With an eye on meeting its original user fee estimate, the Lakeland Regional Sewer District board began looking Thursday at ways to offset more than $1 million in rising costs. Current estimates for the sewer system are about $1.46 million above figures given in the 2010 preliminary engineering report, which anticipated a total project cost of $23.5 million. The board will start looking at finding less costly alternatives and cutting unnecessary options, with the goal of hitting the magic number of $67.50 – the monthly user fee first estimated by Umbaugh and Associates. The accounting firm set the fee estimate based on the number of users, total project price and ongoing maintenance costs. Most of the bill will go toward debt service, board president Dave Doctor noted. “It’s like buying a car or house, you finance it and pay for it over time,” he remarked Friday morning. The board has expressed an unwillingness to charge connection fees, which they reaffirmed Thursday. Other sewer districts have charged a fee of $1,000 to $5,000. Doctor said he’s pretty confident they could find about $1.75 million in costs to pull out, for example combining service on some of the 450 grinder pumps currently slated to serve only one house. Some areas of cost have already gone down between the February engineering report and the latest, such as a reduction in the number of grinder pumps from 1,500 to 1,300, he noted. Without that adjustment the estimate increases to $2.75 million above the original. The board discussed the need to offset costs after member Jim Haney remarked on what he saw as the dilemma posed by a 17 percent drop in equivalent dwelling unit count and 10 percent increase in overall costs. “Is the board willing to go forward with a monthly user fee substantially higher than what we first said?” he asked. “We’ve got to take $4 million out and get a 2.5 percent interest rate to get to $67.50.” A major element driving up costs is the water treatment plant, a site for which was chosen a year and a half ago on CR 100N between CRs 400E and 575E. It wasn’t the board’s first choice on location, Doctor noted, but rather their fourth. The access road has had to be moved, and poor soil quality has required extra concrete for the foundation, all adding up to an estimated extra cost of $725,000, according to Haney. The board debated Thursday the pros and cons of picking a new site or resituating the facility on the same land. After hearing it could result in more time and cost, Haney said that’s the board’s decision to evaluate risk and remarked that he’s willing to delay the project a little to save a few thousand dollars. The board will look at its options as well as calculations on funding grinder pump connections of varying lengths at its meeting next month.
