Meeting to order.

This is time place set for the meeting of the utility finance oversight committee.

Could we have the clerk take roll and see if we have a quorum?

Chair Johnston.

Oh, present.

Uh, Vice Chair Terchek.

Uh, Member Johns.

Member and member connect.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Item three on the agenda.

Now we have a quorum is public comment.

The public is invited at this time to provide comment and any topic that relates to a matter of which this public body has supervision control jurisdiction or advisory power, including any matter.

Any such matter that is not specifically included on the agenda as an action item.

Are there any members of the public here who wish the address uh the committee at this time?

Let the record reflect there are none.

Meeting minutes that were circulated with the package.

Currently.

I am the chair.

Mr.

Zek is the vice chair.

I believe I'm termed out, or it's the policy of these committees to have rotating chairs.

I've been chair for two years, which I think consists of two meetings.

I'll just point out.

Yeah.

Mr.

Chairman, I haven't been chair for 24 years.

Last time for me.

I can see that policy is loosely adhered to.

Yeah.

Do we have any uh volunteers or not or nominations to serve as chair of this committee for the next year?

I'll volunteer if nobody else does.

I would second that for Mr.

Connect to be chair for the next year.

Are there any other nominations?

Anyone else want to take it?

Hearing none, uh we have a motion to second that.

Ron Connect become chair for the 2027 meetings or subsequent meetings in 2026.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

All right, moving on.

Uh vice chair.

Ms.

Turzicka, let me just see if there's uh are you willing to serve as vice chair for a second year?

I am willing to serve as vice chair again.

And I second the nomination.

That Cynthia Turzik serve as uh vice chair for the upcoming meetings in 2026 and 2027.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

None.

Okay.

We have our officers going forward.

Item five B for possible action.

Um discussion possible action regarding the tentative fiscal year 2027 wastewater fund budget.

This compliance with adopted financial policies and recommendation of the Board of Supervisors regarding the tentative wastewater fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

Ms.

Stevenson.

Okay, uh good afternoon, Jamie Stevenson, accounting manager for the record.

Um before I start, I'd like to thank Courtney and Andy from Public Works for helping me to prepare these budgets.

Uh for all three of the utility funds that I will talk about today.

I've included the utility rate increases of 2.9%, which is the CPI for the West urban area for December of 2025, as per the utility rate schedule.

Also across all three funds, salary and benefit increases include our annual contractual increases and uh estimated 10% increase to medical insurance.

Our non-operating income consists mostly of investment income, and we budget conservatively.

For the wastewater fund, our salaries and benefits are expected to increase 246,792.

This is due to our annual contractual increases for employees and anticipated benefit rate increases.

We've also included an increase for promotions of employees expected to receive some certifications.

The supplemental requests that are not included in this tentative budget that were submitted are for promotions of a sewer technician three to a senior sewer technician, and for promotion of a wastewater plant mechanic to a senior wastewater plant mechanic.

The total increase of these supplementals is $18,631.

Our budgeted services and supplies will increase as a result of increases to our internal service charges.

Those are part of the citywide cost allocation plan.

The supplemental requests for services and supplies this year are for chemicals for 200,000.

And there's one for a reduction of $31,500 for mosquito control.

The increase for chemicals is due to price increase in volatility in the market.

And the reduction for mosquito control is to reallocate the overall increased cost of mosquito control across other city funds.

The total budget for mosquito control will be split to $35,000 each for the stormwater fund, wastewater fund, quality of life fund, and general fund for total funding of $140,000.

If those supplemental requests are approved, they'll be included in the final fiscal year 2027 budget.

Next year's planned capital spending for wastewater is $6,246,000.

The larger projects that are planned are lift station reconstruction and wastewater line replacement.

Here's a listing of the planned capital projects over the next five years.

The line graphs represent the financial goals, and the vertical bar graphs represent the projected cash balances.

Based on industry standards, operating reserve is 30 to 45 days minimum of operating expenses.

The system reinvestment funding goal is equal to depreciation and amortization.

The debt to equity ratio goal is at least 5050, and the debt service coverage ratio goal is 1.0 or above.

Are there any questions on the wastewater fund?

Do any of the members of the committee have questions for Ms.

Stevens?

I want to jump the gun, Mr.

Chairman, but I did want to ask about page 21, the fiscal summary for enterprise funds, the wastewater utility fund.

Is that timely at this point?

I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Yeah, page 21 is wastewater utility fund under fiscal summary for enterprise funds.

Yes.

Am I getting ahead of you there or no?

This is a summary of the budget.

I have some questions on that, Mr.

Chairman.

Go right ahead.

You know, if this seems like those questions would relate most to this uh agenda item.

Okay.

So in the past, you may recall I've gone into great detail on various budget items.

I'm going to take a completely different approach.

Okay.

And in particular, I'm going to look at the revenue line up there on the top of page 21 for the last few years, 18 million, 18 million something and 19 million for this year.

And that's a 2.88% increase.

Do you calculate that basically just off of the previous year's revenue and increase that by 2.88, or is there a whatchamacallit?

A rate base and expenses type calculation that yields that the calculation that I do takes the prior year and I get that amount, and then I take the revenues collected to date for this year.

Right.

And so I'll I'll use that revenues collected to date, and then whatever date that ends at, I will look at last year's collections and make my best assumption of what we're going to have for the end of this year.

And then from that, I'll add the rate increase per the utility rate schedule.

Gotcha.

Okay.

I want to congratulate you on this and your next two percent changes, 2.88 and similar numbers, uh charges for services to ratepayers.

Uh but I also want to throw in one caveat on that.

Okay.

Um 2.88% is the best we've seen, I think, in a while.

And it's a great job, and that that to me is the way uh things ought to proceed with a utility is uh very slow increases in the uh services rates.

So great job.

We uh yes, we are following that utility rate schedule that that you uh recommended to the board.

Well, happy, happy for that.

Yes.

What I want to say is in general about uh service rates.

Um they should maybe increase or not increase.

There are times when uh they should go down over time.

Uh it's a great thing that it's only 2.88.

But see this thing.

A hundred years ago, if you tried to make a call from San Francisco to New York, it cost three days wages uh for average labor.

Uh today, well, it probably gets lost in the service fee, or it's effectively zero or very close to zero.

Uh and I could give you lots of other examples as you know, but my point is that in a competitive sector, over time, the uh prices go down in real terms.

If you look at um mattress and box springs from 1926, it's a lot lower now in real terms.

Uh same thing with cars, etc.

And you may have to make adjustments for the quality of the uh service that you get.

Um gee, my first car didn't have a backup camera and stuff like that.

But in any case, in competitive sectors, which should be in general widely our reference point.

In competitive sectors, costs go down over time, which is why we can in fact have these things and these things and bunches more that uh people didn't have 50 and 100 years ago.

So I would hope at some point we look at the possibility of rates uh going down in real terms, and instead of a 2.88 percent nominal, uh you present us with a real uh cost adjustment in real terms, that is adjusting out the inflation.

Uh and and uh that shows zero or maybe negative.

That would be very helpful, and it would be something I would like to brag on this department, this city, and this board about.

So that that's that's my big thought for the day.

Okay.

And again, uh I think you all are doing a fine job and keep it up.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Cynthia, any questions?

Yeah.

Questions?

I had a couple.

Uh sure.

Ms.

Stevenson, just actually sort of on the same same idea as uh as Mr.

Connect here.

Uh and that really is the on the 2.9% CPIU, one of the CPI indexes that you're using for rate increases.

Um does that translate into rates into the rate increase in that you're having obviously the target is to increase revenues by that amount, but you have a constantly changing number of customers, a con you know, and anything that's volumetric, like gallons, that changes uh depending on the on the water year, probably uh and the price to the extent you have uh people reducing use because it costs more.

Uh so how do you do you do a pro forma the next year when you say when you're saying, okay, we want to increase revenues, we want to increase rates 2.9 percent.

Uh or do you just increase all rates 2.9%?

How's how's that working?

And if you do 2.9% increase in rates, that may or may not translate into 2.9% increase in revenues.

Does that all make sense?

Yeah, I can jump in on that one.

Okay.

Um Andy Hummel for the record utility manager for Carson City, the 2.9% is applied to the rates per code.

Uh we apply that to all of the the rate fees, water, wastewater, and the stormwater fee.

Um that doesn't, as you've both uh discussed, necessarily apply to what revenue will actually do wastewater is maybe a little more stable.

So we tend to see about the same amount of flow to the plant.

Uh and the like the the single family, the residential rate is a fixed rate rather than based on water consumption.

The water revenues, they do vary up and down depending on on usage each year, whether we're having a nice wet year and people don't turn their sprinklers on until you know May one year that'll actually reduce our revenue.

It also reduces our expenses.

But uh yeah, we do see some variability because of of that usage pattern.

And just following up on that, for example, connection fees, those aren't subject to the 2.9 or are they?

They are subject to an annual increase as well, but it's tied to the engineering news and review construction cost index.

But they are also capped at a max of three percent, as is the rate increase.

And with the construction going on in Carson City, is is your customer how does how does that 2.9% uh compare to customer growth?

Uh customer growth has been typically around 1% or less is what we've seen annually.

And does the 2.9 still look good as far as uh meeting the financial metrics that we're trying to achieve, or are we falling behind and uh I mean just looking, it looks to me like it's problematical.

Go ahead.

Jamie tells me it looks great.

Well, in the graph that you're looking at right now, you can see you know, we ended fiscal year 25 well above our goals.

Um, but that's because a lot of our planned projects take time to complete.

And so, you know, in our budgets, we have you know, we've in our budget we have that all planned.

We're gonna spend it all, but we still meet the goals even with our spending.

Um I don't know if that answers your question, but I I guess another go ahead.

Oh, no, no, no, I was gonna say if you had a question, go ahead.

Well, I guess you know the with respect to the wastewater and water and storm water, does it look like that's gonna work for the for the near future?

Will the utilities division be able to live within those those constraints of rate increases based on the CPI indices?

This is our our second year of doing that increase.

Uh so far as seems to be meeting our needs.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Cynthia, you had a question?

Yeah, so I was just gonna offer a little bit of color based on your question.

So um I work for the public utilities commission, and so what we have for our companies is um we actually use the gross domestic product deflator, which is a little bit different than what they use.

So what it was for this year was actually 2.971 percent.

And so it's a little bit higher.

And what we tend to find is it's less of a rate shock, so there's less issue with water comp or water customers decreasing their use because instead of having one big rate case every three years, 10 years, whatever, um, you end up with customers easing into their rate increases.

So I doubt there's gonna be much of a decrease in use.

So what we've had with water companies that wait so long between rate cases is you end up with that depression of use, and then the what yeah, for us, we have privately held use of water companies, and so um they don't recover the cost that they wanted to capture with that rate case, but I think because Carson City was smart in the way they set their rates, that they you know, tried to increase the rates, but then now have the CPI to increase them with uh increase of whether it's insurance or you know, like she said with the chemical increases, whatever costs that come along with inflation, yeah, or gas, um, it's slowly but surely you know increasing the cost, so there shouldn't be that depression of use as one would expect with a sudden rate increase.

Um, it's slowly but surely you know increasing the cost, so there shouldn't be that depression of use as one would expect with a sudden rate increase.

So I think hopefully it wouldn't be that much of a difference.

Helpful background.

And I I strongly disagree with you, Mr.

Connect.

I don't think rates should ever go down or negative, but sorry to the customers, but I think that's a little too optimistic.

It you hit the nail on the head.

There's competition when you have cell service, you don't have competition, it's a monopoly, so you don't get to choose who you get your water from you all unless you want to get a bucket and go down to the river.

So Ron, another one?

Just a couple uh more things.

Um first of all, thank you for that, Cynthia.

And I I agree with you that uh we we always ought to look at this in the big picture sense as how do we perform relative to the private sector?

Um and that's what I was saying before, but I also agree with one other thing.

The uh Federal Reserve has been talking about 2.9 whatever seven or something as our general inflation rate.

And if we apply that to your uh charges for services of 288, we're already at a negative number in the um real sense as opposed to the nominal sense.

So doing a great job.

Uh and and by the way, Mr.

Chairman, uh throughout these pages, we're gonna see decreases in the capital spending by substantial amounts from the last year to this year.

So I agree with you.

I'm always concerned about uh the uh financial metrics and coverage ratios and so forth, but with uh less being spent on the capital side, I think we'll probably be in pretty good shape.

And thank you, Andy and uh Mrs.

Stevenson uh for that.

Thank you.

Okay, any any further questions or comments from the committee members?

Hearing none, we'll move on to item 5C discussion possible action regarding the tentative fiscal year 2027 water fund budget.

It's compliance with adopted financial policies.

Ooh, I suppose this was an action item.

Yeah, I think I mean to get it.

Good discussion about yeah, what was it all for?

Yes.

Okay, let's see.

Do we have a motion to acknowledge the tentative water fund budget for fiscal year 2027 is in compliance with the adopted financial policies and to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve the tentative wastewater fund budget for fiscal year 2027?

Mr.

Chair, prior to uh the motion being made, just a reminder for action items.

The common procedure, at least for Carson City, is to check for public comment before the action is taken for each item.

Thank you for that, Mr.

Burr.

That is that a new policy to uh to on public comment.

I can't speak to how new it is.

Uh it's done at every other commission that my staff though.

So okay, happy to oblige that that should be on the agenda though, shouldn't you?

If you're gonna take come public comment intermixed with action items, that's that's unfamiliar to me in my experience of public meeting law, but um do we have any members of the public uh who wish to comment before we proceed to action on the item 5B of the agenda?

It appears there are no members of the public commenting on that item.

Mr.

Chairman, may I move approval as you suggested a moment ago of the uh wastewater fund?

We have a motion from Mr.

Connect.

Uh do we have a second?

Second.

Second from Mr.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

All right.

The motion is approved.

We will now move on to the next item on the agenda.

Item 5C discussion possible action regarding the tentative fiscal year 2027 water fund budget.

It's compliance with adopted financial policies and recommendation of the Board of Supervisors regarding the tentative water fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

Ms.

Stevenson.

Thank you, Jamie Stevenson for the record.

Okay, for the water fund.

As with the wastewater fund, the planned uh rate increases uh per the utility rate schedule are included in our revenue estimates.

That's the CPI of 2.9%.

Our salaries and benefits are set to increase 290,513.

That includes a contractual increases and our anticipated benefit rate increases.

We've also included costs for promotions of employees who are anticipated to achieve certifications.

Our services and supplies will recruit increase by 120,232 as a result of increased internal service charges from the city's cost allocation plan.

Supplementals for the water fund include $50,000 for water purchase due to commodity cost increases and $300,000 for professional services for additional system analysis and studies, including the master planning and resource planning.

Our planned capital spending for fiscal year 27 is $4,640,000.

The larger project we have planned is our waterline replacement and rehab.

Here is a listing of our five-year planned capital expenditures.

And the city's fiscal year 2027 water fund budget meets all of the city's adopted financial policy requirements.

For this fund, industry standards say operating reserve should be 60 to 90 days of minimum operating expenses.

Members in the committee.

Ryan, go ahead.

Another good job, you too, Andy.

But to that gentleman over your right shoulder.

I hope that when we go to contract negotiations with labor, we'll keep in mind that basically inflation or something like that is about the right standard.

Besides the increases for uh promotions, etc.

But uh I I think uh I hope to see uh that the you know I I love our employees, they do a great job, and we should uh pay them right, but I think we are, and so my reference point there is inflation.

Um also by the way, when I talk about a hundred years ago, sort of like Ronald Reagan, I know because I was there.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Mr.

Connect.

Questions from other questions from the committee members.

Since you brought up labor, um, how's your retention of your employees at this time?

It is definitely better than where we were a year or two ago.

Uh we're not seeing the the turnover people, especially on the water side leaving for Tumwa, which has been very welcomed.

Uh we do have a couple of retirements.

Uh one happened a couple of weeks ago.

He called it a retirement, but maybe a midlife crisis ran off to Florida on us to kind of a change of lifestyle for him and his family on our uh our sewer crew side, and then our environmental control foreman is leaving us in June.

But she's been with us a long time.

Because I would like to keep that in mind that even though inflation might seem like a reasonable time to or basis of salaries, I would like to keep in mind that there's other places that pay more than Carson City, and you don't want to create a vacuum for everybody to move over to Tumwa or other agencies when we want to keep the people that have the knowledge that we is priceless.

That's called human capital.

And I know in more than a couple of years you're gonna have the silver tsunami of everybody leaving, so you have to train the people that you have and keep them.

Ron Johns, any questions?

Yeah.

So I had just a question to would a tumor fill up, they topped out, hopefully.

Yeah.

No jobs left to fill.

Uh the I was looking just on the benefits as a percentage of salaries.

It looked like it was like 63% or somewhere around around there.

Um just has that are we still seeing growth there on the on the I mean I know PERS had some huge increases in the retirement contributions.

Any any uh intel as as to whether we're seeing any better news on the retirement or group health side um no, our health insurance uh came back at what we included in our estimate, so there were no adjustments needed.

It came back at a 10% increase.

Um then I have not heard if PERS plans any more increases.

Um they every two years they usually do an analysis.

Um we did our last PERS increase for fiscal year 24, um, and we did not get notification of one for the coming year.

As far as I know.

Thank you.

Mr.

Connect.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

One more thing, uh, since you all raise PERS.

Um, and I've been on this bandwagon for a while.

Um PERS does an outstanding job at managing their investments, perhaps the best in the country.

And I've told them so before.

Their problem is uh they don't want anybody to see any detail behind whatever their projections are.

Um they basically hide all their laundry dirty or otherwise in their accountants and uh uh offices.

Um if you can please lean on PERS to get more open about uh their projections, their numbers, etc.

The underlying figures for the bottom line where they say, here's what we're gonna charge you.

When I was controller, I worked real hard on that, and uh they resisted real hard, and uh they're they're still hiding their dirty laudy laundry in in their accountants' offices.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you.

Takes on PERRS.

I don't know.

Might be outside the scope of this item.

But that was that was the only question I had.

Any further questions?

Okay.

If uh do we have any public comment on this agenda item for members of the public let the record reflect none see we're on water here, so uh do we have a motion to approve the tentative water fund budget for fiscal year 2027 is in compliance with the adopted financial policies and to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve the tentative water budget fund for excuse me, water fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

Mr.

Chairman, I move to acknowledge that the Senate Water Fund for budget for physical year 2027 is in compliance with the adopted financial policies and recommended Board of Supervisors approved the ten of a water fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

We have a second second motion and second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Discussion possible action regarding the tentative fiscal year 2027 stormwater utility fund budget.

It's compliance with adopted financial policies and a recommendation of the Board of Supervisors regarding the tentative stormwater utility fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

Ms.

Stevenson Thank you, Jamie Stevenson for the record.

For the stormwater utility fund, we've included our uh rate increase of 2.9%.

Salaries and benefits are set to increase 46,613.

Again, that's our contractual increases and our anticipated benefit increases.

Our services and supplies are budgeted to increase $38,022 due to increase in internal service charges.

The supplemental for $35,000 for mosquito control that I mentioned during the wastewater presentation is the only supplemental that was submitted for this fund.

For capital projects, we have $1,925,000 budgeted.

Our largest project is for citywide stormwater improvements.

And here's a listing of our five-year planned capital expenditures.

And the stormwater utility fund uh fiscal year 2027 budget meets all the city's adopted financial policy requirements.

The operating reserve for the stormwater fund is 45 days minimum of operating expenses.

Are there any questions on stormwater?

Members of the committee questions.

I just was looking for an update on the uh Bowers area for stormwater, where we stand on that.

And this might be a good one for me to bring up our new stormwater program manager to tell us.

Amanda.

She's walking up.

This is Amanda Singleton.

Uh she is fairly recently taking on the role of our stormwater program manager and doing a great job kind of internally.

One of our successes of bringing her up from you start as an intern with us initially, yeah.

Yeah.

So it's been great having her.

Go ahead.

Uh Amanda Singleton, Stormwater Manager.

Um so Bowers Lane, that one we are waiting for a proposal and then going into design this year.

Follow-ups there.

I just have one question in general about our capital budgets.

Um and our operating budget.

Um to what extent has the fund that's been going on out there on William Street increased any of our utility cost, if you know.

We do have capital investment going on across all three funds with that project.

Uh mainly just pipeline replacement, a little bit of upsizing on the on the water and wastewater, stormwater.

We took advantage in a couple of spots of adding bigger pipe, getting drainage across Williams Street where we needed it, things like that.

So you took advantage of that.

So uh so the idea there is sometime down the road in the future, the usizing would have occurred, but it was um we we saved on some of the dirt uh and digging costs by doing it now.

Yeah, and the pavement more than anything being able to share that cost with the road project itself.

Yeah, thank you, Andy.

Yeah, is it questions?

I had a follow-up on that one, Andy.

Is is uh the on Bowers is that tied into the highway 50?

Is is is it uh how closely is it linked to that?

Because that I as I understand that's to get stormwater under highway 50, correct?

Correct.

Um so it'll go from Arrowhead to 50, and there's an indock culvert, so we're hoping to work with them on potentially upsizing their culvert, and then on the other side of 50, it'll be open channel to the river.

Okay, so that and uh is that is that adding some uncertainty as to how long it's gonna take to get done or anything, or is it just is it all going as smoothly as can be anticipated?

Going smooth so far.

Okay, yeah, good to hear.

One thing I would add on that, um the the five year CIP in fiscal year 29, that number jumps quite a bit.

It's almost it's a little over 19 million dollars when we get to that year, some of which or a significant portion is the the Bowers Lane project.

The anticipation is when we get there, we'll need to bond for those improvements.

Yeah, yeah.

I had one further question on the mosquito abatement.

That's how is that it just seems a little uh strange that that would somehow be allocated uh to the utility funds as unless it's you know how is that how it how does the city determine or the city manager determine how much of that is going to the utility functions?

It seems a strange way to recover for that, I guess is my point as a taxpayer, you know.

Yeah, and utility user.

Yeah, and in a lot of cases, like the stormwater fund, especially, you know, our open ditches and things like that.

That's where the the mosquitoes breed is the is the connection.

If if I may, um Darren Schultz, public works director.

We it it's been uh mosquito abatement has been paid solely out of wastewater for a number of years, and that's been an inequity that that fund was taking the most of it.

So prior to this new budget season, um we sat down with health and parks and open space, and uh we looked at the areas in town where most treatment is happening, and then we um kind of looked into divide up those areas as of of who is the landowner overall is the city, of course, but so how much of that land is owned by stormwater, how much of that land is owned by wastewater, how much of that land is owned by open space, and then how much of that land is open is owned by the city, but it's it's not any of those other three.

And so we kind of recreated, reimagined that program based off of that, knowing full well that um these are just estimates in the first year, and we're gonna monitor it for the first year or two, and then and then those numbers may change a little bit because we'll have real data as to how much money was spent for abatement in those particular areas.

So thank you, Darren.

Darren, is it and what department is that under mosquito abatement?

It's under health and human services.

Thanks.

Any further questions?

Just a comment, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh good management and uh welcome to uh the top drawer okay.

Do we have any public comment?

Any members of the public here who wish to comment on this item on the agenda seeing none?

Uh do we have a motion to acknowledge the tentative stormwater utility fund budget for fiscal year 2027 is in compliance with the adopted financial policies and recommend board of supervisors approve the tentative stormwater utility fund budget for fiscal year 2027?

I move to acknowledge that the tentative stormwater utility fund budget for fiscal year 2027 is in compliance with the adopted financial policies and to recommend that the board of supervisors approve the tentative stormwater utility fund budget for fiscal year 2027.

Do we have a second?

I second a motion to second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

The motion is approved.

Now moving to item six on the agenda, non-action items.

For discussion only, we have a presentation concerning personnel projects and planning related to Carson City utilities from Mr.

Hummel.

Yes, thank you again for the record.

Andy Hummel, utility manager for uh Carson City Public Works.

Uh put together a quick presentation for you today of just kind of overview of the utility, what we've got going on, uh all the fun stuff we're doing.

Uh as you're well aware, water, wastewater, and stormwater are all enterprise funds.

Uh water and wastewater, the budgets are each approximately 20 million annually, as we just saw.

Stormwater is about three million.

Uh water and wastewater both fall under what we call the utility division that I head up.

Uh stormwater, the demand is in that uh the maintenance side of that falls under our streets division.

Uh largely the bulk of that work is cleaning culverts and catch basins, things like that, which are our street crews are maintaining the street right there.

So it made sense to kind of keep that there.

And then all the the program stuff with that, the the flood program, the our NDEP permits related to stormwater.

That's where Amanda gets to play and have her fun.

Uh on the water and wastewater side, we have a staff of uh 41, kind of divided between water production, our treatment operators, and then the distribution crews, our sewer collections team, wastewater treatment and mechanics at the wastewater plant, our environmental control group that uh handles making sure our our businesses and industries out in the community are not sending us anything bad to the wastewater treatment plant and would potentially kill all the bugs and cause us problems.

Uh that's not all they do, they uh help us a lot with our landfill, our water regulatory sampling, fun stuff like that.

And then we also have uh a certified laboratory that's housed at our wastewater treatment plant, the wharf.

Uh, we have a a chemist there that she does all of our our regulatory sampling that we can do in-house, and every year is expanding that program to help us reduce our outside costs of sending samples to an outside lab.

Like to show the this one every year, kind of our utility funds distribution.

Um in years past, I've shown Tumwas up there as well.

I didn't find theirs this year, but uh kind of the the big one is the the blue on the left.

That's our capital outlay.

Uh from years past, we've been about 15 to 20 percent more than what uh Tumwa, for example, was doing on as far as capital outlay reinvesting in our system.

Um I think uh although you know, as you mentioned earlier, Commissioner Connect, uh we don't uh necessarily have the ability to compete in the community as far as different water purveyors, but uh we compete with our surrounding areas uh whether it's formal or informal, trying to be better than one another.

So uh the other one there are our principal or our employee benefits and salaries that's down in about the 15 to I think 19 percent range across the three funds.

So uh I think that's uh keeps us in a good efficient place.

Try to get done as much as we can with the the money we get.

Our water system overview.

Um we have about 350 miles of pipeline in the city.

We're divided up in about 16 pressure zones.

That's governed by our our 16 storage tanks that kind of help set those pressures in those zones.

We have uh a little over a dozen booster pump stations pushing that water from zone to zone.

We have uh large number of pressure reducing valves or pressure reducing stations, um, 60 of those throughout the city that take water from a zone that's at a higher pressure and reduce it to to go into a lower one.

That's largely our tanks are around the outskirts of town, whereas our lowest pressure zone is in the center of the city.

We don't have tanks necessarily that feed that zone directly.

We have about 21 active wells.

We use those wells in a number of ways.

You know, in the winter, we're running maybe six to eight of those wells.

In the summer, we might be running all of them on any given day as we hit the peak of the summer.

Some of them have uh constituents in them, like arsenic or magnanese that we'd have to blend with a cleaner well.

So it's not a matter of just turn one on sometimes.

It's if we want to use this one, we're bringing two on to blend that type of stuff to make sure we're meeting regulatory requirements, which is where our environmental control group comes in, very useful to make sure we're handling that correct.

Uh we also we do have an arsenic treatment plant uh that's currently inactive.

It's over kind of by the juvenile detention facility on 5th Street.

Uh that plant is fed by two wells.

One of them is right next to the fire station in NDEP, that building.

Um, and then another well is right next to that plant.

Uh one of those wells is heavily impacted by silica and that water and the the treatment process just cannot handle that.

And to run just one well with the flow rate that that plant does.

We were using a significant amount of processed water to do all the backwashing, that it really wasn't penciling to make sense.

So part of that uh that's been oh at least a decade since that plant has operated uh part of the the supplemental funding for system studies that we're looking at for this coming year will be to look at what we can do with that plant to change that process to be able to bring that online as growth continues.

Uh the 25% number for our surface water usage, our creeks on the west side and the Marlett Hobart water system.

Uh that part of it that makes up about 10% of our total water portfolio.

Uh right now we're not able to use that water because we're rebuilding our quill water treatment plant.

So we're relying more heavily on our wells as well as our inner tie with Douglas County.

We do have two of our wells are what's considered an induction well.

They're located right along the river.

Uh, so that water that they're they're pumping out, they're you know, three, four hundred feet deep, but they're considered an induction well, use surface water rights to be able to operate those.

We do have the ability uh while we're not using our Ash Kings and Marlett Hobart water.

We have the ability to take that as credit for water that makes it to the river and increase our river induction well pumping.

So it's not going to waste.

We're able to utilize those rights in another manner while we're rebuilding the plant.

And as I mentioned, the inter tie with Douglas County and town in Minden that we're also relying on while we're rebuilding quill, we're able to get about five million gallons a day through that system.

Uh that system serves us, serves uh the northern part of Douglas County, Indian Hills GID.

We also have an intertie with Lion County at Highway 50, where we're both able to put water into that tank and then both able to draw out of it.

Uh as far as water rights, our water resource portfolio.

Uh, we really haven't added to this much over the years.

It looks very similar to what you've seen in the past, but uh probably the big one, that Marlett Hobart system, as we bring quill back online and start maximizing the amount of water we get out of that system.

That was uh part of the supplemental where we asked for additional funding in water purchases.

That's where we asked for that additional funding in.

It was purchasing water from the state as we bring that plant on later in the in the fiscal year 27 cycle.

Uh we're gonna try to get as much of that water as we can.

Plus they did uh raise the rates with the last legislative cycle, about 10 cents per thousand gallons.

So we're anticipating that uh to impact us.

As far as demands, um, we're still holding steady.

We probably about 15, well, almost 16, 17 years ago now.

We were producing or using about uh 12,000 acre foot of water every year.

Uh we've been in the just under 9,000 to 10,000 range in the last five, six years.

So that's largely water conservation has helped that greatly.

Uh metered tier rates helped that, whereas you use more water, your water bill goes up exponentially, essentially.

Um that helped that uh kind of keep that in check.

And and even uh before that, not having meters as we brought meters on, then people were educated about how much water they were actually using that that helped uh bring that in line.

So uh our peak day, we've been hovering just under 19 million gallons a day for the last three years.

So uh keeping a close eye on that, especially with quill down.

We're able to produce with before we took quill offline, we were able to produce about 26 million gallons a day.

So we're down in uh roughly the 24 MGD range with it off.

But uh definitely keeps us on our toes.

And I like to show this every year our drought monitor.

Obviously, it's been you know, a couple weeks of very wet, but uh otherwise oddly dry winter.

Um the drought monitor as of a couple weeks ago were showing that uh we're basically in kind of an abnormally dry period, the first level of a drought.

So uh nothing to get super alarmed at yet, but uh definitely keep our eyes on that and hopefully keep that out of the orange and red as we move forward.

But that's a little out of our hands, unfortunately.

Onto the wastewater system, uh this on this side, you know, we the city maintains and operates our our collection system throughout the city.

We have about 320 miles of collection system piping in the ground.

Uh we have five lift stations or pump stations around town, as you may have uh noticed in our capital plan.

Our biggest expenditure coming up for the next year, or one of was uh rebuilding one of those lift stations, or one of our bigger ones along on Morgan Mill Road as we see increased development, especially in the east uh highway 50 corridor, all that wastewater comes to that station, and it's uh kind of built up on a little bluff, and those tend those have to be essentially down below the elevation of the pipe.

The pipe is down in Morgan Mill Road, so it's a kind of a deep hole when we go to replace it to to dig that and redo it.

So that one's gonna be a fun one.

Uh we still maintained it just one treatment facility in the city, our wharf or water resource recovery facility that's permitted for 6.9 million gallons a day.

Uh I'll show in a minute, but uh we've been running just under five and a half million gallons a day in that.

So we're starting to get closer to the time when we got to think about what's this gonna look like for the next iteration with some master planning that we currently have that underway, so we're ready when we get there.

And then uh we also operate a reuse system.

We're uh considered 100% reuse facility.

So all the water that uh we treat we use on our area golf courses and prison farm.

So that uh drastically helps that impact that if those were using either creek water or our or they were pumping groundwater, they would be in competition with our domestic water supplies.

So being able to use that greatly uh helps extend our resource.

As far as trending, uh you can see we've been uh kind of slowly trending up.

2023, it jumped up quite a bit uh with the wet winter we had that year, that just incredible March and everything else.

Uh our flows have kind of stabilized since then.

Uh we're still kind of trending up uh just a little bit under one percent.

I think that that trend line is about 0.7 percent.

So it's uh kind of holding steady there.

The kind of pinkish line in the middle there, the the the orange one at the top, that's that 6.9 million gallons a day.

What we're permitted to.

Uh the next one down, that's our facility planning trigger.

So that's about 5.85 million gallons a day.

When we hit that point, we need to be able to tell the state or regulators here's our plan for increasing capacity at the plant and how we're gonna do that.

So that's uh that master planning effort is is currently underway with a consultant in anticipation of getting there in the next couple of years.

A little on capital projects and planning.

Uh this photo is uh actually the inside of our of Quill with that work going on.

Uh that's looking at on the left side our what'll be the the crew area and and they'll have a process control lab and then control room in there to be able to control the operation, and then on the there's a wall down the middle of it, the right side will be the electrical room or all the cabinets, the electrical cabinets and such are housed, and then that picture was taken uh roughly where I was standing.

There is where our UV filters will be for uh disinfection.

Uh that project is a little bit over 50% complete at this point.

We've got our the filters were set uh last fall, just right to literally the day before the latest tariffs on Canada because they came out of Canada, we're set to go into effect.

So it's nice to see those show up before that uh happen.

Uh as I mentioned we're also working on our wharf master plan update that should conclude later this year as we get into fall.

Uh we recently received our we did a master plan update for the highway 50 area.

Uh that's primarily led by water, but uh wastewater was a pretty good component in there as well.

Just basically the the amount of inf infrastructure we would need to serve what could potentially happen up there.

Needed to be able to, when developers come in, have an equated response of this is what it's going to take.

Uh a couple of interesting ones that uh we've worked on this spring.

Uh two of our wells, well 10 and well 44.

We did some water quality profiling in those wells.

Uh it's technology that USGS developed a number of years ago, but they basically, while the pump is running, they inject at different depths in the well a a dye, essentially uh beet juice is what they're using.

And then they can tell by with the an instrument that detects color, and they can tell roughly how much of that they're getting out, so they can inject that at different levels in the well, and they can essentially tell where the water is coming from at various steps how much is coming, and then they can also sample at various depths as it's going to be able to tie that water quality in with where the water's coming from.

And if you're really lucky, it's all the water's coming from maybe one area, and all the really the bad stuff in that well is coming from another, and you could possibly go in and blank off that section.

Uh well 44 is one we've had problems with iron bacteria in that well.

We haven't used it for a number of years because of that.

We tried to rehab it at one point and shock chlorinated a number of times to try to kill that, and we're not successful.

Uh we don't have the final results back, but uh what we've seen from the the water quality testing, it looks like that iron bacteria is hiding at two different spots in that well.

So we're hopeful that with uh we can blank those off or possibly spot treat them in those areas that maybe we can get some water back out of that well and be able to use it.

Uh well 10, that one is proving a little less fun.

Uh it looks like that one's got uranium in that well, so we're able to use it for basically two months out of the year and blend it when we do.

Uh it would be a great one if we had it back, even half the capacity that it does if we could use it year-round.

Uh what we found is that one is in uh a really good aquifer, and it's number of zones in there, but all the water is pretty much coming in right where the pump is set.

They were not getting much detection back on the on the juice that they were adding.

So it was telling us basically that those other zones really aren't contributing.

Uh we'll probably have to do some further testing on that one after we get past the season to see if maybe setting the the pump itself at a higher elevation would get us out of a get us into a better zone where we get cleaner water.

So uh tank rehabs.

We're currently rehabbing tan staffle tank.

Uh that one's underway right now.

I basically take it down, empty it, clean it, remove the coating, uh, recode it any structural repairs that needed to be done, upgrade the the safety ladder, and railing that type of stuff.

Uh we got a couple of the tanks in the coming years.

One of them up in Ash Canyon, the roof is getting pretty bad on that one that uh be a bigger cost, as you may have seen in the in the proposed budget for the coming years.

Uh William Street, as uh we discussed a little.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Long ago, uh and far away, I became familiar with Tonstaffel.

And it had three A's, not four.

What is that fourth A for?

It is, and I can't remember the exact, it's an acronym.

Right.

Oh, the the there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Yes.

So is FL.

Yeah.

Where I came from.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

Yep.

Yeah, I've uh I don't know that it was something that uh would necessarily be repeated in public either.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah.

Uh we we did mention uh the William Street uh water and sewer.

That one uh is well underway at the moment.

And then another one uh we're getting ready to start in uh the end of this month, our wharf uh warehouse building, where we'll be building uh a steel structure over there, uh be able to house our equipment inside it, some of the specialized sewer equipment, our our bacteria truck, things like that that has water in it, uh inside the all the pumps and stuff that that needs to be inside at night, especially in the winter, uh keep things from freezing.

It gets rather expensive when that starts happening.

So we'll also be able to the bigger pumps, things like that that we need spares for at the at the wastewater treatment plant, be able to have those inside and housed in a safe manner.

Uh a little more on our our quill water treatment plant upgrades.

Um as we've discussed before, this is uh just under a 23 million construction contract uh resource development is doing that for us.

Lumis Engineering and Jacobs Engineering were the design team.

Uh the picture on the right, that's our filters, mixed media filters being offloaded from the truck and craned in.

We had to remove part of the roof of the building to get those in.

Um and then that picture in the middle.

We have uh two backwash basins.

So we'll be able to, as those filters do their backwash and clean that water will go there, be able to settle that and bring that water back up to the start of the process to keep it in the in the program.

Uh we're starting that the plan will be a four million gallon per day plant initially uh to be expandable to six MGD.

We'll have the the spaces allotted in the building and ready to go for that third filter when we're ready.

Uh we're anticipating it'll it'll be after the the Marlett Hobart system is fully producing.

So that you know, however long it takes that to fill back up and be sending us all that water again.

So and that's uh the picture on the right is that Marlett Hobart water system.

Uh you can kind of see all the springs as we were talking before the meeting, Bob, that uh where those kind of exist there and how they come together just just blow Hobart with that, at least on the water side.

I think uh if you had anything to add, Amanda, but uh on the on the stormwater side, but at least uh the water and wastewater side, uh they're both uh you know, kind of complex, dynamic systems that they really work together, uh especially now we use our reuse to offset water demands, things like that.

Uh we do have a good water resource portfolio, our water rights um we you know we're producing about 10,000 acre feet of year of water, and we have about 18,000 acre feet of available water rights, but uh as you can imagine that doesn't necessarily mean that's a snap of the fingers and we can produce that.

It's you know, it's a lot of juggling to keep those wells in order, looking for new sources as as growth continues, uh, and then ever ratcheting regulations as those get tighter, keeping up with that, and if we need to do improvements to those sources or or look for new ones.

So that planning piece of it uh becomes important to keep ahead of that.

And with that, uh that's what I had.

Any questions?

Questions from the committee members.

Ronnect.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I've got two basic questions.

Um is I remember learning some time back about the uranium problem, and that uh the people on the right side of the country um have some kind of different chemistry involved with their uranium deposits than what we have.

I think that was the case.

And so they crafted uh back inside the beltway, they crafted the regulations with reference to uh the the eastern uh regime.

And uh it doesn't exactly service us the same way, and it doesn't help us.

Andy, can you remind me what the difference was between the two kinds of uranium deposits and how that uh made a difference uh and and a burden for us?

Not easily.

I'll have to look into that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh okay I know it does uh where we see it, it's it's largely in with the decomposed granite, which are you know, especially that east side, yeah, our mountains, that's where we see it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

But yeah, I'll have to look into that for you.

Okay.

Yeah.

Secondly, I I continue to interact with uh some renegades down in Douglas County, and uh hear their complaints and read their complaints about the uh amount of water that's being piped up here from Minden and over the hill uh to Lyon County, even how much water do we get and use from uh Douglas County per year?

Yeah, we have uh a little bit over 2700 acre feet of water rights that Carson City owns, and uh we get pretty close to that right now with quill being down.

Tell me once again, um they keep talking about taking it back.

And and uh, you know, it's it's our fault and it's our problem, and they don't have to solve it.

Uh you're still comfortable uh that uh they can't get any of that water back from us.

I mean anything could happen, you know.

Uh yeah, the the working relationship though that we have with the public works and the groups down there that we work with is is really good.

Uh in fact, we're meeting with them here later this month for our annual meeting, but uh you know we work really well together.

Uh we don't get that impression from them that they're fighting it or not still supporting it.

Just the kind of people that I associate with.

Uh thank you, Andy.

Thank you all, and thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Further questions from the committee.

I had some.

Uh following up on Rock next question.

Uh with respect to that plant that can be filled on on Highway 50, they can be filled from the Dayton side or the Carton City side.

Uh are there transfers that typically occur there?

Is there water flying to to Ly County and most of the time or or vice, or do we take do we have take water from them occasionally?

We're pretty fairly balanced.

Uh it it kind of depends.

Like last year they had a period where uh they lost a well pump for a couple of weeks, and we supplied the bulk of the water during that time.

We've had times when like uh extended period when we had a landfill fire that they were supplying more water to help us out.

Um can say that uh every six months we send each other a bill, and it is surprisingly close to the within thousands of the same amount back and forth.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And then uh do you could you go back to that uh water portfolio slide?

Yeah, Andy.

I think that's where it was.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Just uh and so the the Marlet Hobart system and then the East Side East Side Springs.

You said it was 7525 approximately surface water, well water.

Yeah, that's uh what we have been running at, we're probably closer to about 80 to 85 percent groundwater and 10 to 15 percent surface water right now because of quill being offline.

Uh once quill comes back on, we think that'll get uh we should be able to get that closer to 35 to 40 percent surface water.

Okay, yeah.

And then um with respect to the arsenic plant that's not working.

Is this uh is are we just not using the wells that were creating the arsenic issue?

Or was that plant being used to treat arsenic in the system from other water sources?

It was uh that plant specifically treated two wells, and yeah, those wells are not being used at the the moment.

Yeah.

And not needed in in the near future or uh we're thinking probably in that five to ten year time frame, we will need them.

So yeah, we want to start looking at that plant again.

And then on the induction wells, uh with quill down.

You're using those induction wells, you have the legal ability to draw more out of those induction wells.

Yeah, with our exchanges from the the Ash and King Kings Creek water, we have temporary exchanges in place to be able to, since that water is going to the river that would have otherwise gone into the plant that we can credit that back to those wells.

And does increased use of those wells affect the water quality on them?

Uh it doesn't seem to be.

Yeah.

Okay.

And let's see.

Finally, just uh out of curiosity, Lost Lake Mud Lake and Ambrosetti Pond, where are those?

Lost Lake and Mud Lake, those are both up in the Sierras.

So uh like Lost Lake is down uh Hope Valley area uh at the southern end of that.

Uh those are Lost Lake and Mud Lake are both owned by Carson Water Subconservancy District, and we have agreements in place with them to be able to utilize the releases from those lakes to offset our usage in the induction wells.

So uh they tend to like this year, for example, the the water release from those two sources will they basically carry us through the winter.

Uh and then Amber's Audi Brazetti Pond, that is out in Douglas County.

Uh it is if you travel between here and Garnerville, the off to the right side as you're going south.

There's a property that uh he's put in some vines and there's a couple of dinosaur statues.

That pond is is on that property.

You really can't see it from the highway, but it's essentially a tailwater pond from all the other irrigation usage out there.

We have uh acquired those rights years ago, the tailwater rights, so we're storing that, and as we release those to the river, then we can use that as an offset to the induction well pumping.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Oh, and then if on the next you had a slide that showed the uh exactly water system demand.

Uh on the effluent, the treated effluent, did did that decline in you know, annual annual water usage acre feet.

Did that was there uh change from from treated water to effluent along there?

Did that impact that at all?

Or is that that that's been all in place since before 2008?

Yeah, the reuse uh program that went into effect, you know, we really started it in the in the early 80s with with uh Eagle Valley Golf Course.

And then uh we do see a little bit of a blip uh on this graph 2013.

There's a little bit of an upward tick.

Uh we used to water like Mills Park, the cemetery, uh the uh Centennial Park, those areas with effluent.

Uh at that time we were in the middle of a a drought and they were supplementing the reuse program with treated water to keep it alive essentially.

And we pulled all the parks off of that that rather than just pump that water in there, we put those back on the domestic system.

So that would have ticked the water usage up a couple of hundred acre feet.

Yeah.

Okay.

And we've just been kind of watching that over the years to see when it's appropriate to bring those back on.

Can you go back to the um water rights slide that was before this?

Yeah.

So just to clarify, the Carson Valley groundwater wells and the Minden wells that has the 3,553 acre feet.

Yep.

You said right now you guys are only pulling out about 2700 acre feet.

Yeah, we and uh we have yeah, just under 2300, and then we also have the ability to use more if we wanted.

So we've been maximizing that last couple of years.

When you guys acquired um these groundwater um groundwater rights, was that just for that connection, or did you guys have those before?

As far as the actual history on that, Darren knows that much better.

Um I was just wondering if you know, maybe in uh response that you know, probably had some of those water rights in history and you know, in time, and so it wasn't like just for that inner tie.

So yeah, it was probably a lot longer than just this recent inner tie.

You can say in response that you know it's something that you just recently started stealing water from the yeah, we are a valid water rights holder there, and yes, we're before that.

Yeah, similar similar to some of these other ones.

It's just you know smart water planning.

Yeah.

So Ron Connect, you can relay that to your Douglas friends.

Yes.

Yep.

This was all our water a long time ago.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And buy them a cup of whisk, or not cup, glass of whiskey and whiskies for drinking and waters for fighting over here.

Any further questions from the committee?

Yes, I have uh I back to the uh arsenic wells, the two wells with the arsenic in them.

Are there plans to do the USGS testing on those as well to see if maybe there's a different zone that you can draw from that is on the radar?

We don't have them scheduled yet, but yeah, that was one of the thoughts as we start to look at that to look at both of those.

Yeah, any further questions.

All right, and that is a non-action item.

So we've concluded uh oh, public comment.

I guess we can uh are there any members of the public with uh who would wish to address uh committee with comments on uh agenda item six and let the record reflect there are no members of the public wishing to comment on that item moving right on to item seven, general public comment.

Uh the public is invited at this time to provide comments on any topic that relates to a matter of which is public body of supervision control jurisdiction or advisory power.

Doesn't need to be uh item specifically mentioned on the agenda.

Any members of the public who you wish to address the committee at this time yeah, let the right record reflect there are no members of the public item eight adjournment.

I move that we move that we move.

We have a second to adjourn.

Second all in favor?

Aye.

Aye, all right.

Committee is adjourned.