1. Marion County Utilities
Performance Measurement
and Strategic Planning
April 23, 2015
Flip Mellinger
Director
Marion County Utilities

2. Brief History Marion County Utilities – born in 1995
Purchased major private Utility service area
Purchased Florida Water Services assets – 2003
Agreed not to raise rates for 5 years
Seriously underfunded – lacked sufficient manpower
Maintenance deferred – Assets failing
BCC forced to raise rates – Tiered Rate Structure
5 year plan:
9% April 2009, 9% October 2009, 9% October 2010, 4.5% October 2011, 4.5% October 2012

3. Old Stonecrest Plant Very inefficient and No available capacity
Florida Water allowed
System to run into ground.
Consisted of a McNeil Plant,
2 Rain for Rent tanks, and 2
US Water portable Plants
Very inefficient and
ineffective - compliance failure
No available capacity

4. Loch Harbor WWTP Badly deteriorated metal structure
Supports Loch Harbor Condominiums
Badly deteriorated metal structure
Metal has been patched several times
Plant has exceeded its useful life
Flows being sent to Stonecrest Water
Reuse Facility

5. Impacts Overall 36% rate increase +
Implementation of water conservation tiered rate structure
Some customers saw water bills more than double
Major political issue

6. Benchmarking Utilities track: 28 Performance data points
Higher than normal labor expenditure to track
38 Performance Measures
Calculated from the measures above
MCU uses 22 Key Benchmarks (Goals)
Some examples……

7. Key Benchmarking Results
O&M cost per million gallons wastewater:
Marion County Utilities
Florida
Benchmarking
Consortium
2012/13 Average1
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
$2,521.27
$2,694.18
$2,930.73
$2,844.65
$2,904.36
$3,561.35
$1,737.29
(County)
$3,211.84
(City)
1Florida Benchmarking Consortium FY12/13 Annual Service Report (WW064f-City and WW064f-County)

8. Resulting Goals & Objectives
Reduce direct costs per MG wastewater:
Continue to regionalize
SCADA Implementation
Greater control of plants – reduced electricity
Less manpower
Upgrade / modernize facilities for efficiency
Reduced from 11 WWTPs to 6 – going to 5

9. Stonecrest WRF

10. Accomplishments: Significantly reduce operations and maintenance costs
$15.5M in 2008 to $11.7M in 2013
Improve Bond ratings
Moodys from A1 to Aa3
Standard and Poors to AA-
Refinance old Debt – net savings of nearly $5M
Reduce Rates – 9% reduction on October 1st

11. Questions?