Town Council - Regular Meeting

this town of Mount Airy town council meeting to order. If you would please stand for the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. First up on the agenda tonight in our presentations, we have a proclamation to support Operation Greenlight for Veterans. And I will relinquish to our mayor, Mayor Hushower. Hello, Mount Airy. Um, I actually have two proclamations up here. I'm going to read the one with the uh with the bigger print first uh because I think I can make it through that one. It'll warm me up for the smaller print. Uh the first proclamation is for the town of Mount Ary proclamation municipal government works month. The mayor and town council of the town of Mount Ary proclaimed November to be municipal government works month. Whereas the town was incorporated in 1894. And whereas Maryland is home to 157 other municipalities. And whereas municipal government represents the most responsive level of government, allowing citizens to have direct access to elected officials. And whereas in an effort to educate citizens about municipal government and the importance of their participation, the town of Mount Air is proud to promote municipal government awareness. And whereas municipalities have enhanced the quality of life for their respective residents, maintaining natural and historic sites

and structures and helping to make Maryland a great place to live, work, play, and explore. Now therefore, be it proclaimed that the mayor and town council of Mount Ary do hereby join the Maryland Municipal League in declaring November to be the Municipal Government Works Month. So, that's our first proclamation. We appreciate our staff for everything that they do. Appreciate all of our elected officials back here uh representing the legislative body. And uh this proclamation will be hung up by the front door. So, thank you. that the second proclamation. We thought we were going to have somebody from Frederick County uh here tonight uh because they're the ones who actually offered us this proclamation and it's uh reflects Operation Greenlight for veterans. Uh veterans when they lead the military, it's a tough transition getting out. uh you know I I know that I was fortunate when I got out it it was quite a transition in terms of uh you're used to following orders and all of a sudden you're in the corporate world and uh and you don't even know where to move because you've been told for your entire service career exactly where you're going to live and what you're going to wear and it is a tough transition and some people uh slide through it and some people have a tough time with it. So this proclamation is in uh uh in support of operation greenlight which is about to start tomorrow and it's from Frederick County from the county executive. Whereas residents of Frederick County have great respect, admiration and the utmost gratitude for all those who have selflessly served our country and this community in the armed forces. And whereas the contributions and sacrifices of those who served in the armed forces have been vital in maintaining the freedoms and the way of

life enjoyed by our citizens. And whereas Frederick County seeks to honor those in individuals who have made countless sacrifices for freedom by placing themselves in harm's way for the good of all. And whereas veterans continue to serve our community in the American Legion, Veteran of Foreign Wars, religious groups, civil service, and by functioning as county veteran service officers in 29 states to help fellow former service members access more than 52 billion dollars in federal health, disability, and compensation benefits each year. And whereas approximately 200,000 service members transition to civilian communities annually and an estimated 20% uh increase of service members will also transition in the near future. And whereas studies indicate that 44 to 72% of service members experience high levels of stress during their transition from military to civilian life. And whereas the active military service members transitioning from military service are at a high risk for suic suicide during the first year after their military service. And whereas Frederick County greatly appreciates the sacrifices of our United States military personnel and believes specific recognition should be granted. Now therefore, the County Executive of Frederick County, Maryland, proclaims November 4th through 11th, 2025 as Operation Greenlight for veterans in Frederick County, and do commend this observance for all of our residents. Citizens are encouraged to join in honoring veterans by displaying displaying green lights in a window of their place of business or residence during this week. and that's signed by Jessica Fitzwwater, the county executive of Frederick County, Maryland. So, I

hope everybody participates in that. Um, go to Ace Hardware, get a green light, and put in your uh uh put in your porch light. So, thanks a lot.

[clears throat]

All right. Thank you, mayor. Next up, we have our public comment portion of the agenda. Anyone in the audience wish to speak this evening? All right. Come on up. When you come up, just please state your name and your address and we'll have about two minutes. That's okay.

Good evening. My name is Anthony King. I live at 1411 Marian Way in Nottingham. I've been a resident here for 25 years. And to be honest with you, I felt lucky and blessed to have found this place 25 years ago. But recently, some events have come about with the annexation of this commercial baseball park that have made me wonder if this is the place I belong and I want to live. And to be honest with you, several of my neighbors have already put their houses up for sale and left just on the chance that there might be this field. So, I just wanted to express how I know the the planning commission is doing their due diligence and asking their questions even though some of the answers they're getting may not be forthcoming and then um in earnest, but um I can only hope that this committee and that committee as well is looking out for the residents because we have over a thousand people in Nottingham community that would be seriously impacted by this field with with little to no gain and nothing but a lot to lose including house values, quality of life. I mean, and everybody else has banged you guys with traffic, lights, noise. I mean, just noise alone, I can't imagine the people that live close to that park, how they're going to listen to a bat tinging for 8, 10 hours a day, you know, and feel good about where they're living. So, it's all I can is hope and pray that, you know, we we have all been here and been proud to live here. And to be honest with you, I feel like we do our part as as the residents of of the town, but I can only hope that you guys are actually in support of us and trying to make sure that we have the quality of life that we, you know, are hoping to have here for a very long time. So, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Good evening and thank you very [clears throat] much uh for uh great governance of a town that I've uh lived in now uh for 32 years. I'm Roger Stone. Uh I'm at 1805 Kings Forest Trail. I'm in the Woodlands of Nottingham. I have uh been in the zip code since I came as a 16-year-old, joined the fire company uh in 1980. Uh, I've had I've been a taxpayer in the town limits uh since 1993 where my first home in the last 15 years been spent in uh in this wonderful u neighborhood of Nottingham is from that angle that I'm addressing you today. So I don't want to u to be redundant with some of the feedback that I know our neighbors have uh already shared such as that was very eloquent what uh my neighbor shared from Marian Wei. Uh but I I wanted to come at it from a a couple of different angles. one relative to the infrastructure but also one relative to the process. So this is my first chance to hear about a meeting that I could make from work after work. So it's kind of under rehearsal. I appreciate that. What what I was going to say is um I don't know if other people have mentioned that it it really uh sits it doesn't sit well with me the idea that the entire um uh uh residency of a town especially the people who live nearby would suddenly be on the hook for a contingency between a private uh in uh private company and a land owner and and and putting the town on the hook uh for their as a contingency for their real estate deal. So the idea that that they would come and say, "Hey, I'll buy this property, but only if you put the town residents on the hook, uh, it just it really sits very poorly with me. If it had been something like the town uh consistent with his master plan did some research decided in advance that there's certain acreage that they want to um to uh enex for cause they do it and then after that is going to be after

the town does it then there are lots within that say hey businesses we want to attract you there and you want to buy a lot in the town that would be different but this really kind of sticks in my cron I don't think that that was the right way of of approaching it secondly uh on the on uh infrastructure front, we we can't support this infrastructure. There's no way. I want to bring up the fact that we're marooned. We are marooned with only one uh route of egress. I had called the town planner some years ago and then and then again to see if thing had changed to see if we could ever we have to leave town to get back into town in Nottingham. If there was ever a possibility that we could have egress onto Backacre Circle because we're we're we're as a crow flies, we're pretty close. We're stuck with only one way out. And now you add to that the traffic from all over the area, everywhere, not just people from the town, uh, trying to get in and out of that place, and you're really making, uh, it's really something infrastructure cannot provide. Uh, and so I understand there's a taxpayer advantage maybe, but it's one taxpayer. If we were if all the people going to the ballpark, if we were getting some percentage of their profits, that might be something different, but at the end of the day, it's one extra business taxpayer that gets all of this attention. and the town the the you know petitioning the town government for uh for so that it can benefit its own deal from scratch that just sits very poorly with me and the infrastructure we just can't deal with it it's too I mean it's it's hard enough getting out just now from Watersville Road 450 households served so thanks very much for listening I really appreciate and [clears throat] and I I appreciate what the town government's done for the town in general because I've been living here for a long time and I think we have one of the best town governments in the in in the state

thank you very Anyone else? Yes, ma'am. [clears throat]

All right. Um, yep. Short people problems. Um, all right. Good evening. My name is Amanda Everett. I'm at 903 Longbo Road in Nottingham as well. Um, really adjacent to where this this project uh is planned to be. Um, I have no doubt that Elite Baseball plans to build a state-of-the-art complex. I'm sure it will be beautiful and I have no doubt that they will do what they can to listen and address a lot of our concerns that we consistently echo with traffic and noise and light. But at the end of the day, they're not going to be able to solve for them. We It is going to be a huge change to not only Noddingham, but our entire town. The entire feel of my neighborhood is going to disappear with something of that magnitude next door. we are going to have more traffic and that's already a pain point and I recognize we had one traffic study and it wasn't deemed maybe bad enough to warrant more and I know that other communities who have similar complexes have more traffic but that doesn't mean it's the right fit for us and it doesn't mean that we're prepared particularly given the only minimal ways in and out you know for me there's there's only one way really to get out and it's all around residential land Um, I have concerns on construction. I know it's early. We haven't really addressed it, but there are going to be people whose kitchen views for many months or years is going to be construction. There's going to be noise, and I think we need to be aware of that. I'm concerned of home values. I personally would not have moved to Nottingham if this complex was right there or under construction. I'm grateful that I have no intention of moving. I love where we live, but I'm really relieved that that's not something I have to worry about because I think that's a massive buying turnoff. My kids bus is going to be competing with afternoon

practices and there's only one way to get in. Um, I have concerns on the future of what this land can look like if we annex it in. I don't know the answer, but if if we go through and they start building and things change in a year or 5 years, what can this land be if they go to sell it? I don't know. But I hope that we're thinking about those things. Um, you know, again, I think to to wrap up, I believe that they're going to build a great complex. And I think for those who use it, I can see the appeal and I appreciate that they are willing to let uh the town residents or Noddingham use uh the walking trails and playgrounds. I appreciate that, but I don't think that fills a need for us. We have Watkins Park. It's beautiful. We have rails to trails. Noddingham itself has multiple playgrounds and basketball courts. I don't I just don't think that fits the need of what we have. And just because we can fit it with the acreage doesn't mean that we should. And I just would ask us to think about why many of us certainly me moved here in the first place and what we were really looking for and what I love about this town. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? All right, we'll go ahead and move on. First up, we're going to have approval of council meeting minutes and closed minutes. Uh, first up will be our October 2025 town council meeting minutes. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. I'll second. [clears throat] Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of approving the October 6, 2025 town council meeting minutes, please signify by saying I. I. Right. Then we have our October 2025 closed meeting minutes. Uh this is for subject litigation. Uh do we have a motion?

Motion to approve. All right, I'll second. Any discussion for the litigation portion? Yeah. Uh what I'd like to ask I'd like to go back and listen to the tape one more time and uh make sure the minutes actually reflect uh what was said during the closed uh meeting because I'm I'm not 100% convinced that uh that these reflect uh what was said at the meeting. So if you if you could either postpone them or table them for a month, I' I'd appreciate it, but that's up to the council. I'm good with that. Council Council President, I change my motion to uh postpone the vote on the October 6 closed meeting minutes regarding litigation until appropriate time next month.

All right, I'll second that. Any discussion? All right, hearing none. All in favor of postponing the October 2025 closed meeting minutes subject litigation, please signify by saying I. I opposed. All right, now we have October 2025 closed meeting minutes uh subject land acquisition. I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion?

Uh, yes, Council President. So, are we approving the meeting minutes that have been updated with um the amendment that I had put forward? I saw that was added to the um meeting minutes and that was sent out by the town clerk. So, that's what I'm assuming we're voting on. Yeah, actually, I apologize. I think I hit the wrong one. So, uh yeah, this is the one that I would uh request that you um either table or postpone.

Let's do this. I made the motion to approve. Why don't we make the motion to just postpone this one? We'll hit both these closed meeting minutes next month. Um I'll make I'll re motion to postpone uh the minutes under land acquisition. Second. I'm fine fine with that. So, we have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion? All right. All right, hearing none. All in favor of postponing October 2025 closed meeting minutes under subject land acquisition. Please signify by saying I. I. All right. And we'll come back to those next month just to make sure that they're right. All right. Next up, we have our civil air patrol report with first lieutenant Aaron Lavell. I don't see her here.

All right. We did all receive a copy though, I believe, in our emails, unless I Okay. No, I don't think I'm sure we'll get one from her. All right. Then we have our Mount Air volunteer fire company report with Hall of Famer Matt Herd, but I don't see him here either, so we can uh we'll skip over that. Uh then we have our Monterey Police Department report with Chief Janevra. And looks like he's got a stand in as well. How are you, sir?

I'm doing well. How are you? Good evening, everyone. Uh Lieutenant Hopkins filling in for Chief Janevra. We'll start as we always do. um the meetings and trainings attended for the month. October 6th, Corporal Bridges and Maduras attended their first land supervisor school. October 14th, Chief Janevver met with the American Red Cross Association. And October 16th, we had a couple events. The chief and I attended the uh meeting in reference to the building design and also the uh chief of Carol County had their chief's meeting. So, that was attended as well. Um, proudly on October 18th, Officer Wright arrive, uh, he was awarded the 2024 annual impaired driving award, which is a huge award for the state and for the department. So, good job, Brandon, if you're watching. Um, he continued October 27th through the 31st. He went to the rifle school and finished top number one in the class where he received the top uh top gun award. So, good way to represent the Mount Area Police Department. Another good job by that officer. Moving on to community outreach. Pretty busy month for us. October 17th, we had the Fall Fest Mount Air Daycare, which the chief attended. Good turnout there. October 19th, we all know about this one. That's the department and the team member of 24 members who ended up making up our team to raise $5,713 for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. Thank you to everybody who supported that and came out to the event, not just our team, but all the teams. Uh fantastic job on that. October 25th, we had multiple stuff going on, so we've been quite busy. On the 25th, we had the drug takeback. That was a huge success. Uh, shout out to the DEA. They helped us with that. Uh, we had the fall festival at the Carnival Fairgrounds, followed by trunk or treat booth, which were great turnouts. I think all of us was there. Nice work by everybody who attended that as well. And then on the 31st, officers went out, handed candy to community, just engaging with that, while Officer Wright assisted the Ningham community with road closures.

Um, moving on to our next one, it's going to be recruitment. We have one applicant for lateral officer, which is uh being processed currently still. Uh, we've been working with this candidate for a little while, so fingers crossed that'll continue to go go well. We have three applications uh which have been submitted for uh lateral positions besides that one individual and four applications have been submitted for entry level positions. Um, I know the chief emailed the packet out so you can look through all the wards and the pictures from the special events. If you would like to thumb through that, feel free. It save me time from standing up here and flash the pictures. Um, next moving on to our K9 deployment. Officer Edwards and our K9, they continue to do their monthly deployments for their certifications and they had three positive alerts this this month. Uh, the chief wanted me to go over this one again. This is the prescription overthecounter medication and disposal. The MAPD has a prescription and over-the-counter medication disposal dropbox at the headquarters building. The dropbox is available to the public for disposal of unwanted medications. The station is open to the public Monday through Friday, 9 to 5:00 p.m. We do get a lot of folks up there. So, just keep that in mind. Drop that off Monday through Friday 9 to 5. [snorts] And then thankfully, we have no overdose to report for the month of October. Moving on to our monthly traffic initiative that was ran by Sergeant Brooks. Various locations on the same day. They usually run about three hours long. Um he had five traffic stops, issued five citations, one of uh which was arrest for driving on revoked license. So good job on that traffic initiative. And then we typically cover our calls for service. So for the month of October, we had 493 calls of service. That's a 26 26% decrease from last year at this time, which is is good. We'll take that any day. Last year at that this time, we had 675 calls of service.

Um, in closing, we just want to highlight a couple arrests that we had for the month with everything going on with all the town events. Our officers are still out doing good work and making arrest. On October 21st, we had a vehicle stopped that was conducted. Um, that vehicle end up stopping on a parking lot of the Walmart. Following that investigation, along with Carol County, our neighboring agency, their K9 did a scan of that vehicle. All the occupants were locked up in that vehicle pertaining to firearms. Um CDS, which they seized methamphetamine, and they were served with two uh out of out of jurisdiction jurisdiction warrants. So, great job by that. Our next arrest was October 22nd. We had another vehicle stop that was conducted at Ridville just prior to South Main Street. Air K9 unit did a scan of that vehicle. All three occupants were locked up and we had CDS um seized from various locations that of that vehicle. So all three occupants were arrested. We just wanted to point that out. Highlight the officers acknowledging they're doing great job and great work. We had a lot of community events. We do attend them. So we are out on the streets as well doing enforcement and bringing justice to those who are, you know, committing crimes in our area. So nice work to Mount Air PD. And unless anybody has anything for me, that's all I have.

Any questions at all? Just a quick question. Yes, sir. Um, thank you for this uh great report. One thing that jumps out at me is the [clears throat] 62 body warn camera videos processed. Yes. By Carol County. That's huge. That's huge for any month. Is there anything that you can comment on that? No. So this significant uh I mean Carol County covers the vast majority of where we patrol that's where the majority of our incidents take place at. They're just very active and you know Frederick County so far has not jumped on board with that. We're not going to put that out there but it keeps us busy. It's usually under 20. You know 20 would be high normally from a past month.

It usually is but yes it just uh each month difference from that you have case get postponed for one reason another. So there could have been multiple cases that were previously, you know, listened and heard or postponed. We're waiting for body war cameras. Got it. That could be a lot of it. Thank you. That just jumped out. Yep. That is an extremely a lot. Yes. Anything else? All right. Thank you everyone. Have a good evening. One second. I think Larry's Lieutenant, I'll just jump in uh real quick and and please extend a thanks to your families uh for coming out to all these community events and and supporting them, especially that trunk or treat and the breast cancer walk. So, appreciate having them involved as well. Absolutely. We'll do it. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot. Great job standing in.

All right. Next up, we have our mayor, council, and staff reports. First up will be our mayor report. I'll relinquish Mayor Husher.

All right. uh kind of a busy month. U so I'm going to start by congratulating a whole bunch of people for doing good things out there. Uh uh first of all uh uh my wife was out there with staff, volunteers, and nonprofits pulling together another fun-filled week of scary events during Mountain Scary. A lot of successful events on that. So, uh, congratulations to all of them and appreciation to the staff for all the support you provided. Uh, historical society had all their ghost tours going on and Jim Molsworth stepped in for Larry Valet who had hurt his ankle uh, while he was out in Europe playing around uh, having a good time. But the, uh, but Jim stepped in, presented a great series of ghost tours this year. So, we appreciate that and hope he comes back next year and hope there's no new ghosts uh next year. Uh congratulations on the making strides against breast cancer. Uh Mary's in the room. I thought it went really well. Uh terrific job and they will be back next year in October. Uh and outside of that, November 11th is Veterans Day. Uh there is no guarantee that there's going to be a flyover this year because of the government shutdown. So uh and the weather is always a factor too. Um and we got to find air traffic controllers. We got a lot of lot of straws in there that we got to get through to uh uh to have a fly over this year. But hopefully the stars will align and it'll happen. Uh the event will occur on Main Street next to Town Hall. Uh the VFW kind of takes a lead on it. It'll be at 11 o'clock in the morning. If we're having a fly over, it'll probably commence right around 11:30. So, please come and honor those currently serving to defend our nation. Like to wish everyone a

happy Thanksgiving. This is our only opportunity to do that. So, hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving and uh and next time around we'll be talking about Christmas and it seems like we just got through January. So, that's for sure. Thank you.

All right. Next up, we have our board of board of recreation and parks and sustainability commission. Uh due to football season, [clears throat] shameless plug. Uh I was not able to meet uh to get to the meetings this month, but I will have uh an update next month in December. Um luckily the parks and wreck is is kind of slow right now. All the field allocations have been done for the fall. Uh a little dormant for the winter time and then we'll kick it back up in the spring. So you will get some reports uh within the next couple months. We'll skip now to our planning commission with council member Kelly.

Thank you, council president. A few things. Uh planning commission met on October 27th. Uh public comment portion was do dominated by upcoming the upcoming Warfield property annexation decision. Uh as you can imagine, uh Frederick County reports that there are over 13,000 dwelling units in the in the the development pipeline with 3,200 of them in the New Market Lake Linggonor area. The commission held further discussions on the Warfield property annexation resolution and they worked through the criteria for assessing a proposed annexation. The petitioners from Elite Baseball were present to reiterate uh some important points in response to public comments and provide additional color regarding their plans for the property. Lastly, the water and sewer master plan fall amendment was discussed and uh passed unanimously. The planning commission will meet next on November 24th. That's all I have.

All right. Thank you. Next up, we have our streets of roads commission, commission on aging and livability, and the flat iron task force with council member Mund.

All right. Thank you, council president. Uh the coal council on aging and livability met on uh excuse me, October 29th at 5:00 p.m. here in town hall. An update was given on finding a location for the uh botch ball court. Potential locations are the senior center/ library area or a one of the town parks here. More talks will be needed in the future to decide of uh permanent location for that. An update on the cross county transportation was given. Earlier that day, commission chair Connley, the mayor and I were on a call with Carol County Transportation Services related to this topic. While theou was brought up, more work became apparent that more work needs to be done on figuring out what Carol and Frederick County will will and will not do in relation to transporting seniors across the county lines and stuff. So, it was discussed on the media might be time to again try and get both Carol and Frederick in the same room to hash it out again. Uh the car fit event that was held at the library was an was a success by their standards and another one is being planned for the spring. Uh an update on the senior center was given and the town it was brought up again that the town is still waiting for an engineering report regarding the structural integrity of the patio at the senior center and and library. This was promised to us by Carol County several months ago and we are still waiting for that uh because there are there's more room needed for the senior center and the Cole has looked at the patio to hold some activities and things of that nature and we're just waiting on a report to we're hearing various stories from Carol County. It cannot can be used, cannot be used, and there's supposed to be an engine nearing report along the out out there, too. Two

several upcoming events I was encouraged to mention is that Carol County is transit system is doing a survey, help us improve public transportation. Uh, take the survey. I believe it might be up on the line online on the town's website for the QR code here. You can take that survey until November 15th. And then also a uh caregiver support conference uh navigating with knowledge caring with purpose will be held at the Westminster Senior and Community Center on Saturday, November 15th from 9 to 2. Um, please register with Carol County Department of Aging or excuse me, Division of Aging and Disabilities. Uh, free registration, light breakfast and lunch provided. Please register by November 7th. The next call meeting will be it's a little bit different because both December and November are close to holidays. So, it was decided that um the next meeting will be Wednesday, December 3rd at 5:00 p.m. here in town hall. Streets and roads, there was no meeting this month. Uh the next, excuse me, in October. Next meeting will be November 25th at 7 p.m. in town hall. Uh nothing really new to report on the Flat Iron Task Force. I would just uh reference anyone interested in what's going on to read the mayor's report regarding funding and design. And that and that concludes my report.

All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Next up, we have the EDC and the Recycling and Sanitation Commission with Council Secretary Evans.

Thank you. Excuse me. [clears throat] Thank you, Council President. Um I was unable to attend this month's EDC meeting due to a cheer expo. Shameless plug. Um but we are working towards having another business roundt in the first quarter of 2026. So stay tuned for that. with all the holidays coming up, I'm not sure what um Chairman Miller's plan is for the uh the meetings. So, look online if you'd like to attend those meetings. We'll have those updated as soon as possible. Um I'm going to throw out the turkey trot, which is on Thanksgiving at Shaladon. It's not really an EDC thing, but it does benefit Mount Air. Um I'll be out there running around with my family, chasing my kids around, trying to beat them around the the first hole there. Um, it's easy to register. Just go to turkeytrot.com, I think. Is that what it is?

It might or is it on the site?

It is Mamza. Um, or Mount Arinet as well. Um, that's it for EDC. Uh, for sanitation, [clears throat] we did not meet in October, but we did have an e-waste event um at the American Legion in the beginning of October. Excuse [clears throat] me. We fell just short of 9,000 lbs of e-waste in only two hours and we had to close it down early because we filled all of the gaylords that we had with e-waste from the town. So, there's a huge huge need for this. So, we'll be looking to do one in the spring um and have more ability to to fill trucks to get more waste out. Um again, next one will be in the spring. We got a nice letter. Mary Mayor Husher got a nice letter from the people of Wildwood thanking us for the mediumsiz recycling bins. Um we still have 50 left. If there's any interest for the community, uh reach out to town hall and we can set something up to get your big one changed out for a um smaller, more manageable one. Um next meeting for sanitation and recycling is on November 19th. And that is all I have for my reports.

All right. Thank you. Next up, we have the Water and Sewer Commission, Beautifification Commission, and the Inclement Weather Task Force with Council Member Demoter.

Okay, [clears throat] thank you. Uh, beautifification commission. We last met on October 21st. Uh, weeding and garden gardening maintenance around town continues, but at a lower level during the fall and then into the the winter months. The commission will be helping to decorate the downtown on November 8th for the upcoming holidays. We'll also be decorating the Wildwood fence line that goes around Wildwood Park and the gazebo. We'll be doing that on November 9th. Also for the holidays, the next meeting will be held on November 18th. Uh water and sewer commission, we last met on October 1st, which was right before the October 6 town council meeting. So I reported on that at the last council meeting. There's been no activity since then. Our next meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday, November 5th. In Climate Weather Task Force, we co-sponsored a hazard preparedness seminar that was held on October 8th and offered in person and livereamed via Facebook. Uh the seminar was presented by the American Red Cross and we did have some members of the public attend in person but there were additionally over 2,000 persons who viewed the seminar online. So we did get interest in hazard preparedness uh and that educational information. In addition to this educational outreach, the task force met on October 28th to continue its priority focus to research and provide a recommendation on the feasibility and need for a weather siren alert system and its operation for the town. At our last meeting, we discussed the results of uh many benchmarking outreach visits that we did with other municipalities

who already utilize these warning sirens for hazardous weather and other notifications. So, the objective of these benchmarking outreach visits was to collect lessons learned on siren selection, operation, public acceptance, and support um associated with these systems. And the idea is to draw upon those lessons learned and put that into a recommendation we might offer to the town council. So we benchmark the towns of Lla, Emittsburg, Elicate City, College Park, and Calvert Cliff's uh Calvert County areas. Um some of the things we learned, the sovereign systems were wellreceived and supported by the citizens. educational outreach on the operations of the systems and testing of the systems seem very straightforward. Uh as an example, the LA the Pla tests their systems twice per year in May and December and they publicize that through newspapers and yard signs and and uh elected official notifications. Uh so the information we got was that uh more towns than you realize are already utilizing these types of systems and they've been received and viewed as a good addition to the town's safety. In addition to that, on behalf of the task force while attending the Maryland Municipal League fall conference in October, I network with other town mayors and council members uh to learn more about their weather alert systems and that kind of set us up for these benchmarking visits. Um, it was noteworthy that the town of Brunswick and Thurmont are pursuing these systems and Brunswick specifically said if we move ahead with this, they would be interested in partnering to see if we could get a discount on our equipment.

So, there's a lot going on out there and there are other towns that have an interest in perhaps uh working with us if we move forward. I also on behalf of the task force and the mayor, I attended the October Carroll County Commissioners meeting Octo on October 23rd and offered testimony on the use of the community reinvestment and repair fund and other available funds to help address the cost of us acquiring these weather alert systems and received positive feedback from Commissioner Garen who offered to um see what he could you to assist us in this regard. So where we're at, I think at this point the task force feels like we've con completed enough data collection and information gathering to be able to make a recommendation to the town council. And so at our last meeting um we took a we took a vote roundroin and we had unanimous support that the task force believes we should proceed with the acquisition of such an alert system. And so council president accordingly um we would like to I mentioned this before but we'd like to pencil in for the January council meeting um something on the agenda. We'll be putting together a resolution and we'll be offering a resolution in January seeking council um approval a vote to approve to pursue these these weather sirens. So, we'd like to put that marker down.

Can can we just notate for January? Perfect.

Okay. And I want to thank I mean the task force has been very energetic. We have a mix of age groups and capabilities and um I just heard today from our task force chairperson that they've coordinated with American Signal Corporation. That's one of the companies that we got price quotes from and they offered to actually cover the cost of one of the two sirens that we think we need for the town. So, council, recall a couple meetings ago, I gave you a two-pager that outlined the task force and gave price quotes for various equipment. So, that's another good good piece of information. And then I want to thank thank all the task force members and I want to thank the mayor. The mayor's been I mean this is the mayor's task force um but he's been very engaged throughout the process. He's been at every meeting. Um he went out and did one of the benchmarking visits. he went out to visit the town of Emittsburg. Um I visited or worked with the town of Lla and other task force members have have carried different parts of the load. So it's been a good effort and we look forward to bringing that resolution forward at the January meeting. So I want to thank you very much. Our our next task force meeting is scheduled for November 19th. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Yep.

Yeah. this inclement weather task force has really done an amazing job and I I appreciate uh council member Demoter being the liaison over there. He's kind of kept them uh uh kept them moving forward and uh but the the group is I mean uh I refer to them as kids because I'm over 60 but and they're under 30 so they're kids. uh but they have uh they've really done an outstanding job and I I think the council is going to like the resolution that comes through uh in January and uh this this is everything uh that I was hoping the task force would gel into. So uh I think it's been a great effort and uh we'll we'll see what happens in January. Great job. Thank you, Steve.

All right, next up we have our town attorney report with Mr. Tom McCarron. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um uh I this past month I attended the uh planning commission meeting uh mainly for the discussion of the uh annexation the ongoing discussion of the annexation uh petition um which uh extension for which I think will be requested a little bit later. Um and then otherwise have simply worked on the matters that are on the agenda I suspect for the closed meeting uh at the end of this open meeting and that's it.

All right. Thank you. We all received copies of the town administrator report, code enforcement report, and the zoning administrator report. Do we have anything to add from this? All right. We'll go ahead and move on to new business. First up, we have a road closure. Tuesday, November 11th from 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. This is for VFW Post 1076, Veterans Day ceremony at the Plaza next to Town Hall. This will be between Main It'll be Main Street between Center and Hood. Do we have a motion? Motion for approval as uh written.

All right, I'll second. Uh do we have any discussion? All right, hearing none. All in favor of the road closure for Tuesday, November 11th for the VFW Post 100076 for the Veterans Day ceremony from Main Street between Center and Hood. Please signify by saying I. I closed. Every year that's always a good celebration. All right. Next up, we have a road closure for Saturday, December 6th from 5:00 p. p.m. to 9:00 p.m. a Main Street Christmas and Holiday Celebration Parade. This will close the road at Main Street from West Watersville to Cottonwood Avenue to Paradise Avenue. Uh, I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second.

Any [clears throat] discussion? All right. The only thing I'll say for discussion wise is, uh, mayor, if we could please just get in contact or have actually get in contact with the businesses uh, that are on Main Street and see how we can involve them. Uh, you know, I'm thinking we did have that meeting with the Upper Deck. Yeah. um see if they want to be included, not forcefully, but if they want to be, try and figure out a way to, you know, maybe they can do something in their parking lot, stuff like that. Just just involve the businesses that are being impacted as much as we can. Yeah, we can do that. Jared did make a note of it. Thanks.

Awesome. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. Hearing none. All in favor of approving the road closure for Saturday, December 6 from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. for a Main Street Christmas and holiday celebration parade from on Main Street from West Waters Over Road Cottonwood Avenue to Paradise Avenue. Please signify by saying I I thank you. [clears throat] That's my second favorite parade. All right. Next up, we have a PWA bond release for S-18-0031. This is the Twin Arch Business Park, section 4, lot 8. Uh, this is for approval. Uh, I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Barney, do you have anything to add to it? No, I don't. Okay.

They're both uh pretty straightforward. Okay. And everything's completed as as it should be. Yep. All right. Any further discussion? All right. Hearing none. All in favor of approving the PWA bond release for section 18-0031 in the Twin Arch business park section 4 lot 8, please signify by saying I. IOS. All right. [clears throat] Next up, we have a PWA bond release for T-10-00004F. This is also Twin Arch Business Park section 4, lots 8 through 19 and 35. I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second.

All right. Any discussion? All right. Hearing none of Hearing none. All in favor of approving the PWA bond released 4T-10-00004F Twin Arch Business Park section 4 lots 8 through 19 and 35. Please signify by saying I. I. Opposed. All right. Thank you. Next up, we have our commission appointments and reappointments. I'll relinquish to Mayor Hushower. All right. and I'm asking uh or making the following recommendations for commission appointments and reappointments. Uh Patrick Reid to be appointed to the Economic Development Commission. All right, I'll make a motion to appoint Patrick Reed to the Economic Development Commission. Do we have a second?

Second. Second. Well, Jason can take that one. Any discussion? Was there supposed to be a application or resume attached to this? Uh we didn't get one for both of Yeah, I I regret that. Uh one of our staff members who normally does that was was out last week. So sorry about that. I just noticed myself. So yeah. Yeah. Apologies. So it's it's up to you if you want to table it, but uh Patrick Reed uh uh from Reeden Sons um you know town business, great guy. Uh so uh I I hope you would move forward with the appointment.

I think we all knew who he was. So that's why I think that's I think [laughter] that's enough of a resume for me. Yeah. All right. So any further discussion? All right. All those in in favor of appointing Patrick Reed to the EDC, please signify by saying I. I. All right. Thank you, Patrick. Uh, second of all, uh, Tina does not need an application because [laughter] she she's always here. But if you need someone to speak on her behalf, Dick is out there and he can speak on Tina's behalf. But, uh, Tina Swanson to be reappointed to the beautifification commission. Do we have a motion? Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to reappoint Tina Swanson to the beautifification commission. All right, I'll second. Any discussion?

I don't think we need Dick for this one. Hearing [laughter] no discussion. All in favor of reappointing Tina Swanson of the beautifification commission, please signify by saying I. I. All right. Thank you, mayor. [clears throat] All right. Next up, we're at our ordinances and resolutions. First up's annexation resolution 2025-47. It's 50.98 acres more or less of land located along the north side of Watersville Road. And we have a planning commission extension request. Uh, I'll make a motion to grant or approve the commission extension request. Do we have a second? Second. Oh,

sorry, Sean. I did it. [laughter] Did you Did you want to say anything? Uh, we're in the discussion portion now. Only a respectful request that the extension be stated 120 days. Okay. Looking for 120. Another discussion. Tom, is there any issue with that as far as the timeline? 120 is okay. It's No, it says another 120 days. Okay. So, we're we're good on that timeline. Okay. Great. All right. Any further discussion?

All right. Hearing none. All in favor of granting or approving the planning commission extension request for annexation resolution 2025-47, please signify by saying I. I. All right. Thank you. I make a quick comment. Sure.

Uh just a quick comment for the residents out there who are concerned about this issue. Uh uh couple things. Number number one, an annexation request comes into the [clears throat] town. We can't ignore it. we have to address an annexation request. So, it's it's not like we could have uh just taken this and and put it to the side and said we're not doing this. We have to honor an annexation request and give it its due diligence. Uh second of all, uh with the extension, what that means is the planning commission will have more time, 120 days to deliberate on this. What they present is a uh is a recommendation to the town council. The council has to prove the annexation. This table has to prove approve the annexation and that's after a another public hearing at a council meeting. True.

Okay. So uh so the public will be able to uh to follow this as the planning commission meets and continues to deliberate on it to form that recommendation. But ultimately the annexation is passed here at this table. So thank you. All right. Next up, we have ordinance 2025-9, water and sewer rate increase. This is for adoption. And do we have a motion? I'll make a motion for adoption or discussion of ordinance 2025-9. Do we have a second? Second.

All right. So, we're in the discussion portion. I believe uh our town engineer, Mr. Quinn, does have a presentation. I had some comments if uh Larry wants to go ahead and lead in. So I'll relinquish to our mayor. Yeah.

Yeah. Just to uh kind of set the stage for this. At the u at the last meeting when ordinance 2025-9 uh came up, the council in their due diligence uh you know asked for a little more clarification as far as a capital improvement plan goes and some more specifics on this. So after that meeting, the uh the staff really came together and did a a deep dive uh into our water rates. And um I'd like to thank Jared for leading that cause, Mary for collecting numbers from all the Carol County other Carol County um uh municipalities. uh Barney for putting together a presentation, of course, Nicole for handling all the uh phone calls as uh as people were trying to get their [clears throat] bills paid this year. So, but I also want to thank the council for making us dive a little bit deeper in this uh into this. And uh what I want the citizens to know and I put together this chart, it's available on the table. I'm happy to email it to anybody uh who is interested in seeing it. It's basically our rate structure uh our costs against all the other Carroll municipalities. And what you'll find is that we are indeed the uh we have the cheapest cheapest water in in all of Carol County. Uh but um but this chart kind of explains how that that bill is uh is put together and and the fees that are associated with it. um even if 2025-9 passed as is, and I'm not saying it it it should or it needs to, um we would still end up being the cheapest water in Carol County. And that's why it's important that we listen to Barney's lecture and take it on board and fully absorb u what is uh what the numbers

actually say. And I'll close by saying Mount AR has been extremely fortunate for the last two decades if not 25 years, a quarter of a century. And that's that's because development occurred, you know, that most of us end up living in. uh Noddingham, Sterling Glenn, The Woodlands, uh Summit Ridge, Twin Ridge, Village Gate, all those developments came in in the '9s and the early 2000s, and we got impact fees from all of those uh houses that were built. Every time a meter gets plugged into a new house, the town gets money for that. Uh you know, it's not great to try to to live that way. You got to have a balance on it. But the bottom line is all those things were done and created tremendous reserves in this town. I mean big reserves. Uh and that's what has carried us all the way through to today. And then when it was about to dry up, we got ARPA which was $7.9 million uh that came into the town and that was able to buy us a couple more years. But what the citizens uh have to realize and and what the council is probably already aware of or soon will be is, you know, those those reserves are starting to dry up. We're getting down to the point that that we can no longer live on reserves. We have to be able to uh you know to to manage this town, you know, uh in in a better way. And so what Barney has put together is numbers. What the council does with them as far as legislation goes is up to you and the executive will enforce whatever you guys come up with. But we can't uh we can't keep living on reserves because they're drying up. So

with that, I'll turn it over to Barney. Thank you. [clears throat] Um so we started with a CIP overview or capital improvement plan uh because that's what was requested. Um we wanted to compare that to the numbers as far as our expenses and revenues and um it became part of a rate study and um so we're still working on that till till even today finalizing it. Hang on one second. Do we have some feedback somewhere?

[laughter] [clears throat] I wasn't sure either. Um, so it's 34 slides. There's a lot of information. Um, my suggestion is kind of hold questions to the end. Uh, otherwise we can be like, you know, talking about each slide for several minutes and that will take a long time. Yeah, we'll do that.

So, um what's on the agenda? What is a CIP? Uh what this presentation covers, capital expenses for the water, and then the sewer system, operational expenses, then we touch on the reserves, uh the revenue that comes in, uh then talk about the rates. So, what is a CIP? It's a capital improvement plan and for the town it includes three parts. It's our general, our water, and our sewer. It's a summary listing of large capital items, infrastructure owned and maintained by the town. It identifies costs to replace, overhaul, andor refurbished major capital items. It provides past and future schedules when these costs have and are anticipated to occur. So the purpose of this brief is uh to give you uh the town council and interested citizens. Um an overview regarding the town's capital infrastructure and costs associated with determined need of revenues. Uh what this covers in the interest of providing a simplified understanding of the town's water and wastewater system. We're taking a bird's eye approach. We're looking at things that are $100,000 more, not looking at all the little capital items. What are capital items? By definition, it's a long-term asset with a useful life of more than one year that is used to generate income or is crucial for businesses or individuals operations. In short, it's all the town's large assets. So, capital expenses, Wateride. Uh, so just give you a brief rundown of of all of our large capital items for water. Um, it's broken into three parts. The first part is water stations. So looking at water station number one, it consists of a building. That building has piping, controls, pumps, chemical

systems, tanks. Uh a replacement or complete overhaul of that would be about 1.2 million. That's what the number you'll see after each item. Uh station number one um happens to have uh four wells, four wellhouses, uh conduit power controls. If you remember this summer, we replaced um the conduit and power to two of those wells uh for a quarter of a million dollars. Uh generator set. Uh so every every uh station has a generator, a backup generator with auto transfer switch. Uh has a contact tank, usually a blue tank that you see side beside the tank, beside the station. Um coming is a PAS building that's not installed yet but that's coming and then a parcel of land. So when you look at the summary you'll see there's an identifier water station one WS number one 50 years is uh what we say is the life cycle for replacement or complete overhaul. uh 40,000 a year is taking the total cost for that replacement or overhaul and dividing it by the life cycle the 50 years. So um in in simple terms we just call it's $40,000 a year. Not that you're setting aside 40,000 for that particular item, but it's it's to help determine how much revenue that we need to bring in and how many how much expenses we should be doing to keep up with that equipment replacement. Um, we have the latest year of an overhaul, which was 2006 for water station one. The next anticipated would be 50 years later, 206. So, we have five stations and they're all very similar as far as costs go. The second major item is our water distribution system. you know, we've replaced our water man and and Main

Street, uh, Center Street, Cross Street and Prospect Road, and then most recently Bell Belle View and Rockwell Avenue. Uh, we have about 58 miles of pipeline and it costs about $2 million per mile. Uh, we have gate valves, fire hydrants as part of that. Total replacement cost, if you look at the entire infrastructure, underground piping is about $120 million. Uh we say the life cycle is about 100 years, but that depends on the type of pipe. There's some pipes that we need to replace. galvanized pipes, asbesto cement pipes, uh things that we've been working on. Uh and and um uh what we what we did is instead of looking at the entire system, we took the the latest um or the oldest third or um that's 50 years old or or more. And I'll show you why. Uh miles of pipe installed per decade. uh in the last two miles last 10 years has been about two miles. Uh and you'll see just for reference that's like Britney Manor, Prospect Road, Center Street, 10 to 20 years ago about three miles. Main Street, Ridgeville Heights, these are all very approximate. They're not exact. Um what you'll find is in these next two decades, 30 and 40 years, um we had 35 miles of pipe. That was more than half of our system was installed during those times that the mayor had just referenced when all these Ster um Summit Ridge, Nottingham, Wildwood, Sterling Glenn, Twin Ridge, Village Gate, Wendy, Null, Turnberry, Town View, um um NT, NT, Northtown Court U, I think there's more, but I try to cover most of them. Um and then before that was East and West developments and Konosoga.

Um that's 50 years. We're not even going to include that in this in this um because that's so far out in the future that um you know things can change. We don't know how long ductal iron pipe's going to last for sure. So what we're concentrating on is the oldest 50 years which is I mean 50 plus years up to 90 some years ago u which is about 18 miles of pipe or close to a third of our system. The third large capital item is elevated storage tanks. Elevated tank number one. Um this is kind of a random number but 160 years. We we know they'll last more than 100 years. Um but 160 years is what we chose. Um every 20 years should we should be doing a refurbishment. Um that's basically encapsulating the system, sand blasting all the paint inside and out. Um doing repairs, upgrades, OSHA improvements that are required. [snorts] Um refurbishment cost for tank number one is about $600,000 to do all that work. That's not a replacement cost. Um so average um we should be putting away about 30,000 a year for that installed 1959. Uh 2019 was our most recent uh refurbishment. So 2039 would be the next. Same thing with elevated tank 2 was last done in 2022. Both of those are pretty recent. Tank number three uh was installed in 2005. Um we are at that year and uh we did a rove inspection last year where the remote operated vehicle swam through the water and takes a look at everything. What we found is there was a lot of pitting in that tank and um if you remember there there was a whole pinhole that uh came out and it was just you know you had a fountain coming out the side of the tank. Um

apparently there's a lot more of those um uh that could potentially happen in the near future if we don't get going on it. One thing that this doesn't have that the other two have is um um is a uh cathotic protection system and that will help uh with that you know uh so that that water is not that electrolysis is not attacking the tank it's attacking the anode that's inside the tank first. So we think that would be a great add to that summary. Um for the water costs uh you have the water stations, distribution system, elevate tanks added a small capital item. In general we should be putting about 700,000 a year uh towards just water capital. We did the same thing for sewer and that's also broken down in the three uh sections. sewer pump stations. There are 11 of them. Uh our large capital item, uh number two, sewer collection system. So basically manholes and pipe. And then that gives you some of the years for um when that sewer was put in, but uh 1972 was like our original [snorts] sewer system. So nothing's older than that. uh the waste treatment plant. There's a lot of components to that treatment plant, but um comes out to about 260,000 a year for that. Um and we have had it shows a 100 years for complete replacement, but we're not going to replace the entire plant in one shot. So, we've been doing upgrades as we go and there's been improvements going along. So there have been 1999 there was um uh BNR replace you know upgrade uh ENR came in at 2011 um so there's different things that are

have been happening there already summarize the sewer costs we come up to about 590,000 a year that's our amazing fact number two important fact however you want to call it [clears throat] uh then we looked operational expenses. Um and um what we did is we took not the budgeted cost, we took the actual cost from 2014 to 2024. Uh we don't have 2025's actual cost yet. I think that's coming very soon, but um so that's why we chose the dates 2014 to 2024. Um operational expenses generally have more consistent costs that increases with inflation of the industry. These costs include payroll, chemicals, small equipment replacements and repairs, fuel network systems, certifications, trainings, utility bills. Just basically looking off the budget, you can kind of go down the line of things that are in the operating. Fact three, water and sewer operating budget actual expense for the past 10 years has steadily climbed from 2 million to about 2.8 million from 2014 to 2024. That's about 3% annually. So that's kind of a key factor right there is that 3%. This is what we should be looking at as inflation costs. Adding 3% annually from 2024 just to get to 2026 uh came out to about 2.9 million. And what we did next was uh we we took those recommended capital costs of 700,000 the 590 added to that 2026 number and we come up with 2026 our budget should be 4.26 million. We did that for the outy years added 3% to that 4.26 26 million. And here are

some of the numbers right here. Out to 2034, 5.3 million is um what we anticipate our budget to be. That's keeping up with the capital improvements. Next, what we did is we looked at the reserves. Uh water and sewer reserves is an available collection of funds to be used in emergency or larger than expected refurbishments to help offset excessive capital costs. Um the picture is just an example. That's the 75,000galon water tank that used to sit next to Mount Air Elementary School. Uh we demoed that. Hadn't hadn't been in service for 15 years before that and it was time to take that down. It's not something that we were maintaining. And so that's something that you could pull from your reserves and and you know put towards something like that. It is recommended the town maintain a minimum amount of water and sewer reserves equal to one full year's budget of total water and sewer expenses. Um you you passed a resolution I think it was proposed at somewhere around 3 million and uh it got reduced to about 1.8 million but our FY26 total water and sewer expenses is 4.2 4.2 million. So that's what I'm recommending is what you should be keeping for reserves for water and sewer. Developer impact fees are the primary source for the reserve accounts. when these reserves exceed the town's minimum amount, those extra funds can be used towards normal capital overhauls and replacements. So, this kind of a key statement that um the you can't rely on impact fees for your um capital improvements. That really needs to come from your water and sewer billing. So, that's really to replenish your reserve accounts. So, what's the history of the reserves? the total water and sewer reserves dropped from so in 2014 we had enough

reserves that was 2.3 times the amount of water and sewer budget and then in 2025 we only have 1.1 times that budget it raised for a few years in between thanks to the ARP ARP American relief plan or ARPA uh though it dropped again because as we brought it in we had to spend that and So all that money is spent now. So fact number four, starting the end of fiscal year FY26, um we anticipate will be the first year in the past 30 plus years that we will have less than one year supply of reserves. That's just a graph Sean. It was 23 230% um came down you know at um 110% in 2025 but it keeps dropping. You see that little hump right before the end around 2122 that's the ARPA funds and I think Britney Manor was a little bit part of that but um when you look at the developer fees compared to the water billing it's that's very small chunk so that's mostly from ARPA funds. Uh the next thing we looked at was revenue. Why does the town's end of year budget report? So, at the end of the year, um Charlene, um before Katie had had been talking about it for several years and now I think Katie's mentioned it a few times u but um our revenues definitely dropping and um it does say careful planning will be the key to determining how to fund the ongoing capital projects for which reserves have historically been used. We can't count on those reserves anymore. The build water revenue for Mount Area has not changed drastically and therefore is not keeping up with

inflation over the past 10 years. We're shown a negative um revenue um as opposed to going up 3% each year. So some factors causing that revenue is lack of annual rate increases, decreased dep uh development and minimal change in water usage. So some years we have less water usage than the prior year. Um maybe it's you know people getting more um dishwashers, water saving devices, those kind of things. So we noticed that happening like in the last 15 years that it's been slowly uh changing like that.

So water sewer revenue. So fact number five, the total water and sewer revenue operating and capital together has decreased over the past 10 years taking away grant projects. So I didn't want ARPA funds to um uh be you know throw throw us off as far as how we should be looking at revenue. Um but um so we took out not only the revenue for ARPA but the any projects we did with the ARPA funds. Um when you look at that over the past 10 years in 2014 we had a positive revenue uh for that year but ever since then we've had a negative revenue and that negative has been increasing every year. So over the last 10 years, we were actually we're actually short $7 million in revenue to what we should be doing to keep up with our capital projects. Fact number six is with these shortfalls, the town still completed the recommended amount of CIP projects during the same 10 years, but that's all thanks to ARPA funding, which we received 7.2 million that went towards water and sewer projects. So that was a once in a-lifetime help. Uh we don't foresee that ever happening again, but uh it actually hit right in a good time. What did uh ARPA and other state and federal funds pay for? The ENR upgrade back in 2011 uh was a new EPA rule. So we got state money for that. Um the INI water main upgrades, lab upgrade, water meter replacements, all those were paid by ARPA. And then our PA fast grades uh upgrades that are coming that's also we're getting money through uh federal state funding. So again part of a new EPA rule. So it's either a new EPA rule that gets us funding or it's ARPA the one once in a lifetime thing that's given us that.

Uh this leads into our rates. So this is our rate structure as as it stands. Um, our base rate is $68 plus a $15 bay restoration fee. That $68 includes 25 water, 28 sewer, and $15 system benefit charge. And then you have all the tiered rates for the water and sewer. I don't think we need to look at all that um in detail. Just know that we have that structure. uh if you compare a rate structure increase versus an overall rate increase um proposed ordinance change that you currently have only changes part of the rates. So it's only changing your tiered rates not your base rate. Um what that entails is that's a rate structure change. So your low-end users people use less water you're not going to see any more revenue from them and so you're affecting some people more than you are others. Uh Laurian is one of our highest water users and um so you're really impacting them more if you don't raise everything evenly if you will. So a rate structure change uh lots of things to consider like impacting some residents more than others not bringing in the full amount of revenue. So if if it's 8% per year um if you're not raising your base rate also you're not really bringing in 8% more revenue. you're only bringing in part of that. Impacting the highest tiers also will affect businesses like Laurian, Health Unlimited, your car washes, things like that. An overall rate increase, what I'm saying is a everything raises by the same amount, avoids the question why the structure is being changed and whatever rate increase the town council chooses is precisely the amount of revenue you will see. So, our expenses moving forward, going back to the slide where it said 4.2 2 million is our 26 U amount. Start with

27 through 31. Add those five years together. It's 23,300 uh,000. That's how much money how much um expenses that we anticipate. And that's operating and capital. So that's everything. So that's the number that we need to shoot for with our revenue. That's the way we looked at it. So projected five-year revenue. Um, if we do no rate change, we're looking at 13.8 million or $10 million uh shortfall to keep if we're going to keep up with our capital improvements. A 10% rate increase uh will get you um again, this is next five years. That's an annual rate increase for five years. 10% will get you to 18 million. Would still be five $5.5 million short. A 15% annual rate increase, we would still be close to $3 million short. A 20% annual rate increase is almost the ideal amount. Get you almost zero um a plus of $400,000. A 25% annual rate increase would be about $4 million excess. So that would be overshooting. So fact seven, a 20% annual rate increase over five years will bring the town back into the schedule and where we're dropping below in our reserves for this coming year or the current year. Um it will help replenish that, get us back into a one-year um one-year supply of of reserves. If we did a 15% annual rate increase, and again these are just examples, uh for five years, it'll bring the town back into schedule, but it'll deplete the reserves to less than half a year supply. What will a rate increase look like to the consumer? An overall rate increase, no change rate structure, will increase the total bill by the percentage

annually less the $15 pay restoration fee. So in examples of bill increases in 2027 if your bill was $100 in 20 in the current year in 2027 a 15% will get you to $112.75 and then uh a 20% increase will get you to $117. So it' be $17 in increase. A $200 bill will go to 227 or 237. Um, but you'll see by the end of the fifth year, it the bills almost double. And that's that's kind of what basically what you need to shoot for if you want to keep up with your capital improvements. So $100 bill will go to 185 or 193 and a $200 bill will go to 387 or 403. Um, one of the questions that was brought up last month was what projects do we have in the pipeline? what what are we looking at doing? These are basically in the order of priority for water and sewer. Our PAS projects we're working on uh with design right now. Um and uh that's fully funded. So that really shouldn't be part of what we're looking at from our revenue standpoint. Um so in the same year I'm showing elevated tank number three. That's the tank with all the pitting that's going on. uh we don't want to start having more pin pinhole leaks coming out of that and doing repairs on those. So that's about a $800,000 um uh repair. Uh well overhauls, uh water station number two and three, they're contact tanks. Uh water station number two to supply main. Uh well number six, raw raw water line and feed. Uh that's a a um power feed and Park Avenue water man. uh that's out 10 years from now, but um that's something that we need to be looking at. That's um one of our older mains in right on the Park

Avenue there, one of our main streets there. Um sewer system, uh the waste treatment plant, the electric at the original building um is antiquated and um needs an overhaul. Uh ini pipelinings we've been doing and uh we need to continue doing. Um we've had it budgeted 80,000 in the year each year. Uh our sewer pump stations um working with Brian we talked about uh those um I kind of skipped over it at uh if you look back at the uh slide with the sewer pump stations um looking at all of our capital equipment for the sewer uh you'll see a lot of those because they started in 1972 and we had we had a 50-year overhaul. Um that would be 2022. So, we're a few few years behind on most of those. Um, but we're still running. So, we're trying to keep keep things going. Manhole rehabs. Um, that's like the INI pipelinings, but we need to re repair those manholes also so they don't start leaking water and creating infiltration into our waste treatment plant. Uh, the belt press um is is um been there for a long time. Park Avenue sewer main. We were thinking maybe when we do the water man, we should be looking at that sewer main. Um and now that's not digging replacing that. That's more of a lining of that. So um that um may not cost 2 and a.5 million. That's that's probably on the high side. Uh and then our canopies um down at the waste treatment plant is was just one option of how we can um protect the tanks from the sunlight uh which creates all the algae and it's also uh we've had in our discharge permit that um we're raising we're raising the temperature of water going into the stream. So we're supposed to be at 68 degrees. We're a little bit higher than that in the in the summer months. So, um, that's been in our, um,

permit to be looking at that and, um, they haven't mandated us to do anything yet, but again, that's 10 years out. So, something might happen before then. So, thinking beyond the five years, so that that gets you, sorry, that gets you to the five years to break us even. Beyond that, [clears throat] benefits of implementing automatic water and sewer rate increase. uh financial stability for the water and sewer fund. Avoid rate shock when the town doesn't raise rates for 10 plus years, which which is what's happening. Um we did this back in 2006 where we had I think we raised it like 75% and then we turned around did another rate increase right after that uh because we were so very low with our rates. Um but then we didn't learn from that and we you know continued not to raise rates for for years. So if you did like 3% each year, that would be a a huge um plus so that you don't have to revisit this, you know, every 5 10 years. Uh the political impact of making adjustments eliminates that. So a there's a election next year, maybe we shouldn't raise rates. Um you know, that kind of thing. Um, so an overall automatic fixed rate increase of 3% is recommended with less frequent needs to make adjustments in the future. So just want to say this rate study was not just from me for sure. Uh, we had a lot of input from water and sewer department, public works, accounting, planning, engineering, town administrator, mayor. Um, I'm probably leaving out somebody, but um, basically it's a whole team effort. uh to put all this together. So, um I told you we'd have it by this month and we did kind of

make it last minute. So, um so that is the end of it. [snorts] Wow, that was a uh it's a lot to take in. I We'll [clears throat] get to the questions portion, but first I just want to thank everyone that had something to do with this. Um, I think it was needed though. I think uh, you know, blindly raising rates, not knowing exactly where we are, where the money's going. Um, I think this was needed, but, uh, the extent to which the staff went to make this happen and make it happen in less than a month. [clears throat] Thank you very much. uh it was a much needed education not only for us that are up here that have to vote to make these decisions but also the people that are wondering why we're making these decisions. So [snorts] information like this gives us the ability to explain to them exactly why uh before this if we raised the rates I don't know if anyone up here could explain why other than well you need water

right but um but this this drastically helped so thank you uh at this time I'll go ahead and open it up to questions unless Mayor I'll relinquish you first if you have anything to say. No I mean I think the staff has put the numbers up there. It's up to the uh council to figure out what you want to do. I would be very surprised, I'll just put it that way, if you would be ready to vote on something tonight. I think you're going to have to absorb uh what has occurred here. Um you know, in terms of the briefing, but uh but you're the legislative body, so do as you will. All right, questions. Uh

yes, thank you, [clears throat] Council President. Just a couple comments. Um, thank you for the effort. I think this is I'm just speaking candidly. I I'm the liazison to the water and sewer commission. I've been there since May. I used to go to the meetings even before that. And I know that they have been hungry for a detailed soup to nuts water and sewer capital and operating plan. They've been asking for this since as long as I've been the liaison. So, I I appreciate it. Um, listening to the mayor, I agree with the mayor. I wouldn't be ready to um vote on specific rates at this particular moment given I've just received this plan this evening. I would like to ask if um you would be willing to give this presentation to the Water and Sewer Commission. They are our, you know, town experts and volunteers, if you will. and I would like to get [clears throat] um their feedback on this and what else might need to be added or or get their questioning. So, we have a meeting this Wednesday night. I don't know whether that can be factored into the agenda and if not this Wednesday, perhaps the meeting in December if we have a December meeting. So, that would be my first ask is, you know, we we're respectful of our commissions. I know we're very respectful respectful of our planning commission. I'd like us to be respectful of our water and sewer commission. Route this through them since they've been asking for this. Get their input. I would like their feedback. Um you made the comments at the beginning. You know, this is part of our rate study. It's still ongoing and a work in progress. It was last done in 2006.

There may be different views on this and that's fine. I've expressed my views which is as a policy maker I am not comfortable simply doing a wraparound 8% or 10% or 20% wrapping that around our current tiered rate structure. As part of this process, I'm going to want to actually look at the different tiers of rates, look at the price points, ask ourselves, why is the rate increasing from this 20,000 to the next 20,000? Why is it not increasing on the sewer side? The sewer side, the rates are very flat. Um, some some parts of the rate structure don't make sense to me. So whether we're just increasing rates by 2% or 20%. I start with the tiered rate structure and I want to know that that's sensible and fair and our higher water users and sewer users who are putting more of the burden on the system are indeed paying more for the resource. and higher rates at very high tiered usage hopefully will help foster conservation and stewardship and recycling. So I would want to see that as part of redoing a tiered rate structure. My guiding principles would be I want to make sure that we're we're trying to be as um considerate as possible to those in our community uh that don't have the resources and to our seniors and they are typically our seniors in particular are the lower end water users. So I would want that as a guiding principle and then a guiding principle that the break points and the rates are sensible

and they are fostering conservation and the higher users on the system placing the burden on the system should be paying more. Um, I did have some, I guess about two months ago, I had some informal conversations with town staff and talk through some of this and town staff wanted me to make sure these were my recommendations and not the staff recommendations. But I did kick around the concept of, you know, maybe the higher tier users should be paying more. Those those rates should be higher. and I basically got a confirmation that that that would that would be a good approach. So, um those are those are the thoughts that come to mind. Um [snorts] maybe where we end up I'm just thinking out loud here. Maybe where we end up if we feel like we really need to raise rates just to start chipping away at the deficit. Maybe we reach an agreement on some overall percentage increase. I mean, right now we're saying 8% across the board. We could do something like say, you know what, we need to study this further, but for the next year, we can all agree we're going to raise rates x%. And that gives us several months to a year to really put a structure in place that's sensible to us. We can all get our ducks in a line. And then after that year, we we take another bite at the apple and put our for real structure in place. That makes sense. That that's just one approach off the top of my head depending on how long this would take us to get to the point where we'd want to take a vote. So those are my thoughts and thank you very much.

Any further questions? [clears throat] Go ahead. is so for someone who's allocated a certain amount of money, is there penalties or anything like that if they're using more than they're allocated? No, there's no penalties, but their billing would just reflect what what they're using. So, the the allocation was, you know, more of the original cost, the the hookup costs. [snorts]

Uh, thank you, Council President. So, thank you staff for the report. Um, educational and detailed. Um, [sighs and gasps] I think we can all see something has to be done and I just fear I I I just want to I do want to get it right. Clearly, I'm I'm not ready to vote on this tonight. So, uh, but at the same time, I I I really want to be careful of um paralysis by analysis, right? We know we we we see the overall numbers. we see how the increases need to go for the next few years to get right, so to speak. Um, again, not right to vote tonight, but I, you know, um, something that Councilman Demoter just said, yeah, maybe, maybe we look at a stop gap for 26 and we take the first half of 26 to look at the rates, get them optimized, and uh, and then put a a long-term plan, and maybe maybe that should be on the table, too. Um, but I I if any of us was running our households like this or our businesses like this, we'd have a fire lit under us right now to do something do something fast. So, again, I don't want to do the wrong thing fast, but I you can tell for the last couple months, I've had some urgency with this. It's it's it's worse than I thought. So um lastly regarding the the tiers of the rates I I um if and when we go down that path I I would love some data on how many customers actually touch into those higher tiers. Um we we've touched on Laurian. I think I I I you know if we yes the cursory logic of if if you're using more and we're having to uh remediate more through the sewage system you should be paying more that's fine but at the same time we have to realize

one of those customers is Laurian. So we're not talking about a business just wasting water and using water. this is these are residents that they could be impacted more if we tweak those rates a certain way. So, it's we're talking about pricing, optimizing pricing um to usage. So, that's that's a science in itself. So, it's going to take a lot of research and a lot of um a lot of effort. So, um I just want to be be really careful with that. That's all. At this moment, council president, I would just like to thank the staff for all their hard hard work on this. And word of caution is I get the oneear stop gap, but that's also just kicking the can down the road. And that's a problem because it's taken us 12 years to get to this point. Who says we will have the political or the will in another year to raise it to where they need to be? So if there's any stop gap consideration, it should be multi-year fiveyear with maybe a relief valve at the three-year look to look at it because as projects come down the pike, you can get grants and stuff. You know, there'll be adjustments in the potential rate structure. And if you start going too many tiers within a water system, I mean, in reality, using a thousand gallons of water is nothing for a business or something of that. So you need to have a broad enough where you're not pricing out econom pricing out businesses in this town and that's a real fear here too and also affordability in this town cuz when all afford I'm as I'm attending more conferences related to affordability it's just not the cost of houses that makes a place unaffordable it's also the

utility costs and things of that nature. And businesses, everybody I keep hearing when annexations come down, we love what we have here, this and that. If it's too pricey, businesses are just going to head down the road to uh New Market because they've got what is it 3,000 homes coming down the Pike or Frederick County and then we'll end up driving. to just be careful of the multi-tier and just doing a year stop gap cuz kicking down kicking the can down the road is where is what got us here now and we got to be careful of that. And uh also letting the water and storage commission look at it. I can kind of get behind that but it's no multi-month thing. the next we're doing the budget now uh to plunish I'm saying maybe one or two months looking at it the data is here they can recommend what rate structure or percentage we increase by the first part of the year when the budget so maybe it's not the first half of 2026 or the last excuse me the last half of the 2026 fiscal year uh just starts with the new budget cycle in July when I think there is also a new bill going cycle that takes place. So that might be a better alternative moving forward just to keep it so we know we do have an increase of money and how much for a foreseeable future. So we know what to improve on in uh I want to say projectwise and stuff. So we're not waiting to say, well, are we going to get this money? Well, if not, well, pump station 3 doesn't get the new pump that soly be it it needs so badly. So those those are my comments, council president. Thank you.

Quick clarification. Yep. I think we're saying the same thing, Car Just different ways, I Well, no. I think I just um I don't want to get into analyzing the the pricing and the rates and the tiers and the and all if if we're getting my gut says if we're getting past if we think we're going to go past April without doing anything, that's that's not acceptable to me. Okay. Yeah, that's what I Right. Right.

Yeah. No, I'm think Yeah. No, I look I like looking at it, but I just don't want another year we're discussing this down and we're going broke. So, thank you, Sean, for the clarification. Thank you. Yeah, I'll be honest. I've been trying to think of what to say uh for 10 minutes. Um it's actually kind of infuriating. I'm going to be very blunt. If anyone's sitting up here worried about their political aspirations, you're in the wrong seat. And anyone that sat here before worried about their political aspirations and refused to raise rates and just lived off of savings, you were in the wrong seat, too. Um, it shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't have gotten here. Um, you know, you you can either build or raise rates. Well, clearly nobody here wants to build anymore, but we should not have been in such a deficit to where we're going to have to jump rates so high either. So, I [clears throat] do agree with a annual rate increase. It shouldn't be up to elected officials anymore because I'll be honest with you, the last 20 years proves that that doesn't work. Um, so my goal would be to look for an annual increase that justifies the um, you know, almost like a cost of living increase, but for the water and sewer. Um, I'll be honest with you, I think when it comes to the rates and when it comes to the structure, when it comes to anything else, I don't mean this disrespectfully. I don't think anybody up here has the right idea. I think we need to access professional help. we need to seek an outside source that can give us options as to get where we maybe need to be. And maybe there's somebody inside of town hall that can do it that is, you know, I look at Katie back there. She's very very good with certain things. Um, as

well as Barney and and Jared. Um but uh you know I don't know if if we should take on the responsibility of just creating an entire new structure um without professionals who get paid to do this for a living uh confirm that yes this will get us out by year X or this will help us do this by that year. Um the fact that we're here is a shame, but uh welcome to the fund, guys, cuz we volunteered to fix it. So, um this isn't politically driven. It's just a fact that we need to fix it. Um but I think that uh I love our water and sewer commission, but I think we need to go above I think we need to go above us. I think we need to either ask the mayor to to seek uh either a professional outside that can give us a rate structure that will give us options. If you raise it this much, you'll be out of it by this year, etc., etc., etc. Um, I don't know if the five of us throwing out random ideas is is what we need right now. We we are too deep. This is too time uh sensitive. Um, and I think that we need to we need to look to fix it. We need to look to fix it now. We need to look to fix it in a permanent way to where the people that come behind us don't have to sit here and say the same things that we're saying right now. And this should have been done 20 years ago, but it wasn't. So, I think we need to make sure that it happens now so that people that come 20 years later aren't sitting in these same seats. And if anybody wants to question me about that that was on the council previous, feel free. Mr. Swanson, you have something to say? I agree with the invitation to uh have you make a presentation of water sewer

commission. We're meeting Wednesday. If you can make Wednesday evening, we'll put you on first. That works. And if you would please send me the electronic version of it so I could send it out tomorrow ahead of time

so they get a chance at least to thumb through it. Um and I really appreciate what you've done. And I think you you you framed it very well. Same thing that's been saying over and over again from the Water and Sewer Commission. We are in trouble and we need to straighten it out. How to straighten it out is the question. And um I I would just mention that I think we're deep enough hole right now that I would recommend that what you do is you tonight pass the proposed ordinance for only this year for the six months January through June. that gives you some relief and then by for starting July 1st you should have a uh ordinance in place that puts whatever the look forward is going to be multi-year and I do agree with multi-year because you're absolutely right rates weren't raised for a number of years those were political decisions and we're paying the price for it so uh I think everybody up here understands that Everybody up here knows the situation we're in. And I think now it's to work together collaboratively and come forward and say this is a long-term solution. And I'd only mention that just to respond to one comment. When you look we I'll give you the numbers of how many people are at each one of these tiers uh for the last quarter or so just to give you an idea, but it drops off dramatically after you get to 40 50,000 gallons. Uh so when you're talking about your 60 or 80,000 and above, you know, you're you're talking about very few people, it takes uh a whole lot of money from them to make up for, you know, the

people that uh are at the lower end of usage. So there are a lot of considerations like that and I agree this is complicated. I would just say that I think the numbers he put together just on a cursory look from what I've seen tonight appear to be accurate or at least relatively accurate enough that you can make financial decisions on. I would hesitate going out and getting a uh consultant now paying somebody 6 months later you get something back and you know then we have to work with it and tweak it as you as the town council. I think we're in a position where if with some collaboration we can look at the rate structure come back make a recommendation that says uh we need to think after July 1st forward we need to do something along these lines and give you alternatives and then see where you want to go and during the course of that time to have feedback back and forth to get reactions of where we're going and I think that's the way to get there because I think you've got the numbers Uh, and I appreciate that very much. I also appreciate the mayor putting out the fact that we are the lowest. And um, so that's a recognition that people have been getting a break living off uh, the reserves. They were nine when you talk about back in 2014, I think it was, you were around $9 million. We have $9 million. We're down to 4.2 million. Um, that's what we've done and that has to stop. Recommendation tonight, pass the 20 FY206 rates that go from uh July 1st to June 30th and come up with an ordinance for July 1st and forward. Thank you.

Real [clears throat] real quick, um, Mr. Mr. Swanson, who who would you say would be if we don't go consultant wise and and just for who do you think should be able to create the rate increase and and kind of go through that?

I I think the water and sewer commission could do that with the uh um I council member de motor uh you know he's made some very pertinent comments valuable. I think we can go with that direction of of particularly with the sewer rates. I uh would disagree by the way of going too high on the upper end because there's not enough people there to pay the bills and I would request that Barney sit in at these meetings for the next couple of months and we work that out and I think collaboratively we can uh come up with something

council council president. Hang on. I'm going to be honest. I I don't know if I agree with that. And the reason why I say that, and I say it very respectfully, is because what we were looking at is an 8% increase over the next four years. These numbers show that that wouldn't even touch what we're looking at. You would need a 20% annual rate increase over the next four years to even get close to breaking even. So what's that? Over the next 5 years, not four. So we're sitting up here deliberating about an 8% increase over the next four years that, to be quite honest, isn't a drop in the bucket. So why are we going to postpone this and bringing in somebody that maybe we do have to pay

initially? But you know what? We've been losing money hand over fist for the last 15 years and we've had no structure that gets us out of it. And we're deliberating over something of an 8% increase over the next four years when a 20% increase over the next five barely gets us there. So, I'll be honest with you. I I don't have a lot of confidence that we shouldn't bring in outside help and we shouldn't have somebody that has no stake in the game tell us exactly what our options are and what we need to do. And I say that with the most respect in the world, but I'm also going to be very blunt when it comes to people's money. And the fact is what we're sitting here deliberating about, what we almost voted on wouldn't have fixed anything. and we to set the next five people up in 20 years to be sitting here talking about the same thing. So if you want to fix it, yeah, it might cost a little bit upfront, but you're investing and that's an investment that we will get a return on. 8% over the next four years doesn't touch it. So I respectfully I I disagree with not bringing in outside help. I think we need outside help. And I think these numbers, as you said, show it because what we almost did and thought we were going to be helping wouldn't have helped. So, I I need somebody to show me exactly what will help. So, you don't want to kick the bucket down the road. That's fine. Then, let's bring some people in that we can pay honestly and and get the answers we need.

Oh, okay. my opinion. Oh, no, no, council president, I agree with you. If I wasn't even that wasn't even on my radar screen coming down, coming in tonight to potentially hire outside. I'm not saying we make that decision now. I'm saying no. But I think we should in the long run postpone any decision on rate of water increase tonight. And I would make a motion to change or make a motion that we postpone this to a later date once a report from an outside consultant or whatever the correct legal term is given to the town within a couple months or something or I'm just throwing thought thoughts out there. Sean,

I think problem there is the assumption that it'll only take a couple months. Okay. Yeah, we're talking about several months, multi-year sometimes for those kinds of things. So, I I don't personally I I can get behind researching and opt we're talking again optimized pricing. It's part art part science, right? And it's it's it's it's heavy duty, right? And that to um council president's point, I said this out loud to councilman de motor before to me. I this is out of my league. I I don't know what an optimized price tier would look like for this, you know. Um so I I just

I get behind doing that for the long long term, but but we also need a short-term solution. Clearly, we're hemorrhaging. Yeah. So that's that's where I'm at. But for short, go ahead. Let me go and leave it up to uh our mayor, Mayor Hash. Yeah, if I can have the floor for a minute. Um uh first of all, as far as logistics go, um I think the motion was initially introduced by by Carl. Yeah. So, uh Tom, question. Uh can he withdraw his motion and and basically kill this ordinance?

Um the I'm not so sure about that because was it seconded? It was to get to the discussion portion. Okay. All right. So, so my question is uh how could the ordinance be um as opposed to postponed or tabled? Uh how could the motion be killed uh to the point that we can come up with a new ordinance? Would it have to be voted on and rejected?

No, I think there are other other means of doing it probably. I mean, you know, uh motion table under that will allow you to bring it back but with changes. Okay. um postponed certainly make table changes um to it be the same ordinance but you'd be making

well I guess my thought is that the ordinance needs to uh be modified so significantly that it probably needs to be a new ordinance so how do you get rid of the current ordinance it

vote it down okay all right so with that being said uh let me move on to My next thought here, and I'm going to throw a little defense up for uh for the last two decades. You got to realize we had reserves um that were up around the 9 or even 11 million mark. We were we were actually set up in a situation where the citizens would have had every right to come to the podium and say, "Why are you stashing all this money in there?" So spending down the reserves may not have been the the perfect plan, but we had the reserves and and and utilizing them to give our citizens a break. I'm just not ready to throw anybody under the bus from two decades ago. Um, but we're in the situation that we're in today and I think it's the appropriate time to to get in there and start uh start looking at things and and my final thought toward so so in other words, I'm not angry at where we are, but we need to fix it. We're at that point. We need to fix it. Um, and for the record, because 99% of the citizens will never see this document, you know, our water base in our town is currently $25. That's your base rate. You look across to Hamstead, their water base is $57, so well over twice that. Manchester, 42. New Windsor, 102. Sykesville has a tiered system, but it starts at $14.38. Our tiered rate starts at $2.50. Okay. Tonny Town doesn't have a water base. Uh they charge every,000 gallons.

So, every town has a different setup. Nobody nobody has a standard system across any of the counties. Union Bridgewater base rate 42. Again, ours is 25. Westminster, $2922 as their base rate. Our tiered rates for water, just talking water, not sewer, they start at $2.50. Hamstead starts at at darn near $7. Okay. Manchester starts at $462. New Windsor starts at $9.50. Sykesville $11.3. Again, Tonny Town does it by every thousand gallons. Uh in Union Bridge, $7.39 compared to our $2.50. In Westminster, $529 compared to our $2.50. We are significantly below every other Carroll County city. And my only point in bringing those numbers up, not just to show you that we we're we are really under uh charging for our water and sewer rates, but is also to show you that every municipality has a different system. And and they've all come up with these tiered systems that seem to work within their communities. I'm not against hiring an outside source, but I don't think that we need to. I I think that we can we can come up with something between the water and sewer commission u our town engineer uh Katie uh Nicole and and our council liaison. We can come up with a with a system that we think works for our town as far as triage goes because I agree with uh council member Kelly. I mean the um

paralysis for analysis I'm very concerned about that. I would hope that the council would come back uh with a a sizable increase in January uh you know or in December. Uh maybe if this one gets killed, introduced in December, brought out in January, a sizable increase that would at least triage what we have going on. And then uh you know in the next budget cycle if if more research needs to be done we can do [clears throat] it between then and and uh hit another ordinance or you could handle it all at one time and and take the recommendation. I you know 20%'s too much maybe it's 18 maybe it's 18% over five years but you know I do agree with this we'll take the arrows but we can't we can't keep going this way. The town has been very fortunate. The citizens have been very fortunate to have uh been able to get water for water and sewer services for for little cost. But but those those days have come to an end. So here here we are.

I I just comment. I I agree with with triage, but I would say you pass whatever you want to pass in December as an emergency. ordinance and the reason for that is so it goes into effect so that when January starts you're building the entire period from January uh through March and then you know April through June at whatever those rates would be and uh that way we stay in compliance with the fact you can't retroactively bill

uh for services rendered. So I would suggest you would do that and the triage could be the the rates as they're proposed just to raise some money or you know for the first the one year or something we can come up with in what the next two weeks as a stop catch for 6 months and then go from there. So in so in theory, we can essentially vote down this 8% year-over-year, we can bring in, and this is more for Tom, we can bring in an emergency ordinance uh if once we research it over the next couple weeks that if we do that in December, starting January, it would have a complete cycle. Is that correct?

Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it would take a super majority for the emergency to suspend the rule that says that you can't pass the same immediate ordinance that you're used to.

Okay. And council president, um, here's a thought on something here. If we kill it or just table this and change it to we could change it to say any rate increase associated with this takes effect January 1 and only goes into effect for the first 6 months of that year. That way we act as a triage, maybe get something into it. Takes cons takes um into account Councilman Kelly's uh concern of paralysis for analysis. And if water is sore or if nothing comes by the end of June, it goes back to whatever the standard rates are. So that puts the EMP so we know what the problem is. We set a timetable to solve it. The can's not being kicked down the road. And then in June, if we don't pass anything, we're all responsible for uh

making Sorry, Katie. I know it's budget. I get weird. Can you come back, ma'am? So, when we bill, we bill like the middle of December to the middle of March. So if you pass something that says it starts in January 1st, you won't see that increase until the bill that goes out in July because we can't retroactive. But if you approve it at the December meeting because it's before that cuto off, that's when you'll see it in your April bill. Yeah. So So if you if you say something that can't start until January 1st, you won't see that increase until the last quarter of fiscal year, which is build in July. It would have to start when we pass. So you would have to approve it at

when we pass it, right? In in December and it would have to be effective like that. Yeah. The timing can be worked worked out. I just wanted like but I just you have to be very careful because like Dick was saying we can't retroactive. So if you say January 1st Oh, that that takes a whole another quarter. Well, let me let me just say at the next billing cycle or whatever what whatever works it ends, you know, because July or whatever is the new whenever the summertime billing takes the new cycle takes place takes it's like

so it's it's kind of confusing because we build retro like we bill backwards. So your July bill is actually the last quarter of fiscal year 26. So your first true quarter of 27 is going to be your October bill. But but what councilman de motor uh Monday Mund are saying is uh quarter one and quarter two usage. Yeah. Or something. Yeah. Right. Yes. Right.

Thank you. Thank you for Yeah. I'm trying to get the words out, but you know what I'm trying to get. And then if we do nothing due to inaction or nothing happens, then we're all responsible for putting us back in the hole again. So it kind of puts us kind of hey everybody better get on board and get something going with the water sore work out the rate I think it's 6 months or whatever should be enough time to work I know it's budget time too but that gives us a better time we should be able to get something together for late to late spring early summer intro in introduction

so we I mean we already have it in the in the 26 budget that we're in a deficit and that we have to pull funds from the reserves to cover 26's budget. It's great to do something to kind of help with that, but it's better to have a solution. Yeah. So, even if we take a few months and it doesn't go into effect until the first quarter of 27, as long as you guys have it passed so that it like and are working on it and we can factor it into the budget, it works. But I mean, honestly, it's better just to have a proper solution and not a band-aid. Okay, that's kind of where I'm coming from is we we

ju just to clarify your uh the budget cycle is going to be the fiscal 27 uh period. And uh so what I'm talking about and I think Katie agreed that if you do an emergency budget in December raising ordinance I mean raising the rates u whatever 8% 10% something like or whatever we can come up with in you know two weeks or so um that will be the rates used for the bill that comes comes out beginning of April and the bill that comes out in the end beginning of July. What Katie is saying correctly is that for the budget cycle, you need to think about what your long-term solution is and what part of that gets impacted in the budget for fiscal year uh 27. And so that they're they're two separate issues.

The long-term solution and the short-term triage or fix. So, I'm I'm think Katie would agree that you could do a emergency um ordinance on in December and then your uh bill that you would see in April would cover that period. So, it'd be two bills and what's the remainder of FY26? Tom, if we were at a table, I believe that's the one where we can make changes

or postpone is the one where we can make changes. Instead of doing an emergency, if we were to postpone, could we come back next month with the said changes and not have to do a quote unquote emergency?

Yeah. So, just from a procedural standpoint, what would keep your options the most open would be to to whatever it is to table this, right? So that you have option one that is to make whatever table changes you're going to make this to in the words triage right or you adopt this the next time if you think this triagees it. Um the other thing you could have sort of uh going is potentially a separate ordinance that is so you know you you'd favor that one because it's very dramatically different than than the you know the one that's on the table. And on that one you would want to uh you know vote four to five if if you can get those votes on that one. So that way you've got both going into the next meeting. Okay. If you favor one or the other, let's say you favor the emergency motion, well, you simply or the emergency ordinance, I meant to say, then you simply vote down the one that's on the table and then you you you pass the one that's the emergency one. If you're not able to come up with a suitable emergency one, then at least you still got this one hanging around. Uh I I probably would move to table it and reintroduce it tonight so that you're not beyond 75 days. I can't remember when you were last you last introduced this, right? So procedurally what keeps your options open for next time is is to move to table this then it's and reintroduce it tonight. And now you, you know, on three votes, you could pass this maybe with some table changes. Or if there's a consensus where four of y'all say, you know what,

I like this better and we're ready to vote on this on emergency basis in December, you can do that. Yeah. Here's where I want to be careful. Um, if we do table it, I I want to not limit, but I want to be careful about making drastic changes. And the reason why I say that is because we're going to be past the public comment portion. We're going to be past hearing from citizens if we drastically change what is drafted.

And I don't feel comfortable sitting in this seat making drastic changes without getting feedback from anyone. Um, I I do like the [clears throat] thought to keep this in our back pocket to work over the next couple weeks to get an emergency uh amendment or resolution written up uh ordinance and then that will also be very public prior to the meeting. We can receive public comment before you know during the meeting uh on on either or. Um, so I think that's probably the way to go, but but I would highly question drastic table changes with the ordinance that we have right now. Um, only because we're not going to be able to get proper feedback from the citizens if if we do that. So, um, that would be my only kind of thought moving forward with that. Councilman De.

Yeah. So, I think this [clears throat] has been a a good rich conversation. I'm I'm where council president Washaba is and that is if we come back with an ordinance in December whether it's emergency or just bringing this back I would not be comfortable putting in anything higher than an 8% increase and you could do that just for 6 months you could do that for a full year but we have been communicating with the public we were considering raising the rates 8% annually. So to suddenly pass something, I'm just spitballing here, in December, if somebody says, I want to make a one time 10 15% increase, I'm not going to support that because we've been telling the citizens 8%. So I I I think I think we need to bring what everyone has said here. And I brought up these comments before, but many many months ago, the mayor said he made a commitment to form a working group to to work on this plan. Um, I think we heard from the water and sewer commission chair. Let's let's let's have the water and sewer commission or a subcommittee of that be the body that takes this capital and operating plan and we get their feedback on it. We get their feedback on on rates and such. I I totally endorse what the council president said. I am all for diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, getting some outside expertise to work with us to ground truth what we might come up with. The the mayor ran through five or six different municipalities saying they all have a different tiered structure. I'm looking

at our tiered structure on page 27 of this presentation. Who's to say this is even the right structure we should have moving forward? May maybe we need to collapse some of these tiers or change some of the the price breaks. If we're going to do this, let's do it right. Let's examine what our structure is. Maybe we need something more simplistic and then understanding where the big deficits are, which we heard today. that tells us where we need to get to and that will help inform along with any changes in the rate structure, the tiers, how much we need to tack on annually to to make up our deficit deficits. So, long story short, let's commit to water and sewer commission being the place um where this gets worked. I recommend we do get an outside consultant to work with everyone. And if you want to put a stop gap measure in place even for just six months, I could support that at 8%. I wouldn't go any higher than that because we have not communicated that to the citizens. And then the last point, you know, I was looking at our ordinance. You could take this ordinance right now and I I I know we're not going to want to do it at the table, but we could do it at the table for for each of these items. You you you just you just stop the the ordinance that says, you know, the effective date above through the end of fiscal year 26 or if you want to make it through mid 26, the first 6,000 gallons, the rate will change from $2.50 50 to $2.70 for each 1,00 gallons. Period. You take out the rate increases for the following year. So, this could be modified fairly easily and we could

set the term for just 6 months if we wanted and set it at 8%, we're taking some action. We're moving the community forward with a rate increase and then that gives us time to work behind the scenes through the appropriate commission with the appropriate expertise with a consultant to get to a really good solution. I think that's kind of what we're looking at and we are kind of talking probably a little bit in circles. Um,

we have we have short-term right now. We need to do something, okay, that'll get us enough time to be able to truly fix it, right? So, we're going to band-aid the issue and then we're going to go in and fix the issue. So, you know, I I kind of agree with Council Member Demoter. If you we're looking at 8%, we've been communicating 8%. Um, so if it's 8% for a year and the rest of the ordinance goes away and if you know and that's just what it is and that gives us that year to do it. Um, you know, when I say an outside consultant, I don't necessarily mean it has to be outside. It could be Katie, not to put you on the spot. It could be Barney, it could be Jared, it could be anybody, right, that is comfortable enough to sit in and figure this out. But it's got to be somebody that can figure it out and not just throw numbers at a wall and see what sticks because 8% over the last four over the next four years is numbers at a wall. And that's just what it is. That's the truth. And we're talking about money. We're talking about the future of Mount Ary being able to supply and treat water. It needs more than numbers at a wall. because we were proven that that would not touch it. So, we need people that can fix the problem. And that's where [clears throat] I'm going to hold firm and I will die on that hill if I have to. But I'm comfortable with a one-year 8% just to kind of once again band-aid the issue over the next year or whatever the timetable is that this council whether it's 6 months or a year really commit to finding and having the

right conversations with the right people and and and fixing it. Okay. Can are you done council president? Yeah. I'll in favor of tableabling make a motion to table it eventually or I mean phys whatever the correct motion and I'll be more than happy to work with Tom to figure out alternative language for the upcoming uh December meeting that just extends it a year or six six months to a year and I'll work with the staff to u get that going too

one uh one thing about the outside uh consultant uh going through logist loistically. First of all, council president, I agree with you, Katie, Jared. Um, you know, we have somebody in house who who can sit down and map this out. My my concern was, you know, if you do indeed want to go outside of the building and hire somebody. Now you're talking the logistics of putting out a proposal [clears throat] and then bringing somebody in and then interviewing people and next thing you know the analysis for analysis

becomes a real issue. So I would much rather you know I'm um you know surrendering or throwing a a staff person on the hand grenade. [laughter] How you doing back there Mary? Uh, you know, I I I would be much better u I would think much better of it if it were somebody inside the house than outside. Yeah. And and I think that's what I was mean. I'm fine with with that. We just, you know, two quick real quick points. Sure. Um,

just to vocalize this the the before the numbers and the presentation behind it, I was for a one let's pass 8% one year. Let's get it going. I'm having a real hard time after seeing that, you know, and with just one of the first things you said, which was this is a drop in the bucket.

I'm having a real hard time with living with 8% for a year when we know now we've quantified what the hemorrhaging is. So that's I see the logical part of doing something and then the other part of me is going, man, this is almost this is almost nothing. Um, secondly, just to quantify what the mayor put together on this slide, just for the public out there, the quick math, how low our current rates are using the middle tier, 15,000 gallons a quarter, which is a $167 water bill. Um, the next the next uh let's see, the um the next highest water bill on this chart, which is Manchester, would be 275. That's 65% more than we're pairing. That's the next highest water bill in that tier. The highest in this group is $517. That's 210%. So that's how I put it this way. That's much we're undercharging for the utility right now.

Yeah. So what I'll do real quick, you guys. No, go ahead. I was just going to make the motion to table it, but go ahead, sir. Was out. Go ahead. Go ahead. The original movement. I was going to uh alter my mot my uh original motion to table this uh ordinance 2025-9 until uh appropriate time next month meeting. I'll second it. Do we need a full vote? You have a vote. Okay. To approve tableabling it.

All right. All right. All right. So, we have another motion to table ordinance 2025-9 till the December meeting uh where it will be put under unfinished business. Uh it has been seconded. Uh all in favor of tableabling ordinance 2025-9 to December, please signify by saying I. I opposed. All right. Uh council, I just have one uh request to the mayor here. Sorry, Tom. I'll just that in the meantime that these two Barney's presentation and this be put up on the web page. Maybe create a a subsection of water bill increase or something so people can find all the documents related to it easier or something of that nature if it's fair deal.

Yeah, because it's public information already. So, yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you. Sorry, Tom. So I might recommend at this point reintroducing this ordinance uh with a second so that it's still [clears throat] alive. Okay. Um I don't know what the calculation is there but you don't want to be a situation where you've gone beyond I'll make so just a reintroduction motion or okay I'll make the motion to reintroduce ordinance 2025-9. I'll second that. [clears throat]

And I apologize that this I understand to the outside what it probably seems messy. I promise you it's not as messy as it seems. It it this these conversations need to happen. Uh and and this this process needs to happen so that we aren't back here again in another two years because the majority of this council actually did this less than two years ago already. Yeah. So, um, that's why we're going to going to really hammer this one out and make sure that it's done correctly. Uh, next up, ordinance 2025-20, budget amendment to add $80,000 for the South Main Street roundabout project. This is for introduction. Do we have a motion?

Um, motion to Oh, to introduce 2025-20. Do we have a second? I'll second. All right. Then we'll see that next month as well. We do not have any unfinished business. At this time, we're going to move into a closed meeting. We will actually I'll make a motion to go into a closed meeting. Do we have a second? Second. All right. When we we will roll call into close session. At the conclusion of our close session, this Mount Airy Town Council meeting will be adjourned. We will now roll call into close session. Council member Demoter. I. Council member Mund. I. Council Secretary Evans. I. Council member Kelly. I. I'm as well. We'll see everybody next month. Thank you.