10 - Wastewater Treatment Plant Project and presentation of bids

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As you will recall, and this is all public information found in previous city council meetings, we have many housing, retail and economic development projects in the works that — if followed through on — will serve to spread this burden out. Our planned WWTP project has built in growth capacity (we are using about 4.5 MGD and the plant will be built to about 7.25 MGD). Therefore, until we grow to the point that TCEQ requires us to expand our plant, we have some available capacity to add more customers on. This bid is in essence a "fixed" amount (barring unexpected issues). With any fixed amount, the more it can be spread out, the cheaper it becomes to any one individual funding source (in this case, rate payers). To this point, we have the following projects in one stage or another of development: - Numerous 5 in 5 Housing Agreements (signed and in the works) - Forest Brook Estates - Apartment Complex (golf driving range) - Westgate Apartments - Pshigoda Foundation (South Collegiate) - Senior Citizen Tax Credit Project (East Lamar, Texas Housing Commission) - Cunningham Town Home Project - HOME Program - Chapter 380 Agreements — Town Center, Home 2 Suites, and TownPlace Suites and Fairfield Inn - Harbor Freight, HTeo, Farmers Bank, Taco Bueno, etc. (new retail not Ch. 380) - Several industrial prospects through the PEDC. - Water line extension and redundancy project (sets us up for some smaller industrial users) I'm confident I have left some things off, and there are others I'm aware of that are not as far along as the above, but from this I would like to point out that we have hundreds of new housing units and several new retail and industrial entities in the works, all of which will be added to the family to help spread out the costs of the WWTP. This does not mean today's residents will see rates come back down to pre-WWTP prices (it would take substantially more growth to accomplish that), but I do think this will provide some much needed HOPE that development is bringing more chairs to the table to help us with our bills. Their addition will of course bring forth additional operational costs (chemicals, electricity, etc.) to treat the added water, but there is economy of scale that allows their additional funding to strengthen our utility financially while including a bond component to their rate that will have a direct positive impact to our existing rate payers by spreading our (fixed) debt payments out across more payers. I hope this information provides you some comfort as you prepare yourself for the rough road ahead. We have worked so hard these past three years to bring development to our community. I believe the next three years will show us the fruits of our labor. Our community has a reputation of resiliency following fires and tornadoes, and while the WWTP is not a naturally created issue, it is still a matter that requires us to once again prove ourselves resilient and capable of coming