The day after Village of Salado aldermen authorized Village Administrator Don Ferguson to pursue legal action against any property that is required to tie-in to the Salado sewer and has not applied for a building permit by Feb. 29, five properties came in to do so.
Ferguson reported to aldermen that 85% of all properties in the service area of the Salado sewer have begun the process of tying into the sewer system.
He said that there are 29 properties that have not yet tied into the sewer system. Of those, 15 properties have inquired with the village about the process, two have current building permits, seven have hardships, such as special grinders, easement issues and relocating existing taps and five have been unresponsive to the Village.
According to information received from public records requests for building permits for the Village of Salado, a total of 91 properties have filed for sewer connection building permits or connected to the Salado sewer system or were existing taps from the Stagecoach sewer. This number includes seven Salado ISD connections and seven properties that filed for building permits in February.
The Village of Salado financial reports for January 2020 show 68 properties have made $100 sewer service deposits.
The property connection list on the Village of Salado website lists 133 properties that are required to connect, including nine Salado ISD properties. This number is lower than the number of connections listed in the Village’s Impact Fee Study conducted by HDR Engineering (137).
If all 29 properties that Ferguson spoke about were to connect to the sewer by Feb. 29, it would bring the total to 114, which is dramatically less than the 137 listing in the HDR Engineering report or the 133 listed in the Village’s property connection list.
The difference could be substantial to the bottom line of the Village operating budget. According to the latest profit and loss statement for the sewer system, the Village of Salado sewer system is operating at a deficit of $67,202.05 for the current fiscal year.
The latest financial report shows a total of $10,652.50 in monthly service fees for January. The largest customer, by far, is the school district, which paid $3,624.23 for sewer for seven connections in January. The sewer rate for commercial customers is $60 monthly base rate for high-treatment customers and $16 per 1,000 gallon for usage. Calculating six of the seven properties as high-treatment customers and one as a low-treatment customer, Salado Village Voice calculates that Salado ISD uses 201,513 gallons per month, or 6,500 gallons per day, just over 3% of the 200,000 GPD capacity WWTP.
The remaining 68 customers (who had paid sewer deposits in time to be billed for January) paid $7,028.27 in sewer fees in January. Based on the lower non-residential rate, Salado Village Voice calculates that the remaining 68 customers in January used about 392,000 gallons of water, or 12,650 gallons per day.
Salado Village Voice calculates that the current customers (as of January) use about 10 percent of the total 200,000 gallon per day capacity.
Even if an additional 29 properties tie in immediately, capacity won’t be an issue. What will be an issue is turning the tide on the operating loss for the sewer system, which is at $67,202.05 through the first four months of the fiscal year.
Thus far this fiscal year, the sewer has collected $37,859 in sewer fees and has cost $105,076.
Some good news for the sewer is that Ferguson announced the Sanctuary will break ground on the 190-residential lots of Phase I on March 2, which when built-out could take 19,000 GPD (or less than 10%) of the sewer capacity. The 170-lot subdivision on Royal that annexed into the Village could take 17,000 GPD (or 8%) when built to capacity.
The Village, according to its financial reports, has $724,511.59 in unspent sewer bond proceeds. That money could be used to buy down the bonds and reduce the overall debt service tax rate or to extend the sewer lines to new potential customers, growing the customer base.