 Yeah. Dr. Bussells. Here. Mr. Brennan. Mr. McDowell. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Present. May I recommend. Here. Uh, Reverend McDowell, do you mind saying a few words? Yes. Let us pray. For all that has been done for the tremendous blessings you've already bestowed upon each of us. We simply ask that you might touch us. Fill us with your love and your kindness. Continue to grow our city in such a way that folks' lives are changed and renewed. Be with everyone gathered in this room today. Allow them to sense and feel your nearness. We ask it. We claim it in your name. Amen. Amen. Before we start, uh, Reverend McDowell and I had an opportunity to go to in a marker unveiling today Miss Hedy Anderson. And y'all are pretty incredible that you're constantly history surfacing here about individuals that are connected to Columbia. For you that don't know, she, she actually was the model for the double eagle coin in several other very distinct pieces of art. And they're actually reproducing that. But, uh, incredible lady who lived in New York from Columbia moved back to Columbia. And it's just interesting every time we, we have an opportunity to learn more about our history and the people involved with it. It's pretty special. Where's the marker? It's down on Taylor Street, 600 block. It's number 223. We have 223 markers in Ridson County. Yeah. Well, no, we're not talking about street namings. We're talking about markers. Okay. Now there's about three blocks left in the city of Columbia to be named. Hedy Anderson was an African American female. A lot of folks didn't know that history until it was revealed to us, revealed to me almost six months ago. And I had an opportunity to read something about her. Something about her that was intriguing. She was called the most beautiful person in the United States. Check it out. You'd be surprised at the number of sites in Columbia where there is a significant African American presence. And that's what we're doing. That's what the mayor is trying to do is identify those places. And we thank you all to say she doesn't have a tombstone. They are erected a tombstone in her honor at Randolph Cemetery. Is it Elmwood or Randolph? I think she said Randolph. Randolph Cemetery. But please go by there and look at that marker. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. We are moving forward with our next budget workshop today. Two big items. And the first is a comprehensive update from Columbia Water. Mr. Clint Shealy, our assistant city manager of Columbia Water will lead that discussion. We'll incorporate our water and sewer update, but also the fiscal year 2023-2024 water and sewer financial plan. The stormwater system update with all of his team members and our external assistance from Robert Chambers as well. Mr. Mayor, I know you would agree that I wanted to give a shout out to Clint because he was particularly helpful to you and me over the last several days when we were in Washington and really doing some great advocacy work for the benefits of the citizens of Columbia and getting our canal repaired. So we want to thank you for that. You did a great job. Thank you all for including me in that. And I don't want to be too overly optimistic, but early indications are it's bearing some really good fruit. We'll find out more tomorrow. So really excited and did an unbelievable job. And really cool experience. Very cool experience. Thank you all for including me in that. Thank you for the opportunity to share an update about Columbia water and what we're doing, what your team is doing. I'm really proud of the work that these folks are doing. We've got Lattimer and Dana Higgins and Frank Eskridge and the team, many members of the team here today in case there are any hard questions, they're the ones that will know the answers. What they're doing every day to serve our customers is really, really strong work and it gets better every day. I just want to say thank you to y'all in public for what you do for us. Appreciate you. We wanted to share just a little information and I'll try to be as brief as I can because the smooth tones of Robert Chambers will be after me. I've heard that album. I'm not sure I want to read it. Let's start off with a little organizational assessment and restructuring. As we looked at Columbia water as an organization, we've got the priorities, number one, customer service and being responsive. And then being efficient and using technology to benefit our customers. And then we also wanted to make sure we had appropriate span of control within our, how we manage the work, how we balance that work and that we're giving a consistent response every time to serve our customers' needs. Some of the recommendations that are coming out of that, a little restructuring we're doing with customer care. Many of you know about already and so we'll talk about that. Consolidation of some management areas in Frank's area of responsibility as well. What he's done looking at cutting back positions, you'll see a net decrease of 13 positions, at least in Columbia water in this year's proposed budget and five that are at least at a management, if not a senior management level position. So we're looking to try to make sure we've got appropriate folks in the right position so they can be successful. That's going to generate some potential, some opportunity for existing staff, which we think is great for them to grow and continue in their career. So a little bit more about the restructuring. You can see the red arrows, and instead of the customer care division, we now have the Department of Customer Services and our director is Ms. Tiffany Latimer. I'm so proud of Tiffany and what she's done. We've got team and just helping that continue to grow. It was a logical progression as we moved from manually meeting readers to our manually reading meters to our AMI process to move that data collection and effort and consistency with getting accurate reads into our customer services group that are out checking and doing turn-ons and turn-offs. So that has happened. Tiffany's got some obvious communication and marketing skills as well. So now she's going to be providing direct oversight over our communications group that pushes out messages for Columbia water, including our Boil Water Advisories, Traffic Advisories, et cetera. So really proud of her. And then I mentioned some of the things that Frank is doing as well and the restructuring that we've got coming up there, making sure that we're being consistent and efficient in how we do field operations, whether or not it's fixing a water leak or repairing a sewer backup. A lot of these activities, there's a lot of synergy there, managing a warehouse, doing these types of things. So really excited about what's happening there. I'm going to let Tiffany talk for a few minutes about the things that she's doing as our new director. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm very honored for the promotion, the new position. I think it definitely helps us to improve our services as far as our responsiveness to our customers and just move in more of a positive direction. As you know, customer service, our customers and our citizens are at the forefront of what we do and why we do it. So I'm delighted just to share some of the, just highlight some of the things that we have done in the past few years in the customer services department. Many of these you already are aware of, but like I said, I just kind of want to highlight some of these things and then give you a little bit of information as far as our future objectives for our customer services department. So to begin, who can tell me in the last several years, well prior to the last several years, what was our most common complaint received from our customers and our citizens when calling? Absolutely. Right, absolutely, absolutely. So in April of 2020, for example, our calls were average wait time was as high as 30 minutes with a 25% abandoned rate. So yes, that was our most common complaint that we received from our customers and our citizens in previous years. So in the last few years, we've done a number of things to rectify that huge issue in an effort to provide our customers and our citizens with quicker, more responsive service as what they deserve. So one of those things in October of 2020, we upgraded our phone system to the nice in contact platform which is through AT&T as our vendor. That included features such as a virtual callback option which you probably are aware of and probably have experienced before where it holds your place in line. You can hang up and then you'll get a callback once your representative is available. It also included online chat. So we introduced online chat and we use that every day. Also it includes wall board monitoring which is, if you can see that picture at the top, we didn't have those in our call center prior to this change but we have them now and it's been a great benefit as far as staff accountability and just so our supervisors can always know what's going on as far as our call wait times, our call handling times and those things. Also in another common complaint that we got besides the call wait time, a huge one was also just being able to get service with us. So wanting to set up water and sewer service was somewhat of a lengthy process and pretty much to me it was just a matter of a lot of paper. Customers had to actually fill out a contract and bring it into us face to face or they would have to email it and fax it. So in September of 2021, we went to a online process where customers can now submit their contracts online from our website which of course provides quicker processing and submission. So that's been very, very beneficial. We've seen our numbers as far as our contracts go up quite a bit on a daily basis since we've implemented the online form. Another thing we've done is we have there was a requirement that required for anyone to get new service they had to provide a rental agreement or they had to provide home purchasing documents. So we've eliminated that requirement to make it easier for our customers to get service and to get business with us. Another thing about that as well what we had customers that once they submitted the application they would have to call us in order to have us process it over the phone. So we eliminated that as well. So now of course when they submit their application they get an automatic email saying that their contract is being processed and they don't have to call us. So those are just a few things as far as setting up new service with us that we have changed over the last few years to make it easier for our customers. As you know we opened up 3000 Hardin Street, our customer and payment center providing free parking to our customers as well as our customer service reps have private offices where our customers can come in and speak with a representative one-on-one to discuss matters as far as their sewer billing, water billing, storm water and also they can also submit contracts there. And then of course the drive-through the drive-through has been a great convenience to our customers over there at Hardin Street so we are very excited about opening up that location over there on Hardin Street. Huge big change. March of 2022, prior to that as you know many of you know we operated as a 24-hour call center. So with the support of our mayor may you recommend Ms. Wilson our executive team leadership we were able to go to Monday through Friday as far as our main hours we hired an answering service called Answering Plus to handle our emergency only after-hours calls so they handle our calls during the holidays the weekends and after six o'clock Monday through Friday. Of course as you can imagine that helped increase morale in our department and motivation as well as far as with our staff. So that was a huge change and so far we've heard nothing but good things from the answering service anytime there's issues they're very responsive and it's just a matter of phone call if there's any concerns or issues. Another, well most recently this past January with the help of our IT department and other department personnel we upgraded our billing system so we are still with hands and technologies which is our previous vendor that we've had but we've upgraded the system which has included some enhancements for our customers. One being a phone number lookup to remember that 16 digit customer code number anymore they can just put their phone number in to access their account. So a huge huge benefit for our customers to be able to get the information. Am I looking on something? I don't think it's just emails. So yes another thing is our customers can now make payment arrangements over the phones. They don't have to speak with us live they can just make the payment arrangements over the phone. Depending on you know if you've defaulted three times in the last 12 months there's just some criteria that's built in but that's been like I said another huge benefit just to allow our customers not just still having to speak with us but to do those things through the IBR which is our interactive voice response system. So as you know like I said as far as just some of these technology advancements we've done in the last few years to make things a little bit easier for our customers we I just want to share some information with you not only do you know we service as far as just new accounts and a host of other things as far as just processing mail and contracts and helping other department requests but our assistance programs so we've been able to help many of customers just inform them about you know information and programs that are out there to them to assist them with paying their water and sewer bills I just wanted to share a couple numbers with you here so since last July our customer assistance program which is through the city was able to help over 300 customers with a total amount of funds of over $130,000 $420 customers were assisted with a total of over $230,000 in funds from South Carolina homeowners rescue program and then over 1400 customers were assisted funds tolling over $670,000 in funds from the low income water assistance program some future objectives for the customer services department include a campaign to increase paperless billing that's just something I'm looking forward to doing because we spend quite a bit of money as you can imagine in postage and delivery that's providing a payment option for customers on our online website to just pay as a guest sometimes like I said people don't always have their account number information just to pay as a guest quicker, easier so that is something that we know that we have the capability to be able to do also possible automated service reconnections which means allowing a customer to be able to pay their past due amount and then an automated reconnection service is created so that's just another objective that we're looking into for the future and then to increase our customer engagement through our eye on the water tool that allows customers to track their consumption and set alerts so we know our numbers aren't where they want we want them to be but we're always looking at increasing those numbers and increasing that customer engagement so that is just a few things I wanted to highlight about just kind of where we've been and speaking back on the high wait times I'm proud to say over the last year our average call wait time has been five minutes or less every single month for the last year so that's been a huge change from where we were that is all I have is there any questions or comments yes sir? that's an excellent report and all the things you do are decreasing the calls that we as council members get into AMI I mean phone calls went way down with AMI I think the city manager needs to study the possibility of eliminating a couple of council seats we're not we don't have enough work to do with all the stuff that they're doing to help the customers we started in the 24th I think what he's saying is he's going early I do want to say that this is exactly when we all met in our strategic plan at planning sessions and sat down and said we want our budget to reflect investment and training technology into our employees and giving them the autonomy to do their job this is exactly what we anticipated everything that's happened is because we allowed our staff to do what they needed to do because we gave them the tools and the technology to do it I think it's great I mean it really has tremendously cut down on calls to council and city hall did they take care of your digit number on your paying your bill? oh yeah now that you use your phone you don't have the missing digit for those who have ever paid their bill like that we used to get a bill that didn't have your full digit on so if you went online you couldn't actually pay your bill you didn't have all the digits Tim we have the capability I was just going to say I think this really speaks to where we started a year ago about wanting to improve interactions with the city and we have the data and some of the technology really to back that up and I wanted to give a compliment one of our constituents in Elmwood reached out and they had used one of the online technologies to put a work order in for Columbia water and she said someone came out in 30 minutes and she was like are you sure this is the city? I was like yes this is the city I think it really speaks to us really prioritizing that experience is it's going to happen on time and we're going to be consistent about it so thank you yeah absolutely just want to echo everybody's comments y'all are doing a fantastic job for the one or two that we we do hear about the not so positive interactions with customer service is do y'all have the capability to go back and listen to that exchange you know and use that as a learning lesson for our wonderful staff? yes sir we do all calls are recorded so absolutely is that something y'all do? we do we have audits so our supervisors do random audits but if there's some of course that are in particular that we need to go back we can definitely do that because of y'all the calls being recorded perfect thank you yes sir alright thank you and she's just getting started so it's really really good and thank you mayor for making the comment about and Dr. Bust about just you know empowering the staff the team to get it done they've got great ideas much more to come but having the tools to do that really really important so Tiffany thank you I wanted to give her plenty of time to talk about these things that we've done so I'll pick up the pace a little bit we part of this organizational assessment we looked at benchmarking ourselves versus other utilities American Water Works Association is one of the the groups of we're invited to participate in their annual surveys and so they're surveying utilities across the nation we looked at some of the results with the help of Brian Cully and their team with CDM Smith and it validates that we need to improve on customer service and responses staff retention and recruitment and we need to invest in infrastructure renewal those are some of the things that came out of it I'm not going to do a deep dive but a couple of the old stats about you know who responded we tried to look at our staffing level number of full-time equivalents that we have versus some of our peers what our normalized costs are things like line leaks and breaks and complaints and SSOs those types of things that are typically reported every utilities a little bit different so it's not always an apples to apples comparison but we try to do the best we could with the data that we had what it's showing us is that if we're fully staffed that our number of accounts per full-time employee is somewhere in the middle there probably about where it should be of course we're not fully staffed but if we could get fully staffed with our request for this year then we'd be feeling pretty good about how we compared to other utilities part of our system we are the capital city but we've got 2,300 miles of water piping so a lot of utilities that serve 400,000 people in a much more urban area have one-third to one-half the miles of pipe that we have so we've got a very rural component to our system as well which makes it a little more difficult to maintain the pretty efficient with respect to the number of FT's per million gallons of water produced and wastewater collected a little below average there and so very poor however in employee retention our tenure less than 5 years now organization and that's concerning and a pretty high turnover rate so continuing to work in those areas to improve and try to reach best in class is really really important for us complaints and work orders no surprise there we're not doing great in that area because of the age and condition of our system and needing to continue to invest in infrastructure did do fairly well very very low in cost per million gallon treated and that strictly operation and maintenance cost per million gallon treated both in water and wastewater so he's based on 22 or current 22 let's see 22 yes sir 22 so looking a little further we wanted to look at our backlog we didn't stare too much at the American Water Works Association survey he's got to live where you are and do better with what you've got so but it is nice to compare and see where we've got strengths and weaknesses as an organization the we continue to track this backlog of work orders and we look at that every month actually we look at it quite more frequently than that but we're sharing that every month continuing to have quite a few vacancies in our field positions and both water distribution and wastewater collection looking to hopefully do something with that this coming year part of the strategy that we've been using is a blended strategy of trying to staff up and also use small local contractors where we don't have the people in the bodies in the positions right now the work's got to get done we've got to reduce this backlog and so this current fiscal year we funded collectively you allowed us to do a million dollars worth of leak repair and restoration and asphalt paving restoration work this year we're seeing the need in order to whittle that backlog down we'd like to take that up to six and a half million of funding just again to be aggressive be responsive in driving that backlog down Now are you tying in this into investments into technology to allow the workflow system to be much more efficient you know I mean I think that was one of the things that we struggled with was getting those work orders to the appropriate place obviously even with the third party contractors we had some is there a new seamless way to create that so that you know when you finish doing what we do best which is to fix the leak having that immediately sent to a third party to go patch it I mean our goal should be within 48 hours that that hole build and done yes sir and it is improving we're not there yet mayor but we're much better than we were in terms of city works generating the work orders capturing all the work in the system the having what we've done is refined our process of working with these small local contractors they're operating almost an extension of staff now and that the cost effectiveness is improving and the efficiency and speed at which the repairs are made are improving so that is something and I'll show you a cost graphic here in a moment that kind of demonstrates rather than pulling things together as a batch and then putting them out for bid we're just making phone calls and saying I need to go fix x y and z today and they're getting it done so that that is working and working better quality and quality and control kind of process to make sure the contractors because you see a lot of the work that's done I think I pointed out several in district 3 yes sir it's good for a couple of days but then that that sinkhole starts to come back after a subcontractor has been on it sinkhole will come back the water leak springs again those sorts of things we've got a dedicated project manager sitting at belt line for water distribution and a dedicated project manager with inspectors for wastewater work so that's the system that we've implemented so we're laying eyes when those contractors out there we're putting our eyes on their work and making sure it gets done correctly part of the that repetition problem if they're putting a repair coupling on a really old brittle pipe it's going to break 10 is the rework take priority in the list of of catch up jobs yes sir it does because usually they're working in that area and they'll circle back and if it takes three months to give way again they and they move somewhere else it's different but okay so we are trying to watch that very closely closely so so in terms of work I wanted to show you a graph of service request and our trend and work orders in our trend you remember we had really hard freezing around Christmas and our work order backlog that progress we were making that downward trend flattened out went up a little bit part of that moving back up was also in January and February and in March we put a concerted effort into clearing this log jam of service request so when a customer calls the 545300 number to report a leak we may get 3 or 4 or 5 calls about that same leak each of those generates a service request so we've got this backlog of service request that would only generate one work order because they're all about the same leak so you may have a 4 to 10 to 1 ratio but sometimes it's 1 to 1 hey the service line in my yard is leaking so we wanted to do everything we could to try to clear that backlog of service request which generated work orders that have to be worked but now we're starting to trend back down on work orders as well so the the holidays generated work orders but also a whole lot of service request that we needed to try to can see the spike in December there on the left the um so in on average we receive 1280 new service request every month that generates about 790 work orders each month some things come in as a work order and not a service request but that's kind of the baseline the monthly flow that you're looking at is 790 or so work orders we'd love to see that backlog pushed down to the flow coming in once we get there then we can start thinking about okay what's our level of service how quickly are we getting these repaired and starting to look at at what best in class operation looks like and we're getting there we are reducing this trend and I think the changes that we're proposing with additional contractor support is going to help us this coming year system-wide that's not just municipality the 790 yes sir that's um that is our utility utility yes sir not in the city limits of learning that's do you all have an idea of why we're seeing a drop in terms of staff so yes yes ma'am we saw a bit of a surge we made some adjustments we did the essential $2 an hour raise for field employees and we're seeing a little bit of a dip now and hoping that that trend turns I think we made five offers last week so just seeing some turn in those positions we do have a strategy that we're going to propose in this year's budget as well that we think will stabilize that and maybe improve the retention rate of the old staff so a great question I wanted to show you a little comparison about um and this is a comparison that we did ourselves um so I'll be very transparent about that of what we're paying contractors under different delivery models versus what our staff could make those repairs for something mayor the child asked for last year just to kind of get an idea what it's showing us and we've got a couple of different metrics here does it include yard restoration or not but the first three bars or if city staff does it the last two are a model of contracting out and there are certain things that contractors can do at roughly the same cost that we can and there are certain things that we can do a lot cheaper and we looked at double overhead rates you know equipment carrying costs those sorts of things and tried to make sure we had an apples apples comparison that is difficult to do but I want to point out the um meter sets um which is the fourth bar graph over we're seeing that the contractors can set meters and install new taps pretty darn efficiently and so I think we've got 400 going out they're working probably next week on setting new meters there that's something that they can do and do quickly and work really be very effective you factor in time yeah one thing I think the reason why we're trying some of this is yes we have the capability to do it but when you add in the time factor that it takes us to get there because of our limited resources the costs are much different you know because we're all dealing with it yes sir the staff time I get what you're doing and you're right there's some things but I think you've got to factor that in too yes sir I hear you loud and clear and this would be if we had a clean slate and we had a team ready to go versus the contractor had a team ready to go unfortunately we don't have a clean slate we've got a pretty significant backlog we don't have the option that's why we've got to use both we've got to have our team and we want to get that team sized appropriately so that they can handle that 790 that are coming in every month and so one day we won't have to use we'll probably always need contractors but we won't have to use them as aggressively as we're doing right now we're a little ways away from that and I think we'll add a little more juice to that this next year is going to help us be even more responsive so I show this just to say and you can see some of the far right bars where if we package these up and bid them out we pay more but if we can use them based on unit pricing that the contractors have given us time of material pricing unit pricing for labor for the jobs and use them as an extension of staff which is that next to the right bar we get a little better value there so that's the model that we're trying to use more did you make a model on the complete repair so because most of that is things that we do very well where we where we have the big gap is going back and getting to the plate getting the whole field getting the asphalt getting the landscaping done all those things that backlog does have you don't look at that at the secondary side to that mayor this would capture the cost but it wouldn't capture the pain and suffering and time to get it done for the customer so when we do it ourselves it's making a repair it's sending it over to public works and Roberts team and street division particularly paving there was Roberts time he's come and he knows I'm going to say this they're hopefully understaffed as well so it's really a challenge for them to get out and do that paving so now we might fix a repair and then call a contractor to do the patch so kind of blending those models together you're saying that the contractor lead time is significantly different than the staff lead time yes sir it is right now yes sir it is significantly our response time is significantly greater based on we've we've got relationships with these contractors now they're dedicating crews and we're keeping them busy doing our work so that extension of staff model seems to be working premium to tighten up the timeline we are yes sir yes sir I think we would say we cut down from what 6800 orders to exactly right so we made significant progress and I think if we can get caught up and levelize the service calls we would we're not where we want to be but we wouldn't be anywhere close if we didn't have the contractor support we'd be getting those emails and those phone calls they stop calling about water bill and it's not answering the phone phone service so with these contracting opportunities there are opportunities for small local businesses and we continue to try to work with our Aisha and the OBO team to to expand those opportunities so I just wanted to let y'all know is expanded funding is going to mean more opportunities for folks is memory serves me I think one of the challenges that we seem to have back then it wasn't it was how we were having to procure for stuff we had to add so many layers that it made it hard for us to procure like some of the landscape and other things have we kind of now at the point that figured out where those hurdles are levelized so we can get it to those small businesses so that they can do those things that will benefit us and the customer yes sir we absolutely have we've worked with the department procurement contracts and they've allowed us a lot of flexibility to do this unit price work and select contractors based on qualifications we're looking to package up some of this work and send it out to protégé only or CDBE type contractors working with OBO to give more opportunity for them as well we've had two projects that um the CDBE contractor bid and we required that a CDBE contractor make the taps under the supervision of somebody it's already on our approved tapping list we said in this conference room and talked about that strategy so we've had two contractors get some experience that way and are working to try to expand on that as well so I wanted to touch real briefly on economic development successes everybody knows about scout motors we can't pick up the paper really without hearing about that but I really just want to emphasize water and sewer are a major driver for economic development when we talk to to these prospects it used to be water and sewer was there would be a delay to get service to them and power was there immediately now it's I can't get your transformer for another 12 months but the water and sewer is there so we've really been marketing these industrial parts strong and that Blackwood would not have happened scout motors wouldn't have happened if we didn't have such a strong utility up there and then the investments that Columbia made predating me to bring that 48 inch water line across the northern part of the county slam dunk it really just it made it easy so I was just curious what kind of revenue will we get out of this project for the next 15 years so Mr. Brown it's about a million gallon a day customer and I'm going to have to get the number for you I calculated their average bill and I just can't remember off time can I I'd like to see this yes sir absolutely and the beauty of this one is based on some feedback we had from from council we we really worked with Department of Commerce and Richland County and said you know we got some projects we got to do we don't have any money to do it so if you want us to and this is on the wastewater side if you want us to serve them and we're the only one the only game in town that can handle an industry like that we need some help and we got 35 million to make him one of the few things we can actually leverage yes sir yes sir and that really worked out well for us you're being gracious I mean the negotiation went very well without him having to offer incentivizing anything I mean they were very willing as he told them that you know we didn't need to kind of come up with a special rate or anything like that yes ma'am that's true but there had always also been times where things were put on the table as if we still should have and so I appreciate him handling it the way he did we must have high self-esteem the side in the side in Mississippi was the other game that we were playing against we've had Mark Anthony on one side of town scout on the other side of town that are big water users how much more capacity do we have so up for Blythewood industrial park we estimated they're going to use a million gallons a day there's going to be some support industry up there we estimated 8 to 10 million gallons of excess capacity to serve that site that is a 48 inch super highway of water an interstate pipeline delivering it to the northeast and also to serve that future development so that was kind of baked into the equation and with the improvements that we'll be making we'll have several million gallons a day of sewer as well we expect the excess capacity we expect the residential growth that will happen our water service area is going to be really good for us tangentially around that site it's already booming out there so I did want to mention I've spoken to council it's been several years ago about a wastewater distribution service area dispute that we had with time Nye America and Palmetto utilities Southwest water South Carolina water utilities part of this industrial park all of it sits either in disputed area on who should serve it or it sits in southwest water service area they can't handle a categorical industrial discharge so Richland County asks us to serve so of course we said we would be glad to and I immediately called my counterpart at Southwest Water and said look I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you this is just reality of what's happening this is going to be good for all of us if it hits we didn't know if it would hit or not we've pulled Richland County to the table because they've got some wastewater service area tangential to this as well that they have no infrastructure in whatsoever Southwest Water is interested in that we've got a component of residential area that's in the disputed territory that we're willing to true up with them give them that residential area we take the big industrial customer that's categorical that they couldn't serve we had talked about dividing this baby way and it tried to come up with some solutions those conversations just never matured this is making those conversations mature so you should see a memorandum of understanding and a request to the cog that will be signed by the county by Southwest Water and by us to modify the 208 service area for wastewater and clean up these lines moving forward so I'm glad that'll happen that's a legacy issue we've been dealing with for a while with this rate we're still negotiating but I think with the piece that Richland County is bringing in I think we're going to be in good shape there the only remaining piece is it was the there was a project on the other side on the the eastern side of interstate 77 where we think a lot of suppliers will land Southwest Water would love to serve that if they're non categorical industrial they probably can if they're categorical they'll have to come to us we're trying to work this out I don't want to put a pipe under 77 another pipe under 77 if we're not having customers that wouldn't make sense so we're trying to work all that out right now I'm sorry y'all I'm getting along winded I apologize funding assistance potentially good news based on the DC trip I will know more tomorrow and I'll be sure to let y'all know as soon as I know on the canal recovery we found out about the skip grants remember the state had allocated 900 or $950 million for water and sewer infrastructure grants we stood here last year and talked about that as a component of our capital program we were successful getting a $10 million award for the Crane Creek wastewater storage tank which is great we weren't successful at all for rosewood water quality improvements which stinks and it really we're a little upset about it we're a utility that provides water wastewater and stormwater some other entities that are in the same geography may only you may have one entity providing water one providing wastewater one providing stormwater each of them may have gotten an award we got one award was that for phase two and three of rosewood that we were holding off on phase one councilman that was ready to go having it ready we sent it to procurement this morning after we found out we didn't get they delayed we actually added more funding added another $450 million to it so we're a little disappointed we're going to do some debriefs with RIA we can only talk to Miss Bonnie Ammons I think is the one why don't we set up a meeting yes sir we'll definitely do that phase two phase two has proven to work well for us probably a good idea for us to sit down with Bonnie Dana and I described this very scenario to Miss Bonnie five months ago probably we'll bring some rosewood residents along yes that would be good phase three phase one of rosewood went to procurement this morning so we're moving on that job we've got the funding to do it we were holding off and hoping to do a little bit more with the skip dollars well that's okay we're going to show progress that decision those awards were actually delayed they were supposed to be in by March 30th March 31st and they were delayed until I think came out yesterday we heard so is it because of the size that we are as an utility they didn't want to grant us the money and rather loan us the money Mayor they would love to loan us money and I wish you could see Jeff's face by now we'll think about that in the future but I think part of it is it's easy for them to draw a line for we and cat per organization and I really think that's what happened there's also a theory floating amongst us that we got so much help with the scout motors well they've already gotten 35 million we're just going to give them 10 from the ARPA dollars or should we reply with three different applications for one for each entity we should have called ourselves Columbia water in one and the city and the others maybe I don't talk about these things and really let's do a follow up we absolutely will and we're going to continue that last but I'm continuing leverage for department of commerce dollars as much as possible so just really quickly consent decree for wastewater we're meeting our dates we're on schedule so I won't belabor that we've moved from from a lot of programs to a lot of project delivery we've got to deliver these projects within a certain time frame or we pay fines we did just last week submit our force majeure request based on the impacts of COVID and so that has gone into EPA we're essentially asking for two years so there's a lot of acronyms here and different pieces and parts but we're asking for two year extension and that time that we're required to deliver these projects or pay a fine so a little more breathing room there we'll be we're very hopeful yes sir we're very hopeful we know others have gotten extensions based on COVID that were in some most situations and our request is legitimate we absolutely had some legitimacy there our sanitary sewer overflow count continues to track down that is progress that's one of the key metrics that we've got to hit in order to get out of this consent decree one day we had a difficult Easter weekend at Metro with a power outage I saw some of those notifications that was unfortunate but working through that and we learned some things there as well these are the different programs again everything right on track with submitting and meeting deadlines and completing those but that moves us toward you've got to deliver the project that's what we're talking about now this is some of the categories infrastructure rehabilitation supplemental which is smaller pipes think larger pipes on the left smaller pipes next to left and then capacity assurance which is you can't grow anymore you can't add any more flow unless you upsize this pipe so those add up those first three columns add up to about $400 million worth of spend that's there either active in design or in construction of course some other things that are related to the consent decree we've spent about $400 million to date those three columns we think that the totals will be about $950 million that was information Brian you shared with us a few meetings together we're probably looking at a total spend of $950 now not $750 as we had said that's the inflation adjusted number about halfway there so how much more do we have to pay is it $500 million a little less than $500 million so about $450 million left of projects to deliver as estimated with some inflation adjustment there on the wastewater side versus the water side this is consent some of the consent degree was on the water about $150 million maybe a little bit of waste treatment plant we're not under consent order for the drinking water side we've done a good bit of those things at the treatment plant at Metro almost halfway there a lot of projects and deadlines to go the force majeure request allows us to spread that peanut butter for an investment of $80 million a year for wastewater and water if we can continue that trend we can work our way out of this there are of course other things that we have to do that aren't consent degree related as well but this is helping us renew our system on the wastewater collection side so that leads us to our request what are you asking for what do you need we're going to ask for $120 million again that $80 million wastewater 40 million water split to help us with consent degree compliance and make capacity investments on the water side it's geared toward water quality mainly and you've heard us talk about these perflornated substances there's about $200,000 in for us to do a treatability study fire hydra replacement why isn't that covered by the fire hydra fee this paid right here CIP projects it says fire hydra I'm sorry so the hydrants themselves we typically fund the hydrant work out of water and sewer that's typically the way it's been done they seem to correct me if I'm wrong and the fire fee is paying for the fire hydra fee if there is a hydra fee why isn't this budgeted in that I think that it has more to do with ongoing monitoring than the fire department does where they go out and test hydrants every year I believe that's what that charge is I think that's right we need a fire we need chief Jenkins to tell us for sure but I don't know that there's any necessarily rhyme or reason to it I think this is how we've just done it we've probably done it but it probably should go into that category I mean because fire hydra replacement for us is everybody in our service territory which are not all in the city of Columbia so I mean if there's a way for us to look at that maybe it's too late now but in the future incorporating that into that hydra fee makes sense to me because hydra fee if I'm right is outside city customers inside city would not pay a fire hydra fee I think we've also wanted to leave some flexibility there too for older putting on the table for discussion absolutely so you can see some of the things that we're doing it's really a lot of replacing aging infrastructure consent decree is geared toward that water quality improvements geared toward that as well so 40 million we've got shandon and rosewood water line replacement projects on here hardened street booster pump station to help us move water around you'll see AMI meter changeouts and I know you're thinking wait a minute we just spent 40 million dollars on AMI there were about 4,000 meters that there are roots in the meter box the contractor couldn't get they were problematic it was going to destroy somebody's yard whatever we said well we'll take care of those so we're peeling those off and dealing with those separately the more problematic installations again that's about 4,000 out of 155,000 we only paid the AMI contractor for work completed so we held that money back and are using it so is that an ask or is that a leftover used on that we didn't pay for them we had some money left over that was washed out and so now we're asking for new so it all kind of rolls back into the fund and now we're asking identifying a new project so we didn't do a change order anything like that that contractor quoted us pre routine meter changeouts not more difficult things so we package will be packaging and bidding I think it's coming next council meeting in fact I believe so we've got a local contractor will be doing that work I'm sorry did someone else have for all the future growth you know northeast Garner's Ferry all the new residential growth how does the new water meter how do you charge for that for new services that you know are we paying for it in advance so the meter fee has changed and there's a different cost now from before so now that you're paying for the digital meter so there's a there's a meter paid for over time through bills um they pay for it up front that's the new account I can't remember off top now so the new meter fee have we changed that to now we talked about it okay so I think Robert we need to think about that the cost that that's the cost of the old analog meter essentially and setting that up so we may need to how much is in the meter 200 they're paying 45 we're paying about we make that up over time but that's a fee that hasn't been adjusted yet so okay and they're pay they're accurate so that helps as well so we're not losing revenue there but that that's a great point councilman thank you okay that's a quick map showing what we'll be making the water improvements the wastewater improvements just quick highlights there it's rocky branch it's a lower crane creek work that some additional funding for the storage tank to match funding that we've already gotten the solutor of a force main extension is a project that will highlight momentarily and investing heavily in some of the rehabilitation work as well $80 million in the collection system a little bit at the treatment plant there's a map a graphical map of where those improvements will be happening can we get at some point an updated cost structure to treat outside city wastewater yes sir yes sir absolutely let's work on that we will most definitely do that the um I wanted to share with y'all a graphic and I'm getting near the end of my time and then we'll let Robert come in I'm sorry for being long-winded several years ago six or eight years ago we we would come to you and we would ask for a certain CIP amount and we wouldn't be able to deliver that amount so we might ask for $100 million and we will end much again so we've really been working on our processes to try to make sure that we can crank that work out and this is a graphic of of the last five years and you can show that y'all have awarded us in capital improvement projects $400 million and we've executed to date $371 million we believe by the end of the fiscal year we'll be at about $390 million so we've refined the process so that what you're granting us we're able to deliver some projects take longer than others so that it isn't necessarily a year-to-year balance but looking at the trend over time makes sense and it's showing that we can deliver through procurement through legal reviews through real estate through working with consultants we can deliver the work that y'all have been been asking us to deliver and we continue to refine that process I'm going to skip over a couple highlights and some cool pictures of the projects this one is being completed in May of 2023 just next month almost a $21 million investment this one is at $15 million to be completed in June potentially some recreational pathway there as well this is rehabilitation work using a lot of trenchless technology which is much better for the community and pretty darn cost-effective $19 million to be completed in November we've got a Saluta River force main extension project y'all challenges to think a little differently we're doing our first construction management at risk project on the water and wastewater side for that extension it includes negotiating with West Columbia they were going to put a pedestrian bridge across the river we were going to tunnel under the river with a force main based on the rock quality that tunnel kept getting deeper and deeper and more and more expensive we're going to hang our force main and disguise it underneath their bridge and we're going to help pay for the bridge and come out way ahead it's going to be a lot cheaper that's the plan at least so discussions on going with that is it going to be where they wanted it that's a terrible place for a bridge we didn't cite it but it's where we need our pipe and it's where they want their bridge so that came together fairly well we'll have some graphics for you you're going to ruin a natural phenomenon on the Saluta River bridge there okay it's West Columbia's bridge we're just hanging a pipe underneath it it was by far the most terrible way for us to get from point A is it the rampage on the Saluta River where our parking lot is and thousands of people will be viewing that area and it's going to be screwed up by bridge the power lines haven't already screwed up the view that's exactly where they are power lines that's a terrible place for a bridge I was away from the power lines I don't think it's an issue we are on the cusp of releasing a request for expression of interest to convert our biogas through a public-private partnership to energy and so we think that'll be a nice project and hopefully we can find a good business partner to work and look at expanding those partnerships on solar we are close to a solar farm at our Lake Murray water treatment plant in a delay in Metro still so we decided to move that funding for that contract is still good in Metro you need to put another RFP out because that's sitting on a closed dang near four years I think we need to execute Lake Murray and then probably resellicit for Metro absolutely we're going to use the power at Lake Murray that's right that's the plan any questions before Robert gets up here and delivers the biscuits thank y'all for your time I appreciate that sorry we were long winded Howard so this will be right where the sleeter of a rock is it'll be you know where the Ranger house is and the parking lot candy land it'll be on the west side of that opening there it'll be hideous it'll be true that's where you supposed to launch the rafting now you have a launch to get in there but an ugly bridge too you do want to get across right you can swing from the bridge and if y'all want to install a zipline across I would love a zipline I'd choose a zipline any day Robert hopefully the bridge is better looking than the train track good afternoon good evening Stamir Council everyone at the meeting so we're here today to follow up and kind of build on our previous presentation regarding the financial plan and the financial performance of the water sewer system you know we'll highlight a few items and points that you've seen before as it relates to the drivers you know why we're here and then we'll jump into the financial plan you know we keep highlighting these key components because you know it's at the core of what we do is at the core of what the utility does in serving customers or that customers have served at the lowest possible cost so jumping right in and you know as I go through if there are any questions please stop me and ask no problem no worries we're performing an independent review of the water and sewer system financials which includes revenues and expenses we're really looking about understanding you know what you're operating and capital requirements are you know and discussing your results as such going about understanding what it takes to serve existing customers from a cost of service perspective and then putting together the plan as it relates to designing rates around you know how big is the pie who's driving the cost and then how you design the rates or recover the rates required so that you recover the sufficient revenues to run your system appropriately so moving into the drivers you know ultimately the goal and objective is to continue to run a sustainable utility system through you know integrated financial planning stakeholder engagement in the form of understanding what your customers require for example the examples around customer service you know directly impacts how you operate on a daily basis as it relates to let's say for example call times how you optimize you know customer reps time as it relates to the customer service component for example and then you know striving to achieve business excellence you know Mr. Shealy showed and demonstrated the benchmarking survey and how you ran and that in some areas you're doing better than others that's a part of the path and the process and roadmap you know to achieve business excellence in trying to get there items like revenue stability and your operations are around meeting your operating account programs your consent decree requirements and you know are you appropriately staffed as we're talking earlier if there's a break how long it takes it to get there what's the quality of the repair that's all a part of achieving business excellence and then making sure that you take into consideration the current market conditions for example inflation for example having the appropriate resources to do the job and making sure you're integrated with the market to attract and keep and optimize those resources so this is all a part of you know operational resilience and running and meeting your requirements to achieve a stable operating practice or stable utility so we've seen this slide and really what I want to highlight here is the fact that you've gone through some significant significant events and in doing that you've stayed resilient and you continue to be resilient and it's because of the efforts and the practices and the strategy and policy this group have put in place to drive performance within the utility you know we've seen some of these items you know clean water 2020 you're implementing the program you know historically or recently few years back you had that flooding event you're you know building out your storm water utility you know all these things have an impact as it relates to how you operate so I'll go to the next slide so in developing the FY 24 financial plan you know we have a few assumptions that we wanted to highlight and you know we're providing these assumptions as an initial baseline so that you get a feel and flavor of some of the items we had to consider and how we went about incorporating these items you know as a part of developing that financial plan test years FY 24 estimated revenues for the total systems about 188 million we're looking at about three quarters of a percent growth in customers over the entire forecast period the forecast period is designated from FY 24 to 28 we're we're incorporating user rate revenues which is represented by that 188 million but also additional revenue sources for example interest income expansion fees other miscellaneous fees such as meter installation fees you know all your revenue sources are a part of that calculation as is highlighted in your budget you know additionally your operating expenses are about 113 million you just saw the Mr. Shealy highlighted your capital plan which is about 120 million 80 to wastewater 40 to water and then for the period FY 2024 your existing debt services $50.2 million and with a plan to go about issuing or tendering or seeking additional debt over the forecast period how much of that is principal and how much is interest so I can't tell you off the top of my head but we can definitely get you that answer so my apologies there and we have some pay go as it relates to your capital requirements and again we're trying to implement or continue to implement a balanced approach to understanding your operating and capital requirements looking at a combination of debt and other sources to fund your capital requirements and then using your financial metrics as a guide to establish the financial plan as it relates to debt service coverage funds on hand etc etc so do we charge the same rate for residential commercial non-profit everybody everything's different and all that's how does that set up in-town residential out-town residential got in-town commercial out-of-town commercial the two non-profits pay the same other than the government that pays less than anybody how long has that been like that forever yeah so I'm not going to say you're not in here much older than us I was not here for the first 50 years he's on our level so I wouldn't say it's like being that way forever but the nature of the development of rates is based on you know at the beginning we saw that slide that said the three components financial plan cost of service and rate design you know it's based on trying to set up rates that reflect how you provide that service what portions of your customer base slash customer class slash customer groups how they drive costs and then designing rates as such so for example the nature of residential service maybe different than commercial or industrial so you would say it's based on market value it wouldn't be based on market value per se because it's based on cost it's based on the cost it's based on the cost to provide that service and the cost to provide that service is driven by the demand and how customers within specific customer groups for example residential, commercial, industrial so if I ask the question then to look at the cost versus the revenue it would be you would, I would be able to figure that out that would back up that statement correct, it would because that's the nature by which rates are developed and that's the nature by which we look at the total part of funds and how costs compare and that's a pie that we described at the beginning you also have to factor in the political side of it too because these rates are set by a political body and you don't see some years in there where we were not able to get a rate increase that had to be compounded into a future rate increase and so I think Robert would say it's better if we do small amounts all along I was just trying to understand the modeling of it not so much the outcome more of the process the modeling in my mind would be to give the best water service for the most reasonable rate but it's fair enough yeah and not comparing ourselves just modeling ourselves after ourselves yeah I guess what I'm trying to make sure though is I'm well you can have a chart in here that shows where we fit I'm fine with his answer is what I don't like doing is picking winners and losers so I'm against picking winners and losers so I'm trying to look at the fairness of our pricing model and he's explaining the fairness of our pricing model so I'll stop by and it's a fair question as it relates to the pricing and how we go about developing the rates there's no wrong answer except picking winners and losers and that's a part of the balance that we have to go through in designing and looking at the financial plan on an annual basis but coming back to the statement about this group and what you do you know you provide the willingness to make that decision and the willingness to implement the rates which is a big big component as it relates to looking at the utility from a management perspective how you support and fund the requirements of the system and from a policy perspective you know you all drive the policy around you know how we operate how you operate maintain, achieve and generate the revenues you need you know so from a policy perspective you drive and provide the willingness to make the decision to increase these rates and you're absolutely correct you know historically there have been some lumps but the goal as best we can and I know we've been coming out of COVID and it's been tough for everyone and we understand but you know smaller increases over time and consistent increases over time you know pan out a little better typically but that's not always the case absolutely bring up your statement down there zero revenue increase approved that would have been a rate increase there's a difference between revenue and rate you're correct there is a difference between revenue and rate so my question is if we didn't have parking lots everywhere and we had customers there and we had all these businesses growing then we would have the revenue that we knew not necessarily the rate increase so it has to be a little bit of balance of both we need to keep growing our system so we also have to look at what kind of rate increase you have but if we can grow the system that means it's less which means less impact on our citizens and exactly what you're saying Mr. Mayor is what we do I totally understand what you're saying as it relates to the difference in revenues and rates revenue here is in the context of of the rate the actual rates that are in place and if there are any increases in those rates and the revenues that come from the increases in those rates we highlighted that growth is about a three quarters of a percent that's why I asked that question so I mean that ties back to the Mayor's point and again so I'm okay again with the concept of cost value but I might not be okay in another situation because that's value okay it's not about your cost so value is about value it can be about your cost but it's also about the service you provide that's not just important but solely important to somebody and it also ties back to the point I think when you asked about Scow is that we told the line as well there because the value they saw the value they needed the product why would we have it could be different value for different customers in different projects so that's why I think it's important that we tie back to this concept and you know sometimes we get hung up on the only way we can provide revenue is through taxes which is not true absolutely not true we'd love to see I'll go ahead plant no I didn't mean to walk because Herbert had the floor so what I wanted to ask is because I agree with that as we grow the system but how long does it take to see the material change in revenue do you use the if you're looking at growing the system that's a very good clarifying question we didn't bake in any scout growth into this year's model because it's going to take two years out we did bake in Mark Anthony brewing maturing as they go we're hoping some of the residential growth in that part of our system but we didn't want to be totally aggressive we'd love to see that 0.75 go to 1 maybe 1.5 that would be great but we're trying to be realistic what's your point though so what I'm trying to glean out of all this is so your residential growth might not be necessarily as valuable as your commercial growth or as your big project so I'm trying to I want to understand because I'm going to spend the next two and a half years of my life talking about growth and talking about other revenue sources other than taxes yes sir and trying to make it easier to do stuff here versus harder to do stuff here so all those can be done at the same time and they're not mutually exclusive yes sir I hear you loud and clear one of the things that we did in terms of we talked about residential and then the non-residential rate we also have a large user rate that we implemented two or three years ago two years ago that was instrumental we would not have one more camp than he brewing and we were able to use that same rate and it's for anybody using over 300,000 gallons a day on average for that month and so we use that as an economic development and all those folks who are listening to this meeting if you're a big water user we got capacity all that's smart I need a higher level of understanding about this for my own personal I think I still need clarity though if we go full forward and we're doing the big development is it still going to take us 10 years to really see a material difference because I don't I mean 25% of a point is you know not a whole lot getting to the one or the 1.5 I'm just trying to figure out what does that look like because what we always have is high expectations and we expect to see the impact in a year or two it doesn't sound like it'll be a year or two to take time even with the aggressiveness yes ma'am but I think we're starting to see Mark Anthony in our return we're seeing great benefit from AMI improved registration from our meters and Robert I don't mean to steal your thunder on that but and we look at that growth rate every year so we track that statistic for customers that we're adding so we can project out conservatively and try to be appropriate in how we do that so as we sorry Robert on your project assumptions page you say the 0.75% growth in accounts do you mean growth in revenue no no I mean number of accounts number of accounts including residential commercial correct so the projections that you have put in here for reference only do we just over the last several years have we just assumed it would stay constant at 0.75% no actually we've adjusted it I know in two years back we're at a percent and a half 1.75 to we've adjusted it based on what's happening currently in the economy and what we're seeing for like let's say for example construction starts et cetera et cetera so it's adjusted based on the current market conditions one thing I did want to add as y'all were talking about the projects and Clint did hit on Mark Anthony we really can take a look back and I'll put a report together for y'all Clint Ryan Coleman and I will work on it it's not just what we'll be coming up with Scout but it's also what we anticipate with Mark Anthony what we've already received those have reflected rate increases in the past and I would go back one more on the juicy plant as well we actually took a look at what our anticipated revenues that we're going to be coming in from that and that actually adjusted the rate a couple years ago so just from a historical sense we can go back and take a look at a few of these tell you how much revenue that generated and take a look at what we actually anticipated it did have a positive effect in lowering the rate increase it's one of the things that Clint previously Joey, Ryan Coleman and I had talked about we probably didn't shout it out to the world this is probably a larger discussion on it but going forward on these type of projects we continue to have that discussion and really highlight how it has a positive effect I have a question the capital program I mean based on what we've been able to achieve over the last three cycles maybe four we really going to spend $120 million should we not pull that back to what we reasonably believe we're going to get back to our rate increase and obviously we have been very generous to our community by not getting a rate increase but as we know everything that we touch has a cost increase today from equipment to chemicals and we saw a very large increase in chemicals there's going to be some type of rate but is there some balance do we really need to build on that today when we may not get there I would answer it this simply I don't believe we can meet our consent decree obligations if we don't do $120 million this year I guess what I'm trying to draw that is that's great on paper but historically we haven't done that and that's not going to change based on supply and demand either today so I would ask that we just look at it hard and we will Mayor I think the we demonstrated an ability I said $400 million over the past five years that's what y'all have the blended amount y'all have given us so that's about $80 million a year and so the manager and I have had this discussion as well she brought up that exact same point are we able to process $120 we think we can we think we can do it we think we refine the process enough for extension if we don't coming off the heels of a smaller capital program last year I think we really need to show $120 that's my my recommendation just to me showing and doing it doesn't make sense because there's a cost dealt in there there is yes and there's no reason to create a cost that's not necessary if it isn't so I would just let's double check that and then you know we'll make a decision from there obviously when we trust you and your judgment but just historically doesn't look like we'll get there okay so you know this this slide is provided as a highlight to or as a reference to you know highlight what was forecasted last year when we're going through this process for this year you know and the following years and you know coming back to the point as it relates to how revenue is realized and understood for some of these projects industries you know say for example AMI had an impact on revenues and we are seeing some of the impacts seriously your COVID did have an impact and as it relates to the movement of usage you know in your customer groups and resetting that usage post COVID even what we had to write off yeah and the number of accounts that's a rate increase there's a few ways you can look at it but as you're saying the reality is it did have an impact and you had to kind of work with the impact and absorb it but you're able to do that because of the nature and the quality of the system that you're running that kind of plan for those unforeseen events but you know to the greater point that we made about how these the revenue sources are realized how do we bring all these revenue sources together you know every year we go through the process of looking at all the sources and seeing you know if costs that we're currently incurring are meeting the budget if they need to be adjusted and you know we made a little bit of an improvement this year than what we forecasted last year and you know a few items for example AMI looking at certain costs you know looking at certain revenue buckets kind of you know played a part in increases that are proposed I still think going back to the points that have been made the rate increase needs to be reflective of the fact that it should not be the only source of revenue to support some of our projects and I think going back to the million number and looking at potentially future investments I do think that there's a possibility for us to shave this down a little bit I agree with what you're saying and that's going to come in like a slide good I'm glad I geared you up we did do that and we did shave it down a little and for example this minimum allowance adjustment is an adjustment that had an impact on the financial plan so a minimum allowance it's referred to a reference as a fixed volume of flow that is billed as a part of your base charge and that's for the water delivered to customers so the nature of your existing rate you have a fixed component which is your meter based component and then you have a volumetric component you have a decaying in black meaning with more usage the rate gets lower for your volumetric component and what this component does is say for usage let's say 0 to 3 CCFs so the first few blocks there's no charge because that usage is included in the minimum allowance currently your existing minimum allowance is 0 to 3 CCFs typically it has impacts as it relates to affordability providing assistance or support or some stability for low use users it helps people that are in fixed income for example plan out their bills so there's a lot of affordability and other benefits that come with establishing a minimum allowance you currently bill in cubic feet based on the implementation of the new billing system you're starting to bill in thousands of gallons based on your current minimum allowance which is 3 CCFs or 2,244 gallons usage is about 72 gallons per day we know with conservation and other activities to manage and protect water resources for cost and other reasons we're seeing daily usage come down some so there's a proposal to make an adjustment to the minimum allowance the first of all align with your current and existing billing system that bills per thousand gallons and the proposal is to move that minimum allowance to 0 to 2,000 gallons so what that means is currently the minimum allowance is 2,244 so that 244 gallons would now not be included in the new minimum allowance what that is reflective of is about 65 gallons per day in usage so it's kind of in alignment with some of the trends we're seeing as it relates to daily usage but the impact we will see is about a one somewhere in the range of about a 1.5 million dollar pick up in revenues upon implementing that minimum allowance let me stop there to see if you all have any questions when do we plan to go to Gallup, Brothers and Cubic feet July the 1st I want to have this thank you Robert we're billing gallons of 100 cubic feet units and we get questions quite often about these mysterious units people don't know what a 100 cubic feet looks like but they can figure out a gallon or a thousand gallons and so part of the AMI implementation once we got essentially mature with that penetration of meters is that we would move our billing to units of 1,000 gallons a lot of utilities do and so this seems like a logical transition to true up the instead of 3 units of 100 cubic feet give 2,000 gallons you can't buy that 10 gallon per flushed toilet anymore these water hogs, everything you put in is a water slipping fixture so we're seeing that per capita demand go down we still think that's a pretty fair allotment of water for that base fee which is $8.53 per month for an inside city cluster I'm sorry Robert most people would have no idea that they didn't have it I mean almost everybody right I can't say that nobody would have an idea but there's an adjustment and it's a smaller adjustment Miss G in Great Park would be calling you don't worry I'll forward that to Theresa so my point though is that allows us $2,200 but over time that's been going down because of just normal usage conservation and new equipment so most people wouldn't be affected because it wouldn't affect them to your point you're saying the impact based on what's happening because of other circumstances other than water usage it's water reality and that became one of the considerations along with the billing consideration Miss Ashley highlighted that drove the team to make the decision to do this now I agree to change over to gallons rather than cubic feet for a good thing to do but the thing I don't agree with is that this will have an impact on the lowest water usage there are a lot of people that try to keep their water bill below the minimum they don't understand cubic feet but they do understand that if I work real hard on water conservation that I can keep it only for the minimum charge of the meter and this is going to put 244 gallons less for them to use without hitting a charge and there are people out there that don't use I guess that's my question is how many people do we think this would affect and I guess what I'm hearing is because of there's more to it than just how many times you flush a product it will it will affect it will affect folks that have usage knowing this new third block which would be from 2001 gallons to 3000 the impact is going to be and I'm not going to minimize the impact by no means but it's going to be small sense sense but it's an impact and it's an impact that we consider that revenue you see is for the entire 12 months so you're talking about 150,000 in additional revenues per month given the big impact and positive benefit on the system that 150,000 per month then divided by the total customers that you serve for example because everybody would come through that third block for example so that's kind of the impact and by no means am I standing here trying to minimize the impact or say it's not important because we understand the cost to provide service and what it takes for people to pay for service but there is a multiple benefit and a balancing of these priorities that we considered as a part of looking at it I'm sorry I'm not going to cause I'm the only one who raises money could she so honestly what I would want us to all to consider if we're talking about $180,000,000 dollar budget or revenues that we think so we're talking about bringing it up 1.5 which to me is not any money based on the overall budget so what I would say is really think hard on whether or not making that decision is worth it to get $1.5 million and our revenues are currently 1.88 we still won't be at $190,000,000 so let me highlight one thing you know the team wanted to make sure with everything that's happening we provide as we always do full disclosure on everything and the impacts and the multiple considerations one of the big considerations of doing this is the fact that you bill in thousands of gallons and billing that additional $244 gallons could have an impact as it relates to converting that flow and spending the time to convert that flow on a monthly basis as a part of your billing process and your billing cycle that's why I say July 1 is the time to make the change and I think the change is a good change but it is going to have an impact on the people for that $244 gallons we hadn't talked about this aspect of an adjustment Robert so is the purpose behind it outside of we've always said we needed to make the switch but is there something about doing this I guess to Ms. Herbert on the Herbert's point with the $1.5 million estimated revenue impact is that some attempt to offset what we were just discussing about the rate that really was not the purpose of this adjustment that has become I wouldn't even be I'm not going to call it an unintended consequence because it's not an unintended consequence but it is a consequence I think the bigger driver which was a part of the AMI process was aligning the way and procedures by which you bill on a monthly basis with how the system reads so that you can have an alignment of how the system operates and talks, the customer service the customer billing system and as a result of making that alignment and not incurring the cost and what it takes to bill additional $244 this was what was proposed but as a result of considering this adjustment this is one of the impacts and we just wanted to highlight what that impact looks like Robert what would be the difference and putting the minimum at instead of $2,500 $2,500 so you would be giving them an extra how many gallons of that not many more gallons they're already getting the first his problem is getting the calculations done efficiently for the billing purposes and my thought is that we're going to have people that are counting on that 244 so let's give them $2.5 instead of 244 give them an extra 200 gallons or whatever it will take to make it an easy calculation for us but not a bill increase for the ones that are doing the minimum so to answer your question the first part of your question that would somewhat have an inverse because now you're giving more minimum allowance and that would by its nature provide more support because now you're increasing the minimum allowance which would then turn that number into a negative meaning utility would pay as such but that still doesn't solve the issue around how you set the readings per thousand gallon because whether it's 244 or 500 you would still the reading would be outside of the per thousand gallon that the system does so that's the consideration here so you either got to go 2,000 or 40,000 or 5,000 you can't put a decimal in there Robert no not based on the billing system as I understand move five into the payment assistance plan program for folks call it that let me just make a recommendation of data that we can share if we go in our system and we can pull out how many customers are paying a minimum bill and then how many are within this bandwidth that we're talking about for the 244 how many are below that everybody's going to pay above 2,000 gallons you're talking about most concerned about the people that are using between 2,000 and 2,244 gallons being allowed to take 4 hours in about 4 hours and so I would hear what you're saying let us get some numbers for you and I can share that by email I want to know how many people are paying the minimum amount now because they're the ones that are going to notice that 244 if they're using more than 2,000 we can look at their usage we'll look at their average usage and see how many are affected in that band itself I think that's something we can think about and we can do that in addition to because I don't see citizens have to take is there any way you can break that number out there's a lot you know my bill I mean we do have our system if you know us see I think I don't think we've got the demographic it's not in our database that's the one let me know the impactation it would certainly be good if we could get that let me finish please I said the impactation if we could look at perhaps if there is a line age line if we could look at that see whether or not we can link 244 if we can 2D we can do which is EF do we have a work process we can do we just get this out tight I'm worried that's what I'm saying do I have to do 10 12 we do have let me have a meeting I will go what? okay so are we good to continue our components. For FY24, we're looking at a revenue increase of about 6.52, a quarter of a percent growth, 120 million CIP, a revenue impact as it relates to the proposal for the minimum allowance adjustment. There are specific increases in costs as driven by inflation and the availability of resources, and we utilize the financial metrics around debt service coverage and fund balance to drive the plan. As we're seeing here, the proposed increase is about 6.52. Over time, we're looking at about a 7.7 for 25, 7.46 for 26, 6.26 for 27, and a 5.16 for 28. Line 11 highlights the total revenues, and it grows from about 204.7 to 267.2 million. Over the forecast period, we meet our operating expense requirements, line 12, and our total debt service requirements, line 16. We fund some capital projects, meet our transfers, fund capital outlays, and we provide a growing operating balance, and we meet debt service coverage. Any questions here as it relates to the financial plan? That is a much better figure than I thought we were going to be looking at, and I'm proud of you for getting it that way. That's the team collectively. Okay, moving on, any? Okay, moving on. You know, so just highlighting again and refreshing the major components of the plan. We've seen this slide, and all we're reflecting is the value of the water that you're getting. Over time, if you look at based on your current rates, you're paying just about 0.004 cents per gallon. Your daily water cost is about 76 cents, and your daily waste water cost is about 141 cents for all the value in the services that you provide, or that water that service provides. Over time, when you look at the industry, for the period 20, 2008 through 2020, we've seen that in aggregate, the sewer system and water system respectively, rates are going up 5.8 to 6%. And as a system, you are below 5%. So you're tracking a little behind what's happening in the industry. So what this means, consider looking at and approving the proposed FY24 adjustment. Try to understand if the billing system can accept and implement that minimum allowance. It's key that as you go into 24, continue to monitor the operating and capital requirements and how these budgeted costs perform, and then just continue to monitor the financial performance and how you do against some of your metrics, just to continue to keep a close look on how you're performing financially. So that's the conclusion of the system allowance approach. Instead of the total budget, like actually saying, yes, we're going to put this into effect on this date, how does that play into the fee? The adjustment. Is that a separate issue? It's all calculated as a part of the adjustment, meaning the entire part of it. Upon approving a budget, that would trigger the new approach, the new reading. Okay. Now, the approval of the adjustment is different separately, as I understand, but the revenues and the impact is taken into the budget. All right. So the minimum to have less revenue, if we don't do the billing adjustment, would have to be calculated into the rate, price, or the trimming, that sort of thing. Yes, sir. So that was my question earlier, though, because I hadn't been briefed on this part, because I would have asked these questions to y'all and then it gave you a little bit of guidance on this. So that adjustment that you showed the council to do the new proposed minimum, if they don't decide to deal with that right now, the rate goes up a little bit potentially. It will have an impact on that increase. Yes, ma'am. So I think we need to write that out and not muddy the water with that right now. I'm not saying that I'm going to do it, but I think you've got to show them separately, which I think is what Ms. Herbert was asking, because I don't know that the 1.5, in my opinion, too, I agree. I don't know that that's... Well, we don't know. We haven't even agreed that we're going to do a 6.5% increase. We may come back and say we're only doing a 5% increase. That's right. But can we come back and show it two different ways? And we'll give you the number of customers based on last year's usage that would fall within that envelope. It's a building policy decision that has a budgeting impact. Right, right. It could or it doesn't have to. No, right. It could be a change, I don't know if we're going to... I don't think we're going to come out of this or something. Oh, this is a failure, ma'am. We can do anything in 23, and then in 24 we'll make a 6.5% increase. Is that what we need to be? Or is that negotiable? Oh, this is all just for information today, correct? Oh, wow. We could... We could... Is it negotiable? Even when we get to that point, is it negotiable? Even when we negotiate. That's what we did last year. That's what we... You just want to get all your projects. That's a bad idea. It goes in. Okay, so draw more. Thank you, Robert. Thank you very much. Thanks, Robert. No use. We can get the H tax. Slow down, Dana. Good afternoon. How are y'all? I'm Dana Higgins. I'm the director of engineering for you, Mr. Round. Okay. So with me today, we are going to do a stormwater update, but I brought some of my team with me. I'd like to just point out we've got my deputy director, Andrea Boling with us, our assistant city engineer for design, Frances Bryan, and AJ Jesse, our stormwater manager. And also with Woolpert, I have Hal Clarkson, who will be presenting with me about our utility rate structure, as well as a covered Gorin and Molly Davis with Woolpert. So with that, we'll go ahead and get started. Hal's going to pass out a information sheet for y'all to get an update on some of the projects that have been constructed under construction and that we'll be coming for shortly. So just a little background. Back in 2017, we had a utility rate study done on our stormwater utility fee, just to see how we look at our projects that we had identified and how much funding we needed to get those projects accomplished. Each year, we had around $3 million to spend in capital, which definitely did not accomplish the $93 million that we had identified. So back in 2017, we jumped up $5 from $6.80 to $11.80 and have gone up incrementally. We paused in 2020 and also in 2022 going up incrementally and currently our rate is at $14.15. With the funding that we have, we've been working on hydraulic models throughout the system. We've accomplished nine construction projects. A lot of those projects are outlined on the 1x17, how it just passed out. Under construction, we have two Penn Branch and the Benedict Low Impact Development Project. And we have 10 right now that are designed and some of them that you know is Yorkshire, Elvedere, Shandon, and Rocky Branch. Right now, the two under construction, Penn Branch is a street, it's an earthen as well as a concrete open channel runs through kind of the East Side District 4. The walls were falling in. The flood had impact on this area. So we identified a project and $7 million. We should be done with that construction by early 2024. LJ is a construction contractor working on that right now. In addition, we have Benedict Allen area where the Low Impact Development we're removing impervious area and installing bioretention cells, just trying to disconnect some of that immediate runoff and reduce the amount of water quality. For our upcoming CIP, we are asking for $13.1 million. We are going to continue to evaluate the Rocky Branch watershed. We have some great opportunities to help address the flooding at five points as well as it continues down to Whaley and Maine where we have a choke point and have some culvert improvements needed there. We're going to be moving our Belvedere design into construction. So we're asking for $4 million there. Queen Street right up to construction at the beginning of the fiscal year. We also have projects in St. Mark's Woods. Louisa Street is a man made wetlands where we are bringing in water quality in a city property. So we'll be constructing that in the upcoming year. And we want to continue our program management to do our system inventory and condition assessment and that's been very successful. And also have funds set aside for undefined projects such as all the three big storms we had last year in Washington and Cherokee. Y'all probably are aware of that where we had the 72-inch, the joint separated and we really had not identified that as a project but it became a project. So I'm definitely going to have that covered. To date we have awarded $18.6 million in consultant contracts and $42 million in construction contracts. Spent to date is $43 million with about 70% in construction and 30% in consultant. 30% in consultants? Oh, so yes. I'm glad you asked that because we actually talked about this internally. Right now we've been doing a lot of feasibility study. We haven't moved it to construction yet. So it's been heavier on consultant but we're rolling those into design and construction in the next upcoming years. That is, you're right, that is definitely higher than what we expect but they have been evaluating all the pension points. What do you think it will levelize out? Probably in the next two years maybe. Yeah, because Shandon's a $20 million project and that's been, we've been working through the design and right now we're starting easement acquisition on the west watershed and the east is what about 60% complete. So we're just working through the construction plans now but it's going to start getting heavier construction. Some of the initiatives we have heard from constituents I know y'all have as well on what opportunities they have for reducing their stormwater utility fee. Right now we have a credit manual that allows up to 30% reduction for non-single family residential by installing BMPs for water quality. We have a water quality special protection area that was formed for Gills Creek watershed. That is an impaired watershed. So we had developed and worked with Owens Field Park to create best management practices to reduce the amount of contaminants in the runoff before it gets to Gills Creek. So we have people can get up to 60% reduction and right now we are evaluating a water quantity. We don't have a water quantity special protection area but we're looking at one city-wide which would allow us to grant up to 60% reduction and we expect to roll that out at the end of this year calendar year. So with that I'm going to introduce Hal Clarkson who has taken a look at our rate structure to see what the forecast is and a recommendation of what we're doing in the future. Thank you Dana and thank you Mayor and Council. I'll try and be brief with these out of respect for your time but obviously if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. We were asked to update an existing study that was performed by our friends over at Blackin Beach back in 2017. Basically verify your cost of service moving forward. Look at any rate recommendations that might come out of that. Also look at fee reductions such as credits, collections and your billing policies and then compare with some similar communities of benchmarking that exercise similar to what was performed over on the water wastewater side. Just as a reminder your stormwater utility cost of service really gets split among two departments engineering which has your stormwater engineering division in real estate and in public works which has your storm drainage maintenance activities along with street sweeping. We started with the FY22-23 approved budget and an existing and I just noticed that we have a typo here I guess I'm trying to give you rate payers a slight reduction that should be 14, 15 per month not 14.05 but that is your current equivalent residential unit meaning that your residential rate pay 14.05 or 14.15 per month. Anyone that's a non-residential user we look at the equivalent amount of impervious area that they have how many similar to the size of a house multiply that times the 14, 15 and that becomes their annual or their monthly rate. So if you've got three times as much impervious area rooftops and driveway area as a residential unit then you pay three times as much. There are a few exemptions to the rates to your fee structure supported by the ordinance very few which is a good thing and then you do have a credit manual that Dana referenced earlier. We had some basic assumptions that we made on both the cost-related and revenue-related side. The two that I would point out is we used a 10-year rolling average of 2.6% on the inflation but as we know it's been running a little bit higher than that over the last year or two and with all the money that's coming out for new infrastructure we expect construction costs to rise pretty rapidly as well. On the revenue side when we were wrapping up the study we got some additional information that the anticipated or projected revenues this year will be about 10% higher than what was in the approved budget another million and a half dollars so we've gone back and incorporated that additional revenue into our calculations. When we looked at the program benchmarking similar to what was done on the wastewater side it's a matter of trying to find communities that offer a similar program it's a little more problematic on the stormwater side sometimes because some communities only pay for permit their MPDS permit compliance others pay for O&M on their stormwater system only and some do a combined. So we tried to find five communities in the region similar size similar programs and see where you are if you look at a standardized rate that's your ERU amount per thousand square feet it appears that Columbia is higher than many of your peers but if you look on the revenue per capital you're right in the middle so the 114.51 annually for per person fits about in the middle the caution I would give with this if you look at that bottom row this is really the kicker Columbia right now and going through this analysis you're generating sufficient revenue to meet almost all of your needs when we talk to other communities such as High Point, Raleigh, Chattanooga and Asheville they're telling us that they're not generating sufficient revenue with their rates to cover their mission they're not meeting their performance goals and so I mean the takeaway from this is that rather than you guys being a little bit higher than everyone else you're performing much better in terms of the service you're providing to your customers Do those other cities have capital improvement plans that have projects the size of Arizona? No sir A few Move them with just ditch cleaning projects primarily routine maintenance you know there are a few that have some major projects going on City of Raleigh and City of Asheville which is still recovering from some flooding issues a while back but that's a correct assumption you've got a major capital improvement program underway So to the bottom line recommendations no increase in your stormwater utility rates for the next year we do urge some caution with that you'll have some balance left over in 23-24 but as you can see as it projects out then that'll start potentially running into a negative so certainly about three years down the road want to take another closer look at where you are Holding the rates as they are currently keeps your debt service ratio which was talked about earlier above the 2.0 goal and it keeps a healthy cash reserve and so just a few final recommendations hold the rates where they are for next year review them annually obviously or the revenues annually and then I would suggest that about three years out might be a time to redo the study maintain your current billing rate structure right now it's the based off of this equivalent residential unit it's 14-15 per month per residential unit and then non-residential units are based off of however many ERUs they have maintain your current billing mechanism we looked at alternatives to billing right now your stormwater bills put on your water and sewer bill that is by far the industry standard if you have water and sewer available to you to put on that bill it makes collections much much easier plus you get monthly collections goes on a tax notice there's a cost generally associated with that and you only collect annually we made a suggestion that you revise the credit manual which is already underway staff was already on that when we made the reservation the suggestion and then finally continue developing an asset management program which all your utilities are in the process of doing right now and this is simply a way of moving from a primarily reactive way of doing business to a more proactive way of maintaining your system far more effective and efficient use of your dollars and again both water wastewater and stormwater are already moving in that direction and I think with that any questions I have a question sure can you go back to the slide that shows the number of that right there the non-residential accounts 2666 what's the service area Dana for stormwater the city for stormwater right well those numbers right there so so the non-residential accounts those would be county donut holes what what's that number it's actually commercial so commercial so again I think last time you presented I asked the question if there's a house in the south belt line area that's in the county there's a house that's right next to it in the city right does the person right next to the city resident pay that $14 and 15 cents a month or the city run that they do not they pay the original county bill but still their runoff goes into our stormwater system that's already comes through there basically that's right Leesburg road where you have joiner road all of that goes all into our system that entire area that's all because DOT put in the stormwater drain with no place for it to go other than to us and that's my next question is you know I think I think devil's ditch has a couple choke points that are managed by different you know utilities ones the biggest ones managed by the state we all know the state doesn't get around to cleaning their stuff very often so so how can we how can we do a better job of maintaining that obviously without raising you know revenue streams we do work with planning and development for annexations we do work with our partners over at richland county they do collect a stormwater fee on their tax bill but it's not it doesn't it's not enough to take care of so that house on south belt line that's in the county there is a stormwater fee that yes do you know what that is by chance how they collect off to fee on their tax bill they don't have a water and sewer system that covers it they pay once a year do they contribute to the maintenance of of our our inner city stormwater systems we uh well for devil's ditch we actually partnered with that big stream restoration project back probably five years ago and right now we're in the process of going and doing stream restoration work on some of the areas that are eroded and they're on mr. brown's property trying to get them to the table as well but they're they I don't they're not as adequately funded as they need to be the answer is no yeah it seems like the revenues what limited revenues that come in could actually make a pretty significant in our maintenance of a lot of those so i so it's the conversations there it is what it is thanks thank you all right thank you