Clean Water Works
CLEVELAND, OHIO: From the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, an in-depth and fun conversation led by Donna Friedman and Mike Uva on any and all topics related to clean water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and the people, projects, and programs serving Lake Erie and our local waterways and communities.
Clean Water Works
Ken Duplay on Sewer Rates and Managing Finances
Ken Duplay is Chief Financial Officer of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, and in this episode he shares insights from his 21-year career on the strategic art of setting sewer and stormwater rates, our meticulous five-year planning cycle, and managing debt. It's a thought-provoking look at the financial strategies that keep our essential infrastructure running smoothly.
Mike, have you ever had any finance classes?
Speaker 2:I took an intro to finance class at CSU.
Speaker 1:How did that go?
Speaker 2:It was really interesting.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I took it far after I should have taken it. I took it.
Speaker 1:Were you like sixth year senior.
Speaker 2:No, I took it like eight years ago.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:For like a certificate, a grad certificate at CSU, an intro to finance and I'm like, wow, this is so I'd learned some of the stuff before supply and demand and budgets, you know budgets, accounts, debits. Yeah, I was late to the game for sure, and I've made plenty of poor decisions, financial decisions.
Speaker 3:Everyone does based on you haven't, though I don't really believe that, but you always look back and there's stuff that you could have done differently, like invest in bitcoin.
Speaker 1:Is that specifically what you're referring to?
Speaker 3:no, I mean, I mean that's as much luck as anything else picking on what to invest in. Just you'll learn more, you go through more things and get a better base of knowledge to work off of Chief Financial Officer, ken DuPle.
Speaker 1:Here with us today.
Speaker 2:Hi Ken. Glad to be here, ken. How long have you been at the sewer district?
Speaker 3:I've been at the sewer district, for it'll be 21 years this year. Okay, so that's a long time.
Speaker 2:Did you start out with a background in finance, or did you acquire that as you proceeded through the ranks?
Speaker 3:I started at the sewer district as an intern, actually in the new, at the time, internal audit department. I was finishing my undergraduate in accounting and looking for something to get into the accounting space and you know, I got a 15-minute interview and started as an intern and a couple weeks later I'm working, like I said, in the audit department and I've really been here ever since. I worked on my master's of accounting while working here, but really all my professional experience experiences here at the district.
Speaker 1:Are you a local grad?
Speaker 3:Yes, I went to Kent State for both grad and undergrad.
Speaker 2:So your story is pretty remarkable then here at the district in that you started out as really the lowest rank. That's not a really nice way to put it.
Speaker 1:I know you were an intern, burgeoning generation, really the lowest rank, that's not a really nice way to put it.
Speaker 2:You were an intern, yeah you started out as an intern and now you're CFO no experience and you were able to work your way up.
Speaker 3:About a year after I started, I moved over to the finance department and really just tried to learn as much as I could about everything in the department, and over time I got involved in more and more things, and did you always have an aptitude for numbers?
Speaker 1:Yeah, are your parents in?
Speaker 2:accounting.
Speaker 3:No, there was no one else really in my family in accounting. I was always good with math and numbers in school.
Speaker 3:Senior year of high school at Garfield Heights I took an accounting class very basic ledger paper all by hand kind of stuff, and it just seemed like a good way to go with the things I was good at. It just worked out that I got into it and liked it from the beginning. The only part of accounting I never liked was tax and I didn't want anything to do with that. Why is that hard? It's delving a lot into rules, regulation, taxation. It's almost as much of being an attorney. In some ways it just was not interesting to me.
Speaker 1:It's less mathy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very rule driven. Not that accounting itself isn't, but it's just different motivations get people involved in tax and it's just not a topic that interested me, as opposed to working within a company of some sort and helping to build a project or run a company, that kind of thing build a project or run a company, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Well, the reason we have you on our podcast, clean Water Works, is to talk about maybe not the happiest of topics, but we have to talk about it and we have to explain to the public. About rate increases, how often do we typically increase sewer stormwater rates here at the district?
Speaker 3:We set our rates on five-year cycles. We have rates in place right now that our board passed in 2021, so we're nearing the end of that rate cycle. So in the second half of this year we'll begin a new rate study where we'll look at 2027 through 2031. We have our scheduled rate increases through 2026 of 4.2% Going up just now. People are getting their first bills this year with an increase over last year. Those happen also 4.2% in 2026. And then we're determining 27 and after.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we can tell people five years out what the rates are going to increase each year.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, do we hire a consultant, I assume, to do the rate study?
Speaker 3:We do. We hire a consultant, both for our benefit and for the public's benefit, just to make sure that everything is thoroughly vetted by us. And you know other professionals who have broad experience working with us and other like entities. So we make sure that we have a well-qualified external consultant who walks us through the process. Both you know conceptually in terms of the rate structure so for instance, the sewer being based on water usage and you know there's a fixed fee and a variable fee based on water usage. So we kind of revisit the philosophy of the rates itself each time to make sure that there's not anything new or different that we think would be more equitable or appropriate for how we're billing our customers. Generally. We come back to the same basics of the way the fees have been structured for most of the time that I've been at the district. This will be the fifth rate study that I'll's the meat and potatoes of the numbers and trying to get to the actual fee that will be required to meet the district's revenue requirements over the next five years.
Speaker 1:So you have to gather everything from our upcoming construction plans, whatever we need to be doing to maintain operation at our wastewater treatment plants, any large tunnel projects. So you're looking at the next five years of all that work to be done.
Speaker 3:Precisely so. We internally go through a process where we forecast a 10-year forecast every single year and that feeds the rate study and the rate study also helps validate what we've been projecting over the time. In between rate studies. There's three main buckets. So the operating expenses, the cost of the salary of all the employees and all the materials and chemicals to run the plants and any other day-to-day operating expense just to run the district. And we take those projections of those operating expenses. We look at inflation and other factors to project how much we think those are going to cost us over that five-year period. And we look at the capital needs how much we think those are going to cost us over that five-year period. And we look at the capital needs. So we work with engineering and construction department. They give us a projected capital improvement plan. We see what that looks like, we work with them. Sometimes we make changes to it based on the cash flows, what they're projecting.
Speaker 3:And then the third component that we have to pay every year is our debt service. So that's the principal and interest payments on the loans and bonds that we have previously taken out to pay for other projects. So as we moved into the consent decree era here at the districts around 2011, we started spending significant money on capital projects, the tunnels and other plan improvements. So the annual principal and interest payments on those outstanding debts are the third component that we project, and those are the three things that basically make up revenue requirements that then we need to craft a rate that will fund those. Our customers pay for over 99% of our operating capital. Up until very recently, we hadn't received any sort of grant funding since the late 80s, early 90s, and even the recent smaller grants that we've gotten have been a tiny fraction of our capital project.
Speaker 2:So for the listeners here who are within our service area, I think it's important to note that you paying your sewer bills and your stormwater bills are the sole provider of our work. Really, we don't get much or any outside funding.
Speaker 3:This year is the first year that we got grant funding of any significant amount, and I think it was a couple million dollars, but nothing that we could count on to either lower rates or predict into the future to be there. Like you said, the rate payers are the ones who they pay for all our work. Anything that we do they pay for, and that's why we are always focused on keeping those rates as low as possible.
Speaker 1:We do have two separate rates. We have a wastewater rate and we have a stormwater rate. They're in separate funding buckets. The two shall never converge. You said, for the wastewater side we've got debt services, but the stormwater program is a cash in, cash out program, correct?
Speaker 3:That's correct. The biggest reason why we chose to keep the stormwater as a cash-funded program so everything that they spend has to be paid for with cash they've got for the year is really because of the huge debt burden that already existed on the sewer side. The obligations of the consent decree and the amount that we have had to, and know still have to borrow have really driven that decision. It's been a lot of work to acquire that debt, manage that debt and to try and keep that debt service as low as possible and achieve and maintain our bond rating, which is essentially the same as someone's credit score. So we're at the second highest rating and that helps us have lower interest rates when we do need to borrow money or refinance our outstanding bonds. And not putting additional debt in place in the stormwater program really helps us maintain that credit rating because we know we're going to need to borrow more to complete the consent decree on the sewer side. So it's really around debt management.
Speaker 1:Is it less risky to have a cash?
Speaker 3:program. There's different risks based on which way you fund your capital, and there's good arguments for and against either. It's always going to be the cheapest to cash fund a project, because then you don't have the interest costs that you'd accumulate over time, but at the same time, you can accomplish more. The only reason we've been able to accomplish what we have with the consent decree so far is by being able to borrow as much as we have, and we have just under $2 so far is being able to borrow as much as we have, and we have just under $2 billion in debt right now outstanding, and majority of that has really been related to consent decree related borrowing. Funding with debt, though, also can be a policy decision, because, for instance, you'd get a project like one of our tunnel projects that could be around 70, 100-year life. Well, if you pay for it with cash up front, really only those customers at that time are the ones paying for it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that makes so much sense. So you want to spread the burden over like a generation or two, right?
Speaker 3:Exactly. Borrowing can also allow you to spread that burden over a longer period of time of people who will be using and benefiting from those assets. So that is another reason why debt is, even though it can be more costly, it can be more equitable over time in terms of the way you distribute the costs.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating can be more equitable over time in terms of the way you distribute the costs. Can you talk about the difference between taking out a loan for these projects and using bonds to fund our work?
Speaker 3:They're both debt. They're just different types of debt. So, bonds when we sell bonds, we go to the open market and we work with a bank and with our financial advisors and we basically tell the world the sewer district is going to sell bonds to fund XYZ project and a team gets put in place. We go and we market the bonds and we sell them. We get demand. We have a very good credit rating, like I said, so we get strong interest. When we do sell the bonds and we sell them, we get demand. We have a very good credit rating, like I said, so we get strong interest when we do sell the bonds.
Speaker 1:And who's buying these? Yeah, who buys bonds? Are you?
Speaker 3:buying them Investors. Investors buy our bonds, so they're institutional investors. So it could be a state farm'll buy our bonds and hold them. It could be all the way down to an individual Ohio investor. We offer that too.
Speaker 1:When you're paying on our debt. Does it feel like when I'm paying on my mortgage and I just feel like I'm only paying interest and nothing else is happening?
Speaker 2:Like you're going to be in debt forever. Yeah, like my principal or whatever, is not going to know.
Speaker 3:You know, to a certain extent we have. Most of our loans are either 20, 30, or 40 years. So when you sit down and you look at a statement with a 40-year payback, it does seem like, yeah, like you know, you won't be here when the loans you're taking out are paid off. So it does have a little bit of a feel to that Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, doesn't keep you up at night though, right, no?
Speaker 3:Lots of people do this yeah.
Speaker 2:Does the sewer district have someone in its finance department who is looking at things like energy costs and other things that are more unpredictable than you know how much wastewater we're going to be treating, or other big, maybe political factors or worldwide policy factors? Is that on your list of tasks or do you leave that to a consultant, or is there someone else in-house looking at that stuff? That to a consultant, or is there someone else in-house looking at that stuff?
Speaker 3:We look at all of those things as we're doing that annual 10-year forecast or 10-year financial plan. We publish every year our budget book and it's got details about the current year budget. But a section of it is also a detailed look at our current 10-year plan and it goes through some of those factors and what assumptions we're making about cost of power over time and health care and wages and all those factors. And, like I said, we try and monitor that and incorporate that into our planning. But then when we do the rate study, you know that's that second outside look Say, hey, we're seeing 7% for power. That might be a little high. So that's where we can get that extra validation.
Speaker 1:What are some of the things that, when you became CFO, you updated or changed just how the sewer district was doing it?
Speaker 3:Well, we've had a lot of good things in place already. I can't say that there's anything that I came in and wholesale changed. I tried to automate some things that we still had on paper at the time when I started. We literally had I mentioned earlier how I took an accounting class in high school and it was basically like 1950s style on paper. We had people keeping some records that way in 2003 when I started here. So, for instance, our capital project.
Speaker 2:Where's that folder again? It was on my desk.
Speaker 1:I spilled the coffee on it.
Speaker 3:Part of really my whole career here has been moving a lot of that stuff electronically and kind of pushing some of those things across the finish line to kind of get some things caught up.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's a big shift.
Speaker 3:It is More and more people coming into the department now have always worked that way, Folks who had never. We worked with folks who had really never had to use a computer for work or school or anything when you first started here. So it was definitely more difficult to make those kind of changes now. I think people are used to technology changing as well now.
Speaker 1:With the consent decree starting to wrap up not quite wrapped up, but you know we're pretty far with our tunnel projects. Does that change at all how you're looking at the next set of rates?
Speaker 3:That is a huge factor. So the consent decree has more time left on it, but the majority of the dollars will be spent, I want to say, by 2027, 2028.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there'll be other projects after that, but all the big tunnels will be done by then. That definitely impacts the forecasting, because now we're seeing a window where we maybe don't have that $200, $250 million capital plan every year. It seems likely, for instance, that we're going to be able to have slower rate increases in this rate study than we've had in the past. As we were ramping up for the consent decree, we had, I think, a five-year average in one rate study of 12%, and then we had eights and now this last one is fours. We're seeing now the point.
Speaker 3:That is this the consent decree is wrapping up. We're not going to necessarily need to be as aggressive on that and we'll be able to have increases that are more in line with just the operating costs and inflation, as opposed to the need to really ramp up that capital program. We might be in an environment where we aren't needing to borrow as much, for instance after this current five-year cycle. That's good news. We're hopeful that we will definitely be below the 4.2 that we had in this last rate cycle.
Speaker 1:What's one of your favorite parts of your job?
Speaker 3:It's always been the people. I mean, there's always been good people here who are dedicated to the work we do in protecting the environment. I think that's something that's always been important to me, in that we're doing something that's meaningful for the region and for people's lives. That's meaningful for the region and for people's lives, and I also appreciate the challenges that come with the work. The consent decree while in some ways a burden to deliver this, but it's definitely been something that has forced us to look hard at the way we spend our money and be as efficient as possible, because we know rates have to go up, so everything we can do to make sure that they only go up as much as they need to is one of the challenges of the job.
Speaker 2:No matter how many people are using our services, the cost of providing wastewater treatment and stormwater management doesn't really change depending on that. So if there are half the number of people who are living here than there were 50 years ago, Population is definitely an important factor, mike, because when we go through our planning process we have revenue requirements.
Speaker 3:We know that we need to do the work we need to do. You have to do these things and they cost us much. And a lot of that stuff is fixed. The sewer system is in place, there's crews that have to go out and maintain it, the debt is all in place that's got to be paid for, and if population is declining then you have a smaller number of people having to help pay for that same central set of services. So if the population declines, that will have a negative impact on an individual rate payer.
Speaker 1:I think something I was reading recently was about level of service and level of treatment and how you have these variables with population, but also with the level of service that's required. Previously we had these combined sewer overflows and then we were regulated and told we needed to fix that issue, and so that made the rates go up, but it also made the level of service go up, and the study that I was looking at was just showing how, over the last 20 years, the level of treatment has really dramatically changed across the United States and has come to such a much higher level than it was previously. So I think that that's also important to think about that. Yeah, maybe we are paying more, but the level of treatment is much higher, and so our water quality in the region is much better.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about trust. I think that there is like some kind of crazy Venn diagram between, like the people that we serve, the work we do, and that intersection, I think, involves a lot of trust, and I think fiscally being responsible is a huge element of that, and I know Kyle pushes that, our CEO pushes that all the time and I just wanted to hear your take as the chief financial officer. What is your take on how those things overlap?
Speaker 3:It is 100% correct that trust is about the most important asset that we have with our ratepayers.
Speaker 3:If there is no trust, they are not going to believe you.
Speaker 3:When you say you're going to fix a problem, they're not going to believe you when you say you need this money for a project, and if you haven't given them a reason to trust you, they shouldn't.
Speaker 3:Like I said, it's our goal to make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep the rates low, and really that comes to being able to tell a rate payer we're not wasting your money. That's really where the trust is, and it goes back to what you were just saying, donna, about the level of service, because there's certain things that, as I mentioned, our customers essentially pay for everything we do. So everything that we do needs to be providing value to our member communities, to our rate payers, in as an efficient way as possible, and if we've done something to breach that trust, then it makes it harder to even deliver the things that we have to as a baseline service. So, making sure that we're open and transparent with our rate payers, we're giving them all the information they need to be informed about what we're doing and why really is the reason why it helps us pass the rates when we do need to pass rate increases to do the work. You may not be aware of this.
Speaker 2:You have received some accolades from our CEO on your no-nonsense approach to long-term rate stability for our customers, to avoid rate shocks that have impacted other cities.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the approach that we've taken over time is that you want smooth, steady and predictable increases. If you're going to need increases and I'm not talking about anyone in particular but if there's an entity that hasn't raised their prices in 20 years on something, something was out of whack with the projections there, because everyone knows everything goes up in cost over time.
Speaker 3:Everything costs more over time, so you're either not properly priced or under-delivering something. So to truly be able to plan out rates, you've got to anticipate that costs are going to go up slowly over time and we're here forever. The sewer district is going to be providing a service far into the future. Unless something changes with technology that we can't foresee. We're going to be providing this kind of service far into the future for those people still paying 40 years from now for the southerly tunnel. Anything that we can do to make sure that those rates are as low as possible over time, we want to make sure that we're having the best long-term impact on rates and what rates are going to look like in 2027, what they could look like in 2037. Always sort of having that in mind is really important, because we as an entity need to be here and we need to consider those customers too.
Speaker 1:Do you like budgeting when you get home? I know I had a friend who was a chef and when he got home he actually didn't make the food. His wife actually made most of the meals because he was so sick of cooking when he got home. Is that your situation?
Speaker 3:No, I handle most of that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 3:I actually have my own 40-year financial plan Do you?
Speaker 2:play the stock market.
Speaker 1:Oh, what a fun question.
Speaker 3:I have some investments that I dabble in, but nothing that's critical to the retirement plan. Do you have any?
Speaker 2:financial advice. Or general financial advice for 2025 for people just trying to.
Speaker 1:For people who've never taken any finance classes.
Speaker 3:Everyone who asks me this question, this is the answer I give them Save money as early as you can. Start saving money as early as you can, as much as you can deal with, because the only real benefit that you have is time to have that money. Compound Time is the biggest ally you have, you know, to have that money compound time is the biggest ally you have.
Speaker 2:Ken Dupley is the chief financial officer at the Regional Sewer. District. Thank you so much for joining us today and giving us some insight into what things cost and how we pay for them.
Speaker 3:You're very welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, Mike and Donna. Yeah, maybe we can have you back for a post-rate study update. Oh yeah, I'll put it on the five-year plan back for a post-rate study update.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'll put it. On the five-year plan we need a five-year plan. Yeah, who's going to do that? We need a six-month plan. Seriously, all right, thanks, kent.
