PSA Board says Town/County meeting is 'imperative' in deciding best path forward
One of the biggest obstacles faced by the PSA Board is that the Authority has been underfunded since its establishment in 1974, leaving it to Town and County governments, as separate entities, to meet fiscal needs.
At the Floyd-Floyd County Public Service Authority Board on Oct. 15, members and PSA employees shared their thoughts on how the future of the Authority should be decided.
One of the biggest obstacles faced by the PSA Board is that the Authority has been underfunded since its establishment in 1974, leaving it to Town and County governments, as separate entities, to meet fiscal needs, including emergency funding to address water main breaks (caused by the breakdown of decades-old pipes) and capital funding to improve the system (such as digital meters).
The Board, which includes two members of Town Council (Will Griffin and Bruce Turner), two members of the Board of Supervisors (Chair Linda DeVito Kuchenbuch and Kalinda Bechtold), and three Town/County representatives (Trent Cox, Vice Chair Michael Maslaney, and Rick Parrish), has spent years, Griffin said, trying to produce a funding solution.
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Chair DeVito Kuchenbuch said Oct. 15 that she wanted to hear from each of the Board members about how they feel about the future of the PSA, and two main options were discussed: The County assuming control of operations or establishing a financial plan to move forward under its current structure.
Bechtold said she is concerned about a “catastrophic break, when that happens” because grant opportunities and loan abilities are “stretched.”
“I’m just concerned about the financial stability of the Authority,” she said. “I don’t know what the options are. I know that the County doesn’t have [the funds for PSA] emergencies… If the County’s in charge, maybe there’s more ability to finance it” through grants and loans, she said.
Rick Parrish said the County is “who [emergencies] would fall on” if the Authority didn’t exist and that he’d had “high hopes for changes in politics because different representation makes a huge difference” for where rural PSA funding falls on the state and federal governments’ priority lists.
Engineer Matthew Gross said government-provided emergency funding, such as FEMA, depends on what type of catastrophic failure might occur. He noted that calling representatives and organizations, like the Department of Environmental Quality, could also be a way to find emergency funding in catastrophic cases.
Gross said the most likely thing “he can see” causing a strain on the system right now would be if an entity, such as a data center, moved into Floyd County and needed a significant amount (100,000 to 200,000 gallons) of water per day.
He said the system does not “have that capacity at the treatment plant” and noted that the ballpark estimate for building a new treatment plant would be about $15 million.
“Where you are at Dodd Creek, you’ve basically maxed the capacity of what you can put in at Dodd Creek, so you’ve got to go to a bigger water source to increase the capacity,” Gross said. “A big water and sewer user would be your biggest hurdle…”
Michael Maslaney, who participated in the meeting via Zoom, said it would be “nice” if the Board of Supervisors and Town Council would collaborate on a financial plan to include in the Floyd-Floyd County PSA Charter when it is up for revisions in the summer. He said both groups “have all the facts.”
“They need to work it out… They’re responsible individuals, and I think we (the Board) can help them, but in the end, they’re where the decision comes from,” Maslaney said.
Bruce Turner said he doesn’t think the Town, County, or the PSA Board should be deciding the Authority’s path forward on their own because the groups are approaching the problem “from different standpoints.”
He said he thinks the Board should make its decision based on what experts say for if the County should take over the Authority. He said if the County does assume control, they would need to have the same conversations that the PSA Board has, making their bi-monthly meetings longer.
Either way, “we’re still going to have the same issues” with funding, Turner said. “ And I know getting a consulting company is going to cost money as well… It might take us a while to come up with a consensus that ‘yes, we need to do one or the other,’ but it’s something we need to start pushing for and try to get something in place.”
Trent Cox said his big concern with the budget is about generating enough revenue to fund capital projects without “significantly” raising the rates for residents.
Cox, who works as the Deputy Chief Operating Officer at the Western Virginia Water Authority (WVWA), said there’s the possibility of having a third-party come in and manage the PSA, which WVWA has experience with in other localities, such as Boone’s Mill and Ferrum, he said.
He said it’s a “little easier” for an entity that has other sources of revenue to take over funding in these situations “and be able to put some capital toward [smaller systems] if needed.” He added that, in his experience with WVWA, they’ve kept existing PSA employees in their positions.
Engineer Gross said that path would introduce the customer base to a third-party and reduce local control of water/sewer rates.
Superintendent Patrick Nicola said he would like to see the PSA continue being a joint venture of the Town and County. He said while he doesn’t think the Authority will ever be “totally self-sustainable,” especially when it comes to investing in future infrastructure improvements, it is getting better under the current structure as time progresses.
PSA Administrative Assistant Teresa Conner said in regard to day-to-day operations, the PSA has felt more stable and come a long way in the past few years. She agreed that Town and County governments need to sit down and have a conversation.
“I’ve never really understood why that can’t happen,” she said. “...It really just comes down to who can contribute to helping us.”
Will Griffin said that “a meeting is imperative” and that he would like to see the Authority continue under the current configuration. He said the Board should get a financial plan in place in the charter “if it does nothing else but send a message to our employees that we’re committed to moving this forward.”
“I think we would regret not trying to keep things in place and not giving this a real effort to make it work,” Griffin said, adding that the Board itself is “as strong as any board in the county” and that it is “cut out to deal with what we’re dealing with.”
He noted that the current organization of the PSA includes institutional knowledge from its employees and disrupting that could cause more instability, he said.
Both Town Council and the Board of Supervisors, Griffin said, need to “have a good working knowledge of what’s going on” with the PSA to continue as a joint effort.
“...They need to have a level of trust in our staff and [the PSA Board] that we can do that work without them having their thumb overtop of it completely,” Griffin said.
Chair DeVito Kuchenbuch said it’s “obvious” that a meeting between the Town and County is what most members of the Board want, and it should happen sooner rather than later. She added that the meeting could include PSA Board members as well, and it could be either the whole Board or a few members.
DeVito Kuchenbuch said she and Bechtold would take notes back to the Board of Supervisors and “try to come up with something” around their schedules.
Bechtold said she believes it’s “imperative” to have at least a couple of members of the PSA Board in front of the Supervisors before budget season starts in the new year, and DeVito Kuchenbuch agreed.
Griffin said that Councilman Turner and himself are “ready to go” before the Board of Supervisors at any time. He said they informed Council that “that’s where we’re headed” after the PSA Board’s last meeting.
“I think that’s the starting line… Until we put our heads together and figure out what the path forward is and how we do this, the rest of it is for naught,” Griffin said. “We’ve got to figure out what the Town and County are willing to do.”
Turner said the two groups need to decide if they’re “committed to making it work” or if they’re “committed to finding another option.”
For fiscal year 2025-2026, the Town budgeted $20,000 for PSA operations, and no funding was allocated by the County as a line item. However, in July 2024, the County forgave a PSA loan of about $307,400, which would not have ended until 2037.
Floyd PSA Board meetings are held at 5:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month in the Community Room at Floyd Town Hall (203 E. Oxford St.).
Floyd Town Council meetings also take place in the Community Room at Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. on the first and third Thursdays of the month.
The Floyd County Board of Supervisors meet at 8:30 a.m. on the second Tuesday of each month and at 6 p.m. (during the fall/winter) on the fourth Tuesday. Both meetings are held at 202 E. Main St.