Bangor Water District seeks 10.5% rate hike to fund infrastructure repairs

[0:43] Patricia Hamilton: I'm sorry, good evening, my name is Patty Hamilton, and I'm a member of the Bangla Water District Board of Trustees, stepping in for Board Chair Whalen, who cannot attend tonight. As facilitator, I'll be presiding over today's public hearing. My first duty is to officially convene tonight's hearing at 5:30. The purpose of tonight's hearing is to provide information concerning the proposed rate increase for customers of Bangalore Water and to allow customers and the public advocate at present to testify and ask questions. It's here to be held pursuant to 35A MRS section 6104 and chapter 120 section 7b3 of the Maine Public Utility Commission's regulation. The reason for the proposed rate increase is to increase our capital improvement fund, address inflationary impact on materials and labor and to maintain a quality workforce in a competitive labor market. This will be explained in more detail by the district staff. The Bangor Water District is proposing an increase in water rates to become effective April 1st of 2026. The existing rates have been in effect since April 1st of 2025. the proposed rates will be implemented by an economic change in rates for all customer classes and the rates for each customer class will be increased by 10.5 percent the average residential customer using approximately 12 700 gallons per quarter or 1700 cubic feet will experience an increase of 11.98 per quarter the revenues from under fire protection will increase 10.5 percent charges for sprinkler systems and private hydrants will increase by 10%, 10.5%. In attendance this evening are members of the staff of the district and its trustees, as well as its council for this rate proceeding. Customers of Bangal Water have the right to a fair and open hearing this evening, and have the right to further proceedings before the Maine Public Utilities Commission, as well as assistance from the public advocate. Copies of all materials supporting the proposed rate change were filed with the commission and the public advocate on January 20th of 2026, and have been on file at the district's business office since that date for inspection by district customers. Bangor Water will promptly provide and any readily available relevant additional material or information requested by a customer, the commission or the public advocate. After receiving comments and questions from you at tonight's hearing, the district Will consider those comments and within the next 30 days but no sooner than 10 days after this public hearing will file a formal rate schedule with the Maine Public Utilities Commission. The rate schedule will specify an effective date for the rate change which will be at least one month but not more than nine months from the date the rates are filed with the Commission. The formal rate filing by the district may be reviewed by the Public Utilities Commission in accordance with 35 a MRS 6104. Petitions by district customers demanding a review of the rate changes by the Commission must be filed in accordance with 6104 paragraph 7 must bear the signatures and printed names and addresses of the petition signers and must include at least 1,000 customers of Bangor water and be submitted Bangor water and the public utilities Commission within 30 days of the public hearing. Upon request the district will provide customers with petition forms that include spaces for signatures and the printed names and addresses of the signers. Upon receipt of customer petitions, in accordance with section 6104, paragraph 7, the commission may suspend, investigate, review, and change the proposed rates. As of tonight's hearing, however, the Maine Public Utilities Commission has made no determination and has taken no position concerning the proposed rate increase. After the district has presented information concerning the proposed rate changes, I will open the public hearing for statements and questions from members of the public present at tonight's hearing. Persons wishing to make statements or ask questions will approach the podium and state their name and address. I would also request that you reveal your name and address on the sheet located at the public podium. We would like to limit statements and questions by any one individual to five minutes in order to provide the opportunity for all to speak or ask questions. I would ask that we allow everyone to speak once before anyone one approaches the podium a second time. I will take this moment to indicate the district received two electronic comments which will be entered into the public record. Any questions should be directed through me as facilitator this evening. If appropriate I may redirect the questions to an individual who may better answer the question. Before proceeding I would like to Introduce members of the board of trustees legal counsel who are present here this evening. For trustees today, myself, Patty Hamilton, Samuel Morse, Ralph Voss, and Frank Bragg, and electronically, we have Lee Chick. And legal counsel, we have Andy Hamilton from Catan Law. With that introduction, I will turn the floor over to the district's general manager, Chuck Harrison, who will introduce the members of the district staff who are present and who will present information on the proposed changes. [6:11] Chuck Harrison: Changes. Well, good evening everybody, I'm Chuck Harrison, the general manager. Also with us here is Holly Silva, the director of finance for Bangor Water. So this presentation, I don't know where she went, will be in two parts. Let me see if I can't get it. [Public commenter: She] got it. It will be in two parts. One will be about the rate case. And the second aspect is kind of 2025 year in review. So I've got two screens, we've got to kind of go back and forth here. But when the first slide here is why is a water rate adjustment necessary. And a lot of that has to do with additional costs that we are having to absorb through energy costs, through the cost of chemicals going up. As we all know, it's been a very big issue for water around the world, people getting hacked, water districts getting hacked. We're having to spend quite a bit more money recently on I.T. to make sure we're secure, so that somebody can't get in and turn on, turn off a pump. So I.T. is a is a big driver, and along with just our health insurance going up, and last but not least, we have a very old system, you know, and what we're trying to do is invest and replace of that very infrastructure while maintaining the quality water that we give to the customers. And so I want to kind of go back and see how this is going to affect you as the customers, and get down to kind of the dollars and cents of what that looks like. So as we can see, well, you can't really see, our minimum bill, which roughly makes up about 70% of our customers, will increase two dollars and 28 cents a Month, or six dollars and 84 cents per quarter, for an additional cost. If we do the math, as you can see, if you're a math person, the numbers don't quite add up because we had a penny in their difference. But that general increase goes to 71.95 cents per month, and that's for roughly 70 percent of operation of our customers per core. And then when we start breaking that out, let's see if I can move this because you can't see the. So if we break that out as to what we actually sell the water for, you go to a big box store, you can buy a gallon of water for roughly about $1.26. Sometimes you can buy the little bottles of water for $1.16. 16 cents when we sell that same gallon of water to our customers for 0.0107 cents per gallon at that new rate. For the minimum bill customer, that equals 80 cents a day for that 75 gallons of water they consume per day. And if you bought that same 75 gallons of water at the store at $1.26, you'd be spending $94.50 a day, where the district is charging you 80 cents for that same amount of water. As we said, it's a flat rate across all of our categories. So public fire, these are the amount of hydrants that we have within the district that we have public look fire going towards, and here's a breakdown of what that looks like. And there's some numbers to really pay attention to. When we did the budget, we based our budget off of 2024 pumping numbers because, as we all know, 2025 was a very dry year. So we based everything off of a less pumpage so that we actually have real numbers. As we can see, we'll break it down a little bit more. But one thing to note is that the main PUC allows us to charge up to 13 30 for public fire protection. As you can see at that bottom right number, it's 14.7, so we're not even half of what the PUC says we are allowed to charge. How that breaks down, you know, the increase for Bangor for the annual charges goes up to $142,000, up by $142,213. So an increase per quarter of $35,554. [Carol Cotting: So] with this rate increase, our total revenue required to do all the things that we are trying to do is $11,416,000 change, which will need an additional $1,083,975 to cover of the gap that we need to get to that total revenue required for 2026. And as we said earlier, if approved by the main PUC, the rates will go into effect on April 1st. And I would like to note that we did have letters go out that our third party printer, when they formatted the letter, it said April 1st on the letter we sent it to them, and their software crammed it together somehow and put it as April 15th. But the proposal is April 1st for the rate increase, and this rate increases is crucial for our infrastructure. Our rates are how we fund, we fund our bond principal payments and interest payments, and it also funds our capital projects and as well as our capital reserve account, which is all set by the PUC of how much we can have in the capital reserve, and that capital reserve is used to fund those major projects that we try to do. And one example of that here is the Cumberland Street project, which we are going to team up with the city and we're going to do all of the utilities in that area. So it's one dig, one inconvenience for all the customers on Cumberland Street. And it also gets the oldest water lines in the district at 128 years out of service. So by being able to have more of a capital reserve account, we can do more projects like that, we don't have to go out for bonds for, and we can just do them as part of our SIA program, which tells us which streets we can associate to the capital reserve projects. We also have the project of Nelson and Birch Street designed ready to go. We went out for state revolving funds for that project. We're waiting on the federal budget to get squared away. Hopefully they do. And then that is another project that we will get as a capital project. So that was kind of it on the rate case. We'll take questions here in a minute, but I want to take a few minutes and go over a few slides of what 2025 looked like for us. As everybody knows, we've had a ton of main breaks. Part of that was the dryness, part of it is that it was so cold, and another part is that we installed a new tank which made hydraulics shift a bit. So some of those were just bound to happen. As the cold and age gets to the pipes, they tend to break. So we did have 73 main breaks last year alone, which was a abnormally high Water break season for us, but that did allow us to utilize our billing system a little bit more where we can notify customers a little quicker and easier as long as we have their information in the billing system to is just pick one main street to 30 main streets and then a robo call goes out. It lets the customers know we have an issue. We've gotten very good about putting that on Facebook and trying to let everybody know that hey, we've got an issue, we're dealing with it, we're trying to get it [John Baron: resolved.] And we also replaced 19 valves this past year, so some of those valves were designed by areas where we don't have good areas to shut down. So when we would have a main break, we'd have to have a bigger area that we shut down. So we shrunk that down by replacing valves. We also replaced 17 hydrants this year. 187 valve boxes were renewed. These are the valves that are in the street. So we go out and make sure that we can actually get on those valves. And if we can't, then we go and we hydro excavate around the valve box, and we replaced those, so 187 of those. Service boxes, we replaced 325 service boxes, and that's the box outside of a customer's home that allows us to get down and shut water off should you need to do some plumbing in your house, like maybe your internal valve doesn't work, so we replaced 325 of those. And probably one of the biggest is this is the new BIA tank and it was financed out of the capital and it adds about six hundred thousand dollars to our annual expense of which basically six percent of this new rate increase covers the new BIA tank. Here's the final project of that tank as it sits right now. So in summary, in summary, we make plans and then we try to invest the money that we have that we understand and comes from our consumers smartly to provide the essential service of water to our customers to make sure that if there is a fire that the fire hydrant works, that they can put the fire out with minimal damage to the homes. We just try to focus on what's the highest priority, then we use resources like capital improvement plans to help us help get the priorities listed and publish to all of our customers and I will leave this slide up as has my contact information if you want to write it down and take a picture of it. If you have any questions, definitely give us a call, I'll [19:11] Patricia Hamilton: Turn it back over to Patty. So now's the time for anyone wanting to address the board to come to the podium, and as I said, if you would, but there's a fair number of you, if you would limit your comments to three minutes, that would be great. [19:25] John Baron: Very helpful, thank you. Today it's John Baron. What do you think? So you may have had two strokes, so I stutter. Back in 1985, moving the house. In 1990, I had to install water filters in the house. It's supposed to look like this, Snoop. These last two years, two filters last one year to vary the water. We expect a rate increase. Every time we've had a rate increase, we'll get water out, still dirty. Junk of the water. How come? I also went, during the pandemic,, I went to the water district there and the gasket for the system, this is the normal size. When I took it out, it was this size, swallowed up that much. And the girl that was there blew me off, said, it's got to be something wrong with your stuff. It's chemicals in the water. What's going on? Every rating case is going to cure this problem. It hasn't been done since 1990. I poured a glass of water back then and there was dirt in the water. I thought it was in my house. Houses the house actually my house was the last one on school I was a man gone that's what it is so long they've been there but it's not my pipes the water the system is set up like this parallel so there's two of these filters they set up so if one of them plugs up it'll go to what's that one automatically I design system myself just wanting to watch red increases still have dirty water. [21:13] Patricia Hamilton: Very pristine water you really you don't add. [21:20] Chuck Harrison: Yeah so I just yeah so do you have do you live in have you ever called us about any dirty water? [21:28] John Baron: Way back wrong okay before I put these in back in 1990 they just got blown off well I'm sorry that. [21:34] Chuck Harrison: That happened what I would encourage you to do is if you see that you have some dirty water all here is it right and it what it might be is some it could be when we're flushing the system we do that twice a year that if we are flushing the system and you have your water using it at that specific time you're going to pull in some of that dirty water filters are designed to filter out anything that's in there we don't filter the water we treat the water it's meets EPA standards but what you're. Seeing is probably natural it's what's in the water that's. [22:10] John Baron: Going to turn your filter there's gonna be some sort of filter it floods on something you run. [22:15] Chuck Harrison: some of the dirt in that water should be something there and maybe what you're seeing is some organics that build up because it sits in a filter you know it sits overnight and it just accumulates on the filter that's what they're designed to do it's got to be in [22:34] John Baron: the water no to come in you get here you can check in with him right yes in [22:37] Chuck Harrison: the water yeah so your name and address is on there first one left information [22:43] John Baron: first long list all right everybody all right also there's a restaurant on Main Street does it still use city water for cooling for air conditioning I would have to right next to the old what the strength is building the burn i would have to check on it use the city water to run the air condition system that's crazy the water just goes in there's all the drain should [23:12] Chuck Harrison: you shut right off and that's on you know the address made up [23:17] John Baron: main street no not exactly what was the restaurant i think thai restaurant i think all right thai [23:42] Scott Hardy: My name is Scott Hardy and I'm a resident of Bangor. I live at [address] here in town and I'm here today. First of all, I thought the PUC was going to be here, some representative of the PUC, but none of you are, correct? [24:08] Wayne Mallar: Okay. No, they have the right to be here and the public advocate sometimes is asked to attend by customers but I agree with you I don't see anybody from the public advocates office or the piece I'll reach out to [24:21] Scott Hardy: them and ask them what discussed why they're not here so I've kind of addressed this to the PUC which is not here but I'll address it just this to you too I'm here today to urge this Commission I was talking about that I'll talking this to the board to closely scrutinize the Bangor Water District's request for 10.5% rate increase. We all understand the necessity of maintaining aging infrastructure, some of which we know dates back to 1898. We must also look at the reality of the total utility bill facing Bangor families. We do not pay our bills in silos. We pay them from a single shrinking household budget. Over the last six years, Maine has been hit by a relentless wave of utility increases. Since 2020, our electricity rates have soared to 60% to 70%, nearly tripling. Natural gas and heating oil have seen massive increases of 50 to 60%. Water has risen over 30% in the last 6 years. I believe you had a 16.9% increase a few years ago, as well as a 13 point something percent a couple of years after, and then a small increase in 24, perhaps, or 25. So, somewhere around that 30% sewer rates often rise in tandem with water. And that's that we can take up with the city creating a double hit for every gallon used. The Bangor water district's proposal to raise the to raise the minimum quarterly bill by nearly seven dollars might seem small to a utility, but when added to the hundreds of extra dollars we are now paying annually for heat and power, it becomes the breaking point for many on fixed incomes. In 2024, data showed that nearly one quarter of Mainers, this is the only data I could get, so it's Mainers in this particular thing, were unable to pay at least one utility bill. If you approve this 10, this was addressed to the PUC, if you approve this 10.5% increase on the heels of last year's 1.5% adjustment, you are essentially asking the 70% of Bangor or customers who are already stick to the minimum usage to choose between water and other essentials like food and medicine. I asked the commission or the board here today, at what point does maintaining the system override the affordability of life sustaining resources that the system provides? I urge you to require the district to find further operational efficiencies or to phase this increase more gradually to protect the most vulnerable citizens of Bangor. Rate shock is certainly, this is certainly rate shock when you talk in percentages. It's a lot of money, a lot of money for people that have not, people on fixed incomes haven't seen anywhere near this percent. Over the last six years, wages in Bangor have increased only 22%. And we were looking at these astronomical things that are happening to all of us. You live in the same world I live. Now, I know not one of you is unable to pay your water bill. I'm able to pay my water bill. That's never a question, you know. But there's so many out here. My neighbor across the street, you know, we had to build him steps for his front of his house because he's 90-something and his wife is 90-something. They live on Social Security, which hasn't increased at all. And you're asking the vast citizens of Bangor, I think the average is $58,000 a year, and the whole state is 70-something thousand. So we live at [address]-something thousand less than the rest, probably Southern Maine. You know, we're probably looking at Southern Maine when they have this because that's where the vast majority of the population is. You know, and infrastructure funding, while infrastructure maintenance, the 73 breaks that you had last year, is vital. The burden of these legacy costs should be balanced with affordability mandates under Maine law. A just and reasonable rate must not only support the utilities operations, but must also be a rate the community can actually afford to pay without sacrificing other essentials. And I think that's important for us to think about. You know, I don't know if the board actually goes out from grants, looks at grant funding to get some of this done, so it's not on the burden of the rest of us here that are forced to pay these bills. If I used up my five minutes, you have the information to the. You see, I will get it. [29:30] John Baron: It's freely available on the website. You can contact. My vote for raising rate is actually not. [29:44] Wayne Mallar: Well, that's great. [29:49] Carol Cotting: Hi, I have to rep. I started being with me. Pardon. Hi, my name is Carol Cotting. I live on [street]. I paid water bills at my house that I've owned for 27 years. That's got 108 bills. I need to preface this by saying that much of what I was talking about happened before General Manager took over his watch, but because it's so complicated, I feel I need to bring this up. I oppose the water increase of 10% for two reasons. Not that it's not needed because this infrastructure is ancient, not that living on a fixed income come with family makes it difficult too, but because I think the water department has not been fiscal fiscally managed well over the years before his watch particularly, and because I also have to invest in public into a water purification systems, not a filtration but a purification, because there is a cancer cluster on my street with the water main was installed replaced in 1999, and when it was replaced, it was put under 130 year old cities sewer laterals. They just put it down to the laterals. It was illegally when it was installed against city codes. It was against city codes. Now it's against CDC codes is against state regulations. The reason for that is that sewage can leak in to even pressurize water mains. The senior environmental hydrologist of the state of Maine has told me this, the University of Maine Specialist in Soil and Sciences saying this. So basically we have water mains that are under sewer laterals where it can leak in. It's a hazard in health that you work in public health nursing is a health hazard. People say that it's a pressurized main, but when the pressure equalizes at certain times, it can get in and at certain times means you can't test because you don't know when those certain times are. I had, and this water means there's 5 houses on my road. It's again, these, as soon as that it's under 130 years old, they're still laterals. So the city won't take any responsibility for them. So it's complicated. Okay, this water main serves five houses on my street. Of these five houses, three houses have had a family member develop atypical young age cancer. One person has died, one person recovered with a permanent injury, and one is not doing well, terminal, okay? So five houses with an illegal water main underneath it has a cancer cluster. Can't directly contribute at this point, but it's scary. And so, therefore, I have to also pay for a water filtration system, because purification system, because I was a 9 year old in my house a couple of days ago and asked for a drink of water. I was actually afraid to give the child that I'm 62. I don't want to die yet, but I don't want to have somebody else's kid on my hand. I brought this issue to the water department years ago, his predecessor and since 2021 to the city officials recently state health officials only have the codes dismissed or the answer on the code didn't exist then. This it did I looked it up the goals are designed to protect health and even now the city manager isn't even responding to me she won't return my calls or the or whatever I should not have to pay for an increase for water that is potentially dangerous to cancer costing on my street so the water department should have corrected and this is where I'm saying not fiscally managed on what department should have correct this issue by repairs that impact human health instead of spending money on Equipment such as smart meetings. It was supposed to save us money. They're nice. But, you know, when you've got a problem like this, it would have been cost effective to make the water safe. I bring the water main. To bring the water main up to codes to bring the water main up to codes in 2023 when the city decide to suddenly dig up the entire road and reconstruct it. But they chose not to at this time said he solicited us. David chose to ignore the lawyer that I had hired for. Ignore my lawyers letters and phone calls for 6 weeks, simply reconstructed the road. No water main just spent. Surely over 100,000 dollars. So now the. So, now, during that time, the 3rd resident was diagnosed with cancer. of cancer focusing primarily on keeping drinking water safe is the right thing to do and it's also cost affecting preventing potential litigations or lawsuits i think the puc needs to look into how funding was spent in the past and the state regulators that adhered to i mean patty used to work in a public health i mean this is not okay this is against codes we're talking like you prove those cancers were contributed by the water which we have not yet i would think that they would have massively replaced that water main in 2023 instead of ignoring my lawyer. I mean, wow. Anyways, thank you for listening. Anybody have questions or anything? [35:12] Wayne Miller: No, we had a- [35:13] Carol Cotting: We had a conversation today and he said, Sam's a decent guy. He's inherited this mess. My [35:25] Public commenter: name [35:34] Wayne Miller: is Wayne Miller. I live at [address]. I have many questions in different areas. I'm interested in the hydrants. who maintains the hydrants we do in all areas like in Herman and Hamden correct okay it's a private [35:52] Chuck Harrison: hydrant no so there are private hydrants pretty much everywhere but we don't need to okay [35:59] Wayne Miller: do you do any cooperative planning with the city engineering department as far as when how far in advance do you do your I mean do you have a replacement schedule for equipment and for water lines and hydrants and whatever throughout the city yes what's the range of it five-year plan 10-year plan 20 years learning it's a 30-year plan [36:27] Chuck Harrison: usually every capital improvement plan stretches out 30 years okay so you should have a pretty [36:32] Wayne Miller: good handle on what you need and when you need it correct so why do we have so many jumps all the time it seems to me you should be planning out your expenses as your to match your income not just increasing your income to match our expenses well some of it might not be where the [36:54] Chuck Harrison: city has a project like the cumberland i don't know if the city was saying we need to do cumberland as important as the water so if you guys don't plan to do something as far as the city doesn't plan to do something then it's more cost effective for all of the residents if we jump in like on the Cumberland project to get that done some of the areas that we deal with we have more breaks in those areas so they get up on the hierarchy scale of getting fixed so we're not out there fixing water main breaks we're replacing the pipe where we know we have known areas where water mains [37:32] Wayne Miller: So do I understand what you're saying is that if the city is planning a project, it's obviously cost effective for you to go with them. But the city plans their projects years ahead. So I assume you are coordinating this years ahead because you inferred that you jump to emergency projects as opposed to doing the projected project. And I'm just concerned about that. [37:59] Chuck Harrison: No, we're not jumping from one to the other. if there's one project that we can team up with the city or main dot or anybody else that's doing a project then we will do that and that's generally when we're looking for the state revolving funds which is a grant from the state to do those projects agreed now how much do you have in the capital reserve fund it's fully funded holly do you have that number in your head and what do you use that for those are for the projects like the cumberland projects [38:36] Wayne Miller: that is completely based off of capital funds what about the water tower project that was a we got bonds for that project so you didn't you didn't plan ahead for the that project we did but then if you planned ahead shouldn't there have been something in the reserve fund for [38:55] Chuck Harrison: all right some yes but we the puc sets the amount of money we can have [39:03] Wayne Miller: have a reserve fund we can't it's not are you at the maximum yes you are at the maximum i believe so well i don't believe so are we at the maximum [Patricia Hamilton: that's] confused you put the maximum in you can put [39:21] Scott Hardy: They say they don't say they tell you [39:32] Wayne Miller: how much not how much you have in the account, but how much you have to put into the account. Okay, well, it seems to me that we don't do well at planning. And you've known this water tower was coming up so that we're getting hit with a rate increase because of the water tower and your funding of it. [39:54] Chuck Harrison: Is that correct? No, I mean, I can't speak of that. I was not here. You know, I've been here. [40:00] Wayne Miller: Oh, no, but you know what the bond cost was now and you understand what the rates are. So how did the board plan? It was always planned to have a rate increase to cover the cost of the bonding for the water tower. Yes. Is that being fair to the user? You're not looking at, it seems to me that you should have been reserving this money long before you needed the tower. So when it came time to build the tower, you had money in the reserve to pay for a portion of it instead of bonding. Bonding is not always the answer. That's committing the next generation to payments, where funding it by reserve is the group that's already here is paying for it. [40:41] Wayne Mallar: So, Mr. Maller, sir. Yes. And I've been a water utility attorney for decades. And there's three mechanisms that the general manager said, were used as part of capital replacements and improvements. One is the capital improvement fund, which the PUC caps on an annual basis. The second is through rates. And the third is through bonds. It is not the case that it's irresponsible for a water utility to use bonds. It's not the first choice, but it may be a necessary choice. The other question you asked is why the incremental rate increases. I have represented water utilities that have generated crowds a hundred times the size of this crowd tonight that waited 10 years to increase their rates. That's what causes rate shocks. This incremental adjustment, and I think Mr. Party's sheet shows quite well the water district rate increases the lowest on the sheet. And so I would just urge caution in the conclusion that the district is doing anything but the responsible thing with the ratepayers funds. We have, we're a consumer-owned water utility. We have responsibility to the consumers, and we're regulated by the PC as a consumer-owned water utility. So I'd urge caution in drawing aspersions about the board and the general manager not properly using funds of the customers properly. We are regulated. We have to make the case every time. We want rates to cover our revenue requirement, and the revenue requirement is watched like a hawk by the public utilities commission. And again, the lowest rates on this sheet that Mr. Party passed out are the Bangalore water district. Right. So can I infer from that, did you think of [42:43] Wayne Miller: 10 rate is appropriate on a continuing basis, so how often do you think you should have a 10 increase? Sounds like you think it's okay to ask for it every year. [42:55] Patricia Hamilton: Excuse me? 30 more seconds. Yeah, fine. [43:01] Wayne Miller: I believe you took part of my time. [43:04] Wayne Mallar: Sure. Take more time if you need to. No,, that's fine. [43:07] Wayne Miller: I mean, I understand what you want, and I just can't see that you're appropriately providing the monies other than taking them from the current users as opposed to taking it a little at a time over the past few years. years, and bonding is not the answer. Bonding commits the next generation and the next generation. [43:27] Wayne Mallar: I got the generational point that you made very well, Mr. Maller, and that's why this water utility, in my opinion, is one of the more responsible water utilities in the state because they don't wait until they're in extremis and then go for the largest increase possible. They're trying to do it on a graduated, incremental basis because everybody acknowledges cost of living, cost of equipment, cost of capital facilities is going up. [43:56] Wayne Miller: I agree, but I don't think 10% can be handled by- [44:00] Wayne Mallar: We need to respect your opinion. [44:02] Wayne Miller: Well, fine, thank you. [44:13] Dave Rock: My name is Dave Rock, I'm from 11th Rock, Nevada. I appreciate calling on you. I just have a question. Did I understand, he brought up bonds, did I understand that you're not going to apply for a bond this year? [44:27] Chuck Harrison: Is that what you said at the beginning of the meeting? We don't have a project for a bond. Okay. [44:34] Dave Rock: And one other question, do we donate time and equipment to provide water lines to some apartment buildings that are being built, or I mean new buildings are being built, is anything free be being given to them? Not my knowledge. Okay. It should not be. All right, great. No bonds, that sound good. Thank you. No. [45:14] Patricia Hamilton: One online. Okay, so I don't know if any of the trustees would like to make any statements, so. [45:26] Public commenter: Frank Brang, the thing impressed me about the water district is they, we've got 200 miles of water main under the streets of Angora and 42 miles of that 200 miles is over 100 years old. No wonder we're seeing water brains break and this capital improvement account is to hopefully systematically replace those hundred-year-old water mains. It costs about two million dollars per mile to replace a water main, so you do the math. 42 miles, hundred year old, 42 miles of the water mains are 100 years old at 2. Million bucks a mile, that's 84 million dollars. So that's, that's how long range we're looking at for our anticipated expenses, so we have to plan for it. Thank you. Raising. [46:24] Patricia Hamilton: The plans, I think we're good. So I think that completes the hearing and I'd like to thank everyone for their comments. Thank you for coming today and for participating in the hearing. We really appreciate it. We'll take everything. We've got everything noted. Thank you.