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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1981.10.28 CITY COUNCIL MINUTESRE: ADJOURN A motion was made by Nile Boyle and seconded by Jim Morris to adjourn. All Aye. o 4' Q oa�� Mayor John C. Porter City Clerk R Bagley SPECIAL PUBLIC INPUT HEARING FOR SEWER RATES A Special Public Input Hearing for Sewer Rates held by the City Council for the City of Rexburg, Madison County, held October 28, 1981, at the City Hall. Present were the following: Mayor: Councilman: Councilwoman: Also Present: About twenty citizens were in attendance. John C. Porter Nile Boyle Glen Pond Jim Morris Morgan Garner Darlene Blackburn Rose Bagley, City Clerk Richard Horner, City Treasurer Mayor Porter told the group the purpose of the meeting was to get input from the citizens on the sewer fee. The fee had not been set yet, it has to be done by resolution. We have estimated about $6.50 a unit, but nothing has been done until we get the input from the users. Gene Palmer, told the group he had done some homework, and gave the council a hand- out explaining the study he had done on the sewage flow from his trailer court.(attached) He had spent last weekend in Provo talking to Community Consultants. He wanted to talk to some people who would have some statistics as far as mobile homes. At the present time they have 82 lots occupied with 225 residents. He then reviewed the handout. To back up his study he had one of Community Consultants flumes and have had it in his sewer system for a 24 hour period to check the flow. He had come up with a figure of daily flow of 6225 gallons per day, or 27.4 gallons per day per resident. He had called Community Consultants and the way he had taken the read was about 1/3 of an inch off. He said the average mobile home has less occupants than the average home, and uses less sewage, he feels that should be considered in the rate structure. He had had people tell him it should not matter to him, he could pass on the raises, but he has people living in the mobile home park that work at Louisana Pacific, within the last ten days Louisana Pacific has shut down and these people working there would be without work for about six months, how do you pass on the increase to people like that. Earl Kemp said he had gone over the figures with Gene Palmer, and they are correct, he had also checked the flow and by that he is equivalant to 62 equivalent users instead of the 82 trailers occupied. Earl Kemp said the Sewer Ordinance does allow for monitoring the flow and setting rates, based on monitored flow. Kenneth Hacking and his wife were present. Mrs. Howard Pearson, owner of a trailer court, told the council most of the trailers in her court have only two people in each one and some have only one person. Gerald Mackay from El Centro Trailer Court said he has twelve trailers in his trailer court and eitht of them are single people. The mayor told him, we can't get down to splitting them too much unless he wanted to put a meter in. Earl Kemp told him if we tried to set the rates for each home saying they all had a different amount of people in them, it would cost too much for clerical work. 1 The mayor suggested in an individual home the amount of people vary from 2 people to 10 people and we have to go by an average. If we took all the trailers in Rexburg and average them, the low ones would bring everyones average down. Gene Palmer told the council, according to Community Consultants, in Provo take the water consumption for a given residence for the month of January to establish the coming years rates. Some municipalities take November, December, and January and establish the sewer rates based on the water used. Bud Hunziker ask what $6.50 a unit means. He was told it meant a home, apartment or trailer. The mayor told him the city has to set our budget for $296,000 to come in from the sewer system, and that will pay off the bond and pay for the cost of operation. That was based on 3600 units and we have discovered we have 4100 units, so when we set the rates it may be lowered. Earl Kemp told the group if there are 4100 units it would lower it to about $5.75. The mayor explained, what we have to do is bring in enough money from the charges from users fees to operate the system. We have to establish what the system costs us. In the past we have been charging $2.50 for homes and half of that for apartments. The EPA says we are subsidizing the apartments. They are not paying as much as a home. EPA says we have to establish a unit rate and everyone has to pay the same. The problem we have now is many of the apartment owners have contracts with the rental units and we may have to say they have a grace period of two or three months. Mr. Hacking ask if the charge was for paying for the system or for maintaining it as well. The Mayor told him the city had passed a $235,000 bond about a year ago as our share of this sewer system, that will pay that bond off and the maintance of the system. Mr. Hacking argued that there was just one sewer 'nook up for a trailer court and the same with apartments and should be less maintainance so they should be charged less. Earl Kemp told him the maintainance was for the plant itself. Mr. Hacking ask if the city would have put in a mechanical plant if it would have been cheaper. Earl told him the cost of putting it in was a lot more money and the operation cost is about 6 times more than the one we have put in. Bud Hunziker, ask about the cost to Sugar City on the sewer system, Earl told him Sugar City pays per flow coming in to the system just like a home will. They also have their own administration cost and their own bonds to pay. Their rate per home will be $6.25. They pay the city of Rexburg; all of their sewage is metered out on the Moody road; that meter is read every month just like a water meter; they pay 20� for every 1000 gal, and they maintain everything from the Moody Road North and they also paid for the treatment plant initially. We anticipate $6500.00 a year from them. The College will be paying, when everyting is worked out, about $30,000 a year. Jim Meyers ask how a unit will be assessed. He was told if he had six students in an apartment it would be assessed just like a home. He ask if he had a vacancy, if he would not be charged for it. The Mayor told him he thought it would be possible if it was for a certain period of time, the only thing the city would have to be careful because it is a lot different in an apartment than in a home, because we can shut the water off at the curb for a home but we cannot shut off each individual apartment, and anyone can walk in anytime and use the water. Mayor Porter told the group, if he could think of anyway we could run the sewer system without charging, he would do it. Kent Jolley - He ask if the $6.50 charge was used only for the operation of the sewage treatment plant, and if any of it is used for retirement of other bonds. He was told the $2.50 that has been paid, has been retiring revenue bonds for the Lagoons that was first put in plus maintaining the sewer system. We still have to pay on the original bonds, for about another 10 years. Kent ask if the city uses any property tax money to maintain the sewer system. The Mayor told him we have been doing that, but we just can't do it anymore, we havea limitation on the amount of property tax we can levy. The Fire Department and Police Department are paid out of tiae property tax, those two budgets together are about $525,000. We are using Revenue Sharing money, liquor tax money, so we are using other money for that. The utility accounts will just have to carry themselves. Kent ask if the city had considered the fact that the apartment buildings has helped increase the tax base. An apartment house that is worth a million dollars is setting on a piece of property formally occupied by two residents. The tax that the city received from the apartment complex in comparison to the two residents. He felt the council should consider as far as the apartment complex is concerned, there might be 30 or 40 units sitting on an acre or two of ground, the tax base of it is substantially higher than that of the residence on the property. He also felt the council should consider the standpoint of the maintainence of the sewer system, for example two units of his approximately 90 apartments on 2 to 21-2 acres, comparing it to that many homes, where the apartments have two hookups compared to the amount of hookups for that amount of homes. Another thing if the city imposes a higher rate in 30 or 90 days, these rates cannot be passed on to the students. We have contracts which include garbage and sewer, these contracts are through next April. In some cases we have set the contract rate for next summer for Sun City People. In his case he[ had set the contract rates for the school year of 1982 to May 1983, which is 18 months away. The increase of rates without warning, will make it so all apartment owners can do is absorb the increase, which he felt would be unfair. He said he thought the city should do a study as to what other college towns are doing as far as sewer rates. There is also a factor the apartments are vacant from the time the students leave until the Sun City People come which is about one month, and during the Christmas Holidays the students are gone. The student living patterns are different than that of a family, a mother and her children spend their day at home where students don't. An elderly couple from Sun City sould be different than an apartment with. six students in it. Homer Taylor - He said he did not rent to Sun City people so his apartments are vacant during the summer except for about two units. He ask if there was any plans on the South end of 1st west to improve the sewage. He said at least twice a year he got flooded with sewage. He has a carpet now he has to replace because on one holiday the man that was left on duty went up to get wood and was not available, finally the manager got in tough with the fire department, after calling the police and everybody else, and by that time the water had risen about two feet, and it had also come up in his complex like it had never done before. So if he is going to be charged that much for service on the city sewer and then have his apartment's flooded twice a year maybe somebody should pay for his carpets. The mayor told him the city have been trying to get the money to put in a new line, in the mean time we have a new truck to clean the lines, and the department is supposed to go out every three months and clean the lines; unfortunately they haven't done it, however the city have only had the machine about three months. We now have a calender to keep track of four or five places in the city and keep the lines clean. When the sewer system was put in forty years ago, those lines were adequate, now what we have got to do is to get in enough money from the sewer system so we can replace some of those lines that are not big enough to handle the flow. We had a study made to identify all those, we tried to include it on this project that we are doing now so the federal government would pay 75%, the state 15% and we would pay 10%, unfortunately we got in on the end of things when they were cutting everything off, so if we do that now we have got to pay for it by ourselves and we haven't got the money. The mayor told the group if the apartments are vacant for three months of the year and the people come in and tell us we will adjust the bill. Loren Grover - told the council that there are several of them that are in similar circumstances, and he agreed with Kent Jolley. Dean Ricks - We don't feel we should pay the same rate for apartments as we do on our homes. We want to see the system self sustaining. The mayor told the group that in a week or so we have got to set the rates. It maybe some of the costs have been estimated, we do have to make it so we are sure we can balance the budget. Kent Jolley ask how short the city was annually on the budget as far as maintaining the present system. The mayor told him we have been running short each year and running a deficit of about $100,000. The problem we have had since the flood we have had federal money and been able to shift it around, but that is all gone. Kent Jolley ask if there wasn't anyway they could have anticipated this about 6 months ago and then eased into it, instead of doing it all at once, to go from $1.25 to the proposed rate, it would be a raise of about 300%. To ease into it would have shown good judgement and fair play. Nile Boyle told him the people were informed the rates would be raised when the public hearings were held for the bond election, last summer. Mayor Porter said he did not know how we could have eased into it, our power bill all of a sudden has jumped 30%. Jim Morris told him we have tried to be con- servative. When we make our budget, we go to the power company and ask them how much power will go up and they tell us 12% and then it goes up 30%. The other problem is that the city has in budgeting, is we can't accumulate money. Gerald Birch ask if 15 or 20 years ago, did the department carry itself? The Mayor told him 20 years ago the city made a profit which went into the general fund. Gerald said the reason he was asking was property tax had increased and wondered if the city was getting the increase. The mayor told him three years ago the Legislature froze the property tax the city could collect, so the past three years we have received the same amount of money : All the city levies on taxes to collect is $410,000 per year; about 10 years ago it was about $370,000. Today we have a bigger city and more property to levy on. Jim Meyers told the council they are controlled by the college on the rates they can charge for rent on the apartments, so he cannot increase the rates to pass on the increase in utility rates. He said they are running about 74% full. Kent Jolley - Speaking for all the apartment owners, he said they realize the responsibility the council has, and that the council is their representatives, they have elected the council and mayor to exercise their best discretion and judgement in these matters, and the only reason they were at the meeting was to offer information to help the council make a decision. We want to be fair and support our local government. We feel the council and mayor are doing an excellent job. We hope you will consider all the factors we have talked about. Kent Jolley ask if there was different rates for businesses and industrial, for example would the rate for the Racquet Ball Club be different than possibly Flamm Funeral Home. Earl Kemp said there was a different rate schedule for not only flow but for strength of flow. Mayor Porter said he thought we should check the rates in different cities. Richard said he had checked with several cities about 8 months ago and most of them range from $5.00 to $8.00. He said if we do something that is inequatable the EPA will throw it out. Earl Kemp said the only thing that EPA controls is treatment costs, the city man power or anything else has nothing to do with EPA. Meeting Adjourned. May John C. Porter City Clerk ose ey MINUTES OF THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING November 4, 1981 A meeting of the City Council for the City of Rexburg, Madison County, held November 4. 1981, at the city Hall. Present were the following: Mayor: John C. Porter Councilman: Sander Larson Morgan Garner Glen Pond Jim Morris Councilwoman: Darlene Blackburn Also Present: J. D. Hancock, Attorney Rose Bagley, City Clerk Richard Horner, City Treas. RE: MINUTES A motion was made by Morgan Garner and seconded by Darlene Blackburn to approve the minutes. All Aye, RE: CANVASS OF VOTES Mayor Porter preceded with canvassing the votes. He told the councilman there was a sheet in their packets, giving the precinct and the amount of votes on each person and the votes on the override election, he told them there are soem write-in which are listed on the Tally Books. Mayor Porter read through the Tally Books and checked the addition. There was two corrections on the addition to Precinct 961. Yes votes for the override was corrected from 79 to 69 and votes received for Glen Pond was corrected from 167 to 157.