Proposed administrative budget doubles and policies discussed

SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board was presented with a budget for the next fiscal year that doubles last year’s budget and discussed the User Agreement (UA) and District Rules and Regulations (R&R) at their May 16 meeting.

The proposed 2019 District Administrative Budget has doubled from $47,620 to $95,625.

The main increase in the budget is to pay for the part time District Manager at $38,400 per year. The manager was previously donated by Missoula County through an inter-local agreement. This winter the county determined it was incapable of continuing the agreement after their public works director who was working as the District Manager took a new job. The inter-local agreement expired in November.

Other line items that increased were mainly related to the need for extra meetings, hearings and legal fees as the District gears up to go to bid and begin construction.

About a third of the budget continues funding the reserve that will be used for grant matching dollars and subsidizing the operating and maintenance of Phase 1. The reserve fund was originally created from the money saved when the county started providing the District Manager in 2011.

The District is proposing to use the same methodology of spreading the assessments using a flat rate for properties with dwellings and a square footage rate for everything else. The properties with dwelling units would climb to $154.79 this next year compared to the $76.90 that has been paid annually for the last several years. The square footage price based on the actual size of lots with no dwellings would be doubled as well.

The budget will be discussed further at a future meeting before the board approves it.

The board is closing in on finalizing the UA. Once the UA is approved the District could start collecting the 148 signatures required by Rural Development (RD). However, the District’s attorney didn’t feel the board should try collecting signatures until the R&R are completed.

The issue the attorney pointed out is that the District would be asking landowners to sign the UA which mandates that they follow all the rules laid out in the R&R. If no R&R exists, the landowners wouldn’t know what they were agreeing to.

Curtiss felt that most of the important issues were included in the terms and conditions of the draft UA, however, she presented the board with a draft of the first couple of chapters of the R&R to begin working through.

Chapter 1, General Provisions includes sections titled Purpose and Policy, Authority, Jurisdiction, Applicability, Abbreviations, Definitions, Administration, Review of Administrative Actions, Non-Compliance, Interruption of Service and Liability of District.

Chapter 3, Wastewater Use Regulations deals with who can connect and what waste can and can’t be put into the sewer. One section that Curtiss recommended the board consider in the future is mandatory connections. Curtiss said it is too late to mandate Phase 1 property owners to hook up but it could be done for future phases.

Chapters 2, 4 and 5 are reserved for future additions to the R&R.

The main thing Curtiss felt was missing from the UA is the operating and maintenance (O&M) cost but that won’t be addressed until Chapter 6 Rates, Fees and Charges.

Curtiss said that there was an issue with the way the District previously estimated the price per lot for the O&M. While Curtiss thinks the estimated O&M can be reduced from $230,000 down to around $200,000 per year, it was proposed to spread across all 200 lots in Phase 1 equally. The issue is that vacant lots cannot be charged the same as lots that are using the system.

Vacant lots that are not using the system can’t be charged certain things such as electricity, operator wages, chemicals and other things related to the actual service provided. Vacant lots can be charged for other things including maintaining the system and some of the District administrative costs. Curtiss is working to sort out the O&M budget that will be needed to work on the rates and fees chapter of the R&R.

The District’s new website, seeleysewer.org, is up and running. Secretary Felicity Deery said she has been working on adding more information to the site such as current and past agendas and minutes. The District will begin using it to post documents such as the draft UA and draft R&R to help the public participate in the creation of these policies.

Curtiss said that RD recommended the board start having two meeting per month, one for regular business and one more of a work session where they could take care of more specific things like the UA and R&R.

The need for extra meetings couldn’t have been more apparent being that after two and a half hours there were still a half dozen unaddressed items on the agenda. The board moved the remaining agenda items to a future meeting.

The board scheduled a meeting June 6 at 5:15 p.m. in addition to their regular meeting June 20. There was discussion of having the meetings at a larger venue but the location was not set at press time.