Check check one two.

All right.

It is six oh seven p.m.

on Thursday, June 11th, calling the Committee on Finance to order.

In attendance is counselor at large, Ian Abrew, Council of Ward 2, Scott Pemberton, Councillor of Ward 1, Leo Choquet, City Council President, Councilor Ward 6, Ryan Pereira, Councilor at Lodge, James Roy, Councilor at Lodge and First Vice President.

Shane Burgo.

And Joe Hopes, Counselor of Ward 5 and the Chair of Committee on Finance.

We do have two letters to be read into the record.

The clerk will read the letters.

Dear Council Lopes and honorable members of the Council, I am writing this letter to inform you of my possible late arrival to the Committee on Finance on Thursday, June 11th due to a prior commitment.

I ask that this you read this letter into the record to make my colleagues, those in attendance and the public aware of the reason for my delayed arrival.

Sincerely Neil McCarney, Councillor at Large.

And the second is from Councillor Gomes.

Dear Chairman Loebs and Honorable Members of the Committee, I am writing to inform you that I will be unable to attend tonight's committee meeting due to a personal prior commitment.

Please read this letter into the record to make my colleagues and the public aware of the reason for my absence.

Item number one is a communication member city council submitting it.

Oh sorry.

Note this meeting is being live streamed and recorded.

City Council committee meetings can be viewed on the City New Breforts homepage under quick links, then meetings.

Oh, Eric J.

I apologize.

So Sean, do you want to give us a brief overview on the on uh item number one.

Good evening, everybody.

Thank you very much.

Chairman Lopes.

So the um the city is proposing to make modifications to section sixteen, uh chapter ninety-four of the city's code of ordinance.

The current code um was written around um wastewater rates with an interpretation that um only one year at a time can be voted through by council.

Uh in 2019, we attempted to put through a five-year ordinance rate um smooth.

And uh that's when uh that interpretation came out.

So unfortunately we were only able to move forward with one year at a time.

And the goal of what we're trying to do here is to allow the council to implement multiple year rate increases at one time.

Up to five years, which is directly written into directly written into the into the ordinance change.

Um so what that'll do is it doesn't preclude the council from um only allowing one year rate increases, but what it does is it allows the council the flexibility to implement up to a five-year rate increase at one time.

And the driver behind this is that with doing one year rate increases, um the rates are set based on the budget itself, right?

So one year you might end up with a 3%, the next year you might end up with like a 15% rate increase, and the year after that you might end up with an 8% and back down to 3 and so on and so forth as we move through our implementation of the CIP.

But with a multiple year rate increase, what it allows us to do, it allows us to smooth the rates out.

So by smoothing the rates out and avoiding that sawtooth pattern that I had just talked about, it's easier for the ratepayer to be able to budget monthly for their sewer bills annually with knowing what that annual percentage is going to be.

Secondly, um the changes that we're making, uh the changes that we're making don't preclude council from making modifications to the rate.

So as an example DPI comes forth to you, or the wastewater division comes forth to you with a budget.

Council approves a rate modification.

Um say it's two years, right?

We're allowed to do it two years.

And it's say five percent both years.

Year two comes by, you would expect that the rate would be five percent again.

However, as a result of changes in the budget or council wanting to make modifications to the rate, say the budget comes in lower.

The council would still be able to make modifications to that second year rate, even though it was set the year before.

So it's again, it's not setting it in stone over that multiple year rate time period.

It's just allowing the council to be able to actually implement that over a multiple year period.

Again, giving flexibility in terms of creating that smooth that smooth pattern while still giving uh council the um the changes that if they want to make changes over time, they can do that.

Um the other change that we made is that um it establishes a minimum rate increase of the consumer price index modification.

So if the uh sewer rate uh ends up being lower than the CPI, then the CPI index would kick in.

Um secondly, if there was no rate increase proposed for that year, then the CPI index uh would kick in.

This basically eliminates that potential to create a structural deficit um by not outpacing inflation.

Um as we all know, inflation uh is is certainly rampant right now.

So um it avoid it mitigates that issue as we move forward.

So with that, uh DPI is proposing that we make modifications as proposed to council for section 16 of in uh chapter 94 of the city's code of ordinance.

So two things.

Welcome to Council Carney, Council Oliver, Council Baptiste.

Can I get a motion to receive in place and follow the package that's on your desk?

So moved.