HomeMy Public PortalAbout2012_tcwsmin0123Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Mayor Kristen C. Umstattd
presiding.
Council Members Present: David S. Butler, Thomas Dunn, Katie Sheldon Hammler,
Marty Martinez, C. Terry Titus, Kevin Wright, and Mayor Umstattd.
Council Members Absent: Council Member Hammler arrived at 7:32. Council
Member Dunn arrived at
Staff Present: Town Manager John Wells, Town Attorney Jeannette Irby, Deputy
Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Director of Utilities Aref Etemadi, Research and
Communications Manager Betsy Fields, and Clerk of Council Lee Ann Green
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Work Session Items for Discussion
a. URAC Report Update
Dan Connolly: I'm Dan. Utility Rate Advisory Committee. As you guys probably
remember previously we have come up here ... we give presentations, we talk about
maybe bringing in a consultant to start getting the ball rolling and it was stated that
maybe we should get some guiding principles together for the consultant before we
actually bring one in. So, we have done some work here to set that up and I would
like to share that with you guys today. This is our current plan of action that I have
previously shared with you. The first thing we are going to do is identify and
prioritize your concerns. Hopefully we can all come to a consensus of what those
concerns were so we could address them.
Martinez: Do you think we should get Terry Titus up to speed on this?
Titus: I think I have gone through this before. Thanks, Marty.
Connolly: We did that at our last presentation. I'll kind of go over a little bit of that
again, I think in the next slide. I didn't have check marks so there are smiley faces as
a check mark there. So, where we are now is we are recommending our principles
and rate structure to you guys. Hopefully we will receive feedback from you today. I
am hoping its just thumbs up. If not, you guys can give us feedback and if something
is not sufficient, we will continue to work on it. We will come back and present again
and eventually, hopefully you will allow us to work with a consultant to move
forward. Targeted problems. Again, this is kind of a summary of what we presented
to you guys earlier. These are no surprise. These are the same problems that we have
been dealing with for I guess the last year. The sewer rate being 1:1 with the water
usage. Obviously an issue for people with larger houses that water their lawn. High
usage surcharge ... basically if you go over just a little bit, it hits your entire bill. And
with this, the next bullet there is tied to that. It's all based on your winter base and if
you are a winter bird or something like that, you go out of town and have low water
usage in the winter you could unfairly be hit by the high usage surcharge later on.
Then, the URAC and the previous URAC also thought that the fined rates are too
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low, which also leads to a variable revenue for the Utilities. Some of our opinions... it
costs money to maintain a connection for individual households and if they are not
around, if they are a winter bird, or the house is in foreclosure and the bank is taking
over and water is not being used, the fixed rate doesn't reflect the cost of keeping the
connection. These would be the fundamentals that we would basically share with the
consultant. This would be the basis of them moving forward. Unanimously, it seems
like all members of URAC are in favor of a tiered rate structure. This is kind of based
on feedback we have received from Council. The fact that it would address many of
the concerns including the threshold. We wouldn't need a threshold anymore. You
wouldn't have to deal with winter birds. It promotes conservation and basically puts
the majority on the cost on those who would most likely stress the system. Derive an
alternative for the 1:1 watensewer fee. That is ... there are a hundred ways you could
address this. But we didn't actually take a stab at that. We know we want it to reflect
more of actual usage, but would like to work with the consultant who has more
experience to help us figure that out. As we have already talked about, fixed rates
should represent a higher percentage of revenue. Preprogrammed increased should be
dispersed over fixed and usage rates. We understand that sometimes it's hard to get
utility rates revised, altered. So this is kind the next bullet there too. We would like to
get everything planned out for the future so we don't have to do this again in five
years, essentially. High usage pricing should be driven by conservation principles,
utilization and capital expenditures. What that's basically trying to say is it's not
just about conservation for the environment, it's about costs associated with high
water users. If they require us to increase capacity and capital costs, that affects
everybody. Basically the costs should increase as high water usage goes up. So, those
will give the consultant enough of a model to give us a bunch of acceptable outcomes
that we have come up with that are no surprise. Tiered rate structure, higher fixed
rate, the highest tier rate remains higher than the current rate, in fact I am pretty sure
it probably will be. The lowest tier rate may be lower than the current rate and
hopefully we can minimize the bills for lower water users. Unacceptable outcomes —
operating revenue does not cover operating expenses. Excessive increases for low
income, for winter birds /slow usage and increases the current out of town rate.
One thing I was still struggling with, we haven't quite figured out. This is something
where we probably do need to talk with a professional consultant is our wants and
needs and what we have presented here ... how do we handle commercial users into
our rate structure? Next steps, hopefully you guys can look this over, give us feedback
and incorporate that feedback, adopt these principles, start engaging a consultant and
hopefully you will let us talk to the consultant while they are doing this. I think that's
it.
Mayor: Thanks, Dan. That was a really good presentation.
Titus: All I would say is I think Daniel was quite backing up that last one. I
think URAC felt that they want to participate with the consultant and what he is
doing. I mean, not on a day to day basis, but on a regular basis so we can have some
input into it. We recognize the faults of the suggestions, but I think that's where the
consultant can help URAC figure out the way we legitimize all of your concerns is
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one we talked about several times. So, I think the committee is ready to go and I
hope the council will scrutinize these and give them good feedback.
Butler: A few things... one, absolutely I think the committee should participate with
the consultant. In fact, I would look at this as the committee is bringing in a
consultant to help them rather than you are recommending that the town bring in a
consultant and then you guys helping the consultant. It's a very different kind of a
spin. I definitely agree that we need to increase the fixed rate and I understand the
objections about it, but there was just an article in I think it was City and County
magazine where it showed trends for utility departments across the country and there
is a lot of water conservation going on where it reduces the overall input and they
were talking about raising the fixed fee and how that's necessary and appropriate
across the board. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring it in today but I will try to copy it
and bring it in tomorrow for Council. Another thing, one of the things that you may
want to look at is for very high users that a lot of tiered rates have a very high use rate
that actually goes back down because what you don't want to do is put car washes out
of business or completely discourage say light manufacturing which may use a lot of
water to come into town. Since the fixed cost of the utility department is very high
and the variable cost is very low, there is a strong argument to made to say that hey
look, if a commercial business like that comes in town, that if it is worth it, then we
don't want to kill them with water costs, which could be the case if we don't structure
it well. Another thing is I know the theoretical arguments for availability fees and
such, but there may be effort to look at partial availability fees versus residential
availability fees. I would have no problem if the residential availability fee is higher to
at least have a slight disincentive to build more houses and if the commercial
availability fee is lower, to have a slight incentive to bring in commercial, especially
restaurants. I know we have done some stuff in the past to help our restaurants, but
as far as I am concern it's not an issue of making it higher for one and lower for the
other. Last, you said one of your goals was to not increase the out of town surcharge.
What I would look at is run an analysis and look at making fairly constant the total
like for like revenue delta between out of town and intown. This may, depending on
how the tiered rate structure is structured, it may mean a raising of the surcharge, may
mean a lowering of the surcharge ... I don't know, but right now last I looked at it,
which was a while back, it was about a million and a half a year that out of towners
paid over and above what they would if they had the same rates as in town. So,
regardless of what the surcharge is, I don't really care what the surcharge is, but the
overall estimated delta should be about the same. So because one of the things that
we don't want to do is you don't want to come in here and have an argument and
have us discussing whether this is good for out of towners or bad for out of towners or
in towners because that's not the argument that we are trying to make. The purpose
of this is not to give a break to the out of towners or to make it worse for the out of
towners. At least that's not my incentive and I'd like to keep the total thing about
constant regardless of what the surcharge ends up being. Thanks.
Hammler: Thank you for the report. I apologize for being a couple of minutes late.
Although I looked at the clock and I actually thought I was on time, so you might
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have covered one just very basic question which is what is the estimated cost for the
consultant, John.
Wells: I think the last time when we did the consultant it was about $80,000.
Hammler: Before I make a couple of comments, I just wanted to make a comment on
Dave's last point relative to the surcharge issue. One of the most important things
relative to bringing in a consultant is ensuring that as it relates to surcharges it's the
issue of the methodology and ultimately the cost of providing the service and all of the
things that Council has learned relative to everything we have been through with the
surcharge question and aligning towards that fairness rate. I think that's going to be
the most important element is that methodology by which we get to that end. All the
other things that we have learned relative to the input that we have had in terms of
ensuring that we don't set a rate quite frankly higher than this point that has come up
a number of times relative to 50% or so as it relates to some of these legislative items
that are coming up with different levels of government. So, I think we just need to
look at the political realities as it relates to the feedback we are given juxtaposed
against the methodology of, if you will, fairness and the cost of providing the service.
Those are very ... you have got the political but we have also got just the strict
methodology of which we get to that. As I have been thinking about a couple of the
things that we have certainly discussed in the past that I'd at least like to throw back
on the table. One is the issue of the sewer fee. I know we have got our system as
it relates to the limitations of our being able to measure who is using what with sewer
and there are certain assumptions about the fact that if you are using water to water
your grass and ultimately do a lot of landscaping, you are probably using a lot of
water and we are making an assumption therefore that you are also paying a 1:1 ratio
and you are technically not using the sewer, but we can't measure for the sewer, so
the thing that I keep coming back to is pursuing either a flat sewer cost. It's a capital
issue anyway so to the extent that you would look at introducing some sort of flat
sewer rate ... and I know Terry has mentioned this as well, but more importantly if
there is anything we can do in a progressive way to be able to offer a type of service
that might be an option for those that want to water their lawn and want to do
landscaping to use untreated water so instead of paying a lot of money to treat water
that is ultimately being thrown on grass... ultimately there is a benefit... aesthetic
benefit to the neighborhood but is there a way ... it's just kind of an open ended, can
we discuss this, whether it's a golf course that needs untreated water or some of our
fields, but kind of in an on demand way, how could we help lower the treated water
costs for those customers who then in fact are using it to water their lawn and
ultimately save the filtered water for what we really need it for. So, I just wanted to
throw that out because I don't know if we have really pursued that to an extent that
we have gotten any answers in terms of how could we make it happen. Obviously we
won't do it now, so we would have to think a little bit outside the box. So I don't
know if you have any initial thoughts, John?
Wells: That's something that certainly the committee and the consultant could look
at. I know one of the items that they have identified is looking at ... without
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identifying an option, that was certainly one of the goals that the committee had was
doing something that disengaged the 1:1 water to sewer, but the committee did not
have a particular recommendation other than don't do that ... but there could be some
creative ideas as to how to do that or part of a formula that would... because there
isn't a way to track it. I think everybody at the committee level was certainly in
agreement that we needed to do something, but wanted to work with a consultant to
look at some options and ideas, and certainly we don't have a best answer at this
point but I think it was clear that is something the committee wants to recommend to
council... that would be part of the overall mix the consultant would deal with.
Hammler: Because I think if we disengage those high water users from the fact that
they are using it for something that the treated water probably shouldn't be used for
that has got this ripple effect of feeling it's unfair to have the sewer rate as well, that
somehow we might be able to get things back in balance relative to the fairness idea of
the treated water, which is incredible, we all know that. Certainly our friends in
Raspberry Falls and Selma are well aware of that. So, I just wanted to again throw
that out. I am visualizing trucks like you have with pool water... somehow we could
find a way like we offer great services for brush pick up. We somehow manage to get
everywhere we need to be in town and around town for doing things like that.
Connolly: Are we talking about something like reclaimed water? It wouldn't be
drinking water, essentially...
Hammler: That's exactly the point. We would not be using drinking water to water
lawns. We understand the inherent value to customers to be able to use water, but it
would be at a different price, because it's not the treated water. Then you disengage
the fact that they are going to end up being in a totally different tier ... they won't be a
high tier user anymore and it takes the pressure off that element of the service.
Connolly: Would we increase the discharge from the wastewater?
Titus: I talked to Katie the other day about this, but I wasn't ... when I left the
conversation ... we were interrupted... there was some question in my mind as to
whether she is talking about untreated water being from the sewer treatment plant or
just untreated water going into the water plant.
Hammler: I don't know what... technically it would be water that makes sense for
landscaping, grass growing purposes that would not be potable water, if you will.
Whatever that is.
Titus: I told her the issues that I had been aware of was that putting treated sewage
water on a farm is one thing ... putting it on somebody's yard where the kids play may
be another. You have to realize that she may be talking about untreated water, not
treated sewage.
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Hammler: Again, I'm not making any distinction because I don't have the technical
background on what those options should be, but obviously keeping in mind the
health, safety and welfare of our families as relates to putting water on lawns and for
landscaping purposes. Thank you.
Wright: Just one follow -up on that issue is I think the challenge with anything like
that would be the infrastructure because you would need a separate set of pipes or you
are going to need local access to a source...
Hammler: You don't like my truck idea?
Wright: No, because if you think of the number of folks that are watering their
lawn ... if you are going to run trucks to them, that would be something we would
have to outsource.
Hammler: Well, I am trying to think outside the box, because we have treated water
and it is causing all this pressure on tiered rate systems for high usage customers and
the situation with the sewer, but point is well taken.
Wright: A couple of things... one thank you very much for the presentation; for
sticking with this. On your fundamentals, I like all of this because the one thing ... I
think the other fundamental; it's already there but as we look at these rates, the one
thing we have to do as we approach all of this is make sure they are fair, reasonable,
practical, and equitable. On a tiered rate structure, that's easy to do. On this
alternative 1:1 water to sewage I think the other thing we will have to do is be able to
have the opportunity to look at our actuals, look at the history versus what is being
treated through the plant, versus the water that we are generating, those type of items
to see what that ratio is. I don't know that ... I would love for just winter quarter to go
away and we have another genius way to calculate it that has to be out there
somewhere. I am just ... we have to be somewhat thankful that we are not in a
warmer climate, although maybe not. In the warmer climates they don't worry about
it. It's a 1:1 deal with it. Here it is a slightly different thing because we do have the
seasonal usage. The outcomes, I had no real huge issues there. The one thing you
touched on as far as sort of addressing the commercial and appointment user rate
structures, I think probably the way you try and capture that is most of those users
have a different meter size so you are going to have a tier that's created just based on
the two core residential meter sizes that is 85% of the system? So, you have got that
core system and you look at are the tiers greater? Sort of are there bigger gaps or is
that tiered structure on the commercial side simpler, but that one ... that's probably the
easiest way to manage that one because I think most of the apartment users and the
commercial users, especially if you think of the car washes and the folks that we don't
want to have that unintended consequence to can probably be managed by identifying
the tiers based on your meter sizes or identifying your rate structure based on your
meter sizes to where some of those may not make sense to have the tier because the
usage in them is fairly consistent so they are not stressing the system, their usage is
consistent. That maybe something to be looked at. So, John, I guess really my only
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other follow on would be is this something we need to have a work session to kind of
work through and figure out next steps? Sort of the Council says go forth and
accomplish X, or what did you envision since you are their new best friend? You
hang out with them as they have continued to work hard, which is very much
appreciated.
Wells: No, I think ... the Council has just received this last Thursday. You may have
some thoughts, questions, want some additional information to refine any of the
outcomes. Essentially this would become the scope of work at the broadest level for a
consultant. If you would like to take some time, review that, fine tune it in any way.
If any additional information, either the staff or the committee working together could
bring something back to the Council at a future work session, again refine it if you feel
that's necessary. Where this was last left was a two step process that would engage a
consultant and Council said before we engage a consultant we wanted to know what
the scope of work would be. So, at the point you feel that this is sufficient to give a
consultant, then we could move on but there may be some questions that you would
like to refine a little bit more. The more refined and the more defined your scope of
work is, the less the consultant is going to have to search for options. There may be
some things that you want that on...
Wright: To more simplify their engagement.
Wells: Yes, exactly.
Martinez: Well, one of the things that I haven't heard a whole lot on that I think
always bites you in the end is no matter what we implement is what are going to be
our long term operation costs. Sometimes we sit there and have great ideas and then
think well, wait a minute. It's costing us more to implement these great ideas than if
we just left it alone or simplified it. So, I think we were talking about all these
different rates or tier structures, but you take into consideration the long term
operational costs that it's going to impact. That has to be part of the equation. You
can't just ignore that. Going to Katie wanting to have different alternatives, I have to
go with Kevin that the infrastructure itself would probably be prohibitive to do
anything like that. Trucks would be prohibited, but one thing that we haven't talked
about is allowing some of the high water users to maybe dig a well for their irrigation.
I'll just say Rivercreek off the top, if some of those places could have a well and
separate that from our system and find someway to maybe see if we could get that to
happen. The other thing ... I have got a lot of questions here so hopefully I'll go
quickly through them. The first thing that came to my mind also was the low income
users who we need to be considerate of. Along with that, we really need to talk about
the winter bird penalties and that, but I get to think about the low income adult, small
families that ... we cannot overpenalize them ... and yet these low income people share
some of the burden that we are allowing for. All of that I think has to be part of the
equation also. We are looking at the low income, we are looking at the low volume
users, but also tie that into the winter usage. It's not that the winter bird should be
ignored, but I just don't want to give them a break at the cost of the people who are
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still here that are having low volume and are low income. I hope that makes some
sense. We talked about commercial availability. I think when you look at
apartments, they have a pretty big pipe coming in, at least I believe they are, and I'm
not too concerned about the apartment versus commercial issues but one thing I am
concerned about is that we need to talk about is availability fees. One of the biggest
concerns on small businesses who come into town and we will talk about restaurants
and for example, a brewery, is a high cost to hook up. What I would not want to do
is forecast that a restaurant comes in ... we get bill for them and they can't afford it.
Have some way, because from what I understand the availability fee goes to the
building, not the business. So that we have a way to encourage businesses to come in
there with some kind of tiered payment structure for their availability fee that carries
with the building, not the business. If the business just happens to be there long
enough to pay for that availability fee, great, but what I don't want to do is forecast
revenues based on small businesses coming in and paying these huge availability fees
and then they go out of business and nobody gets the money. That was another one
of my concerns. The other thing, when you talk about alternatives, you know I
mentioned wells. One of the things that has been really successful, especially in my
neighborhood, are the water barrels. What kind of information are we passing on that
maybe some of these high water users, if you had a water barrel system hooked up or
maybe you strung it out as part of your irrigation system, how can we help facilitate
that. I think that's another thing we can look at. One of the things that I think we
really need to consider when we start talking about tiered structures is if I am
somewhere between a middle user and a high user, someway to find out where I am
at that quarter and that would tailor my usage. Say for example, the first month of
the quarter, I am using a lot of water. I'm going to go wait a minute, if I keep using
this, I'll be hitting high usage in six weeks. To be able to go to the website, see where
you are in the tier, how much time you have got, what you are using on an average
basis and what that does is help conservation and that somebody doesn't get hit with
a high usage water bill when they could have looked at that usage and said you know
what, I'm not going to water my lawn three times a week. I'm only going to water it
once.
Connolly: Real quick. The rate structure that we had in mind wouldn't... unlike the
high usage threshold now where you break that threshold and then it's applied to your
entire bill, the rate structure we have now, you would be billed the same rate for
gallons x through you know 10 x X. If you go over that, you are still billed the same
for that usage right there. It's like a tax bracket. Then when it kicks up again, you
just calculate it for what is above. It's not retroactive through the entire bill.
Martinez: But it still gives a person an ability to take care of their usage throughout
the year, especially during spring and summer where it is more critical.
Hammler: Marty, do you mind if we pause just to get some feedback because that's a
critical issue. Are we going to be in a perspective from our billing kind of IT system
to be able to provide real time feedback of where people are of their usage, sort of like
your Verizon minutes.
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Wells: Short answer is yes.
Martinez: I think that's something that we need. Weigh these things out. We have
got to have the ability for people to look at what they are paying, what their rates are,
what their usage is. Okay, let me see what else was there. Meter. I know we talked
about having separate meters, one for outdoors, one for indoors. I know initially it
was pretty cost prohibitive, like $3,000 -4,000 for the meter, but maybe some of these
really high water usage ... pools, big lawns, may find it advantageous to have that
second meter. We maybe have ways to have a program that says hey, if you want to
invest in this water meter, we will do something to hook you up with it and have a
process by which we can hook them up with that. I wonder if I had anything else. I'll
leave that for now. I'm sure I'll come up with some other stuff later. Hopefully this is
enough for you to chew on for a little while.
Dunn: Just appreciate you all's efforts. I know that it is challenging and we are a
fickle group to work with, so I do appreciate your efforts. I just want to mention that
I have been mentioning is that I still feel that the utility department should be going
under a water authority... take it out of the hands of this group here. I think it would
be a better situation for everybody. Takes the politics out of it and gets a more
independent group managing it. Still would like to see us try to find other customers
for our utility department. In fact, we are under utilized and look for other
communities that we could look at selling water to. Hopefully we can get some
legislation out of Richmond that would help accommodate that and relieve some of
- the fears of sprawl that might come from people tapping into those pipes that could
possibly be laid. Look at ways we can possibly work with in conjunction with the
utility authority or water authority concept... possible ways that we can work with
Loudoun Water to help us with our utility department.
Martinez: ...it all has to come back with information is that we get tweets or alerts for
all kinds of different things. We have gotten some complaints in the past with people
not being reminded that hey your water bill hasn't been paid or things like that. As
we are looking at ... I am not throwing all this on a URAC tiered rate study, but when
we are coming back and looking at long term life, how we are going to do this ... I
would personally like to get an alert saying hey you haven't paid your bill and it's
overdue by a week or you are using this amount of water. For example, I had a
neighbor who had a leak in their pipe. They had an excessive water usage. It would
have been nice for them to get an alert that said hey by the way, did you know you
just used three times the amount of water this month versus last month? A feedback
system that lets our residents and users know when something unusual has happened
to their water rate.
Butler: Or like set up an automatic email like once a week that tells you how much
water you used for the week.
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Martinez: If it's cheap and there is a way to do it on the operations side, it would be
great.
Hammler: Especially because it is a quarterly bill; having an alert that goes out two
weeks a month before the bill is due.
Etemadi: You can do that right now, it has been in practice since the start of this new
system we have had. We have thresholds that we can set on the program that kicks
out low usage, normal usage and high usage. From that, we can investigate to see if
it's no usage, they go out and check the meter. Maybe the homeowner is out of town.
In fact, this morning we had a resident who's flow had been stuck. We have this
currently, right now. It is available but when you get 3,000 reports a day, it is difficult
but the guys are very diligent and they go put a note on the homeowner's door.
Martinez: That's what I am thinking as Dave said. Get an automatic email coming
back with every week or every month you can get an automatic kick back. Whether
there is an _ on the operational side of things. It's something I could sign up for
that you guys ... it's just part of your doing business without having to add another
task to one of your guys. It's something to think about. Implementation may be a
cost, but operationally it's not.
Hammler: In other words ... John, if I can just pause because the answer we just got is
it sounds like it's labor intensive. Somebody is pouring over information literally
somebody versus an IT solution which there should be smart enough artificial
intelligence...
Wells: What's going on is we have just recently installed this system, so I think we
are learning to walk before we can run a little bit.
Wright: Before we start firing emails to everybody, validate the function of the
system.
Wells: The good news is we have an ability now that we didn't have not too long ago
to monitor and track. I think the key is how do you integrate that in a way so it is not
as labor intensive as it is now. Because it is an automated system that we do have.
How do you set the thresholds. How do you put the notification end on it, which is
the communication part as opposed to having to look at it...
Butler: The good news in what a lot of companies are doing is allow people to put
their own thresholds on and you just send them an email and then you don't have to
worry about it. If you don't have to be going out... if you don't have to be reviewing
2,000 -3,000 words a day ... it's all self service.
Wells: That's where we are trying to discover how to make all this work.
Titus: How are you doing that now?
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Wells: We have a new system that...
Etemadi: Our software system has the capability of informing, but not to send emails.
We had one person full time sitting there daily looking at these reports, identifying
which ones need to be investigated...
Titus: But you all read the meters but once a quarter, right?
Etemadi: Right, but daily the machine spits out daily a number of middle reads, high
reads, or low reads.
Wells: The meters are read officially. The data is available daily.
Etemadi: The data is collected twice a day every meter. The readings are collected
every day.
Titus: (inaudible).
Martinez: Part of the problem with the application that you are talking about is there
are so many potential uses of that application... we haven't had somebody on board to
explore that. We have just had somebody to do the work. We don't have anybody
who has the real background and experience in procedures...
Etemadi: Washington, DC has their own IT staff that had developed their own
software programs. We don't have that here and unfortunately will not have, so we
have to depend on a consultant. We are working right now on contract issues
regarding availability of a web module for the homeowners. Once the contract issues
are resolved, which we are almost at the last tweaks of the contract between us and
the contractor, the web module will become available, eventually in a few months.
Hopefully where the residents can look at it daily and see what their usage is, just
like...
Wells: I think through that module is where I would be looking to put the type of
communication effort that is being talked about. We are getting very close and I
know we talked about this last year. The pieces are falling into place, but we are not
totally there yet. We are clearly heading in the direction I think Council is looking
for.
Etemadi: We are going to have some trial periods. We may select you as one the test
cases.
Wells: It is pretty interesting. They have had the opportunity to show me how it
worked and it was over one of the summer months and I could tell when I was out of
town a couple of weekends, the daily reports matched when I was not home and you
could tell...
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Martinez: So, in anticipation of the rollout, you will give us a presentation on that?
Etemadi: Hopefully we have learned enough to do that presentation.
Mayor: That's really good news. That module that permits everyone to look...
Etemadi: We have had some contractual issues with the contractor.
Mayor: What other jurisdictions around the country have that system in place
already, do you know?
Etemadi: who has recently acquired this company, they had it for the electric
and gas customers. They are bringing that software and that module into the utilities
side because they have just acquired this company. So, Washington, DC has this.
Some of the bigger jurisdictions, Boston, Chicago, New York, those have that kind of
capabilities. The closest one is DC that we know of.
Mayor: It is in place and its operational and individuals are already checking every
day what their usage is?
Etemadi: For example, with Dominion Virginia Power you can log into your
account, you can look at your usage patterns for the duration that you have had the
account. It will be a similar system to that.
Mayor: When you say it is operating in DC, are we talking about water usage or are
we talking about power usage?
Etemadi: Water.
Mayor: Okay, so it is up and running in DC.
Titus: They have contract issues down there too.
Wells: Ours are different.
Mayor: Dan, thank you for that presentation. Most of my questions will probably go
to Aref and John, so if you want to relax ... Aref and John, you feel that it would be a
good idea to hire a consultant, that staff is not able to do this study themselves?
Wells: The level of detail, I think, that's going to be necessary having gone through
this when we did the rate analysis as a result of the court study, I would not be
comfortable having us do that level of work over that period of time. There is some
expertise there that I don't think... between finance ... not that everybody isn't very
capable, but the end product needs to be done with some expertise that I don't think
that we have.
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Mayor: Very good. I think looking seriously, the tiered rate structure is probably a
very good idea. I don't agree with everything that URAC has presented, but I think
they have presented some very good ideas. Question on our 1:1 water /sewer charges
and assumptions. Are we capturing, in what is a higher sewer rate, are we capturing
the cost of enhanced TDML regulations or not? If we are going to have to charge our
users more money for meeting the Total Maximum Daily Load regulations, are we
incorporating those costs into perhaps higher sewage rates, or not? Is the higher
sewage rate covering that cost at all?
Etemadi: Right now, it is. Yes.
Butler: How do you say it is, when we are barely making money? I mean we are not
making a profit on the...
Etemadi: The mayor is asking if that covers the cost of treatment.
Butler: But not over and above anything that we are currently doing. Not the
TMDL. You are referring to the TMDLs that are coming down the pike. I mean we
are not making any money.
Mayor: I know, but there are a couple of aspects to this. Let's say we lower the seer
charge because no longer will we be assuming that one gallon of water equals one
gallon of sewage treatment and it would seem fair to me that we should charge for
water and we should charge for sewage treatment actually needed. So, in the summer
one gallon of water doesn't always mean one gallon of water going into the sanitary
sewer system, but if it's not going into the sanitary sewer, then it's going theoretically
into the storm sewer and we are going to be responsible for the quality of water
coming through our storm sewer system too, I understand.
Etemadi: Eventually, yes.
Mayor: Are we going to be recouping the cost of that stormwater pollution through
our higher sanitary sewer, our 1:1 charge ratio? Has anybody looked at how this is
going to work?
Wells: The short answer is we don't know what those long term costs are going to be
and we are not covering those costs ... we don't know what those costs necessarily are
at this point. I know there is some opportunity for looking at nutrient trading and
other types of aspects, but the rate structure the Council has put in to place that goes a
couple more years out, doesn't take into account anything significantly different in
terms of TDMLs.
Hammler: So, when will we know? Because let's face it. You are talking about
something that is going to be on such a different scale that this gets back to customer
relations 101. We don't want to go through this entire consultant project only to
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introduce some very minor change based on our current system and we know
something catastrophically different is coming down the pike, so when will we know?
Wells: We don't know. I know it's hard to imagine that we don't know. Right now,
we don't even know whether we are a standalone entity in terms of the whole TDML
process or whether we are part of Loudoun County. One of the challenges we are
facing right now is based on how the state is requiring the efforts for TDMLs in
general as those are being dealt with at a county level. We have no ability as a town
to report a particular set of data on our own other than through the county. The
county doesn't know if they are going to participate in the regional effort as part of
what NVRC is doing, so we have been working ... and this isn't just wastewater. This
is the whole program in general. Right now, we can't get a definitive answer from the
state in terms of how we are going to be treated because we are in the no man's land
of being in a county that may or may not wish to participate in a regional solution,
but we have our own MS -4 permit and we are under certain obligations of our own
and we also have a utility. So, as convoluted as that sounds, that's the reality of what
we know. I can't give you definitive dates, times or what the requirements are going
to be at this point.
Hammler: Is it a fair... sorry, Madam Mayor. I mean it's such an important point. Is
that something that could be introduced into the consultant's scope of the project in
terms of analyzing scenario A, B, C based on some reasonable assumptions?
Wells: The short answer is that it will need to be or at least at the point that we need
to finalize a rate study, at least know what your worst case scenarios might be so that
again those types of things can be built in. We are struggling at this point trying to get
definitive information from the state and we are working with two different agencies
at the state level to try to run that down, so it's not a known number at this point or
it's not a known date. So, the answer to the question is no. It's something that we do
need to take into account and to the degree that we can continue to run that down
while a consultant is here, it will need to be something that they have to incorporate.
Butler: I'd be careful with that because we are really looking at two completely
separate issues. This is basically you got a pile of beans and you are just moving the
bean around. Whereas the TMDLs are that you have got start collecting a lot more
beans.
Wells: True. All I am saying is that...
Hammler: It's not different from a customer end point perspective.
Butler: Absolutely. One is just changing the structure, the other is saying we need
more money from everybody to pay for the whole pollution thing.
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Wells: What many local governments are doing is looking at things other than a
utility rate structure to recoup those costs. That's where you are hearing about utility
districts and things of that nature as opposed to doing it through your water utility.
Hammler: It would not be affiliated with the enterprise fund... it may be somehow...
Wells: But there may be certain aspects of costs that are affected by nutrient trading
and costs of operation at the plant because there are two different aspects of TDMLs,
one dealing with impervious surface issues and the other dealing with plant
operations. Those could have that impact. I am kind of telling you the bigger picture
story, which isn't a real clear picture.
Etemadi: Half on our side has been cleared... of course dealing with TMDLs in one
way or another for a number of years ever since the inception of the . I have had
this ... knowing what our limits are. Just recently our new permit from the DEQ, just
a month ago, so the path is set. In fact, I have a memo coming to you all at the next
meeting that brings up these issues and talks about where we go and gives an update
on the TMDLs at the wastewater plant. So, you guys started this a little earlier than I
was expecting to discuss that. Just to brief you guys, we did do a little pilot study this
past summer at the wastewater plant to see what our capabilities are. We added
methanol to lower the phosphorus. It was very successful, the pilot period, but the
flows were somewhat low. We were about 5 -5.5 million gallons, but our permit is for
10, but our design right now is 7.5. As the flows go up, it is going to be a little more
difficult to meet those limits of 4.3 for phosphorus, but the results were very positive
with the addition of methanol which we are thinking about $150 to $200,000 we
might be able to meet our limits without any upgrades at the facility. So, I will have a
little more briefing at the next meeting with some numbers for you all to look at. But
our path is pretty much set and is pretty clear, where we have to go and where we
have to travel versus the MS -4 region.
Mayor: Building on something Katie had said that from the customer's standpoint, it
doesn't really matter whether I am paying $100 for watering my lawn and having it go
into the storm sewer and I have to pay to help mitigate the pollution caused there in
the rivers and streams. It doesn't matter whether I am paying for that, or I am paying
for sanitary sewer treatment, I am still paying the $100. Do we envision that at some
point in the future, we are going to say, Okay, you are paying $1 for this gallon of
water. Since its summer, we assume that half of that gallon is going onto your lawn,
but you will be charged X number of pennies or dollars for the sanitary sewer and X
for the other 50% that is going on the lawn and into the storm drainage system. You
are still going to be paying, but do we anticipate our utility bills will be reflecting two
different categories for sewer treatment?
Etemadi: The information we included was the main water and sewer. There may be
a special tax on either the property tax or other means, trash collection ... I don't know
how that mechanism will work but then we will be able to keep the water and sewer
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separate ... but I don't know. I'm not sure at this stage. That's going to be pretty
much up to you.
Titus: I don't know this far back, but it seems to me that a different kind of animal is
going to do a rate study than do a TMDL study because TMDL stuff is so technical in
nature. I would caution that number could get pretty high to do those kind of
facilities, particularly when you have a town that's 200 years old and you have no
space to do something like that. Costs of acquiring land, and something like that is
kind of scary. From what I know now, I agree with Aref that we should try to look at
a different category of billing rather than mix it with sewage because it's going to take
one heck of a big study to do TMDL. We have some already done with the
stormwater management plan. Do we have much inflow?
Etemadi: Depends on the weather. I guess about '/2 million to a million.
Titus: That's unfortunate. It really is.
Hammler: I am anticipating the concept. If this does have to be passed on to our
individual taxpayers based on the fact that this is coming down from the Federal
government and they are passing this requirement down to us and the legislators in
other levels of government aren't taking any responsibility whatsoever that the cost is
coming down to the local level. If we are able to separate out and in all expectation
given what we are hearing in terms of number could be significant as that per
household number, that amount should be tax deductible. There should be
something reflected in an individual's budgetary ability to say the government has
passed this tax on to me, I am not going to therefore take money that I have already
paid... it should be pre -tax money. I guess we need to think that through as it relates
to at least finding some ways to...
Butler: If it was pennies on the tax rate, that would do it.
Hammler: Different topic all together, but I want to add it for final comments. One,
someone mentioned earlier ... just John is running with this with URAC but I would
highly recommend that we nominate a member of Council given that this is the only
committee in which we don't have a Council liaison to support the next level of effort
ongoing. So, I would certainly support a nomination process to make sure we have a
Council member deeply involved moving forward. And then, a couple of other quick
things. I appreciated Marty's willingness to brainstorm a little bit about how could
we find ways to not use treated water for landscaping. Loved the well idea. But just
another concept... there are a number of services we provide where the town just
outsources. We don't provide it, but it is available as a service. Like recycling, as an
example. Is there any way this could be outsourced as an option? A much less
expensive option for again, homeowners, to water their lawn. One other
brainstorming idea. Then finally, Tom raised a good point about customers. Given
that we are having our meeting with the Board of Supervisors coming up soon, I just
wanted to impress upon Council the importance of a boundary line adjustment for
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Crosstrails. They are a really important water customer and I think we really need to
not forget, if you will, revenue generating water customers as well. I certainly thing
Crosstrails is a prime candidate that we need to keep front and center.
Mayor: Thanks, Katie. Aref, John, thank you very much. Dan, thank you. Other
members of URAC, thanks for coming.
Butler: So for the URAC, we decided we are going to come back at a different work
session and refine?
Mayor: I would think so.
Titus: As a member of URAC, used to be member of URAC, I would think they
would like to have an answer as soon as possible because there is momentum being
built up in people coming to the meetings and so forth, so I would encourage Council
to do it as soon as it could.
Hammler: If I nominate say Dave, tomorrow night to be the Council liaison, would
there be support for something like that? Or is there not support of Council to have a
Council liaison for the URAC?
Wright: Well, Dave might beat you.
Butler: It depends on how often they meet, I guess is one thing. I am not interested
in meeting every week for six months.
Titus: I would be happy to do it. Obviously, but I won't be here that long. That's
what I am concerned about. I'll do it for the next three months. After that .... that's
fine.
Butler: I'm good with that.
Titus: Is that okay?
Mayor: Yes. Thanks, Terry.
Titus: Okay, I'll do it as a non - voting member of URAC.
Wells: Ex- officio.
Connally: To clarify, we are reworking our comments and will bring it back as soon
as we can.
Wright: We will have a work session to go over the comments. What I was thinking,
John, is you could take what you have heard and probably get that into a statement of
work or a resolution to for us to throw out at them.
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Wells: Right, and then go back for any integration.
Wright: You guys have done a good job and you get like a week break. Maybe 10
days.
Butler: We don't meet for three weeks.
Mayor: Three weeks break.
b. Amendment to Chapter 34 Articles II and III — Revising Various Fees
Etemadi: Back in November, Council authorized staff to look into initiating changes
to Chapter 34 Articles II and III. We have been looking at these for the last few
months. Staff has been looking at various fees that we have suggested to be looked at.
The memo explains the changes that we are asking. Most of these changes are due to
the fact of the recurring administrative expenses do not equal the service provided to
the customer. Most of the changes ... I don't know if you all want me to go one by one
to explain...
Wells: URAC has looked at this since the Council last saw it. It went back to
URAC. They went through it in detail and felt comfortable recommending to you
this set of changes.
Etemadi: The changes are in line with neighboring jurisdictions, Fairfax, Loudoun,
Purcellville, so we have surveyed those jurisdictions.
Wells: I think the key point that the Council raised last time, just to clarify, the fees
being talked about have nothing to do with the rates and the fees associated with
water usage. These are services provided through the facet or down the drain.
Titus: I like them. Aref, Number 5, is a fee for unauthorized use of service. That is a
very serious offense. I don't think these fines are enough. At some point they got to
yank a guy's license. He should not be out there stealing water.
Etemadi: These are even for residents who's water gets cut off.
Titus: I'm not saying we have got to sack them, but stealing water... stealing anything
is not right. I don't have a solution, I just ... from a commercial side, if somebody is
doing this kind of stuff, we ought to be on them and jerk their license in a minute.
Etemadi: It has not been an issue. We have had a few occasions in the past few
years. I can probably count a handful since I have been here. It's more a deterrent
that we have rather than it happens every few months. This is the first time we are
implementing this. If you see there is an issue, we can always come back and revise
the numbers. Staff feels comfortable with these recommendations.
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Wright: In general, all of these made sense. I had the same kind of take away in
looking what the charge was coming from and to in the cases of existing charges of it
cost us ... it's simply adjusting it for the cost of what it cost us to administer that
particular service, but I had a similar reaction to Terry's on Number 5 of based on my
understanding of what we are putting there... unauthorized tampering or use that the
first offense should be higher than $50.
Irby: That's the civil charge. It does not preclude a criminal charge for stealing.
Etemadi: We have a public hearing set for February 14 in front of Council.
Mayor: Very good.
Dunn: On Number 2, do you have ... I guess 2, 3, and 4. Do you have any examples
for each of those as far as amounts or number of situations we have come into. For
example, you mention Number 4. Do you have any examples of how often this is
happening?
Etemadi: Number 4 happens quite a bit. The ordinance will establish certain time
limits. If the customer calls before 4:30 p.m., they will get their service on or off on
the same day. A lot of people wait until five minutes before five p.m. to call. One
person does the cut on and cut offs. He may already have 15 calls to attend to so if
that pushes him into overtime after hours, that is one of the reasons the charges are
going up to pay for that excessive amount of labor, but that does happen five to ten
times a week that people call in late or they call Friday afternoon and they want it cut
on Saturday morning. As far as Number 2, right now, the fee for that is $10 for a
service charge and $5.75 for water use for a thousand gallons. We intend this to
reduce the number of contractors who have direct access to our hydrants. Some is for
a maintenance issue. One of the biggest reasons is security. Currently we have about
80 meters that are loaned out to various contractors. We are trying to reduce this to a
handful of contractors and encourage people to go to the water plant. We had a nice
facility built with our last expansion for filling tanker trucks. If they chose the other
option, it's a much cheaper rate and they pay to have the town high usage charge. If
they still only chose to use one of the hydrants, we are going to designate certain
hydrants. We are going to paint them different colors. We are not going to allow all
of the contractors to access any hydrant that they so wish. This is an enforcement
issue until we get a good grip on this, it may increase water theft because people may
not want to go to the water plant to fill their truck. With the help of the police and
the help of staff, we are hoping we can manage this. Security is our biggest concern.
We have been trying for a number of years to come up with an idea of how we can
control contractor's access to hydrants and we have come up with this option that
hopefully will work for us.
Dunn: Then Number 3?
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Etemadi: If the homeowners pay their deposit when they open their account, and the
deposit is returned after, I believe, it's three years, so they have no deposit on hold. If
their water is disconnected for nonpayment or other violations, this will require them
to pay a deposit again. Basically their credit has been damaged due to nonpayment.
How many will this affect? I can get numbers for you. I can see if the finance
department can produce some numbers. We can do that.
Dunn: That's good. Because there has got to be a reason for implementing it. If we
are talking about three people a year, why do it.
Etemadi: I know there are quite a few nonpayments that occur every quarter so the
numbers might be in the 20s, 50s, 60s. I can check with Finance.
C. Amending the Town Code — Deleting Reference to the Airport Fund
Wells: Very briefly, tomorrow evening you have a public hearing on your agenda that
will provide for the opportunity for Council to adopt an ordinance to have the airport
fund as an enterprise fund disappear. The airport fund was established in 1965 to
create a separate set of books, if you will, as part of the overall town operation as an
enterprise fund. In looking at the value of what an enterprise fund provides for the
town there may have been good reason in 1965 to have an enterprise fund. As we sit
today, I can't give you a reason why it should be an enterprise fund, but I can give
you a number of reasons why it shouldn't be. We are making a recommendation to
actually no longer have the enterprise fund and incorporate the airport operations
within the town general fund. We have reviewed this with the airport commission.
We have talked with our auditors, financial advisors, the FAA and the Virginia
Department of Aviation and they have no concerns. The airport Commission has
officially endorsed the proposal. Basically the net result will be you will see the
general fund totals... typically when we present the budget, we do a combined total,
but the general fund in and of itself will technically increase. The airport fund, as an
enterprise fund, will disappear. It will not have any change or impact on the tax rate
as it sets. Items that are listed as depreciable assets of the enterprise fund, become
part of the general fund. One thing we do note is the $3 million in loans and
advances to the airport fund will be eliminated, so those dollars that are held in a
reserve in the CAFR are then undesignated and I will be making specific
recommendations for the allocation of those funds based on our fiscal policies when
we present the budget.
Titus: I can tell you exactly why it was done. I wasn't on the Council '65, but soon
after I can remember there was an uproar about this thing not paying for itself and it
still doesn't. It maybe has one year, I don't remember. The Council was pretty
adamant that thing be set aside whether that thing was making money or not. It was
some kind of folly. It is obviously not a folly, but I'll candid with you. I am not going
to support this resolution in any shape or form because I think we still need to know
what the airport is doing. If they are losing money, we can just look at the structure
of the charges so we can appropriately charge people who are using expensive
vehicles at the town's expense. I don't have an airplane. I don't want one. I couldn't
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fly one if I had to, but I don't feel like I should be subsidizing somebody who has got
a $25 or $10,000 or million dollar airplane out there at all.
Mayor: Dennis, would you address the issue of whether the airport has been
operating in the black over the last several years?
Boykin: I think the Town Manager has expressed most of it and he has a handle on
the budget. I'd let him answer.
Wells: From an operational standpoint, current revenues are exceeding current
expenses. When you count in depreciation as an enterprise fund, it does not. I think
the question is does that depreciation affect the bottom line from a tax rate in the
town. The short answer is no, but one thing I do want to address for all council
members and that is moving the airport into the enterprise fund, doesn't mean we still
can't answer the question that you are asking. We are not going to account for it as a
business. Similarly, when Council asks how well do fees and charges cover the rec
center in Parks and Recreation. We don't have an enterprise fund that the parks
department is part of, but we can talk about recovery for any of our individual
programs, whether it is the tennis program, the pool program and the rec center.
Similarly for the airport, we would be able to answer similar type of questions.
Wright: Just one follow -up and this is where I think a lot of people get lost is on that
depreciation number because if you take the depreciation number and throw it out,
the airport is actually in a very good position. What a lot of folks don't understand is
the bulk of the expenses incurred at the airport that are capital expenses, 95% of them
are paid for by another entity. So, we are taking a 100% charge on an asset of which
we are only responsible for 5% of the cost based on the way the enterprise fund is
structured. You knew that, but I needed to get that out there.
Boykin: That was the driver behind examining and starting this examination three
years ago and saying why do we have an enterprise fund because we constantly
fought with this depreciation issue where we are depreciating all this money that is
paid by the FAA.
Wells: Then, matters became worse when the change in audit requirements affected
how loans were affected. If you recall two years ago, we ended up with the $3 million
charge against fund balance and that accelerated beyond what we were already
dealing with. Again, I can't tell you from an accounting standpoint why we should
do that. It is actually detrimental from my perspective to have it as an enterprise
fund, no disrespect to that issue. I think what Council Member Titus brings up is still
very important and we won't lose that, but having a $3 million charge against a fund
balance number just because we have an enterprise fund doesn't serve the town or the
citizens well at all. I think doing away with that, I think helps tell a clearer story as to
how the airport operates. Again, we don't lose the ability to still report to you, but
right now we can ... I'll be able to give you some suggestions on how we can reallocate
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that portion of fund balance that can have a positive impact on the town's bottom
line.
Martinez: It might help people to get a better idea if you go through the ILS runway
improvements, other improvements that have been funded by 95% by federal
government and state because the state has also contributed and break that out and
see that maybe out of $15 million of improvements, we really should be
depreciating ... we are depreciating all $15 million, but really our input to the whole
thing has been a lot less than that.
Wells: We carry greater assets on the books than we have paid for. That doesn't
mean that we still don't own the asset and there are lots of comparisons about how
does that work with roads, but if you simply look at the airport in and of itself, those
assets are now town assets, but principally were paid in many cases by the FAA.
Hammler: What about the terminal?
Wells: That's a different matter.
Hammler: Well, that's an important matter. So, how does this change...
Wells: It doesn't change anything. That's the point, from a budgeting standpoint,
this does not change your operational budget, long range plan by moving from an
enterprise fund to the general fund. We already took part of that step when we
moved the debt service... Council approved having debt service be part of the general
fund last year, so the fact that the terminal is on a different return basis, your hangars
operate more on a cash basis. We could go through each of the particular capital
assets out there, but budgetarily this does not have a negative impact on the budget I
am going to present. In fact, it will actually give me the opportunity to make some
recommendations to you that can have a positive impact.
Martinez: The other thing that also should be put out there for people to see is that
the money we did get from the federal government and state have strings attached. If
you ever decide to do something different with the airport...
Wells: There are dollars to pay back.
Dunn: I want to see the airport succeed. I think that this is about shining light.
Having an enterprise or its own entity helps shine light on true success of that
operation. While it is operating in the black, theoretically it is not in the black
because it still has debt that you pay. If it was a business, it would not be in the black.
Much like ... and we say this doesn't have any impact on the taxpayer. Well, that's
because we have been subsidizing that and we have been already paying for it. Alls
we are doing is we are now changing the light. Instead of the focus being on the
airport that it has debts that we should be focused on trying to achieve paying it of
itself we are now saying well we haven't been doing that anyway, so let's now take
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the light off of that issue and we will just put it back where it has been going, which is
coming out of the general fund anyhow. I think that does have an impact on the
taxpayers because what that does is it starts to allow us as public officials to start just
saying we have free will to do what we want with the taxpayer dollars and we don't.
Much like the Balch Library. The Balch Library decided to spend $2 million on
upgrading the Balch Library. The $16,000 it brings in room rentals per year, it's
foolish to think we will ever see a return on that investment. I think it goes back to
the responsibility of government. We do have a responsibility to the tax payers and I
would rather see it stay as an enterprise zone. I would rather see Ida Lee as an
enterprise zone because we can just keep throwing tax payer dollars at things. We
never really have to recoup this because it's tax payer dollars. I don't know if the tax
payers necessarily feel the same way about it, so this has no ... to me, this does not
diminish my feeling for the success of the airport and the need that we have for it in
the town. This resolution shouldn't reflect that at all but I would rather see it stay as
an enterprise zone myself so that we can draw the attention to the need of it's a
business entity and we need to be managing it as such and it needs to pay for it's own
bills regardless of depreciation. It's kind of like tax deductions. You don't make it
rich with tax deductions. I can't pay my electric bill with tax deductions.
Depreciation doesn't give me anything as far as the operation of the airport. I'll be
having to vote against this also.
Titus: I kind of laugh at this. URAC left and that discussion that we have had several
times about the town charging itself for its own water and sewage use. So, it's kind of
interesting that this thing came up when it did. They are all gone.
Mayor: John , Terry has raised a valid point. Will you be able to outline where a
typical citizen can go within the budget if this were to pass ... can go within the budget
to figure out how much revenue is coming into the airport, how much expenditures
are being made?
Wells: Yes, I can.
Hammler: One of the key points is that somewhere near 95% of the actual costs have
been paid for by some other entity, such as the federal government, so being able to
formulate that ... what I would appreciate shedding the light on is that 5 %. What is it
that the town's citizens are paying for that is not accounted for. What are those line
items?
Wells: Those are not highlighted in the accounting documents. Those are
highlighted in your budget. When we present a budget each year, those are capital
outlay... capital expenditure items as part of the CIP and we clearly delineate the
funding source for any capital project that we do.
Hammler: Then, there is the verbiage around those things certainly as it relates to all
of the things we know we have talked about that we are going to somehow put into a
plan such as you know, if you will a better way to get a return on investment on the
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decision to put a very big, fancy terminal building there that is not providing any
return for the investment that we provided as taxpayers. So, if there were restaurants,
things that are going to be the verbiage around here is why we did that.
Wells: I think Mr. Boykin will attest to the fact that as we have looked over the past
seven years at capital expenditures at the airport, we go through a fairly rigorous
effort at whether we are going to make any capital expenditure. Hangars has been the
classic case where we looked at corporate hangars and held off on building those until
we could develop a pro forma that identified how those would have a reasonable pay
back. We have looked at helipads and we have set a rate structure that establishes
helipads with a pay back schedule of four years.
Hammler: John, those seem very reasonable in the scope of determining what we
should be building as an airport. I am Monday morning quarterbacking as it relates
to the big, expensive terminal building and just the fact that we need to do more
things to bring in revenue on that.
Wells: I can't speak to how the terminal building was built and what decision making
went into play there, but I think the key that we have learned going forward, is that
we do operate the airport like a business, as we do many of our operations. And
whether they are an enterprise fund or not, we have got to look at what the return on
the investment is, especially when we are looking at the other side of paying the
difference with tax dollars and I think we have ... we could look at a number of
decisions, Monday morning quarterbacking the airport going way back that today
don't seem to make sense. I can't speak to whether they made sense at the time, but I
know going forward we have taken a very business like approach to any capital
expenditure that we make out there. If it's something that has a fee structure to it,
having a reasonable pay back so that the residents aren't burdened with that
excessively over time.
Butler: All that is good, but I don't want us to fall into the trap that we are a business,
because we are not. The revenue ... if we are going to make an investment and get a
payback, it's not sufficient to just take the revenue that comes directly back to the
town. If we can spend one tax dollar, but it puts two tax dollars into the pockets of
taxpayers, that's a 100% return on investment even if we don't make a dime on it as a
town government. So, if we make an investment in an airport and it brings $5 million
in business into Leesburg and the surrounding area, I don't care if we make any fees
or not. So, we need to be very careful about looking at things and their return on
investment.
Wells: And I don't disagree. I think the state study that was done in terms of the
economic analysis of what the airport provides to this area ... I think the number was
$80 million in round numbers. That's not a number that's anywhere in the town's
accounting bottom line, but it is part of the business in the community and that is a
payback to the residents. I can't calculate that per person, because we don't know
exactly which businesses, which people, but we do know based on what the state has
24 1 a,, c
Council Work Session January 23, 2012
said that is a fairly substantial number and so are these investments that help the
airport? There is the bottom line in the town budget. There is a bottom line in our
accounting, and then there is a bottom line in the community and I appreciate the
recognition of those two different numbers.
Wright: John, so speaking of bottom lines ... my understanding of this proposal is one,
this is something that you are advocating because it is going to help you better
manage the town's finances.
Wells: Right.
Wright: And the three bullet points I have taken away ... I'll list them and then you
can agree or disagree ... is you feel this is going to give us the ability to get more
accurate reporting of the town's financial position in regards to the airport. I have put
in all caps, towns, in my sentence.
Wells: I think we can tell a clearer story. I have certainly tried to explain the airport
budget over the past seven years and I think it would be ... I will find it easier to
explain it as part of the town budget in total and then pulling out the airport as a
separate issue as opposed to having to explain the intricacies of the accounting of the
enterprise fund, which I think have gotten in the way of a better understanding of
what is going on at the airport, in my opinion.
Wright: So, that segways into my second point, which was two parts. So, what I
hear you saying is that is going to help you better manage the funds. I also kind of
hear you saying that is going to reduce the overhead expenses, it is at least going to
reduce the auto expenses.
Wells: It should have a positive impact.
Wright: Finally, what I have heard you say through the course of this, as well as the
discussions leading up to this is we are going to be able to maintain the visibility of
the operating costs, P &L of the airport, to include the reporting of it's revenue.
Wells: That's correct.
Wright: I know from my experience with reviewing the budget both being on Council
and before I was on Council, it was real easy even with Parks and Rec being
embedded into the General Fund to figure out how the parks and rec department was
performing based on not only its expenses, but its revenue. That's all I've got.
Hammler: John, what do other municipalities with airports do from an accounting
perspective? Do they in fact have everything in their general fund?
Wells: Both ways. We have seen it as enterprise funds and as part of the general
fund. I think it depends upon what objectives the locality has and also probably not
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Council Work Session January 23, 2012
for general aviation airports... certainly one of the reasons you have an enterprise fund
is for separate accounting purposes so that you can track grants. There are different
ways to do that. You can set up special revenue funds as opposed to a full enterprise
fund. Typically when you are setting up an enterprise fund, you are doing that with
the idea that you might issue debt at some point. Maybe that was part of the thought
a long time ago that if the airport could make enough money for itself, that it could
issue its own debt. Again, I don't know that was the case, but typically I have been
reluctant both at the county and town working in budgeting not to set up enterprise
funds unless you have either a federal requirement that you do, or that you are
planning to issue debt. Neither of those are required in this particular case.
Hammler: My last question is really an editorial comment, which is I do appreciate
the importance of being able to articulate the economic impact, but I can't help but
take a step back and say quite frankly that's what the LCVA does when it says we are
putting dollars back into the pocketbooks of every taxpayer, but the flip side of that is,
we only pay $100,000 out of the overall operating costs because that's its own entity
and they are providing an added benefit back to us. This is a situation where we are
literally subsidizing all of the county taxpayers and we are just 42,000 out of the
quarter million people, so it has really flip- flopped as it relates to the fact that we have
got the brunt of at least the 5 %. Just putting it into perspective.
Titus: I was going to do the same and I will do the same thing. What you related
earlier, was not the case when the situation was created. My comment was all of us
sitting around here are paying $14 trillion that the federal government... and they may
not be there very long to be doing this. If this country doesn't recognize, and this is a
part of it ... I'm not saying the airport is bad, I am saying the federal government
spends too damn much money and to me that might be one way to attack it.
Hammler: That was a big article in the USA Today. It pointed out Leesburg Airport
being one of the big subsidies from the Federal government. It's all in your
perspective. It's a critical article about all of the subsidies to airports around the
country... municipal airports.
Titus: I had a beach place and the government pays to put sand on the beach. I know
and they are cutting back too.
Hammler: And rebuilding houses that are built on those beaches.
Butler: Unfortunately John is not tackling that problem. If we put the airport on the
county agenda and say we should be getting money for the airport because it's helping
the entire county, I would be all for that. I think that would be a very fair point.
Dunn: I guess ... and I hope I am not beating this horse, John. What is hard for you
to explain about the airport? Because you used that phrase. It's hard for me to
explain the expenses at the airport. What is hard about that?
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Wells: I think it's from an accounting perspective, not the basic day to day revenues
and expenses, but I think when you have an accounting rule that indicates that you
have to have a reserve of $3 million out of the general fund to cover the costs of the
airport over time ... those costs have already been paid. There is not the intention of a
repayment plan for that. Again, there was never an agreement between the general
fund and the airport fund as to whether there was a loan, whether there would be a
repayment plan and so when the new accounting rules came in and we had to set
aside $3 million out of general fund ... we talked about two audits ago, that doesn't
make sense to the average person and it doesn't make sense to me. Those dollars are
spent. There is not a commitment that it has to be repaid. That's tying up town tax
dollars that can be used for other sources that fit within your fiscal policy. I will be
recommending ways to use that to reduce your debt service over the coming year and
that won't change the bottom line of the airport fund. It could have an impact on
your long term debt service. I can't explain that in a way that makes sense to me, let
alone to you all and the public. That's one of my favorite GASB rules. Not to pick
on them, but I knew I could get them in somehow. Seriously, I don't believe there is
a reason ... it is an accounting rule that didn't exist three years ago. Then it did. Now,
there is a reserve on that $3 million that says that money needs to be held for the
airport. There was no agreement, but that's the way the auditors look at it now. So,
by removing... taking this out of the general fund, I can make recommendations to the
council for the utilization of those funds without affecting what you have already
heard your bottom line is in terms of your undesignated general fund balance to
possibly pay for capital projects that you have already said you wanted to commit
debt service on. Projects that you have currently. I am not talking about taking on
new projects. I am saying using cash instead of debt. That will help your tax rate over
the next five years.
Dunn: And there is no vehicle by which you can ... because in essence the general
fund has been paying the debt for the airport already. Why is there a vehicle by
which you can, I guess, in theory, lend the funds to the airport ... not having to pay it
back. Just clear that debt then. Still keep it as an enterprise fund going forward. It
still has to operate.
Wells: The rules, and this is where I want you to talk to the auditor, because I am not
an accountant, but when you have the two funds and you have transfers... official
transfers between the funds, then that creates a record of a liability from one fund to
another. Was it a grant instead of a loan? In the absence of whatever type of formal
mechanism was envisioned years ago, all I can tell you right now, trying to explain it
today under a different set of accounting rules that weren't in place when the fund
was put in place, what you are faced with today is basically having $3 million of your
general fund revenues tied up or fund balance tied up ... I can't tell you for a good
reason.
Dunn: Okay.
d. Legislative Update
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Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Betsy Fields: This is the updated tracking report. Friday was the deadline for filing
so we now have all of the bills before us.
Hammler: Anything about influencing our water /sewer rate setting ability?
Fields: Actually no. We were very surprised and that is one of the first things I was
going to say is what's not on here. No bills were filed that would affect the setting of
water rates ... giving the county authority over setting water rates outside the town.
Titus: I got an email from somebody from Herndon. I don't know who sent it to me,
but whatever. There was a bill in there by Mr. Peterson to say they couldn't do it.
Fields: He didn't submit it. It was a drafted bill, but it was not submitted.
Butler: This was the Falls Church /Fairfax County reaction, right?
Irby: They have decided that the statute we have right now adequately protects their
interests and they are going to litigate that via the courts.
Butler: They are basically going to sue Fairfax and expect to win.
Irby: Well, if Fairfax tries to send them a bill, because right now it's really not an
issue until they do something. They haven't done anything.
Butler: Right, because Falls Church is just going to continue to charge what they
have been charging, and they will shut people's water off if they don't pay the bills.
When Fairfax tries to recoup the money, they tell Fairfax to go pound salt, then it will
be an issue.
Irby: Yes.
Titus: This is behemoth Fairfax?
Butler: Yes.
Fields: The report that is before you is divided now into three sections. The pages
with the red at the top of them are hot list. Each of the issues for which... it says that
down at the bottom, divided into house bills and senate bills. These are the ones, that
will if possible, actually send someone to testify on because these are very important
to us. They will impact us greatly either positively or negatively.
Butler: When you said under comments, you have Friday, Monday, Monday, is this
Monday like today?
Fields: These are the comments. If I listed a day and a time, that is when that
committee or subcommittee typically meets. If, in there, as you see on Page 3, I
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actually have a date, January 25 listed, that means that bill is on the docket to be
discussed at that meeting. We are trying to get a handle on it as things are coming
forward, when we might be head...
Hammler: Do they live stream these meetings?
Fields: No. So, you will see that our charter bill is going to be heard at the Counties,
Cities and Towns subcommittee meeting this Wednesday.
Butler: This is just normal stuff, right?
Fields: No, there is not going to be an issue with that one. One bill that I missed
earlier in my review of submitted bills that I will be adding to this is House Bill 1117,
which actually extends the moratorium on granting of city charters for another two
years, submitted by Delegate Minchew.
Hammler: Can you repeat that? I don't think I heard it right.
Fields: House Bill 1117 extends the moratorium on the granting of city charters to the
next biennium. The way that bill was originally crafted, the way the code reads, the
moratorium expires on July 1, 2018 or it expires on July 1st following any biennium in
which the state did not give the localities the local law enforcement aid that they are
supposed to by statute, but they keep adding these bienniums that doesn't apply to.
What he is doing is adding this biennium, the 2010 -2012 biennium into this
exception.
Wright: So, he missed a meeting and he was the sucker that got stuck proposing it
this round?
Titus: I'm not sure that's the case, from what I have heard.
Mayor: The county asked him to introduce it.
Fields: I'll be adding this. The next section, the green section, are all the other bills
that do affect us in some way. We will track them. We will send our delegates our
comments... please support this ... please oppose this ... this is how it will affect us, but
we won't necessarily send anyone to Richmond for those. The last pages, the ones
with the purple at the top are the ones that have been killed already. There are about
12 of them so far.
Mayor: The purple are just the ones we were interested in that are killed, or
everything that has been killed?
Fields: Anything that we were tracking that has been killed. There are 162 bills in
this list right now. I'll be adding HB 1117, so there will 163 bills out of 2,352 bills and
resolutions.
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Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Martinez: So, I am assuming we are going to go through everyone of them.
Butler: So, this party identification on ballots, it looks like all the house bills got
tabled?
Fields: Except one. So, one is still alive.
Wright: They rolled them into the one, probably.
Fields: That's what they did. They tabled all the duplicate bills.
Butler: Okay, so they didn't combine them into one, they just said okay you are the
best one.
Fields: I am assuming it was probably the most senior delegate's bill that got...
Butler: Why are they so interested? Why have we got nine bills, all from the same
party, to put ... most of them require local governments to...
Dunn: So, local politicians will come clean on what they are really doing.
Fields: VML is getting... solicited comments about these bills and they have gotten a
lot of very good comments from opponents of the bills. One of the ones I thought
was especially applicable in this area was that a lot of federal government employees
participate in local government because it's nonpartisan. If it is partisan, the Hatch
Act prohibits them from doing so. That was brought up to VML.
Butler: I have looked at a couple of these and the committee votes and everything
else and it's completely by party line. 100 %.
Dunn: It sounds like one party wants the truth and the other one doesn't.
Hammler: Oh, Tom, stop.
Dunn: You brought it up. There you go.
Butler: There is one party that likes partisanship and the other actually tries to get
something done. So there.
Dunn: Which one is which?
Fields: I am happy to answer any questions. I don't think I have added anything to
this that's substantive since it was included in your packet.
Martinez: I wanted to talk about a couple of things.
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January 23, 2012
Titus: I have a general question. What is the opposition to this eminent domain
thing. I am missing something as I read this.
Fields: It is a very good question. The way it is written, it would dramatically
increase the cost of capital projects, the cost of land acquisition.
Titus: Condemnation. Is it going to affect the fair price of a property?
Irby: No, what's included in this bill is that we would be paying for lost profits, we
would be paying for lost access. It goes way too far with respect to how land is
acquired. We have to start with the fair market value price. We haven't underpaid
anybody for their property in Leesburg. This just...
Titus: I understand that...
Wright: It also adversely impact repairs and maintenance.
Irby: Absolutely.
Butler: Let's say we have to dead end the road to put in another road. A business on
here can say you have cost me access. Lots of profits and a whole bunch of things
like that we haven't had to pay in the past.
Titus: I understand the situation about the lost profits, that's very clear. But the
access issue is unfair. If you take somebody's access and you have somebody right
next to the corporate limits that had that done and that piece of property is virtually
worthless. I am not saying they couldn't have been compensated for that, but it's just
patently to me unfair.
Irby: With respect to this bill, there may have been some good in it, but what it also
didn't do ... and I don't know if it was written in haste, but they either inadvertently or
on purpose left out utilities with respect to localities, so if we go to run a utility line,
we wouldn't... it has to be for a public use and not economic development. There is
no other reason for us to extend our water and sewer except for economic
development and we would not be able to do so.
Titus: I knew that was part of this.
Irby: It's badly done and I guess the problem is if they amend it, then they have to
start over.
Butler: It doesn't need to be a constitutional amendment. It's not a reasonable
constitutional amendment and it's not written like a constitutional amendment. It's
written like Virginia Code.
31IPa;c
Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Irby: The interesting thing is this talks about how lost profits and access can't be
defined by the General Assembly, yet there is a bill in the senate that attempts to do
just that, so someone is not talking to somebody with respect to how this bill will
impact. Betsy, can also talk to ... people were sleeping with respect to this bill. A
whole list of 20 large business entities have come out against this.
Fields: Chambers of Commerce across the state.
Irby: Home builders associations. They realize that this isn't going...
Fields: This is bad public policy, essentially.
Butler: I am all for ... if you run a road through somebody's farm and you are going to
cost them profits for x years or something like this ... I get it. I'm all for that. But this
is not the bill ... the bill is written poorly and you can't change it. It needs to be killed.
Fields: The one thing that has come kind of out of left field for us is HB 166. It is on
Page 2. It's the third line on Page 2 of this. It would narrow the instances in which a
zoning administrator can amend a decision and essentially what this would do is
allow rezoning by mistake. If the zoning administrator makes a mistake, it becomes
law. That would be a rezoning without a public hearing, without a recommendation
by a planning commission, without any action by you. It has made it through the
house committee...
Hammler: But that's so nonsensical. You have to ask who on earth is influencing
this person to do this.
Fields: VML is actively working with the proponent who sponsored this bill to figure
out what.
Irby: Something happened to somebody. This is the remedy they came up with and it
just isn't.
Fields: So they are working to figure out how do they fix the problem they were
trying to fix without creating all these other unintended consequences, but we will be
keeping an eye on this as it heads to the senate.
Butler: But I do see that there are a few bills that basically would fix the Cornerstone
Chapel issue.
Fields: Yes, and those were submitted on our behalf. You'll notice they were
submitted by Randy and Mark and we will definitely have someone go down and
speak in support of those bills and explain the situation hoping that will be Susan
Berry Hill, Brian Boucher.
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Wright: You had mentioned in your memo there were two items you were suggesting
us to opine on. Can you refresh our memory?
Fields: Yes. Additions to the 2012 Legislative Agenda. One is this
identification ... Page 2 of my memo. The first is the identification of candidates on
local election ballots by political party. The other one is equalizing city and county
taxing authority. In other words, granting Loudoun County the same taxing
authority that cities have to enact meals tax and cigarette tax without a local
referendum. The bill has been submitted. Loudoun County, interestingly enough has
backed off on this. We still think it's a good idea because there is a competitive
disadvantage for our businesses that have to charge the cigarette tax and Loudoun
County's businesses don't. So, if we could get people to stop driving to Lucketts to
buy their cigarettes because they are cheaper there, it would actually reduce that
competitive disadvantage that our businesses face along with our restaurants for meals
tax.
Butler: I don't understand. It's an emotional thing rather than a practical thing. Half
of the meals tax you get from people who don't live in the county or the town, so it's
a strong benefit to the residents of the locality.
Fields: But the issue for Loudoun County is that it has failed at local referendum
three times. For them to ... it looks like they are doing an end run around ... So, before
you were questioned if you want to add these two items to the legislative agenda...
Mayor: You'd recommend taking that up tomorrow night?
Fields: Tomorrow night by motion.
Mayor: Any opposition to taking this up. I think we should at least opine on it,
otherwise staff is operating on their best guess.
Fields: Just a couple of updates on the memo that I submitted ... the status of your
legislative agenda items on city status. I mentioned that this house bill 1117 was
submitted, which actually was counter to what you want to have happen. The
definition of unsafe structures... Delegate Minchew did submit a bill requesting to
legislative services for drafting. It did not get submitted. There is a complicated issue
related here that what we are asking to be done is to amend the maintenance code and
the building officials association...
Irby: They don't want to do it. Same issue as last year.
Fields: They don't want to do it and they don't like being told by the General
Assembly to do it. They prefer to have things work through an administrative process
rather than a legislative process. The other one was the utility line relocation issue.
Randy did co- patron HB 1286 which is at the top of Page 1 of this report that would
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give us a little bit of teeth in getting utilities to relocate in a timely manner for capital
projects.
Wright: The only other item I had is in your report that was in our packets, the
unfunded mandate list. This is really more of a comment. I noticed on the list, the
photo red 275 page report review made the list of things to be discontinued, which is
nice because basically the General Assembly said you can do photo red and VDOT
said you can't because I don't think anyone has made it through that process.
Fields: There is a bill submitted that would address that.
Butler: SB 227 that Herring put in about stormwater sewer service districts. I didn't
get a chance to read the whole text of the bill, but the summary, I'm not sure that
helps us.
Fields: It does. What it does is it says if a County creates a stormwater service
district that any revenue collected within any incorporated town goes to the town.
Butler: Collected by the county would go to the town?
Fields: Collected in the town. So, collected from town residents. The assumption is
that this would be an additional real estate tax.
Butler: It's just the way that was written. It was like, okay if we collected through a
tax...
Wells: If the county collects it, we get ours.
Fields: That has passed the senate and Delegate Minchew is patroning that bill on the
house side.
Titus: I have several questions and comments on stuff that is going to be taken up
tomorrow night. I didn't want to belabor the point with the public here. These are
technical issues. I'm not trying to hide anything. I have some concerns about this
pump station, but they are minor in effect and I don't know enough about what I am
talking about so I have to call John or somebody tomorrow to find out what is going
on here because I don't quite understand it. Same way with the contract for the
design of Battlefield Parkway.
Wells: Any questions that you have any agenda items that aren't necessarily on the
agenda tonight, just give me a call and either I'll help you or get the right person to
help you out.
Butler: You will let us know if some of these get dates? Especially the hot list?
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
34�t'age
Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Mayor: We already know we need to appoint Terry to NVRC.
Hammler: Madam Mayor. Terry and I spoke this morning. He actually cannot
drive at night and it's a long way away. So, we talked about, if you don't mind we
would actually switch. He would do Balch and I would do the NVRC, which really
would be a great opportunity to leverage some of the stuff going on with the executive
committee with VML.
Martinez: In that case, I wouldn't mind doing that too.
Mayor: So, we have two people interested in NVRC.
Hammler: I think it might be a good idea to have a primary and an alternate given
the time commitment that it is going to take given the commute.
Butler: Didn't Ken say that he managed to make zero meetings.
Wells: He made one.
Hammler: It's off the beltway.
Butler: I'd like tomorrow night, if we can, I'd like to nominate Gigi Robinson for the
URAC. She had been on the URAC before. Did a good job. Now she has more
time on her hands since the election.
Martinez: I notice that we have a Comcast Wi -Fi here. Is that for the public?
Wells: Yes.
Martinez: It's a lot easier to access stuff through that.
Wells: That's something new we were working on and I think it's running now.
Martinez: The other thing is email. I know with the IPads and stuff, you get direct
access to the server so it makes it so much easier for us to do that. If you can just
figure out some how we can get that.
Hammler: That is actually one I was going to mention. Is that town policy, John?
Butler: It's not the town. It's the county.
Martinez: We use the county.
Wells: Let me see if I can...
Martinez: We have an insider. We should be able to talk to her.
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Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Wright: John, if I could get a follow -up on the two street comments that we got. I
think we got one ... I think it was Valley View. We got one from Mr. Mason on Wirt.
The one on Valley View, I found particularly entertaining because they said the
sidewalk did not connect to the trail so many, many years ago staff came out and
corrected the issue by placing a sign there that says no pedestrian or bicycle access so
you see a dead end of a sidewalk that says no bicycle access and about 10 feet in front
of it, you see the bike trail. So, I am pretty sure if it is in our right of way and B if we
ask nicely and use small words, we should be able to connect a sidewalk to a bike
trail.
Wells: Let me work on it.
Dunn: I think tomorrow night's meeting is going to be pretty short. If I harken back
to my Baptist days, I could make the invocation longer than the meeting.
Hammler: Please don't.
Wells: If I can, just to confirm. I haven't heard anybody say they can't make the
joint town /county meeting on February 13. While everybody is here, that would be
six o'clock Monday, February 13. Most have responded, but I just wanted to double
check with everybody.
Martinez: Just so you know, I probably won't be here the 14th
Hammler: Valentine's Day, really? You were married on Valentine's Day?
Martinez: 31 years. It was not planned. It was an accident. It was the only Saturday
Doris and I were available and it just happened to fall on that date.
Wells: Mr. Titus has asked, what's the agenda for the meeting. Your resolution from
a few months ago indicated that annexation was on the list, partnering to support
local cable TV production studio efforts was on the list, financial support for Balch
Library was the items that you voted on back in October. We have 90 minutes. I
know there was some comment made tonight about funding for the airport. That
could be added in, if you so chose. The county will likely ask for some idea of what
we are interested in. They did ask a question specifically about the town taking a
position or they are likely to ask us about the town position on utilities being extended
to Raspberry Falls or some provision for water service to Raspberry Falls, so they are
likely to ask that question.
Titus: Do they have an agenda?
Wells: That is the only thing ... this is what we voted on ... what the Council voted on
back in October.
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Council Work Session January 23, 2012
Mayor: John, tomorrow are you going to give in your manager's report, a verbal ... I
know you have done the memo, but a verbal update on the courthouse expansion? I
guess the question would be do we want to put that on the agenda or do we just want
to request the county present whatever they are planning to us.
Wells: Yes.
Butler: Is this the Church Street thing?
Mayor: That is involved in it.
Wells: You might want to ... and this may be something to think about and then
tomorrow evening during Manager's Comments we can maybe firm that up. Do we
want to ask the County to provide the Council directly with a briefing on what the
current thinking is for courthouse expansion and how that affects Church Street and
other issues. Council will be requested to take an action on at least one special
exception, possibly two, to deal with the expansion of the courts. The original land
use application was done over a decade ago and provided for 60,000 square foot
building on the property. They are now looking at, I believe, 80,000 expandable up to
maybe 110 -120. There are a number of different changes in the road network that are
being contemplated as well as movement of a parking structure that was originally
envisioned to be where the old jail was at to the Pennington Lot. The Council hasn't
received a formal briefing on this in some time and I know that additional thinking
has gone on since your last briefing and if there is some desire that the County has of
the Council putting together some type of a group to address the issue, you probably
owe it to yourself to get briefed on what the current thinking is before you jump in on
that. We can talk about that tomorrow since we brought it up tonight. We could deal
with that as part of the manager's report or something earlier. It sounds like a not
long agenda.
Dunn: If you keep adding stuff, I am going to have to do some serious invocating.
Wells: I have nothing more to add. You heard it. Everything I would say tomorrow
night, I just said.
3. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 9:33 p.m.
\a, r
Clerk of Cgtfr eciP
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