Committee Members Present: Russ Silbiger, Jac Nickels, and Troy Brown Jr. 
Committee Members Absent: Dan Jovick, Carlos Reichenshammer, and Allen Douma
Staff Present: Bill Molnar, Mike Faught, and Tami De Mille-Campos
Consultant Present via phone: Ray Bartlett (Financial Analyst)
Council Liaison Absent: Rich Rosenthal
Transportation Commissioner Present: Joseph Graf
 
Mike pointed out that we did not have a quorum so the committee couldn’t take action on anything during the meeting but the meeting could continue due to the scheduling of the conference call with our consultant, Ray Bartlett. Informational notes will be taken for submission to the full committee at its next meeting. 
 
WATER SDC
Ray provided an example of the current sdc and the proposed sdc based on a 2,000 square foot home. Bill asked if the committee wondered where Ashland’s SDC’s stack up with other cities around Oregon. He said he had remembered seeing an email, possibly from the League of Oregon Cities, which showed that Ashland was sort of in the middle. Bill didn’t recall the details of the document. Mike asked Ray if that was something that he could take a look at (as long as it wouldn’t exceed 25% of the contract amount). Ray agreed that he could look into that.  
 
Ray then stepped through the “Update - water system development charge” document (see attached). The tables discussed in the document show the changes to the current water system development charge (SDC) and compares the current water SDC to that proposed in the 2012 Comprehensive Water Master Plan (WMP, Final December 2012), and to this proposed SDC based on changes that have occurred since 2012.
 
Table 1 summarizes these three calculations of the water SDC for residential and for commercial & industrial users on a ¾-inch water meter.
 
Table 2 shows the entire schedule of changes by meter size for commercial & industrial users.
 
Table 3 shows the changes in the cost basis of the reimbursement fee.
 
Table 4 is from the WMP (Table 9-16) and shows that the Emergency TAP line project is deleted.
 
Table 5 shows the list of qualified improvement fee projects and the adjustments made to the original WMP projects as of this year.
 
Table 6 shows the allocation of the eligible improvement fee projects to residential and commercial & industrial users based on the expected number of ¾-inch equivalent meters each customer class is expected to use.
 
SEWER SDC
Ray noted there weren’t any new changes to what was proposed at the April 4^th, 2014 meeting. It is pretty much the same as what came out of the master plan. The calculations were increased based on the change in asset value from 2011 to 2013. The proposed improvement fee resulted in a slight increase, adjusting for inflation. Ray pointed out when the SDC was put together originally for the current sdc there were pretty large reductions made in the calculation of the sdc, in part because the City was charging a tax on food and beverage, much of which was going towards paying for improvements to the sewer system. Those corrections have still been made but the current sdc was based on an artificially low sdc. The capital projects have increased due mostly to a pretty dramatic increase in sewage treatment requirements.
 
The committee would like to see a summary of the current and proposed, in addition to the rates. Staff will provide that.
 
Transportation SDC
Russ questioned how they can determine the Transportation sdc based on a list of capital improvements that may or may not be completed. Faught stated that is something that the committee will have to decide. Ray pointed out the master plan eliminated the low priority and developer driven projects. The question is whether the committee wants to trim back any of the high and medium projects. Transportation is harder to predict. Russ commented that maybe the Transportation sdc is something that the sdc committee needs to revisit more often than every ten years. Mike said he actually recommends that all master plans be updated every five years.
 
The next meeting will be held at 1:00 pm on July 8^th, 2014.
 
Tami De Mille-Campos, Administrative Assistant