June 8, 2026 – Wastewater Management – Video & Transcript
June 8, 2026 - Wastewater Management
i'm going to call the uh june 8th 2026 meeting of the wastewater management district commission
to order um the meeting agenda was posted on the town website along with the link
this meeting is going to be done a hundred percent remote via the uh the town's zoom channel
and this is mike gittin participating remotely darren bach participating remotely okay is there
any public comment is anyone else out there nobody is listed under the attendees tab thank you okay so
uh tom are we are we we have the uh wastewater rate proposal is the purpose here to basically uh reiterate what we said last month and say we're going to hold the hearing yeah i i can go over what we've actually learned um i had treated the wastewater rate hearing much like we we treat the water rate hearing and they're actually two different uh types of protocols um the water department operates as a water department you guys we operate a wastewater district commission and in mass general law and as well as in your enabling legislation it speaks to the details of having a rate hearing and rather than a 14-day notice for water uh the wastewater uh the wastewater requires a 30-day notice and it also requires us to post proposed rates for that same time period such that the public can review that and be ready to participate in a rate hearing 30 days afterward so we amended the uh agenda today to really reflect um the commission members proposal for a rate for an fy 27 rate and um so it would be helpful to at least get to that point you you won't actually vote the rates but i think it would be helpful to have a motion that establishes this is what you are proposing those words would be adequate and then we'll actually you know advertise that proposed rate structure both the the uh the consumption rate and the base charge if that changes um and then we'll post that with the actual hearing and sometime after july 8th we'll be able to hold a a formal rate hearing so a little bit different than water and something i just learned and caused a little confusion at the last moment so i apologize so um sent around uh with with the material for today's meeting was where we ended up um last meeting showing the fiscal year 2027 nine percent um increase across the board for all all tiers for the base tier one and tier two and did we have any clarity also tom yet um would these rates go into effect then um august 1st or or something like that or so between now and the july hearing we will make the determination as to whether or not we can actually uh place these rates effective july 1 which would be the first day of the fiscal year if we have the ability to do that we'll do it if we learn that we're not allowed to we'll make them effective the date uh just after the actual rate hearing and munis has the ability to prorate uh much of these rates uh such that that's how it'll become effective the bills don't actually go out wastewater bills don't go out until august so we we do thankfully have enough time to make all this happen prior to the bills going out okay um darren any questions okay so then um i'm just i make a motion that we propose um fiscal year 2027 rates effective as soon as practicable uh with the increase of the base charge of nine percent tier one nine percent tier two nine percent and that will get us to a base charge in 956 the tier one is 752 and a tier two of 22 58. darrenbach seconds that motion okay all those in favor and bakkeye okay um all right okay well i i is i would be fine if if the new rate occurred uh you know give people a uh a point one percent discount or whatever it would be point point five percent from what i've looked up i do think you can back date it as long as you're okay and you're in the same fiscal year like i've seen it done in other communities so i'm like fairly confident it will be fine to start it on july 1st i think worst case whenever the day of the meeting is right okay um anything else to discuss uh on the 20 fiscal year 27 rates i don't think so and i know matt you know joined us he's on the uh the meeting call right now and uh so if you know i guess it at whatever point we're through with that subject it might be right now we can say thanks to matt and uh if matt could join us we'll let you know what uh um what the the actual rate hearing date and if matt was able to join us that would be helpful just to have his you know expertise to answer any questions that might come up on that particular date okay would it make any sense to try to set the date while we're all together um in this topic sure so we just have to what did you learn sarah as far as advertising because we need to we need it's got to be 30 days from advertised so if you wanted to i don't know whatever yeah they need about three days notice i assume business days i know that they do obviously advertise over the weekend but i'm not sure that they work over the weekend so i just need to give them that notice so if we were to have whatever day we pick their hearing it will probably take three days after that um after today for me to get them actually posted so keep that in mind when you're thinking about the next hearing so if we decide today that it's going to be 33 days i guess from now give us 30 days plus three more days keep in mind the weekend um i can look at the calendar as we're talking about and get a sense of what seems practical you know if it's a friday is june 12th so i'm thinking if we did something the week of july 13th okay that would be a safe place to land i'm sorry that's a safe place to land because it gives us a couple you know the three days like the weekend so it really helps yeah i'm i'm working i'm but i i'm around yeah i'm pretty good the week of the 13th matt are you available that week yeah it should be fine it should be fine so we could i mean i guess we could do it uh keep holding with our monday schedule monday the 13th
works for me darren uh i can make it work okay is is noon a good time for you on monday yep
putting it in my calendar now then i think now we're ready to to move on to the next agenda item and say uh thank you matt again for another year okay great thank you if it only took you three years to train us it went smoothly all good you guys are doing great thank you thanks matt thank you bye
okay next item is uh monthly operating report yes um so yeah it wasn't a bad month uh we uh did a hypo clean on mbr side two that went very well numbers are still doing great um we sampled alta for their fog results um and then following that we had it cleaned out by mcvac so it is now um pristine and we are monitoring it daily to see how it uh builds up again going forward and so we can kind of plan uh cleaning schedule on how we're going to maintain this um we also lost power once and uh it did not call out and i actually happened to get very lucky that i happened to remote in and um the levels were high and i was able to restart everything um and we did not have to call a truck or anything the plant was able to catch up overnight um and you know just with some close monitoring and then i worked with lcs to figure out um what went wrong or just really to get the win 9-1-1-1 system back up and running um to make sure that that doesn't happen again um and then we also uh i found a leak on screen two on the shaft seal so the manufacturer is sending out someone to come repair that and lastly um whitewater had to reseed one of their other plants so we got um 5 000 gallons of sludge taken out of our storage tank for free so that was a nice little bonus
okay jared did the backup generator not kick in um it was not um an issue with the power not being on i think it was it could have been i don't know if it kicked on or not the generator but it could have been in one of those transition periods it just um for some reason usually when it when it when we lose power 99 of the things restart on their own um for some reason this time it needed me to just acknowledge and reset the alarms and then everything started right back up but for whatever was going on the the blowers were still in alarm so it wasn't treating the water through the mbrs got it so we lost power for a little bit got utility back but because something was still an alarm we haven't read they didn't get reset okay exactly yeah okay and you weren't alerted to that yeah so is that a skata issue um yeah it's i mean it seemed more like a kind of like semi separately from skater like the win 9-1-1 program that does the calling out um it's i guess i'd describe it as like a sub program of of skater because it's like integrated um but yeah they can get a little um uh out of sorts they're just you know a little cross-wired um and and not operate as it should i'm not sure if i'm explaining this um well it's more just like uh it's it's not a common occurrence it just it has in the past which was the main reason we got the secondary uh win 9-1-1 license and then that one just um has not been fully integrated yet so this should be um fully resolved going forward got it okay that's what i was looking for will it be resolved okay got it it'll be fully resolved when we get the second one got it yep jared did we talk to lcs about this yes um okay yep casey's remoting in uh today to work on the second license okay perfect and um what what what were the flows like over the last month any change you're still hovering in the low 30s yeah still low 30s um kind of hit 35 a few times don't really uh you know dip below 30 too much anymore so i'd say yeah really consistently 30 to 32 is still where we're at okay that's actually encouraging because again we were dipping sometimes 25 i think i saw remember a 23 one time too so yeah february was we had a very we had quite a few uh low flow days um but yeah i'd say like for the past few years we'd still dip into those 20s a good bit but yeah now now consistently and you know at 30 i'd say okay okay and um back to the the oxbow so did they they sampled the same time we took split samples is that what happened and yeah um so we actually did um a few grabs over the course of the day whereas they just took um one sample in the morning uh so we we did oh yeah we did like to throughout the day but the main one was during the peak um flows which was between six and eight and that was the you know really telling value we got
and did what's the next step with them they're going you know we've asked them go concurrent paths to have they is there a date out there that were you know we're there isn't we're having time bond take all of this information including the lab data um and the testing methodology assessing it and we'll respond to um blackrock oxbow when we get that i've just been going back and forth with them they're working on the memo now okay but but but the oxbow folks haven't said we're going to get you or something it's it's dateless at this point it's stateless at this point and i think they're still hoping to come up with a methodology for an o&m plan okay and and meanwhile they're going to get billed for the clean out and whatever yep exactly okay yes they've already been it's already been attached to their account all the different expenses that come to play in that okay but but jared and you and sarah have better things to sarah and happy i've better things i'm reading the teleprompter uh jared jared and abby have better things to do with their time than than this and it's putting a strain on on the equipment okay and uh okay um and has the um the condo folks have they connected in yet formally are they have they made the the the physical connection they have not yet they have their plans approved and um we also went back and forth a little bit about uh they don't have an easement per se but um just defining what our role in terms of access is to their system uh so that was good and um i will follow up with them on a date okay i was gonna say do you have a date or i don't have a date they were supposed to reach out to jared jared i'm assuming you haven't heard from them yeah i have not heard anything okay so they didn't have another quarterly bill okay all right yeah hopefully we get connected okay and and none of the other the the no new the people on um route 27 conquer road haven't made their they're they haven't even started construction over there yet okay we are planning on using them as part of our new electronic permit filing system and since that building and project is so complicated across all the boards we're hoping to get all our sewer permitting information all online and working directly with the building department as as an example project okay anything else uh darren any other questions related to monthly operations um i'm good okay one last question are we queued up to for for the capacity study to is that oh yeah is that ready to go in july uh yes uh we can start at any time we have that money now uh we have a meeting with time bond they're coming here on thursday okay great we've also been working with them um in corollary to the wastewater treatment plant evaluation we recently submitted our one stop for growth grant where we worked with um the developers down by long fellow hdr holdings and the town center developers to identify infrastructure needs um they would need if they were going to um expand town center or add housing uh in the area of sewer so that was submitted last week okay and who would who would do this study we would engage someone or would would they we would engage we would we would engage someone to upgrade the infrastructure so that they then would be able to further their development projects and and and this will define what those upgrades could possibly be based on what they tell tell us that's right exactly okay um then we can move on i'll move on to the next item the sarah the financial report we're in the home stretch here yep we are all right it should be on the screen can you see it yep okay yep all right this gets us through march 31st by may 31st my goodness um 92 percent of the year complete um as far as expenses go the four or five overspent contractual um sludge disposal water and contingency those are the big ones i think um are being offset by the lowering of use of small equipment in order to meet 100 the orange line uh of goods and services being spent we haven't spent that full 80 yet um but we are close we have um a few thousand much extra in there so we're pretty much there we are at the end we have pretty much spent everything we have here um there are going to be some purchase orders that will be liquidated and potentially a little bit more um of a difference where you see encumbrances but i've really already taken that into account in the forecast so it doesn't matter if the encumbrance says this much i'm already forecasting what i know or expect to be spent anyway encumbrance or not so this we should be pretty close but we should be okay and those delayed small equipments we just move to the next year and just prioritize list right and anything we have in small equipment i would say so some of the you know money and contractual services you know it really speaks to some of the initiatives in small equipment it might be more of a service than a supply but it's still stuff that's related to that list i feel like abby you could probably expand on that better but i know that we have some consulting work in there that's related to um support for the plant so it's sort of kind of just moved not necessarily abandoned for the year and the the line um um transfer to general fund is is that is that for services town departments provided or is that related to the professional staff that those are indirect costs uh so my understanding is it would be like our share of certain things that are for the entire town i'm not even 100 sure what falls in that category this is in our line item every year like the opev is the future retirement um but indirect costs are things that we all have to take a portion of so they have that figured out what that number is going to be at the beginning of the year and it looks like it's within a dollar and this is just going to be rounding but um yeah so that's all planned and expected
you got a paper headquarters but given the bonuses to the town manager yeah yeah got it no that's that's what i was just wondering if it was in kind labor or true overhead it sounds like it's overhead overhead i believe yeah and um i i saw it congratulations to uh to abby and yard i saw it you you both were represented wayland at the the conference and i read i read my newsletter yes oh good um we went to um revenue sorry unless you want me to stop there still i'm good on expense um okay great so revenue is you know not the biggest pieces to discuss are user charges which we're tracking to be at 690 and based on the billing that went out in may the final quarterly billing which comes due on june 22nd so this fiscal um is you know it's starting to come in but you just tend to see most of it arrive right around the last day before it's due so i think we're at about 615 000 today in user charges but that will that will make a big jump in the next 10 days before it's due or i should say 12 days no 14 days um so we have that and then you can see that our miscellaneous revenue operating which was at 335 it still technically was at the time of this financial report but by now those checks have been deposited it will be at 531 084 and 75 of that 75 000 of that will be for the assessment that we've talked about so it will move out of this into its own little pot because it is a different type of bucket that it lives in but it is included in this number for right now that's all of the remaining flow the privilege fees that were just under 200 000 to town center it's all included in that and that's what we're doing the small equipment and special smaller special projects from right true that's intended the privilege fee was always intended to support that small equipment line and it certainly is more than enough after the 75 000 that we have slated for assessment to do that where does the money from oxbow show up is it in that line too that the revenue the extra um no that is uh the wastewater service order so those are two fog cleanings right in there um you're going to see the next one uh that probably since they were already billed that will not show up until the next fiscal year so this will be that's the other thing that's kind of tricky about the timing of the expense versus the revenue because we did the cleaning but we don't build them again unless and this is a thought we send out a separate just service order bill only to them in this fiscal year which we also could do we don't have to wait until their normal utility bill goes out we can always send just a miscellaneous charges bill and if that's something that feels like it's a popular idea then we could do that too keep it status quo is what i would do yeah we're not we're not desperate for the cash right now right right i mean we need it it's it's warranted it's you know there there's need behind it but just keep it on its normal schedule yeah if they weren't a big a big outfit it was a small mom and pop i'd say send it out separate to make the point but i don't i think the point would be lost once the bill shows up right totally agree yeah so we'll keep it like it is and they'll get that in august when that billing goes out okay it will be more than it's been because there are obviously there's testing that occurred there's more labor hours of different you know consultants and jared's time uh so and the actual fog remediation itself uh and there's really nothing super exciting in here outside of that um there's a little bit of spending if you go down to capital that's only other new information is we've started to make some payments on that low pressure sewer replacement design project yep all right so not dipping into retain which we know we're actually going to increase it um but we had that planned in our ramp down with matt so it makes sense okay and we're going to go next into the request for services have we have we um is there is there still some capacity in play that like i can't remember did did town center come in and in consummate and pay pay their that's what the privilege fee was that why it was going up yeah yeah the request i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead yeah no next yeah look we'll move on we'll move right into i can answer that because i actually yeah i do have like two things to say on that topic um i think i'm pretty sure abby mentioned at the last meeting that the hastings way development was looking for an extra 880 cubic feet for four new two-bedroom units units so the plan was and has now been done to look at the town buildings that may have been you know holding on to too much that they didn't need and now that we can see
that we have folks online like like the coa like the library and whatnot that we have just enough to accommodate that request through just checking um what they're really needing over at those locations so we have enough to accommodate that so we will hopefully be offering that up i assume right abby um anytime now and they know they'll pay the base on that immediately they oh yes because they're doing it now with the current and they haven't connected yet so i i would on that one point i'd be i'd be comfortable with the the town building whatever it is i i don't know do we have enough history from the library or anything else to be uh reducing that at this point versus going over a little on on or if we're talking a couple hundred gallons we we had enough we felt like we had enough or i feel like we have enough from the coa considering the flow was just so much lower than the um initial design flow i think we always felt that initial we always right actually now that you said that out loud we were kind of because i sit on another committee and i did bring up that hey do you want to ask to reduce it and i kind of assumed someone had and no one did okay uh so we did that and then we took a little bit from the library and um we had enough we had a lot of data for the library but um we also looked at public safety building and while their average was lower they did have a couple of peak times so i kept the public safety building as is okay but is there an allocation to the to town hall to the municipal building that there is yeah there is but they're planning to connect in our sewer replacement project okay good good for us i would guess um so what do we need to do on on that do we need to wait till we have actual do we need to do anything um not here but we have a sewer use permit to offer them that will off that will do that i know we have the ability in our current regulations to remove capacity correct i think that's that's so we're okay there as far as having the ability to do so and then it's just a matter of them purchasing it and completing the application yep
but i do have a second part to that is there has been a request i believe it was from them actually um yeah as far as if for some reason they purchased this capacity and then their permitting doesn't follow through with the rest of the town building would they be able to have it be refunded and we do not have a mechanism for that in our but we have to answer them regardless because they've asked in writing so um i said that i would bring it up i think they brought it up a while ago when we discussed the first purchase of the flow there but it didn't turn out that we had to do it that way so i guess we just need a confirmed answer from the board as to how they feel about that request
sell it to another user right another user has to occupy it yeah yeah i i remember we discussed this and that when we before i think abby ansauer were involved that there's there's no refunds um if uh
it's the same way we're not giving money back to the town right now um it would set up a difficult situation if you're stating that you know 20 25 percent if they want to make a side right if they want to make a side deal on something but um
right then though we still get a charge we no i what we're doing with town center is releasing 880 right or whatever the number was 880 to them okay if they want to reverse it back then they got to find the person to give it back to right i i actually thought we discussed that's it's to protect the public because town center could have come in and and said i'm going to write you a check for a hundred thousand dollars to take all your capacity and then it would have shut out it would have shut out um right these things and everyone i i think
the new person has to pay us and if they make a deal with with hastings they pay them too but that's separate right that's what we talked about yeah yeah that's exactly what we talked about in the bylaws yeah because um so that would be no that's all i have for request for service nothing else and and our current capacity is zero to give right and our official our official other than we're moving this right but like until the rates until the rate site until the plant study is done yeah our official is we have zero to get okay good and and combined with that is is as we get one or two more substantial users coming on to keep an eye on the plant to it's not stressing i mean the the desktop study the most interesting thing i'm looking for on the desktop study if we can with scientific uh justification and mathematic justification adjust how we're um converting the title five flow to what we sell and then the next part is looking at the gazinkis at how they're doing the components how they're doing is that correct it's like are they doing both yes um i mean they started it and never finished yeah for the unit processes but yeah that's the unit that's that's the engineering term um and and go and as we slightly creep up we're not seeing any major flaws but it definitely takes a you know someone like jared keeping an eye on stuff more than when we were running at 18 000 gallons or whatever it was yeah so you know things that we'll be looking at going forward in the study are in title five there's a way to look at your water use over two or three years um and then um you know two times that as your peak and show actual water use um as your design flow as opposed to um what we've specified through the title five designation all right and then what do we have as our buffer with the epa the discharge discharge our permit is what is it again it's 89 yeah is it i remember it was 80 something yeah 89 000 so plus 30 odd thousand to the to the oxbow field not i mean no 89 is total oh yeah i remember 89 being total okay yeah yeah wish i was thinking that's all right we still got it's still 50. we still do at 35. i don't think i i think i could do this yeah if we were going from 50 to 100 i'm pretty sure we'd have to do something to the building one of the things about the new meter program that also play a role here is because i think district six which is where all of our wastewater customers are have been probably almost a year i'll have to look specifically but it's the data is better with the new meters that are out there as far as usage usage goes there's the potential that you know there were some aging meters out there that weren't accumulating and tracking it well so it'll be nice to have really fresh good data on that we won't have three years of it just yet so the longer we wait i guess to collect a few years of data with the new meters in the better the data is going to be that's right okay okay um anything else on requests and and and that grant that you put we put in for what what what is that called again the um uh one stop for growth and this is a compilation of grants that the state has you apply to sort of an umbrella of grants so it includes what what used to be mass work grants it includes the um mbta um initiation now there was an there was a grant for the mbta zoned areas to initiate housing and provide um infrastructure to those areas and a couple other ones so we applied to the overall program and they'll see where our project best fits into it and and what is the rough dollar amount you may get and when do they decide do they decide by the fall um and we could get i think it's like four hundred thousand dollars let me fill up what they officially put in there and and the in the potential growth areas that we cited were town center and and uh and are they both are they both are they both in the mbta zoned areas yes we um the total project is 650 000 the post award or the grant ask is 497 000 and then we have shown um our collection system study that we just did for the 75 and the um 75 000 from um town center as a developer match uh so that gets you from the 497 plus the 153 to 650 000 total project and um i had a thought totally and is that just for wastewater or is it for water and fire and everything that's just for wastewater okay so that would include expanding the capacity at the plant and looking for another groundwater discharge location okay was was something similar done for for drinking water and in other infrastructure or just the no just the wastewater and does this include the the town parcel across adjacent to the to the landfill the landfill the old landfill that was been floated around for some reuse or it does not that is not in the mbta zone okay okay kind of related to request for service because that would be a big request yes okay long range planning i i have nothing else darren yeah no no i'm good okay
meeting minutes from our may 11th meeting were circulated uh with the agenda uh i had a chance to look at them i have no comments darren i read mine no comments i'm good thank you um i make a motion that we approve the minutes from may 11th 2026 meeting as distributed i second that motion am i getting yay darren bach yay okay anything else uh to discuss
i will july meeting now we were going to not meet in july or august but we'll have a july meeting so we're yeah we're going to be down a member
in july right yeah yeah and i i'm trying to i'm trying to pursue someone to see if we can get them on if you know anyone darren um you know there's uh an event tonight for wayland dads i'll be uh maybe i'll hit somebody up yeah
do we have any volunteer thing on on thursday so i make my own okay it's it's it's it's a much very nice position compared to some of the other ones they're looking to fill the town needs to fill so okay uh do we want to schedule september at all now or wait till july and talk about it then that's totally fine they don't july yeah that's fine it is a far out i know i i can't plan september right now no if we weren't meeting until like if this was it i'd probably say we should do it in july we're fine let's do that meeting very good okay i i make a motion we adjourn at 12 45. i second that motion mike darrenbach's darrenbach in favor yes getting in favor bye everybody all right there thank you take care
uh tom are we are we we have the uh wastewater rate proposal is the purpose here to basically uh reiterate what we said last month and say we're going to hold the hearing yeah i i can go over what we've actually learned um i had treated the wastewater rate hearing much like we we treat the water rate hearing and they're actually two different uh types of protocols um the water department operates as a water department you guys we operate a wastewater district commission and in mass general law and as well as in your enabling legislation it speaks to the details of having a rate hearing and rather than a 14-day notice for water uh the wastewater uh the wastewater requires a 30-day notice and it also requires us to post proposed rates for that same time period such that the public can review that and be ready to participate in a rate hearing 30 days afterward so we amended the uh agenda today to really reflect um the commission members proposal for a rate for an fy 27 rate and um so it would be helpful to at least get to that point you you won't actually vote the rates but i think it would be helpful to have a motion that establishes this is what you are proposing those words would be adequate and then we'll actually you know advertise that proposed rate structure both the the uh the consumption rate and the base charge if that changes um and then we'll post that with the actual hearing and sometime after july 8th we'll be able to hold a a formal rate hearing so a little bit different than water and something i just learned and caused a little confusion at the last moment so i apologize so um sent around uh with with the material for today's meeting was where we ended up um last meeting showing the fiscal year 2027 nine percent um increase across the board for all all tiers for the base tier one and tier two and did we have any clarity also tom yet um would these rates go into effect then um august 1st or or something like that or so between now and the july hearing we will make the determination as to whether or not we can actually uh place these rates effective july 1 which would be the first day of the fiscal year if we have the ability to do that we'll do it if we learn that we're not allowed to we'll make them effective the date uh just after the actual rate hearing and munis has the ability to prorate uh much of these rates uh such that that's how it'll become effective the bills don't actually go out wastewater bills don't go out until august so we we do thankfully have enough time to make all this happen prior to the bills going out okay um darren any questions okay so then um i'm just i make a motion that we propose um fiscal year 2027 rates effective as soon as practicable uh with the increase of the base charge of nine percent tier one nine percent tier two nine percent and that will get us to a base charge in 956 the tier one is 752 and a tier two of 22 58. darrenbach seconds that motion okay all those in favor and bakkeye okay um all right okay well i i is i would be fine if if the new rate occurred uh you know give people a uh a point one percent discount or whatever it would be point point five percent from what i've looked up i do think you can back date it as long as you're okay and you're in the same fiscal year like i've seen it done in other communities so i'm like fairly confident it will be fine to start it on july 1st i think worst case whenever the day of the meeting is right okay um anything else to discuss uh on the 20 fiscal year 27 rates i don't think so and i know matt you know joined us he's on the uh the meeting call right now and uh so if you know i guess it at whatever point we're through with that subject it might be right now we can say thanks to matt and uh if matt could join us we'll let you know what uh um what the the actual rate hearing date and if matt was able to join us that would be helpful just to have his you know expertise to answer any questions that might come up on that particular date okay would it make any sense to try to set the date while we're all together um in this topic sure so we just have to what did you learn sarah as far as advertising because we need to we need it's got to be 30 days from advertised so if you wanted to i don't know whatever yeah they need about three days notice i assume business days i know that they do obviously advertise over the weekend but i'm not sure that they work over the weekend so i just need to give them that notice so if we were to have whatever day we pick their hearing it will probably take three days after that um after today for me to get them actually posted so keep that in mind when you're thinking about the next hearing so if we decide today that it's going to be 33 days i guess from now give us 30 days plus three more days keep in mind the weekend um i can look at the calendar as we're talking about and get a sense of what seems practical you know if it's a friday is june 12th so i'm thinking if we did something the week of july 13th okay that would be a safe place to land i'm sorry that's a safe place to land because it gives us a couple you know the three days like the weekend so it really helps yeah i'm i'm working i'm but i i'm around yeah i'm pretty good the week of the 13th matt are you available that week yeah it should be fine it should be fine so we could i mean i guess we could do it uh keep holding with our monday schedule monday the 13th
works for me darren uh i can make it work okay is is noon a good time for you on monday yep
putting it in my calendar now then i think now we're ready to to move on to the next agenda item and say uh thank you matt again for another year okay great thank you if it only took you three years to train us it went smoothly all good you guys are doing great thank you thanks matt thank you bye
okay next item is uh monthly operating report yes um so yeah it wasn't a bad month uh we uh did a hypo clean on mbr side two that went very well numbers are still doing great um we sampled alta for their fog results um and then following that we had it cleaned out by mcvac so it is now um pristine and we are monitoring it daily to see how it uh builds up again going forward and so we can kind of plan uh cleaning schedule on how we're going to maintain this um we also lost power once and uh it did not call out and i actually happened to get very lucky that i happened to remote in and um the levels were high and i was able to restart everything um and we did not have to call a truck or anything the plant was able to catch up overnight um and you know just with some close monitoring and then i worked with lcs to figure out um what went wrong or just really to get the win 9-1-1-1 system back up and running um to make sure that that doesn't happen again um and then we also uh i found a leak on screen two on the shaft seal so the manufacturer is sending out someone to come repair that and lastly um whitewater had to reseed one of their other plants so we got um 5 000 gallons of sludge taken out of our storage tank for free so that was a nice little bonus
okay jared did the backup generator not kick in um it was not um an issue with the power not being on i think it was it could have been i don't know if it kicked on or not the generator but it could have been in one of those transition periods it just um for some reason usually when it when it when we lose power 99 of the things restart on their own um for some reason this time it needed me to just acknowledge and reset the alarms and then everything started right back up but for whatever was going on the the blowers were still in alarm so it wasn't treating the water through the mbrs got it so we lost power for a little bit got utility back but because something was still an alarm we haven't read they didn't get reset okay exactly yeah okay and you weren't alerted to that yeah so is that a skata issue um yeah it's i mean it seemed more like a kind of like semi separately from skater like the win 9-1-1 program that does the calling out um it's i guess i'd describe it as like a sub program of of skater because it's like integrated um but yeah they can get a little um uh out of sorts they're just you know a little cross-wired um and and not operate as it should i'm not sure if i'm explaining this um well it's more just like uh it's it's not a common occurrence it just it has in the past which was the main reason we got the secondary uh win 9-1-1 license and then that one just um has not been fully integrated yet so this should be um fully resolved going forward got it okay that's what i was looking for will it be resolved okay got it it'll be fully resolved when we get the second one got it yep jared did we talk to lcs about this yes um okay yep casey's remoting in uh today to work on the second license okay perfect and um what what what were the flows like over the last month any change you're still hovering in the low 30s yeah still low 30s um kind of hit 35 a few times don't really uh you know dip below 30 too much anymore so i'd say yeah really consistently 30 to 32 is still where we're at okay that's actually encouraging because again we were dipping sometimes 25 i think i saw remember a 23 one time too so yeah february was we had a very we had quite a few uh low flow days um but yeah i'd say like for the past few years we'd still dip into those 20s a good bit but yeah now now consistently and you know at 30 i'd say okay okay and um back to the the oxbow so did they they sampled the same time we took split samples is that what happened and yeah um so we actually did um a few grabs over the course of the day whereas they just took um one sample in the morning uh so we we did oh yeah we did like to throughout the day but the main one was during the peak um flows which was between six and eight and that was the you know really telling value we got
and did what's the next step with them they're going you know we've asked them go concurrent paths to have they is there a date out there that were you know we're there isn't we're having time bond take all of this information including the lab data um and the testing methodology assessing it and we'll respond to um blackrock oxbow when we get that i've just been going back and forth with them they're working on the memo now okay but but but the oxbow folks haven't said we're going to get you or something it's it's dateless at this point it's stateless at this point and i think they're still hoping to come up with a methodology for an o&m plan okay and and meanwhile they're going to get billed for the clean out and whatever yep exactly okay yes they've already been it's already been attached to their account all the different expenses that come to play in that okay but but jared and you and sarah have better things to sarah and happy i've better things i'm reading the teleprompter uh jared jared and abby have better things to do with their time than than this and it's putting a strain on on the equipment okay and uh okay um and has the um the condo folks have they connected in yet formally are they have they made the the the physical connection they have not yet they have their plans approved and um we also went back and forth a little bit about uh they don't have an easement per se but um just defining what our role in terms of access is to their system uh so that was good and um i will follow up with them on a date okay i was gonna say do you have a date or i don't have a date they were supposed to reach out to jared jared i'm assuming you haven't heard from them yeah i have not heard anything okay so they didn't have another quarterly bill okay all right yeah hopefully we get connected okay and and none of the other the the no new the people on um route 27 conquer road haven't made their they're they haven't even started construction over there yet okay we are planning on using them as part of our new electronic permit filing system and since that building and project is so complicated across all the boards we're hoping to get all our sewer permitting information all online and working directly with the building department as as an example project okay anything else uh darren any other questions related to monthly operations um i'm good okay one last question are we queued up to for for the capacity study to is that oh yeah is that ready to go in july uh yes uh we can start at any time we have that money now uh we have a meeting with time bond they're coming here on thursday okay great we've also been working with them um in corollary to the wastewater treatment plant evaluation we recently submitted our one stop for growth grant where we worked with um the developers down by long fellow hdr holdings and the town center developers to identify infrastructure needs um they would need if they were going to um expand town center or add housing uh in the area of sewer so that was submitted last week okay and who would who would do this study we would engage someone or would would they we would engage we would we would engage someone to upgrade the infrastructure so that they then would be able to further their development projects and and and this will define what those upgrades could possibly be based on what they tell tell us that's right exactly okay um then we can move on i'll move on to the next item the sarah the financial report we're in the home stretch here yep we are all right it should be on the screen can you see it yep okay yep all right this gets us through march 31st by may 31st my goodness um 92 percent of the year complete um as far as expenses go the four or five overspent contractual um sludge disposal water and contingency those are the big ones i think um are being offset by the lowering of use of small equipment in order to meet 100 the orange line uh of goods and services being spent we haven't spent that full 80 yet um but we are close we have um a few thousand much extra in there so we're pretty much there we are at the end we have pretty much spent everything we have here um there are going to be some purchase orders that will be liquidated and potentially a little bit more um of a difference where you see encumbrances but i've really already taken that into account in the forecast so it doesn't matter if the encumbrance says this much i'm already forecasting what i know or expect to be spent anyway encumbrance or not so this we should be pretty close but we should be okay and those delayed small equipments we just move to the next year and just prioritize list right and anything we have in small equipment i would say so some of the you know money and contractual services you know it really speaks to some of the initiatives in small equipment it might be more of a service than a supply but it's still stuff that's related to that list i feel like abby you could probably expand on that better but i know that we have some consulting work in there that's related to um support for the plant so it's sort of kind of just moved not necessarily abandoned for the year and the the line um um transfer to general fund is is that is that for services town departments provided or is that related to the professional staff that those are indirect costs uh so my understanding is it would be like our share of certain things that are for the entire town i'm not even 100 sure what falls in that category this is in our line item every year like the opev is the future retirement um but indirect costs are things that we all have to take a portion of so they have that figured out what that number is going to be at the beginning of the year and it looks like it's within a dollar and this is just going to be rounding but um yeah so that's all planned and expected
you got a paper headquarters but given the bonuses to the town manager yeah yeah got it no that's that's what i was just wondering if it was in kind labor or true overhead it sounds like it's overhead overhead i believe yeah and um i i saw it congratulations to uh to abby and yard i saw it you you both were represented wayland at the the conference and i read i read my newsletter yes oh good um we went to um revenue sorry unless you want me to stop there still i'm good on expense um okay great so revenue is you know not the biggest pieces to discuss are user charges which we're tracking to be at 690 and based on the billing that went out in may the final quarterly billing which comes due on june 22nd so this fiscal um is you know it's starting to come in but you just tend to see most of it arrive right around the last day before it's due so i think we're at about 615 000 today in user charges but that will that will make a big jump in the next 10 days before it's due or i should say 12 days no 14 days um so we have that and then you can see that our miscellaneous revenue operating which was at 335 it still technically was at the time of this financial report but by now those checks have been deposited it will be at 531 084 and 75 of that 75 000 of that will be for the assessment that we've talked about so it will move out of this into its own little pot because it is a different type of bucket that it lives in but it is included in this number for right now that's all of the remaining flow the privilege fees that were just under 200 000 to town center it's all included in that and that's what we're doing the small equipment and special smaller special projects from right true that's intended the privilege fee was always intended to support that small equipment line and it certainly is more than enough after the 75 000 that we have slated for assessment to do that where does the money from oxbow show up is it in that line too that the revenue the extra um no that is uh the wastewater service order so those are two fog cleanings right in there um you're going to see the next one uh that probably since they were already billed that will not show up until the next fiscal year so this will be that's the other thing that's kind of tricky about the timing of the expense versus the revenue because we did the cleaning but we don't build them again unless and this is a thought we send out a separate just service order bill only to them in this fiscal year which we also could do we don't have to wait until their normal utility bill goes out we can always send just a miscellaneous charges bill and if that's something that feels like it's a popular idea then we could do that too keep it status quo is what i would do yeah we're not we're not desperate for the cash right now right right i mean we need it it's it's warranted it's you know there there's need behind it but just keep it on its normal schedule yeah if they weren't a big a big outfit it was a small mom and pop i'd say send it out separate to make the point but i don't i think the point would be lost once the bill shows up right totally agree yeah so we'll keep it like it is and they'll get that in august when that billing goes out okay it will be more than it's been because there are obviously there's testing that occurred there's more labor hours of different you know consultants and jared's time uh so and the actual fog remediation itself uh and there's really nothing super exciting in here outside of that um there's a little bit of spending if you go down to capital that's only other new information is we've started to make some payments on that low pressure sewer replacement design project yep all right so not dipping into retain which we know we're actually going to increase it um but we had that planned in our ramp down with matt so it makes sense okay and we're going to go next into the request for services have we have we um is there is there still some capacity in play that like i can't remember did did town center come in and in consummate and pay pay their that's what the privilege fee was that why it was going up yeah yeah the request i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead yeah no next yeah look we'll move on we'll move right into i can answer that because i actually yeah i do have like two things to say on that topic um i think i'm pretty sure abby mentioned at the last meeting that the hastings way development was looking for an extra 880 cubic feet for four new two-bedroom units units so the plan was and has now been done to look at the town buildings that may have been you know holding on to too much that they didn't need and now that we can see
that we have folks online like like the coa like the library and whatnot that we have just enough to accommodate that request through just checking um what they're really needing over at those locations so we have enough to accommodate that so we will hopefully be offering that up i assume right abby um anytime now and they know they'll pay the base on that immediately they oh yes because they're doing it now with the current and they haven't connected yet so i i would on that one point i'd be i'd be comfortable with the the town building whatever it is i i don't know do we have enough history from the library or anything else to be uh reducing that at this point versus going over a little on on or if we're talking a couple hundred gallons we we had enough we felt like we had enough or i feel like we have enough from the coa considering the flow was just so much lower than the um initial design flow i think we always felt that initial we always right actually now that you said that out loud we were kind of because i sit on another committee and i did bring up that hey do you want to ask to reduce it and i kind of assumed someone had and no one did okay uh so we did that and then we took a little bit from the library and um we had enough we had a lot of data for the library but um we also looked at public safety building and while their average was lower they did have a couple of peak times so i kept the public safety building as is okay but is there an allocation to the to town hall to the municipal building that there is yeah there is but they're planning to connect in our sewer replacement project okay good good for us i would guess um so what do we need to do on on that do we need to wait till we have actual do we need to do anything um not here but we have a sewer use permit to offer them that will off that will do that i know we have the ability in our current regulations to remove capacity correct i think that's that's so we're okay there as far as having the ability to do so and then it's just a matter of them purchasing it and completing the application yep
but i do have a second part to that is there has been a request i believe it was from them actually um yeah as far as if for some reason they purchased this capacity and then their permitting doesn't follow through with the rest of the town building would they be able to have it be refunded and we do not have a mechanism for that in our but we have to answer them regardless because they've asked in writing so um i said that i would bring it up i think they brought it up a while ago when we discussed the first purchase of the flow there but it didn't turn out that we had to do it that way so i guess we just need a confirmed answer from the board as to how they feel about that request
sell it to another user right another user has to occupy it yeah yeah i i remember we discussed this and that when we before i think abby ansauer were involved that there's there's no refunds um if uh
it's the same way we're not giving money back to the town right now um it would set up a difficult situation if you're stating that you know 20 25 percent if they want to make a side right if they want to make a side deal on something but um
right then though we still get a charge we no i what we're doing with town center is releasing 880 right or whatever the number was 880 to them okay if they want to reverse it back then they got to find the person to give it back to right i i actually thought we discussed that's it's to protect the public because town center could have come in and and said i'm going to write you a check for a hundred thousand dollars to take all your capacity and then it would have shut out it would have shut out um right these things and everyone i i think
the new person has to pay us and if they make a deal with with hastings they pay them too but that's separate right that's what we talked about yeah yeah that's exactly what we talked about in the bylaws yeah because um so that would be no that's all i have for request for service nothing else and and our current capacity is zero to give right and our official our official other than we're moving this right but like until the rates until the rate site until the plant study is done yeah our official is we have zero to get okay good and and combined with that is is as we get one or two more substantial users coming on to keep an eye on the plant to it's not stressing i mean the the desktop study the most interesting thing i'm looking for on the desktop study if we can with scientific uh justification and mathematic justification adjust how we're um converting the title five flow to what we sell and then the next part is looking at the gazinkis at how they're doing the components how they're doing is that correct it's like are they doing both yes um i mean they started it and never finished yeah for the unit processes but yeah that's the unit that's that's the engineering term um and and go and as we slightly creep up we're not seeing any major flaws but it definitely takes a you know someone like jared keeping an eye on stuff more than when we were running at 18 000 gallons or whatever it was yeah so you know things that we'll be looking at going forward in the study are in title five there's a way to look at your water use over two or three years um and then um you know two times that as your peak and show actual water use um as your design flow as opposed to um what we've specified through the title five designation all right and then what do we have as our buffer with the epa the discharge discharge our permit is what is it again it's 89 yeah is it i remember it was 80 something yeah 89 000 so plus 30 odd thousand to the to the oxbow field not i mean no 89 is total oh yeah i remember 89 being total okay yeah yeah wish i was thinking that's all right we still got it's still 50. we still do at 35. i don't think i i think i could do this yeah if we were going from 50 to 100 i'm pretty sure we'd have to do something to the building one of the things about the new meter program that also play a role here is because i think district six which is where all of our wastewater customers are have been probably almost a year i'll have to look specifically but it's the data is better with the new meters that are out there as far as usage usage goes there's the potential that you know there were some aging meters out there that weren't accumulating and tracking it well so it'll be nice to have really fresh good data on that we won't have three years of it just yet so the longer we wait i guess to collect a few years of data with the new meters in the better the data is going to be that's right okay okay um anything else on requests and and and that grant that you put we put in for what what what is that called again the um uh one stop for growth and this is a compilation of grants that the state has you apply to sort of an umbrella of grants so it includes what what used to be mass work grants it includes the um mbta um initiation now there was an there was a grant for the mbta zoned areas to initiate housing and provide um infrastructure to those areas and a couple other ones so we applied to the overall program and they'll see where our project best fits into it and and what is the rough dollar amount you may get and when do they decide do they decide by the fall um and we could get i think it's like four hundred thousand dollars let me fill up what they officially put in there and and the in the potential growth areas that we cited were town center and and uh and are they both are they both are they both in the mbta zoned areas yes we um the total project is 650 000 the post award or the grant ask is 497 000 and then we have shown um our collection system study that we just did for the 75 and the um 75 000 from um town center as a developer match uh so that gets you from the 497 plus the 153 to 650 000 total project and um i had a thought totally and is that just for wastewater or is it for water and fire and everything that's just for wastewater okay so that would include expanding the capacity at the plant and looking for another groundwater discharge location okay was was something similar done for for drinking water and in other infrastructure or just the no just the wastewater and does this include the the town parcel across adjacent to the to the landfill the landfill the old landfill that was been floated around for some reuse or it does not that is not in the mbta zone okay okay kind of related to request for service because that would be a big request yes okay long range planning i i have nothing else darren yeah no no i'm good okay
meeting minutes from our may 11th meeting were circulated uh with the agenda uh i had a chance to look at them i have no comments darren i read mine no comments i'm good thank you um i make a motion that we approve the minutes from may 11th 2026 meeting as distributed i second that motion am i getting yay darren bach yay okay anything else uh to discuss
i will july meeting now we were going to not meet in july or august but we'll have a july meeting so we're yeah we're going to be down a member
in july right yeah yeah and i i'm trying to i'm trying to pursue someone to see if we can get them on if you know anyone darren um you know there's uh an event tonight for wayland dads i'll be uh maybe i'll hit somebody up yeah
do we have any volunteer thing on on thursday so i make my own okay it's it's it's it's a much very nice position compared to some of the other ones they're looking to fill the town needs to fill so okay uh do we want to schedule september at all now or wait till july and talk about it then that's totally fine they don't july yeah that's fine it is a far out i know i i can't plan september right now no if we weren't meeting until like if this was it i'd probably say we should do it in july we're fine let's do that meeting very good okay i i make a motion we adjourn at 12 45. i second that motion mike darrenbach's darrenbach in favor yes getting in favor bye everybody all right there thank you take care