Board adopts FY22 operating budget

SEELEY LAKE – At its April 15 meeting, the Seeley Lake Sewer District Board adopted their fiscal year 2022 budget and discussed assessment methods and filling a vacancy on the Board.

District Manager Jean Curtiss informed the Board that she plans to resign her position at the end of June.

Director Beth Hutchinson felt that going forward at this time the District could use a manager that was more of a placeholder to meet state law and reduce their operating budget accordingly. She said the manager could be as simple as being paid to attend meetings once a month but she recommended they consider someone who would work around 20 hours per month instead of the currently budgeted 80 hours per month.

Hutchinson suggested the hourly pay could be reduced as well being that the tasks performed would be less technical than when the District had a project in the works. The District currently pays Curtiss $40 per hour and Hutchinson felt it could be reduced to $25 - $30 per hour.

Hutchinson said these changes could reduce the budget for the manager from $38,000 to $10,000 for this year and then they could raise the budget next year if they needed a manager for more hours.

Director Pat Goodover said he felt they needed more of a half time manager like Curtiss and should budget for twice the amount Hutchinson suggested. He said they could always try to find someone to do the job in fewer hours but they needed the budget for the higher amount. He suggested $30,000 but then later raised it another thousand. $31,200 was budgeted for the manager.

At last month’s meeting, the Board voted to put $25,000 in the budget to drill additional monitoring wells to better understand the groundwater pollution. Curtiss and a member of the public questioned if the District would be prepared to drill this year or if they could put them off until next year.

Hutchinson said she felt the wells needed to be done sooner than later and the data collected from them would add a lot of clarity to the pollution issue.

Missoula City-County Health Department Environmental Health Director Shannon Therriault said the Health Department is very interested in the possibility that the District would have money for additional test wells.

Therriault said having funding for the test wells could help leverage other funding for a more rigorous study of the groundwater. The Board left the money in the budget for the test wells.

Curtiss said she has no idea what the Board’s insurance will cost this next year. In the past it has been budgeted at $2,000. However, the Board has been sued twice in the last couple years. One company Curtiss checked with refused to provide insurance and the current insurance company said they would let the District know if they would carry them and the rate when the policy renews this summer. She put $10,000 in the budget.

President Tom Morris suggested they consider raising the rate they pay the secretary since she has not raised her rates in several years. The other Directors agreed and raised it from $15 to $18 per hour.

A significant amount of time was spent discussing the District’s reserve funds. The District’s February financial statements show that there would be about $18,000 in the reserve but the statements do not show several items that have been paid for this year.

Things that were not in the budget include paying off legal bills from the previous year and paying for the bond election. This year’s budget also contains things that are tied to the project that will not be needed like designing future phase of the collection system. The Board has not amended this year’s budget to account for these differences.

Morris said that moving forward the Board should amend the budget when needed. Curtiss said she had planned on giving the Board a better idea of what was spent and year-end estimates but she was having computer problems.

Curtiss suggested that no money be put into the reserve this year since there should still be money in the reserve fund. She said next month she could have a better estimate for what would be in the reserve at the end of the year.

The Board voted unanimously to adopt an operating budget of $124,102 for fiscal year 2022 that begins in July of 2021. This is a significant reduction from fiscal year 2021’s budget of $214,329.

Following the adoption of the operating budget, the Board discussed how to spread the assessment across the properties in the District to raise the amount needed. State law limits how the assessments can be spread. This always creates a lot of controversy because all of the options have downsides that end up costing certain groups of property owners significantly more than others.

Last year the Board opted to use the market value of the land option. This put a significant amount of burden on the more valuable properties along the lake. Most lakefront owners ended up paying more than $1,500 for the year while most residential properties in town paid less than $150.

Previously the assessment method put an equal amount on all property with dwelling units and an amount based on the square footage of property with no dwelling units. This method put about 25% of the assessment on the mill due to it occupying about 25% of the land in the District.

This year the Board is considering a couple of different options.

One option is an equal assessment where every lot in the District would pay an equal amount regardless of its use or size. Using this method every lot would pay $245.75 for the year.

Another option they considered spreads the cost over residential, commercial and vacant land based on the Department of Revenues’ classifications of their area. Some properties would have more than one classification. For instance, a property with a house and a commercial structure on it would be split between those two classifications. The Board could then set a factor to assess the different classifications to put more or less burden on the different class properties.

Due to the complexity, the Board will post a chart on the District’s website seeleysewer.org so people can look up their property and see how the different methods would impact them.

Cheri Thompson was the only applicant to fill the vacancy created when Walt Hill resigned his position. Thompson was not able to attend the meeting so the Board will schedule a special meeting to interview and possibly appoint her before next month’s regular meeting.

The next scheduled regular Board meeting is May 20 at 6 p.m. The agenda and information on how to participate will be posted on the District’s website seeleysewer.org.