City Council — October 20, 2026

October 20th, 2026. Roll call please.

Yes, thank you Mayor. The City Council met in closed session to discuss the four items on the agenda. On items number 1, 2 and 4 there was no reportable action taken. On item number 3 the council voted unanimously to authorize the city attorney's office to file a complaint in one litigation matter and the details of that complaint and the topic will become public when the complaint is filed. Thank you.

Thank you Mayor Mozik. Councilman, I so appreciate you. I keep hearing my prayers all the time and not because have bad behavior because you need leadership from the one up above, right? And then I would say first and foremost to all of Lompoc, and if I'm on... I gotta stand back. That thing has really got a little echo to it. I wanna say to the city of Lompoc and everyone that's listening, and especially for you those that are here, I am so grateful to be able to, and it's an honor for me to pray for you I don't just do this because they pay me. As you do know, I do this because I want to do this. I haven't asked for any compensation yet but I might need to talk to Dean about that.

But no, I really do enjoy coming here praying for you, praying for our city. I wanna say a special thanks to Kevin Martin, Chip, our law enforcement. I really do appreciate it. Every time when I hear the emergency sirens, it could either be fire department chief, Chief Shea. I appreciate you. Appreciate your engineers, your officers. I wave. They probably say who's that crazy man?

Sometimes I try to do things so I can get pulled over by Lompoc police so that I could just say hi but I guess they already know my license plate. I want to say thank you Before I do this invocation, I want to tell you something about God's love. And it's part of my prayer because we can hardly go anywhere without it. We know that it says that without the Lord, the builders they build in vain.

Without the Lord, the sentinels, the people who watch our city, the people who run to our aid Whether it's a house on fire, an accident, someone locked in a car because of an accident. Jaws of life had to open it up. And sometimes we don't have that expression of appreciation for the city, for the people who work here. You guys come here every Tuesday, you sit and listen, take notes, got to answer.

You've been working all day and then you come here and And I want to say thank you. I want to let you know that I appreciate it. And so when I come to pray, it's personal. So as I get ready to do this vindication, think about this word love. The Greek gives us three kinds of love, eros, phileo and agape. OK? Eros is like when you're romantic. That's a romantic love.

Phileo is friendship. when we're friends. How many of you know we should be friends in here? Raise your hand, even if you don't want to just show your hands anyway. All right. But agape! Now that's the God kind of love. That love is the greatest love that we all get to partake when we come together here and we're trying to figure out things how to make the city work and then we turn it all over to God. That's why I'm glad that this platform For the person that does the invocation, I'm glad that it's here.

I hardly ever preach to you know that but I sense in my heart today that I need to let you know that for me this is a sincere moment. So father as we consider your love It is such a mystery that you would even want to continue to partake with us because sometimes we can be messy. And yet, you decided to jump in our messiness and try to help us sort out life and You give us leaders! I pray for the leaders Lord to have that insight, that revelatory insight on how to make this a better city And that you would bless our leaders that are in the fire department and the police department, Chief Shea, Chief Martin.

Our engineers, our captain, our watch commanders. Lord we all give it up to you and we ask that you would help us to be a better people because that's what love does. Love does not hold anyone accountable for their failures. He just says, I'm going to just love you more. The God kind of love says, I care for you even if you don't care for me and trust me, I know what that's about.

The God kind of love says, I am for you even to the very ends of the earth, I am with you. It doesn't force itself on us. You don't do that. You could withhold the rain You could cause earthquakes. You could cause the lights to go out, the water to stop flowing. You can stop the rain. You can say because they don't acknowledge me I'll just stop giving them water but you're not that way.

You give us rain, you give us water, you give us food and you take care of And so for this moment, I want to express an appreciation of thank you. So you can say that quietly to yourself. Thank you Lord. Help us tonight as we get through the business of our city. Lord, we give You thanks for everything even when we don't deserve it. I know I don't. I just misbehaved yesterday. I'm still asking God for forgiveness of my misbehavior. I dare not tell you what it was, just to let you know pastors are not perfect.

But I am asking God to forgive me for my misbehavior. So if you've been misbehaving even today, you can ask for forgiveness. So Lord in all these things we do thank You in Your precious name. Amen.

Presentation is presented elsewhere. October 16th, proclamations honoring the City of Lompoc Chamber of Commerce and Business Bureau Man and Woman of the Year were presented at the Takeda Weas Community Center. I'll bring this up to the City Manager's report. Thank you Mayor.

I want to invite everybody to participate in this year's National Make a Difference Day, Saturday the 24th. It's an opportunity to get out and give back to the community. Volunteers will be meeting here at City Hall at 9am on Saturday. They'll also have lunch at noon and encourage people to come out I also want to let everybody know that we are going to be doing the Dunkin' for Pumpkins event this Sunday.

The beloved community tradition transforms the Aquatic Center activity pool into a floating pumpkin patch. Participants can swim and pick up pumpkins, it starts at 330. They can go out and decorate them on the patio from 430-530. General admission is required It's $10 for general admission, children two through seven is 550. Back up, I'm sorry it's $ 10 for pumpkin and it's $6 for general admission, 550 for two through 17 and $2 for kids under 2 and seniors $5. I want to remind everybody that we'll be having the Christmas party Friday December 4th at 6 p.m., and registration for that is due November 16th.

I also wanted to let everybody know with El Nino coming that we have sandbags available at Station 51 on G Street and you can load it up yourself, you just drive through and there will be sandbags and shovels and everything there for ya. I don't know if you noticed, Chaplain Ron, thank you Chaplain Ron for the kind words that you always give us. I appreciate you. I don't know if you notice the microphone is very strong. We replaced it. You don't need to touch it so if anybody goes up and does a public comment just you don't need to go right down on it. It's very powerful. So I want to thank everybody for showing up for the employees luncheon.

We do it every other year and we had a great turnout and I was really proud of everybody And I want to thank the Employees Development Association for that lunch they put together and everybody that went. Also remind everybody that November 3rd we'll be skipping our meeting for the election, and we'll resume on Tuesday, November 17th. I also wanted to let everybody know about a company called Sparks Energy that's going around door-to-door Trying to give natural gas services.

I just wanted to let everybody know this is not affiliated to the city Make sure that you verify who you're talking to be careful to review those agreements it's a third party that will provide gas, but all the services will still be done by SoCal Gas and I don't know if our attorney wanted to pine in on some

Yeah, just to add to that I'm going to be taking a look at the city's franchise agreement with SoCal Gas just to make sure if there is any potential violations of that from this Sparks business that seems to be soliciting business in town. Additionally, I had some announcements or items to state about the consent calendar if I can go ahead and do that right now?

Please. Well first of all, item number eight on tonight's agenda is not the consent calendar but I just wanted to let the public know

Thank you, City Attorney. After consulting with the city manager on this item The additional funds of $479,164 are going to be split evenly between Funds 424 which is the government building fund and 484 which is library impact fees. So thank you.

Back to the City Manager, several people contacted me about the Spark Energy. Do they have a business license to be operating in town?

We couldn't find it with the sparks name But we're gonna do some research on that and I was gonna say once Jeff's done with his research on the franchise agreement I will bring it back if there's more information that needs to be provided to the council note the community

Maybe you can put it up with the PIO. I know

Yeah, we could do

that

too.

The gentleman one of the people contacted me said they were very aggressive and It appears prop potentially promising things That they can't but I don't know there's It's interesting what's going on. If they're not acting appropriately, I think we need to open people's eyes and maybe help them do it the right way if there is the right way. Yeah, we will. OK. Something else for you as it's getting later, darker earlier, people are concerned about the lighting at the parking lots that we have on I Street I drove around there the other night and noticed two of the lights are out in the lot.

There's one out in the center on the south side of the old chamber building, and there's one on J Street on the north side. Maybe some bushes can be trimmed up to get some more light in that. Time change is coming soon.

Yeah we could look into those.

Okay. Did anybody else have anything else to say? I know I had one other thing, but I'll remember when it comes along. Was there one other thing? I don't know. All right. Very good. So we'll open up to public comment on consent calendar. These are on consent calendar items. Consent calendar item. We have approval of minutes, a Lompoc Council meeting and special meeting of June 23rd, 2026 and regular meeting of July 7th, 2026 and July 21st, 2026. Approval ratification of expenditures of payroll September 25th, 2026 at $3 million. A voucher from September 14th through 18th, 2026 at 1.367 million. Another voucher registered from September 21 to the 25 of 624,957.

Number three is adoption of resolution number 6852 to implement a state-mandated minimum wage increase effective January 1st, 2027 approved supplemental appropriations for the increase. Number four is adoption of resolution Approving an authorizing resolution for application statewide park development and committee revitalization program grant funds prop 4 round 5 for renovation of Johns Manville Park and Ryan Park And number five is award the library a For HVAC replacement project RFP number 3077 to JR Bardo heating amount of 591,182 adopters of resolution number 6855 parentheses 26 authorizing supplemental appropriations. If you have any questions want to pull any of those items?

I had a couple quick questions could be answered on item number five Are the units being replaced? Do they have air conditioning in any of those five units? There's three on the roof, two in the basement. Is there AC on any of those? No AC on them. Okay so we're also doing an upgrade then it's not just replacement correct? Last week AC would have been nice right?

Yes, that is correct. We have not had air in the buildings or ventilation. The units currently there are over 25 years old.

Well I noticed the one you had a picture of was 2012 so it wasn't quite that old. The Resner up on the roof? I remember a couple 10-12 years ago when they did that but the ones in the basement are quite a bit older aren't they? Correct. Okay. Are you getting AC out of the basement or all three on the roof for AC?

It's four throughout the building, so I'm not entirely sure though.

OK. So another question with that, I noticed in here which it's not always customary that we do this but you have the $75,000 contingency in here to be approved currently at that. It seems kind of like we're anticipating and already go to the next level? You say the bid was for 591, but you're wanting to add the 75,000 on there currently at this time.

Yeah, because this is a time-sensitive project the grant expires in December. We just in the interest of time we'd like to have it all approved now if possible. Hopefully we won't have to use the contingency but we know it'll be if it's there if we need it that would help expedite the completion of the project.

I just noticed that when we generally put a contingency that a contractor has a tendency to make sure he uses it so I've just Make sure you give me the time sensitivity so I won't pull it off on that one or make the request to pull it off. Thank you, Mr. Cross. So I had one other question here on item number four and this is the authorization resolution for statewide Park development grants, you didn't have a dollar amount on there. Is there a dollar amount that you're looking for or what's the deal?

Then the grant is eligible up to $8.5 million is the cap so once we finish our meetings with the community and figure out what the scope of the project is it could be anywhere from 200,000 to 8.5 million per

park. Is there a reason why we're applying so early for it then?

The deadline for the grant is December 17th, so we have to have the resolution to be able to apply for the grant.

And at what time will you know the dollar amount that you're making the request for the grant?

That's why you're having your public meeting so you can figure out what you want to do? Correct? Yeah, we want to see what the public wants and seeing what can afford in that grand amount. So some people wanted the gopher wire but that might not be possible because that might push us up past 8.5 so we got to see what's possible and keep it under 8. 5 including the contingency money.

So you're trying to get a couple more meetings on this correct?

Yes.

And it's 8.5 for both parks or just one park? Per park.

Per application.

So you're doing two parks, one application?

No, one application for each park.

Okay. Yeah. Alright. So great opportunities. We need to get more people to come to those meetings and tell us what they need right?

Yes, sir. And then please check the social media and our website. We will have updates to those meetings.

I've been at two of them, and I think we've had 10 to 15 people at the event. You had free candy last time too so maybe we'll get more people there. Anybody else see any other questions?

Mayor. Yes? I just wanted to remind you to check the phone and Zoom for a public comment.

Public comment.

There is no public comment via phones or Teams.

Okay, anybody want to comment on this going once twice we're looking for a motion to approve with the modifications right of the funding source correct that was only thing

What's your motion, Council Member Bull? I'll make a motion to accept consent calendar with all the modifications mentioned. And seconded by Bridges. Go ahead and vote.

See it changes pretty colors. There you go. All right. Hope your AC works as well as the one in here. Okay, what have we got? Staff presentations. Announcements. Finance department staff provide a presentation on recent revised calculation of city Lompoc wastewater rates. Come on down Mr.

I was asked to bring back a review of the wastewater discussion that had been approved earlier this fall. It went into place in September. So just to recap a little bit, prior to 2022 usage was based on average usage during January, February and March of the last six years dropping the high and low year. In 2022 it's changed to a four-year average And we implemented a cap for the change until we could bring back a revision to the process. So, we were capping it at four units for residentials and ten units for commercial.

Then in 2026, the usage calculation changed to one year average and removed the cap that had been added in 2020-2022. Customers are now billed consistently based on their actual usage from prior winter. This goes along with utility billing principles of treating customers consistently, billing for electric water that is actually used Under most circumstances, we can't really make exceptions on one-off because once we do it for one, we have to make exceptions for all customers. So again, the main goal for Utility Billing is to treat customers consistently and whenever possible. So I want to go through some of the numbers that we've implemented it So based on, this is based on number of units. We had 1% who decreased more than five units. We had 19% decrease from one to five units which saves them about between nine and $46 a month.

40% of customers didn't change their bill from August to September essentially. 19% increased one to two units That would be an increase of $9 to $18 a month. And then 13% increased from three to five units per month, and 8% increased more than five units per month. So that's as of the original calculations. Now, of those, 891 customers whose usage increased They were at seven units previously. This is important because seven units is the base for a new customer. Whenever a new customer starts, they're put at seven units until they establish a winter average. So 11% of the customers were at seven units and then increased.

Some of them likely were new customers who once they established their actual winter usage They were increased to what their appropriate amount would have been. We had another 1,156 customers who are at the minimum five units. So they were at the minimum and then they recognized higher water usage so it was increased. A lot of those customers who were at seven also If they increased up to 15 or 20, I mean that's they would have only gone up four units at a time so under the prior system. So they wouldn't be paying 11 but other customers who are using 20 are paying 20. So that's the consistency we're trying to recognize. Everyone who is using 20 in the winter months is paying the same amount.

That was one of the issues with using the cap permanently. So since we implemented in September, staff has sent out about 50 letters to customers who experienced increases to determine if they had a water leak and we've already recalculated usage for 28 customers. We're continuing to look out for customers who experienced high increases determined if it was a leak We can look into it and we are adjusting based on leaks. We can estimate what their actual water usage should have been, and we are making those adjustments. We're encouraging customers to contact Utility Billing or Conservation to start that process but we're also sending out letters and trying to contact customers when the data shows that something happened there that was unexpected.

So again, the Wastewater Cost Service Study was presented in 2025. It's in the process of being updated. We expect it to be presented early 2027, March or April hopefully and this study will use the current calculation method and usage to determine whether rates need to be adjusted having this more precise method of billing, more precise method of determining revenues We'll go a long ways to determine whether we need to do any type of increase or decrease, or keep rates the same.

So that's what I prepared and I'm available if you have any questions.

One of the things I noticed is that the people who contacted me concerned it as Depending on the climate and the weather, if somebody happens to be irrigating their yard then it increases their water usage during that time frame. In many cases as they state 20-30% of the value of your property is your landscaping and when we have wet years people aren't. You're correct, your assumption is correct January, February, March you might not be irrigated but some years people go and start a little early either garden or otherwise And since we're not supposed to be charging more than cost of service, your equation you try to make it fit and for the most part it does.

In most part people remember January, February, March not irrigate when you had the multiple year averaging if somebody forgot one year he was averaged over 24 months now you're averaging over three months and leaks are affected as well as It affects the equation when you reduce down to just three of the measurements. And I don't know if there's an ability or a way to say, somebody, I want to do December, January and February. I don' t want to do March.

I'm going to do these other months because I'm going to grow my garden in March. Again, you guys want to make it easier and simpler but it's complicating And to be able to calculate the equation, likewise we don't want to undercharge them because they're being subsidized by others. But when you're overcharging them, you're not charging cost of service. I know staff has worked with them as far as the leaks and such go but if you could answer what people would do if they wanted to keep their lawn green in March and we didn't have rain?

Well, if they water a little bit it's not going to make a big impact. We do remind staff or staff we do write our December bills every year Thank you

Somebody choose maybe the months they wanted to, what three months. Like I said if somebody decided that you know December, I water a lot less in December than I do March especially when we get an early spring but anyway I'll let some of the people comment and then I am going to bring it up. We don't have public comment written down here but I'm gonna move towards that to let public comment on that but let's see what other people have to say.

So when did this go into effect?

The one-year average went into effect September 1st.

September 1, and so we used last year's for the basis.

Correct.

And we want to be consistent. I understand your consistency. If we offered to everyone the ability to not have their rates go up more than X units each year, would that be consistent?

What you would end up with is some customers using water but paying less, well using the same amount as other customers but paying less essentially.

But we'd offer it to everyone so it would be consistent correct?

You could but customers who are already at that level and aren't going up they would still be paying more.

That was true before as well right?

Yeah. Yes, the average and that's what we had would have customers who are at the seven they start out using 30 and they go up to 11 and then actually go up to 15 and there it takes a long time before they get up to where they're actually So I

can see where it's more accurate. But I have a lot of sympathy here for someone whose bill jumped a significant amount of money, what is the on your pie chart? That greater than five, I know it's 8% of the people. I don't know how many people that is but what does that mean in dollars and cents? Greater than five?

So five units would be $46. Some of them were higher than that but a lot of those are the ones we've reached out to so we're in the process of adjusting.

So when it could be $100?

There were none that were that high.

OK,

so what was the highest? The highest was about 30 in general and those were 100.

How can greater than 5 be 46 and the highest one be 30?

I'm sorry, five units is $46. There were increases in 30 units. People who were billed at 7, They're increased to 37 to 40 units. So that means they're paying, you know, at $9 a unit, they're paying like 300 dollars.

You've got to repeat that. That was too quick. Let me tell what I just heard you say. Was somebody got a bill out there that went up $300? Yes.

Again, they were at the base.

I don't feel comfortable with that to start with, and I feel like the pitch we had was that this was not going to be a significant pain point for a bunch of people. So yeah, I think at the end of this, we need to come up with some alternative approach that doesn't... That's enough money to break somebody. And I'm not interested in breaking somebody because The economy is a scale, I understand it's cheaper for the city. Understand the billing process is better.

I even think it's better averaging because you get immediate results if you try to save water but... I also gotta say man having somebody's bill go up 300 bucks we need to address that somehow in my one opinion up here.

Anybody else? public comment on this. This is on the presentation matter.

One of the fundamental issues that has come up is when people were watering in January, February and March they were under the old billing guidelines that only allowed a 4% increase. So if they were using 7 units January, February and March they knew their cap was at 11%. When this got passed after the fact in retroactive that cap went away so what they were told was you're capped at 4% of your usage so January, February and March that's what they knew when they did that. So they had a predictable billing increase so if they used a lot of water January, February and March they knew their bill would only go up to four units or $27 or whatever it came out to.

It was never intended, the way that it was pitched to us as well, to raise rates $300. I think the fundamental solution to this is to cap this year's increase to the 4% that people were expecting when they used water January, February and March and then maybe in the future there's a warning that goes out that there is no cap but for this year what people knew and what they expected was that there was a 4% cap on their usage for billing. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Deborah Jewell and I own and reside at 412 North D Street in Lompoc. Effective September 2026 my sewer bill increased from $46.40 to $167.04 a 360% increase! A friend of mine that owns and lives on Cagney Way her sewer bill increased from 46.40 to 296 dollars And 96 cents, a 640% increase. At the last city council meeting on 10-626 I requested that this be put on the agenda which it was thank you very much. I requested that we got some figures which we did get some thank you for that but we still don't have the independent in depth financial impact study that has not been completed.

I reviewed the notice of public hearing to consider the adjustments calculation method for wastewater charges, and nowhere on this notice does it tell or explain that 40% of customers will see an increase in how much of one. So how could a customer know whether to attend the public hearing and or protest it when they were not informed of a potential increase?

I reviewed the wastewater winter averaging calculation dated 7-21-26, page 3 of 5 paragraph 2, resolution number 5863.13. Put in place a cap so that residential customer units billed could not increase by more than four units per month. Those caps are not able to be implemented in MUNIS software and therefore staff recommends removing the caps which they did.

Comment. So what can MUNIS software do? It can't average customer water usage for four years, and it can't apply caps. So Lompoc customers have to suffer and be gouged because the Munis software that the city purchased is unable to do basic math of averaging and apply a cap. I have another friend that owns and lives on Somerset Place. She is just too busy working as a full-time teacher and caring for her elderly father to print out her bills or come to the City Council meeting. Her bill went from $350 to $512 per month, the sewer amount being $157. And what I'm seeing is that customers who have irrigation sprinklers or a leak during only three months that you are averaging, are being gouged when the water is going into the ground and not to the wastewater plant.

I'm sure that all customers and residents are counting on you all to take the necessary steps to make sure we're being charged accordingly and fairly. FYI, I did not get a letter and neither did any of my friends that had these increases. And why didn't we get an estimate to reprogram Eunice to benefit the residents and the customers rather than just making it easier for the city to have to not

do it

manually? My name is Steve Kelly and I live on the north side of town. And my bill went from $55 a month for waste, wastewater. And this time I got it $120 that's $65 more than I was paying. That's 120%. I just don't understand why we weren't informed was going to occur until I got my bill. And when the bill stated we recalculated, we recalculated what? There must have been a percentage you charge per unit.

So I did my own calculation and the original one at $55 came out to 4.37 dollars per unit Now I'm paying an extra $4.91 and it's up to, let me see what everything, used to be $148 is up to oh my god, $315 so that's $9.28 per unit, when I used to pay $4.37 per unit. And the explanation was just, I recalculated it or you recalculated it? But no one said it was going to increase by a certain amount and that would be, excuse me, $4 and 91 cents per unit.

That's the highest entity on my bill $120 is higher than the electric. And it's just, there's no explanation as to other than we recalculated. It didn't say we increased the price of the unit and that's one of the things that really bothered me so pretty much that's all I have to say but thank you

Hello. Karen Hauenstein, lifelong resident. It seems like this is accounting mistakes that have been made and regardless of why they were made by software or by people it is the responsibility of our city manager Dean Albro to prevent these types of mistakes obviously he has not Maybe because he doesn't attend any of the commission meetings, maybe he's just not up on what's going on in our city when it's his job.

That's what he gets paid for. Thank you.

Anybody else? Anybody on teams or phones?

There is no public comment via teams or phones.

Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment bringing it back. So a couple questions Mr. Cross The unit costs the one gentleman was mentioning is that We didn't raise unit costs. Was there

It was always $9.28, it's been that since 2017. Is

there

a miscalculation on the bill or

something?

There was likely a lower number of units on the original bill and when the units increased that's the increase you saw but I believe if he took his original Bill divided by $9.28, he would have his actual winter average that we were using before I suspect.

We don't have anything... What level of action would we be able to take on this?

You can request that staff come back with a future agenda item to consider whatever you'd like to consider in the future agenda. Whatever actions you'd like to take in the

future. Is there any other questions for Mr. Cronus?

Council Member Bull? I don't have any questions, I agree that this should come back sooner than later so we can address this and see what we can do. It's frustrating because I've been here long enough to know that Munis was supposed to be a net positive in many ways and I'm sure it is but some of these impacts are staggering.

Is it true that munis doesn't have the capability of the cap or 4%?

It's just, that's how...

You know we've been given that excuse before that the computer or the software is not compatible with everything that we wanted to do. We should be able to do whatever we want you know? Don't you agree?

In the past we had a product we could program this is not one we can program.

Is that something immunists could come in and redo it and add that capability?

They would charge for it. Well

of course, of course they're going to charge for it but can't we do that and ask them to come back? We

could ask.

Put another category or what would they charge to come back and whatever you

know? I don't know. We've never requested special programs before.

But I think we should do something like that because the answer is pretty clear that they don't have a cap anymore so I don'y know why the questions are even being...we're sitting here like we don't know the questions to ask but if the capability for the software can be We've never asked for any special programming before, but

I don't think it's a quick fix for them. They would basically, I don't know. I don't know for sure.

So if we did this and you guys would have to do a manual entry so we could actually change the policy to say we want it done they would have to put the cap in manually for every customer correct? Is that what you're saying?

We would have to look at those customers who increased or decreased by more than that and change those manually but

I think that's what we need to do, one or the other. Either get that thing changed where we have a cap or ask for the software company to come in Munis and have it adjusted so that we can actually have it changed to benefit the customers versus another meeting just to ask more questions. I think we can actually give a little bit of direction. Thank you Bob.

Well I want to start with, I don't think you guys made a mistake in the math or anything like that. And I think from here I'm probably as much at fault as anything in that I did not recognize when I approved that I eliminated the cap or when I was one of the folks that eliminated it so that's probably an error on my side. How were you doing it before? How were you doing the cap before?

We were calculating manually and entering the data into the 10,000 to 15,000 accounts.

So you ran out all the bills and did analysis and...

We ran reports, exported in Excel and then had a lot of complicated formulas to determine what the new amount should be.

Okay. Well, I think I agree with Councilman Vega that we need to go back and do it manually if we can't do the software. I do think we have some tools now available where you could automate some of that through a simple Python routine, have the builds pumped out in Excel running routine and you'd still have to manually correct it, but I think that we'd have to ask the lawyer when you know if the council decides this is coming back say whether that would be consistent or not. But I feel like we can justify if we're doing it for everybody that we're not increasing more than a given percent.

And maybe we start, we do a sliding scale until it goes away you know? It's a 4% the first year, it's 10 the next 25 and then that cap goes away some kind of

scale that gets us to a

solution. And just to clarify,

it's four units not... Oh whatever the... Because the four units can be in 20 or 30 percent. Okay. But still just to clarify.

Whatever metric you come back with, you could in my opinion put a sliding scale that over four years which was our normal averaging before. It's washed out and you've solved the problem but nobody gets this shock so I don't know if it's appropriate for me to make a motion or make a movement, but I'd like to see it come back and address those issues. Come back with a recommended cap that passes legal mustard and see if we can get through this and find some relief.