Utility Committee Agenda and Packet 2019 10 30

Home Browse Search

City Council Utility Committee Meeting Minutes Friday, September 13, 2019 Page 3 of 6 lot. Mr. Ahrens said that is the indicator of the rate structure. Mr. Kowar said who they are would be a person using 1,000 gallons gets billed for one unit on base line minimum bill, which makes the cost per gallon go up. The current rate structure currently has 5,000 gallons in the base rate which is continuing what the City had previously done and is generally what you budget for indoor use. Councilmember Stolzmann stated we wanted to set a readiness to serve charge and we didn't want that to not give you any water. So everybody had to pay a minimum amount and wanted to make sure they could still have water. Then stated when figuring out how to allocate that readiness to serve charge is a policy question. Mayor Muckle agreed. Councilmember Stolzmann continued with saying this is a good follow up conversation for customer classes. Mr. Ahrens discussed the costs and referred to the 2nd page of the bigger document for service charges. The Committee discussed the influence and relationship between the cost and use patterns. Mr. Ahrens continued with referring to the chart on page 12 and explained that 87% of our customers fall within the same category. The remaining, are typically older commercial accounts that were developed with smaller infrastructure and later occupied by tenants with larger demands that are translating to bigger monthly bills as these users transition through the tiers very quickly. Councilmember Stolzmann asked are they actually subsidizing the smaller ones. Mr. Kowar explained that every time you have a big user the flat rate goes up. Mr. Ahrens went on to page 14 explained this graph shows the highest chance in the 6 month period that usage is doubling. He continued saying what this analysis found were some interesting outliers. Mr. Kowar continued with saying this is a lot of raw information and has never been analyzed this deep and asked the Committee if they want time to absorb it and schedule a time to talk about it at the next meeting and to talk about next steps. Councilmember Maloney said he would like time to absorb it and have a meeting where this is the topic. However, we have a November meeting already full and suggested we meet in October to just talk about this topic. Councilmember Stolzmann agreed and said she too needs more time to digest and dig through it and also would like to meet. She asked if we can include the different rate structures between accounts breaking down the residential and commercial. Mr. Kowar asked if she wants usage or cost. She replied consumption with average cost and flat rate by meter size. Mrs. Balser suggested we take a couple weeks to look at it and when you figure out what's missing then let us know and if we schedule a meeting to talk about this we can try to have that for the meeting. Councilmember Stolzmann agreed and if nothing is missing we can talk about this again and the information on pricing. Mr. Kowar went on to say we are focused on the flat rate and we have the current rate then asked if there is anything else we should be thinking about. Councilmember Stolzmann said from a data perspective we were looking at flat rate for understanding the cost per 1,000 gallons. Councilmember Maloney said this was very helpful in understanding the process. Mayor Muckle added, the ultimate goal here is for trying to figure out if we are charging the right class. Mr. Ahrens will look at what the habits are of the Louisville water users as we don't have the why. Mr. Kowar said another piece is that he did take the cost of service from last meeting and zeroed out the peaking in the calculation which helped the commercial and he thinks we should keep that in there and bring that to the meeting for