The Indian Wells Valley Water District held a board of directors meeting workshop on Tuesday morning. The Water District holds these workshops twice a year to gather IWVWD staff and board members in order to step back, look at the big picture, and discuss long-term goals for the coming months.

Discussion at Tuesday's workshop went on for roughly rough four hours covering a number of topics. It also covered a review of Water District finances. Slides on the budget can be found in the board meeting packet available online under the "Board of Directors" tab on IWVWD.com. The site also includes full audio recordings of meetings, also under the "Board of Directors" tab.

Though they covered many discussion points throughout the long workshop, one of the most pertinent items covered was the potential introduction to customer fees on credit card transactions at IWVWD. The board did not take action to introduce fees just yet, but began looking at numbers so they could begin formal discussions on the topic.

At multiple Water District board meetings throughout 2017, the board of directors occasionally discussed the idea of adding a fee for customer credit card transactions, a practice that's become commonplace among many companies. At the moment, the Water District does not place a fee on credit card transactions.

For the workshop, IWVWD chief financial officer Tyrell Staheli presented a break down of costs so that the directors could have a more informed discussion on whether or not they wanted to introduce a fee.

Staheli provided a breakdown of the costs of different customer transactions. According to the presentation, the average credit card transaction costs $2.67 for the IWVWD. That number is for online transactions, and it goes up even higher when a customer comes into the office to make a payment as it requires time from staff.

According to Staheli's presentation, with the costs of both in person and online credit card transactions, the processing cost to the Water District adds up to $139,575 per year, or 54 percent of the cost of all payment transactions.

Board member Don Cortichiato said, "I've been against the District subsidizing using credit cards from the start. Now it's growing more and now it's over $100,000 a year. That kind of money would almost double our engineering department."

He suggested that the Water District ought to do something to offset that cost, even if it's just a flat $2 fee.

Despite the cost, not all board members were immediately for adding a credit card transaction fee for customers to pay.

Board member Peter Brown said that while there is a cost to accepting credit card transactions with no fee, there are also benefits which may be more difficult to calculate.

"I think we're overlooking the fact that we have cash flow," Brown said. "I don't know if you can project how much slower our cash flow would be, or what people wouldn't pay because they couldn't use a credit card. Or maybe people would pay it no matter what. One of the reasons we enacted [credit card payments] is to make it extremely convenient for people to pay their bill."

He continued, "The more money we get in, the faster we get the money in, the more that money goes into use to do other things that saves money."

Following Brown's comments, Staheli said, "Our outstanding payments has also decreased as credit card payments have gone up."

"I rest my case," Brown said.

Brown said that if not adding a fee makes credit card payments easier and increases the likelihood of people paying their bill, that may end up a more financially efficient plan than adding a fee because most on-time payments means the Water District doesn't have to pay for staff to go out to shut systems off, then go back out to turn them back on when receiving payment.

And, quite simply, payments made on time means the Water District has cash flow.

Even so, Brown also admitted that if there is some level of fee they could add that would not cause a decline in payments, he'd support that as well, even if it's a fee that only covers a small portion of the credit card transaction cost.

With no other board members seeming undecided on the matter and with even director Brown and director Cortichiato open to changing their mind, the directors agreed that they needed more data before coming to a conclusion.

Board president Ron Kicinski requested Staheli come back to a future Water District board meeting with added data to answer some of the questions that were brought up in the discussion.

The board also requested that the item go to the Water District finance committee for discussion. The item may come back to the board for action, though the discussion ended with board members giving IWVWD staff the authority to introduce the fee if it appeared to be financially efficient.

"If it's going to save us money, it's going to work. If it's going to cost us money, we don't do it," board vice president Chuck Griffin said. "If we're going to make a quarter more, it's worth doing."

IWVWD general manager Don Zdeba asked if the board would like to see the numbers again after Staheli works it out.

Brown said, "We're not that much of a control freak are we?"

Board president Ron Kicinski suggested the item at least go to IWVWD's finance committee, and the board agree to go that route.

The Daily Independent will report on developments in future editions.