Lowell continues public hearings for sewer ordinances
Although the public hearings for three ordinances to address sewer rates and charges for 2025 were scheduled for the Lowell Town Council meeting on Feb. 24, council elected to continue the hearings until the next meeting due to a minor oversight.
Town attorney David Westland pointed out to council that copies of the proposed ordinances are on file at the clerk-treasurer’s office, but they weren’t made available online at the town’s website, which was also called for in the town’s legal notice published in a local newspaper.
Westland recommended to council they continue the public hearings for the ordinances until the next meeting, which would give town manager Craig Hendrix enough time to upload copies of the proposed ordinances and their corresponding legal notices to the town website.
The motion to continue the public hearings passed 4-0. Councilman John Alessia was not in attendance at the meeting.
In the work session prior to the meeting, Corby Thompson of O.W. Krohn & Associates of Westfield briefed council about how they came up with the numbers for the new rates in the updated ordinances.
Thompson explained in his presentation that the town’s proposed rates are being adjusted to accommodate for an increase of over $1 million in revenue requirements for the town’s wastewater system from 2022. This year’s revenue requirements are projected to be $5,017,935, up from $3,971,016 three years ago.
The Town of Lowell will have $3,164,355 earmarked for Operations and Maintenance, up from $2,504,390 in 2022. The annual proposed debt service figure of $904,007 for this year is up from $879,626 over the last three years, and the Capital Improvements Allowance for this year is slated to be $949,173, up from $587,000 in 2022.
Thompson said the debt service figures will be similar “because we have some bonds rolling off, but also include some proposed debt service amounts.”
The big increases in Operations and Maintenance – which amounts to a 26% increase over 2022 – are due to a 17.7% jump in inflation since 2022, additional overhead requirements from the water utility sale and the overall growth of the town’s sewer system, according to Thompson’s presentation.
“We’ve just had to kind reallocate certain overhead due to the sale of the water utility,” Thompson said. “The water utility used to cover some administrative executive position salaries, and essentially those have had to be reallocated among the civil funds as well as the stormwater and wastewater utility.”
Thompson noted the benefits from the sale of the water utility “greatly outweighed those reallocations of costs.”
Likewise, the Capital Improvements allowance will increase due to new environmental requirements with Lowell’s aging wastewater infrastructure, and “significant upgrades and improvements are needed at the plant as well as periodic upgrades to the collection system,” according to the presentation.
Thompson pointed out another noteworthy change in the wastewater rates would be the transition from a flow charge and a base charge to a flat rate. He said on of the main reasons for this change is the town hasn’t been receiving reliable readings from Indiana American Water Company and that “this is kind of a way to more equitably apply the actual impact to any plant upgrade or essentially your capacity requirement at the plant.”
Hendrix said the rate increase would not only go towards the wastewater plant upgrades, but also the collection system as well. He acknowledged the treatment plant would be seeing the largest portion of the revenue generated by the rate increase.
Hendrix said the extra $1 million in revenue from the rate increase could allow the town to fund multiple smaller projects or “bond off the money for bigger projects.”
The next meeting will be at 7 p.m. Mar. 10.