11-11-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 11,2013 are going through increases right now, so of them are significant like we talked about Evansville, with the 32%, but what I did was I just put in our 2014, if it went at 9% and where we would be in relation to everyone if nobody else had a rate increase just to show you kind of where we are for the next four years at least. Councilmember Henry Davis Jr.: Yes, sure, thank you for that. One thing that I have been concerned about and I have been talking about this for the last month or so, is how do we capture the biggest economic impact possible when we are dealing with large prices like this, I was concerned about another project and I can't remember right now exactly what it was or actually two of them these past few Council meetings in dealing with how we deal with local hiring of labor. And so as we are edging forward on this project/projects how likely is it for us to think or know that we will be able to be specific in our goal setting to make sure that the money is captured back here, this is a huge project, this is monumental, you know and I agree with Dr. Varner when he was saying about a$200 water bill, my seniors and lower income families they can't even pay their water bill now, and you know for us to look at an increase is already scary enough, and you know, you talk about no water at all, so how do we kind of reverse that but not only reverse it but make sure that those dollars are being recaptured here, so that if there is an impact, the impact actually happens here and not in Southwestern Michigan or you know somewhere in Colorado or where ever somebody might come in and say(inaudible) Eric Horvath: I think that is something that we definitely need to look at, one of the issues that we are going to have to deal with is that you are allowed to do local preferences for equipment and supplies,but you are not allowed to do local prefers toward public works bid projects, you have to go with the lowest, responsible, responsible bidder. But they may be other ways that we can figure out systems that we can drive so that we can have construction locally and I think that is something that would be important to us that we would love to sit down and share ideas on how to we get there to make sure that we are keeping our dollars local as much as possible, I think that is very important. Councilmember Scott: Going back to what Dr. Varner was saying, of these cities here (referring to the power point)besides Indianapolis, are they any other ones going through the CSO project? You don't have to answer that right now, I would kind of like to know what their budget is on their projects, Indianapolis and anybody else. Eric Horvath: Ok, if not, I can probably answer most of those, but we will send you those. Councilmember Scott: Can we get this power point? Eric Horvath: Absolutely. Chairperson White: I am going to ask Eric to complete your presentation, I do know that you do want to go over the finances and then we will ask the Council any questions on the presentation and then we will go to the public hearing. But I also know that we will continue to have discussions on the issue that is before us in terms of this bill, so if you have questions,just make sure that you keep those questions and they will be addressed. This is just really the Is`public hearing that we are having thus far. John Skomp, Crowe, Horwath: As far as the financial side of the presentation goes (referring to the power point presentation) that his gentleman has up here right now,throughout the remainder of the life of the plan we put together here would be 2029, what we put together in the plan is basically a$3.44 increase per year in the monthly sewer bill. What we looked at as we started here obviously over$400 million in capital improvements that were needed over that period of time. First of all, we tried to have some level of construction each year, it's a project that is mandated and it be done in the most efficient manner and try not to do $75 million dollars of projects in one year and then $3,4, or 5 million in another year. Trying to smooth that out, so that a level amount of projects can be completed each year. Along with that also, trying to make it as smooth as possible the monthly increase in the sewer bill year over year, we have done that a couple of different ways tried to look at a percentage increase trying to keep that level. And what it comes out to is trying to make the impact on a residential customer as manageable as possible. We have also come back and looked at trying to come to Council and plan for these