11-11-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 11,2013 Councilmember Oliver Davis, Chairperson, Public Works and Property Vacation Committee, reported that this committee met on this bill this afternoon and did not take formal action on this bill because of the fact that we still are going to allow for a public hearing at this time. Just to note that in doing our research I would like permission to have a quick summary regarding this bill from our City Attorney, regarding what she shared with us today. That's correct Council Attorney. Council rn Kat Ckrd B for increase Atto for the next ey four hleen(4) years;eanski-Far it was properly ill pu64-13 blished sets that this the evening proposed would be rates public hearing on this. However,the Council does have the opportunity to continue the public hearing in the event that they would like to hold more committee meetings through the Utilities Committee and work with the Administration in gathering more information. With regard to past history of the sewer rates, the Council is charged by State Law under title 36 to establish what are to be determined just and equitable fees for providing services in this area. There is a listing of 10 different factors that the Council may use in determining those fees. Councilmember White requested in a recent Utilities meeting a brief history and we went back to 1989 when there was a significant increase first time in fourteen (14) years that the City of South Bend had raised the waste water rates. Thereafter in 2003, there was a twenty-four(24%)rate increase and also in 2004, 2005 there was a five(5%) rate increase, in 2006 at twenty-nine (29%) rate increase, in 2007 fifteen percent(15%) , 2008 eleven (11%) and each year thereafter a 9% rate increase. And again like we have done in the past Mr. Skomp will be presenting detail information as far as determining what is just and reasonable in this area. Chairperson White: I would also ask our Council Attorney to give a very brief overview when we move to the Public Hearing portion. Council Attorney Kathleen Cekanski-Farrand: At the time of the public hearing anyone has the right to speak before the Council. We ask that you give your name and address for the record, you have the right to speak for five (5)minutes. We always ask that anyone who wishes to speak in favor of the bill, speak first, after that anyone who wishes to remonstrant against the proposal also have the right to speak for a maximum of five (5) minutes. If there are any questions raised in either one of those portions the formal presentation given by the City Administration then have a rebuttal period of five(5) minutes. Councilmember Oliver Davis: Madam Chairperson is it at this time or afterwards that we will talk about continuation. Chairperson White: When we get back into the Council portion. Eric Horvath, Director of Public Works, 13th Floor County-City Building, 277 W. Jefferson Blvd., South Bend, Indiana, made the presentation for this bill. Mr. Horvath: Also with me today Becky Schaefer she is an Engineer with Greeley& Hansen who will be joining me momentarily as well as John Skomp who is a Utility Rate Analyst with Crowe Horwarth. I wanted to start by giving a little bit of background and apologize to some of you that have heard this before,but throughout its history the river has just been a tremendous asset for the City of South Bend. Early on as an important industrial base, but for years it has been a mechanism through which we can get our sewers out of the city and into the river where it is diluted and taken away. This is something that has been going on in civilizations for over 5,000 years and they figured out that there is a need to have sewers and that they provided a good health benefit for civilizations, if you look world-wide we are still not there. We have 1 in 4 people who do not have access to sanitary toilets and 4,000 deaths a year from water borne illnesses, 4,000 deaths a day from water borne illnesses throughout the world. So we are very fortunate that we are not in those developing countries and we are not in that same situation. However, we have got our own issues that we have to deal with, and the late 1800's early 1900's we took our sanitary sewer and our storm sewers and took them directly to the river. In the 1950's we decided that we needed to build a wastewater treatment plant to treat some of that II 1I