4.10.2025 Sewer Commission

Welcome to the U April 10th meeting of the for civil commission.

Um before we get started, I got to do the open meeting law. Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through medium. Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible. Mr. Furl, will you do the

roll call, please? Yes. Member Susa here. Member Elves here. Howak here. And President Alita here.

Okay. Okay, I think we've all been sent the uh the agenda and it's I believe we all have a copy of it. So, we'll proceed to u item number one, which is um citizens input. It's my understanding that there will be no citizen input today. Nobody has signed up for it. Okay. Um item number two, the minutes of the previous meeting of February 26th. Um we've all been sent the um the happenings from that meeting.

Um unless anybody has any questions with respect to the uh content of it or wants to make a change. Uh if not, I'll entertain a motion to amend to approve the minutes of uh February 26th, 2025.

Make that motion to approve minutes.

I'll second it. All in favor? I I I All right.

I'm not sure if I need to abstain from that one cuz I wasn't Yeah, you weren't here. That's fine. As long as As long as you didn't make the motion to approve it, that's fine. Um items number three.

Um and this is what we're here for. Uh the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 in the amount of $32,785.

$785,387. Mr. Ferlin go. Uh so thank you uh board members for coming tonight again. Uh so in front of you, you have a revised budget. Uh as some of you may know, I've uh brought the budget that was previously approved by this uh by this body down in front of the city council. Uh there was uh some um questions in in and uh posed by the city council which uh made us go back and

take a look at this budget. Uh when the budget was constructed originally uh we work from the uh program that was developed last year by our outside consultant that came in did a financial analysis uh rate study of our budget and our rates. uh their recommendation was the rate increases that we uh went forward with last year in the FY25 fiscal year uh as well as 5% increase uh for the next four fiscal years following

that. Uh so the budget that you originally proposed that you originally approved was a 5% increase from the uh current existing uh rate in uh the budget to support that. Uh what I did after the last city council meeting was I went back with the uh with the CFO. Uh we went through the budget and uh again line by line uh and we remove some things from the budget. Primarily uh we

reduced the amount of uh uh capital expenses within the budget, right? Uh so that was a reduction. So in other words, that just means that any large equipment or large issues that we have throughout the year that may go underneath those cap expense portion uh we may not have the funding to do within this fiscal year. Uh and also uh some other lines that we took from uh other personnel

costs uh which is typically used for interns or co-op students that we hire uh that perform services through us, work in the utility for us. uh we wouldn't be able to uh move forward with those. Uh there was some other minor uh line item cuts uh throughout the budget.

So it was roughly about a $210,000 um cut to the budget. Uh what that did to the rate. It took the uh rate increase. Uh what was uh proposed originally was uh increase uh was to $851.

uh what's proposed based off the budget that's uh provided to you tonight uh is $843 increase. So that's a 32 increase uh from prior fiscal year at the current fiscal year FY25. Uh so 32 cent increase. Um I think just prior that year before that we we were looking at a much to get to 25.

Yeah, we had a much bigger increase.

Yes. Than what we had than what we're talking about here. I think it was what was over a dollar. Yeah, we we were we were almost uh $2 I believe it was $26.

Yeah, it was a substantial increase again that we had last year. Uh and that was due a lot to the loss of uh retained earnings. We had zero retained earnings to use in last year's right in the current fiscal year's budget which we were coming off of using over a million dollars of retained earnings uh I believe in the in the fiscal year prior to that. So we didn't have those uh

those retained earnings plus then uh increase on debt service and other operational uh expenditures that have increased. Um, so after all these cuts, again, storm water, there's no change to the storm water within within this proposed budget. There wasn't originally. It was still not proposing to change storm water. Um, overall, the average impact to a uh average household uh is $16.96 uh per year.

Uh so that on the uh that on the sewer rate is a uh 3.95% increase. So originally the original uh rate in budget that was proposed uh that was approved by this board was a 5% increase. Uh we're down to this brings us down to a 3.9% increase on just the rate alone. Again, no no increase on the storm water fee.

Um so, uh that's like I said, that's roughly uh 16 uh 96 per household per year increase to the average customer on just sewer.

Uh again, you know, I know sewer and water, two separate boards, two separate commissions, but uh we did the same thing with water, and we'll be meeting with the uh with the board after this uh after this meeting. Uh and just overall, the overall increase uh on the average household for water and sewer rate increases is $25.97. Uh so that's just about 6.6 per day increase. 25 for a year. You said that's $16 per year.

16 uh just under 17 for sewer and a total of 20 26 per year per year per household. Correct. for the average household. What that does to the actual bill though too, so even though it's it's a 3.9% change on the rate on sewer and it's a 3 uh it's a 4% increase on the water, um the actual change on the average household bill is only a 2.9% increase on the average household bill.

Uh there's a lot of people out there that are saying we were going up 12% before. Those numbers are untrue.

They're not correct. Um, currently what's proposed in front of you with this rate increase as well as the water in rate increase, the average household increase is 2.9%.

Bills haven't gone out yet. No, bills.

Yeah, these bills have not gone out.

Quarterly bills go out on a regular basis. Basis. Yes. So, so there was a bill on on this last ring that we not not on the No, no, not on the one that was proposed yet. All these rates that you're voting on now go into effect July 1. Yep.

Yep. Okay.

Um I think I think we've got a pretty tight budget.

Yeah. Judge judging from what I've gone through and having made having made over a $200,000 change to what we originally proposed just on a suicide, we're going to have a pretty tight budget. Yeah. No, this is a very tight budget. Again, there are some things in here that are concerning uh just with the uh e economic uh the volatile market that we're in just in the past week. Uh definitely concerns me

with chemical cost and other you know variables that may come from overseas or other countries. Uh that's you know that could unknown that's an unknown that would that isn't even in this budget but even stuff that we took out of this budget we were planning for if it's determined that it's needed throughout the year we're going to have to come back and we're going to have to find out

where we're going to get that funding from possibly midy year. Uh if there were things that come up that aren't that we had to cut from this budget or that we're unprepared for, uh we may have to come back to the sewer commission as well as the council for whether it's a rate adjustment, whether it comes from the general fund, whether it comes from other some other funding source, we may have to do that.

Well, I know the climate out there is is right now very tentative. Um but with respect to things that might be affected by tariffs, um are there anything to say in the raw materials inventories that you know of that could be affected by tariff may be coming in from but by you know I don't know if uh boarding remington or any of the other providers of uh chemicals that

come into us um you know I don't know if they're bringing stuff in from China like like a a lot of other people do and so forth. But I think that's something we're going to have to keep an eye on, you know. No, without a doubt. Again, this this past week uh uh definitely concerns me. As it is now, we're under contract uh for the rest of this fiscal year. Uh I hope that uh any providers

will, you know, maintain those contracts. We're out to bid. Yeah. Uh going out to bid for chemicals for the next fiscal year right now. um where those prices come in at cuz there's going to be bidding for the whole entire next year. Again, those that's one of my concerns are there, you know, cuz yeah, raw materials, you know, a lot of the chemicals may be formulated in this country, whether it be by Jones Chemical

or B Remington or one of our other providers. uh they may be formulated but the raw materials to make the bisulfite or the sodium hypocchlorite or the polymer may very well come in as an export you know import into the US.

Yeah. And we can't buy in both because we're running quarterly anyways you know so we can't buy ahead. Right. So Right.

So we bid we bid out for the full year but we only Yeah. We only have so much tankage to be able to keep stuff on site. you know, that's what we're really limited by is our take on site. Yeah.

See these contracts come in, but you know, Yeah. It's going to be interesting. Yeah. Definitely something we're going to have to stay on top of and I'm sure everybody else respect to what goes on in in the city in terms of buying and so forth. But, um, in looking at the budget, it's tight. But on the other side of the coin, it's just about a 3% increase. And and I

think, you know, I can understand how uh you know, this the city council wants to um you know, make sure that we're dotting our eyes, crossing our tees, and and have looked at things very carefully and so forth. But um and it's in a sense uh one of the reasons why we've gone back and and even tightened up even more and some of it's pretty tentative in a sense of being close to the vest. But

um I would hope that the um citizens of Far River would uh look at the fact that we're we got a combined rate increase between water and so of just under 3%. So um I hope um I'm hoping that the U administration and the city council looks at it favorably and u lets us move forward.

Having said all that, I guess we're at the point where um any of you gentlemen have any questions about this or want to make any comments about what you think is right, wrong, or indifferent?

If not, I'm going to ask someone to make a motion to um approve the budget for fiscal year 2026 at an amount of

$32,785,387. Anybody any anybody have any comments about this? If not, like I said, I'll uh entertain a motion to approve it. Can I make that motion to approve?

I'll second it. All in favor? I call I I Okay. Now, we have to go ahead and improve the rate the rate.

Now, do we also have to improve that rate sheet that you have here that uh reflects I guess the different rates that go out to the uh neighboring communities and so forth. Yeah. Yes.

Typically the uh what you approve is the uh rate um and right based on the rate sheet that's provided because you have uh the standard residential rate uh which will be increased to $843 from $811 per cc. Okay. You have the SIU uh significant industrial user rate uh which is going from $3.87 to $42 under the proposed increase. Uh and then you have the increase to the uh individual households uh that do not

have a water meter. Uh and that's based on the number of residents in our household, how they're built. uh those go up the same percentage that the actual rate goes up. Okay.

Um so let's let's deal with the rate for the um for the um homeowners in the city of forever first. Uh with respect to um the budget that we just produced on the sewer side um it equates to a rate of $843 per CCF. Correct. Correct.

Okay. Would someone please make a motion to approve the rate of $843 as a sewer rate that that per CCF that that is uh relative to homeowners in the city of Fargo. I'll make that motion for the uh new rate of $843 per CCF.

I second that. All in favor? I I I I thank you, gentlemen. Okay, that takes us to the the sheet that Mr. Furin just um gave us a little bit of um of information on that shows all the rates that deal with people that do not have that are not meeted and there are a number of them. So, I'm going to I'm going to request if it's okay with you, Paul that um we refer

to the outline that's been provided to us. Okay. Okay. Uh having said all that, then uh we have that outline in front of us. These rates reflect the um the decreases that we've um we've just imposed into the new budget. So unless anybody has any questions about what these are all about and what they're for and so forth, u I'll entertain a motion to approve the rates that are um that have

been provided to us on the schedule.

I'll make that motion.

I'll second it.

All in favor? Paul. I I I I thank you, gentlemen. I think that completes the um the process what we've been asked to do here. Uh the next item is other business. Unless anybody has any other business they want to talk about, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Anybody have anything else they want to bring up? Just anything on that last appeal that got scheduled or got cancelled? The the what? The last appeal from last meeting. Uh they did come in.

They want to come in again. I didn't want to put them on this meeting just because I wanted to kind of keep it to the budget, but I will I am planning on having them on a future meeting. They did contact us wondering what our next meeting was going to be. So, yeah, put them on the next one if you can. Any other business? Nope. Anybody want to make a motion to adjurnn?

I'll make that a motion to adjurnn.

Second. All in favor? I Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.