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your rate system governs. I'm just very disappointed to hear today that you're reluctant to allow for even a phase in to get to that point. You want it to happen next year and be done. Mr. Falls said well, we have a couple things that are going on that call for this to be addressed now as rather than five (5) years from now. You both know, you've been in the utility business for quite some time. You understand when you finance and bond for an improved project, you need to have. rates that the bond can be backed up by and we are going to be in a process where we're going to build a new Water Reclamation. Facility that is going to require some financing and some bonding and to be able to do that, that's in the best interest of the customers that we serve we need to be able to have one (1) rate for the customers to get the best financing package that we can get. So if we waited and held off for five (5) years to phase in a rate, we would delay the construction of the Water Reclamation Facility until then. Mr. Brown said, I would say, our proposal was to transition to City rates, which would give you that control long term. You know what our rates are today and I can tell you we are raising our rates 3% on October Is'. We've got a provision where were able to raise our rates by a CPI adjustment and I anticipate we'll be that for the next few years because our costs of providing service is going up with the increased regulatory. environment. I believe you can structure a bond issue today that contemplates maybe some constraints on your rates now with higher rates in the future. You can structure your debt service to work through these things. I think that can be worked around and the big picture, I think we came here last.month, the County presented the terms of a settlement that I think the City was presently surprised by the fact that we were looking to work out an agreement, but that agreement had to have certain terms. This agreement that you are proposing today is just the same result we'd get if we went to court and you guys won. I don't know what's benefiting it for the County. Our south barrier residents are pounding on us for even having offered this. The Town of Indian River Shores has sent us information that they're unpleased with our attempt to make an offer and I thought what we put on the table was a very reasonable offer for the City. You'd be able to lock down one (1) portion of your customer base quickly and resolve whatever you did with the Town as that process happened and I thought a faster way because I keep hearing we're holding up the construction of the new Wastewater Plant. I thought what we proposed was a faster way for the City to get to that certainty and again I believe the rate transition is something that can be dealt with in the structure of a bond issue. With that I don't know how the County can support anything like this. I thought that we had made a very fair offer to the City and this is completely not in line with what we proposed. I can't see supporting it, not to mention we've been presented today with the idea that the Town's really not going to react well to this news and I think our position has been a dispute between the Town and the City on the service territory. But, when you're starting to talk about making rate changes to an existing franchise agreement, what good is a. franchise agreement and I'll go back to Mr. Reingold's point again, I got a sermon the last time I was here about the County not cooperating and about the intent of folks who many have passed on, that for an agreement that was done when I was in 9th grade, meanwhile the City is, in my opinion in my mind what I'm hearing very clearly not honoring an agreement entered nine (9) years ago when I was involved as the Budget Director in those 5 07/22/21 Conflict Resolution