Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'm good. If you can hear me. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to call this meeting to order of the mayor and board of commissioners for April the 8th, 2025. Could I have the roll call, please? Emily here the record show. Will you rise with me for the pledge of allegiance please to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Right. Would you bow your heads with me for a brief prayer? Father God, I come to you tonight on behalf of our town. Lord, I ask that you watch over our citizens uh and the folks that are here this evening. as please uh watch over our first responders as well as our military that are serving here and overseas. Uh and we also send a special prayer to uh Commissioner Warick's father uh as he recovers from surgery in Jesus name. Amen. All right, moving forward into the consent agenda. Town administrator, do you have that? Yes, mayor. And if you would, I would ask um if we could make a modification to the agenda. Um, I had inadvertently forgot that we were having the auditor come to give uh a presentation on our annual audit that was concluded. So, I would recommend that we make item A under number five, public presentations. If that's good with the board, you can make a motion to amend the agenda. Could I make a mot uh excuse me, could I get a motion to uh amend the consent agenda to add the auditor for uh excuse me, section 5A? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any

discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I So I I'm sorry. Going back to the consent agenda, it's a pretty straightforward agenda. You have the approval of the March 25th, 2025 town meeting video summary and then a listing of the upcoming town meetings which are which are fluid, but they're essentially the second Tuesday of every month. Uh, and we're showing a listing from May through August of the proposed meetings. All right. Could I get a motion to accept the consent agenda? So moved. Motion. Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Uh, any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I I passes. All right. Moving forward into public presentations. Our auditor is here. Thank you. I am Kim Stank from Zelinkovski Axel Rod and with me tonight is Steve Rock. And we would like to thank both Judy and Kelvin. They do a great job with your financial statements and all of your financial processes. Um we did do your 630 of 24 audit and we performed that and we actually I know we are in April. However, this um everything was buttoned up and done completed in December. So um you should have received two items and the one is our letter to you as those charged with governance. Um we will leave you a copy and I'm sure you can get the copies from Judy and Kelvin at a later date. But basically, our letter is very standard. It's similar to prior years and it's just um it goes over our responsibilities over your financial audit and your responsibilities as those

charged with government governance. Um it goes through talks about significant areas. Um all adjustments were made and posted to the financial statements. There's nothing um significant that you we need to project to you. Everything was very good. Um Steve is going to talk a little bit about the financial statements themselves, but I will ruin his his good news. You do have an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance. So that is a great thing. So kudos to both Judy and Kelvin for for doing that. And I'm going to turn it to Steve so he can go through the statements. Thank you. Um so the financial statements they begin with the first three pages being the opinion to the financial statements. Um like Kim said it was an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. Um the next uh seven pages are the management discussion analysis. Um this is really management's way of really discussing any changes that occur um during the financial statements during the year um and allows management to really uh provide any uh explanations as to any of those changes. Um then going to uh page 12 of the financial statements. Um it begins um with the uh the statement of net position. Um this provides both the statement of or the governmental activities and the business type activities. The governmental activities really being the general fund and business type being this water and sewer funds. Um overall there was about uh $8 million in assets for the governmental activities and about $23 million for the um business type. um about $2 million in liabilities for governmental and $20 million of liabilities um for the the business type. Coming down to your total net position, you really your differences between your assets, you know, liabilities uh of about $6 million for your governmental activities and $3 million for the business type, excuse me. Um the next page your statement activities and this really breaks out your uh expenses and revenues by like

their actual functions um and shows the differences between your revenues and expenses um for those functions. Uh looking at that you really see that a lot of the different functions for the government actually come in at a loss for the year. Um and this is then offset by the the taxes that are taken in um by the uh by the town and in the end comes to a change in that position of a positive or uh an increase of $2 million. Um and this was largely due to the recognizing of the ARPA money that the town would have received u in prior years but then finally recognized and earned during 2024. Um, moving on, then it goes to your um your fund level statements, which um really provides more of a a one-year kind of focus um on your assets and liabilities. It doesn't uh include the long-term um debt or capital assets in them. Um, in the end though, it uh your fund balance remains at about $4 million um for general fund and uh approximately $3 million uh for your uh for the uh uh business type uh the water and sewer. Um after that, then it really just goes into your notes to your financial statements. So, if you really ever want to see any um additional information about your capital assets, your cash balances, your investments, um the debt obligations that the the town may have, uh it provides more insight and more detailed information about um those numbers in your notes, the financial statements. Um and then the last page would be your um your uh budget to actual schedule. And this kind of shows that the uh the differences between what was actually budgeted during the year for revenues and expenditures and then the actual numbers. Um, and it just shows those variances. Um, overall there there wasn't extreme variances. I think revenues were about 200,000 more than budgeted. Um, and expenditures ended up being about

$125,000. So, it really kind of evened out um during the year between the revenues and expenses um for budgeted versus actual. Um and then the last thing I want to talk about is um because of the ARPA funds that the uh the town recognized there ended up being a single audit this year which was testing of the uh um governmental uh funds that were received by the town. Um we provide opinions then over the uh the testing that we performed for uh compliance for these uh the program. Um and again there was unmodified opinions on both the uh the testing of the the major program and of your internal controls for the year. Um, so in the end, clean opinions all across the board. Um, thank you both again to Calvin and Judy. Have any questions for us? No, thank you very much. Yes, we appreciate all your work on it and uh thank Calvin and Judy as well. Mayor, I just I would like to add when they referenced they are correct. They were they had the audit done in a timely manner. I just want to remind everybody the oil spill in the building knocked us out of commission for a while. So that's why we're so late getting them here before you folks. Okay. Well, thank you. But if there is ever any questions, please feel free to reach out to us and Judy and Calvin can get in touch with this. Thank you so much. Truly appreciate it. Thank you. Oh my goodness. You can just say we say za. We call we call ourselves za. It's much easier. Thank you both. We really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Moving forward into uh new business. Uh, we have a resolution

2025-08, which is a property purchase. Calvin, do you have that? Yes, I do. Um, so what I'd like to do is read the resolution into the uh uh minutes and then you can vote on it. And this is a resolution to authorize the purchase of real property at 19 East Cherry Street, Rising Sun, Maryland. uh skipping the first couple the first two boiler plates. Um the third whereas the mayor and commissioners believe it is in the best interest of the citizens of rising sun to promote economic development and the improvement of the main street area through the purchase and revitalization of key buildings and parcels of land for ultimate reuse in the community. And whereas the property of 19 East Cherry Street, Rising Sun, Maryland, meets the criteria for improving the downtown area and is currently for sale, but at a condition that requires significant improvement, revitalization, and repurposing for economic benefit to the downtown region of Rising Sun. And whereas the town desires to make an offer to purchase said property and further authorizes the town administrator as provided by the town code to execute any and all documents necessary to consummate said purchase. Therefore, it be enacted and resolved that the merit commissioners of the town of Rising Sun that one, the town of Rising Sun shall enter into a contract of sale for the purchase of the real property at 19 East Cherry Street, Rising Sun, Maryland, for the purchase price of $345,000. The town administrator, Calvin A. Bon River, Jr., shall have all authority and authorization to execute any and all documents necessary to consummate said purchase. Now therefore, it be further resolved that the mayor and commissioners introduce, passed,

approved, and adopted this resolution on this 8th day of April 2025. Could I get a motion to approve resolution 2025-08? I make a motion to approve resolution 2025-08. Second. There's a second. Uh discussion. Uh does anyone have any discussion? Uh, go ahead. Tell I I think Augie's on mute. Okay, Commissioner Pearson, you're on mute if you're trying to say anything. We'll we'll let him figure out the muting. And there we go. Go ahead, Auggie. Did you have any comments? No, I didn't. Okay. Uh just on behalf of the elected body, we are really excited to finally uh get Main Street parking under control. Uh we look forward to uh adding this property along with the Jensen property to be able for folks to park on Main Street and visit Main Street businesses. It's a pro part of our broader goal of uh Main Street revitalization. Uh and in the coming year and next year, we look forward to a few more changes uh that are really exciting to happen uh towards our main street revitalization goals. Uh all in favor? I I passes. Thank you. All right. The next one's a big one. Resolution 2025-09, which is the fiscal year 2026 tax rate. So this is um a resolution adopting the real estate tax rate for fiscal year 2026. Um skipping the first three boiler plates uh whereases and going to the fourth one. Whereas the town has received notice from the Maryland

Department of Assessment and Taxation that for the tax year beginning July 1st, 2025, the estimated real property accessible base will increase by 3.12% from 235,86,64 to 243,161,490 which is a 7 million 354,886 increase in total assessed value over the last year, but will only result in an additional $33,832 of additional revenue of which to balance the town's budget. And whereas the town's current tax rate is equal to uh 0.460 460 per $100 of assessment and has further remained at this rate since 2020. And whereas the town of Rising Sun, like other small municipalities, is facing significant challenges in providing basic services such as streets and sidewalk maintenance, parks, trash collection, and other amenities to our residents. However, rising sun is also unique in the amount of other services that are provided through the real estate revenue such as daily police patrols and protection, weekly trash recycling and yard waste collection, sunfest spooktacular, winter extravaganza, attractive parade, tiger tribe, little parade, carol singing and other family fun activities. And whereas the mayor and commissioners are committed to conservative fiscal oversight of the town's finances while continuing to maintain the level of service that our residents expect to receive and at a level of taxing that is not overly burdensome to our residents. Therefore, it being enacted and resolved that the town will maintain the current

tax rate of 0.46 46 for each $100 of assessed value for the 2025 fiscal year. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the mayor and commissioners have passed, approved, and adopted this resolution on the 8th day of April 2025. Mayor, if you would, there's a couple things I'd like to add to this is um the significance of the numbers in the fourth um whereas the 235 million going to 243 million. Two things to that. Um sometimes people look at that like the resulting number is an increase in $7 million. That's not the town of rising sun getting $7 million. The $7 million is divided by 100 and then basically multiplied by the zero uh 0.000046 meaning that for every $100 of value the town collects real estate tax at a rate of 46 cents for every $100. So the number is not significant and at times I have people say wow you got you're getting you know in this case seven million more dollars this year. That's not the case. The other thing that I think is significant is that and every budget year since I've been here that goes back to ' 07 but more specifically starting around 2014 and 15. You remember we always talked about how incredibly impactual the sewer and water moratorium was for the town of Rising Sun. In addition to going from having to pay a million2 in 1999 to

solve the sewer issue. We went to 16 million in 2016 to basically build the same sewer technology. And that a lot of times is just born out of maybe a not a good enough presentation to the general community to understand the business operation of the town. And I've always been one that has advocated for the fact that people are the CEOs of their own lives and they make tough decisions every day. And as we've done here, we continue to try to be transparent and tell people both the good and the bad so that they understand the decisions that have to be made. They might not like the decision any more than you folks do as elected taxpaying residents in the community, but there are decisions that have to be made. And we are slowly coming out of that 20 25 year chokeold on our town finances. And what I mean by that is that in 2010 before the economy crashed, the housing bubble of 2008 and the trickle down effect and before we went into a sewer and water moratorum, the total assessed value of all property in rising sun was $236 million. We just passed that this year. That's, you know, 15 years later it took us to dig out of that. And I and I'm always trying to complete the story for everybody to understand that in itself is the detriment to the sewer and water moratorium that we had to go into. Not only did we pay a lot more for sewer and water infrastructure upgrades because of the delay in making the decision. So,

our residents have been, you know, hit hard with high sewer and water rates and and although we have kept our tax rate down, it continues to require the elected body, which we have historically done, which is to be very fiscally conservative in the way we do stuff. We don't we have yet to go into our rainy day funds to pay our day-to-day expenses. And as I've been saying a lot lately, anyone who pays their electric bill over the past year and all the controversy regarding that magnify that about tenfold and just the electric bill alone for the town of Rising Sun has gone up to the point where it's probably going to consume every last nickel and dime of the $33,000 of increased revenue we're gonna get on real estate tax. So, I don't say that to paint a doom and gloom picture. I say that to say that our we've we've done a lot of good work over the years. Residents have done a lot of good work. They've invested in their homes, which is good for the town. Uh but there's still some work to be done. And I think the other disconnect that I think is important for people to recognize is that the federal government gives money to states to help them cover their expenses. You know, when you live in the state of Maryland or Pennsylvania or wherever, your real estate tax or income tax that you pay is doesn't doesn't provide even nearly 100% of the funding that's needed to operate the state. It relies on federal government money to gets filtered down

to the state and then sometimes federal government money is filtered down to the local level. But more importantly, a lot of state money is funneled down to the local level. and our town through the hard work of our, you know, our mayor and our elected body has done a really good job of getting the attention of all levels of government in the state of Maryland, whether they're Republican, Democrat, independent, whatever it is, whatever sheet of music they play by is fine. The fact of the matter is to build relationships with those entities to have that money being funneled to the town of Rising Sun. And I know that it is it's it's our it's our income tax that gets paid to those state agencies. And I get it that some people say, "Well, if the state didn't tax us on it, that um there would be a savings." or the state is never going to stop taxing people and the state is always going to give money to someone and so not all 157 communities in in Maryland get that money and in the town of Rising Sun and Cecil County alone we've gotten two project restore grants we're getting a lot of demolition money grant money and we're getting a lot of facade improvements that is because we build relationships with those people who control the money. And that can't get lost, especially now with, you know, we know our federal government can be upside down at times and we know our state government can be upside down, but at this level, we don't have the luxury to necessarily choose who we want to talk to and who we want to, you know, have relationships with

because at the end of the day, every taxpayer in this community will lose if we don't continue to build relationships with those other entities and get that grant money flowing to us. That's what enables us to keep our real estate tax low. So, I just wanted to, you know, bring that full circle here as we're considering this tax rate. Thank you. Could I get a motion to approve resolution 2025-09? So, moved. Seconded. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Just a brief discussion point. Uh I just want to commend Calvin and our staff for um all their hard work on this. Um we were lock rock solid on wanting to maintain our tax rate. And um we have a lot of uncertainty coming from both the federal level and from the state. And uh as Calvin said, we're not immune to the cost of goods rising and uh the cost of inflation. Um, but we are tightening the belt and after multiple years of tax reductions, uh, we are still holding the line on taxes. So, uh, I commend you. I know our board does. Uh, all in favor, I I Dave, I sorry, he's muting himself so that, you know, he doesn't get that feedback. Uh, passes. Thank you. Uh last tonight, uh resolution 2025- uh10A. Calvin, do you have that? Yeah. So, we have we have another annexation request from a property that currently is not in the incorporated limits of the town of Rising Sun. And this property is very similar to the one resolution we had uh a month month and a half ago. Um, this one is for

523 Mount Street, which basically is the location of the um since abandoned gas station sitting right at the corner of Mount Street and um and Route One uh and on the the corner of North Hills Drive. The property behind this property, 35 North Hills Drive, is the one that we submitted the resolution for a month or so ago for their annexation. So, this is the same um process here where we read the resolution into the minutes. You guys don't vote on it. it just starts the formal basically 90day process to um to proceed through the legal steps of annexation. So if if the elected body is interested in this um request, I can read it into the minutes. Please proceed. Okay. So this is uh annexation res resolution 2025-10A annexation 523 Mount Street, Rising Sun, Maryland. Whereas the town located in Cecil County, Maryland is a municipality organized under the provisions of the Maryland Constitution and governed under the provisions of the local government article of the annotating code of Maryland. And whereas the town is proclaimed as a perpetual entity with the right to pass laws. And whereas the town of Rising Sun has received a request for annexation from a contiguous property owner and the town of Rising Sun is agreeable to the extension of the corporate boundaries and related services of the town of Rising Sun by annexation of the subject property. Whereas pursuant to the authority of section three, home rule of article blah blah blah, municipal corporations of the constitution um of Maryland and of subtitle four of the local government article of the

annotated code of Mauin as amended and the code of the town of Rising Sun, the Mary commissioners of the town of Rising Sun are vested with the authority to enlarge the corporate boundaries of the town and whereas the sole property owner of all of the assessed valuation of the real property located in the area to be annexed has consented to set annexation in an annexation agreement dated April 8, 2025. This agreement will be recorded in the land records at Cecil County and further outlines the terms and conditions related to this annexation. It is therefore resolved by the mayor and commissioners of the town of rising sun that all the following land situate contiguous to the town of rising sun and the sixth election district of Cecil County state of Maryland known as 523 Mount Street as shown on the annexation plat here too prepared for 523 Mount LLC by Rockrun survey dated April 7th 2025. The said par will be more particularly bounded and described as follows. I'm not going to give I'm not going to read all the surveying meets and bounds, but that's what's in there. And be added to the corporate boundaries of the town of rising sun and any persons residing in said area shall become residents of the town of rising sun generally subject to the provisions of the charter code of the town of rising sun ordinances and other rules and regulations of the town of rising sun. And be it further resolved that the zoning map of the town of Rising Sun be amended to include this newly annexed property and that all the property be designed designated as rural business zoning district. And be it further resolved that this resolution shall become effective 46 days following its passage and approval. Therefore, be it further resolved that the mayor commissioners of the town of Rajit Sun introduce this resolution on this eth

day. Um, I want to show you. Um, this is the subject property. Right here is Route One. Here is Mount Street. And this is the existing, um, basically abandoned gas station um, sitting there. Um, a couple things I want to remind everybody. Again, it talks about it will take effective 46 days following its passage. This is not a passage of the resolution tonight. This is just introducing it and then it has to go through a review process with the state and the county. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Moving forward into sta uh citizens input. Would anyone like to speak this evening? All right. Moving forward into staff reports. Town administrator. Yeah. Um a lot of interesting things um are happening and um you know we're in the middle of budget crunch. Um we have the land development community is inching closer towards submitting plans. Um we have been aggressively on our level doing evaluations of the sewer lines to make sure that um our interceptor lines are able to handle the capacity of proposed sewer going through. We're always looking at our zoning and land development codes to make sure that the town is protected um and that we get to have a a dominant hand so to speak in the in the development process so that we make sure that the wants and needs of all of our residents are met to the best of our ability.

Um, with that there seems to be a big push for solar. Um, and I don't know if the state had actually passed the legislation, but you know, just like we ran into with the cannabis regulations, the um the state legislature is and and and I'll be honest, it it's probably indicative. I probably shouldn't say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's indicative of lobby groups and their ability to lobby legislators. Um, local municipalities have had their hands tied on cannabis dispensaries. We're no longer really able to regulate them. The state has taken that authority away. Um the state has moved in with the idea of Airbnbs and they've been they've been formulating language to take the right of the local jurisdiction. And let me say something that's really important. The local jurisdiction is the taxpayers of this town. You guys just happen to be voted by your fellow taxpayers to sit up here and represent the town. But so when they change this legislation, they're taking away the right of the taxpayers in this community to be able to control the destiny of their town. And one of the things that is in the legislature right now is to take away the right of towns to regulate solar fields and solar arrays. And there's a lot of uh companies that are looking to take farmers fields. So as we have been concerned about maintaining the rural heritage of our surrounding area, we want to be rural. We respect the rights of land owners to be able to develop,

but at least we can control to some degree how that development is done so it doesn't have a negative impact on our constituents as a whole. The state is moving towards legislation that would basically take us out of any oversight on a for-profit entity coming in and taking a 100 acre farm and just turning it into a solar panel array there. Um there's a lot of thought out there of the negative impacts of solar panel arrays and how uh there are those who believe that it actually hurts the environment. it hurts the soil um so forth and so on. But we're slowly getting our hands tied. So today in me a meeting I had with the engineering firm, we want to try to get some ordinances on the books to help us be able to regulate solar panel arrays on anything that happens in our incorporated limits. We don't have a whole lot of farm land around, but you know, annexation is always something that happens. So, um, you know, a farm in the future that might annex in the town, at least we could have some language about solar panel ways to to protect our interest at the end of the day. So, we're trying to stay ahead of the curve balls that the state is giving us. That concludes my report. Thank you, Chief. I've got a couple things I want to go over. One was we had the little parade. I'm sorry. Um I got a couple things I wanted to go over. One, we had the little league parade last weekend and um things went really well. But what that means is Little League season is open and we will have a lot of pedestrian traffic in and around town. Um, so when you come through town driving around town, be cautious because there are kids. Again, I say there are kids

walking to and from the Little League fields. Um, in addition to that, we may have other uh children friendly events that are going to occur in a park throughout the summer. So again, when you're driving through town, use caution because there are families, children running and playing u throughout town. Uh second, um the update on the speed cameras that are coming. A, um a contractor has been identified. Um the installation should start, I was told, the middle of April. We're just about there. So, we should start see some movement on those being installed um on the two roads that we've identified. and uh hopefully that can be up and running and and get people to conform to uh the speed limits that are in those areas and again to keep kids safe. And um that's my report unless anyone has questions. Thank you, Chief Assistant Town Administrator. I do have a few things. I do want to remind everyone that we are going to start hydrant flushing on the 14th as planned. They'll start at 9:00. We'll be flushing hydrants the 14th, 15th, and 16th. Uh be sure and run your water a little, especially if you're doing laundry, to make sure that that your water is clear because sometimes opening up those hydrants will stir up a little bit of uh movement in the water. Dumpster day. Uh this is a really great opportunity for you to do spring cleanout. It's going to be the 26th. I I will talk about uh what's not acceptable, but then I I'll share with you something else that that that is is what um you no yard waste, no paint, no hazardous materials, no tires, and no appliances with freon. But Cecil County at the at the waste at the landfill is they're going to have a free

household hazardous waste day and that is April 27th. So, if you have hazardous waste that you identified on the 26th, you can take it to Ceil County Landfill. It's the one at uh 70 758 East Old Baltimore, Old Philadelphia Road, sorry, in Elton on Route 7. So, you can take it there and dump it free. Um, and that is probably I wanted to to also tell everyone if you're looking for what's new and what's going on in in the town, go to our homepage and go down into uh recent news and you'll find all of the flyers that we normally would have put in the bills. They're there for you. You can read them and and they're also posted outside town hall, correct? Yes, they're on the bulletin board, too. Thank you, Judy. Uh, town attorney Good evening everybody. It's been a busy month. Um almost like Monopoly with all the properties that you guys are looking at and dealing with and everything. So, you know, you ratified a contract tonight. Um you know, we go to settlement. We we went to settlement on the prior property. Um you're set for settlement on the one you contracted tonight after the uh tenants have moved. So, we're on top of that. And then the one we've been dealing with the longest, which was the tax issue for your Main Street property. You can see that that propertyy's now been posted. If you've read the newspaper, this court has posted the notices in the newspaper. And we have a deadline of May for everybody to respond. And so far, the county has accepted service uh and uh we are waiting for the other two parties to accept service. So, it's moving along slowly but shortly. And um that's the biggest issue. We're going to have a lot of issues to deal with with your other property um with the railroad crossing um to go into the proposed Stevens

Preserve. We've been doing a lot of title work to try to find out about the title for the railroad and also the title for the park that's next to it. And eventually you all will be needing to get Calvin to go down to the county uh to finalize what they started years ago and get us to sign get them to sign the deed. So, lots of little legal stuff. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you, Jay. No questions. All right, moving forward into uh the mayor's report. My report's pretty brief. As Chief Peterson said, uh myself and uh the board of commissioners attended the uh Rising Sun Community Little League opening day celebration. Uh we threw over 2400 pieces of candy um out to residents. Uh we definitely enjoyed um the parade as well as the ceremonies and uh we continue to build strong bonds with Rising Sun Community Little League and uh look forward to this season. Uh we also attended the uh Community Fire Company of Rising Suns award banquet uh where uh the board of commissioners and myself presented a check for $15,000 to our local fire company. Uh we do all that we can to um support our local fire company and our first responders. Uh and we certainly thank them for all that they do for our community. It was especially moving this year. Uh they had a victim uh who came back to thank the first responders. um for saving his life. Um it was really moving to hear his testimony. Um he's still getting back up on his feet. Um but it was really moving to watch. Um the only other thing I wanted to add is um that while we continue to make uh strong moves with Main Street Revitalization, um this all would not have been possible without our partners in government. Um we're using grant funds to purchase these properties. Um and uh we continue

to look forward to the new improvements that are going to come on Main Street. Uh that concludes my report. Uh Commissioner Kleiner, um just wanted to echo how much an honor and pleasure it is to be a part of the Little League parade and opening day ceremonies. Um it's so um encouraging to see all of the the youth um pledging to be good sports and um I wish them a very successful season and that you know we could get to states again this year. Um and also thankful to be a part of the um Rising Sun Community Fire Company banquet. Um, congratulations to all who won awards and um, it was a lovely evening. Thank you. All right. Um, Commissioner Braw did have a report and Calvin, you have that. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Um, a couple quick things is I'm and I'll dotail it into what I was talking about earlier. Um several months ago we had the engineering firm do two different types of testing to see the interceptor lines for the town. Basically you have uh transmission lines that you know transfer the sewer from your house you know down the street and then they go into two interceptor lines. One on the east side of town and one on the west side of town. Um the one on the west side basically cuts across Pearl Street and down through the Reynolds Farm that way. And the one on the east side of town basically um cuts uh on that vacant piece of ground to the east of the car wash and then follows the stream bed down in that direction. The test results were rather interesting and and and

Judy, this is what I said I was going to bring you up to speed on tomorrow, but hold on because it's going to blow your mind. Is um that Judy and I are very practical in the way we look at INI. And I ini is is basically water that gets into your sewer system that doesn't really need to be there. So you're paying the electric and the treatment of basically rainwater or stream water. And although I ini stands for inflow and infiltration and so there's two different ways that you get water in your sewer system. And Judy and I both being practical say that well if if we have distributed 140,000 gallons a day of water on average throughout the community maybe a little bit of INI maybe you would see 160 180,000 gallons going through the sewer plant. We're basically averaging on a on a on a monthly basis or a daily basis over the 24 over the 2024 calendar year. And I'm going off the top of my head. We're averaging about 242,000 gallons of water going through the treatment process at the sewer plant. Now, that takes into account your high peaks when you get a really bad rainstorm. And we're averaging about 142 to 147,000 gallons a day of of sale. So it's like a a 100,000galon difference between that water we really don't want to be treating and the water we should be treating. But what I found out today is that the industry standard is you don't

have a high INI rate until you consistently do three to four times the amount of water that you're producing. So it's basically understood and inherent in a system that you're going to have ini. And so your, you know, your infiltration is where you have basically pipes underground and water tables get up over top of that pipe level hypothetically and the atmospheric pressure and gravity allows the water to be forced into any joints in there. where inflow is where you could have the same pipe running through a stream and when it floods the water gets up over the top of the manhole um and flows in. The other thing that is inflow is if you have illegal sump pumps in residential homes because technically if they're tied into the town sewer system they're illegal. So that means when somebody living at one 123 Jones Street has water coming into their basement and they pump that into our sewer system and if everybody along Jones Street has the same water problems and they're pumping it into our sewer system, that's the INI. And that is not a good business model. When you're trying to keep water and sewer rates down, you don't want to be paying for more electricity than you need to. You don't want to pay for more chemicals. you don't want to pay for a lot of different things. However, we're not that bad. Now, with that said, I know that Judy has the same mindset we do. We're going to then fine, if it's not that bad, we're going to make it better. So, we're going to target trying to bring those INI rates down because hypothetically it saves the town money down the road. So, we're going to be we're working on that. We're also

working on interceptor lines, which when you have some of these new developments being built, we had to do an evaluation of all the lines from all the developments and residential neighborhoods go into an interceptor line. And we need to make sure that that interceptor line is of capacity to be able to handle that additional flow. That's the beauty of the difference between the way land development is done now compared the way it was done 25 years ago is that we are anticipating these things and we're going to the development saying hey your development project looks good but you're going to have to spend some money and upgrading our system because your impact is going to have a negative impact on the community and we don't want to be going to the taxpayers of rising sun saying yeah that new development that came in up the street, we have to raise your tax rate or charge more for water and sewer to be able to handle that. So, that is what is called adequate public facility fees and we've been talking about that. So, we got our studies done and we're narrowing down what that cost is going to be for the development community to make these necessary upgrades. The other thing is that back in the day I've always been told that there are some properties in and around the town that were able to get perk test approved. Read between the lines. Maybe they should not have been approved. And so we're starting to incur a lot of failing septic systems in and around around the town of Rising Sun. And we're getting a lot of inquiries from people

wanting to know, hey, I'm looking at a 4050 $60,000 bill to fix my septic drain field. Can I connect to your sewer system? So, we're starting to get those inquiries and that's just that's just, you know, 20, 25 years, 30 years, whatever, of a system that maybe it never should have been approved or it should have been done a little bit differently, just slowly catching up. Drain fields are starting to fill up. And so, we're starting to get people inquiring to us as to whether or not we would be able to provide them um sewer and water. Generally speaking, and just to put that out there, generally speaking, yeah, the town would be willing to provide it, but in some cases, you're talking a whole lot of money to get the sewer and water out to those locations because it's not like the sewer and water is running right in front of the subject property. So, it could be a lot of money to get it out there. And so, that's where you're trying to pull together multiple properties that can share in the cost or possible grant monies. But again, when we talk about keeping our real estate tax low and our water and sewer rates low, we're not putting the town in a position where we're going to go to our rate users and have their money paid necessarily to provide water and sewer to someone else outside of town. You know, that that's just a business decision that we're trying to be fair to everybody. So, you're going to be hearing more and more about this over the next year as more of these properties start to come forward. Thank you, Commissioner Pearson. No report. Commissioner Warick. The only thing I have is um we have the MML

uh quarterly chapter meeting next Thursday and we need to give Charles Town the counts by this Thursday. I have the form. Are you going, Dave? Yes. Okay. Augie, are you planning to go? No. Okay. Thank you. On the agenda, you can see the board of zoning appeals and commission schedule as well as town events um and the trash, recycling, and yard waste schedule. Is there anything else to come before the board this evening? Hearing none. Could I get a motion to adjurnn? So moved. It's been moved. Is there a second? All right, second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I I passes. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. Thank you, Augie.