But when it's complicated.

So tonight is really about one thing.

I'll probably wait a couple more minutes in case there's straggler coming through, but it's how we pay for uh storm water and whether those uh costs should follow your water use at your property or uh hard surface that would actually make the the runoff.

Um though everyone refers to your utility bill, it's the water bill, water rates aren't part of it tonight.

This would just be the water pollution control side.

Um so there's kind of six parts uh tonight that we're gonna touch on, and I really want most of it to be open discussion, but there is too many slides anyway to go through.

But uh, so we're gonna go over what we've heard, the funding problem, how we're proposing to allocate those costs, what it would look like on a bill, and then what council uh still has to decide uh and how we would get ready before anyone's billed, or what the what the change uh would be.

So uh I'm Rob Schultz, the gender manager chief engineer for the department of utilities.

I want to thank everyone from coming.

I'm assuming most people got a letter that probably said their bill was going up.

Um, and that's a fair reason for for people to to be concerned or be here, and that's why we sent the the letters out.

We wanted everyone to see an order of magnitude number, uh, so there wouldn't be sticker shock, or we wouldn't have um the surprise that we've had in in the past with some of the rate shockers.

So uh four things before we really get into it is that the figures tonight are examples from the rate that they're directionally correct, but they are not set in stone.

Um what we're proposing is that the council would set the rate in the typical budget cycle.

Um so and that's only if uh it gets adopted and approved that way.

And so uh the bill doesn't start now, the earliest it would have start would be next July, and that's if we're uh comfortable with the billing system and the data and everything behind it.

And so we're gonna present uh during the that budget, hopefully, two paths.

We're gonna do one with stonewater fee and one that would just be the conventional water pollution rate with a flat increase um like last time.

And um so to protect that pathway, uh, we are gonna be pushing an ordinance to council um for approval in October.

Uh there's going to be two parts.

One will be uh updating the stormwater regulations for development and and the typical review, and then the one will actually be the uh structure for for the utility.

Um that won't set rates, it doesn't mean the rates are guaranteed to come in for July.

You have the entire budget process, that public process that's gonna have those two pathways.

If uh the ordinance doesn't get passed, then that pathway won't exist, and it would just be uh as we have for the last um numerous years.

So uh the notices that went out, there is a group of them, probably around 500 or so that uh some of the condo units got assessed the entire on-purpose area for uh the the parcel.

And so uh the tradesman center is a group this Scott came over, uh, and I got didn't get a chance to look at it until today.

Um but that number for the entire parcel isn't correct, and so it'll wind up being either billed to the condo association for the condo as a do that, or if there's the individual units, it could just be uh you know, split if there's 10 units, whatever that that number would get divided.

So there's about 500 notices that probably have sticker shock because it's for the entire parcel, not not the uh portion of it.

And so I say so.

So you put the whole entire square footage of the whole plot on my bill.

Oh my gosh.

Yep.

And I went to you and I said it's this close to what it might be.

You go yes.

I said it could be.

I didn't have the number of units that were in there or it.

I told you I'd look into it, wrote down the information, and it's been two days.

28 minutes, 28 owners that actually divided up that's 62,000 square feet.

That's 62,000 square feet.

62,000.

Um so that corrected.

The same exact reason that I just listed.

And so as part of the public process in going through this and to protect our ability to even remotely have a chance to do it for July.

So you're not going to see a flat across the board increase that wouldn't be fair from what the rate study showed.

We needed to engage the public, and it was better to have a order of magnitude that would be the maximum amount.

And that all of all of all of that data still has to go through QC in that.

So there were 10,000 notices and round numbers, and say a few percent of them were overestimated.

And we will get the corrected information on it.

Oh wait.

And so that ordinance is basically enabling us to have that pathway.

If the ordinance doesn't exist, then we can't it's not worth doing any of the work.

Okay, if it's not the work.

Yeah.

Um that's that's uh so you know um this isn't new, it's new to Rhode Island.

The city looked at it in 2017.

Um, and it's similar to what we have now, and rates didn't follow.

Middletown studied it, and Providence is doing uh implementation work now.

Um the goal overall uh is to adjust that water pollution control charge to be more fair as to what's driving those and and water use isn't a good uh tool for that.

Um the storm water is included in that store bill right now, it's already getting paid for, but it's buried in that rate, and so a uh paved lot or a property that doesn't have uh water use isn't paying anything into the system, or if you have a um restaurant, say that's a pretty small building but uses a ton of water by their use, they're paying more than their share.

And so we're looking at the proposal to change to the hard surface that creates the runoff.