During the December 11 special meeting of the Town of Lake City Board of Trustees, Mayor Dave Roberts and fellow trustees agreed to approve budget adoption Resolution 2024-14; budget appropriation Resolution 2024-15; Resolution 2024-16 for the 2025 Mill Levy; as well as a 2025 Rural Community Advocacy Corporation (RCAC) recommended sewer rate structure, directing Town staff to draft a water and sewer rate ordinance. The ordinance, 2024-7, was subsequently approved at the December 18 regular meeting of the Town Board of Trustees. RCAC is a non-profit organization that partners with underserved rural communities of less than 50,000 to assist with environmental infrastructure projects. This organization has been working with town staff to update existing water and sewer rate structures. The budget appropriation resolution is a formality allowing town staff to appropriate town revenues towards the town’s operating expenses. The mill levy is a property tax on all property within town boundaries. It is a 4.265 millionth of a dollar valuation of all property in town. According to Town Manager Lex Mulhall, the proposed sewer rate structure recommended by RCAC will bring Lake City up to industry standards and practices. When the town initially applied for the loan for the renovation of the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), the State of Colorado informed staff that the sewer rate structure the town had been operating under was insufficient. “That’s why we had to have the rate study done,” said Mulhall. “The new rate structure will also off-set additional debt service, as well as adequately fund capital reserves. You have to be charging your water and sewer customers correctly in order to get grants and loans for these infrastructure projects, and you have to be in compliance with the state, or the state will take over and they can charge whatever they want. This sewer rate structure that we are proposing,” Mulhall went on, “is actually far lower than what RCAC recommended.” Mulhall referenced the chart shown on page 3, saying sewer rates will be going up 14.5 percent for residential commercial low-strength waste customers (for full details on strength of waste, reference December 13 SILVER WORLD); for medium-strength commercial customers, rates will be going up approximately 50 percent, and for high-strength commercial customers, nearly 85 percent. Customers in the county outside of town limits can expect their charges to increase an additional 20 percent above and beyond those percentages. The highest-in-strength wastewater customers are considered to be industrial strength, and this includes businesses such as breweries and RV parks. Present at the December 11 meeting in the audience were local realtors Danielle Worthen and Michael Murphy. A public hearing was opened shortly after the meeting was called to order. Mayor Roberts turned the floor over to the audience for comments, and Michael Murphy addressed the board, saying, “[considering] the hardship for the three RV parks [in town], have you come up with a contingency plan if we lose those RV parks? You’ve got a huge amount of revenue coming in from those three. If that for some reason changed, and they decided to sell off those lots individually because they’re no longer viable, do you have a plan to fund the water and sewer enterprise fund? You’ve got 11 lots over here [gesturing toward Elkhorn RV Park on Bluff Street], [if they] put in a house on those lots, your gross revenue is going to plummet. Do you have a contingency plan if that takes place?” Trustee Linsey responding, “What they’re [going to be] paying for is the strength of the wastewater that they’re producing. If they are not producing that wastewater, then we are not eating that cost, and it will be paid for just like every other single-family house.” Trustee Landon Whinnery replied, “If I’m not mistaken, there’s tap fees included, just the tap fees alone would cover the year’s cost and an adjustment to that would need to be made at some point. I would say that the contingency is if they do divide up lots, there is initial fees that do offset the cost of a year’s revenue.” “It’s the other 23 years on the note you’re going to have an issue with,” said Murphy. Trustee Diane Bruce spoke up, noting, “the bottom line is, we were going to have to do this – update the rate structure and renovate the [WWTP] facility -either way.” Hearing no further comments, Mayor Roberts closed the public hearing at 5:12 p.m. Before Mayor Roberts turned the matter over to the Trustees to vote, Danielle Worthen asked to make additional comments regarding the sewer rate structure. Worthen read a prepared statement, saying, “While the current Board of Trustees makes the extremely difficult decision to restructure the sewer rate, I’m asking you to please consider the following: please keep in mind that it is not the residential or commercial customer’s fault that the Town of Lake City failed to be proactive to fund depreciation for the now-needed upgrades at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. In my opinion, gradual sewer rate increases over the past 10 years would have been more equitable and affordable for sewer customers within the rate structure. However, that did not occur and is the reason we are all now facing today’s situation. With the proposed 2025 sewer rate structure for the industrial RV parks classification, resulting in the highest rate increase due to strength of waste being produced by those properties, I personally don’t believe those owners will be able to financially sustain their RV park tourist-based businesses and may be forced to either change to an alternate use for their properties or even list their properties for sale, marketing to a potential investor as an alternate use rather than an RV park. The current three RV parks are within the Town of Lake City Ordinance section 2311 MHR, Mobile Home Residential zone. As stated in the ordinance, the MHR district is intended to provide a suitable environment for conventional residences, mobile homes and travel home parks. It is designed to allow variable
