EWEB Board of Commissioners — March 2, 2021

0:07 all right everybody welcome to the march 2nd 2021 eweb board meeting um we are um calling the meeting to order and we will start with an agenda check so um i don't know we can start with um sonia anything that you would like to or i guess anybody does anybody have anything that they would like to change or comment on the agenda nope okay sorry didn't mean to put you on the spot as i said i'm a little fuzzy today so okay all right so there's nothing to change on the agenda then we will go on

0:52 to number two items from board members and the general manager so sonia i'm going to start with you also nothing to add make it short sweet great um john barofsky um nothing really to add i just want to say thank you to mindy for putting together the uh little uh work session or whatever we were calling it that we had last week i thought that was very informative and helpful and i wish i had some uh pita and and other things with me tonight but i don't but thank you again for that you're welcome john brown

1:37 thank you and i'd like to echo john b's sentiments about the the appropriateness of what you did i don't know if you had peter or not john i had it i totally had a great big rib eye and a steak and a baked potato and all that stuff i don't maybe they just got the wrong delivery at your place so i'll get there um the only thing i have is maybe as uh asking frank for maybe a reminder a refresher especially to our new commissioners about um where we sit in the liability issue and everything else because i know the board members of pacific gas and everything have all been named in lawsuits for the fires down in california and and they're they're going after individual board members and things and could you maybe give us at least me a refresher and if the other board members want to see it about what our liabilities are what our our

2:23 coverages are our legal defense if we have claims made you know when we go off the board if something happens now are we still liable three years from now could you kind of give us a summary of that just because it seems to be that the thing that uh some board members are getting blamed for things that are you know may or may not be in their control yeah um commissioner brown i can certainly follow up and do that i did ask legal counsel about three months ago for an update as to board member and executive liabilities associated with actions of the utility and so i have that information and it's fresh and i'll share that with the board thank you

3:12 all right matt anything that you would like to mention nothing for me thank you all right and my only thing is that um a couple weeks ago matt frank and i met with the city of eugene for our quarterly kind of check-in is what it's become now and i don't really have anything to report back from that but that meeting just happened and we continue to build that relationship frank yeah mindy were you gonna um actually mention the incident on the lieberg canal go ahead and do that and i i did not have anything to add i'll be talking plenty later about the state of the utility and so i don't have

3:57 anything to add at this point but i i knew you wanted to to add that yes so thank you for that reminder so um one thing that i wanted to do tonight was um to call out um uh one of our employees and um oftentimes we talk about how our employees go above and beyond and um usually it's in like the case of a storm or something like that um but we had an incident recently where there were a couple of women um who were uh going for a walk along the walterville canal and

4:44 um they one of their dogs fell in and one of our employees donnie whose last name is escaping me right now because i don't have it in front of me yeah it's mcglassen donnie mcglasson um was called over by a passerby they needed emergency help and um because of his quick thinking and his resourcefulness he was able to pull them out save them and their dog from the canal and um could have been a much worse situation and so we just want to appreciate our um we want to appreciate donnie and his quick thinking and what a wonderful employee he was or he is and um his heroic actions

5:32 i i did tease donny a little bit um president schlossberg because he saved the dog first before the women but apparently it was pretty much a package deal so um all safe and sound thanks to donnie's actions and very proud of him yes thank you donnie okay so um we are moving right along and we are at agenda item number three public input and i know that we have some some of our speakers here i'm not sure if everybody's here yet um when your name is called remember to unmute your call

6:17 press star six if you're calling from a landline or simply use the unmute button if calling from your cell phone please state your name and optionally your address reward and speak clearly into the telephone each speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony please keep track of time uh you'll hear an audio notification when three minutes has elapsed or if that audio notification doesn't happen i'll just kind of jump in after all testimony is heard each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if they so if they choose although by policy we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue 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

7:03 an eweb staff member will contact the speaker so that the question can be addressed at a later time so the public testimony period this meeting is now open and hang on to who we have first sorry i lost that thread um so first up we have david hausem hopefully i present i um pronounced your name right you just talked about how to pronounce it um and next up stephen anderson i'm not sure if he's here yet hello my name is david allison i live on flynn oak drive in southeastern 3570

7:49 glen o'drive i'm part of war 2 my wife pamela and pamela wright and i have lived in the u.s service area on and off since the mid 70s and in ward 2 since 1999. we have really three points real quickly one is we support the primary objective of this safe municipal water storage you and hillary we know that you know that's a vital thing for the community at large two we're pleased to hear that there is some engagement you know by the utility with local partners and possible restoration of some habitat there the oak pine savannah habitat that

8:35 primarily occupies that hillside and i probably won't have time in my three minutes but i have a third point that i it has to do with the elevation 607 and what i think might be the best kit one of the better kept secrets in eugene and possibly an overlooked opportunity for the board on the second point oak pine habitat together with our neighbors in the city of eugene we've maintained a small remnant patch of habitat in our little pocket park here called glen oak park and to do that that means we've eliminated duck birds from over topping the the ponderosas and the oak habitat mostly by turning them into snags

9:20 in our yard alone in 2003 and four we turned seven doug furs into snags including two with uh greater than 70 inch dbh in the 15 or more years since then we've seen those snags and the surrounding habitat provide great nesting and foraging for flickers and sap suckers and nut hatches and chickens and western grey squirrels the native gray squirrels a host of migrant species and in recent years western screech owls red shelter hawk and the cooper's hawk nested in the area and in december we had a great fox come through here and uh just last month we had a aaron

10:05 sydney nut hatch that somehow wound up here and set it over by sisters um on the ground or understory there's wild cameras fawn rollers and wildlife and this kind of asset but when we look out from our little patch on this hillside we see the 40th and hilliard hill over there we see the west side of tubman park as other places where some of this habitat exists i'm sure there's more places in in the this part of town but if we look closely at any of those nearly nearly all nearly all of them or all of them are being in some phase of being overtopped by duck bird trees and so to

10:52 wrap what i would i just want to interrupt really quickly your three minutes is up so if you wanna okay um so my final point we we believe that no patch is too small you know and when it comes to uh doing something for this habitat you know we would like to see a place like korea and haley would be a keystone for restoring some of that in this part of south eugene thank you thank you very much um i'm not sure if stephen anderson is here followed by sandra bishop oh great okay go ahead you are up yes uh my concern is what it's been uh

11:39 almost from the beginning which is that i hate to see eweb even considering cutting 260 trees for a single tank in this first go-round for a variety of reasons one of which is that i don't think that the surveys you've done are truly honest and by that i mean you could have asked from the beginning which is the most important whether we impact neighbors or put the tanks where they do the least impact and so if tank one is on site two it's going to be many fewer trees cut

12:24 that's first off and secondly much less excavation because it's a bit of a lower site so there's not going to be as much excavation to get the same result that will happen on site one also site one is right on top of my neighbor which i think is inexcusable on a site this big when the tank will not be built if if they cut all the trees for both tanks the second tank will won't be built for a decade and we need those trees we just had an article in the guard about the overstory of eugene the longer those trees can stay put the better for everything it's habitat it's quality of life in this area and i don't i don't know if you've

13:10 communicated to the neighbors but friends of mine who are engineers got to looking at how many dump truck loads it's going to take to excavate site one as opposed to site two and it's probably a thousand more truckloads on site one so we hate to see that not even mentioned anywhere in this and uh we think the a positive step was planting the trees on the slope i do hope that you've factored in some way to water them because this is an unforgiving climate up here which is why those those uh trees are actually fairly small compared to where they would be anywhere else in the willamette valley the other thing is you've been harping

13:56 on oak savannah and i want to reiterate those wolf trees the big pines and furs are part of oak savannah they always have been on these hilltops in the willamette valley any forester with a knowledge of history can confirm that so that's where we are we want you to cut 100 trees and put tank one on site two it makes the most sense for everybody thank you thank you very much all right next we have sandra bishop followed by jim moo hello this this is sandra um can you hear me yes okay hold on just like i've

14:43 got some headgear here um so my address is 4096 hillard street and i also am here to talk about the 40th and patterson hill uh water tank project um it's been really interesting to try to wrap my mind around why there's such a push to clearcat and and completely clear all of the forested area on on the eastern end and yes our house is at this end but i would not be speaking to the board if it weren't a mature old-growth forest grove that we're

15:29 talking about here so i would really appreciate if the commissioners would look at the sequestration of carbon what is locked up in this standing old growth on the site and there seems to be almost like it's being run as a as a pr campaign rather than a a major capital uh project there how can even make progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions when you're not even talking about the opportunities on a site like this you could be trading on the carbon credits value of this of the mature firm pines on this site and when when it first came up why would why would you need to clear the site for two

16:14 tanks when you're only going to build one the first response was well we needed for parking which was rather a kind of off-cuff response which is not true there's a there's the meadow with um that's going to be restored later with native grasses but it does not have native grasses now so there's plenty of parking that that's not really a an issue here but what's really important is that eweb honor its duty to safeguard the environment and preserve as much of this forested area on this site as possible along with providing adequate water storage facilities and i i would just say please be honest about it it's nobody is talking about specifics but please be honest about what the

16:59 engineers are proposing to do to quote prepare this site why is news going out just recently there was a registered guard article about tran planting trees on the south side of the hill which is wonderful but why is the news going out and it's not being corrected when it's said that two water tanks are to be built there's only one tank to be constructed now so why is that not made clear technically yes two tanks because you're talking about building one ten years down the road but be honest about it you're not going to build two tanks now and please don't use that as an excuse to clear cut the heart out of this forest grove when and then later come back and

17:46 say oh oh we changed our mind we don't have the money in the budget to build two tanks i sincerely doubt that there is enough blood money in the budget to construct two tanks right now so just really appreciate having more specifics how many trees are you talking about we've had foresters go up there and we've counted the trees you know we we have some idea but you are the experts you know you have all of that that information why are you not talking about how many trees what's your variety sorry to interrupt you sandra it's just your three minutes is up so if you just want to wrap up let me wrap up quickly but yeah so as many specifics as possible please don't let engineering decisions destroy

18:32 your legacy as our elected officials who we have put in there to really help us with climate protection so thank you thank you very much all right next up we have jim new followed by dylan plummer good evening the web commissioners can you hear me yes yes we can hear you we're all muted thank you i'm sorry thank you for the opportunity to speak uh my name is jim new i live in ward 7. and thank you cherish schlossberg for mentioning that you had the meeting with the city of eugene this is the intent of my testimony actually after the recent weather related power outages

19:17 in the nation's midsection the current administration's national climate advisor gina mccarthy stated and i quote the u.s needs systems of energy that are reliable and resilient we need to work together as much as possible unquote fortunately in the pacific northwest we have a high percentage of renewable energy predominantly hydro but it is not reliable and resilient the oregon state university climate impacts research consortium was quoted in the city of eugene climate action plan 2.0 that by 2050 the cascades will have no snowpack the lack of generation service from the lieberg walterville facilities equates to a loss of 9 to 13 megawatts a more diversified energy portfolio would make our sourcing more resilient

20:02 on friday the county climate advisory committee prioritized 100 percent renewable energy sourcing with a diversified portfolio of green energy development they discussed recommending lane county board of commissioners arrange a meeting with all the utilities in lane county to discuss getting to 100 percent renewable energy and zero emissions communication between the city county and the utilities is necessary to incorporate locally sourced diversified energy a significant percentage come from local commercial residential and community solar generation and green hydrogen storage to provide resiliency when weather events inhibit bpa sourced energy

20:47 a recent study shows oregon could produce one thousand percent of its current statewide electricity consumption from offshore wind according to the institute for local self-reliance we have a short eight years to increase energy diversity and resiliency folks in texas can attest to what can happen in the blink of an eye i thank you for your time tonight thank you very much um next up dylan plummer and then um we have james porter and his public testimony will be read by um joe harwood hello commissioners can you hear me yes we can hear you great thank you thank you for providing

21:34 this opportunity for public testimony and for your service to our city my name is dylan plummer and i'm the grassroots organizer with cascadia wildlands a regional environmental 501c3 organization i'm also a resident of ward 2 and a board member of the amazon neighborhood association i'm testifying tonight on behalf of cascadia wildlands and the fossil free eugene coalition an alliance of economic environmental and social justice organizations while you predict the public health and safety of our city and our climate from polluting fossil fuels as you may be aware our coalition has been organizing at the city level to advocate for climate action a ban on the construction of new fracked gas infrastructure and just broadly to push the city to be accountable to its 2016 climate

22:20 recovery or cro goals climate recovery ordinance schools as the climate crisis worsens our coalition believes it is of utmost importance for eweb to take measures to completely eliminate polluting fossil fuels from its energy portfolio and to lead in our city's efforts to create a just transition to clean renewable energy we expect that with the bold leadership of the commission our city will meet the goals of its climate recovery ordinance and transition to 100 renewable energy by the year 2030 in our buildings both residential and commercial and all of our electricity sourcing to do this we need the commission's commitment to meeting our city's energy needs with clean renewable energy as soon as possible through investments in local renewable generation projects constructed and operated with well-paid

23:06 union employees fortunately there have been exciting prospects for a major shift to clean and abundant renewable energy such as those mentioned by jim new earlier and studies have shown that renewable generation projects can provide invaluable stimulus to local economies and job markets stimulus that eugene desperately needs clean energy and energy efficient technologies are growing fast getting cheaper making them more accessible but to realize this latent potential we need the leadership of elected officials like yourselves implement these new technologies and help curb the impacts of the climate crisis on our community particularly those most vulnerable the fossil free eugene coalition is dedicated to the framework of a just transition and when making the move away from fossil fuels we believe it is imperative to center

23:51 the historically marginalized communities and workers that are the front lines of this crisis black indigenous and people of color communities in eugene deserve clean air and water in and outside of their homes low-income households and renters deserve to have access to renewable climate-safe energies workers and industries that will be impacted by the transition deserve good-paying union jobs in the emerging green economy as such our coalition requests that the eweb commission pass a resolution that lays out clear goals in support of a more equitable and fossil free eugene specifically we hope that the commission will voice its support to reach 100 renewable energy in its portfolio by 2030 increase energy generation to levels to comfortably replace the current energy use of fracked gas on

24:37 our grid and invest in local union-built and operated renewable energy generation projects to fuel a just transition away from fossil fuels our city and its publicly owned utility have a historic opportunity to lead the efforts to address the climate crisis i hope that the commissioners on this board will choose to support the climb bold climate action that our city and our planet so desperately needs and that is widely supported by its residents thank you so much for your time and for your service thank you dylan all right last up james porter uh has a statement that's going to be read by joe harwood uh james porter uh he did not provide an address or a ward

25:22 he is an eweb customer and this is in regard to the east 40th avenue water storage project put the first tank in the center of the property rather than on the east end to save the biggest portion of large trees okay so um that is all of our public testimony public input people that's everyone that signed up so um the public testimony period for this meeting is now closed and now commissioners have an opportunity to comment if they so choose

26:08 so i don't know if someone wants to raise their hand to go first or just want me to i don't like to call on people randomly it kind of puts you on the spot so sonia i think i see your hand kind of going up so go ahead well appreciate the testimony tonight um as always i would like to hear um i know that we are meeting um tomorrow to go through some more of the uh the work on the 40th site so i think many of my questions that come out of this will be answered tomorrow hopefully um but i mean my understanding was that engineering is still working on it that there is a design there's a number of different designs and potential proposals that they've still been reviewing

26:53 so my understanding is that part of part of the reason that they haven't you know given a clear path is that they're still working on it um so you know if frank or others could confirm that i would greatly appreciate it uh jim always a pleasure to hear from you and get your feedback on resiliency and climate change issues i uh i too think that there and and others who brought up the the climate change issues um jim is just in my ward so i've heard from him a number of times anyway uh absolutely focused on that um i know that we have a number of big contracts that are coming up um particularly around um bpa in 2028 because that is

27:39 both bpa and then on the market purchases market purchases are particularly where we get uh most of our uh climate impact because the resources that we own directly are more renewable resources so uh you know obviously we we have been it well obviously but we have been in conversations about you know how do we eke out that last um what like 10 and under of that is really uh has more of a climate change uh impact or a carbon impact um of sorts and that last little bit is is a big push because it's typically market purchases um where we get that so anyway uh look forward to continuing that conversation

28:25 it's always something that we've been focused on um as far as the time that i've been on the board so we'll continue to do that thank you great are there any other commissioners that would like to comment at this time you can just raise your hand i can see you go ahead matt thanks um just uh on the water tanks uh echoing sonia's comments that looking we are looking forward to learning my eye i'll speak for myself i'm looking forward to learning more about that project tomorrow we have some time with staff to learn more about it so hopefully we can get a better sense of the issues that are being brought up and how the the engineering

29:11 team is approaching those so um i'm looking forward to having that soon um on the other end in terms of climate action uh i agree with the jim and dylan that um there is an opportunity here um and i think um i think that we'll we'll be having conversations about exactly that over the next several months i think um i think the the board will be taking steps that will chart a path towards getting us our community um closer to a target of being off off in fossil fuels so thank you for your comments all right anybody else have a comment on

29:56 that frank i see you raising your hand yes thanks commissioners i always appreciate the public testimony even though there's times when i disagree with portions of it i think our staff has been incredibly transparent with the neighbors up around east 40th and there are some design elements that that we are still finalizing we just received the ecological report and we're going through that we're trying to finalize tank placements for both tank 1 and tank 2. and and to be real honest i have asked staff to evaluate whether it makes more sense if we're going to need both tanks whether we have two large disruptions or

30:43 whether we just do it all at the same time and i have asked them to put together that assessment looking at the benefits of having to do it once or twice and understanding that there's uh benefits and there's drawbacks so i've i've asked staff to look at both of those and we'll be discussing that with the board so we are trying to be as environmentally conscious as we can in in that but we also have to make sure that we're providing the best water services that we can to the community as as for the comments on renewable energy i actually look forward to one of these

31:28 meetings i'd like to give the board maybe it's a work session a little bit of overview of where i see renewables in the northwest and in the western region i think that it would be prudent although most of the resource decisions that need to be made by eweb are beyond the the the tenure of this board i think that there are some principles of which we would uh discuss regarding uh the future of those uh of of those resources and so um look forward to that i don't think it's as simple as all renewables by 2030. um i think uh renewables mean different things um as does the term fuel or fossil fuels

32:14 and so i think it's there's a lot of trade-offs with reliability there's a lot of trade-offs with affordability we are the only organization that is chartered with being safe reliable affordable and environmentally responsible and we take all those things very seriously so i i look forward to working with the board on that and developing a set of principles thanks frank all right john or john anybody else have anything to say okay well i just want to thank everybody for their public testimony i know that i think i've said this before but this format is not very easy especially when you're talking and you can't really see us so i appreciate that people are showing up

32:59 for it um and now we are going to move on to board action item number four which is approval of consent calendar a i'd like to pull number two just for a question okay john borowski did you have something to say yeah i was going to say i have a question about that one as well okay so do we talk about that one now or do we approve the rest and then talk about that i'll move to approve the rest second all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye aye okay

33:45 and so now we talk about item two yeah um my question was just about it's a 42-inch transmission made through the university's riverfront property so when it says extension that you know i think i get capacity and why would we pay for that if sdc fees are designed for capacity expansions yeah commissioner brown um i can't tell you the specific question about

34:35 um between so there's two two pipes that come across so it's part of our transmission resiliency project so we can swap between the two sources that come across the river uh and so we're expanding the transmission system for the resiliency and and alternate ability to feed from several ends so we can expand the um the ability to to use the the new reservoirs and and some of those things so is that kind of the answer or the question or i was going to jump in just for a second john i would answer your question by saying this is more of a resiliency um project as opposed to a capacity project all i need to hear just kidding thank you

35:23 john borowski did you have a different question about that well i guess i was confused as to what item number one or number two was i my question was on the northwest youth core contract um so that's coming next okay that's consent calendar yeah okay thank you all right so did that clear up what you needed john brown yeah and i'll move to adopt uh item number two on conquest consent calendar a so any seconds all right all those in favor say aye hi hi great all right item number five approval of consent calendar b so john brofsky this is where you would

36:08 pull that one i moved to pull the northwest youth corps contract all right okay um and the resolutions are part of no they're not part of the consent calendar okay so the remainder of the consent calendar be absent item number three there uh there are a second to that second all those in favor say aye aye all right bye all right john what is your question about the

36:53 northwest youth corps uh i guess my only question on that was i know that we're having the northwest youth court do a bunch of work upriver on the recovery would that be a separate contract that we would probably see forward or is that getting rolled in because it seems like this one is just an ongoing vegetation one and i know that they're doing a lot of good work for us on the stream corner restoration rod would you like me to take that one yeah please thank you okay so we've had a long-term relationship with the northwest youth corps and we do have an ongoing as needed contract with them this contract that we've negotiated includes both that ongoing as needed work plus the restoration work up river

37:43 and we feel that the same amount of funding is going to be adequate as in years past so um i believe i'd have to go back and double check the numbers but i believe that we did increase it to cover the additional work okay great thank you i just wanted to make i know they're doing good work up there and i just wanted to make sure that there was enough funding then thank you all right all those in favor say aye all right great moving right along to board item number seven which is resolution number 2105 the water o

38:29 m budget amendment fee and resolution number 2106 the watershed recovery fee and i believe that's deborah hart good evening president swasberg and commissioners we are here this evening uh with a water own and budget amendment and watershed recovery free fee presentation um i've done a lot of talking over the last few months so i'm actually going to hand it off to adam rue and ben sachdeva thank you deborah for you go the next time

39:15 uh so this table is a summary of the cost for the watershed restoration restoration actions identified in the february board memo and discussion at that time the 2021 column that's highlighted reflects the budget amendment being proposed for this year and we're requesting approval of that today the details of the spending actions can be just found in the february memo and it's my understanding that carl's available if there's more detailed questions about those actions so the board has made significant efforts in recent years to maintain affordable rates to provide headroom to make these investments in watershed restoration these affordability efforts include cost control budget monitoring and debt restructuring strategic use of

40:00 reserves to pay down debt and other obligations and this allowed us to maintain low rates for our customers we continue to monitor affordability and review our bills as compared to median household income and comparable utilities in the region and this fee maintains our position among the utilities as you'll see in a chart uh coming next uh the proposed fee covers the risk and resiliency measures on the chart should the board decide to pursue the strategic measures we'll look to other funding sources such as reserves green bonds and partnerships with others in the region i'll now turn it over to ben to her senior financial analyst ben sachdeva to discuss

40:45 the structure and impact of the fee this is ben's first time presenting to the ewe board and he came to us from the finance department of the city of aspen colorado he's at covet hire and has joined us in the last year it's been a great addition to the team so i'll turn it over to ben thank you adam and good evening commissioners um so to uh in order to fund the operating costs associated with the risk and resiliency work from the previous slide we are proposing a watershed recovery fee this table outlines the proposed fee that would be applicable to all eweb retail customers the proposed fee scales up by meter size to account for potential higher usage the intention is to blend principles of basic and volumetric rate making in the proposed fee watershed recovery

41:31 costs will be applied to wholesale customers based on their individual contracts details are still being discussed and will be brought to the board for approval when finalized the proposed fee will be temporary in place for five years from the month it goes into effect at which point it will sunset without further board action this will allow eweb time to recover the annualized costs incurred over the five years of the plan which is 2.4 million per year from e-web retail and wholesale customers for a total of 12 million dollars based on board direction the 10-year financial plan will include funding for the additional strategic work of 17 million dollars through a combination of reserves and potential green bond issuances next slide please

42:20 so this graph shows the impact to our typical residential customer as you can see we maintain our position relative to our comparators in terms of affordability with the proposed watershed recovery fee included as adam mentioned the water utilities focus has been on affordability over the past several years which is uh how we've managed to maintain our position on the low end of this graph next slide please oh one one one thing to note um on the previous slide apologies um 95 of our residential customers are in the one inch or below class uh and thus would see a a three dollar increase to their bill per month all right next slide this is the same case for commercial customers um 65

43:05 of general service customers are on a one inch or smaller meter and 95 of general service customers are on a two inch or smaller meter so with that i'll pass it back to adam thank you ben uh so yeah so we're requesting approval of resolution 2105 and 2106 to approve budget to spend on water watershed restoration activities and a fee to fund these expenditures so the last slide for questions or comments all right looks like john brown let's hand up right away go ahead yeah thank you and welcome benjamin good presentation thank you

43:50 um just a couple questions about equitability i know that you said that the wholesale people are going to get it later but so we we supply to the city of anita river road water district and all these other water districts will am a water company a private company and they've got thousands and thousands of customers and and you know i can handle the three bucks a month but i want to make sure it's fair that if i have 20 000 people in in river road or if i have 25 000 and bonita are they all going to pay the same per household or are we just going to charge bonita or river road water district or one of the willamette water district how are we going to make sure that this is fair and equitable that everybody that's benefiting from this effort is paying for it thanks it's a good question and it's

44:36 been a topic of a lot of conversation and internally we have specific contracts with those wholesale customers so we've been going through the contracts and working with the um the partners as well uh the water districts for example are looking to kind of mimic our surcharge of the three dollars per residential customer at the one and so uh neighbors that might be having different water providers see the same thing on their bill to kind of make sure that it's equitable in that way but in terms of our um cost allocation we do you know have a cost of service methodology that is currently in place under our contracts to make sure that we recover equitably the costs of um of this for all of the contract customers so we're kind of working with them to make sure that it's equitable for customers that are

45:22 our neighbors and looking at their bills maybe looking at their bills next to each other but also making sure that all of the contracts are um are being allocated that their share of the costs will be bringing back um any of those things to the board though before we made adjustments to the rates of those customers who will be able to provide feedback at that time as well this is a follow-up so these revenue projections don't include if i have another 10 or 20 000 customers that would be paying three dollars a month uh because their river road oakway uh willamette water and all those bonita these revenue projections don't include that revenue is that correct so if they come under the same guidelines that the that i do or all the

46:08 commissioners do that would substantially increase this revenue is that correct no actually we've included the revenue from those because we uh have the rights under the contract to pass through the cost of those customers so whether we do it in the manner the exact same with the three dollars per customer or if it just goes through as a part of their base rates that they're paying as a water district customer um either way they're paying their their fair share so we've included okay so i'd sorry to be so revenue so if riverworld water district has a thousand uh retail customers are we going to get uh three thousand dollars a month from riverwood water district in this in the in this budget is is that is that is that money from those thousand customers at river road included in this revenue generation

46:55 correct it is yes so we've already budgeted in a retail amount for all our wholesale customers okay okay thank you thank you um so my my question is is kind of on the other end it's on the spending side um i know that when i've been involved with task oriented fees or taxes with other local government agencies and stuff there's been a a tracking mechanism you know we're charging you we're we're asking you to give us three

47:40 dollars a month to help up river restoration and i'm just wondering if is there a mechanism for us to track the results it says this money is going into this fund this year we spent you know five hundred thousand dollars on stream court or other is there a mechanism in place to do that type of tracking back to the board i.e back to our customers saying this is how the money was spent and it was spent in the way that we represented it to when we imposed it that's a good question and yes we do have a tracking mechanism in place and these funds will only be spent on watershed restoration so will that be something

48:27 that will come back on a yearly type of a report to us or how how will we see that and track that uh we can report back to the board in whatever way is useful or meaningful maybe as a part of our quarterly report yeah and we can attach it to the any information that carl provides about the work that he is doing yeah again that's just something that i would like to see i've seen it in other things you know at the city of eugene we've got a street bond repair uh committee that looks and they say yeah you're supposed to fix this many streets and here here's the streets we fixed and so you know if we're saying yeah we're trying and i think that that goes shows

49:12 good faith to our customers saying we're charging you this money to to rehabilitate our watershed and we did this and this and this and i don't think it has to be quarterly but maybe on an annual basis would be helpful for me um commissioner barofsky i'll just step in and say a lot of the projects you would see categorized under the quarterly report but then probably at least an annual reconciliation of here's here's the revenue that was generated and here's the specific allocation of those funds um i think that that seems to be a pretty good mix of of uh activity and accountability and transparency to the community thank you

49:59 sonya two questions one um well three i guess if you count this but can you please go back up to the slide that shows the timeline for the funds that right there thank you okay so we have over the course of this there's a large jump up in 2023. what what is the strategic portion of this project in 2023 that has this large bump up and how does a steady i'm assuming that over the course of it we have the steady fee and then we build up the amount and

50:45 then it we have enough built by 2023 to cover it for this project but i'd like to know a little bit more about what that project what why that particular bump there so so commissioner carlson i i guess i would i would weigh in just real quickly and and say that the fee itself is is mostly if not fully covering risk-based and resiliency work this year there's a little bit of strategic if we get into the the large strategic you know the 10 million 5 million that would typically be covered with bonds or some other kind of financing and would be very specific a lot of that might be land acquisition for example or other things that would be large chunks of opportunities but this funding method is really

51:32 designed for the risk-based and resiliency categories okay so tonight if we vote on these resolutions we're not committing to the other portions of the strategic plan there will be other feedback and input there that's correct yeah okay great because the way it was outlined it was a little it was a little unclear to me sorry about that um and then just from a process perspective typically when we do uh rate and and kind of budget changes we have to have two meetings two public meetings why does this is it just because it's a fee and not a rate change that we don't have to have two meetings with uh samuel nano notice

52:19 yeah we have a so the reason that we have the two public hearings is really going back to a purpa which is an electric utility legislation that we're conforming with we notice both water and electric utilities when we do those we did check with our um general counsel just to confirm that there wasn't any other statutory requirements and got the advice that we're able to move forward on the uh water utility fee and this would just be a board preference and and the public noticing requirements that we do for um board meetings and agenda setting and and the public comment period is covering any requirements we might have statutorily so okay is there is there another precedent

53:04 for this because this would be the first time in my you know my term in the board that we would actually be voting to to increase fees and you know i just is that something that that we typically do in just one meeting um i i understand the legal uh legal says that we can do it but i guess my question is should we do it um should we provide that other feedback for another month to just do our due diligence there and give the community public proper public feedback if they choose to take it uh commissioner carlson i think that maybe the closest um and it was unilateral board action previously when we made the decision to start a fund for the second drinking water

53:52 source um i don't i don't recall specifically what the notification was for that but i know that the board acted unilaterally in creating that fund and and so there is precedent for this and and there's also some other utilities that have created fees as well but i don't know what their notification has been okay okay those are my questions for now i may have others after others ask all right matt do you have any questions yeah just one quick question thank you commissioner schlossberg um my question is about low-income households and i know we already have programs in place to

54:38 protect low-income households from you know from water expenses becoming too too exorbitant for their income can you just remind us what programs we have in place and then confirm that those will remain in place and will cushion anybody who can't afford this additional fee thanks so we're currently offering customers who meet the qualifications 260 dollars once a year to their utility bill so that covers both electric and water we are working with customer solutions to see if there may be an opportunity to potentially offset a portion of this for impacted

55:25 low-income households yeah i wonder if those households that qualify for that 260 dollars if we might just waive this additional fee for those particular households typically we would who's talking frank go ahead yeah i was just gonna say typically administratively uh commissioner mccray it would be more advantageous to keep the fee and provide um some extra customer care dollars than it would be to get into situations where you're waiving fees

56:10 um sort of unilaterally or for specific reasons so it's it it's much more beneficial and and easier to administrate and probably more effective in the long run to keep the fee and then provide customer assistance where necessary and and we are looking at potentially uh adding a little bit of a kicker to our 260 dollars uh for those because to partially offset this understood yeah and the administrative tool exactly isn't as important to me as just us trying to avoid putting people further underwater uh swear no pun intended um but yeah i i would be in support of um taking some administrative action to make sure that this

56:55 isn't added to the bills of people who are already qualifying for support yeah i i think commissioner it's fair to say that we could have something in place before this goes effective well one of the consequences of going last in the queue is that all of your questions get asked so um i did have some questions and they were already asked and answered um i don't know if people have further questions sonya you kind of indicated that you had some more questions um i i guess i'm i'm still puzzling over it a little bit it sounds like i'm not hearing any other comments from

57:40 commissioners that nobody else has concern about how holding in two meetings i didn't get any head nods there so i guess i'll withdraw my concern um the last question that i had was around um when we've looked at low income uh kind of issues before and how it relates to the uh water and electric utility we've we've noted that there's some kind of correlations that don't really match up um that that kind of we think that they should match up but then they really don't in in that um and and i'm wondering if the rate retail fee um if there's any correlation there

58:26 between kind of the size of the the meter size and the unit that's being hooked up i mean do we have do we have any sense of whether or not there are you know what are the types of uh homes and such that are actually on these much larger meters were there any that were really oversized that are in you know areas that may actually be more low income and that may get a bigger hit than just the three dollars well so the for the residential customers uh as ben mentioned like 95 of the residential accounts are at the one inch so the three dollar fee uh larger service typically wouldn't be related um so much to the what's going on inside the house as what might be outside extensive uh

59:13 irrigation or some kind of um uh some kind of agricultural use that might be in a residential application so a one-inch meter should presumably cover that a lot of um apartment or like multi-unit houses uh residences would presumably um not be individually metered at a higher uh meter size if it was individually metered it would be typically the owner that or the landlord that would be paying the water bill and you know passing it through in rates but it wouldn't be an individual a residential account necessarily seeing that a larger meter um except for those kind of larger usage that's probably outdoor irrigation okay so if there's an apartment complex

59:58 of sorts typically that would there if it had a larger meter obviously that would be spread among all of the different users at the you know maybe at the 10 inch rate but it's 30 divided by you know 30 apartments maybe it's not just like 30 per apartment yeah and those apartments wouldn't be e-web water customers that the landlord would be the e-web customer to be paying the fee okay i just wanted to double check and make sure that there you know weren't and and i'm assuming if there are particular situations where somebody is hit then we can come back and we can you know modify as need be if there's you know an unattended consequence of this that you know particular people are hindered in a way that they that wasn't the you know the outcome that we intended so

1:00:44 all right thank you that's all the questions i had thank you um yeah so i guess i have a a comment and a question um so my comment is when that when i saw this on the on the board agenda and after last month's meeting um i just did you know a little survey amongst people that i'm at you know i said what would your thoughts be on a three dollar fee and i explained to them what it was going for and almost universally everybody said no i i think that that's a good thing i didn't get anybody that said oh no that's a terrible thing so that's just a little anecdotal

1:01:30 thing because this is the first time as a commissioner i've had to deal with any sort of a rate increase or rate issue so i wanted to do a little bit of due diligence and say well customers what do you think um so with that being said i'm i'm in favor of this definitely the question that i had was when i saw the the packet today and and saw well it's uh if you have a one inch line it's this much if you have a two inch line it's this much i didn't know what size lines i had so i've got a residential one i assumed that that was a one inch line but then i have a small commercial you know building that i pay e-web at and i don't know what size line

1:02:17 i have at that and i don't i don't even know where i would find out what size line i have and how much that's gonna be done so i don't know if we need to do outreach to the community to say hey you know these are the type of people that are gonna have more than three dollars or not i don't know if my restaurant's got a two inch line if it's got a five inch line i don't know these things and i would have no idea where to look to find that so i would be one it'd be nice to know how i can find that out well yeah commissioner borowski i think i think there's going to be plenty of outreach between now and the

1:03:02 the time of implementation including some of those comments and questions um i i think what our what our attempt was was to balance between creating a fee and also having at least some tied to the volumetric component without directly making it a volumetric rate which classifies it differently we will do plenty of outreach we wanted to wait and i know this was part of the presentation until some of our self-service billing changes took place we didn't want to change everything all at the same time and so um a lot of out there will be a lot of outreach over the next couple of months to prepare for any kind of fee like this so and by the way i think quite a few of

1:03:48 the commissioners have never dealt with a rate increase or a fee increase um either luckily um but i have a feeling that's that's going to change um so um all right matt or john brown do either of you have any other questions all right so this is a resolution it's an action item so we are needing a motion and a vote i'll move to adopt uh resolution two one zero five and two one zero six second all right all those in favor say aye

1:04:35 aye aye aye all right that passed those both paths um we are now on agenda item number eight advanced metering infrastructure program background and update and i just want to say that rod i think you get the award for the best background this month thank you i i have to credit gary lynch he's the fleet supervisor he provided this photograph of salt creek so um hats off to him uh well good evening and thanks for the photo compliment um

1:05:23 for the record i'm rod price and with me is simara khalsa who is our ami strategic program manager we're here tonight to get you updated on the ami program and talk a bit more about what's coming in the program i just want to take a quick minute though and thank callie curtis and rachel chilton for uh for helping with the graphics with this presentation and making us look good i'd also like to thank all the the many employees that have been involved in this project over the last three years this is really a big team effort and i was actually thinking earlier how am i going to convey or how simmering am i going to convey a project this big in 10 15 minutes but here we go i guess so next slide please quick agenda check this is just for information and status only

1:06:09 i think i get to give you some context with some of the things we may approach the board with uh coming up and just kind of give you an idea where we're at for this project uh so i'll do a quick you know ymi kind of thing and talk about the uh do a quick financial overview and then simra who's the the been managing the program we'll give a uh update on the progress we've made today and what's coming up so next slide please so the question is why are we doing ami well uh the the real answer here is that it applies directly to our strategic plan and you're probably familiar with the plan and of course we'll be talking about it more in some upcoming sessions but in essence the the goal is to drive towards you know our

1:06:54 integrated sources uh in in flexible and resilient water and electric delivery right to get to that end goal uh we're working on increasing our customer confidence and creating consumption flexibility our plan is to update and modernize our technologies and business process to get us to these goals modernizing our meeting metering system is the key tool to achieving the first two stages of the strategic plan next slide please do a little history lesson here personally i've been involved with smart meters since 2001 but the the modern era for eweb got started around 2013 when the board approved to move forward with an opt-in system now opt-in

1:07:41 which leaves the choice of the meter in the customer hands is not necessarily the standard deployment method uh across the industry with opt-in we expect it to deploy about 30 to 40 000 meters in 2017 the board adopted a more standard methodol deployment methodology called opt out so we quickly realized that opt out would be critical to the ability for us to create consumption flexibility so in the fall of 2017 the board approved the full deployment of approximately 150 000 meters and the goal was to get those installed

1:08:26 by 2025 and then as we talked about things and to better understand our loads and improve our electric planning the board in late 2018 approved an accelerated electric meter deployment with the target of having all customers installed by the end of 2021 so after about 18 months of experience installing smart meters we slowed down the install process and deployment process in 2020 to lay some of the foundations to scale up both the deployment and the related systems for data and remote reads simran will actually cover the the 2020 work in a little bit more detail here in a bit but um we have realized

1:09:12 a number of benefits today so next slide please just wanted to give you a quick overview of where we're at with finances when you have made the decision to accelerate the full deployment in 2017 our projected budget was around uh 32 million and it was based on mostly on the opt-in model by 2018 we'd made the decision to accelerate deployment we had revised some of the cost estimates to up to about 36 million during the 2020 scale up last year we took a very detailed look at our final cost projections you know and along with the experience we've gained and all the things we had to do to scale up and revise the final cost to be around 44 million now that's total

1:09:59 between both water and electric much of the additional eight million in costs or added costs has come from um additional meters the changes to the meters and then also the contract deployment we're going to employ to make sure we get the electric meters installed by the end of 2021 so i'm going to turn it over to simran now and she's going to tell you the real good details thank you rod good evening commissioners general manager lawson customers and staff my name is simrat kalsa strategic program manager the focus of the ami program this past year

1:10:44 has been several cross-functional projects ensuring that the work we do is aligned with eweb strategic plan and to move us towards these goals as you are aware the four projects under the ami program are smart meter deployment ami facilities is improvements and meter to cache process improvements we've been working to ensure that we understand the critical path dependencies between the projects and execute accordingly so in 2021 our messaging from 2018 still stands the bullet points you see before you were shared at that time and are still core to our ami work

1:11:29 so what does a path to this look like my next slide please thank you over the next couple of years we will continue to set the groundwork for that future vision the fundamental work is taking place now with the installation of smart meters ensuring that our ami facilities and is systems are scaled appropriately and working on operational process improvements driven by these changes this work is the foundation to developing these products and services and supports the end goals of customer choice and control enhanced resiliency and providing the data and information needed for future decision making

1:12:18 as we get into this year and next we will look towards what we need to have in place to provide these benefits moving along the timeline from tactics to strategy to vision the data evidence and certainty we have increases over time we work will continue to identify dependent projects such as cis the cei customer portal and possibly more slide please thanks in 2020 despite slowing down deployment the program was very busy just over a year ago we were able to get together to brainstorm all the places that ami touches our metered cash processes

1:13:03 that was soon before many of us shifted to working remotely due to the pandemic little did we know how things would change as the year progressed the mi program team adjusted our working methods to still proceed but in new ways allowing for social distancing and working remotely i can say that i'm really looking forward to getting back to a new normal being able to return to the office at some point to work with our great team face to face again with plug and play we made improvements to our systems to allow for more streamlined meter installation process the time it takes field staff to install electric meters

1:13:48 is greatly improved with this change the map that you see in the center is from our rni system the radio network interface is the bridge from smart meters to other is systems it continuously gathers and processes network data sending it to our customer information and billing systems the rni upgrade gave us a greater level of visibility to our network coverage from each meter on up to overall system health i've highlighted the coverage of the new facility sites installed recently spring creek and green delta and orange and crest in blue we will continue to work with our vendor to tune the network

1:14:34 through the year as we deploy meters we will also start shortly to engage upa utility partners of america to make the last push to install single-phase electric meters all that preparatory work was taking place last year the primary focus for 2021 is on smart meter installations to meet this goal upa will be here in april their scope will be residential single phase electric meters internal staff will continue to install electric 3-phase and some single-phase meters we've examined the existing policies and

1:15:20 recommended changes to be more clear on customer options to support full deployment we will continue to build out network facilities this year based on recommendations from the vendor census and what we can see in the upgraded rni we have three more sites scoped out for installation and upgrade this year to be ready for full deployment another area we're focusing on is improving transition operations utilizing change management best practices the team is identifying how ami changes the work that we do and working with staff on how best to make those changes we're really trying to be thoughtful and

1:16:06 proactive with transitions to ensure a solid future when each project closes out learning from past experiences and using continuous improvement and change management practices help us to do better managing transitions well ensures a solid future as each customer is upgraded they are operational for our four core smart meter services as deployment scales up continue continuous improvement is applied to our delivery of these services electric deployment is on track to complete in early 2020

1:16:51 scaling up deployment efforts with the upa allows us to meet this timeline as opposed to how we might have without their assistance as shown at the dot with the dotted line water meter deployment is on a steadier pace with internal staff doing that work we're on target for completing the end of 2023 we are having ongoing discussions on how best to support internal staff with that effort as we look on past meter deployment we can see that completing meter installations allows us to plan for products and services for our customers and the data and information for us to

1:17:37 make future decisions installing meters is one small part of the whole picture it really is the beginning and not the end so that concludes our ami program update and with that i open the floor for questions comments and discussion and thank you all right anybody have any any questions or anyone want to go first go ahead john thank you i hate to go first all the time but i'll try i say just a quick quick question rod um

1:18:24 i noticed that on like in downtown on my block uh the meters in my building are the water meters are smart because i can see the census uh transponder on the top of the meter but the ones uh on the other half of my block have not been changed i see the manual reader on there why would they only do part of a block and not the rest of it if we all pretty much have the same vintage meters and everything in the water ah boy that's a that's a detailed complicated question but in essence we it depends uh uh they plan these out by routes um and so um it's almost i'd have to dig out the particulars if you're blocked no i it's just one was wondering if there was maybe uh there's not an opt

1:19:09 out on you know because the building has smart meters and and uh but but they don't have they didn't put the water meter uh census in because they're you can tell they don't watch them manually read them now right no our opt-out load is our opt out um level is very low so it's more like a scheduling thing where they've done it by routes and by um by programs and those kind of things for efficiencies and meter reading and such all right thank you mr brown i i would i might also add that in the case of water meters um there is a difference between the transponder on the meter box itself and whether there's an actual smart meter in the box and so

1:19:56 but i think um mr price is right the intent will be to actually schedule these according to route and be efficient but sometimes there's a little bit of confusion as to the meter box versus the meter inside and so we we might need to verify that for you no they just had the transponders on half of them on the top and they don't have the transponders on the plates on the others and i just saw him there manually reading them uh some of them i just was wondering why we would do that but i think you've tried to explain it thank you

1:20:47 thank you uh um thank you for the presentation and the information that was provided in the packet uh gave me a a good history lesson on on where you've been and where you've come from uh the question i had was on the you know the financial update so that was back a few slides and it's you know it started off the project initiation in 2018 initial scope budget was about 31 million dollars and then 2019 it was 35 million dollars and then the current one we're at 44 million dollars and i understand that you know we made changes and went from opt-in to opt out and we brought in a contractor to help you know get the meters in on time and that i understand that that's how those

1:21:33 uh budgets have uh swelled i'm just wondering if you can foresee anything else that may shoot that budget up exponentially like like it has been in the past i mean we're up 13 million dollars from 2018 to now so it seems like you've figured out most of the contingency and we're nearing the finish line but are are we going to be looking in 20 21 22 that that 40 million 44 million is now 50 million or have we pretty much gotten most of the uh the heavy lift out of the way i'm i'm going to say we got mostly heavy lift out of the way but i also know that simret uh there is a few things hanging

1:22:18 out there and so uh you want to take a we since we talked about this why you go ahead and answer it yeah so we have a couple of project managers that are working on the various projects and we are doing more detailed projections through to the end of 2023 at this point so i feel that uh you know i don't foresee any huge um uh unknowns out there i mean of course there's always some unknowns but i feel like at this point there's not as many by far as there were say even two three years ago and one other point i

1:23:03 thought i would make is these figures are from 2014 forward so it wasn't that we just started in 2018 and we've spent all that money since then yeah thank you i understand i understood that with the with the background of it and and i saw where the increases came you know through board actions and well-informed decisions and i was just like i said i just was wondering if there's any anything that you saw that was like well you know there's one more thing you know the smart the water smart meters we may not be able to put them in ourselves and we may have to contract those as well you know things like that that have come

1:23:48 up on the other side i just wanted to check and see if we're looking for a another big hit that's all i was asking a little bit to say that i think the biggest variable that we were wrestling with over the last couple years when we went from opt-in to opt-out the scale of which we had to deploy and the scale of which we needed the radio network interface and the and all of the support systems behind the scene wasn't foreseen under an opt-in approach and so just that scaling of it

1:24:36 was a big driver behind the move from opt-in and to to opt out but it drove a lot of things that maybe when we were in the opt-in mode did not foresee um i'm i'm glad to hear we don't foresee any any big things out there i think there's a sense of urgency on the electric side the water side doesn't have quite the same sense of urgency when it comes to the need for new products and the integration of renewables for example so i can i'm pretty comfortable with the pace difference between water and electric and and i think you you heard it from the project manager and the chief operating officer that that they're pretty comfortable with those numbers

1:25:22 i i think one thing too though i guess i should throw out a caveat upriver is not part of this budget so that that could be a a different a new decision coming up and it but it's never been part of the budget to this point yeah that's correct sonia uh do you think that it it will be then your your rod you're kind of foreshadowing that there may be a decision that but my understanding before was that the technology itself was limiting is there new technology that would make it so that we actually could put these in a river yep yeah there's

1:26:07 there is some options we're looking at um i mean we could there's two or three different options so uh it um but i think right now we're really concentrating on the scope at hand which is to deploy the meters in town okay and commissioner carlson that that would be a that would definitely be a separate decision we would bring to the board the if the technology is different because you have now a treed forestry foresty environment it might be a different system altogether but that would definitely be something that would we would bring to the board as a separate decision

1:27:07 no questions for me thanks um thanks for the presentation and the materials very helpful um i don't have any questions either so i think unless there's anyone else that wants another go-around um i think that we are done with that action or that item so thank you for your presentation thank you everyone good night all right so now we are at a break and um we're just two minutes early but why don't we just stay on our schedule and we will break until 7.05 see you all back in seven minutes

1:34:33 yet give it like 30 more seconds all right so just to make sure that we stay on track of time we're going to get started again and we are on um agenda item number 10 date of the utilities draft in the 2020 year-end strategic and operational reports from frank well president schlossberg good evening commissioners i've actually been looking forward to this this evening and reporting out the results of the utility as well as the

1:35:18 traditional state of the utility address which by tradition has been done by a commissioner but it made actually a little more sense to have me report out to the condition of the utility to the commissioners and so that's a little bit of a variant this year and go ahead with the next slide as part of the formality i've recorded this um for this portion of it and then i'll get into a lot more details uh supporting details for the results of 2020. so and if you want to go ahead and start it um i'll sit tight and that commissioners can enjoy the state of the utility address

1:36:05 pump station enhancements and customer building requests the water utility started from the beginning good evening president schlossberg commissioners employees and members of the public i am here to report the state of your utility is healthy that word has intentional meaning this year because it reflects the utility's condition in the context of the worldwide pandemic that impacted 2020 and challenged our community even when healthy you can feel good or bad from time to time but your general condition a result of your history diligence and hard work and good habits is strong e-web is indeed healthy a pandemic

1:36:51 major wildfire economic challenges cyber attacks along with social and political unrest tested our community and our utility in 2020. sadly people in our community have suffered struggled to cope spoken out in anger and frustration or with empathy and praise and even died because of the events of this past year if struggle both builds and reveals character it did both for e-web in 2020. as an organization while these conditions challenged our finances and systems they mostly tested our people eweb's employees and our board but we were able to

1:37:36 respond and respond we did this month marks the one-year anniversary of eweb's first executive stay-at-home order a situation we fully expected to pass within a few weeks or months eweb human resources and safety staff have worked tirelessly with eweb leadership throughout this past year to make adjustments to policies and procedures often influenced by changing government regulations or health standards to help our employees and protect our capacity to respond to the needs of our community you of employees have endured and worked under ever-changing conditions and rules smog

1:38:21 and smoke fires threats from citizens and in some cases at home conditions impacted by family situations and technology despite cyber challenges like the solar winds attack in december ewebs information services staff provided important support enabling safer and more flexible working environments and also managed to upgrade many of our systems becoming more cloud-based and more resilient in the process these and other lessons learned in 2020 will continue to provide opportunities for e-web in the years ahead and respond we did in 2020 not only did eweb

1:39:06 safely and reliably and affordably deliver almost 8 billion gallons of fresh high quality great tasting drinking water and 2.4 billion kilowatt hours of low carbon electricity we also contributed over 18 million dollars directly to the community through customer assistance programs education grants water and energy efficiency and electrification incentives and contributions in lieu of taxes to the cities of eugene and springfield staff responded quickly to both the coveted economic impacts and the holiday farm fire victims with special assistance qualification adjustments new payment programs and in some holiday

1:39:51 farm fire situations bill and loan forgiveness to ensure the ongoing viability of our services eweb made approximately 58 million dollars in capital investments in 2020 including roughly 18 million in water infrastructure and 40 million in electric and shared services systems these investments were specifically prioritized to reinforce the values of our board and community safety reliability affordability environmental stewardship and our strategic objectives focused on emergency preparedness and disaster recovery and preparing for a new energy supply future besides the miles of water pipe upgrades

1:40:37 pump station enhancements and customer building requests the water utility has now fully commissioned five emergency water sites throughout eugene two years ahead of schedule with another two planned in the future completed construction of a new water lab building at hayden bridge made significant progress on the design and planning of our new base level reservoirs with construction on the east 40th site starting this summer and received the laboratory accreditation to perform in-house cyanotoxin and biological testing oh and there's the watershed which we have worked with the board to expand our approach from watershed protection to watershed

1:41:22 recovery requiring additional care and investment besides replacing poles and conductor along with responding to customer building and renovation projects the electric utilities significantly rebuilt the mackenzie valley service territory in a matter of weeks added an important switching system linking the north and south downtown eugene underground electric networks significantly increasing resiliency and replaced some large key substation transformers in 2020 if 2020 showed us anything it's the importance of respectful relationships with our colleagues with our advocates and with our critics

1:42:08 eweb continues to build individual and organizational links with lane county the cities of eugene and springfield and communities in the mackenzie valley with organizations that share similar visions like pure water partners and mckenzie river trust with other energy suppliers like public utilities and northwest natural to decarbonize both the electric and gas grids members of our community and our neighbors and with our colleagues and board of commissioners these relationships will continue to be important in the years ahead because although eweb is healthy some heavy lifting is still to come after years of no rate increases

1:42:53 including absorbing increases from our largest energy supplier the bonneville power administration eweb will likely need to raise rates in 2022 but as with your other assets we will continue to be good stewards of your money and make prudent investments ensuring the continued delivery of safe and reliable drinking water and electricity finally commissioners on a personal note i celebrated my 10-year anniversary working at eweb in 2020 and i can honestly say i've never been prouder of the organization including staff management and the board i am excited about the opportunities in front of us and know that we have the ability to

1:43:38 fulfill our boards and communities needs thank you to all who continue to contribute to the essential services that we provide making eub a great place to work and for ensuring that our community can indeed rely on us thank you commissioners and with that i now look forward to sharing a few additional details regarding the state of your utility and the status of our strategy and organizational goals thank you so that's the traditional uh address i suppose um a lot of the next couple of slides i won't be too repetitive there's there's a number of things on here that were mentioned um actually in the

1:44:24 address uh there's a couple that we're not uh on this first slide um the picture on the right there is the downtown switch that was mentioned linking the the feeders between the north and the south part of the networks so that multiple substations can be used to to feed the downtown core which is incredibly important in the case of resiliency you as a board approved a million dollars in emergency funding last fall um when it came to the watershed i think that's worth mentioning and also when you think about the last bullet there the customer care and energy share programs almost 1.8 million dollars delivered directly to customers

1:45:09 that wasn't administrative or overhead coverage that went to customers 7 500 recipients and depending on how many in a household that's 20 000 people plus or minus that we impacted with our customer care programs really really significant um 2020 result go ahead with the next slide a couple of other things the picture on the right is the new eweb water laboratory building approved for occupancy in december um staffs probably uh staking out their space in there and working on uh getting the lab up and running um we did um

1:45:54 receive a couple of awards also the the american water works association the um award for safety went to the water utility um for for uh which is a national award we financed a lot of this through a 90 million dollar bond uh offering it was a combination of refinancing and and new financing water and electric and i did want to at least acknowledge in this process tonight commissioners helgeson and mattel for their work and also uh welcome commissioner borofsky and mcrae look forward to all the good things that we're going to do over the next uh several years and during your tenure go ahead with the next slide i wanted to

1:46:41 touch briefly on the goals we set out for last year we had eight organizational goals um really in the in the memo i mentioned that we fully achieved half of those and partially achieved the other half there was that was um one and i'll just ami i'll just start at the top i felt like managing utility operations was was a challenge in 2020 for a number of obvious reasons but i think we really stepped up and showed our character as an organization the ami project you just got an update on so i won't i won't belabor that too much um we i do believe we have set ourselves up for scaling the deployment which was an important part of the objective last year the customer you just got a demo a

1:47:28 couple weeks ago of the improved customer experience and it's a little bit late so partially achieved but that's one we want to be also very careful with uh given that it impacts customer bills directly and so we'll complete that in 2021 the emergency management i felt again we made a lot of good progress on that extensive vegetation management a number of different plans were completed including a risk assessment on the water utility which you have a correspondence update on tonight actually the goal that was a challenge this year for us was working with with springfield utility board specifically on the sec opportunities with the second treatment plant that was

1:48:13 re-prioritized a little bit because of some real estate opportunities with both sub and eweb but we did make some progress on discussions around how we maintain and test our inner ties and and we're reviewing a new mou between sub e web and rainbow water district which those are ongoing discussions completed our electrification report you recently got at least a partial update and i would really consider it a partial update on the lower mckenzie specifically the the lieberg canal assessment economic and technical assessment there's a lot more to come on that before we can consider it a really triple bottom line view and so there's a lot more work and that's another goal that we have

1:48:59 continuing into 2021 and then our climate actions that we were really looking to achieve around carbon reduction the the number actually is just slightly short of our 8 500 metric tons but that did not include uh evs since june and so um that will likely surpass that goal so i considered that one achieved at this along with a number of the operational components to that go ahead with the next slide i wanted to just present a little bit about trends i'll talk mostly about things that you you know the the colored area are things that affect all of all both utilities across the organization the the water

1:49:45 trends are up above the electric trends are below made significant uh progress this year on our dam safety program and our relationship with the federal energy regulatory commission that in large part was was due to daniel huang who we we hired from seattle who's really taken that program on and so good safety records our good catch reporting which is a preemptive type of reporting was significantly higher than in years past cyber security continues to do well financial management public communications and outreach did just a lot of things water quality in the midst of of forest

1:50:32 fires um and other challenges and continues to be good on the the unfavorable piece i think generation availability at one point or another carmen smith because of the wildfire was unavailable we know about the lieberg canal lieberg was unavailable the entire year and even our stone creek facility up in the clackamas valley was unavailable because of in one case fire and then also recently because of of ice so some challenges on generation availability we are seeing some financial pressures forecasted on the electric side some of those were predicted if you recall the long-term financial plan showed some rate increases potentially next

1:51:18 year anyway but we've seen some consumption and and retail level consumption being below historic levels uh because of economic pressures um so i mentioned workforce morale i i think that that's one that we're very attentive to it could actually be workforce and community morale i think we all feel it um it's it's been a struggle some of it is is a little bit of combination of just routine and burn out and understand you know one one situation after another um i think that workforces has done a tremendous job in 2020 it's something that we're we're mindful of and something that we're paying attention to as as an organization go ahead with the

1:52:04 next slide this is just a reminder kind of where we are in our strategy um the the whole intent of this synchronizing out a little further is to recognize that and you hear comments about renewables and wanting to move toward renewables um there's there's a whole challenge that we we need to look at and how we're pursuing because of the the integration of variable resources with variable consumption and we need to be able to synchronize those two and so our strategy is the process of getting there as well as being resilient and being prepared for emergencies and recovery and so this is kind of where we feel we

1:52:50 are it's it's pretty close to the timeline there's a lot of things that are in the work to support that final slide please this is this is it questions i'd be happy to entertain questions or comments from the board um very proud of the work that the board did this last year although from a board perspective was probably a little bit mundane that will change going forward a lot of big decisions to make but overall incredibly proud of the organization were we perfect nope did we get everything done no um but the things that we did we did really well and we did under uh some really difficult circumstances and so and like i said in the the state

1:53:36 of the utility address i couldn't be prouder of the organization than i am right now so i'd be happy to entertain questions or comments i went a little bit over on my time sorry about that john brown will call me out on that i'm sure go for it okay keep with tradition and go first um anyhow frank thank you very much i think uh what you said you know i've been here for a few years and uh we've had a lot of challenges we've had snowmageddon we've had the ice storm and things and those things are you know although they're intense they're not long-lived like the tragedy tragedy we had in holiday farm and that's going to be long-lived that's going to be decades and it's not

1:54:21 you know and so hats off and kudos to you and everybody else for what you've done for everything and but especially protecting that watershed and making sure that we get it back together i just have a real quick question on some of the financial metrics and things i still have this question it's it's kind of minutia but i'm just still wondering that uh schools haven't haven't been in session for quite a while we're still spending quite a bit of money on the educational programs what are they doing if they're the kids are in class and all that money in the past has gone for field trips and things yeah i know that janine did some outreach and commissioner we we can get back to the entire board with the details of that um i think generally they have moved into virtual classrooms virtual salmon watch

1:55:07 there's there's a number of different things they've done but we can it's probably worth a complete correspondence response to that or a general manager's report just to ensure that that money is being used effectively and what for so i'll get back to you on that thank god because i did notice there was a another line item that we spent money outside of that budget for a virtual salmon watch and i'm just wondering if we're diversifying or things because uh you know that's a great program and things we don't have the silver challenge and things like that i just want to make sure that we're we're using our money properly so thank you i will double check that too because i know that some of those programs list get listed separately but they're actually part of the the

1:55:52 conglomerated funding so i'll we'll get out the decoder ring for the board and so that we can figure out exactly where this is going go ahead matt frank i have a decoder earring here if you want to borrow mine thank you yeah um i just want to say it's um quite an honor to be able to join this board and to see this utility coming through just the craziest of years um just dealing with covet alone and supporting people who are in a bad spot because of covid

1:56:38 and then dealing with the wildfires it's just it's remarkable to me um and quite a testament i think to the whole team the ability to stay steady and come out the other end though we're not quite out the other end um with with everything intact um mind you recognizing you know that there were homes lost and i don't mean to diminish the the um impacts there but as a utility coming out um you know on the other end the intact is really remarkable in my view so um kudos nice work and my dog what the heck that's good down here yeah thanks man i really i

1:57:23 really do think that once we got through some of the it's it's sort of you wrestle with the realities of your situation and it started with covent like that and and you know once we got in and recognized this is a long-term challenge it's still ongoing that you kind of come to a realization that you have to step up and and people generally who work at eweb they're there for the right reasons and that's too that it's a career certainly but they're there to help their community and i think that's and feel like they're part of something and so i i really do feel like the people of eweb is what really stepped up this year and and

1:58:09 they deserve the credit and all the credit for that all right i just wanted to echo that i mean such a remarkable job over the last year just grappling with so many different challenges and i know that um you know new frameworks new policies had to be created on the fly and adjusted frequently for new science new developments um you know things we never thought you'd have to deal with um just it's just it's been remarkable and and even though there's definitely been much human loss and impact um i'm very very proud of the work that all of

1:58:55 you have done at eweb to you know we've done uh to maintain and i mean it it's it's really been uh i can't imagine what it's like on the ground with all of you you know pulling together every single day when it seems like okay now there's a new shock and a new shock and a new shock um i i my heart goes out to everyone there who is feeling the the stress of that and the you know it's just gone on for so long we're coming up in a year here with that and it's we're definitely not out of the weeds so it's it's still going to be a look at how are we continuing to adjust this and then when we do when when are we able to

1:59:40 kind of come back from all of this and what does that process look like so thank you for that and thank you for the upcoming work ahead to move us in a better direction and support the community members who've really been um impacted in so many ways they didn't know were possible go ahead john thanks thank you for the presentation um uh again yeah i think i echo what everybody else has said um but i also look at this as an opportunity uh you know we've uh we've been through

2:00:26 the a very tough time but we've we can emerge out of it and grow from it and and move on stronger and with that with that being said i think that there's areas that we can look at to try and focus on um you know when i was going through the packet a couple of things jumped out at me um one of them was uh when i was looking at the workforce composition you know where we're at with women and minorities and those types of things in the workforce and hopefully we can we can continue on to try and have the most diverse and uh strong workforce that we can going forward i think that that's something to keep an eye on

2:01:11 um and then another thing that just stuck out to me was um when we talked about community involvement and the you know the 18 million dollars that was spent on community involvement um you know i went through the list of all the the things uh in appendix f that we did you know schools and helping with paying the bills and and all the partnerships that we had the one thing that i just i had a tough time swallowing was that we put the silt dollars into community involvement you know to me silt is it's taxes or it's rent you know and when i when i pay my property tax at home

2:01:56 i don't really put that as i'm doing my community involvement you know i i know i've i know how the city of eugene's spends their self because i've said a lot of spend a lot of time on their budget committee um and so to mix that in with with what all the other good things that we do it just didn't kind of feel right to me um but that that's just that's just me personally um you know because the other things have tangible you know we're helping schools and we're helping people pay their bills well giving the city money to put into their general fund to possibly help pay pers for

2:02:41 a you know a public workforce worker is is that community involvement well that you you can make a nexus i suppose but for me it was it was a tough reach to put that into that category so that that's just a comment on my side i don't think we need to take it out it's just i i see that as a different a different thing that's cost of business not necessarily community involvement but other than that i was really uh happy with the the presentation and all the all the things that the utilities done and i i just hope to build on it from this this past year

2:03:26 thank you commissioner barofsky i i think that part of there's a number of reasons that silt historic i'll just give you the historical background for why stilt has been included there's there's been a couple of reasons one is statutorily the state of oregon requires a three percent and we pay a six percent to the city of eugene so we do go above and beyond what would statutorily be typical for say rent of the right-of-way um or for an in lieu of tax um contribution of which in many cases we still maintain the right of way um and so um i think there's uh there's there's certainly it goes into the community it it can be considered direct or

2:04:12 indirect um but there is some historic reasons why that was included in that number i think there's enough um good things going on around that that we we have a lot to be proud of as an organization um but that was um at least part of the contribution to the community um and so um just just to give you a little historical context there's probably some some other commissioners that that over time can help you understand what our historical perspective has been on that as well but but i appreciate the comments um i just want to echo what everyone else has said i appreciated that presentation and i

2:04:58 too feel really proud to be associated with eweb i think that um we do really good work and so it's good to hear the state of the utility where you can highlight all of that good work from a board perspective thank goodness this past year was pretty mundane because it was enough just to pivot to figuring out how to do all of our stuff online remotely um so that was kind of a gift but i also want to acknowledge that i know that there are probably a significant number of employees at eweb who did not have a mundane year and have actually worked really really hard especially the folks who are working on the watershed recovery i know that they've been pretty much working non-stop since the fire and have

2:05:44 gone above and beyond um and i'm again really proud to be associated with all of that good work so looking forward to this next year we can do even more good work thank you commissioners i appreciate all the comments there is just a lot of work left to do i don't think i think it's uh it's great that we have lots of opportunities in front of us including those that commissioner barofsky mentioned around diversity and i would would be and i think inclusion is a really big piece of that as well a lot of work left to do um and um yeah there's including for the past several weeks we've had crews dealing with ice storms up in portland so it's it's nice to be part of an

2:06:30 industry that shares resources and help helps each other out as well so i think we feel i feel lucky to be part of the organization and appreciate the people and their work this year so thank you i appreciate the comments great all right we are now in the home stretch agenda item number 11 correspondence and that is you frank uh thank you president uh schlossberg i we we had three pieces of correspondence um in in this month's packet i just guess i would open it up if if there were any any questions on those just as a reminder um an update on our emergency response

2:07:18 plan which is part of the water infrastructure act was one of the updates um some proposed updates to eweb bylaws of which we'll probably bring back in a consent calendar form and then jason huser and his state legislative update and and i would just entertain if there's any questions on those subjects that we'd be happy to answer them um or or get back to the board if we can't answer them uh online tonight just open it up and see if there's any questions uh commissioner barofsky yeah just one question on the the dogami uh legislation it it it seemed like it was

2:08:03 it was from the correspondence that it was going somewhere and then it's not going somewhere do we have do you have any update as to i mean with this legislature things are are changing you know daily and weekly i'm just wondering if there's any update because i think that that's an important piece of our strategic plan yeah the the the guy who was uh closest to that and i think was involved actually within the last week in in that particular topic is jason huser um commissioner borofsky i don't know if you've met uh jason user directly he's our um person in salem everything governmental he's our uh and so jason you want to respond to that

2:08:50 yeah um thank you uh good evening commissioners uh as far as dogami um there was a a real outpouring of support for dogami um when they were proposed to be axed um to be honest it might be the best the silver lining is it might be the best thing that ever happened to dogami so many people came out of the woodwork and so the the natural resources subcommittee of ways and means went so far as to issue almost kind of an unprecedented we we give up uh don't don't testify anymore in support of dogami we get it we're gonna keep dogami um now the question then becomes um the funding piece and that's that's many that's a long distance race for the

2:09:36 session the the budget often doesn't get wrapped up till the uh towards the the late stage of the session the one issue with dogami is there there have been complaints that you know the their budget turns out to be volatile and there have been cost overruns and they've had to make budget adjustments uh i you know the nature of dogami is they get a lot of federal grants they it's very grant intensive and as we all know in any web can speak to this from firsthand experience grants are very unusual revenue source and it can be unpredictable whether grants are are granted or not so um you know in in fairness to dogami it's not really their fault they've been very good at getting

2:10:21 federal money but the federal grants are not a very predictable revenue source so the legislators are trying to figure out how how can they build in some kind of predictability to mitigate the volatility of of how grant grant grant awards are awarded or denied so i feel good about it every retired geologist in the state of oregon testified on that bill so well surgery got the point thank you jason great thank you very much for that update

2:11:07 i'm not seeing any would you like to move on to a future agenda planning i would let's move on for agenda planning i know there were at least two subjects associated with this one had to do with the format and potentially timing of the upriver meeting and the other one had to do with the potential timing or a request to bring up closer a discussion on wildfire mitigation and so those are the two things that i've gotten feedback on the upriver board meeting i did provide a little bit of information in the general managers report as to some options april was a challenging month to do anything outdoors

2:11:53 or i shouldn't say maybe plan anything outdoors sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's not there are still some like that we would still want to have some restrictions but i don't know the board's comfort level in general at large the board at large whether you're comfortable with having an in-person upriver board meeting in april and i think that's part of the discussion tonight you're muted sorry thank you um i'm willing to do something i'm i'm

2:12:38 personally not willing to do and i think an in-person indoor event is not something that i'm personally willing to do i would like to provide access to the people there but i also am concerned that they don't have that they the internet and the stability there and the signals are not as robust as maybe they could be also i'm not sure especially with the continuing recovery how um how this falls into the agenda for you know for them and what what they're going to want to need now i'm absolutely willing to uh be a part of an electronic sort of event i do wonder if maybe it would be more prudent to hold it later in the

2:13:24 year to give some more time to get through you know some of the other recovery efforts but i i don't know if you or staff on the ground are hearing uh a lot of want from the community to hold this event or to push it out or maybe it's just not even something that that's really on the radar there so i personally commissioner carlson i'm not hearing a clamoring for an event but i also i'll need to touch bases with staff that are a little bit closer um and involved in that community directly to con to confirm um what the interest level is i i know there's a lot of topics that are of interest to the community and interest of us to share um but i i don't necessarily feel like

2:14:11 there's a sense of of urgency necessarily to do that but that's that's my perspective and i'll need to to confirm with staff what what they're commissioner brown yeah i just uh comment i'm okay with meeting you know whatever and but i also respect everybody else's desires um do we even know if uh up river has internet service a lot of my friends that lived up there say they they still don't have uh you know it's like dial up and they can't stream and they can't do those things with uh internet so do we even know if we can have an audience with that really encompass everybody that has kind of a stake in

2:14:56 what our topics would be but potentially commissioner brown i i think it's probably spotty i've seen something that we'll have to check on um there there may be the opportunity to do something like was mentioned in the report at a consolidated site where we could have some some interactiveness with a small group up there with the commissioners potentially uh um being in some format like this so some maybe hybrid um or we could simply say there's the timing just isn't quite right and we can look at another month or two where it would be more more advantageous to do something

2:15:41 even outdoors um with with proper spacing so um if the board has a sense of urgency to do something in april we can continue that i'll check with staff but also maybe recognizing that it might be okay to do something that's a little bit more comfortable to the community and to us but do it in may or maybe june um or depending depending on the the surrounding situation oh i i think we'll go uh commissioner barofsky mccray and schlossberg in that order thank you um for me again yeah

2:16:27 i'm i'm willing to do whatever the the the board decides um correct me if i'm wrong but last year because of the fire we didn't have an upriver meeting so it's been a year plus before since since it's since we've made a presence up there not that we haven't been present but that the board hasn't done an upriver thing um i guess the the the only other thing that i would have um trepidation about pushing it out for further is we've got things that are directly relative to that community that are going to be coming up on the agenda and it would be good for me to hear from the people that are living up there you know uh with whether it's the lieberg walterville

2:17:13 or you know some of the fire mitigation type things that we're going to be coming up on in the next few months if we push it up to the until the summer are we going to be making those decisions without really getting the input from the people that are living up there that's my concern i'll try to be quick i don't have i it is important to me that we have an upriver meeting um particularly for the reasons that commissioner boroski just mentioned really important that we get feedback from folks up river before making decisions on how we manage those assets um it's not i don't have a sense of

2:17:58 urgency about getting up there in april all things being equal i just assumed do something outside if that's possible and if june makes that work that makes all kinds of sense to me um i yeah i do think it's important that we get a river but i don't see april as being unless i'm missing something i don't see april as being uh essential to that i think june work thank you yeah thanks commissioner mcrae i think the the reason that we had traditionally settled on something in april was it's typically early april when we get our snowpack forecast and we can start to make some predictions around flow management especially with um and and communicate

2:18:43 uh when our scheduled outages are for the canals now with one of them is out permanently and if we're going to go into a special low water flow management process for walterville so we would typically know what that is in early april so we just thought well it's good timing for late april um without that though there's there's we can still communicate that there's a lot of other channels that we're using um newsletters um neighborhood sites um the blue river bulletin i mean there's all kinds of ways that we can communicate certain things but um that was traditionally why we had moved it to april from the fall originally um um president yes thank you

2:19:29 and president schlossberg and then i think commissioner carlson um had another comment and then we can move on to the second agenda item that we wanted to discuss i like to keep us a little bit close to being on time yeah um i just want to say that i think that it would be uh advantageous to have a in-person meeting there outdoors just given the challenges with the internet um and i think i agree that we should wait until june we're so close to having full vaccination for everybody that wants it and i would hate to push it or to put people in an uncomfortable position of coming to the meeting if they didn't feel totally comfortable but that was the only option um and then i just want to make sure

2:20:15 that we um communicate enough with the community up there so that they know exactly what we're going to be talking about when it comes to walterville and leeburg because that really is going to affect them and i don't i don't want us to spring something on them and then have to make a decision very close to the meeting that we have with them thank you commissioner carlson uh two quick things i know we didn't end up moving our meeting to april as well because we wanted to do a follow-up on the major storm uh that we had so we'd typically done it in september we did move it not just for the watershed issue but also because it seemed to be prudent to have that information right

2:21:00 on the heels of this major disaster that was up there so i in that context too i would agree that it would be beneficial to have kind of a follow-up now that there's you know potentially some other information that we can provide to community members and if going into the summer time especially with the watershed restoration work i know that there was some trepidation around some homeowners and in in having us come in and and help provide you know services to them around restoring the watershed um potentially there there could be some benefits there so i i do think it would be beneficial to have it not in september um to have it earlier than that to potentially help um move some of that work along but i i do think that it would be beneficial

2:21:45 as well to have it outdoors and now it's tricky in in april um i also think that there's you know on the other side of that the um vaccinations from all the information i'm now seeing they're saying that everybody over 16 would be would have access to them by july 1st so again you know it's anybody's guess golden you know the crystal ball and whether or not people will actually have access to that but it might be beneficial to have that out there as well so that everybody who wants one can and can participate but if we decide to do it before then um i'm willing to sit in a very far corner of a outdoor space

2:22:30 thanks great thank you commissioners i i do believe i have enough to go on it sounds like there's um sort of a sense of um as soon as practical uh outdoor being the private pres the preference um before summer which is probably a preference because of things like wildfire discussions um not waiting until the fall and then communicating very specifically around here's the topics here's the concerns and doing a lot of outreach and communications around the meeting so i'll just take that as the takeaways in general commissioner carlson sorry one last little quick point um i do know that typically we have lots of powerpoint

2:23:16 presentations that we do at these sorts of meetings um obviously that gets a lot more challenging in an outdoor setting if there's some way we can do you know still have that same kind of sense and provide that information but i know that that definitely provides some logistical challenges for staff maybe we could rent the uh the city of eugene's uh they used to have those big screens that they would do in the park maybe we could rent something like that so we could still have the powerpoint presentations because i think they're very effective at helping convey information that's useful to the community thank you commissioner we'll we'll try to explore all of the various technical options to to get information communicated the other one the other request i received

2:24:02 was to pull up the wildfire discussion from june um that came from commissioner mccray and i just um understand the logic of it i think uh correct me if i'm wrong commissioner but your thought was if if the board needs to make decisions prior to the fire season that you felt june was a little bit too late to to properly assess that and so something sooner would would uh make more sense um i i had we we had scheduled i'll say two different sessions one was more of a here's where we are and then the other one was some advanced plan going forward i had intentionally

2:24:49 put off the first portion of that because we still do not have a any kind of a determination or legal determination from the department that from the us government regarding the cause of the existing or the existing hope it's not still existing the the previous holiday farm fire so but we can still have a discussion we will have to be uh it will be based on um industry practice and our plans going forward um and so i i think um you know i with a lot of without a lot of discussion from the other members i think it does make sense to pull up pull that up some

2:25:35 i'll have to look and see how much of it is a discussion of here's what we have versus here's where we're going and um try to do something at least before june so maybe may or april depending on the the topics the specifics of where we stand on those plans is it is that acceptable to you yeah thanks yeah president schlossberg um i know we have bookmarked like sometimes for um work sessions and i'm wondering if that would be something that we could cover in a work session just the kind of the background information on it if um our agendas are pretty tight in may it's it's it's a potential certainly um one of those sessions was

2:26:21 the april tuesday where we were going to do an upriver meeting i think that now that's going to be changed a little bit i would like to take one of the work sessions and and talk about where i see the electric sector relative to decarbonization and some of the things that this board is hearing around renewables and where i see the opportunities going forward for that so that might be one of the work sessions um i don't think we have a work session that we would or or the topics to have a work session this month in march i'm not quite prepared for that but i think it's an option if it if it's purely informational discussion with no action then we we know we have

2:27:07 those um kind of earmarked i guess i would say for the third tuesday of of the months so i'll i'll take a look at the schedule and i'm granting commissioner mcrae's request to accelerate that um and see where it probably best fits with where staff is at and and what information we think we could provide and you know make a good information and i think that was that was all i had uh on unless someone else had anything on future agendas i haven't seen very much about the uh the upcoming legislative uh advocacy day and i'm just curious it

2:27:52 says it's it's still happening next week i just wanted to flag that mr huser uh i'll have a i've got four appointments scheduled and two are on standby i expect to know in the next 48 hours and uh look for the uh the full schedule um hopefully by thursday and i'm working on some bulleted talking points on uh our key issues so i'll have i'll have ann um get that stuff to you and um let me know what else anyone thinks they might need in preparation okay thank you i'm not sure how much of it i can attend but once they see the schedule and talking points we'll see what we can fit in so thanks the nice thing is there's

2:28:37 there's no driving involved so uh if you squeezed in one one appointment that'd be better than uh than nothing so please uh join us as you can thanks thank you jason i i think we're done with this part of the agenda uh president schlossberg people pass the baton back to you all right last but not least board wrap up who wants to go first okay matt that was a tough sell uh i would like to propose that we um get an agenda item to address carbon targets for the electric um side

2:29:24 this is i think what what frank was just addressing um it seems like uh it's important that we have some if we if we as a board decide we want to set some targets around the carbon intensity of the electricity that's being provided to um customers it feels like it would be important to have those set in place before any negotiations on new contracts are coming up so um it feels like we'd want to have something by the end of the calendar year uh so and it feels like there's probably at least a conversation or two um to get us all on the same page on what that would mean and whether and how we want to engage in establishing targets but uh there was

2:30:10 some discussion today um you know from folks that came forward and um in speaking with other commissioners it sounds like there's openness to have this kind of conversation so i'd like to get something put on the calendar you know we don't have to set a date right now but perhaps next month we could entertain some dates for that um just a comment uh commissioner mcrae um i'll have to do some checking but it it it still will be a number of years before we have any kind of substantial contract decision to make i would potentially like to propose a slight modification

2:30:55 to your request and that's that we work together as a board and staff toward a set of i'll say resource principles especially electric generation principles it could include carbon intensity but there's a number of of other things that i think are important to to include in that discussion and so maybe a discussion more around the principles of which these these future decisions would be made if that seems like it's acceptable yeah sir i mean i think however we want to frame it and you know i guess the devil's in the details there in terms of what principles look like i agree there are other facets of our electric um resources that we want to talk about

2:31:42 besides just carbon intensity so i think a broader set of principles or goals would be useful thank you mindy before we go on i've got a procedural question because historically before we've put anything on the agenda or done anything and matt i want to have this discussion but procedurally we've always had uh so one person can't you know if every one of five of us went out with a one agenda topic we'd have a challenge and we've always said can i get three head nods so we had a majority and i know that how that votes gonna go but i think just procedurally so you guys would understand that that's what we've done in the past that doesn't mean we'd have to do it in the future but it was just something that uh would

2:32:27 give more direction to staff to make sure this isn't a one uh pony show that this is you know a majority of the board wanting to go there yeah thank you for keeping this honest on that one john much appreciated i just you know i just i know we're going to have a good conversation i just want to make sure that you know i can count the heads you know it's that doesn't matter it's just a procedure thing to make sure for the records of the staff knows yeah that's how great thank you yeah thank you john okay anyone else have anything they want to wrap up i've got one last item but kind of around john borowski's comments about silk that's been one of my unfavorite topics of the last decade or two and uh i agree that it's kind of

2:33:14 a mislabeled thing but i also agree that i know that the city is looking for money for their climate recovery ordinance they don't have it but um you know we give them 1.2 to 1.4 million dollars a month that comes out of electric generation and i would hope that they could take some of that money and you know and you heard frank say that next year we're going to probably have to raise weight rates which we haven't done that's a windfall for them because every time we raise rates they get money they get a lot more money because i know that the city managers yelled at me for years when we weren't raising rates saying we're killing our budget and i would hope that you guys that are having the conversations with city staff could say you know we're going to raise rates one or two percent and you're going to have a 400 000 windfall why don't you take some of that

2:34:00 for the cro2 or some electrification or use some of that money because it's generated by utilities and it's you know and kind of give that direction rather than just have it go into the general fund and like john said pay for who knows what you know i'm just just a food for thought that uh maybe we could have that discussion in the future at least encourage them to do that so that's all i've got all right well props to ann for producing tonight's meeting and for keeping the timer up there she wasn't sure she was going to be able to do that but it all went super smoothly so thank

2:34:46 you anne and at 805 the meeting is adjourned thank you commissioners