Gardiner Sanitary
District
Board of Directors
Meeting
May 17, 2014
Meeting called
to order by Jackie Degman, present were Board Members Catherine Kent, Dennis Conger, Marc Fullhart and Charlotte
Hinshaw. Also present were Mary
Chambers, Ray Davenport, Matt Waddlington, Mack Holman, and Suzanna Noordhoff.
Matt Waddlington
made the final presentation on the rate study that his firm has conducted: He summarized the prior presentations by
explaining the purpose of the rate study is to find an equitable process for
deciding how much each rate payer should pay individually. As explained before, there are expenses that
must be paid for the operation of the sewer system, some of those costs are
fixed and some are variable, but can be estimated based on historical
expenditures. The total of all expense
determines how much revenue must be collected to cover them. The study that they have finished presents
the following:
Capital Costs Due to the City of Reedsport:
$12 million
20-year DEQ loan/GSD’s share@6.45% = 54020.52
$1.2 million
20-year IFA loan/GSD’s share@6.45% = 3870.00
Total annual obligation 57890.52
Operation and Maintenance Costs Due to City of Reedsport:
2013 total of
$313,987.49/GSD’s share@10.41% =
32686.10
Administration Fee Due to City of Reedsport:
5% of Capital
plus O&M Costs(2013=90,576.62)
= 4528.83
GSD’s $215,000 5-year DEQ loan annual obligation = 49198.00
GSD’s Operation and Maintenance Costs = 80550.00
Total Annual Obligations 224,853.45
Total Property Tax Revenues @ 1.4191% = 35,600.00
Balance to be collected by user fees:
189,253.45
Based on the numbers of water hookups in Gardiner Sanitary
District the values that the rate study determined for the 3 different
assessment options that were evaluated were:
Option 1:
Flat Rate for All = $141.63
Option 2: Per
Gallon Usage would be the most variable and would have to be adjusted regularly
to make sure enough revenue was generated
Option 3:
Hybrid Method using a Base Rate plus Rate for usage over 1000 gallons; the first 1000 gal @ 60.00, each subsequent
1000 gallons of usage @ 20.00. The
average resident uses 4600 gallons per month, so their bill would be
140.00. Low users would be at 60.00 and
high users would be at 1180.00.
Civil West recommends using Option 3 with a 3% increase per
year to keep up with inflation.
Written copies
of the previous minutes were passed out and read, Catherine motioned to accept
the minutes, Charlotte seconded, motion passed with a unanimous voice
vote.
Written copies
of the financial report were passed out and read, Catherine made a motion and Dennis seconded to accept the report
and pay the bills.
Old Business:
Jackie and
Charlotte met with Reedsport on April 8 and came to a tentative agreement
regarding the contract for services and on April 9 they sent the contract to
the district’s attorney for review.
When Jackie returned from vacation on April 23 the contract had still
not been signed, but they had just found out that the IFA had established a
deadline of April 25 for the contract approval in order for the grant process
to proceed. After several phone calls to the attorney and Jonathon, the
contract was presented to the Reedsport board members at a special meeting held
on April 24 where they accepted it.
Jackie picked up the contract on 4/25, signed it and faxed it off to the
IFA in order to meet their deadline.
Jackie asked for an oral vote by the board to officially ratify the
contract and each board member voted “yes”.
Jackie also
presented the revised MAO that had been rewritten per her request based on the
new timeline for the replacement of the line under the Umpqua River, all board
members voted unanimously to approve the revised MAO.
Ray reported
that copies of the updated easement have been presented to American Bridge and
we are now just awaiting their signatures.
New Business:
Civil West
presented the board with an Engineering Task Order outlining the project to
replace the forcemain under the Umpqua River with work to start in June 2014
and be completed by June 2015 at an estimated engineering cost of
$98,761.00. Marc made a motion to sign
the Task Order, Catherine seconded and the motion passed by unanimous voice
vote. Jackie signed the order and Matt
took the signed copy to send off to the IFA and give the go ahead for the work to
begin.
Ray reported
that everything seems to be working properly at this time, but would like to
purchase a chemical pump as Reedsport has requested that we reduce the hydrogen
sulfite in the wastewater by adding chlorine to it before it gets to the
treatment plant. Dennis made a motion
and Charlotte seconded to allow Ray to find a chemical pump, motion passed by
unanimous voice vote. Ray also
requested a new squirrel cage fan for the dry pit for ventilation, the other
one broke. Catherine made a motion,
Dennis seconded and motion to find a new fan passed by unanimous voice vote.
Jackie asked if
anyone would like to voice their opinion on which rate structure option would
work best for the district. After some
input and discussion, the general consensus seemed to be that Opion 3-the
hybrid method would be the most equitable.
Jackie asked for a motion, Catherine made a motion to use the Hybrid
Method for establishing billing rates, Dennis seconded and the motion passed by
unanimous voice vote.
Safety
Report:
Nothing new
to report.
Items Not On The Agenda/Open to the Public:
Ms.
Noordhoff made a request to have her physical address added to her statement,
Jackie asked Mary if that was possible, she replied that she would have to look
into it, she did not think it was an option with the setup that exists. Jackie asked her to do a little research and
see what she could come up with.
Jackie
suggested that they should consider setting up on-line banking access in order
to transfer money between accounts and view current activity and give access to
Mary as well as the signers. Charlotte
made a motion to setup online access to view activity and make transfers
between accounts only, with access being granted to Mary, Jackie and Charlotte,
Marc seconded and the motion passed by unanimous voice vote.
Charlotte would
like to see the floor in the meeting room cleaned and possibly get help from
the Fire Dept to do so. She said she
would discuss it with them and look into who could possibly do the work and
bring it up at the next meeting.
Marc made a motion to adjourn, Charlotte seconded and the
meeting was adjourned.
Submitted by Mary
Chambers (Office Manager)
