LRPC

The Long Range Planning Committee’s (LRPC) effort over the past month continues to focus on the formulation of an Asset Management Plan and a recommended Reserves Fund Policy. Both are still in process with the goal to discuss with our committee members in September and formulate a recommendation to present to the Board of Directors (BOD) at our October 13th meeting.

MC Engineering submitted an Asset Management Plan proposal in early August. Since then, we have had a cou-ple fact-finding sessions to discuss the specifics of the scope, proposed plan information that may already be available from prior studies and tasks that may potentially be performed by our staff. We agreed to approach the plan preparation in phases to look into the above areas and decide on the appropriate data and scope to meet our needs. The first phase is to develop an updated Asset Inventory Database (with consideration of the current USDA Project) based on data extracted from a previous BLSMWC Asset Inventory prepared in 2006 by HDR Engi-neering, along with our 2014 Water Master Plan and the more recent data compiled during the engineering phase of our USDA Project.

As mentioned last month, the Asset Management Plan is intended to provide the basis for a Capital Reserves Pol-icy, and a Capital Reserve will be a recommended Fund within our overall “Reserves Policy”. Based on the re-search performed, the Reserve Policy will recommend Restricted Reserves Funds (USDA Loan Requirement), Capital Assets Reserve Funds, and Operating Reserve Funds. Each Fund will have Target Minimum Amounts and strict guidelines on the Use and Authority, and Reporting and Monitoring. The agreed to reserve funds and tar-get amounts will play an integral part in the annual budgeting process.