Paul Szmal: Friday morning means we recap the Auburn City Council meeting from the night before with City Clerk Chuck Mason, who joins us now. Good morning. Happy Friday.
Guest: Good morning, Paul.
Paul Szmal: And Earth Day was the 22nd. The council meeting was last night on the 23rd, but there was an Earth Day proclamation that was part of the council meeting yesterday.
Guest: That's right. And to start out, we want to give a quick shout out and thanks to some area companies that came to town on Wednesday during an Earth Day and helped us clean up some city parks in the downtown area. Baxter, the company Baxter from over in skinny Atlas Falls, they came over and helped us clean out a Veterans Memorial Park and some of the parks in the downtown area. And then we had employees from the local NYSEG as well as Unity House. Those two organizations teamed up and they cleaned up the Market Street Park area in the downtown along as well as some of the areas along the arterial. And those groups all came out on Earth Day itself, April 22nd. And last night, Mayor Genitino with a proclamation for Earth Day and presented it to Dom Gambiani, who is the chair of the Auburn Beautification Commission. And this weekend, Saturday morning, tomorrow morning, the Auburn Beautification Commission is holding its annual Awasco River cleanup event. The event starts with a 9.30 a.m. quick tour of the Mill Street hydroelectric facility provided by our city Department of Municipal Utility staff. And then from 10 till noon, volunteers will be out with garbage bags and rakes and cleaning up the Awasco River area in the area of Mill Street Dam all the way down to downtown Auburn. Volunteers are welcome. You meet at the Mill Street Dam, which is between Osborne Street and Miller Street. And come on out. There's light rain in the forecast, but this will be a rain or shine event. And we got rained on a little bit last year, but we still had a great turnout. And anybody interested, come on out. We take every volunteer we can get, do a nice spring cleaning in the Awasco River area.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, just bring your rain gear tomorrow because I have a feeling it's going to be a little bit wet.
Guest: That's right. Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason is with us here on FLX Morning. So that was the Earth Day proclamation and talking about the Earth Day event happening tomorrow and the cleanup along the river. Let's dive into what happened at the meeting last night. And again, the central focus was on the final phase of budget presentations from the various different subunits, if you will, of city government, including the municipal utilities budget.
Paul Szmal: That's right.
Guest: Seth Johnson, director of our municipal utilities, was on hand. And these departments include the city water department, the sewer department and our power utility fund, as well as Seth serves as the city's engineer. So we did get a presentation last night from the engineering services department. And Seth walking through the various budgets, an awful lot of work that's been happening with water and sewer infrastructure in recent years and will just continue into this next budget year. We're underway with the, we're actually more than underway, we're almost at the conclusion of the $90 million wastewater treatment plant facility upgrade, which has put the biodigester dryer system in, which is going to lower the cost of sludge disposal for that system. Both water and sewer rates proposed for a 2% increase. Seth going through the numbers of that last night. It is in the grand scheme of things. Nobody really ever wants to hear about an increase, but when you do the numbers and take a look at the impact that the actual increases would have, it's pretty minimal. If you are a minimum water user, it's about a $6 annual increase with the water and sewer rate adjustment. And then if you utilize more water, your billing is based on consumption. So a minimal person, that's six units of water that they are able to have paying the minimal amount and they would receive a $6 increase annually, works out to about $1.40, I think quarterly. And so it's a pretty reasonable increase, keeps both those funds in good shape for the next fiscal year and the future, and allows for some infrastructure improvements to continue to occur.
Paul Szmal: Okay. That was actually going to be my next question, Chuck, was does this money go into the general fund or does it get rolled back in for things like infrastructure?
Guest: Exactly. A combination of both. There is some administrative charges that go back to the general fund, but these enterprise funds are their own setup because not only do we service areas that are within the municipality of Auburn, but we also have a lot of wholesale customers with the surrounding towns that we provide water and sewer services to. So there's rates for our municipal users here within the city of Auburn, then we have wholesale rates for the business that we're doing with the towns. And that's why these water and sewer funds are set up as enterprise funds separate from the general fund. But there is administrative service charges that come back to the general fund to support the general government services that actually support the water and the sewer funds themselves, such as our city comptroller's office, the city finance, our city manager, things like that. It's kind of like all supported by the general city government. So the good news is while we've got some issues to deal with with the general fund, the water and sewer fund are in good shape and power utility fund is a slightly different story. The hydroelectric facilities are very dependent on good weather, normal weather. We take a hit on power utility if we have a drought like we did kind of the second half of last summer and into the fall, there was quite a bit of dry weather. And when there's not a lot of flow in the Wasco River, we basically are not able to produce hydroelectric power through these hydroelectric facilities that are on the river. On the other extreme as well, Paul, if there's too much water flowing through the river during our high water events, we also will oftentimes have to shut down those hydroelectric facilities because the water pressure is too much for the turbines. So you really need to have kind of perfect weather conditions. Last year was quite, we experienced a very heavy rain, wet spring, and then a drought in the fall. So the conditions last year were just not good at all for our hydroelectric power. So the power utility fund is basically subsidized by the general fund and we hope for the best as far as future years, as far as the weather goes, because perfect weather helps with those funds tremendously. So our engineering department provides a lot of the services, Paul, for the road program construction that we hear about, the Lake Ave Bridge, projects like that. They presented last night as well. Their 8% and 11% scenarios would cut a lot of the contractual work that they do, and they would probably try to make the difference with the employees that are within that department by cutting out some of the extra contract work that they do. And then the next presentation, which was significant, was the city controller was there with the revenue projections. So she walked pretty much line by line of all the major categories of how she has determined so far what the revenues would be for the city. She's admitted to being quite conservative in her revenue analysis so far. The last couple of budget years, we were actually, you know, projecting some revenues in some categories that did not end up coming through. So she's made those adjustments with lower revenue amounts, and the council took a good close look at that. And then to wrap things up, Paul, we are now through the month of April. We have seen all of the city department presentations. We have no council meeting next week because it's the fifth Thursday of the month. So at the end of the meeting last night, the council letting the city manager know that they are not waiting till May 7th on the budget calendar. May 7th was slated for council input. The council last night letting the manager know that they are wanting the manager to get going on bringing them a balanced budget that would have no more than an 8% property tax increase and take a look at the scenarios under the 8% budget cut categories to strike a balance. The mayor and council giving the city manager the direction last night, take these next three weeks, come back to us on May 14th with a balanced budget with those parameters. So the council already making the decision it's going to meet in the middle with a little bit of input from the taxpayers, a little bit of input from the organization having to make some cuts, and hopefully some good results from the retirement incentive that's been offered. And we'll have a much better understanding of where things are at exactly come about three weeks from now during this budget process. So a little bit of a break in the action, but we'll be back in the month of May to talk more about getting this budget to the finish line.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. And I guess this is the point, Chuck, where the heavy lifting begins.
Guest: Exactly. But it's also we're further along in the process now that we have a better understanding of what exactly some of the expenses and revenues will be. We are still waiting on the state budget. It's kind of looking like there won't be a state budget till mid-May, but a lot's going to hinge on how successful that early retirement incentive is for some of the decisions that our employees will make. If we have quite a few employees take advantage of that, it might help offset some of the cuts that have been discussed. And the goal would be to try to get through this thing with as minimal staffing cuts as possible. So we'll know more in three weeks. So we'll take a little breather here and be back in action during the month of May to continue this discussion. And that's why the state budget being on time matters when people talk about it, just so you're aware. It's definitely very helpful for the state budget to be on time. That's for sure.
Paul Szmal: All right, Chuck. We'll take the time off next week and we'll catch up with you in a couple of weeks.
Guest: Sounds good, Paul. Have a great weekend.
