The Tippecanoe and Chapman Lake Regional Sewer District had a full house at their public hearing and regular board meeting last night, Monday, Aug. 14. The board heard from a couple of people who had questions about the project. Pictured, from left: Bob Weaver, Jeff Thornburgh, Kim Hathaway and Chuck Simpson. Photo by Marissa Sweatland.

By Marissa Sweatland
InkFreeNews

NORTH WEBSTER — Any time the Tippecanoe Chapman RSD wants to pass a new rate or charge, a public hearing must be held. During the Monday, Aug. 14, public hearing and board meeting was a full house.

The board approved a use ordinance that will be applied to future connections. The use ordinance marries with Warsaw’s use ordinance since, ultimately, the sewage flows to Warsaw. Even though the use ordinance will not affect sewage rates, there are newly applied penalties and fines if the ordinance is violated.

The board also passed an amendment to rate ordinance, which introduced a capacity fee. A capacity fee is what will be charged, beginning in 2024, to connect those to the system who were not a part of the original project. As of now, project members are paying debt services at an interim rate, which will continue. The capacity fee was created as a way for new property owners who hadn’t been paying previously to “buy in” to the system and put them on equal footing as other project members.

Deb Beck spoke during public comment, asking why her neighbors are being charged $15,000 to join the project. The lot Beck was referring to was vacant when the project originally began; they bought the lot two months ago.

“The vacant lot was not included in the project, so money was not borrowed to buy them a grinder pump to be installed. They were not a part of the initial project. They are not paying a $15,000 connection fee, that is the price of equipment. We already closed on the loan for the project, there is no money available for them,” Andrew Boxberger explained.

Joyce Delatorre asked about accruing fees if their cottage were to sell and be rebuilt.

“There would be no additional fees, they would connect to the existing grinder,” Boxberger explained.

Upon the start of the regular board meeting, Kim Hathaway updated the board on the monthly financial report and bank reconciliation. Jeff Rowe, partner at Baker Tilly, gave the board a “pretty big overview” on construction spending and operation spending to give the board a feel to where they are in the project.

“With the debt service reserve, what is required, is over a period of five months or five years, 60 months, the time we close, we transfer 1/60 of an annual debt service payment. We set it aside in an account  and that account continues to accumulate, every month for 60 months. Until you deposited essentially the maximum annual loan payment in the account, and then that money just sits there. It’s kind of like a savings account, but also like an insurance policy. The SRF knows that you know that you have set aside one years’ worth of bond payments that in case if the district reaches financial difficulties, you can tap into that if needed,” Rowe explained.

Hathaway asked the board for approval of payment of invoices that are paid on a monthly basis: Mediacom, Bank of New York, North Webster Community Center, Baker Tilly, Gemini Billing Services, Carson LLP, JPR. Some will be paid out of the DSRF loan and some will pay out of the USDA loan. The board approved total payments of $290,497.84.

Steve Henschen, senior staff engineer at JPR, updated the board about two items the engineering committee discussed: customer connection process and RFP process for ultimate operations.

Currently, the projected construction completion date is end of 2024. However, one contractor is on two contracts: Chapman Lake, contract A, and eastern side of Tippecanoe Lake, contract B. The contractor is on a schedule where their full attention is on Chapman Lake right now and they are currently projecting completion of March or April 2024. Henschen suggested if Chapman Lake is ready early, it could be beneficial to slowly phase in on the new system. There are 1,800 customer connections to be done.

Henschen proposed, per the rate and use ordinance, there is a $250 base fee for the initial permit and application process per customer and $50 per site inspection visit. Depending on the circumstances, the typical process is two inspection visits. One is when they build the gravity sewer lateral and making that connection, then there is a follow up visit to ensure the septic tank has been abandoned.

“So we are looking at $300-$350 for the typical connection inspection. This would create a revenue of $540,000-$630,000 from the permit application process once you multiple it by the 1,800 connections,” Henschen explained to the board.

“The revenue would cover our expenses. We’re not trying to come out ahead or behind. We want to cover the cost of this process,” Jeff Thornburg added.

A formal proposal will be presented at the next regular board meeting.

Henschen provided a JPR update for the board, mentioning property owners are still being met with. Since Chapman Lake has so much pipe and conduits in the ground, locations are pretty well set. If changes are made, there could be added costs.

He reported not much has changed on the easement status. There are 34 at Tippecanoe and Chapman dropped from 15 to 12.

Henschen reported invoice mailings, which are for nonstandard installations and/or new grinders requested for vacant lots. So far, $151,395 in variance payments on this project have been commanded.

The board approved three change orders.

Contract A was a change order for $41,177.79. Contract B was a change order for $21,056 with one additional day requested.

Contract C was a no cost change. The change was to extend the milestone completion date to match the final completion date.

The board approved three pay applications.

Contract A has withdrawn 59% of available contract budget. Contract B has withdrawn 34%. Contract C has withdrawn 6.4%.

To date, 36% of the overall construction budget has been spent.

The next regular Tippy Chapman sewer board meeting will be held 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 11 at the North Webster Community Center, 301 N Main St.