The council time available, October 27th, at 5 p.m. to order, and look for a motion to adopt the agenda as circulated.
Second.
Recording in progress.
All in favor?
Motion carried.
At the end of council business, public will be provided an opportunity to address council during public question period.
Questions must be restricted to items that are on the current agenda, and each question must be limited to two minutes.
And water matters. Move right into the capital operating budget.
CFO.
Thank you, Your Worship.
Solanely, Council is required to develop a five-year financial plan.
This year it goes from 26 to 23, which includes both operating and capital.
With respect to utility rate bylaws, which were water, sewer, and parcel taxes,
those need to be adopted before December 31st.
So the report that's in your package, and I've got a PowerPoint
summarizes the operating and capital expenditures, utility rates proposed
for Rado and Sula over the 26 to 30 period and so purposes to inform counsel seek feedback
before returning to a future council meeting with
draft utility rate with a draft utility rate bylaw for counsel to review.
So we jump into the PowerPoint.
So the agenda and I think that the slides might we'll see how they go. I think two are inverted, but I've got review of the 2025 projects just to give council an update on where we are with 2025.
What's projected to carry forward into 2026 and this will likely change between now and year end because stuff happens in projects that we thought we're going to start and complete might be delayed.
but right now this is the projected carry-forward going to the budget
principles and then dive into the sewer capital budget operating budget then
move over to water and then talk about the the rate increases what the reserves
look like and did some comparison with where everyone sits as of today this
isn't what's being proposed sort of across the region but at least you can
and see kind of where the rates sit as of today.
And then the timeline going forward.
So budget principles,
we didn't change these from last year.
So water and sealers should be borne
by the users of the service
and not subsidized by general property taxes.
We treat the water as one water service.
So that means the residential
as well as the non-farm and irrigation,
It's treated as one water service.
Rates should be set to ensure adequate reserves.
Should anticipated expenses come forward.
And should we have a grant opportunity present itself, we have our cost share set aside in the bank.
We try to compare our rates to local communities that are similarly sized.
And then, of course, maintenance of service continuity and public safety should underlie proposed capital and operating expenditures.
That should be what's driving us when we prepare the budget.
The ranking, we haven't changed any of that, so I won't go through that slide in detail.
But we rank projects from P1 all the way through to P5.
The P1 are the critical ones that Director of Operations feels is, you know, we need to do.
And then it goes downward from there. So, 2025, these are all the water and sewer projects.
I just put them all onto one slide and I just highlighted the ones that are being carried
forward. There's another slide that shows you them. But you can see pretty ambitious plan
this year was 2.8 million rounding up in terms of capital expenditures on water and sewer.
We're not quite there yet and there'll be some carryover from this, but these are the projects
that Public Works has undertaken during 2025.
And I'm happy if there's any questions to
tell us what that is. It's probably going to come on the next slide. I notice the
The difference between the numbers on this slide and the next slide, and I wonder what the reason was.
It shows a carryover topping, like pollination, life cycle upgrades, 695,000.
Very popular truth flow meter, 30,000, but on the next slide, one is 500,000 and the other one is 10,000.
Through the Mayor to Councillor Mattis, I think this slide is showing the budget.
And then the actual on the next side is where they what they think they'll be out at the end of the year so with topping
I know
Directive operations feels probably 500 will be left to carry forward in the in the next year
So it's probably just a timing
Yes
Through the mayor to council as yeah, we've we've actually just shut down talking today
So we've ordered the pumps. We've got some materials and things like that
But we'll be starting the decommission of everything over the next three months on our end
And then the electricals will be
Starting in February completed in March back up and running in April
So we had to wait till the end of the season to do all of this work until the station was shut down
This
is the slide that we're referring to
So those are just the cave amount I'm carrying over into the next year
And those numbers are fluid.
They might change depending on what bills come in and what public works can get accomplished.
So the 26 to 30 sewer projects are here.
And this year what I focused on in terms of the detail, you see all the projects here for the five years,
that I focused on the coming slides on just 2026 because I always think that's probably the most relevant
and because that's what we base the rates on for this year.
So I sort of zoom in on those,
but if there's any of the projects that are on this list,
the other attachment that was in your package
has all the projects for water and sewer
in numerical order.
And so we can bounce back and forth.
If you said in 2028,
can you tell me more about project X,
Director of Operations would be able to speak to things,
but I didn't want to take you through five years
worth of projects, project by project at this point.
But this is the whole university.
You can see the six million over five years on sewer,
but for 2026, we're proposing 1.7 million.
And on the overhead,
You can see where the priority was set and then where the proposed funding sources and that funding source can can vary as well because we haven't you know
We have several sources of funding with the town, but this is just what's proposed at this point
So for the sewer projects for 2026 these are the four big ones that are on the
the docket so snow coming Avenue and
And it's 447,000 Main Street veterans to school is 170,000.
Those are both funded by grants.
We have the grant application in for some welcoming.
So we're waiting.
I'm not sure what the timeline is when we're here,
whether we were successful,
but I know there's a lot of interest in those grants.
So we'll be competing against all the other municipalities
in the regional districts.
So, but I always expect we're going to get something.
It's just how much will be for us.
The two coming out of the capital fund are upgrading the compactor room
and then the high lift upgrade.
There was a 408,715.
I circled the two P1 projects just because I put risk to service continuity
just because whenever I see a P1 project,
project because those are ranked by public works as critical and we're doing them subject
to grant right now, so if we don't get the grant, we can't do the project and then I
worry because it's rated critical. So I just put that as an alert through the mail to
wouldn't that trigger something like debt?
Exactly.
And that's, yeah, we'll have to find another source.
We have kind of three, if you think of,
we have grants that are coming that are in play right now.
We have debt, which we can borrow.
And then we still have money in community works fund
and growing communities fund.
So we have a few options.
It's not that we don't have options.
it's just those are all difficult trade-offs because I know you never know
what's coming in terms of you know a large project that the town might want
to undertake but we do have options I just put it as a concern because it's
not you know it's not it's getting done subject to changing something.
Yeah thank you just for clarity those where it says funding source the grants
grants are possible, we might be good in grants, but we haven't been really secure in all the
projects.
That's correct.
Thank you, Rishabh.
So what is the process then, because these are slated for 2026, so obviously if we prove
the budget, we want these to go ahead.
So if we don't get the grants, do you come back to us to look at alternatives right away
and see how we can move it forward?
I'm through the matter to answer.
We have that option. We can come back and say the grant didn't come in.
We can do the project by going into the, say, fall borrowing for debt or taking it out of the two funds that I mentioned.
You can do that sort of at the time we find out or you could do it during the budget process to say,
well, we want this to go through this fund, but if we get the grant, cancel that.
that you could do it prospectively so it doesn't have to come back to council. Either way would
work.
I think it would be important to do that now. I think that if these are priority one, we
should have a backup plan in place if the grants don't come through. If we do feel like these
need to happen in 2026. I don't know what the rest of council thinks about that.
I think these projects have been put off for a few years already and I'm not sure one more year is the right answer either, but if necessary that is an option.
I totally agree that we should have another plan in place, but we haven't done that in the past, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it in the future.
I don't know how long have these projects been on the books, how long have we had the engineering finished on these?
Two years.
Yeah, so we've done this. We've pushed them off for at least two years.
I also just add that we need to see what water carries in the old forest as well.
Sorry, we need to see what?
We need to see what the water capital has in the store for us as well,
because I doubt everything there is funded either.
Councillor Matys?
I want to make a little, maybe it's there somewhere.
What is, we're spending $1.74 on capital this year.
What can we spend last year?
A boat.
I have to get back to you on that. It wasn't much dissimilar. Just let me look here.
Through the mirror, I just want to add a note to those two projects have a very large impact with water and road work as well.
As we know, this is Milka Mean Project's 2.7 million. The Main Street Project is 3 million plus.
So there's a monstrous impact, not just sanitary,
to those two projects as far as dollars go.
And the mayor's right as when we look at the water,
kind of where we're at with what we're looking at
for those projects this year.
Didn't include the water in those two,
not thinking that we'd be moving forward
with those two major projects.
Water will reflect sort of four P1s
that we consider our must do
And so Comaine and Main Street are not part of that water, so just just wanted to point that out and keep that in mind
you might be draining a fund without realizing that we're draining a fund if we don't get
three grants in a row or something like that.
So to me it makes more sense to have the conversation again.
So Mattis?
In a lot of these projects that I've read through, there's also a component of drainage
that we talked about, storm surge and that sort of thing, and given that probably the
sewer system runs 24-7, it's difficult to scope, but do we have the capability
or is there anything in our budgeting to do some scoping on some of our water lines to see just how
bad they are? You know, we felt that that was a mistake that we made on one of our other projects
and similar with our drainage. Can we, in the dry season, should we not be scoping those
and take a look at what is the condition of it, but maybe we don't need to replace them yet?
Through your worship to Councillor Matys. So you're referring
Time to camera the domestic water lines.
Water and drainage and sewer, if possible.
Yeah, so there was a comprehensive program done in 2016 to assess a ton of these sanitary sewer projects are part of that, essentially, and what was found in cameraing that.
It's very easy to camera storm and sanitary. A little bit more difficult.
So I had basically $200,000 next year in investigating the secondary reservoir feed.
That's just that one water main.
We're looking at a couple hundred thousand dollars just to investigate that, and that's about a kilometer long.
Basically, you have to cut into that water main.
You have to camera it, disinfect it, get it back online, repair it.
It's very difficult compared to storm and sanitary.
They have access points.
They have manholes and they're gravity mains.
So it's not full pipe, it's not full pressure,
and then obviously all of the disinfection requirements
with the domestic mains.
There's very few companies that do it.
There's a lot of different ways
to analyze pipe thickness and stuff.
There's a lot of new technology coming out.
I don't think it's really perfected yet,
but you can put like sauna balls down a hydrant kind of thing
and kind of shoot it through your system.
It gives you some data,
but it's not video documentation.
It gives you pipe thicknesses
and maybe deficiencies in your main.
Nothing's really perfected as of yet.
The biggest thing, the company that,
well, the process that I would like to do
is be prepared when we do do those investigations,
be prepared to actually line the pipe.
You know, like go through, spend the money
to actually investigate it.
So say it's a million dollar project,
we spend the $200,000 to cut into the pipe,
to video the pipe, which is part of the process
of sift lining.
And if the pipe is that deteriorated,
Well, you have everything down open cut into not disinfected again all of that
You actually line the pipe complete the project because we got we got that other project done in actually two weeks for 900 meters
So that's kind of the process on the water means it's just it's very difficult to do you know
The technology isn't really there and they're always full they're always running
I should determine the condition before we say we need to replace it.
The, through the Merida Councilor Mattis, the 2025 budget for sewer was $938,000.
It's what we budgeted, $938,000 going up to 1.7 this year.
This is the Smokamine Avenue sheet, and this is just a sheet you would have seen in your
PDF package with all the projects listed numerically.
This is Main Street on the sewer side.
This
is the rationale for the compactor upgrade.
I'm not sure what year our equipment is, but they don't make parts for it anymore.
So I imagine it's quite...
I can give a bit of an update to that as well.
So the compactor was installed in 2011.
Unfortunately, they don't make parts for it anymore.
They're on the third generation of the compactor.
They can fabricate them at a very, very expensive price,
and just the one sort of part and it would take months to do that. We have some issues
as well with the MCC and the PLC and communications and stuff like that that we would be redoing
with the compactor. But the compactor is basically what takes all of the sewer solids. So it
compacts that down, puts it through like a corkscrew and we actually bag that, put
it in the garbage bins and take it to the landfill every week. So that compactor is
a major part of our sewer system on how we deal with the solids that come in to public
works.
The next project is the high lift upgrade.
I
can add to that one too, Mayor.
So it was constructed in 1983.
It's 42 years old.
The existing equipment is at the end of life at the risk of failure that includes
the control panel, the PLC and the HMI and the power supply components and the motor
or starter contactors and associated equipment
to prevent excessive emergency service costs
due to failure of equipment,
provide redundancy by upgrading the system
with capabilities of connecting a backup power generator
and reduce operating costs by the installation
of energy efficient VFDs as well.
So what we're looking to do is a complete upgrade to that.
The transfer switch for the new actually water gen set.
The reason we put that in as one
one is the critical piece of infrastructure.
Public Works, we only have two days of effluent storage
before we have to pump up to topping.
That's what this pump does.
It pumps the effluent up to topping
into the aeration ponds.
So without this running,
we only have two days storage before
we have some major, major issues
and try and figure out how we get it
from here up to topping.
That backup gen set that we just got last week, actually,
for the water backup,
up. It actually will power this while we dismantle everything. So it will actually be pumping
everything for us every couple of days up to topping and keep for the couple of months
that all of this work takes will actually be powering that station for us and keeping
everything running and up to speed. So that gives you a little bit more explanation on
that one.
Well, I thought Council Madison was putting his hand up.
Well, I was tempted to ask a question here. I'm just trying to find if it's
It's actually there, oh, there it is.
Yeah,
question?
We'll continue.
I was also going to mention this,
the milk and meat avenue,
where obviously that's tied to the housing initiative
to be able to open up more capacity
to do for buildings on a lot.
So that's the other kind of key piece of that project.
So this is the operating budget for 2026.
I just put the no at the bottom because someone will look at that and say, well, two million
in revenue and 2.2 million in expenses, you're running a deficit, but we really aren't.
If you add back the depreciation, which is non-cash, it's balanced.
And you can see the transfer to reserve that we're budgeting 772 compared to 613 last
year.
And you can kind of see over the four years what we've put into reserves each
year.
The operating budget was built based on status quo staffing just for
council's information, no proposed staffing changes to the service and we've
budgeted in the collective agreement increase that's kicking in January 1st
which this year is 3%. This
is our initial proposal for sewer rates for
We're going over the five years, so you can see we have 7% budgeted for 2026, 11% in 2027
proposed, and then going through percent.
And you can see the reserve balance, if you look at the fourth line capital reserve,
we dropped down to 11,000 in reserves, then up to 16, then it gets better, and if you
look at 29 and 2030, you'd say, wow, we're 1.1 and 1.2, they're quite healthy, but
But the reason why that is, is what drives the source of funds for capital projects.
So in the box you can see in 29 and 30, those are overstated because we're relying on grant
funding.
There were critical projects in 27 and 28 that were marked P1.
And if I put those to come out of the capital fund, then we would drive the reserve
into a negative balance.
So, didn't put them in under capital, but of course then that makes it look like you have more capital left.
I mean the other thing which I think Councillor Mattis mentioned, you can always defer a project later on.
So those critical ones in 27 and 28 could get pushed when there's more money in the reserve,
but if they're truly critical, they probably should try to stay in the year that they've been planned for.
but that's always a, you know, council always has that option at their, but there's a, you know,
that option comes with risk that this could be a year that something breaks.
And these are the current 2025 rates, so these aren't the rates, these are our rates
compared with everyone else's rates today. We don't have the rates that each of the
municipalities are proposing, but I would imagine there will be some proposing increases, some
proposed fairly large increases last year, larger than what we had in our budget, but
you can see we're sitting at about 587.
So we're kind of below our soys in summerland, but certainly more expensive than the peach
lands and and Princeton's and Carameas of the world. So I took our 587 and assumed if we
if we had a 7% increase what would that look like and really that put us would increase
us to 629 and so if you look at here 629 we would still be below Soyuz and Summerland
and we don't know what their rates they're going to propose for 2026 but it's not
It doesn't change our position regionally and what that would amount to in terms of the annual cost.
It's about $42 a year which is $3.50 a month and it doesn't seem like a lot but I know we have people on limited income
and they would make a case that any amount is money that they won't be spending on something else.
so but it's tried to keep the increase modest you know to keep our reserves on
side but keep the you know most of the projects going forward and
that's it for
the sewer piece. Thank you. That's another question. These charts are based on grant
approval for the sewer and I guess for water too. How would it change if we
don't get those grants because the economic environment doesn't look too
healthy with the government. I'm just wondering how these reserves and per cost
to a homeowner would change if we could filter that out on a different slide
next time so get a better view if the grants aren't available or don't come
through if that's possible?
Yeah, through the Mayor to Councilor Dalla-Wallet,
I think it just depends what we choose to do
to carry those projects.
If you said debt, if we're taking debt,
then of course that's not going to affect,
it's gonna provide the capital,
but it's gonna eat into your operating funds.
And if your operating funds are paying debt service costs,
that'll be less money available to go into reserve.
So you certainly have that at your disposal.
If you take a couple of the other reserves that we have, that would have no impact.
But of course, that's opportunity cost because those reserves can be used for a myriad of different projects
from roads to buildings to anything, not anything you could imagine,
but certainly there's a lot of flexibility with the Community Works Fund and with the
Growing Community Fund, so it's just, we can do that, it just leaves us money for other
things.
Yeah, because on that chart proposed sewer rate increases, you know, 7.11, and then drops
to 3.33, that's, we're making a kind of a good case scenario here, that this is
This is how it's going to happen, but if it doesn't happen like that, it won't go to 333 in 28, 29, 30, it might be another 777, right?
Yes.
And these charts took like a really good scenario happening.
Yeah. I mean, you've got options. I mean, it can go a lot of different ways.
This way is trying to show the, like if the P, if the projects,
And of course, it's hard when you're looking at 27 and 28 to say, well, we'll take on debt for those projects.
That'll impact, you know, that'll lower the amount that goes into reserves.
But you'd probably get more projects done because you can see the spending drops down.
Like we're doing one point, we're proposing 1.7 this year.
But you can see, but this is all, this is just the spending out of the reserve, right?
you can see it dropped down to 750 and then a couple, you know, 200,000 and 275 in the last two years.
Thank you.
Grace.
Thank you, Worship. Just a question about a couple of the projects that aren't 2026.
One of them is the Fairview to Sawmill main replacement for 2027,
and then way further down the line was the reclaimed water main replacement.
So, I'm wondering if we've looked at SIPP or CIPP for those.
As well, or if they've gone, if they're beyond that point, or why, because I know for some of the other projects, like the Sanitary Main McKinney Road has SIPP or CIPP, but the others are, looks like they're recommending replacement instead.
The other, the other PDF.
Yes, through, sorry, through the, just wrapped my head around, I can't really see that sheet head size, and that's way too small. Sorry, through the Mayor to Councilor Grace.
the 900,000 I think that's basically we still need to do that sanitary main but
that's on the current fair view to station like to co-op basically that
actually sewer main has like grout or something poured in it when I did the
co-op project we actually tried to camera that the camera got stuck I
couldn't even camera the entire thing it's a six inch sewer main and we
have about four inches essentially it's it's like a grout slurry at the
bottom of that or something.
And like I say, the camera got stuck.
This sheet's up there now.
I think if that's the one you're looking for.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm talking the wrong one.
But that is, stations another one.
This is actually our major,
this is our major main by 210 Co-op,
that right away that goes from Fairview
by the water park through to 210 Co-op.
It's a big toilet clay pipe.
And it's basically, is this the gravity one or,
sorry, John, can you just go back up or for Sheller?
not that far. Thank you.
Just wanted to make sure it's, I think it's, yeah, collection
network. This is the gravity, so we have two mains that go should, we have a force main,
we have an eight inch force main that goes through that right away, but, and we have
this 300-vitallic clay gravity pipe. So this takes all of this, we're from the
other side of the bridge, essentially. And it's down, we, what we know from the
in Victoria Clay is most likely it's taking on water.
And this is down in the water table.
So we tie in the co-op, which was down in the water table.
We've stopped out of length outside of the roads.
We don't affect all the new road and the paving
and everything else.
And we've tied in a little bit down the pathway,
but this is sort of slated as a major project
for replacement.
And it would only be the sewer cost associated to that
just because it's within a right of way.
And it's just fair to you to co-op basically.
Yeah.
I guess it's safe to presume that relining has been looked at as a possibility with all of these and we're gonna try to go in
That direction if we can but if it's sort of beyond that point, then we're looking at replacement
Yeah, and through the design portion of this
What we looked at with co-op was the integrity of the pipe as well in the water
The toughest part is in the water table you it has to be a dry pipe to line
And when it's in the water table and taking on water
We actually camera co-op and it literally got to a point
it just dove down and it was full of water. You couldn't see anything. So the
top portion that we didn't do is possibly able to line the top portion of
Co-op up by the shopping center. Similar to this we might be able to line half of it
and then replace half of it sort of that water table side of things but we would
definitely investigate that. The design is put into the same year as well so
part of the design we would do that investigation and ensure what we're
to do there.
What's the matter? What is our current borough and rate roughly?
To borrow one in. MFA is charging us these days?
Through the mayor. Councilor Mattis, it is I think around 4% maybe a little bit. I could
go on the website quickly. I just wondered if you had a rough number, so 4%. So just
for council's benefit, a 1% increase where it's up to about $20,000. It's very
similar to taxes, surprisingly enough. So if you borrow a million dollars, it's a 2%
represents 2% increase in the budget.
So that's the sewer portion.
Yeah, we'll have to continue with water.
He knows that we're dealing with it. We
would deal with sewer first, and I
don't remember him giving me an exact time personally.
We'll start at 4 o'clock right on the dock, or sorry, 3 o'clock right on the dock.
Thank you.
Your worship, so now we're on to the water budget.
So this slide outlines the five years of water projects proposed together with funding,
funding, proposed funding source and priority. As I did with sewer, focused on the projects
for 2026, but we can pull up the detail for any of the projects over the five-year plan.
And I should also say that the Director of Operations, which is in your handout of PDF,
shows you the 10-year plan. So we're actually working now with a 10-year plan, which
which is good. So we have more of a long-range plan in terms of sewer and water, but we only
show you like the five years that are relevant for the budget purpose. But you do have the
things that Public Works is envisioning for those out years, getting ten years for a
full ten-year picture.
So for 2026 the projects were continuing to replace water meters.
The Semilkamine Avenue is in there because that project is a complete project, water, sewer, and road.
So when you see the general budget in a couple of weeks for capital, you'll see the road portion of Semilkamine coming up as well.
And we've applied for a grant for the Semilkamine piece. We haven't applied for a grant for Main Street.
We could only, with that grant that we applied for, there was only, we could only apply for
one project.
So that was deemed the project that would deal with the housing issue or give us more upside
on the housing side.
Main Street and veterans.
I've got a question.
Sorry.
Through on water meters, I noticed your funding, but then the other day we were talking
about there's some money in the water meter replacement fund. Remember we were talking about
using that money not very long ago? So I want to know how much that is and isn't that what we
should be using that for? To either the mayor of the council and director of operations can kick
in too but what we're doing is we're going to have funds carried over in the water meter
this year, that'll carry into 2026.
So the money that's not spent, like the money that's been spoken for for the meters,
but we don't spend will carry into 2026, four meters.
Like that money, once it's allocated, it stays there unless we come forward and say,
we want to change the allocation and move it.
And in the last meeting, we decided to pay for the – I'm telling you, Rockliff was
the project, if memory serves me correctly.
We were taking that money instead of the water meters.
We proposed let's cut the water meter budget down.
But based on Council's feedback, we left the water meter budget alone and took it
out of community works funding for the bank that was $65,000 to complete Rockliff,
the extra work that Director of Operations was doing with the Rockliff well.
If that's what you're speaking to.
Yeah, that's what I'm speaking to.
Yeah.
How much is in that?
Do you know off the top of your head?
I don't know.
Through your worship to Councillor Michelle,
there's approximately going to be about $180,000 carryover.
That's in that.
Yeah.
I'm actually looking to purchase water meters right now.
So as of December 31st,
there'll probably be about $100,000 that's carried over.
Okay.
And we'll have about 175 water meters in stock
to replace the 5-8 meters.
Because when I was looking down the funding, where all the funding is coming grants, it's
water capital.
So I thought, well, jeez, there's money in that, so why not use that for part of it?
Your worship, I would much rather utilize that money for rock cliff irrigation, to be
honest.
I'm extremely concerned that if that rock cliff irrigation goes down, we'll get
to that.
But yeah, I'll put my case forward when we get to that.
point. I'm still a little confused because if we've got a water meter replacement fund, I think that
that's what we should be using it for. We shouldn't be moving that money around because we need it
somewhere else. We're not. I don't agree with that. I think that there's a fund there for that
and I remember setting it up a couple of years. I can't remember when we did it because we knew
we were going to have to start replacing these water meters. I don't think that we should be,
I mean, to me anyway, that's what it should be used for. Well, let's just keep it, it's
noted. Let's keep track of it and there's some more information to come because the majority
of the budget is unfunded anyway. So we're going to be looking for sources.
Councillor Grace. Thank you, Worship. So just to clarify though,
is there a specific put aside fund for the water meters like a reserve or is it just
that there's a line item with an allotted amount for water meters coming out of water
capital? Through the MetaCouncilor, Grace, you're right. That's what. There's not
there's not a water meter fund.
It's a line item that we allocate the dollars to,
but if we don't spend those dollars,
they carry us forward to the next year
if director of operations,
that's with any of our capital projects.
He looks at the end of the year and I try to say,
well, what's finished and what's not.
And if a project's not finished,
we carry it forward because you don't want to lose
that money and not be able to finish the project.
So with water meters, the money that we don't spend,
And we'll get spent on water meters in a future year unless we come back and say, well, we
want to move it, which we suggested last meeting, which Council decided not to move it to keep
it in water meters, which is what we've done.
Councilor Mattis?
So I'm confused.
We don't have an actual water meter reserve set up.
No.
And all of the other capital items that if we come in under budget on those items
in a particular year, where does the money go? Does it not go into general water reserves?
Yes.
And that is where this water meter money should be going as well. And then if we need to draw
out of that general water reserve for water meters, then that's what we do. But it shouldn't
be following that line item because somewhere along the line you have to get your budget
exactly right because you want that balance on that particular line to reach zero.
It should never have a carryover every year, it should go into the reserve, and then you draw from the reserve to buy the water meters that you require.
Am I misunderstanding how our system works?
Through the Mayor and Councillor Mattis.
No, I mean, I think the budget, say the budget this year or last year was $300,000 for water meters.
If at the end of the year we haven't spent the $300,000,
Normally we do, if the Director of Operations tells me,
I'm going to spend that money in 2026, then I carry it forward.
If there's a project, say one of the other projects,
say it comes in, what happens?
It comes in under budget.
That money just goes into, if we don't spend it,
it goes into reserve.
Once the project is complete, then the funds are freed up.
That hasn't been spent.
It goes into the reserve to top it up, but in the case of water, the information from
Director of Operations is I'm going to use that money for meters, so I wouldn't.
I would carry it forward.
But you could.
You could say what you don't spend goes into general funds, but then we've dropped
the budget.
You can see the water meter budget this year is 150.
So we have dropped the budget.
But that's because, you know, the amount that we thought we could replace, you know,
practically speaking with the resources and the local talent in terms of installers outside of public works
wasn't available to be that ambitious.
So we've dropped the budget back for this year, which frees up capital, water capital.
But I don't, I mean, with what we carry forward, I think, I mean, director of operations,
I can't put words in his mouth, but with what's carried forward plus 150, you know, at the end of the year, you may not have any money you may have spent 150 plus what's carried forward.
So 2027 will be, you know, a new budget for water, like another budget allocation for water meters, if you know what I mean.
What was the budget last year?
300.
And we said we didn't have the capability to install 300 so we ended up with so we lowered the budget to 150.
I thought I just heard you say that we didn't have the local talent to put it in from staff so we lowered the budget this year to 150.
So does that mean we only installed 150,000 worth last year because that's all we have the capability for,
which would have created $150,000 carryover, which should fund this year's budget.
There shouldn't be another ask for $150,000.
That's right.
I think this will all make sense through your worship to Councilor Mattis.
This will make a lot of sense, I think, once we get through this entire thing.
The rationale, a couple of things.
One is we kind of heard Council wanting to keep that money within water meters, right?
So there's going to be about $180,000 right now.
We did not have the manpower to be able to replace all of these. We've actually been hiring plumbers.
So we've kept up with the failed meters and replacements as they fail this year.
That came to the tune of about $120,000 by the end of the year. Right now we're about $110,000 is to spend.
There's a $180,000 proposed carryover. When I'm proposing we're down to 74 meters left, we've had about $191,000 at the start of last year.
I'm proposing to buy another 100 before there's a 10% increase in January again with the current
money that we have.
That'll put us down to, it's about $80,000 for that.
That'll put us down to $100,000 remaining.
So if you put that $100,000 onto the 150, we have about $250,000 for next year.
And essentially, you'll kind of see in the rationale, so there's rock cliff irrigation,
which I'm extremely concerned about, honestly pulling up on us, to be honest.
So it's $1.1 million.
When I worked out this budget, it wasn't reflected as dead.
I took that into place as that we're going to replace that.
So I've slashed everything that I could to actually get to that point to replace the critical things
and put the water meters down to $150,000 instead of $300,000.
We've taken out design projects, we've taken out PLCs,
We've taken out gate valve replacements anything else that we could kind of do because I'm so concerned about Rockliffe irrigation
Literally in my write-up. It's a 400 amp service. It's in there
So all three pumps that are running are 588 amps a couple years ago. We had a breaker blow up and burn out
There is no replacements. We bagged in board and found one to replace that particular breaker
But it made basically burnt when we put the ionizer into that
station, we actually had to add another transformer to actually power a 30 amp breaker to get the
ionizer up and running in that station. It's built in 1975, it's never been upgraded, and
it pushes 9,000 gallons a minute. If that pump station goes down, we don't have an irrigation
season. So it's one of my biggest, biggest concerns, but it's a really, really big dollar
amount. So when I put this together, that's what I looked at. What can we do to still
keep everything going, keep the water meter replacements going, praying that $250,000
would be enough, and we'd not up to 400 or something in half to possibly borrow for more
of that.
But I think if when we look at the numbers and kind of what's remaining, I think we're
deficient about roughly $500,000 to actually complete those four projects and include
the rock lift irrigation.
But that's kind of the rationale on $150,000, just to clarify things.
And the water meter program is, if you look at the five-year plan, you can see it does
carry on in 27, 28, 29, and then tails off in 2030.
But every year going forward, we have set proposed $300,000.
Back to this slide.
So I think the waplif irrigation is the one Kelly's referring to, the $1.1 million
that you can see.
and I have grant funding slash debt there, just because of the directive operations feelings
about that project.
I just didn't leave it at grant.
I think that project needs to go forward.
The other projects out of the capital funds for 2026 are Hester Creek Piping and Flow
meter for 285,000 and then the well decommissioning plan for 30,000. Same point about the P1 projects
dependent on grant to move forward, but really the Rockliff I would propose debt. If there's
another grant that was brought forward, I think we found out about it last week, specifically
specifically for irrigation systems or for farming.
We finally released a program, so we're going to be applying for that,
which for Rockliff, but I think if that grant isn't successful,
we should probably think about whether we should borrow money in the fall.
The fall borrowing, I guess, would be the timing.
Councilor Grayson, a question.
Thank you, Rishabh.
Yeah, I just want to clarify, because on here you've got Rockliff as
grant funding in debt, but in the main budget, like the 86-page document, you've got it listed
as water capital.
In the original, that's just a timing thing in the original slide with the detail.
That's what, you know, when Kelly proposed it, it was, well, it's coming out of capital
because we have to do it.
But when I was preparing the budget, I'm always trying to balance the reserves and
try to keep us from going upside down and it would have put us upside down.
So that's and then we found out about the grant this new grant for irrigation for farming
And so that that was the change that I made but
There's no questions on like more detail on the well commission decommissioning
Our Hester Creek I didn't have a question on that what what is entailed what we're gonna shut it
Maybe explain that better. I didn't really get a full explanation by reading this
Sorry, could you repeat your question?
Well, while decommissioning, there's three of them.
Yes, sorry, through your worship to Councilor Michelle.
So that's decommissioning.
There's one at Black's age,
so it's literally a concrete pad,
but it does have an opening still to the aquifer
that they dip into.
So it actually, basically when we did
our source protection plan and working through that,
these are straws to the aquifer.
So whatever happens, it's literally a direct straw
to our drinking water.
whether it's a diesel spill or whatever that might be, that's essentially what
these things are that we're at risk of them not being capped off. So there's
there's Tuckling with P1, a station that is not utilized anymore, it's like a 15,
it's literally been decommissioned, well it's not been in use for probably about
20, 30 years I would say, and there is the CPR as well. So it's decommissioning
those three wells, and so you need approval from the province to be decommissioned well
now, and that's working through this process with our hydrogeologists to work through that
process with the province to get permission to decommission those three wells, and then
next year I have a budget to literally dismantle, get rid of the pump hoses, and cap everything
off and get rid of the concrete pads and decommission those three wells.
That's the lines well this is CPR okay, so CPR we're not using for not at all isn't CPR the one that had all that
Uranium through your worship to the director. Yeah, with your any problems. Yeah. Yeah, correct
Okay, I thought we'd be using that one
Just to my own knowledge that I thought it was Lyons Park that had the uranium
Are they both the same well, or are they actually
how close are they located together?
Through your worship, they're at the Iranians of Lyons Park.
So Lyons, the other well, they utilize for irrigation.
The Lyons well that you talked about,
so they both got basically shut down because of uranium,
but the Parks and Rec utilized it for irrigation for Lyons.
And then CPR has been inactive for numerous years.
So they're already cobwebs.
We had very, very hard, it was troublesome
to try and get into that building, to be honest.
But that is by the tourism building, yeah.
That little building, that little building right there, that CPR, yeah.
These are the four capital projects proposed, the detail.
The
less than a serious. See a typo in there.
This
is the operating budget proposed for 2026.
The budgets, as I made the point with the sewers balanced on a cash basis.
It's just appreciation. You have to add it back.
budgets based on status quo staffing for water service, so no additions or deletions to staff,
and those
are the questions.
I had a chance to bring this up with you briefly during the break.
When I look at this budget, the revenue side, when I look at 5% increase,
20-25 budget at 3.5 million, 5% would be $175,000.
And yet the difference is only $31,000. Why is it not
showing $140,000 more? Similar question with parcel taxes. If we're increasing parcel taxes by
at 5%, why are they going down in 2026?
Yeah, through the Mayor to Councilor Mattis,
the 2025 budget, I think the 2026 numbers you're seeing
is based on what we do every year is kind of reset
the revenue side in terms of how the utility,
like the number of properties,
and we kind of reset it to what the actuals are
in terms of revenue.
And so I think that's why you're seeing a you're not seeing the variance in the 2025 like you're not seeing that percentage increase because the 2025 budget had more units I guess I think of units like houses or meters of cubic meters of
service flowing through it than when we reset it this year to what the actuals were.
So you're not going to see that lift.
To budget, you're not going to see the same lift because I think we did an audit,
I know on the parcel taxes and corrected some properties that were getting charged
that shouldn't be charged and some of the farm irrigation came back
and water was turned off where we were charging them so some of the revenue I guess we budgeted
to collect isn't collectible just because of corrections we made to try to make to do an audit
we went back and did an audit and tried to true up the numbers to make them tie to track to
actual but so it throws the 2025 numbers off when you're comparing to 2026 but the 2026
numbers that you're seeing there do have the proposed rate increase in them that that I'm entirely
confident on. I understand that with the parcel tax is when I look at the 2025 year date and the 2024
actual we've actually gone down quite a bit and we're headed for under three million. I think
there's more parcel tax to hit though in the fourth quarter. This is year to date the year
to date for 2025 isn't the whole year I think it's 29 it's only three quarters I
get that but when I take a quarter of 2.3 million yeah that's about $600,000
that still leaves us below 3 million last year was 3.3 almost this year is
going to be 10% less than that well and I think the year to date that you're
seeing on this slide I think that we're still some utility entries that
weren't booked when I pulled the actuals. So I think the numbers are higher than that.
Because I looked at the year, like the actual year to date to try to see where we would end
the year and it's coming close. You know, it's not that far off in terms of there's
not a big miss on the revenue side.
We really don't have the number in front
of us to say that what the 5% increase is based on to drive that 3.5 or 2.
Yeah, it's based on, it's based on truing up to the actual, like I can go, I can read
through them.
But it's not here.
No.
No, the detail is way.
It's, you know, the number of cubic meters and the number of, you know, 5-8s connections.
It's very detailed in terms of, they have probably...
We can't even base it on...
So many race, race codes though.
You know, I understand now that we can't even base it on last year's number on
this chart.
Yeah, no.
Council Schaefer and then Council Grace.
Thank you, Your Worship.
Yeah, a question through to the CFO.
I noticed on this page the principal payments
and the interest payments have gone down quite a bit
into next year to the tune of about 228.
So that means to me that we've paid something off or could you explain that?
Through the Mayor to Councillor Schaefer. Yes, that's exactly.
That was a good observation on your part.
One of the, some of the debt that we're carrying is going to be paid off this year.
I think it's the, what's called the TENS water system.
That debt is going to get retired.
So that's why you see the pickup in reserve too,
because, of course, if the expenses drop, that puts more money into reserve.
That'll disappear if we borrow money, of course, but that's why you see the drop-off because
we actually have paid off another one of our outstanding debts over the last two years
we've had.
This is a large one that's coming out this year.
Grace?
Thank you, Your Worship.
So looking at, so part of the rock cliff,
like we're gonna be upgrading the pump house
part of that rock cliff project.
And then there's two others,
Tecal Newet in 2028 and Hester in 2029.
I'm wondering if we've considered,
I mean, I don't know if we wanna front load
that much money into the budget,
but bundling those just for sort of economies,
the scale of procurement of equipment
and contractors of doing them in tandem
could provide any kind of cost savings.
Yeah, through your worship to Councilor, Councilor Grice, there would probably be minimal savings.
A lot of it is...
We have a lot of equipment. There's one. And obviously we know those prices kind of fluctuate and continue to kind of go up, especially anything I need to get out of the states right now that's only available there.
And a lot of our equipment is, a lot of the pumps, that type of thing. It's either that or we go to China and it's just not as good a product.
It is definitely cheaper, but I worry about the longevity. We won't get the same lifespan that we're getting out of our pump hoses now.
and it's just sort of detrimental to that.
There would probably be some minor savings,
but not a lot, just because they're two separate projects
at two separate times, depending on when we shut them down,
that type of thing, so there wouldn't be a ton of savings
by doing that, and it's obviously a very large cost
as well to kind of team them up into one year,
just kind of with where reserves are right now.
I think I'll be revisiting this all over again
and kind of trying to sort of space some of this stuff out as best as we can and just those
ones that complete failure and catastrophic, you know, to that extreme is really what I'm
going to be going for until we kind of get ahead of this wave, unfortunately.
Thank you.
Closer to Madis.
Thanks.
Does this 2026 budget include the principal and interest on that proposed 1.1 million
of borough?
So in natural fact, this sheet with the numbers that aren't at the top and the numbers that aren't at the bottom really isn't very useful.
I hate to say it.
I was going to say I think some of those decisions have to be made today and then when this comes back we'll see those numbers reflected in what we decide to do.
So this is kind of an interim thing.
You can estimate what the cost in interest payment and principles going to be.
You can probably have that discussion a little bit, but we're going to have to decide whether we're going to do the project
and if we're going to do the project, how much debt are we going to do?
Are we going to fund it from somewhere else where we don't have debt?
There's a few decisions that need to be made.
One, if we do the fall borrowing, that won't hit till 2027 anyway on the budget. It's not
going to be a 2026 issue. If we borrow the money in the fall, the first payments will
hit in 2027. So it will be a 2027. That's where it will show up in the budget. But it's
not in the budget. Councillor Matys is correct because I was waiting to know which
direction.
So in terms of the proposed increases, we put 5% in for 2026 across the board with
the one water system principle. We didn't do anything different for irrigation compared
to domestic. And you can see a larger increase proposed in 2028. And it's just to build
the reserves back up relative to where we're spending our money and you can see
the budgeted spending going forward and that's coming out of the reserve not out
of other funds but you can see the the budgets a little over a million dollars
every every year with the exception of 2026.
Councillor Matys. Do we know what it will cost us to borrow 1.1 million?
That
we can calculate that 20
years.
You
could share with the rest of the class.
I was just saying to Councilor Mattis, if we end up deciding to borrow for it,
it won't have the impact on rates that doing it will,
because obviously it's going to amaturize it.
So it'll be over 15 years or whatever.
So the impact on your rates is going to be a lot less than trying to fund it,
And if we can get grant and then borrow part of it, it might help.
So 1.1 million in principal, an interest rate of 4.17% will be annual debt payments of $73,185 to be exact.
Split between principal and interest.
Yeah, that's the total debt, so yeah.
20, I think.
How many years?
Oh, sorry. And that's with a 25-year amortization.
I can do it for 20 years, if you'd rather.
No, that number works.
And just to follow up on that through the Chair would be fair to say that looking at our total operating revenue of 4.3 million,
that 1% represents $40,000.
So in order to service this debt, we'd be looking at a 2% increase, give or take.
For that piece. Yeah, if you segregated it that way. Okay.
These are the residential comparisons
Current state. This is without any of the proposed increases that a municipalities may be bringing forward for their 2026 budget
So you can see us sitting at 720 305
So we're a
close to us and summer land is higher.
If we did a 5% increase, the homeowner piece would
go from $7.23 to $7.59 or $36 a year, which is $3 per month. And our rates, if you modeled
that increase in, our rates would remain lower than a source in summer land. And I'm assuming
those rates will be going up in a source in summer land. So if they froze their rates
and our rates went up, we'd still be lower than them.
On the irrigation side, this is just the proposed irrigation increases which fall in line with
the residential.
And these are some of the projects that are coming related to irrigation just for council's
information.
So the irrigation comparisons, we just did an assumption based on a fixed 10-acre
parcel.
And I'd have to look, I can't recall.
We have assumed a certain whether we're available because a couple of municipalities had a variable rate built into their rate structure.
So we assumed a certain amount of irrigation.
So you can see where we're sitting with 3,175 relative to,
Penticton seems unusual at 19, but we did contact the municipality and, you know, ask them theoretically if we had a farm.
This is, you know, what were the rates that would apply.
So I'm not sure why Penticton.
I wonder about that, but we did check with them on that.
Do they have any actual farms that are paying now?
Because then those farmers are out of business.
Yeah, well, that's that one.
They're out of business.
There's the orchards and vineyards
don't pay for enough to ever justify that kind of a water
rate.
Even ours is getting to the point where I get a lot of phone
calls, and I'm sure Pinter does.
You know, when they actually, people don't pay attention
to what's going on until we get good bill in the mail.
Didn't pay attention real quick.
And they go, why is there a water rate?
How can I afford this?
Because what farmers get isn't going up.
If anything, it's going down.
So anyway, I'm wondering why as soon as it's so low.
Probably just because I have, yeah.
That's an error because there's a big kind of pullback.
It's over 4,000, 4,500 I think.
We can go back and check, but I know we did call, you know,
because we had the initial chart and then the numbers looked funny.
So we had staff call the, the municipality's like a couple of the municipalities.
So I'll double check on, on a story as if you're sure that the-
Positive, it's not a letter.
And are they fixed or do they have a variable component that we missed in our analysis?
So a fixed?
It might be the residential level.
It
would be for their, their, their two systems, right?
That they have water counselors for, just outside of the town boundary.
I don't know how they're doing their fair stewardship.
We'll definitely check that and bring back the comparison.
As this goes along, we'll hear what the other municipalities are proposing
in terms of rate increases, because I haven't looked,
I haven't seen anything on that yet.
In actual fact, we have to make sure that our rates are equal,
but at the same time, we've got to make sure that our farmers
and all of them are made competitive with other farmers.
And I used to use the exact example of Kelowna because it was it was they were had a huge advantage because it was from
Reservoirs in the hills
You know, it was their cheap, you know, I mean we got to make sure our water our farmers can survive. That's a big bill
Anyway, you know, I mean, it's it's a big percentage of what they get for their product
So we dive, you know every year I'm sitting here
Found this message because I'm hearing it from the guys that it's hard to pay those bills, you know
I mean, yeah, I don't know what the solution is,
but we're gonna talk a bit about Rockliff
and 1.1 million dollars.
And anyway, when we get there,
I got some questions about it.
And then let's go.
Thank you, Worship, in response to that,
I understand that.
And we go through this discussion every year,
and every year we fight to keep
the water rates down for the farmers,
keep the water rates down for the farmers,
and every year we're faced with the same situation
where we don't have enough money.
So somewhere along the line we have to change that balance a little bit, I hate to say it,
but that balance needs to change somewhat.
I recognize it's not an easy business, I totally appreciate that.
It's not easy living in town, paying for water either on a fixed income or anything else,
but nonetheless we increase those rates and you made the comment and I appreciate that
is that the users have to pay.
On
this side, I've just shown the impact for all of her on a 10 acre parcel, so it would
go up $159 per year, or $1325 per month, but that's with a 5% increase.
It's an annual pick up of $159.
Through the CFO, is that 5% based on borrowing for that 1.1?
I'm a little confused because in the budget the way I read it through, it's not going to try and fund it.
So if we borrow, then what is that? I mean, there's got to kind of have...
I didn't answer that question as to what it really...
You know, if we decide to borrow, is it 5% or is it 3% to be able to balance the budget?
You know, so what is that 5% based on it?
What I read through here was that we were going to try and fund it, whether through grants or through water capital.
So that's how you came to that 5%?
Or did you come to the 5% based on borrowing?
And you just told us it was $75,000 annually.
So that obviously is going to change the numbers.
Through the mayor to come from a shell, it'll adjust them marginally
because you can see if you look at the water rate, this is consolidated.
So all service, you can see our reserve is going to 268.
So if you say, well, we're going to lose $70,000 to principal and interest payments in 2027,
that reserve, you know, the $36,000 in 2028, well, hit one 2027, you know, that would drop to 200.
You know how the, because you're going to have less, put less in reserve if you have
more operating expenses. So would I change the rate from, I guess your question is,
what I changed the rate from 5% to 4% or 3% if we borrowed. Our reserves are marginal
at best, so I don't know if I would say that would make the rate lower, because I think
the rates probably need to, unless government, because we only have so much we can borrow
too. We have a limit. We're not there, but we're coming up against where increases
are going to have to happen to get some of these projects done?
Tell us a minute.
The water system is not subject to the same borrowing limits as the rest of the municipality.
The water system can borrow what they need.
So that is not that we want to go into debt any more than we need to, but that's not
a consideration when it comes to the water system.
I just want to say that we should get that clarified, because I understand that
we don't need to go to the electorate, because if one solid was dissolved, there was a propasion
put in there that you didn't have to go to the electorate, but I wasn't aware that we
could borrow whatever we wanted, so we should clarify that. I don't have the answer to it,
so I can't say definitely yes or no to that. We should look into it.
I thought we had a limit on it.
I assume that the debt capacity is a debt capacity, and you don't need to get electoral
ascent for borrowing for utilities but I could be I could I'd need to look into
that to confirm because the
question to
I'm interested to know, like, future lobbying with UBCM and stuff like that and the challenge
with the high water rates, is there a way through taxation or income tax to be able to
have farmers, you know, be able to write off more than that? Or, I don't know, but I mean,
it's an expense, so if it goes up, they're ready, they're able to write that off against
the profit of their farms. Okay.
Yeah, it's not expensive like any other, it's not expensive like fertilizer or trees
or...
Yeah, just to answer that question there is a way because on your taxes you see fire library and everything else
If you want more residents of BC the four million five million did pitch in downtown, Vancouver and the bigger cities
There could be a line item on everybody's taxes where it's four dollars
Whatever that works out to to help
the agriculture in British Columbia pay for some of the
Something you know it's a future thing
You didn't propose before, but you just left off the matter.
Thank you, Richard.
Yeah, I'm wondering too, if there's any precedent for,
I mean, the same that we do with like our class rate
multipliers, if anything's been done similarly
between irrigation residential water,
like to adjust the tax rate,
or to adjust the increase,
or like something following a similar model.
I'm through the minute.
To answer the question, in terms of the multipliers,
there's a multiplier.
are obviously for farm, so you're saying we could somehow,
but there's not, the tax burden,
the actual property tax burden on the farms is not,
there's not a lot of revenue there.
I'd have to look, but it's not like it's a,
residential is, you know, residential and business
and large industry are three big ones
with residential and business being the two
and then other, their farm and recreational
are pretty small.
So, you're right. You could adjust that to make less of a tax burden.
Certainly, to pick up the $159 increase, I mean, I guess that's, you know, you could do that.
I don't know if that's the answer, but just kind of spitballing.
I'll just offer some thoughts on that.
Not the UBCM.
Summerland's been leading the charge with having a lot of farm properties
and not getting very much tax from those properties
yet having a lot of utility costs delivering water and sewer out to farms in remote areas in their district.
And the Ministry of Agriculture has been working with them.
I did attend a meeting there.
They are looking at different things, nothing concrete at this point,
but they do recognize that as a significant problem.
Looking at the threshold that you need to make to be able to maintain farm status,
those type of things, because there seems to be a lot of people that are slipping kind of,
Like you can get farm status with very little income being generated and either they need
to up that or else they need to be taxed at a different rate.
So something that's getting more discussion, especially in places like Summerland and Lower
Mainland, those type of things, it's definitely a conversation that's happening.
So that's the capital and operating for water and sewer service.
So the
next version will come back at the next meeting and I will put the debt, the burrowing
in for that project in the next version as well will bring the proposed, unless Council
wishes differently, but the proposed increases into a draft bylaw for Council's consideration
at the next meeting. Or I can come back with a different scenario that you have that option
at your avail.
Just go to Councillor Benjamin that you had your hand up first.
Sure. I'm
just going to ask a question specifically to the Director of Operations just about the,
So it sounds like the issues that are urgent this year
have been ongoing for a couple of years.
Like is there something that pushed it over the line
to make it drop dead urgent in 2026?
When it wasn't in 2025?
Or sorry, not the pumps, if you'd like to say it.
This is how you're worshiped to Councilor Grice,
or sorry, Councilor Vintemela.
It's literally just sort of picking
those priorities each year.
This is born radar, but looking at it as sort of that highest priority and where we're at right now with the irrigation
This is the number one pump hosts. It literally pumps as much as two other pump hosts
So looking at the sort of different priorities. That's why I actually had I actually had tuckle new it for this year
I've pushed that to 2027 because I really want to get in town taking care of in the sense of the pump hosts
We've dealt with rock cliff. Obviously. There's some issues and hiccups there
We're dealing with that, but we do have sort of our main domestic pump posts in town upgraded.
Feel comfortable with that. There's no worries.
Looking at sort of the same thing on the irrigation side is that main pump station
that pushes sort of, you know, to some of the pump posts, it's three times the amount of water.
It's just a critical piece of infrastructure.
And more of this is just the ionizers and the screen that we install in the arm
and just learning more about the capacity we're at with that particular pump station.
really really scares staff for sure and how what that would mean to an
irrigation season.
My question was kind of along the same lines in other words it
seems like we're at the budget time we're always we all these crisis you
know we have this oh my god it's all gonna fall apart yet it's been going on
and also another question we don't run all three pumps there do all three
pumps were at the same time? To push the 9,000? Or is it staged?
Through your worship counselor, Michelle, I think originally, I think they were staged
and that's why there's only a 400 amp service. To the capacity that pushes now, we have all
three pumps running at all the time. So we've got a 200 horsepower and two 150s and they're
running all the time. So the demand is also picked up, I think, over the years.
And it literally, that's just what we need to keep that up, is that thing running all the time?
Further to that?
Yeah, I'm just curious as to how demand is kind of picking up on that pump station.
We must have all the data and charts and everything.
Because a lot of the practices that orchard is, and also vineyards especially, use less water.
We know that.
That's what we do as farmers.
We implement practices that use less water.
So I'm just curious where that demands coming from because I don't think we've had any expansion of acreage in that in number two
You know in that pump hose. So I don't yeah, I'm just I just
I'm frustrated that we sit here as a council. We've got this we are always told that we have this thing that's gonna every year
That's gonna, you know, I mean that one year was lying the pipe
I'm you know, I'm going back to it because it was like a crisis, you know
There's other projects in here like replacing the AC piping, you know, I was I was reading through them
and they're quite expensive.
Once again, you know, we're being told on the AC piping.
I'm gonna go to that because I have
no questions about it.
That it's at the end of its life expectancy
and I did a quick Google search.
It's anywhere between 50 to 75 years on AC piping,
depending on soil types and whatever.
So once again, I think we should be testing.
I said that that year with the other,
we should be testing.
I don't, you know, somebody should give me a report
that says, okay, this AC pipe has been tested
and it'll last another 15 years
it's got to be replaced within two years.
You know, we can make better decisions as a council
if I have that information.
I don't like crisis management.
It seems like we've got, you know,
now it's, now it's rocket aggregation
that we've got to do right now.
You know, I'm not saying we don't have to do it.
I'm not saying that at all,
but I'm saying that it's better for me anyway
to be able to plan, you know,
and see what's coming in the future.
And that's what I thought we did every year
with all these capital schedules.
It's just, it's frustrating that we've got these crisis that happen and yet we keep planning
every year for longer range.
Anyway.
Mr. Shepard.
Thank you.
I can appreciate what Councillor Michelle is saying, but thinking about these three
wells that are being decommissioned, I understand that there are different reasons
for each of them, but with now the crisis of the war cliff well, and that's a huge burden
on that well to try to pump that much, but we talked to, I can't remember, maybe it was
last year's budget time, about the need for a new well at some point, and now there's
going to be a big bump up in the budget and definitely get this is irrigation
from the canal not from a well this is irrigation from the canal you're
confusing it to I think councilor Schaefer this is rock if well as well no I
don't know but he's saying I was just wondering if there is a timeline for
you know possible new well through
your worship to to council Schaefer right
Right now there is, it's about 10 years out, it needs to be monitored.
We've looked at a lot of our water conservation, a lot of things that we're trying to do.
We're trying to defer that, that is one of the big items, we're trying to defer that
sort of to that 20 years of when we need to do well.
We tend to have a plan of location and that type of thing, but true engineering basically
has proven out that we're okay for now.
I do have that at the tail end of sort of the 10 year to kind of do that investigation
again, but we're sort of seven to ten years out before we need to look at that.
Demand needs to go up. I think housing needs to come into place.
A lot of different things will affect that, and only time is going to justify that.
When I look at all of the composts out there, all of the irrigation
composts are in the 70s. Tuckle Nuit sort of starts in 83 and up.
Rockcliff was 91. Miller, I think, is 2008. Buchanan is 2016.
So when you actually look at our domestic pump posts, we're in pretty good shape.
And literally, in that 10-year plan, I do have all the irrigation pump posts in that 10-year plan.
And this is information coming from staff.
And I trust they're the ones that are out there every single day
and what I've observed and what we've added to that pump post with the INI.
So if that pump hose goes down, the ionizer goes down.
So never mind the pump hoses, we still have running.
That ionizer on the south goes down.
We have an algae problem.
I mean, it escalates and escalates and escalates from there.
So, and forgive me, but I've only been here
two and a half years.
And in the five year capital plans
from water and sewer in 2018, 2019,
I have every single project in here.
These projects that I'm introducing aren't in that plan.
And this is why I wanna be able
to do our own asset management
and be able to track that and be able to implement that and sort of be live and updated all of
the time.
As staff comes up with these situations and these issues, I can update that we can adjust
our budget and adjust our ten-year plan.
And that's what I'm trying to get to with this.
And I apologize that some of this is reactive, but it's honestly, it's what I'm learning
month-on-month basis to what's actually happening in the field and where staff
is at that operates this system every single day.
And that's what's driving a lot of these changes in the 5-year and the 10-year capital.
And honestly, it's going to continue to do that because the more I learn, the more critical situations, we only have so much money.
And I understand last year we talked about the Victoria Clay and the AC Pipes, and it's 60 years old.
It falls into that 50 to 75-year time frame.
I brought it up that, hey, we have $100 million in pipe replacement here.
Are we going to have to do that today?
No, but we're going to have to do that in the future.
It's just like a new well that's going to cost six, seven, eight million dollars.
So all of this is coming and all I'm trying to do is actually keep our infrastructure
that pumps the water out of the ground or pushes the water to irrigation into fields,
that type of thing.
Running, to me that's the critical infrastructure right now so we can move it.
We can always fix a pipe.
If a pipe collapses and we have catastrophic well then that's when we come back to
council on an emergency situation.
But right now the critical things to me is what the lift stations, the pump houses
that push and process our water and our sewer.
That's our major concentration
and that's what I'm trying to put forward.
Thank you.
Councilor Grace.
Thank you, Worship.
I know you touched on it too,
but I was gonna sort of remind us
of this robust asset management plan
that we're working on too that's coming
that will hopefully help better inform
our capital planning as we go forward.
I was gonna ask, just as a reminder,
because I can't remember sort of where we're at
in that process right now,
of building that new asset management plan.
Through your worship to you, Councillor Grace, we've literally just purchased that asset portion.
So we're looking to move forward with that, and then we've applied in the SPF grant on
that asset management side.
We applied for the budget program and the, was the other one, sir?
Staff to input the stuff.
Yes, and also for a one year hire to actually input and sort of expedite that into the
assets because it's all data driven.
So to get all of our assets into that program, that's the key.
And then go from there. But we budgeted for the budget software, and there was another one
that went with that, John.
So I just lost it. But anyways, there was two pieces of software
that go hand in hand through PSD citywide, through that process. And then that's getting
all of that moving forward. And then our asset management is basically live and can
be updated at all the time. So we're waiting on that grant at this point, but we do have
that asset portion and we are moving through that training and we'll be starting to populate
some of that. Absolutely.
To follow up with I mean, when do you feel like that's going to be to a point where
then that's going to be able to sort of fully inform our budget process going forward?
If we got approval for the staff member, I would estimate three years. If we don't
get approval for the staff member, honestly, I think we're pushing five, six years.
I mean, I think some of it will be there, but we won't be complete and be able to everything won't be in there and everything
I mean it budget-wise as well
This software will replace the Excel sheets and stuff that we're utilizing right now
So it's all a process, but I think I think you know within that three-year time frame if we've got everything
We asked I think we'll be very close. That staff member was going to be grant funded though
That's correct. We get that grant and we're looking for the staff member over still waiting to hear back on the ground
I'm talking with the grant writer. We're a couple of months out. It's a federal grant,
but it's pushed through UBCM. And a lot of the times through the UBCM stuff, we get results
or at least answers a lot sooner than we do just it's a federal grant. So towards the
end of this year, we're hoping to hear something.
Thank you.
I'll go to CAO and then Councilman.
Yes. You worshiped over to Councillor Grice. There is a terms of reference being put
together for an asset management committee, which will include a member of council as
well.
So, somebody will be-
Does this sound so interesting?
Noted.
That's the best.
Thank you, Worship.
Is it possible to go back to the scenario increases water, proposed
water rate increases?
I look when I hear $100 million in pipe to be replaced, I look at a $10 million well,
and then I look at this sheet and I know that if Councilor Michelle and Councilor Dolly
Wall and whatever other faces are around the table when we hit 2028 we're going to be short of cash
once again as we are every other year and there will be a fight to raise a 10% percent. The
question I ask as a councilor is there any appetite to change the numbers in 2026 and 2027
to mitigate the increase in 2028, possibly provide some more money to pay
debt for that pump house, and also possibly provide some money for looking
at our pipes and the condition of those pipes so that maybe it will save us
money and give us flexibility down the road. I don't know what that will cost
and I guess as a supplementary question or whatever to ask staff if we could
look into what would they need every year to do inspections on our pipes, you know, so
that we can do, we don't have the asset management program, but maybe we can do some things to
push some of those expenses further out because we're always short of cash when it comes to
water every single year. And we fight to keep the rates down and fight to keep the rates
down and we go through this every year because we keep the rates down. I hate to say it,
But maybe it's time that we look at 7% in 2026 and 7% in 2027 and 7% in 2028 instead of a 10% in 2028.
And it might make your fight easier in 2027 and 2028 when you ask for to change from 7 to 5 as opposed from 10 to 5.
Except that this council in the last number of years has not lowered it from what staff has proposed.
That statement you just made is incorrect. We do not sit here and fight and drop it.
It's being what staff is proposing.
Some of the right investors might not have voted for that, but it still has gone through what staff is proposing.
So that's an ink. I don't.
And staff is proposing 5%. I guess we have to decide if we're going to fight to lower it, or if we're going to agree to that.
I mean, definitely not in favor of an increase in it. Absolutely not.
Yeah, I just want to say that if we hire it now, staff is always talking about possible
grants that come through, and then we're over collected in the present rather than the future.
And right now the economic climate doesn't line up with higher rate increases, perhaps
in the future it does.
I'm just thinking when you were talking about the irrigation rates, the other aspect of that
grant I was speaking to that we're going to be applying for is the money.
One of the things you can't apply money for or apply to give money for is to put bidders
on farm irrigation.
That's one of the things that the government's saying is an applicable,
uneligible expenditure.
So that's just something for Council to, because that's
an expensive, I think the Director of Operations told me, that's an expensive
undertaking if we ever wanted to do it. So this could be an opportunity for
that, if there's a benefit.
We've had this discussion in the past and the
amount of money that it would cost. I mean we don't need more debt.
We don't
example with the residential meters there's a huge cost going forward after
you even install them so I mean we've got a lot of dentists at town we're not
going to go borrow five or six or seven million dollars while I'm here to put
water meters in for irrigation we've got flow controls it's not like we've got
an open pipe farmers are restricted in how much water they can use so it's not
you know I'm not going to be in favor of ever spending that kind of money to
go and meet our water rates for farmers when we have flow controls that
or balancing our pumping needs with what the farmers use.
Yeah, this was a grant opportunity.
Yeah, it wasn't borrowing, I think.
I'm not sure if it's 100% funded that.
Councilor Mattis.
Just very quickly, I think my councilman
shalls more concerned with the 300,000 a year
to maintain them down the road and staff to go.
Yeah, it's sometimes it's great to get it for free.
I guess if there's nothing else,
that's the end of my report.
Can I just just one second have a couple more,
please?
I thought it was to do with the AC pipe and the longevity of the other 10.
I thought I read him here somewhere that they were 50.
They were approaching 50 years old, yet the director said it's 60, so I'd like to clarify that.
Because in the report it said 50.
Yeah, I did. I'd made notes.
Yeah,
here we go.
I can open it and look at it when it does show up.
Yeah,
so in the report it says 50, so I just want to clarify that.
What number is that?
For the AC pipe, on this one on page 7086 it says 200 millimeter AC pipe.
as two years remaining, 50 years in brackets, so is it 50 or is it 60?
That's only a piece of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's been through a 65 or 75 kind of thing that was put in the ground.
So like it's all probably 60 on.
But every single piece of pipe has been put in at a different time.
So that particular one?
Is 50 according to your report, correct?
Yeah.
I
think we're done.
We're done.
I will call for a motion to adjourn.
Yeah.
Move second.
All in favor?
We have another meeting coming for
this.
We have something for the meeting that we just...
There was a...
We
decided on that yet.
Thank you.