Public Services Committee Meeting November 2024

The hard-working Hot Springs Village Public Services Committee met on November 14, 2024. The committee discussed many subjects, including HyperFiber, recruitment of new committee members, traffic safety, water rates, water conservation, paying for utility upgrades, culverts, cardboard recycling, and much more. Please comment below, as we would love to hear your polite input on these subjects.

Committee Members present: Walt Black, Chair; Keith Buchanan, Secretary; Bob Cunningham; Drew Kahle; Danny Moore; George Parker; Jim Patton; and Michael Riley.

Staff present: Ken Unger, Director of Public Services

Board Member present: Larry Siener, Board Vice-chair

Absences: Doyle Baker, Board Member; Rolland White, Vice-chair; David Childs; and John Sowers

Guest present: HSV Resident Steve Bishop

Chair Comments

Chair Walt Black mentioned the upcoming committee appreciation luncheon, which will be catered by Clampits. It is anticipated that six Public Services Committee members will attend.

Discussion (Working) Sessions Cancelled: Due to the holidays, there will not be another Public Services Committee working session until Thursday, January 23, 2025. The next regular P. S. Committee meeting will be on Thursday, December 12.

HyperFiber inspections

The Public Services Department will let the committee members know what the Hyperfiber schedule is so the members can inspect the progress. Unger said HyperFiber is in the restoration process of everything they have already touched. Unger expects installations to restart in a few weeks.

Unger said HyperFiber is working on the west side and installs about one to two thousand feet per day. “They move pretty quick.”

Unger explained that going forward, cuts in the roads would be limited. “We are trying to get them to bore those…The amount of road cuts should decrease dramatically.

Unger continued, We will wait until springtime and see how the areas HyperFiber patched are holding up. We’ll probably have to seal-coat those roads, and HyperFiber will pay for sealing patched areas where they made the road cuts. The POA will pay for seal-coating any areas that were not cut. Some of the areas may be microsurfaced.

Unger said that when residents make installations in the road right-of-way, this is not their property. If you look at our policies, we should return the touched road-right-of way the original grade. Technically, we don’t have to restore right-of-way with additions made by property owners. “I have asked HyperFiber and they have agreed to do their best to restore things to how it was. There are going to be some people that are not happy. On one of our water main projects, the contractor installed sod on the right-of-way, and somebody complained that it wasn’t the same color. I can’t help that. You are lucky they put sod down. I am pretty confident they are going to do the best they can. Is everybody going to be 100% happy? Probably not. They [HyperFiber] realize that if they don’t make people happy, they will not get their business.”

They are connecting people as they go. When they come past your house, they generally provide service almost immediately – within a few weeks.

Unger feels the competition may lead to better service or lower costs from the other carriers.

Recruitment of Committee Members

Possible places to advertise to recruit additional committee members: POA Weekly Digest, HSV Gazette, Village Voice, teleprompter in the administration office, and the POA Facebook page. (The red link will take you to a recruitment advertisement for the Public Services Committee.)

Traffic Safety

Committee Member Danny Moore said that a few weeks back, he met with Matt Broom, Associate Director of Public Services, to view road areas with safety concerns. They discussed what safety enhancements could be made, including installing guardrails. It is not a good idea to install guardrails on top of water lines, which limits the use of guardrails in the Village. The use of barrier walls will be considered.

The Police Department’s requirements for inputting information have changed. Everything is now tracked through a state database, and the accident report detail given to the committee in the past is no longer available. Due to this, Unger said the committee is best served to rely on the HSV Police Department to inform them about problem areas instead of a committee member obtaining a monthly accident report. When necessary, the Police Department will notify Public Services and the P. S. Committee of any problem areas that need addressing. This relieves Committee Member George Parker of the responsibility of obtaining a monthly accident report.

Unger said he may ask the community how it feels about installing speed bumps on certain roads. Many complaints are made about speeding in high-traffic locations. There is a lot of speeding on Ponderosa and also people flying down the road to Isabella Golf Course. “To control these speeders, does it make sense to install speed bumps?”

Water Rate and Conservation Discussion

Unger said there is a very small subset of the Village that will be affected by the implementation of a third-tier water rate structure. “We are trying to establish the need to use water wisely.”

“Village water rates are low. If you compare us to other communities, our water rates are in the 20th percentile. Our sewer rates rank somewhat higher.”

There are around 77 high-volume water users in the Village, and they will be notified of a new water rate structure that could impact them. Unger anticipates the Board will vote on this third-tier water rate this month. The rules for the first two tiers will remain the same. The first tier is for up to 5,000 gallons per two-month billing cycle. When using over 5,000 gallons of water in a two-month billing cycle, the second tier kicks in. In the second tier, the rate per 1000 gallons (over the base of 5,000 gallons) is 70% of the base rate. The third-tier rate will kick in when you exceed 30,000 gallons per month (or 60,000 gallons per two-month billing cycle).

At the time of publication of this article, the 2025 Fee Schedule was not yet approved by the Board of Directors. The 2025 proposed Residential Water Rate Schedule is as follows:

• Residential Monthly Base Rate (includes 2,5000 gal. per month – $20.75
• Residential Monthly Excess Rate over 2,500 and up to 30,000 gal. (per 1,000 gallons) – $6.00
• Residential Monthly Excess Rate for each 1,000 gal. over 30,000 gal. per month – $12.50

The Public Services Director said they are not trying to hurt people but rather get the message out that conservation is important and setting the third-tier water usage structure is meant to discourage water waste.

Most of the residential high-volume water usage is tied to irrigation.

The third tier does not apply when there is a pipe rupture. We work with residents on those occurrences, stated Unger.

Commercial rates are higher than residential. Commercial rates will not have a third tier. Unger does not believe commercial entities use excess water because they are conscious of their bottom line.

Anticipated but not yet Approved by the Board of Directors, the 2025 proposed Commercial Rate Schedule is as follows:

• Commercial Monthly Base Rate – $41.00
• Commercial/Wholesale Excess Rate over 2,500 gal. (per 1,000 gallons) – $6.25

The Rotary Club has received a grant that will be used to design and promote an educational water conservation program in Hot Springs Village.  One of the reasons Public Services is encouraging water conservation is to delay for as long as possible needed water plant upgrades.

The POA will institute water-saving programs to support conservation.

How to Pay for Utility Plant Upgrades?

Because of the Arkansas mandate of Act 605, operations, maintenance, and capital costs must be covered by utility rates.

Unger anticipates that the Village will pursue a bond to cover necessary utility infrastructure upgrades. (Almost $21M is needed for Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrades.) To pay for this and to avoid a huge jump all at once in utility bills, it is anticipated that utility bill increases will run around 7% for the next couple of years.

Most of the sewer upgrades will occur before the water system is upgraded, as that is more critical. Unger hopes we can self-perform a lot of the work.

Unger hopes the timing of the bond procurement will coincide with good interest rates.

Water Rights and Emergency Water Sources

Unger discussed existing water rights and potential additional water rights plans in addition to possible emergency water sources.

In 2016 or ’17, Unger’s predecessor acquired 2 million/gallons per day of raw water rights from Lake Ouachita. “We have no way of obtaining that water. We would have to build a raw water pipe main from some form of intake at Lake Ouachita and pipe it here to our treatment plant.” We are paying about $42,000 per year for this currently unusable right. These payments are scheduled for around 15 more years. We are talking about $900,000 worth of payments still, for those water rights. I don’t know what the future dream was with that.” These rights have value, but only when they can be used. “Right now, the only people who can use this is Hot Springs, and they already have a lot of water rights out of Lake Ouachita.” North Garland County could tap this source, but they lack plant capacity… ” Unger said he has had conversations with Bill Burroughs of Hot Springs, and they are willing to acquire the rights.”

Unger said that as long as we are not providing service to anybody, we can tap directly with Hot Springs and have them supply us with water. “But it only makes sense in my mind to work with our adjacent neighbor, North Garland County, who currently has a connection to Hot Springs, to potentially provide us with a secondary water source and bring it to the Village at a location that actually serves the majority of the Village, which would be outside the west gate.”

“We currently have an interconnect agreement with North Garland County, where they would supply us emergency water (which they don’t have in the middle of summer):” This connection would be out the Balboa Gate. “We could still do that if we needed to. This would only take about a week or two to connect. But that would only serve a small portion of the Village due to topography. We have around 9 or 10 different elevation zones, and the west side is much higher than the east side.” Bringing water in at the Balboa Gate doesn’t supply a water source for the west side. The ideal location for an outside water connection is to come in around the West Gate.

“We cannot obtain funding from the state or federal government. We have been fighting this, but that is the reality.”

Unger said he would prefer to work with North Garland County (NGC) (already tapped into Hot Springs water) to build a consortium that allows NGC to upgrade their infrastructure and pipe Hot Springs water to our West Gate. Unlike the Village, NGC can obtain state and federal funding.

Unger said this plan is a long play.

Another avenue to obtain a raw water source outside of our current source is the Middlefork of the Saline River. Unger said this need could be solved with wells. The Village used to be run on wells. A study to determine the feasibility of wells would need to be done. The second alternative, which would be a backup, is to draw water from Lake Cortez. Because of docks and other things on Lake Cortez, this plan would probably only be approved in an emergency.

In a unanimous vote, the committee agreed with Unger’s first step, which is to eliminate our obligation in the 2016 / ’17 water rights agreement by selling these rights to Hot Springs. This would eliminate a $42,000 yearly payment for something unusable to the Village.

Public Services Director Report

Unger said they had some extra money left in the culvert budget, so they did a trial lining the bottoms of four large class 3 culverts. Class 1 and class 2 culverts have been completed. A contractor cleaned out the bottom of several of the class 3 culverts, backfilled them with gravel, installed rebar, and poured concrete across the bottoms. This process solidifies the culverts’ structural integrity and will not affect the culvert capacity. Unger said if anything, it probably improves capacity. The cost for this process is an average of $4,200 per culvert. This procedure saves tens of thousands of dollars compared to spray casting. Unger estimates that they can do 20-30 more of the culverts by the end of 2024.

One of the more significant in-house projects that Unger hopes to accomplish in 2025 is the replacement of four failing 72″ culverts with box culverts. Unger said that ideally, we want something we can execute ourselves.

Public Services has been working on lift station odor issues.

Public Services replaced one water line and plans to replace another small line before the end of the year. By self-performing this job we save thousands of dollars. Doing the work ourselves costs $5,000 to $10,000 for a thousand feet. Contracting out this work would cost $100,000.

The tornado-damaged Coronado Center roof was replaced.

Public Services plans to replace some additional roofs with metal.

A recent rainstorm caused more than 90 potholes on Balearic. This stretch was finished in “Superpave,” which has not been holding up as initially expected. Unger thinks they will probably have to mill the entire road to remove the “Superpave” and then resurface it with a proper crown so water sheds when it rains.

Lake Coronado has been lowered six feet, and dredging will soon commence.

Thirty-three signs were replaced. Replacements were needed for numerous reasons.

The POA has started recycling cardboard. This reduces loads to the dump and saves dumping fees while also providing a positive cash flow.

Board Member Report

Board Liaison Larry Siener said the current number one challenge for the Board of Directors is finalizing the 2025 budget. He said this is the best budget he has seen. (He has been involved for five years.)

On the 2025 Fee Schedule, the unimproved buy-in fee has been reduced.

The Board has been interviewing candidates for the General Manager position. The Board hopes not to have an interim GM situation. A national search firm is being used, and local resumes have also been submitted. The Board now has a small subset for second interviews. Siener said they would like to have the GM search concluded by the end of the year.

Siener was unable to comment on the Atkins/Simpson lawsuit.

Interested in Joining the Team?

If you are interested in joining the Public Services Committee, applications are available here and can be submitted via email to jwhite@hsvpoa.org or in person at the HSVPOA Administration Building, 895 DeSoto Boulevard, attention Julie White, Assistant to the General Manager.

By Cheryl Dowden