EWEB Board of Commissioners — December 1, 2020

0:03 okay well welcome everybody my name is steve mattel i am uh this year's president of the uh e-web board welcome to the final meeting of the 2020 calendar year we have a relatively light agenda but um some significant items on it nonetheless uh light in terms of i guess uh the time um it'll take to get through it all but some significantly um some significant items nonetheless um we will start with the agenda check do any of the my fellow commissioners have any concerns about the agenda as it's been published i do um all right then steve i did number 13 i'm just thinking of that he prays upon you and commissioner helgeson for 15 minutes can we just

0:49 move that down like one minute and then use it for something else i see how the evening is going to go well you know i i had to approve the uh agenda and uh a week ago or so with with uh commissioner schlossberg by the way and i purposely held back and let her um make the first motion and she chose to leave it out of respect for mindy i would have um reduced that amount of time as well but out of respect for mindy our future board president i thought i would just know okay i'll acquiesce and let you have that time john i i just want to say that i i also saw your comment on the uh board survey um and and you'll get your wish at the end of the day so um just if you're just patient uh and can

1:35 live through that 15 minutes i think you'll be okay but you just wait and make sure you don't cast stones in a glass house because i'm not sure where that comment came from in fairness dick that was my comment uh that i think you're referring to nonetheless let's go we're going to move right on before we descend into chaos here uh all right item number two we have items from board members and uh the general manager we will start with um commissioner uh

2:20 commissioner carlson i'm the same i'll let it pass and reserve for other things later in the event here all right fair enough commissioner helderson i will pass as well thank you unusual well uh commissioner um yeah two things we had our quarterly opeb meeting and uh to summarize it uh things are in good shape um the uh the financial health of the post and employment benefits is good and uh it's in good i think it's in really good hands um also i got an email from some people at summit bank who participated in a run to stay warm i didn't even know what was going on i apologize but um they had like 14 participants and they made a 500

3:06 donation i think it was a success so uh those are a couple good things so that's all i have okay well great um i'll just add in a couple of things one i have a monthly call with my counterpart over at sub currently john de winter is the board president there he is stepping down as am i and mike eister will likely be elected their um board chair at their january meeting and we have scheduled a meeting for uh the two of them plus me and commissioner schlossberg just essentially passed the torch and get mindy and mike up to speed on the kind of the normal uh procedures that john and i have walked through just to help keep our two

3:51 boards um apprised of uh important actions that are taking place so that's scheduled i believe it's next friday and um other than that i don't believe i have anything else frank thank you president mattel commissioners good evening i have a few things um mostly i wanted to provide a covid update to the board so let me just just want to make sure my sound was on from a covert perspective the utility continues to operate under cobit protocols intended to preserve our workforce capacity uh presently we have two active cases and five employees under quarantine all of those are from

4:36 external and non-work related exposures uh saw minimal impact last month from uh kobit uh relative to consumption but in the year to date still running about 3.8 percent year-to-date down on electric consumption there's been really no measurable impact on the water side of the utility our collections are fairly stable at the moment our 90 day aging has increased a little bit over the last few weeks we'll presently have 538 disconnect orders that are active just for your reference that reached a

5:22 high of about 3 000 kind of mid-year so significantly down from that a little elevated compared to our pre-covered uh disconnect order level of you know between two and four hundred so a little bit elevated there and kind of steadying out we continued to sign up people for various kinds of payment plans at this point as of about a two o'clock this afternoon we'd received about 60 customer care aid applications for the month that means there's still 314 spots available for december and we have given out if you remember last month we talked about the the city's

6:13 funds that came through the cares act those have been 150 000 there has been fully distributed to about 600 customers with another 76 000 or so distributed to non-profit or child care providers there's a little bit left on that side of the grant program of about 24 000 and so in general we continue to operate well uh you know in the spirit of thanksgiving i'd really like to thank the commissioners and staff for what will likely turn out to be a pretty memorable year 2020 and uh all in all operations have have gone well and staff and and has performed quite well and the commissioners have provided great guidance this year so that's it for me uh president mattel all right well thank you very much uh you know i'm just gonna say one last

6:58 thing uh prior to moving to item number three i know that we're joking a little bit and uh uh we have this uh appreciation so to speak um deep into the meeting for staff who may not um uh you know who may sign off earlier i just wanted to say on my own behalf and dick may have something to say himself to my last meeting um and i have just thoroughly appreciated my eight years on the board and uh the highlights have included i'll say more later i suppose if there's an opportunity but it just included getting to know so many staff and getting to learn um from you all so if you sign off early i totally understand that i just wanted to say thank you i really enjoyed my time on the board all right well we will move into um uh public input and let me open up

7:44 a public input session i'm obligated to read a little bit of a preamble and then i believe we have six speakers lined up so um public input for those of you who are out there when your name is called remember to unmute your phone press star six if calling from a landlord line or simply use the unmute button if you're calling from a cell phone please state your name and optionally your address or ward and speak clearly into your telephone each speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony please keep track of your time if needed the board president myself will notify you when your time has elapsed after all testimony is heard each of the commissioners will have an opportunity to speak if they choose although by policy

8:29 we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue well of course sometimes we do uh please note that failure of a commissioner to speak shall not be construed as support of or opposition to any speaker's testimony if a question is presented by a speaker and the board does not provide an answer an eweb staff member will contact the speaker so that the question can be addressed at a limited time um alrighty i believe first up we have uh tana shepard all right if you would pause and starting mine for one minute no i'm just kidding i'll do my best so hello commissioners and frank and i'd like to thank you for continuing to support education and 4j in this time of change and unknowns the

9:15 global pause has evoked creativity collaboration and innovation with our programming and ways to serve students and teachers virtually and so this is what i've been up to uh virtual examiner in the classrooms i have 50 teachers accessing it currently but there are more i just kind of gave up on that and just wanted to have as many kids getting access as possible i'll recoup that later but it's involved a salmon taken my home for tank live videos and observations designing a digital unit available through google and the seesaw platform a youtube channel called ecochick and you can see the videos there i can share a link and that's where the tank live videos virtual field trips and interviews with experts live i've been doing some zoom classroom visits and so far the feedback has just been

10:01 extremely positive many teachers have written in thanks to say this has been a bright spot in the comprehensive distance learning it's decreased their workload and the students are loving it as much as they can virtually anyway so this is being developed in real time but it's going to be a continued resource for years to come and um it's been welcome to have this um that i have missed the field trips and all that a lot i'm continuing to work with middle school science teachers to vision and plan for distance learning it's involved meeting and sharing resources planning units and we are not sure what's going to be happening after the new year with hybrid etc so trying to figure out how wind and solar

10:46 will fit or if there's something else that we might innovate around elementary science support has essentially just been working with our stem specialist and we provided science materials to the elementary students at the end of the year to have a hands-on you know access to the experience at home i did start a newsletter called the steam blast powered by 4j eweb education partnership and that's mostly for teachers to just stay connected with us because we can't see each other and so that's been pretty well utilized with the climate education i continue to work with and well develop our 4g climate justice team it's comprised of staff and high school

11:31 students and our focus is on climate education across our district and collaborating at the state level and the students actually had audience with the oregon department of education and are involved in um well we're going to get involved with helping the state move forward with us too so it's kind of a big endeavor and it's pretty exciting and then we'll see where eweb lessons but are going to fit in but we're developing lessons across multiple subject areas not just science and they'll be piloted across the district by teachers um and so that's pretty cool um and then pledge to prepare i i really um have a lot of aspirations on how to get this information out to families especially because it's a january calendar so i'm hoping to

12:17 get that out to families after the new year i do have a question and just in general about resources on the website is there any plan for spanish translation at any point just to put that out there it would be a great access point and just working on website changes i'm dumping wordpress and going with the google sites for easier um just it's just a nicer looking easier platform continuing the love food not waste partnership and and with the city and the county and in particular focusing on how much water takes it takes to process foods and um you know and just how the seepage of um landfills gets into our groundwater

13:04 and and then finally just um with this being the beginning of the new five-year grant cycle we've just been using this time to strategically work toward the grant goals while simultaneously meeting the needs of the current education model we're working within so there's lots of ideas and possibilities to not only serve our students now but in the years to come and then i'll just end with best to to dick and steve i really enjoyed getting to know you over these years and i wish you best and i'll miss um you know heckling you steve especially you so anyway um and thank you i i just really appreciate you giving me the extra time i know i went over so you're welcome thank you all right um next up we have stephen goldman

13:50 yes hi um thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today um i live at 1495 west hilliard lane in north eugene that's sonia carlson's award i have two main points requesting that e-web adopt an annual net metering policy for solar producers like myself similar to the epud and pg e policies which are annual net metering policies as opposed to eweb's monthly net metering and the second thing is to drop or change eweb's solar access standard of 85 percent access threshold before you give any of those incentives away

14:39 hello you're still there oh okay sorry i just got a call anyway i i've lived in this neighborhood for 10 years i paid i paid into the green power program all this time to support green power but when it came to do green power in my own house i get zero from e-web i put in a system that cost me over 24 000. i had to save on a small state pension and social security for 10 years to afford this so it was really disappointing to get zero from e-web and yet even though i have some shading from a tree by adding some extra panels i still need a hundred percent of my annual electricity consumption on my all-electric home with the system that that was put in and unfortunately the payback on this system

15:25 is going to be hugely long more than 15 years probably more than 20 years because because ewa's policies only pay at 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour for surplus power beyond what what i consume and a uh an annual net metering would give me credit for my power consumption during these winter months like now when i don't produce enough power and i have to buy at 9.1 cents so i looked at e-puds policy i looked at pg e's policy they have a policies that provide more incentive for putting in more solar why is it why is important to do this because it encourages more renewable energy production more systems and larger systems

16:13 um and it also provides jobs for local contractors and well maybe eweb doesn't need to buy more power now but with more electric cars being bought by people more people moving to eugene you will eventually need more electricity and it's better to buy that address electricity locally it doesn't require transmission for hundreds or thousands of miles it's produced locally and you know you say well you have hydropower it's clean energy whatever but it results in damming rivers and destroying fisheries like the columbia and snake river fisheries so it's not a zero impact uh energy but but the but the um hydro power is important because it's a

16:58 good backup system for solar power which you don't get when the sun's not shining um right mr goldman i'm going to ask you to wrap up in the next 10 or 15 seconds okay okay so the other issue is the shading issue like the federal government doesn't limit shading why should you limit shading let the customer decide um you can meet shading needs without cutting trees don't encourage people to cut trees down that's not a good policy uh anyway i provided my testimony in writing so you can read it because i had to rush through it i didn't finish everything but please read what i said in writing because i had more time to explain it all right thank you thank you very much mr goldman before we move on to our next speaker that's uh steven anderson but before we move on and just a point of order normally we have a clock where i can see but our speakers as well can

17:44 see how much time has elapsed of their three minutes is that not functioning tonight or is it my job to try to remind folks where they are within their three minutes my apologies president maitel i had someone in the lobby that i was trying to identify and so i i missed restarting the timer but it is um on the screen and i've got it reset and ready to go for the next speaker okay great thank you all right well next up we have uh stephen anderson yes i'm right here can you hear me yes we can great well i'm i'm bad like a back like a bad penny to talk again about the uh the 40th and hilliard tank site now that we have the geologic dwelling report i think it's time to seriously

18:29 look at the site ii tank site for the first tank it's the easiest and fastest place to construct tank number one we now know it's a rocky hill exactly what we thought the salt columns fracture easily so there's no impediment whatsoever there's plenty of parking on the meadow for equipment and the meadow is not original so once the tank is built you can bring back native grasses which i believe is the plan so also you could be spending time creating habitat to the west so when it is time to replace the big timber for tank two in the future will have more habitat which we're going

19:14 to lose now in mass if you allow the staff to do what they're planning which is to clear cut all the trees for both tanks now eweb claims to be a good neighbor and yet here we are looking at tank site number one which is right on top of exactly one neighbor on an 11 acre site this is not necessary please eweb commissioners weigh in on this legacy project and actually take our concerns to heart it's amazing the tank sites were decided before you even received a habitat assessment which you completed at a time of year when the least birds and animals are present so that's all i have to say i appreciate your time

19:59 all right thank you very much mr anderson next up we have sandra bishop thank you i'm on a phone so i don't have um i can't see the time clock but i'll try to make it fast my name is sandra bishop i'm at 4096 hilliard street and thank you for allowing me to address the board this evening i'm here to speak about the water tank project as mr anderson just referred to it i'm here to ask that the board direct the staff to come back to the board with facts addressing an alternative location for the first tank that's going to be built next year or the building will start next year specifically as

20:44 steve anderson just said please look at the efficacy of building the first tank on site two which is in in the saddle of the hill closer to the middle of the 10 or 12 acres on this site rather than at the extreme eastern corner i've done some more research others have surveyed the trees and the land a little bit closer the problem is there's no question that we need updated water storage in south eugene that's not an issue at all the problem is exactly where the location is first tank will be and um the description on the eweb's website of this being a vacant land is really deceptive in a way there's a rocky outcropping bordered of an open meadow

21:32 and it's home to a mature forest habitat there are hundred-year-old fur pine intermingled with a variety of other ages and species of trees shrubs plants it also includes 250 year old furs that grew up as part of the original oak open grassland this patch of forest was defining the landscape 80 or 90 years before oregon became a state the point being this habitat has grown up over centuries the acreage is now a balanced ecosystem so eweb the problem is the location of this first tank being pushed to the extreme southeast

22:17 corner of the property that will entail immediate removal of the oldest most dense section of this forested area it will devastate the oldest growth trees even though the second tank site in the middle more more to the middle a little bit to the west it's it's in a saddle an actual saddle and it's on the border the meadow that's not expected to be used for another 10 years so proceeding as planned the habitat's going to be decimated now unnecessarily a decade before it's it's really needed so that's the problem the solution is we can have both water storage and maintain the

23:03 habitat simply by putting the first tank on site two a lot fewer trees will be removed so staff and board when giving answers about the timeline the tank locations seem to be in service of really temporary benefits such as equipment parking and there seems to be a real rush to build without adequate consideration of the disruption that the potential for this on this precious natural resource area so i would really think excuse me encourage people to access the property at the south end of patterson street off of 40th and it's easy to see the benefit and the wisdom of locating the first tank

23:49 on site two closer to the middle of the property rather than clear cutting the heart out of that mature timber on the eastern end so thank you i really appreciate all your service and thank you especially to the commissioners mattel and helgeson for all your service on the board thank you very much santa much appreciated all right we'll move on to uh we have two more uh next is joe mull good evening for the record joe mall with the i'm the executive director of the mackenzie river trust uh chairman hall and commissioners thanks again for an opportunity to speak a few words this evening uh when i last spoke with you on the proposed near-term and longer term uh spending plans in october we were just a

24:35 month past the holiday farm fires we've certainly had a series of wet weather events since then so suppliers are out and we've had a few tests of the assumptions about steep slopes and soil erosion and impacts the water quality and more importantly impacts to the communities from the headwaters on down my comments two months ago ended with the encouragement that ueb is indeed the organization to take a leadership role in recovery for the river and for those communities i stand by that encouragement and just want to reiterate that tonight with a couple of observations first it has been a head spin of activity by many groups at all local state regional and federal levels trying to make sense of what happened how to recover how to better prepare for

25:20 the next disaster we might face and throughout that e-web staff have brought incredible clarity to those discussions they demonstrate immediate action near-term coordination and long-term vision with their leadership and your financial support the river is already being buffered from potentially troublesome uh indeed toxic runoff from some of the properties that burned along its edge that work involves partners who've developed trust in working relationships over the last 10 years initially all aimed at sort of proactive practice measures for watershed health but able to mobilize on a dime turn of a dime in this in this emergency situation uweb's leadership is also instrumental

26:05 in planning for the next three to five years it's going to take for this community to recover from that fire including navigating the maze of federal programs from fema and elsewhere that will prove helpful if we are deliberate and patient um we're also entering a very dark time of year not just literally but it's the time when disaster is beginning to fade from the broader public awareness it's common it's something we were warned against by peers in other states who have dealt with catastrophic fires and associated landslides and it's something we have to guard against so from my perspective it makes your decisions and some deliberation tonight more so over the next couple months your deliberations on the

26:51 continuing to invest in the watershed that that much more important so i just want to encourage you again to recognize and continue your commitment to that leverage for the long term far beyond the fire recovery period you have investments today in watershed health should be celebrated 50 years from now and i think by then john brown will finally step down off the commission if i've done my math correctly so finally i'll just echo the other thanks to commissioners helgeson and mysal for your years of service i've been impressed especially with your attention to both efficiency and effectiveness i think we toss around the word utility without even thinking about its original route long before electric and power but the utility that

27:37 you provide for the community in so many ways is something that i think the two of you have modeled well and i wish you well on that and look forward to seeing how commissioners mcrae and barofsky fill your shoes thanks very much thank you joel always eloquent finally we have jim new uh this is joe harwood i'll be reading uh sorry that's okay uh jim new uh lives in ward 7 and here's his comments commissioners i wanted to express my appreciation to eweb for the rooftop solar rebate program i was recently a recipient of this rebate from a

28:23 rooftop solar installation completed just a few months ago however i was disappointed to to see the rebate check was issued by u.s bank ewebs financial institution considering the amount of monies u.s bank has contributed and financed for large fossil fuel projects that have added to global climate disruption i am surprised that uh would continue to have business with a company with a poor climate record i urge the e-web board as part of its commitment to a more climate-friendly operation would consider divesting from u.s bank and explore other financial institutions that have a cleaner portfolio the city of eugene made a decision to

29:08 use carbon-free financial institutions just a few years ago i hope ewef explores this possibility thank you for your time and service all right well thank you joe and jim both uh and can you just confirm that there are no other speakers in the queue that's correct president maitel okay great i will close the public input session and open it up to commissioners for responses uh we will take it in the same order that we took uh input from board members just uh 5 10 minutes ago so commissioner schlossberg you were up first um i don't have anything except thanking people for their testimony okay commissioner carlson

29:55 [Music] all right well thank you very much i really appreciated the comments tonight um and the updates on the various programs that are out in the community from tana and joe mole thank you for that and um to uh my constituent i i really appreciated the information that you know you shared regarding your um your particular solar array on your roof um some of the reasoning behind that is that you know you have the ability to utilize the services in the winter time and that's not worth nothing and the cost to offset that that benefit is is pretty extensive i

30:40 mean we have fixed costs that we have to cover throughout the system so providing even that first kilowatt of electricity um and the resiliency there has a cost and so we've had a neutral policy um so that customers that do utilize the metering are not costing others who don't um utilize that that benefit now i'm i'm very supportive of looking at it further um i actually looked at getting a solar array on my own house i want to say about 10 years ago and we had a similar situation with the shading issue in that they i don't know that we couldn't get any um coverage from it but they said that it wouldn't be very very effective and i know that the technology has improved quite a bit

31:26 since then um i would certainly be worth for me it would certainly be worth reviewing the staff why we have some limits on shading there and i don't know if that's um what the reasoning behind that is or if it's just the payback period because you may not be able to get the full benefit from the shading um on the roof but i would certainly be willing to look at that if it is a particular policy in place there and um would love to have a longer conversation with you at some point about um your solar array and and working with eweb on solar um but i'll save that here because it's a much longer conversation and um on the banking resolution uh for jim i know he's maybe not on the call but might hear this later

32:11 i do know that we in 2017 we did pass a resolution um changing some of our banking um to other you to other um institutions that better align with our values um but i do understand that there there are some limitations from a utility perspective and regulatory perspective on where we can put money and some of that becomes pretty challenging i'll let frank delve into that a little bit further if he wants to but um thank you for bringing that up it's definitely something that we have in the past looked at as a board all right commissioner helgeson yes thank you i want to appreciate everyone's testimony and then speak to two of the items that were brought to

32:56 our attention one is with respect to a solar ewb solar program and there was a lot of detail and i appreciated steven's uh forwarding to us the full text of his testimony because i did have the opportunity to review it um prior to the meeting and i can't address all of the individual points there but i think there's uh some general sense of misalignment between e-webs the terms of e-web solar program and at least the interests of those who have made solar installations i think that um maybe some of this is due to some misunderstanding of the value and the costs associated with um solar i think for example um i too have

33:41 tree issues when i looked into solar and i know that at least in the distant past the rationale for eweb's um approach to the incentives with respect to tree and shading issues had to do with not wanting to recommend to customers and incent behavior that would extend the payback period for those installations beyond 15 years because we didn't feel that that was a prudent thing for us to recommend for our customers and and that may be something that could be revisited i think it's also true that the value of power in the summertime when these systems produce a surplus is certainly different than the value of power or the cost of power

34:26 in the winter time uh and that's separate and in in addition to the point that commissioner carlson made about the costs of recovering the investment and the operation of our distribution system um but i think um because we've heard this sort of testimony before and it's been some time since there's been a revisiting of uweb solar program it might be useful for staff at some point moving forward particularly with new board members coming on to provide a backgrounder that kind of reviews and touches on some of these issues with respect to eweb's approach to solar and the benefits both to the community and or uh the utility

35:11 because i think there's some need at least for clarity if not adjustments to to our approach so um that would be my comment there and then just on the elliott reservoir citing issues i would hope as this is my last meeting and opportunity to influence things that we would continue to listen to the concerns of the neighbors there as we have been i know staff has been trying to be very sensitive to this i would hope that we would continue with an open and transparent process and that as final sighting decisions and time frames for moving forward with construction are made that at least the board have an opportunity to hear from staff about the considerations that uh

35:56 go in ultimately to their recommended uh approach and um to and location decisions um i know that that work is underway and that is as of yet incomplete and so i think it's premature to insist the staff respond to all of that in the moment but i would hope that when the time does come for staff to make those final sighting decisions that the board would have the opportunity to hear directly from staff as to the reasons for their recommendation and how they plan to move forward so thank you for that and thanks to the others for your testimony as well all right well commissioner brown thank you and i'd like to echo the sentiments of my other

36:42 commissioners on thanking people for testifying i assumed frank that the tana's comment was either timely or is that the response to my inquiry in the last meeting of where all our money has gone for the educational programs if they're not doing field trips and solar challenges and things such as that but you can respond to me later on that um and then uh joe uh maul thank you for your testimony and things and you never know be careful what you ask for i may just run just to spite you uh again so that and jim news comment about the banking uh i share his concern but i also know the logistics of when we initially tried to get more money into local banks but we also i know like opeb uh i think it's probably 14 or 15 million dollars that's

37:28 managed by u.s bank alone just in that one trust account so um there would be a a lot of issues to deal with there so but i'm sure that we'll look into it thank you all right well i'll round out the responses from commissioners and then give frank a chance to respond as well i won't um repeat some of the things that have been said but largely i find myself in a supportive position of things i've heard from other commissioners one little tidbit of information for jim new if you should read the minutes i suppose um is that that contract comes up for review and renegotiation um in 2022 so your comments are timely and certainly uh we can add some environmental criteria to the to the set of criteria used to determine

38:14 who ultimately wins that contract to manage our banking services so that's uh something that can be done um again thanks to everybody for their testimony frank i'll turn it over to you uh thank you president mattel uh is my time up already yeah that's me yeah go ahead sorry about that so anyway thank you president mattel commissioners i'll i'll add a couple of pieces of context to it the um the banking issue is is one that we did initiate in 2017 coming back up in 2022 there are a number of criteria that we can look at it's the reason why we use a request for proposal approach is that you can take a more triple bottom line look at various suppliers in including um looking at

39:01 climate and other sort of values-based criteria on the issue of solar incentive there's a couple things that i'd like to weigh in on one of them is that the incentive which is based on the connected um kilowatts not the actual produced kilowatts assumes that there's some degree of efficiency with that that can be changed that is a requirement that comes out of the green power program and therefore would require a vote by the green power customers to change that policy that is something that could be done and we can explore doing that from an incentive perspective but it's it's there because the incentive is based on connected uh solar capacity not actually what's produced so

39:46 so that's part of it if if we're ever compared with pg e i'll take that comparison almost any day um you know they're the the tiered rates and the time of use rates in in that uh part of the world are you know three to five times higher than eweb and in fact this issue is one of of rate design um not just related to solar but how do you recoup the balance between fixed cost and variable cost that's one that i plan to work with the board on over the next several years to look at right now um emerald puds basic charge is over 50 percent higher than eweb's basic charge um and so this doesn't involve just

40:31 generation it involves the entire way that we could um we would price our products presently we don't need solar energy and it comes at the wrong time and so what we do is we pass along the value that we get when someone produces solar energy in the summer time primarily and so there's reasons behind it we we will work a lot on rate design over the coming years and that will be part of that discussion and so it's it's relevant to consider these things when we do that um relative to the the east 40th uh property uh whenever i term hear the term clear cut i i have to step up and say our our plan is really we're anticipating

41:17 maybe cutting about 25 of the trees on that property and so i think and i have complete confidence that staff is trying to consider public input as as part of this process however you know in that we will ultimately have to make some choices that some individuals just do not agree with and and so there's a number of things going on we are looking at a triple bottom line placement of the tanks that's probably a two or three month process and we'll keep the board fully informed uh of the outcome of that but i also think we're working with a number of different people relative to the the impacts

42:03 environmentally uh and and otherwise but i also know that some of these neighbors just they are not going to like the outcome and so um and i don't actually believe that it's their job to design and and site the tanks um that's ultimately our job so we are doing as much as possible to consider public input and like i said i have complete confidence that staff is doing that and they're doing it transparently there will be more to come on that in the first quarter was likely the next check-in relative to where we are on the environmental studies as well as the geological studies and the triple bottom line looking at tank placement so some more to come on that appreciate all

42:48 the input we will continue to listen and always learn from public input but there's there's been some reasons we make certain decisions and um i appreciate the opportunity that commissioners give me to explain where some of those came from all right well thank you frank and i'll just remind um everybody who uh maybe listening on the call that this issue of uh the um tanks up there 40th and hilliard has been uh visited and revisited several times over the last two or three months and the board fully affirmed uh the position and approach that um summarized by frank just now so we are moving forward recognize that we're going to cause some angst for the um those neighbors who live most

43:33 close uh in proxy most close to the eventual site but and we are taking those things into consideration but just want to reaffirm the board support that that was given just last month all right we will move forward um into general business items the uh first um sorry i'm just moving back to my um agenda first up is approval of consent calendar a i'll just remind us that on the calendar um includes the minutes from executive sessions and uh last month's regular session plus three contracts do we have a motion to approve uh i think that that was john john you might be muted right now but in any case i think you

44:18 um uh made a motion do we have a second i'll second it all right great we have uh any discussion prior to the vote uh this is sonia i just wanted to note that uh i appreciated the comments or the the answers from staff on the transformer contract specifically i noted that i was going to pull that but they fully answered my um concern there and um outlined the differences between the two so i in support and uh thank you all right well we have a motion uh we have a second i believe there's no interest in further discussion so all those in favor please raise your hand and signify by saying i

45:04 all right it looks like that passes unanimously we'll move on to consent calendar b there are um no contracts but there are several uh or one intergovernmental agreement and one two three four resolutions do we have a motion to approve still moved uh moved by brown and seconded by sonia carlson um anybody want to discuss any of these items before we move forward with a vote go ahead i'd like to ask i'd like to ask briefly to pull um the wga item uh i'm not sure which one that is hold on just a second uh can we pull that's item seven commissioner or

45:50 president number seven uh resolution number two zero two seven we will pull that any others that uh folks want to pull for discussion all right well why don't we go ahead and um vote to approve the remaining contracts so that's items five six eight and nine i'm not really doing this right am i uh why don't we just have the discussion with 2027 and maybe we'll be able to approve them all as a batch go ahead dick i just wanted to um endorse uh the staff's recommendation and the passage of this resolution and also state my appreciation to all of those uh past and current who have been involved

46:35 on the operating committee or otherwise in managing this relationship with both klatsk and i and their mill up there over the years i can fully understand why that relationship is probably at this point run its course and i i think that um the value that's contemplated in terms of a sale of the asset is is reasonable in consideration of any future value and i just wanted to ask that when when the operating committee meets and has an opportunity to take action on this themselves that we convey on eweb's behalf our appreciation to the other parties for their uh work with us over the past i believe 25 years or so in this co-generation

47:22 relationship that has been of some value and i think also the subject of a former bpa billing con billing credit which bonneville was uh involved in in the earlier years so that was the reason for my pulling the item and i uh i would be happy to take all of these items without any objection on the part of my peers uh at once uh as part of one singular motion looks like frank wanted to weigh in he sure does go ahead frank yeah thank you commissioner helgeson i just i just wanted to extend appreciation to staff um for getting value out of the end of this

48:07 contract and extracting value out of it i think they did a really awesome job which included internal legal counsel from an eweb staffer matt schroeding um and for all his work weighing through the the various um uh legal aspects of how wanna and how wga and klaskani and all that interact so appreciate your comments uh commissioner helgeson i know you know the history of this and to get value like this out of something that is is basically terminating um i think um is is actually really good news for us thank you i think it'd be a good idea to keep that same staff around as

48:52 as there may be similar issues that come up at some point with respect to the same cogen investment that we have out of the ip all right well i believe we had a motion and a second to um approve the entirety of consent calendar b and the discussion didn't change that at all so why don't we go ahead and vote all those who um in favor please raise your hand and signify by saying aye all right looks like that pal passes unanimously as well we will move on to our um next item and that's the 2021 proposed

49:37 budget and prices with our chief financial officer deborah hart uh well good evening uh good evening president mattel and commissioners uh we are here again this evening with budgets and price proposals this is the third review of budgets and the second of the price proposals and it's really a culmination of a process that started last june and has incorporated board feedback and direction over the last six months with me here this evening is uh to present is adam roof the fiscal services supervisor could get the next slide

50:24 uh and so um this evening the materials for this meeting have had no substantive changes with the exception of the reserve table edition that wasn't available in november and then also we're no longer recommending the creation of a mckenzie valley class because there have been have been so little change from what we previously presented we're going to be briefed this evening in our in our presentation after the presentation we will hold a final public hearing and then return to answer questions and at that time we'll be requesting board approval uh with that i'm going to pass it to adam

51:18 yeah thanks sorry um uh thanks uh okay this is the chart we've seen a couple of times now uh in october november and as deborah mentioned there's been no uh substantive changes to the budget document we just included that one chart that we typically hold off um including until we have a little more information on how this year's financial results turn out and to kind of add on to her point about the that process this is a process that began in late spring early summer when we were talking about scenarios of covet impact and different range of demand reductions we're expecting and some mitigation strategies we've incorporated all that feedback and the budgets in terms of reduced travel and training budgets and other factors to mitigate the demand reductions and this budget's been guided by those

52:04 decisions and checked in with the board throughout the year um this is an item that we'll be asking for uh approval and a resolution later in the present day or later in the meeting next slide please um so as the last time we brought the financial plan we did indicate that um there are potential rate increases in that not too distant future so i just wanted to highlight um uh take the opportunity to highlight the five years that we have had no overall rate increase for the electric utility and four years for the water utility and mentioned that we haven't included any rate increase for this year's 2021 budget we went through these items in a little bit more detail last month so we've just highlighted which

52:49 resolutions are associated with which items um uh we've had a more detailed discussion in the background or in q a with some of the commissioner questions uh finally i just wanted to briefly mention a few items that we're not asking for approval but just to mention that we did prepare a cost of services a year and we're not implem or we're not recommending implementing the results of that although there were some shifts among the classes those were dependent to some extent on the demand reductions so we're not recommending any implementation at this time last month we also discussed briefly a potential multi-year rate proposals that would

53:34 provide an opportunity to mitigate implementing the cost of service and spreading that over multiple years potentially finally as deborah mentioned we've removed the upriver rate class proposal at this time pending further communication with those customers and uh consideration by the board so with that i'll turn it back to deborah thanks adam next slide thank you uh management is recommending that the board approve budgets and price proposals as they were presented in the board materials uh next slide again from here uh we'll have our final public hearing and then return to answer questions and then seek board approval of resolutions

54:19 2028 29 and 30 approving the 2021 budget and prices all right well thank you deborah i believe i'm just gonna do a process check with uh ann and frank i think we'll go straight to public hearing uh open that up potentially close it right away if there's nobody waiting in the queue and then return to commissioner uh questions and feedback is that about your sense of things frank yes that's correct okay thank you so i'm going to open up a public uh hearing to address the 2021 proposed budget and prices and can you let me know if there's anybody wishing to speak president may tell no one signed up to speak at the hearing this evening

55:04 all right well now i am closing that public hearing and we'll um open it up to uh commission we're moving on now essentially from um item number eight and to item number nine we have some 15 minutes that we could put on the clock for questions and feedback from commissioners we will uh take this well i'll just open up a cue um let's see here hold on a second let me just make sure i can see everybody if you uh would like to get in the cube please raise your hand go ahead frank yeah president mattel i i just wanted people to know if if they're watching this um for the first time that staff um started soliciting soliciting guidance from the board back in may

55:49 and um while it this is just a snapshot we have really appreciated the board's guidance and feedback especially this year with all of the potential changes because of of covet economy impacts and other things and so while it looks like oh here's 331 million dollars of not a lot of potential discussion tonight this has been at least you know six to eight months of various back and forth that led to a lot of detail behind the scenes so i wanted to thank the board for their feedback throughout that process and also thank um deborah and adam and their their whole team for filling in all of the you know 90

56:36 pages worth of detail behind that and really looking how we can keep rates flat in a year that is going to be a tough year for a lot of people so i just wanted to say thank you to the board well and i'll say thank you to staff and just echo some of the comments made by frank and then i'll get your question or comment um dick that uh it's a long process it often uh uh some years are more controversial when you get down to december than others this tends to be i'd say a much less controversial uh year and uh most of the discussion has happened in the last few months and so from a board perspective i don't expect that there needs to be a or that there will be a lot of uh scrutiny at this point in time but that

57:21 doesn't mean that there wasn't significant attention paid during um along the way go ahead uh dick if you have questions please ask them well i'll be brief as well um and i just wanted to add to some of the things that you've already said uh so this is the culmination not only of a budget process that involves multiple discussions with the board that really commences you know much earlier in the year around june it's also part of a long-term strategic plan and 10-year financial plan that the board engages regularly with the staff on that allows us to give guidance and manage the trajectory of our costs and our rates and as adam pointed out earlier this is the

58:06 fourth and fifth year for water and electric of not of being able to have a balanced budget in challenging times with no significant changing changes in staffing or resourcing but uh in a manner that allows us to approve a balanced budget for yet another year without an increase in rates and i think that's a very commendable achievement on the part of staff and i appreciate very much the quality of your budget process and the document that is produced for public review and also the fact that um you bring us something that contains generally not a lot of surprise and is always consistent with the strategic plan and the 10-year financial

58:52 plan and i know that that as time goes on without rate increases that becomes increasingly challenging and will need to be revisited each year by uh the new board but um i commend you for your work and another year of a budget that doesn't require any change in rates so thank you great well thank you again for such a a great process um i have felt like we've really had a lot of you know opportunity to provide good input along the way um part of the reason why i asked the question that i did in the premium

59:37 questions about you know how are we increasing budgets for both water and electric and still maintaining rates is in part because i think that there was there's a lot of staff effort time and a strategic plan that does go behind that and i think it's it's really critical to look at that and celebrate the that effort in that work um i did have one question um in that the response it said that purchase power costs are up um however we'll have lower silt and lower transmission costs and i was just hoping that staff could talk a little bit about um kind of the reasoning for why some of those costs are up or down and why they're helping offset sure

1:00:22 sure um i'll take the first uh stab at that the um the per well the silt cost is a function of our retail revenue so we get billed on retail revenue to the city so since retail revenue is down that's partially offset by or offsetting um the silk offset by lower sale cost since we have less remit to the city um for transmission costs our kind of fixed infrastructure doesn't change depending is you know on a single year's load reduction but we at the biggest part of our transmission is bonneville's um nt uh transmission purchases which we get billed on our peak demand for a specific hour so if we have a lower demand then there's a lower cost of bonneville

1:01:08 transmission so those are kind of offsetting things and then also when we have less to sell to retail customers um we have kind of a wholesale revenue offset so we either purchasing less or having more of our power to sell in the markets or kind of the let's see okay so the so we we don't have to pay on all of the for the silt we don't pay for the wholesale revenue we get it's only on the retail revenue for local well we we pay the retail revenue silt which is that six percent of retail revenue collected we also pay a fixed amount for wholesale um operations in the past we paid a different percentage on wholesale revenue but i think since it's so

1:01:54 volatile and goes up and down the city wanted some budget stability and so we negotiated a fixed number that we've had for the last several years commissioner carlson i would just jump in and weigh in that the things that you're seeing go down are related to the retail side the things that you might see go up um are because there's a corresponding increase in wholesale business when your retail goes down so and that silt agreement was negotiated i believe in 2015 or so kind of time frame where it stabilized the wholesale side so that's great you've seen some go up and some go down i see and can you remind me again uh is

1:02:39 that is that a contract i think we talked about that earlier in the year is that a contract that's coming up again is that something that we negotiate on a regular basis or is that something that kind of rolls over how does that work the first silt specifically with the city i don't know if there's an end date on that but deborah do you we'll have an opportunity to revisit the wholesale revenue but the date is not at the top of my mind or the wholesale cells okay all right thank you commissioner brown yeah just a clarifying question i know when uh one of deborah's responses to uh commissioner schlossberg's questions um you talked about budgeting at 90 and i know that we used to budget at 85 percent water and then we

1:03:26 debated and debated uh this was with previous boards and we went to 90 and then i thought we had done away with uh cutting it down to 90. is it could you correct me are we still at budgeting at 90 water year or are we at 100 water year or 10-year average we are still budgeting in a 90 water year yeah the recent change that or the uh the maybe more recent change that you saw is that in the 10-year forecast you go out five years at the 90 and then in the back half of the plan uh we go back to expected so i would i would add a little bit of color commentary to that um what we did commissioner brown is to combine several risk factors into

1:04:13 what we term as the contribution margin risk factor um that number which is basically just a conservative number on on the the wholesale piece is where we capture it could be when you get 90 water or it could be if you get a 10 reduction in wholesale rates for example or you get i don't remember the exact retail um because of weather conditions so it's it's one number that captures a number of different conditions and we call it the contribution margin risk factor one of those conditions being a low water year okay thank you other comments or questions

1:05:03 well all righty i'm sure sue would be proud debra uh good job uh to adam and debra and the whole team thank you very much for bringing us uh you know a balanced budget um and not having to raise rates once again um i believe it's time to vote is that right do uh frank can you just remind me can we take all three of these together or do we need to do them one at a time that's that's a good question uh president mattel let's just do let's just do one at a time um to be alright all right well we'll start with resolution number 2028 that is the 2021 budgets do i have a motion to approve move to a person thank you and a second second

1:05:48 thank you all right all those in favor of approving resolution number 2028 please raise your hand and signify by saying aye aye all right all right that passes unanimously now we'll take resolution number 2029 this is the electric customer service charges and prices do i have a motion to approve i'd love to approve uh once again by commissioner carlson in second second thank you commissioner schlossberg all right we uh all those in favor of resolution 2029 please raise your hand and signify by saying aye aye that also looks like it approve it passes unanimously and finally we will take resolution number 2030 that's the

1:06:33 february 2021 revised water prices do i have a motion to approve to approve all right that's a hat trick for sonia um and do we have a second nobody well i'll do it uh i will be the second okay um do we have uh we will uh those in favor of approving resolution number 2030 please raise your hand and signify by saying aye i think that approved unanimously um we have a break scheduled i am just looking at what remains here and whether i should suggest just barreling through shall we thumbs up thumbs down

1:07:19 thumbs up means we're moving on thumbs down means i want to take a break looks to me like we're moving on okay no break there's no cheesecake so why should we take a break that's what i say frank all right uh next up we have resolution number 2031 ewebs 2021 state legislative agenda and i oh we have susan and jason speaking or perhaps just jason i'm not sure uh i'll i'll go ahead and take it away unless you had anything you wanted to open with no problem i couldn't get to the mute button fast enough so you go ahead

1:08:04 all right sounds good um well um thank you folks uh it's good to see you all commissioners virtually as you all know it's that time in oregon's constitutional calendar that the oregon legislature assemble in salem it's an odd numbered year so it'll be the long session i'm sorry uh next slide please uh again it will be the long session although i have a feeling that will be curtailed a little bit uh due to logistics as you can imagine um you've all adapted to a new way of um doing the people's business during this pandemic um the legislature um has certainly gone to great lengths to do the same

1:08:49 however given some of the logistical challenges i do expect that the scope of the session in length will be smaller and it's easy to see that there will be um enormous emphasis specifically on covid19 and wildfire relief i have a feeling you'll see fewer hearings there will be fewer bills things of the past such as courtesy hearings as they're sometimes called i don't think you'll see as many of those or informational hearings a quick post election update the legislative makeup has really changed very little the democrats maintained majorities in both the house and senate i think

1:09:35 really only one or two seats really changed hands on a net basis it's notable that the majorities are three-fifths majorities which that's the necessary majority to have a revenue raising measure if it were to be a party-line vote um however those majorities fall short of a two-thirds quorum requirement that would mitigate the possibility of a legislative walkout and that's notable um something to remember since we've had the last two legislative sessions um conclude with with walkouts next slide please so um although the overwhelming focus will be on pandemic and wildfire relief uh and recovery

1:10:22 uh there's no doubt the legislature is not taking their eye off the ball uh when it comes to climate i know there are many legislators in salem that still see this as the next pandemic and has to be addressed in some way oregon has been a leader on clean energy legislation we had a landmark bill passed in 2007 the oregon rps there was an update to that bill in 2016. you would think that to some extent the electric sector was sort of set but um just since 2016 we've seen california and washington update their clean energy standards to go all the way to 100 100 clean um so we've recently been

1:11:09 eclipsed by our neighbors to the north and south furthermore we know that carbon pricing legislation most likely has no political path forward because of the lack of quorum as as a result of the walkouts last last session governor brown did take matters into her own hand and issued executive order on climate 2004 to cap and reduce emissions that order addresses transportation industry and natural gas but very crucially not electricity and that's due to a lack of authority for the executive branch to regulate imported electricity so you can see with with those elements in place it's

1:11:56 not hard to imagine that oregon will take a look at a standalone approach to move the ball forward in the electric sector i i it's hard for me to imagine that a complex effort like that um could be completed in a session like this with the challenging logistics but i expect at a minimum this will be a dress rehearsal for preparing legislation in the 2020 2022 session and uh there's a lot of you know there's been a lot of turnover in the legislature there are new members that were not around in 2016 they certainly weren't around in 2007 so we're going to want to do a lot of work this session you only get one chance to make a first impression on new legislators so we're going to

1:12:42 want to make them apprised of the institutional history on on clean energy legislation as well as a lot of the lessons that we've learned about carbon pricing and overall least cost approaches to reducing carbon uh next slide please um so so definitely we we know that carbon pricing is the least cost policy approach we're advocates of that if that's not going to be the policy approach we've got to learn we've got to take as all the lessons we've learned about elements that make carbon pricing a lease cost approach and see if we can adapt those and apply those to any new clean energy law in oregon the easy place to start is technology

1:13:27 neutrality we understand why in 2007 hydropower uh does not did not fully qualify for the renewable portfolio standard um it's time for that to change we need to have a truly technology neutral approach for all clean energy technologies to count equally that really accomplishes three really crucial goals if you have a technology neutral approach first we know from the seventh power plan that the northwest power council did a least cost approach to decarbonizing the northwest a crucial element is using surplus regional hydropower inside the region instead of exporting it if hydropower doesn't qualify for the oregon rps that can be an impediment to using that

1:14:13 that surplus hydro in the region if we can make sure we use that hydro in the region we'll avoid over building unnecessary generation over building increases cost to retail electric customers and it also um even further erodes wholesale power prices in the region which creates its own set of of issues of problems and finally this rectifies a very basic fairness issue as far as resources different resource types competing with one another if hydro power can't qualify can't be used for rps compliance by say portland general electric for example if portland general electric does an rfp for new energy procurement

1:15:00 hydropower is a disadvantage trying to respond to that rfp so these are really three crucial elements of a leased cost approach to clean energy legislation and i think we should be happy to take up the mantle of technology neutrality in any new changes to clean energy law in oregon um finally there's a really crucial element of the rps we're going to want to see stay in place in 2007 the legislature came up with a definition of a bundled renewable energy certificate that's the currency used to show compliance with the rps we came up with an approach that was determined by whether or not an entity procured the electricity and the environmental attributes as in

1:15:47 embodied by the wreck whether you acquired those together if you acquired those together that determined what was a bundled wreck we're going to want to see see that stay intact that was chosen for a very crucial reason and i think we really got it right in 2007. i know there is some discussion of an alternative approach which sometimes is called flow based accounting and that's where legislation is tracked from the source to the end use and consumption um if if that approach if that alternative approach was utilized um that would uh make compliance incredibly complex and labor intensive um and most likely would lead to overbuilding

1:16:32 of resources and i can see no discernible environmental benefit or carbon enhanced carbon reduction benefit that would come from using that more complex and costly approach so we're going to want to plug the two 2007 approach as being an example of not only getting it right then but a policy that still makes sense today um another uh legislative proposal we're expecting to to move forward um is a requirement for the legislature that utilities uh complete a wildfire mitigation plans that are risk-based this is a repeat of legislation we saw

1:17:17 in 2019 and 2020 both times those bills essentially stalled because of the walkout the legislature has pretty much picked up where they left off this bill is almost identical or the draft that we've seen is almost identical to previous bills and we're pleased to see that um local decision making seems to still be in place here the e-web board would adopt the plan there would be a requirement to remit the plan to the oregon public utility commission but the puc would have no role other than simply to be a repository of of all the plans around the state the plans would be required to be adopted by uh december 31st

1:18:04 of 2021 from internal conversations at eweb that would not be a problem for us we can easily make that part of our work plan in 2021 this last item it may feel a little open-ended and amorphous and that's because it is it's not something that's totally in focus yet but i want to make sure you're apprised of likely work that we'll do in this area in the upcoming session covid 19 and wildfire impacts to eweb customers we know that many e-web customers and lane county residents are hurting from these two disasters there is a

1:18:49 concerted effort locally to get on a road to relief and recovery that's most likely going to exceed what local resources can provide there's going to be a role for the state to play on these matters eweb's been part of a local effort to determine all the uh the needs that are are there and what would be unmet we're consulting with local governments community agencies and fire affected residents themselves we're going to have some kind of role advocating in salem on behalf of affected customers and residents it's not in focus yet but i think some examples could include customer bill assistance more energy bill assistance but also

1:19:34 crucially water bill assistance which was not addressed in the uh the previous assistance the state provided earlier this year telecommunications connectivity in the mckinsey corridor watershed recovery these are a couple of examples we'll be happy to provide you a memo or otherwise update you in january when we know more about what specific ask will likely be made to the the state of oregon in the upcoming legislative session and uh that's all i have i'm ready to take questions um real quickly i will tell you um it's always been customary for the e-web board to have an advocacy day at the capitol i think it would be great if we planned on doing that again obviously we'll do it

1:20:19 completely differently it would have to be done virtually but i see no reason why we couldn't continue that tradition and as a bonus you don't have to worry about me getting you lost in the capital basement this time so thanks jason all right we will open up a queue um please uh yeah raise your hand if you'd like to jump into that queue well i'll go first while others uh may be pondering questions it's uh jason i kind of alluded to this earlier in an email just so you'd have some advanced warning i just wanted to um just try and learn a little bit more about the flow accounting so you're telling us that there seems to be very little practical benefit um

1:21:04 and a lot of complexity that would likely get introduced i don't doubt that so though but therefore i am trying to understand what the advocates of flow accounting see um as value coming out of this you know i i um i will tell you i would struggle to articulate it but i'll take a shot i think it's a it's a verification they want some kind of double verification um that clean energy was utilized uh and to some extent it might be true that they want to draw the circle a little smaller about where energy comes from that that's possible but i

1:21:51 i see no discernible environmental benefit um i mean there's even there's even a case to be made that it could work against decarbonization one of the reasons being um if if we were to move to an approach that required tracking of generation renewable generation all the way to its end use that's very incongruous with the direction that organized centralized electricity markets in the west are moving those those markets are not markets that are going to be compatible with a source to load uh end use tracking and i think that would be unfortunate because

1:22:36 those markets are those those centralized markets are very likely crucial to seeing the western united states reach regional decarbonization goals so um i i'm hoping we'll prevail to the advocates of this approach that it's really not going to give the desired result they want it may even run counter to some crucial um goals to to create centralized markets and get us on the track to that clean energy future but i think it's a verification issue that they feel like they would be more confident uh if there was a verification but i think most people in the energy industry will say that it's really not necessary people

1:23:23 people build resources or sign long-term power purchase agreements to use that energy for their own load primarily there's some cases where you uh you may not because you're long with energy and he has been in that exact position sometimes but it's really a verification that probably just isn't really necessary all right well thank you i'll before my time's up i'll also just say that i am very much in support of um attempts to have hydropower treated the same as other low-carbon energy resources that we have in the region so i'm i'm hopeful that we'll prevail with that and thankful for your advocacy on that anybody else

1:24:09 go ahead dick uh quickly jason thank you for your good work as always um i agree with uh commissioner matal's comments just made about hydropower i think it's perhaps i i appreciate that people have issues with hydropower that have to do with fisheries and a host of things that get managed in other contexts we do pay costs associated with mitigating those impacts both in terms of commitments made and re-licensing those projects and also in amounts that are paid and included in rates for for fish programs of of all manner which if nothing else

1:24:55 comprise a very significant portion of bonneville's budget so i think it's a little disingenuous to try to take another bite at that by excluding existing hydro legacy hydro from this calculation when it really doesn't contribute to our carbon footprint the other comment i'll make quickly and you don't have to respond because i know that you'll work this issue diligently but i find it kind of ironic that when we make the point that a carbon

1:25:40 cost would be the most efficient way to get to our climate mitigation goals that the republicans would choose to walk out on that but might gladly join some of them an increase in the rps standard when at the end of the day it's the same people that will pay in fact higher costs under that strategy and i i don't know whether they would choose to walk out on that kind of a proposal but at the end of the day it's in the interests of our customers to take steps to mitigate the climate issues that are before us but at the same time to do that in a way that's as cost-effective as possible and at the end of the day we all know and understand that those

1:26:25 costs will flow to our customers in one form or other and so we take the positions that we do because it's our obligation to um to do what is necessary and important but also to do that in a way that minimizes the cost and the impact to to them so thank you again for your work and i look forward to um reading about your successes in the newspaper and i'm sorry that i'll miss that next trip to the basement of the capitol anybody else sonia i don't see you right now i don't know why that is uh but is your hand up by any chance no i turned my video off for a second oh thank you jason appreciate all the i didn't have any other

1:27:10 questions to add but i do appreciate the update and look forward to uh coming and joining you in the capital or not joining you in the capital but virtually joining you in the capital at some point in the next few months alrighty well i'm sensing that that's as much discussion as uh we need to have before taking a vote so i am going to ask for a motion um for resolution number 2031. all right move to approve uh ready and a second i'll give it a second uh looks like i beat you to that one dick sorry all right we have a motion we have a second any discussion

1:27:56 in that case um all those in favor of approving resolution number 2031 are 2021 state legislative agenda please raise your hand and signify by saying aye aye all righty that passes unanimously and that takes care of general business items for the calendar year 2020. correspondence and board agendas thanks jason uh by the way um all right frank it's yours you have 10 minutes yeah president mattel commissioners um thanks again i'd like to start with the agendas this time normally we start with correspondence but i'd like to start with the agendas given that we have some pretty significant early year topics that i'd like to highlight

1:28:41 first of all in february we have teed up the leeberg canal discussion this is both in separate sessions a technical review and then also a financial review and that's teed up in for february as well as our drinking water source protection and recovery planning that was something that um rightfully so recognizing the changes in the watershed that we will bring back to the board um to take a look at how we want to change and how we want to move forward with that so that's in february in march we do have and you heard jason refer to wildfire mitigation we've got a presentation to the board on wildfire mitigation

1:29:26 practices as well as a more complete ami program update those are both in march and then in april we have our upriver board meeting tentatively uh scheduled for april 20th uh what you don't see on the calendar yet and i i'm not using this as a specific date right now but sometime in march likely i would like to have a strategic workshop with the board we will have if you if you consider who participated in the last strategy strategic planning effort we will have three board members on the board three commissioners on the board who did not participate in the last strategic work so uh sometime

1:30:14 in i'm kind of tentatively looking at march 23rd but you know that that'll be depending on commissioner's schedules we'll either be sometime in that that range either late march early april uh where we can do some strategic work i think that'll be important with the the new makeup of the board and taking a look at how how we want to adjust going forward i wouldn't expect you know student body left wholesale change but i think there are some things that we would want to take into account the situational analysis of where we are and where we'd like to go so that's not on the calendar yet but i wanted to point it out that we will be reaching out to talk about that from a correspondence perspective there

1:30:59 were really two items one was the 20 20 year in audit planning letter that's from moss adams i think probably everybody on the board is familiar with that process now that tends to get started um it intensifies in the first quarter primarily with the uh with deborah's staff when and then a final report out on audited financial statements in april so that is just the beginning of the background for that work and then there was also in correspondence the 2019 and again this is 2019 so this is i'm not 2020 this is a whole kind of year old the operational greenhouse gas inventory

1:31:45 report in 2011 just for for background eweb set out some set forward some goals to re reduce our operational greenhouse gas levels by 25 percent by 2020 and 50 by 2030 we are on track for both of those um and it's worth noting that the the ghd report is for operational only it's not for total electricity generation for example and it's for 2019 primarily because many of the regional carbon intensity data is not compiled from the previous year until quite a ways into the to the next year after that so

1:32:31 we'll incorporate operational information in our report out for the 2020 goals because we have some broader goals around carbon mitigation and we'll do that as we report out our 2020 goals and so i'd be happy to entertain i at least i may be on the line as well if commissioners have any questions about that or if you have any questions about the um the upcoming financial audit dick did you catch all that you got a question no i just wanted i just wanted to endorse your comments about using the market-based approach to this tally as opposed to the location-based approach i won't pursue that here or ask for a staff

1:33:17 response but i fully endorse the comments that you provided prior to the meeting and i think the failure to use the market based approach is kind of the lead tally um sort of denies us the opportunity to take credit for and and bank the the savings that occur as a result of actions that we've taken to green our portfolio and it's kind of ironic to me that in this case um we'd use the location based as kind of the marker when for other purposes when we talk about the greenness of our portfolio and the opportunities that exist for electrification we tend to point to uh something that's more akin to the market-based approach so i just leave it there it's probably not

1:34:02 worth much at this late juncture in my tenure but i thought you made some good points thanks dick go ahead sonia i i wanted to note on the greenhouse gas emissions the fact that goals were set and are actually on track to be achieved um is is another thing to be applauded i typically see in that realm that goals are set and i don't think that our goals are unambitious either and then you know as you kind of look at the track record of those goals the the gap gets bigger and bigger and so it's really refreshing to see that we're not in that boat and i appreciate the work to to keep it that way and to really hit the target so thank you

1:34:55 yeah i'll just chime in as well the some of the things that caught my attention were the 11 electricity reduction um i think i said in the comments uh which is remarkable and bears some additional you know analysis as to what it is that we did to achieve that's a lot uh you know we didn't because we're not we're not significantly different in terms of our operational footprint in this town as compared to uh now comparing back to 2011. so i found that um pretty incredible and the um sf6 uh emissions which you know sort of crop up some years but then die back i know we've taken a lot of effort um to work on that and same thing with the fuel switching away from a pretty dirty source that produced our steam that we circulated around town and uh kind of move that off of our book so those are all

1:35:40 in my mind some really neat achievements and congratulations to lisa and all the staff who are responsible for that work over the years go ahead frank yeah thanks commissioner i i am sorry that you won't be around to have the debate uh commissioner helgeson on which type of accounting to use i think it's i would agree that a lot of the decisions that we can make as an individual utility do better get captured by a market-based approach than a location-based approach i would argue with you a bit and it would be a very healthy debate that when you look at the actual environmental impact you have to look beyond the borders of

1:36:25 the decisions that we make which would be more of a regional base and that would be because the grid and in fact all energy systems are so interconnected across the region that if we do something it's not done in isolation and so that would be you know i'd be a very healthy debate we don't know i won't i won't debate it here um even though we're ahead of schedule but i i absolutely appreciate your points around um the using the market market-based approach does capture the decisions that we have historically made more appropriately the other things that i would note is a significant amount of work the last um really almost decade now from when we started this has been done by our fleet department

1:37:10 relative to the types of fuels that we use that a tremendous amount of work and analysis that goes into whatever type of renewable fuel we're going to use the idling practices there's a whole bunch of things that that go into that and how we manage our fleet and our on our fleets staff has done a really good job of trying to expose that as one of the significant sources that we that can generate operationally so a lot of credit to be to be spread around we also make decisions uh around using things like variable frequency drives instead of just for for operating motors more efficiently and some of the other high use devices there's a lot of automation which rolls into some of those reasons that you talked about

1:37:55 president mattel relative to where we seen some of the electricity savings those all are sort of captured in the efficiency work that we do um and then sf6 very potent um part of our it's it's the only option that we really have for small space designs um at the high voltage levels it's 23 000 times more potent than co2 and so we're very careful with uh how we monitor how we handle that how we track for leaks you know all of that we're still under the the levels of required reporting but we voluntarily report that any kind of significant leak there so um

1:38:40 really i appreciate your comments and there's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes but um and and more debate to come on the various ways of accounting for for these types of things i'm sure thank you president intel thank you any other uh lisa did you want to chime in about any of those items i just wanted to um you know while i've got just a minute to take the floor just appreciate frank chimed in what i was going to say which was really the efforts that our fleet department and our fleet supervisor in particular has really done to to kind of green our fleet with alternative fuels that is far and away the um the thing that we have the most control of direct control over to reduce our emissions

1:39:26 and um is largely responsible for not only our ability to meet the goals that were set a number of years ago but to actually exceed them we're on track to exceed them we're on track to meet our 2030 goal by next year if things go the way we think that they will and so that's nine years in advance of what what we set out to do so i also want to applaud that team and then also the environmental team and the rest of the organization in general that has really put some some thought and effort into reducing our carbon footprint so thank you for the opportunity to share that and i appreciate your interest in the report all right well thank you um all right well we will uh well let me just ask real quick anybody want to bring up any of the other items

1:40:11 that frank touched on in his summary well all right then it's time for the infamous item number 13. it feels a little strange to preside over your own dirge i'm not sure uh what we are doing here to be totally honest um but uh mindy is this something you want to take the lead on as the vice president about to become president um i don't know exactly who planned all this but maybe um frank did you know did you have something in particular

1:41:01 you're a mute there well well i can jump in and save a couple of minutes if you if you don't mind yeah go ahead go ahead chilling i i i almost hesitated because i almost wanted this to be the the last one i i wanted to change the agenda around because i'm worried that i'm gonna cry i'm already feeling a little teary i was reaching around for my kleenex earlier um it's been it's been a real pleasure to serve with both of you over the last number of years and um i appreciate the wittiness i appreciate the camaraderie that we've all shared i i appreciate the various perspectives and the the really engaging commentary that that we've had

1:41:46 and um while i'm appreciative that we have two new board members that are coming on very much going to miss all of the um the service that you've put in over the last number of years sorry i'm crying okay um and and i'm i'm really sad that we're not getting to be able to be together to share this i mean eight years and and for you steve and dick you've been on you know involved with eweb for what 40 plus years i mean almost 40 years that is just incredible the amount of history and knowledge that you've brought to this organization to make it a better to better serve the community is just

1:42:31 remarkable and um you're both really going to be missed so i know that this is maybe dick said earlier this was his last opportunity to influence them i don't think that's the case i know we've seen other board members come back and share and i hope that we can reach out to the both of you um from time to time because again i've really appreciated your perspectives on you know various matters and i'll try to channel and i think you know others will as well try to channel some of the passion that you brought to various topics too because it may be that others will have different um you know different interests but i think that they were very valid and even though you know in your time you may not have gotten to achieve everything that you wanted

1:43:16 um but i'll try to carry the torch a little bit so please feel free to reach out thank you thank you sonya uh very much appreciate god go ahead frankie like may i say something i mean what happened of course like can i stop you you know this going to be sugar-coated right you guys have been absolutely uh amazing to work with uh you know and uh you you've taught me a lot you've taught me a lot about the in the industry and you've taught me a lot about uh you know human interactions and and learning to accept uh uh different perspectives and things such as that but i've done a little thing you know i wore the bowling shirt tonight just to remind you guys yeah you all teamed up and we

1:44:04 got in our lovely khakis and we held hands and sang songs but uh you know dick i made a little a compilation i have a a set of cds of all your input it is 435 of them one hour and i also have a 350 page glossary of all the words you use that have four more syllables and so that's also on sale and you get them all real independently steve you know i'm not gonna have to worry about my fishing poles anymore how to do this and you know how to fish and how to catch stuff but uh in all seriousness you know you're not going to be going away i mean you're just you know like i say i i've said before you know my little isms it's kind of like you know watching my mother-in-law

1:44:51 leave with my new cadillac i don't know whether to be happy or sad but happy for you you're going to get some great time and sad that i don't get to have this interaction with you guys before and dick i still owe you a dose of poison oak just that there's a little inside joke but i am very very pleased to see that uh you you met a challenge in health and you came through it and that had us all concerned very much so and steve everything you've gone through and everything so i wish you both the best in whatever endeavors you do but don't become strangers please thank you very much for your service thank you i'm gonna jump in here that's okay um i just want to say um selfishly how much i've appreciated serving on

1:45:37 this board with you it's pretty intimidating joining this board there's a lot to know and there's a lot of different people and you've both been so kind and welcoming and i have so appreciated um just kind of soaking up your knowledge your leadership skills i've really appreciated that steve i've been paying particular close attention to how you lead these meetings over the last few months because i know that student will be my turn and um you do it so deftly and i really appreciate that um and i i'm sorry that i only get to serve with you for two years but i'm just so grateful for um everything that you've done and i've really appreciated both of you so thank you thank you

1:46:23 go ahead frank you done you done walking the dog now you're back yeah i'm back my my computer locked up just at the wrong time so i appreciate the opportunity to comment um dick and steve did you actually get packages this afternoon well you know we we did and they're sitting here yeah you can open those up if you would like um and then i've got a couple other slides to show i will i'm opening mine right now thank you oh my gosh can you all see this if i put hold it up like that

1:47:09 yeah there's if you click on the faces you can enlarge you know steve up to the go away from the presentation so dick has one piece of it which is basically uh our way of thanking you a commemorative plaque appreciate 40 years for you dick helgeson and including your eweb terms and then uh steve mattel um eight years of leadership on the board and and definitely uh extend that but i would like to go back to and that that that's a water meter by the way um dick would probably recognize that yeah we probably got a lot of these for the smart meters going in right

1:47:54 we got a pretty good deal on those um um but it was you know it was a little easier to to fit in a package than a fire hydrant which there was a former employee who got a fire hydrant so i'm not sure those would fit well fire hydrants don't always smell so good but so appreciate this yeah so yeah let's go back to the presentation so if you click on the presentation and just run through the next slide [Laughter] so you know steve um it's it's been an honor it's been a pleasure you have helped staff tremendously over these last years here's just some of the highlights from from your your time um we appreciate the uh what you've brought to the board you

1:48:40 and i have a couple of signals that we know there's multiple meanings of and so i've appreciated the relationship on working with you these these past four years in particular but i do remember sitting with you in the audience i think it was back in 2011 or so when i used to just go to board meetings for the fun of it um now i have to but um you used to go and you were always doing your your homework before you became a commissioner so i think that was 2010 2011. somewhere in there um and so it's i've learned a lot from you i still have a steve mattel list with a few open items on it just so you know i haven't forgotten about those and i'm sure we'll be talking about those uh going forward especially some about a fence in the willamette river or something

1:49:26 being one of those things so steve thank you it's it's it's been a pleasure um learned a lot and i hope you've got a lot out of it too uh the next slide um is um go ahead with the next slide if you can this is this is dick helgeson um in various stages of his contribution um still have to love the stay puft marshmallow man in the lower right that's that's got to be a highlight but um you know dick starting in 1978 i'm not even sure what was going on in 1978 i think that's um this is you weren't born yet i was i was around i certainly remember 1978 but but not that well um thanks for not

1:50:12 only your your help on the board but just your contributions uh through the through the decades for eweb you've really had a lot of influence on the community and and and helping the board and helping staff and management and um it's challenged us in fact both you and steve have challenged us to be better and i think that that's the role of a board i i expect that to continue with the members that are on the board now and the new members and so i just on behalf of management and and staff wanted to thank both of you um very sincerely from the bottom of our hearts for the the contributions and the the help along the way so um thank you um on behalf of management and staff for your service

1:51:02 well thank you uh thank you all thanks for the thanks for the gifts thanks for the kind words dick i assume you might have a thing or two to say and i suppose i do as well would you like to go first okay i i would um certainly like john brown at the beginning of the meeting i i this is the part that i in some respects wasn't looking forward to because like many of us i i have trouble with goodbyes and uh i don't take praise very easily for some reason so i just want to tell you how grateful i am for the opportunity to having uh served with all of you uh as an eweb commissioner i want to thank our customers and um uh all of you for um not only the good work that you do i i think um also for your friendship

1:51:50 and um i i want you to know how important eweb is i i think um all of you on the board know this and that's why you're part of the organization in the governance role i i the work that we do matters matters to the whole community in ways that are really important and for all of us that have had the privilege of working at eweb i want you to know that those of you who will carry on that work uh are doing important work even if sometimes it doesn't seem that the community is always paying attention or thankful for what we do it's meaningful work it's worthy work and it's public service and i think that's

1:52:36 one of the highest forms of service that any of us can can engage and so i want to thank you all and i also want to give a shout out to ann and holly for their support to the board um i think there have been several times when i would have been late to meetings or showing up in the wrong place had it not been for their their good guidance and and reminders uh and uh help with all manner of things so thank you dan and holly for that and um uh thanks to my fellow board members who i think we've worked well together i look forward to seeing all of the new board functioning and getting up to speed and i have every confidence that you'll carry on the good work that we've all

1:53:22 engaged over the last eight years so thank you for your acknowledgement and all of the the time that we've spent together and your friendship i hope that we run into each other and maybe steve and i will come and give you six minutes worth of our joint testimony on the virtues of these various accounting methods for carbon well thank dick john i want to thank you in particular for your support you made reference to the some of the challenges i faced on the health front a couple years ago and i i wasn't really going to mention this because it's it's you know it's kind of personal but that meant a lot to me and uh you're you're a good human being

1:54:07 thank you well i guess i'll try and round it out uh i i'll just have to say that i have loved my eight years on on this board and uh i i didn't really know what to expect i was when i when i first uh came on the board i was uh super fearful of robert's rules and the protocols and uh and and i think everybody could probably tell i've gotten really comfortable in the role and enjoyed it so much and uh and i have learned you know how to work you know with and around those things so in any case i think what i'm trying to say i have learned so much um you know i have a couple of graduate degrees i got from the u of o but honestly i think i learned more about the things uh you know that really matter to me

1:54:52 substantively energy issues specific northwest um environmental issues and how energy and water kind of um play in those but also about interpersonal dynamics sean mentioned that leadership uh working with folks respecting others and i've grown quite a bit and i'm really thankful to all the folks who contributed to that it's the uh my my fellow board members frank the leadership team um a whole bunch of folks of course who have moved on to other positions or retired um lots of different staff and of course has always been fantastic holly as well thank you for bringing the uh the cake by i think it is i haven't had a chance to look at it yet earlier today so i have grown so much and changed a lot and so i just want to um you know remind myself and and others that uh you know you come into these

1:55:37 positions and you think you know something and uh and you do to an extent and but you certainly learn quite a bit for me it was sort of um poignant that we had the testimony this evening from the one man i forgot his name i think it was stephen goldman who was really upset about the solar prices and that's pretty much exactly the place that i started when i uh came on the board i thought that you know that rooftop solar on you know on every house would be a good thing and i've learned a lot about why it is but also why it isn't from a community perspective and so um so that issue sort of came up for me tonight in any case i'll round it up by mostly i'm just thanking everybody it's been an absolutely fantastic experience uh for me personally i think i um

1:56:22 uh i got honestly more than i gave but i'm glad to have given something as well alrighty that's uh i guess i'm still present so it means it's my job to move to the next uh item and that's uh item number 14 board wrap up i don't know that there is any but if there is uh now's the time stone you go ahead um well knowing that next month we'll be um voting on you know various different positions and such it always felt a little weird to me when i started that the first thing we do is we elect officers and we appoint people to boards and such and it seems like right now there's

1:57:08 there's a lot of knowledge potentially going out and i wanted to maybe open it up and see if anyone wanted to talk about um the various positions that they've held that are up for um review because i know that our other two board members i believe are still on the call and it might be beneficial for them to to know kind of what what is coming up pass along a little bit of the knowledge to the the next to group um i know dick you've you've been serving with the mpa and i don't think that that's something that that carries over that's not somebody nobody else can serve on that is my well maybe i'm correct on that but let me throw in another briefly i will need to resign from that board given the circumstances to give them

1:57:53 notice i will also talk with frank and maybe he can talk with scott corwin who's the ceo up there about opportunities for other board members should any of you wish to continue that involvement i don't think it's necessary or essential it's a good organization john brown has a little bit of knowledge as well about what they do and how that relates to our operations so it's not necessary for us to maintain that participation but i will certainly work with frank to make sure that a path forward is available to the ward should any of you or our new board members wish to continue that association and it involves the nominations process and the seating of new uh board members

1:58:40 on that board in in june so i'll um work with frank to make sure you have the information that you would need to follow up on that should you wish and otherwise would have frank should you not um give our apologies and good wishes uh along with my resignation letter thank you and steve i think you had been serving as a liaison for some of the other utilities i wasn't or was that last year well i mean i'm doing that a little bit with some of these days yep and i did it a little bit we didn't uh have too much interaction quite frankly with um uh with the folks over at lane electric but

1:59:25 so there's a little bit of that honestly that's um better sort of best managed i think in one-on-one you know informal relationships than than trying to be you know having too much formal engagement things get lost sure absolutely um and for me i've i've served on the uh elkhog the lane council of governments board for the last year and i'm also i've been serving on the executive committee uh the the position uh for the executive committee i did let them know that we would be interested as a as an organization and serving on that again i am interested in running for it though if others have a significant interest um you know open to that uh basically it's a meeting once once a quarter for the regular

2:00:12 board and then the executive board meets once every month and then there's other various committees that are associated with that but it's a i mean lane council of governments as you can imagine a association of a number of the different governments that have chosen to opt in and work together around various issues in the community so if anybody's interested in that wants to learn more um about that organization more than happy to meet with them at another time okay all right well thanks for that opportunity i thought it might just be helpful and i think john brown was on the board i don't know if he wants to give a little bit of information about that but

2:00:57 anyway i i just found it was very when we're joining the board it's like the first thing that we do and you have no idea what you're voting on so um you know getting getting a little up to speed on it would be maybe helpful to think about before we're making those choices on that noted suddenly sorry suddenly occur i suddenly feel like the dead guy who just you know who wakes up after everybody said some nice things to remind folks that now that i think about it i think i have like five minutes worth of duties at our january meeting um which is actually to preside over the election of officers and then hand over the uh the gavel to the next ford president which i expect would be mindy so that's

2:01:43 uh i hadn't actually thought about that until now but maybe there's some way to avoid that but i i think that's actually the process that needs that that is normally happens sorry john you were going to say well i would just uh open uh that's a quarterly meeting you're a non-voting member it's basically informational only about the retirees and their um and the health care benefits and things and the funding of that making sure it's funded um it's a it's a pretty easy position to have and uh if somebody you know one of the new individuals or anybody else wants to uh to have it i'm open to that because uh if we have to have somebody at mwppa i would i would consider that too going into that so i'm just i'm also

2:02:29 curious on how just how the process is of swearing in that do they do that remotely now or do they do that in person they can do that virtually john virtually okay and then i just want to add that um i serve what in a commit committee whatever with the city liaising with the city that's what it is and um it's newish we've only done it for the last year and a half maybe and we meet quarterly and um i believe it's supposed to be the president and one other board member so there will be an opening for somebody who wants to join us there and um we're supposed to mainly talk about climate

2:03:15 issues and how it relates how um eweb and the city can work together but oftentimes we also just talk about other places where we overlap a lot of relationship building and keeping each other in the loop all right any last discussion items before we wrap up well um it's been a pleasure serving with you all i hope everybody has a really you know peaceful and relaxing end of year holiday season and with that uh we shall return thank you good night thank you it's been an interesting 2020.

2:04:06 yeah memorable