Water Resources Board

MINUTES MURFREESBORO WATER RESOURCES BOARD April 23, 2024 ______________________________________________________________________________ The Murfreesboro Water Resources Board met on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in the conference room of the Operations and Maintenance Building, 1725 South Church Street. Present at the meeting were Board members: Mr. Ron Crabtree, Mr. Brian Kidd, Ms. Kathy Nobles, Mr. Warren Russell, Mr. John Sant Amour, Ms. Madelyn Scales-Harris, and Ms. Sandra Trail. Also present were Darren Gore, Valerie Smith, Michele Pinkston, Doug Swann, Alan Cranford, Matt Powers, John Strickland, David Pendley, Adam Todd, Steve Campbell, Jennifer Tag, Joe Russell, Linda Sullivan, Brent Fowler, and Craig Tindall, along with other members of the public. The Consent Agenda was presented to the Board for approval: A. Consider Barton Lawn Care contract amendment B. Consider Change Order #3 & Change Control #4 & #5 for 316 Robert Rose Drive Sandra Trail made a motion to accept the Consent Agenda as presented and it was seconded by Warren Russell. The motion carried unanimously. The March 26, 2024 Board Minutes were accepted as presented. The Board considered the request to purchase GIS servers. These servers allow the dissemination of data and applications throughout the department, to the public, and to other government entities. The current GIS Servers were purchased in 2017 and will not support the latest version of the GIS software that will be required to improve storage and functionality. GIS functionality continues to expand as technology allows the use of GIS in multiple jobs throughout our department. GIS data that is stored continues to grow as well. The recommendation of the City IT department is to use servers in a virtual environment versus the physical servers that we have used in the past. Funding for the computers in the amount of $31,147 will come from the FY24 rate-funded capital expenditures budget. Brian Kidd made a motion to approve. Madelyn Scales-Harris seconded. The motion unanimously passed. The Board considered the Hawthorn Retirement Facility sewer connection fees. This retirement community does not fall within a specific category within Chapter 33 of the City Code regarding sewer connection fees. Hawthorn Retirement Facility has provided water usage information to assist in determining an equivalent sewer connection fee. Page 66 Water Resources Board Minutes April 23, 2024 Page 2 Staff requested approval to use the Hospital/Nursing Home fee instead of Apartment unit fee as well as use average water usage to calculate the Overall Creek Sanitary Sewer Assessment District fee. Hawthorn Retirement has provided much information in support of the suites at their facility not being full dwelling units. The suites have no cooking equipment, dishwashers, or laundry facilities. All meals are served in a central dining room and dishwashing and laundry are centralized services as well. This creates efficiencies that do not occur in single-family or multi-family dwellings. Additionally, the suites are mostly single occupancy, further reducing water usage. Using the Hospital/Nursing Home category would use bed count instead of suites, other than the two manager units that would be considered full dwelling units. Hawthorn has also provided historic water/sewer usage for several facilities around the country. Based on this historic data, their actual water usage averages less than 65 gallons per day (gpd) per suite which is much less than the 260 gpd that the Department considers as equivalent to one apartment unit (sfu). There are 149 suites, or 170 beds. The fee for a single-family unit is $2550 and the fee for a hospital/nursing home bed is $800. Staff requests the approval to use the Hospital/Nursing Home sewer connection fee for this retirement facility as well as the average usage per suite to calculate the Overall Creek Sewer Assessment District fee. The standard sewer connection fee will be $141,100 [(170 beds * $800) + (2 sfu’s * $2550)] and the Overall Creek Assessment District fee would be $39,250 (149 suites * 65 gpd = 9,685 total gpd/260 gpd = 37.25 sfu + 2 manager sfu’s = 39.25 sfu). Sandra Trail made a motion to approve. Kathy Nobles seconded. The motion unanimously passed. The Board considered the proposed water and sewer rate design to support the FY25 budget and FY28 pro forma. The combined monthly residential water and sewer bill is $70.23. This falls between a 2- and 3- person family household and is well under the affordability indexes. The proposed FY24 rate design, when plotted against the combined recovery curves, demonstrates how the minimum fee is raised and the commodity fee slope is reduced. MWRD’s current rate design meets the affordability index for 1-person through 5-person homes. The good news is that the pro forma for FY28 also meets the current 2023 HUD affordability indexes. Note however that the cost of service for FY23 and pro forma for FY28 do show the need to increase the minimum monthly fees rather substantially and flatten out the commodity charges. The affordability limits represent 4% of a very low-income earner (50% of median income) in Murfreesboro. Median family income of four is established at $99,800 per year, so 50% of median for a family of four is established as $49,900 per year. Water fund revenues are estimated to increase by $177,000; $59,000 in water commodity revenue and $118,000 in proposed minimum monthly charge increases. Page 67 Water Resources Board Minutes April 23, 2024 Page 3 Sewer Revenue is estimated to increase by $1,365,694; $1,117,000 in commodity revenue due to growth and $248,000 in proposed minimum monthly charge increases. Staff requested the Board to recommend to City Council approval of the FY25 rate ordinance. Kathy Nobles made a motion to approve. Sandra Trail seconded. The motion unanimously passed. The Board discussed the use, funding, and benefits of the future City Transfer Station, WastAway equipment and process, and the anticipated closing of Middle Point Landfill. The facility will not impact the Solid Waste Department operationally or staffing. However, a Solid Waste Authority Board will be required. Staff presented the Water Resources Dashboard Performance for March 2024. Staff presented the Financial Reports for nine months ending March 31, 2024. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned. _____________________________ John Sant Amour, Chairman Page 68