Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Altoona Budget Committee met on Thursday, September 24, 2026, at 3:30 PM in the Council Chambers at Altoona City Hall to review the proposed 2027 budgets for the water, sewer, and stormwater utilities. Mayor Brendan Pratt and committee members Dale Stewart, Timothy Lima, Bruce Thielen, Matthew Buren, and Susie Zilmer were present; Susan Rowe and Mark Willer were absent. City Administrator Mike Golott, Finance Director Tina Nelson, Director of Public Works Scott Quick, and City Engineer Christian Hubert presented a joint overview of the enterprise funds.
I put pumpkin sol last year after the squirrels, I think, are the only one that's not. No, they just rotted over there. Cynthia, you're in kind of all through notes. Yeah, it's against the rules. It tastes really good for um picture taking the display. Cranberries and go ahead and call the budget committee meeting of Thursday, September 24, 2026 to order. We have roll call. Mayor Brendan Pratt. Member Dale Stewart, Timothy Lima. Bruce Thielen, Matthew Buren, Susie Zilmer. We have absent Susan Rowe, and we have absent uh finance committee member Mark Willer. We also have President Mike Golott, City Administrator, Tina Nelson Finance Director, Scott Quick, Director of Public Works, Christian Hubert, City Engineer Assistant Director of Public Works. We have a corn. All right, we have overview of the 2027 proposed budgets, water, sewer, storm budgets. Thanks everybody for being here. Um I want to let you know that this has been a joint effort, and this will be a joint presentation. Um we really worked together, the four of us to put this presentation together and went over it with Mike a couple times. So if you have questions along the way, please let us know if we're a term that you don't understand. Please feel free to ask questions. We use these the terminology all the time or the acronyms all the time, but make sure that you understand what we're saying. Tonight we're gonna talk about the how the enterprise funds work and how they read differently than like a general fund budget. And then uh we're gonna go over the water sewer and stormwater utilities, and we're gonna give updates. We're gonna talk about the capital projects that we're doing in each utility, and then look at the financial status of each of the utilities. So tonight is water, sewer, and storm, just the utility budget, the enterprise funds. And how an enterprise fund works differently than a general fund. Uh is it's all all the revenue is generated by the user fees, which goes on the utility bills, where the other funds are by tax revenues or a special sort of revenue like a grant fund. Um so tonight we're just talking about the user fees, the enterprise funds, and you should think about them as their own business. Each the water, the sewer, and the stormwater. They have their own set of books for each one of those. Um of the differences though is the water rates are set by the public service commission. So the the city council um doesn't have authority to set the rates that we we go through our rates to the public service commission, and they have to approve what our rates are. Why are we stormwater and the why did water get broke out? They they regulate just water, the Wisconsin thing. There used to be a lot of sewer utilities in the Wisconsin that were regulated, but that they got away from the sewer. But it it is a different way of looking at things with the PSE. And it's so and I'll talk about that later in another slide. And Bruce, we we we don't know why water owned in other states, there's similar commissions that they do all right, and in some, like for example, XL is regulated by the PSC, but the co-ops so in other states they don't do any of them. Yeah, right. Up to the state, you don't do any of them. And a municipal electric utility is regulated by the public service.