EWEB Board of Commissioners — September 1, 2020

0:02 all right well good evening everybody we'll get started um and welcome to the september 1st edition of uh eugene water electric board's monthly meetings uh my name's steve mattel i am the current um president and we will um jump into the agenda checks anybody have any concerns that they'd like to air regarding the agenda as um as published uh well this time i can see all five commissioners uh uh four of them anyways i guess i gotta look in the mirror for the fifth and i see frank as well and i see heads nodding in the direction i'm hoping they were gonna nod so we will get on with um item number two which is actually our public input um i believe we have one person who has let us know ahead of time that she would like to speak but there's some technical

0:47 difficulties so we will delay that and move on to items from board members and circle back to public input in about 10 or 15 minutes time so um items from uh board members we will um start uh uh furthest downriver as we would normally sit um if we were in the real board meeting so that means uh john brown you are first well thank you um just one real brief thing i i just sent uh frank a picture of some uh water conditions at clear lake which is obviously the headwaters of the mackenzie that look less than appealing and he said that you'd had staff up there earlier from somebody else that voiced some concerns that you know it's not lake wide it's just in certain areas but

1:32 um it's better to be proactive than reactive so if you could kind of let me know what the status of that is i'd really appreciate it certainly world commissioner in fact uh well after you sent me the picture um karen kelly forwarded the email from before it's a little bit aged so i'll make sure that it's um it's appropriate for this condition and we'll get back to you on it and we'll copy the rest of the board as well thank you all right well that leaves uh i think i am next not much to report for august um other than uh the fact that i have my quarterly-ish phone meeting with uh the president of subsport that's something we do every quarter just uh check in on how things are going

2:18 we talked a little bit we've always talked a lot about covet policy and how um each uh utility is managing that and uh making sure that we're kind of just uh clear and aware of what each other is doing and a handful of other things one thing that we did discuss was just a smooth transition both he and i are transitioning off of our roles as president so we said we would make sure that our new president um and theirs had a chance to meet and perhaps we'll try and bring that um you know just sort of kick that off at in december prior to our departures from our um positions um other than that i don't think i have anything to report trying to remember who's next i can't remember it dick is it you or

3:03 sonia who i think sonya you sit next to me next all right go ahead please uh i i don't have anything really to report um i did want to bring up a quick item that um i'd like you all to think about we can circle back on this uh perhaps next month or frank can weigh in but something that um i've urged that we do at um my work is looking at at having more of a day to uh recover and recuperate and process whatever happens during the upcoming election um no matter what side or what your views are on it i think there's a lot of people that will have a lot of um very high opinions of it and probably

3:49 need to process and something we're doing at my work is is taking that day off now i know that you know as a utility that's not something that everybody could do but it might be something to consider so i'm just throwing it out there as is an idea um for us to kind of think about and consider is something to just this year is very special tensions are very high no matter where you're at um it might be good to just give people time to process so that's really all i had um as an idea that i wanted to put out there and other than that it's it's been an interesting month and i'm glad we've made it through another one so thanks everyone commissioner helgeson thank you i don't have much uh this

4:34 evening principally because i've been out of town for all but four days of the past month and so i'm just now in the process of getting through all of my backlog of emails i made one pass and found that there wasn't a lot in there that was too urgent but i would apologize to anybody who i've perhaps inadvertently offended by not getting back to them right away as i just got back into town last night i have however had a chance to review all of tonight's board materials and uh we'll get through the rest of my inbox tomorrow and so if you're waiting uh you should hear from me soon thank you commissioner schlossberg well it's been a very quiet month for me

5:19 so i have nothing to report all right frank it's uh your turn you can uh um and i think we'll also just right jump right into your cover 19 update oh you and i think you're muted frank or at least i can't hear you you you were correct i was i was muted um thanks president mattel good evening commissioners um i do have a a brief covet update uh for you uh this evening we provided a pretty detailed report uh as part of our uh quarterly reporting to the board last month so this this will be a pretty quick and high level uh more recent update um if you want to go

6:04 ahead and to the next slide i can i can get started we continue to monitor external conditions um i particularly presented this format where we're looking at case rates per 100 000 and also positivity test rates frank i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt you for a second i don't think everybody was on the phone when anne was explaining that at the base of your screen you should see i think yourself but also um the slides and so it's your choice you can toggle and you can look at the view of all the folks who are online or you can click on that and see a blow up of the slide that frank's on sorry about that frank i don't think everybody caught those directions yeah and no worries president mattel i wanted to mention this particular format partially because this is the type of

6:51 data that the school districts are using for or this the state is using for their criteria to guide either school reopenings or partial reopenings or hybrid private hybrid programs eweb has about 140 employees who've expressed that they have some kind of school scheduled uh issue request to deal with and so that's why we look at it in this format amongst a lot of other formats as well go ahead to the next slide please slide six one of the things that we continue to monitor and this is this is some of our charts get so complex i know president mattel this is one of your

7:36 favorites um it just has so much consumption information on it that we have nicknamed this the adam root chart um named after the creator it it really looks at a daily consumption record what we're seeing so far from march through july on the electric side is about a four and a half percent uh decrease in consumption that can be traced to kind of the partial closing the economic impacts of of covid um oddly enough a little bit of an increase on the water side that could be for a number of reasons people staying home watering gardens that type of thing we don't know exactly but there we continue to monitor uh consumption pretty closely we have

8:21 forecasted going forward economic impacts of about five percent on the electric side for consumption so it's it's tracking with that it was about two percent in august uh which was a little lighter than that so we we monitor this daily month by month week by week to make sure that we're understanding consumption patterns also relative to weather weekend conditions key accounts a number of other things that that weigh into our consumption and so we we continue to monitor that pretty closely go ahead to slide seven please this is something we also continue to work on um it's a chart showing um

9:06 some of our activity relative to the aging of payments um you can see i'll just describe the the bars there are actually the number of disconnect service orders uh the number of people that would be on the list to disconnect and you can see really through about march that was holding pretty steady 300 500 and and then when we voluntarily put a moratorium on disconnects and shutoffs that you can see those bars steadily going up to well over 3 000 and so um and and then throughout this this period um roughly in about may or june we started

9:52 to increase our number of programs and payment terms that we were offering customers you start to see a general trend down and then in kind of mid to late july we started communicating that we were going to not under exactly the same conditions but in some cases disconnecting customers as a last resort and all of a sudden uh you know early august you see a dramatic uh decrease in the number of disconnects as well as the the blue line for example you can almost see a just a an immediate drop in the the 90-day aging which was the the most the the oldest

10:37 most aged accounts receivable that we had and so we continue to monitor that this is the first of the month for example where we have our kind of open enrollment period for aid applications and so some of the the data from this morning actually on that we we had about 404 spots open and as of 2 o'clock this afternoon 56 applications had been received so not fully subscribed um either last month um or this month and so there is aid available for people to take advantage of if if needed so really interesting to see what happens when you

11:23 look at aging versus disconnects versus you know overlaying that with different programs as far as payment terms processes and services and and other things that we're offering so we thought that was a pretty interesting and important thing to track from a customer perspective i think that that's um just that was you know again a very brief update uh we continue to operate um in our reintegration phases um which is a combination of telecommuting and and um we're continuing to get a lot of work done um as far as meeting our objectives and continuing to work um on getting accomplishing our goals just doing it in a little different way

12:11 that's that's my update president mattel all right well i'll open up a queue for if anybody would like to um ask for some questions regarding uh the cobia 19 update i have one but i'll hold on if anybody else hold on a second let me make sure i can see everybody um there we go uh yeah anybody else have any questions they'd like to ask oh uh john if you're speaking you are muted not anymore too bad so we're good yeah no i think real quickly uh 91 plus i noticed a pretty steep decline in the last few uh days is that because there was resolution to the people that were out three months or did they get financial help or what happened why did we see such a steep decline in the 91

12:56 plus category uh the the general answer uh commissioner brown is that they have agreed to sign up for some of our special payment terms for the most part there it's a little bit deceiving some of those have made maybe have been abandoned accounts um students that may be for example that might have just left and even though we we disconnected them they're basically abandoned accounts but for the most part that's an indication that the most aging accounts are signing up for repayment terms okay thank you i'm done uh go ahead dick

13:43 can i unmute myself here um so frank the takeaway um and i really appreciate your giving us those statistics every month so it's a nice real-time view of how things are doing out there for customers if i were to characterize my take away from that as being one that suggests that we're doing a pretty good job with additional payment terms and the available uh uh low-income support funds and other mechanisms uh of managing this such that while we're still above what would normally be uh the level of disconnection activity that's continues to trend downward and um you know so far both in terms of ewebs needs and our customers needs that we're

14:28 doing a pretty good job of managing it would that be a reasonable takeaway i think that's a good takeaway for example uh commissioner helgeson the number of disconnect service orders as of today was down to 707 so you know from going from a peak of 3000 down to 707 i think um our our customer service staff in particular is doing a and communication staff's doing a really good job of of trying to get people to sign up or be aware of the various aid terms and conditions and programs that we have so i think that's a fair characterization thank you anybody else sonia good um i'm curious

15:15 on the i mean i see obviously that we're going down and record recovering some of those funds now if we get into a situation again that it starts to um ramp back up uh you know people people start losing their work because they don't have child care other businesses start closing because they can't operate outside those kinds of things um is there a threshold at which are there covenants in place for any of the kind of debt service ratings are is there any risk to us on that side of like having a certain number or a quantity of accounts that are kind of at risk or for this financial exposure i don't know

16:00 if any of the if if any of them really factor that in or not yeah i i think normally uh what they do commissioner carlson is they will look at the the history of your delinquencies and in particular so delinquent accounts historically eu has been incredibly low i don't know if uh the specifics of the numbers around aging which it tend to be you know 30 60 90 days type of aging um i think they would look at that just as an overall ratio versus accounts receivable receivable to see how much exposure you have and then they would weigh that against what you have planned for reserves for bad debt for example they i think they want to make

16:45 sure that you you have um you know proper um coverage of that and i see debra hart popped on and and deborah i hope you're shaking your head because um that's typically what i would expect them to look at but deborah you have anything to add to that uh no i was nodding my head in the affirmative they're going to look to our reserve levels and what we've budgeted for bad debt as well as how we fare within the industry and we're only reviewed periodically it's not a monthly or quarterly event good question yeah and i think also um if if i recall deborah we

17:32 increased the budget um to handle that in 2021 we we increased the the the amount we thought might be at risk we did we increased the amount that we thought would be at risk and we are carving out the loans that we've done so that we can monitor are those payment plans so that we can monitor that ar separate from our other customer receivables and keep a close eye on it great okay thank you deborah uh last kind of financial related question um if there is an emergency declaration and any areas kind of get funding from that is there funding that we could get for the kind of

18:17 related to covid uh debt that is unrecoverable that's that's a good question a commissioner i there has been some discussions it might be something to ask jason a little bit later when he does his presentation there there have been some discussions around state and federal aid that might be payable directly to the utility instead of uh through for example the la heat program which is where a lot of the funds are being channeled now that might be a good question to just hold for him um yes i know he's he's been tracking that pretty closely okay great we'll do thanks

19:05 ben do you have any uh comments or questions okay i just have a quick one um let's see uh ann or holly whoever may be controlling the slides would you just back up one slide to the to the slide everybody's but yeah thank you so frank can you just help me understand this uh i'm looking at the very last day 21st of august and it shows something like a thousand or slightly less um accounts but how should i understand that that means that that's how many were are active are in some status of of uh uh of of turn off um or that was the number that um that were issued in that particular day no that's that's the cumulative total of disconnect service orders that we have that are in various states of of um

19:53 scheduling okay so of the give or take 90 000 accounts that we have uh this is on the electric side i think right um right that you know something like 89 000 give or take are you know are operating as normal about a thousand are in a disconnect mode of some sort and that we're reaching out to those folks and working with them to re-establish connection once they agree to their payment plans that that's correct commissioner okay great um we will move on unless anybody has any follow-up questions for frank regarding covid thank you okay uh and uh my next item would be to go back to number two there and do public input can you let me know if anybody's available to speak

20:38 yes miss bishop has joined the meeting oh great i'm glad that worked out well uh in which case i will uh bang the gavel and open up a uh public testimony let me start by reading this mandatory statement it's essentially for your benefit sandra so i hope you're listening no shenanigans uh when your name is called remember to unmute your call press six if you're calling from a landline please state your name and optionally your address or awards speak clearly to your telephone each speaker will be offered three minutes to present her testimony please keep track of time and if you need the board president that's me will notify you when your time has elapsed after uh your testimony is heard each of us commissioners will have an opportunity to speak

21:24 if we choose although by policy we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue please note the failure of a commissioner to speak shall not be construed as support of or opposition to your testimony if a question is presented by speaker and the board does not provide an answer an eweb staff member will follow up with you afterwards all right um i believe we have sandra bishop um here to testify and thanks for working through the technical issues sandra go ahead hello this is sandra thank you for um i'm going to especially thank ann for helping me negotiate the technology to at least get on the phone so thank you my name is sandra bishop my

22:10 address is 4096 hilliard street here in eugene and thank you to the board for allowing me to address the board about the water storage tank project on hilliard hill off of 40th avenue my husband and i live in one of the houses most closely affected by the project we are in the north we're north of the favored site for the first tank at the east extreme east end of the property just at the dead end off of 40th and donald we moved to the property a little over a year ago so as commissioner brown knows we inherited a garden that was planted on e-web

22:56 properties so it's kind of funny being an e-web commissioner and moving into a property that was utilizing the public land there but tonight i in all seriousness like to ask the e-web board members to take a more direct role in the decisions being made on and about this project and the use of the property if my understanding is correct there's about 13 acres in this property and the long-term goal is to have three water storage tanks cited there most of the acreage i would say over half of the acreage on the site is a mature fur pine habitat there's no question that eugene

23:44 needs and deserves more water storage capacity that's not the question but the question is how to best use this piece of land that you have been holding for so long specific points i'd like to address and i i do understand and i'm not intending to invoke a give and take in this meeting tonight but i do have some questions and things i'd like the board to be thinking about one is what what there's confusion about whether or not there's a pud approval process needed or not and apparently it was assumed that there would be a pud process what changed now all of a sudden the city say no it's not required so given that will there be adequate time

24:30 and opportunity for public input and an appeals process and then the second thing is i'm disappointed to find that there will not be an rfp put out for an independent contract for environmental assessment of the property and it's being done under another direct service contract with with no competitive bidding it's going to be done basically it sounds like like by the original firm or the firm that's doing the sighting i think that's a conflict of interest i want more attention paid to the environmental um practicalities of this site so if the board can enter into that at all there's a lot of talk about the value of

25:15 the oaks in the open meadow as a habitat which would need substantial enhancement the oaks are not that old it of course it's a habitat it's been been empty for a long time empty land but i think there's an underestimation of the of the fur pine habitat so um what will be the you know looking carefully at what will be the process for environmental assessment and also specifically what is the zone verification process that is being talked about with this city i've had some experience with land use i don't understand that terminology what it means and so i guess bottom line because i'm sure money not sounds very is that i really hope the board will

26:02 take a much more engaged look at this project there are incremental decisions being made and they appear to be being made mainly on the on the staff level and i of all people really trust the staff and as a board member you have to trust your staff and consultants but i really do hope the board will engage a little bit more closely with this walk this property look very carefully at it we are being told that it's possible that one of the tanks can be within 30 feet of our property line which means within 35 feet of our home so this is a large site i know there are a lot of constraints on it but please

26:47 look at the impact on some of the properties up at the north end here and realize i'm sure you all do this is the largest capital project that evil will probably do in the next 50 to 100 years i was trying to think of another project this site maybe the water intake on the mckenzie river but this is a major project so i really hope that the board will uh will really drill down and ask the specific questions at every turn on this project so thank you so much for allowing me to testify tonight thank you all right well thank you sandra before we uh move into responses or or feedback that is from the board um and can you just let me know if

27:33 anybody else happens to be out there no sandra was our only person to testify tonight okay wonderful thank you so um we will uh allow some some time for any responses from commissioners we will uh i was just going to go right down the line but sony if you want to jump in that's fine go ahead uh well in that case we'll just go right down the line um commissioner schlossberg here first thank you and um thank you sandra for your testimony um i just have a general question i guess for frank um i feel like it's been a little while since the board has had an update on the

28:18 um the reservoir replacement maybe it was only been a couple months but everything is kind of blurring together and i'm just wondering if we could have like more regular updates on what is going on with the process even if things are kind of stalled due to covid but um for me personally sometimes it just gets hard to track if we don't talk about something for a few months so that would be really helpful for me personally commissioner helgeson thank you um senator i appreciate your testimony tonight it's good to hear from you i can't see you but uh it is good to hear from you um i can't respond to the questions about the land use process i will point out i did attend a meeting

29:04 i think it was back in february or march uh when there was a neighborhood meeting uh on this and i uh like the rest of the community invited there had an opportunity to hear more about the project i do know and i trust that the staff is doing as best they can to try to resolve issues and manage the trade-offs that you referenced and i'm sure there are a host of others i can't really respond to the land use issues although i know that we had raised those with the city just to get clarity as to what the process was or are moving forward and if um it's perceived that there are any changes in our approach it's probably as a result of whatever it is that we've heard back from the city um

29:50 as far as board involvement is concerned uh i too would like to uh have the opportunity to hear more about the project as it progresses and i and my recollection is that we had a general uh kind of overview of the um high level improvements at the transmission and and storage level that were anticipated as part of the capital plan um but that wasn't really focused in any detail on uh the kinds of things that are now coming up in the context of moving the project forward so if there were an opportunity sooner than later to put something on the board agenda to get a more detailed briefing on this particular project the other thing i think i i've had a chance to tour the site it's been a

30:35 while i wouldn't mind doing it again but if on a one-on-one basis there was some way that staff could coordinate with those on the board who would have an interest in walking the site again it's been a while since i've been up there and i can appreciate that if the neighbors have had the opportunity to see and use this site uh as kind of open land for so long that um you know there would be some concerns here so um well i fully support the need and the um efforts that the staff is making to get the project organized and moving forward i also want to be sensitive to the issues for the neighbors and if there's an opportunity for those of us that want to visit the site to do so sometime in the next month or so

31:21 then i'd i'd be happy to do that thank you sandra commissioner carlson excellent well thank you so much for your testimony really appreciate you bringing up that important topic again uh yeah my last recollection of this conversation was us looking at the communication plan for customers and the citizens in that area and what that would look like and um so obviously moving on to the next phase i i really appreciate that i look at i would love to hear the responses from staff to the questions that you raised and also would mask up and head on out there and and do a tour if we can do that so count me into that thank you

32:08 um i guess i'm next i don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said so i'll just uh defer to commissioner brown um thank you um some good questions and responses sandra thank you for your testimony i understand your concerns but i i don't know if you're aware that we're under a mandate from the state to have college hill removed very quickly and staging of construction if college hill goes down we have to have a backup and frank correct me if i'm wrong but uh it's a very time critical project and i understand your concerns but also understand the concerns of what happens if we don't have water service to a large portion of our community because we are going you know they are going to be mandated that we shut down college hill in a few years and the construction is such that it's

32:53 i think that it can't be staged this is the best way to do it absent uh many many millions of dollars of additional construction costs on on the college hill so um i understand your concerns uh but also understand it's it's in urban growth boundary it's an urban facility and i think that we all know that things don't remain the same forever so hopefully we'll be able to work through the differences thank you frankie give you a chance to respond on behalf of uh staff if you're if you'd like to you don't have to so um thanks president mattel thank you thanks to ms bishop for the for the testimony there's been a lot of correspondence and communications with with neighbors i think sometimes that

33:42 when there's when there's a a neighbor who disagrees with the direction then there's outreach to to that person or to the board and in the other direction we'd be happy to give the board a tour that's that's not an issue um and i'd be happy to have staff provide a little bit more detail to the board as to as to where we're at the construction website also is available which has regular and routine updates as well and so we we can do that we do have a couple of staff members president mattel who who can provide a little bit more update if you wanted specifics or we can just hold that and respond

34:27 formally to the board and also schedule an update with the board as to the to the specific status um i i'd sort of lean on you for that direction well um i have not heard um from i believe from any of the commissioners a particular request for information i heard i think that's true i heard a request for uh the opportunity to walk the property but i haven't heard any other kind of request well just for sake of seeing if there are others out there who would support this i if we're moving into the decision phase around discrete issues that are of significant concern to the neighbors for which we either have alternatives or

35:15 the board should at least be advised i i would appreciate the scheduling in the next month or two of just an update for whatever time it takes to kind of advise us as to where we're at what are the key decisions around which there may be concerns where are we landing um what flexibility if any do we have and um you know just a general update i'm not saying that the board would take over control of the project or you know bear down on uh you with uh with our concerns but i just i just want to be better informed as we kind of move towards the point where we're closing on some discrete decisions that relate to the kinds of issues that were raised in testimony and if there's any other support for

36:01 that you know it doesn't have to be a hour-long presentation just to be clear i think what you're asking for is a backgrounder at the end of the day that answers those handful of questions is that right dick well no i was actually i mean that'd be fine and i realized we're going to get some sort of staff response to the specific items that have been raised here but i i guess i was more in the vein of asking for some time on a future board agenda that um you know would not be designed to kind of rethink everything but just at least if nothing else give us a sense of what's being decided what considerations have been taken into account and and kind of how that's all coming down as we begin to move this project into the um implementation phase

36:48 okay and then just again because when i was when i was briefed on this at the neighborhood meeting you know we weren't quite yet at that point and we were very open to dialogue and i hadn't really heard you know where that had gone um since then so i just think that would be helpful let me just ask quick question before we look for additional support just given dick's uh limited time on the board my same situation applies to me i would assume he would want that presentation to happen no later than november so we'd have at least a little bit of time to uh you know to to respond and act uh as he sees fit um december might essentially becomes too late is that reasonable then frank given the you know to put a presentation together

37:34 20 minutes 30 minutes in length i don't know exactly 10 it might just be 10 minutes i take that part back i don't want to put a time limit on at this point but sometime either next month or the month after so given the fact that that staff is already actively working this project um and the fact that we are in the in the des you know kind of early design uh phases of it um i i i don't think it's it's going to be an extra burden on staff to to provide information and communicate with the board as to to what the plans are we're in the process of doing ecological surveys we're in process of doing design work those those are all active

38:20 and we have a couple of choices if we did something in november we could include it as part of the quarterly update and just focus on that a little bit more as a as a relevant topic or we can add it as correspondence knowing that if the board wants to spend some time with that during correspondence we could respond if the board has further questions or we could do it as a separate item a you know 30 minute item is i don't think an issue for for the staff to respond to i think you want to just weigh in on which those options i just um i i'm not particular about the manner in which we proceed with this let me just be clear about my interest and

39:08 i think would be helpful if you're moving forward to just find an opportunity to advise us as to where we're at with these things and to gauge from the board's response our comfort level with what you're doing my purpose is not to undo anything or to insert ourselves in the staff's work in fact my hope would be that we would just be adequately informed so that we could express a certain comfort level and maybe point to a thing or two that in our view might deserve a little additional attention but i would be comfortable as if there were a general support for some kind of follow-up along those lines that went beyond just simple correspondence i would be happy for

39:53 frank and the officers to find a way to do that without messing up our agendas too much yeah president mattel um i will out out of um courtesy and respect for staff i will follow up with our chief operating officer rod price as well as chief customer officer who's also in charge of communications to get their input on doing something as early as october and and sort of gauge that along with what we have um else planned on the agenda uh when we do get into november and december sometimes we start getting into a number of rate making and financial and budgeting type of decisions so it may actually work better into the agenda

40:38 to do it in october and i i can follow up with the board um you know this week on that if that's appropriate well i was going to ask for a couple additional head nods but uh looks like you wield um substantial influence dick we don't even need to do that uh it's already been put on the october agenda um but let me do that anyways is there my sense is there addition there is additional support for this update to so the board can get familiar and comfortable with the latest is that true show hands i haven't enough of them um i have a question if i could yeah i'm gonna say something first and then you may um as well i just wanted to be clear at least for my um on my own behalf other members can speak as they like

41:24 um that you know we have while i'm not clear on all the details and certainly not on the technical land use issues that sandra bishop raised i you know we were briefed on this and before and made aware of its importance to the community and i just want to um say um on behalf of staff that may be listening that this does like we expected some you know pushback from community members and certainly understand their discomfort with having you know a lot of construction right um near their homes and in sanders case immediately adjacent but there is as as john brown said earlier the community interest that we're responsible for and i just want to be clear with staff that that i'm still very strongly in support of moving forward with the project but like dick it's nice to know some of the particulars um to see if there's any opportunity at all to

42:10 um you know satisfy both sets of concerns uh go ahead john so frank if you're going to give us an update in october could you include in there what happens if this uh hilliard is delayed what that does to the neighbors on college hill because it sounds you know what i've heard before my understanding is that if we have to uh build college hill without hilliard uh that it's going to be a significant impact on that particular neighborhood much more than it would if we tore it down and had hilliard to uh backfill it is that could you give us the statistics and the cost risks were going there as well i can just say uh with with affirmative commissioner brown that there there's a 2023 deadline to decommission college hill

42:55 and the the best avenue to do that is to uh do the do first do the base level reservoir at east 40th um there there's no question that that that facilitates uh the work at college hill that that in essence comes first thank you alrighty well i will um use the gavel once again and close out the public testimony and move on to board action items number four is the approval of consent calendar a and in this case it's the minutes and uh a sole contract mason bruce and gerard for four hundred thousand dollars spread over a five-year period uh does anybody wanna pull either of those two for discussion

43:41 uh john brown wants to pull the minutes again is that right john no i want to pull mason bruce i just have another question and a request all right well in which case uh we will um take a vote on the minutes alone i guess uh all those in favor of approving last month's minutes please raise your hand so i could see it and say aye aye we'll have to work on that but i think that that was unanimous approval and uh why don't you go ahead john with um your concerns on mason and bruce yeah thank you i i it's not a concern much as it's it's about protocol and things about to me it looks like we're over budgeting and i have several questions but because the backgrounder said you know

44:26 50 000 a year so i did the math on a five-year contract but yet we're asking for 400 000 and we got this bid by and correct me deborah or whomever is listening uh by setting up a hypothetical survey uh and they bid on that and that's with the award criteria but is there no criteria for any of this these surveys because how are we going to know we got what we paid for i mean that's a lot of money to start out with uh over a five-year period and i i know a lot of these terms for nso the north spot all habitat of woody debris snake creation all that i i do quite a bit of that and uh i just i'm trying to under

45:11 grasp this thing and so uh is there any way none of this has been defined i guess i might call commissioner on um i don't know if mike mccann is available um to to respond to that i i am yes i'm here and and so uh commissioners this is a task order contract so the fifty thousand dollars is our estimate of what will be required this year so the first year of the contract we estimated out over five years what we think it'll be it's not fifty thousand dollars every year we looked at all of the surveys required by the license over the first five years and estimated you know what the cost for those would

45:56 be but each of the tasks will be issued separately and the budgets develop separately so that's how we we will know that we are getting what we are asked for so you know in year three we may have to do a say uh noxious weed survey around carbon diversion reservoir we'll ask for a specific budget for that project and then we will approve that budget the four hundred thousand dollars is just a not to exceed for the total value of the contract but uh each individual year will be budgeted separately each individual task will be managed separately okay thanks just to follow up then so there is no defined tasks already who's going to define those ferc and forest service or you know who's going to define a noxious weed survey who's going to tell us to do that in the scope of that

46:42 work is that eweb implemented is that ferc implemented or or who's going to do that and under what standards how do we know that you know they're not going to give us a project that's going to cost us less or more so some of the things are already defined and so like uh i'm a bit out of it at this point uh so i'm going on memory but the um uh we were originally required to do say a cultural signif culturally significant plant survey of the entire project boundary as part of relicensing we are to redo that within the first five years of license issuance same thing with the noxious weeds survey so there are some things that are very well defined and we can put a pretty good estimate of

47:28 the cost on those there are other things that are less defined so we are required to do a tne plant species survey any place we are going to disturb ground for say fish passage construction so once the fish pass design documents get produced we'll be able to know where we're going to be disturbing the ground and based on that we'll be able to instruct the surveyors to go out and survey for tna plant species so you know that's the part that's a little bit up in the air um but uh we we will be managing the scope and the or excuse me we'll be managing the tasks and the scope of the survey are defined by the uh by the license so it and it's really three it's it's teeny plant species

48:13 culturally significant plant species and and noxious weeds okay so we inventory them and then if we find a bunch of noxious weeds then they then there's another stage to that too is that correct i mean just the inventory is for a purpose yeah so we we have under the vegetation management plan there's a requirement to work with the forest service on controlling noxious weeds and a protocol for how we do that for each individual type of weed all right thanks and we can if i want to check on this a year from now just to see how this went i can easily do that frank absolutely i'd be happy to take you up there and we can go look at the weeds ourselves i i can't wait to watch that 19 miles thank you yeah commissioner

49:00 i don't want to get into it further here because i'm prepared you don't want to get into the wheat is that what you're going to say no i i uh yeah yeah right the noxious weeds um it does raise an interesting um question from a board controls and accountability standpoint because what we have here i think what we're essentially improving is um staff's ability to do business with this consultant for really not a a a fully specified piece of work to the tune of up to four hundred thousand dollars and so um unlike a say a vehicle purchase which you know we put out a spec it's a particular thing there's a particular price we look at

49:45 the process we look at the price we look at what we're getting in return and we can judge and hold you accountable for if that truck doesn't show up then you know then then we we uh we we can have an issue around that in this case you know you're just being authorized to do 400 000 worth of business with this company around a general scope of work that conforms with the requirements of the new license uh process but we're not really involved from that point forward and you know the money that funds this going forward is just buried somewhere in the budget and generally not subject to uh review unless something goes bump around it and you exceed for example the 400 000 so just from a process and accountability standpoint it's a

50:30 little bit of an odd animal more like a retainer for a legal consultant you know where you're going to retain them to do a certain general scope of work but that's going to be authorized on an individual individual task base but even in this case i'm not even sure it's tied directly to a schedule of um of hourly fees or whatever so i'm just pointing out while i'm prepared to both move for approval and to support this that it's a bit of it puts the board in a bit of an awkward position kind of procedurally under those circumstances and i'll just leave it there i don't i don't really need a response well i i think that's a good point so i'd like to since i

51:16 i'm on here i can say another thing um uh commissioner hawkins and you know when we brought the license to the board or the settlement agreement to the board and said you know here's where we think we are this is what we think it'll cost we we had everything sort of scoped out in really big round numbers and so we had a number for this work uh in our spreadsheet uh when we when we said the project as as envisioned will be basically break even for a 40-year license um now we have a somewhat more refined number and and we have a consultant on board but but like i said a minute ago you know each individual year will be looking at the projects in that year and budgeting uh for that that work in that particular year so i think

52:01 as we get down uh into individual project level you know it may not be visible to the board but it will be in the in the budget that uh that the board approves and initially a lot of the stuff anything we can capitalize we will capitalize but eventually some of the stuff will roll into the o m budget and that was also envisioned as we were developing the the long-term plan for license deployment any other comments questions concerns frank yeah uh commissioners i would just also um remind us that while these are five-year procurement approvals the these go through an annual review for performance so

52:48 like a lot of the other contracts that we do that are multi-year these are reviewed for performance um typically by staff but then the budgets are included uh for the board to approve on an annual basis and and there are times when they're significant enough that we will break out uh the visibility of those uh i'm not sure 400 000 over five years would be something that would be that visible to the board but it will be reviewed for performance annually yeah well i'll just say before we move for a motion that i think there's a good discussion and i think in general the board expects that um that you know staff are managing things even smaller um dollar items such as this one's 400 000 spread

53:35 over five years but the carmen project is itself is uh you know millions and millions and millions of dollars it's a relatively small piece but the expectation generally is we manage as best as we can um you know get a good value for um for the money on behalf of the customers and my own senses we have every reason to believe that that's what we're seeing um out of um you know through all the various uh uh controls that we have available to us but just to remind staff based on this discussion that's always the expectation to do the best that we can with the money the communities money that we have dick does are you satisfied or uh and john brown for that matter as well yeah i'll move i'll express my satisfaction by moving approval of this consent calendar

54:20 item don't second it all right well uh um those in favor please raise your hand and say aye that was better all right there we're moving on to consent calendar uh b there are two contracts for consideration do i have a motion to approach uh excuse me do i anybody want to pull one go ahead sonia i would like to pull number four i have a couple of quick questions okay in that case we have the all-tech uh contract for 416 thousand dollar remaining do i have a motion to approve so we have to approve the others uh all right for the record uh moved by brown seconded by carlson um all those in favor of uh contract

55:06 number three the altrec contract sorry i think everybody knows what i meant uh please raise your hand and say aye hi hi um all right that is uh approved sonia the floor is yours okay great so on this one it said that there was um that there was some time frames on there that were too tight and that's part of the reason why a number of the other bidders chose not to bid and i'm curious if staff could speak to that a little bit and why such a tight time frame what why i guess yeah um sonya can hear me sound check yeah sorry this is rod um i'll turn my camera on then

55:51 everybody can tell um no that's that's a great question but time frames are for uh construction season uh and one of the things that we um i don't know if you've noticed but business has not slowed down if anything it's picked up there's a lot of projects going on uh and so um we were kind of surprised to only get one bitter but uh on the other hand there's a lot of work going on um you know and so we couldn't necessarily control that but we are trying to get through the construction season and it's a pretty short time frame um because we got started a little late due to some of the covid stuff but uh hopefully we'll get it done by the end of the year okay so so covid related and also some of the some of the potential

56:37 bidders have projects that are conflicting in that time frame i just wondered if this was something that got pushed and pushed and why we didn't kind of bid on it it just seemed like it was sort of last minute bidding i understand if that's covert related obviously that's that's challenging to deal with right right no we're just following the the project timelines okay and we had to do that okay yeah that was that was pretty much my question if if there was anything around there so thank you that answers it um thanks rod do i have a second i had a move to approve from sonia all right well then i'll do it uh um i think i beat you to it

57:22 mindy so uh moved bart carlson seconded by myself all those in favor of contract number four please raise your hand and say aye hi um alrighty uh that takes care of that business um we will move to general business items we have 30 minutes on the clock for jason uh reporting in from an undisclosed bunker somewhere in the willamette valley go ahead jason the floor is yours i will start i i will start a clock you can go ahead though good evening commissioners it's good to be with you all tonight virtually i'm sure you've all found it's been challenging to conduct public business during pandemic but you've all adapted

58:07 and likewise your counterparts in salem and washington dc have done the same to adapt the work goes on there's important decisions to be made next slide please while legislators certainly have uh the current pandemic outbreak at front of mind uh they're not losing track on longer-term issues um and there are many who uh many in the legislature who would suggest they need to keep their eye on the ball on another pandemic one unfolding in slow motion relative to covid the governor has issued executive order 2004 on climate which she's calling a cap and reduce order it is in direct response

58:52 to the failure of the legislature to enact carbon pricing legislation in the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions she's used existing air quality authority in the deq statutes to order specific actions for reducing emissions in industry transportation and natural gas the electric sector is largely omitted that's because current statutes only give her partial authority to regulate emissions in the electric sector only in-state generation sources and not emissions from imported electricity partial authority makes it very difficult to regulate that sector properly

59:37 and so i think it's probably prudent that the order largely omit electricity for the time being there will be implications for the electric sector however in the transportation sector one of the key tools the governor has targeted to reduce emissions is increasing the targets of the clean fuels program for transportation fuels electricity is an eligible fuel for credit generation in that program and eweb indeed is a registered credit generator and aggregator we have been for several years now so that will be the key tool utilized there um i i did want to point out that the update of the clean fuels program it's not just going to be higher targets

1:00:24 and housekeeping there actually will be some opportunities to explore strategic secondary objectives for example the oregon deq is evaluating an option to use a credit multiplier which is where one ton of carbon reduction would actually get credit for some multiplier like 1.5 tons that could be done in order to move the needle on other strategic goals targeted goals for example renewable hydrogen has a lot of potential to reduce emissions in the heavy vehicle sector heavy duty vehicle sector uh i would say the costs have come down for electrolyzers it's very close to penciling out but it's still somewhat nascent

1:01:09 as a technology where electric vehicles were 5 or 10 years ago the state could certainly use a credit multiplier to help get things moving on the production of renewable hydrogen from clean electricity also there are locations for ev charging infrastructure that are very strategic say along a state highway for example where the state wants connectivity across the state for electric vehicles to charge along the way there may be locations that are very strategic but won't have high enough usage to generate the revenue necessarily necessary for the owner of the charger to recoup their investment whether that be a third party or utility so they could use the credit multiplier to help bridge that delta

1:01:56 next slide please back to your issues more front of mind naturally legislators in salem as well as washington dc are extremely concerned about all the oregonians in crisis during this pandemic you may have seen in the newspaper there's been an extension of the eviction moratorium for example in oregon there has been no utility shut-off moratorium in oregon that's a good thing um washington oregon or excuse me washington and california did enact a moratorium oregon has held off so far and i think that's in large part because consumer-owned utilities and i think really led by eweb we've made a really strong case that the

1:02:42 voluntary approaches of utilities are the most efficient and effective way without unintended consequences to to address customers in crisis uh we've we've proved that our approaches sound and the governor's listened to us um obviously utilities at the start of the pandemic uh there were there was a voluntary suspension across the state of shutoffs by all the utilities that was that was a sound decision at the time but um obviously not a sustainable policy indefinitely and in fact i think the the slide and the data points that frank uh displayed for you all earlier they actually demonstrate that um you know a a ongoing uh suspension of shutoffs may

1:03:27 not actually be in the interest of our customers i think actually we found that resuming some level of normal collection policies has proved very crucial to incent customer utility interaction which is so crucial right now we really need the utilities and the customers to connect so we can find out what's going on so that we can get payment plans set up i we can also help get customers that need it connect it up with a bill assistance whether it be eweb's program uh funded by ratepayers or if it's state or federal resources so you know i think i think really uh the approach to resuming collection policies is sound and it's important to stress uh it's not business as usual there's certainly a

1:04:12 much more lenient approach to reconnection fees and deposits so uh also you know we we showed we demonstrated to the governor in the legislature that our approach was sound but we also reminded folks that you know our resources to provide assistance to customers were limited and we needed the cavalry and to that end eweb and many other oregon electric utilities successfully lobbied the state to allocate 15 million dollars out of their federal cares act allocation towards energy bill assistance and eweb really i think had a leading role we we really were a leader statewide in our own assistance of program we had a lot of credibility in that

1:04:57 effort and i think it's great that oregon took this step it's only we're only the second state in the country to use cares act dollars for that purpose and we should extend a thank you to the governor and the legislature for making that happen next slide please looking ahead a bit to 2021 no surprise given the grassroots efforts to pass cap and invest legislation in salem and coming so close there will definitely be cap and invest legislation reintroduced in 2021 um the outcome of 2021 legislation on that topic is highly dependent on the ability for the democratic majority in

1:05:42 salem to accomplish a quorum to do business and hold a third reading and vote on that legislation that means it's highly likely we'll probably know the fate of cap and trade the day after the november election uh if a legislative route appears closed off uh coupled with some issue fatigue in the legislature on carbon pricing it won't be surprising to see a pivot to sector specific command and control type policies we've already talked about the governor's executive order on climate we talked about how that does omit the electric sector and so that's a vacuum you could expect to be filled with legislative action next slide please uh

1:06:29 indeed i think there's a a very high probability that if cap and trade kept invest legislation is not successful it's going to result in the return of rps legislation that would increase rps targets also since the last time oregon took action on clean energy targets washington and california have taken a step forward to 100 percent clean variance i i think uh as a utility that's on record supporting carbon pricing as the least cost approach to reaching oregon's targeted greenhouse gas emissions uh an approach that is technology neutral market-based and economy-wide that will

1:07:14 be somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow but if we identify that this is the direction the legislature is going to go i think it will be very incumbent upon e-web to try to take as many of the lessons learned and as much of the the data and the findings we've made on a lease cost policy approach to reducing carbon and apply that to any rps legislation that moves forward in oregon centrally i think the the place to start would be calling for hydropower or really any non-carbon emitting form of electric generation to have full-fledged qualifying electricity status under the oregon rps and that means rec generating status the generation of

1:08:00 renewable energy certificates hydropower does have some compliance value in the existing oregon rps but it's not sufficient it does not have parity with wind and solar and if we're going to reach the finish line of a clean energy system in the northwest at an affordable cost we have to make it technology neutral so i think that would be the the central recommendation from staff uh on how eweb would position itself on any rps legislation and and uh also i think in the last two or three weeks we've seen in california you know some challenges to operating the grid reliably as we add more and more

1:08:46 dynamic renewable generation and so it probably will be very advisable for the state of oregon to acknowledge that and i think the last thing we want to have is a grid operator struggling to keep the lights on to have in the back of their mind the idea that there's punitive compliance consequences when they're trying to keep the lights on i think washington state seems to have done a pretty nice job in their recent 100 clean legislation in establishing reasonable off-ramps for reliability and we would do well to import those washington elements into oregon legislation next slide please we did want to give you an informational update on something i'm sure

1:09:31 you will see in the news soon the columbia river systems operations environmental impact statement is expected to be finalized in a record of decision made later this month that's in response to legal challenge the army corps of engineers formulated a new crso eis staff assessment is that this is a collaborative and flexible eis for the operation of the federal hydro system we think it's a nice balance of fish benefits and power benefits this would be an oversimplification of a very complex and nuanced document but the real centerpiece of the eis is making permanent

1:10:16 uh the temporary flexible spill agreement in the pacific northwest for the federal hydro system flexible spill is the idea that increased court ordered spill rather than occurring 24 hours a day can be accomplished strategically where spill occurs at hours of the day when energy demand is lower prices are lower and the grid is cleaner and spill is foregone at those times when the grid is uh with demand is higher when the grid is dirtier and prices are higher so it's a a flexible approach and i think it's balanced and it's collaborative it's a good interim strategy for the region and it's a potential stream board

1:11:03 for additional collaboration as you all know you know the courtroom has a time and a place for for studying settling policy matters but it's somewhat of a blunt object sometimes and a regional collaboration could have a more strategic approach to answer questions about the long-term future of columbia river systems operations one topic that would entail would be the future of the four lower snake river dams and that is a controversial matter um the uh the eis does not address the future of the snake river dams it certainly did not identify breaching as a measure the collaboration could be accomplished through a four-state process the states of idaho oregon washington

1:11:50 and montana are right now discussing how to create a venue a platform a process to discuss collaboration and decision making about the long-term future of the federal hydro system that's encouraging it certainly does not ensure that there won't be further legal challenge but it's possible that this time around the state of oregon which has been an outlier they may pursue non-legal solutions and they may stay at the collaborating table instead of going back to the courtroom and that would be a positive for efforts to find some kind of regional consensus long term on the federal hydropower system uh next slide i'm done i'm ready for any

1:12:35 questions you have all right well thanks jason uh if everybody can boy anyway i forget that we have about 15 minutes remaining i'm gonna uh open up a queue sonia looks like you want to jump in first go ahead well i'll reap repose the question that i uh posed earlier uh i'm curious if you've come across any legislation or funding that looks at the the customers that have been impacted um particularly through the cares act i don't know how the how the funding is allocated specifically but for the accounts that we likely won't be able to recover funding from if that climbs significantly would any of that funding be able to be

1:13:22 used to kind of offset uh those accounts that we we're not they're just not recoverable i'm just looking at the future and thinking right now it's manageable but who knows going into the winter you know when when electricity rates and uh you know heating we have much higher bills during the winter time and much and have may have a much higher risk as some of these other funds kind of dry up so yeah well to that end um uh to reiterate uh first the federal cares act that was passed um i want to say april uh that i that allocated nine million dollars in lightheap funds to oregon and then obviously the state took action on top of that and programmed the 15 million

1:14:07 for a light heap like program even though it's not lahib so that's a combined 24 million dollars i don't think the state is very far or the community action agency network they are not very far uh in in doling out those dollars and processing claims so there's a lot of assistance that's just now and continuing to hit the streets um as i as we mentioned you know i think it's possible that the resumption of collection practices um is going to help result in more people getting connected up with that assistance now with that said um while fantastic that oregon program those additional dollars it's not going to meet the need in the state of oregon

1:14:53 there's a lot of hope that just for example i would say to date the combined amount of money programmed in the federal cares act that's probably only equal to what was programmed in the 2010 financial crisis this this may be a more extreme event than that and so additional need is out there there is uh the heroes act that was passed by the house of representatives in dc um that allocated 1.5 billion dollars for additional light funding um as well as a 1.5 billion for water bill assistance uh which would be the first of its kind um and uh that that bill um was passed by

1:15:38 the house the senate has not yet acted on its own version there are negotiations underway right now i i will tell you it is difficult to get a bill passed this close to the election and as much as i would love to tell you action could happen before then it's probably more likely um uh a bill a negotiated bill would be passed after the election but what i can tell you uh what i what i do know about the the senate bill the bill was not released in full written form but uh one thing that the senate had uh proposed was forgivable loans that would go directly to utilities and when the forgivable the forgivable component as i understand it the portion of

1:16:25 bad debt that any utility ends up having to eat that would be the forgivable portion of the loan but i'd have to go back and get more details so we're in we're in a awaiting a holding pattern when it comes to federal assistance i do think there will be some but it's hard to say that it will be here before the election okay yeah i really appreciate that and and you know while i'm obviously concerned about the you know finances of the utility as a board member we have to be obviously i'm i'm very thankful for all the work that has been done at the various levels of government and for whatever role you played in that to make sure that that our customers and community members are receiving

1:17:10 financial aid because electricity and water are basic services and making sure that we can continue to provide that for for customers during these really challenging times and and when those funds dry up i mean i i think i would like to see in the future you know as we're starting to hear that those funds are drying up or we're kind of getting to the the end of what we've allocated um we just need to keep having conversations about this and seeing what we can do to continue to advocate to to carry people through this i'm just deeply concerned about when those funds run out and and what will happen to those people who need those services so agree agreed commissioner and i did want to stress um i think one niche that eweb has really filled is um

1:17:55 reminding people of the challenges of small businesses there's a lot of focus on low income oregonians and and job loss but small businesses are in crisis and we know that you know some of those small businesses if they go away they may they may well never come back and so we've we've i think we've filled a niche in salem to spotlight the plan of small businesses and there will be there is some assistance available for small businesses through business oregon but there's also additional unmet need for small business assistance as well all right we'll move on uh in the interest of time we have just 10 minutes or a little bit less now remaining in this 30 minute session anybody else have any questions or comments to um share

1:18:45 oh well what do you know uh well in that case thank you jason for the report and we'll move into our next item which is a physical physical security program overview with lisa krentz hi lisa hi can you see me and hear me okay uh yes we can all right fantastic um thank you um good evening it's a pleasure to be with you tonight to give you um an overview of our physical security program i'm lisa krantz operation support manager also joining me tonight is ken baldwin he's our physical security supervisor our goal this evening and for this presentation is to give you a high level understanding of our physical security program particularly in relation to current events next slide please

1:19:32 shown here is an overview of what we'll be discussing tonight no board action is required however we are looking for additional feedback from you on what you more information you'd like to see either in quarterly reports or via another avenue so be thinking about that as i'm walking through this presentation next slide please the formal mission and vision of the physical security department was provided in the board backgrounder i won't um reiterate that here but what we've done is we've boiled it down to a simple phrase our goal is to provide a safe and secure work environment so that employees can focus on their primary duties as you know as a provider of critical electric and water services we have a responsibility to our customers to continue to deliver those circumstances or does

1:20:17 services regardless of the circumstances that means protecting our employees in critical infrastructure we do this by 24 7 monitoring patrolling investigating and training to support this mission one of the most important things we offer is de-escalation strategy to help with the difficult situations we stress the importance of personal safety and positive conflict resolution whenever possible next slide please eweb employs an in-house team of security professionals as licensed professional security officers our team adheres to not only eweb standards and codes of ethics but also to the additional laws regulations and administrative rules set forth by the oregon department of public safety standards and training

1:21:02 our team has 152 years of combined security law enforcement and military experience including former police and corrections officers and a combined 62 years of military service our security team provides active assailant response training to e-web staff to prepare folks for the potential violent threats in the workplace and we maintain our state mandated licensing with an in-house instructor to ensure regulatory and legal updates are promptly communicated we do take a very thoughtful approach when selecting candidates for our physical security team we look well beyond the basic security officer knowledge that's required by state law we have a complex and thorough vetting process to ensure we hire only the most qualified individuals our officers

1:21:47 can and do adapt quickly to unusual and rapidly evolving situations that can affect our entire community next slide please again our ultimate goal is to ensure a safe and secure work work environment followed by protection of our of our critical infrastructure and assets one of the best ways to do that is to have an established and robust physical security program including the presence of security professionals e-web security officers are often first responders to an incident so to achieve this goal we we do a number of things which i'll go over then with the next couple of slides we monitor and control access to hundreds of doors and gates at all e-web facilities we install monitor and maintain hundreds of cameras and electronic card readers

1:22:32 at e-web sites around oregon we again facilitate de-escalation training to provide communication skills to our field and customer service staff which has been particularly important as of late that's a fairly new program for us and we're excited to offer it we provide active assailant training to eweb workgroups to respond to workplace violence which is something we've been doing for quite some time and we actively patrol e-web properties and facilities in clearly marked up security vehicles this has the effect of deterring impacts to facilities and you'll see on your screen one of our clearly marked patrol vehicles next slide please in addition to um the activities on the previous slide we also assist employees with challenging interactions um we develop enterprise-wide um

1:23:17 policies and then also action plans for potential events and this might be a particular interest to you although i won't share the details of any specific action plans we have developed action plans for example a civil unrest plan that will outline what steps our security staff take to keep employees and infrastructure safe in the event one of our facilities is the target of violence we respond to customer and neighborhood concerns and complaints we manage camping trash dumping and other property nuisance issues on e-web properties to prevent disruption of service or contamination of the water system and above all else we're continually adapting to emerging threats for instance we actively monitor trends and threats against utilities both regionally and across the nation

1:24:03 to ensure we're prepared to respond and maintain resiliency please the geographic scope of the program is actually quite large um e-web owns over 200 properties many contain critical infrastructure on them so our program covers all substations reservoirs pumping control stations and additional properties in and around eugene transition please we also cover properties and infrastructure in springfield and also up river at haydenbridge leeburg walterville and carmen smith next slide or transition please and then our scope extends even further with video surveillance of the stone creek hydroelectric project east of portland so this is a lot of ground to cover with a relatively small team

1:24:49 we're able to accomplish this through a combination of both virtual monitoring and physical patrolling and we rely pretty heavily on our security systems administration team that works full-time servicing and maintaining hundreds of cameras electronic access control and alarm devices that protect against security breaches or service interruption next slide please one of the ways we monitor our effectiveness is through maintaining statistics of incidents these are provided in the quarterly reports to the board um i'll walk through just a couple of those things here on this slide so for background of this slide the physical security program has devolved pretty dramatically over the last 10 years or so at that time security officers were focused primarily on the headquarters

1:25:34 and roosevelt operations center and were not conducting routine patrols at other sites we have since instituted proactive patrols at most e-web locations an example of how this strategy has positively impacted us is shown in this graph in 2013 where the large orange bar is we had 24 incidents of copper theft at our substations alone aside from the hundreds of thousands of dollars required for repair and replacement i'm sure you all are familiar with the fact that unsafe removal of copper ground wires or other elements can create unsafe conditions or disrupt service since we implemented product patrols in marked uh patrol vehicles incidents of copper theft have dropped to nearly zero and we view this

1:26:19 as sound evidence that our physical presence has effectively deterred impacts to facilities next slide please at this time i'd like to hand the presentation over to ken baldwin he's our physical security supervisor ken you lisa our physical security team has a lot of encounters with our citizens uh including many of those who are in challenging situations uh while our primary mission is to provide safety for our employees and protect eweb's ability to continue to provide service our approach to citizen contacts is based on dignity respect and compassion we carry helpful flyers with us on our patrol in our patrol vehicles listing dozens of community assistance resources and we hand them out as often as we can

1:27:06 we recognize that we all have a unique story to tell sometimes the best approach to an encounter on our properties is simply to listen to what they have to say by hearing the details of one's circumstances we can possibly help them find resources options uh things to help them resolve the situation they may be in one thing we're quite proud of is that with the hundreds of challenging encounters with folks in the field we've never had a related injury to our officers or any community members that speaks highly to our communication skills and the compassion with which we approach everyone we that we deal with slide please we're here to detect and prevent threats to our utility not be big brother we're not watching every move folks make we really don't care what our employees

1:27:52 are doing out there as long as they're being safe so instead we use our resources to identify risks and potential harm that may come to our staff in the community the relate the relations that we build within the utility and with other government entities allows for rapid solutions uh to pretty much any situation well we do have a large geographical area to cover we believe more success can be had through broad personal reach of relationships throughout the community whether we're supporting the board of commissioners our management our staff for our community our security team strives to help everyone feel secure to continue their daily tasks without worrying about anything hindering them from their job duties slide please

1:28:37 the few photos we're going to show you here during the initial response to the covet 19 pandemic many communities around oregon adopted a shelter-in-place strategy we encountered an increase in unhoused citizens using our properties for refuge since he had neither they had neither the shelter nor a place we joined with other government entities by not issuing trespass notices unless situations were impacting our ability to provide water and power to the community this first photo is an example of how one sunshine encampment got a little out of control so we unfortunately did have to redirect these people elsewhere and help them find another place to move on transition it's not unusual to encounter this many needles from illicit drug use on a

1:29:22 single visit to some of our properties for the safety of our workers and the residents who occasionally transit the properties and we follow safe work practices to collect and dispose of these hazardous drug product paraphernalia such as the needles and other things we encounter transition please uh campers and rubbish blocking the gates to a substation for instance may hinder our first responders and troubleshooters from accessing the apparatus which delays in restoration or power to the community this photo shows where a camp spread across the access path to a substation in just a few days we did have to intervene and get some assistance from the city of eugene to conduct a clean up of these properties this is often a complaint driven process from community members and neighbors and we respond to all of our residents as

1:30:07 quickly as possible and again we do try to to use as much uh respectful dialogue with the folks that are that we're dealing with to resolve these situations slide please uh many employees and customers have commented that our visible presence helps them feel safer especially with the recent events and sometimes violent civil unrest occurring around our area we've developed mitigation and response plans to ensure if any violent or destructive activities do spread to our facilities we're prepared to ensure the safety of our staff and our customers we often provide additional security for customer care events community sport activities and to ensure board of commissioner meetings are safe for all participants

1:30:54 we provide strategies and examples to our staff for safely resolving encounters with agitated or angry folks who may be impacted by events that are out of their control we know we can't always avoid conflict but with helpful communication tools we can lessen risk and achieve acceptable resolutions when critical incidents happen our 24 7 patrol officers may be the first initial responder on scene we follow the incident command system for safely managing incidents until other qualified agencies can respond we've established very good relationships with police fire homeland security and emergency management agencies around the area to help provide a unified response to any events where we can be of assistance and help minimize negative impacts to the community and uh we're very proud of our physical

1:31:41 security team that we continue to maintain full operational capacity throughout this coven 19 pandemic and we've adapted our strategies to meet the challenges presented by the change in operational and customer service methods by the utility and i thank you for the opportunity to highlight how our department supports the 11 community i handed back to lisa thank you next slide please holly at this point we'd like to open it up for questions or comments from the board all right i'll just uh show you my clock there we've got uh 13 out of 20 minutes and laps so seven minutes or so remaining in this session and i will open up a queue

1:32:27 go ahead john sorry to always go first but um it's better than having to deal with me in person number one i'd just like to compliment your uh your segment of eweb operations as being excellent i i'm really impressed with what you do and the challenges you have based on some of my experience in dealing with some of the unhoused and things such as that along the riverbanks i do have a question lisa or whatever a while back um we got uh a college show reservoir got broken into and some people got into the water supply i believe and we found out that our reservoirs and our facilities were not on a priority call from epd they didn't consider them critical structure you know infrastructure so they didn't respond to the alarm has that been changed and verified that that's been changed throughout all our facilities

1:33:12 i'll be honest i don't know i would have to defer that question to ken and if can if you don't have the answer to that that's certainly something we can follow up on i'd like to follow up on that uh later and give you some actual details rather than just conjecture commissioner okay well thank you it was at college hill and it was a group of youth that broke in and i believe we it was when roger was here and we found out that uh we wondered why the police didn't come and they didn't come because they didn't consider it a critical infrastructure because we weren't on the list and i i thought that was a little alarming and i hope i just want to confirm that it got changed one thing i would just add to that and can please correct me if i'm wrong um you know one of the the benefits primary benefits of having

1:33:58 um such a qualified in-house security team is that as you well know um epd and other law enforcement agencies are extremely busy and so our officers are are trained to be able to respond to events and then liaise with with law enforcement and have great relationships so that they can actually stress the importance of an event to epd or other law enforcement agencies can anything to add or change on that response no i think you hit it well again with with our varying experience and and uh and honestly our great reputation with the with the agencies around uh we're able to triage an incident uh pretty much and we can determine whether they need to be

1:34:43 there urgently or emergently and and help them decide what resources they need to allocate so frequently we can we can bring things down to the point of a community service officer for instance coming out and simply taking a report rather than dedicating the other resources which are in other places in the community i think we're pretty successful with that okay thank you i look forward to your response on that thanks go ahead dick well i just want to appreciate the presentation it's obvious to me that our um our expertise and our approach and our relationships with uh others uh have matured considerably over the last several years and my your presentation has kind of opened my eyes to that

1:35:28 in ways that give me confidence i uh the only thought that i have and it's probably irrelevant for the remainder of my tenure because it's possible that we may never meet again physically through the end of the year but um as far as um your training goes it sounds like you have considerable expertise and maybe some recommended protocols for various kinds of incidents and if there's an opportunity sometime in the coming year to conduct and if the other board members and the new ones have an interest if there's an opportunity to conduct a training for the board uh that would not be part of a regular public meeting on response to potential incidents in the board room

1:36:19 everything from unruly people unwilling to yield the floor during public testimony to other sorts of things it might be helpful to at least line out kind of how we all behave and respond in those situations should they occur and i i again doesn't probably doesn't need to be something or wouldn't be particularly useful between now and whatever time it is that we can reconvene physically but it sounds like you have lots of good training uh expertise and protocols uh to recommend and if you could share some of that with us as it applies to things that go on in the boardroom potentially that would be helpful and useful in the event that we're faced with something like that thank you again for your presentation thank you commissioner um just to respond to that we would absolutely be

1:37:05 um we'd be thrilled to provide some training in a non-public session and since you opened the door having been at eweb and have a fair amount of experience with eweb and made reference to how much the program has really evolved over the last number of years i did want to acknowledge nate watto so he um ken baldwin is acting physical security supervisor that's been you've been in the job what a couple months now ken um and ken's been doing a great job but i did want to acknowledge nate wata who has been leading that program for many for a number of years and under his leadership has really expanded and improved it so um just wanted to get that out there thanks lisa other questions concerns comments go ahead sonia i thank you so much for

1:37:50 the presentation i really appreciate having this background knowledge of of the staff um you know in the four years i've been here this is the first that it's really come up and been detailed in a broader way so i appreciate having more of that background about the staff and the approach um i my sense is that you're doing all of the right things and like dick i feel like we could also learn from your approach on the board and would welcome uh some sort of you know other training outside of this i know there have been times even when i was you know board president and leading meetings that you know people were unruly at times said it's just helpful to have you know you may need not need to pull out all of those tools but it gives you confidence and comfort in

1:38:36 knowing what tools are available and and how to be able to use those and it seems like right now especially with heightened emotions and such it's it's even more important to have de-escalate de-escalating tactics and um you know we're not meeting in person now but we are still encountering people a lot of the staff i know you know they're meeting one-on-one with uh community members so i appreciate any work that you're doing to give them those tools as well so thank you again for all this work i know it's it's not easy work but it's really critical work and i i it often doesn't get the

1:39:21 attention or focus you know when things are just working um behind the scenes uh a lot of times we we take that for granted and and i don't want to do that so thank you again for what you're doing it's so critical i'll also just uh quickly uh throw in some comments thanks both lisa and ken uh for the presentation and uh like sonia she's been here four years i've been here eight i don't think we've had a presentation like this in the time that i've been here so uh you know thanks to frank as well for recognizing that it's time to sort of include this in our uh you know in some kind of an annual review i i think there's some value to having some kind of uh whether it's a presentation or a background or i suppose um could be discussed and debated but uh where the board just gets an annual

1:40:06 update as to um i guess i would leave it to you to think through what kinds of metrics ought to be included in that kind of update you know the numbers of camps were removed or break-ins or you would have to you know lead on that i wouldn't know enough to advise on that but i can imagine some kind of an annual report if for no other reason to help the board sort of keep clear about the reality of physical risk it's not something that i think of all that much because it doesn't get brought to our tents and so just simply by bringing to our attention reminds us of how much uh you know physical assets and human assets we have spread out across lane county and beyond and what it means to protect them over time especially uh in changing times uh commissioner

1:40:51 schlossberg or anybody else have uh we we're a minute or so over but we'll extend just to make sure everybody has a chance to provide some feedback if they'd like nope i just want to echo what the other commissioners have said thank you that was super informative um and also i too would appreciate some kind of board training on um general safety so but thank you for that presentation it was great so uh up commissioner crosston go ahead all right one one last comment of course you know in these times i think it's really prudent to mention um i'd be curious to find out what other kind of uh training that that you all receive around

1:41:36 you know sensitivity training uh racially motivated sorts of um you know incidents and how to respond to people empathetically and in a de-escalating way when when there are heightened tensions around that as well so i i didn't hear as much of that in there but i'm assuming that that is something that you do and if it's not then i would like to know why so anyway just putting that out there is the last item thanks i'll just uh summarize it sounded like pretty widespread interest in um some kind of a board level training for how to handle uh a range of incidents that might happen in the board room directly my own sense is given that two of us are departing in three months and two other

1:42:21 folks are coming on the board and perhaps delay until january for that's usually a slow time of year for the board on the board's calendar anyways and that way can unless stick feels uh otherwise i would just think to make it such that those folks could benefit from us and and uh dick and i'll limp along between now and um and december without it frank i'm uh i heard some interest in also in um in some kind of an annual whether it or sort of a report a presentation a background or i guess i would leave that to you and lisa to discuss but it seems like there's interest in keeping this somewhat visible to the board at least on an annual basis yeah um president mattel i i think we all agree there's there's some natural opportunities

1:43:06 when we do the the annual report to look at that and then any kind of noteworthy security updates could be quarterly as well so i think lisa touched on at the very beginning that would include a number of different metrics and activities that we'd be working on at the time and then if something like this is informative doing something like this for the board just on its own merits once a year just as an update for the board there's a lot of things that evolve in this world and knowing that we have a professional and dedicated staff for this purpose is i think really important to all of us i would also add just i think

1:43:52 you know we will probably add something like this to the new commissioner orientation going forward so that something like a de-escalation training well i agree it's probably an early next year given that we'll be much mostly virtual if not all and completely virtual between now and the end of the year um that we would also add it to the list of things that we would work on potential you know presumptive new commissioners on in the future all right well thanks once again to ken and lisa both thank you alrighty uh i'm looking at the agenda we are scheduled to take a five minute break it's uh 7 16 anyways according to my clock so um

1:44:38 we will do that five minute break see you all at 7 21. president mattel yes sir i am going to exit and try to reconnect my computer or my network is incredibly slow and so um i'm going to try to reconnect in good luck may the force be with you

1:49:47 we're going to uh for folks who can hear me uh we are going to extend the break an additional um five minutes to well anyways to 7 25 our fearless leader general manager lawson is having trouble rebooting so uh pressure's on frank you got to 725

1:50:37 tips for what fishing or rafting i think i'd get some get some advice from you well you've been down more times with me uh but i'll tell you what i guess maybe you don't have to worry about this so much because you got some folks guiding but the water is low we um oh yeah yeah we beached on more than one rock and uh did some damage to some boats so i think that's the main thing but man it was fun yeah we're we're done i think it's one yeah but but how they get the sweep boat down with the logistics and the gears for being on the river for 10 days is beyond me they've got i mean they get that sweet boat down like that you know hills half mile and all those places it's just amazing how they get it down there but are you flying into um uh was it like indian creek now are we starting wow really

1:51:26 wow i'm just trying to figure it out my back is killing me from being on the dirt for a few days and i'm gonna go do it again we stayed away from all the hot springs just trying to you know reduce our interactions with folks from other parties because of covid so um i don't know so that was a thing and you could tell other people i think we're largely thinking the same thing because those that you could see from floating by we're pretty empty yeah we're uh we're flying out at either cougar lane or thomas creek at the end of next week and so i just got a plane just to pick my son and myself up rather than flying with usually they put three or four people in those planes and i just said i just want i don't want strangers if you can uh if you get to camp at otterbar i thought that was the best camp on the

1:52:12 on the river but i guess those decisions are probably made for you fred yeah we well we pick them before we start we we you know you got to pick them for the logistics and how many miles you go each day and everything but we don't have any competition nobody else on the river this time of the year all righty uh let's see do we have i can see three out of five sonia are you here mindy are you here there's sonia oh great alrighty well we will uh reconvene we're all um the gang's all

1:52:57 back uh frank i believe the floor is yours 30 minutes to discuss the mckenzie valley service territory and rape making go ahead great thank you president mattel commissioners good evening i appreciate the opportunity a background or was provided to the board and so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on presentation other than to highlight a few of the diagrams and and facts and figures kind of behind the scenes go ahead with slide 34 please um just as a quick overview a reminder of the service territory that that we're talking about um roughly ewebs totals about 30 236 square miles we have a little over 90 000 accounts or customer accounts

1:53:42 split between residential small commercial medium and large general service and then a couple of of contracts in addition to that the mckenzie valley represents about a little under three percent of our total customer accounts and a little over three if you look at just residential accounts um and as you can see a pretty substantial part of our territory from a geographical perspective go ahead with slide 35 please so uh one of the things that has has come up relative to rate making principles um is you know where does this fit relative to other things we've done and continue to plan to do over the next um several years if you look back about

1:54:28 10 years there's been a number of rate making activities that we've done especially around this notion of equity uh above the timeline represents the electrical side uh below the timeline um there indicates where we've made some changes uh relative to the water uh rate making and and rate structures anything from adjustments to basic charges to try to work on a line between fixed costs and variable costs or fixed costs and marginal costs as well we also and and this is really captured in in table two of your of your background or which has a list by year everything from eliminating tears on the electric side to

1:55:14 looking at how we do pumping charges for example on the water side the the g there is when we eliminated the 15-year distributed general rate for um um local distributed generation and then the one that's called general customer the the black figure there was when we aligned fees and costs associated with customer service activities that was a couple years ago and then the most recent one actually earlier this year was when we adjusted the sdc charges on water for auxiliary dwelling units and so but when also you look at the future there's a number of things that we really have to work on over the next several years especially around on the electric side

1:56:01 looking at consumption choices more work remains that will facilitate future consumer choices based on energy resources time of use peak mitigation and carbon intensity just for example so there's a lot of work to do on the rate making front and the structure of rates especially on the electric side over the next several years as we look to offer new products with with new kinds of value go ahead with slide 36 if you'd like um as part of the backgrounder we also included rate comparisons between eweb and some of our neighbors in particular lane electric and you know the one thing that jumps out pretty quickly is the difference in the

1:56:46 basic charge or the fixed charge associated and differences between lane and epud and and eweb for example and and that becomes more evident in the in the upcoming couple of slides uh go ahead with slide 37 one of the things when you uh lay on top um of of this the different rates you know one one thing that is whenever you make a rate adjustment people talk about well you're you're increasing these people are paying more and these people are paying less um the the reality of it is every one of those lines is up and to the right meaning that as you increase consumption levels across the bottom what you pay goes up and so

1:57:31 while we've looked at tiers differently we've looked at different mixes of fixed versus variable charges they all go up and to the right eweb is the dark line kind of in the middle the one that crosses eweb the yellow line is emerald public utility district or e-pud and then there's two lines for lane electric um all uh remain above the e-web line the reason there's two is that they have a winter rate and a summer rate and so there's there's some slight uh we decided to plot both of those the winter rate is slightly lower than the summer rate because they can they have a higher consumption and can plan to absorb more costs over a higher consumption and so that's that's part of the reason go ahead with

1:58:18 the next slide this is an interesting one when you look at the impact of of basic charges on consumption and what you pay um the i'll start with the two lines that are close together those are how eweb and an e-web monthly bill would compare with lane electric when you look at different levels of consumption and so for example if you look at a bill that's roughly 800 kilowatt hours a month those numbers are a little over 10 percent lower so eweb would be 10 lower than either of the um rates the winter or summer from lane electric at 800. when you go out to 1600 two thousand uh that closes to four point seven

1:59:05 percent we are four point seven percent below lane um lanes winter rate and six point eight percent below lane electric summer rate as you get out into higher consumption levels the one line that crosses there that's um emerald public utility district or e-pud and so up to about 900 kilowatt hours a month you'll pay less from from eweb versus you'll pay slightly more from euweb if you have higher levels of consumption and so you can really see the impact of the higher basic charges from lane and from epud when you look at the low end of the consumption scale there go ahead with the next slide please one

1:59:52 of the things i think to recognize too about the mackenzie valley just in general is that we do have a presence up there that that goes beyond the service territory um the the investments that have have been made since about 2000 total just capital loan total over 150 million dollars um you know of that 90 of those roughly relate to hydro facilities and hydro re-licensing um you know you know of that 140 or so million about 50 of the carmen smith and about 40 of lieberg and walter walterville uh was those investments were in non-electricity generating activities

2:00:39 so what that means is fish and recreation habitat resource management so the presence of in fact part of relicensing is to invest in the community in ways that go beyond just investing for example in a powerhouse or a generator additionally and one thing meant as kind of mentioned in your background eweb has also invested over 15 million dollars in the non-capital o and m programs uh specific to watershed and source protection uh since about its inception in about 2002 and those are not included in electric rates by the way so we have invested significantly upriver

2:01:24 well beyond what we recapture in electric rates directly go ahead with slide 40. so as you can see my recommendation is on the screen you know i made this recommendation based on some judgment that um indeed the territory has unique attributes of cost and and based on the fact that nowhere in our rate making principles or policies could i find a mechanism to not make this recommendation unless to treat it as a de minimis subsidy so or i could i couldn't find a way to use a non-cost based reasoning to make a different recommendation to

2:02:09 the board that would be that would overcome the the rough 800 000 shortfall that this particular territory costs versus what's recovered and so that's the purpose of my recommendation as well as to to foster a little bit of discussion because unlike many of the issues and recommendations that we present in this case i don't expect complete alignment on the board uh and therefore welcome some additional conversation perspectives and and guidance and so um that's why i presented it this way it's really some foster some some communications and discussion especially uh this being a little bit premature

2:02:54 recognizing that up front that we have not had our upriver meeting yet and so this is um in preparation uh or in maybe staging that a bit so um that's um the recommendation and i would i guess turn it back to you president mattel to lead any further discussions or comments that can help us prepare for our upriver meeting in a couple weeks and also help us prepare to as far as what to bring back to the board um after that um engaged on that input as well i don't want to be be at all premature um to that and so i would welcome any

2:03:39 further discussion or questions i think that's the next slide which is questions no i guess i i don't have any ques you can't i guess ask any questions since there's there's no question slide but well i'll just say a couple of thanks for the presentation i'll say a couple quick things and then open up a uh queue yeah just to follow on what frank said as a reminder to whatever it is two three weeks from now we have our upriver meeting there are um we've kind of worked through what that agenda will include and of course it includes this topic uh i think um frank has volunteered deborah to um lead the presentation although i think he's gonna join her uh at least a bit in any case it'll be a short presentation probably fairly similar to this one and um and then we'll open it up to q a

2:04:25 for as as many as as long as people have um you know questions or comments or whatever else to throw at us and there'll be an opportunity for commissioners to respond if they so choose so we're basically structuring that although it's not actually public testimony sort of structured in that way where we can hear um the comments and concerns so this is really an opportunity for us to kind of work through whatever um you know concerns or issues we have individually um two or three weeks from now when we meet um the the plan is more to listen and and less to sort of uh you know to to provide any direct commentary or feedback but to really hear what the uprover folks say so anyways that's just a little bit of preamble so folks have a sense of what's coming in the next two

2:05:10 um in a couple of weeks from now sonia it sounds like you wanted to jump in the queue first so please go ahead thank you well i appreciate the background information i'm not going to give uh very much thoughts on the the proposal right now because one of those one of the things that was brought up at the last meeting that resonated with me and finding out more information about it was uh one of the other commissioners i can't remember if it was john or dick but brought up that the silt taxes the the contributions in lieu of taxes for the city um that there's some kind of an interplay there i don't know what that is um other than

2:05:55 i know that we make those to the city of eugene i don't know what our um i would like to know i would like to know more about how that figure is calculated and if that is on everything that we do which includes all of the upriver kind of wondering if it it should or shouldn't and also um how that how that plays into you know the the service that they get provided or not um and and how that kind of wraps into the cosa so i i didn't see that in any of the presentation and i i remember that being um an item that there was some question about and i'd i would like to get more

2:06:40 of that information before i provide more feedback on the proposal i'd also like to have hear the upriver um people kind of give their feedback before i really make any judgment as well but that's the one thing i would like to see more thank you so thank you commissioner i will provide a little bit of feedback directly um and then we can provide more details as to the the specifics behind the actual equation that drives the calculation of silt um it is a combination of a couple things one is uh relative to wholesale business it is there's some assumption levels that were made because wholesale markets go up and down so i don't want to say that's a fixed amount but it's a predetermined amount

2:07:25 on the retail side silt is calculated based on the revenue we we receive from all customers it is it isn't it's an overall revenue based uh calculation and so that includes electric and water and also whether you're upriver or in town that's a real cost that is incurred by the utility based on revenue from everybody um now i don't know exactly when that silt agreement expires that's something that either debra can weigh in on or we can follow up on but i don't think it's it's any anytime in the near future

2:08:10 and we can get some more information it's it's a spreadsheet that looks at all the different uh classes as well but it's basically calculated off of the entire revenue retail revenue plus some factor that accounts for wholesale revenue okay so when you provide that that information too can you let me know if the agreement was in i mean if it's in lieu of taxes i'm assuming that's property taxes because we're a government entity and so if the property is what we're kind of offsetting maybe i'm wrong there but but if you could correct me on that when you when you come back and bring more information i would appreciate that and kind of what the offset right and some of this yeah some of this

2:08:56 is driven by state statute which requires um public utilities pay this this fee um and then um there's a part of it that was just negotiated in from a historical perspective um the last negotiation i believe was between roger gray and and city manager john reese a number of years ago and i don't know when that particular one expires but we we can provide that and i saw debra jump on real quick i don't know if she had an inclination as to when it expires you're you're on mute debra join the club all right sorry about that i was just gonna comment on the retail side we can get you the

2:09:42 the expiration on the wholesale agreement uh the the retail side is perpetuity until we renegotiate that was a negotiated deal based on uh the state statute and it does the calculation is off our and all of our retail revenue so as written we're not permitted to exclude uh revenue from upriver all right well i'll jump in the queue um just to move things along so i i'll i'll go on record saying that i'm in favor of the recommended action with some modifications because i too was uh kind of moved by whoever it was dicker john who mentioned the you know

2:10:28 the silt impact and i think it's roughly three percent or that's certainly what the utility or no i guess it's a little bit more five six percent something like that uh what we owe the city on um as a pers uh each year and so to me it does make sense to um you know to subtract that off the you know the impact um or that it just to subtract that out and so what we might end up by offering the upriver folks uh you know recognizing that they are in a sense paying those taxes and and shouldn't have to do that if they're not um uh you know for not benefiting from city services so i can imagine that we would back down that rate increase by some percent to accommodate that so that's a that's a piece that i'd like to

2:11:13 see further discussion on but generally speaking i'm in support for all the reasons frank um mentioned that this is uh the impact here is in excess of uh three to five percent is where we start to really take an interest and for all the standard reasons that we've already discussed uh you know it's our job to try and reduce and uh you know eliminate to the extent possible cross subsidies and and we find them when we find them we address them when we do it's um you know some folks get the benefit of our of the time it takes for us to you know to catch up with those things but that's doesn't seem to me to be a reason not to pursue just because we've allowed it for some period of time another thing i'll say is that you know there has been this on-again off-again discussion with um some of the rural utilities lane electric in particular for

2:11:58 as a to perhaps um buy out that part of our service territory and that's in recognition that they are better tooled to deal with uh rural issues and we are less tuned in that way and the last time this came up at the up river meeting we had an enormous number of people come out and say please don't do this we love eweb but the reality was they liked that you know the difference in cost and so i i think we ought to be if it turns out that we are subsidizing them we ought to clarify that issue and then um we will see in uh in much more you know just kind of real terms where if it really is of benefit or interest to the upriver

2:12:43 customers to transition to a different utility and that utility may just express greater interest recognizing that they don't have the burden of having to raise rates on folks right away that those issues have been cleared from the table so those are some of my reasons for moving forward with this i'll um open it up to anybody else who wants to chime in go ahead it looks like everybody wants to get in go ahead john well thank you uh i'm favorite conceptually for this i think i may have been the one that brought up the silt but it doesn't matter but uh frank uh i know that we pay the city of eugene like 12 million dollars a year but we also pay the city of springfield about a million dollars a year for revenue we generate within their boundaries so why couldn't logic

2:13:29 i mean to make this a little bit more fair the for the revenue we generate outside the incorporated areas that still go to the county and dedicate it to something like their fire departments or schools or whatever because in essence we do it in other regional jurisdictions and i just you don't need to answer that now but i would just think conceptually if six percent of your bill is going to go to an entity that provides nothing for you uh i mean we give money to springfield we give money to eugene for what we generate in those geographic areas i don't know why we couldn't do the same for the unincorporated areas up the hill um just a food for thought and then secondarily on steve's point about the the territory and maybe swapping with lane or somebody else i mean you know our previous general manager lived up on spring boulevard and

2:14:15 he had lane electric they they provide service in the city limits of eugene all over and it would seem logical that if we could somehow figure out the economics of uh territory swaps or service swaps and things such as that and make the pot right it would it would make more sense for you know why have lane electric in an urban area and uh in the city of eugene etc and then you know also then the people up the river could have representation because right now they have no say in anybody i mean it's kind of default to mindy and i was in that position for four years and and we had a lot of fun discussions but uh you know hopefully we could uh pursue that i'd like to see more of that uh in in what you come back with thank

2:15:00 you mindy go ahead oh sorry frank did you want to respond to anything that john i was just i was just to mention he used the word logic several times and i i can't explain some of the historical logic um i i can definitely say that we have a a good relationship with lane electric uh we can open dialogues that are logical around service territories and swaps and and i do think that the big issue um that we struggled with you know i'm not sure is to struggle with i think one of the big issues is representation of the way that co-ops and puds are formed is kind of a natural process i don't i don't think we're trying to unload a territory i think we want to look at this what's the best for the customers and if something if

2:15:47 you know service is there the price is there the representation is there then it it would likely be something that a co-op or a pud would also be interested in so i i think there's some some natural logic to use uh commissioner brown's term but i cannot explain all of the logic around silt and its origins um especially the way that that we do it now so but but we'll we'll see what we can do commissioner schlosser go ahead um so there's something about this that just makes me a little uncomfortable and i'm trying to figure out why and i shudder to read back the minutes next month because i'm not very eloquent in presenting it but i think part of it

2:16:33 is silts a big part of it is representation so if we were looking at a different area of town like let's say we decided we were going to look at south hills because they have more downed trees and we were going to look at how much it costs us to provide electricity there they have a they have direct representation and so um i feel like that's one of the things that makes eweb special and here i don't know it just it just feels a little off to me that that they that people upriver don't have that um and i guess the other thing is i understand that there's a whole cue and there's a plan of when we do these type make these types of decisions but just earlier in the meeting we were talking about people um who are needing shut-offs or

2:17:21 non-compliance for paying bills and um i guess i would just want to know what the timeline would be if we implemented any kind of rate increase because that feels a little just off to me right now to be talking about that again i understand that we're a business and and business has to go on but there's just something something that doesn't sit right with me so um i can't explain what's not sitting right with you but i i will say that there there's potentially two steps one is that the board would authorize the creation of a rate if you then look at the other principles one of those is gradualism and there could be uh you know that's that's one of the principles that we

2:18:06 could employ here so it would depend on the board's comfort around the level and the pace of those changes and what that would look like the the flip side to doing this now is a recognition that they've underpaid for a number of years and so at what point do you do you say oh it's time to pay your fair share so um and we'll we'll ease you into that given the circumstances so there's there's a couple ways to look at that i think if the board says yeah we're comfortable with the rate because there's enough distinction then that rate could start being you know just the difference in silt it could progress over time whatever there's there's ways to do that so

2:18:53 so the timing is is a little bit separate from the decision to to have a mckenzie valley raid itself yeah i i think about it that way myself sorry dick yeah i'm sure you probably want to jump in that uh you know if everybody had the time and interest to look fully into these issues the way the way we are uh and the way we do as board members you could imagine of course there would be a bunch of people from the up river community that would you know say this doesn't feel fair i don't want this or please don't do this to me but there would be you know 10 or 20 times as many people to say what i'm paying where i'm helping to pay an extra 800 000 and have been for the last 25 or 30 years um for these folks that doesn't seem right either you it's your obligation

2:19:38 to you know remove that subsidy from me so if they're there there's both sides of those things neither of those groups are going to come in in full because they're just simply not aware and don't have the time it's really up to us to sort it out dick i'm sure you want to jump in no i'm unmuted i feel um as sort of secure in my opposition to this as some of you do in your support and i don't mean that as uh a joke i i just um i look at it from a different perspective and i think you're focused on the cost of service perspective as though that were in and of itself equity i'm going to just make a statement about

2:20:24 this that represents my view i guess i'll stay open to a final outcome as we move through whatever our process is but i i do not support the recommended action and my statement around that is that we have a major uh presence in the mackenzie watershed we have for a century and this is a presence both in terms of our facilities and operations that has a significant impact on the upriver community whether it's varying the water levels up there or the major construction that we engage or the vegetation management that we do all of the things that we are involved in up there um represent an impact to that community uh i we also at the same time have

2:21:11 historically and continue to obtain major benefits from our presence and our utilization of that resource both on the electric side and on the water supply side we committed to serving those folks a long time ago fully with the understanding that it would cost us more it's a rural area there's a less dense area in terms of capital investment it's an area that's exposed to more reliability issues that's not new information you know i guess we've never chosen to run a cost of service study on that but i mean to the extent that we find ourselves surprised at this point that that's the case i think we've known that at least

2:21:56 because i've seen it over the years all along and have seen that as an appropriate trade-off against the equity considerations that have to do with our presence up there and so for me equity as a rate making consideration is not just cost of service it's the balancing of all of the factors that affect not only the quality but the nature of service and the way that um people uh obtain whatever the benefits they do do from us um i would also point out that we do pay silt uh to the city of eugene which we're obligated to do and i'm sure you will get the details on that but the bottom line is it's six percent of their revenues which provide little or no direct benefit if we were not a public entity we would pay property taxes on all of

2:22:42 our holdings upriver to lane county which would accrue to the benefits of the school districts and other functions upriver which i i would hasten to say are probably much greater than the 700 000 uh that that would otherwise accrue to those folks in fact you know for the fact that the in lieu of taxes that we pay for not having to pay those property taxes those goes to the city of eugene not the upriver interests so i guess what i'm saying is in the balance of considerations and the history of this i think that relationship has been important to us and we've seen that as a valid trade-off against the benefits that the eweb and its um down in town

2:23:27 citizens receive as a result and i i don't see any significant change in that uh sense of the balance of equity here and for that reason um it would be difficult for me to support this change and i realized that purely technically from a cost to service standpoint and i guess i'd point out again that that's essentially a tool uh and that equity really balances a lot more than just that um including some of the things that i've referenced here so so for that reason i'm i'm uncomfortable with it and and i guess like misty you know feel a sense of discomfort around that there's also a timing issue here and the fact that we're in covid mode we're not going to have much of an engagement with those folks

2:24:13 and we're not anywhere down the road in terms of re-engagement with elaine electric we've got issues around our presence up there coming up next year with respect to decisions on the hydro project so i just questioned even if this did make sense and was an appropriate policy shift of whether this is the right time to take it on for the benefit of something approaching half a percent in um interest to the rest of the customers and i i know i've exceeded my time uh i've also um exhausted my arguments uh well thanks dick uh well we are probably out of time uh at least that which we yeah just slightly um that we allotted for ourselves to discuss this issue but it's a big issue and we're going to have

2:24:58 some follow-up and probably a lot of uh heated um you know feedback from the community in a couple of weeks so we can extend a minute or two or more if folks want to um you know follow up especially on what dick had to say is as usual he's the most eloquent and in this case um uh uh you know uh express some good counter arguments go ahead john well dick i don't totally disagree with everything you said i do have some you know some comparisons to you talk about eweb being up there and having their facilities not paying taxes well it's no different than the corps of engineers and the dams that they run and uh and the benefit or lack of benefit you get from their presence uh or the forest service having their

2:25:44 headquarters up there etc i mean it's all it's all intertwined and everything else and the fact that we haven't been doing it right in fiscal management at least in my opinion for decades doesn't mean that we can't make it right uh you know it's uh if the water line's been leaking for decades doesn't mean we can't repair it and and do a better job because i think that's that's it so i'm i'm not ready to move on this i'm ready to have a better discussion about this with with others because um i don't think it's it's fair like steve said to uh to go out and have the people here i know minnie has a concern about raising rates but uh you got to remember that the people here that can't pay their bill are paying a higher rate albeit not much but a higher rate

2:26:30 because they're subsidizing the people up the river and there's a lot of absentee owners up there that pay a really really low base charge because you know we're 30 below the others they don't occupy their homes six eight months out of the year so but yet we provide service to them when they need it so i'm i'm gonna gonna support moving forward and having a better dialogue i'm i'm concerned that we're not gonna get a very good turnout with the meeting on the 22nd just because of the the restricted infrastructure up there but um i share your concerns but i'm not ready to say no i'm i'm ready to say give me some more information frank i saw your hand up do you want to jump in yeah i was just gonna you know so the one

2:27:16 thing i i think that commissioner helgeson does point out which is which is incred which is really accurate is that the the equity principle is probably the most squishy um and and becomes that way because of kind of the the ongoing values of the utility in relationships to customer owners um now as part of that i would i would also we do have a presence upriver and and we have invested heavily in upriver that that goes well beyond um the fact that we have some generating facilities we've we've invested in things that have nothing to do with generation itself

2:28:01 and also we've invested in the watershed which is incredibly important and ongoing for our water utility and so i think that's if you're going to look at one side of that particular issue you need to look at the other side and in fact the canal we are obligated to make investments in the canal upcoming to manage water for at a minimum and potentially generation as a maximum that'll that'll be a decision that the board has to make and that's a pretty heavy investment so we've we've had ongoing investments there um i think we we have been as responsible and prudent in in our presence up there and it's been a long one and i i certainly understand that and and and i'm open to more

2:28:46 discussion as well now this discussion did not just start tonight it started about a year and a half ago with commissioner's request for acosa um and so it's it's not a new sort of emerging oh here came covent and let's sneak something through um this has been something for a long time but i i certainly appreciate the um the opportunity to have more dialogue around it i know there's a various opinions on it and it's because the equity piece when you talk about rate making is is the most it is the one that requires the most sort of balance around values um and so um i think that's part of the reason that this is not one of those oh it's an easy five to nothing vote let's let's do this or

2:29:31 let's not do this um and so look forward to more discussion and as well as public input sonya sonia you're muted don't you hate that all right so annoying can you hear me okay here we go uh i'll try to be quick uh to john's point i appreciate the thought that we could potentially fix the unfairness issue around the silt i think that's something that we should look into and at least review i mean something that's agreed to in perpetuity really should get some look at occasionally two

2:30:17 i don't agree that just because we've done something before and that's the way that it has been done that we shouldn't look at changing that or making it more fair or at least review it moving forward so um that's why i say on that i also appreciate the fact that we do have a number of projects upriver and if we handed you know if even if we thought that it was beneficial to the community um up there as well to to look at um you know potentially moving that into lane electric lane electric or epud or someone of that nature i don't know how you know the voting system for them works obviously i think the people would need to be involved in that conversation i think that that's another uh fairness issue that

2:31:02 is challenging for us to hand you know to to really weigh in on i mean we're kind of we are handed that if there's something we could do to change that and it would be beneficial to the citizens that that that's something that we could look into the last thing i will say is that because we do have so much upriver um territory there and we can and we plan to have more projects potentially in that area maybe not more projects but presence in that area if we transition that over to another utility of some form i wonder what impact it would have on our ability to operate in that space i mean we've already seen kind of territorial

2:31:47 issues with other utilities that we're trying to partner with and so i certainly wouldn't want any of our you know current opportunities and presence upriver to be negatively impacted or more more costly over the long term because we just can't get the projects done that we need to because we now have to you know work with another utility that may be less willing to help i don't know how that territorial situation works up there with current infrastructure but i think it's something to consider and maybe look at precedent for that as well okay thank you other feedback or thoughts

2:32:35 all right well uh well go ahead frank yeah it commissioners i was just gonna i appreciate the conversation i have a number of additional you know pieces of a follow-up to work on um around you know presence and silt and a number of things uh related to that um and and how that there's a significant process associated with service territory transfers um around when you know asset valuation bonneville allocations um just just like we are restricted from a charter perspective on having a a commissioner represent the up river community the either a public utility district or um a co-op would have their own method

2:33:22 of developing and getting an authorization to have representation so and and even along those lines we're probably talking about a fairly lengthy transition and our presence will continue around transmission which is a key piece of it um generation and water even if we did not have a distribution only presence so don't want to get ahead of ourselves there i think the next piece is for me is to bring the board back more information and so i can tease out just that many more different opinions and direction on this and so um i appreciate the

2:34:07 um the conversation i think it was useful for me to understand where um where people at and where are the gaps that i can try and all right well thanks frank i just uh in closing this issue i'll just say that in i think perhaps my nearly eight years on the board um this is probably the issue that has generated the most uh you know sort of opposing opinions uh normally we're tend to be fairly like-minded as a board once we've kind of worked through the issues and it just might not work out that way this time and uh so i'm happy for years and years of uh you know friendships and processes to get us through this regardless of how it turns out um and i'm not looking forward to the final vote because the worst thing that could possibly happen

2:34:52 for me is to end eight great years on a down uh uh you know on a down note with uh dick but uh we'll just have to see how that goes all right well we'll move on to correspondence and board agendas yeah thanks i'm sorry i was looking away sony did you have something you wanted to say only that dick wanted to talk i mean i don't think he was given a second round i'm sorry just so you know i don't the way the camera is i can't see when you raise your hand but sorry about that go ahead and you're you're muted thank you just a couple last points one is i don't take this stuff personally we can disagree that's okay the purpose of the discussion is nothing else is to understand each other and to kind of consolidate our viewpoint and

2:35:38 know where we are and i you know at the end of the day while i may not be able to join whatever the majority perspective is on this um i kind of feel bound to make my points and and having done that i feel honored in in in the discussion um but it's not simply that we can't change because we've done something for a hundred years i i'm making the point based on the equity considerations and i guess my point is that from my perspective the trade-off in the equity view hasn't changed all that much so i'm not feeling a need to treat it and i'm not hearing from all of you yet exactly what it is in your consideration in that value trade-off that has shifted such that it's appropriate to make

2:36:24 a change and so i i honor the conversation and uh you know at the end of the day i may just choose to go quietly i i i honor that that there's a majority view and that once a vote is taken that um that's that's the decision so uh thank you for for your concern about harmony but um i i take no offense whatsoever so a dick in full disclosure are you putting your head in to run for the mayor of liberg is is that what's what's going on here i i don't think i'm eligible i i don't live in the right place just all right well thanks thanks for the conversation all all the way around it's nice to see that there are

2:37:09 at least some um decision-making bodies uh however local that you know can manage difficult issues and still be friends that's a nice thing all right well uh we have item number 11. that's correspondence and board agendas uh and frank that's um for you to lead yeah president mattel there was just one item that was in correspondence and that was a a follow-up to our management letter uh from our annual audit there were a few comments in there from from deborah and also updates from um travis knebe our our manager of is and so if there were any questions on that either of those can answer and if not we can we can move on i think that was pretty straightforward

2:37:59 as for the the future agendas i did correspond with staff earlier in this meeting we can incorporate a half an hour into the october meeting regarding the base level reservoir work particularly at east 40th and so that's a change that i will bring to president mattel and vice president schlossberg as part of agenda planning but um staff is supportive of that and looks forward to sharing where we're at with those projects in particular east 40th so that'll be a change and then the the upper river meeting is is actually uh three weeks from today it's the 22nd and so we're trying to prepare as best as possible to engage that community as much as as we

2:38:47 can some of it will be virtual we're also going to provide standard telephone connections as well so that if people have limits to bandwidth they can still participate in some form or another i view this as more of a very brief presentation kind of open house town hall kind of opportunity to present a little bit of of information to fuel some discussion but mostly a listening session relative to the issues up the mckinsey valley and so we'll look forward to that other than that i think the agenda is pretty pretty flexible and and set um and has somewhat history to it so um

2:39:32 this fall will start to get into the budgeting process and rate making uh and rates process all right um we have our board wrap up why don't we go uh downriver to up john brown that's you first okay thank you i only thing i have at the beginning i forgot to say that i participated in the quarterly open uh the post employment retirement benefit committee meeting and about their investments and where they are and obviously like everybody they took a hit but they've come back and they're they're stronger now and i'm glad to say that uh they're they're doing really well and i think they're being well run so all that in a nutshell that's it

2:40:19 all right well uh um next i don't think i have anything to add good meeting everybody thanks for your participation i feel like this the virtual you know component we're just getting better at it it feels it feels kind of natural which i i am loath to say because i ultimately i prefer the in-person meetings but we're getting better at this overall so thanks to staff of course and and uh and commissioners alike for making it work reasonably well um sonya you're next i don't have too much else to add but do appreciate the dialogue tonight and you know recognition that we can work together and have differing opinions i really appreciate that i think that is actually what builds stronger teams and gets better decision making so

2:41:06 good discussion thanks i'm i'm pretty much good uh just on the the notion of the virtual board meetings i i to feel more comfortable with this i'm kind of hoping that before we step off the board we're able to meet once again physically but maybe that's not going to be the case i'm kind of wondering what it looks like from those that choose to join the meeting as members of the public and i i feel like we're able to have a good conversation amongst ourselves but i just have no sense of what this looks like externally so if anybody out there at the staff level has a feel for that um and maybe maybe nobody's tuned in so i i don't know but i just i agree with your point steve but i'm

2:41:52 just not sure that i really have a sense of how this plays in peoria you know thanks yeah frank go ahead yeah i was just going to say commissioner helgeson um we can provide you with the the youtube link where we broadcast the meetings if you want to go back and and take a look at what what uh a live event would look like um i i as a side note we'll add that we're doing this as a live event for these types of meetings because there's kind of a set group and then you're you're broadcasting the presentations and the interaction live we'll send you we'll send all the commissioners that link by the way but then the meeting up river will be a team's

2:42:38 group meeting which will have a much different feel to it um it'll be you know nine people on the screen a lot might uh you would expect with some other platform so it'll be a little different platform um than this one but we'll send you that link so you have so if you want to peruse it and see what other people see you can at least get a feel for that i probably should be made to do that regardless i'll i'll uh be looking forward to seeing that link okay thank you all right mindy you're i guess second last we'll give frank a chance to why not all right um well i also appreciated tonight's discussion i think that um when we have differing opinions and have an opportunity to discuss things it actually provides for

2:43:23 a more robust look at the issues that we're kind of dealing with so i appreciate hearing everybody's opinions and thoughts and then just to echo the compliments for the virtual meetings a big shout out to all the people behind the scenes that made it happen that are making these meetings happen because they are getting easier and um they're also a little bit shorter than our in-person meetings which i appreciate that's it right any concluding thoughts uh well well thanks you know i i actually appreciate the the dialogue uh tonight as well i i think i'll instead of asking for discussion in the future i'm just going to put put something out there and let everybody argue about it um i i think that that tends to foster some

2:44:09 good conversation um no in all seriousness i i appreciate the fact that there's differing views on this issue and and that we need to wrestle through it and wrestle through it um with some healthy debate i think that's important so so thank you for that um and you know i think tonight's producer was holly so um if if things transitioned well and all that it was because of holly with a lot of help from from ann who's always there somehow um and and then a lot of is support uh through the last several meetings so we're continuing to evolve and get better and look forward to the next meeting so thanks for the good conversation i i really do appreciate it got a lot out of it

2:44:54 all right everybody with that uh we are gaveled out good night have a see you in three weeks yep thank you commissioners