Call to order the city council meeting for Monday, May 4th, 2026.

Is this particular part of it on uh the Zoom and TV TV and all that in Wordley also?

Okay.

So we're on Zoom webinar.

The information is on the agenda on the website.

Uh TVC TV, we're live streaming.

And we also have Wordley live translation available.

Information for that is on the agenda.

The city is committed to providing equal access to public meetings.

Requests for accommodations can be submitted to the city recorder at least 48 hours before the meeting at CityRecorder at Cornelius OR.gov or call 503 357 911 2.

We had our executive session and now we're going to have a work session.

The work session is Clean Water Services, cost of service study and rates.

Presenters, please approach the table and introduce yourselves.

And if you're not familiar, you need to have a little green light showing.

Yep.

If the green light doesn't show, you don't get to.

And it's just a tap.

You don't even have to press, just a just a quick tap and go.

There you go.

And the microphone will probably need to be if you're both speaking, you'll probably need to slide it back and forth between you.

Welcome.

And please introduce.

Yes, Mayor and Council.

I'm Joe Gall.

I'm the chief utility relations officer.

I was just telling Kathy I'm get to come to Cornelis two nights this week.

I'll be here Wednesday night for state of the city.

So looking forward to that.

You're not going to hear from me primarily tonight, uh, as in the past.

You're going to hear from Kathy Leader, our chief financial officer, about our cost of service study and the rates projections, and we're here to answer any questions that you might have on those topics.

Or anything else, CWS related.

So with that, Kathy.

Thank you, Joe.

Um good evening, Mayor, members of council.

Um need to get that mic a little closer.

It's probably not going to pay.

Is that good?

Yeah, I guess we could hear you over the mic and speakers now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So Clean Water Services provides regional sanitary sewer and stormwater services for your customers in the city of Cornelius.

The City of Cornelius provides the local services for the their customers.

And so on on the regional side, they build for those services and remit them monthly to Clean Water Service.

That's that connection with the city and the district.

So first I'm gonna start and talk about the history of our rate increases at the district.

Then I'm gonna go into the cost of service study and the cost allocation process that we went through and finalized.

We're gonna define regional and local services, and we're also gonna look at our 10-year rate forecast.

So Cleanwater Services has a history of modest and predictable rate increases.

Over the last 10 year period, we've had an average annual increase of 3.38% on our rates for our these are the customer rates for our direct bill.

So it's our local and regional rate to our local customers' cleanwater services bills directly.

Um in 2026, it was $66.95 for both the sanitary and storm services.

Um development and reserve policy that prepared and adopted by our board back on April 14th based on that cost of service study update.

So the cost of service study, um, this was an ask of our board, but also this member cities, because there was a feeling over time, the last time it had been looked at was in 2008 that over time our rates, um, our service levels had changed not only between the two different utilities, but also the regional and local component.

So we initiated that study back in 2021, and um we contract with Bartel Wells and Associates to complete that final study and and the update to all the numbers for in February of 2026 this year.

Um after that completion of that study, it did show that local rates charged did not fully cover the local program for both the sanitary sewer and the stormwater programs.

So this study that we put in place provides the basis for our long-term financial planning and rate development under a new um met cost methodology.

So the three main objectives of the study were to first review and update the cost of service study, the allocation between the Santerio sewer and stormwater programs and the regional and local services, then prepare a 10-year financial plan that helps us fund operating maintenance debt service and capitalese annually, correct that local service area funding deficit that's going on, and then ensure that clean water services has adequate reserves to maintain um in their future operations effectively.

And finally, the calculation and update of rates and evaluating their impact on our customer bills.

So we the rates now under this new methodology, rate increases vary across our service areas.