Hello, Middleburg! This column summarizes recent council meetings and activities I have been involved with recently.

I mentioned the visioning exercise last month. Council is now reviewing them to determine the resources required and setting target dates. You can review the Vision Statement on the Town web site. Council also introduced the new Economic Development Coordinator, Jamie Gaucher. Mr. Gaucher replaces Cindy Pearson, who retires this fall.

I sit on the Utility committee with Martha Semmes – the Town Administrator, Bob Krallinger –our engineer and the Imboden water system operators. Our agenda includes operations, maintenance, and improvements. The committee gets into many operational, maintenance, design, regulatory and other engineering details, and I see these meetings as highly productive. They are invaluable opportunities to discuss improvements to prevent problems, find cost savings and improve water quality. We also discuss issues raised by the Wellhead Protection committee, and two of us are members of both committees.

We are currently discussing an ongoing project to replace the West end pump station and a new one to replace old water lines in the Ridgeview neighborhood. These projects both require regulatory approvals, and we are working to coordinate the water line replacements with VDOT (as we did with the improvements on Washington Street last year). We hope to start replacing water lines in 2018. VDOT will then resurface the streets.

Martha and I have worked over the past year or two with the utility committee to flesh out our utility capital improvement plan (CIP). This CIP is now in the rate model. Martha and I review it before each budget cycle with Ashley Bott, the Treasurer, to make sure we are on track with these expenses. The CIP includes replacing major assets as determined by our engineer's analysis of expected useful lifecycles.

One of these assets is the micro-filter membranes in the wastewater treatment plant. The membranes have an expected life expectancy of approximately ten to twelve years. The Imboden staff, however, sees less than the predicted wear on our membranes and we may get about fifteen years before we need to replace them. They are quite expensive, so we are looking at options, including a financial one that Clark County recently entered with the vendor.

Council reviews the overall utility budget each year as part of the annual budget process. Including the CIP in our model helps us stabilize rates by including the capital costs. This helps prevent situations where we must increase rates dramatically to cover an unplanned replacement.

The committee also discusses ways to increase water quality, increase efficiency and achieve each regulatory review with the state departments of health and environmental quality. The regulatory approvals ensure that we meet health, safety, and environmental concerns. However, approvals also add many weeks to each project!

That is my opinion – what do you think?