Amador County – The Amador Water Agency heard at its last meeting that agency cash is up, and it could also increase with a new credit card fee for bill payments.

The AWA Board on Aug. 25 approved a credit card fee for bill payments that staff said should save the agency about $10,000 a year. General Manager Gene Mancebo said “AWA customers who pay bills by credit card will now be charged $1.50 per transaction.” He said “credit card transactions now cost the Agency about $10,000 per year.”

Mancebo said the “transaction fee will transfer the cost of credit card fees from the cost of doing business for all customers to the individual credit card users.” Directors agreed to review the policy after a trial period of six months.

The Board at its last meeting heard a report that agency cash for July was ahead of budgeted projections by about $100,000. The Aug. 25 cash report showed “our cash situation is improving slowly,” shown by water sales that were up a little bit in July. Controller Marvin V. Davis in a report said that July began with $616,000 in cash and increased over the month by $433,000, to end at a total of $1.05 million. Spending for July was $975,000 and revenue totaled $1.4 million.

In other Board action in August, an agreement was made with Ione development owners Wildflower Investments LLC, allowed transferring of participation credits from the original developer, Ryland Homes. Mancebo said the whole project changed hands to Wildflower, and the agreement made changes that secured that their reimbursement would only be for participation fees, and not for cash.

Ryland in the original agreement had an option for either credits, or with fees paid by JTS Communities, they could take their credits as cash. Mancebo said the new agreement limits it to participation fee credits, any time they request a meter set. Wildflower has about $2 million in credits, from Ryland building a 2 million-gallon storage tank at the Wildflower Subdivision site.

JTS financed a pump station used to fill the tank, and earned fee credits. An August agreement with JTS for early fee payments also gave the concession that JTS would forgo redeeming those credits from the water tank.

Wildflower does not have any units building, Mancebo said, but “one unit is very, very close” and if they wanted to request a meter there would be very minimal work involved to allow that to occur.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.