EWEB Board of Commissioners — July 7, 2020

0:04 vii 2020 a web board meeting and I am stepping in for commissioner Mattel she's out of town and I think that I am mostly well acquainted with Robert's Rules of Order but if I make a mistake please feel free to chime in and correct me um so we're gonna start off with item 1 which is an agenda check so anybody who has anything that they would like to add see I know from mr. Carlson some Commissioner helgesson Frank nothing ok then we'll go on to agenda item 2 items from board members and a general manager COBIT update so I think maybe if we go in alphabetical order by last name that

0:49 would be easiest maybe for me to keep track of so I'm Commissioner Carlson we'll start with you this month attended and all club meeting and an L cog executive meeting by zoom other than that not not too much going on over there I'm just trying to get through the day today appreciate again all of staff's work to deal with these challenging times I know it's not easy out there so yeah I don't think I can say it enough appreciation for all of you what you do to keep the lights on keep the water running so that's what I have thanks great mr. Halverson

1:36 ok well um I haven't had the opportunity to attend any meetings this month given that kind of in the situation we're in I too will join in expressing my appreciation for all of staff's efforts to manage the utilities affairs in these times the only thing I wanted to call attention to was that I received probably somewhat belatedly cuz it was sent in the mail and would otherwise have been distributed at a board meeting our last year's water quality report I'm sure that you all received that as well and I just wanted to acknowledge how credible the information is that's reported there with respect to our water quality I think it's easy for that to wash over us as we get fairly consistent

2:26 results reported each year but I can tell you from my experience that there aren't a lot of water utilities that can show those kinds of lab results consistently over time I know that that the EPA has at least a couple dozen items that are items of concern with respect to drinking water and reporting their content and the only ones that I saw in the report that related to our water were largely just the result of our disinfection process which continues to improve with the changes that were made last year and I I just call that out because it's it is pretty incredible and we have a tendency to take it for

3:13 granted so I just also appreciated the clarity the report given that much of the format is prescribed by the EPA and it's a little hard to put that information out in a customer friendly way so I think we do a good job there as well and so my appreciation staff and that's all I have for tonight great I don't really have anything to add I was hoping to give an update on a meeting that we had scheduled with the city of Eugene to talk about our work together around sustainability and climate change but that was cancelled by the city so this is the second one that's been canceled and I realized that they have a lot on their plate right now but I would

3:59 like to figure out a way to get back on track with that and Frank maybe you have a little bit more insight because I know that you meet with the city manager so you I don't know if you have any any insight on that but that is all I have to add over to you Frank yes Commissioner Schlossberg Thank You commissioners good evening I just have a couple of dates regarding the city's postponement I believe it's temporary commissioner speaking with the city manager they're pretty inundated with a number of things not just the the kovat issues but also kind of the civil unrest that's taking place in the city and so I have had a

4:46 number of conversations with the city manager I know one of the agenda items on our August agenda is to talk about the headquarters building and so she and I are also talking about that as well so a number of topics that the city manager and I continue to discuss I did want to thank Commissioner help us and for his comments about the water quality report that's that's really a team effort Karen Kelly and the water management team that works as part of her staff and then also our communications team with which takes a lot of and Rene Gonzalez who's Manager of that group they take a lot of a very

5:32 sort of wonky technical information and try to massage it in a way that is clear and understandable to customers and in as you know that's not always an easy task and so thanks for recognizing the work there I wanted to acknowledge Andrew Janos and kind of the staff and the teams that he put together to help the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife with some temporary electric service to help with the fish sorting and Counting and hatchery on the the I guess it's the the left bank at Leaburg we've done some and are doing some work with them to help facilitate that and so

6:17 Andrew and and really the multiple departments that have kind of worked with him on that deserve some acknowledgement and other than that I think if you want to a vice president she lost Berg I I can just jump into the COBIT update if that's appropriate at this point and I know that the commissioners that asked for kind of a regular update regarding Covina so this was probably the appropriate time in the agenda to do that I just have a couple of slides that kind of highlight where we're at if you want to go to the next slide Holly I'd appreciate that Holly's our producer tonight so thank you as as you know we we do a pretty in-depth analysis of what's going

7:03 on externally as well as internally externally infection cases are going up this is the latest chart we have from Lane County so you can see some some exponential almost increases recently in cases here locally on the good news side Hospital capacity remains really good in Lane County I'd actually don't believe there's any hospitalization cases as of this morning and so that's just one of the many factors we look at externally next slide please we do have a pretty organized intentional approach to kind of our crisis response we are in what I would

7:48 term somewhere between reintegration and recovery you can kind of see the highlighted yellow reintegration is really more of our internal where are we at and then recovery or is part of how we're helping the community relative to continuation and a supply of electricity and water and also the ability and programs to help pay bills go ahead with the next slide you know as you can see you know we are in reintegration we have a combination our office staff is really a mix of kind of in office and as well as telecommuting or telework we have a number of people that continue to telecommute we are not limiting matings

8:35 per se but as far as access to buildings we can't have meetings they are restricted in size we also do a lot with virtual medians like we are with the commissioners this evening and so we are not restricting people from coming into the building it's really more of the effectiveness at this point there are certain positions that are just more effective in the building versus telecommuting and those were those that there's a real mix at this point there are conditions of entry for example where we have some hired cities we are doing some pre-screening and temperature screening for example and we continue to employ distance and an appropriate PPE this is really a kind of a multi-layered approach as you can

9:22 see kind of the table in the upper right hand corner of this this slide the rock occupancy is continuing to kind of slowly and steadily increase which was part of our plan to really control the density headquarters is remaining pretty constant about 35 to 38 that is mostly the the call center which is split between the first floor and the third floor fortunately because we had this base to be able to provide some isolation and distance their consumption so far and you'll hear this actually throughout a number of the scenarios that we talked about tonight about four percent on the electric side seems to be what we can attribute to kind of economy or kovat related there's there's always other

10:07 factors like weather and a key account we've which are oi Co which decided to Willamette industries basically decided to close as of May so there's some impact there but about 4% related to the economic conditions are on COBIT so far water very little very Institute's to that but we're just as you know entering the more that the higher consumption season last week we did start launching our customer recovery programs it's been very well received and we've very intentionally and and specifically reached out to accounts that are delinquent or in in the collection

10:53 process we've reduced that significantly from over I believe it was over 2000 are actually close to 3,000 disconnect orders down to about 2300 many of those agreeing to the payment plans that we've presented and so while that number is is high there's some encouragement based on the the outreach that we're doing to customers and the programs that we're offering to customers I did provide the commissioners with a link to and some information regarding our different programs for to to help customers and so next slide please and so we we continue to kind of work our way through the process we're very and you'll see this tonight

11:40 we're very sensitive to the rate trajectory kind of coming into coated versus where we're headed we we know there's a sensitivity to that but we also know there's investments we need to make and we'll talk a lot about that later in the meeting there's some projection as to budget gaps because of consumption and then you know we're really the spending a lot of time and and I think our our customer solutions group as well as the operations group that supported have done a really good job reaching out to customers about different programs and and really specialized terms more than anything they don't have a they're not an investment per se from a budget

12:26 perspective and so we remain really diligent I think that we're working our way through it but externally as as many of you know there are spikes many of those relative and maybe after the Memorial Day weekend work you know kind of expecting that we'll see much of the same relative to the fourth of July holiday so with that that's that's kind of the the quick snapshot update if you had any questions I'd be happy to entertain those and I think that you know that gives you a feel for I don't where we're at and where we're headed

13:19 hey Carlson you have a question yeah real quick so you said that we're getting the number of accounts that are passed you kind of down are we still seeing I mean from my perspective I know the economy is opening back up people are getting back to work but are you anticipating that you know we're going to have another bump and as an unemployment benefits decrease that we'll probably have more people kind of joining in that mix again I'm really worried about what's gonna happen after you know some of the unemployment benefits come out and what what you're hearing in the industry what what people are modeling there yeah I think as far as what we're hearing the industry a lot

14:06 of the same numbers relative to decreased consumption and we are hearing that other utilities do have an increase in the number of past due accounts were worse we have seen an upward trend I think what's interesting is our more recently through kind of aggressive outreach I would call it and very intentional outreach we've gotten a number of customers to sign up for more of a payment plan but I I think it's a legitimate concern commissioner that as there's ups and downs in I would call it the difference between say unemployment and the federal aid that accompanies unemployment as if that graph gap grows

14:54 or shrinks then the people's ability to pay things like electric bills or water bills or in fact other bills becomes more at risk and so what we're not projecting that it gets significantly you know falls off the edge of the cliff I think it is is a very valid point that you bring up relative to to unemployment aid and and the cares Act which carried through a while and then you know the next version of that which which we're hearing about so I think it's gonna be the the differentiy the difference sort of the Delta between the what's unemployment and then what aid is provided we've we've advocated through

15:40 the state and through our federal contacts for for direct aid as opposed to tools such as moratoriums on disconnects and things I think direct aid is probably a more effective way so but it's a very legitimate concern that you bring up go ahead commissioner huh listen I just want to chime in sharing that concern for me it's it would be premature for us to take further action at this point but I certainly would hope that that you would monitor things in terms of what staff is seeing and experiencing and when you reach a point where you feel

16:25 like the resources and the programs and the flexibility that we've afforded this point combined with whatever the feds are doing or not doing if you see us reaching a point where we need to revisit that conversation you know I'd rather be out ahead of that then you know at least in terms of our thinking about what the options are but on the other hand I don't think we need to take any action until you see that we're moving into a position where that becomes a concern thank you Thanks thanks commissioner he'll Vicente I agree I think it's part of you know we we've started looking at our aging numbers in a lot more discreet and

17:13 detailed way partly to to get some pre warning or pre trending as to maybe future problems if as you know as you've been there if you wait till the to the 80 or 90 days late before you start doing anything then it's too late so we're starting to look at the trans or Lee Deborah heart and and her team are really constantly trying to look at those numbers and if for any reason we think we're getting to an exposure level or were we're out stripping our ability to handle that type of risk we will raise our hands and come back to the board and with some not just what the

18:00 the problem looks like but also potential solutions so I think that appreciate that very much just another quick thought on that and that's that I appreciate that we are making extended payment arrangements and that that seems to be a mechanism that's in some ways responsive I do have a concern though that as we move into the fall and certainly the winter people's bills will be going back up and you know if they're not able to work off their marriages between now and that time then then they're kind of pushing a rock uphill so I think it's um it's something that we have to balance and pay attention to and

18:47 I think your eyes and ears are the best reconnaissance for for us so just keep us informed yeah absolutely commissioner I think it's a great point it's part of why we really wanted to get started now I think that just the consumption levels over really now through you know October maybe November are at a level where there is the opportunity to do that once you get into the winter months when the electric portion of the bill starts to to increase dramatically it's a tougher challenge so think really oh you know keeping track of this over the next several months is gonna be important for setting us up for maybe a more difficult period depending on the timing of aid

19:32 packages versus where we are in our overall Co bid and unemployment and you know postcode economy I think that's that's an incredibly important point that that you bring up so kudos to the team for really starting to push through that now but definitely your concerns are warranted and we'll keep you posted and I think that's part of why Mindy and Steve wanted to have a kovat update as part of the normal board process is just you know where are we out with things like this and I think that's a good thing to do so I'm fully in agreement with that great and I believe that Commissioner Brown has joined the meeting so um if you are here John and with Mike if you have any items that you

20:17 would like to ad can you hear me okay I've been here since the beginning and I don't didn't know why I wasn't included but that's okay I'm seeing everybody and hearing everybody but anyhow yeah no items from the board members I echo what dick said about the water quality report I appreciate it Frank your Co would update that's very informative but what does you know from 3000 to 2300 that's still a lot of people that are going to be able to have a refrigerated food in the summer and and and if it's that bad now the winter is gonna be there's some trends I've seen that are not very pretty what is 2300 shutoff relate to how was that a year ago at this time yeah I I think typically were in the few hundred range

21:03 if you remember a few years ago it was probably a couple thousand we've worked through a number of different processes to lower that we got it down to a few hundred which would be normally what we would see if I remember I used was about three hundred now it you know it sort of spiked up to three thousand and we're working our way back down it's I would say that of that mm you know 2500 whatever the number is 2300 there's most of that is residential some of that is a small business but it's it is definitely higher certainly something that we've

21:49 we've also kind of included in our budgetary and financial process thinking when it comes to risk mitigation I I think it's an it's an absolute important number to keep track of and your point is as well as the other commissioners is valid it's it's an indicator of sort of economic health and and also one of risk from our perspective so if and if there's things where you know maybe there's there's one time reserves that are used for certain things if it comes to that and we would be talking to the board about that but it's it's something actively working now I think there's an opportunity to actively work it but we

22:35 don't want to do it in an ignorant way and so as we go through the summer we'll keep the board posted as to what those trends look like but you know relatively speaking it's it's significantly higher than it was a year ago thank you all right thank you for that I echo what everybody else has said and additionally I just worry about um in the winter time when children maybe you're at school during the day and parents are at work and they're not usually maybe needing to heat their houses during the day and what's gonna happen when everybody's home in the winter time just making sure that everybody can stay safe and warm but it sounds like we are on track with

23:21 monitoring that so I appreciate that thank you yeah Thank You commissioner okay so we are moving on to action item 4 which is approval of consent calendar a and move to a dot second any any objections is that what I'm supposed to ask any discussion I suppose otherwise call call for the call for the vote okay is there any discussion any need for discussion I just want to note that I had indicated a few questions about

24:06 item 11 but those were masterfully responded to by Deborah this afternoon I think you saw her response so I don't need to pull that item okay and there's a motion in a second and all those in favor raise your right hand and say yeah all right all right looks like consent calendar a passes as is moving on to item number five approval of consent calendar be Mindy quick point you might want to note that Commissioner Mattel president Mattel is an excused so he's not voting just

24:54 president Mattel is excused and he is not voting okay um approval of consent calendar B I'd like to pull number eight for discussion please okay Mills improve the balance minus 8 second alright do we vote on I guess we'll vote on that all those in favor of consent calendar B - item number 8 raise your hand and say aye all right all right so that is approved and we can discuss item number 8 well I pulled it and I gave some pre-meeting questions and rod answered them very skillfully but I still have questions

25:39 about process and maybe Frank you or rod can answer this but um you know we like I said we rely on lidar extensively and in its accuracy and when we say it was off by 40% and apparently we didn't have like a pre-bid meeting on site to have these people come up and look at this because we're just taking the contractors word for it that it's another hundred and hundred and twenty two thousand dollars I just the whole process kind of bothers me about the way this has come down so can you shed some light on how reliable lidar is because we use it to do all our riparian areas and number two do we have a process where we do you know pre-bid walkthroughs to say you know I do

26:25 blogging and things on some of our properties and I understand the the issue here but I the process just doesn't seem right to me could you maybe help me get through this yeah I'll mention a couple of things and then I maybe rod come in can embellish this a little bit I think you know we we do use lidar for a number of different purposes and and I think you know one of the lessons learned from this process in particular relative to you know a forestry type of application where the larger trees were counted accurately but some of the undergrowth and smaller trees were not I think that it has its limitations and it's probably you know lesson learned we would probably do it a

27:10 little bit different next time in this kind of application now a little bit different here was we we were using a process where we it was a kind of a per unit or you know per treat basis and so even though the count was off the the per unit costs was was what we were really using lidar to originally estimate and so the overall cost would have probably been about the same or would have been been the same but I think there is a lesson learned relative to where you can use lidar effectively and maybe where you would not use lidar effectively we do have history here with the contractor

27:56 and the vid process and so we overall used it to create a ballpark I think after that we did the walkthrough but I think there are times when you maybe just want to do a walk-through from the beginning and so I think you're you're right there's there's times when maybe we would adjust the process to do that I know broad wants to jump in and add anything more to that but I I do think that because this was a per-unit process that or proposal that the cost went up because the units went up and then the administrative fee was held held the same so yeah I think there's some lessons to be learned in the process

28:41 there rod did you want to add anything to that yeah I guess the only other thing I'd say real quick too though that since this is not really a timber harvest per se it was more about a habitat mitigation that the other part of the bid was really based on experienced manipulating the undergrowth and and and managing that part of the project and so we've had past experience with with these folks this contractor before so they were the clear clear winner in this particular bid anyway and so yeah absolutely lesson learned we've we've talked about it as a group that we'll do a walk-through next time and

29:26 take a little extra time lidar though is is a very useful tool I'm not sure if this we are working on a new light art contract to redo the basically our whole area with the Forest Service that so we'll be getting some more light our information but it's a very useful tool and very accurate for for what it is like what you actually contract it for you can get as accurate as because you want and I don't know the particulars on this lidar data set but I'm guessing it wasn't set up for for the undergrowth so yeah it's just kind of it's one of those lessons learns but

30:11 I would also say that we have really good experience with this contractor and we've also verified this with staff and NWA so we don't feel like we're getting overcharged here okay and just a clarifying question because I I had a question from a couple's constituents about but they for service has done this before trying to mimic mother nature by putting the woody debris in the stream for fish habitat I agree I like that but they're not doing it they're not taking the root wads and so the last time I think they did this they said in the last flood although all this stuff just went down the river because they're just cutting logs and that's not mimicking mother nature they're cutting the trees or putting them in the river and then when it floods all the logs go down the

30:57 river are they going to do anything to put root wads or leave the root wads on the trees and so they don't just roll down the river with floods yeah now you're stepping into Mike McCann's territory Mike can you address that at all happy to and and yes Commissioner Brown the contract is that's part of the advantage of having Mackenzie watershed council manage the logging for us is that they're getting the trees exactly as they want them for their habitat and so they're leaving all the root wads on thing yeah and so that's all gonna be good thank you very much that's very good answers I'm ready to I'm done I'm ready to vote yeah I think Commissioner Brown though I would like to acknowledge that we well it may not have changed the

31:43 outcome in this case I think your point is received relative to evaluating the process going forward and lidar and it's applicable uses so we want to acknowledge that from the point that you bring up so thank you thank you I'll move to adopt number eight on consent calendar B second all right all those in favor say aye all right Hey all right item eight passes and I realized that I skipped over the public input reading I'm really sorry about that so I think Frank that

32:30 you are you gonna read or is it just put into the public record well there was there I guess you can sort of open the public testimony portion first Commissioner schlossberg and then I will take it from there there's one that was short enough that I will read but I will acknowledge the two pieces of public input correspondence that we got so if you want to open the public input to start then I will take it from there okay I am opening the public input portion great well thank you commissioner we received two pieces of public input one was from will Rutherford that we would acknowledge it was regarding and

33:17 passed along to commissioners relative to the upriver cost of service analysis and so it was approximately five pages well-written from will will Rutherford is for the record a resident of Veda and so he's provided that and we will attach that as part of the minutes for for future review as part of the record the other piece of Correspondence and testimony was received by Webb Sussman Webb Sussman is a resident of Eugene and I will just read that into the record and it says so here we go - mr. Lawson and the board the Springfield Utility Board is moving

34:04 forward where a web is stuck back in the 1900s an exam greetings technology Association of Oregon in the southern Willamette Valley I'm Sally Bell the new vice president and executive director and I have some hot off the press news to share about fiber in Springfield net neighborhoods and now live this week thanks to Springfield utility board and excess media to increase community access to high-speed Internet excess media is the first provider installing fiber in Springfield homes and businesses for this program the net neighborhood concept is part of the Springfield infinite suite of

34:50 telecommunications infrastructure tools and is the first of its kind in Oregon interested service providers and potential customers can find info Springfield in finet comm here's two more participants and service providers and potential customers to find info technology Association of Oregon in cooperation with sub and excess media if you're interested in service like this apparently excuse me here here's more to come in partnerships innovation in our neighborhoods unquote here's where Webb picks it up outside of the quotes Technology Association of Oregon in cooperation with sub and excess media if

35:37 you're interested in service like this apparently you can either move yourself or your business or both to Springfield and join the 21st century or you can elect new a web board members in the upcoming elections if I sound a little frustrated it's because II Webb has been quote discussing unquote this type of service for the past 25 years sincerely Webb Sussman this will also commissioners be put into the minutes there was one sentence in there I got a little bit mixed up on the on lines at the very end so I apologize but I think you got the gist of the email from mr. Sussman and I think with that vice-president schloss burg you can

36:23 close the public testimony and if there's any Commissioner comments they can go from there okay I'm closing public input and is there anybody who would like to say a few words missioner helgesson I just quickly would want to respond to the testimony that you've just read from mr. Sussman I I don't agree with the notion that were behind the curve on this my experience is that were actually ahead of the curve in terms of having installed a significant investment in fiber optics in the community which we've used among other things to provide high-speed Internet to

37:09 the schools and more recently to to a major upgrade to internet service in the downtown area and also to participate in the public area network by contributing fiber to that so I think we've been just as much or more assertive in this arena we've just chosen to prioritize that work differently I think the other thing that I would comment on is is that the reason that we have not to this point looked at broader deployment community wide is because we were unable and have been unable to find a way to do that

37:54 cost-effectively in ways that would allow us to be competitive now that situation is something that may change over time with technology and the build-out of things like our ami capability and I would say at a point at which staff feels that were in a position to take another look at that that at least I as one board member would be willing to consider ways that we could continue to broaden that presence in the can unity but I think we have made those investments and that the community has benefited in very significant ways and we continue to have an interest in broadening that where we can cost-effectively I'd be interested in

38:39 knowing more I'll research on my own more about what subs doing to see if they found something that might be adaptable for us but I just I would disagree with the characterization that we are behind the curve or have not made those investments for the benefit of the community Thank You Sonia or John near view many comments none for me none from Sonia I guess I would just like to say I'm I'm interested in the argument that web poses I don't really know much about it so I'm interested in just hearing a

39:24 little bit more at a different time about our history of what we've what we've done with that I do believe that our Internet should be a public utility I don't know that our water electric board is the one to take that on necessarily but I'm I'm I'm open to learning more about that so thank you to web until well for submitting public testimony um we're gonna move on to our general business items item number seven electric and water long term financial plan and update and our 2021 budget assumptions and it's gonna be presented by Deborah Hart the chief financial officer I'm going to hand it over to you Deborah thank you and good evening

40:10 commissioners we are here this evening to share a long-term plan update as well as get direction on our budget assumptions for 2021 my name is Deborah heart and here with me this evening is he's our fiscal Services supervisor and Alicia Ward's the senior analyst and then we also have a special guest appearance in this presentation from general manager Lawson so tonight we plan to talk a little bit about where we are to date after which we'll review the long-term financial plan and the proposed budget assumptions we'll be sure to leave time for board discussion and direction frank though is

40:56 going to start off with some context around our planning process and the economic conditions thank ya Thank You Deborah I don't know that I've ever been termed a special guest before her but I appreciate the the characterization commissioners I just wanted to start off with with a couple of slides some of this you know as commissioners but I also wanted to make sure that people who may be tuning in from the general public or others even within staff kind of understand how this process works there's a number of moving pieces and so I wanted to kind of run through how the long term financial plan and capital plan and strategic plan and budgets kind of all fit together it's not necessarily

41:41 a linear process but I'll kind of start on the far left side of this slide the two areas in yellow are really what we're asking the board for tonight it's for guidance around economic assumptions on the long term financial plan those obviously work in concert with the long term investments that we make around capital planning and so guidance around priorities with that and those those definitely work hand in hand we tend to take a ten-year view at least on paper with that I know that Debra and her team look beyond the ten years for example when it comes to the the financial metrics those are done from a long term

42:27 basis in the context of the strategic plan those then roll out into developing annual revenue requirements and then a cost of service and analysis and other things lead to what that means as far as specific rate actions and then usually starting October and going through December the far right where we ask for we have public hearings on the actual rates and then seek board approval on those rates as well as the the annual operating and capital budgets for the phone use and these this process is for both with the water utility and the electric utility so I just wanted to kind of explain where all this kind of fits together next slide please

43:13 one of the things that came up in our discussion last month we wanted to make sure that the commissioners had a little bit of financial backdrop and context to this was we a number of financial stress testing for both the electric and water utilities this was under some forecasted economic changes that we were anticipating as a result of the economy that kind of the post kovat economy and we did stress test where we looked at so you know what would happen if we did nothing we just sort of continued on as is we looked at well what would happen if we just put all of this on the backs of our customers and rates for example or we just the capital dial was the only one

43:59 that we turned and there were there were a few conclusions that came out of this and I think one of the things that's really important to understand is that the electric utility and the water utility from a financial perspective are in different situations they have different conditions for example the electric utility if we looked at a rates only solution between now and 2020 three would essentially double our rate trajectory that we had built in precoded we had some increases because of Carmen and and Bonneville but that would essentially double if we put that only on the backs of our customers and you contrast that for example then with the rates only approach with water and it moves from you know 3% to 5% so it's

44:45 it's a little less sensitive probably on the water side relative to both consumption but also the rates impact of doing a rates only approach now we also looked at at borrowing capacity you know one of the questions as well you know what happens if you just borrow your way through this because you're making long-term decisions there's not a lot of headroom with the present rate trajectory or plans that we have on the electric side we have some reserves but there's not a lot of headroom to borrow more without a rate impact and you will see when we start talking about long-term financial plans and capital plans where we're looking at what would happen if we

45:30 increased the capital planning by a hundred million dollars for example and so we think that's possible and in fact maybe necessary and theirs but there is some rate impact and that's in the outer ears and so we looked at so that you know we can we can kind of summarize that up and if you compare that with the water utility the water utility based on how it operates the fact that it borrows for these long-term investments anyway and those are kind of built into the rates already in a little different way there's a lot of headroom on the water side I don't want to say this I said it's almost unconstrained so there's a lot of borrowing capacity on the water side so very little on the electric a lot on the water and then pretty similar

46:15 on the rates you know in the race we're kind of mid pack in the electric utility and you'll see that with specific numbers whereas the water utility we do have what I would term is rates Headroom based on the the fact that we're the second lowest in the region from a water rates perspective and so I just wanted to give you a little context before we start talking about about numbers and one example I'll just give you next slide please is that when we looked and really you don't even have to look at the numbers you just look at the colors this is the know an example of the no mitigation modeling that we did the electric utility yellow by the way through this presentation means that

47:00 we're within 10% of our board minimum policy and in this case the orange or reddish color means that we have violated that so we've gone beyond policy we've in which has a lot of implications and so you can see the electric utility without mitigation there's a lot of red starting next year pretty much going all the way through the ten year view with a lot of other metrics that are just kind of on the edge where as the water utility under no mitigation has one year in the and really the outer years where there's a violation of our metrics and so this we did this for a number of scenarios this is just one I wanted to share just to

47:45 give you a feel for what what we've done to look at some of these stress tests and so with that context in mind and that can that foundation I think I'll turn it back to either Deborah or or Adam I'm not sure who's picking it up from here to run through the specifics of the long-term financial planning scenarios that we came up with based on what we thought were the most likely scenarios and assumptions going forward so we've explored the boundaries and now we're gonna bring it back into what we think the board should be thinking about as far as details I think Deborah back to you

48:35 Debra I think you're on mute before we launched in to a discussion on 2021 I did want to just take a moment to make sure that we were caught up on where we were here today as Franken mentioned the water utility hasn't seen a drop off below budget in consumption yeah it's got off to a very strong start of the year however June consumption was the lowest that it had been in years still above budget but lower and we are coming in to our heavier consumption months and that trend may change either through whether our customers considering their irrigation usage the electric utility is definitely a different story warm temperatures earlier in the year and the loss of a major customer already

49:23 put pressure on the utility and before koban so in addition to those stressors we are seeing that for that four percent load loss that Frank mentioned we are monitoring the industry analysts we're looking back at the last recession our unemployment figures and that really tells us that this is consistent with the economic conditions that we're experiencing right now so in addition to the declining consumption past two balances do remain high we spent a lot of time on that so I'm just gonna say that we are watching it really closely and I had hot off the presses numbers

50:08 that Frank didn't have we had about 600 payment plans in in the in the pipeline right now of those customers who are very passive so that's been really good work and our customers have been really appreciative the customers who answer our calls are really appreciative an option for them to help dig out of that hole I'm sorry to interrupt I just for the record and for commissioners I just some of you have may or may not just got a text from sonia carlson apparently she is texting that was told that her building is on fire and she was asked to

50:54 evacuate and so hopefully everything is is okay with her but I think she may have dropped off the meeting because of that and so vice-president schlossberg I wanted to make sure you were aware of that I didn't know if you got that hot that's really literally hot off the press information so Deborah sorry to interrupt I just wanted to make sure that commissioners were aware of why Commissioner Carlson dropped off the call well timing was good I was just about ready to pass thanks Deborah so this Frank alluded to our position and relative to other utilities in his slide and this chart demonstrates where we are

51:41 currently relative to the pure utilities for the combined water and electric the background ER had the individual utilities so we just wanted to present this one to demonstrate that we're in the same position as last year when you saw this as six lowest for the combined utility were second lowest for the water and then closer the middle of the packet eight lowest for the electric utility as standalone a big driver for this position has been that coming on the fifth year of no rate increase that were looking towards in 2021 next slide please and so we have talked about the revenue reduction assumptions we've included so we have a five percent in 2020 and 2021 that's been mentioned

52:28 that's consistent with what we've seen so far we have assumed reductions in 2023 and 2024 as well so some of the cost reductions that we've been mitigating the lost revenue include and lower inflation assumptions for both labor and on the costs as well as reductions in travel and training budgets throughout the plan and will be we've incorporated that capital improvement plans that route we'll be talking about later in the next presentation so those are incorporated in these financial plans as well next slide please Thanks and so we have included several scenarios for either utility so I'll spend a little bit more time in the

53:14 first slide here but there'll be three for water or three for electric and then three for water and going through the assumptions but just to provide the context in the first slide here that board target for the cash and reserve balances is represented in the green kind of background on the chart the bars represent our projected our projected cash balances so you can see we're above target within each of the years as Frank mentioned in the yellow on the top line and that in the middle table is where you can see we're approaching target debt service coverage is the red line and you can see that's really the constraining factor throughout the plan in terms of our cash flows and borrowing and so we're approaching that throughout

53:59 the plan in the near term and the long term the rate trajectory that's incorporated is consistent with what you saw last year so the only rate increase that's included is really when we picked up the 10th year being what's in assumed bonneville rate increase where we model every other year the 6% bonneville that corresponds with two and a half percent for new web customer so other than that rate trajectory is very consistent with what you saw last October and it's very uncertain that 2030 since that'll be a new contract year but we just continue to model that assumption until we have more information in addition to the 5 percent load loss we have for for our

54:45 commercial or for residential and commercial customers we've also assumed a reduction in our that the loss of a route code that Frank alluded to earlier so that's incorporated in the plan as well and for in terms of resources this does include that Leaburg outage throughout 2021 which was discussed at last month's board meeting so we've assumed a generation in that facility throughout the 2021 until we have more information on that project so next slide please so the this is that what we've characterizing as the constrained scenario which is at 25 million dollar reduction in capital rods presentation we'll go into more detail of what that

55:30 looks like in terms of trade-offs for reliability and other factors in the capital planning progress process but for financial planning you can see that that does provide a little bit of additional Headroom in the metrics in the in the out years and where those reductions are occurring but the plan looks relatively consistent and has some different borrowing and reserve utilization assumptions but for the most part the other assumptions are the same as the as the as planned scenario so next slide please so this is the expanded capital scenario this one is assuming an additional hundred million dollar in capital expenditure and brought we'll talk more about what that would look like in terms

56:15 of capital planning and capital investment decisions and but this plan includes a significantly higher borrowing so you can see more pressure on debt service coverage and we've also incorporated higher rate increases we've in order to support the higher capital spending we've assumed roughly three and a half percent increase in the rate trajectory to manage the higher capital spending and by the other revenue and cost assumptions are consistent with the prior versions of the plan so moving to the water utility as Frank mentioned the circumstances are a bit different for the water utility as the electric utility you can see in the twenty twenty

57:00 four to twenty twenty seven timeframe is where we show a drawdown for funding that that current plan for the over the current assumption for the second source treatment plant and that brings us to the one year where we're approaching target in twenty seven as we find that that treatment plant and the rate trajectory is consistent with what you saw last year it's a little bit of a change in terms of we moved up some borrowing that we had seized on an opportunity of historic low interest rates to borrow in 2020 and reduce the 2024 borrowing so that's I came to me assumptions moving to the next slide so this slide is a that

57:47 constrained scenario with the reduced capital of fifty five million dollar second source treatment plant and so with this scenario you can see we're adding cash well above target and we've also reduced the rate trajectory and this to maintain close to the targets but you can see we're well above debt service coverage and gas reserves targets in this scenario I'm so next slide please after the expanded capital scenario is an additional 50 million dollars in capital funding for the second source and this includes higher capital borrowing you can see in this scenario the water utility does approach those debt service coverage metrics and is

58:34 challenged in that way and it additionally includes a roughly three percent rate increase in the rate trajectory so higher borrowing higher rates to fund that second source treatment plan and so after going through those scenarios that the next slide just go into the next steps a little bit so our budgeting process really gets kicked off with this board meeting tonight so we'll take any direction that's incorporated in the capital plans or any financial plan assumptions and we'll start the budgeting process tomorrow where we'll make any of those changes into our worksheets and the exclusive feedback from throughout the organization to make sure that and those get completed

59:20 throughout the summer and into the fall the budget is completed kind of in parallel to some extent with the cost of service analysis which will be informing any rate decisions into the fall we'll be finalizing the budget and preparing cost of service analysis in October we'll be bringing back an updated long-term financial plan incorporating the budget have a draft budget and preliminary cost of service results the November and December meetings will be formal public hearings and ultimately December we'll look to have a seek approval for that budget and any recommended changes in rates so that's

1:00:07 the last lap dress I think Thanks all right we can open it up for questions or comments and if we go alphabetical order we'll start with you John well thank you um thank you for the presentation Deborah Adam that's very good just a couple questions mostly on attachment one but one of them is your full-year labor of generation outage in 2021 so are you assuming we're going back on in 2022 that's the current assumption that we have models here in the plans okay do we know what impact just approximately we don't go back what does that do these some of your metrics if we don't generate in 2022 Weaver doesn't come

1:00:54 back and so I think an extension into 2022 there still seems to be some Headroom in there I think it'll be a probably a bigger issue for the metrics as we go into 2023 where we're challenged again but we'll be incorporating those and presumably by the October board meeting when we bring back the financial plans hopefully we'll have more information on the duration but the most recent information that we have was an extension through 2021 okay thanks mr. Brown I wouldn't I would just add just for context you know you you look at the numbers here and Leaburg by itself when you separate it

1:01:39 out from Walter ville the revenue generated from Leaburg is probably in the the two to two and a half million dollars a year range not all of that is margin but that's revenue which you know is it's slightly impactful but I don't know that it changes the the overall conclusion that the electric utility is probably tight but there also is the ability to with some rate adjustments in the outer years look at future investments we are also contemplating as part of our financial planning the investments needed potentially that we will talk to the board about later this

1:02:24 fall around you know what levels of investment does Liebherr need which could be significant so both of those are gonna be part of our process as we go through the next few months but just just so we you know Leaburg is a big chunk of that okay couple other quick ones using 19 and a half million or the rate Stabilization Fund what's the total balance and that fund right now are we wiping it up okay what's that five million so basically we've got we're using 19 and a half million and we would take it down to five yes yeah go ahead and that's consistent with with we

1:03:14 initially deposited 20 million in there to reduce future borrowing so that's actually the action that we're taking there okay and then last question I noticed that we're gonna start million dollars a year to the meter replacement reserve fund and 2021 for electric but we don't start until 2024 for water why the difference the water meters and what we're trying to avoid there is that lump in the snake where we need to replace a bunch of meters at once and that reserve available to find those okay thank you thank you very much good answers all right mr. hell this thing have any questions yes thank you um first of all I just want to

1:04:01 appreciate our process I mean this is developed and matured over the time that I've been on the board and you know I think we're in a position now where you're bringing us consistent information that doesn't vary wildly from presentation to presentation and and we're working along a trajectory that's understood and leads to and through as Adam indicated our budget process I just want to point out that even without COBIT issues or labor issues or other uncertainties that are beginning to impinge on us we've anticipated that there would come a time not too distant future when rate actions would be necessary in order to sort of

1:04:47 normalize our a trajectory and that the actions that have been taken and and very diligently over the last several years to restructure our debt and to contain our staffing and in our internal costs are not things that will allow us to defer rate increases forever so you know we're faced with some uncertainties now that make that potential problem even more acute so I just want to say first of all that while I recognize and I appreciate that avoidance of a rate increase next year is probably an appropriate consideration that I don't want to see us dig ourselves a hole or

1:05:32 develop some kind of bow wave that becomes a difficult problem for the new board I'll call it as we as people take up their their new terms I guess I won't be here to worry about it but I just know historically that there have been times when we've deferred rate actions to the last possible moment and then combined with some untoward unknown event that conspires against this the rate actions come off as being precipitous or larger than anticipated so I just I just want to make sure that we're not so reticent to play the rate card looking forward that that we dig ourselves a hole or create a about a bore a large increase all of a sudden

1:06:20 when otherwise we've held off for six or seven years I also want to say that the levers we have to reach to in order to manage a situation like this obviously you can deal with rates you can borrow more money but I would say that when we're in a situation where additional borrowing just drives the rates up because of our debt sub service coverage requirements that suggests to me that maybe we're potentially close to being leveraged as much as we can because you want to avoid a situation where there the debt service coverage is driving your rate equation I think we can cut costs but that's a long term efficiency play that you work you're in and you're out and you can't do things that are precipitous maybe you can do that

1:07:06 temporarily but not solve problems that go forward so you can defer capital but that too has consequences and you can draw to some extent on reserves but reserves are not inexhaustible and you know the relief they provide with respect to ongoing costs like BPA rate increases is only temporary so I just want to caution that we not you know get so used to keeping the rates at the same level that we buy ourselves a problem down the road of significant proportions that's exacerbated by some of the uncertainties that are coming to the fore so thanks for that opportunity okay

1:07:54 I don't know if there was a question in there that you wanted responded to or just that was just your thoughts but no I think the presentation is clear and I understand what was provided and kind of what we're looking at in terms of contingencies I just I'm concerned that we just not push off any rate action to the point where that creates problems either with customers or in terms of maintaining the financial health of the organization and that those were more comments great thank you um so I have a comment that kind of piggybacks on what dick has just said and I I understand

1:08:40 that I need to make sure that we are that we don't push off any rate increases or anything like that the thing that just comes to mind to me is when you gave the presentation you talked about where we are where our rates are compared to other people in the region but I think in one of our background things you looked at more of like what the energy burden was based on what we pay compared to the average salary here and average income here and it just looks a little different just because our income our average income here is lower than some of our comparators and so that that just causes me a little bit of concern if we are going into a recession that um just

1:09:27 looking at the energy burden that we have versus just the raw rate comparing rates across the region so it's just something that's on my mind and then I do have a question I'm just wondering is there any talk of any kind of like recovery funds or any anything from the federal government or the state government that might help help us out I know that a lot of money is going into PPP loans or unemployment but I'm wondering if for utilities is there any talk of any kind of help so Frank you had oh I was I was gonna address a couple of things when it was

1:10:13 when it was my turn I think that there is some movement at the federal level to look programs that would aid utilities it it comes with some strings attached to it for example they're talking about if you were to get a grant or a loan from the federal government as the utility you would have to agree to not do disconnects for example and some other things so there's there are some strings attached that is not that has not been approved at this point there's also some infrastructure act work taking place so that would actually help any web potentially because of the heavy

1:10:58 investment that we make in infrastructure so not not a lot of direct aid they did the state of Oregon did increase aid for the electric customers they did not do that for the water side however some of that is because there are hundreds of water utilities because of you know every little utility can become a water supplier can by default become a utility so we're keeping an eye on that most of them may come through infrastructure funding as opposed to just crisis aid and if it does come through crisis aid is gonna have some some burden that is associated with it your your other

1:11:47 comment commissioner schloss berg around the so I really agree with both you and Commissioner help us and when it comes to you're looking at the different levers you know the the rates is is one of the tools reserves is one of the tools you know you look at spending and you look at cost you you know you try to look at all that in balance and context we specifically look at the utility burden just for context it's not a tool by itself but we we want to remind ourselves of the condition of our customers in this area we are we are not Bellevue I think going back to Commissioner Browns comments from a number of years ago comparing us

1:12:33 directly with Bellevue where income is is tens of thousands of dollars higher is is maybe not a very relative comparator and so it partly it's about the rates directly part of it is about understanding our community we we do know that there's some challenges from a family income perspective so we use that just to keep our mind in the right place and our decisions in the right place but I I do agree with Commissioner helgesen that all the levers need to be looked at in concert and in fact when you look at both the water and the electric long-term financial plans they have you know roughly twenty one or so percent increases over the next decade which you

1:13:19 know comes back to a couple percent or so that's pretty much in line with inflation and so I think that was previous direction from the board was to keep rates within inflation and as well so absolutely agree we've got to look at all of these in balance the one thing that we didn't mention in our planning is we're not just looking at the cost side I think it's also really appropriate to look at the revenue side as we go forward now we haven't baked a lot of those numbers in because when you think about electrification there's some potential increases in consumption and load and therefore revenue those will tend to be a little bit more longer-term or require incentives either from the state or the federal government or a web so we are

1:14:06 recognizing that those who say you know you have to look at the revenue side as well we agree with that we just haven't baked that in to some substantial perspectives it took a substantial point yet Deborah right sorry were you gonna add some comments in there did I steal those I think for the most part there's not a lot of direct aid out there we are keeping an eye on the possibility of a loan program for working cash however it does not appear that we'll need it at this point some folks have done some good work and getting reimbursed for tepee expenditures but otherwise Frank

1:14:54 covered it okay so did you get what you needed from us I believe so will here the capital discussion what comes out of that yeah I believe John Brown had a had a commenter question thank you I following up what the discussions talked about you know the portion taking the cannon down the road and then having a significant read increase of four and a quarter percent in year after next what what's it gonna take to see if we decided we wanted to see what the long-term plan looked like we raised rates one or two percent next year and what that would do to these projections

1:15:40 just to have that information at the next meeting so we can consider that because to go nothing in 2021 and then four and a quarter past four and a half you know at all those increases you know the two kicks point and kind of soften this a little bit if we haven't had a radiant five years yeah is that anything that anybody else wants to see it kind of soften it because otherwise you're gonna be pretty significant rate raises coming up yet Commissioner Brown I would say we can run a number of different models smoothing it can be part of that I'm not sure I would classify four percent as a as a large increase but you

1:16:26 know looking at two and two instead there there is a little bit of financial pressure on the electric side in in 20 21 and 22 as as we kind of get into some of those metrics but so we can slide that around as we go through the next few months and see how much difference that's gonna make what we've kind of found the last several years is as we approach the year we we have found that our conservative assumption work out pretty well and so you know it may not be four and a quarter it might might end up being three and a half or you know it is tended to slide down rather than up but we can run those scenarios we can look at some some early rate increase to smooth that yeah and

1:17:14 then just follow to build that rate Stabilization Fund back up we started with five million we have apparently twenty five million in the bank there now is that correct Deborah yes okay and so it kind of looks like we're depleting it all in for two to keep no rate increases next year and I would kind of like to think about building that back up because we're using you know we've been saving that for five years and using it all in one year it seems like we're you know if our goal was five million dollars a year and we're using twenty million of it and we have twenty five that's a significant chunk of money for one year and then we raise rates I'm just wondering how yet the Commissioner Brown they you know

1:18:01 we're not using that money because of sort of normal business that was set aside specifically for Carmen and so to offset borrowing for for the lump in the oatmeal that is Carmen and so if if there are larger lumps in the oatmeal that we need to be saving for I think that would probably make sense but that had a very positive that for specific reasons and that was for to offset borrowing for Carmen and so that you know week we can build that back we can establish a level of comfort that the board wants to establish there but just

1:18:46 just that that was built up for a specific reason we're using the money for those reasons and so that's why it's going back down to that what the original boards to board target was all right dick yeah one more round just quickly following up on commissioner Browns comments and questions so I understood Frank from what you said then that that the use of the rate stability reserve funds as anticipated for next year is directed towards reducing what would otherwise be a larger debt issuance for Carmen Smith purposes yeah suppose that

1:19:32 deposit yeah well I know that was the original intent but but is that in fact what we're using that money for such that our debt issuance is lower than would otherwise been which is consistent with that intent or as Commissioner Browns earlier question suggested are we using that money to cover groceries or in revenue requirement that otherwise would drive a rate increase that is we the plan has not buying groceries to your point we want to make sure that we cover our operating expenses with okay well that's good clarification I just would comment that when you use reserves

1:20:17 to cover ongoing costs all you're doing is postponing a rate increase not really avoiding one so I would fully endorse the use of our rate stability reserve for avoiding what otherwise would be debt service in the future because that accrues to a rate benefit you're in and you're out or as if we were using that money simply to cover some of our higher costs that otherwise would drive a rate increase next year that's just it at best a temporary measure so I would be interested like Commissioner Brown in seeing at least some scenarios that would involve a

1:21:04 modest increase next year I don't mean that to be that that's what I'm suggesting we do but I don't think four and a percent is outrageous either but I think if we're moving from a place of having had no increases for an extended period of time to having a series of what people perceive to be sizable increases year in and year out for a while that that's a tough road for a future board and in the third year it all comes home to roost in my experience thanks thanks commissioner we actually Commissioner help us in it and though the comment you made about the use of reserves is absolutely the way we view it reserves are there for a specific purpose to cover something that

1:21:52 is either intentionally preordained or a one-time event you we do not believe that you use reserves for ongoing expenses or capital that would otherwise be funded in a different way that that is absolutely what we agree with so thank you for stating this so so eloquent eloquently ok thank you for that presentation we are in at 652 and we are almost exactly on our timeline for our agenda and we are slated to have a five minute break so we are gonna take a break and we will come back at 6:57

1:22:37 and I believe that commissioner Carson will rejoin us then yeah yeah it's not an issue but uh on my screen I just commissioned Elvis and I don't know if we're still alive or not we may be just so you know that's okay I'm not gonna tell any secrets I see on my screen a little telephone and says calling do you have that as well do you I do and I don't know what that is that that maybe it's obviously not creating a

1:23:24 problem so I'm not gonna worry about it I thought we noticed that online as well and I will I don't know if Anne or Travis can answer that one is different to Travis because I'm not seeing that in the producer view correct is not in the producer view it may be showing that there are callin attendees we have at least 13 other attendees in there but it shouldn't affect what you're seeing or what you're doing yet it's kind of a it's right in the middle of the screen above the control bar and it's pseudo

1:24:10 transparent just just so you know but it's yeah it's kind of right in the middle of the screen but I I was I wasn't as curious as as dick I figured it was just kind of there for a reason that I couldn't control anyway so all right well at least the good news is there's not an end button that's true not for me anyway and that's good news yes take a look II didn't that identified for yeah Molina said it might be somebody's in the lobby I don't know yep

1:27:07 all right it's 657 but it does not look like the majority of people are back yet so okay everyone another minute or so here we are and Sonia are you back with us we know all right I am back thanks for the indulgence there that was a bit scary be the fireman banged on the door I don't know if you saw me jump about a mile off my chair but the fire is out there's really not any damage it's all external apparently somebody probably left a cigarette butt or

1:27:53 something of that nature I may have to jump in and out though so I'm gonna be on I'm gonna turn my video off I think the firemen are trying to get to me so I'm gonna be in and out but I'm gonna try to be listening okay well I'm glad that you're safe and that you're back yeah take care of Sonia okay so we are gonna reassuring and we are moving on to agenda item number nine electric and water capital improvement plans and I believe that we're gonna turn it over to rod price yes thank you so good evening commissioners Frank and I plan to wear the same shirt I'm sure nobody else got the memo anyway we're here to talk about

1:28:41 the the capital plan and some of the scenarios that that Frank is laid out basically we're seeking some direction on our recommendation as a staff to use the as planned ten years sip scenario I wanted to do a quick shout out though to Wally and Tyler and the finance team I went on vacation for a couple of weeks and they've done a ton of work getting this planning together instead of doing one plan we've we've been doing three plans and looking at them so thank you to those folks Wally and Tyler will actually speak a few minutes and tell a little bit more about their side of the the capital plan and what's in it

1:29:27 tonight though I want to focus on the size of the pie we've come to you in the past and talked a lot about pies and slices and sizes and all that one of the things that I'd like to do is talk about the size of the pie how big of capital plan we have and how that impacts the finances and then also how it may impact reliability and you know somewhat to dicks point about pushing the snake down the road so next slide please so Frank showed you his view of the the financial planning thing and I'll just show you the the rod engineer thing here about how I think about money and capital spending and how it fits in the

1:30:12 big picture and you know we have a mission in our mission is pretty simple we deliver water and electricity reliably and we're got the strategic values of resiliency in there and and there's a whole bunch of things that go into that package and you're all familiar with that to accomplish that of course we have income and that pays for reinvestment like capital and ongoing expenses Onam that kind of thing so these are all interrelated and you know you pull one you kind of tug the other and so it all kind of goes around in this circular loop so I'm gonna speak about the the three scenarios that that were outlined by Deb in Adam a little bit in these contacts so next slide please

1:30:58 so last time I talked to you about we we can tweak the dial last about a month ago what I'm going to do is just kind of review real quick what the capital plans look like in the different scenarios laid out by the financial folks so the as plan is basically last year's plan that we presented both in magnitude and basically in projects it one of the things that though is notable is is we have not included the the labor canal mitigation we simply don't know enough about it so it's not in the plan yet and I believe Adam did refer to that also I'd like to point out we do have a placeholder in the water plan for a second source and we talked about that a

1:31:45 month ago as well the placeholder we have there is enough to do a shared venture with with an the utility or a very minimal second source for free web alone the constrained plan is basically the as planned and the reduced version of that and that would be in response to to economic pressures basically what we would end up doing is again we talked about this last month differing some resiliency and projects like modernization and automation and condition based monitoring insert condition based replacements but the goal is to maintain the reliability within our metrics and acceptable limits

1:32:33 one of the key elements from especially the water plan is to to reduce and get to the constrained plan we would move the second source completely out of the ten year window the fun one here for me is the expanded plan and again I'm throwing some English in here and some engineering so if you see Deb Paul and her hair in the background there these are not financial terms and precision so bear with me but basically you know how how much can we go and reasonably remain affordable and so Frank laid out some scenarios and this is a bookend to sort of look at you know what are the impacts if we if we do spend more and if we do then then that

1:33:19 allows the electric capital plan to start attacking our age of system and getting our condition based type one cross arm kind of replacements pole replacements all these things in in full function it also leaves a lot of room for leave the the canal mitigation and we won't know more about that until later in the year or perhaps in another year or so but also there's some room for electrification so there's the the expanded plan lines out some some Headroom for us to work with in the water plan what it does is it brings the the second source back within

1:34:06 the 10-year window with a full amount to fund a full sized treatment plan in all the transmission and everything that would go along with that next slide please so just kind of a spoiler alert here the part of the purpose of looking at those plans is to review the the impact on on rates in the future so what I'm going to do is go through the three plans here and kind of line them up with my model a little bit but starting with electric you'll see that the capital plans around three hundred and thirty five million we maintain reliability or major system stays about the same resiliency sources

1:34:51 projects are in the same ballpark I put a little bullet in there the the green it says rate impact is zero so basically the there there is a great trajectory both Frank and and and Adam have covered there's a planner a trajectory this does not add or subtract from that planned rate subject trajectory in the water department we're looking at about two hundred and forty four million again maintaining reliability it'll slightly queue into our Aegis system and and give us some resiliency from our second source perspective and again no rate changes next slide please

1:35:36 so this is a constrained scenario basically it's the reduced reduction from the as plan so in the electric that's about it twenty five million dollar reduction over a ten-year period or our estimates are showing that we will start to drop our reliability probably below our five-year averages because we're not able to keep up with with all the things going wrong right now we're really focusing on our big-ticket items like transformers fire transformers substations main points of contact and we have a Tyler who can probably tell you a little bit more about that when we get there so one

1:36:21 of the things that will be stressed though is our Aegis system metric will be pushing sixty percent or greater due to the the investments not keeping up with with the depreciation and of course our resiliency will be reduced because we'll have to cut some of the represent projects so the rate impact on this is it's no change and I suspect you would have to talk to dev and Adam for the exact details of why this is but basically the idea is were we're cutting expenses in the as planned scenarios and not touching the the capital plan and so as the economic pressures come in and the capital plan is reduced as well so

1:37:07 and that maintains the the rate trajectories in the water department though the capital plan drops significantly from 244 to 191 basically we were still able to hit our master plan and keep our reliability intact but our Aegis system will stay probably raise a little bit but it's dealt well with in targets in the real kicker here is that we'll lose that second source and so that significantly hits our resiliency what is the cost of that or the savings basically it's at the end of ten years we'll be sitting about a dollar a month on a typical utility bill

1:38:00 thank thank you the expanded scenario so we went in the electric we jump from 320 to 435 that's enough money and Headroom to to cover Leaburg mitigation we suspect and even some electrification kind of things and it also helped us push the the focus on the the electric and generation plant to about 360 360 million which will help us to you into the age of system and increase our and maintain our reliability in the water side and well that in the estimates are that would have had about six dollars per month to the electric bill at the end of ten years in the water side we

1:38:48 would add was that we would go from 244 so it's about fifty million dollars had bringing back in the second source obviously reliability will be enhanced with multiple sources and flexibility and switching sources around and transmission lines etc Aegis system will go down because the investment but the kicker again is our resiliency will be greatly enhanced and this is fully in the the master plan the rate impact of that we expect to be about a dollar a month more after 10 years so I'm gonna turn it over to Tyler and he's I'm sorry Wally and he's going to talk a little bit about the contents the secret sauce in the pie

1:39:33 okay thanks Ron evening commissioners I just wanted to kind of give you a quick overview of what's in the well of the water pie for the ten-year CIP and just kind of go over each of the categories let's start with the compulsory work though that's all the work that we really need to do we can't really push it out or don't have a lot of flexibility with that that's about 20% of our ten-year CIP the bulk of that is all really our service and development work driven by our customers it also includes our main replacements that are dictated and driven by the city street rebuilds that that occur all around town you see those an example of this one of

1:40:20 these projects is the East 19th main replacement was in the consent calendar tonight was a compulsory main replacement driven by a city street rebuild program in the 10 years you've also put in for compulsory our first base level reservoir as it's needed to really take out of service the College Hill reservoir which is driven by regulatory issues and a new reservoir would be at the East 40th site the board should see a contract for design of that new reservoir in the consent item in the August board meeting with completion of construction in early 2023 for that project and then going down into the

1:41:07 next category which will be our strategic work that's about 30% of our 10-year CIP it starts with kind of wrapping up the ami program over the next three but in into 2023 we have that being wrapped up a few years behind electric kind of taking a little bit slower approach there it includes our emergency water stations the distributed sites that were establishing around town the consent calendar again it had the South Eugene Wells was part of the South Eugene water distribution emergency water site it was approved tonight so anxious to see how that goes and moving on from South will be just

1:41:52 keeping working around Eugene probably heading to Churchill next and then make another loop around the periphery of our service territory as rod mentioned the strategic category also meant includes kind of a placeholder for a second water treatment plant and is nice and this could the amount that's included in our CIP could be a fairly robust plant if there was some contributions from another utility sub or a more of a much more scaled back plant if this had to be a web wholly funded the bulk of the well but little or 50% of the ten-year CIP is our risk based work there's a lot of

1:42:38 things that go into this it's a tremendous number of small projects that are in our risk base then they're kind of overshadowed overshadowed by the large reservoir and transmission projects an example of some of the small projects that included a risk based work would be the VFD replacements that was also on the consent calendar tonight for water that would be a risk based project we have some variable frequency drives that turn the motors and our pumps that are at our hayden bridge filtration plant that now is the right time they're not having failed yet but the resources and timing just worked out right so they fit into our capital plan currently so

1:43:23 it's just an example of one of those small projects but risk-based the large projects include the replacement of our base level reservoirs at College Hill Hawk and an at Santa Clara eventually and it also includes numerous large transmission pipeline projects to kind of interconnect those reservoirs as we're building our kind of distributed storage approach that we've talked to the board about our first phase of our first transmission pipeline is in construction currently going across the headquarters site that we coordinated with the cities parted with that our infrastructure upgrade and that will be going on for the next several years just that one project so anyway

1:44:09 it's kind of a quick summary of what's in the ask planned CIP for the next ten years for water and I'll turn it over to Tyler to to review the electric you mean commissioners thank you for the time record I'm Tyler nice electric division manager so kind of tail along with Wally talked about with the PI for electric we have the same categories and they're and they're roughly the same components you know about a little less than half of that risk-based and the compulsory and strategic between 25-30 percent for each of those sorry I don't know if you can hear that but sounds like the neighbors getting rid of some extra fireworks so apologize for any popping in the background but really the overall

1:44:54 principle that's kind of guiding each one of these scenarios but talking about the as plan specifically is a focus on infrastructure replacement to maintain reliability under this plan the as plan which is basically a copy and paste so last year's funding well what we're seeing is that this is in a maintaining reliability mode but it is slightly declining and there's a couple things I mentioned I'll mention in here that that are indicators of that and really that's focused on trying to limit the larger outages that we have so of our city and safety reliability indexes for the last couple years around 15 20 percent of the makeup of those has been from you know a few number of large substation outages

1:45:41 and those outages usually run two to three hours to restore if everything is easily switchable but they may have three to five thousand people on a substation so we're really focusing on trying to maintain those large replacements of those substations since they're real key player and those in those metrics going down the list here merchant repair we kind of have historical numbers that we build into the budget for for that kind of equipment that fails that we need to replace throughout the year customer work surprisingly has been actually up this year and it's been kind of maintaining and we don't know if that's a bubble or if that will fall off as kovat progresses and the economy experiences pressures or if that'll

1:46:26 maintain but but for a while that has been in staying very steady so we're still counting on that no change in that and the plan on the compliance and PUC for the electric side and on the generation side for compliance those are both programs that were really focused on really driven towards and for safety and reliability and and compliance frankly and we're really focused on keeping those programs and tax so those are still fully funded I know we've done a lot of work on both of those in the recent history on the strategic ami is still planned for a 2021 completion deployment some of the more three-phase or more complicated metering setups may will bleed over a little bit but the residential is still

1:47:11 shooting for that to reach the benefit that's able to move forward one of the big hurdles was communication and with partnership with the city with at your level and with rod and Frank involved we're able to move some hurdles to get some of those towers installed so we're moving on that that's that's a really good sign so that's still modeled also we are we are still up River resiliency and reconfiguration that's our up River plan we've talked to you about has to do with the resilient spine bringing power in a large outage either from from BP a black start or from upriver now parts of this plan are on hold right now with the liebhard decision in the canal being up in the air but there's other parts we are working on thirst and substation and Curren the main ones that

1:47:58 that involve some bolstering to upriver reliability but also some ties within the system we do in the later years have some load growth planning mainly focused in Wes Eugene that would be some transmission line additions and substation upgrades for future load based on historical knowledge and in what we know of coming up with urban growth boundary or possible load expansion and then of course Carmen that that one is slightly delayed this year with the the larger generator work happening early in the year next but there is some work happening this year that's going to take it take its place kind on more on the controls the brain side of the generators and then of course all the work continuing on in the plan going forward with fish mitigation and also just the other powerhouse work

1:48:44 and on the risk-based front like I said we're really focused on those larger outages and so we're trying to hone our asset strategies to that you know since we're talking metaphors and we talked about mumps in the oatmeal or lumps in the snake you know another ones a pig in a Python and you know when we talk about our transformers right now that's like a piglet you know it's a it's a manageable problem but we have started to see in the last two years failures at three of our substations of the large power transformers the big ones when you drive by you see and those are equipment that's kind of in that six to nine month lead time that in the in certain substations and situations would be a really bad issue that that we want to mitigate so we are putting some upfront money into a mitigation plan that involves bolstering some of the spares

1:49:30 ahead of time to make us a little more nimble for those replacements and underground replacement plan cable we talked about that I think in October November last year about a plan to focus on underground feeder because that agent that asset is aging and that still it's reduced a bit in this plan is what we plan but but it's still in there and some resemblance and then our normal distribution or new one replacement that's our poles and wires and transformers that that we roll over and try to keep up on and that ties a little bit with the PUC work but that that's kind of a look at electric and our focus next slide please and I'll speak a little bit about the support services side and kind of the focus on support services the the big rock if you will and this one is rod putting this this

1:50:17 photo here that says pipes and wires are the least effective way to connect with this generation ratepayers and that's really in that focusing on that strategic portion of the pie first that that's really the focus of that you know we may not compete in on the power and water sense directly with with any other utilities in Eugene but the customer experience we're competing every day with their experience with other companies and so we do have built into that support side through is and and and also other support services to be able to provide a similar experience that's where the ami and the CEI and the CIS come into play and in going back to the other categories you know that there's still the day-to-day work that there that we can't afford to trim out because

1:51:04 it is the backbone of keeping our our system running from behind the scenes which is our IT network and systems they're also fleet which keeps our employees and staff out there working and restoring outages we need to keep that funded and also looking forward down to the wrist bass talking about systems for asset management and also streamlining our operations with kind of our Metro e and and control system out there into a wider area network and so working on all those things a lot of those are more the same in the plans some of them a little bit reduced but still that focus on the larger infrastructure and some of these larger strategic efforts that are customer focused so with that I'll hand it over

1:51:49 to rod thank you sir thanks guys so just a quick wrap-up basically it for both the water and electric capital plans where we're just recommending we stick with the what we've planned last year for for this year with a couple notes we as we develop an understanding of the second source in the water capital scenario you know I think it's nice to know that we've got plenty of capacity to to go

1:52:35 ahead and bring in different amounts to to address the second sources as however we end up doing that with very little rate pressure oh I think Frank I heard Frank say I could borrow intimate money to spend the the electric plan does have more of a top-end and that's that that 450 but or whatever was the right now the as planned is just enough to keep us going I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we were in the 350 to 360 range to start really tipping into the change of system and as Tyler was kind of talking about the the condition based monitoring kind of things but again it shows that we

1:53:22 have been very financially resilient we've got a great finance staff just done a lot of work to get to this point where we can even talk about these options I think it's fantastic and it gives us a lot of headroom in both plans to to maneuver as we need but for the time being I think we're good with with the planned scenario so with that next slide and I'd open it up to questions if I've done my job right you've got one minute to ask a question Thank You rod for that presentation and the only Commissioner that I can see is dick so I'm gonna offer it up to you first if you want to have any questions or comments I do think John's out there I

1:54:09 was clicking around and I saw him so John are you out there I'm still here oh okay well then why don't you go first I I I think brown comes before all of us don't care all right well thank you I did great presentation I just do have a couple just a minutia questions about these things you know I was involved when we built the rock and I see that we have some pretty significant expenditures that were pushing down the road could you just tell me real quickly what's worn out there already I mean if if I'm out living buildings that's a little scary but I did because I thought like the mechanical should have a 20 year life and I thought we built that to

1:54:54 seismic three not essential service but we built didn't we build that facility to upgrade excitement code and I know she had millions of dollars in there for seismic upgrades yeah that's a good question so one is the the seismic code it's bill to is to walk away from not to go back into right and so as we have developed our dispatch center and our real-time trading floor our critical IT assets are housed here in the rock we're in not only that if we pancake our our garage in our warehouse and you can't get parts then then that's no good

1:55:40 either so we're looking at providing a updated upgraded seismic package so that with inspection you know we can reasonably expect to to reuse the building after a large earthquake otherwise we did have some backups and some of that plan for the at least for this the SCADA and dispatch over there hayden bridge but we've scaled that way back and that made that building a lot more affordable and it was more cost effective to do the work here at the at the rock well thank you I would hope that some of that because of the resiliency things could be maybe applied for in federal grants because to build it to essential

1:56:27 service like the police department like like hospitals I know it's very expensive and a lot of those entities sometimes get federal grants to do that so hopefully if we're gonna put that in the budget in a ten-year plan we could look to other sources of income well that's a good thought so that's that's all I have for now thank you all right Sonya I'm not sure if you were there or if you have any questions or comments I'm here I'm gonna pass right now I'm just listening and thank you great then over to you dick okay thank you I have two questions in the comment I noticed that from your slides we have

1:57:15 an 815 million dollar you ever take plant for electric and 300 million for water I noticed that on the as is for electric we're looking at spending about 33 million a year that you know and to realize these aren't great statistics but that that means on average we're going to replace that plant in 26 years recognizing that a lot of some of that 33 million goes into strategic investments that are more than just replacements on the water side we have a 300 million investment and if you take out the second source and set it aside for the moment we're proposing

1:58:01 about a 19 million dollars which means that we'd be replacing the plant at least metaphorically in 16 years that causes me to wonder you know whether we're adequately funding our capital program particularly on the electric side I just got a quick comment on that sure if you look at the water system and they are different animals if you look at the water system we're spending a great chunk of water or money on Hayden bridge in the reservoirs and so those are once in 40 50 60 year account of projects so if you spread it out over the if you took a 60 year life and get

1:58:47 three cycles on the electric you might come up with a different more of a a one to one conclusion okay thanks well I still have a little bit of a concern about maintaining adequate capital funding on the electric side I think maybe in some of your comments in the presentation that you would share that I'm not sure I would go all the way to the total expansion that is the option or that the bookend that you've got another question I have is that you know when I joined the board and I think at the time Frank was was the chief engineer or the person bringing us capital presentations on the electric side there was a lot of discussion about opportunities to

1:59:32 optimize the system so as to reduce our capital investment over time with the notion that we were over built at least in some areas are we done with that initiative or we have still have more work to do there or is there are there further opportunities whatever happened to that that thread well that's a bit of a pet peeve with me that the saying the system is over built I don't think it's very accurate but I don't think we're thinking about it in quite the same way now I think it's more about utilizing one of the things that so we may be over built from a capacity standpoint but from a redundancy standpoint we've got some weak spots out out west so you can

2:00:18 have all the capacity you want but if you can't keep it connected you're not not reliable so really it's more focused on replacing the key pieces now on on keeping the the reliable path secondary paths that the system intact and we may need that capacity if 10 years from now the you know if we hit that that or they call it the shoehorn with electric vehicles and it shoots up we may just use that capacity and be very happy we have it so I think what we're trying to do is take a more holistic approach now to do planning and in bringing in asset management and and some of those kind of things so so I wouldn't say that the the concept is completely gone but I would

2:01:05 say that we're kind of building on that and moving forward with it one one note I would add into what rod just said commissioner Helgeson is that there are parts of the system where there's there's added capacity or additional capacity those are also the parts of the system that are aging and so you know when you look at you know the total plant and service and you try to optimize that your your I think optimisation is probably the key word there's also areas where we think that that there is gonna be redundancy and capacity and resiliency that's needed so it's it's it's not that we've abandoned that I think we're refining it as we go

2:01:52 forward with the resiliency lens I would also agree with your comment about planting service and age of system on the electric side if the you know looking at water and electric and where we have planned sort of previously planned I would say there's opportunities on the electric side to turn the dial up some of that is because of the relationship of age of system and replacing assets you throw on top of that capacity and resiliency for electrification and then you would throw on top of that the potential of sort of a situational challenge like a Leaburg canal because we're talking planning if anything I would turn the dial up from a planning

2:02:37 perspective on the electric side and probably keep it as planned on the water side until we would find the second source direction a little further but we haven't abandoned what you just mentioned is just being refined and looked at it in a little different way going forward okay well a little bit of a comment well my time is up I do have a comment on second source but I'll wait to see if there's a second round and the last question was really just because I hadn't heard anything about optimization in in a while so it sounds like I may or may not but that's okay your response was informative all right Tyler was there something you wanted to add oh

2:03:23 yeah I was just gonna kind of finalize that same comment Commissioner helgesson was talking about which was the capacity question one specific example I mentioned was power transformers and in the past when the system was built it was decided you know you do two 20 megawatt units at each substation basically that's 40 megawatts one decision we've made since then is to move to a standard of a 30 or 33 megawatt unit which the cost is really proportional that amount of copper so that's kind of one example pointing to a decision we've made reduce that capacity of the substations we do touch that that did carry forward so I think when Frank was was in the chair in the engineering

2:04:08 department so that is something that's a cost-saving measure thank you all right is there anybody else is there a consensus people want a second round of questions I don't have anything else to add I appreciate the presentation looks like a good plan to me that's dick man just make a quick comment then on second source I I agree and I think the rest of the board would agree with the notion of pushing any assumed expenditure for second source investment out a year or kind of resequencing that as you update the capital plan on the water side I support

2:04:55 that because we're I think clearly we're not ready to move forward with anything specifics and we don't know what it what it's going to be or how it's going to develop so I think for that reason it makes sense not to put the expenditure in as early as we had planned otherwise but I don't think that at least from my perspective when we delayed or postponed implementation that we were taking it off the table I think we just want a better clarity about how it related to regional opportunities and options that might allow us to either do it more cost-effectively or move through clearly some of the roadblocks that we face and I don't feel like we're making much

2:05:40 progress on that front and I'm not sure when if ever we'll have it back in the plan if we don't get to a point reasonably soon as to where we have a clearer picture of what we're planning to do moving forward so I don't need a response to that but I just that's where my anxiety lies with respect to the second source question is let's let's get after it so we can put something in the in the ten-year financial plan and I realized that it's not staffs responsibility and an entirety because there are some clearly open questions that need to be resolved Thanks thanks mr. helped us and I think we we

2:06:25 agree that it's important to keep it in the financial planning process it's an important piece of resiliency details without getting into too many details there's a number of hurdles and opportunities that that we're working on to try to provide more and more clarity as we move forward so I think that our views are consistent on that and getting to it as as part of it all right thank you very much we are going to move on to item number 10 correspondence and board agendas Frank yes Thank You Commissioner Schlossberg

2:07:10 appreciate it there were a few pieces of correspondence there were actually five in total I don't know if the the commissioners had any questions on that there was the annual integrated resource planning update some proposed actually fairly simple revisions to a customer service policy there was a competitive salary memo for the general manager's salary that was worked on by our chief workforce officer Lena costopoulous primarily with a follow-up from Commissioner helgesson we had some proposed changes that and again these are correspondents so there's no action but it was kind of a

2:07:55 heads up for for future actions in some cases task order process for a particular contract where we're just bringing things back to the board routinely and then our enterprise our annual Enterprise Risk Management update report and so those were correspondence we would we have people standing by if the commissioners have any questions on those and we'd be happy to to answer those at this point okay so anybody that has any questions

2:08:47 you're muted sorry I first wanted to acknowledge the time that chief workforce officer costopoulous spent with me following up on our request that there'd be some documentation relative to the management of general manager's salary I did that not because we had a problem but because we didn't spend a lot of time working the mechanics of that this year and that I just wanted to make sure there was something in the record that documented how all of that was intended to work and how it related to consistency that Frank and we had saw with respect to how the compensation has managed within the

2:09:32 utility for for the utility as a whole so I just wanted to appreciate that and note that it's now in the record and available for future consideration if the board wants a reference that would help illuminate that and then just quickly I wanted to ask a question that could be answered actually offline I just wasn't sure I understood what was being proposed with respect to the memo on Carmen Smith contracts and I'm tracking with what we've done to sort of authorize the 10 million and then carve out by work order specific amounts but I'm not and I think what the bottom line was with this memo was that you're no

2:10:17 longer gonna bring us the individual components of that you're gonna work within the 10 million that we have already authorized unless it rises above the half a million level so was that the significance of that memo yeah I think Commissioner helgesen it was just recognizing that when we we have a contract that we've approved with work orders we would change the threshold slightly so that the board isn't approving things that are really part of a scope that is has already been looked at and approved as long as it's working within that scope it's it's really changing the thresholds of which we will still bring some things back to the board it's just a slightly different threshold when we have a pre-approved

2:11:04 conscience overarching contract is that intended to apply solely to Carmen Smith where we've done a rather large carve out for multiple projects or does that apply generally where we have any contract that involves work orders this this was a request specifically for the Carmen Smith contract all right so it's not a change in our policy per se yeah not not yet I mean I think it would be something that depending on the size and nature of this it could be evaluated as a policy change in the future where that's not this particular request I think it's an opportunity to try it and see see if it if it works

2:11:49 like you said contracts when they get to us or projects or programs when they get to a certain size the board has a lot of awareness and knowledge of them that's that's different than just springing a con you know one big large contract on the board so this is specific to Carmen Smith and you know what not to rule out a policy change in the future but it's not intended to be though at this point okay thank you for that clarification hearing Oh Commissioner Carlson you had a question just a quick comment one I'm

2:12:35 sorry that we had to add some language on there about the meter reading sounds like there's probably some incidents there I think that's unfortunate but I think it's the right thing to do so I'm glad we're you know taking the health and safety of our staff seriously and moving forward with that and I also wanted to say that I appreciated the language in integrated you know in the the EPR no can't remember that at the emergency response planning I know that you were looking at adding it language about diversity equity and inclusion I really appreciated that that was a portion of what you were looking at as you're doing

2:13:22 this review so those are my two comments Thanks yeah thank you those are those are accurate observations of the the motivation behind it I don't see any others the second half of my particular piece and the agenda here is to look at upcoming agendas there's some interesting activity in August we will get a chance to give the board a view of the first half of the year it's been an interesting half of the year to say the least so we'll provide our results for the first half we also have on the agenda to give the the board its its first view of the results of our electrification analysis and study

2:14:08 I think that's has some pretty interesting information that that will be of interest to the board and others in the community as far as our capacity to electrify other applications and so that's on on tap and then we'll talk a little bit about strategy and the headquarters building and kind of what our go forward plans are for that and so and then and then September we start to get into more upriver activity and a lot more around financial planning and some of the next stages with that so a lot of good things on the agenda coming up really excited about some of the information that the staff is putting

2:14:55 together I've seen a lot of that in it's sort of early in evolving stages and so excited for the August meeting well I will also mention the August meeting we are preparing to have a little bit of a change in the agenda probably very first thing we will actually even if it's virtual to have a live Colin public forum public commentary so her testimony rather and so even if we have a virtual meeting we will have members of the public who can participate early in the meeting with public testimony so that's we're planning around that if we're still in the state that we're in now which is to

2:15:43 be virtual and separated so that's the sort of the coming attractions and look forward to that entertaining any questions about that if commissioners have them seeing none I guess I will pass it back to vice president slots Berg for next item on the agenda okay so we are on agenda item 11 board wrap-up so Commissioner Brown we'll start with you as we go in alphabetical order well thank you I just feel like to come come lament staff and everybody else so I think it was a great meeting and Mindy I think you did a great job of herding

2:16:29 cats congratulations on doing that and looking forward to it for Matt next year so thank you very much all right Commissioner Carlson I agree great job Mindy thank you so much for leading the meeting and sorry that I had extra challenges that made that a little more awkward this evening you're saying it and dick over to you I too appreciate your meeting management being one of the more problematic of the cats I just wanted to mention that I'm in the process of considering a road trip for August which may affect my ability to

2:17:16 attend I'll try to manage that so as not to be absent but I just wanted to give you a heads up that that is being considered I also wanted to mention that I asked a question that doesn't to be answered here but relates to the request for an option that might involve a rate increase next year I recall that we you know the longer we go without an increase the more the potential is for our rate classes to get out of whack with the customers with with the cost of service study and so as we move further into the budget process and in conjunction with any discussion about the need or not for a rate increase next year I'd like an update on on kind of where we think we sit relative to that

2:18:01 equity question as it relates to deferring increases when our cost structure may be changing in ways that would otherwise affect the rate levels for different classes so thank you for that and I think it was a good meeting okay and the only thing that I would like to add is I've been on this board for a year and a half and I've noticed streamlining of the presentations something with the design is getting much easier for a lay person like me to understand so I just want to give it appreciation whoever's in charge of the design but I think that staff is doing a really great job with the presentations

2:18:46 and then also last month I gave a shout out to IT for helping facilitate all these meetings and again this format just keeps getting better unfortunately we have to do it this way and maybe by the time we have it completely perfect we'll be ready to meet in person again but otherwise it's this has been very smooth so Frank I don't know if there's any last things that you'd like to say or if you covered that in your last white I would I would echo I think as we get into fall we will start start talking about more details around budgets around rates revenue requirements being the first thing and

2:19:31 then the actual cost analysis as part of that but both upriver related and just in general I do think Commissioner helgesson I don't remember if it was last year or the year before or where we did not have a overall revenue change but we did make changes between the classes and so we have continued to do that within the guidance that the board is provided I don't think we made a change this last year because there wasn't something significant but I think that's an important point as part of the process it's not just about the overall revenue it's about the structure within so we'll look forward to those conversations really getting into the

2:20:16 heat of that this fall so it's it's it's an appoint noted and and I'm sure staff heard that and and we'll be bringing things back to the board so other than that I you know appreciate all the feedback I think we've got some good feedback tonight and appreciate it and we'll continue to push forward and just like encourage people to stay safe and [Music] you know thanks for all your all your help all right well then exactly on one minute past schedule 751 we are adjourned thank you everyone Thank You commissioners I don't think metallo Burt got within one minute so that's that's

2:21:02 probably a record well done everyone good job Holley Indian thanks everybody yeah thank you