April 13, 2026 – Wastewater Management – Video & Transcript
April 13, 2026 - Wastewater Management
Good afternoon. I am calling the April 13th, 2026 meeting of the Whalen Wastewater Management District Commission to order.
This meeting is being done 100% remote. The link to the meeting was included with the agenda and it was posted this morning.
So with that, I call the meeting to order and Mike Gitten here participating remotely.
Darren Bach, participating remotely.
And I see, was Ed's with us there? Is your mic working there, Ed?
Okay. So is there anyone from the public for public comment before we get into our agenda? There is one person in the attendees tab that just joined. Oh, it's a... It's an in-call phone listener. Okay. I can't tell if there's somebody here that's trying to use it just as sound, but I will click allow to talk just to be on the safe side. Thanks, Abby. Yep.
And then you... Okay. And I would leave it open because we do the next...
Sorry.
The next... Maybe I can speak for Vinny Amendola. Maybe. I'll leave the call in line. He's part of our group, so... Okay. For Oxbow. Yeah, sorry, Kev. That's me. Sorry about that. Yeah, great. No worries, Vin. That's fine. So we'll move on to the first agenda item. And I apologize. I was on another call just a moment ago that was on a different portal. And so the next... And my agenda disappeared. So the next agenda item is talking about the fog matter. At the Oxbow. And we have representatives. And I apologize. My screens are not behaving.
Yeah. Yes. Fats, oil, and grease at Oxbow sewer pump station. And we have representatives with us from ComRef Oxbow LLC, the current representatives of that entity.
I understand there was some more studies going on. But Abby or Tom, if there's anything you'd like to say, and then we can hear from our guests. I can just give a little bit of background, if you'd like. And Jared, maybe you can supplement this too. Is it almost two years now? We started observing a lot of fats, oils, and greases at the pump station. And we had been working to do periodic cleanouts and observe the buildup over time. We have done testing over time to show that the wet well has levels of fats, oils, and greases that exceed what the district commission allows within our system. We've been back and forth with Oxbow trying to achieve some levels. And we've been trying to see whether that's a good level of pre-treatment prior to our pump station. And that's where we are currently at, seeking that pre-treatment. Ray Willis has proposed a sampling protocol in order to do some sampling at the wet well. We are in the process of reviewing that.
We plan on saying that he can proceed with some of that testing, but that we don't... think it is sufficient enough that we think that there are other testing protocols that we would like to conduct at that time in addition to what he's suggesting. In addition, we would like to not only test that well but also the downstream manhole and the pump station closer to Route 20 and the local down there. Jared, can you talk a little bit about your experience with the pump station and the testing protocols that Rhode Island are analytical proposed? Not to jump in, I'm sorry. No, please. I might suggest maybe we have some introductions. We can introduce ourselves and maybe introduce those that are representing Alta Oxbow just so they know who we are and we know who they are. So I can start off. My name is Tom Holder. I'm the Public Works Director. Abby? Hi, I'm Abby Shrest. I'm the Town Engineer. Jared? Jared Cotton, the Plant Operator and Manager. Sarah? Sarah Polachonik. I'm the Wastewater Administrator.
And Mike Ginn, Chair of the Wayland Wastewater Management District Commission. Darren Bach on the Wastewater Management Commission.
And on our side, I can start with introductions. My name is Tom Holder. My name is Kevin Doody. I'm with BlackRock Realty Advisors. We represent ownership, ComRef, Oxbow, LLC, on the line and on vacation. So a little background noise and I'll introduce him as Vinny Amendola. He's our in-house engineer with BlackRock. And then also Ray Willis from Fusso & O'Neill, who is our consultant for the wastewater.
Great, great. Thanks very much. Thank you. So I guess we'll go back to Jared was about to... Brief us on his findings. Yeah. So, I mean, shortly after I started here in June 23, it was when the pump station went online. It did not take too long for there to be noticeable grease. And then that eventually started to become more of a mat as the occupancy rate went up. So I've had to go out there a number of times over the few years for... Like the float getting stuck, level, high-level alarm, or low-level alarm usually resulting from the stuck float. I've gone out there and I've taken some grab samples a few times, I think three times now, that 250 milliliter in an amber bottle, two bottles for each sample that we bring to our analytical.
And I also had discussed... With them about using a composite sample. And so they sent me an excerpt from EPA method 1664, section 8.3. The high probability that extractable matter made here to sampling equipment and results in measurements that are biased low precludes the collection of composite samples for determination of oils and grease. So I just think right there that says that... We will not get an accurate number, and we will actually get a skewed lower number if we were to do a composite, which is why we have been doing grabs.
Okay.
So right now, the town, we're going to be responding to their proposed sampling program? Is that what you... And that's what you were outlining, Navi? Yes, they'd like to do more sampling, but they're still working to respond to our request for a new pretreatment process. So from your perspective, they're on the same... They should be proceeding concurrently, not... We're not waiting. That's correct. Okay.
Okay.
The BlackRock, Fuss and O'Neill team, anything you want to bring up or... Yeah, I'm happy to lead it off. Once again, Ray Willis from Fuss and O'Neill. Yeah. So, as described by the town, we've been working with the town engineering department, sewer department, public works department, to come up with basically a plan to mitigate the grease from the actual pump chamber itself. We have received... BlackRock had received a few letters from the town documenting the results that they had. From grab samples, we did perform some testing on the actual sewer going in and found that the actual oil and grease levels were below the 100 milligrams per liter. As far as the sampling techniques used for the grab samples, looking at the numbers, these concentrations are consistent with a restaurant use, which is what we don't have here. We feel as though some of the sampling might be skewed by either grabbing some oil and grease off the top of the wet well, so on and so forth. But with that, we do as a group acknowledge that, you know, the oil and grease buildup within the pump chamber can be problematic at times, especially if proper O&M is not implemented on such a piece of infrastructure. What we're seeing at this particular pump chamber is no different from, you know, many apartment complexes that we've seen, the actual pump stations servicing. It's to be somewhat expected with such a high residential use using essentially one pump chamber. Based on our experience, we feel that upon implementation of an O&M plan, that any concerns from the town could be mitigated right at the pump station itself. Yes, and we've sent a response letter to that end. We've been working with our engineers, Ty and Bond. Ian Catlow wrote a letter in response to say that, in his experience, that this fat, oil, and grease issue was more excessive than most pump stations and that the standard cleaners, cleaning protocol was not enough in this case to provide sufficient care for the maintenance of the pump station. Jared, I know that you had a few pictures. I think Sarah has them to show. Will you also talk about your experience with pump stations and what you see when you look at this pump station? Yeah. So yeah, I did send those over to Sarah right before this, so hopefully those are formatted in a way that she can share them. And it's, I'm not really sure what to say. It's, it is such a solid mat. I've never seen this type of scum on top of a tank before. It's almost impossible to get a grab sample with how thick the mat is. This is a picture of the Route 20 pump station. So this is what is making it past from the, from the, from the Alta wet well. And then the next pictures will showcase the solid mat. And you can even see on top of the grinder and on the walls there is a line from where the high level has made it up to. And that's just within the time that it has taken me or Whitewater to get out there and mitigate it. And so that's going above the drop point. And that's going to be the, the influence point in that tank. So that will start backing up into the buildings if it's not able to be handled within an appropriate time frame. And I guess, you know, my point to Tom Holder, public works director, is that, you know, allowing this to continue. I know we've got, you know, a process in place where we periodically, you know, pump this out, clean it out. We charge Alta Oxpo. They pay for it. That is not a sustainable solution to this. These pumps and this equipment, the float valves and all of that are experiencing really premature deterioration. And, you know, the expected design life of this equipment will not be experienced because of this, you know, this inflow that, that has these excessive levels of FOG in them. So it's, it's our point. And I'm, I'm glad, you know, we're supportive of, of having a round of sampling protocols. So we, you know, have an agreeable data set to discuss. But, you know, I think in the long run, it's our desire to prevent this from actually these, these levels, these excessive levels of FOG from actually entering this, this, this pump and process system. With, with most of these systems are based on my experience. The fats, oil and greases will stay at the top. And actually what's being drawn through the pump is not of the same water quality as you see at the top of this. So. Yes, we would agree with that. But I think what we're having are issues at the top of the wet well. We're having issues with the grinders. We're having issues with the floats. We're concerned about backup into the apartment buildings because of that. We're having issues. We understand that, you know, fog floats to the top, but that's where the issues we're having are located. And Abby really quick. And you've also said that it's making it past the initial wet. Well, I'm going to use the proper terminology here, but the wet well at Black Rock, right? The, the, the apartment complex. That's right. Making it all the way to the Route 21 as well. So it's not like it's not making it through the system. It's going down through the system. That's right. Not to this extent, but we do see impacts downstream. Yes. So this photo is of the the altar. What the the altar? What? Well, that's correct. Okay, what is just one quick question? Does that station that all the pumps to does that receive flow from other pump stations or other service areas? It's not exclusive to Oxbow. But Jared, I believe the manhole ahead of it is exclusive. Is that correct? No, the manhole ahead of it will meet with the rest of the Route 20 corridor. And okay, but yeah, that's so we don't have a way of testing only the flow downstream. Yeah, not exactly. Okay, like we could we could shut off or we could notice the flow coming in and see that. There's nothing coming from Route 20 and then kick on the altar pumps to see to time that but there's really not a guarantee that it's fully isolated. That's right. But to that end, what we're concerned is what's coming into the Oxbow pump station. You know, that's our highest priority to right now. That's the wet. Well on the okay. Yeah.
So what I'm hearing then just to summarize is that we're Proceeding with but discussing more and more rigorous sampling, but the town is still looking for a proposal on on controlling what you know, the wet well north or upstream. Yes. Yeah. And and I'm hearing that the concern is the the long-term not only the O&M, but that The impact on that the service life of a lot of the components. That's right. Okay.
Darren Ed while we have these folks here. Any thoughts questions.
I think it's laid out. I think it's the path forward, right? Which is mutually agreeable sampling on what the effect is happening to the system, right? While we continue to what what did what did what what a solution? Would be assuming that the you know, that we we're back to where we are now. Yes, I'm at in the near term. We have to keep on a dual track of getting more field data and looking at what a long-term solutions. What what what the options are what we're doing or what is going to be done? Yeah, because the from from from an engineering perspective because The wastewater is capturing both gray water and black water. We couldn't provide a conventional grease trap for this. So it would have to be essentially, you know, to provide some form of pretreatment. It would be upwards of, you know, like a 30,000 gallon septic tank, which can say given that the sites already constructed and build out. Wouldn't be the easiest thing to try to incorporate with this. Layout as it is. That's why we are asking for the O and M approach towards mitigating this issue.
Are there any point of origin solutions like in the in the in the residence that that could be done at the source or we have done some public education. We've gone over over there. We've handed out flyers provided that type of material. We've gone over over there. We've handed out flyers provided that type of material. But we haven't seen that be effective. In the maintenance.
Are there are there? I mean, Ray, I mean, not that you're going to judge us for are there engineered solutions to that that could be done besides at the source, but not that we're going to not to not to be presented now, but We can certainly look into that further. Okay. So, so from an O and M, right? You said, let's take an O and M approach. So with that, Abby. Tom, Jared, that would be yours to say, look, if you're going to approach it that way. This is what we think you would have to do. Is that like the proposal? The proposal would be for us to operate and maintain the wet well in a in a different manner. So what we've been doing and just sort of upping that in terms of a specific schedule, you know, this is issues with us in terms of staffing complexity. It's also a funding issue. Right. Because we don't have it in our budget to do all of this maintenance. And then what happens is, you know, we spend the money and then they, you know, we, they get back charged for it. And then the next year we're able to kind of take it from our funds, but it's, it's not a specific mechanism that works well for us funding wise either. Because right now, all the, all the equipment, everything was, is, is under the domain of the waste water management district commission. That's right. We own this. We own, that was part of the original setup. Right. That's right. We own that. It's. And therefore, the equipment is degrading faster than its lifespan due to this. So therefore we have to take these actions, but then it's not frequent enough for the labor wise. Okay. So, I mean. In a budgeting. In a budgeting, right. The cash flow might be there, but we can't use it. Right. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. When, when, when, when we're working with developers where there's going to be a known. FOG issue, we require, you know, pre-treatment prior to it, getting to the town system. You know, I don't believe anybody realized that we would be experiencing and accepting this type of FOG levels. And, you know, so now we're all in a place where we now have to deal with it after the fact. And, you know, I think quite frankly, I don't think the town is interested in dealing with it through an operation and maintenance. This is why. This is why we have FOG regulations and we have thresholds and the repercussions of exceeding those thresholds, you know? So I think having the sampling performed, getting a data set will, you know, we'll offer, you know, some real factual information to discuss. But I, you know, I think sitting here this afternoon, I think it's the town's position, at least DPW staff's position that pre-treatment is likely going to be. The proper path. And my understanding from what Ray said is that because it wasn't designed in upfront gray and black are together and I'll just use that. And normally if you were to do a FOG pre-treatment, you would want to do gray only. I'm assuming gray is the FOG. Not being a wastewater expert here, but from that perspective of the technology, but and that's your challenge is that it's mixed. Okay. I agree, Tom. I think it's the sampling. Let's get agreed upon. And let's get a agreed upon data set between the two of us. But concurrently, we need to be penciling out ideas for the whole cost benefit, you know, what, how this is going to work. Okay. Yeah, this is Vinnie with BlackRock. I have a quick question. Has anything been replaced in this pump chamber in the last two years? Jared and I have only been here the last couple of years. But I think we've had to do some floats in the area and then, you know, now we've just noticed some of the grinder issues. So we haven't to date, but we're concerned about issues going forward from that. It's also experienced high levels of alarms and calls to whitewater and, you know, significant parts of Jared's time on this as well. I'm just curious. I wasn't aware of anything that's on it. Yep. I apologize for the background noise, though, honestly. That's fine. No. Well, thank you. I think I'm set. Well, it was good to get an update. And we look forward to resolving this. So with that, move on to the next agenda item, the wastewater rate study with Matt Abrahams. Thank you. And it's another year. Is this year three or four, Matt? My guess is four. But let me confirm that. I just have to look at the folders on my computer. Yeah. This is year four. Okay. Well, good. We didn't get you anything. And for five, we might. You don't need to. That's fine. We're officially adjourning that other topic. So I think. Yeah. So. Yeah. We're moving on. We're adjourning. Okay. Yep. Thank you for your time, Matt. Thanks. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Thank you for your time. Yep. Yep. That was good. That was more background than we've had in the past. That was great. All right, Matt. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Matt Abrahams from the Abrahams Group. I'm back to speak about wastewater rates. So as I already mentioned, you've been working with me on this for a few years now. So you are familiar with the analysis that we typically perform. We have taken the latest and greatest information that the town has provided. And updated last year's analysis with that information. We have already put together for your review multiple rate options in a packet format that should be familiar to you from past years of working with me. And the approach that we took with those rate plans, at least for this first pass was, well, let's look at some of the things that we were looking at last year at this time in terms of rate changes and see what that looks like. And then ultimately see if we can settle on a rate option that may look a little bit better than those. So option one and two are a little bit focused on the work we did last year in terms of the rate plans that we were looking at at the time. Option three, more trying to get to a number that might be a little bit more interesting, I guess, for lack of a better word. And we'll get into the details of that. I'm just kind of giving you a quick overview before we get into files themselves. So what I plan to do today and I'll take direction from anyone on this call is to just walk you through some of the highlights, I guess, of the analysis. Thinking about looking at the actuals from the most recently completed fiscal year, which is FY25. Looking at projections for the current fiscal year of 26. Looking at where we think user charges will be or the projections that we're comfortable using for that. We'll cover user charges in FY27 and going forward. On the expense side, we'll cover the budget expenses, which you're familiar with, but we'll go over them real quick. And also what we're including for future capital, because that's always something that we want to make sure we touch upon. And then in the end, we'll cover what we think the rate options are based on all of that. And I guess just as a reminder, you know, April meeting is our first, you know, review of the rate structure and our current expenses and revenue figures. We'll convene again at our May meeting with, you know, to respond to any suggestions that the commission members have. And then it would be a hope that the following meeting in June, we would actually have the rate hearing. So this is the first of perhaps three gatherings where we'll have an opportunity to kind of absorb this stuff and act upon it. Yep. So any other thoughts or comments before we dive into the numbers? Before we dive, just start with the assumptions, right, of what we made adjustments. And I think start there before we start looking at option one, two, three. When you say assumptions, you're talking about... Assumptions, not actuals and what adjustments and, you know, we have new connections and what's our assumption on what their flow is. The reasoning behind why numbers appear the way they are. Yeah. The flow is... Yeah. Yep. I was planning on walking you through that before we get to the options. Yep. Sounds like we're on the same page. Okay. We're on the same page. Yep. All right. I'll share my screen now. All right. Let me know when you can see this. It is not up yet. There it goes. Okay. I can see it. So this is that busy sheet with all the revenues, all the expenses. Don't get too focused on numbers. Highlight for you the ones that I consider to be the most important. And also, as was mentioned, we'll cover the assumptions in these numbers that I feel matter or that are important. So, first I wanted to focus here on 25. This is the most recently completed fiscal year. When we did this work for you last spring, this was just... 25 was the projected year, the current year. Now it's completed. Based on information provided by the town, revenues were about $818,000. That was down a little bit from the prior year, but the prior year had some miscellaneous revenue in here that wasn't in 25. So that stands out as a difference there. As we go downward on the expense side, this is your total expenses right here, $867,000-ish. Ultimately, results were about $49,000 in the red. From a retained earnings standpoint, your retained earnings certification most recent... This was done very recently. The most recent certification, just under $1.1 million. The year prior to that, it was right around there. It was just over $1.1 million. So a very slight change there. Not a huge retained earnings impact overall. From a health standpoint, we compare retained earnings to the total expenses. That 126% is an incredibly healthy number. But we also understand that there's been a buildup of retained earnings over time, in part because you have that debt that needs to be paid off. So some of those prepaid betterments have been... That money, I believe, is included in that retained earnings value. So that's another reason why it's so healthy. So over time, you'll see that as debt gets paid off, that number will go down. But we're expecting that, and we're accounting for that. With the work that we do. Alright, so that's the latest on the financial picture. Thinking about very historical stuff. Now let's focus on 26. So we can focus on these two columns. 26 is the current fiscal year. From a budgeting standpoint, your total budget expenses is about $953,000. That's up a decent amount from the $866,000 that was spent last year.
Budgeted revenue is about $769,000. Supplemented by about $184,000 in retained earnings gets you a balanced budget. You may recall, but from the work that we do, unless someone tells me otherwise, we always assume that you fully spend your budget. So you'll see that the projected expenses column is equal to the budgeted amount. Because you are authorized to spend that money. Now, anything that is not spent out of the budget is a turn back. Those are turn backs. Those, in theory, would roll to retained earnings. Because you are aiming to recover revenues a certain amount to cover your budget. So any budget not expended would presumably roll to retained earnings. But again, for now, we assume you fully spend your budget. Actually, these numbers are slightly off. And I think the reason why was... I don't remember the reason why. Oh, okay. Matt, can you? Go ahead. I'm sorry. So these are the projections provided by Town Staff right here from the latest file that was provided. So these are projected expenses by the end of the year. So the projections are showing slightly less than the budget. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. The column L and M, where you have budgeted and projected, there's a $700,000 jump in revenue. What is that up above? Yep. So we're going to... Row 108. sorry, I didn't do revenue next. Yep. Got it. So let's go up here. So the numbers that we should focus on here are really the two in orange, everything else is pretty similar to your recent past. The first number in orange is wastewater user charges. The how we came up with this was we took the latest projected amount, I believe. Sarah, is the 570 the projected amount or the year-to-date amount? Yeah, the 570 was the projected amount, which is going to change because of quarterly billing, which I think you're probably about to talk about, but I'm happy to jump in on that. Right. But if the quarterly billing transition was not happening, your projection would be 570. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So the latest projection for wastewater user charges is $570,000. That was taken off of information provided by Sarah very recently. That's the 570. But because of, and Sarah, I'll ask that you confirm this for me, because the wastewater, the way that wastewater is now billing or will be billing is being set such that it matches the amount of waste water that is being collected, which is how water is doing their billing, there will be additional or additional amount of revenue is expected because of just timing differences. Yeah, it's the timing. Okay. Did I say that right, Sarah? Is that good enough? Okay. Yeah. Essentially, we'll collect on five quarters in this year. We only bill for, which is correct in the way it should be, but our cycle changes have caused us to have to shift when the bills go out by a short, by a slight amount to get on a good quarterly billing schedule. And so that means that instead of the June billing, it'll be a May billing for the final quarter of this year. And that will cause revenues to come in in June instead of in July. And so that does change. It means there'll be a bubble year, essentially. It's still four billings in the year. It's still, I think, September, December, and then there was a February, so a little bit earlier, about a two and a half month. One and then another one, two and a half months later to slightly adjust ourselves into this quarterly billing to align with water billing because bills go out to get water and sewer. Okay. And that decision was made so that you could be fully aligned with water. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And also, you're not expecting any impact in 27. You're still expecting four bills for everybody in 27? Correct. There'll still be four bills in the future. I believe they'll end up being, yeah, three months after May and then every three months. So, there'll be four. There'll be no impact in the future. It's just a bit of an earlier quarter. I guess mine is then, where's the negative one? Eventually, it's got to show up somewhere, but okay. You're expecting 27. We're going to have four billings in addition to this May and being collected in June. Even next year, we'll still have four. Yeah. Because it'll be August and then every three months after that. So, August, November, February, and then we're going to have four bills in June. So, it's going to be four bills in June. So, I guess, in a forever standpoint. Would the August one not cover the full three months? It would. It would be from, I think, May 10th to August 10th. Okay. So, maybe the negative is that some of the bill cycles for 26 just weren't a full three-month period. It's not really negative, but you said that some of them were two and a half months. Right. But in the end, it seems like a one-year boost from what Sarah referred to as a bubble year, transition year. Okay. Let's keep going. Okay. And then this number right here, the 484, is related to privilege fees that were not budgeted. So, this 334 number was, let me see if I get this right,
already collected. The 334 is what was already collected, Sarah, and then there's an additional 150 estimated. Is that accurate? Yes. So, 334 is guaranteed. It's already been received. And the conversations with Town Center, which is our final buyer of flow right now, it's a lower estimate of 150. It really depends on how much they decide to take, but we're talking with them right now. That was the 5,000 gallons, right, or something? That's right. They may go with less, and we're still working out the assessment fees that go along with that. But that entire amount is the privilege that we, one time. Okay. That is correct. But we don't have the flow. We don't have that last 150. We have the 334,000, definitely. We just expect to receive this from Town Center in this fiscal, so we're including it in this. Okay. Yep. At this point, just a projection, but one that the town staff is comfortable with. So, the 334 is money already in the door, and then that's... The 150 is being added to that with the expectation that that 150 will come in before FY26 concludes. Right. And if not, it might go into 27, but it's coming, and it might not be 150. It might be a little lower, but either way, it's either in column M or N, and same thing with the one above. Correct. It's either in M or N. Right. So, you're just shifting... It'll likely be higher, if anything. Yeah. Yeah. You're just shifting timing. And it's conservative. Right. Considering the long-term approach that we take, with the rate-setting plans that we present to you, whether they come in in column M or N, it's not going to have a huge impact either way. Correct. Okay. I understand.
But yeah. So, obviously, you notice that the projected revenue amount, compared to the budgeted amount, is significantly higher for those two reasons. And if we go down to the bottom, this 679 is a projected surplus for FY26. It does include the 183 out of retained earnings as a funding source. So, in reality, if you did not include that, the true surplus is more like $500,000. But that 679, in theory, that's the amount that would boost your retained earnings, right there, the 679. Right. That would drop down, right? So, are we obligated to take money out of return earnings? At this point, has any money been taken out, and will it, by the end of June? No. I don't know if you want to answer that, but no. We wouldn't have to actually take the money out. But it's accounted for in here. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry. No. No problem. So, the town typically does authorize the use of retained earnings to balance the budget every year. And the latest budget presented by the town is this amount right here, this 320, 539. That is an amount to balance the FY27 budget. And has that already been authorized? Can someone comment on that? Has town meeting already authorized that, or is that upcoming? Upcoming. But it's on the article. And that's the amount? I believe so, yes. That looks right. So, assuming that authorization, that 320 would come out of retained earnings?
We'd end up over revenues by some amount next year. But we're not assuming anything else. We assume we wouldn't make our target. I think, sorry. Going back to what Mike's saying, is because we collected so much over this year, even though we put in for a 183, 635 number of retained earnings to draw, we made so much extra because of like the 334,000, and all that. Technically, we don't actually have to pull from retained earnings to take that 183 out anymore because we've made extra. But you have that balance in here. And we're going to deposit more into retained earnings. Correct. Yeah. So, the way certification works is last year's certification would have taken that 183 out at the time because you had authorized or the town had authorized that that 183 be used out of retain earnings for FY26. But in the end, you didn't need it. So it's just going to roll back into your retain earnings balance at the next certification. And you're going to add in on top another 400 and whatever that number was when you delete the 183. So you're going to add that. So we're going into fiscal year 27, our retained earnings should go up 400. And that's what we're working off of as we now look at our expenses and revenue for 27. Yep. That's a good way to put it. Which we know we are planning on, which you'll get into 27 expenses to do 75,000, something like that for a study to see what our plan can do plus some other things we talked about. Yeah. Okay. I'm really interested in you. Understanding what influent rate was used for setting the revenue for 2027. What flow rate?
Okay. Are you talking about this number right here? Yes. The 587?
Yeah. No, I actually wasn't focusing on that. The projected, whatever, what's the difference in the 27 budget and projected? I'm sorry, I missed that. Projected is where we're going to end up this year. So that's Sarah's projection. No, 27, fiscal year 27. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Budget versus projected. Now I see what you're talking about, Mike, com N and O, right? Yeah. So he's asking about which flows we use, Matt. I know we talked about this, the idea being that once terrain comes on and we get some more users, that flow will increase and will achieve a higher revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Higher revenue. So I don't know where that was in the spreadsheet, but we did discuss that. I'd be interested in it because more than halfway through the year, we added the Council of Aging terrain is going to come on supposedly beginning of next year. There's another small restaurant coming on beginning of next year. We're getting more flow from the condo shortly. The library came on. And that's- That's conservative. If we want to be optimistic, the town center folks are talking about more fully utilizing what they are doing there. But without even bringing that in, I'd be uncomfortable using a conservative flow from 26 for 27. I'm comfortable being slightly optimistic on it. Not overly, but slightly. Okay. So as Abby mentioned, we did review where we thought user charges would be for 27. That's on a separate tab. I was going to get to that momentarily. And we can walk you through that. But you're right. Very observant of you to notice that we have a little bit of a bump up there. We'll talk. Excuse me. We'll talk about the assumptions related to that. Before we get there, I just wanted to cover one other thing. It seems like we're pretty comfortable with 26.
Your 27 budget from an expense standpoint is this number right here. 1.1 million. If you compare that to your 26 budget, 953,000, that's a pretty big jump up. Part of that has to do with new debt that's now on the books. You can see that line item right there is debt. That jumped up by over a $100,000. This O&M piece went up a good amount too. I don't know why though. Sarah, do you know that? That's our plant study, right? Right. Contracted services. Okay. Thank you. And that assumes we don't have final results. Is that also where the, what we were talking about, agenda item one hits? The ALTA work? It would be in expenses. I don't know how much we buffered. We buffered in there for, I think our expectation was that we wouldn't have to be doing that next year very long, so I would not say there's a lot of in there for that. That's almost going to be like our contingency in a way, so yeah, it's mostly, it's the contracted services, it's some data support, it's that study, Abby, I don't know if I'm missing anything, I feel like it was just those two pieces mostly, yeah. Okay, and we're comfortable with the contingency at 35? I know we floated. Floated, was that enough, but we just think it was an off year, right, for 26 due to the pump-outs, was it a pump-out, whatever it was, the sludge to remove? Yeah, we also had several electrical issues that we found at the plant when we did the new project, so we were dealing with that. New project, so the new project should get us back to 35, okay. That's, cross my fingers, but that's what we're expecting. My fingers are crossed as well. Okay. And also one other thing that has been a topic in the past. The small equipment continues to be in here on an annual basis as part of the budget. So we're carrying this 1059 number forward every year into the future. You can see that going out to the right. So just understand that that is in here. From a capital standpoint, and this is it before we get to the user charges, the impact of the capital plan is felt on this line. I do include a separate line item for what I call new debt service. It's fully related to future capital items, so you can see the difference between the debt that's currently on the books and then the debt that we're anticipating happening for future capital. So the future capital that is in here to produce these numbers, I'll show you that real quick, is found on this tab. This is the capital plan tab. It was the one we used last year. And then we just added to it down here. So what's in the 26 column, that's all taken care of, meaning those have already been borrowed. We don't need to worry about those any further. Already on the books. So these two items in the capital plan, the design and the bid documents related to the low pressure sewer replacement, 125, that was in last year's analysis, as well as the 2 million for the construction phase. That was in last year's analysis. That was in last year's analysis. We continue to carry these in this year's analysis the same exact way as we did last year. We also added these two items down here. So the first one being a rehab of tanks, $400,000. The timing of that being that that would start in FY28. And the other one being replacement of HVAC system starting in FY31. So we have four items in the capital plan that we're including for future capital. The three items in the capital plan that we're including for future debt. These are the four items. Two of them were in last year's analysis and then we added these two. And those, that extra $800,000. Spread out to two milestones that's that's rolled into the high level sheet you were just showing us? Yep. Yup. So what we do is we do one projected borrowing schedule for each of the items. um these two were in there last year so this is the 125 for the design portion of the sewer replacement this is the two million for the construction portion and then these two tabs are the new ones so this is four hundred thousand dollars for um the tank and then this is four hundred thousand for the hvac and what i do is i include um all the debt together on one sheet so all those debt schedules feed into here this is the year that you see the the tank i'm sorry the sewer replacement construction coming on there's a big jump in that year the next jump is nope so this would be the tank sorry the sewer replacement construction plus the tank i think are in the same year that's why there's a big jump there this is the year that the hvac replacement kicks in there's a jump there but you can see only a little bit of the, not a lot of the due date but there's a high number ofdzins so if you're interested this is the year that we have the most expected debt for all four together on this tab so if i highlight i'll just highlight five years worth so that's $974,000 five years together if i go back to that main tab right here i already have the five highlighted $974,000 so they're there right and the existing debt 2032 okay 2032 is where the existing drops off okay yep so we got 29, 30, and 31,000 30,000 to the project, fatan, we're looking at 13,500 to the project, the project is seven hours, I think that's the last one and we have $974,000 to the project we're looking at that are elevated until our existing debt starts dropping off okay right and the capital that we did that 500 000 or so went into existing versus the new because it's now existing okay i got it that's where you put the hundred yeah the the town um took out a new bond in november i believe and those items are on there yep so they've transitioned they've transitioned in my analysis from new to existing because they're now on the town's existing schedule understand okay any further questions on expenses yeah no this is all um yep i'm good all right so now to the user charges piece and this schedule may look familiar to you from um past years of reviewing the town's existing debt and the town's existing debt and the town's existing doing this. Focus on the current two columns over here. These were the numbers that we were looking at last year, last spring, when the decision was made to raise rates, I think it was 9.75% across the board. So these rates right here reflect your current rates, but also, and this is a configurable sheet, we've changed some of these on the fly during some of our meetings in the past. The assumptions down here are the same ones that were used last year. We have not changed these. Okay. Current is basically your 26, right? So we're mainly, okay. Correct. Which I think is probably the right thing to do. Okay. Yep. So this is our starting point, right? And then we work from there. Yep. The allocated design flow in gallons per year, this was the number we used last year. This is a simple calculation to get you to a hundred cubic feet per year. Instead of gallons, the full ALTA was that amount. At one point we were carrying a percentage occupied greater than 85%. I think we had it at 90 at one point. And then based on where the flow, the actual flow for ALTA was looking at, because we did an analysis on that last year, we decided to back that down to the 85%. And we're going to get more into that in one second. These were the water use estimates based on an actual review of real bills that we did last year. And then ultimately it produced down here, this box just does calculations based on the allocated design flow plus the flow per tier to give you this number, which is a billings number. And then we throw a collections rate on 94 and a half percent, which we've used for a few years now. And that's going to come up with this projected user charges number. So that's the current environment. And this is based on the assumptions we used last year. But since we have real money in the door, plus the calculations that Sarah provided for that, the billing transition impact, we're not using this number for FY26 in our analysis. We're using the one that we covered earlier to get you to the 690 that we showed you a little while ago. But I still wanted to show you this because these are the assumptions that we used last year when we did the rate setting. So one other note before we look over here, because I know you want to go here and we'll get there in one moment. You may recall down here that we did an analysis on actual billings to figure out how on target we were with the numbers that we're using for flow. This box that I have
here, based on FY24 and FY25 actual billings. So we got to the point where we were comfortable using an ALTA number right here and a number for all the other users right there based on actual billing review. So that's 11.7 for ALTA and 19.7 for everybody else. If you go up here, you'll see we have 11.9 for ALTA. What was it down below? Is that right? 11.9? No, 11.7. So it's a little bit higher. But I think we're in the ballpark and we were comfortable with that. 11.9 for ALTA, 19.7 for everybody else. If we go down here, 19.7 for everybody else. Okay. So that was basically how we arrived at those numbers last year because we did that actual analysis. Because of comments from town staff, when we met with them, when I met with them recently, we thought it was, was a good idea to do a similar review of recent bills. Because the impression was that flow wasn't quite as high over the past year. And we did that analysis and this is what it produced right here. So compare really the bottom line numbers here last year's to the bottom line numbers this year. ALTA about the same, other users dropped.
All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. some of the reasons why. We talked about the winter and the impact that it had. It was the first really harsh winter that we had in quite some time. And we think that had an impact on flow or water usage. People weren't necessarily going out as much. Maybe the commercial properties weren't as busy as they had been in prior years. So we don't necessarily think that we need to adjust all the way down to here as our new baseline. But it is showing that maybe, you know, the current flow is not quite these numbers. But this here does not account for the fact that you have those new connections coming in. And there is going to be a bump up in flow for those reasons.
So ultimately, we decided, and of course, we can change these numbers. You know that from past meetings, we can change these numbers on the fly. But when we met, Town Staff and I met, we decided, okay, we don't want to be down to these numbers. We look at it as kind of a one-year blip. But also, we do want to make sure we're accounting for that new flow in some capacity. So we ultimately basically ended up back using similar numbers to what we used last year. And if we go back up to the top here, you're going to see that for the flow numbers, we just decided to roll forward the numbers that we did last year. So we'll be looking to you to validate whether you agree with that or not. And we can make changes here. But then just one other comment before I let you speak about this. This number can change though definitively because we know that design flow has been allocated further. And my understanding is it's almost completely allocated. Town Staff was comfortable using this number going forward based on the recent connections. So we have bumped up the allocated design flow from the about 115,000 gallons per year to this 125,000 gallons per year number starting in FY27. Also with the understanding that that's probably on the conservative side.
So I'm done talking about this. Just one final comment. So these are the assumptions we're using right now. Allocated design flow for 27, 125,000 gallons. Again, conservative. We haven't changed the ALTA estimates at all. And we haven't changed the water use estimates at all despite that additional analysis we did. But also understanding that new connections are coming in.
And then I guess to wrap it up to Mike's comment earlier, that's the reason for the difference, the bump up, is because of that additional allocated design flow compared to what we were looking at last year. Great job walking through that. Thank you. Can you scroll down to the bottom again what the new study showed? 16,557. Okay. The new study is on the bottom. Yeah. And that includes Q4 from 25 and Q1 of 26. We like to average those two because those are the two warm weathers and you know maybe one skews a little bit because of it's a dry period and there's a lot of outdoor water usage. And then the second row is Q2 from 26. Just one cold weather bill. Yeah. Yep. So, Mike, if you don't mind, I'll go first really quick. So the way I look at it is, okay, you did your new study, 16557, right, is where we're at. Again, cold, maybe that, other things, there are lots of other things that can cause that, right? But in the end, we added, go back up above, so 16557, we added our design flow. Where's the design flow? We added 11,000, we'll call it, 10,000. And I think we typically see that actual flow is like 30% of design, somewhere around. I know it's not quite 50. We always used to use 50, but I don't think we're quite there, 30%. So if it's 30%, then that's 3,000. You add the 3,000 to the 16, you get back to your 19. So, I mean, logically, I think it makes sense to stay at the 19, whatever, right? From using a 30%, if actuals are 30% of design, is what I think we've been experiencing, right?
Yeah. Approximately. About that. Yeah, about that. So we added 10,000 design, 30%, 3750, you add that to the 16. I mean, Mike, you might get a little bump, but now again, hopefully warmer weather and more occupancy and whatever goes on in town center, we get additional lift to get back up to the 19 where we were, and then we should have a 3,000 lift from there. But this new should be a 3,000 lift. That's right. And our... Our current numbers include the library and the COA. They've been online for a little while now. Yeah. Great. Yeah, for the second. What is the actual allocated design flow as of now?
I can look at it, but it's about that 14, 9, the 114,000. Does he need to do that now, the application for the 109? No, it's the one where I thought was the 125. Yeah. I mean, that's what it will be once we've sold the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. So the... I thought it was more... I thought there was 5,000 left. There's 5,000 of... Town center. Of town center. So we'd be 120. Yeah. 125, I thought, was what the new everyone in there, but the... I'm hoping for the town center, that number or not. I'm wondering, because we're collecting base charges on everybody's purchase flow, even though they're not throwing any flow in the system, not much. I thought the 125 was... Yeah, I would do too. Let me pull it up, and I can look at it. Yeah, I'm interested in that. Pretty good.
Okay. You know, that number accounts for the base charge increase towards the bottom of the page right there, because that we are getting. So that's our usage is TBD, but obviously it will be higher. Okay. Another thing I was looking at personally, and I know I mentioned it to Matt too, is quarter three. That's come in, that we built out. That was only a 71-day cycle, which is that two-and-a-half-month quarter that I talked about before. You know, that definitely... That actually came in higher than a full 90-day quarter one and quarter two, which speaks to the fact that there's some increase, but also we're coming out of winter, and that winter was so effective. In fact, the town center used half what they used the quarter... Quarter two was half what they used in quarter one. That's a big, you know, it's a big chunk right there. Difference. Because of weather. But they're also right back up in quarter three to where they were in quarter one. So quarter two is an anomaly due to weather. But anyhow, you know, it is promising that we're going to head back up based on quarter three, which is only a 71-day quarter, but is higher than two 90-day quarters previously. So it's interesting how that worked out. Yeah. The difference between what you would expect in... You were expecting to see more of like a 190. The 119,000 and then the 5,000 to 125. The 114 versus the 119 allows for some differences between people that we have allocated for, but they are not connected yet.
But they're still paying the base charge, though, right? They still pay the base. Yes. So they should be included in the base charge revenue. And they will be with the 119. And they will be with the 125. Okay.
So our current allocated is close to 125 now?
Once we get that town center. Which you're expecting. Yeah, exactly. You need a demo for it, right? Okay.
But unfortunately, I don't know that we'll see a lot of actual flows from that, or at least in the near future. Yeah. I still would like to discuss the... I still have a lot of current news are going up a little bit because the whatever, I don't even know what they call it. The old Whole Foods building has been vacant, including the building out front and everything but a dry cleaner and a shipping place. So I don't know how much is allocated to those two properties. But the flow has probably been about... I'm going to guess 5%. And if we upped it to 30% starting next year, I would like to see the 19-7 go up a little bit, by more than the 3000 you're talking about. And same, the council aging library, the new small restaurant. Yeah. None of them were online, or if they were, they're barely being used in quarter four of 25. I don't think they were.
They weren't. I don't think any of those were online.
Quarter four of 25? The fourth quarter of 25. Yeah, they weren't online. None of those were. So I would like to discuss bumping the 19-7 up some.
I was trying to find... Yeah. I was going to say, let's do half of that 3000 just to see it. Because again, the only thing this does not affect is tier one. Tier one makes up 15% of our revenue. So you're really impacting 15% of our revenue somewhat, right? If you take the 103 to 5, 5, 5, 600 and whatever, right? Somewhere around there. 15. But like, Matt, if you did update that 19-7 to another plus 1500, right? Which is half the 3000, Mike, of what we lost. Plus we've already allocated the 3000. They've already bumped that up for the new people, right? So that's already in there. So even if you just bump that, what did it do to our revenue? We went to 651. Well, this would be a billings amount. And then we always take a collections of that. Yeah. Six, six. What was it? I'm sorry. I was not. Yeah. You're making. Yeah. I see your point. It went up like five grand or something. Six, 11, three. Now it's 616. So five grand. It went up less than five grand. Because it's our flow. Tier one is not where our main revenue comes in. It comes from the base charge. The big jump was to the 125 and base charges. So that's where we focused.
So our flow, let's say we get all 3000. That's going to be 10 grand. Right. So 1500 is five grand. Then three, 3000 gallons will be 10 grand. So we have 10 grand more. Yeah. I'd be. And once again, I don't. I, to be frank, maybe before the next meeting, if you could send around the allocation, the whole foods, the old dentist's office, the restaurant, the CVS, the wood shop, they've been vacant for five years or more. Yeah. The, the, the terrain. Took all that capacity and then some, and we haven't seen it in five years and same for the bank. It's been, it was vacant for all last year. It's going to become a restaurant and same as for the Cronin's, whatever it's called. It's, it was basically vacant for the last three years. It's going to become a restaurant. So I know it's not a little, I, I would like to see a little more of the underlying facts and go up even a little more because all that allocated, a lot of that allocated has, has been more than under, you know, more at like a, a one to 10% use versus a 30% use. So I, I do think. Well, Mike, I'd be comfortable with the 3000 too. I mean, that's going to be, we've taken a $10,000 risk, right? Plus or minus on a $1 million. Yeah. You know, 10 grand, we're talking, you know, 1%. I don't have it with me, but. Plus or minus 1%. I'm fine with that. I just think it's hard to. I know the plan's getting old, but we're having a 700 or $600,000 surplus and we're going to tell our users the increase is going to be pretty much the same as the last year.
After years ago, we had told them that when the. Alta came on, we get flat rates. I mean, I, I know I hear it, but that's kind of. And. And I'm also hoping that the study. We'll show. That. Even without. It's the minority of the question is part of the study that we're. That we engage for. I don't have the number of $75,000. Is that what the study is? I think it was more like 50. Yes. Okay. Does it include. A statistical review of. Of. More than a rule of thumb of what the ratio between. The title five that we use to develop the privilege fee versus what we see. So, because so we can, when it comes time to revisit our. Our cap on allocate design flow. That might give us. More design flow to sell. With more comfort. Without capital improvements. Yes, we have. We haven't worked on that scope of work yet, but when we do include that in there. Yeah.
I don't know that I would ever have. One of the other. We had a chance to do the actual review process. So we weren't able to. We were we couldn't, we can't engage them officially until after July 1st. Now that you say. As soon as it came out on my mouth.
It's in September, October timeframe. Yeah. While you're. Just I know.
We're hoping that as part of its. Town center. Permitting process. but we can't use the money if we collect it from them as a peer review fee um right right right because they're over the the magic number yeah so we're working on it i i i mean i i'd really to be frank from the staff too i'd be curious you know the 19-7 i i would like to see the full 3 000 allocated because i i think we've been at we've been at um uh i i'm kind of i would be curious what what whole foods was doing when it was there eight years ago or whatever not that i but but i i feel comfortable going higher hey mike i'm i'm fine with the three like so yeah well just just because it's you're talking plus or minus 5 000 from 1500 so i like from an overall this is not going to greatly make us make poor decisions down there right so let's just do that okay well we'll know that that's our baseline so matt we're upping it 3 000 from your 19-7 okay when you say 3 000 though how do we get from so instead of the 1500 you want three 3 000 yeah yeah okay like that yep please yep thank you okay all right so now what does that look like when we get to i think now we get to your magic uh charts all right well i need to add this to the other tabs or actually i might not have to let's look okay how automated are you i am not that automated and then guys i do have a hard slap at 130 all right well we can go through this very quickly all right so go ahead um the rate plans that were set in and shared with you were based off of all the same information so i'm going to go ahead and show you the information we talked about other than that one adjustment we just made to the rates yep um option one is simply the rate plan that we were looking at last year when you made the decision to increase rates 9.75 percent so these rate changes in these years were the additional four years on top of the 9.75 percent yep okay and this is actually a better financial picture than what the graph looked like last year when you made that decision because we didn't have that addition to the retained earnings in there right yep um so that's not necessarily recommending this as a rate plan we just thought that that would be interesting for you to see all right so option two is let's start with last year's rate increase of the 9.75 and see what that looked like now i personally think now that we've made those other changes that these numbers can come down a little bit so maybe do 11 instead i'm just going to play around with some numbers okay and then option three was trying to present something that looked like a level rate plan but also you know one of the things that we try and do is keep the blue above or maybe just slightly touching the orange especially in these middle years of 30 31 when the debt gets paid off so we have this as nine percent for five years and then four percent in the subsequent years you might be able to go a little bit lower than this with that additional change so maybe something like that and that's it we just had three options so far what are your thoughts i like i mean it's good it's good that it shows like option one was the assumption we went in a year ago right and this is what we said and due to our privilege fees and due to that we're in a better financial picture than what we even looked at so that's great um and including our and if we can get our motorcycle as tom would call it right now we have our new study that says we can run it at 70 miles per hour again or 75 um and we can get additional users added that because we have had more people ask them what we have and if that ever went forward in the year 29 or 28 right because i know it takes a while then that could be even more base charge coming on to better utilize our plant i mean i still look at it as like we know that's coming because we made this investment into the plant i like the idea of option three to be honest mike you know just because because we have this interest in town and we have this flow and hopefully again the the study the 75 or 50 you said abby um says that our plant can do more right we can run that thing and get on more flow hopefully fingers crossed again that it says that that's the way it's going to go and i think that's what we can do with our plant due to our capital improvements and we bring those people on because whalen's a hotbed for new business coming in or new residents then that would change our 29 30 outlook as well where we have to worry about that 30 and 31 years right that's where we start getting close until that existing debt is paid off and then 32 is when we start looking up right because we get that existing debt so i i that's mine mine is just Just, you know, just thinking how you, Mike, you know, as we kind of have a plan here, right? And we've got a plan and we're in better shape than we were. And we still need to do an increase, but it's nowhere near what we were looking at a year ago. Yeah. And yeah, that's a good segue. Matt, can you go back to option one and just what we're looking at there? What you're showing is if you if you had pulled up last year's option, it would have said we we could do nine and three quarters in the current year. But we may have to do 14 starting 27, 28. Is that is all what we're looking at here? Yeah, I'm looking. I'm actually if you want, I could show you last year's. No, that you answer, Mike. So. But yes, but these just so you know, the blue here. When it was around 30 and 31 in last year's graph, the blue was basically touching the orange in 30 and 31 with that same rate plan that we're looking at here. Yeah, I'm not looking at the graph. I'm just looking at the percent increase. And due to the the growth in interest, it created that gap, that that very favorable gap in the privilege, the privilege near term. And then if you go back to option three, it. Once again, I'm thinking of the users and our mandate is it shows that the future years may also be a conservative. And if if we really can up usage a little without it, we're not naive years is it's an old motorcycle and it's going to need parts. The frame might be OK, but we the cap. But we can't put our head in the sand on the there's going to be capital that's going to go along with these increases. It's better to see the eight and a half forecast in the 14. That was my long winded talk talking through it myself so I can remember. Great. And yeah, that I now down in the bottom for the simple math, if if rates are going up 9 percent, it's 30 dollars a month. One hundred and twenty dollars a year. That's that. OK, that's more like 10 percent. But what am I doing wrong with my my my my fingers math? How come? How come it's not 9 percent going up or eight point seven five? OK, it's my bad math. OK, got it. I guess those little percentages. If the rounding broad rounding hurts, you can't do it. Yeah. Which is good because we're in small percentages. Yeah. Yeah. I have to jump off this meeting. Yeah. And another one at one thirty. So I know this and I will I'll I'll catch up with Abby and Sarah and Jared afterwards to find out what I missed. Yeah. OK. Any anything else? Thank you, Matt. Yes. No, I'm I'm I'm good with that. And I think we got our assumptions. And hey, um, and I think it's still with us. We can sit through some of the other items. I actually just moved my one thirty. So I can I can go now. No, thank you. One thing I want to throw out there is that, well, you know, we do have that May tenth billing, and it as well in advance of our final actual meeting where we vote, we'll have a little more information to share. So if we decide we want to tweak further, then we'll have some other ideas. Right? You know. Right. I mean, you're. Don't we? I'm right. I'm稿 still. I'm correct. I'm in the room. They hid it so that the boa-boa is and that's all I put into my new. more information just yeah is there any homework assignment for matt i guess going between now and our next meeting or are we so far so good with option three as is i don't think there's any other homework it's gonna be i think you got all the assumptions yeah i think i think the main thing is if we i i think for the team though i i would maybe if you just circulate it i for my own curiosity don't we have a spreadsheet where we keep track of of the allocated um users yeah if that's something you could share um happy to and um and i must have i think i have it at at home i i i wait i i i i'm happy to say that my google search brought up the the nice summary rate schedules we have out there thank you whoever's keeping that but i have my own little notes on what our percent increase has been for the last uh six years um i'm gonna look at that i'll send that out after the meeting thank you um so anything else on this agenda item for now matt any questions for us i'm comfortable i'm good and um uh do we take any sample about those wet well growth of the hard you know hard material how we can we do something with uh chemical addition to solve that otherwise the wet will be getting solid yes um jared has been doing some of that and um you know it's it's due for another cleaning so we've been trying to do that in the meantime but i think yeah um the issue is sort of the long-term solution that we're looking for yeah i i know that was last year that was i'm kind of yeah if they don't circling back i we're going dual tracks yeah more data and that's right they got a bright idea that's different than a big holding tank present it right yeah we got to keep we we're not going to wait i i think you've made it clear um from the the letters and the communications that you've all been having yeah um we and i think budget and the budget makes it even clearer we're we're assuming there'll be some sort of resolution that's going to minimize our costs soon yes okay okay yeah okay so thanks matt this is great all right thank you all right i also have a 130 i'm gonna go join um so thank you and uh if there's any questions sarah just reach out i i have a two o'clock boy we even had rates are important though yeah okay um jared anything else to add on the operating report um uh yeah i mean i can go through quickly what the last month was there's a few a few things um but yeah uh we had a did a hypo clean on mbr1 um the diffusion clean cycle is not working and so it's going to be a little bit different than it used to be so we're working on getting a new one of that ipac came and resealed all the screens and replaced some of the bad nozzles um we did a citric clean on uh mbr side two a few days later we did a hypo clean um skated to the skate to computer died randomly and so it took it town it took it um and it was thankfully covered under warranty still so it was though came down quick replacement um didn't even have to we didn't have to have lcs put the scouted back on everything was up and running so it was very simple um and thankfully not not bad i met with hastings way just to go over what their proposed um future design is um with the diffuser clean not working i did a manual uh clean of side one because we couldn't the whole cycle was locked out because organic ᕗ ᕗ two wouldn't work so i could just manually open side one um we also had kaiser out here to make do some maintenance on our blowers and one of our pre-air blowers is is just really at the end of its life and they said there's potential that they could rebuild it but it really just will need a full replacement at because if we rebuild it it could last for a good bit but it might just die shortly after um as well as an mbr blower um that is um workable and it just needs a new cooling fan motor so it uh right now it's off but it is available if we need it until it gets repaired um and then we had a few alta alarms where um whitewater and and or i had to go out and mess with the float clear it and and get the pumps back up and we're not working again were any of those in the the the the the the 20 chamber that we were talking about earlier uh no just it was the alta wet well so yeah in the actual oh in the wet well okay in the wet well yeah and that's all i got okay the premature failure of the skater right under warranty do they have a root cause of what cause there is just um i guess they didn't tell me they first thought it was a power supply then they um thought it was the motherboard i'm not sure if that was the final answer um but they were surprised that the skater program was even still on it um i can find out more information from it if you'd like i'm just curious if there was a root cause to if it would happen again and are we still under warranty okay good questions i can definitely ask it fails again due to an external environment issue whether it's power or whatever yeah yeah okay it's yeah and and had that that has the the power vagaries that that that was we found something and repaired it yes um we did have um daigle and wilson controls came down and um did some work on our um mcp cabinets we have had a few um power blips since then but they seem to really only happen during like uh high wind storms and stuff so i think it that makes sense okay and and is there a rough date on the the uh the condo folks um connecting their plans um yeah i'm not sure about that but it's it's not as imminent as we thought back you're still we're still talking details on on the connection etc is what you were saying correct yeah i'm not sure i think they were they needed to send abby some final plans or something i'm not sure what the status of that was but yeah there were talks of the design yeah and i got to do a site visit and see what they were planning it does come down to plans that is correct they're just making sure they have to get those in and then they had a little delay i think because of the weather obviously even getting started so between those two things and the site visit was like walking across the street for charity yes yeah they already had the manhole open but they yeah they just showed me exactly what they were like how they were piping and stuff and and they don't it's not a change they're going into a manhole we're not there's no change on our end to get it to the facility. Correct. Yeah. Great. Okay.
Darren, Ed, anything else for Jared? Okay. Sarah, more to budget? More on anything else from your end? I have a monthly report if you want to go over that. Yeah. Sorry, it was up. It was up and then I did something. Is it up again? No, I meant the amount of our expense. I thought the forecast.
Oh, yes. It's changed a little. Last time was much more dramatic. So in any case, there's really not a huge change to expenses. In fact, we're trying to look at our purchase orders and see if there's anything we can liquidate that we're not going to end up needing. But the forecast takes that into account anyway. I would say, honestly, the biggest shift, I think I moved the sludge number a little bit because, you know, we spend on average about $3,000 to $4,000 in monthly bills for sludge disposal outside of the fog issue. So figuring there'd be about $12,000 more, it would get us up to like $66,000. And then there's a little bit of wiggle room at $72,000 for another cleaning, which we are going to have to do. And that comes to around $4,000 to $5,000 when it's done. So I think I lowered it a little bit. But it still accounts for that cleaning that needs to happen at Alta. The small capital down here is kind of like our catch-all to make sure that wherever we go over, we're reducing here. So, you know, we already know contingency is well overspent. And small equipment has gone down to accommodate that so that we land at 100% spent.
There isn't anything major in the expenses to talk about unless you see anything you want to talk about. Okay. I was looking at it on my phone, so I saw the $117,000 and I thought we were over. You're rebalancing to the $100,000. Okay, good. Okay. I saw the $117,000 and that's when I had in my brain like we were way up. No. No, we're okay. And $99,000 is still a good amount of money, you know, for small capital work. So that's good. As long as, you know, we just got to get three more months in without any major problems. So, then we get down to revenue. You know, the user charges, you know, that was obviously news to all of you today when we went over the rate study. It's something I hadn't really thought about, honestly, until I really started to pay attention for the rate study. And we would have, had we billed out 90 days for our Q3, which would have normally been our last revenue generating quarter for this fiscal, we would have probably been at that $570,000. But it was a little short at 71 days. It's because of the slight shift to transition. We're kind of like moving the quarter back a month, essentially, because the idea is that every billing month, there's a similar amount of accounts being billed. So, we don't want to have this month where we're billing like 2,000 constituents and then another one is 500. We'd rather have to spread that out. So, we're dealing with like maybe like 1,300, 1,300, 1,300 each month until we start the, you know, the next quarter. It's just easier on the staff here for billing and also managing customer, you know, issues and needs. That's for, that's the reason for the shift. We've always, we've been quarterly. That's not new to us. It's just we're, when we're billing quarterly, that has changed. Because of that, that 570, which I don't have updated in here, I should have, I should have updated that in here. It's going to be, we think 690 based on, you know, kind of expecting what we just got in the 71-day cycle because it's going to be around another 71-day cycle coming up. Sorry, not that. No, yeah, that's right. 71 should be about, put us at about 690. Hopefully. So, we won't see that. We'll know before the year, year-end. And we'll have data on what we build out by, you know, around mid-May. So, I'll be able to show you that before the rate hearing. We send it out prior if we need beforehand. So, yeah, so that really is going to go up. Like you said, even with math though, it, it's just the timing. So, it really doesn't impact whether you put it in 26 or 27. It, from the rate hearing thing, it doesn't matter. That's right. So, yeah, so that number is really 690. Nothing, no movement on the liens, really. And we're still at 334 on that operating, which is, we all just talked about that. So, you know, we're just looking at, you know, working with town centers. That 334 also had a 150 on top of it at one point, too. It did. That's the town center amount that we're expecting to come in in FY26 or 27, which like, like to point out, will matter. It'll still be a part of our five-year plan in the same way that it would be. Whether it was in 26 or 27. Right, right. So, timing, right. Yeah. And we do really want that. Yeah. Okay. And that's really, that's really all there is. There's nothing, nothing big in capital. Nothing's really changed. We haven't spent any money on the low-pressure sewer replacement. We do have a bill in, but, you know, it's going to be 75. We know it's going to be 75 in the end. That's what the contract is. So, that's really it. I'm good. Again, I saw the 117. So, I'm good. This is everything flowing. And everything we did with Matt already explains these numbers, so. Yeah. Exactly. Sarah, one question. Have you noticed a unit price increase in the sludge management? Usually, that's a great question. I probably have it right in front of me, too. I should look at that. I don't think so this time, but I will compare to last time. I know with, like, whitewater, we usually see a seasonal, an annual increase right around now. But these look pretty stable, these prices. Okay, good. These don't look any different. At first glance. I will compare them and check and make sure. And are they locked in for the year or? Not exactly. I think we're working on contracting a locked-in price, but not really. But luckily, it's been pretty consistent. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, between fuel surcharge and PFAS surcharge, it would be great if they kept it pretty flat. Yes. Okay. Ed, anything to questions on money? No. Okay. So, we move on. You talked, so, requests for new services. We talked, you mentioned that we're waiting to finalize something with the town center folks. Yes. Abby has been especially speaking with town center. We've come up with a sewer use application and a fee associated. And they're just deciding whether they can, they want to put that much money into it. Now, because they don't necessarily, they want the five, but they don't actually have the businesses to start using the five right away. So, they don't need to necessarily buy it all now. It is first come, first serve, as we know, and it's dwindling. But, so, they're weighing those options right now. We're trying to settle on a number soon, though, I think. Well, that's the more typical conversation we're used to. And if it involves, if it even involves something more involved, like a restaurant or whatever. That triggers them into the more, is it the more they have to pay for, so, we're not, so, protect everyone from, you know, concerns later. Okay. Ed, Darren, any questions on what's going on? Okay. And that brings us to the minutes, which I must submit. I did not look at. I looked at it prior. That's my fault. I like the new format. I like the new format. They standardized all the minutes, as far as, like, the headers and whatnot go. Yeah. So, trying to make it. It's easier to read. As easy as possible. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Has there been any discussion about letting the platform do your minutes? Is that, is that allowed in the public meetings? It does send me a transcript. And I've actually switched. I've switched to taking the transcript and editing the transcript, which is a lot of editing, believe me, just because of all the things it grabs and the timestamps and the adding people's names correctly, and then sometimes, somehow, it has the wrong name in the wrong spot occasionally. Okay. But, you know, and cutting out, you know, things that don't belong in the minutes, you know, so, you know, most of that is easier that way. Maybe at some point, though, maybe when they roll out the new whatever, they'll allow you to use more of an AI-based smart. Okay. Transcript. That would be lovely. Mm-hmm. Certainly not the most exciting part of my job to type the minutes, but, hey, we got to do it. I would, I would, I would pay attention to that if they allow it. I will. I use my work. It's phenomenal. Yeah. Awesome. And I, I imagine there's something when we log on that tells us that it's being done. So, hopefully, they'll let you. I scan through it. I, I have nothing to do. I'm good on my wording. Okay. I make a motion that we approve the March 9th, 2026 minutes as circulated. Second? Anyone? I'll second it. Okay. Darren Bock seconds. Okay. Mike Gitten, yes. Darren Bock, yes. Okay. Yes. And anything else to discuss? This has been a marathon for us. No. Okay. And our next meeting is, those, those are firm because we're on schedule, right? They're, they're. I think we already got them scheduled. Yeah. Yeah. The 11th of May is the next one. 11th of May for the May one, 12 PM. And then we have June 8th for the rate hearing and regular meeting combo. Yep. And I know we don't schedule July or August because we typically don't. So. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, with that, I make a motion to adjourn. Second that motion. Add to. Mike Giddens says yes. Darren Bock says yes. I hear Ed. Ed, thank.
And I see, was Ed's with us there? Is your mic working there, Ed?
Okay. So is there anyone from the public for public comment before we get into our agenda? There is one person in the attendees tab that just joined. Oh, it's a... It's an in-call phone listener. Okay. I can't tell if there's somebody here that's trying to use it just as sound, but I will click allow to talk just to be on the safe side. Thanks, Abby. Yep.
And then you... Okay. And I would leave it open because we do the next...
Sorry.
The next... Maybe I can speak for Vinny Amendola. Maybe. I'll leave the call in line. He's part of our group, so... Okay. For Oxbow. Yeah, sorry, Kev. That's me. Sorry about that. Yeah, great. No worries, Vin. That's fine. So we'll move on to the first agenda item. And I apologize. I was on another call just a moment ago that was on a different portal. And so the next... And my agenda disappeared. So the next agenda item is talking about the fog matter. At the Oxbow. And we have representatives. And I apologize. My screens are not behaving.
Yeah. Yes. Fats, oil, and grease at Oxbow sewer pump station. And we have representatives with us from ComRef Oxbow LLC, the current representatives of that entity.
I understand there was some more studies going on. But Abby or Tom, if there's anything you'd like to say, and then we can hear from our guests. I can just give a little bit of background, if you'd like. And Jared, maybe you can supplement this too. Is it almost two years now? We started observing a lot of fats, oils, and greases at the pump station. And we had been working to do periodic cleanouts and observe the buildup over time. We have done testing over time to show that the wet well has levels of fats, oils, and greases that exceed what the district commission allows within our system. We've been back and forth with Oxbow trying to achieve some levels. And we've been trying to see whether that's a good level of pre-treatment prior to our pump station. And that's where we are currently at, seeking that pre-treatment. Ray Willis has proposed a sampling protocol in order to do some sampling at the wet well. We are in the process of reviewing that.
We plan on saying that he can proceed with some of that testing, but that we don't... think it is sufficient enough that we think that there are other testing protocols that we would like to conduct at that time in addition to what he's suggesting. In addition, we would like to not only test that well but also the downstream manhole and the pump station closer to Route 20 and the local down there. Jared, can you talk a little bit about your experience with the pump station and the testing protocols that Rhode Island are analytical proposed? Not to jump in, I'm sorry. No, please. I might suggest maybe we have some introductions. We can introduce ourselves and maybe introduce those that are representing Alta Oxbow just so they know who we are and we know who they are. So I can start off. My name is Tom Holder. I'm the Public Works Director. Abby? Hi, I'm Abby Shrest. I'm the Town Engineer. Jared? Jared Cotton, the Plant Operator and Manager. Sarah? Sarah Polachonik. I'm the Wastewater Administrator.
And Mike Ginn, Chair of the Wayland Wastewater Management District Commission. Darren Bach on the Wastewater Management Commission.
And on our side, I can start with introductions. My name is Tom Holder. My name is Kevin Doody. I'm with BlackRock Realty Advisors. We represent ownership, ComRef, Oxbow, LLC, on the line and on vacation. So a little background noise and I'll introduce him as Vinny Amendola. He's our in-house engineer with BlackRock. And then also Ray Willis from Fusso & O'Neill, who is our consultant for the wastewater.
Great, great. Thanks very much. Thank you. So I guess we'll go back to Jared was about to... Brief us on his findings. Yeah. So, I mean, shortly after I started here in June 23, it was when the pump station went online. It did not take too long for there to be noticeable grease. And then that eventually started to become more of a mat as the occupancy rate went up. So I've had to go out there a number of times over the few years for... Like the float getting stuck, level, high-level alarm, or low-level alarm usually resulting from the stuck float. I've gone out there and I've taken some grab samples a few times, I think three times now, that 250 milliliter in an amber bottle, two bottles for each sample that we bring to our analytical.
And I also had discussed... With them about using a composite sample. And so they sent me an excerpt from EPA method 1664, section 8.3. The high probability that extractable matter made here to sampling equipment and results in measurements that are biased low precludes the collection of composite samples for determination of oils and grease. So I just think right there that says that... We will not get an accurate number, and we will actually get a skewed lower number if we were to do a composite, which is why we have been doing grabs.
Okay.
So right now, the town, we're going to be responding to their proposed sampling program? Is that what you... And that's what you were outlining, Navi? Yes, they'd like to do more sampling, but they're still working to respond to our request for a new pretreatment process. So from your perspective, they're on the same... They should be proceeding concurrently, not... We're not waiting. That's correct. Okay.
Okay.
The BlackRock, Fuss and O'Neill team, anything you want to bring up or... Yeah, I'm happy to lead it off. Once again, Ray Willis from Fuss and O'Neill. Yeah. So, as described by the town, we've been working with the town engineering department, sewer department, public works department, to come up with basically a plan to mitigate the grease from the actual pump chamber itself. We have received... BlackRock had received a few letters from the town documenting the results that they had. From grab samples, we did perform some testing on the actual sewer going in and found that the actual oil and grease levels were below the 100 milligrams per liter. As far as the sampling techniques used for the grab samples, looking at the numbers, these concentrations are consistent with a restaurant use, which is what we don't have here. We feel as though some of the sampling might be skewed by either grabbing some oil and grease off the top of the wet well, so on and so forth. But with that, we do as a group acknowledge that, you know, the oil and grease buildup within the pump chamber can be problematic at times, especially if proper O&M is not implemented on such a piece of infrastructure. What we're seeing at this particular pump chamber is no different from, you know, many apartment complexes that we've seen, the actual pump stations servicing. It's to be somewhat expected with such a high residential use using essentially one pump chamber. Based on our experience, we feel that upon implementation of an O&M plan, that any concerns from the town could be mitigated right at the pump station itself. Yes, and we've sent a response letter to that end. We've been working with our engineers, Ty and Bond. Ian Catlow wrote a letter in response to say that, in his experience, that this fat, oil, and grease issue was more excessive than most pump stations and that the standard cleaners, cleaning protocol was not enough in this case to provide sufficient care for the maintenance of the pump station. Jared, I know that you had a few pictures. I think Sarah has them to show. Will you also talk about your experience with pump stations and what you see when you look at this pump station? Yeah. So yeah, I did send those over to Sarah right before this, so hopefully those are formatted in a way that she can share them. And it's, I'm not really sure what to say. It's, it is such a solid mat. I've never seen this type of scum on top of a tank before. It's almost impossible to get a grab sample with how thick the mat is. This is a picture of the Route 20 pump station. So this is what is making it past from the, from the, from the Alta wet well. And then the next pictures will showcase the solid mat. And you can even see on top of the grinder and on the walls there is a line from where the high level has made it up to. And that's just within the time that it has taken me or Whitewater to get out there and mitigate it. And so that's going above the drop point. And that's going to be the, the influence point in that tank. So that will start backing up into the buildings if it's not able to be handled within an appropriate time frame. And I guess, you know, my point to Tom Holder, public works director, is that, you know, allowing this to continue. I know we've got, you know, a process in place where we periodically, you know, pump this out, clean it out. We charge Alta Oxpo. They pay for it. That is not a sustainable solution to this. These pumps and this equipment, the float valves and all of that are experiencing really premature deterioration. And, you know, the expected design life of this equipment will not be experienced because of this, you know, this inflow that, that has these excessive levels of FOG in them. So it's, it's our point. And I'm, I'm glad, you know, we're supportive of, of having a round of sampling protocols. So we, you know, have an agreeable data set to discuss. But, you know, I think in the long run, it's our desire to prevent this from actually these, these levels, these excessive levels of FOG from actually entering this, this, this pump and process system. With, with most of these systems are based on my experience. The fats, oil and greases will stay at the top. And actually what's being drawn through the pump is not of the same water quality as you see at the top of this. So. Yes, we would agree with that. But I think what we're having are issues at the top of the wet well. We're having issues with the grinders. We're having issues with the floats. We're concerned about backup into the apartment buildings because of that. We're having issues. We understand that, you know, fog floats to the top, but that's where the issues we're having are located. And Abby really quick. And you've also said that it's making it past the initial wet. Well, I'm going to use the proper terminology here, but the wet well at Black Rock, right? The, the, the apartment complex. That's right. Making it all the way to the Route 21 as well. So it's not like it's not making it through the system. It's going down through the system. That's right. Not to this extent, but we do see impacts downstream. Yes. So this photo is of the the altar. What the the altar? What? Well, that's correct. Okay, what is just one quick question? Does that station that all the pumps to does that receive flow from other pump stations or other service areas? It's not exclusive to Oxbow. But Jared, I believe the manhole ahead of it is exclusive. Is that correct? No, the manhole ahead of it will meet with the rest of the Route 20 corridor. And okay, but yeah, that's so we don't have a way of testing only the flow downstream. Yeah, not exactly. Okay, like we could we could shut off or we could notice the flow coming in and see that. There's nothing coming from Route 20 and then kick on the altar pumps to see to time that but there's really not a guarantee that it's fully isolated. That's right. But to that end, what we're concerned is what's coming into the Oxbow pump station. You know, that's our highest priority to right now. That's the wet. Well on the okay. Yeah.
So what I'm hearing then just to summarize is that we're Proceeding with but discussing more and more rigorous sampling, but the town is still looking for a proposal on on controlling what you know, the wet well north or upstream. Yes. Yeah. And and I'm hearing that the concern is the the long-term not only the O&M, but that The impact on that the service life of a lot of the components. That's right. Okay.
Darren Ed while we have these folks here. Any thoughts questions.
I think it's laid out. I think it's the path forward, right? Which is mutually agreeable sampling on what the effect is happening to the system, right? While we continue to what what did what did what what a solution? Would be assuming that the you know, that we we're back to where we are now. Yes, I'm at in the near term. We have to keep on a dual track of getting more field data and looking at what a long-term solutions. What what what the options are what we're doing or what is going to be done? Yeah, because the from from from an engineering perspective because The wastewater is capturing both gray water and black water. We couldn't provide a conventional grease trap for this. So it would have to be essentially, you know, to provide some form of pretreatment. It would be upwards of, you know, like a 30,000 gallon septic tank, which can say given that the sites already constructed and build out. Wouldn't be the easiest thing to try to incorporate with this. Layout as it is. That's why we are asking for the O and M approach towards mitigating this issue.
Are there any point of origin solutions like in the in the in the residence that that could be done at the source or we have done some public education. We've gone over over there. We've handed out flyers provided that type of material. We've gone over over there. We've handed out flyers provided that type of material. But we haven't seen that be effective. In the maintenance.
Are there are there? I mean, Ray, I mean, not that you're going to judge us for are there engineered solutions to that that could be done besides at the source, but not that we're going to not to not to be presented now, but We can certainly look into that further. Okay. So, so from an O and M, right? You said, let's take an O and M approach. So with that, Abby. Tom, Jared, that would be yours to say, look, if you're going to approach it that way. This is what we think you would have to do. Is that like the proposal? The proposal would be for us to operate and maintain the wet well in a in a different manner. So what we've been doing and just sort of upping that in terms of a specific schedule, you know, this is issues with us in terms of staffing complexity. It's also a funding issue. Right. Because we don't have it in our budget to do all of this maintenance. And then what happens is, you know, we spend the money and then they, you know, we, they get back charged for it. And then the next year we're able to kind of take it from our funds, but it's, it's not a specific mechanism that works well for us funding wise either. Because right now, all the, all the equipment, everything was, is, is under the domain of the waste water management district commission. That's right. We own this. We own, that was part of the original setup. Right. That's right. We own that. It's. And therefore, the equipment is degrading faster than its lifespan due to this. So therefore we have to take these actions, but then it's not frequent enough for the labor wise. Okay. So, I mean. In a budgeting. In a budgeting, right. The cash flow might be there, but we can't use it. Right. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. When, when, when, when we're working with developers where there's going to be a known. FOG issue, we require, you know, pre-treatment prior to it, getting to the town system. You know, I don't believe anybody realized that we would be experiencing and accepting this type of FOG levels. And, you know, so now we're all in a place where we now have to deal with it after the fact. And, you know, I think quite frankly, I don't think the town is interested in dealing with it through an operation and maintenance. This is why. This is why we have FOG regulations and we have thresholds and the repercussions of exceeding those thresholds, you know? So I think having the sampling performed, getting a data set will, you know, we'll offer, you know, some real factual information to discuss. But I, you know, I think sitting here this afternoon, I think it's the town's position, at least DPW staff's position that pre-treatment is likely going to be. The proper path. And my understanding from what Ray said is that because it wasn't designed in upfront gray and black are together and I'll just use that. And normally if you were to do a FOG pre-treatment, you would want to do gray only. I'm assuming gray is the FOG. Not being a wastewater expert here, but from that perspective of the technology, but and that's your challenge is that it's mixed. Okay. I agree, Tom. I think it's the sampling. Let's get agreed upon. And let's get a agreed upon data set between the two of us. But concurrently, we need to be penciling out ideas for the whole cost benefit, you know, what, how this is going to work. Okay. Yeah, this is Vinnie with BlackRock. I have a quick question. Has anything been replaced in this pump chamber in the last two years? Jared and I have only been here the last couple of years. But I think we've had to do some floats in the area and then, you know, now we've just noticed some of the grinder issues. So we haven't to date, but we're concerned about issues going forward from that. It's also experienced high levels of alarms and calls to whitewater and, you know, significant parts of Jared's time on this as well. I'm just curious. I wasn't aware of anything that's on it. Yep. I apologize for the background noise, though, honestly. That's fine. No. Well, thank you. I think I'm set. Well, it was good to get an update. And we look forward to resolving this. So with that, move on to the next agenda item, the wastewater rate study with Matt Abrahams. Thank you. And it's another year. Is this year three or four, Matt? My guess is four. But let me confirm that. I just have to look at the folders on my computer. Yeah. This is year four. Okay. Well, good. We didn't get you anything. And for five, we might. You don't need to. That's fine. We're officially adjourning that other topic. So I think. Yeah. So. Yeah. We're moving on. We're adjourning. Okay. Yep. Thank you for your time, Matt. Thanks. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Thank you for your time. Yep. Yep. That was good. That was more background than we've had in the past. That was great. All right, Matt. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Matt Abrahams from the Abrahams Group. I'm back to speak about wastewater rates. So as I already mentioned, you've been working with me on this for a few years now. So you are familiar with the analysis that we typically perform. We have taken the latest and greatest information that the town has provided. And updated last year's analysis with that information. We have already put together for your review multiple rate options in a packet format that should be familiar to you from past years of working with me. And the approach that we took with those rate plans, at least for this first pass was, well, let's look at some of the things that we were looking at last year at this time in terms of rate changes and see what that looks like. And then ultimately see if we can settle on a rate option that may look a little bit better than those. So option one and two are a little bit focused on the work we did last year in terms of the rate plans that we were looking at at the time. Option three, more trying to get to a number that might be a little bit more interesting, I guess, for lack of a better word. And we'll get into the details of that. I'm just kind of giving you a quick overview before we get into files themselves. So what I plan to do today and I'll take direction from anyone on this call is to just walk you through some of the highlights, I guess, of the analysis. Thinking about looking at the actuals from the most recently completed fiscal year, which is FY25. Looking at projections for the current fiscal year of 26. Looking at where we think user charges will be or the projections that we're comfortable using for that. We'll cover user charges in FY27 and going forward. On the expense side, we'll cover the budget expenses, which you're familiar with, but we'll go over them real quick. And also what we're including for future capital, because that's always something that we want to make sure we touch upon. And then in the end, we'll cover what we think the rate options are based on all of that. And I guess just as a reminder, you know, April meeting is our first, you know, review of the rate structure and our current expenses and revenue figures. We'll convene again at our May meeting with, you know, to respond to any suggestions that the commission members have. And then it would be a hope that the following meeting in June, we would actually have the rate hearing. So this is the first of perhaps three gatherings where we'll have an opportunity to kind of absorb this stuff and act upon it. Yep. So any other thoughts or comments before we dive into the numbers? Before we dive, just start with the assumptions, right, of what we made adjustments. And I think start there before we start looking at option one, two, three. When you say assumptions, you're talking about... Assumptions, not actuals and what adjustments and, you know, we have new connections and what's our assumption on what their flow is. The reasoning behind why numbers appear the way they are. Yeah. The flow is... Yeah. Yep. I was planning on walking you through that before we get to the options. Yep. Sounds like we're on the same page. Okay. We're on the same page. Yep. All right. I'll share my screen now. All right. Let me know when you can see this. It is not up yet. There it goes. Okay. I can see it. So this is that busy sheet with all the revenues, all the expenses. Don't get too focused on numbers. Highlight for you the ones that I consider to be the most important. And also, as was mentioned, we'll cover the assumptions in these numbers that I feel matter or that are important. So, first I wanted to focus here on 25. This is the most recently completed fiscal year. When we did this work for you last spring, this was just... 25 was the projected year, the current year. Now it's completed. Based on information provided by the town, revenues were about $818,000. That was down a little bit from the prior year, but the prior year had some miscellaneous revenue in here that wasn't in 25. So that stands out as a difference there. As we go downward on the expense side, this is your total expenses right here, $867,000-ish. Ultimately, results were about $49,000 in the red. From a retained earnings standpoint, your retained earnings certification most recent... This was done very recently. The most recent certification, just under $1.1 million. The year prior to that, it was right around there. It was just over $1.1 million. So a very slight change there. Not a huge retained earnings impact overall. From a health standpoint, we compare retained earnings to the total expenses. That 126% is an incredibly healthy number. But we also understand that there's been a buildup of retained earnings over time, in part because you have that debt that needs to be paid off. So some of those prepaid betterments have been... That money, I believe, is included in that retained earnings value. So that's another reason why it's so healthy. So over time, you'll see that as debt gets paid off, that number will go down. But we're expecting that, and we're accounting for that. With the work that we do. Alright, so that's the latest on the financial picture. Thinking about very historical stuff. Now let's focus on 26. So we can focus on these two columns. 26 is the current fiscal year. From a budgeting standpoint, your total budget expenses is about $953,000. That's up a decent amount from the $866,000 that was spent last year.
Budgeted revenue is about $769,000. Supplemented by about $184,000 in retained earnings gets you a balanced budget. You may recall, but from the work that we do, unless someone tells me otherwise, we always assume that you fully spend your budget. So you'll see that the projected expenses column is equal to the budgeted amount. Because you are authorized to spend that money. Now, anything that is not spent out of the budget is a turn back. Those are turn backs. Those, in theory, would roll to retained earnings. Because you are aiming to recover revenues a certain amount to cover your budget. So any budget not expended would presumably roll to retained earnings. But again, for now, we assume you fully spend your budget. Actually, these numbers are slightly off. And I think the reason why was... I don't remember the reason why. Oh, okay. Matt, can you? Go ahead. I'm sorry. So these are the projections provided by Town Staff right here from the latest file that was provided. So these are projected expenses by the end of the year. So the projections are showing slightly less than the budget. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. The column L and M, where you have budgeted and projected, there's a $700,000 jump in revenue. What is that up above? Yep. So we're going to... Row 108. sorry, I didn't do revenue next. Yep. Got it. So let's go up here. So the numbers that we should focus on here are really the two in orange, everything else is pretty similar to your recent past. The first number in orange is wastewater user charges. The how we came up with this was we took the latest projected amount, I believe. Sarah, is the 570 the projected amount or the year-to-date amount? Yeah, the 570 was the projected amount, which is going to change because of quarterly billing, which I think you're probably about to talk about, but I'm happy to jump in on that. Right. But if the quarterly billing transition was not happening, your projection would be 570. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So the latest projection for wastewater user charges is $570,000. That was taken off of information provided by Sarah very recently. That's the 570. But because of, and Sarah, I'll ask that you confirm this for me, because the wastewater, the way that wastewater is now billing or will be billing is being set such that it matches the amount of waste water that is being collected, which is how water is doing their billing, there will be additional or additional amount of revenue is expected because of just timing differences. Yeah, it's the timing. Okay. Did I say that right, Sarah? Is that good enough? Okay. Yeah. Essentially, we'll collect on five quarters in this year. We only bill for, which is correct in the way it should be, but our cycle changes have caused us to have to shift when the bills go out by a short, by a slight amount to get on a good quarterly billing schedule. And so that means that instead of the June billing, it'll be a May billing for the final quarter of this year. And that will cause revenues to come in in June instead of in July. And so that does change. It means there'll be a bubble year, essentially. It's still four billings in the year. It's still, I think, September, December, and then there was a February, so a little bit earlier, about a two and a half month. One and then another one, two and a half months later to slightly adjust ourselves into this quarterly billing to align with water billing because bills go out to get water and sewer. Okay. And that decision was made so that you could be fully aligned with water. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And also, you're not expecting any impact in 27. You're still expecting four bills for everybody in 27? Correct. There'll still be four bills in the future. I believe they'll end up being, yeah, three months after May and then every three months. So, there'll be four. There'll be no impact in the future. It's just a bit of an earlier quarter. I guess mine is then, where's the negative one? Eventually, it's got to show up somewhere, but okay. You're expecting 27. We're going to have four billings in addition to this May and being collected in June. Even next year, we'll still have four. Yeah. Because it'll be August and then every three months after that. So, August, November, February, and then we're going to have four bills in June. So, it's going to be four bills in June. So, I guess, in a forever standpoint. Would the August one not cover the full three months? It would. It would be from, I think, May 10th to August 10th. Okay. So, maybe the negative is that some of the bill cycles for 26 just weren't a full three-month period. It's not really negative, but you said that some of them were two and a half months. Right. But in the end, it seems like a one-year boost from what Sarah referred to as a bubble year, transition year. Okay. Let's keep going. Okay. And then this number right here, the 484, is related to privilege fees that were not budgeted. So, this 334 number was, let me see if I get this right,
already collected. The 334 is what was already collected, Sarah, and then there's an additional 150 estimated. Is that accurate? Yes. So, 334 is guaranteed. It's already been received. And the conversations with Town Center, which is our final buyer of flow right now, it's a lower estimate of 150. It really depends on how much they decide to take, but we're talking with them right now. That was the 5,000 gallons, right, or something? That's right. They may go with less, and we're still working out the assessment fees that go along with that. But that entire amount is the privilege that we, one time. Okay. That is correct. But we don't have the flow. We don't have that last 150. We have the 334,000, definitely. We just expect to receive this from Town Center in this fiscal, so we're including it in this. Okay. Yep. At this point, just a projection, but one that the town staff is comfortable with. So, the 334 is money already in the door, and then that's... The 150 is being added to that with the expectation that that 150 will come in before FY26 concludes. Right. And if not, it might go into 27, but it's coming, and it might not be 150. It might be a little lower, but either way, it's either in column M or N, and same thing with the one above. Correct. It's either in M or N. Right. So, you're just shifting... It'll likely be higher, if anything. Yeah. Yeah. You're just shifting timing. And it's conservative. Right. Considering the long-term approach that we take, with the rate-setting plans that we present to you, whether they come in in column M or N, it's not going to have a huge impact either way. Correct. Okay. I understand.
But yeah. So, obviously, you notice that the projected revenue amount, compared to the budgeted amount, is significantly higher for those two reasons. And if we go down to the bottom, this 679 is a projected surplus for FY26. It does include the 183 out of retained earnings as a funding source. So, in reality, if you did not include that, the true surplus is more like $500,000. But that 679, in theory, that's the amount that would boost your retained earnings, right there, the 679. Right. That would drop down, right? So, are we obligated to take money out of return earnings? At this point, has any money been taken out, and will it, by the end of June? No. I don't know if you want to answer that, but no. We wouldn't have to actually take the money out. But it's accounted for in here. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry. No. No problem. So, the town typically does authorize the use of retained earnings to balance the budget every year. And the latest budget presented by the town is this amount right here, this 320, 539. That is an amount to balance the FY27 budget. And has that already been authorized? Can someone comment on that? Has town meeting already authorized that, or is that upcoming? Upcoming. But it's on the article. And that's the amount? I believe so, yes. That looks right. So, assuming that authorization, that 320 would come out of retained earnings?
We'd end up over revenues by some amount next year. But we're not assuming anything else. We assume we wouldn't make our target. I think, sorry. Going back to what Mike's saying, is because we collected so much over this year, even though we put in for a 183, 635 number of retained earnings to draw, we made so much extra because of like the 334,000, and all that. Technically, we don't actually have to pull from retained earnings to take that 183 out anymore because we've made extra. But you have that balance in here. And we're going to deposit more into retained earnings. Correct. Yeah. So, the way certification works is last year's certification would have taken that 183 out at the time because you had authorized or the town had authorized that that 183 be used out of retain earnings for FY26. But in the end, you didn't need it. So it's just going to roll back into your retain earnings balance at the next certification. And you're going to add in on top another 400 and whatever that number was when you delete the 183. So you're going to add that. So we're going into fiscal year 27, our retained earnings should go up 400. And that's what we're working off of as we now look at our expenses and revenue for 27. Yep. That's a good way to put it. Which we know we are planning on, which you'll get into 27 expenses to do 75,000, something like that for a study to see what our plan can do plus some other things we talked about. Yeah. Okay. I'm really interested in you. Understanding what influent rate was used for setting the revenue for 2027. What flow rate?
Okay. Are you talking about this number right here? Yes. The 587?
Yeah. No, I actually wasn't focusing on that. The projected, whatever, what's the difference in the 27 budget and projected? I'm sorry, I missed that. Projected is where we're going to end up this year. So that's Sarah's projection. No, 27, fiscal year 27. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Budget versus projected. Now I see what you're talking about, Mike, com N and O, right? Yeah. So he's asking about which flows we use, Matt. I know we talked about this, the idea being that once terrain comes on and we get some more users, that flow will increase and will achieve a higher revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Higher revenue. So I don't know where that was in the spreadsheet, but we did discuss that. I'd be interested in it because more than halfway through the year, we added the Council of Aging terrain is going to come on supposedly beginning of next year. There's another small restaurant coming on beginning of next year. We're getting more flow from the condo shortly. The library came on. And that's- That's conservative. If we want to be optimistic, the town center folks are talking about more fully utilizing what they are doing there. But without even bringing that in, I'd be uncomfortable using a conservative flow from 26 for 27. I'm comfortable being slightly optimistic on it. Not overly, but slightly. Okay. So as Abby mentioned, we did review where we thought user charges would be for 27. That's on a separate tab. I was going to get to that momentarily. And we can walk you through that. But you're right. Very observant of you to notice that we have a little bit of a bump up there. We'll talk. Excuse me. We'll talk about the assumptions related to that. Before we get there, I just wanted to cover one other thing. It seems like we're pretty comfortable with 26.
Your 27 budget from an expense standpoint is this number right here. 1.1 million. If you compare that to your 26 budget, 953,000, that's a pretty big jump up. Part of that has to do with new debt that's now on the books. You can see that line item right there is debt. That jumped up by over a $100,000. This O&M piece went up a good amount too. I don't know why though. Sarah, do you know that? That's our plant study, right? Right. Contracted services. Okay. Thank you. And that assumes we don't have final results. Is that also where the, what we were talking about, agenda item one hits? The ALTA work? It would be in expenses. I don't know how much we buffered. We buffered in there for, I think our expectation was that we wouldn't have to be doing that next year very long, so I would not say there's a lot of in there for that. That's almost going to be like our contingency in a way, so yeah, it's mostly, it's the contracted services, it's some data support, it's that study, Abby, I don't know if I'm missing anything, I feel like it was just those two pieces mostly, yeah. Okay, and we're comfortable with the contingency at 35? I know we floated. Floated, was that enough, but we just think it was an off year, right, for 26 due to the pump-outs, was it a pump-out, whatever it was, the sludge to remove? Yeah, we also had several electrical issues that we found at the plant when we did the new project, so we were dealing with that. New project, so the new project should get us back to 35, okay. That's, cross my fingers, but that's what we're expecting. My fingers are crossed as well. Okay. And also one other thing that has been a topic in the past. The small equipment continues to be in here on an annual basis as part of the budget. So we're carrying this 1059 number forward every year into the future. You can see that going out to the right. So just understand that that is in here. From a capital standpoint, and this is it before we get to the user charges, the impact of the capital plan is felt on this line. I do include a separate line item for what I call new debt service. It's fully related to future capital items, so you can see the difference between the debt that's currently on the books and then the debt that we're anticipating happening for future capital. So the future capital that is in here to produce these numbers, I'll show you that real quick, is found on this tab. This is the capital plan tab. It was the one we used last year. And then we just added to it down here. So what's in the 26 column, that's all taken care of, meaning those have already been borrowed. We don't need to worry about those any further. Already on the books. So these two items in the capital plan, the design and the bid documents related to the low pressure sewer replacement, 125, that was in last year's analysis, as well as the 2 million for the construction phase. That was in last year's analysis. That was in last year's analysis. We continue to carry these in this year's analysis the same exact way as we did last year. We also added these two items down here. So the first one being a rehab of tanks, $400,000. The timing of that being that that would start in FY28. And the other one being replacement of HVAC system starting in FY31. So we have four items in the capital plan that we're including for future capital. The three items in the capital plan that we're including for future debt. These are the four items. Two of them were in last year's analysis and then we added these two. And those, that extra $800,000. Spread out to two milestones that's that's rolled into the high level sheet you were just showing us? Yep. Yup. So what we do is we do one projected borrowing schedule for each of the items. um these two were in there last year so this is the 125 for the design portion of the sewer replacement this is the two million for the construction portion and then these two tabs are the new ones so this is four hundred thousand dollars for um the tank and then this is four hundred thousand for the hvac and what i do is i include um all the debt together on one sheet so all those debt schedules feed into here this is the year that you see the the tank i'm sorry the sewer replacement construction coming on there's a big jump in that year the next jump is nope so this would be the tank sorry the sewer replacement construction plus the tank i think are in the same year that's why there's a big jump there this is the year that the hvac replacement kicks in there's a jump there but you can see only a little bit of the, not a lot of the due date but there's a high number ofdzins so if you're interested this is the year that we have the most expected debt for all four together on this tab so if i highlight i'll just highlight five years worth so that's $974,000 five years together if i go back to that main tab right here i already have the five highlighted $974,000 so they're there right and the existing debt 2032 okay 2032 is where the existing drops off okay yep so we got 29, 30, and 31,000 30,000 to the project, fatan, we're looking at 13,500 to the project, the project is seven hours, I think that's the last one and we have $974,000 to the project we're looking at that are elevated until our existing debt starts dropping off okay right and the capital that we did that 500 000 or so went into existing versus the new because it's now existing okay i got it that's where you put the hundred yeah the the town um took out a new bond in november i believe and those items are on there yep so they've transitioned they've transitioned in my analysis from new to existing because they're now on the town's existing schedule understand okay any further questions on expenses yeah no this is all um yep i'm good all right so now to the user charges piece and this schedule may look familiar to you from um past years of reviewing the town's existing debt and the town's existing debt and the town's existing doing this. Focus on the current two columns over here. These were the numbers that we were looking at last year, last spring, when the decision was made to raise rates, I think it was 9.75% across the board. So these rates right here reflect your current rates, but also, and this is a configurable sheet, we've changed some of these on the fly during some of our meetings in the past. The assumptions down here are the same ones that were used last year. We have not changed these. Okay. Current is basically your 26, right? So we're mainly, okay. Correct. Which I think is probably the right thing to do. Okay. Yep. So this is our starting point, right? And then we work from there. Yep. The allocated design flow in gallons per year, this was the number we used last year. This is a simple calculation to get you to a hundred cubic feet per year. Instead of gallons, the full ALTA was that amount. At one point we were carrying a percentage occupied greater than 85%. I think we had it at 90 at one point. And then based on where the flow, the actual flow for ALTA was looking at, because we did an analysis on that last year, we decided to back that down to the 85%. And we're going to get more into that in one second. These were the water use estimates based on an actual review of real bills that we did last year. And then ultimately it produced down here, this box just does calculations based on the allocated design flow plus the flow per tier to give you this number, which is a billings number. And then we throw a collections rate on 94 and a half percent, which we've used for a few years now. And that's going to come up with this projected user charges number. So that's the current environment. And this is based on the assumptions we used last year. But since we have real money in the door, plus the calculations that Sarah provided for that, the billing transition impact, we're not using this number for FY26 in our analysis. We're using the one that we covered earlier to get you to the 690 that we showed you a little while ago. But I still wanted to show you this because these are the assumptions that we used last year when we did the rate setting. So one other note before we look over here, because I know you want to go here and we'll get there in one moment. You may recall down here that we did an analysis on actual billings to figure out how on target we were with the numbers that we're using for flow. This box that I have
here, based on FY24 and FY25 actual billings. So we got to the point where we were comfortable using an ALTA number right here and a number for all the other users right there based on actual billing review. So that's 11.7 for ALTA and 19.7 for everybody else. If you go up here, you'll see we have 11.9 for ALTA. What was it down below? Is that right? 11.9? No, 11.7. So it's a little bit higher. But I think we're in the ballpark and we were comfortable with that. 11.9 for ALTA, 19.7 for everybody else. If we go down here, 19.7 for everybody else. Okay. So that was basically how we arrived at those numbers last year because we did that actual analysis. Because of comments from town staff, when we met with them, when I met with them recently, we thought it was, was a good idea to do a similar review of recent bills. Because the impression was that flow wasn't quite as high over the past year. And we did that analysis and this is what it produced right here. So compare really the bottom line numbers here last year's to the bottom line numbers this year. ALTA about the same, other users dropped.
All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. some of the reasons why. We talked about the winter and the impact that it had. It was the first really harsh winter that we had in quite some time. And we think that had an impact on flow or water usage. People weren't necessarily going out as much. Maybe the commercial properties weren't as busy as they had been in prior years. So we don't necessarily think that we need to adjust all the way down to here as our new baseline. But it is showing that maybe, you know, the current flow is not quite these numbers. But this here does not account for the fact that you have those new connections coming in. And there is going to be a bump up in flow for those reasons.
So ultimately, we decided, and of course, we can change these numbers. You know that from past meetings, we can change these numbers on the fly. But when we met, Town Staff and I met, we decided, okay, we don't want to be down to these numbers. We look at it as kind of a one-year blip. But also, we do want to make sure we're accounting for that new flow in some capacity. So we ultimately basically ended up back using similar numbers to what we used last year. And if we go back up to the top here, you're going to see that for the flow numbers, we just decided to roll forward the numbers that we did last year. So we'll be looking to you to validate whether you agree with that or not. And we can make changes here. But then just one other comment before I let you speak about this. This number can change though definitively because we know that design flow has been allocated further. And my understanding is it's almost completely allocated. Town Staff was comfortable using this number going forward based on the recent connections. So we have bumped up the allocated design flow from the about 115,000 gallons per year to this 125,000 gallons per year number starting in FY27. Also with the understanding that that's probably on the conservative side.
So I'm done talking about this. Just one final comment. So these are the assumptions we're using right now. Allocated design flow for 27, 125,000 gallons. Again, conservative. We haven't changed the ALTA estimates at all. And we haven't changed the water use estimates at all despite that additional analysis we did. But also understanding that new connections are coming in.
And then I guess to wrap it up to Mike's comment earlier, that's the reason for the difference, the bump up, is because of that additional allocated design flow compared to what we were looking at last year. Great job walking through that. Thank you. Can you scroll down to the bottom again what the new study showed? 16,557. Okay. The new study is on the bottom. Yeah. And that includes Q4 from 25 and Q1 of 26. We like to average those two because those are the two warm weathers and you know maybe one skews a little bit because of it's a dry period and there's a lot of outdoor water usage. And then the second row is Q2 from 26. Just one cold weather bill. Yeah. Yep. So, Mike, if you don't mind, I'll go first really quick. So the way I look at it is, okay, you did your new study, 16557, right, is where we're at. Again, cold, maybe that, other things, there are lots of other things that can cause that, right? But in the end, we added, go back up above, so 16557, we added our design flow. Where's the design flow? We added 11,000, we'll call it, 10,000. And I think we typically see that actual flow is like 30% of design, somewhere around. I know it's not quite 50. We always used to use 50, but I don't think we're quite there, 30%. So if it's 30%, then that's 3,000. You add the 3,000 to the 16, you get back to your 19. So, I mean, logically, I think it makes sense to stay at the 19, whatever, right? From using a 30%, if actuals are 30% of design, is what I think we've been experiencing, right?
Yeah. Approximately. About that. Yeah, about that. So we added 10,000 design, 30%, 3750, you add that to the 16. I mean, Mike, you might get a little bump, but now again, hopefully warmer weather and more occupancy and whatever goes on in town center, we get additional lift to get back up to the 19 where we were, and then we should have a 3,000 lift from there. But this new should be a 3,000 lift. That's right. And our... Our current numbers include the library and the COA. They've been online for a little while now. Yeah. Great. Yeah, for the second. What is the actual allocated design flow as of now?
I can look at it, but it's about that 14, 9, the 114,000. Does he need to do that now, the application for the 109? No, it's the one where I thought was the 125. Yeah. I mean, that's what it will be once we've sold the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. So the... I thought it was more... I thought there was 5,000 left. There's 5,000 of... Town center. Of town center. So we'd be 120. Yeah. 125, I thought, was what the new everyone in there, but the... I'm hoping for the town center, that number or not. I'm wondering, because we're collecting base charges on everybody's purchase flow, even though they're not throwing any flow in the system, not much. I thought the 125 was... Yeah, I would do too. Let me pull it up, and I can look at it. Yeah, I'm interested in that. Pretty good.
Okay. You know, that number accounts for the base charge increase towards the bottom of the page right there, because that we are getting. So that's our usage is TBD, but obviously it will be higher. Okay. Another thing I was looking at personally, and I know I mentioned it to Matt too, is quarter three. That's come in, that we built out. That was only a 71-day cycle, which is that two-and-a-half-month quarter that I talked about before. You know, that definitely... That actually came in higher than a full 90-day quarter one and quarter two, which speaks to the fact that there's some increase, but also we're coming out of winter, and that winter was so effective. In fact, the town center used half what they used the quarter... Quarter two was half what they used in quarter one. That's a big, you know, it's a big chunk right there. Difference. Because of weather. But they're also right back up in quarter three to where they were in quarter one. So quarter two is an anomaly due to weather. But anyhow, you know, it is promising that we're going to head back up based on quarter three, which is only a 71-day quarter, but is higher than two 90-day quarters previously. So it's interesting how that worked out. Yeah. The difference between what you would expect in... You were expecting to see more of like a 190. The 119,000 and then the 5,000 to 125. The 114 versus the 119 allows for some differences between people that we have allocated for, but they are not connected yet.
But they're still paying the base charge, though, right? They still pay the base. Yes. So they should be included in the base charge revenue. And they will be with the 119. And they will be with the 125. Okay.
So our current allocated is close to 125 now?
Once we get that town center. Which you're expecting. Yeah, exactly. You need a demo for it, right? Okay.
But unfortunately, I don't know that we'll see a lot of actual flows from that, or at least in the near future. Yeah. I still would like to discuss the... I still have a lot of current news are going up a little bit because the whatever, I don't even know what they call it. The old Whole Foods building has been vacant, including the building out front and everything but a dry cleaner and a shipping place. So I don't know how much is allocated to those two properties. But the flow has probably been about... I'm going to guess 5%. And if we upped it to 30% starting next year, I would like to see the 19-7 go up a little bit, by more than the 3000 you're talking about. And same, the council aging library, the new small restaurant. Yeah. None of them were online, or if they were, they're barely being used in quarter four of 25. I don't think they were.
They weren't. I don't think any of those were online.
Quarter four of 25? The fourth quarter of 25. Yeah, they weren't online. None of those were. So I would like to discuss bumping the 19-7 up some.
I was trying to find... Yeah. I was going to say, let's do half of that 3000 just to see it. Because again, the only thing this does not affect is tier one. Tier one makes up 15% of our revenue. So you're really impacting 15% of our revenue somewhat, right? If you take the 103 to 5, 5, 5, 600 and whatever, right? Somewhere around there. 15. But like, Matt, if you did update that 19-7 to another plus 1500, right? Which is half the 3000, Mike, of what we lost. Plus we've already allocated the 3000. They've already bumped that up for the new people, right? So that's already in there. So even if you just bump that, what did it do to our revenue? We went to 651. Well, this would be a billings amount. And then we always take a collections of that. Yeah. Six, six. What was it? I'm sorry. I was not. Yeah. You're making. Yeah. I see your point. It went up like five grand or something. Six, 11, three. Now it's 616. So five grand. It went up less than five grand. Because it's our flow. Tier one is not where our main revenue comes in. It comes from the base charge. The big jump was to the 125 and base charges. So that's where we focused.
So our flow, let's say we get all 3000. That's going to be 10 grand. Right. So 1500 is five grand. Then three, 3000 gallons will be 10 grand. So we have 10 grand more. Yeah. I'd be. And once again, I don't. I, to be frank, maybe before the next meeting, if you could send around the allocation, the whole foods, the old dentist's office, the restaurant, the CVS, the wood shop, they've been vacant for five years or more. Yeah. The, the, the terrain. Took all that capacity and then some, and we haven't seen it in five years and same for the bank. It's been, it was vacant for all last year. It's going to become a restaurant and same as for the Cronin's, whatever it's called. It's, it was basically vacant for the last three years. It's going to become a restaurant. So I know it's not a little, I, I would like to see a little more of the underlying facts and go up even a little more because all that allocated, a lot of that allocated has, has been more than under, you know, more at like a, a one to 10% use versus a 30% use. So I, I do think. Well, Mike, I'd be comfortable with the 3000 too. I mean, that's going to be, we've taken a $10,000 risk, right? Plus or minus on a $1 million. Yeah. You know, 10 grand, we're talking, you know, 1%. I don't have it with me, but. Plus or minus 1%. I'm fine with that. I just think it's hard to. I know the plan's getting old, but we're having a 700 or $600,000 surplus and we're going to tell our users the increase is going to be pretty much the same as the last year.
After years ago, we had told them that when the. Alta came on, we get flat rates. I mean, I, I know I hear it, but that's kind of. And. And I'm also hoping that the study. We'll show. That. Even without. It's the minority of the question is part of the study that we're. That we engage for. I don't have the number of $75,000. Is that what the study is? I think it was more like 50. Yes. Okay. Does it include. A statistical review of. Of. More than a rule of thumb of what the ratio between. The title five that we use to develop the privilege fee versus what we see. So, because so we can, when it comes time to revisit our. Our cap on allocate design flow. That might give us. More design flow to sell. With more comfort. Without capital improvements. Yes, we have. We haven't worked on that scope of work yet, but when we do include that in there. Yeah.
I don't know that I would ever have. One of the other. We had a chance to do the actual review process. So we weren't able to. We were we couldn't, we can't engage them officially until after July 1st. Now that you say. As soon as it came out on my mouth.
It's in September, October timeframe. Yeah. While you're. Just I know.
We're hoping that as part of its. Town center. Permitting process. but we can't use the money if we collect it from them as a peer review fee um right right right because they're over the the magic number yeah so we're working on it i i i mean i i'd really to be frank from the staff too i'd be curious you know the 19-7 i i would like to see the full 3 000 allocated because i i think we've been at we've been at um uh i i'm kind of i would be curious what what whole foods was doing when it was there eight years ago or whatever not that i but but i i feel comfortable going higher hey mike i'm i'm fine with the three like so yeah well just just because it's you're talking plus or minus 5 000 from 1500 so i like from an overall this is not going to greatly make us make poor decisions down there right so let's just do that okay well we'll know that that's our baseline so matt we're upping it 3 000 from your 19-7 okay when you say 3 000 though how do we get from so instead of the 1500 you want three 3 000 yeah yeah okay like that yep please yep thank you okay all right so now what does that look like when we get to i think now we get to your magic uh charts all right well i need to add this to the other tabs or actually i might not have to let's look okay how automated are you i am not that automated and then guys i do have a hard slap at 130 all right well we can go through this very quickly all right so go ahead um the rate plans that were set in and shared with you were based off of all the same information so i'm going to go ahead and show you the information we talked about other than that one adjustment we just made to the rates yep um option one is simply the rate plan that we were looking at last year when you made the decision to increase rates 9.75 percent so these rate changes in these years were the additional four years on top of the 9.75 percent yep okay and this is actually a better financial picture than what the graph looked like last year when you made that decision because we didn't have that addition to the retained earnings in there right yep um so that's not necessarily recommending this as a rate plan we just thought that that would be interesting for you to see all right so option two is let's start with last year's rate increase of the 9.75 and see what that looked like now i personally think now that we've made those other changes that these numbers can come down a little bit so maybe do 11 instead i'm just going to play around with some numbers okay and then option three was trying to present something that looked like a level rate plan but also you know one of the things that we try and do is keep the blue above or maybe just slightly touching the orange especially in these middle years of 30 31 when the debt gets paid off so we have this as nine percent for five years and then four percent in the subsequent years you might be able to go a little bit lower than this with that additional change so maybe something like that and that's it we just had three options so far what are your thoughts i like i mean it's good it's good that it shows like option one was the assumption we went in a year ago right and this is what we said and due to our privilege fees and due to that we're in a better financial picture than what we even looked at so that's great um and including our and if we can get our motorcycle as tom would call it right now we have our new study that says we can run it at 70 miles per hour again or 75 um and we can get additional users added that because we have had more people ask them what we have and if that ever went forward in the year 29 or 28 right because i know it takes a while then that could be even more base charge coming on to better utilize our plant i mean i still look at it as like we know that's coming because we made this investment into the plant i like the idea of option three to be honest mike you know just because because we have this interest in town and we have this flow and hopefully again the the study the 75 or 50 you said abby um says that our plant can do more right we can run that thing and get on more flow hopefully fingers crossed again that it says that that's the way it's going to go and i think that's what we can do with our plant due to our capital improvements and we bring those people on because whalen's a hotbed for new business coming in or new residents then that would change our 29 30 outlook as well where we have to worry about that 30 and 31 years right that's where we start getting close until that existing debt is paid off and then 32 is when we start looking up right because we get that existing debt so i i that's mine mine is just Just, you know, just thinking how you, Mike, you know, as we kind of have a plan here, right? And we've got a plan and we're in better shape than we were. And we still need to do an increase, but it's nowhere near what we were looking at a year ago. Yeah. And yeah, that's a good segue. Matt, can you go back to option one and just what we're looking at there? What you're showing is if you if you had pulled up last year's option, it would have said we we could do nine and three quarters in the current year. But we may have to do 14 starting 27, 28. Is that is all what we're looking at here? Yeah, I'm looking. I'm actually if you want, I could show you last year's. No, that you answer, Mike. So. But yes, but these just so you know, the blue here. When it was around 30 and 31 in last year's graph, the blue was basically touching the orange in 30 and 31 with that same rate plan that we're looking at here. Yeah, I'm not looking at the graph. I'm just looking at the percent increase. And due to the the growth in interest, it created that gap, that that very favorable gap in the privilege, the privilege near term. And then if you go back to option three, it. Once again, I'm thinking of the users and our mandate is it shows that the future years may also be a conservative. And if if we really can up usage a little without it, we're not naive years is it's an old motorcycle and it's going to need parts. The frame might be OK, but we the cap. But we can't put our head in the sand on the there's going to be capital that's going to go along with these increases. It's better to see the eight and a half forecast in the 14. That was my long winded talk talking through it myself so I can remember. Great. And yeah, that I now down in the bottom for the simple math, if if rates are going up 9 percent, it's 30 dollars a month. One hundred and twenty dollars a year. That's that. OK, that's more like 10 percent. But what am I doing wrong with my my my my fingers math? How come? How come it's not 9 percent going up or eight point seven five? OK, it's my bad math. OK, got it. I guess those little percentages. If the rounding broad rounding hurts, you can't do it. Yeah. Which is good because we're in small percentages. Yeah. Yeah. I have to jump off this meeting. Yeah. And another one at one thirty. So I know this and I will I'll I'll catch up with Abby and Sarah and Jared afterwards to find out what I missed. Yeah. OK. Any anything else? Thank you, Matt. Yes. No, I'm I'm I'm good with that. And I think we got our assumptions. And hey, um, and I think it's still with us. We can sit through some of the other items. I actually just moved my one thirty. So I can I can go now. No, thank you. One thing I want to throw out there is that, well, you know, we do have that May tenth billing, and it as well in advance of our final actual meeting where we vote, we'll have a little more information to share. So if we decide we want to tweak further, then we'll have some other ideas. Right? You know. Right. I mean, you're. Don't we? I'm right. I'm稿 still. I'm correct. I'm in the room. They hid it so that the boa-boa is and that's all I put into my new. more information just yeah is there any homework assignment for matt i guess going between now and our next meeting or are we so far so good with option three as is i don't think there's any other homework it's gonna be i think you got all the assumptions yeah i think i think the main thing is if we i i think for the team though i i would maybe if you just circulate it i for my own curiosity don't we have a spreadsheet where we keep track of of the allocated um users yeah if that's something you could share um happy to and um and i must have i think i have it at at home i i i wait i i i i'm happy to say that my google search brought up the the nice summary rate schedules we have out there thank you whoever's keeping that but i have my own little notes on what our percent increase has been for the last uh six years um i'm gonna look at that i'll send that out after the meeting thank you um so anything else on this agenda item for now matt any questions for us i'm comfortable i'm good and um uh do we take any sample about those wet well growth of the hard you know hard material how we can we do something with uh chemical addition to solve that otherwise the wet will be getting solid yes um jared has been doing some of that and um you know it's it's due for another cleaning so we've been trying to do that in the meantime but i think yeah um the issue is sort of the long-term solution that we're looking for yeah i i know that was last year that was i'm kind of yeah if they don't circling back i we're going dual tracks yeah more data and that's right they got a bright idea that's different than a big holding tank present it right yeah we got to keep we we're not going to wait i i think you've made it clear um from the the letters and the communications that you've all been having yeah um we and i think budget and the budget makes it even clearer we're we're assuming there'll be some sort of resolution that's going to minimize our costs soon yes okay okay yeah okay so thanks matt this is great all right thank you all right i also have a 130 i'm gonna go join um so thank you and uh if there's any questions sarah just reach out i i have a two o'clock boy we even had rates are important though yeah okay um jared anything else to add on the operating report um uh yeah i mean i can go through quickly what the last month was there's a few a few things um but yeah uh we had a did a hypo clean on mbr1 um the diffusion clean cycle is not working and so it's going to be a little bit different than it used to be so we're working on getting a new one of that ipac came and resealed all the screens and replaced some of the bad nozzles um we did a citric clean on uh mbr side two a few days later we did a hypo clean um skated to the skate to computer died randomly and so it took it town it took it um and it was thankfully covered under warranty still so it was though came down quick replacement um didn't even have to we didn't have to have lcs put the scouted back on everything was up and running so it was very simple um and thankfully not not bad i met with hastings way just to go over what their proposed um future design is um with the diffuser clean not working i did a manual uh clean of side one because we couldn't the whole cycle was locked out because organic ᕗ ᕗ two wouldn't work so i could just manually open side one um we also had kaiser out here to make do some maintenance on our blowers and one of our pre-air blowers is is just really at the end of its life and they said there's potential that they could rebuild it but it really just will need a full replacement at because if we rebuild it it could last for a good bit but it might just die shortly after um as well as an mbr blower um that is um workable and it just needs a new cooling fan motor so it uh right now it's off but it is available if we need it until it gets repaired um and then we had a few alta alarms where um whitewater and and or i had to go out and mess with the float clear it and and get the pumps back up and we're not working again were any of those in the the the the the the 20 chamber that we were talking about earlier uh no just it was the alta wet well so yeah in the actual oh in the wet well okay in the wet well yeah and that's all i got okay the premature failure of the skater right under warranty do they have a root cause of what cause there is just um i guess they didn't tell me they first thought it was a power supply then they um thought it was the motherboard i'm not sure if that was the final answer um but they were surprised that the skater program was even still on it um i can find out more information from it if you'd like i'm just curious if there was a root cause to if it would happen again and are we still under warranty okay good questions i can definitely ask it fails again due to an external environment issue whether it's power or whatever yeah yeah okay it's yeah and and had that that has the the power vagaries that that that was we found something and repaired it yes um we did have um daigle and wilson controls came down and um did some work on our um mcp cabinets we have had a few um power blips since then but they seem to really only happen during like uh high wind storms and stuff so i think it that makes sense okay and and is there a rough date on the the uh the condo folks um connecting their plans um yeah i'm not sure about that but it's it's not as imminent as we thought back you're still we're still talking details on on the connection etc is what you were saying correct yeah i'm not sure i think they were they needed to send abby some final plans or something i'm not sure what the status of that was but yeah there were talks of the design yeah and i got to do a site visit and see what they were planning it does come down to plans that is correct they're just making sure they have to get those in and then they had a little delay i think because of the weather obviously even getting started so between those two things and the site visit was like walking across the street for charity yes yeah they already had the manhole open but they yeah they just showed me exactly what they were like how they were piping and stuff and and they don't it's not a change they're going into a manhole we're not there's no change on our end to get it to the facility. Correct. Yeah. Great. Okay.
Darren, Ed, anything else for Jared? Okay. Sarah, more to budget? More on anything else from your end? I have a monthly report if you want to go over that. Yeah. Sorry, it was up. It was up and then I did something. Is it up again? No, I meant the amount of our expense. I thought the forecast.
Oh, yes. It's changed a little. Last time was much more dramatic. So in any case, there's really not a huge change to expenses. In fact, we're trying to look at our purchase orders and see if there's anything we can liquidate that we're not going to end up needing. But the forecast takes that into account anyway. I would say, honestly, the biggest shift, I think I moved the sludge number a little bit because, you know, we spend on average about $3,000 to $4,000 in monthly bills for sludge disposal outside of the fog issue. So figuring there'd be about $12,000 more, it would get us up to like $66,000. And then there's a little bit of wiggle room at $72,000 for another cleaning, which we are going to have to do. And that comes to around $4,000 to $5,000 when it's done. So I think I lowered it a little bit. But it still accounts for that cleaning that needs to happen at Alta. The small capital down here is kind of like our catch-all to make sure that wherever we go over, we're reducing here. So, you know, we already know contingency is well overspent. And small equipment has gone down to accommodate that so that we land at 100% spent.
There isn't anything major in the expenses to talk about unless you see anything you want to talk about. Okay. I was looking at it on my phone, so I saw the $117,000 and I thought we were over. You're rebalancing to the $100,000. Okay, good. Okay. I saw the $117,000 and that's when I had in my brain like we were way up. No. No, we're okay. And $99,000 is still a good amount of money, you know, for small capital work. So that's good. As long as, you know, we just got to get three more months in without any major problems. So, then we get down to revenue. You know, the user charges, you know, that was obviously news to all of you today when we went over the rate study. It's something I hadn't really thought about, honestly, until I really started to pay attention for the rate study. And we would have, had we billed out 90 days for our Q3, which would have normally been our last revenue generating quarter for this fiscal, we would have probably been at that $570,000. But it was a little short at 71 days. It's because of the slight shift to transition. We're kind of like moving the quarter back a month, essentially, because the idea is that every billing month, there's a similar amount of accounts being billed. So, we don't want to have this month where we're billing like 2,000 constituents and then another one is 500. We'd rather have to spread that out. So, we're dealing with like maybe like 1,300, 1,300, 1,300 each month until we start the, you know, the next quarter. It's just easier on the staff here for billing and also managing customer, you know, issues and needs. That's for, that's the reason for the shift. We've always, we've been quarterly. That's not new to us. It's just we're, when we're billing quarterly, that has changed. Because of that, that 570, which I don't have updated in here, I should have, I should have updated that in here. It's going to be, we think 690 based on, you know, kind of expecting what we just got in the 71-day cycle because it's going to be around another 71-day cycle coming up. Sorry, not that. No, yeah, that's right. 71 should be about, put us at about 690. Hopefully. So, we won't see that. We'll know before the year, year-end. And we'll have data on what we build out by, you know, around mid-May. So, I'll be able to show you that before the rate hearing. We send it out prior if we need beforehand. So, yeah, so that really is going to go up. Like you said, even with math though, it, it's just the timing. So, it really doesn't impact whether you put it in 26 or 27. It, from the rate hearing thing, it doesn't matter. That's right. So, yeah, so that number is really 690. Nothing, no movement on the liens, really. And we're still at 334 on that operating, which is, we all just talked about that. So, you know, we're just looking at, you know, working with town centers. That 334 also had a 150 on top of it at one point, too. It did. That's the town center amount that we're expecting to come in in FY26 or 27, which like, like to point out, will matter. It'll still be a part of our five-year plan in the same way that it would be. Whether it was in 26 or 27. Right, right. So, timing, right. Yeah. And we do really want that. Yeah. Okay. And that's really, that's really all there is. There's nothing, nothing big in capital. Nothing's really changed. We haven't spent any money on the low-pressure sewer replacement. We do have a bill in, but, you know, it's going to be 75. We know it's going to be 75 in the end. That's what the contract is. So, that's really it. I'm good. Again, I saw the 117. So, I'm good. This is everything flowing. And everything we did with Matt already explains these numbers, so. Yeah. Exactly. Sarah, one question. Have you noticed a unit price increase in the sludge management? Usually, that's a great question. I probably have it right in front of me, too. I should look at that. I don't think so this time, but I will compare to last time. I know with, like, whitewater, we usually see a seasonal, an annual increase right around now. But these look pretty stable, these prices. Okay, good. These don't look any different. At first glance. I will compare them and check and make sure. And are they locked in for the year or? Not exactly. I think we're working on contracting a locked-in price, but not really. But luckily, it's been pretty consistent. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, between fuel surcharge and PFAS surcharge, it would be great if they kept it pretty flat. Yes. Okay. Ed, anything to questions on money? No. Okay. So, we move on. You talked, so, requests for new services. We talked, you mentioned that we're waiting to finalize something with the town center folks. Yes. Abby has been especially speaking with town center. We've come up with a sewer use application and a fee associated. And they're just deciding whether they can, they want to put that much money into it. Now, because they don't necessarily, they want the five, but they don't actually have the businesses to start using the five right away. So, they don't need to necessarily buy it all now. It is first come, first serve, as we know, and it's dwindling. But, so, they're weighing those options right now. We're trying to settle on a number soon, though, I think. Well, that's the more typical conversation we're used to. And if it involves, if it even involves something more involved, like a restaurant or whatever. That triggers them into the more, is it the more they have to pay for, so, we're not, so, protect everyone from, you know, concerns later. Okay. Ed, Darren, any questions on what's going on? Okay. And that brings us to the minutes, which I must submit. I did not look at. I looked at it prior. That's my fault. I like the new format. I like the new format. They standardized all the minutes, as far as, like, the headers and whatnot go. Yeah. So, trying to make it. It's easier to read. As easy as possible. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Has there been any discussion about letting the platform do your minutes? Is that, is that allowed in the public meetings? It does send me a transcript. And I've actually switched. I've switched to taking the transcript and editing the transcript, which is a lot of editing, believe me, just because of all the things it grabs and the timestamps and the adding people's names correctly, and then sometimes, somehow, it has the wrong name in the wrong spot occasionally. Okay. But, you know, and cutting out, you know, things that don't belong in the minutes, you know, so, you know, most of that is easier that way. Maybe at some point, though, maybe when they roll out the new whatever, they'll allow you to use more of an AI-based smart. Okay. Transcript. That would be lovely. Mm-hmm. Certainly not the most exciting part of my job to type the minutes, but, hey, we got to do it. I would, I would, I would pay attention to that if they allow it. I will. I use my work. It's phenomenal. Yeah. Awesome. And I, I imagine there's something when we log on that tells us that it's being done. So, hopefully, they'll let you. I scan through it. I, I have nothing to do. I'm good on my wording. Okay. I make a motion that we approve the March 9th, 2026 minutes as circulated. Second? Anyone? I'll second it. Okay. Darren Bock seconds. Okay. Mike Gitten, yes. Darren Bock, yes. Okay. Yes. And anything else to discuss? This has been a marathon for us. No. Okay. And our next meeting is, those, those are firm because we're on schedule, right? They're, they're. I think we already got them scheduled. Yeah. Yeah. The 11th of May is the next one. 11th of May for the May one, 12 PM. And then we have June 8th for the rate hearing and regular meeting combo. Yep. And I know we don't schedule July or August because we typically don't. So. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, with that, I make a motion to adjourn. Second that motion. Add to. Mike Giddens says yes. Darren Bock says yes. I hear Ed. Ed, thank.