Committee of the Whole - Special Meeting

We are here today to talk about our public service rates proposed for 2027 to 2028. We are going to make two presentations. The first will focus on the prices of solid waste and the second on those of water, surface water and sewage. In addition, Ron Straha will lead the discussion on the service of water, used water and sewage. We will discuss a study on the cost of the service that we have ordered as part of the rate study process for 27 to 28. It was launched in 25 to 26 but ended in 27 to 28. We examine the supply cost of these services and review the cost distribution plan for water and surface water in order to better align the charges on the real cost for each customer base. Each customer base therefore contains specific associated elements. We have examined these distributions and Ron will review them today. These rates are based on the best information currently available, especially on inflation projections for 2028 and 2027. but also on the updated budget information that we have today, our internal cost allocations, etc. For waste rates, we have identified a precise rate, contrary to the water and sewage services. We have tariff forks because we have not yet finalized the figures, but we think we are close enough to reality. Although these are not exact figures, we wanted to give you an overview. This will give you an idea of our tariff position before the budget discussions and will allow us to answer your questions and comments before the presentation of the final tariffs revised in October. Now, I give the floor to Mera Houbar, our manager of the Solid Waste Management Program. She will tell us about the Solid Waste Tariffs.

Hello, as Martin said, I am Mera Houbar, manager of the Solid Waste Management Program and I am here to discuss tariffs for 2027 and 2028. Before sharing the projected rates, I would like to review what these rates finance. The collection and elimination of waste represents about 85% of the costs covered by these rates. The collection of waste, or what we pay to providers, represents about 52%, followed by the elimination of waste poured into the County of King at a rate of 33%. Then come the taxes and rebates associated with waste collection services. These include the state tax on waste, the BNO tax, the municipal tax on public services, the sale tax and the fees for the dangerous waste management program of the County of King. This represents about 11% of the costs included in the customer rates. Finally, we have the costs associated with the municipal staff and the waste collection program, the durability and solid waste section, as well as the billing. Then, I present to you an overview of the evolution of the main costs of our solid waste rates over the last five years. In green, you can see the customer rates for solid waste in Renton. In gray, it is the increase in elimination costs, which, as you can see, has made a lot of progress in recent years. In red, it is the IPCW, the consumption price index that we use to determine the collector's remuneration and its annual increase. I specify that for 2023, if you look closely, there is a small orange line in the top right corner. This is because, although the increase in the IPC was 9.54%, which means that Republic Service's remuneration should have increased as much, our contract limits this annual increase to 8%. And in the Recology contract, this annual remuneration will be raised to 6%. It was raised this year, but not as much as it could have been. Here are the tariff increases planned for 2027 and 2028. in order to generate enough revenue to cover the cost increase presented in the previous slides. This is what we expect to need for 2027. As you can see, there is a global increase of 8.1%, followed by an increase of 6.8% for 2028. We have 80 different rates for solid waste services. So it varies according to the price and the sector, but we generally foresee an increase of 8.1%. I would like to show here what this represents for our customers on a monthly basis. In the left table, we have our most common service levels for each sector. following what customers currently pay for these services per month in 2026. Then, we have the projected monthly cost for 2027 and 2028, indicated in blue. I also included, as a reference, the projected monthly cost that I had shared with the planning committee earlier this year in January. As you can see, we are now planning an increase in lower rates, and I will explain why in the following slide. I leave you a few moments to assimilate all the figures in this graph. You may notice, by observing the monthly costs for 2027, that we offer a single combined rate for the whole year, instead of a raise in January for public services, followed by another in April. By combining these rates and distributing the costs, we think that the impact will be less for customers, while being easier to communicate and manage at the billing level. For my last slide, I will review the factors influencing these rates, the measures taken to minimize the costs and the steps necessary for their completion. As I mentioned, about 85% of our customers' payments are directly transferred to the waste collection company and to the King account for the treatment of waste. In 2026, Republic Service rates, or rather their remuneration, will increase by 3.79%. The RECOLOGY rates will be higher than those of REPUBLIQUE for several reasons. REPUBLIQUE rates, as I said, have increased each year according to the Price to Consumption Index . However, even these years, we have not indebted them to the full inflation rate due to the contract. In addition, when their basic rates were set in 2016, the economic conditions for recycling were different. For example, a major buyer of recyclable materials, China, accepted many items that it no longer accepts today. There have also been changes in the sector that are not really reflected by the annual increase in GDP. It is in particular about the evolution of labor law and standards on fuels, which have increased the costs of the entrepreneur and which we do not really take into account with the annual increase of the IPC. As for the elimination of waste, as you have seen, costs have increased every year. In 2027, the elimination costs of the King County will increase by 7.3%. And a new increase of 8.4% is planned for 2028. But in the face of these increases in costs, we have taken several measures to maintain lower rates. The first consists of distributing costs over two years. The second goes through the realization of tax savings. The new contract gave us the opportunity to reorganize the way we set some of our rates. We will thus make significant savings on the state tax on waste by modifying our billing mode for composting and recycling services. Another important factor, albeit minor, is that when I presented to you the elimination forecasts earlier this year, the rate of the King County had to be higher. Since then, they have prioritized some investment projects in the solid waste management system and have a new source of income by resuming the installation of energy valorization of the gas. Thus, their costs are lower than what I had announced earlier this year. We have also obtained subsidies and we will use the treasury reserves of the fund for solid waste in order to compensate for the cost of new compost bags. We will therefore no longer need to contract a loan to pay for it. But as I have said many times, these are forecast rates. To finalize them, we must essentially do two things for 2028. We do not yet know the price index for consumption. For now, we are planning an increase of 4%, but we are studying several different scenarios and we have to take a little more time to examine them before determining which projections to use and to set the rates. And the last point, as I mentioned, is that there are 80 different waste management rates and we want to examine in detail how the costs are distributed between these rates to ensure that they are equally shared. This is therefore what we must do before presenting you with a final proposal, which I intend to submit to the Committee of Public Services by October. On this, I will take the questions now or will keep them for the end, once Ron has finished.

E, Councilor Rivra, then Councilor Howard.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate this presentation. We always love to hear how our taxes and our taxes are going to have to be increased because of inflation, all these funny things. My question is based on, I think it was slide 3 or 4, regarding the price. Yes, it is this one. Perfect. Does this also include the anticipated increases in the costs of the King's account? Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yes. And on this slide, you mentioned something about a mixed rate. Do you hear me? Okay. Yes. And what is it? Is the January projection the mixed rate, or the one in August, or is it a mix of the two? I'm a little lost because we're looking at two rates here, but you said there's a third one, which is a mixed rate, which for me means that it's neither one nor the other. That's it, I have a lot of numbers.

So, the blue rate in the middle, the price of 2027 will fall in blue, is a mixed rate for 2027. Uh, just to compare, I wanted to show it in case someone would have a photographic memory of the similar January presentation and wonder what these numbers have become. Why aren't they there? The monthly price of January 2026 is only a comparison. What some cities have done, and what we also have the opportunity to do when we change providers in the middle of the year, is to proceed with a series of tariff increases. We could therefore have a set of January to March rates, then another set for April to December. But we propose to have only one rate for 2027. Or, instead of two different rates, the total income required for the year is the same, but we divide it differently.

Does that help? Yes, okay, if I may. I think I read the headline wrong. This is the projection of August 26, what we present today, that is to say August 2026. Yes. Okay. I thought, for some reason, that it was a mistake and that it should have indicated 2027, that's why, but basically, what we're saying is that we're going to use a single price of 34.65 for individual houses from January 2027, and that's what we're saying today in August. Yes, I understand. It's a dense slide. Thank you for being patient with me.

Very well. E, municipal councilor.

I just wanted to say that I understand the confusion perfectly, because I had similar reflections, but also based on the evolution of our economy. So, a little on a head start, in a way. It seems logical that you were saying, well, this is what we are planning for the moment, because things could change in three or four months. God preserves us. Maybe for the best. We hope so. But I am grateful to you, because I really think that these elements are a little different, and I appreciate the explanation. So thank you.

Let's continue, because I don't see them. Is it the municipal councillor Prince up there, or who is the person next to Judith? What is it? What does it say?

Karen.

It's written Karen. She presents with Ron in a minute. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I had forgotten that there was, okay. I wanted to make sure I didn't forget them. Perfect. I'm getting old. These glasses don't work as well anymore. Ron, I think if there's nothing else, it's up to you or the word is up to you. Good evening, President of the Interim Council Albertson, Member of the Municipal Council. I am Ron Straha, Director of the Division of Systems, and I am here to talk to you about the analysis of the cost of service that we have carried out and the tariff restructuring that we propose for our water and surface water services. I will also talk about the projections and the range of tariffs that we are considering for our water, sanitation and surface water services. This evening, Karen L. Johnson is here with me. She works in the financial council. She is our consultant for our tax studies and she will help me answer all your questions that I could not answer. The following slide shows a basic overview of the components of a tax study. The first step concerns revenue needs, where we examine all our costs, from operating costs to capital costs, through our taxes, our internal service charges, and so on. Then, according to our current rates, we assess the necessary increase so that our revenues correspond to our forecast expenses. A reminder for the council, our public services work as a business fund. We operate as an independent company within the city and all our expenses must be covered by the income we generate as a public service. The second part of a tariff study is the cost of the service. It is a question of examining how we perceive income from different categories of customers and ensuring that the collection is carried out in a fair and equitable manner so that no category pays more than another. Then comes the tariff design, where we determine the necessary rate level and target service levels to meet these income needs while being considered fair and conform to our financial objectives. Pour cette étude, nous avons utilisé les directives standards de l'industrie pour réaliser ces analyses de coût de service. Nous les effectuons tous les six ans pour nos services publics. Nous nous appuyons sur l'American Waterworks Association, l'une des normes que nous suivons pour mener nos études de coût de service. Oups. As Martin mentioned, we started our full tariff study in 2024, using the client data from 2023 to carry out our analysis of the cost of service. Then, we projected this data until 2026, using our tariffs from 2026 to define our revenue needs and rebalance the costs between the different categories of customers so that they are equally distributed. So what we propose is to ask the Council to adopt our tariff restructuring as part of the budget. 2027 to 2028, as well as the tariff increases necessary for water, sanitation and rainwater services at the same time. But we propose to extend this adjustment for customer categories over a period of two years. It will therefore not be implemented in a single year. We will spread it over 2027 and 2028. We will therefore divide it in two. So here is a slide. Oops, am I on there? I was wrong. Thank you. There you go. Hum, so this slide presents the results of our study on the cost of service for the water service. It mainly shows the categories of customers. Our individual, collective and residential residential customers. Then, we have private irrigation and municipal irrigation as other categories of customers. And finally the fire counters. What it shows, and it's important here, it's a bit counterintuitive, but the negative values you see indicate that these categories of customers pay more than their fair share, and the positive values show that they do not pay their fair share. So, in the context of the analysis of the cost of service, we are trying to bring adjustments to these different categories of customers, such as individual houses, where it appears that they pay 2.45% more than their share compared to the collective and non-residential. This change is due to a few elements. The first change is motivated by a change in the way we account for the public protection costs against fires. Previously, we used mainly the fire rate to set the cost according to the size of the counter, and we have moved on to a new methodology that takes into account the rate and duration of the fire rate. For example, an individual house requires a fire rate of 1000 to 1500 gallons per minute and must be able to run for a minimum of 2 hours to fight fires. And in other larger buildings, such as commercial, collective or industrial buildings, the fire rate varies from 3,000 to 6,000 gallons per minute. And they must be able to flow for 3 to 4 hours. They therefore exercise a stronger demand on our system. The study therefore takes this into account and makes adjustments due to this fire rate demand. I can tell you that our infrastructure must be designed to meet these costs, which determines the size of our tanks, our distribution systems and our pumping stations. All this plays a role in the design of our water supply system. Basically, what happens with this change is that we transfer part of the public fire protection costs of individual homes to the collective and non-residential customer classes so that they pay their fair share. Then, the other category concerns our customer classes for irrigation, namely the private and the city. We have two different rates for this, where the municipal rate is lower than that of the private. What we propose here is to modify this so that there is no difference between what the city pays for irrigation water and what private sector customers pay for municipal water. And then, you know, the percentages may seem a little high, but if you look at the amounts in dollars, it represents $ 65,344. This is the change we would bring to align these two rates so that they are identical. Thus, there will be no more different payment scales between the private customer and the municipal customer. And so, these $ 65,000 would be distributed over two years, or $ 32,500 per year. And then, the other point concerns private fire counters. This is a field where the methodology is evolving, which is currently causing a lot of debate. Therefore, we do not propose to modify this customer class for the moment. We will come back to this later, once we have new standards on this subject. We will therefore maintain this situation as it is. And to come back to the irrigation section, it is. The municipal rate has been lower and has been mainly subsidized by the private irrigation rate. Thus, in our water rate structure, there are 3 barèmes. We have individual households, collective households, private and municipal clients for irrigation, as well as fire counters, and in addition to that, it is just our basic remuneration. We have a basic remuneration for each client. Then, we add our water consumption rates, and this concerns individual households. There are three levels of water consumption and for the other classes, it is a specific uniform rate based on the amount of water used. The advantage of all this is that we create separate basic repayments for individual homes, reflecting the effect of the change in fire rates, and we adjust all customer classes according to the sector's standards, again basing ourselves on the size of the counters and the demand they impose on our system, while re-aligning our cost recovery between the fixed part and the variable part. bill rates for all categories of customers in order to be fair and equitable to each of them. This slide shows you an example of a residential bill for a family and presents the different levels we have. Thus, for customers, we have three levels, from 0 to 500 cubic feet of water, from 500 to 800 cubic feet, from 800 to 1,000 and beyond 1,000. This chart shows you the number of customers in this category with a three-quarter-inch counter. We show our current rate and the progressive implementation of adjustments related to the cost of the service. As you can see, for a family with a three-quarter-inch counter, 68% of customers in this category will see a slight reduction from 3.3% to 0.3% of their docile rates consume up to an average of 650 cubic feet of water. Customers who consume more than an average of 650 or 650 cubic feet of water will see a certain increase. This is rather beneficial because it helps to encourage conservation, which we want to promote. Then, for the family rate with 1-inch counters. Once again, it's the same thing for 10% of our customers in this category. Here, they all see a reduction in their rates thanks to this adjustment, mainly because the smallest accountants paid a larger share for fire protection than the largest. This is an example of invoices for categories of multifamily and non-residential customers. It shows again the different sizes of counters, the number of customers and the percentage of customers in the category. It then shows the progressive implementation over two years, in cumulative percentages and in dollar amounts on a monthly invoice, for customers of these different classes. As you can see, the average consumption on these different counters is much higher than what you see for a family. Once again, another factor is the demand for fire protection. Let's now move on to private and municipal irrigation counters. Here again are the different sizes between the private sector and the city. This shows the changes that we propose to align the rates of municipal irrigation meters on those of private meters, in order to group them into a single irrigation category. And so, for the irrigation meters of the private sector, they will see a fairly significant reduction in their invoices. And then, them, our municipal irrigation meters. Thus, for all our municipal parks, our facilities, all our buildings, wherever we have irrigation counters belonging to the city, they will undergo an increase. Once again, these $ 64,000 that I mentioned earlier represent the total amount of the increase which will be distributed over a period of two years. So this is all about the cost of service and the tariff restructuring of the water service. And once again, when we carry out these cost-service analyses, we do it so that the revenues are neutral. The main thing is that we do not receive any more revenues in total. We simply adjust the share of revenues that we receive for the different categories. I would now like to present to you the tariff restructuring proposed for our surface water service. This mainly concerns our commercial customers. We do not bring any change for individual residential customers and our surface water service applies a tax rate. This will therefore concern our commercial customers and our individual non-residential customers and we want to bill them an amount per acre or a fraction of an acre per plot. For the service of surface waters, we calculate according to the surface area of the plot multiplied by a percentage. We determine the intensity of impermeability, for example 10% or 50% of impermeability. So far, we have calculated by tranches from a half acre to an acre. I will talk a little more about it in the next slide. We want to expand the number of categories for the intensity of the impermeable areas. Currently, we have three levels. We want to create six of them so that customers with a very low percentage of impermeable areas do not pay the same as those with a higher percentage. We want to re-align our tariff for gravel. We have a special tariff for city gravel that has been set at a very high level. We do not know why, and we now want to treat them like any other customer, depending on the percentage of impermeable areas in their field. And we also re-align what we bill to the State Transport Department for their limited-access highways that cross our city, I-405. And they, in short, we will simply bill them according to their percentage of impermeable surface, but according to the law of the state, we can only bill them 30% of what we bill to a comparable property. So, for a property that is 50% impermeable, we can bill them the same rate for 50%, but we have to reduce it to 30%. And this is imposed by the law of the state. This is why we also propose to review the way we build our roads for the management of rainwater. We will therefore bill them according to their percentage of impermeable surface on all our dedicated routes and the category in which they are. But we will reduce this amount to 30%. Thus, we treat our customers in the transport sector in an equitable way. This slide shows you our current structure and our revised commercial structure. We do not modify our single-family residential rates at all. Restructuring therefore focuses on our commercial rates. And as you can see, if you had less than a half acre at low intensity, which can go up to 50% of impermeability, you had to pay for a half acre. What we propose is to bill according to the fraction of the surface of the field. Thus, if it is a field of a quarter acre, it pays for a quarter acre according to their category of impermeability intensity. And this also applies to medium and high intensities. There are therefore three different levels. We propose to create six levels for our commercial customers. Very low, low, medium, medium intensity, high and very high. and to adjust the way we perceive the revenues of each of these customer classes so that everything is neutral in terms of revenues, while being equitable. Customers who have very little impermeable surface on their land will pay a lower price, but those who have a higher percentage of impermeability on their land will pay a higher price. And this is due to the fact that a larger impermeable surface leads to an increase in waste. This also shows for the state of Washington how we propose to modify the rate for the Ministry of Transport, or HDOT, which is currently in the lower category at 50% of impermeability. We have made a recalculation based on the surface of their enclosures and their impermeable surface within these enclosures using a geographic information system or SIG. This is based on our most recent photogrammetric cartography of the area and, therefore, they enter this high average category, between 45 and 65% of impermeability. This is therefore the category in which they are classified, but we only make 30% of what we would normally perceive from them. This is why their rate is lower and it is the same for the streets of the city. We did the same exercise using our SIG to determine the percentage of impermeable areas compared to the total amount dedicated to the city and we determined that they belong to the high category. The streets of the city are in high categories. We therefore have borders, canals, sidewalks and roads that occupy an important part of the enclosures. They are therefore in a higher category, but due to our proposal to treat them in the same way as the WASHD, we charge them 30% of their tariff category. This is therefore what we propose as a revision of the tariff structure of the rainwater service. We think this is fair for all the different levels of customers we have and this allows us to treat our customers in the transport sector in an identical way. Here is what it looks like with our comparison of the coverage costs. Once again, nothing has changed for single-family homes, but you can see how customers with low waterproofing, from 10% to less than 20%, are affected. You know, they will see a reduction in their bills. Only customers in the commercial category classified as high and very high intensity will see a certain increase. It is still a question of equally distributing this cost between the different customers within each of these categories. And the same goes for the WASHD with the E adjustments. Based on the category in which it is located at 30%, then for our urban streets. Thus, in terms of total cost for our urban streets, it is an increase of $ 83,191. And this will be again distributed over two years. Once again, all this is done so that the operation is neutral in terms of revenue. We do not collect additional revenue, it is simply the way we perceive the sums to the different customer classes. Here is a slide that shows the comparison of invoices for the category of groups, similar to what I showed you previously, but it simply shows, once again, what their invoices would look like depending on their area, and it indicates the number of accounts affected here. 7 1 728 And then, this shows what the OHDOT represents for the streets of the city. This is therefore what we propose for the restructuring of surface water rates. We therefore propose to implement this, once again, with budgets 27 to 28. And then, in addition to this, when we carry out the restructuring, any final increase of the estimated necessary rates will be applied in addition. Now let's talk about the increase in our public service rates. As for solid waste, I show you what our rates were for water, used water and surface water, which are in blue, orange and green. And in relation to the price index for consumption since 2019, the small bars you see correspond to the years without any price increase. As you can see, this has been irregular. Certain years, we did not have an increase for water, especially in 2023 and 2024, then for the last two years, 2025 and 2026, water had a 2% rise, then 0% in 2026, and used waters had 2%. Our rates for surface water varied between 4% and 3.5%. Over the last three years, This shows where we are in relation to inflation, and I can simply say that we are faced with difficulties related to inflation in our operations, including electricity costs, chemical products, as well as fuel and others. All these costs increase significantly. So we are facing constant opposite winds on this subject. We have carried out a preliminary analysis and I present to you a fork because we have not finished our final tariff analysis. But we will do it, then we will present the final tariffs to the Council as part of the budget adoption process. We are therefore projecting an annual increase of 2 to 4% for water prices, between $0.77 and $1.53 per month in 2027, then between $0.78 and $1.59 extra in 2028. This fork is a little wider because it is a field where we see major increases in operating costs, especially for water services. We therefore use a wider fork, but I have good hope. Once we have integrated the final figures into the tariff model, we will be able to see where they are really located. I hope they will be located in the low fork, like you, I'm sure of it. And for the use of used bones, we are projecting an increase in rates of 2 to 3% per year. And here, we are not making any adjustments to their rate structure, because the analysis of service costs has not shown any need for change. We therefore do not modify anything to the rate structure for used water, only for drinking water and surface water, for which we are planning a 1.5% to 5% discount per year for 2027 to 2028. from 73 to 91 hundred. The percentages are misleading, because we can observe a drop in surface water rates of 73. 100, or 4%, while for the water service, it is an increase of 77 hundred with a rise in rates of 2%. Overall, we will therefore know a global increase in prices including between 2.4 and 3.8% for our three services gathered in 2027 and 2028. That was my last slide. Once again, we will propose to implement this analysis of service costs and revisions of the tax structure that I talked about for the services of water and surface water with the budget 2027 to 2028. and in the framework of our final rates for 2027 to 2028 that we will present to the Council. On this, I will answer all your questions and Karen will help me to answer them.

Very well. Uh, Councilor Hauer. Thank you. Yes. Uh, thank you very much. It's a lot of information to digest, and I must say that the only thing I have remembered is why some single-family residences have a three-quarter inch counter and others one inch.

Excuse me. Why would single-family homes have a three-quarter inch counter and others a one-inch counter? Well, it depends on the time when the structure is built and it also depends on the size, because some individual houses may need sprinklers. But yes, it is one of those things where the manufacturer chooses the size and it really depends on the number of devices in a structure or a building. So you base the size of your counter on the number of devices, sink, washing machine, shower, bathtub, everything that consumes water. There is a calculation based on the plumber's code that allows you to determine, depending on the number of devices, what should be the size of your counter. It is therefore according to the number of bathrooms, washbasins, washing machines and everything that consumes water that the number of devices determines whether the size of the counter is three quarters or more.

It makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. I really appreciate this presentation. I agree with the Councilor Ollerin. It is a lot of information. I have been in charge of the Public Service Commission for six years and I still have the impression of receiving a jet of water under pressure. If you had to explain to a class of children, for example, why their water bill or that of their family increases, in very simple terms, how would you explain it? I ask the question for myself, for when I talk to children. Why does the bill increase, apart from the simple inflation?

Well, yes. Once again, we operate as independent companies. Whatever our expenses, including our capital costs, our operating costs, taxes, etc. We must generate the necessary income to cover these expenses. So try it. The basic principle for which the price must evolve. For us to be able to provide our services, we must collect enough income to cover our expenses. Due to inflation, the cost of materials increases, just as the cost of labor and the cost of internal services that we give to the city to support our operations. All these elements influence our expenses, and to do so, we have to make adjustments. I think we were lucky, we are trying to keep the rises to a number, but it will not always be possible, especially if inflation worsens or with new regulatory requirements. And on the capital side, we have important needs. Our infrastructures are aging and are at risk of falling into disrepair. We had two major sewage ruptures this year. One of them flooded the building of 200 million, causing considerable damage, and this conduit was 74 years old. These are problems that we must solve as a public service by replacing our infrastructure. It is therefore a factor that also influences our rates, our capital needs. Je veux juste mentionner une chose que j'aurais dû dire plus tôt. C'est quelque chose dont cette communauté devrait être très fière. Je veux dire, nous, les conseillers, devrions être très fiers. Après 2027, nos trois services publics seront totalement libérés de toute dette. Nous aurons remboursé toutes nos obligations de revenus et nos prêts à faible taux d'intérêt que nous avions en tant que services publics. Et je pense que cela en dit long sur cette communauté, sur vous tous, les membres du Conseil, et les anciens membres, en termes de soutien aux services publics pour nous aider à atteindre ce que j'appelle une indépendance financière, qui nous donne une grande flexibilité pour l'avenir afin de répondre aux besoins non satisfaits, qu'il s'agisse d'infrastructures ou d'exigences réglementaires. So, you know, my congratulations, and I think it's a great success. 2027. After 2027. This helps us to maintain our efforts, because our payments of the debt service have decreased over time, but we will be totally free of any debt after 2027. And that, I would say, gives us a great financial freedom. You will not find many communities that have public services without debt. So, I think there are two sides to this medal. That's where Ron and I don't quite agree, because being without debt is an excellent thing, but that means that you need more liquidity every year to finance your investment program. While there are infrastructures that can be financed by debt, because they will last for 30 years. We don't do it for sewerage, because they are constantly in work. You will never be able to catch up with all your delay on sewerage. But for elements like a reservoir, it is a costly investment, but with a long-term perspective. you have a long life span. When you build a tank, it's usually for 50 years. This is something for which you would generally contract a debt. And this would not require as much initial capital, because these are things that can be very expensive. This is where there is a compromise between the two. Thus, while we are considering expanding our tanks, we could come back to this idea and decide to contract a debt to avoid increasing the rates too much. It is therefore, once again, a double-edged sword. I think that the other aspect, as Ron said, is that, as for everything else, the cost of electricity has increased enormously, and it weighs heavily on our water system via pumping. We have a lot of hills, so we have to climb the water, and gravity only helps it to go down, but it must then go back up. So it's a real cost that we have to bear. And then, as he explained, the chemical factor, given the current global situation, the state of the market, the strengthening of restrictions and the circulation of these materials, these costs are real and we need these products to treat our water. These are the standards required by the Ministry of Health of the State of Washington. There is therefore a whole set of factors that explain this, and these are things for which we have no other choice. These are requirements to which we must respond in order to provide a community water system. Sorry. Yes, I agree with Martin on the fact that for certain infrastructures, it is necessary to resort to borrowing, especially for reservoirs, because we dimension them according to the future use of the soils. Thus, by using borrowing in this kind of situation, future customers will pay their share of this cost as part of the debt service once it is repaid. This is therefore a good point when it comes to the moment when it is advisable to borrow. We found ourselves in difficulty at the beginning of the 2000s and towards 2010, when we were over-borrowed and that we financed with some of our sewerage work, and we found ourselves in a situation where the repayment of our debt really influenced our rates. We are therefore in very good shape now. We got out of this difficulty. It took a lot of time to get there, but as I say, it gives us this financial flexibility to use debt in a fair way where it makes sense. What else? No other questions. Ron, that must mean that you have done a complete and in-depth work. It's probably redundant. Or is everyone just dumbfounded? But anyway, thank you for the presentation and if there is nothing else, the session of the committee is over. Thank you. Take care of yourself.