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There were just three of the five Water & Light commissioners at the June 7 meeting in North Branch and discussion yielded little direction deciding the life expectancy of the utility.  

Commissioners Volstad and Baxter were absent.  

The commissioners’ top issue is prioritizing what needs to get done before there’s a vote to eliminate the utility commission.  The utility leaders also should decide if the abolition will be on a regular general election ballot or a special stand alone vote.

Commission Chair Nathan Keech kick-started the hour-long meeting asking,  “What do we have to gain keeping the commission going and going and going?”  

He commented to the two members present that job one is to pick a date to hold a referendum to abolish the commission.  The vote could happen as soon as this November, but there are state and local notification deadlines, election judges to reserve and ballot printing timelines to meet.  Unless the vote is delayed until 2024, the deadline to make a decision is basically August.

Commissioner Phil Carlson commented he’d like to see a potential charging station project get more finalized,  before the commission is abolished.  Commissioner Patrick Meacham suggested there’s nothing so difficult about a charging station that city staff couldn’t take it over at any time. He noted the city is already scheduling the extensive Highway 95 water main replacement package,  which had been something the utility would have pursued. Meacham did say that the city council still needs to appoint a member to serve as utility liaison, expressing his opinion it’s important to have somebody attending utility meetings to be a conduit for information to council.  (Council member Kelly Neider relinquished her non-voting liaison position, story in Press May 25.) After the utility commission met council approved Mayor Kevin Scheiber as liaison.

Vote is a formality

City Public Works Director and General Manager for the utility Shawn Williams commented that he doesn’t envision much will change if the utility commission goes away (abolished by vote,) Electric assets have been sold to East Central Energy and North Branch public works has absorbed the water side of things. Williams observed, “We will still produce water, still going to do (operations and billing.)”

Chair Keech suggested the utility commission’s next meeting June 28 (a change from schedule) be used to clarify the management agreement and better-define chain of command so the city won’t have administrative landmines when the commission is no longer meeting.

~ There was a special 3-0 action (separate from the referendum workshop format) to accept the Water & Light 2022 audit, which  utility commissioners reportedly saw May 17.

In the print materials posted on-line with the regular meeting packet, 2022 revenues or water and light’s “income” total was up over last year by $404,295.

A number of findings were noted by the audit firm,  including the utility’s balances not being sufficiently covered by FDIC.  There’s $9.4 million held by Water & Light in institutions and only $6.8 million would be covered by insurance in the event of a bank shutdown.

Bank reconciliations were not completed in a timely manner and year end balances do not reconcile to the general ledger. Also, the audit footnotes point out the financial department lacks a procedure to track assets and no list of assets was available for 2021-2022 auditors.

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