Amador County – The Plymouth City Council last week discussed a potential $370,000 in payments from developers Reeder Sutherland Incorporated to offset impacts on the city’s water system, which would pay toward the city’s new water pipeline.
The Plymouth City Council last week held a final workshop to prepare for a future Public Hearing on a development agreement, conditions of approval and full environmental documents for the Shenandoah Ridge and Zinfandel residential developments of Reeder Sutherland, its president Bob Reeder, and its partners.
“We should be finished after tonight,” Garnder said before the meeting last Thursday, with the finalizing of the documents to take them to a public hearing. He said Bob Reeder has agreed in the draft development agreement to pay $74,000 a year for five years, and $370,000 total, to make the water fund whole, and to “offset the city’s debt service payments so we don’t have to raise our water fees.” Gardner said the agreement, if approved by the council, after public hearings, would “offset impacts and keep us from having to raise the rates.”
Gardner said in the draft agreement, Reeder would make two payments per year, to be “paid a month before we have to pay our debt service payment,” for the pipeline that connects the city to the Amador Water Agency. He said the payments are $176,000 a year, but in six or seven years, that will go down by about $16,000. That occurs when a 10 percent “debt service reserve” portion of the payment accumulates enough money to make a year of payments on the plan, part of USDA funding qualifications for the project.
The Council approved the development agreement and also heard from Bob Reed on an analysis he did on the city’s water fund. Gardner said the funding was “way short and if we don’t get some money from Bob (Reeder) we will be looking at some serious water rate increases.”
Gardner said the payments were something Reeder and the city have been discussing for a long time. He said if the payments do not go through in the development agreement “we will immediately look at the water study and immediately look at moving forward with another rate increase.”
The Plymouth City Council last Thursday ended the workshop and set a public hearing on the Shenandoah Ridge and Zinfandel development agreements for Oct. 13.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
