make sure that I went back by there. Probably about two hours later, the gentleman was home. He had no water at the time because he had contacted a plumber to get it fixed, but he thanked me, even though he didn't have water. He thanked me. He said, we thank you for being proactive. Thank you for looking out. That's where we want to be. We want to be able to be proactive. He also said that the customer service team, Mr. Will Gerald, who's in our audience tonight, his staff member, he said that she was extremely pleasant, professional, and thorough in giving him the information. Kudos to customer service. They're doing a wonderful job. Those are the projects that we do, like the AMI project. Those are part of the capital improvement projects that we do at the utility. To get started tonight, yes. Go ahead, Commissioner Herriot. I actually have a second story from today also from another customer that called and said more or less the same thing. I don't think it was the same one, but he said he got a phone call from customer service today stating that he was using – his meter was continuously using water and went out and found a hose that was still turned on. Yeah. And so he had the same compliments from customer service staff, extremely professional, very grateful, and wanted to extend his thank you to everybody as well. Vice Mayor Avila-Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. I had a question once before, and it just reminded me about when you were commenting. Is there any way someone can see the status of their meter and stuff like that online from home with their account number? So the AMI – the project itself was three phases. First phase was putting the meters in the ground. Second phase was getting the tower set up. The third phase is doing the resident portal. We're currently working on that now that would give an access so that they can see all of their usage, what it's doing hour by hour, along with some reports and some other information for them. But we're currently working on phase three of it. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate that. Yes, there will be an app that will be available along with the resident portal once it becomes live. All right, Mr. Parrish. Yes. Commissioner Caldwell, let's try to wrap it up. Through the app, will they be able to set up alarms? Yes, absolutely. It will be able to set up alarms to say, for example, if I've used 50% more today than I used last week, please send me a text. It will send them a text to let them know that. All right, Mr. Parrish, go ahead. Thank you. All right, so the first slide that I want to kind of run through is, you know, what kind of things do we go through for the overview? And then also what pressures do we have? You know, what things do we have to deal with for essential public services? You know, the Water Department is highly regulated, extremely regulated by entities such as DEP, St. John's Water Management District, and the EPA. And we have to make sure that we ensure compliance so that we can provide to the public. If we are not providing that compliance aspect, then we're not allowed to put the water out. It just – the regulatory agencies do not allow us to do that. The utility department is also an enterprise-funded operation. It is not supported by any general tax revenue. It is 100% funded by the user rate. So what we look at in our rate studies is what's it cost to maintain it and what's it cost for us to do additional projects to relieve some of the mandated things that we have to do from the regulatory agencies. We currently provide service to about 36,500 water accounts, 7,500 wastewater accounts, and 1,750 reclaim accounts. Your infrastructure that's in place right now is a long-term investment. It's old. It is below ground, so it is unseen. So it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. But it's something that we have to maintain. We have to have regular replacement and repair so that we can make sure that we have the ability to use it whenever we need it, which is 365 days, 24-7. Approximately $200 million in installed asset value right now, that's installed for what we paid for it. To replace it, very much more expensive than it is. So the costs are rising on it. The amount of money that it is for pipe material, for chemicals, fuel, some of those costs that are not fixed, is driven by global markets. And some of those items, we don't actually have any say-so over. Say, for example, chemical cost. We're required to use those chemicals. And there's a limited amount of suppliers on there, so the dollar amounts that we have to pay are rising. So it's driven by the global markets on that. So we've got quite a bit of challenges, and as I said, some of those authoritative agencies are going to be the St. John's Water Management District, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and then the Environmental Protection Agency. These are the authoritative agencies. These are the agencies that set the standards for which we have to adhere to. There are a lot of other agencies out there that they will say that this is the number, but those agencies are not authoritative agencies. They are a lot of times advocacy groups that don't have the true numbers of what they're supposed to be. The Environmental Protection Agency sets the standard. The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 actually said that these are the minimum requirements that you're going to have. That's what the EPA sets. They also allowed, in 1974, they said, okay, your individual states can have more restrictive guidelines, but they can never be less than what the EPA is. So that's why we have the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. They're the next level. And then beyond that is the St. John's Water Management District. Each one of them has to get a little bit more strict. We as a city cannot be less strict than the St. John's FDP or the EPA, but those are the authoritative agencies. So what do those authoritative agencies do for us? Well, they provide regulations, and then they also provide compliance. So the regulatory aspect of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 and others says these are the things that you're going to adhere to. These are the standard operating procedures for whenever you have a water main break. You have to do X, Y, and Z so that you can maintain the public safety and protect the public's health. Those are all things that we don't have any sort of latitude over. We have to make sure that whenever there's a water main break that we either maintain 20 PSI or we chlorinate it and do a boil water notice. Those are all regulatory items. So those affect our day-to-day operations. It affects the employees. It affects, you know, ultimately our rate payers. So besides the regulatory aspect, they also set what are called maximum contaminant levels. These are what the maximum levels are of a constituent that is in the water supply can be, okay? For example, an apple seed has arsenic in it, right? Well, there is arsenic that is naturally found in the ground. So there's a maximum contaminant level for arsenic. None of us would ever think that we would want to have arsenic in our water supply, right? But it's naturally there because it's in the ground. So they set, they meaning the EPA, FTP, and St. John's Water Management District, they set a maximum contaminant level for 10 parts per million of arsenic. One of the things that we've given here today are what's called the Consumer Confidence Report. It's a report that we must put out every July for the previous year's testing. On the arsenic level for the MCL of being 10, our water is 0.46. So we're well below the maximum contaminant level. But what's really a maximum contaminant level? You're saying arsenic in the water, but is it harmful to me? Well, the way that the EPA sets the MCLs, they're very stringent on it. And their guideline is a maximum contaminant level would be two liters of water above the MCL every day for a lifetime to have a one in a million chance of the described health effect. So even at 10, they set it there so that the public can be safe if you are still at that level. For arsenic, we're at 0.46, not 10. There's been a lot of talk about our MCLs and about our water supply and the water that we're providing in the city of Deltona. The last five years of our Consumer Confidence Report, you please look at them, show that there's been zero violations, no violations whatsoever on those reports that we're required to send out and have to be approved by all of those regulatory agencies prior to us sending them out. So those entities, they give us the regulations, but there's also a compliance aspect. The compliance is testing, reporting, inspections, testing. You know, we have to test for items daily, weekly, monthly, every three years for some things. Some things we have to test every nine years because they're just not that much of a factor, but we're still going to test for them whenever we're required to. Not only do we have the testing, every one of those results have to be reported to all of those regulatory agencies. We take the samples, but we don't do the analysis. All of the analysis are done by a third-party testing laboratory, laboratory that is certified by what's called NLAC. They do the actual MCL, you know, reporting numbers, and they get sent in. They're not sent in by anybody other than that independent laboratory. So we have testing, we have reporting, and then we have inspections. You can have a wastewater inspection at a minute's notice. So you have to always make sure that your infrastructure is in compliance. It's not like you have an inspection coming up every three years, so you wait until the last minute, and then on the third year you do a lot of painting or you try to fix things every three years. You have to keep your infrastructure so that it is, you know, ready to go 365, 24-7. Along with it, you've got to make sure that you're ready for any sort of inspection. So those are the items that are given to us by the regulatory agencies for water that has literally been on this earth since the beginning of time. There's never been any new water made. The water that's here today is, however you believe, is the water that was here at the beginning of time. It's just in a different spot. It's either going to be below ground, it's going to be at the surface, or it's going to be up in the atmosphere. In the state of Florida, this is not the way that it is all over the country, but in the state of Florida, we have an aquifer. We have a couple of aquifers that are below ground, and that's fortunate for us in some aspects. But on another aspect, we're using more of it below ground than what can be replenished below ground. So we have to find ways to use water that is at the surface. If you live in one of the northern states or you live out west, a lot of your water supply comes from dams, reservoirs, things like that, that are surface water because they don't have aquifers. So they're taking surface water, and they're treating it to drinking water standards and then using it as potable water. The state of Florida typically has not done that because we have these wonderful aquifers that have pristine water in them. We can't continue with the population that we have and the water usage that we're doing now and expect that water to still be there. So we have to do additional projects that utilize water again so that we're not deplenishing the potable water that's in the aquifers. So we have some challenges. The biggest challenge that we have is water conservation because we live and we die based upon water. You have to have water. It's the elixir of life. So you have to have water. But you've got to have good quality water. Quality water comes at a cost. There are a lot of folks that think that water should be free. That's just not the case. It takes a lot of effort to actually bring it up and to maintain the infrastructure that the city owns. So the first thing that we have is we've got water quality. Well, if you look down at about, if you're looking at a clock, at about 6 o'clock and about 7 or 8 o'clock, you've got employees and then operation and maintenance processes. Your water quality is determined greatly by your employees and also the process that you have in place. If you have employees that care about what they're doing and are invested in the community that they're in, then they're going to take better care of your water quality. The process that you have greatly determines it as well. If you have reverse osmosis in your system, then you're going to have some great water, but you're going to have a byproduct of a brine that has to be disposed of somewhere. But reverse osmosis comes at a cost. It's very expensive. It's the most expensive water quality treatment that there is. So we have water quality that we've got to deal with. We also have reliability. Every single day we have to deal with an infrastructure that's aging every single day. So you've got to repair it. You've got a replacement. You've got that aspect to make sure that it's reliable so that whenever your constituents turn that water faucet on, there's water going to their tap. You've got affordability. Affordability is the next thing that we're challenged with. We want to make sure that the water is safe, but we also want to make sure that it is affordable. Okay? But if you look on the system right here, mandated, you've got funded and unfunded mandates that those regulatory agencies are always saying, you need to do X, Y, and Z. Some of them, there may be funds available for them. Sometimes they're not. They say, you're going to do this, and you're going to either find a way to do it or you're going to shut your system down. So we have to come up with ways that we can fulfill those requirements. This right here, availability of our cup and the compliance ties a lot of it together because if we don't have the water supply, you don't have the ability to have the Chipotle. If you don't have that additional water supply to bring them in, you don't have the ability to bring in the Amazons. You don't have the ability to bring in BJs or whomever it is that you're wanting to attract or to have a new hospital if you don't have the availability of your consumptive use permit. The regulatory agencies are not granting more water in your consumptive use permit. They're shrinking it. They're telling you that you need to do more with the water that you have, water conservation, things like we've done with the AMI process to be able to reduce that. But they will allow you to have more on your consumptive use permit if you are doing projects that are alternative water supply projects such as reclaim or bringing wells that are away from spring sheds. They're wanting you to think outside of the box and to reduce the pressure on any of the natural resources that we have. Okay? So we have to deal with those things and we have to think about those things every day as we're making decisions for your utility. So some of the mandates that are out there. Okay? Lead service lines. Doc's pretty familiar with this because there was a lot of talk about lead from where he's from. Right? Everybody's heard of Flint. Right? Okay? So EPA came out and they said, all right, before September of 2024, you have to identify every single service line within your city and you need to tell the constituents, the residents, if they have lead or not. As you can imagine, 36,000 residents going through and finding out what is on their property is a monumental task. Your utility was able to be 100% compliant in that prior to the deadline. You've got other municipalities in the area that are still not compliant. They had to send out all of those municipalities that were not in compliance. They had to send out to every single one of the residents that they didn't know if they had lead or not. They had to send out a notification to them that said, we don't know if you have lead service pipes. That's a tough pill to send out to residents, especially after everything that happened in Flint. We're 100% compliant in that. One of the few that was able to do that. It comes from being proactive. It comes from being ready 365 days a year, 24-7. That takes planning. It takes effort to do that. The next thing, advanced waste treatment on all plants. This is a mandate. This is a mandate from the state. All of your wastewater treatment plants have to be advanced waste treatment or AWT upon your next renewal of your permit, which is every five years. That's why we're going through and we went and we got a grant to help with the design for Fisher. And now we have $22 million for the construction of it, for 50% of the construction. That's a mandate. It's an unfunded mandate. But we were able to get funds for it by determination and some folks that help us out with grant writing. Next thing, nutrient reduction of Blue Springs Basin. Some of the items that draw the most people here into our area are the resources that we have to protect. Blue Springs is one of them. Blue Springs produces about 180 million gallons a day out of that boil. 180 million. We're only allowed 9 million ourselves. All the residents here are only allowed 9.1 million gallons a day. We don't use that much, but that's what we're allowed. But Blue Springs loses 180 million gallons a day. One of the biggest things that's affecting the springs is nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus that's being put down into that Blue Springs shed. A lot of those come from septic tanks. So there has been a mandate that says that over the next 45 years, you're going to remove all of your septic tanks or you're going to get advanced treatment on the individual level at the house. Okay. So, you know, I remember a few years back, there was no septic to sewer, no septic to sewer. It's out of our hands. It's been mandated by the regulatory agencies that either anything new that goes in, you have a advanced septic tank that removes those nutrients or you're going to put people onto sanitary sewer. So we're working through plans to be able to do that and trying to find funding for our residents. Water conservation. Water conservation is one of the next mandates. They're saying you have to go to things like AMI to be able to save water throughout your residence in the cup. You have to save water. You have to implement things. Another one of the items that we found this morning through our reporting were people that are still watering twice a week. We're on watering restrictions right now because it's daylight savings time. So that gives us the ability to contact our constituents and say, hey, in case you're not aware, you need to change your irrigation controller so that you're only down to one day a week as a proactive measure before we have to contact, you know, code compliance because they're out of compliance with water restrictions. So those are mandates also. Another mandate is that we have some sort of alternative water supply project. You have to have reclaim projects. You have to reuse the water that is at the surface so that you're not depleting the water that's in the aquifer. On a given day, we will use approximately 7 million gallons of water in the city of Deltona. If it rains, we'll use 3.5 million gallons. It means half of our water supply is going out onto lawns. That's a big opportunity for us to save water. But we have to implement programs and we have to be able to be intelligent about how we're conserving water and what projects we need to implement, okay? Another mandate is going to be PFAS, PFAS, and PFOS removal. That's a mandate, okay? You have to have a plan in place. And if you're not familiar with PFAS or PFOS, they are microplastics that are in the water. They're in the water from, as I said, you know, throughout the beginning of time whenever there's been any sort of runoff or something like that, it goes into the water. It's a mandate that we have to remove it, okay? But there's a process to go through in order to make sure that you're being intelligent and smart about how you're removing it and what it requires to remove it. I want to talk to you all before we go into PFOS, I want to talk to you all about a project that we had that was very similar to PFOS that happened in the past, okay? And this was what's called the disinfection byproduct rule. All water that we use, it has to be disinfected. The difference between our water and water that comes from a well is if you're on a well, you bring the water up, you drink it, it's got sulfur in it, it's got everything, right? It smells, it smells like sulfur but you don't care because you know it doesn't hurt you, right? But there's no disinfection in it. In order to have a public water supply, you have to disinfect it. You have to make sure that there are no sort of any sort of bacteria in the water that could harm someone. Well, whenever you put those disinfectants in the water supply, depending upon what you're using, be it bleach or ozone or whatever, your disinfection byproducts can raise and the MCL on those is about 80. There's two things in there. There's HAA5s and another thing that, you know, it's right here, trihalomethanes. I don't want to bore y'all with that information but whenever we were dealing with the rising disinfection byproducts that we had, we had to find a method to reduce those to stay in compliance with those regulatory agencies. So what did we do? We had a study. We had a study done based upon the raw water that we have and what items are going in that said, this is what you need in order to maintain your compliance. Then we implemented it. We had to have, you know, we had to come before the commission and have capital improvement projects and so forth, right? And then we had to implement it. So we implemented and then our results on it spoke volumes. Prior to implementing that program, we were at or above the MCL for disinfection byproducts. The disinfection, as I said, the MCL for TTHMs is 80. After we implemented our change, which was moving from chlorine to chloramines, we went down to 36 where our MCL is 80. So we were able to do it intelligently and make sure that we were doing what's right for our rate payers and do it at a cost that was not astronomical. Okay? That's the same thing that we have to do with PFAS. Okay? And immediate reaction is, oh my gosh, there's something in the water. where you got to get it out. But you can't necessarily do that immediately because you have to have a study that shows how you're going to do it intelligently, how you're going to implement it, and what your results are going to be because MCLs will change. So what happened with the PFAS? Okay? Well, we have what's called UCMRs, or Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring and Reporting that happens. and they tell us, they say, when you do UCMRs, you're going to test for a certain number or certain types of items that are not regulated currently. So when the UCMR 5s came out in 2023, they said, you're going to test for 30 items. Here are the items you're going to test for, and you've got X amount of time to do it. They basically gave you until 2025 to do the testing. We did it twice. We did it in 2023. We did it in 2024. So we had some baseline numbers to report to EPA. EPA then came back and they said, not specifically to Deltona, but throughout the entire country, they said, hey, we're going to start with an MCL for this. But your MCL is not going to be enforceable, meaning you have until X date in order to become in compliance. And that date originally was 2029. And they took that list of 30 and they said, there's going to be 10 constituents that you're going to monitor. Well, they didn't have very much science behind it at the time. So then, the EPA came back last year and they said, we're going to shrink this list from 10 down to 2. PFOS and PFAS, these are the only two that you're going to have to have an MCL. MCL on. Oh, yeah, and by the way, you have until 2032 to make sure that you get the technology right to remove it. There's lawsuits out there that are challenging the MCLs. So we don't really even know right now where that number truly may land. We do know that in the spring of 2026, they're going to come out with a new finding. We're hoping that the target doesn't move because currently we're in a lawsuit as y'all know we're in a lawsuit against 3M and some of the other big folks that were contributors to PFAS and PFOS. Okay, this is not and I want to make clear this is not something that the city injects into the water. This is something that has been contaminated by users like 3M, BASF, companies that make Teflon. Some of the things that contribute to PFAS and PFOS are Teflon, firefighting foam, septic tanks, believe it or not. As you can imagine, in your dishes, you have Teflon on your pans. As you wash your pans, it gets into the waste stream. Tiny, tiny particles of it, then it sits in your septic tank. Then it leaches down into the groundwater. So that's another reason why the regulatory agencies are saying, hey, you have to reduce septic tanks. Okay? Yes, sir. Really quick, we have a question by Commissioner Harriet. Yes. Do we want to hold questions for the end or do we want to ask them as we go? I think if it's okay with the commission, we can ask as we go. That way we don't lose. What do you feel, Vice Mayor? You're okay with that? You're okay with that? Is everybody else okay with that? Yeah. As we go, let's... Right. Okay. Short questions. Okay. Yeah, it's a real short question. It's along the same lines as the PFOS and PFOS, but can... I don't know whether it'll be best to include it here, but can you speak at some point to pharmaceuticals and wastewater? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So we have a lawsuit and that lawsuit is reimbursement for any expenses that we have and then a piece of the pie, basically, for what's being gathered from 3M, BASM, and so forth. So right now, we have a study that's going on. We've spent a little under $25,000 on a study. We've done testing. Those are all items that are 100% being reimbursed through this lawsuit. What the study will do is it will say, this is what our raw water supply is. This is what it's going to take to get from... I think that our average for PFOS is 0.0046 and the MCL is 0.004. So it's going to take this particular type of technology to get you well below the MCL. We don't want to be at an MCL. We don't want to be riding that line all the time. We want to be well below it. So we're doing a study so that they will tell us what we need to do. That study also will include a pilot program so that we can verify it and then we will come back to the commission with any sort of actuals that we need to beef up the water process. Okay? There's $14 billion worth of funding but it's a reimbursable like I said. So we have to go through those steps in order to do it. But PFOS is being addressed. However, because we do not know what that target is, it's not included in this survey. So the numbers that we're looking at right now do not include any sort of PFOS mitigation because we don't know what we're going to use. We don't know what we're going to be reimbursed for. So it's irresponsible of us to tax the rate payers on something that we do not know in our opinion. So what do we have to do for compliance? We've got to maintain our current infrastructure. Well, the top priority is cup stability. Okay? Cup stability is what we have to deal with. In order to have that cup stability though, you have to implement a lot of those mandates so that you don't see your cup shrink. If your cup shrinks and you don't have water, you have zero growth. And I'm not talking about huge growth, I'm talking about growth in services, fire protection, things such as that, your city dwindles. And I know as a resident here for 22 years, I don't want to see that happen. So I want to make sure that we maintain cup stability. Well, as we talked about, some of those projects that we have to do are wastewater involved. Okay? That mandate of advanced waste treatment is exactly what Commissioner Harriet was talking about because advanced waste treatment removes a lot of those nutrients, but it doesn't remove pharmaceuticals. Okay? Pharmaceuticals, and if pharmaceuticals are left to sit inside of your septic tank, they eventually break down and they leach down into the water supply. Pharmaceuticals is a huge deal. That's why we always have the boxes at the fire stations to put your medications in. You never want to advise somebody to flush it down their toilet because eventually it gets into the waste stream. Okay? And as I said, all water, it's the same water that's been here from the beginning of time. So you want it treated to a high level with a great technology to be able to remove as much as that as possible before it goes down into your waste stream. Okay? So they've mandated that we have advanced waste treatment and that you expand your wastewater offerings so that you can conserve water for your cup. Well, additionally, the way that the regulatory agencies do it is if you can process a million and a half gallons of wastewater a day, you have to be able to have a million and a half gallons worth of storage to put it. So you've got to have what's called effluent disposal for that million and a half gallons of water. So we have to have those projects that expand our wastewater supply, which means we also have to expand our effluent disposal. You've got to have the ability to do that. Well, in other parts of the county and other areas, they have a lot of land. We're landlocked. So our disposal right now is the rib site, okay? And the rib site is simply eight dry ponds that are sandy in nature and all the reclaimed effluent goes into it and it perks into the groundwater, which is the way that most reclaimed effluent is, okay? So you've got to have the ability to dispose of it. One of the projects that we'll talk about is an ASR, aquifer storage and recovery well. This allows us, because like I said, we're landlocked, we don't have any land for us to put it in. It allows us to actually have an area that is deep below ground for us to put that effluent into, okay? We'll talk about that a little bit later also. So we've got to have a place to put it. We also have to remove the pressure off of any of the spring basins, increase reclaim production, and also have some sort of alternative water supply. So we have to not only utilize the water that we've already used at the surface, but we also have to find a way to use the water that we've got. And we have a huge potential for water supply in the St. Johns River. You've got water, billions and billions and billions of gallons, that we could potentially use for reclaim, for using for purposes other than drinking, so that we can take that pressure off, okay? So that was what the 4B project was. It was going to take water from the St. Johns River, process it to drinking water standards, and then use it as reclaim. Just like wastewater, though, if you're producing water, you've got to have a place to store it. So we've got to have an area to do that. So that was the upper Floridan aquifer that we'll talk about a little bit later also. All of these projects tie in to CUP stability. Every single one of them tie into that CUP stability. In addition, we have to maintain the current infrastructure that we have. So we have to have the renew and replace. We have to deal with all the compliance issues. So we need help from y'all for, you know, the study that we've done in order to be able to maintain this. I hate that Commissioner Harriet took a quick little break. One of the things that he had asked for was that what did we accomplish in the last five years? What projects did we accomplish? Okay. There's 21 projects, capital improvement projects that we've accomplished in the last five years from the previous rate study. All of these are focused on water quality, reliability, and then the availability capacity of our cup. We have done process conversions. We have expanded our effluent disposal. We have rehabbed the infrastructure, portions of the infrastructure. You can't do it all in five years, but you can do a portion of it. So we've done repair and replacement of many items. There are items that we've used for water quality, and as I said, for capacity as well. One of the things that we've done the past five years is is 77,000 linear feet of sanitary sewer lining. We do about a million dollars worth of that every single year. I brought this up here for everybody to take a look at. This is what lining of a pipe is. This pipe, and there's several pictures that we have of some of the infrastructure that we have in place where it was put in here in the 70s. It's clay terracotta pipe, basically like a clay pot that you'd have a plant in, and through time it breaks and gets brittle. Well, a liner on the inside of it restores the integrity of it, and this is how thick it is. Another, so you're more than welcome to, this has not been used, it hadn't been in the sanitary system, so you're fine to touch it. Okay? Down on the ground over here is a piece of pipe that came from an address off of Raleigh Court on the 29th of January this year, a couple days after we had one of our commission meetings. This section of pipe here split 23 feet. This is pipe that's been in here since the 80s. It's what's called class pipe. It's thin-walled pipe. The pipe that we put in these days is very thick, so it lasts a lot longer, and it holds up to different, you know, much higher pressure. But these are items that we have to maintain. We have to do them in a structured environment. It's a lot cheaper to, in the long run, to actually, you know, schedule your repair and maintenance than it is to replace 23 feet of a section of pipe at 2 o'clock in the morning. Jim, really quick, that liner that you have there, the green one, that's one that increases about 50 years on those pipes that we've requested from the state. Yes. Got it. Yes. This adds to the integrity. You could have a split right down the side of this or a root growing through it. You can clean that pipe out, put a liner on the inside of it, and it's ready to go. It'll give you many, many, many years of youthful life instead of replacing it. You can do this on gravity lines. You cannot do this on lines that are under pressure. Lines that are under pressure, you have to actually replace them. Okay? So we've done an awful lot. We've done a great deal of work in the last five years, and we've got a lot more, you know, scheduled to be done for the infrastructure. Okay? These are a few pipes. There are a few pictures of pipes that we have. We've also got some on some of the storyboards around here of items that are in desperate need for replacement. At the time, whenever we had the last rate study, these items were not identified, but they have been identified to be fixed either immediately or over the next five years. And as I said, they're identified in the next slide. The current five-year CIP that we have, as we talked about before, advanced waste treatment at the Fisher plant. Expansion at the eastern. The eastern is currently one and a half million gallons per day. We see that within the next five years, we need to go ahead and get the infrastructure built to expand that from one and a half million gallons per day to three million gallons per day. We need to go ahead and increase the capacity there. It takes, as you well know, utility projects are not an overnight thing. We can start a project before you are elected and then two terms later, after you've served your term, that project may still not be completed. It takes a long time to do infrastructure projects. So we're typically planning 20 to 25 years in advance of what's happening. So you have to get infrastructure in place before you can bring folks online. But we're planning for those items now. So the eastern expansion, the Fisher AWT in expansion, our first phase of septic to sewer, which is going to be approximately about 800 homes within the next five years, we're going to need to convert from septic to sewer, alternative water supply for the 4B, repair and replacement water main projects, lining of sanitary sewer pipes, upgrades for SCADA, which SCADA is the brains of notifying us of what's going on out in the infrastructure. Enhancements to that AMI meter network that we talked about earlier. Rehab of the potable wells. We have to rehab them. We have to make sure that the integrity of the well remains in place and those cost dollars to be able to do them. Rehabbing of lift stations, backflows, membrane replacement out at the eastern floor, the membranes that have been in place since 2016, some basin replacements, and then well-filled expansions. As you heard me say, they want to take pressure off of wells that are close and in the Blue Springs basin. So we have a project in place to do a test well outside of the Blue Springs basin to see the quality of water that we have, to then be able to move wells outside of it. During the past five years, and Commissioner, two slides before, we had the previous five-year CIPs, but one of those was new wells 41 and 42, which are wells that are outside of the Blue Springs basin. Yes. Ice Mayor B. LaVasquez and Commissioner Harriet, who was actually talking to you. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I have two questions on the current five-year. The first one is Phase 1, 800 septic to sewer conversion. Yes. Is there still going to be assistance? We're looking for funding to assist in that. And as with everything, we need to do a study to see which is the, because there's different methodologies for septic to sewer. There's low pressure or there's adding gravity systems or vacuum systems. So we have to find out what's going to be the most economical cost over the long term for the residents as well as what we can support, meaning the infrastructure we have that can support. We're looking for grant funding, but the grant funding for that is very, very little. Right. I remember back then when this came up, this project came up, there was an option. So if you were within a certain feet away from sewer and you opted to convert on your own, there were some grants that you were good for. But if your sewer broke and you didn't take advantage of that option, you were on your own to repair and still connect with the expenses. Typically the way that funding works for that is you get a grant to do septic to sewer conversion and that pays for getting the infrastructure to the home. But then there has to be the connection by the end user. So typically, and that's not depending upon the funding, but typically what you do is you give the end user, you say, hey, you can either connect now and it'll be a greatly reduced cost or you can roll the dice and see if your septic system will last X number of years. But if you would have gotten on it whenever there was funding available, then it's typically 25% compared to what it would be, 75% more. So that's still available? Is that what you're saying? Or it will be after you do the study? Well, we're going to have to figure out what the dollar amounts are. So we don't have anything in place right now. It's just part of what we have to go for. And okay. And one more item that we said with short questions. Can you just give a real brief explanation of what the back flow is for residential? Because I myself receive a lot of calls from mostly people, I guess, who are on wells. Yes. Right? So they couldn't understand according to residents, this should be only for commercial. So can you just give a little explanation? Yes. So we have to protect the public water supply. Our job is to make sure that that is healthy for every constituent to use that uses it. Right? We have to have the disinfection. We have to make sure. And remember how I said the difference between a well and the difference between a public water supply is we disinfect it. Okay? So if you're at your home and there's somebody, a neighbor down the street or something like that, and they're doing something nefarious, say they've got a meth house, you know, and they're doing something and a water main breaks. A water main break will reduce the pressure and it will actually backflow what's going on down the street into your home. So we require that commercial businesses or any area that has enhanced levels that need protection on them have a backflow. So the folks that you're talking to that have a well, they have to have, and it's not our choice, it's Florida Administrative Code, that regulation part that says they have to have a backflow. Okay? Now, one of the changes that we started implementing last year is going to what's called residential dual check backflows. So a residential dual check goes in line of the meter box. So who here had a problem with their backflow freezing at the beginning of this month? Well, that's because the line is above ground. So as the cold temperatures got on it, it actually froze the water that's in there. Okay? So part of this project is anything that has reclaim associated with it. Florida Administrative Code allows us to put a residential dual check in line below ground so it doesn't freeze any longer. Okay? So our new residential communities and then we're retrofitting everything else with these residential dual checks. We don't think that that should be a burden on the rate payers to pay and supply. So that's why we came to y'all at our last CIP that we had and said, hey, this is something that we want to add. We're not only going to be adding it to everyone that has reclaim or has a backflow currently, we're going to be putting them in line over time at every single residence throughout the city because it's something that we want to protect the public for. And just because your neighbor doesn't have reclaim or doesn't have a well doesn't necessarily mean that something couldn't backfeed into the system because they were doing something nefarious. Commissioner Santiago and then Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be quick. Just a quick question, Jim, on the Fisher plant. I know a couple of, maybe one or two years ago, maybe the county had offered that they would be able to help us with an interlocal agreement in probably helping us process some of that water. Is that something that we're currently doing or can we look into that maybe to alleviate some of the funding in this on the city? Great question. So that agreement, there was never any any dollar amounts that were ever discussed. It was never discussed that it would actually save money. It was an idea to take everything away. But you also have to look at it to say, OK, if I'm sending my water away to be processed, I have to pay Volusia County to do that. So I have to pay them to process the water. I also still have to maintain the infrastructure along with all the compliance and everything else that's with it. And you lose your destiny as far as what happens with your processing of your sanitary sewer. So at that time, we did a survey. We did a study. And that study was give us three options. The three options was do we send the flow to Volusia County and we get out of the wastewater business and we just deal with our infrastructure and deal with the pipes and the lift stations and everything else and not really get any revenue or we take Fisher up to advanced waste treatment and expand the eastern or do we demolish Fisher, build a big lift station and send everything to the eastern. So we had a study done by an engineering firm and they came up with that dealing with Fisher and expanding the eastern was the less costly of the three options and allowed us to to have control of our destiny. So Commissioner Howington, you had touched on the backflow preventers and I know that we're supposed to have them above grade now, I believe, by state regulation or county or something. Is there any way that those can be moved down into the utility box rather than being above ground? So so the current the current backflow that you have is called an RPZ. The requirements of that to be installed is it has to be installed at least 12 inches above grade level. OK, however, we're going to be retrofitting all of the the backflows from RPZs to the residential dual checks, which will go in the box. OK, so those will be they will be. Yes. Can residents do that on their own? And since apparently we own them, so can we make those changes ourselves? Because now, I mean, in my subdivision, it looks horrible because nobody's taking blankets off of these things. Right. And they're unsightly to start with. So so for for reclaim for folks that that that have reclaim. OK, the city actually takes responsibility for those and the city maintains them. The city tests them. If you don't if you are on a well, then you maintain it. You have it tested. You can can hire a plumber to go do it. But as with anything, you want to make sure that you have standards and specifications and continuity and what you're using. If you have, you know, seventeen hundred and fifty of these backflows for reclaim, you'll get probably 30 different types. So whenever it comes to maintaining them, you have less control. It's more costly. So we've scheduled for the city to take the responsibility and to pay the cost to actually put them in, maintain them and so forth. So if if someone, you know, is just absolutely got to have one, we could we could schedule it. But currently, other than the the weather condition that we had, which we haven't had in many, many years, we we plan to to to methodically go around and replace them as they need to be. And at a, you know, organized fashion. OK, thank you. OK. All right. So lift station replacements. We've got some some of those scheduled to happen. And as I said, that wellfield expansion. And then we have the aquifer storage and recovery wells that we need for the effluent disposal to make sure that we maintain cup compliance. OK, so what is aquifer storage and recovery? All right. This is this is taking an area where we can actually inject water in an area that is in a confined space that is protected, that is monitored, that makes sure that we don't have any sort of compliance issues and make sure that we don't contaminate any of the surrounding water that we might have in an aquifer. So this is this is just a good way, an easy way to explain it. But as you can imagine, the aquifer is not straight across. It's not like you can dig down to 300 feet everywhere and hit the aquifer. It's very jagged. OK, if you go over to Pasco County, the aquifer in some areas is three feet below the ground. Um, that's why they have a lot of sinkholes, real sinkholes, because the aquifer is very shallow and it rises and falls a lot there. OK, blue springs, that spring or Gemini spring or any of those springs, that's where there's a vent where the aquifer goes up and it's at the surface. OK, so there are ebbs and flows in the aquifer. It may be 20 feet at some point. It may be 600 at another. Typically for the upper Floridan, it's usually in the area of 200 to 500 feet. So we have two in our area. We have two aquifers in our area that we'll discuss. The upper Floridan aquifer, which is where all of the good drinking water comes from, and then you've got the lower Floridan aquifer, which is not potable. You can't drink it. OK, you can process it just like anything else. You can process it and you can remove the arsenic. You can remove, um, all of the chlorides and salt and so forth, and you can make it drinkable. But there's a lot more of a process to do it than what it is out of the upper Floridan aquifer. Upper Floridan aquifer, if you live on a well, you dig a well, comes right up, you drink straight from it. OK, so the upper Floridan is what we are, you know, trying our best to preserve, protect. But we've got another thing that we have to deal with, which is disposal of effluent. OK, so we have the lower Floridan aquifer. Lower Floridan aquifer is very brackish, very salty, and typically is used a lot of times for effluent disposal, injection wells, things like that. An injection well is where you simply pump it down into it and you leave it there. Aquifer storage and recovery is where you're, you build in an encasement that's in an area, oops, like this confining layer, and you inject it into that confining layer. You're basically building like a tank underground where you can inject it into it and then you can withdraw it at a later time. So say, for example, we process, you know, two million gallons of wastewater, OK, into reclaimed water that is at drinking water standards, OK? So we process it, but it's in the middle of the summer. It's raining every single day. Nobody's using their sprinklers. I got to do something with that two and a half million gallons, OK? Well, I've only got a million and a half gallons of effluent disposal right now, so I got to have somewhere to put the extra, but like right now, we don't have enough reclaim. So you put it in the aquifer storage and recovery well in times whenever you've got excess and then times like now when it's dry, you use it. We typically run out of reclaim every single day in between November to May. That's a long time to not have reclaim, but we have the St. John's River right there that we could take the water, we could process it, the drinking water standards, and use it. But if we have excess of it, we need someplace to put it, OK? So we have permitted two wells. We have one that's permitted for reclaim. That's the lower Floridan aquifer, which goes all the way down into the lower Floridan aquifer. It's encased in concrete, and there are monitoring wells that are set there to make sure that we don't contaminate anything in the upper Floridan aquifer as it is put down in there to use at a later time. The same thing for the upper Floridan aquifer that we would use for treated river water, surface water, only water from the St. John's River would be treated to drinking water standards and then used in the upper Floridan aquifer ASR well. Doesn't mean that it's going into the upper Floridan aquifer. That's the level that it's at, OK? OK, so all of the purpose of any of this, whether it come from the St. John's River or come from reclaim, or excuse me, come from the wastewater treatment plants, would be used for reclaim use only. We want to treat it and have it to use so that we can lessen the pressure on the potable supply that we have. It's an alternative water supply project to keep us from using any potable water that's not needed. OK? So... Jim, one moment. We've got two people. Vice Mayor Avila Vasquez and then Harriet, Commissioner Harriet. Thank you, Mayor. Jim, the reclaim process, is it just available in subdivisions like HOAs? So, currently, yes. There's several communities that are out there. You have to have the infrastructure in place, meaning the gravity sewer lines. You've got to have the force mains. You've got to have that infrastructure in place in order to add folks. The difficult part that we have with sanitary sewer is the roadway. The most expensive part of any project usually is the paving. Because if you go to dig up the ground to lay gravity lines, you've got to repave everything. So you've got to... And you've got to go all the way down through the base layer. When we repave now, we're just basically skimming the top and then re-putting over. But whenever you do sanitary sewer, you've got to go all the way below the base layer. You've got to basically rebuild that road when you do it. So there's other options, like I said, like low pressure, that doesn't necessarily go completely under the road. It's a different form of it. But currently, we only have it available in areas like Twin Lakes, Saxon Ridge. You've got it in Hampton Oaks, Lake Baton, places like that. Thank you. Commissioner Harriot, then Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Mayor. Here, the surface water project, if we're cleaning the surface water from Lake Monroe to drinking water standards, what prevents us from just using that as a drinking water? Okay. So it's drinking water standards, okay? But it's not drinking water. It's not the same as the way that we process water that is used to drink. Correct. It's just a different process, but the standards are there, meaning that it meets the MCLs. Yeah. So our drinking water is better than the minimum standards. Yes. Thank you. Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Mayor. So you said that there would be two wells. So will there be separate processing for the lake water? Absolutely. So the reclaimed lake water would never be treated in the same facility or anything? They would be completely separate processes? They're separate processes. It doesn't mean that it wouldn't be the same facility, meaning the same site, but it's completely different processes. Same site, different equipment? Correct. Different holding tanks, things like that? Absolutely. Absolutely. So the 4A project at Alexander Avenue was originally set up to do the cleaning of the water from Lake Monroe. So that process is there. That process is completely separated from any sort of reclaim that happens at Fisher or the Eastern Plant. They don't commingle. Okay. I think that, yes, I am. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Knobbick? Thank you, Mayor. So when you're taking the St. John's water and you're treating it and you're injecting it for storage, what is the capacity you're looking for? We're permitted just to do the test right now because, as with everything, you have to test it first to see, are there any sort of reactions? Or whenever you're putting it down in there, is there any release of any other sort of constituent? The process was permitted for 4 million gallons a day, though. Okay. So about 4 million gallons a day. Why are you going down? Why can't we go up and then have a gravity feed system with above-ground water tanks where we don't have to worry about monitoring and we don't have to worry about, potentially, if there is a leak, the cost of the cleanup? Right. Okay. So it's an alternative water supply project, and along with that, there's what's called recharge. Okay? So you have to somehow recharge the aquifer. And the way that the aquifer is recharged, just like today, it rains, the water goes on the ground, and eventually it will soak in through the sand, through the dirt, through the limestone, and bring out all of those impurities that may be in the river to get into the aquifer. Okay? Pressure is what does that. So who's ever dug a hole and say at, like, 3 feet you start hitting water whenever it's in the middle of the summertime, right? That's your groundwater. So your groundwater will actually mound up, meaning that it will rise and rise and rise and rise, and it will be like a bubble. And then eventually, when there's so much weight on it, it will push it down further into the other confining layers. Okay? So it happens through pressure. So the hope of the St. John's Water Management District whenever they permit ASRs is so that, yes, we have it in a confining portion of an aquifer layer, but through time and through pressure, maybe it will allow some of that to actually be forced through that limestone rock and be forced through that filtration process. There's additional filtration by going down versus treating it and then just storing it. So we're not just holding it underground. There's a filtration process. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Okay. Jim? Well, now we'll start talking about the financial part of it. Yeah. Hey, Mayor. Myself, along with Brian with GovRates, will handle this portion. Rate design, why is it? Well, we've kind of heard already from Jim that when it comes into rate design, we have to take into account the cost of service, revenue requirements, and community goals to come up with the recommended rates. And that's what GovRates provided last month at the previous commission meeting. So the question really comes, how much should a gallon of water cost? Well, again, that's taking everything into account. When we're going through a rate design, number one, we're looking at grants. As Jim has established, we have the grant for the fissure plant. We have a grant for the subject to sewer conversion. We have grants for various things throughout the city. We're constantly looking at other grant opportunities as Jim provides, you know, lift station rehab. Anything that potential could be a grant, we go after it to try and reduce the cost to the rate payer. So we're going to talk this evening about our current rates and the rate study did take into account maintenance, CIP, and debt service requirements. So the recommendation that was provided is a multi-year rate plan. We did it over a five-year period, taking into account all the assumed increases for salary and benefits, operation and maintenance, and CIP. When we're looking at the CIP, he also does a cost value analysis. How much is the current cost today going to cost in five, ten years from now? We're constantly monitoring cost and the financial results. So every time that, you know, every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out various indexes. So Brian is constantly monitoring that and putting it into this forecast model. So based off of the last meeting, we went back and took a look at everything. So this evening, the way we presented this is we're providing three options. Option one is the recommended from gov rates, and it's a uniform and across-the-board approach, taking into account our water, wastewater, reclaimed and irrigation utility rates. Option two is taking a look at, you know, a base rate and then a different tier rate. So as was stated in a previous meeting in years past, you know, we gave one increase for our base rates and a different rate increase on our tiered rates. And then finally, the third option is just the E&R Construction Cost Index Plus. That's for water, wastewater utilities, their CIP index. And then whatever that percentage is, is adding 1% to that. So whereas last month we talked about 1.6, if we were to go to this model, it would have been 1.6% plus one for a total of 2.6% increase. This is something that Volusia County currently does. I'm saying that only because their last rate study was in 2011. For the most part, they only provide water utility, not wastewater utility. So the county has also expanded in growth far faster than us, that they haven't had to put any more additional capacity to the level that we are, because as Jim said previously, we're landlocked, so we're having to keep track of everything within our confined space. So on the rate options, just to recap based on what Brian has done, under option one, that would be a 6% across the board. It handles our fixed charge recovery, and we've taken a look to make sure that it's completed all three options for the next three years, I'm sorry, five years, through fiscal year 2030. Option number two would show a 9.0% increase in our base charges, 3% in our tiered rate system for a combined overall increase of 6%. So option one and option two both provide the same overall revenues in a fiscal year based on consumption. It also complies with our fixed charge recovery and our fixed charge recovery through 2030. Option three. Option three is just based off of, as I stated, the ENR index plus 1%, and it also would be the same for both the base and the tier rates. This option does not provide sufficiency for a five-year cost recovery in terms of CIP. There would have to be a reduction in our infrastructure renewal and replacement and any future enhancements. The benefits of option one and two, it complies with all the latest regulatory requirements. It provides us access to debt financing and grant funding. When we apply for any grants from DEP or FDEP, we have to show that we have rate plans that can provide all the future rates for not only operating maintenance, for all CIP deans. So this is just, you know, when you go after a grant, it's helping to reduce the impact to the rate payer. And most importantly, if you come to my office, you see I have that bookshelf. I have a bunch of black books. Those are all our bond covenants. So option one and two, we're completely compliant with all the bond restrictions. And also option one and two, I should have put this on there because it's extremely important. It maintains our current status with Fitch and standards and poor. Option number three, we could see losing the bond rating agency's current level of assertiveness. We have one major issue with option two. It does not encourage conservation because you're increasing the base rate higher than the tier rate than, as Jim stated before, you know, on a good day we're using seven and a half million gallons of water. So if you don't increase that tier, then you can see households maybe watering more on their yard because it's not going to cost them that much more to water versus, you know, the option one increase. All of us sitting at this table do have concerns on option three, strictly because, you know, we do run the risk of not having the funding to stay compliant with all the regulatory agencies. We could have issues in getting permits because we just don't have the funding to do what's required. We would potentially see a failure in being able to maintain critical infrastructure per the pictures that were previously provided because we wouldn't have a cost recovery rate study. It's just simply a cost plus every month or every year. Then we would not be in compliance with a lot of our DEP and FDEP, SRF loans, etc. because it has to be able to show a five-year rate study of sufficiency. Jim, is it safe to say that the county is going to have to start looking at that? Because in District 2, you have two Amazons, you have another big company coming in. That place is getting developed, and that's all run by county water, isn't it? That is correct, Mayor, and absolutely, you know, I can tell you that, you know, when we spoke before, they are in the very near future having to look at another rate study because there has been so much growth. There is going to have to be some major improvements to their infrastructure, just like us. And then also, if we're unable to maintain our infrastructure because every bond that we issue, there is, you know, a requirement in there that, you know, we have to set our rates to account for our expenditures. It's much different from the taxpayers that we set our expenditures based on the anticipated ad valorem proceeds. So it's completely different when you're looking at enterprise versus taxpayer-supported. Mr. Mayor, if I could add, as I talked about, we've got, you know, name of the game is maintain your cup. You have to make sure that you have the ability to use what's remaining in your cup and not go over it. The regulatory agencies renew that on a fixed basis. However, whenever you're not within certain percentages and whenever you have issues, they look for you to have alternative water supply projects and the ability to save on your cup before they will actually renew it. We had a renewal of ours recently because we're showing that we have good strides and we're doing things that conserve water. There are other entities throughout the county that are still waiting for a cup renewal after 10 years. They haven't, they're not even considering any renewal of their cup until they offer more in the way of potable water supplies. So that, if you're not doing infrastructure projects, if you're not, if you don't have the bond rating to be able to do it, if you don't have the fund in cup to have a review. Yeah, my concern, and then I'll go to some of the commissioners and the vice mayor that I have lit up the screen. But if we look at option three and leaving everything the same, we can potentially be looking at getting downgraded on our credit rating for the bonds and then still paying more in interest, or am I not correct? And, John, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the last two bond ratings that we have have all been increased because of what foundation the utility has and the structure of it and how healthy it is. So irregardless, we're going to be faced with some type of increase, forced or not? That is correct. Currently, I just did the Fitch renewal three weeks ago, and based on the budget as adopted, they're maintaining the current rating. So there's no change for this upcoming year. Thank you. Vice Mayor Avila Vasquez and then Commissioner Novick. Thank you, Mayor. So going back to the mayor's question with Amazon, does that also fall true for the hospitals on Harlem Boulevard because they're on county water? So the way that projects work is someone says, hey, I'm looking at doing this project in your area. We would like to get a letter of sufficiency from you that says, do you have the capacity for water and do you have the capacity for wastewater? And we keep a tally of that and say, for example, you were currently using 7.7 million gallons a day, but outstanding for projects, you have, you know, 1 million gallons. Okay, well, that would be 8.7, which mean you would only have 300,000 gallons per day basically to play with. So if somebody came in, a big manufacturing company that said, hey, we want to do $400,000 worth of business or gallons with you a day, we'd say we don't have the capacity, okay? So we don't have a capacity issue. I recently probably within the last nine months heard somebody say, I heard Deltona's out of water. We're not out of water. We're in better shape than most other utilities in the area. There are some that they're questioning, do they have enough water for any of these new projects? But that's not our case. So with all the Amazons, with the hospitals, and all these huge businesses on that area of Deltona, is that sucking up a lot of our cups of water? Because it's not in our city. Does it affect the city? It affects the county, not us, because it's not in our city. How does it affect the county if it's the water coming to us? Because it's their wells. It's their service area. They provide the water so it affects their cup. But there have been conversations with the county, with us, that says, hey, if we have to have some sort of connection with you because we don't have any water, could the city of Deltona provide it? Is that on top of aquifer, is it? Aquifer. The aquifer? Is that where we're in danger? Isn't that the whole section, the part that's in danger of the water? What happens is the regulatory agencies, they say, hey, can the recharge and the withdrawal, can it maintain sufficiency for X number of years into the future? Well, the regulatory agencies have looked at it and said, we can't give any more. As recently as last week, St. John's and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, they came out with stricter guidelines for a lot of counties, meaning that some places get to only water their lawns every two weeks, not every week. But they've not placed any of those restrictions on Volusia County and any of the cities within Volusia County because we are doing a much better job and we've had more rainfall than a lot of the other areas of the state. So they look at it and they say, can the current level of withdrawal and recharge, you know, accept the supply? And if it can't over certain many years, then they reduce that cup. So at this point, excuse me, at this point, the regulatory agencies are saying, we can't give you any more, we can't supply you any more per day, so you have to do things that provide either an alternative water source or you have to conserve water in some form or fashion. Thank you, Mayor. So the water is not depleted. Commissioner Anabic. Thank you, Mayor. So Del North, the county's water system, that is the area where we have a lot of commercial growth going on. We have the interconnects with the land, the county, and Deltona in order to be able to provide the amount of water that is necessary in that area up there. How is that rate structure, what is that rate structure for moving water back and forth in the event that it's needed? Is that metered in a gallonage, and is that at a bulk rate? Yes, it's a bulk rate. Okay, can we adjust that bulk rate in the event that we have to sell and provide water to Del North or to Deland? So one of the projects that we completed in the last five years was a reclaim interconnect with the county. Everything ties together. We talk very, very frequently with Volusia County Utilities, with Deland Utilities, Orange City. We talk with them every other month. We actually have a meeting with all of us with St. John's, and we talk about projects that are regional projects that help with not only our water supply, potable, but theirs as well. So in the last five years, we actually put in a reclaim interconnect because the county has been buying water from other counties. And the regional project that we had discussed was being able to have the withdrawal from Lake Monroe to be able to use that as reclaim and be able to supply it through that reclaim interconnect to Volusia County so that Volusia County could have less pressure on their potable water supply as well. So all of our projects, some way, shape, or form, affect the rest of the utilities in the area as well. So that's just one aspect of it, Commissioner, where we're able to take some pressure off of theirs to allow them to have some more use. I understand the water alliance concept in that. My question is, we're talking about rates here. I'm looking for ways to increase potential revenue to help hold our customers' rates down. We have no control over the rates that Commissioner Santiago's customers in her district, what they're paying, that's Del North. This building is on Del North. We don't have control over that. They haven't had a rate study since 2011. I'm looking if they have to buy water from us, I want them to pay above a little bit what's reasonable and customary. And same thing with Stone Island. Is that bulk rate there? Yes. So are we looking at maximizing those rates and making sure we're getting our money's worth on what we're providing to those outside customers? And then as we go down the line in the future, if it becomes non-cost effective for Volusia County to buy our water at some point in time, would it be advantageous to us to try to acquire Del North and take that off the county's hands and have that as another revenue, possible revenue stream for us? Have we looked at that? I'm sure. I know that back in, I think, 2015 we did. There you go. Yeah, I know. Hell no. Several years ago, you know, the city bought Florida Water out, and Florida Water had divvied off a part of that service territory to the county, which is now Del North. Yes, we did go, once we became in the city, we did try to go and approach the county about purchasing that system. Again, a few years ago, the city manager at the time also went to the county, but my understanding was that, you know, the price tag that they had on it, it wasn't effective for us to purchase it at that price. I don't recall exactly what the price was, but it was quite steep. The county does a great job. Mike and Aaron and those folks over there do a good job with their utility, but the only part of the county that we supply on a continuous basis is Stone Island. You know, the other interconnects that we have over on Catalina and North Normandy, we're usually not sending any water unless they've got a real big issue with the well, which has not happened for many, many years. So that's the only one, that, and then they have an interconnect that they are wanting us to take over that they own right now. We've kind of been talking to them a little bit about that. Once we get some details, we'll be coming back to the commission with that. So that would take part of the service territory, but it's not in Del North. And again, as Jim mentioned earlier, you know, if the growth in Del North, if they need water, we have talked to them about supplying them water. They're, you know, at our bulk rates. And my understanding is we are, as far as I understand, we are looking at the bulk rates also. Just to interject a little bit of what Commissioner Novick said, I think the whole idea is if we're able to decrease from 6% to maybe 5%, right, just as rounding things off, and by doing so we're increasing the bulk rate, I think that obviously it's going to benefit our residents. And I think that's, am I incorrect in making that assessment? That's where your train of thought was, Commissioner Novick? Yeah, I'm looking to try and shift some of the increased burden off of our residents. We can definitely look at that. But as a surcharge, for perspective, we do 7.7 million gallons per day. About 150,000 gallons of that is only what we supply to the county. So it's a small amount. But if that growth in that area continues, that number is going to go up. So I want to be prepositioned that we're maximizing the sale of that water to those outside customers rather than our internal customers having to pay for that. Mr. McKinney wants to say something. I know. Go ahead. Well, as was stated, we really don't have that much bulk sales. I mean, it's very minimal. Currently, right now, for the county residents that we do serve, we have a 25% surcharge that's allowed by state. With that said, there's a bill on the state right now to eliminate that. So if that gets eliminated, we're not allowed to have a different tier system for city versus outside city. So if that gets removed, then that means that I'm buying water from you right now. You're paying $1. I'm paying $1.25. Then we'd actually see a reduction in our revenue stream coming in. Okay. So you can't have a different tier system. Okay. So if we, what you had said earlier, we're using about 7 million gallons a day, and when it rains and people aren't watering, we're using about 3.5. So roughly half of the water that we're using is going for irrigation rather than for consumption. Correct. If we create more reclaimed, if we create some of these other programs and we bring that 7 million gallons down a day, then potentially we are using, we will have less revenue in the tiered system. It's a double-edged sword. If we do the base rate, then people are not going to have the incentive to conserve. Correct. But if we make reclaimed available, which is cheaper, we're going to have less usage and less billable water on the tiered system. So I'm curious why, how you struck the number of the 9% on the base rate. I need more explanation of the 9% on the base rate. Because to me, if you put the money, the charge on the base rate, you're spreading it out over a larger group of people. The individual should pay less. And both of them are still getting us to the 49.81, no matter which way you cut that. Per the direction received previously, we were to look at a different rate structure, but actually bring in the same amount of revenue. Right. So the only way that we could bring in the same amount of revenue was the 9.02 and a 3% increase. So you had another question a second ago about bringing more people on reclaimed. You know, I'm a household that uses 3,000 gallons of potable water a month, but I use 15,000 gallons of reclaimed water. So that would mean that I would have to, you know, we'd have to have five more homes come online to provide the reclaimed water that I use. So, I mean, that's a lot. So bringing 800 homes septic to sewer, if we are within that area reclaimed as available, I mean, there's a lot of infrastructure costs to go down to add the reclaimed lines at the same time you're adding the sewer lines. So there's still going to be some cost increases. We can go back with Brian, and I'll turn it over to him then here, is, you know, we were asked to do a down and dirty, you know, what could we do? So we can go back and look at other options, but at what point do you, you know, we need direction on what the overall goal is in terms of what the rates should be for the base, as well as for the tier, but still maintaining the current O&M, CIP, and capital outlay budget. With us going to 1.6% increase, Mayor, on, you know, what was passed last month, for the remainder of this fiscal year, we're going to be bringing at midyear a reduction to the budget of $1.1 million. That's the, that's how much less revenue is brought in by reducing it from the 6 to 1.6%. So that's just where we would have to have, you know, the direction from the commission is where would you like for us to look at either reducing O&M, CIP, or capital, and then what are the overall goals on the base rate? We can look at a 10% and see where the tiers would fall over, but we set, again, those rates to bring in the same amount of revenue as of October 1st. Yeah, and, and I understand the revenue, it's not going to get cheaper to kick the can down the road and do these capital improvement projects further down the road. They're just going to become more expensive. Yeah, and our, and then, so I pulled to the side the second slide from this evening. Our biggest issue mayor, sorry, commissioner that we have, I apologize. It's okay. Our biggest issue that we have commissioner is the fact that we have 36,500 water users. We only have less than 8,000 sewer customers. So we're trying to, you know, maintain two pretty good sized plants on an overall customer base of 8,000. So for us to have reasonable rates, we have to have a blended approach in order to, you know, as we talked about before, our sewer rates are the highest rates in the region. Our water rates are some of the lowest in the region. So by going to that blended approach, that's where we came up with the 6% across the board and still using that blended approach. That's where we came up to the 9.02. But we would have to give something somewhere. Commissioner Novick, are you? Thank you. Okay, we're going to go to Commissioner Howington, then Commissioner Harry, and then we're going to go to public comment. Commissioner Howington, hold on. Commissioner Howington. Thank you, Mayor. Have we ever looked at potentially selling the water utilities to the Florida Government Utility Authority? I have not. I know that Amelia Island just did that in October of 2025, and it seems to me that we've had an issue with politics playing into how we've maintained the infrastructure over several years. And would it be in the best interest of our residents if we look into this option? Because if the state is maintaining the water utilities, they're the ones that are at risk if the infrastructure is failing. That's not falling on our residents. If a sale were to go through, we would extinguish about $115 million of debt that's currently sitting on the city. So, I'd like to know, is there a way that somebody can look into this option? Can we look into coming up with some sort of an interlocal agreement to transfer our water infrastructure to Florida Government Utilities Authority, the same as several other communities that have infrastructure that is in a lackluster state, has done recently. Some are being forced. Some are doing it optional based on their own decision. I'd like to see what those numbers would look like for our residents. We can look at that, Mayor, and bring that back when we bring the proposed rate increases. I will state that, you know, typically when that does occur, that's for a utility that cannot sustain operations on their own, but it would not eliminate any of our debt service. So, you know, it's just like the county. The county has multiple rates based on areas because, you know, their east side and west side utilities do not touch each other, so they can have different rates. So, even if we were to sell it off to another agency or government agency or privatize whatever the case might be, they're still going to try and recoup the cost from those utility customers. But we will look at that. Well, correct. The debt would be transferred to another agency, so the city of Deltona would no longer maintain that debt. It would be held by a different agency. That's correct. So, I'm just looking at it, and I know that several of the other organizations that have been moved over to FGUA in recent years, they experienced about a 15% increase. We're looking at a 30% increase. So, if we can somehow mitigate that for our residents and still get them the infrastructure upgrades that are necessary for our community, it might be worth looking at if they have an option that might work better for our residents. We'll definitely take a look at that. Thank you. Commissioner Harriot? Okay. Let's hear from Commissioner Harriot, and then we'll give the gentleman a minute. Thanks, Mayor. With that being said, I want to make sure that when you guys look into it, that you also look into what happened to those rates in the subsequent years after those were taken over, because that sounds like, quite frankly, the easy decision to just pitch it to somebody else so that we're no longer responsible. It also sounds like the difficult decision, because we're still going to receive the calls and the blame and the why aren't you doing this, why can't you do this, and so sometimes we have to make hard decisions, and sometimes, you know, that hard decision means that we have to be in control of something. All of us up here know people from that agency, so we will definitely take a look into it and report back. Absolutely. And also their track record for spills and leaks and whatnot. Absolutely. So, Mayor, moving on to the next. We've got to go to public comment. And did you want to say something really quick? Yes, I just wanted to say I do some work for FGUA, and usually their rates are some of the highest in the state. As a rate consultant, I like putting FGUA utility rates on a comparison. So that's just something I wouldn't expect, a huge break in your utility rates. But as John mentioned, it's certainly nothing wrong with taking a look at it. Okay. Let's go to public comment, please. Brenda Knott, please. Greg Gimbert, please. Mr. Gimbert, if you push the button, I'll turn on the button for the speaker. My name is Greg Gimbert, and I live in Daytona Beach. Estoy aquí hoy para pedirles con respeto que dejen esta distracción y simplemente la pongan en la boleta para que el pueblo pueda votar. Si realmente no van a poner aguas residuales en el acuífero, entonces no debería haber problema en ponlero en la boleta, donde no se pueda cambiar la decisión después. La comunidad merece claridad y transparencia. ¿Por qué no me permitir que la gente decida? Gracias. Kathy Bracken. Everybody understood that? Thank you, Mr. Gimbert. Have a good day. I've still got a minute and 40 seconds. For anybody who didn't understand it, so my name is Greg Gimbert, and I live in Daytona Beach. And I'm here today to ask you all, with respect, that you stop this distraction and simply put it on the ballot so that the people can vote. If you're truly not going to put wastewater in the aquifer, then there should not be a problem with putting it on the ballot where the decision cannot be changed afterward. The community deserves clarity and transparency. Why not allow the people to decide? Great statement. I've been practicing Spanish all day. Thank you for admitting what everyone's been denying, that those wells are absolutely forecasted to be used to treat treated sewage in a special part of the aquifer. Everything else is just going to rush by. Thank you for acknowledging the leaks. I don't know how in the heck it could go to a place where it's never going to get out, and then suddenly, if it leaks out, well, it was filtered anyway by leaking out. It just doesn't make any sense at all. I heard the commission ask for, I'm sorry, the utilities director asked for direction, and I don't think they gave you any. But here's something y'all didn't talk about. Maybe cut back on new development until you can cut over to a safe water supply. What I'm asking you guys to do is to just take the cheapest, dirtiest way to solve your water problem off the table. You still have infinite opportunities to do anything else. Thank you for your consideration and admitting the real issue. Thank you. Kathy Bryan, please. Before you put the next speaker on the mic, can we actually get a real translation of that? Because what he said was not what he said or attempted to say in Spanish, please. Thank you. Is this your phone, sir? Thank you. Go ahead, Ms. Bryan. Okay, good evening. Kathy Bryan. I understand that we're supposed to be using the surface water off of Lake Monroe for the injection wells. You know, there's wastewater in that too, and I'm not going to focus a whole lot on that because my concern is not the wastewater. You can bleach that. You can UV it, get rid of the bacteria. Although you have to watch bacteria, they're smart and they become resistant to stuff. Ask anybody who's had MRSA or C. diff. The second thing is my bigger concern is with, like, the pharmaceuticals and the other items that end up in that. And even if we're using it for reclaimed water, and, you know, does it accumulate? Kind of like DDT. You put it on your lawn, it runs off, you collect it back up, and you put it back out there. You know, is that accumulating? So that's one thing I want you to think about. The second thing is I think we really have to make potable water work. We need to change the culture of how people think about what we do. There's a lot of options. One is, you know, when we're taking this stuff, when we're dumping into, when things get dumped into the lake, et cetera, there's plants, there's animals and stuff that can help clean that up. Don't use that plastic mesh because eventually it will become microplastics. There's a lot of different innovative ways we can do this. You guys are working on the land use code. Let's up the percentage of the amount of native xeriscypic plants people have to have in their yard. If they live in a dry area, put the stuff out in the area, you know, if you live in a wet area, those type of things. But native plants, so the people don't have to use that water to keep their lawns, you know, nobody, I'll get it when I'm done. Kind of want to waste any more time. I don't want to, thank you. In other words, why waste all that water to keep St. Augustine grass pristine and green? It's not feasible when we're looking at, and there may be, quote, unquote, an infinite water supply, or not an infinite water supply, but no new water, et cetera. What changes is the availability and the potability of it. So we've really got to start thinking about it. And I don't want to hear property rights. I don't care. I can't start a fire on my property, can I, Mr. Knobbick? That's my property. And then my property rights, oh, it affects the life and health and safety of others, right? So does water. And this is the kind of considerations we need to think about. The other thing I've asked over and over again is get education out to the public and start telling developers. And this includes HOAs. I really don't care about, you know, if you're going to come move here, you're going to have to understand you may not have that lush green lawn. You may have native plants, et cetera. But you don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining it. Table logic, please. No. And if you guys decide to... Thank you, Ms. Bryant. Ms. Bryant, thank you. Ms. Bryant, thank you. Ms. Bryant, thank you. Thank you. Ms. Bryant, I understand. Your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, where to begin. I don't know if any of you have ever been to Israel, but they are without a doubt one of the most progressive places you will ever find for water conservation. They use little pigtails for all their plants. And they grow trees and bushes and all sorts of stuff in the middle of the desert. They take every ounce of water that they can get their hands on from airports, schools, public areas, streets. And they put it in one huge reservoir. It's called the Sea of Galilee. You might have heard of it. Jesus walked over it one day. I haven't heard any of that here. I had an irrigation system put in that predated the St. John's Water Authority by a year or two. I'm using fresh water to water my lawn. I don't have to. I really don't need to. And I don't see any efforts to make it so that I do anything else. Everything I did was legal. Okay, so where do we go from there? I also grew up in Levittown, Long Island. We had artesian wells, 300 feet under the ground, similar to Deltona. And when we all grew up, most of the friends that I had that I went to high school, all 485 of them, had or had it for cancer. And a whole bunch of them have died. Now, when I came here, I went to Blue Springs. It said the rain that you get on the ground here today will be in the aquifer in 63 years. And if we put something into the ground, are we going to encapsulate it? Or is it just getting a head start down to the aquifer? Federal regulations give me no comfort whatsoever. My house up in Levittown was tested all the time. Met every federal regulation that there is. My wife and I both got cancer anyway, as well as all the people in my town. And they sued everybody they could. And they found reasons why they couldn't sue them. I see that as your future. And that's what really bothers me. That's what really worries me. Went to a lot of trouble to put together this plan. But it seems to be we're following everybody else. We're wagging the dog. We have the best water system, the best fresh water in Florida. We should be doing everything we can to become the water merchants of Florida. And we're not. We're trying to follow everybody else. Let's try and do better. Good night. Christine Peacock, please. I don't have a speech. I actually have a question because I think I may have missed it. How exactly and what is the mechanism in place to keep that injected water that's going into a porous karst system aquifer from traveling through the crevices and porous limerock or limestone? I mean, how are we going to keep that from getting polluted or some accident happening? That's my concern. Ms. Peacock, if you can, I'll get your information when we're done here. And I'll try to make sure I respond to you, okay? I think we'd all like to know. Albert Bryan, please. Two things here. One, you saying that you use 5,800 gallons of water for watering your yard? That's a problem. Right there. Thank you. My time. Anytime you have somebody using that much reclaimed water on a yard, that's insanity. That means you're wasting water on grass that is not native grass to the state of Florida. The other thing is, I'm going to ask one more time for a town hall with the Mead and Hunt engineers who are engineering the injection wells. There's not an engineer in this room that can answer my questions or his questions or anybody else's questions here. It's fairly simple. Set up a town hall so we can ask pertinent questions that need to be answered. Because nobody here can answer those questions truthfully, honestly, and with a real background in what they're talking about. The other thing is, is I'm going to take and echo one more time that we need to look at our land use law. Now, I understand that the state governor just added a state emergency to our county. So we can't change a lot of stuff we need to change for another three years. But we still need to look at them. We need to look at different ways to conserve water as a government. How much water does this building here use per month? Can anybody answer that? I see all the dumbfounded looks on your faces. I get it. How about all the facilities in our control as a Deltona government? Can you tell me how much that is used per month in our water? Whether it's reclaimed water or whether it's portable water. Something we need to look at. When I first moved into central Florida from down south, 1973, Wekaiva was putting in reclaimed water. How come Deltona didn't look at that back then? Or the county looked at it back then? If a no-name city like Deltona or Wekaiva did it without even being a city, that means y'all had no future site at all. None whatsoever in the county. I know that doesn't show what y'all have done in the past five years. But at the same time, it just shows that there was never, ever any real thought process. And that goes back to what I said a few days ago to the county chair. Too long the government's tried to tell us that there's unlimited water below our feet. It's never been unlimited. My grandfather in 1969 wrote a water paper that said that if they didn't start figuring something out, that we would run out of water. All right. Do we still have enough time to do another workshop at some point? I mean, because I see implementation in October. Can we, because obviously this should have honestly been spit up into two different workshops. Do we have time? We can wrap it into our budget workshops, Mayor, if that so pleases. Is that the will of the commission? Can we not do one sooner than that? Yeah. That won't be a problem, sir. You're talking about two split up. What are you referring to? The water rates versus projects? This should have probably been better split up into the first part and then the rates completely separate. Yeah. So you want another workshop on the water rates? Just on the rates so we can talk about giving direction because obviously we're leaving with no direction. We'll schedule something up. Please. Thank you. All right. Any city manager comments? Yes, sir. I mean, he's adjourned. Thank you.