Good evening, everybody.

This is a committee of the whole meeting concerning uh South Essex Surge this SESD is for presentation.

I'd ask the mayor to come up and give us a quick synopsis of what's going on.

We're on Mr.

Chairman.

Good evening, Council.

Everybody's doing well.

Uh great to be with you.

Uh I'm just gonna speak for a moment and then turn it over, but I uh uh today wanted to have presented to you uh as you can see on the screen a sustaining SESD for the future.

Um here today with Mike Jingris, our finance director.

He and I and Will Paulitz uh met uh with uh the SES dean, who I'm gonna introduce in a moment, uh, to look at um their capital plan, some of their operational uh items, and there was a lot there.

There was a lot to take in, uh a lot of uh costs that are gonna be coming our way that we need to start thinking about and planning for, and I wanted them to bring forward to the council uh to the public, uh kind of that same presentation that I received at that time, and just so you're aware of what we're looking at in the years ahead.

Uh it's great we have State Senator Joan Lovely here, our state representative Tom Walsh is here as well.

Um representative from SESD, who's done a terrific job for us, Bob Langley uh has been our representative with SESD now for a number of years and is very familiar with everything that's taking place in in SESD, and there's a lot happening.

Um I'm here to answer any questions as best I can, Mike Jingris as well.

Uh but we really want to turn it over to SESD, and I'm happy now, Mr.

Chairman, with your approval to ask Mike Parsons to come up and he can introduce the team and jump into the presentation.

Mr.

Parsons, please come up.

Mr.

Chairman.

And the suspension of the rules motion receive item eight D and refer to this.

You heard the motion to receive item eight D under suspension of the rules.

I'm chairman of the board at at South Essex.

Uh along with us today is Dave Michelson, who is our executive director, and Kristen Kohlik, who is our general counsel.

And um the mayor already introduced Bob Langley, who has been a long time representative of the city on our on our board.

Um we're here tonight because South Essex faces uh some very severe financial challenges.

If we don't address them, it'll impact our ability to um provide the kind of treatment that we're mandated to do by legislation and permits.

Certainly in the last 20, 25 years treating wastewater.

Um but now we're facing some real threats, and and it will impact our ability to do so as we go forward.

At the same time, we recognize that communities such as Peavy and the other members of the district face really significant financial challenges.

And even though that's the situation, we'd be remiss if we didn't come forward and present to you what our challenges are and work with you to try to find a solution.

I'll tell you the punchline right now before I get started is the district is looking for relief from proposition two and a half, and that's the whole focus of this presentation.

By law, we are subject to proposition two and a half.

That no longer works for us.

We've made similar presentations to this to your uh the district's legislative delegation that happened back in uh December, and then we made another one in January to uh group of community leaders, and input from that meeting helped structure our request for legislation that I'll get into get into part way through the presentation.

And the ultimately uh the legislative delegation has requested that each community, um each legislative branch of each community uh pass a resolution in support of our request for relief from two and a half.

We don't have that resolution with us tonight.

We intend to assemble it after we visited each of the communities, but that will be coming to you at some point in the future.

So, Dave, you want to go to the next.

Perhaps you all know that the district comprise is comprised of five major communities that are shown there.

We also serve portions of Middleton and Wenham.

They're state facilities in Wenham that we serve, uh, 190,000 people in total.

Next.

So what do we do?

It's pretty straightforward.

We collect wastewater from the member communities.

Um they're conveyed through our pipelines, very large pipelines and pump stations, to our treatment facility in Salem on Fort Avenue.

Um there we treat treat and process the wastewater and discharge it out into Salem Sound.

We are a wholesaler, if you will.

Uh you all probably recognize you get your sewer bills from the city, but included in the calculation of your sewer bill is the assessment or the charges that South Essex makes to each of the member communities.

Um the reasons we do it are the same as a hundred years ago when we were reformed to protect the public health, so that's what happens on the land, and to protect water quality, and that's what happens in the ocean.

Next.

Um we occupy about 14 acres.

It's it's quite a large facility.

It starts with the building in the foreground and extends all the way back to you can see a narrow horizontal dark building facade.

There's a being poked at right there.

Um that's our site.

Areas under grass are actually concrete tankage that hold water.

So the entire plant is is covered.