Water Quality, Streets & Infrastructure Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. We're gonna go and and get started. Bringing everyone to their places, please. I'm going to commence the water quality committee hearing for Wednesday, 05/28/2025 at 2PM. The purpose of this meeting is to address winter averaging. Clerk, please call the

roll. Martinez? Present. Morris? Gaddis? Hartman? Here. Comives? Also present, Sorrento?

Alright. Thank you. Director Stevens, I believe you have a presentation for us. For members of the public, there is a sign in sheet at the back by the doors if you wish to speak. Once we're finished with the presentation, we'll bring the sign up sheet to the front. And this is specifically to discuss winter averaging. If you have any other water questions, we're happy to take them offline. And we can move forward. Director Stevens, you have the floor.

Thank you. So I'd like to say upfront that we have representatives from City of Toledo and Engage Toledo in customer service. So if anybody has any questions related to their bill afterwards, we have people here who can answer questions for them. So with that, I appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk about our sewer rates and how it pertains to the winter sewer average that existed in our previous rates. So I'll just go with an overview.

The sewer utility has about 104,000 little over customers that we bill monthly. About 70,000 of those customers are City Of Toledo residents who residential that may have received winter sewer average in the past. Again, was only applied to Toledo customers, it was only applied to residential users, at least as far as the Toledo winter sewer average calculation and rate. So anyway, if you were to look at winter sewer average in today's rate model in dollars, that would cost the utility about $4,000,000 of revenue, which I'll talk a little bit more in detail about the revenue and why that's important. I do want to go back to 2022, 2023.

We went out for an RFP in 2023, a cost of service rate study was began, and it was done by Raftelis, who is actually working now. We've come to counsel, and they are going to be working on our water rate to renew that in 2027 when those expire. So the study was complicated, it involves a large variety of factors, and they followed the cost of service model. The cost of service model was something adopted on the water side back when we went to a regional water commission. There were no arbitrary rates any longer or different rates for communities.

We actually went through and did a study using consumption data and other factors to create a rate that would effectively charge you what cost of service means is charge you for your share of what is consumed. So, you know, if someone uses one cubic foot or, you know, 100 cubic feet of water, one CCF, and there's a million in the system, then you're paying one millionth of the cost. So essentially, it's just a way to fairly distribute the cost for what you use. So we did that with water, we undertook that then with sewer in 2003. So that's what our rate model is, the cost of service.

We have current included in that cost of service model are current and future operational costs at both the plant and in our sewer piping system, our collection system. We have the improvements that were put in there by Toledo voters. Those are improvements that are going to be in the neighborhood of $650,000,000 over a period of fifteen years. And then we also had dollars or rates sufficient to maintain the dollars that we put into the collection system now on the sewer system. So that's our pipes that you see in the streets that we still maintain that dollar value of capital we're putting in.

So one thing we added is we added a low income discount rate program for those with 200 percent or less of the income requirements for low income. And that's based on federal guidelines on how many people in the house and what income you make. And so we maintained our 25% senior discount, and we also included a senior plus low income discount, which would be the 25% plus 15%, effectively giving a low income senior a 40% discount. At this point, I want to kind of circle back to boy, bet it would be all the way back to 2020 or maybe even 2019. Councilman Komai as well remember, he chaired the committee that looked at affordability.

We had community leaders, we had people from DPU, we had council members, Councilwoman Gaddis was involved. And I think out of that, we had hired a consultant to study our affordability program and recommend one. And I think out of that, Toledo is a model. I think that we're probably second to no one in being able to give discounts. Again, with water and sewer, to have the senior discount rates, to have low income rates, and then we have our customer assistance program where you can, if you qualify, get $250 to help you with your bill.

There's just a variety of options that we have undertaken. You know, we have payment plans that we believe are reasonable and affordable. So I just wanted to throw that out there moving forward. So going forward as to why winter sewer average was eliminated, part of that was because we wanted to create a low income discount. And with the number of discounts we already had, adding a low income discount, there needed to be some level of give back so that the utility could collect the revenue that it needs to operate.

And I have another slide where we'll talk about it, but essentially we have what it takes to collect the waste water and maintain everything clean it and put it back into the environment. It's expensive, and we have costs associated with doing that business, and we have to be able to cover those. So when you give discounts, you arbitrarily increase rates to make up for the discount you gave. So we're trying to, you know, be reasonable with giving discounts to help the folks that need it the most, but we're also trying to be responsible with our rate and not increase it too much, make it unaffordable. So the second reason is we embarked on an AMI project.

That AMI project allowed us to go into virtually every home in Toledo, and we have been able to get in and install new meters. Those meters really support the cost of service rate structure, because instead of giving you a read actual maybe every third month or maybe every sixth month, we're actually getting right now, every meter that's been installed, 99.9% or better every month are giving us an actual read. So back in 2019 we were estimating 15% of our bills, and some people were getting estimated, I'm sure you all heard it, you know, five, six, seven, eight months at a time without an actual true up, and it was causing issues. When AMI was put into service, it let us be able to accurately bill people, so cost of service model was another way to go and why we didn't need winter sewer average. Part of, you know, going to the cost of service and billing accurately is it makes averaging obsolete.

You know, when you know exactly what someone is doing, we don't have to give them, you know, an average and spread it out over a whole year off of something that's being estimated. So if you look at what winter sewer average was, is you basically took someone's bill from November, December and January, averaged usage, and said, well, here's how much water you use in those three months, and said that's what you'll use the whole year. And then we just billed for that for the whole year. And it would give some people discounts and some not so much, we'll look at some of that later. But again, that's why we went to cost of service and we're billing for what's used.

The other piece I talked a little bit about, you know, it eliminates the need to increase rates higher to offset the cost of having a winter sewer average program. If we were to increase rates, there would be lower volume users, our commercial people and our industrial customers, who would pay a little bit more for our higher volume users to be able to get discounts on their sewer bill. And then higher rates, I'm sure, and councilman Sarantu knows he goes to Chicago every year, if we if we continue to increase our rates and we have a population that the the average median income doesn't really support our ability to afford our rates, that can damage our credit rating. So if we were to have to go go for bonding, you know, we could be downgraded in bonding and then have higher interest rates to pay on our capital projects, and thus, again, arbitrarily throw additional costs at our customers that we don't want to do. And then lastly, you know, there's going to be, you know, surely people will say, well, you know, this isn't going down the sewer.

You know, all this water you're talking about, it's going into the yards. And, you know, that's going to be true to some extent, department doesn't know what percentage of water goes into yards, you know, during the summer or the winter. You know, there are gonna be people, and I'll show you later, I'm one of them, who who water, but there are kids at home. They You come in and they run water, a lot of times you take more showers in the summer. There's a lot of reasons why people use more water in the summer.

It's not merely to wash a car or, you know, go out and water the lawn, but we don't know exactly what the split is. So previously the winter sewer average was very generous to say, you know, even if it was just because you had three kids home from school all day now and you used a little more water in the house, we were given a discount on that saying it wasn't going down the sewer, which wasn't truly accurate. And again, we were basing our estimates of people's three bills, think about the number of people that got nothing but estimates for three months during January, you know, December or November. We were putting estimates on top of estimates to come up with what people should pay, and there was a lot of inaccuracy with that. So sewer cost of service rates, this goes back to so the sewer utility needs a little over $101,000,000 in revenue from our customers to be able to operate and do what we need to do.

There are two charges on your sewer bill. There's a fixed rate that's based upon the size of the water meter in your home, and there is a second portion of the bill, which is your consumption charge, which basically takes how many CCF you use, which CCF, if you don't know, is centum cubic feet, so it's a 100 cubic feet, and I think a cubic foot is 7.31 gallons. So, yeah, you you can do math on that if you like. So we charge in CCF, and to generate the revenue that we need to cover that $101,000,000 it was determined by the rate consultant that for 2025, we would need to charge $5.841 per centum cubic feet. So you can see I've got a little note in there, it talks about our fixed rate.

Our fixed rate is really to help cover capital assets that we do, our bonding or our loans from the EPA that we use to do capital projects, and then the consumption charge is what we use to staff staff and buy chemicals do all the things we need to do to make repairs and maintain the plant and the system and keep it operating. So you can see we generate about $35,000,000 off the fixed rate, we generate about $66,500,000 in revenue off of consumption. If a water sewer winter sewer average discount was applied, we would lose $4,000,000 of that $66,000,000 revenue. So we would have to make up that revenue in order for us to operate. So that would change the number per CCF for this year to be about 6.227 actually, 6.277 per cubic foot is what it should be in 2025.

So that's 7.47% higher, 7.5% higher just to give winter sewer average, we have to increase the sewer rate. And so again, not everyone has an advantage or a large advantage to a winter sewer average, so this only benefits a certain segment of our customer base. So this slide shows you on the left you see year and then rates as proposed, those are the rates that are in code that were passed by council last year. And then the rates to the right, rates with winter sewer average, those rates are what we estimated would happen if we were to have done a winter sewer average model. Now just keep in mind that second calculation was not a full blown rate study that took six months to complete.

You know, that data we didn't have. Robert Krasinski, who is with me here today, he's our head of DPU finance, and he and his team worked very hard to, over the last several weeks, try and put together what a rate structure would look like with winter sewer average included in it. So you can see in 2024 where you start out where both numbers are the same, that was where rates were before council passed rates last year. And then the 2024, the second one, that was the midyear rate adjustment that came in July after council passed rates. And then here we are at 2025 where we pay 5.841, and the rates are 6.277 on our estimate of if you were to have winter sewer average included in the rate.

So that is how much more you would pay per CCF, you know, to have that winter sewer average. In the end, where rates terminate based upon what was passed, if you look, if we added winter sewer average and had done it that way, rates would have been 9.26 higher at $7.22 per CCF as opposed to the $6.72 So kind of giving a customer breakdown, and a lot of this is going into a set of customers, again it goes back to that roughly 70,000 that are City Of Toledo customers in residential homes that would potentially be eligible had there been one or used to have one. So right now if you take all of the usage that is done by our residential customers and you take the average of that total consumption divided by the number of customers we have. It's about 5.8 CCF per month is what our average customer would use. That's the average consumption.

So using that 5.8 CCF per month average, you know, again, it goes back to what we discussed earlier, you know, the 5.841 per CCF, the average customer's consumption charge is 33.88 a month. Don't hear that to represent any person's individual individual bill, that's just numbers from our data that show where the average falls in consumption. So again, the utility relies on every customer when you look at it from this perspective to use 5.8 CCF and pay 5.841 per CCF. Now we know customers use less and some use more. And so, you know, again, this is just representative of an average.

And then now if we wanted to make up that loss consumption covering it again of $4,000,000, the rate goes to the 6.277 per CCF. So if we go to take the math and say $6.277 that same 5.8 CCF, you would see the cost went up from $33.88 to $36.41 So again, almost seven and a half inch percent increase, about $2.50 a month if you use the average amount of consumption. So when you look at a winter sewer average number, you're you're going to see that anybody who uses less than the average of 5.8 CCF per month on their average usage is going to actually be paying, I guess, unintentional surcharge to fund people who use more than 5.8 CCF a month to get a discount. And hopefully some numbers will show that a little bit better as we go through. But, you know, when you have an average, there are people who bring the average up and people who bring the average down.

So, you know, if you're charging people based on an average, there are going to be people who, if you artificially suppress the amount of volume they use above average to be below average or at average, they're going to be getting a discount, while people who are lower than average are gonna be paying a little more to get with that increased rate to subsidize that. So it's a difficult concept, but hopefully I'm explaining it well enough. So when you look at our average of 5.8 CCF a month, of our 69,961 residential single family Toledo customers, 48,229 use 5.8 CCF or less. So that's 68.9% of our customer base for residential customers. So a little over two thirds of our customers would break even or actually pay a little too much if we had a winter sewer average and we were trying to make up that $4,000,000 revenue.

Whereas 31.1% of our customers who use more than the average would be getting a discount on because we would cap their usage. So we also wanted to point out, you know, our senior discount customers, we have a little over 15,000. On average, they only use 4.33 CCF per month. So they don't make the average of 5.8. So when we increase their rates artificially to cover people who use more than 5.88, they're getting a surcharge.

And, you know, again, three sixty three of those people are also on low income discounts. So again, this is a demographic that we're trying to protect. They're one of our fixed income and vulnerable demographics. Our low income customers, they use a little more, they have a little over six CCF a month with a 25% discount. They do stay at $26.9 which would have been as opposed to a little under $29 if we had a winter sewer average rate.

So they are still doing well there even though they use a little bit more water than the average. So kind of to take a lot of really complicated math and boil it down, I did three scenarios, and if you start with the left, you see the senior discount customer. This was a random account that Robert's team pulled and said what would this customer get charged under our current consumption based charge versus the approximated rate with a winner average. And this would be a user who is right close to that 4.33 average that seniors use. So you see the consumption based, they pay $40.99 for consumption, and with sewer winter average, they pay $41.42.

A really small increase. Wouldn't be much, $5 a year, but again, they're the average customer. They're not someone who is on the lower end. So when you're at that average, you would expect to get almost no benefit from winter sewer average, and you'd expect to be minimally, if any at all, surcharged. So the same thing went over to a customer who uses the 5.8 or close to it.

It was a random customer. We pulled them out, and you can see again they would have paid 24 more cents a month with winter sewer average, which again is about where I would expect them to fall since they're real close to debt average. And the difference between the senior discount and the average customer is 5.8 to 4.33 CCF a month, which 4.33 is almost dead 75% or a 25% discount of the 5.8. So that's why they both work out to near zero benefit and minimal to no, you know, surcharge. And then lastly, I I had them pull my bill.

I water, and, you know, I I use more water than just outdoors in the summer, but a little bit of both. And you can see I would get a $32 a month discount on my water bill to have winter sewer average, and I would get an annual discount of $394, whereas I believe that, you know, nearly 70% of my customer base would be getting no discount or paying some smaller surcharge to fund my discount. So I threw that out there so you can see the range of which people can get discounts. And there are probably people who are on the lower end of volume that use less consumption than 4.33 or don't get a senior discount when they use around four CCF, and they would pay more of a surcharge than you see here. Maybe not in line with the numbers that you're seeing me get discount, but again, that surcharge can grow the less they use.

So we have some solutions for higher volume customers that we're happy with. We have got our new MyTOL portal that has come out since we've implemented our AMI meters and our new billing system. If you sign into the AMI portal, you're able to go in and you're able to set alarms and alerts, you're able to monitor usage, website and we have options for you to be able to see how you can reduce water and save and conserve water in the home. So the first option is conservation, and we have got information and the portal is a new tool to help people conserve. The second option is one that, you know, I know I've looked at in the past.

Other communities do this as well. You can get an irrigation meter. So an irrigation meter is a separate meter where the the homeowner would have to do some private plumbing work in their house to get a meter setting set up, and they'd have to have backflow prevention, which prevents water from backflowing from the home into our drinking water system. And they would go out, they'd get that work done, there'd be some inspection and a meter that we would come put in, some cost with that, and then they could have this irrigation meter. So for someone who uses water in their lawn, if their water bill said you used seven CCF this month, but your irrigation meter showed you used three CCF to irrigate, that would be essentially a three CCF deduct from the sewer bell.

And that's how that works. Even looking at the situation I had for me, I don't necessarily know that this is a cost effective measure for me in the long run to get a sewer or get an irrigation meter to do that deduct. But again, is an option that people do have. And the last, and I think this is something I have not talked about publicly yet, And it's just really started to come online. But now that we have got our new billing system up and running and we're starting to get better data on our bills because of the AMI meters, we have the ability to do budget billing just as though just like Columbia Gas does it or Toledo Edison.

You have to have twelve months of history at your current address. And when you do that, when we've got that, you can ask for budget bill and it will clean up the spikes that you have in the summer. We'll go back and take your usage over the last twelve months. And based on that usage, estimate what you would approximately use in the upcoming twelve months and then you'd get a flat bill. And then at the end of the twelve month period, it should be pretty close one way or another, but there would be a true up of whether you got a little bit of a discount or a refund, which would amount to a credit on your next bill or whether or not you'd owe a little bit to have a true up in balance if your estimate was a little bit low.

So this actually was the option I chose. I got put into it as we were testing, and this was my first month getting that bill. And so I highly recommend that one to many people. I think many people do budget billing just because it's easier to know what's coming every month instead of wondering if it's an extra $10 or something. So I do recommend it.

Right now, it's not available on the MyTOL portal. That implementation is being worked out by SEW who manages our portal. But you can call DPU customer service at (419) 245-1800 and request to be put on budget bill. They'll work with you, tell you what that bill is and then get your permission to move forward that way. Or you can do the same thing by e mailing DPU customer service at dpucustomerservicetoledo. Oh dot gov if you would like to do So with that, those were the solutions. Hopefully, this was helpful. And Robert and I are here to take any questions.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Wonderful, very thorough presentation. We will put your presentation online so anyone can download it and the links to DPU customer service. So if they're interested in doing the budget billing, they can. And before I ask my questions, I would refer to my colleague, Councilman Surant, to your questions, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the presentation. I'm glad we finally had this presentation because we've been asking for it for several weeks and this really is important. I think option two is not very practical. I think to ask the citizenry to spend $1,500 or more with a plumber and that's in the first year, I just don't think many people want to do that at all. I think they'd rather pay the increase than come up with that at a one time. But I want to ask you a couple of questions here. Number one, does your rates, do they apply also to the residents of Lucas County or is this just City of Toledo customers?

So on the sewer side, it's just City of Toledo sewer customers. So if you are a Lucas County sewer customer, you would be applicable to their rates and discounts.

And are their rates lower or higher than the City of Toledo sewer rates?

Their rates are lower. Way over top of ours.

So is it fair to not have the county residents pay a little more on sewer versus City of Toledo has to carry the burden?

Well, have the Toledo revenue that we collect on behalf of those customers, there's a rate that they pay, but then they pay more on top of it, and that's to maintain our infrastructure. So that's why we charge those rates.

Okay. All right. So in terms of let's focus in on the summer. Let's pretend it's June, July and August now. People are filling their pools. They're watering their lawns. We have a drought, so they're using even more water. They're washing their cars. They're filling up the baby pools for their kids. What is the net effect? Isn't it the net effect going to higher sewer charges than what they were paying a year ago?

Yes. The net effect will be higher sewer charges.

Okay. And the average customer, the number you presented to us, how much more do you think they're going to be paying on their sewer portion of the bill? So the and

this is where it gets a little difficult. Let me go back to okay. I'll go back to this slide. I know it it's a lot of wording. So so the average customer who uses around five CCF per month average for a whole year.

They will spike if they use more in the summer. But this number is really based on an annual usage averaged out over the year. So if they're the average customer, they're going to see an average cost of $33.88 per month. It may only be $25 for, let's say, seven months of the year, and it might be $38 one month, 36 another. So it should still average out for the average customer to about that dollar value, which is one of the reasons why we want to heavily stress that a budget bill will help take and smooth out that curve so you don't get hit with higher water usage and a higher bill and dip below the average bill later on in the year.

So based on an average usage, as you pointed out, what would be the increase you said? 33? Well, that would be the current cost. If it's

hard to relate that back to what the increase would have been over last year because we really have that comparable. Again, a lot of the winter sewer average rates by customer would be based upon specific consumption or specific estimates of consumption. And then the system automatically put together some level of estimate. And again, I would say, going back to prior to these rates being passed, the data from the billing system due to the number of estimated reads and then estimating consumption, probably I don't know what the average would have been, but it would have been somewhat inconsistent and probably not the actual calculation if you could truly have done cost of service and done a discount.

Okay. So I think what I heard you say earlier was that if we went back to winter averaging, it would be at least a four it would cost us an additional $4,000,000

That's correct. You would okay. So yes, so you would increase the rate you'd have to increase the rate to make up $4,000,000 in revenue. So the same five CCF per month would come to the $36.41 per month as opposed to $33.48

And that was about 7.4% increase?

Yes, $7.47 yes.

All right. All right. Now you and I spoke earlier, and there's a figure of unpaid water bills that we need to collect delinquencies. And we haven't collected since COVID, probably 2020, for a number of good reasons. One, we wanted to institute the automatic meter reading systems in homes.

So we felt, you know, let's give the customers a break. But the fact is, correct me if I'm wrong, that the city Department of Public Utilities is owed maybe 55,000,000 to $56,000,000 that includes water and sewer. So what comes to my mind is, why can't we go back to winter averaging, but make a really concerted effort to collect? Because it would seem to me out of $56,000,000 we should be able to at least collect 4,000,000 in a given twelve month period. I would think even more.

I would hope even more. But isn't it true that we have $55,000,000 to $56,000,000 in unpaid water and sewer bills? We've not turned the water off for any customers, industrial, commercial and residential, which, again, is pretty unfair to those ratepayers that are paying their bills every month.

Yes. So we do have outstanding debt in that amount. We have been working on reinstituting that program for turn off. We'll start with higher users and work our way down. But that I expect to start in June, working with the administration to get that process in shape so that we know that we're doing it right.

But you are correct. So when we don't collect revenue from our customers and every city has a certain amount that's just never going to be We were pretty good before COVID. We were about three percent. And I think now we our uncollectible rate's about four point five percent.

Four point five percent,

So at one point during COVID, it hit five or just slightly over. So our collectible rate has come back in line. We do intend to go out after that revenue and collect that. So I mean, ultimately, that would be helpful towards keeping rates down. But I think as far as the utility has looked at it, is we don't want to move away from the cost of service model simply because if we do that, and again, it goes back to 70% of our customers don't use the average amount of water.

So the rate is set to charge them as though they do. So they receive, unintentionally, a surcharge automatically because we have to pick a rate at which to charge. But I guess I look at it from my terms. I'm watering because I can afford to. And there are people in our system that can't afford that.

They don't do it. They struggle to pay the bill. And I just feel as though that having a surcharge on two thirds of our customers to be able to subsidize 31% of us who use more water, some of which may go down the sewer, some of which may go in the yard. I just I don't think that necessarily fits what a modern utility is doing in terms of how it sets rates and processes for collection.

Did you say the budget system is in place? Or is it about to be put in place for customers?

It's in place.

It's in place. Yes.

If they customer service at 245-1800 or e mail DPU customer service, They can get put on that rate or on that single budget plan. And I

recommend it. Could you make sure that in the monthly billings that people are notified of that on the billing statement they get? I think a lot of people are not aware of that. I think, again, with costs going up and inflation ever present in America, we need to need to give people some options. And that's not a bad option.

Whether we have winter averaging or not, it still will help people from a budget point of view. So I think monthly notices, we have a marketing and communication department. They ought to be putting this out in social media. But we really need to get the word out because I think many customers haven't thought about it. Now Columbia Gas does it, and they do it frequently with the bill. They tell you several months ahead of the winter season, which makes sense. So if we can do that, I think it would help a lot of people.

Yes, we will definitely do that. And I appreciate that suggestion. We'll either put it on the bill or we'll do an insert, and we'll work with Director Hart and ensure we start to push those communications out.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Councilman. I appreciate your candor and concern. I think that's a very viable solution to make sure we get the word out. And just so you're aware, the collection rate and turn offs and all that stuff has been top of mind for probably the past two months. We just didn't want to arbitrarily roll it out until we had a very refined system to present. We will have a presentation to counsel on that.

That way nobody is surprised when we start turning off water. Seeing no other questions from my colleagues, I'm going to open it up to public comment. I will give you five minutes to speak. As of right now, there is a sign up sheet up there, but if you already signed up in the back, I have two persons to speak. And then again, this is more focused on, excuse me, on the sewer rates and winter sewage averaging.

If you have any other personal questions, we do have customer service representatives in the back that can address your specific situation. First on my list is, and I apologize if I slaughter your name, Gary Bozinger? Bozinger. Bozinger. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, council members.

So if you can come up to the mic because we do have construction out, so I hear all the pounding and knocking. My apologies. Yep. So if you can speak in the mic so we can hear

I've lived in the area thirty years in various different locations. And when I moved back to Toledo about five years ago, the winter soar average was something that made sense to me as a resident. In the summertime, I guess I looked at it as I'm being billed for what I'm being used for my meters and the upgraded meters which are sonic meters which is a new technology. You know I experienced those in the gas industry that I work in. So it's a new meter.

I'm glad to pay for every ounce of water that goes through that meter, whether it's going down the sewer or onto my lawn. It's when in the summertime, we all know and it's in my specific situation, I water my lawn, water my plants, take pride in our home, we maintain it, wash the lawn. I have to clean off my driveway after every rainstorm due to city issues that flood my driveway, so I have to clean it off. So I'm using water to do that. You know, that's the cost I'm incurring due to city engineering.

So when I'm being billed for sure that I'm not actually using and I know that, then I'm receiving a false bill from DPU. You're invoicing me for what goes through the meter. Where's your meter on the backside to balance it out as a check and a balance? There's no check or balance in there. You're assuming it's an assumption. And you know, the assumption is we all know what that makes of you and me when you make assumptions. But the winter average made sense. You know, I lived in Bowling Green prior to moving back

to

Toledo, and, you know, they had the situation where you had to install $1,500 to have a separate meter just to water your lawn. If you want to take pride in your house, maintain it and not have to pay for the sewer side of it. What I learned here today is that 78% of us are subsiding 22% of our rate people, and I understand that. At some point you have to find a balance, but when you're telling me you have $56,000,000 outstanding, what percentage of your AR is outstanding? What's that percentage of $56,000,000

It's about 4.5% at this point, our non collectible rate. So that number has accumulated over five years. It's not the current past three years. We But have about 4.5 that's

a lot of money out there. A resident, I'm subsidizing. I'm in a situation I can afford to add another meter if I need to. And, you know, it's something to look at. But for everybody else out there, that people are doing the right thing, wanting to make make their home better, make the city better, now you're punishing them. You're making them pay more for water that they're using. You know, how many people out there that have pools that aren't going to realize it until they get that first bill when they fill the pool this year, 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of water that they're going be hit with suicide? So just things to consider. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Mary Menek.

Thank you, counsel. I'm here just to see what the results or the explanation of the winter average being removed was going to be. I myself am a prior City of Toledo employee for the water company, so I'm real familiar with what the sewer winter average program was, how it worked, how it benefited everybody. I think my big concern is is I feel that most of everybody inside the city of Toledo wasn't really educated enough when it was decided that winter average was gonna end. In the fall of last year or the beginning of this year, had the customers known you are going to get charged every single drop of water that's used.

They may have been a little more conservative so far in watering the lawn, washing their car, squirting stuff down. I agree that I believe winter average is a great program, and it if you if your winter average was more in the wintertime for whatever reason and you use less in the upcoming summer months, you're not charged what you used in the winter. It's only what usually it was you you only billed for what you use if it's less. But summertime, everyone is, you know, filling a pool, everything like that. So I, you know, I see the benefits of the sewer winter average program. If I myself only used five CCFs

for

my winter average, normally, if I use 20 in the summertime, that means my sewer bill from $30 is gonna go up to 20 times the $6 or $5, so that's like a $100. So it's a $70 increase in my sewer bill for consumption. And I'm only doing the rates based on $5 because it's easier to calculate. So I wanted to just see what resolution was gonna come from this because I don't think it was really explained when I went to like a community meeting. It was kind of vague and I think it may have been vague to everyone here at council also as to what removing winter average was.

And I think it is a big benefit for most everybody that does use the extra water in the summertime. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank

you, Mr. Shah. I wanted to ask you a question, Mary. You have a pool at your house? You have a pool? Yes. Okay. Could you come up to the mic? All right. So as best you can recall, what do you think your bills were on average in June, July, and August last year?

The sewer portion, I would say last year, it was consistent. In in the summertime, the sewer charges were consistent throughout the year because I was in a on winter average.

Winter average.

The water portion exceeded. It it goes up as I used more water.

Sure.

But if my sewer usage or my sewer winter average was $40 per sewer volume charges, it stayed that for the whole year each But

clearly you were expecting a higher water charge because you were filling the pool and so forth for the summer. So this would raise your sewer rates significantly is what you're telling us?

Yes. Yes. If go from five to 20, I'm now getting charged for the 20 CCFs times the rate. And if it's $6 that's $120 compared to $6 times my average, which was 5, which is only $30 and that's a month.

Okay. Great. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you, mister chair. You. Ma'am, if you can just sign. I think there's a pen up there.

Signing now. Okay. Hi, my name is Deborah Sue.

If you can say your name and speak Deborah to

Sue Pearson. I actually want to reiterate what the young what the lady before me was saying. Can you hear me okay? Okay. I have two things, two things of concern. I actually called the water department because I have a pool as well. And I I was 100% okay with the water averaging. Okay. This time around and I have a small pool it's only 8,000 gallons it's a small pool it's 18 foot pool and I've had it for probably twenty years. I was told specifically by the water department that my bill would increase during the summer months that filling my pool is going to be anywhere between a 150 to $200.

That's ridiculous. I will not be filling my pool for my grandkids this year. That is insane for me. I'm I am a retired. Although I do much for the city myself. I'm a city commissioner for the historic. I'm a historic commissioner. I run a non profit and I sit on boards of four other non profits. So I'm more into philanthropy than I am to working anymore. My background radiology.

So basically I am afraid of what this is gonna do for people who cannot afford that much money and who are not even who don't even own pools. Secondly, my second concern is for people who are landlords and their tenants run these water bills up. You know who's responsible for that bill the landlord is and if we don't pay it the water company will tack it on to your personal water bill. And I find that extremely aggravating. When that happens because tenants know when they leave in high have no intention of paying.

Utilities okay so they'll run that water bill up to $6.07 $800 especially with the going up now they have a hard enough time paying the other utility as well the water. And now we have a situation where they'll run it up, they'll leave and then the landlord is responsible for that bill. Completely unfair. We don't use that water. And then we already have to go through the rigmarole of eviction and wait for months for them to get out and they're still using that water.

I just think there's a better way to do this. I do. I I don't approve of how this is gonna go for for tenants and as a land as a as a homeowner with a pool. I just cannot see paying that kind of money that is in it that's a huge jump for me. That is a hit and I'm sure it's going to be. And I have a small pool there people until you have much bigger pools and I do and I hear people come up here and say well I can afford it. Guess what? There's a lot of people that can afford it. And as we get older and you all end up on retirement or disability too, you can have the same concerns. Well, now I can't afford.

I could afford whatever I wanted to when I was working for Mercy. But now I see that I'm on the other side after be very, you know, be very scrupulous on how I spend my money and now we're talking about we can look right off of a lake. Are you kidding me? And we have to have this huge jump like this. I don't approve, not that it matters because you're going to do what you want to do anyway, but I think it's unfair. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you, ma'am. So we do have some DPU representatives in the back that could address your personal concern about your pool. But also Director, could you address the tenant because that's as a landlord, she's absolutely right. Could you address that? And then what other options there may be, if any?

I mean, ultimately, I mean, are it depends on the situation. Some tenants are in agreements with the landlord to have the bill go to the tenant, the tenant pays the bill. However, at the same time, you as landlord, as you know, is still responsible if the tenant doesn't pay that. And it really I mean, in some ways, it doesn't really change that situation if you have a tenant and you are giving them the bill, if they won't pay you then you're still responsible as the landlord. So mean we're willing to bill a tenant with a tenant landlord agreement so that the bill goes directly to them if that's what they want.

But it still ultimately resides with U. S. Landlord.

Great. That's what I thought. And that's based on ORC, not Tulum Municipal Code Law, correct?

I'm not sure if it's TMC or ORC. It could be ORC, I don't know.

I think it is, but I could be wrong. But thank you for addressing that. Sorry, if you could just sign in your name so for the record. Councilman Soronte, go ahead while we're waiting.

Thank you, Mr. Shah. I just want to follow-up. So is it accurate that if the tenant doesn't pay the bill, then the landlord is responsible, does it get tacked on to the landlord's personal bill? Like they live on Kenwood Boulevard, do they get the billing for the apartment building they own?

So it's tied to the property itself. So if you own three properties and one was your primary residence, the city could come after you for your secondary property or they could even lean the secondary property, but would not apply to your primary residence where you've paid the rent. It wouldn't apply to your personal water bill,

DPU bill, but it does apply, you're still responsible for it.

Yes, still going to be in your name. It's just going to be if you have a secondary address that you have paid the bill, it won't be tied to that bill. It stays with the account that you're given.

Thank you, Chair. Director, that's you said because I've actually had on my personal rental property water tied onto my personal bill. So that's a different conversation for another time, but that has happened to me. Ma'am, go ahead.

My name is Laura Hankins. Thank you for hearing me today. I'm going to reiterate what some of the other ladies have said. I too have a pool in my backyard. Mine is a larger one and I'm afraid to fill it because of this

sore tack on. I'm 65 years old. That's the only pleasure I have, and I might not be able to afford it because of this. I'm not in the position to be able to afford all those extras and I'm doing my best. You say it's, you know, you'll do better in Toledo.

Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I'm really not. I'm considering relocating because of all the garbage that's happening in this city and it's not just the water, It's the crime rate. It's the lack of respect. People don't have respect for one another anymore.

Your neighbors, the community I live in. I've been in my house for forty four years. Now we're seeing that changeover and the lack of respect from those people that are moving in compared to days gone by. I know this is across the board, but this is big. This is huge.

This change that was not brought to our attention. Sitting here, I just learned that there is a senior citizen discount. I never knew that. Why isn't that information out there? I'm just curious, why isn't it out there?

We do have that information out there. We have someone here today who can help you look at that. We have that information on our website. We have a person

What about

who does those of us that are technologically challenged?

Well, we do send a DP representative to various community centers and other meetings. It may not have been something in your neighborhood at this point, but we do have someone who goes around and deals with the discount program and talks about conservation and helps with that. And again, I have people here and I would be happy to have them help you ensure you can get that senior discount and any others that you may apply that you may have that apply to you.

And I don't have any problem paying for the water that's going into my pool. I have a problem paying for the sewer that it's not going down.

I understand, I do.

Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you for your testimony. We appreciate it. Are there any other further comments, ma'am?

Something popped in my head while I was sitting there.

Can you put on the mic?

Sorry, something kind of came up to mind. If it stays that the winter average is not in existence, is there going to be a one time appeal available? I know it's called like a management review. We've done that when I was working there. It's something like City of Sylvania.

If I'm filling a pool, they'll give me a sewer credit for the size of pool based on how much water is calculated based on that. I don't know if that's been talked about since I've been gone since last August, I don't know. But I know again the feasibility of separate metering, redoing plumbing is not feasible for probably 95% of the people used even filling a pool or water in the lawn. But I didn't know if the appeal process was being considered if in fact the SOAR winter average doesn't come back in.

The original appeal process is still in place. As far as considering anything new, we've looked at what a few other communities do. There's been nothing formal yet to talk about like a onetime event for leak or pool. There's models of that out there, but we have not fully explored those options at this time.

So it could be an option?

It could be

an option. We're not saying no, we're just saying let's look into it.

We're looking.

Within a timeframe?

I mean, we're actively looking. So it could be in the next month or so where we'd have some information on what that might look like if we were able to do it.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions, comments from the public? All right. Going once, going twice. Okay. This meeting will be adjourned. Thank you.