Good evening.

Thank you for being here.

This evening, we are going to present our cost of service study overview for both the sewer and solid waste utilities.

With us, we have our consultant, Kyle Stevens.

Sorry, to present.

And I'll just turn it over to Kyle.

Perfect.

Thank you so much, Aaron.

And look forward to covering all the topics this afternoon or this evening, as it were, that we'll be conducting as part of this study.

Put together a brief presentation to cover the different elements of the study that we'll be examining for the city.

For this particular rate study, we'll be looking into the sewer utility as well as the solid waste utility in detail.

Quick agenda for this evening to uh cover the different elements of the study.

First, I'll be just talking about the general industry that utilities operate in and some of the challenges that uh utilities such as the City of Columbia as well as others uh face uh in the fact that they're very capital intensive and a bit different than some of the other services and goods that we interact with in our daily lives.

Uh in additionally, I'll be taking a bit more time to go through in detail um the three big elements of the rate study for each of the utilities we looking at.

So that's a revenue sufficiency, uh cost of service, uh rate design, and then for the sewer utility, the connection fee.

And then also at the end, I'll just be talking about the project timeline and when we expect to have the uh deliverables in this study completed as we move through the springtime period.

And so just quick background, Stan Tech Consulting, as Aaron mentioned.

I'm Kyle Stevens with Stantech Consulting.

Uh Stantec is a top 10 design firm, a global engineering firm.

And I sit specifically in the management and technology component of the company, which covers roughly on the utility side, 25% to 30% of the U.S.

population in the sense that we've served them through rate studies or debt issuance support and help them with a manner of issues related to utility uh rates.

Uh we are a group uh it's been growing rapidly here.

I think we're up to uh over 50 consultants now that work full-time in this industry uh with uh municipal uh partners, much like the City of Columbia.

Uh and so what is a rate study?

Uh let's start there first and we'll dive into the elements.

The best way to think about this is it's a series of interconnected investigations.

And so we're trying to answer several detailed questions about the utility uh and its operations.

Uh first and foremost, we start with the biggest one, which is how much does it cost to run the utility?

Not only today, uh, and usually uh the city, uh, much like the City of Columbia has a really good idea through its budget of the expenditures in the next fiscal year, uh, but really taking that and building that out into the future to think about uh the next five years, the next 10 years, uh what types of investments do we need to make, what maybe are changes in services that are coming down the line that we need to plan for, and then comparing that to current revenue levels to see if we're fundamentally sustainable over time.

Uh from that jumping off point, we then next move to uh the cost of service analysis, which on here I've I've said from whom.

What we're doing here is a much more deep dive into one year's expenditures uh to understand how those expenditures align with the way the service is delivery, so delivered.

So, for example, um in solid waste, how much of the expenditure related to collection maybe versus disposal or material recovery, uh, in really thinking about uh the different ways that the uh utility supports those different functions and ultimately uh connecting that back to how customers use the service and the different ways that different customers may use the service.

Uh so current industry challenges.

Uh utilities, as I mentioned, are a bit special in the way that they interact with the the world at large.

And so there's a few unique trends that are out there that I'm sure we will see in this study as we get into the data, but we should think about up front as we we embark on this journey together uh into the study.

And so uh put a couple of these up here.

The first is uh reductions in use.

And so this has been a historical challenge uh for utilities, uh both on the water side and the wastewater side specifically.

Uh basically relates to the idea of over time folks get more efficient with their usage.

And while that's great on one side, uh on the utility side, that means potentially lower revenues over time, and we need to account for that.

We've seen that trend really play out over the last 10 years.

That's been slowing down a bit, and we'll really want to take a deep dive into the data here as we get into this study to see the impacts of that uh on potential revenue over time.

Uh aging infrastructure, a really big one.

Uh so utilities, as I mentioned, infrastructure heavy, a lot of pipes uh on the sewer side in the collection network that need to be maintained in a in a state of readiness 24-7.

And many of those pipes are old and retire and in required continued maintenance across not only Columbia but within the U.S.

And so it's really planning for the eventual replacement of those assets.

Additionally, we have regulatory pressures that are changing over time and typically move in the direction of stricter requirements, uh, especially on the wastewater side as it relates to this study.

And so factoring those in, making sure that we're meeting all of that and the cost associated with it.

Also put down here some of the other elements that I think are are maybe more uh on the side but do come into play as well, aging workforce or workforce related issues.

So as I I conduct these studies all over, I often hear about the um uh retirements uh having impact on these utilities as well as vacancies now is has been a bigger one as well, filling all the positions that we have open.

Uh and so we do take a look at that as we think about uh the uh budgeted expenditures and what we're actually expending in the fund.

Uh customer affordability.

So uh there's always uh this relationship in the utilities world as we need additional resources that increases bills, and we need to think about how that impacts customers.

And you know, one of our stated goals is always trying to minimize uh utility increases and make them as predictable as possible.

Uh additionally, uh, you know, operating cost increases uh the most recent period uh of operations here and and really broadly in the economy, we've we've seen inflation uh be higher than it has been uh over the last 10 years.

Uh that's had an acute effect on utilities.

And so something we're keyed in on and also watching as that inflation starts to slow down a bit.

Uh so next I'll jump into the specific topic.

I've got revenue sufficiency up first.

Uh what how I like to think about revenue sufficiency is it's it's fundamentally putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together in order to put together a good forecast of how the utility actually operates.

I've got a graphic up here where we can see uh the annual revenue requirement is how we talk about how much we need, and it's really those different pieces of the puzzle, whether it be personnel services, uh whether it be operating expenditures, so think about things on the sewer side like chemicals or electricity, uh, vehicles, equipment are really big ones.

So every once in a while we'll need to replace vehicles, and they've definitely gotten more expensive over time.

So we need to plan for those and include those in our plan.

Uh we might have debt service.

So on the wastewater side of the equation, we have some debt we've borrowed historically.

We are continuing to pay that over time, so we need to plan for that and ensure that we can meet all the covenants associated with it.

The one of the larger dynamics um that goes into the financial plan is capital planning.

And so while some of the elements of utility are relatively stable, the budget's over time, capital planning tends to be one that ebbs and flows over time.

So some years we might have a heavier need on capital spending, other years it might be a bit uh lighter.

Uh, what this revenue sufficiency allows us to do is put all of that in there and look at how it works over that five and ten year period, and are we sustainable given the revenues and the in the current fund balances that we have.

So uh this is another presentation of the results, an example here of a model.

So uh as we go through the revenue sufficiency um uh part of the study, what we're fundamentally doing is taking all of the great data that the city currently has, the balances, the expenditure data, the operating budget, and we're bringing it into a model that tries to best replicate the realities on the ground through conversations with the city's subject matter experts.

And finally, we'll get to a product here where we can look at a panel of the results in a simple graphical format where we can look at different scenarios, whether that be uh different levels of capital spending or different rate plan scenarios uh in order to determine uh what might be uh the most sustainable or best mix uh of scenarios and and and rate plans for the city going forward.

Uh and this is something we provide at the end of the study to the city as well for for ongoing beneficial use.

Uh one of the elements I wanted to show here to just give a little bit of context as we enter a study like this.

Uh each city is unique, but as I mentioned, we we do operate in this broader economy.

Inflation has been one of those big elements.

And when we think about inflation, most often we're thinking about consumer prices.

Uh, this graphic that I put up on the screen right now has consumer prices on the black line here, and it shows the cumulative change since the turn of the millennium, since 2000, roughly 87 percent increase in cumulative cost from that period for the consumer price index as measured by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

However, in that measurement, a Bureau of Labor and Statistics has subindices that they track as well.

And relevant to our study today, they specifically look at the CPI for water and sewer, uh, and that is a great metric where it holds uh use steady uh at 5,000 gallons a month and looks at the change of the cost of those services for households across the U.S.

You'll notice that one's quite a bit higher.

So instead of 87%, it's up to 219%.

That goes exactly to the point I was talking about a minute ago.

The basket of goods that utilities are purchasing looks a lot different than a household, much more uh intensive uh on the capital space, and we see the cost pressures much higher on the utility front.

Um interestingly enough, sanitation or garbage sits in between the two.

So it's not as high as water and sewer, um, it's not necessarily the same kind of distributed infrastructure, but of course we have the the large vehicles and trucks and the landfill costs associated with that one.

Um that's up 140 percent since the turn of the millennium.

So definitely see a bit more cost pressure on the utility side than overall in the U.S.

economy.

And and finally, here on the revenue sufficiency, um, I think what's helpful, and I've I've mentioned a few of these uh as we've thought about uh the revenue sufficiency exercise that we go through in the first part of the study, you know what really moves the needle here.

So there's a lot of components that go into this study uh and different data points that we get from the city in order to build a model like this in a forecast.

Um but when you get down to it, there really are a few moving pieces that really rise above the rest.

So the first is I mentioned capital investment need.

We have a lot of conversations about the adopted capital plan, uh what's happening on the system and what the needs are in the next five to ten years in order to make sure that we've got that projected uh correctly in the model.

And you know, changes in the timing of that capital plan or the magnitude can have a very large impact on rates because those are often some of our lumpier expenditures that we have to plan for.

Um mentioned operating cost pressures, uh, of course, we're we're factoring that in and having conversations about how the budget's evolved over the years, and then thinking about in the future how best to forecast the ongoing inflation that we might expect over the next five or ten years.

Uh regulatory compliance, and then finally, I think that's that's pertinent as well as we think about sewer uh and solid waste tonight is the time since the last rate adjustments.

And so in these particular utilities have been a number of years since uh on the sewer side 2019.

Uh so it's been a number of years since these rates have been adjusted, uh, and so revenues have have been maintained at that certain level, while costs have, of course, increased over that time.

And so we'll want to be looking uh closely at that comparison and thinking about uh that context as we get the answers from the revenue sufficiency.

Uh next we'll be talking about the deep dive, so cost of service.

Um I always start with cost of service uh from an industry context.

So when we're thinking about the study in front of us here uh that we're launching into tonight, uh, we're first going to look at industry resources, uh a by the book approach, if you will, for cost of service.

On the wastewater side, uh we've got MOP27 or the Manual of Practice 27 from WEF, uh the Water Environmental Federation, which provides a very detailed um uh principled guide in which we take a test year of expenditures uh and we break those expenditures out to the different functions that the utilities supporting.

I'm gonna show those in the next few slides, but um you can think about that essentially following the water, if you will, uh from your house uh through the collection system over to the treatment plant.

Uh on the solid waste side, uh it's a little bit different.

We have a few other other industry groups out there that do from time to time put out different guidance on how to set rates.

Um solid waste rates tend to be a bit more dynamic, a bit more variety from city to city.

So GFOA uh Finance Officers Association, uh Solid Waste Association of North America, both of those have uh some industry guidelines out there that talk about pricing.

Um I tend to think those are a really good starting points, especially on the solid waste side.

But of course, what we're also doing is customizing or thinking about the uniqueness of the way that the services are provided in the city here in Columbia, Missouri, and incorporating that within the cost of service.

So it's starting with the industry guidelines, but then of course adapting it to what we're doing on the ground so that we can make those as accurate as possible.

So spend a little bit of time on this next slide.

Um cost of service is probably the most abstract element of a rate study.

And what this graphic does is tries to demystify that a little bit.

And so I start on the left that 2027 revenue requirement, that's what's going to come out of our first effort, the the revenue forecasting side.

It's going to determine how much uh the total cost is to run the utilities and what we need to recover in rates.

Uh we'll then remove off of that some miscellaneous revenue.

So, of course, we have interest income and we have various miscellaneous charges that come in.

Uh with that revenue comes in, we we back that off so that the rates only need to support the remainder.

And then finally, the cost of service on the far right is really this exercise of taking those remaining dollars that we need to recover and trying to put them in the right bucket with regards to what services are being provided.

And so on the sewer side here, what I've broken out are the big functions uh that are typically thought of.

So, first being uh the idea of collection.

So we have a system of underground pipes that are collecting wastewater from our various different customers, uh, moving it to the larger interceptors all the way over to the treatment plant where it is treated and then finally disposed of.

Umce we have those functions broadly identified, we then move to cost components.

And and cost components are a way for us to think about measured constituents here of use of the service.

And so on the wastewater side, uh flow is the first one.

We're thinking about the total volume uh that we need that that we receive from customers.

Uh we measure that in hundreds of cubic feet uh per month.

And so that's the first.

We just think about the total volume, but then in wastewater, the next level is thinking about what's in that wastewater, um, what needs to be treated uh primarily in the industry that is uh BOD or biochemical oxygen demand and TSS are total suspended solids.

So it's two different measurements of the necessary treatment that needs to be performed on the wastewater in order for it to get ready for its its ultimate disposal.

And then uh down at the bottom I've got the customer component as well.

So there are certain functions, uh think about uh utility billing, uh inquiries to the utility department that aren't necessarily directly related to service, but under the broader uh uh envelope or umbrella of the utility that we do need to consider as well in the scaling for those costs.

I've also put here uh in the little box here I think is helpful, it's just the common units of measurement.

So um, this very much goes down to the end of the day, you know, when we we do bill or we do think about customers.

Most commonly we're thinking on this side about two different elements.

So we're measuring uh the connection size for non-single family users, so thinking about how uh larger users can place much larger potential demands on the system over time is of a large difference between a five-inch meter and a four inch meter or an eight inch meter on the water side and correspondingly how much wastewater might come back.

Um additionally, there's the measured usage, as I mentioned in CCF that is a very broad metric of the kind of wastewater and the the quantity uh that we need to deal with within the system.

Uh we then uh change just uh flipping gears over to solid waste, uh put over the same graphic here, and I'll focus on the right side of this particular screen.

So on the solid waste side of the equation, again, uh first in the background and the colors, we're gonna be moving to functions, and we're breaking it down on this side, really fundamentally into first the collection, so going out into the field, um, removing the ref use or the recycling material, and then transmitting it over to uh either the landfill for final disposal or the material recovery facility if it's going to be uh recycling material.

Uh and then when we we break that down underneath the solid waste, uh this one works a little bit differently because we have a number of different customer categories that are in play that have different service configurations.

And so I've I've listed them out here between you know residential refuse versus recycling versus commercial front load or rear load versus roll off and commercial recycling.

And each of these represents fundamentally a different type of service, vehicle configuration and personnel uh that's working in these service lines.

And so it's an exercise in ensuring that we've got uh a strong connection between the type of the function, but then also it's broken down in such a way that it's connected back to these unique lines of service uh that the City of Columbia provides for its customers.

Uh and I'll show you as we get the rates, this will make more sense.

But the common units of measurement here, we're really thinking about uh potential disposal capacity.

So that's the size of your roll off cart that you might put in front of your house.

It's the size of the dumpster that might be behind a commercial establishment.

And then it it goes down to frequency uh next, thinking about uh how often we're going out into the field to pick up those containers, and then also what type of waste uh might be included.

I mentioned there's a uh significant difference between if it's going to be uh refuse or or it might be um material that could be uh recycled or recovered at the material recovery facility.

So when we get done with cost of service, while it's a very detailed analysis line by line to perform those functional allocations and those connections back to service lines.

Uh what we're really the answer at the end of the day, and I've put an example of this, is we're trying to get an idea of how close we are currently with regards to the revenue collection from different customer classes to the underlying cost of service.

There's usually going to be some variance in there as costs change over time and we update the units of service.

What we're really interested to see is how close we are currently, and then as we move to the next step of the process in the rate setting, thinking about what objectives we might have to close the cost of service.

In an ideal world, we would love the revenue collected from a given class of customer to be very close to the underlying service uh over time.

So there's a strong cost causation nexus, the idea that you're paying very specifically for the type of services that are being rendered to you.

Next, I'll move over to rate design here to talk about the elements of rate design.

And I've just put up here these next few slides a starting point for us, the current rates that are in place for both of the utilities that are underneath our study this year.

First up is the sewer uh rates.

And as I mentioned, uh, or what's broadly applicable in the industry is two types of rates.

One is a fixed monthly base charge, and I've put that up on the first part of this slide here.

Uh for single family homes, that's that's set at the 5-8 uh inch level at 1237.

But for non-single family, it'll scale.

So as the water meter size changes, you would experience a larger base size.

Again, the typical thought there is there's a connection between a larger meter size and the amount of wastewater that you potentially might send to the system, um, a readiness to serve, if you will, on that side.

And then on the bottom side, we also have a component that's a measured component or a volumetric component, and this applies to the amount of volume uh that you're sending uh to the wastewater system.

Uh we measure this in terms of hundreds of cubic feet or CCF per month, and there's a single charge that applies to all customers.

That's currently uh 255 right now on the system.

On the solid waste side, there's a few more moving pieces.

Um you may have noticed on the cost of service, there's a few different service lines that are in place.

I put the primary ones up on this slide here right now.

Um a couple things to notice here that will be taken into account as we look at the study.

So the first are the residential rates up top.

Um the City of Columbia has a pay as you throw program or a differentiated set of fees for cart different cart sizes.

So you'll see a 35, a 65, a 95 gallon cart size.

Um there's different disposal capacity present in those cart sizes, and so the pricing is dynamic there, depending on on how uh large you choose your container.

Uh and so we'll be looking in as we do the cost of service, the underlying cost related to collection and disposal for that.

Uh if you go down to the commercial schedules under there, uh the breakdown there is a little bit differently.

So, first on the full left side, again, we're talking disposal capacity, it's in terms of cubic yards, um, so two yards up to an eight-yard dumpster.

Uh, and then we're moving over as we go right across the matrix to think about how frequent the pickup is.

So on a commercial side, uh the customer is is self-selecting uh the needed uh frequency related to how much uh trash or recycling they're generating uh and they could uh move up to six times a week uh across there.

Uh and so it's a little bit of a different service line and a different service paradigm really fundamentally driven by the type of business and and how much refuse uh they're generating.

Uh and then you can see down there is also a breakout uh for the rear loads as well, which is uh is a different apparatus we're using um to pick up uh uh certain carts that are out there, two yards and roll carts.

So when we go into uh rate design, I think it's it's super helpful uh to think about this slide really closely as we go into a rate study, which is oftentimes when we talk about rate design, there are multiple objectives.

I put a few up here uh because a few here help me illustrate oftentimes the interplay between these objectives and the fact that some objectives are in direct opposition to one another.

So the one uh uh I love to point out the first is the revenue requirements.

Um we establish that first how much we need.

Uh and oftentimes, as I presented with in in just inevitable inflation over time, utility rates go up.

However, that puts pressure on another one of our objectives, which is affordability, keeping rates affordable for customers.

Um, the more the higher rates are, and the more revenue we need, the less affordable they are.

And so we're always balancing these types of object objectives.

Um on the other hand, we want them rates to be as simple as they possibly be.

That way they're easily understood.

Uh customers get the correct price signals that we're sending them, but at the same time, they need to be proportional.

And if they're gonna be proportional, there is a minimum level of complexity there.

We need to be able to measure the correct units of service so that the fees scale correctly.

And so these are often type types of objectives, these and other objectives that we're considering and thinking about as we go into a rate study in order to balance and come to a spot where we can find the most sustainable rates uh for a given utility.

Uh then we go down to a just a couple examples here of rate impacts.

Um again, we're at the first step here in the rate study.

So we don't have outputs yet.

What I've come here is just grabbed a few.

What we'll be doing is showing this in a number of different ways is oftentimes like this example will show in an average house, uh three CCF per month, uh regular uh c solid waste service here at the 95 gallon uh level.

And you know what is the relative change for that household.

Um I I think the you know my one of my jobs and in the the utility study is not only to show an average, like I think these are super helpful, but just understanding the the full uh gamut of impacts across customers so that we don't leave anyone out as we make these changes, understanding how maybe different service configurations might impact customers or different usage levels.

So oftentimes we'll run these bill impacts at uh the average level and a larger family level.

Maybe it's double uh the household average within the city so that we can understand if there's going to be unique uh cost pressures or or uh bill impacts to different users at those different levels.

Uh, this is just again an example of what we might look at for residential.

Non-residential is a bit different.

Uh I've got an example here on the sewer side where we're pulling uh very specific uh sewer customers and looking at uh how their sewer bill uh might change over time.

And we'll do this for a number of different rate scenarios.

Um it tends to be less um uh of an average impact on the commercial side and more specific to again the unique business and the unique way that they interact with the utilities, the the service that they use.

And so do a lot more of a deep dive uh thinking about uh outliers and different types of businesses that would potentially have outsized impacts or or impacts that are much less, uh, of course, from different rate design decisions that we're making.

Uh and then uh of course part of it is benchmarking as well.

So as I mentioned, uh the city of of Columbia is unique in one sense.

Uh it runs uh these services for the uh you know jurisdictional boundaries of the city.

Uh but of course others offer these services as well within their other uh uh peer municipalities.

Uh what we do as part of the rate study is an exercise to grab some of that information so that we can generate graphics like this, where we can determine where we currently sit with regards to our peers.

There's gotta be differences, of course, between uh Columbia and its its other peers.

It might be uh age of the system or different technologies or investments that we've made over time.

So there's always a caveat here, but it's always helpful to have that understanding.

Um I think it's also useful sometime looking at the actual uh rate components to see if we're falling within the normal rate setting practices or we're doing something a bit different.

And if we are, why are we doing that?

Maybe there's a very good reason for that because cities are unique and are and are different, and there and there may be uh reasons that we can extract from that.

But benchmarking is a very helpful thing just to level set and find where we are.

Uh move on next uh to the topic of connection fees.

And so connection fees are a little bit different than the rates I just went through.

So connection fees are a one-time payment uh for a new connection on the system.

Uh and so what you're essentially uh one way to think about is you're essentially buying into the system uh with a a sewer connection fee or sewer impact fee as it's called other in other places in the industry.

Um that is oftentimes uh paid by developers or uh uh somebody that's that's developing a property for the very first time.

Uh there are several accepted methodologies to arrive at updated impact fees.

And so what we'll be doing is taking a really deep dive into the sewer investments and fixed asset data that exist in the city to understand uh the historical investment this the city has made, what that cost currently, if you had to make that investment today, knowing some of that was made many, many years ago that's still in service and still supporting customers, uh, and looking at uh what the current fee is and if that can be supported or if the costs justify a change to that fee.

As I mentioned though, there are several methodologies here, so I'll I'll go through them real quickly.

Uh buy-in methodology, that will likely be the most appropriate for the City of Columbia, and that's where you have an existing system, has plenty of capacity.

We're not looking at any uh new treatment plants in the near-term horizon or big changes to incremental capacity.

Uh we're just trying to essentially calculate what the current value of the system is and the representative of that value to uh representative portion of the value to a new connection.

The incremental uh approach is an approach where we do the same analysis as the buy-in, uh, but we have uh maybe a new treatment plant or a number of maybe very large pump stations that are owing something in the near future that's a large addition to capacity to the system.

And what we want to do is essentially blend the two costs together to recognize the fact that we've made historical investments and recognize that we have new investment, new investments that may come at a much higher cost than historical investments or blending the two together.

And then finally, uh uh, and I actually just went through the combined as I was talking about.

I incremental um is the final one that I'll mention, the second one on this list.

Incremental is when instead of considering any historical investments, uh it's really a case where you're you're potentially building out a brand new system or you've got a very young system that's just building out, you'd only consider the future investments that are being made and the costs associated with those investments.

So you may be building a brand new treatment plant, and we want the cost to buy in to be associated with the uh current cost of that treatment plant, the unit cost of that new treatment plant.

Just a breakdown on this slide.

Uh the math at the end of the day is really simple as far as the equation for this.

Uh the devil's in the details as far as the assets.

So the assets tend to be exceedingly lengthy as far as the number of assets, the types of assets, the years that they were invested in, and the conversations that have to happen with regards to how those assets are currently serving the system.

But once you get that, you essentially have the value of the system in current day dollars.

So we're going to bring everything up from its historical investment period to 2026 and think about the current value of the system as if we had to replace it this year.

We're going to minus off any credits on it, so credits to think about.

That might be uh previous grants where we paid for investments with grants or dollars that were outside of the utilities rate base.

Uh additionally debt.

Uh so if we had taken debt out, uh we don't typically include that in a connection fee because it's going to continue to be paid for in the operating rate, so we back it off of the system.

And so we're just making very standard adjustments to arrive at a fee that is representative of the current cost of capacity on the sewer side of the equation for this particular study.

Uh and then this example I brought up, this is this is actually, of course, it says water, and we're talking sewer and wastewater.

I brought this example up.

This is actually from last year's water presentation, which just shows you a great example of the relative update on this.

Uh and so I don't you know don't take this as an expectation for where we're headed, but it essentially shows what we're trying to do, which is in Water's case, we had a fee that was $578 for a brand new standard connection.

When we updated it, it was a little over $1,000, $1,000 $69.

And so what we're looking to do again is grab that most uh recent list of assets, compare the current fee that's in place to what we calculate as the current cost and capacity, and then think about adjustments over time in order to uh ensure that we're we're getting close to that.

Um the other thing that that is I always mention is this is you know there is a uh a zero sum game here.

So this is paid by growth.

Uh if these fees are not at or close to cost recovery, um, then other ratepayers are making up the difference.

And so that's one of the critical parts of these studies when we think about how these different fees work together in order to provide the resources to run a utility such as the sewer utility in the city of Comedy.

These are very complex, very expensive utilities.

Um these types of fees help offset when new growth comes onto the system, pay for that capacity that they're using that that otherwise other ratepayers would pay for.

Uh so finally today uh we we get to the project schedule that we'll be outlining.

So the project schedule here, uh we're just getting kicked off here uh today and and having conversations about rates 101, uh, where we're headed on this study.

Uh as we move forward here, things will develop pretty quickly.

So we've already received a good amount of data from the city and begin on our first task here as we enter February, which is the financial plan or revenue sufficiency.

Uh we'll be moving right out of that in mid-February over to cost of service and digging into the details of both utilities uh from a cost of service perspective, and then expecting on the tail of that, uh given the interconnection of these different uh parts of the study to move into rate design in the March time period, which will put us in a great position as we move into April uh and May to have the preliminary results and start to have the recommendations come out of the study.

Uh we'll be fitting probably in March uh the connection fee as well, uh, that analysis, which is the the one-off analysis I just went through.

Um that will put us in in a really good period uh to have those conversations uh in this year in spring as we go into the summer, uh likely, and I didn't put this on here, for implementation of the rem recommendations for next fiscal year.

So at the end of the end of the day, that's ultimately usually when these types of recommendations uh come into play.

Um and so we like to get the conversation started on those early.

So that's all I've got tonight, but any particular questions that you may have, you know, happy to answer that or any other slides you'd like me to go back to uh can of course go back.