capital spreadsheet.

That powers one by the roundabout.

Yeah. So, that's what what's shown here. Um that there's one that's in the roundabout that's not this one. So, uh, like a lot of the orchards, um, the community grew up around the the the topography, I guess we'll call it. Uh, you know, downtown, this this has been an urban core for, you know, the density, the concrete. Uh, it's been like this for hundred years. The orchards have have grown. Um, this pond is kind of a natural low spot. Uh, the ditch on Powers naturally drains into it. People have diverted the ditch in different directions filled the ditch. Uh a bulk of powers and probably some fane and some other neighborhood streets just drain into it. There is an easement for this pond, but it's somewhat landlocked. It's hard to get to. And so when we have significant rain events, the storm water crew need to go up there and pump that water out of the pond because it over tops and into private property and has caused property damage. And so that's one of there's a handful of priority projects and I think when we created storm water utility um people are now paying utility they expect service and so the handful like Stewart Pond that was a it it just didn't have enough capacity. So adding capacity we're seeing less flooding from the the basin that drains in the Stewart pond. This would be the same thing. I'm not I don't you know Jeff can answer any questions on to what they plan to do with this water. Um Bangal is another one. There's a handful of these projects that are kind of already shelf ready other you know you get the designs moving forward on Bengal field powers is I think designed these are projects that we've known about for a while and now we have the funding to to build them or getting the funding to build them. So that's that's the priority right now for uh the storm water folks so they don't have to go out there and pump pump the pond dry every time it rains. What are we what are we doing to ensure

these ponds that we're digging don't just turn into a mosquito breeding p?

That's part of the operation and maintenance that we go out there and and make sure you know if they've got a weir that there's no obstructions in them that you know that there's no weeds that there's not garbage fill filling in them. Um case in point like the southway that's a obviously a significant drainage comes down there. Um, we TVD that line and if you've ever driven Southway, you probably know where all that dirt came from, but that whole pipe network was full of dirt and so we had to vector that out and clean all the the dirt. So, yeah, that's what that's what the we have now two people that go out there and that's what they do is maintain that system. So, a lot of it is just understanding the pipe network where your pinch points are. There's some areas where the the pipe network is unders sized and so there's some areas on 21st Street where we're out there making sure there is no obstructions in there because we are we're tight for pipe capacity. But then there's other areas where we're getting dirt out of the pipes or you know pulling garbage out of these ponds. You know that's that's what we're owing them for.

What what do they do to fix that? What does that look like? Maybe I can have Jeff talk about that. So, we there's another pond that's located by the roundabout. We're going to divert part of the water. Stand up and introduce yourself for the record because we have folks at home listening. They want to know who you are. Jeff Wymer, the storm water coordinator. And we plan on diverting a portion of the water that flows to this pond over to the roundabout pond. But we have to make sure that we don't overflow that pond either. So we're doing some hydraulic analysis right now to see how much water we can do that.

Is the goal to get rid of this all together so that you don't No, I don't think we'll be able to get rid of it all together. We'll be able to manage the water better by diverting a portion of that water off that actually ends up into this place.

And you have to do that every time it like overfills like you have to go over and I don't know what the looks like. Yeah, sometimes we have to monitor this. Every time we have a large rain event, we'll drive back there and look to see how, you know, what our capacity is. And if it's getting close to over topping, then we send a crew out there and then they'll pump that water off and it they actually pump the water back to that other pond that we're where we want to divert the water to, the one in the roundabout. So, they don't need any um actual construction changes like any kind of new concrete or um there there will be some piping piping

piping and curve work and possible swailes. We're we're still in the uh design phase really early into the design phase though. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. So, question on your storm. I was looking at your list you have on here of the orchard design study. I know one of the biggest complaints of Orchard residents is that they're paying the storm water fee, but there's no storm water drain by their house. So, we can probably look forward to some extensive work after this design study is done. Yeah, I'm let Jeff talk about that one again. Yeah.

Yeah. Part of the design study that we're looking at is the uh the sixth in a burl area because currently when it rains there's water that ends up clear out in this intersection there. So we want to design a project that'll uh take care of that area. And then also down on sixth from about Warner down to u down through that corridor there. We want to uh try to uh minimize the flooding there because it's pretty undersized system there. Open ditch line goes to pipes, plugs up, ends up with property damage there also. But there there will also be other areas too that we identify as the program grows too. Anything else on storm water? All right. Wastewater. So, wastewater again is uh I talked about the different financial models earlier. Water is the one that is not um is in the in the hardest shape right now. Wastewater, I would say, is the opposite right now. Why don't we give Nate a hard time because this is what your goal is when you're operating utility. Um, you know, they they were um getting a bond for the wastewater plant. They cash flowed a lot a good portion of the money, but they still needed to build the bond for the treatment plant. And hopefully in Nate and I's lifetime, we don't have to build another wastewater treatment plant. Um, so you won't have that large of an investment. But um a utility's goal is to not have to go to these large bond bonds. And so you're seeing the bulk of what we need

to do are these pipeline replacement. There's I think two more and I'll identify them in a little bit projects out at the wastewater plant, but other than that, the bulk of what we need to invest in are pipelines. Um and it takes a lot to get the design, the contractor, and then get this. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, I don't want to say hundreds of miles, but dang near hundreds of m probably actually, you know, over a hundred miles of these pipeline replacements. Um, we try to make these as, um, affordable as far as trenchless technology where they do slip lines or pipe bursting. Uh, that's significantly cheaper than digging the pipe up with trench boxes and excavators, shutting down the whole street. Um, but the case in point would be the Snake River Avenue project. We thought we could do the majority of that trenchless. You got out there and the conditions were not um you know the trench. They originally dug that trench uh right up against the cliff. We knew there was rock. We knew there was a cliff, but we did not realize they didn't really bed that pipe. And so trying to expand that pipe, it didn't work in those conditions. So then we we dug it up. Um and so that that adds adds money to the project. I I'm again here's there equity buyins because equity buyins everybody pays equity buyin. So there's two equity buyins for wastewater. There's the collections and then treatment. So if you're in a COSD you don't pay the collections equity buyin but everybody pays the equity buyin for the treatment. And so that again would I have a project I'll show in a little bit that would be you know specifically uh uh eligible for some of these equity buyins. This debt fund is uh the exact same as what I talked about earlier with water. So these these funds in reserves are not really equity buyins would be eligible for a very specific project. These are specific for the the the debt funding. Um capital uh that's that's a big figure. There's $15 million

is is a lot of money in the bank. Um but you can see capital moving forward projecting out um you're you're going to be running at a deficit. Um and that that money in case in point you can start seeing these these numbers this is what we spent will have project or what we had budgeted in this year's budget. So if you had $15 million in this budget I mean again that's a snapshot that money is moving in and out um dang near $15 million in 26 in pipeline replacement design uh Southshore all the things that were in the budget. It's a it's a long list. Where water has a somewhat short and expensive list, uh wastewater, you'll notice, has a a a longer list that they're all, you know, 4 million, 1.5 million, 1 million, several hundred,000. And these are not small items. I mean, I don't take it for granted that these are, you know, overall we're asking for $9.2 million. Um this is a major utility. I mean, just like any, you know, out out at the mill. Um it costs a lot of money to keep this pipe moving, keep your capital improvements moving, keep and keep operations moving. And so you can see uh just projected ahead. These are the farther you get out, the less certain you are about these numbers. Uh this is the headworks building. This is the one that's out at the So that's the main receiving center for the wastewater when it comes into the plant. This was not upgraded as part of the the facility. Uh so now this is the pinch point as far as capacity. The plant's running just fine. Um knowing that the headworks would need to be expanded at some point, you know, in the near future. Um so that's a that's a big investment that is specific to expanding capacity. So that would be funding that would be eligible for for you know from the equity buyins for that specific uh project. Um

these are all generally we go through what's called NASCO. Uh it's a pipe um national accepted pipe assessment. What is it? One through one through five.

One through five. So if you've got a bad number, it it everybody, it doesn't matter if it's in Clarkston or if it's in Tampa Bay, Florida, the number is the number. And so it's a nationally accepted number. And so we just identify all the bad pipe and then put it on this list. And so we try to when we work with the contractors uh and bid these out, it goes by basins. And so when you accept the the contracts every year, you'll see it's basin 6B or whatever. And I don't even understand all how all these basins are done, but it makes it easier to construct because you've identified the NASCO rating for this particular segment averages low. We're going to go in there and replace these pipes and it's easy to fix them because it's it's in one area and then we just move through the basins as they're, you know, as it's necessary. Uh and it's not replacing brand new pipe. It's not creating jobs for us to keep busy. did is we've defi we we go by the national scoring system. We've identified pipes that need to be replaced. We try and find them. You know, as I said, if we could slip line them, pipe burst them. We'll do whatever we can. But you can see the five-year projection is $47 million. It it doesn't feel like we have too much money in the capital reserves at 15 because that money will cycle through and will continue to cycle through as we make more investments in the pipe. So, as we um grow out east and having all those new developments, you said that the water is provided by Lloyd, but is the new sewer provided by Orchards, East Orchard Sewer District or the city?

So, like um there are some boundaries that move and kind of overlap out there. There are, you know, East Orchard sewer project that's kind of a driver with the URA that is city sewer. So, that is being built. All those that are going out. Yeah. Yeah. It's the Greco stuff. Oh yeah. So all of that is Yeah. That is us. So on the East Orchard Sewer um project pipe replacement, is that reflected in the capital revenue? Yes. Yes, it is.

U Yep. Yep. Yeah. And so that's also somewhat deceiving in some of these figures. I shouldn't say deceiving. It's the revenue doesn't necessarily mean it's always coming in from rateayers because I'm just trying to show you how much money is taken in in revenue and some of it will be URRA some of it will be grants some of it a lot of it will be rateayer money and then the expenses well that's a so capitals so that's where those those go out so yes that that money is counted as part of that revenue so I'm probably jumping ahead but if we have rate increases for instance for this wastewater and the orchard is paying us will their rates increase?

Yes. Yep. Yeah. That's reflected in the in the the rate sheet when it comes across. They you know most if you're a customer to the city of Lewon, you pay a flat fee. Uh we meter Lloy or Lewon Orchards you're no we meter COSD and LOSD and so they pay by um what is it the cubic foot or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So they pay by volume and then we we charge them. So that's Yes. And then they bill their customers however they build them. So what's the average life of these pipes that we're putting in? So these pipe burst pipe

That's a good I mean these pipes aren't under pressure. Um which is a good thing and a bad thing. Um it it it can vary so much because a lot of it is if it's built in good bedding material, you don't have root intrusion. Um you you get because you don't want you want your pipes kind of at a slope where you're getting good drainage out of there. Uh I mean obviously we've got pipes in city that are um 100 plus years old and I don't like the the sewer that's in front of the courthouse. There's some segments in there that are flowing just fine and they were probably built in the 30s. Um, and so that's not really that big of an issue. It's a lot of times you get um, construction practices haven't been consistently good through all, you know, decades. Uh, pipe material isn't always necessarily good. Uh, you get root intrusion in some of these stuff. you'll get um segments that settle and so you get a that's how you get the the the sink holes where the the pipe is separated and so the sewer will get outside of the pipe and then start bringing in debris. Um but it it's all that's why we TV we try and TV as much sewer pipe as we can because you start catching that stuff and then you don't have if you like root intrusion if you can get in there and cut those roots out you save yourself replacement of that pipe. But if the roots get in there and they're allowed to kind of get in there and pop the pipe and cause sink holes, then you're replacing that pipe,

right? So, and that kind of stuff sounds more like the the dayto-day, not really project. That's just the kind of maintaining the pipes. And if you get some weird scenario, maybe you got to dig a hole and replace that you wouldn't expect. We want to go out there and TV it and video it and and so you'll see it's just a box. It's a big white box truck and you'll see people out there with cones and light flashing and they're out there and they're running cameras down these lines looking at them and then you'll see the flusher truck that goes out there and we want to flush those lines and so if there's anything again roots I mean it's hard to get roots our stuff but um you go there any obstructions you'd be amazed what you find in those lines

it's not supposed to be there. So, in general, would you say it's fair to say 60 to 80 years a pipe? HP is what we're Sorry, come on up, Nate. I'll just say it because I can't can't handle it without saying it. So, HTP is what we're installing 90% of the time right now. And HTTP is a newer product, but life expecties between 50 and 100 years. 50 and 100 HTTP. HDP, would you introduce yourself for the record? I'm Nate Smith. I'm the wastewater utility manager.

So, how how much I I guess maybe more a ratio um percentage do we have of piping in the sewer system that's 50 years plus? The majority. Majority.

Yeah. So, right now I can give you a pretty So, the entire city's been CCTV and we have scoring on every pipe in town including LOSD. So 6 and 8 in line is the majority of the lines in town based on current NASCO scores. So four and five are considered critical and need to be replaced as soon as possible. Uh we're at about 62.5 million in pipes that needs replaced today. Um my goal is to you know we could do we're doing three to five million a year. It really depends on the area but you might be doing between two and five miles of pipe. There's 110 miles we take care of. So the goal is is 20 to 25 year mark to have all that replaced. And then you know at that point though things that might have been at two or three now maybe threes and fours then so that you'll probably continue that project or that's my goal is yeah between 20 25 years to have all those lines replaced.

What was the total amount? 62.5 million was the last numbers I've seen. Okay. Thank you.

And that's just the six and 8 inch lines in town. Any other wastewater questions? Oh, yeah. The biggest driver I think right now um is pipeline replacement. All right, this is the one everybody wants to get to. So, what what does all this mean to user rates? Um, I provided you this exact uh Joe Customer uh utility bill last year uh at the public hearing to adopt the rates. And so if you look, we uh raised rates whatever a little over $4, $430 from. And what I did, what I did for a you average Joe customer uh was trying to build something of a realistic utility bill. But I know the biggest thing is always water. If you're a a large irrigator, you have a big garden, a big yard, you're going to use this probably in five five days or a week, um that's that's five what I call five units or 500 cubic feet of water, which is I think almost 40,000 gallons, like 37,000 gallons of water. But I wanted to make it somewhat scalable, you know, because I can't build um you know, budgets off, you know, the the the bell curve, the ones on either end. I tried to find your average somebody in a averagesized lot uh that's a average user maybe you know just a a retired couple uh a 3/4 inch meter uh put them in a location that was the higher the more expensive um drainage system utility uh regular wastewater service

charge and a 64gallon tote for sanitation. And that ended up being in 20 24 was 141. We raised the rates uh to 145. And so that's kind of where we we're where we're at today is that is generally uh and that's full service. That's recycling, that's waste water, that's water um and storm water.

You said the five So if someone had like more than the 500, you would just multiply that by the 1974. Is that right? No, that 1974 is you go five that's your total consumption times your 500. So it's like 30 cents. I could back calculate it, but I it doesn't I don't have the the consumption rate right here. Okay. I was trying to kind of do some math on if like someone had a really a bigger lot, you know, and how much what's the worst case scenario? Yeah, I I'll have that for you when we get to the public hearing, but I I don't have I mean, I could back calculate it here, but it's it's 30.

So, the problem is we everybody in the industry goes by um uh units and so it's this would be five units of water, but we had some customers that couldn't understand. They were fr frustrated and want to know, well, how much is that? And so, we changed it to 100. And so, now I'm trying to do the math on my head. So, it used to be like it's like 0.003 003 something rather where it used to be like $3 and something a a unit. But I will get you all that number when we and show you what we're in today and what we're proposing at the public hearing. So with all that being said, um what we wanted to do was to try and find uh a feasible way to adjust the utility bill for the customer. And so we we took that and said, "Okay, so a three and I talked about CPI, a three and a half% rate increase, which with everything going on with inflation right now seems to be in line with where we're at across the, you know, expenses." Uh, and so that's roughly $5 a month. And so to take that bill and say we're we are proposing to take the average bill from 145 to 150 which is a three and a half% rate increase for the bill and then allocate that into our utilities based off of need. And so as I showed you wastewater is only a 1% rate increase because where we're we're moving along. We have revenue we have funds within the reserves. We have revenue coming in. It's at a at a a decent position right now. Um and same with sanitation. This depending on what happens tonight, I may come back with a slightly different number, higher or lower depending on where we end up with SDI. But you saw the reserve balance within sanitation. Don't see a need to to raise this. We

know we're going to operate within a deficit. And so that one is another a smaller um number for the utility rate. Um storm water is one where this is year three. When this was adopted three years ago, the council adopted it at 50% uh capital. So it budgeted the full uh operations and maintenance. So, we've got people out there maintaining the pipe, but we don't have we're only having half of what the recommendation was in the capital improvement plan to fund that. And that those numbers were based off of pre-COVID numbers. So, you can imagine we're probably closer to like 25 30% of what the capital budget is. So, we we were asking or would be asking for a dollar per eru. So, this would go from 740 to 8.40. that obviously when you get your rate sheet at the final public hearing that's going to be a big percentage. So whatever percentage increase of 740 to 840 is but that's that's reflective of the of the um eru because it's a smaller number. We run into that a lot with with some of our public works fees when you change the the fee from 10 cents to 11 cents. It's a 10% increase but it's only 11 cents or 1 cent on on 10 cents. Water was the big one. Water is a uh requesting a five and a half percent increase and that's based off of all capital demand and where we need to make the investment. And so this was the approach that staff took to say how can we make this utility bill uh more digestible for the public while at the same time trying to find the revenue in the areas that the revenue is needed for the capital investment. So, um, that's where I'm going to stop for a conversation because we're gonna based off of the feedback I get from you. We

will build our budget on these enterprise funds with these rates and then bring it for you forward to you at the the rate hearing in a month or two. And then that will be part of our budget moving forward into FY27. And so I I wanted to educate you and give you all the information you needed to know up till now. This is where I need some feedback on you as far as what you think about this proposal. Question. When you say 5.5%, are you talking both to the the fee of water per cubic foot and the fee on the meter? Yeah. So 5.5 on both of those.

Yep. Last year we tried something uh as far as locking the meter um because that was we we held that meter fee at $39 last year. Um but then we didn't raise the rate to the 10%. So I think we got maybe a little too cute trying to find a way to make it more palatable. Um and there there's been a lot of conversation I guess I guess I'm glad you brought up the meter fee. We're changing the nomenclature. It's in the code as base fee. It is not meters are part of it, but it's such a small portion of it. This is this it it's based off the size of your meter. So that's why it's called the meter, but it is a base fee. And so if you have a house and you never turn your water on, I still have to, you know, I have to maintain the pipes and make the water, charge the system. So when you turn the pipes on, when you turn your water on, it's there. And so that basically pays for the fire hydrants outside your house, the pipes, the distribution system, everything up to that. Your consumption fee is for the water that you actually consume, the treatment of the water and the pumping and all that other stuff. And so that's that's where I think that's one of the biggest questions I get when when are you going to pay off these meters? We've been paying for them for decades and it's it's not for the meters. It's it's for the base um no usage portion

is a good idea. That is a sticking point. Yep. Yeah. I I I intended to do it last year and then it slipped the the utility uh resolution. So what were we planning to try to change it to? Base was base fee.

Yeah. And it will probably have we'll have to delineate because there's base fee, three quarter inch meter, one inch meter, all the way up to the meter sizes, but it is it's only based off of your meter fee because that's how much water you could consume if you opened it. And most people are 3/4 or one inch. A lot of water. People don't recognize how much water like a 4 inch would far exceed most needs. So, if you looked at your five-year plan, which you provided us with all those projects with if this was an annual increase for five years, would it keep up?

Based off of the costs that I know today for water, no. No, I mean, but no, because yeah, like I said, we've got uh probably 16 million in the intake and then another 20 million on the transmission line. Um I I the intake is kind of uh sitting there. We have an intake. So that is not that was never intended to be the intake that we use. It's been a a legacy, but it is not a I wouldn't see say see say that as a critical piece of infrastructure. It's just something that we needed to have done and we're still struggling to have it done. The transmission line that's different, but I don't have the funding for it. I mean, if you not including those, just the ones you put on this list,

it would get us closer. Um, you know, it would get us to Yeah, it would it we're going to be squeaking through the door to get this low reservoir done. We're basically spending all of the available cash to get low reservoir taken on or rebuilt. If we have this revenue backfilling that, we hope to have enough revenue to start on those one of the other two reservoirs. And so it's it's emptying the bank account for FY27, emptying the bank account for 28, emptying the bank account for 29, and then seeing grants and ex, you know, those those types of things can really change things quickly. I don't see a lot, you know, it's like this. The thing that we've gotten the most right now are emerging contaminants. So that was that alkalinity at the water plant and then some more uh sewer pipe up in the orchards. I'd love to spend that money on that transmission line or get something like that done, but that was not what the grant was for. And so, um, this gets us closer and we can only do, you know, this is we're budgeting FY27. So, like I said, we'll empty the bank account to get that emer that urgent issue resolved and then we'll start looking at those other two reservoirs. Transmission line, I I don't have an answer for. So I guess for me looking at them, you know, you'd think that 5.5% it kind of seems like well what it equals here equals a dollar.

Yeah. Yep. 5.5% of 19 and end run that is much me as a consumer user. It's I can accept that. Um but usually it all depends on how it comes across in the media. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the hard part is is it's it's projected and I you know it's funny in the valley you've got you've got other competing water systems. I've talked to Lloyd a lot. They are they're obviously uh they come to me and they say yeah we we're in a similar situation but they've got their other um issue with with you know diverting the irrigation water. I looked up Moscow today. Moscow's uh higher than us um on they've got a tiered water system. They've got water um source issues. We've got lots of water rights. We've got lots of water source. It's just trying to get on that front. Our our issue, I don't want to pick on Moscow. I love Moscow. I work with them closely, but we've got all the water. We fix these these kind of these $20 million items. We're smooth sailing. They they've got they're they've got a a a water source that's getting farther away from them. So probably I know we don't have like a crystal ball but um like for instance when I went down to the the AIC leadership training they talked about the city of Star which has only been in existence for I think since the 80s or 90s. I don't remember the exact date. So their pipes all new. I mean it's you know maybe 20 years old. So they don't have that issue. So they're obviously their rates are going to be a lot more affordable because they're not playing catch-up on deferred maintenance. So really the to the consumer the reason that we're having such a high increases and such high water bills is because of our infrastructure aging and having to try to capitalize improvement. So let's say in the in the perfect world we get everything updated. We're we're looking like star now we have all updated infrastructure. Do you ever think we'd get to a point where we can actually have a more lower rates? Like now we can tell the people, hey, we're dropping your bill now because we're up to gate on our infrastructure.

Yeah. And that's where it it there was, you know, when we programmed it, you know, to do the intake on the financial model, they built it so high and then reduced it. And so the goal is not to ever have to refund or lower rates. I mean, you could lower rates if you have a say a water treatment plant and then you paid that that debt off. And so now you you backfilled $2 million and say, "Okay, yeah, we're rates were super high. We can we can lower that because we don't have that debt service anymore." But typically, you're programming projects behind that as as the need arises. So you don't have to carry a debt like that. What the way you want to do it is, you know, you're you're just you're flirting with uh uh CPI. As inflation goes up, you're maybe a tick above or tick below. And so, yeah, you you paid off these projects and so you had a consistent 10-year period where you were below inflation one or two percent. And and then everybody else's rates are going up and you you then you become if your your your uh system's healthy, your reserves are are healthy, you have enough money to fund everything in your capital improvement plan, you've caught up with it. And so you you're just kind of riding that that line right there and oh yeah, we actually have the cheapest water in the valley. So that's how it got there.

So more not so that we're going to say oh now we're so up to today we're going to drop your bills, but more that hopefully we get to a point where we stay steady.

Stay steady. Yeah. I And you know I I don't want to speak for whoever's in my shoes when the water treatment plan is paid off in 15 years. Um or maybe that's the 30-year loan. Um anyway, when that's paid off, that's that's a significant chunk that's going from your utility bill to that debt service. It obviously built some significant infrastructure, but I think you know, whoever's in my shoes, you know, 10 years or 5 years before that's debt services finalized, programming, okay, you're going to see this debt come off the books, how does that program out into our capital improvement plan? And yes, maybe that is we're going to drop the rates, you know, 10% because we we we're ahead on all our improvements and all these other things, but I have a hard time seeing that with water right now with everything that's that's out there.

What are dates on those each of the debt the bonds? Wastewater is a 20-year loan. 15 years. Yeah. And water is 25. Okay. 15 and 25. So we're left probably 12 years left on wastewater and 12 years left on wastewater left on waste water waste water and then 22 22 23 23 on water.

I've got a question. So when it when it comes to kind of the overall budget when we're doing taxes, one of the things that I assume saves you money to or not saves you money but makes it so you don't have to raise taxes as much is you had growth in your city. There's new customers paying taxes so you don't have to raise taxes as much to keep up with inflation because your growth is helping you keep up with inflation. What is our growth in new customers and more water being used?

Yeah. And and I guess you're kind of hitting on I mean so wastewater and is is good because everybody's using us. And so you'll that's why you if you look closely and you have the pack, you can go back and look at revenue. If you're if you're a city resident, you pay the city of Lewon somehow. Even if it isn't if you're in a sewer district, you're still paying us for treatment. So you're see there's a much larger revenue in wastewater. What's happening in water and it just that's the way the city developed. Lloyd has a good portion you know 50% I don't know what the percentage is now but it was roughly it's probably 55 to 45 now. And so and that's where the growth is and so basically half of our city or less than half of our city are paying our water. uh and it's we have large investments in that and we're only getting revenue from half of our customers and the areas of growth are actually in a different water district. So that's kind of one of the reasons it's it's been a struggle to just build that capital up.

But the orchards isn't actually putting strain on the water usage. They're completely separate to that pocket because they don't you don't give them that service. Nope. Nope. Yeah. They're completely separate water district and they're, you know, again, we work closely with Lloyd in different areas and and again they the the the sewer districts were built in the 70s. Lloyd was has been being built. So again, the pipe in those areas are probably I know are newer than what we've got downtown. What's the rate we need in order to when we have to go to a vote? I can't remember. Is it about 5% I thought. Are you talking about public hearing?

Yeah. Well, no. I thought we had to go surface edged. You had to actually go to a vote, but that might not be for waste, not for water. Not for utility fees. Not for Okay, that must just be All right. Would that 1.5% increase uh for sanitation be necessary if we don't uh adopt the 18% increase?

That's what I need to look at. Um, I would probably if it wasn't I need I I need to look at the project whatever number the council lands on tonight. I'm not super concerned one way or the other because it it it will we've you've seen the reserves operationally we'll we'll absorb it. I don't want to uh spend down those reserves too quick because you get two two lines that don't converge very well. Um but yeah, it it could be dropped. I mean it now we're talking about, you know, the revenue, you know, going, you know, what's the difference between a half a percent or 0% and one and a half percent on a $24 tote? Um it wouldn't wouldn't be that much, but um that number Yeah, that number could be adjusted based off of what the conversation is tonight. I do have transportation to talk about after this just for one more thing.

Uh was that 3.5? Guess I'm not maybe that's just me but the 5.5% is just the water and where's the 3.5 coming from? So I took the overall bill, so adding all of the average customers rates including water, wastewater, and their their rate is currently based off of this average Joe is $145. I thought it is reasonable based off of current conditions. A three and a half% rate increase for the to overall for the total bill, which equates to $5. And then I took that $5 and put it into these rate increases.

Oh, I see. So that would be the full amount is the that would be the full amount. So you're asking a average customer to go from 145 to 150, right? Okay. And as I said, the caveat is if you're a large water consumer,

it's going to be four and a half or whatever it is. You'll never be more than five and a half because that's the highest in increase. So going back to my my previous question on um growing to offset increasing every year is that uh apartment complexes within the the downtown city area or you know the city not the orchards we need it when I was looking through the fee types it seemed like apartment buildings is a good source of

Yeah. Yeah. Uh and those buildings that are being built um East Ridge Estates, those are all in city water. So you're starting you'll you'll see more consumers there. You know, all the all the development up by the high school, you know, they they've been a customer. They are a customer. Um, so yeah, it's not been flat, but um, you know, you you you kind of get I don't want to I don't you look at the revenue and how wastewater is able to to kind of keep up um with with all of the they obviously have a backlog of needs. It's that they also have a more robust revenue stream.

Yeah. Yeah. I'd be I if if you're able to get those numbers, I' I'd be interested in understanding how customer growth has occurred, how water usage has increased and how how that's hurting or helping us. Yeah, it's a unique because like I said, Moscow, it's a water um source issue and so you see a lot of cities in the west where you know, you have these tiered water systems, you have water conservation. Lewon, yes, I acknowledge it. Water is expensive in Lewon. Um, but we have all the water you'll ever need. We'll sell it to you all day long. You know, we have the Clear Water River and we have these wells that can produce and get it out to you. Barge it down to you.

Yeah. Yeah. Keep the dams and barge the water. Just have a comment. Um, just a just a reminder that when the citizens voted uh to turn down the bond, they voted for increases. They expected everything to go up. So when we have these rates and stuff, that's that's a way we can help pay for main street projects. Old pipes need replaced way around it.

Okay. Um if that is it, I will we will load our um rate sheet by these numbers. Um I'll like I said, I will have a another breakdown because that will be a a a public hearing. So, I'll break down have more I'll have the actual rate um what you're charged per per unit of water um and probably give you a little bit more breakdown. I'll probably even maybe I'll have time to give you some trends of how much water we produce and how much we sell and and and I can also probably give you we have all that data.

All right. Uh the last one, transportation. Uh we talked about a lot of this at our last meeting uh regarding Brighton. Um so this is kind of just a a continuation of that conversation. I think almost everything that you're seeing under construction right now or at least that's being discussed currently is funded through a grant in some some form or another. um you know our um um STP surface transportation funds uh the allocation that I talked about that's been you know funding Snake River Avenue 9th Street grade and then moving on to Brighton that one I think it was what 66 $6600,000ish uh annually um this LSIP program uh it's safe I call it you know safety money uh that is a good program we I think we have three active projects currently It is not a program that you want to use as a as a backbone for your transportation network because that means you've had a significant accident or a bunch of significant accidents or fatalities more often than not. And so you it it's based off a criteria. So that's what we're funding Brighten Canyon with. Uh some improvements on 8th Street and I think there was one up in Bane and Brighton. So um that that is obviously we've got a lot we've had success with that but not for the right reason. Um, and I, you know, we can go through all these grants, but I think the number one I talk about people talking about the meter fee. The other thing is why are you building that road? Why are you building that road? It's either been uh obligated into the federal STP realm decades ago and I didn't think it would be wise to pay back all the money that we've spent to move on to another program or it was, you know, uh, a TAP sidewalk project. So, those are grants. TAP is transportation alternatives. That's typically sidewalks near or in front of schools. So last year it was uh this in

front of Jennifer. Um safe streets for all. These are all um projects that we've built uh or or uh grants that we utilize for the projects that we've built. Um the the So that's the fund, you know, FY27 significant amount of money, $5.1 million. We ended up paying a local match. Um, typically the federal match is uh 7.34. Uh, sometimes I think some of these, which one was it was 20%. Um, the safe streets for all.

Yeah, safe streets for all is a 20% match. And so, um, you'll need to to match those. Uh, again, talking about reserves, uh, it it it's somewhat deceiving. So, in these reserves, uh, I talked to Bill last week about Brighten with the arterial reconstruction program. Um, and again, snapshot of when it was last week. I gave you the number. It was five and some change based off of what was in the bank or it would be seven million if you um if you fund it in this fiscal year. This number is actually a little bit more accurate because the money that I gave you was I took the money that was contributed and subtracted out the money that was budgeted. This figure is audited money because we didn't spend the full budget because there was a design and then there was another oh another grant application and so this you know fattened it up by a couple hundred,000 that we didn't spend. So um that's what's sitting in the arterial reconstruction program. The reserves can be deceiving um because you know you talk about this pot of reserves like it's funds that are you know you can spend you look at this ending balance of $13.5 million. Why don't you just go build Brighton tomorrow? Well, these both of these funds are potentially like the reserves are are better example. They're obligated for, you know, some of these reserves came from state for pave pavement preservation or a specific grant that is already dedicated to a project that's currently funded um or specific uses. I can't spend pavement preservation money on Brighton because it's not a pavement preservation job. So, um, transportation is really a a hard time, hard, um, in I don't want to call it a enterprise fund because there's so many different pots of money coming in. You always have to hold back some money because you've got um, grants that you're going to have matching funds for. And so, I can tell you, again, this

is a snapshot. 13.5 million is sitting in the bank. I have projects budgeted and scheduled moving forward, but that's that's not available for today's projects. So, you know, I guess any questions, conversations about these? Yeah, the the sewer lines. Is it sewer lines right outside this building that's being done right now? Is that what that is? Water. Oh, water lines. Okay. So, the water lines get replaced and then they're working on the street right now. Is that all coming out of the water budget or is that water 5050? That's all water.

Yeah. And so if you'll notice some of these pipeline projects even even this one this anything downtown water related was paid for through the the co um what's the

ARPA money ARPA money. So that had to be it's obligated that it has to be spent by the end of this calendar year. But typically you see a lot of these water projects. There's not enough money in water. That's like Main Street. We We can't afford to repave and redo Main Street out of the water fund. And so that's where we needed to pull out out of the general transportation dollars. And so you're going to get this hodgepodge of uh going. So why don't

do we what's our typical thing that we do if if water or sewer lines are being replaced does the line itself comes out of that budget and then the street itself is typically the transportation budget we cut it and it's all done through water. So this one was all water. If if we get and we have some some transport you'll that's where we try and tie these like the main street where this project we're gonna you know sewer we're going to kick that slope back and it's going to be you know store building to store and we're going to rebuild the street then we'll kick in some some transportation dollars in there or southway I mean you put in those sewer lines that was all sewer yeah and then the

surface because they've they put that back yeah But oh, that was two separate projects. So yes, yes, we got out in front of it. You're right. You're right. Yeah, we got out in front of it. The stuff on the other side of the roundabout, that was all waste water paid for that patch. That was only waste water on that was only waste water. Everything from the roundabout towards Main Street was it well we we got in there, got that stuff fixed, and now that's a transportation project. That's a that's a STP funded project and another grant. And that's because we tore the road up and then to do the piping and then You would use the rest of the funds from transportation. No, that one that was a scheduled transportation project. We reached out to Nate's crew and said, "Hey,

you don't get to touch this road for 30 years. If you want to fix the pipe, you do it now." And they did. I Okay. It was a timing. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we try to do. Um getting out in front of some of these projects.

I did want to share with this is the last slide. Um this is the transportation um uh budget. So, this should match your uh spreadsheet hopefully. Should be Oh, there it is. Yep, it does. Look at that. Generally, uh so these are these are the projects. Uh and most of these you'll see um some of these are smaller items like the ADA improvements. So, that's just a budget item that we've held back um when we have an opportunity uh that an ADA ramp is broken and the city needs to go fix it. those ramps are way more expensive than you would think. So, this maybe covers two or three, if that, maybe two. So, that that's not a significant amount when when you're doing these ADA ramps. Uh service charges. Paving infill is another one where we, you know, an opportunity to pave alleyways or uh there's some dirt roads still in the network or um a developer is paved a brand new road, but he's not going to do this half a block. So, we'll pick up that little extra um to try and just make the system pull. The bulk of the rest of these are um grant funded projects or SDP projects.

Are they hard? H how often do we have options for ADA grants? Are they hard to come by? Are they um a lot of them? We get a lot. I mean, that's like the TAP funds. That's where those those go through. Um um safe routes to school tap. They don't typically cover the ramps though that you're No, these would be something that's not tied to a specific project where we find a ramp. Um I'm trying to think of the last one we've done. There was one somebody built one on 21st Street, a car lot, and the ramp was non-conforming. Next, they weren't going to do the improvements, and we said, "We'll just replace that ramp." And we we did we we we did that. Like a concrete concrete slab, right, where they

Yeah. with the truncated domes, the yellow things, and so yeah. Okay. And it doesn't necessarily need to be um ramps. Those are typical, but you know, a non-conforming sidewalk will go out there and it's typically the the responsibility of the property owner, but there's oddballs where it's just easier to go put an ADA compliant sidewalk in this section.

And that you're saying runs around 10 grand. A ramp right now is anywhere from four to $6,000 depending on the location and difficulty of it. So that doesn't This used to be a lot more money. We used to do a lot more of that, but just budget cuts. We've we've trimmed that down. This used to be I think closer to $100,000 and now we're down to 10. So those are the projects that we've got uh loaded. So yeah, the the this eighth street safety improvement, that's a LSIP safety money. We dovetailed. This is a pedestrian um grant. So they're on the same corridor. This one's doing ped ramp, bike, and ped. And this is doing lighting. That that was an LSIP. Had a fatality on that. Um Brighton, that was another LSIP. There was a fatality on that intersection. This is just design. Um Bane and Preston is one that is being funded through the arterial reconstruction program. That one feeds into So we've all talked about uh FHA 10th and Warner um that intersection. We looked at that. What is that? It used to be Wells Fargo. P1FCU bought it. They offered it up to the city. We couldn't get the traffic circulation with that property. Um you know, everybody said, "Well, just build a roundabout there." it didn't function because there's too much traffic on thing uh and you couldn't get it to work. We we tried uh and finally P1FCU sold it to the current property owner. And so the what we're basically trying to do is address this thing and Preston to take off a little bit of that traffic pressure off of of Tenth and Warner. So then we can address Tenth and Warner and Thane there. So

divots. No, this is well that's thing the street. This is just the intersection improvements of Preston and Tenth and Thane. So that's it. So that's your that's your capital is 6.2 that and that includes grants offshoot some of grants paying for stuff here and there. So that's what's the what's the city do you have a city number of what your capital is? I could get that for I don't think I have it off the top of my head here. Um I mean I guess we'll see it in the budget when the budget gets proposed.

Yeah. And that's that operations. And yeah, we can I should do that just to get you that information so you can see how much is property taxes, how much is grants, you know, because that's broken down. This is obviously capital, but a lot of that into into operations, too, that I think you guys would Yeah. would like to see. The operations is probably a good chunk of that. So, as far as this one on here, that's Brighton. That's Brighton Canyon. I'm Yep. Yeah, that's Brighton Can. the other bride like we talked last week. So in this budget, are you going to put forth any money to proceed with anything on that?

That did come up today. Uh that would come out of the arterial. Um and we have a meeting this week actually with the MO to ask them to ask for us or we will ask with them whatever um because it's programmed and it's not till 2030 2031 2030

2030 for right away and so if we went in there and secured the rightway whether it's FY27 or FY28 to just get off that and start that rightaway process. So, yeah, we have a we have a question. We have a call in uh to find that out this week. And so, that I'm glad you brought that up because it was in my notes. I forgot to bring it up. We may amend this to include that right away if if we get a a green light. Yeah, the director will be down here to meet with us before that. So, I can even update you at the meeting.

Does our do we I know we're looking at collecting impact fees. Um I really can't trying to utilize any of those for any kind of projects. Yeah, impact fees are tough. Um the city of Star impact fees and that's exactly what they are covering with

it's star is a great model for impact fees because they have a ve they had a very small community and are kind of growing with the rest of their neighboring communities. um because impact fees also they kind of like equity buyin fees but they're not for you know specific utilities. So you have like fire districts and park districts and transportation districts um but they can only be used for capacity expansion and so it wouldn't necessarily fix our pavement issue on thing and Brighton. It wouldn't you know so you so it's the same as the equity buying as far as it's the same thing. It needs to be used for uh capacity expansion.

Okay. Okay. Not to say we wouldn't, you know, some of these areas in East Orchards, um, but we've looked, we've really tried to find alternative funding sources and and you whether you want to call them, um, impact fees or whatever, it it's diff because you have you can't sit on them. And so we collect a certain amount of money um for transportation dollars as people come in, but impact fees are a different animal and you have to use them within a certain amount of period and document it and it's capacity expansion. And so it it's it's more challenging and sometimes we've looked at what the revenue would be. Would we get benefit out of it? So, okay.

Eight minutes. Well, the mayor's ditched this and it wasn't exciting enough. Okay. Well, I guess we'll move on to finish new business. City councilor comments. Do we have any tonight?

Uh the ASC leadership training this last week that I went to was actually really insightful. Um learned a lot about how different cities are going through struggles. We just talked about STAR. One of theirs is using impact fees to basically fund their police department. um they don't have nearly the same budget that we have. So they they have found some creative ways to be able to to use those impact fees. Some other cities and and how many cities are struggling with infrastructure issues just like we are or deferred maintenance. And so one of the things though that they said the legislators constantly say why aren't the cities using the foregone taxes? They are astonished of why we do not use those. and the city of Star every time they have budget come up they use their foregone taxes. So I don't know something interesting um maybe something worth talking about as a council and what the effects would be if we did start trying to utilize those impact fee or sorry foregone taxes to cover some of these major expenses that we're trying to get past. Uh so maybe we can get ahead of the ball. I'm not for it or against it, but it was definitely something interesting on how many cities are utilizing those fork on taxes and we're not using them at all. So, at least for the last couple years. Anything else? The mayor comments will pass on that. And last order item seven adjournment to adjurnn.

So move a second. Second motion made and seconded. We're returned. So good.