 council meeting and we are allowed to meet virtually by order of the governor and so I'm going to quickly test audio with people on the screen and we may have other people join us as well. So in terms of counselors being present, Kathy Shane. Present. Lynn Johanicki. Present. Pat DeAngelis. Present. Alyssa Brewer. Just unmute and say present. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. Evan Ross. Present. And Lynn Griezmer is present. Okay. Let me go ahead. Yes. I noticed that Andy is in as listed as an attendee. Oh, let's make sure. Andy in. And Bob, Bob, is actually on the non is a resident non voting member. Of the finance committee. So he could be invited in as well. And Darcy is present. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hagner. Please unmute and identify yourself. Yes. I'm present. Okay. And then I just want to make sure that others. Guilford, can you hear us? Yes. And Amy is also there, right? Thank you. Yes. Megan. Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Justin. Justine. Justine. Yes, I can hear you. Okay, Sonia. Yes, I'm here. Okay, Paul. Yes, present. Okay. And. Sean, you're running this for us. Are you, you're present. And Athena. Can you hear us? I'm here. Yep. Okay. Then we should proceed and I'll turn it over to Paul. Thank you. So thank you Megan and Justine for being here. This is an information session. There are no decisions will be made by the town council to talk about block rates. And I think I'll look, I'll be looking to Guilford for a little more context for this, but just for your benefit. Sonia is our finance direct interim finance director. Sean is our IT director. Athena is our clerk to the council. Everyone else is a member of the town council, which also serves as our board of water and sewer commissioners. Bob Hegner isn't on the council, but as a member of our finance committee. So that's your audience as you make your presentation. You know, Guilford and Amy, obviously, because you've worked a whole lot with them. And I think the idea on this is, I know you have a presentation to talk about. Introduce the concept of block rates, which the town has not done before. It's something and explain why we should be considering this, why the town might be in considering this. And then I think just other general questions that members of the council may have for Guilford or whoever on, on the water and sewer issues that we're talking about today. Guilford, is there anything that you or Amy want to add to that? No, I think that's it. Okay. So. I think the, I think Sean or, or Athena are running the slideshow, the slide deck. So they'll be able to. So I'll leave it. I'm not sure who's headed off by Megan or Justine, but. Justine. I'm going to, I'm going to get us started. Are you set Athena to have us go? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So, um, primarily the, the presentation we started with focuses on water rate structures. We had done some more clicking at water rates for the town in the past. Um, most of the concept that we're talking about would, would also apply to the sewer rates. Um, the, the decision on how to set the rates goes a little bit differently on the water and sewer, but, um, we can answer any questions related to that at the end. So if you want to go to the next slide, we can get started. So we just wanted to kind of give a little bit of an overview are on how water rates are determined, um, before you get into the block versus a fixed structure. So the user fees, basically customer bills that they pay would generate the funds necessary for the, the daily operation and maintenance of the water system, um, as well as a long-term investment into your system. So your, your prices need to reflect the costs required to operate and maintain the quality of the, of the water and, and your infrastructure so that you can provide funds for repairs, rehabilitation and replacements. Um, so, um, I'm going to go to the next slide. So there are different methods to establishing weights. The American Water Works Association has a, has a manual that, um, outlines the methodology. So there are a lot of technical, uh, analysis that has to go into place to basically look at your revenue requirements, which would be your operating and capital costs and the cost of service. Um, so different costs to serve different classes of people. You need to consider basic residential versus commercial. Um, you need to look at the cost of service and the cost of service. Um, you need to look at the rate design so that you could set the rates to meet the revenue and cost of service and also factor in any debt services that you have, um, that you need to pay off based on your rates. Next slide. So the key aspects when you're looking at setting rates, um, is, is communication first and foremost, because you have to communicate between the customers and the utilities and the policymakers to make sure everybody is on board. Um, you know, there's a lot of information, um, financial planning. So you need to have a thorough plan will better help officials make informed decisions. Um, when revenue decreases occur and data management, which is basically the engineering side of this whole thing is, it's, you need to go through a lot of detailed data on customer water use, operating expect expenses and infrastructure maintenance. Um, so that you can better manage system fluctuations over time. Um, so that goes into looking at what your rates should be to basically be sustainable. Um, a lot of formulas. You look at the debt services, you look at upcoming capital plans that you need to fund. Um, and, and all of that goes into a decision process. Next slide. So the pricing structure. So your, your rates put a value onto the water supply. If your rates are too low, then your water supply will be used by consumers. And the rates need to obviously cover all of your costs. Um, to be sustainable. The specific price structures can be in place to encourage water conservation. So that's mainly the big push for doing a block structure, lower usage results in lower rates. Um, so you're kind of rewarding water conservation by paying a lower water rate. The next slide. So there are pretty much three types of rate structures. Um, there are two different types of block rates, which basically means that depending on the amount of water that you use, you're charged a different rate. Um, an ascending block rate has, once you divide the user usage into blocks, each like succeeding blocks. So the more water that you're using, you charge at a higher rate than the previous block. So this is basically an attempt to charge a higher rate for non-essential water use. And it basically, um, the customers are charged a lower rate for less water usage. So this promotes water conservation. Um, a uniform rate, which is currently what, what Amherst uses, um, is one constant unit price for all metered water usage. And then there is also something that's called a descending block rate, which divides water that each block would be charged a lower rate than the previous rate. So this would be kind of that mentality of buying it in bulk. Um, the more water that you use the less money you'd have to pay for it. Um, this obviously doesn't promote water conservation. And it is actually illegal under the mass general law. So towns and communities in Massachusetts can't use a descending block rate. So I'm going to hand it over to, to Megan now, who's going to kind of explain a little bit about the current rate structure and then kind of give some examples of what some of the surrounding communities are using. Hey, Megan, this is Paul. I'm sorry to interrupt. I apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. Could you each sort of introduce yourselves and what your, what your role is or your background is stuff like that. So the council gets a better sense of who you guys are. Yeah. Yeah, I can go first because I obviously was the one who was just talking to you. So my name is just seeing Carol. Um, I've been, my, my background is in civil and environmental engineering. I've been at Tayden Howard for 13 going on 14 years now. I'm the vice president. I am predominantly on the water side. We do both water and sewer at Tayden Howard, but, but my team team does, does mostly water. Um, Is anything else you want to know about me or is that kind of. Okay. So I'll hand it over to Megan now. Megan, I'm a project engineer with Tayden Howard. I've been there a little over four years. I have about eight years of experience in general. Um, in water and wastewater. I'm also on the wastewater side of things at Tayden Howard. Um, And that's it. Okay. Um, okay. Next slide, please. So I'll talk about Amherst current rate structure. Um, they have a uniform rate of $3.80 per 100 cubic feet, which is a standard unit of measure for water rates and sewer rates. Um, And the minimum quarterly charge of $10 and 20 cents, which corresponds to a minimum volume of usage. Um, that's about, um, Based on the 1020 and $3.80 per 100 cubic feet. Um, that's a little over 2,000 gallons, which in a quarter, um, most occupied buildings will reach that minimum, um, So basically you're paying for the actual metered usage beyond that point. Um, Amherst recently established agricultural rates in 2018. And there are strict guidelines that define what land is applicable. Um, it would be a participant in the MGL chapter 61 a, or the agricultural preservation program with an agricultural preservation restriction placed on the property. And the same uniform rate applies the $3.80 per 100 cubic feet. Um, you just not charge sewer. Um, the uniform rates are simple to implement and understand for all the customers. Um, and they do provide revenue stability, um, over more complex rate structures. Next slide. So the sending block rate, um, overview and benefits. Um, as Justine said, it divides the volume of usage into ascending rates. Um, as you use more water, you start to pay a higher rate for that usage. Um, and when designed properly, the idea is that you pay a higher price for non essential water use. Um, nasty P promotes this price, promotes this price structure, um, as it promotes and rewards water conservation as you pay less for using less water. Next slide. So you can also have different user categories. Amherst has one, no user categories. Everybody pays the same. Um, but you could have residential industrial commercial. Um, some examples of nearby towns that have different user categories. Um, you'll see in later slides that Aguam has, um, ascending block rate structure for residential users. Um, but for non residential users, which include commercial and industrial, they have a uniform rate of $2 and 38 cents per 100 cubic feet. Um, which is the highest rate for all residential users. Um, Hadley has an ascending block rate structure for commercial commercial users. Um, as you can see in this table here. Um, and they're all higher Aguam has generally lower rates, but they also have, we'll talk later, um, a quarterly service charge, which helps make up for that. Um, but Hadley has generally higher rates for commercial than Amherst charges $3 and 80 cents. Um, next slide. So separate irrigation meters. Um, as we talked about before, Amherst already has this for agricultural users. Um, and this means that you have a second meter to reflect water. That's not returned to the sewer system. And you don't pay the sewer rates on that irrigation meter water. Um, you are Amherst requires a backflow preventer. Um, that's routinely tested and inspected, um, to prevent contamination into the rest of the water main, um, um, for safety reasons. Next slide. So the fixed charges is another aspect of the water bill. Um, it's the minimum fee, uh, minimum bill that a customer will receive regardless of water usage. Um, They're different types. Um, the billing customer would recover costs for either meeting meter readings or billing costs. Um, service meter charges. Um, if you're a customer and you're a meter size, you had a three quarter inch meter versus one inch meter or greater. Um, your cost, your fixed charge would increase with that meter size. Then the minimum charge, which is what Amherst has typically relates to a minimum volume of consumption. And these fixed charges. Um, the more so the first two types of billing and customer and the service meter charge. Um, Help to increase revenue stability. Next slide. So we looked at what, um, what the cost of the service meter charges is. Um, So these, the towns in these in this table are uniform rates without different user categories. So these are all one flat rate. Um, You'll notice, um, South disabled water supply district is a little different than the others. Um, they have the $1 and 1.375 dollars per thousand gallons. Um, For water usage, which comes out to be once you convert it to the hundred cubic feet, which is $1 and 3 cents per hundred cubic feet. But in addition to the water usage, they have a water tax rate of a dollar and eight cents per $1,000 of property value. So it's a little different, um, to compare directly. You can't say, um, South, do you feel it will generally have lower water bills? Cause that's not the case once you factor in the water tax rate. Um, but it's worth noting that Amherst does have, um, the lowest rate of these uniform rate billing structure of the surrounding communities. Um, Next slide. So these are the rate structures of surrounding communities with block rate structures. Um, You can see the tears for the usage will vary. Um, And then the rates vary as well. Um, North Hampton, the numbers in this table are for a one inch or smaller meter. They have a uniform rate for any meters that are above one inch. And that uniform rate is $5.99, $5.99 cents per hundred cubic feet, which is slightly less than the highest tier of, um, smaller meters. Um, And with exception of Aguam, um, The rates are generally higher. Um, In the surrounding communities, Um, Um, So these are some of the fixed charges. Um, And then the rates vary as well. Um, So these are some of the fixed charges, especially once you factor in. The. Um, Service charges. Hadley has a minimum has a service charge based on the meter size and Aguam has. A $35 across the board service charge for. All semi-annual billing. Next slide, please. So these are the, some of the fixed charges. Um, And then the rates vary as well. Um, So these are the fixed charges. Um, 3250 quarterly. Uh, 3823 quarterly for North Hampton. Um, 35 semi-annually for Aguam and $10 for Belcher town. Um, Aguam and Belcher town is charged that fee regardless of the meter size. Um, Which helped to help make up for the lower. Um, Water rates for Aguam. Next slide, please. Um, So the current uniform rate does not, um, encourage water conservation as much as a ascending block rate structure would. And the minimum charge based on, um, a minimum volume doesn't, it allows more fluctuation in revenue than a fixed. Be based on service charge or just a general, um, service fee. Um, Wood. Um, Um, Um, Establishing and ascending block rate structure to encourage water conservation, um, within the town. Um, as well as establishing fixed quarterly charges to ensure, um, stable and predictable revenue. And then to figure out what those quarterly charges and what each block tier and corresponding rate would be. Um, we'd recommend conducting a water rate study that would look up on the, um, other rates for your own M costs, your operation maintenance costs, as well as your capital needs costs. Um, that will help you focus on setting the tier rates, um, for the block rate structure and assess whether service fees based on meter size or different user categories will be beneficial to the town. And next slide. Any questions. So we are gonna pause for a moment and take questions. Yes. Thank you for a very clear presentation. I have a series of questions. So maybe I'll just list them. And then you can figure out how to respond. If we were moving to block rates. Could we, I'm, I'm assuming, but I should ask it as a question. Can we set the tiers differently for residential. Commercial and industrial, you know, so including, you know, have three tiers for one of them, but only two tiers for another and different rates in each. The second question is you mass and numerous college, would they be considered commercial? Or are they considered residential? So just a, what category did they fall in? The third is if we went to tiered and block rate, could we exempt agriculture? Cause they're a single rate now. If we wanted to. So again, you know, can we differentiate? And then my last one is we discussed. Paul presented a municipal regional sharing agreement for, when we're short with Hadley. And I saw that Hadley. Right. Hadley tears rates. If we went to block rates with tears, would we be going to the residential tiers with Hadley? Would we be going to something else? So it's a Hadley specific. I think that's all. I mean, I had another one, which does Amherst have a fixed quarterly charge, but I think since you're recommending it on your last chart, they answer is no, we don't, you know, on that chart 14 that showed us other towns. So those I think for now are my questions. So I'm going to suggest that we collect the questions since some of them may be similar and then you answer them. So Andy. Hi, so I have two questions and thank you for the presentation. It was very helpful. One has to do with the agricultural rate and its implementation. My recollection as a former member of the select board that was on the select board when we adopted that system was that there was one barrier for some of the agricultural communities. Members and that was that it required restructuring the water pipes within their property. If they also had a house on the property so that they could differentiate between what they were using for residential and what they were using for agriculture. And I was wondering if anybody knows whether that has been a limer on the use of the agricultural rate structure that we established. So that was one round of questions. And the other is I'm assuming from what all you've recommended that the experience in other communities that have descending or ascending, excuse me, ascending rate structures is that it has reduced usage. I was wondering if that's in any way quantifiable whether the amount of reduction is somehow measurable. Okay. And Mandy job, you have your hand up. Sarah was going to be next, but she must have raised her hand. And I have the question about institutions too. And one of my questions with the institutions is, you know, you say the block rates are for non essential use as you get up, but I don't know how the institutions are metered. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it's residential in those institutions. So part of the large use is probably considered mostly essential in that it's people living and showering and all of that. So how, how. Would we account for that in a block rate structure. Whether it's splitting them out if they're commercial or something. But if they're residential, how do we account for that if we can't do sort of a deep and a deep access structure. And I think that's a good question. That's a good question. So what are the cultural separate meters. Is that something that residences could use for irrigation and lawn care. Is, is a question I had. The service charges that you're recommending. It looks like it's a one charge per quarter. We have a number of residences that do not. Are not on the sewer system because they have septic tanks. a service charge or something? Is it water only? Is there a water quarterly charge and a sewer quarterly charge? How does that work? Okay, Bob, Agner? Yeah. Yeah, I apologize for my COVID appearance here, but I wasn't expecting to be on video. But I just have a, I'm coming to this relatively new and I have a maybe a basic question which is what is the problem we're trying to solve here? And Paul, maybe you can answer that or Lynn. Okay, thank you. We're gonna hold on. Darcy. Thank you. Sorry. I think one problem we're trying to solve and I know I'm not the answer is just the problem of overuse of water. And what I, my question is, do we have the data on which sector is the, you know, the different, what are usage in each sector so that we can see where is the most impactful part of town where conservation would be most effective? And just generally, do we have the data on residential commercial? Institutional, if that's separate from commercial, agricultural and so on. Interested in that. Okay, Kathy, you had additional questions. Yeah, I had, it's just a last one. When you come back with potential recommendations for us, it's a request, we've got a big study to put in a new water processing plant and a large capital expenditure. Can we see the rate impacts of different decisions out 10 years when those capital costs come in as opposed to just one or two years? So just get a longer term view of if we make a change, here are our fixed costs going outward. Okay, so I'm gonna try to organize how we get at these and I'm gonna start with Paul and Guilford and Amy and just ask a couple of questions. What problem are we trying to solve? And do we have connect, reconnect fees and any other basic things you think we should know about our present water system? They came up in these questions. So I'll start and then I'm gonna hand it off to Guilford and Amy. So you've raised some really excellent questions. And again, thank the presenters, Justine and Megan for doing a great job on laying out the framework for that we're reviewing. So this is a new role for relatively new role. The council is relatively young in its occupancy of being board of water and sewer commissioner. So it's a really good time for us to step back and look at how we are doing things. I think Amy and Guilford can talk about how the state and their oversight of management of larger water resources are going to be encouraging the town to be taking steps to manage its water resources. One of the tools for managing water resources is through the rate setting structure. So Bob asked what is the problem we're trying to solve? I think it's the management of a valuable resource that we have and are we doing it right? And as we look proactively and project prospectively into the future, are we going to recover enough of our water use through our revenues to offset the expenses of our system? Now just one caveat before I turn it over, these are, we're in a particularly bizarre time because our two largest users have depopulated their campuses and that's going to create incredible stress on our system. So we need to look at it with that in mind but also to take out the, to look beyond that once whatever the future holds for those three institutions comes to the forefront. So Guilford or Amy? Hey, can you hear me okay? Yes. So just to correct one thing, we used to have block rate structures. When I came here in 2002, we had block rate structures and we had a block rate structure until about 2007 or 2008 when it was actually eliminated and we went back to single rates. And that was for a political reason. We are going to be asked by DEP in the future as our permit is renewed that we use what they consider best management practices to charge for our water. And one of those practices is a block rate system. So in the future, maybe two years out, maybe three years out, we will be asked to re-look at our rate system and think about changing it then. Just a little background there. Okay. Is there anything else about our basic water and sewer structure that you feel we should know? I believe there was one question, does Amherst have a quick fixed quarterly charge? We don't have a quarterly charge. There's a meter rental fee for every quarter, but it's very insignificant. It was probably put on a long time ago and it's just never been updated, but we don't really have a significant quarterly charge. We charge anybody. Okay. So now I'm gonna turn to the consultants. And the way I heard the questions, they came in a couple of different groups. One was around agriculture. Another one was really around the different levels of residential, commercial and industrial. And then we got more specific about our higher ed institutions. We may have more as well. And then the other question that did come up was whether or not we have the data to go on that helps educate us about where we are right now. That's probably a combination of our consultants as well as Guilford. So you wanna get going? Sure. I can try to start some of them that I kind of wrote down some notes. So as far as the different tiers and the different usage groups, there is almost an infinite number of ways that you could do it. You could do separate tiers for commercial, separate tiers for residential. You can treat the colleges as their own usage group. I'm not quite sure about how the second one, but I think UMass has large meters that basically the water that flows in gets tracked. They're not individual meters on the individual buildings. So yeah, they would typically be more of a higher total, just the way that that's metered. So you would probably have to look at that separately regardless of what you choose to do. The flip side of it is you don't want to over complicate this. I mean, we can engineer it to forever and come up with minute changes in the different rate categories, but you're gonna wanna be able to maintain some stability in what's going on to keeping it simple does still give that opportunity for lower water usage to be billed at lower rates and promote that conservation, but then also not necessarily punish some of the commercial users that are more using water for process as opposed to, you know, they're not watering their lawns. So it's a lot of detail that goes into kind of figuring out what would work best for you, but you can basically complicate it as much as you want or simplify it. It does, as you kind of see some of the other ones, you know, Northampton does only have two tiers and that's what works for them. It's gonna have to kind of look at the data. There is a good amount of data available. You can look at billing records, you know, you have each user and you can kind of total their usage for each a year period or a quarter or however you guys bill it. We have done a little bit looking at that for other projects that we've worked on with the town. We've actually kind of mapped some of it where we've actually assigned the usage to a parcel. It's not super detailed because it's kind of like a quick overview to kind of see where the usage clusters are, where they're more heavily concentrated. So there are different things you can do with mapping and looking at where the usage is. I think that was one of the questions. The question about the looking at the 10 years down the road that can all be part of the rate study. A rate study too can be as simple as looking at an immediate, you know, one to two year impact on rates or you can look at the bigger picture with known capital stuff coming in the future that can all be worked into the scope of what you're looking at in the rate study. I don't know where. There's a lot of questions. We have data that shows that in places that have put this into effect that it has in fact reduced water usage. I'm sure there is data. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that where it would be kind of readily tracked. You kind of would have to look at an individual community to see what they've seen. As part of the rate study, you're gonna have to kind of factor in that there are places that, especially if they're trying to promote it, if places that have a high usage, there definitely is places where this is seen. One of the communities that we do look at has one of the higher rates in the state. They actually have a very complex meter system that they installed. It's a much smaller community. It's a much smaller system where people can actually see their water use real time. It's a different way to meter that it's all on the cloud and it remotes back. So a person can actually go in and see what they're using on a day-to-day basis. And when they implemented that metering program and the block ascending use, just because their rates are so high, they did see some dramatic decreases in how much water people were using because they could see it real time. And also saw the impact on their bill with decreasing their water use. But again, it's different for every community. You have to factor that into your rates as well, but there is gonna be some conservation. So if your water use goes down, you're still gonna require the same amount of funds to run your system. So you have to balance that and when you're developing the rates. Okay, and then we got into the issue of the agriculture and also people who, for instance, might wanna use it for gardening and lawn. And we have a number of garden centers. We have a golf course or was a golf course. And how have you seen that applied in the agricultural side of the world? So let me take that question because we wrote our agricultural rate system in a specific way for the town of Amherst. You cannot use an agricultural meter unless you qualify in one of those two categories. They actually noted in the presentation. Your land has to be in APR. You have to be actively producing a crop with it or some type of agricultural product. So to use your agricultural rate for someone to water their lawn is not allowed in the way we have it set up. And it's meant to do that because watering your lawn is not an essential service. Essential water use is not to keep your grass green. So that's how ours is set up. We have only one person who actually has an agricultural meter, we believe. We had two people take applications out and I know there's only one person who has an agricultural meter at this time and no one who had a problem with their plumbing to go back to Andy's question has actually gone all the way through the process to set up their account as an agricultural account yet. There's another question about a sharing agreement with Hadley and how would our structure apply to that? I'll take that one too, if you don't mind. So the agreement we have with Hadley is to become more open and more thought, more thought put into how we actually interact with them. We've been sharing water with them. We've been providing water to them since about four or five years ago we started providing water to them for maintenance and emergencies when they had emergencies or maintenance they had to do. We charged them the same rate we charge everyone else in the system right now. So as we go move forward and start talking to them about working together that gives us the opportunity to look at how we provide rates and how we structure our agreements in the future with them. So we and they both understand that the rates may change as time goes on. Technically right now it's very hard for Hadley to provide us water. We have to put an actual pump out there to pump the water to us. If we actually wanted to set something up that's more permanent there would be a permanent structure which would have to be installed for us to take water on a regular basis from Hadley. Did I jump in here for one second? Because one of the questions that came up and since we're talking about Hadley was Guilford about fluoride in the water with Hadley. Can you address that and how that would go about sharing? So whenever we provide water to Hadley if it's a scheduled event they actually notify as they're required to do their board of health and the residents as they're there's a requirement for how they do it. I don't really know because we don't do it. They're required to notify their residents that they're gonna take water from Amherst and that there's fluoride in it. So right now over the five years there's not been any issues with providing Hadley with water with fluoride. Another question, yes actually this is more my question. When we look at Amherst, there was a conversation at one point that if UMass Amherst wanted to they could just dig their own wells. Is that true or would they be tapping into our water table? Technically, yes UMass could go through the process of becoming their own water system. It would be very hard to do. One, it's very hard to permit new water sources especially when you have existing water sources in the same aquifer. Hadley has their, if they were to, well depending on where UMass put the well they would either be in Hadley's aquifers or our aquifers and there's a long drawn out process for that. The second thing they would have to do is they would actually have to separate, physically separate their system from our system which is almost next to impossible without doing some major, major, major expenses. We run our system with UMass through master meters. So they would have to install a separate system that pipe to all their buildings to be their own water system. And then they would have to actually staff up and meet all the requirements we need. They'd have to have a CCR. They'd have to do CCR as a consumer confidence report. They would have to do the annual stats reports to the state. They would have to do the sampling that we do. We sample on their campus for our system now. They would have to build that whole system together and actually run that system. Before I go back and ask whether we've answered everyone's question, I have one more in that. It was what was the political reason that led to getting out of it the last time? Has anybody else joined this meeting besides the people that are there? No. The town was looking for financial... But I should note that this meeting is being recorded and will be online. Thank you. Maybe I won't answer that. Okay. All right. All right. Have we missed any questions, people? Lynn. Paul. So I think that a lot of the questions revolved around the institutions, Hampshire, UMass, and Hammers College. And maybe if Guilford can sort of outline how we service those three institutions because those are our three major water users and because that will come into play a lot in the council's consideration. Can you... Is there like one meter or they have multiple meters, Guilford, that kind of thing? Yeah. We can do that. And then we do have some additional questions. Okay. Okay. So how we service Amherst College, actually all three of the colleges is primarily they have master meters. And the water flows both ways through the system. So water flows in the campus. And if we need water on another side of the town, it can flow out of campus. And we subtract the two numbers and that's what they're billed for for use. They actually, Amherst College and UMass actually have individual meters at their facilities. So they actually monitor usage at their individual facilities and classify it by their facilities. We treat them only as an institution. And this is your bill. This is the institutional bill. If we decide we want to have UMass and classify each individual buildings, this is the research building. This is a residential building. This is something else building. We could do that, but we'd have to have help from UMass and Amherst College and they are set up for it. Hampshire College is not set up for it. Hampshire College has only one meter and it goes in. And that's it. So Hampshire would be a little harder to differentiate their different uses there between residential and whatever we wanted to use as choices. But we could possibly do it and we just take longer to set it up. All right, Mandy Jo? Yeah, I was still looking to see about an answer about service charges and whether they're separate for sewer and just water use or not, or can you do that because we have so many people on a septic system. So we do charge, if you have a service charge for water, it's only charged for water. If you have a service charge for sewer, it's charged for sewer only. They're separate charges and they're totally kept different. Sarah? So I just want to make sure that just to make it clear that I'm really hoping that the agricultural rate that we have right now, I think it was really well thought out. And I feel like farmers really lobbied for it. And I feel like Amherst definitely responded. And I just want to make sure that we're going towards a block system or a tier system that that would stay in place. Okay. Andy? Yeah, I guess the comment just on that last piece is you get circling back to the thing that Guilford responded to sooner is that it has to technologically be capable of measuring the agricultural use, which gets close to my next question, which is colleges in the university and others. How much of the water is being used for athletic fields? And is there any other way to reduce our water usage from our drinking water system to achieve that goal, such as a groundwater recapture from the water treatment plant? So we don't actually have the actual numbers of how much water they use for irrigation. They don't really have those numbers either and they've been working on getting those numbers together. They actually use more potable water in cooling and heating than they actually use in irrigating fields. So that's the one place we've actually been focusing on for what we call the reuse water system at the wastewater treatment plant. We do provide effluent from the plant to UMass and they treated to use for this cooling as well as heating at the central heating plant. And that's something we really want to keep pursuing and we want to keep moving forward with because taking reuse water from the wastewater plant does allow you like we just talked about to then use it for cooling, heating, flushing for toilets. Some of their buildings are built for purple water for flushing and then irrigation. So there's things that we've been talking to the university about, things in the process that would actually help reduce water usage. But then again, as I think Justine said or Megan said, you reduce your water usage, you still have fixed costs. So you have to have a balance there between making sure you pay for everything. Okay, Paul, you have your hand up. Yeah, just two things. I want to make sure that if anybody has any other questions on the inter municipal agreements which are going to be on your agenda on Monday, this is a good time. But to Justine and Megan, you look at lots of different cities and towns and that's the vantage point that you're able to bring to us. We have three large users and these three higher edged institutions but other communities have large users also like in Northampton, they have the Coca-Cola bottling plant and things like that. How have other towns addressed the idea of having one or two or three mega users plus then you have this large residential and then the other question being on top of that is how would you classify the university and the colleges in terms of are they residential, institutional or could we just make that up as we go? So I don't know the details of Northampton's rate study but they do have their tiered usage for users but they have a large user with the meters over one inch which I'm guessing the Coca-Cola bottling plant would be which is slightly lower than their highest tier. So that could, I can't speak the details but that could be how they factored that in, the large users. Yeah, I mean again for other communities that have a large user, it is this balance that they typically tend to probably take up the bulk of what your costs are through their rates and then it's that balancing act of where do they fit in a rate structure. I think that especially you almost have to treat them the same like obviously you can't treat UMass different than Amherst College whose their uses is probably on a completely different order of magnitude. You probably would need to look at those separately and whether you put them with commercial or you have a separate category for institutional just because it wouldn't necessarily, the way that they're billed be fair to just blanketly put them in the highest residential user category. There has to be kind of, and it may be it is that rate is the same rate that they get but you're kind of tracking it differently. It is a kind of a system specific thing. I mean, you guys are unique in the position that you have with the facilities that you have in the percentage of water use that they use compared to the percentage that the other people use. Other cities like we do stuff withster, they have a balance with their commercial users and all the colleges as well. I'm not 100% sure how they treat them differently in their rates, but I believe they have a relatively simple rate structure just that they kind of factors all of that in. They're also selling water to different communities that tends to their rate study is probably much more complicated than anything needs to be for you guys, but it is kind of a unique situation. Again, I think Northampton covers it. They have that block rate. I think that the, from my understanding, because we have worked with them in the past, that the usage at the Coca-Cola plant remains relatively steady over time. You know, they're not, every once in a while they'll do kind of a revamp up of some of their production, whether they're 24 hours, six hour days. I mean, that does change their water use, but for the most part it's kind of a fixed number that I think makes it easier for them to factor into their rates and why that rate was probably developed for that side of things. As far as the colleges is concerned, they probably do have a pretty similar use pattern where obviously if they're on campus versus not on campus, their usage needs until they kind of do massive expansion projects remain relatively steady. They're still gonna need to run the cooling towers. They still need to run the heating plants. They're still gonna need to irrigate the fields. Obviously a drought may factor into that. They might use a little bit more in, or want to use a little bit more in a hot weather situation, but it's still something that you can probably quantify a little bit better than you would the residential house usage. So I wanna just stay on this one for a minute because basically what we have with Amherst College and UMass is kind of a mixed use water user. It's not all one or the other. And unlike for instance, Cambridge, Worcester, Boston, we don't have much commercial. So to suggest that now all of a sudden their commercial is kind of not the same. So I think it would be interesting to see how other places that have multiple higher ed institutions deal with those higher ed institutions. But meantime, we also have another question from Kathy. As I understood it, so you could correct me, we could create a classification called higher ed. So we wouldn't have to put them in commercial. So that's one. And then I just wanna know whether I heard that right and if we wanted to. And then the second is we have not very many, but we have some large apartment buildings. And do we currently, Guilford might know this, do we build the entire complex for all the water use or do the different apartment people get like a monthly or quarterly water bill? So just thinking of a different kind of residential that and are their apartments metered, like someone takes 15 showers a day or doesn't, in terms of usage. And we only have a few, but just, how do you treat large apartment complexes? So what we do now for the institutions and for the large apartment complexes is we read them on a monthly basis versus a quarterly basis. So they actually allows like the apartment complexes to track leaks faster. If you're waiting three months to get a leak, let's see if you have a leak or high usage, it's hard for them. So they get a bill once a month, they can say, oh, look, I have some leaks and then go look for leaks and try to shut it down or they can send a note out saying, hey, stop taking the third shower every day. You only take two showers a day. So that's how we handle the apartment complexes and actually institutions. They get a monthly bill as well. So if we go to a block rate system, like we said, we can make any classification we want to. The classification that most people use right now for colleges is institutional. And that kind of covers a facility that has residential and classes and support services altogether, an institutional rate or institutional classification. And that makes a little difference from just straight commercial. So yeah, also when you're looking at kind of the impact of a block rate structure promotes water conservation, it is typically more for residential users that that is true. I mean, a commercial user is still gonna need to use the same amount of water for their production. The college, the people using the water, at least on the residential side in the dorms are not seeing the direct impact of their water use on the bill. So it kind of does take that part out of the equation. Obviously the college on a whole, higher education facilities do tend to wanna promote water conservation on their own just because the younger students tend to want to gravitate towards that green infrastructure, the reclaimed water system that they have. Some colleges do things, one that we worked with had the students involved in a basically a trial program to pick low flow shower heads and which one they liked and they kind of gave them out in the dorm. So most colleges are doing that to promote conservation in their facilities as well to keep their water use down. One way to kind of the apartments that they would possibly be pop up in a higher usage tier just because they have one meter going in, what other places do is when you would see some of those comparisons is base it on your meter size. So your residential tier structure could be based on your meter. So if you have a one inch meter or smaller that is typically going to encompass your single family, maybe two family homes, maybe a multifamily situation, but a larger apartment is likely gonna have a bigger than a one inch meter. So then those would be kind of have a different classification and whether you put them together in an one large meter category, especially if you don't have a lot of commercial that would kind of take your institutions and it could also take the larger apartments. But again, there are kind of a whole bunch of different ways that you can separate them out. Manny Jo? Yeah, I wanted to go back to the service charges. Just in talking about institutions and all, it struck me that the service charge seems to potentially be the same fee for all users, whether it be commercial or institution, but we have, as you've heard, three places generally that use a large majority of our water, splitting that service charge to create a more, well, instituting a service charge you've said creates a more predictable revenue stream. But if you do that in a way that Amherst College is charged the same $32 per quarter that a residential is, that seems to be a bit unfair to all the residential. So my question, I guess, would be, can you have different service charges for different types of institutional users where Amherst College's service charge might be, you know, the institutional service charges would not be $20 a quarter, whatever it might be because of so much larger use. Is that something that can be done or how would you do that? Yes, it could be done. And actually I believe there is a difference between, there's a resident, the service charges for a minimum bill for the residents is much different than the minimum bill for what we call commercial and institutional right now. So we do have differences now. They're just, they're still relatively small charges. And the, I mean, the service charge also that we pay, it's based on, there's two things. There's the minimum bill for if somebody doesn't use above a certain amount, they get a minimum bill, but there's also a service charge that's the meter rental, that's on every single bill and that's based on the meter size. And so it's relatively low for residential, but it is higher because it's a bigger meter, bigger piece of infrastructure. So it is higher for the institutions or even the commercial accounts that have a larger meter. Lisa. Thank you. I just wanted to make one point for the town council and the public who are watching this so that with the aside of that wonderful conversation about low flow shower head trials is that UMass has already instituted humongous water conservation to the point that it definitely impacted our town revenue years ago. And so that isn't something that's new. So speaking, for example, to Darcy's, let's make sure we're conserving water. She's probably aware UMass has already done all the work there. And that's one of the reasons we actually need more money is because they don't pay as much as they used to. The other is I wonder if Guilford not today, but as we move forward with this could help characterize how this proposal fits in with the stormwater management that we hear about across our local communities who are freaking out about how they're gonna pay for new requirements in stormwater management. Guilford. Unfortunately, the stormwater management is gonna be a totally separate charge and totally, I mean, there's not gonna be much relationship between the stormwater fees that we charge stormwater fees and the water fees. With the exception of is if you're a good person in stormwater and you collect your stormwater and it falls on your property and use it for irrigating or for use it for something on your property instead of using your potable water, you'll actually have a lower potable water bill. Those are the types of things you could do, but you're very limited as a residence and what you can really do with stormwater to have an impact on your water bill. So there are gonna be two separate things and there are two separate fees probably. Okay, could you explain just a little bit more on the stormwater stuff? I mean, are we talking a fee for something that flows into an area or how is stormwater collected that allows you to charge a fee? So there's many different ways to do this and this is totally a whole nother conversation and totally a whole nother multiple hours of discussion about this. Many places just charge a fee based on the size of the property and how much of the property is impervious and how much of it is pervious. Other people have a use factor that goes into there. There's many things you can do to make this fee and things you can do to compensate for the fee. If you have a big property and you have a lot of impervious area but you pre-treat your stormwater before you lease it into a storm drain, you might get a discount on your stormwater fee. It's totally a whole nother animal and it's a whole nother discussion really. Okay. Could I just jump in there for a second, Lynn? Please, Paul. Just put in perspective, Gil, for why are we even talking about this and why is this a concern for the town? Yes. So the stormwater, when we talk about stormwater, we now have our stormwater permit. We're permitted to run a stormwater system which we've been doing since the beginning of time as a town. We have to meet requirements set by EPA and maybe some by DEP to manage our stormwater and there's gonna be a cost for doing that. They're gonna require, have requirements about amounts of water and loading on the water, nitrogen, phosphates, those types of things. So that's something that's coming in the future and there's gonna have to be some type of way of paying for the requirements we're gonna be asked to do to clean the water before it's released to our downstream neighbors. Okay. Thank you. I think, I mean that, I just needed a little more context to what all that was about. Are there other questions from the council or Bob, other attendees? We have no other attendees, by the way. Okay, so I guess the only question I have now is, so what's next? To tell the truth, we're now kind of, this COVID situation has kind of really hit us in our revenue pocket a little bit, what's going on with the university being closed and everything. But really the next thing to do is we look at the next, as our next rates for the next coming years, does the council think they wanna go to a block rate now or would you like to see a comparison between the rates we would propose to charge versus how you could set up a block rate system? That's really where we're kind of at. And I mean, there's no requirement to go to a block rate system now. It's just a matter of time for us to research it and think about it and try on different things and see how it would compare. But you're saying we will have to go to one in the future. There's probably gonna be a requirement in our next Water Management Act permit to have a block rate system within a certain amount of time. Okay, Paul. Thank you. So when we initially set this up, this was pre COVID and Tata and I were ready to go and then to do the presentation, it was to set the groundwork for a larger discussion about where we were going with our rates, where we were going with, introduced the concept of block rates, whether that's something that the council had an appetite for or not. But then the world changed. And I think what the next steps as you asked is more, is gonna be on the finance side. We will be talking to you about where we are in terms of our two enterprise funds, the water system and the sewer system and what has happened to the revenue streams as it were for those two accounts. I don't think we wanna make decisions longterm based on our current status. We need to address our current status in terms of our reduced revenue and how we're gonna manage through that. But it is time to be thinking longterm about, and I think as Kathy pointed out, looking longer term. And then to also start having the conversations with the colleges and the university about what this might do, because if we have to raise X amount of dollars and as you start to adjust your rate structure, it's going to shift those costs to different people. And it's just a matter of where the council wants to shift those costs. It's like the tax rate. You still need to raise it. You can put more of a burden on the commercial properties, but then to lessen on the residential, but it's sort of an interactive system that we'll be managing through. So I think that this right now, it's a really good introduction so it can educate ourselves about what Justine and Megan brought to the table today in time for another conversation down the road. And I think we're blessed to have Gilford and Amy here who are really experienced on this as well as our engineers. So Paul, as we get into the budget for FY21, and we have to set the water and sewer rates as well, I assume we're going to be looking at the impact of COVID on the existing trust funds or the existing enterprise. So I think, I mean, I'm watching Sonia, she's looking at her spreadsheets right now. She might be looking at them, but yes, that's one of the things that you'll be, we'll be presenting to you is what it looks like. We are going to be looking at those funds. Our costs have not gone down for those real in any real way, but our expenses remain the same. So we're going to have to recover those costs or utilize our reserves as the same types of questions we're asking about everything else. We have two more counselor questions, Kathy. Yeah, thank you. With Lynn's what's next? As I heard you say, we're going to first deal with the current situation and get a better grip. So if we wanted the longer term look and block, I don't know how much work is involved in coming up with some potential choices and showing us if this will go that way. So would that be potentially later in the fall, sort of the timing on how long? And then, I think we're going to have to, with that, would it be helpful since I heard both people from Tata and Howard, Megan and Justine say there's an infinite number of possibilities here. If the council, whether it's at the finance committee or something said, we'd like to see at least these four or these six variations, something that gave a framework of what ifs, not giving you the rate differences but separate rates for, or would it be better for you just to think it all through and give us three or four scenarios? So I'm just looking for what kind of, rather than feeding something to us and having us ask all the same questions, would it be better to get some early input just idea-wise and then schedule something for late 2020 or early 2021 if we were going to do a change? So personally, go. So personally, I would really appreciate it if you said, this is what we'd like to see as possible rate structures, that would be nice. That would kind of narrow it down for us and we don't have to kind of guess a bunch of things and come up, that would be nice if you just said, we think these are what they should be, the classifications. Do you have recommendations for us on those? We could put some together based on our billing now and how we classify, how DEP classifies, we could put some together and send them to you and then you could think through them. I think that starting with some recommendations from you based on what we do know would be a good place to begin. Mandy Jo, you have a question. Mine was just on timing. Are we then looking, if we go into the studies and all now, are we looking at FY22 rate changes, structure changes? Is it too late to implement for 21? Just the timing of how soon do we need to start to get it for FY22? Or is there even a possibility for FY21 at this point? So Sunya, you can weigh in here if you want to, but we will be recommending a rate structure for FY21. It's part of our budget process, typically. And then in terms of major changes, I think that would be something that would be doing down the road. Let me ask the caution. I mean, the problem we're going to have is that the data for FY20 and the data for FY21 are just going to be totally whacked out because, I don't know, it's a technical term. And it's because of the higher ed usage and then if they complicate things and don't come back fully in the fall, or they come back with significant lower enrollment, I don't see us being able to do anything in terms of actually changing our rate structures until FY22 at the earliest. But I do think we could get the classification discussion going so that it could help direct and make best use of the study. That's my personal opinion. I'm looking for, I'm looking at Sunya because I want you to nod, Sunya. I was trying not to have to talk. Well, we're going to have to have some rate changes for fiscal year 21. We just have to go back and relook at them. We also have to notify certain people within a certain amount of time. So I'd have to, Paul, I have to talk to you about that. Right. So there is going to be some rate change for fiscal year 21 for sure. We need to get these hearings on the schedule and get the proposals out there so that they're done with all the qualified amounts of time and so forth. And I don't see us being able to do this in on top of everything else right now for FY21. So it does seem to me that the earliest would be FY22. But as a council, I go back to my takeaways for this as we're looking for Guilford and Amy and our consultants to give us some recommended definitions of categories. And then based on that, we'll say, gee, those look like good categories or could you tweak it this way? And then you would go back and build a model or a couple of scenarios based on those categories. That's the long-term. The short-term is we need to get the sewer and water hearings scheduled in the rate set. Am I missing anything? No, sense. Okay. That's part of the plan going forward. Yes, you got it. Is that any other counselors want to weigh in on my kind of summary there of the order of doing business and what we need to get done? Okay. Are there any other questions from counselors while we have these experts here who look at water every day? I want to just tell you, thank you for a terrific presentation. I think you accomplished exactly what the goal was was to get this conversation moving and you did it with some really significant ways to help us look at that. And so Paul, good way of spending time on this. And counselors, we'll see you on Monday night. I want to thank you very much. The slides were clear and you added information as you talked. So thank you very much. Great. Thanks to all of you. And thanks Gilford to name me everybody at DPW for all the work you're doing right now. It's over the top. Thank you. Meetings adjourned. Thanks guys. Bye. Thanks. Hey, Gilford. I'm looking out of the window. Yeah. I don't know if you want me to give you a call when you guys are all in one place but I was still looking for a response to that email. I sent you about the water main.