Remarks by Jane Hughson
728 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 18 of 30
“Because I think that would be the starting point for a motion, and then you could- But what is in here right now in front of us if we don't make an amendment? I don't think there's- Zero. It stays the same. Right. Okay. And what is the recommended rate? Because I'm thinking it's scenario five, because that's what's in the, not this one, but the other one, the summary of all the utility, that one right there. But you said that the budget is built on no increase.”
“OK. But we haven't had an increase in three years. And you all will recall that I said this is one of the rates that our community understands. This is to take care of stormwater issues, hopefully prevent some flooding in certain areas of our town. And so I think most of us, according to my sheet, said, yeah, we would look at an increase. when we discussed it before. Of course, we all said we'd do an increase in water and electric also at the last meeting. So, council, I'm going to ask, six of us said we would consider an increase. So where do we want to do this? Because if we go back to the…”
“It's a flat fee. Actually, there's three rates.”
“This is the middle one, but it's, it's not a, it's not based on consumption like electrical water is.”
“That would be very helpful. We need to know how that effect is on the business community, because it's a lot higher. And what the increase is. you know, what it is now and then what that increase would be. Okay.”
“Commercial. But it's the, you've got to look at, this gets multiplied out by the amount of their impervious cover. And when we've talked about this in the past, what staff has done is they have taken a business that, Everybody knows Lowe's. You've got the building, and you've got the parking lot. What that turns into, and then something that's like a small restaurant. Right. That's a standalone, not part of a shopping center or something. And so staff have taken maybe three, maybe five examples that we can kind of look at and kind of get it in our brain what that actually is. Because this is…”
“Thank you. So if we could have that. if we can get this past and onto next reading, that would be very helpful to have. Okay.”
“That's why we have the flexibility. Right. OK, so right now, I don't think that we even have a motion, because I wanted people to know what their motion was going to be. And I think at this point, what we would want I did the public hearing, right? Yes.”
“Go to the next slide, please. Yeah, and that's where we end up. Even with this 86 cents, we're still less than $8 a month.”
“Yes, I did. Thank you for keeping me straight, but I did second it.”
“I think we looked at, we were trying to find that, and I was thinking we looked at averages for neighborhoods.”
“Yeah, it would also be good if we had not just the R2 because the others aren't on here. And so we need that because some of the folks you're talking about may be at that lower, which is $0.57 additional. I don't know what it would be, but it would be good if we saw. All three of them. A holistic picture.”
“That's how we were trying to get to the numbers that you're talking about. We did that once before. I don't know how, but yeah, it's not possible. And it may, maybe it wasn't everything, but maybe two or three main streets, maybe not the cross streets or whatever, but anyway. and different parts of town.”
“Actually, in exhibit A, we've got the small residential, typical, and large. So we're talking about the 1490, the R2. The smaller lot is $9.14. No, I'm sorry, it used to be. nine 67, but still it's like five bucks less. This is for the stormwater. So this is the attachment a, and I'm not even sure what this says that if we don't say something different, what we're even passing on this one, it has October one, 2025 yet rate October one, 2026, right? But there's a range.”
“But you can't pass the range for a rate.”
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“Okay. So... Okay. Anybody else, question, comment, concern?”
“But everybody in an apartment pays electric and water waste water. This isn't all single family homes.”
“I just don't think you can look at property tax and utility rates I mean, that's apples and elephants.”
“But the, Property tax rate doesn't go into the utility funds. Those are run as separate businesses.”
“And what I want to know is why we didn't have this discussion months ago.”
“Yeah, we had discussion. on June 25th at our special meeting. We had this whole thing, and most of you are going, yes, I'm good with increasing it. I'm good with increasing it, including the two of you who are now voting against it. So let me just say, next time. I have always expressed my concerns on the increases”
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“I was getting ready to ask for something, but I think it's maybe on here because I was doing the 10 million because it was 1.2. Is this future one-time capital project amount? Is that where, if we go with scenario five, we would have $24 million to do storm. We could fund a $24 million bond.”
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