Bangor council reviews wastewater, TIF and downtown district budgets

[0:03] Susan Hawes: All right, we are live. [0:08] Michael Beck: good evening it's the budget workshop agenda for june 3rd 2026 it's 5 15 p.m before we begin first order business since chair hawes is not here we'll have to nominate someone to chair tonight does anyone have a nomination for tonight i will nominate councillor beck second all right any opposed we have to do a roll call though i believe because we have two that are on zoom so we'll start with those two the motion on the floor is for me to chair temporarily tonight councillor carson yes okay Councillor Mallar? Yes. Councillor Leonard? Yes. Councillor Fish? Yes. Councillor Deane? Yes. Councillor Walker? Yes. And Councillor Flinn? Yes. Okay, well, I guess let's get started. The first item will be the wastewater treatment plant, and I believe our director Amanda Smith will be taking this over. Yes, thank you. Amanda Smith, Director of Water. [1:11] Unidentified department director: Quality. This department includes both the wastewater treatment plant and the sewer department, so this budget encompasses them both together as a whole. Our first, I'll go over our core functions, what we've been up to recently, what we plan to be up to this coming year, and just as a brief overview, our department consists of the second largest wastewater treatment plant in San Luis. It is a biological treatment plant, and it is 18 million gallons a day average is the design. We treat on our average day. About just under 8 million gallons per day. Our sewer system is one of the oldest and most complex in the state, and that is 150 miles worth of publicly owned sewer line. I also like to throw in there, but there is a good portion as well that's still privately owned. Our job basically on a daily basis is to protect both the Kanduskade River and the Pobscott River from the pollution of raw sewage, that is domestic residential raw sewage, commercial and some industrial sewage. Our recent accomplishments. Have been some much needed upgrades. The bulk of our treatment plant was built in 1993. Much of that treatment plant is coming to the end of its useful life in a lot of ways, and a lot of equipment, a good portion of our treatment plant is still the 1967 treatment plant, and so we've spent a lot of time upgrading that. The most intensive project that we've done over the last year is the completion of our SCADA project, which is our computer system, our controls at the treatment plant. We still have a portion of that to do in the upcoming year in the upcoming two years that will address our remote sites that are spread throughout the city our constellations and other regular strategies that we have throughout the city i want to pause to tell you that you have an amazing crew both at the treatment plant and on the sewer i spend a lot of time with my involvement through the main water environment association with a lot of other crews in the state of maine that do sewer and waste water and I would put them against any one of them any day I'm very proud of them and they've been breaking records again this is the third year in a row especially on the sewer end of things with the work that they've done and uncovering and getting into places that haven't ever been seen in the history of the city so that's really probably our best accomplishment goals for the upcoming year a lot of what we do because the city is under an apa consensus from 2015. the city's been on under consent decree for decades on going in order to mitigate the combined sewer overflows so you'll hear me refer to cso's and what that is this city was designed to combine storm water and sewer in the pipes under the streets not all of that can go through the treatment plant the treatment plant can only do at best 43 million gallons in a day so when you have massive snow melts big rain events in order to protect not just the treatment plant but infrastructure meaning roads and private a property like people's basements there are relief points eight licensed outfall strike city that will relieve some of that flow during those storm occasions or high snow melt occasions so the city operates under consent decree in order to mitigate that to remove those combined sewer were overflows we have accomplished nearly 90 percent since the early 90s and it's this last 10 that is the most complex it is the high hanging fruit it is the most labor intensive and expensive and we've been working on how we've been working our way through mitigating that over the last 10 years, so 2015, our consent decree was put in place. It's really broken up into three five-year sections and each of those is negotiated as you get to them. So it's important from a budgetary perspective to understand where we're at. This 2026 is the last year of that second phase. So five years ago, we negotiated this phase with EPA. We are on the tail end of it. We really have one more project, and that is the sewer separation project on, we call it, Meadow Brook, which is a separation project on Columbia Street that will reduce CSO outfall activations down behind the Pancras Cap building that would overflow into the Condescay River. That also makes it a little bit of a quiet spell for FY27 when it comes to our immediate capital needs, because we haven't completed negotiating what our other big projects are going to be for the next five years. We have a very good idea of what the total is going to be for the five years, but we don't have any particular projects that have, when we get to the end of the negotiation, we'll know exactly which projects we'll be doing. So when you, when we get to that point, you'll see a lot of capital. It was front loaded into the four years following FY27. Aside from that, our goals this year, we would really like to do our aeration upgrade. So our aeration upgrade, our treatment plant as I mentioned is biological, and all of that microbial life needs oxygen to stay alive. So we have four very massive blowers that breathe air into that water to keep them alive. The way that the plant was originally designed in 1993, when energy was cheap, makes it so that we actually over airy, and we've over iterated for a really long time, sometimes tenfold, but there are no controls built into that system to allow us to dial it back. And 2026, one of our largest expenses is electricity. The department utilizes nearly a million dollars worth of electricity every year, so it's really important for us to be able to dial that air back at times when we can. We started down this road about 10 years ago on this aeration upgrade, and there have been times that money has had to be called, that project has been felt multiple times because critical needs came up, critical infrastructure that had no redundancy that needed to be addressed, and we're at a point now where we'd really like to move forward with that. We have most of the funding for it. We actually put it out to bid last November, and we got a sole bidder, and it was estimated the engineer's estimate from our consultant was 2 million and it came in at 2.8 so you will see a small amount of money to make up the difference put into this year's capital. So that is one of our goals. It's difficult sometimes to be able to focus on the things that we have need to focus on outside of the consent decree because that consent decree drives so much of our capital investment and we've got to be careful not to forget about the other things like this project and other infrastructure that needs to be addressed that doesn't necessarily help us eliminate CSOs. Aside from that you know we're continuing to focus on our new employees. We have in the last 10 years had a nearly complete turnover of all of our personnel mainly due to retirements. A lot of our personnel came in about the same time when that secondary part of the treatment plant was built in the early 90s and they very much all retired in the last 10 years and so that is another focus is framing and retaining is very important and the other thing that we're working on if i from getting through this negotiation with epa on this phase is the dep is in the process of renewing our discharge permit that has been several years in the making and we're getting very close to that will bring some changes operationally that we've also got reflected in our upcoming operational budget. For example, we used to have to disinfect our discharge only from May 15th through September 30th every year. And that is going to be extended by one month on either end, which does impact operations, mainly for chemical dosing, for chlorination and dechlorination. Any questions before we get into operating? [10:46] Michael Beck: Any questions, comments, Director? [10:50] Unidentified department director: Okay, so say I know this is your last department. I'm not going to take it personally. Our budget is very sort of run of the mill this year, mainly because we are in the face that we are. So it's a lot of business as usual. If you look down through our operating numbers, there are a little bit of fluctuations here and there compared to prior years. One thing when it comes to operations is we're very weather dependent, so we try to budget our operations on an average year. When we end up in a drought year, we end up with a surplus because we don't spend as much on chemicals, we don't spend as much on electricity, and you never know when we're going to get a wet weather year. And in those years, we end up on the flip side where we're spending a lot more than we could possibly anticipate. So we look at the prior five and we budget for average weather. That's the biggest impact to our to our operations. There aren't any really crazy changes. We weren't asking for any new programs this time around. If we look at revenue in order to keep up with operational costs, you know, we are seeing increases in chemicals, electricity. We've talked a lot about biosolids disposal. The revenue that you see here includes a rate increase that is nine percent. Now that is one of the larger rate increases we've seen since I've been in Bangor, but we've we're at we're at a point with the EPA where we they take financial capability into consideration when it comes to what they're going to require of us in capital projects. One of the things that they look at is where our rates are. Our rates right now, the way that our rates are, we charge per 100 cubic feet of water, which nobody knows, that's not everyday language. So basically 748 gallons is one unit that we charge for. We charge nine dollars and four cents right now for our rates. That would bring it up to nine dollars and eighty five cents for 748 gallons of water. Most of the communities in this area, you know, just doing the average Hamden, Brewer, Oreo, whole town, we are about two dollars under everyone else. Even with this rate increase, what that's going to mean for the average residential user right now is three dollars and 84 cents per month. So it's not a big impact on the on the user in dollars. So nine percent sounds like a lot, but it's three dollars and 84 cents for your average residential. Our minimum bill is it will be an impact at two dollars and 43 cents per month. Now we are, EPA looks at cost of sewer versus gross income in any community. And the threshold for them really is two and a half percent of median household income. And we are still well under two at that rate. The only other thing that really stands out, and then you can ask me whatever questions you have, I just try to anticipate what questions you may have, is under the changes in net. So a lot of these are in line with what you've seen in other departments. They're really not controlled, you know, under the department's control, health insurance increases, things like that. The only thing that really stands out as far as I could see is under other personnel related. So I thought you might want to know what that, what that number is, and that's a few different things. We had a position from vacant for a long time that we ended up taking that money right out of payroll and putting it in the operating budget in order to use contracted services. At this point, we're bringing that kind of operating and putting it back in the payroll budget. The other thing that includes is we have a very key retirement that we are anticipating next summer, and we have budgeted to overlap that position for three months from April to July in order to try to retain some institutional knowledge and get some training before we lose that employee. And then there was 22,000 of that number is just a wage adjustment on three positions. You know, we've, we've been looking at studies for main water environment association, and also Lewiston had a really good wage study recently, and so they, we identified three decisions in the department that really need to be addressed. Again, our focus is on employee retention, and so we want to make sure that those three positions stay competitive. And I guess I'll pause before I get into capital if you have any questions now. Thank you. Just a quick question. What is the dollar amount of the average residential sewer bill? You know, I didn't do that. I didn't do it that way. So it would be under $120 per quarter. Okay, so it's probably like 114, because that's what mine is. And I'm thinking so I'm probably an average residential customer. Yeah, well, the minimum, I'm sorry, the minimum is 12 units. People average residential use 19. So just quick math, it would be under 190 just because it's under $10 per unit. [16:59] Michael Beck: Any other questions or comments before we move on? Councilor Fitch? [17:03] Carolyn Fish: A couple. Last year, the electric increase, the report was 170. This year, the electric decreased by 400. So is that just the way that it was reported that there was some kind of carry over and adjusted,, adjusted within the reporting frame of this? [17:25] Unidentified department director: From 26 to 27. Yes, that did. That was. Yeah, that is a calculation in the spreadsheet. So it might have just been a matter of a day off from one year to the next. And we are, since this has been done, we have renegotiated a contract with Constellation. So hopefully [17:49] Carolyn Fish: that will be a little bit less than that. And along that same line, if I can, capital fund, I know you're gonna go there, but the capital funding last year had decreased by almost 400,000, but this year I see we're increasing so by 589. So I'm thinking there was a capital project that it was just the way that it was funded, but didn't come in and wasn't paid out. Is that what I'm [18:16] Unidentified department director: understanding here? That one actually, I believe, is because there was a project that was, there were two projects actually that were approved to be funded through the unassigned fund balance. So they actually do come out of [18:33] Michael Beck: the operating. Thank you. Hands online. All right, please, the director for people capital. Our [18:46] Unidentified department director: capital is a little bit light this year compared to most years, like I mentioned, because we're in a pause on our consent degree. We'll go over a few. I have really good news I just got a few hours ago. So this year, a lot of our major projects ending in the million dollars, we try to apply for state revolving families that goes through DEP. It goes to, every project is submitted, it goes through a scoring process, and this year was probably one of the more competitive of all years. They ended up with over 400 million dollars worth of requests for 80 million dollars worth of funding that they can approve. So it was highly competitive. We submitted four projects, and two of our projects on our capital were approved. Yeah, so that's a little over six million. Now that is funding through the SRF program is a bond that is not a grant, but the interest rate as it currently stands is 2.8 percent, which is a significant savings on six million dollars compared to what we'd be looking at, a four or five percent if we go elsewhere. And that would be the Perry Road pump station project and the Perry Road separation project. The Prairie Road separation project is almost certainly going to be one of the projects that's negotiated with, are going to be imposed on us, that we've offered to the EPA. I'll run down the, through these really quickly. You see the skated project in the next two years, that's finishing up our remote sites, like I mentioned, and then from there, all of our entire skater system will have been Complete and we will be budgeting just an annual small capital amount to keep that up. It's it's very software controls related, so they don't have a long lifespan, and we don't want to be in a position again where we need to spend five million dollars within a short period of time to replace our entire system. The next one is the aeration upgrade over bid. It's we have five hundred thousand dollars in there. We're expecting that we can get a bid around two and a half million. We already have two million worth of funding that's just going to get us over the hump so we can get that project done. Prairie Road pump station design, and then next year you'll see the actual 4.8 million for construction. That's one of the ones that was moved on today. The CCTV van replacement, I want to mention to you that for the last five years we've been carrying two CCTV van replacements on the capital, and in anticipation we have two CCTV vans right now that we run daily inspecting sewer lines. That takes usually we have two people per van inspecting the lines and coding all of the defects that they find in every sewer. I've had both of those vans need to be replaced, the vans and the equipment. They've been riding on the capital improvement plan for a long time at about $450,000 each. And technology has come to the point where, that is the most recent quote that we got for the technology that we're gonna spec out for this one van. And with AI and the new technology that we have and the advancements in the canvassing system and the speed at which we can canvass, this one van will replace the two. So we will be running just one van from that point forward. So that number has bumped up from capital plans that you've seen recently, but it's just on one van instead of the two, which will be a cost savings upfront, and it will be a cost savings for labor. That's labor that can be allocated elsewhere, which is And then further down, you'll see also, we currently have a software called IT Pipes. We are looking into other softwares. Right now there's one in particular that is Sewer AI, again, it looks like it would be a much more thorough and cost saving software. So we put that on the capital. And the other large ones that you'll see up and coming is the Kmart Comp Station Elimination. We've talked a lot about the Bengal Mall area and the restrictions for development there. And this is to go toward completing those phases. So there was ARPA money assigned to the first phase of that, which is boring under the interstate and upsizing that line. But there's a lot of work to do upstream of that in order to really open up that capacity for development in that area. BPI is a potential DOT project on Main Street where they would be beautifying Main Street, and as they did their work, we want to be prepared with approval for funding to go in and also replace the sewer lines and separate out storm water from those lines. That's one of those areas that really we can't justify the bang for the buck for us to go in there rip up main street by ourselves and just address the sewer lines but if dot is going to be in there anyway and the water district is going to be in there anyway we want to be ready to be able to do that would that would be very beneficial in many ways but especially toward our consent decree with the cso's that would help eliminate as well combined so little of those and the rest start our early Run-of-the-mill projects, sewer replacement and some separation, the last one, the 925,000. Generally we try to budget around a million for small projects, and these are just spot repairs that we do based on the CCTV work that we've seen. We prioritize the defects that we find, and we try to get things before they become a problem, before they collapse or. [25:21] Michael Beck: Okay. Questions? Comments? Well, Director, do you have anything else for us on this? [25:34] Unidentified department director: No, that's all. If you come up with any other questions as you're mulling this over. [25:38] Michael Beck: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Now bring this to our TIF overview. Join us at the table. We are business and economic developer, development officer, director, sorry, angry name, chief engineer Davis. [26:02] Carollynn Lear: all right just to review what a text increment financing district is for new councilors people watching at home basically the tip is a tool that can be used to capture added value in a district to be able to fund certain projects. Sometimes it's used for capital expenditures, which a good amount of the downtown TIF goes to capital projects, but it can also do specific things for property owners like credit enhancement agreements, which this also does based on the debt service at the Cross Insurance. So you know, it's a, it's a way to be able to reinvest some of the added value that new development has brought to the district right back into the district. So again, the, district funds are kind of in three different. Categories versus finance, which is the funding of debt service and credit enhancement agreements. The second is economic development, downtown partnership funds for marketing, a position at the downtown Bangor partnership. And also what's new this year that hasn't been in previous years, the state statute changed for the tax increment district of what you could do with those funds. Previously, it really was for, you know, financial considerations, marketing, and capital expenditures, but they changed the law where you can also make investment in arts and entertainment as part of your district. So what's offered here is a couple of expenditures to do a cultural assessment, you know, if we, if the city is going to continue to invest in arts and our team with this district funds, it's really important to have a strategy. And we talked about it a little bit in the comprehensive plan, basically to say we need a strategy. And so that's offered in here as well as additional funds for the grant program that the cultural commission runs and makes recommendations to you folks on. They get a lot of applications, they're getting more and more applications all the time, and so this allows them a little bit more, a little bit, a little bit more funds to be able to fund either more projects or projects more fully. And I'm asked Jeff to be here with me to go over some of the capital projects that's also in here, so [29:07] Unidentified staff member: Engineering, public works, parks and rec, you all have projects in this tip line. Some of the larger ones you'll see in which you've seen in the past, the bill of partnership which Amanda just mentioned, this is for, you know, a local share of that outside of the sewer replacement, but storm drain sidewalks, caravan, landscape and amenities, that sort of stuff. Public works and engineering, we both use the sidewalk replacement funds. Last year we did, we finished Lower Hammond, corner of Central. This year, you know, we plan on doing Bain Street past York Street, and then we always have funds and we use the funds for downtown pedestrian improvements if those are perfect bomb ballots ways to calm the traffic and make crossing safer, and then also downtown traffic signals electrical. In the past we've upgraded a lot of electrical cabinets, they're on their last life, but we can also use it to upgrade the signals and pedestrian crossing push buttons, the signs and everything, some of the larger One the largest one you see here is the kinesthetic stream retaining wall. I brought that infrastructure last month that is continuing to fail at a rapid pace. So we want we've been scrolling money away to start up with John as director of engineering. But we have you a good chunk we are we have an RFP that's going to go out next week for a design build with a contractor to fix that most critical spot. But this is an ongoing issue we're going to have so we certainly need that money and then you know Tracy has tracing public works they have you know the dark floor placement on the waterfront. I know Tracy has some monument and restoration in there and then one of the one of the critical pieces of this is the parking infrastructure pickering square garage maintenance that garage built in the 80s is being held together with I'll say duct tape just the way that just the way that structure was designed and built in the 80s with you know being close to the salt water the salt that's used we continuously have to do yearly maintenance on it so it's so it's usable. So we have an engineer a consultant engineer that this company has been working with us for many years they come and do a report every year and they get us a project list so that continues to function. So that's that's paid out of there and that's been very useful. So that is an overview of what we use this tip funding for any questions I'll try to answer any questions [32:09] Carolyn Fish: The parking knowledge is the future and you know the age life expectancy in this we're just kind of putting a band-aid on it and we're going to get to a point where it's going to appreciate more than we're going to be able to maintain. Do we have a plan for [32:30] Unidentified staff member: for that sort of breaking point we do have a capital plan that is throwing Thomas Eddie who's our consultant they're working on and they are looking at alternatives for that too eventually you know we're not there yet but eventually we're gonna have to do something. I don't know if it's 10 years down the road about 13 years down the road but I don't know what that is if we build one somewhere else and then that one that one stays operational while we build one or we don't have one at all I don't know the answer to that right now but whatever this the capital standard for that I'll bring it to infrastructure so you guys aren't now just curious [33:07] Carolyn Fish: Because I know a couple of times we've had a surprise where it was an emergency, we needed a special vehicle or something, and we thought, oh, why didn't we have it in the plan? Yeah, I've seen this for several years now, and I'm thinking, I wonder when we're going to get that, you know, pivotal point where is going to really need a different plan. Thank you. [33:29] Unidentified department director: In hindsight, was the placement of that garage beneficial, or do you think it should have been [33:35] Unidentified staff member: placed elsewhere? No, I don't, I don't think the placement, you know, just the way that they constructed these parking garages in the 80s, you know, you could first and second story, then they were, they made it so you can add on story after story after story, and then the, you know, the way they did the file caps underneath the structure, it just didn't hold up to the amount of salt that we used to treat the roadways or the parking itself, so that's one of the issues there, you know, engineering construction. I mean, we've had technology that lasts forever, but you know, as we move on, we know that, you know, you know, 20, 30 years down the road, we notice things that we should have done in the past, we try to solve that, so I think that's one of those situations. Oh, I think that was a newer system that was the, you know, the great way to go, but you don't [34:30] Susan Hawes: know that until you're down the road, right? Thank you. [34:36] Michael Beck: the only question i had is under parks and rec under their section they had the project where they wanted to vary fiber for better wi-fi is that something that's eligible for tiff funds or was it put under unassigned fund balance because [34:50] Unidentified staff member: it wasn't eligible? It depends on where they're, the TIP district, there's a map and outline. I don't know where Tracy had that, was the waterfront, or was that, you know, other parts? I think a lot of [35:05] Michael Beck: I'm sure there was a reason why I would put here and not there, but just another thought I was thinking about. Any other questions or comments before we move on? Please continue, directors. That's all I have. That's it? All right. Okay. All right. What are you moving on to? Was that all you had? Street plus? [35:31] Carollynn Lear: Yeah. I mean, I didn't- Well, I mean, oh, sorry. [35:35] Michael Beck: We're on to number three, the downtown special assistant assessment district tower. Okay, you're good. [35:42] Carollynn Lear: I know on Monday we have gone over this budget with the director downtown Bay and Partnership for the Special Assessment District, and just to clarify the difference of how these are funded, the Assessment District comes under a special statute just like the TIP step. The TIP district is a separate statute that's controlled by the Department Development, the state. But the statute for a Special Assessment District is completely different from the term, and basically that is taking the existing value and adding an assessment, so it's not captured value like it said. It's added, it's an added an assessment on each of the properties based on their value. So the budget process is a multiple one. It includes, you know, assigning the district and assigning the fee, the assessment itself. And so it's a, it's a separate, it's a completely separate process because you're a pass-through, so it's not really part of your budget. So we have a completely separate public hearing that'll be on your next council meeting on the 8th. But I, but I wanted to have this on the agenda in case there was any follow-up questions. And again, if this year we have [37:15] Unidentified department director: specific things, do we have any questions? Does [37:23] Michael Beck: it look like we have a quiet night again? [37:27] Susan Hawes: Is there anything, sorry, I could be wrong, but I believe that there's an error in that the $30,000 for Street Plus was left out of the TIF amount, so the one, the sheet that's on online though is accurate. Okay, that was updated. Yeah, your budget books will show four million eight four three four eight one. You need to add thirty thousand to that for four million eight seventy 473-481. So that was just an error that was corrected. I just want to make sure you all [38:10] Carollynn Lear: were aware of that. It's corrected on the online user manuals. I can't understand it here. Okay. [38:16] Michael Beck: You're welcome. Any other questions? I don't see any hands online. I think that might be it. Okay. And with that...