EWEB Board of Commissioners — April 6, 2021

0:03 april 6 2021 um eweb board meeting and i think that this is our one year anniversary of having a virtual meeting actually i don't know if that's a milestone to celebrate or to root over anyway um i am calling this meeting to order and we're going to start off with an agenda check is there anybody that has anything they want to comment on the agenda just one comment this is frank um keith simovic from moss adams has another meeting tonight it's a it's prior to this meeting if we get to seven o'clock and he is not shown up then we would propose to

0:50 switch the uh rate making principles and the auditor's report um that's that's item eight so uh we'll we'll see it's just a note at this point okay great thank you um if there's nothing else about the agenda then items from board members and the general manager anybody have anything unmuted sorry um yeah previously i had a constituent contact me about uh the integrity of the berms we have uh two hazardous waste berms that are right above our

1:35 intake uh from ip warehouser when is it on about 42nd street and one is right on i-105 and they contain millions of gallons of effluent and they wanted me to ask frank a similar situation that's going on in florida now with the hazardous wastes uh breaching the berm if that is a potential uh at our area as well and the the second part of that question is that knowing that our 10-year plan that we passed last year or two years ago on watershed recovery i want to make sure we don't i don't detract from what's going on upriver but we had a pretty robust plan to deal with storm runoff at 42nd and 52nd and could you get back to me on whether or not that's proceeding

2:20 or if that's been sidelined and if so what would it take to get it back into the work plan yes uh commissioner brown i'll get back to you on that i it's it's not sidelined i'll get back to you on the status of the project and also you know hopefully we're not in the same situation as they are in florida um with their potentially massive breach of millions of gallons of of wastewater emptying into the bay but we'll i can do a follow up for the entire board on that

3:06 no in a quiet month for me i can't remember really much of the last month i have like some kind of covet brain time um feels like ages ago so i don't think i have anything to report frank yes president schlossberg commissioners um i did want to inform the commission that we do have a new employee her name is susan fricke who will be taking over carl morgenstern's previous role as the water resources and quality assurance supervisor she comes to us from the kuruk tribe tribal department of natural resources where she was the water quality program manager doing work on the klamath river and his

3:52 tributaries she's experienced with various grant projects and other types of projects and a good collaborator and so carl's off doing watershed recovery but she'll um come in and and take over his former position on water quality an issue that i know this board is uh uh you know quite interested in and so i'm sure you'll be hearing from susan fricke going forward so just wanted to introduce the board to that name and welcome susan yeah welcome susan great so i didn't see anyone else jumping in to add anything lots of head shaking no

4:37 um frank was there anything else that you wanted to add no um no i think i'm good thank you okay all right so the next item item number three is public input and i know that we're a little early so um most i know that most of our people that have signed up are here but i'm not sure if everybody has and so and has ever did everybody enter the yeah yes president schlossberg our our last speaker did join okay great and we are now on agenda item three public input um

5:24 when your name is called remember to unmute your call press star six if you're calling from a landline or simply use the unmute button if you're calling from your cell phone please state your name and optionally your address or ward and speak clearly into the telephone each speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony and you can try to keep track of time on your own but i will remind you when it's when we've gotten to those three minutes after all testimony is heard each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak 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

6:10 and the board does not provide an answer an eweb staff member will contact the speaker so that the question can be addressed at a later time so the public testimony for this period and the testimony period for this meeting is now open so i'm gaveling in and we are going to start with sofia trotter followed by dylan plummer sophia you are up yeah you're a little quiet hello can you hear me yes hi um thank you so much for providing this opportunity um and for all your service to the city my name is sophia trotter and i'm a part

6:55 of sunrise eugene a youth climate group and i'm the resident of ward 2. i am testifying on behalf of sunrise eugene and the fossil free eugene coalition an alliance of economic environmental and social justice organization organizations fighting to protect the public health and safety of our climate from polluting fossil fuels and we are currently working at the city city level for climate action and we want the city to be a climate leader and achieve their 2016 climate recovery ordinance goals so i'm a young person who has grown up into a world facing the existential threat of climate change and coming of age when fires floods hurricanes and blizzards are a far greater threat than they were when my parents are my age and as it stands right now and without

7:41 immediate and real action we won't have a livable future that is why i'm here to make the demand that e-web take measures to eliminate fossil fuels from its energy portfolio i believe eugene could become a real climate leader with the help of bold decision makers so in order to reach the goals of eugene's climate recovery ordinance we need a transition to 100 renewable energy by the year 2030 and we believe this needs to happen through investments in local renewable generation projects constructed and operated with well-paid union employees and i just like to say as a young person i don't want a job in a dead end fossil fuel producing job i want a clean energy job that is paid well and backed by a union so the

8:28 fossil for eugene coalition is dedicated to the framework of a just transition and when making the move away from boston fuels we believe that it's really important to center the historically marginalized communities and workers that are at the front lines of the climate crisis so black indigenous people of color and low-income people deserve clean air and water in and outside of their homes and low-income households and renters deserve to have access to renewable climate-safe energy workers and industries that will be impacted by the transition deserve good paying union jobs in the emerging green economy as such our coalition requested the eweb commission passed a resolution that lays out clear goals in support of a more equitable fossil-free eugene

9:13 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 cracked gas on our grid and invest in local union-built and operated renewable energy generation projects to fuel a just transition away from fossil fuels all right thank you so much for your time great thank you sophia next up we have dylan plummer followed by sandra bishop hello can you hear me yep all right um thank you so much for this opportunity to testify today and for your service to our city my name is dylan plummer and i'm the

9:59 grassroots organizer with cascadia wildlands i'm also a resident of ward 2 and an interim board member of the amazon neighborhood association i'm testifying on behalf of cascity wildlands in the fossil free eugene coalition and alliance with economic environmental and social justice organizations fighting to protect the public health and safety in our of our community and our climate from polluting fossil fuels as you may be aware our coalition has been organizing the city level to advocate for climate action ban the construction of new fras gas infrastructure and to hold the city accountable to its 2016 climate recovery ordinance goals and we know we won't be able to do that without eweb's leadership as the climate crisis worsens and our city experiences firsthand the impact of its effects our coalition believes that the

10:45 utmost importance for e-web to take measures to completely eliminate polluting fossil fuels from its energy portfolio and to lead the way in our efforts to create a just transition to clean renewable energy in eugene especially in light of last year's historic climate-driven wildfires and the drought that is gripping southwest oregon currently uh we believe it is critical to move with the utmost speed in order to protect the the homes and safety of not just folks in eugene but folks throughout so throughout the country in the world 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

11:30 renewable energy by the year 2030. 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 union employees this is especially important to me as a former member of the communication workers of america union and an organizer who works closely with organized labor i think i believe is critical that we are investing not only in renewable energy but again renewable energy that is constructed locally uh and constructed and operated through union labor clean energy and energy efficient technologies are growing fast and getting cheaper

12:15 making them more accessible but to realize its potential we need the leadership of our elected officials like yourselves to implement new technologies and help curb the impacts of the climate crisis on our community with a focus on front lines communities and workers including organized labor the fossil free eugene coalition has dedicated the framework of a just transition and when making a move away from fossil fuels we believe it's imperative to center the historically marginalized communities bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and the workers that are the front lines of the transition away and are facing potential job insecurity because of this transition we should be advocating like i said earlier for clean renewable generation projects locally that are union constructed and

13:01 operated our city and its publicly owned utility have historic opportunity and we really hope that you'll take it thank you so much for your time yeah thank you dylan okay next up we have sandra bishop followed by twyla jacobson sandra are you there yes can you hear me yep we can hear you now okay thanks um let me just make sure i can time myself so i don't get too far out my name is sandra bishop i am a resident of ward 2 and i am here tonight to respectfully

13:48 request that the board delay taking any action on item number seven please do not be rushed into this pseudo-legal process for creating a record of decision that will force building two water tanks at the 40th and patterson site um it's really a surprise to everyone everyone's wondering well when was this new decision made to build two tanks now for many years eweb has been planning to build one tank on this site at 40th and patterson build one tank now and then about 10 years later when that capacity is needed to build a second tank

14:33 so i'm wondering how does this fit with the 10-year capital improvement plan and any other of the plans for the total system of water storage so it seemed like this came as a reaction from the general manager it seemed like a kind of an off the top of the head decision that the gm was making and then staff was expected to back it up it happened in a meeting a few months ago it's in the tape the general manager says well maybe we should build two takes but there probably isn't money in budget and i'm so surprised that now it is an official decision um records of decision are usually used with a lot of documentation

15:20 in the case of eis and those kind of things which uweb has not done for this site so moreover what does this mean for the neighborhood building two tanks now will extend the construction period for two or three years instead of two there'll be more than twice the number of trees cut to make room for the second tank the impact to neighborhood streets and safety will be profound to build two tanks now there'll be thousands more ton of rock lasted and hauled off the site putting all those trucks past tugman park for additional years at a time who will pay for this excess capacity the rate payers i'll get to that later if i have time

16:07 and how does this fit with the city-wide storage plan does this mean city i mean college hill tanks are not going to be recommissioned or reconstructed on time what about hawkins heights what about west eugene [Music] this decision will probably put this project over budget and off schedule this will add millions to the cost is it a recorded decision is a very convoluted backward way to make such a decision that is going to cost this much what about santa clara what about these other projects why burden taxpayers now for something in the future so please look at the equity of this why are you building excess capacity in

16:54 well-to-do neighborhoods please get back to the original plan the well-thought-out planning to build a system throughout the city please look at the social and economic and environmental equity with this thank you thank you sandra all right next up we have twila jacobson followed by stephen anderson uh good evening um i hope i'm coming through yeah you're loud and clear all right my name is twyla jacobson and i reside in ward 2 a popular award tonight um and we are worried of people that are concerned and active and appreciate definitely

17:40 the fact that we have a community-based utility like eugene water and electric board and you your commissioners that you commissioners that are serving for us we have certainly learned during this year of pandemic reality that we are interconnected globally according to a study published in earth system science data quote while 2020's fall of over 2 billion tons of co2 is welcome the scientists say that meeting the goals of the paris climate agreement will need cuts of up to two billion tons every year for the next decade to minimize the up the uptick in carbon scientists are urging a

18:26 green rather than a brown response meaning recovery funding should be spent on sustainable projects and not on fossil fuels so here we are you know 2021 we've been through a year unlike any other yet you know in in some ways it has shown what it's going to take to reduce our carbon footprints and what i'm hearing and from friends and others is how much we want to travel we want to you know be be uh alive in the community again so in your role i think you have a specific way you can promote

19:13 and be part of developing that kind of green economy thank goodness that we have that opportunity here in oregon with our hydropower solar wind now with the osu research on ocean wave electricity we do not need any more fossil fuel based energy systems in fact we need to stop them as soon as we can yes we do have a bill in the oregon senate i mean i'm sorry the oregon it's house bill 2021 i believe it has nine amendments now and it particularly uh calls for setting

20:00 clear achievable targets for reducing emissions from oregon's electricity grid and establishes strong labor standards for new clean energy projects we're going to have investment money through the federal government we have got to make this based on community level standards of inclusion on equity and making sure workers a union is not just something to battle against a union is there to provide management or administration whatever a community voice to be part of this building thank you so much

20:45 thank you very much all right last up we have stephen anderson and then we have um joe harwood going to read uh public testimony on behalf of former commissioner dick helgeson so stephen you are up now yes um stephen anderson steven with a ph i live on hilliard in ward 2 uh right next to the project here on patterson hill which was named by my deceased neighbor who lived here when there was only one house on it but anyway [Music] i blame where we are on covid at least that's what i want to blame it on because from our point of view uweb is again losing credibility instead of getting better as we communicate it's worse

21:31 we need answers for example why have years of planning for one tank now and one in the future suddenly become two tanks immediately impacting this neighborhood and all of south eugene for at least three years although engineering friends tell us it will be closer to four what in the world is going on it feels as if we who had the temerity to question the location of the tanks from the very first and only public meeting caused by covet i understand we are now being punished for caring about the environment and the neighborhood from day one we were told you are in a hurry anxious about earthquake effects on this current system and now you're not in a hurry at all it can take three or four years and

22:17 then we'll have two tanks do the citizens of south eugene matter than those on college hill we were told initially the long-term plan was a new tank there here after our tank was compl first a tank there after our first tank was completed and then you could easily build a second tank there on the decommissioned bank site once your wi-fi tower contract is up so long before you need tank 2 on patterson hill you could be building down there which is much closer to the freeway and would impact far fewer citizens with truck traffic because of easy access to the freeway so why are current taxpayers being asked to pay for extra storage now here rather than 10 years from now

23:02 if this is so important why wasn't it part of your four years i mean your many years of planning i don't have idea how many but there was for one tank here and another in a decade now you're changing horses in mid-stream your engineering firm on page one of their reports what you just sent us this week finally cited tank one exactly where we've asked it to be all this time which is site two in the middle of the site which would save our big trees as long as possible it would be very easy to move that tank 30 feet north and then it would not impact drilling or blasting for tank to a decade down the road when we visited with your uh engineer at the eweb camp meeting

23:47 that's exactly what he told us and lastly there's not a single member of the u.s border staff that would want tank ones sited within 60 feet of their property line on a property this big yet that's exactly what you're planning and the justification you need to keep the ridgeline view pristine what in the world are you talking about people directly below the ridge can't even see a tank if it's moved 30 feet west and the view of the ridge is from the playground or people up on other hills and a screen of shrubs or trees would take care of that don't you think thank you stephen lastly i i just want to say one more thing okay no satisfactory answers and decide to file a lawsuit we might be able to find out exactly

24:32 what's been going on behind closed doors calling our own experts and said some let's shed some light on what's really going on and perhaps then the e-web board of commissioners will look at this and enjoying the discussion we appreciate your service but you need to really look at this and not approve this measure thank you stephen okay last but not least we have public reading by joe harwood on behalf of former commissioner dick helgeson okay here we go as a former commissioner and retired water utility director up's plan for replacement of its base level reservoirs remains of keen interest to me i've

25:17 reviewed the recently published board material regarding the elliott site and project recommendations for what it's worth i concur fully with the staff recommendations and record of decision that you and your fellow commissioners will be considering tuesday night i will be in portland tuesday evening and therefore i will be unable to testify at the board meeting but i would certainly urge that the board proceed expeditiously with this project as the age ongoing deterioration and seismic vulnerability of existing base level reservoirs is a major risk to our entire community that must be addressed decisively as planned i acknowledge that the elliott project will have significant impacts on the site

26:02 and its adjacent neighbors but these impacts are necessary and unavoidable in order to address broader and critically important community health and safety needs uf staff and consultants have been diligent and comprehensive in their evaluation of timing and citing alternatives i would urge the board to endorse staffs recommendations and direct that the project move forward now with construction of both new tanks as proposed thank you thank you all right and that is the end of the public testimony period for this meeting it's now closed and at this time commissioners have the opportunity

26:47 to comment if they so choose you can you have something sonia go ahead great well thank you for all the testimony tonight i really appreciate that people in the community come out and share with us their views um it's critically important to our society that we have these discussions and i know that covid prevents us from being in person but all of these meetings are open to the public anybody has the the ability to attend them and i appreciate that you've taken the time out of your out of your busy schedules to come and actually participate and do your own civic duty i do want to say that you know i really appreciate the the information from the the folks from the fossil free eugene

27:33 and cascadia wildlands um we we absolutely are focused on on looking at what we can do around climate change and what we can do as a relatively i mean we have we have a very low impact in terms of our electricity generation um the the the sources that we own specifically are very carbon free our challenge is when we have peaks and weather events and we have to go and purchase out on the market and out in the market to support electricity that's where we get more of our dirtier energies and that mix that we don't have control over um one of the things that we do have control over and we are focusing on is helping carbon switch and supporting uh

28:18 electric vehicles within the region i hope that you're um looking at some of the work that we're doing around that to help because it's it's one of the best ways to switch from gasoline to our very clear clean electricity so i appreciate that uh those thoughts i also wanted to make sure that you were aware that we had a a lobby day at the capitol in march and one of the bills that we supported specifically was the climate bill so we are actively working within the community in the region to support climate change issues and to the other folks uh who we've heard from a number of times around the elliott project continue to

29:04 appreciate your feedback um i do hope that if you haven't already that you'll read and also attend the the later portion of the meeting where we uh we'll get a lot of the feedback because i do believe that many of the questions that you've proposed in your public testimony will be answered uh very fully in that conversation tonight um and i i do believe that we have had more than uh i know that there were at least two public meetings within the last couple of months specifically at the site and there were a series of other meetings prior to that so you know i do take a little bit of um issue with you know this is all happening behind closed doors i think the the staff have been very proactive about reaching out to the public putting

29:50 it out on the website we've had i can't even remember how many countless meetings here uh in the zoom sessions uh to discuss this project so i do hope that you'll um attend the the later portion of the meeting and uh hear what staff have to say because i think they have done a very thorough job i know many of us i've attended the site twice and i know others have as well so this isn't something that we're taking lightly by any stretch of the imagination i feel for you i absolutely do these are huge impacts and it's going to be construction in your neighborhood for a long time no matter what and so you know it's hard for us to um to weigh this because it's hard to you know not everybody is going to be happy

30:35 but we do have to wear way the greater good so again i appreciate um everything you've brought to the table tonight and i do look forward to uh the broader discussion with staff later and how some of the recommendations have come out thanks thanks sonia any other commissioners there you go can you hear me all right yep great thanks um yeah i would uh echo the um appreciation for folks taking the time to provide testimony tonight [Music] i'll be very very brief because i'm just

31:20 reiterating what has already been said uh i do agree that we need to steer really swiftly towards the fossil free future and i see this board engaging in that discussion um now and over the the coming months so thank you for the encouragement there and i also agree that um the transition towards the fossil fuel free future needs to be done justly and carefully um with regard to the water tanks um i agree with sonia that the impact on neighbors is is real and um a little bit hard to comprehend um it's it's going to be a significant impact and i'm hoping we can find some ways to um to

32:05 lessen that impact to the degrees the the greatest extent possible i will also reiterate i've been up there um twice taken two site visits with engineers had conversations with the folks up there trying to understand what options we have and i feel fairly satisfied that our team that's working on that project has really thought through the options here and and actually they're finding that well there are some downsides for sure to building both tanks at the same time it actually saves money it's not adding cost it actually reduces the overall construction time it doesn't um you know puts it all all together uh but it's actually a smaller amount of

32:50 time overall and it reduces the number of truckloads doesn't increase it so um uh it it's it's a hard i think it's gonna be hard to deal with no matter like i said this is uh the impacts are real and and i understand the the concerns and frustrations um and i feel like our staff has really done the work to understand and find the the best solution available thank you great yes president schlossberg good evening i would just um for those who provide a testimony on um a movement toward fossil free and climate change we do have a work session

33:37 coming up on april 20th to initiate some conversations around climate and energy and and i will be presenting some of the state of the utility industry at that point when it comes to some of the good news relative to new technologies and also some of the challenges so we'll have a good discussion on april 20th i would just remind people of that thank you either of the johns have anything to add uh let's see where's my mute button you're good okay um i just would like to say thank you again to the people for coming out and and testifying and i will be speaking to

34:24 the uh the water water tank thing when we get to that agenda item uh obviously that's in my awards and so i do have some thoughts on it but i will save that for the appropriate timing thank you great okay well thank you to everyone who provided public testimony i feel like i'm getting to be a broken record by saying that i know that this is not an easy format to provide public testimony and so i appreciate you taking the extra steps needed to do that and then specifically to the folks talking about fossil free eugene um just so you know we have been meeting quarterly with the city of eugene to try to work together to help the city realize the goals in the climate action plan and i too really want to make sure that

35:10 that happens so i think that this board is doing some exciting work and starting to delve into climate and energy right now and so stay tuned for just some more interesting stuff coming from us okay we are now moving on to the board action and general business items portion of the meeting item number four approval of consent calendar a move to adopt consent calendar a great i'll second estonia all right great uh any discussion

35:56 i i was just um just both of these consent calendar items i just want to voice my appreciation for the work that goes into this i know that it's not easy for staff to write up on these memos i mean it takes time and and and effort uh and i feel like the transparency transparency that it provides is really valuable um you know even though we often just um vote to approve them it gives us a chance just to understand better what's going on anyway thank you for the effort involved to all the staff yes yeah i i will echo that i know a few years ago when i started um that was not as comprehensive and they've integrated a lot of the questions that we were typically asking

36:42 into the basic format which has significantly reduced the number of questions that we were asking pre pre-meeting so i appreciate the new format it's made it's made the monday morning uh questions a lot easier so thanks for that great and on that note all those in favor of approving consent calendar a raise your hand and say aye all those in favor raise your hand and say aye

37:29 that also passes unanimously okay um we can skip over agenda item six because there were no items removed and we can go on to agenda item number seven record of decision the final design report for the east 40th water storage project great president schlossberg commissioners good evening uh pertaining to this topic you did receive a pretty robust 167 page background package so we won't repeat all the details in there in this presentation or re-review the information previously presented to the board at past meetings go ahead to the next slide please

38:18 i'm not seeing it coming up yet but i'll get started as as part of an operating a large organization there are times when management makes strategic or engineering or design or operational decisions that are not directly under the purview of its governing body but are within the policies and controls and guidelines that you have established we manage roughly 1.2 billion dollars in assets on your behalf as elected officials and manage expenditures of almost 1.3 million every working day occasionally we use a record of decision to codify certain decisions and or outcomes the logic and the basis for those decisions for the public record or internally we

39:03 use those for alignment or to preserve the logic and reasoning of the decision for uh public transparency on this project and because they're of public interest uh we have used direct record of decision voluntarily uh to capture the engineering and designs design decisions specifically associated with the tanks citing and also the sequencing of construction the decision was presented to you in the background information and we're asking for your endorsement of that decision this evening go ahead with the next slide

39:52 as rec i'm just i'm having some bandwidth issues so if it sounds like i'm trying to keep up with the presentation then just to give you a little insight of as far as what's going on as recommended by staff management concurred with the tank siding as pictured on the left of the slide and the decision to construct both tanks concurrently beginning in 2021 in our analysis there are significant economic social and environmental reasons for the sighting and concurrent construction of both tanks a few of those are highly highlighted on the right side of the the tank one that is not is that it does provide greater flexibility when we look at the sequencing with the other work that we

40:37 want to do at college hill and at hawkins which are both projects that will still be upgraded and potentially also a storage site at the new water treatment plant in glenwood so it does provide additional flexibility other than the the benefits listed there go ahead with the next slide as for the tank siding there are multiple habitats on the property which was purchased by eweb back in the 1950s however the independent triple bottom line analysis showed that the tank siding and alternative one here listed had the highest ranking because it requires the least amount of rock

41:22 excavation impacts to the view shed uh for the fewest number of adjacent neighbors it preserves the ridgeline and protects the largest amount of the the oak habitat which is also listed by the oregon the state of oregon as a protected habitat or or strategic habitat i guess i would say to be accurate go ahead with the next slide more than for more than a year eweb staff have conducted significant public outreach listening and educating including

42:07 multiple interactions with this board multiple neighborhood mailings direct response to customer inquiries neighborhood meetings articles and in neighborhood association newsletters and meetings with other government officials as well over the past year commissioners have received periodic formal project updates from staff and also had three in-person on-site interactive visits the last being on march 4th so we've done a tremendous amount of customer outreach on this project go ahead with the next slide please

42:52 so commissioners this is a long project there's many decisions and activities along the way as you can see we're only part way through and before we entertain questions i would like to emphasize that our outreach will continue as we interact with the neighbors the public and this board on future issues and decisions related to construction protocols and eventually public amenities and uses and the ongoing maintenance of the site so the this is the outreach will continue as we progress through the project next slide please i would like to conclude by really thanking staff and a few people

43:37 in particular i'd like to thank our chief operating officer rod price our water division manager karen kelly our project manager laura farthing communications supervisor jen connors and also our customer relationship manager janine parisi for their work so far on the project it's still going on for most of these subject matter experts are available this evening if we have further questions or if you have further questions as necessary but i'm really pleased with how the project's been managed the detail of which they've provided information to management and the board and the public and expect um and acknowledge that this

44:23 project will have significant impacts on the neighborhood uh for a period of time um it will be shorter if done and and procured and and um mobilized once as opposed to twice i do believe that if we did it twice people would look back 10 years from now and say why didn't you just do this all at once especially given that hillyard will be resurfaced during that time and the expenses associated with that will be significantly greater and so we'd be happy to have staff or myself entertain questions from the board as to the project and where we would like to head with it so with that uh president schlossberg

45:09 back to you great looks like sonia's got a question well i think in our last uh get-together uh to review the site i promised staff that i was going to grill them during this conversation so that's what i intend to do you were forewarned um so when we when we were when we were on the site we were talking about uh you know two versus one tank just what what kind of work you were doing to look at that and some of the the information that was brought to us was around the trees that needed to be removed and in order to get tank one into that space we had you were going to have to remove those trees anyway is that

45:55 still correct in the the line of thinking and what came to this decision yeah so the truth is for site too essentially that is part of it commissioner carlson and actually i'll i'll ask laura farthing who's the project manager to weigh in on with with some more detail on that but that is in essence true that is correct we were going to have to remove the trees early on in the process approximately 25 of the trees on the site and that had to do with the fact that we're going to it's been recommended that we do control drilling and blasting so the plan was to do that for both tanks regardless of sequencing or you know where exactly they were sited on the property right so in order to move this giant tank into place in the first position

46:42 those trees all had to be removed the ground had to be broken up and the the idea was that many of those trees wouldn't survive so in in terms of the of where you decide where the sighting recommendation came from can you just really quickly talk through i know it's in the background but i think it's it's good to have this on public record some of the work you did to analyze what kinds of trees to save and what i know frank kind of glossed over it really quickly they're talking about the oak trees being you know of higher value but can you talk about how you roll with that decision and that recommendation yep we worked with a local arborist and we did a survey of the health the size the type of every tree on the site

47:28 and then we also brought in an ecologist to help evaluate the different habitat sites and so they were really the ones that brought you know kind of we already knew but reinforced the fact that the oak trees are a strategy habitat that are prioritized for preservation by the oregon department of fish and wildlife and so they are really the trees that will survive climate change they are more drought resistant and fire resistant than fur habitat and so that was how we decided that the oak habitat was probably the more i mean it all has value but the more valuable habitat on the site and so that's how we kind of constrain the site of where we were going to put the tanks and then you are correct to actually put the tank there and we had to clear a certain amount of trees but

48:14 we really looked at taking out the smaller unhealthy trees and you know those are a little more impacted that's why with alternative one we're actually taking out more trees but that includes the smaller unhealthy trees that have been shaded by the fur trees that answer your question yes absolutely so you know on the environmental side you know very clear distinction of looking at what was impacted you did an assessment um also of the i mean reaching out to the neighborhood asking people to come in and provide some more feedback and doing a survey of the kinds of animals in the habitat that was there as well which went into part of your sighting work correct correct um i can continue with this blind question i don't know where

48:59 i'm at time wise if others want to jump in fine if not um i'll continue so just let me know when i when my time's up here mindy if you're talking i can't hear you darn it um does anybody else want to jump in i was going to say sonia i'm happy to yield my time to you because you seem to have a set list of questions that you're trying to get through but i saw john borowski raise his hand yeah i'm i'm happy to give others time i otherwise they're serious so um why don't you go ahead and go a couple more questions sonya you may get to where i'm going but i do want to speak to the asu as well absolutely okay um so

49:47 that talks about the tree survey the trees removed and why that's the ecological impact um you know basically we're gonna have to if we're going to have to remove many of those trees anyway or they're going they're at risk for not surviving um putting not having a tank there then for a while doesn't seem to make um as much sense uh also when we have the when you have to do that blasting work you talked a bit um to us about how how that blasting was going to to kill the trees in that area anyway all of that work had to be done the blasting work had to be done kind of all at once um to make room for it in 10 years which is what's going to um to kill those trees essentially

50:32 and we would have a lot more back fill so still along the same kind of environmental lines having to take more rock out has a much bigger impact on climate impact as well for and neighborhood impact from having more trucks run back and forth how many more truckloads was it in the other versions if we didn't do two tanks now can somebody remind me do you want me to go frankly obviously yeah laura please please do okay um total how many well there's a reduction of about i think it was 2 000 truckloads by building both tanks now

51:17 and that mainly comes from if you only build one tank now you'll have to over excavate and backfill just a portion of tank two just to accommodate um the construction of tank two so by building them both now you reduce that rework which amounts to about 2 000 truckloads of reduction okay so so that's that's a huge impact to one the environment and the the roads and the community because every single one of those big trucks going through there is another disruption to those neighbors um so getting more into that that social impact time wise um there's actually how much of a reduction in the the time from a neighborhood perspective to

52:02 the amount of time that's estimated to to be needed to to fulfill it if it both are done at the same time we're estimating that it will save about a year's worth of time on the overall construction um by doing both tanks now okay so another you know significant impact to neighbors yes it will be now but those trees wouldn't be there anyway and then the project will be done and we won't have to touch it again for decades and finally um the cost i see on this slide uh 1.4 million can you dig into that just a little bit more and then i'll be done with my my line of questioning there

52:47 do you how are we getting these savings essentially one point four million do you want me to take it okay yeah laura you can go into the exact differences um i i would say there's a couple of primary differences uh commissioner first of all you're you're having to mobilize and demobilize and then mobilize again and demobilize again and so you're that there's a number of different inefficiencies when you do that some of that is included in this cost and then also the fact that over time construction costs are increasing at a greater rate than what you're discounting back through inflation and so there's those those are the two kind of key components the mobilization piece laura if you want to add to that more specifically as to what some of

53:32 those details are that would be great the biggest savings is for the tank construct construction company so they would only have to come to the site once so that amounts to about a 275 000 savings per tank if we build them both now and then there's also savings and just bringing you know earthwork equipment in and out so those are really the biggest efficiencies they're just inherent in doing them both now great well i would conclude that staff did a good job a very good job of figuring out how to consider the ecological impacts the social impacts and the cost

54:18 impacts to arrive at this and it was not something that they did lightly that they did heavy due diligence and kept us and the public apprised along the entire way and i just want to thank you very much for all of that hard work um i think this is a wonderful plan that's well thought out thank you thank you commissioner john barofsky did that did your questions get asked or do you have some yeah i i just need to to weigh in on this as well um thank you president um i uh as you know this is in in my award so i have a uh a due diligence to to look into this deeply

55:03 i feel um and i have done as much as i can i've gone to the site i think i've done five different visits to the site with staff and with community members also attended a southeast neighborhood uh presentation on this topic at one of their board meetings or actually it was one of their general meetings um so i'm fairly familiar with it the the problem that i'm having is the the switch from one tank to two tanks and the public process that went into that um when i was you know obviously i was just brought on board early on january was when i was sworn in i did

55:48 familiarize myself with this project before i was actually a sworn commissioner but even in those early months it was one tank college hill hawkins another tank and that's what has been presented to the neighbors that's where the contention came as to the sighting of the tanks i think if we had gone in with the public process early on and said we're building two tanks here we would have probably gotten different public feedback on this because it wouldn't have been switched from putting it tank 1 and tank 2 which we heard for months and months to save the oaks if we had gone in with the public process and said we're building two

56:34 tanks here and we want to hear from the public the two tank option came along fairly quickly in my in my view i i agree that it has a bunch of uh very compelling reasons to move forward in that direction um i'm concerned about the process and i'm concerned that this is a process that we need to look at and see going forward if we're gonna change like as one of the people said earlier if we're gonna change horses in midstream we need to look at that because i don't think that's the proper way to do it um i do believe that this this

57:19 does have merit going forward i'm sorry that it wasn't presented in this way all along for the last year and a half to two years because i think what that does is it loses trust with the community that i that i represent um the one thing that i was very encouraged by was that my predecessor dick halkinson weighed in in public testimony and gave his evaluation that this was probably the correct way to go and as somebody who has as much experience as he has that gives me a lot of

58:04 a lot of confidence in moving forward with the way we're going i just want to make sure that moving forward that we don't have this type of last minute switch again because these are very impactful uh decisions that we're making and we need to make them carefully and i think we did and i think it was well thought out but i think that we we can learn from this going forward thank you thank you commissioner borofsky um president schlossberg do you mind if i comment on his his his comments right ahead yeah i i certainly appreciate the the comments that you make and i i think that um when all is said and done i have to take full responsibility

58:50 for the the the switch from one tank to two tanks there were there were a few things that drove that and i guess i i go back to the original uh outreach and planning process that we started it was pretty clear early on that there were certain design elements that that were going to have to be made by appropriate engineering staff this this particular change came about in in a couple of ways uh first of all after the um the fire on the mackenzie and the realization that we may have to accelerate and there was there was a renewed interest in accelerating the second water treatment plant which would also have storage by the way that was

59:35 part of a different view view of it having 15 million gallons of capacity at this site would give us more flexibility as to the sequencing of the remaining base level reservoirs and so it it wasn't originally part of the approach but given the flexibility that it created from a capacity and storage perspective doing college hill at a different time or sequencing that differently with hawkins or a reservoir at the new treatment plant was flexibility we felt uh was was emerging so that was kind of an emerging thing

1:00:20 the two tanks versus one tank originally started about four months ago when i mentioned it to the board and it was truly an evaluation at that point it was not a pre-ordained decision it was not to sort of dispute the this tank versus that tank it was truly a different way of looking at it i thought it warranted a tbl kind of analysis and that's what staff provided if it would not have shown the benefit we would not be we would not be doing two tanks but it but it did and um um i do agree with you the uh the communications of that and the approach of that which falls on my shoulders is something to adjust and learn from

1:01:06 going forward so i absolutely agree with you on that no dispute and then i've got one other question regarding the record of decision part of the packet stated that we would need if we went forward with this direction we would need to get authorization from the state to possibly keep college hill in in operation longer than we had anticipated if that doesn't happen if the state says no i'm sorry you need to take this off at the time that we told you to what is our option at that point

1:01:51 yeah it's a that's a good question but i i also think that there it's a very low risk question for us karen do you want to add into that a little bit as far as how the state process works and the fact that they are pretty lenient when you have a plan that you're working and are involved with so i don't know if karen kelly wants to add into a little bit on that yeah i'd be happy to um so you might remember that i worked for the oregon health authority drinking water services for about 15 years and managed a number of staff across the state in that capacity so i'm very familiar with their operations very familiar with their rule set and what happens in this situation is they would put us under a bilateral

1:02:36 compliance agreement which is a form of enforcement action whereby we then sign on the dotted line that we will create a new action plan with new dates uh for compliance of taking college hill offline so what that means is we need to tell the public that we were out of compliance we'd have to tell our customers that but in essence we just signed the agreement with them with some new timelines i do agree with frank that i don't think this is a high risk for us the state is interested in working with us they have been for a number of years in fact ever since i was the inspector for eweb so we'll continue that good relationship with them and we will come up with a plan if we

1:03:21 find ourselves in that situation i hope that answers the question thank you all right matt or john brown to either of you have any questions john brown not questions just a comment um i understand uh where everybody's coming from and everything in this but i for one am grateful that the staff gave us the option of considering one or two um i i think i would be more remiss if we were sitting here only considering one and then somebody at this meeting said what about two what are the cost things and it didn't take a few more months to do that i'm glad we have the options uh the fact that we have two and it was it was rather short uh doesn't change the engineering doesn't change the tbl or anything else it's just a

1:04:06 process i understand john your concerns and and the good the way we get better is to learn from our past and thank you for bringing that up but uh i'm i'm grateful that uh we have these options to consider um because i can go back uh over a decade and say i wish i would have had this option on a couple other projects but uh we didn't we're learning we're getting better we're we're trying to to do the best we can for everybody concerned and so uh unless i hear something to contrary i intend on supporting this record of decisions thank you all right matt do you want to chime in no pressure thanks thanks commissioner i will uh very quickly um uh first on the

1:04:54 report that we were provided this record of decision report is has just remarkable detail for anyone seeking to understand the project's scope the options consider the tradeoffs involved in all the variable variables evaluated by the project team it is a remarkable amount of reflects and just an immense amount of work by the project team and for me it's very very valuable after multiple site visits and this explanation through this report um i'm comfortable with the decision and i'm confident that the staff decision is the right one uh it doesn't mean it's not hard and that there aren't some difficulties to come with it but i think it's the right one it's still this this project is going to have a huge

1:05:39 impact and the concerns of neighbors about the impact of construction in their backyards uh is warranted i'm not looking for proposals right now but i would like to see staff take some creative efforts to reduce and then offset impacts of three years of construction i really hope that we'll do everything we can to mitigate the impacts recognizing that we're going to be doing the same thing when it comes to college hill uh working in people's backyards and so we need to find solutions that are replicable um and and equitable but i do hope that we'll really put some thinking into how we might just offset some of this this difficult

1:06:24 neighborhood disruption that's all thank you i would just like to add that um i am incredibly empathetic to the neighbors that live around there i know that it's going to be a huge disruption i know it's probably a hard hard thing to anticipate of what that will look like and it's you know on behalf of of the entire eweb customer base um so i am really empathetic to that and also to the um fact that the project did change going from one's one tank to two but i also think that sometimes that's what happens in the planning of a project is that some new ideas might come up

1:07:09 and i think that this um alternative is much better than stretching out the project to be much longer than it actually needed to be i think that finding efficiencies while as difficult as it will be might um in the long run just be a a better way to go so i do feel for the neighbors um but i also support this um record of decision and going forward frank yes president strasberg there's a couple of other things just to mention really quickly so first of all i agree with uh commissioner mccray's request to really look at the impacts uh of construction this it's incredibly difficult and and

1:07:55 challenging and annoying to neighbors to have a neighborhood for some period of time an extended period of time like this turned into a construction zone and and we want to develop and and be as empathetic and understanding and flexible as we can in that process um the other thing i would point out who came up in public testimony is we do have uh and have worked with finance staff on the long-term financial plan and the capital improvement plan that this is definitely something that is within the scope and the affordability of those plans and so um there's there's no concern from finance staff on the sort of rearranging of of tanks and moving some projects around so i just wanted to make mention that since it

1:08:41 since it came up earlier but absolutely uh completely agree with comments about uh turning a neighborhood into a construction zone and the the understanding and the approach and the empathy we have to have for those impacted does anybody need another round john barofsky thank you president stottsburg um yeah i just want to uh reiterate again that i think our board and and eweb as in general takes all of these considered considerations to heart um as somebody who

1:09:26 lives and has a business right near a major construction project i i own a business that was almost adjacent to the new hayward field and saw how that impacted my myself and my my business and my neighbors and i live in the neighborhood it was it was something to uh to deal with um and we got through it we've got a new beautiful stadium and i think that once this is done you will have still the majority of the of the acreage is going to be available for open space and recreation and we're going to put it back as as nice as we can the other thing that that we also need to consider as a board and as an organization

1:10:12 is that the city of eugene has uh values these types of properties um anything that's above 600 feet is in the south hills study and there's a there's a refinement plan that deals with that now we didn't have to deal exactly with all of those things but as a city we know that these are valuable sites throughout the whole community and and need to be treated that way and i believe that eweb is doing everything they can to maintain this site in accordance with the south hill study and with what the community as a whole feels is appropriate for this type of space so

1:10:57 i i want to give kudos to staff for doing that i think the plan and what will happen when it's all said and done will be an attribute to the community as far as the drinking resiliency and as far as the amenities that it will provide to the the neighbors after it's done so i want to say thank you very much to the staff for doing everything they can to know that this is a valuable resource to not only just the community that is adjacent to it but everybody that will benefit from the the use of the water throughout the community thanks all right sonia i just want to reiterate again that i am

1:11:45 very very sympathetic to the neighbors and what this is going to mean for them um i mean part of the reason that i want to support this is that i think it will mean a lower impact uh over the long term for less time and that's really critical too i mean this there's no getting around it this is going to be a significant impact and i'm sorry you know for those that live around there that the the other side of it too is that you know i think eweb long term will be a a very good neighbor in that that space will remain you know primarily trees the rest of that property will be protected and you know it won't be developed i mean that that really

1:12:30 could be all mowed down and put in with high value housing um if we weren't there and i do again recognize that this is this is going to be a process and this is not the last time that we're going to hear uh from those neighbors i mean we want to be apprised when when things aren't going well there or or the impacts you're having if you have thoughts on how we could potentially you know minimize those impacts we talked a little bit about the blasting earlier that is one thing that we absolutely need to make sure is communicated to the public and how that that process will happen when it will happen so neighbors who have you know animals potentially other

1:13:16 conditions if there's impacts there ptsd i mean any of that kind of work i hope that we're going to be working very closely with that community to make sure that those impacts are known well in advance so people can plan for them um you know people are working at zoom right now and being home when there's blasting happening in the background it will be challenging so i don't know when that that portion of it starts um offhand i'd like to know more about that hopefully we'll be more out of this situation as that develops but i know that there's other work to make sure that you know properties are are surveyed before that happens so please for those who are still listening

1:14:01 um that are neighbors impacted in the area this is not the end of the conversation this is an ongoing conversation please continue to to work with us on this we want to be good neighbors for you and and again staff thank you for the due diligence here thank you sonia anybody else who hasn't had a second go around have anything to add so this is an endorsement so are we looking for a vote just a thumbs up how do we do this frank so um presidential this this could be one of several ways probably the easiest thing to do with at this point would be to just call for a question to the board with a

1:14:46 simple hand raise or thumbs up as you you described it um endorsing the decision as presented recognizing there's more decisions and more interaction and more status updates to come but what we're asking for is an endorsement on on these particular items the citing and the sequencing so that we can move forward prudently so if you wanted to ask the board to endorse it via a show of hands and and probably a voice as well just uh for people who are not visually watching that would probably be the easiest thing okay so i'm gonna call for an endorsement um with the citing um and the um

1:15:33 design of the project but also knowing that this is an ongoing conversation that we have more work to do with neighbors in terms of how to mitigate some of the impacts so if you support that endorsement raise your hand and say yes yes yes all right i don't know the video picks up hand raises i know we can see it on our end but the video recording does not it picks up the audio only only i believe unless the screen isn't being shared just apply yeah just for the record i saw all five hands go up so just so it's on the audio record as well thank you commissioners yeah and and thanks to staff and and

1:16:18 thanks to the neighbors as well and i look forward to hearing more updates as we go forward with this project absolutely okay um we're now on to agenda item number eight which is the audited financial statements and i'm wondering if keith simavik is here do we know oh it looks like he is okay great so we're gonna move on to the 2020 year-end audited financial statements and management letter perfect well in that case i'll go ahead and kick things off here excited to be here thank you commissioners uh for having us uh it's definitely been an interesting year from a number of different

1:17:03 perspectives and definitely the audit is not immune to that so uh you know i keep thinking back on uh actually a year ago doing the 2019 financial statement audit i think eweb was one of the last audits that we did or that i was involved in where we were actually in the field for the audit so this was the actual first year uh even though we've been in this environment for an entire year but this is the first year that we did the audit entirely remotely for eweb so definitely an interesting year uh took a you know a little bit of flexibility adaptability uh definitely a little bit challenging uh but happy to be here and and you know along the lines of our initially scheduled time frame for completing the audit which is a pretty remarkable feat for for your staff and your management

1:17:48 team as well that have been able to guide everyone through this process so happy to be here and go ahead and advance the slides please so uh just real quick for our agenda we're going to talk a little bit about our team as you hear from me today but uh there's a whole team behind us that are involved in the financial statement audit of eweb so we're gonna give you just a a glimpse into the rest of the team or the core team at least talk a little bit about the services that you've uh engaged us to perform and the deliverables you you can expect to receive out of this process we're going to go through some of the areas in our risk assessment process just bringing you into that a little bit more give you a little more insight into what we consider these significant uh audit areas this year and that's to show you a little bit more about where do we spend the bulk of our

1:18:34 time uh and what type of procedures did we do there uh and then after that we'll talk about uh each of the audit opinions and those deliverables that that we'll introduce you to but we'll talk through uh what you can find when you read through those um what kind of items will you see in those what were the final results and then after that we're going to go through kind of what we call our communication to those charged with governance i really wish they would change the name of that letter but it's from our professional standards and it's a letter that we issue as part of every audit that we do that communicates some additional items uh related to the audit process uh what we found were there any audit adjustments and did we have any recommendations or best practices so we'll go through all that go ahead and advance the slide please uh so this is kind of our core team and

1:19:19 there are other individuals probably had another four individuals involved from a staffing perspective but this is kind of the core team again myself i was the senior manager on the engagement i worked very closely with the partners on this engagement to help design our audit approach each and every year making sure that our team is carrying out that audit approach as stated and reporting out the actual uh either findings or adjustments or things like that that we note in the process julie desemony who you may be familiar with in previous years she is the partner and overall what we call our engagement reviewer she is responsible for the engagement as a whole and for signing her name on the actual audit reports at the end of the day uh so and she also leads our firm's energy and utilities practice so a

1:20:05 very high level technical resource in that area as well so excited to have her back on the engagement again this year lori tish is our concurring review partner and she actually leads our firm's is involved with our firm's utility practice but also leads our firm's governmental practice as well as a governmental utility we're very excited to have her on the engagement she was kind of a new set of eyes a couple years ago when we started in the current contract that we're in with eweb and served really in that quality control role it's a very important piece that our firm requires to have someone that's really not involved with anyone on the management team or or staff but coming in really is that cold reviewer to make sure that we're following all of our professional

1:20:50 standards and the actual uh final deliverables of the audited financial statements really uh include all the bells and whistles that are required by the governmental accounting standards so it's a really important role and then sydney jacoby stepped in this year a new set of eyes uh serving as our in-charge auditor we had a manager for a number of years that served in that role and every so often we like to bring in a a new set of eyes to step into that role and sidney jacoby served in that role this year go ahead and advance the slides please so this this is intended to give you a better feel for the different deliverables that you can expect to receive out of this and really break this down in a few different boxes here uh box one uh really is probably the deliverable that you may be the most familiar with

1:21:35 and that is our audit report over the financial statements of of e-web and the intention of that report is is for us through all the the procedures that we've performed and tracing transactions back to invoices or contracts and agreements making sure that things are recorded at the correct amount in the correct period classified correctly uh and and be able to get to the point where at the end of the day we can say we believe those financial statements are free of material misstatement so a very important piece box two is kind of uh related to that and it kind of goes a step further of not only kind of looking at those transactions and tracing them back to actual documentation but also looking at that final financial statement that your team puts together that your staff puts together and making sure again that it

1:22:20 we're doing that technical review and it includes all of the requirements of the governmental accounting standards so that technical review is very important as well box three uh is a little bit different uh this year for eweb it's gotten this report in the past but it was one that was unique this year and required because of the fact that the um because of uweb receiving federal funding uh fema funding for the storm event and some hazard mitigation funds from fema uh related the storm event back in 2019. so whenever federal funds are received the the federal government requires that the audit be performed in accordance with government auditing standards which is just a little bit different than our normal professional standards that we use when we go through the audit and requires additional layers

1:23:07 of of training on our part to make sure we've got people uh that can go through and do those additional compliance audits that the federal government requires box number four is an additional audit report that we issue in accordance with oregon municipal standards so the state of oregon has certain state statutes that they require auditors as part of any governmental audit to go through and look to make sure that that organization is following those state laws so there's a number of different items that are noted in that report that we look at i'd say the one where we spend the bulk of our time with eweb specifically is on public procurement and uh pulling samples and making sure that at the different thresholds and for the different types of procurements is eweb following all those state guidelines when going out for public

1:23:52 procurement box number five is is really that report related to the federal funds those fema funds that that eweb has expended and received reimbursement for making sure that those expenditures were in line with the underlying agreements with with the state or the federal government in those cases so that's an additional compliance report that again that was unique to this year because of the level of funding that had been received and then finally it's that communication to those charged with governance that i mentioned that additional letter that would that we issue and we'll discuss some of the items that are included in there go ahead and advance the slide so give you a little more glimpse into what we've identified in our risk assessment process this year because we sit down and look at this every single

1:24:38 year as a team and we talk about where do we where do we see the greatest risk where do we want to design you know either additional procedures or pull larger samples or use technology to help us uh in our process uh to be able to at the end of the day get comfort over the accuracy and the fairness of the financial statement so some of these are areas that you may seem uh see from year to year just because of the inherent risk uh when you think of something like work orders and making sure that those are closed timely and and they're accumulating all the costs that should be included within there that takes a lot of collaboration a lot of different departments to be involved in that process there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of internal controls that need to be happening to make sure that happens smoothly so that is more of an inherent risk that

1:25:24 you'll see from from year to year i.t security and access is another one that we look at each and every year becomes more and more and more of an important area of all the audits that we do just because so many processes and so many checks and balances uh that have been in play are are done in a in an electronic environment in in today and so that's an area that we want to understand well who has access to the system what can they do within the system how is that reviewed what are the internal controls at eweb to take a look at that so that's another very important area and creates additional inherent risk this year because of the fema funds received we we performed that additional federal funds audit or what's known as the single audit so that was an additional focus this year

1:26:09 the next box talks about thinking about the environment that we're in and the impacts that a remote environment for different parts of the year could have had on that system of internal controls you know we've been the auditor for eweb for for a few years and we have an understanding of what those internal controls have been what that structure has been what those policies have been in the past but you you kind of have to take a different look at that in the current year because of being in a remote environment you know were those internal controls still happening to the same degree are we still seeing evidence of of the different reviews and approvals how are we seeing evidence of those if they had to be done electronically and had been done manually in the past so that's another area that that we took a lot of

1:26:54 additional focus there making sure that we're pulling transactions before and after kind of the start of the pandemic and making sure that we had a good understanding of what impact at least from an internal control standpoint did the remote environment have on e-web and we were able to go from there and then finally the additional procedures that we perform for the state requirements and again going back to some of the procurement laws and making sure that investments are in line with state laws and regulations making sure that you're investing your funds in approved depositories things like that are what the state requires and what we report out on as well so those were our significant audit areas let's go ahead and advance the slide so i want to spend a minute just talking about well how did we get through this process in a remote environment i mentioned this

1:27:39 is the first time that that we've done that with with eweb and i think just you know how how in the world have would we have done this uh you know maybe five years ago definitely i think 10 years ago uh entirely remotely if you've ever been inside the rock while we've been there and set up and going through the audit you'd see that if you walk in the room we've got a team of people up and down working with different folks having face-to-face conversations looking over their shoulders as they're processing transactions providing documentation to us you might see stacks of contracts and things that we're looking through you know normal things that you you'd expect to see so you might wonder well how do you do that in a remote environment well thank goodness for for where we're at in terms of technology uh we think about how we exchange

1:28:25 documentation and the investments that that ewebs made uh in the recent past to uh in technology and digitizing records you know a lot of the the documentation not even just this year but leading up to this year has been passed electronically to us that it's already been in a digital format and we use kind of a secure file transfer site to be able to transfer all the information that we request electronically safely and securely as well uh you think of things like uh microsoft teams uh of course the face-to-face conversations and meetings are great and we definitely miss that that in-person touch and teams helps with that but we also think about just the the technology baked within that with with screen sharing you know

1:29:10 it's something great right here where we can go through and and have our presentation up but in terms of the actual nuts and bolts of the audit we're able to kind of simulate those conversations we would have in the past where we'd have someone kind of as we're looking over their shoulders show us how they're processing a transaction um and show us the different control points and approvals along the way we can still do that in this remote environment by using technology such as this and being able to use that screen sharing capability so that was very effective in this process we updated our risk assessment process as we just talked through kind of the impact on internal controls was definitely a focus for us and and seeing if controls were still happening uh were they happening as timely as before as we know you know those checks and balances aren't as effective if they're not

1:29:55 happening relatively closely to when those transactions happen so that was something that we were looking out for as well and then finally we're thinking about the actual financial statement document saying well has eweb been uh transparent in its disclosures and the footnotes in there in terms of the financial and operational impact to e-web and acknowledging kind of the uncertainty of the impact that we could still see in the future as well so that was that was part of what we looked at too in this process go ahead and advance so at the end of the day with all those different audit reports that we mentioned what will you see within those well for our audit report over the fairness and accuracy of the financial statements you'll see our unmodified or clean opinion again a lot of work goes into that and you think

1:30:41 about you know yes thought it was done in a remote environment over the course of several weeks but this is something that staff and management have been in you know ever since the pandemic started and processing transactions and transitioning to that environment and being able to move business forward uh and get to this point where again this is the initially scheduled time frame for completing the audit to get to this point and have a clean opinion very good news there that's exactly what you're looking for and any third party that you provide those statements to are going to want to see that as well for our government auditing standards report that additional report i mentioned because of the federal funds audit nothing was reported within there and you know if we found anything in terms of significant internal control deficiencies or what we call material

1:31:26 weaknesses kind of that highest level of severity of you know lack of checks and balances those would get identified in this report but we didn't have any findings to that level to note in that report so good news there for our report in compliance with state laws and some of the different things that we look at there we did not have any instances of non-compliance to note through the transactions that we looked at for the year so that's exactly what you're looking for and finally for the single audit or that federal funds audit of the fema funds received we did not have any compliance findings in terms of the expenditures that were made in accordance with those agreements as well so all good news uh across the board there go ahead and move the the slide forward so now we want to talk a little bit and just give you a little more flavor for for the audit and how things went this

1:32:12 slide shows kind of a bullet point list of what you will see in that separate letter what we call our communication to those charged with governance and each of those bullet points kind of represents one of the different paragraphs within that letter i'm not going to go into each one of those and a lot of it is probably pretty standard professional language that we're required to put out there but that's that's good news that's that's what you want to see because if we had something outside of that one you probably hear from us you would hear from us much earlier in this process when you think of some of the things that are listed on here such as no disagreements with management no difficulties in performing the audit if we had issues there you would be hearing from us and that would probably be something along the lines of if uh if we were asking questions or we were asking for documentation and and management wasn't giving it to us or or staff wasn't answering our questions

1:32:57 you know that could limit the scope of our of our audit and uh probably prohibit us from being able to give a clean opinion on the financial statements so even though it seems like a simple thing uh i i think it's important for any governing body to know that we didn't feel that our scope was limited at all any any piece of documentation that we asked for it was provided to us any question that we asked we were given an answer to it we felt like everyone that we talked to was was transparent in that process so i think that's important to know this is also the letter uh where we talk about it were there any audit adjustments and that would be something where if there was any uh errors in the process as we were going along and looking at the information and testing it back to contracts agreements

1:33:42 so on and so forth if there were any errors in terms of how things were accounted for things that weren't recorded things were recorded at the wrong amount or in the wrong period things of that nature is what we're looking for and of course this is all in the bounds of what we deem to be materiality as well because our audit opinion again goes back to uh that we believe that the financial statements are free of material misstatement so that's something that we always keep in mind and we'll talk about a few of those that we identified here on the next slide as well as some recommendations that we have in relation to that perfect so a couple items to note here uh the first one here on this side is going to be related to to work orders and through some of the testing that we do we always want to see items that are sitting as construction work in process uh if

1:34:28 we're identifying any of those that were actually in commercial operation as of december 31st 2020 and hadn't been closed to assets in service we want to quantify the amount of those and see if there is a significant amount of missed depreciation because assets are only your plant assets are only getting depreciated once they are placed into service uh in your financial statements when they're sitting in construction work in process they are not uh to be uh depreciated quite yet and so through that process we noted some items uh both on the electric and water side you'll see the different dollar amounts there about 2.6 million on the electric side and 115 000 on the water side that represents um adjustments that were made to reclassify those from construction work and process to assets

1:35:13 in service i will say both of these amounts uh well were not material to the financial statements as we note there individually or in the aggregate um but these are things that even if they're not above necessarily a materiality threshold for your financial statements if they're they're they're above kind of a lower threshold we bring them up to management we propose them uh and and let management know that hey we found these errors and uh proposed them to to be adjusted your management team has done that these have been reflected in your financial statements and the impact of any missed appreciation is is immaterial overall so whenever we find something like this we always have a related recommendation um you know this is one that we have had items here and there related to work orders and this specific issue in the

1:35:59 past with with eweb but i'd say we've had years where there are more significant items definitely i i use that terminology material weakness or significant deficiency previously you know these do not fall in line or under those categories definitely these are not material items and they do not fall under the category of a material weakness or significant deficiency but however we do have a recommendation and kind of thinking about because fine-tuning this process going forward to help prevent some of these things even even at more immaterial levels one is to implement controls so that you actually have a system automated control so once these items are actually in commercial operation you start that time clock within the system of kind of an industry practice

1:36:44 of best practice of 60 to 90 days to allow for trailing charges to come in but closing out those work orders within that time frame after the commercial operation date and we think that will help going forward address some this item specifically in the future go ahead and advance the slide for the next item the only other item that we'll note in that report that you'll see relates to some of the it procedures that we do and this one has to do with the staff's review of what are called stock reports system or organizational control reports and this is actually kind of an audit report that's done of any uh kind of vendor that you're using or service provider that's performing a service for you processing certain transactions for you or or doing something like that

1:37:29 for you and so this is kind of an uh an audit of those organizations and this goes back to someone at eweb looking at those reports seeing what items are noted in there and it helps in your overall risk management determining if this is the right vendor to be working with if they've got a lot of issues that pop up and kind of taking that all into consideration uh so what we're looking for there is is having kind of a formalized review kind of documenting having that audit trail to show that that those reports were reviewed and any items uh of note were documented and and reviewed uh within that within that report as well other than that again this falls in the line of best practices uh but we did not have anything else in addition to that and these are these

1:38:14 you know are are good things you want best practices like this to come out of the process uh but what you don't want to see is these things to raise to more significant levels where you start having material audit adjustments or again things that really raise that level of a material weakness so so this is good and i i think within that letter there are management responses as well addressing these uh acknowledging them and uh with an action plan going forward on each of these go ahead and advance the slide and i think that's the end of our kind of prepared statements but we're happy to field any questions as well and really here is just kind of a thank you to everyone that was involved in this process and thanks again just for for the patience the uh flexibility and the adaptability in this process it was challenging we

1:39:00 definitely hope to be on site and see everyone's faces again next year and be able to present to the commission in person next year as well but thank you to everyone that was involved any questions go ahead we'll go with john barofsky first and then john brown so just just a question um how many of these sock reports is that i mean is that are there hundreds of vendors that would have to go through and do this or is it is it a few i mean if if you're

1:39:45 talking 50 100 vendors to go through that that's that's a time consuming thing and i'm just wondering what the impact on the organization would be to implement this best practice sure and i don't know that i have the exact number uh offhand um but i would i would imagine it's from um you know we have a separate i.t team that comes in and looks at this um and has prepared this recommendation um and i would i would imagine it's less than 50 would be would be my thought i don't think you're talking 50 to 100 different um third parties that are performing some kind of service for for e-web processing transactions for e-web or

1:40:30 or hosting or things like that that that would fall under kind of this sock report but i don't know if there's someone at eweb that has a specific number out there of these reports that you're getting uh commissioner borowski i don't know if travis uh canada may have a specific number i know what we've looked at is prioritizing the systems that we feel like there would be the most risk with some of those related to billing for example and so we've we've prioritized some of those but the exact number i don't know off the top of my head i don't know if travis does or not but if we're trying to prioritize it to the major systems yeah and and i can speak to that a little bit i think that we've identified about four or five systems we're

1:41:15 primarily host our applications on premise and so we don't have a lot of um sas uh tools that we're using right now at eweb so our numbers are in the four to five range great that that's helpful so so if going forward if they address those the major priority ones and there may be a few smaller ones that would probably check your box on next year then correct correct john brown yeah two questions thank you um one we don't get fema money every year so just curious if you can quantify the

1:42:01 additional cost for accounting for when we get fema money and my second question is regarding it seems like the closing of accounts seems to be a recurring issue it you know this isn't the first time you've found that that's a problem with eweb that you know closing of the accounts i think in years past it's been the same problem and what's it going to take for us to get if i'm wrong correct me but what's it going to take for us to get to not have that be in a recurring finding of the audit yeah both good questions commissioner brown uh so i guess the the first one you know i don't know that i have an exact number for you in terms of how much staff time is required to to go through and and do the complete accounting of that um i you know i do know for like the fema funds and everything you

1:42:47 know one ewoom's been through it a few times now unfortunately uh with these storm events that have happened uh the last several years um but there's a there's more familiarity there i think and you know when staff goes through this work orders are created just like with any other construction type project and things like that so there's there's processes and procedures in place already uh to to track those types of things um uh but you know federal money is never is never free uh it it's definitely great to have that opportunity to get reimbursement and some federal assistance on those types of projects but but it's definitely not free money and there is a cost to it and uh investment and time in that as well and when you get enough money there's

1:43:32 also a required audit that's in connection with that as well and there's actually two programs with the fema disaster relief program as well as the hazard mitigation program both required audits because the amount of federal funds received this year um but you know again this is not something that eweb goes through in each and every year could that somebody get back to me on that and just kind of give me a rough order of magnitude of what that cost is yeah we we can do that john okay on your second question i would acknowledge that that the the closing of work orders or the the putting of the assets into service um has recurred over a

1:44:17 number number of years i asked keith and julie when they when i went through my sort of closeout interview as part of the audit whether they felt that was because we just weren't paying attention to projects or whether we were actually at the end of the project it was still collecting money so there were charges still coming in but at some point you have to decide whether those charges are material or not and so um they assured me it wasn't because we were being negligent with our projects um we were just um making decisions that come around at the end of the project and given the number of work orders we have uh it was uh something that was not

1:45:03 material but something that we can continue to work on that's why we're having some discussions with engineering and also our accounting departments to see if there are ways that we can automatically trigger some kind of a closing based on uh when an asset is actually put into commercial operation and so there's some there there's some opportunities there but it's it's certainly not a negligence issue um it's it's not necessarily material but it's also something that we want to get better at thank you other questions matt sonja

1:45:55 fun for me thanks for the great report thorough [Music] yeah i don't have any questions but uh just a couple of quick comments um i'd also like to thank you keith just for your diligence and for this uh excruciatingly detailed report holy cow uh but really uh i appreciate the the work that you all do to help us all make sure you have confidence in the work that's being produced by our team um i am glad to hear that there weren't any material issues and i think that does um uh speaks highly for for our team and i i appreciate having a a team in finance that has their stuff together um i also really glad to hear the staff are open and supportive keith as you are doing the audit and i think that's equally as important i really

1:46:40 value that and i appreciate you calling that our attention to that piece um thanks that's all i have all right i just have one quick uh question but also um i don't know if it's boring for you keith to do an audit like this where you don't find anything but it's great for us um and my question is when you have these findings and recommendations for best practices so next year will you go back and look to see if we um did anything about those and give give us an update about that how does that work no that's a very good question as well so you know that is something that we definitely need to do each and every year that we take into our risk assessment going into the next year to say well what did we find last year

1:47:26 and uh you know what do we need to look at this or what is what has management changed this year and what evidence can we see to kind of support that or do we think it's still an issue and in that case you know it causes us to dig down deeper uh in certain areas because if there's a lack of internal controls or checks and balances that means that there's more of a likelihood that something could slip through the cracks uh not get identified so it's definitely something that we always circle back on um and make sure that we can report back on uh to to the commission um anything um that's still prevalent that was there in the previous year as well great deborah

1:48:12 i just i just wanted to jump in we did look up an answer for john brown and uh we'll also follow up on these items with the board in august so you'll have a progress report from staff the single audit this year covered two programs and so it was 22 000 the first program was 12 000 and then the additional was 10. perfect thank you commissioners thanks keith all right we are on agenda item number nine which might be everybody's favorite right now where we get a five minute break so we will come back at 7

1:48:57 40. we to be exactly on time

1:53:24 that break was a little bit too short i agree all right this meeting is a little bit too long [Laughter] long meeting today i just chased the chickens out of my garden they got out bring up all of our little seedlings i'd like to compliment you on your ability to keep this right down to the minute i used to dog dick and steve like you wouldn't believe when i think of two minutes off and i'd be on them like you wouldn't believe and you just absolutely perfect i got

1:54:09 i'm really loving it great well i'm glad that's something i can bring to this oh you're doing a great job all right i'm not sure if matt is back or not yet but i think that just to keep us on schedule because we still have quite a bit of our agenda we are going to move on to agenda item number 10 which is rate making principles and it looks like deborah and adam are gonna give us a presentation great thank you good evening uh commissioners tonight uh as uh you said i'm here with adam ru and we're talking about rate making

1:54:55 principles this discussion is actually a bit of a precursor uh to the coast of discussion in the fall and will help support future discussions on rate actions tonight we're going to talk a little bit about the objectives of rate making rate making principles have a brief overview of the policies that support this and then we want to be sure to leave plenty of time for board feedback and discussion on our rate making principles um and with that i'm going to hand it over to adam thank you deborah um so we came with as kind of a refresher or potentially some new material regarding these rate making principles

1:55:40 uh hopefully this will provide some context um an insight into the specific principles and policies uh there may be a little bit of natural tension uh between some of these policies so um we'll try to highlight some trade-offs between them and would hope to everyone would love to hear some feedback from the board regarding those as we um prepare uh proposal for life for later this year as denver mentioned these principles help guide and inform the rate approval process which is a key function of the board both for the financial viability of the organization as well as the impact impact to customers um so the rate um actions are informed by both these policies um and principles as well as the strategic

1:56:25 strategic plan so we've highlighted some of that key elements of the strategic plan on the slide as well um so you can keep in mind how those interplay as we go through the slide next slide please um so there's some industry standard uh principles surrounding rate making uh we've informally adopted several of those um listed on the slide um we've discussed a little bit um the potential for memorializing these and eweb policies in some way but now they we kind of crosswalk through the memo where they currently exist um so they're not all completely reflected in the um policies at this time but to just walk through those that

1:57:10 we've been informally talking about the first one sufficiency um really relates to the ability to cover cot to have revenue covering costs uh it hasn't been at the forefront recently as we haven't been needing overall rate increases um and the current rates have been sufficient for the last several years as we've mentioned in the past um but going into the future might be more of an issue as we have more uh pressure on costs and customer rates affordability as mentioned in the memo isn't specifically stated in the board policies now but it's been valued obviously by the community and the board we address that with both cost containment keeping the overall revenue requirement as low as possible as well as specific programs targeted for limited

1:57:56 income assistance efficiency is really referring to the economic efficiency to establish prices that are sustainable long-term and give customer good price signals so they can make those long-term decisions such as whether to install solar conservation programs or um or gas conversion things that are relied on that um economic fundamentals rather than a distorted price signal so some of the discussions we've had in the past about fixed versus variable costs are aligned with that efficiency principle another perspective on that might be um efficiency referring to customers ability to understand rates and kind of simplicity so

1:58:41 as we think about potentially um memorializing these or if the list is to be added i think simplicity might be another one that could be addressed additionally on a related topic might be customer choice um if that was a explicit principle it's kind of addressed to some extent inefficiency but that might be another thing that we've talked about internally cost basis is something we'll be talking about later this year as we update our cost of service model as one of the organization goals and we're moving towards a multi-year cost of service um so the underlying model isn't being changed dramatically it's just being expended expanded to go for multiple years instead of just the single year we currently bring

1:59:27 um so we'll be talking about that later in the year equity is um really kind of a legal standard by which rates can be judged is fair equitable and non-discriminatory are our standards that we'll want to make ensure are um existing in our any rate proposals um another element of equity was kind of came up last year when we started talking about the upriver cost of service and whether or not to implement those i think there's a lot of elements of discretion among the board on interpreting equity finally gradualism we talk about in the policies having um

2:00:12 reserved targets to mitigate against rate increases another way we've employed gradualism in the past is by using a threshold when we're not increasing rates overall and all the cost of service results were within five percent we've um not recommended making those adjustments to um not unnecessarily change rates that we might be um reversing in the future so we i think as we transition towards a multi-year coast cost of service analysis we might be looking to implement that in the first year of the three year cycle and and let it go for the following year so kind of meeting the graduates in principle with a different tool [Music] next slide please

2:01:00 uh so as mentioned earlier there's uh industry-wide rate making principles that typically every organization or regulatory agencies probably gonna have um memorialized or codified in some ways so this is kind of where we have as an organization explicitly stated some of those principles and we talked about that a little bit in the memo as well we have had some discussion about whether it would make sense to identify the specific rate principles and presumably in like sd9 rate-setting policies or somewhere if the board did want to explicitly adopt some sort of rate making principles but we talk about some of those are already incorporated in the other policies listed here

2:01:49 so here i think we just wanted to bring this conversation to help inform uh future rate proposals uh presume particularly later this year um and initiate a conversation on some of the trade-offs uh hopefully solicit some feedback that'll help us bring back great proposals later this year that are meeting the needs and expectations of the board so that i guess we'll just kind of open it up to feedback discussion or any questions all right all right anybody want to jump in the queue and have any questions sorry to go first as many times as i do but i'm gonna get the david kelly award that

2:02:35 said um about the funding for second source when we started that with the water rates years ago we raised rates considerably in anticipation of needing to generate a reserve account or fund up to 70 million dollars which in a small utility like that we backed that down we reduced rates and we haven't been doing that but now that we have second source back on there what part of your rate um your your structuring and things how do we do gradualism there where we have such a steep curve to climb in a short period of time yeah i think that's a that's a good point and and does kind of highlight i

2:03:20 think what we've been trying to get at with a multi-year uh cost of service or trying to incorporate the impacts of future years rate pressure on current years and looking to potentially pre-fund some of the large capital uh expenditures um so hopefully we can bring back a proposal that that looks at that over a multi-year period just like drunk would that would the same go for funding whatever we're going to do with leigh berg and uh things such as that because we're going to get a lot of pressures from a lot of things that you know some are financially feasible you know we can spend money and generate income but some of them are not and uh how much of that gradualism or pressure are you guys anticipating or how are you

2:04:06 going to smooth that out with the rate making policies so i think that that's another very good example of where we could use gradualism and how a multi-year cosa will help inform that trajectory so as costs come clearer to us we should be able to provide the board with options uh over a time period um commissioner brown i would also inject it that there's um you're asking kind of a two-parted question one one of them does have to have to do with rates which is any change associated with your cost base but the other piece of that is how you're financing your projects in

2:04:53 the case of where we're using bond funding in essence the the repayment of those bonds is a way of spreading that cost out over a period of time and so um and at some points the utility has been in um you know situations where we didn't have the capacity to borrow or the rates to you know weren't as attractive as they are to borrow as they are now and so um the financing piece of that is is part of it not just the rate piece but you know if we looked at some large projects for example the second source that would be an opportunity to leverage the bond markets and then spread those costs spread the costs out naturally as well as the rates

2:05:54 the previous slide for a minute please i think it's the previous no uh back one more where the principles are listed out there we go [Music] can you cover sufficiency again for that's just just covering what we need like to to operate correct yeah exactly that's kind of a lot that what we go through in the budgeting process i think would be the process that would be most at play but having enough um when we evaluate our costs and align it up with revenue making sure the revenue is sufficient to cover all the projected costs okay these seem to be the same principles that we've had in the past i don't know maybe i guess this this seems kind of uh like a different uh

2:06:39 it seems like we've had this prior and i just want to make sure that i'm not missing anything because it seems like these have been our standards before the affordability has been in the strategic plan i think it's called out specifically there maybe the efficiency one might be a little bit newer but um equity and gradualism certainly have have been kind of standard principles correct yeah this is just kind of a refresher on the principles that we've had in place and and opening up a conversation for any level of tradeoff or interpretation that we might want to incorporate in future rate proposals this year um since we haven't been adjusting rates in quite a while seem kind of prudent as we start kicking off the process of identifying if there are shortfalls or are um

2:07:26 principles that we would want to employ uh related either gradualism or um uh you know with a new cost of service model just felt like a good refresher ahead of that process so again you're correct commissioner carlson these are these are consistent with what they've been in the past it felt like a good time to start resurrecting some discussions these these can feel a little bit disconnected when you just think about them as bullets in a presentation they become a lot more real when you're starting to evaluate the actual trade-offs and the structures of your rates and so later on this year we'll definitely start to see some of the tension between these and and as um as adam mentioned we we are considering

2:08:12 a couple others one of them that's probably going to be important going forward is how do we roll consumer choice into this you don't want your neighbor's choice to impact your rates adversely and by and vice versa and so when we get into multiple products um there could be some some further principles that we add but it seems a little bit bland at the moment but i i can tell you it gets pretty real when you start to look at how the dollars trade off between uh different customer segments uh when we get into that kind of discussion so this seemed like an appropriate review period okay uh the only thing that maybe sticks out to me is something that's not covered and maybe it is covered for you in one of these i just don't see it is

2:08:59 is how we look at different scenarios and the volatility i mean we've seen so many different shocks over the last number of years and how how we deal with that i guess um you know nobody could have anticipated that we were going to have this pandemic and that had a real impact the fires had a real impact on you know our decision to uh institute the temporary fee are there how are scenarios played into that and you know how do you look at that is that one that's kind of already in this system in terms of equity or yeah if you can speak to that i'd appreciate it so i i think that you find a piece of that in uh sufficiency

2:09:45 part of sufficient rates means ensuring that we have adequate reserves and to protect ourselves if power markets or fires we have operating reserves we can dip into and then were we to need to dip into those that conversation would come up in the following rate making period in order to ensure that we once again uh had our adequate reserves okay perfect thank you yeah i support these principles commissioner carlson i i would i would also want you to know that there's a number of different scenarios that our financial staff runs uh relative to

2:10:32 rates when we start looking at the impacts of different kinds of events we we probably ran you know i'd say we sorry deborah's group must have ran a dozen different kinds of scenarios last summer um we also you know the the fact is if you really look at our industry on on the electric side more than the water side but the electric side is volatile every single day and we actually sort of smooth and average that for the benefit of our customers but prices fluctuate all the time in the market and so some of that is prudent financial management some of it is situation management and then we do a lot of modeling to understand the different kinds of conditions that we'll

2:11:17 face and that again i say we but that's that's debra and her team that really do a phenomenal job of that yeah some of some of that modeling and the the tools that you use to smooth that out i think it gets it one of the commissioner's questions um from the pre-meeting questions about um i don't know it's not derivatives but it's uh what's the word i'm looking for the uh hedging edging yeah that that gets it some of it right yeah we um we we do assert to a certain extent because we've seen depressed prices in the secondary market we have over the last decade or so financially

2:12:02 hedged um to a certain extent some of our length um in in the in the wholesale market we we don't fully hedge and we're going to continue to have to look at why we are hedging going forward it's different a hedge for volatility than it is market depression and so we're in process of starting to look at some of those a little bit further but but yeah that's where that falls in uh from a financial management perspective okay yeah i definitely echoed that thought about kind of looking at how that plays out more because that seems to have a pretty significant impact on you know our rates but it's over those are typically five to

2:12:47 ten years that they're hedged out for so it also crosses multiple boards you know i mean the the right there's different potential turnover in the board so right yeah we we hedge um we're fully hedged for the next business year and then as we get out to five years that drops down to about 20 hedge so we don't we don't hedge past five years okay great thanks for that clarification all right any other questions yes john brosky thank you um on the efficiency bullet point it seemed like we were looking outward

2:13:34 on efficiencies from of the customers i'm wondering at what point do we look at internal efficiencies as it opposed as it a affects cost of service you know where do where will we look at that and say hey are we are we being as efficient as we can internally with staffing with resource management obviously for cost of service the major driver is going to be the the cost of the power that we're buying and moving on to our customers but there also is you know when you've got a a 500 employee organization obviously there's efficiencies that can be you

2:14:19 gained within any organization at what point do we look at that as it uh relates to cost of service well i think probably the key process that would be in play there would be our annual budgeting process so i kind of was thinking that of more as the um sufficiency bullet point um but i can see how it could be interpreted on the efficiency in operating the organization but um when we're looking at the sufficient revenue to meet our budgeted costs i think that um big piece there would be what are all of those costs that go into the budget when we're determining the revenue requirements so i guess the the timing of when those are evaluated we kind of we bring in july our first glimpse at

2:15:04 what the next year's budget will be as part of the 10-year financial plan and then we kind of take the initial phase of that incorporate any feedback from the board at that time go through the do the more detailed budget and bring that back in the fall so that would be kind of the process wise how we would address that kind of cost efficiency from a cost basis what internal costs yeah i would also and commissioner borowski that the internal efficiency has been incredibly important and in fact we rolled it into the affordability pieces from a strategic perspective recognizing that a lot of customer confidence is built

2:15:50 through your your managing of costs is you know that's that's basically the one thing that our customers interact with us uh regularly on is their bill and so we recognized the importance of that early on it's probably captured internally through what adam mentioned is either sufficiency or the affordability piece um but it is certainly not lost on the organization um i think it's it's an incredibly important part of rate making which is you you have to cover your costs then you need to keep those costs under control and improve them while you can

2:16:35 did you have another question john oh anybody who hasn't gone yet have a question i see sonia that you're raising your hand again i just want to make sure it was just a comment on that topic go for it uh just based on that kind of interaction i wonder if efficiency would be better named like signaling or something to that effect since it's really more at helping customers make an appropriate decision i think efficiency maybe sends the wrong message for what you're trying to achieve with that bullet point that's it thanks yeah thank you all right anybody else

2:17:23 no all right oh not yes i just want to say thanks to deborah and adam for the presentation in the memo it's very clear and helpful and gets the new guy up to speed as we jump into rate making discussions appreciate it all right well thank you for that preview of what's to come further down the road um that was very clear and concise so i appreciate that thank you yeah all right we are moving on to agenda item number 11 the last big agenda item we have and that is the general manager's annual performance evaluation for 2020. so

2:18:08 um i will just kick it off frank by saying that um you've received really incredible feedback you've been rated um highly proficient in uh overall and um it was really a pleasure to hear what the executive team had to say and share about you and i just want to um highlight some of the things that we heard we heard about your some of your strengths in that you are an incredible multitasker that not only do you do a lot of things really well at once but also that you have a command of the industry you have the business side the technical side you have peer

2:18:53 relations that are really strong and that you're really forward thinking we heard that you have a lot of care for your employees and that you like to listen to employees at all levels of the organization so you weren't just listening to the people on the executive team or the people in charge of big departments but that you really took the time to listen to lots of people um we heard that you encouraged collaboration among departments that you give employees autonomy and that um you have a lot of trust in your employees um that you think outside of the box and like i said before that you're forward thinking um and one thing i think that we saw is that you've built a really strong executive team and i think that they all really appreciated that and we can see just

2:19:40 from the level of the um presentations that we get and just how the organization is functioning that um there really is there really is strong leadership at the top and while you're you you are the top you've created a really strong team underneath you that helps carry out um the mission of the organization um and like everybody should get a little bit of constructive feedback on things to work on um and there really was one major thing and that was in terms of communication and part of that um is because you have such broad and deep knowledge just the one thing that um was mentioned is that um

2:20:26 sometimes if people aren't used to working with you that communication can be a little bit of a challenge because you are such a broad and deep thinker and um you don't really like to delve into details but some people just might need a little bit more of that so those were some really great things that we heard about you um i encourage the other commissioners if you want to step in because i have never led a performance review like this before so i apologize if i'm not doing what i should be doing but um we've just heard really wonderful things about you and um i'm really appreciative of the the care and the expertise that you've led the organization through especially over this past year what a curveball um

2:21:13 and it seems like things have kept chugging along as they should so i think we're really lucky and not just chugging along but that you've continued to drive the organization forward you haven't um stopped thinking about the strategic plan and where we're going and so you know that that really could have been a we could have derailed there but it just seems like we just kept on going so those are my words somebody else wants to jump in matt yeah i'll just be brief and thank you mindy for summarizing you know the input that we heard from others and some of our conversation

2:21:58 earlier um you know frank i don't i you know only have a few months to to go off of and actually most of my experience and interaction with you is based on you know previous years um i would just say that you know if the proof is in the pudding the fact that the utility comes out the end of the lid and wildfires whole and in good condition speaks volumes i think to the position that you have put the utility in and the people that you have hired and the way that you work with them so i appreciate the the competence and um and skills that's all for me thank you

2:22:50 go ahead john brown oh i think sonia had her end up too so it doesn't matter to me go ahead sonia it's okay you can go that's fine okay fine thanks um frank i'd just like to say thank you uh again for another year of leading us through not only your your normal job but you know a little pandemic little fire just a little things to kind of give you a little extra something to do over the last 12 months i think you've done an exemplary job and and uh you know you reflect the values of the organization and the community well and i'm looking forward to working with you again for another couple years at least so um and i think that uh you know in mindy if you don't i was going to talk about the merit discussion if that's okay i'll just say that having been through this i think that it's you know we we can't decide things

2:23:35 in executive session but i think it was probably a consensus that we we're going to defer that discussion until we get some more additional information from our hr department regarding uh salaries and and historical trends and things such as that so we're going to push that down that discussion for uh uh next the next meeting i believe so thank you very much uh your your marks reflect uh our oops you muted john yeah i unmuted i apologize for that quick on the draw i'm done okay sonia all right well one frank thank you so much for everything you've done over the last year i know

2:24:20 this has been just an incredible crazy year and you know i echo their the the other comments about we've getting to the other end of this and being whole and not even being whole but i mean we're really poised to do we're still poised to do the great things that we had planned to do year you know years ago uh in spite of all of this and that is just remarkable to me and um you know you and the staff that support you and the team that you build uh i i really appreciate it and i think you know a couple of things that i would like to highlight here are that you know you don't shy away from challenges you don't shy away from learning opportunities

2:25:05 not everything goes well but when something falls through or doesn't go well you really look to it and learn and have it instilled that kind of failure as an opportunity throughout the culture of the organization and i think that's part of how you know you've built a more resilient culture um it's it's not something that you just rush under the rug i mean you are one of the first people i would say to bring issues to our attention something that comes up it's like okay here's what's happening here's here's how we're handling it and that's built a lot of trust and confidence at least with me and in how the organization is you know performing and what's going on i mean i'm not surprised generally i mean

2:25:52 surprised by the shocks that we've had to deal with but by the level of professionalism and the way that you treat you know the the different situations that come up that nobody could predict um and learning from them is a real testament so thank you very much for that um i i recognize that uh you know we did ask some questions of of um you know in the past we've had a kind of a full comparison uh of uh other salaries of other people in the same position uh lena i think i think you're still on if if lena is not on i do have a couple of questions for lena um if she's here but if not we can defer

2:26:37 um did we did we do a comparator study last year or because of coved we because we didn't you may recall that the process for the general managers compensation review was changed um a couple of years ago and it no longer includes an annual comparative review and part of that is because we revisited the general manager's employment agreement um i think is in late 2019 and what we did there was we got all of the actual contracts for the comparators in the region

2:27:22 um and got all of the actual pay for all of the general managers that are in our comparator group based on that commissioner brown and myself and i can't remember i think probably eric dufrese worked with um the general manager to arrive at his base rate of compensation and we built in an annual escalator that is like a cost of living escalator if you will and then the merit increase will also play a role if the board were to elect to issue one the merit increase will also play a role in making sure that the general manager's salary advances we can do at the board's request we can do

2:28:08 a review i will tell you that it takes a while to do that we have to do it through public records requests and so we could certainly do that at any time but we would need some notice if you wanted to include such a review for example for next year we could we would have plenty of time to do that but there is not a real there is an nwppa survey that is floating around right now that is somewhat useful to us but the survey is put together in a way that is not necessarily as comprehensive as we like they would um they did review how it's put together this last year and so we're waiting on the results so we will have some guidance there about whether or not we're in the hunt

2:28:53 on base salary but there's a lot of apples to oranges comparisons in that um survey so that's a really long answer to no we didn't do it no no that's fine that's exactly what i was looking for because i i couldn't find anything from last year on it and i remembered the process that we went through when i i was the president a couple of years ago and we were going through this process because i know it it took um it took much longer and we had to kind of do this look back at it because of that time frame um lena one other question i have so within the organization um was it decided this year to not do merit increases we did something called

2:29:39 progress i'm sorry my dog's losing his mind i apologize to probably nothing i can do we did something called progression increases and so here's the way that works for the mapt folks in the mapt we hire people in in a pay range and the goal is to move everyone to the center of the pay range and so what we do there is as people as their performance progresses to what we consider the fully performing zone we give progression adjustments we gave those progression adjustments we did not give anything which is what we consider to be pure recognition pay recognition pay would be sort of i think

2:30:25 what you are referring to as merit and so we last year you'll recall that we withheld a merit increase or a recognition increase from the general manager but last year the mapt did receive recognition pay this year we have withheld it because of some economic realities in the covid situation so i don't know if that's answering your question but it's kind of flipped usually if we withhold merit from or if we withhold recognition from the mapt we would do the same thing for the general manager just because of the timing of covid last year and some of the economic realities

2:31:10 we had already given those adjustments for the mapt employees and so that's why it it's kind of tipped over this year and and the timing is a bit off i mean i i i personally feel like that's the it was unfortunate that didn't happen last year i think frank being the leader that he is did the right and responsible thing to say please you know i'm i'm good now i want to make sure that the organization and my staff are taken care of um i think that that's probably um you know where we might be in this boat this year but i'm i don't want to get so far behind in in

2:31:56 where frank is uh towards the comparators that he gets snatched up and leaves and i know it's been hard that we have in the past it's been put off and put off and then we get to a place where we can't catch up um i don't i guess for me personally i i don't have as much fear of that over the last year because everybody regionally and nationally are probably in a similar boat with lots of these same challenges that have come about it's not just uh you know a utility specific issue this is a you know country-wide worldwide um situation that we face and some of the economic realities are very real across broad swath so i

2:32:41 don't anticipate that there's lots of movement in other uh comparator groups as well as as an anecdotal matter what i will tell you and we haven't surveyed for this because there's it's there are tricks to being doing our own survey but as an anecdotal matter what i can tell you is that most of the utilities in the comparator groups continued with their salary progression and merit increases um just as they normally would have so i'm not sure that i'm not sure that that that theory holds um but what i will also tell you is what happens with the workforce is almost never the same as what happens with the general manager that's driven by the contract

2:33:26 negotiation and really there is no range if you will for the general manager's pay it depends purely on the general manager in question and their ability to negotiate with their board so i feel pretty comfortable that the board did a good job in late 2019 and bringing the general manager's salary into better alignment with the comparator group we can do a cursory look um and that that's a little tricky but probably faster than doing a public records request and actually doing a deep dive but we're um we stand ready to do whatever the commission would like us to do from a research perspective okay thank you for that you know sure i'll let others talk and might give

2:34:13 other feedback after the fact hear others perspectives john barofsky do you want is there anything sure thank you um yeah i i myself being new to the board my uh interactions with frank just kind of began uh at the beginning of the year and he's been very gracious and very understanding in helping to bring a newbie along uh and i really appreciate that i like to think that matt and i are blessed in the fact that we came on board in january and i see us as the transition to the next phase of all of these things i i didn't

2:34:58 have a fire i didn't have you know we're on the other side of covid so this is the new beginning for for this board and for frank's newt tenure going forward that's the way i i want to think about it in a positive positive attitude and not looking back on the other things that being said i i'm not blind to what happened last year and uh with with what lena just brought to our attention that their the process was amended to make it more in line with with everything else that kind of helps me with uh the heavy lift of us deciding whether or not to compensate frank going further i think

2:35:43 we will have that discussion at another meeting i hope uh i i don't know if we're really ready to do it today but i think that the information that i just got really helps me to lay in some place at a further meeting so thank you and thank you frank for helping bring me on board yeah you're welcome um president schlossberg do you mind if i weigh in a little bit on this this discussion would you rather just sit there awkwardly as we talk around you or yeah it's like i'm i'm sitting at the table with him no i um i guess the the process that i'm really comfortable with the fact that the process we went through in

2:36:28 2019 um brought my compensation into what would what i would consider a fair and equitable range relative to to the comparators that we typically look at we also built in an escalator that was similar in scope to our our union to account for some escalation going forward and i don't think that has gotten out of whack in the in the the last uh two years uh since that was developed and so i'm i'm not um i've always felt like it's important that that everybody's pay the general managers and everybody else's is is fair um and not necessarily equal

2:37:13 there are not any necessarily equal jobs um and i i do feel like it's it's fair so you know take that for what it's worth it's um i have never made well i can't say that one time i made an employment decision based on money and it didn't work out very well so i i've never done it since um and you know i so that that's my my comments on compensation i i think i really appreciate the feedback uh that you given that you've given me i do feel like i'm a reflection of the board on one hand and the organization and its people and its performance on the other and um i think that 2020 was really an

2:37:58 opportunity for the board and the employees of eweb to to step up and really really show themselves and i think we did and i would agree with commissioner borofsky there's a lot of opportunity going forward that that's exciting and along with that comes expectations as well so um that's that's how i view my role i i think it's um we've got a lot of good opportunities and a lot of hard work in front of us i do appreciate your your comments about communicating details and across the horizon and and things that are in some cases a bit conceptual and philosophical and futuristic and i'll

2:38:43 i'll work on i'll work on that um but yeah that's kind of my perception of the of the process and i appreciate the comments and the support that i get from the board and and mostly from the executive team and and ann and others in the organization management team and really that's i feel pretty lucky to be in the position i am john um yeah thank you frank and thanks lena um i i would like to know uh what the other utilities did uh i mean because i don't want to make a decision in in the absence of data i like to something i know that we go through the exhaustive thing we did a couple of years ago but if there's some way we can find out

2:39:29 i know that epud just hired a new general manager or they're going to be a transition at the end of the year and find out what some of the other local things have done i don't know if they raised their general manager's salaries five percent or 20 i mean we've seen it over the board so i for one would like to just at least have that information so i can know because if we for if we if we didn't do anything last year which we didn't i'd just like to know where we are in in relationship to some of those just on a percentage basis of what you can do i know your challenges but if for me that would help me make that decision when we make it um if i may make a suggestion then um it's probably going to take us a couple of months to do that not because we're slow at doing it but because it's

2:40:14 very difficult to get people to cut loose with the information and so anything that we do could also be issued retroactively so for example if i were to come and tell you that the average growth of a general manager is three or five percent um you the board could elect to do to choose a retroactive effective date so that you could feel like you were fair and and had done that um in accordance with the timing of the review um that of course is also completely at the board's discretion but um if you could give us a couple of months just to put the request out there and get the information and as soon as we get it we can include it in correspondence so um it could be earlier than that well i'm i'm okay with whatever the the majority of the board wants to do

2:41:00 uh you know i don't want to hamstring others just by for one person if the if the majority of the will the board is to to move forward with the decision now without that absent that data i'm okay with that you know it's just whatever uh if it's available and others want to wait that's fine and if not i'm okay too sonia did you have something to add i mean i was a little bit curious how much cost it really takes to do that kind of work staff wise i mean is this it's not so much a question of the staff time to do it we have a pretty we have a pretty good lock on what we ask other utilities to provide to us it's just that these are all public records

2:41:45 and it is very we are barred from doing our own survey um and so we could hire it done but it's easier to and and less expensive for us to just get the actual records i guess what what i was thinking there is if it's going to be a significant amount um and given that frank didn't get you know i he didn't get any um adjustment last year it seems fair and equitable to do something this year to recognize that um you know other staff got it last year he didn't um if they didn't get it last year and

2:42:30 they didn't get it this year then i would say you know it probably is fair and equitable to not do it in either year but since frank didn't get anything like last year i mean for me it would make sense to propose something um for this year in in that recognition um and if if it's going to take a lot of staff time it might be worth it to just say okay let's you know pick a figure and and do that as a little bit of recognition i also hear frank saying you know i feel like i'm in a good place and comfortable with where i'm at but this was a really hard year and i want to recognize and reward that good work too if it's helpful to the board i took the

2:43:17 liberty of looking up what our average increase was for those that received recognition awards last year since we aren't doing them this year and so um the the average for those that received it is just under two percent and so we're not talking about a big percentage adjustment here if you wanted to track with what the mapt received last year if you want us to do a deeper dive we're happy to do it um it could as i said we could we could maybe get the information a little sooner and that's and that's different than the kind of cost of living adjustment that's yes it is i mean i would propose that we do that adjustment that uh the the figure that lena just put out there

2:44:05 but if others want to wait i'm also willing to have them go and get other information john borowski you've had your hand raised thank you thank you so lena if if i'm getting this correct if if this were a regular employee that was eligible for this type of of increased compensation you would look at their performance thing and it would be based on what level of performance they've got so if you got all excellence it might be a three percent if you got all adequates it might be one percent is is that am i correct in that type of analysis you're close we have a total budget for recognition awards that we have to come

2:44:50 in under and so um there's some latitude for people who are giving these adjustments and so some of it depends on exactly what was achieved and so some of it is a little bit subjective but we do collaborate as a as a group similar and similar to how the board is doing this right now we discuss all of the recognition increases and look at the averages in different departments so it's a little hard to do a straight across comparison with the general manager because when i tell you that the average is two percent that means that somebody could have gotten a five or a seven percent increase and somebody could have gotten you know a one or a two percent maybe one time award right so so there is is there a top left

2:45:35 i mean is there a top at eight percent and i mean there is no cap as to we we don't give guidance we um we say you know here's what the budget is and we give people an opportunity to look at their money because not everybody in a department might be eligible for a one-time award or recognition award to their um to their base salary so so we've done it that way again as i said it's a little tricky to compare these things sure okay that well that that gives me uh kind of the ammunition that i'm needing um and i'm i'm with sonia i think that there's a there is a mechanism in place the average is two percent i think frank from what everything that i've seen did

2:46:21 an exemplary job last year getting guiding the organization through some very difficult times and so you know i would i would be fine with even a three percent uh adjustment and just moving forward at this point john brown i agree with um three percent i think that's fine and uh if that's i'll just leave it that thank you all right so i i've heard some uh agreements and um i'm wondering if there's someone wants to make a motion if there wants to be more discussion anybody else wants to weigh in

2:47:07 matt i'd love to hear from you um if you have thoughts if not you can wave it away but otherwise i can i can make the motion uh i'm happy to weigh in on this part um it is a little bit hard without having more orientation so just being new to you know this discussion it's hard to see kind of the sideboards of what um a person in this position might receive um i do think frank's done a really decent job my experience in past employment and working with with uh increases like this is that somewhere in the order of two or three percent is is

2:47:53 common and significant um and so i actually i i agree i think three percent is a is a good place to land where um yeah so i i think that's good that's a good call amazing i moved to approve a three percent increase to frank's okay one second all right any discussion had a lot of discussion yeah john just a point of clarification that's to his base salary correct yes that is typically what happens with these types of changes correct lina you can go either way sometimes um in the mapt we give them as

2:48:38 one-time awards other times we make them as an adjustment to base so it's really purely up to the board okay and move to approve three percent increase to the base pay second okay all those in favor say aye aye all right all right okay we saved you some work there yeah i appreciate that and if you'd like us to do um a periodic review that's something for the board to consider and just come back and tell us we generally do a true up on the mapt

2:49:23 salary structures and individual pay bans every three years because that's pretty much a good slice of the market to see what the movement is so we might we would be are we're planning on doing that for the mapt in the fourth quarter of 2022 and we can add the general manager's salary to that or unless you'd like something sooner okay um frank did you want to say well i was just going to say thank you i almost almost wanted to vote on that one um compared to some of the others um but anyway thank you very much commissioners it's it's um it's truly um an honor to

2:50:10 to work with all of you and and i really do feel like um staff and management is has done an incredible job this last year so there's a number of thank yous to them as well i just want to say one last thing about this process um and i guess i'm i am president so i helped set the agenda so this this one's on me but um i feel like we didn't we didn't give as much time as we should have to this process and to your performance frank i mean one of the other commissioners commented earlier that this is probably one of the most important decisions that we make as a board i mean you're the general manager is

2:50:55 what is what leads everything and so um maybe just for future going forward in next year is if i don't know if this would be like a separate meeting or something but it did really just feel super rushed like even an executive session the 15 minutes 15 minutes 15 minutes i hate to curtail discussion for something that's so important yeah i would agree um president schlossberg i i think that even from the management team when i when we were talking the other day they felt like and i really feel like there's an opportunity to do a little bit more of a 360 review process with them and um the short amount of time that that was taken

2:51:40 after the review was already written was probably not the appropriate sequence so i i think that um i can work with with you and maybe whoever's the president next year to figure out and lena to figure out a little bit different process great okay we can check that one off the box we're done with that conversation but thank you very much frank yes thank you okay agenda item number 12. we're wrapping up here with correspondence well there were uh i believe it was um four or five items of correspondence there were a

2:52:25 couple that were associated with our power trading operation both our annual compliance report and then also a general update on market conditions and hedging and i know commissioner barofsky wanted to meet with staff and a little bit more detail on that which we're happy to do and pleased to do there was a dark fiber leasing rate adjustments and a correspondence piece on a just the beginning of a pilot around some e-web electric vehicle charging and then i think jason is still on the line he was earlier if anybody had any questions about the state legislative session and what's

2:53:11 going on in salem so that was our correspondence and we'd be happy to entertain any specific questions other than the ones that were provided before the the meeting yeah i i just have a question on the on the charging stations um is is there a time limit that people are allowed to be at those charging stations because i know like in the in the city parking garage it's a parking spot and so somebody plugs in and charges but then they're there all day so you get basically one charge out of that whereas

2:53:56 opposed to like the fast charging stations like you see out at gateway you know it's a 15 minute or 30 minute type of a deal is that something because if we're using the offsets to fund these i don't think that would be sufficient offsets if it's one car sitting there all day just that's just a question i'm not sure you're ready to answer yeah commissioner borowski i think that's one of the things that that we're interested in discovering when now that we'll have access to the the patterns of data i i would agree with you that um a single car in the spot all day um does it make a lot of sense although some of this the slower charging it it may take a while to actually it may take hours to do the charging

2:54:41 as opposed to the dc fast charge which might be 20 minutes or a half an hour so there's there's some differences there and i i think um we'll look and see what kinds of patterns of consumption we see and whether there's opportunities to expand this potentially into other areas right now there's not a limit to how we can use clean fuel credits there may be some limits going forward that we would have to recycle and earmark those for transportation types of projects but or certain types of electrification projects um but i think that's one of the the objectives of um doing some more research and well i think that's a great point we'll keep it in mind when we and and maybe even supply the board with

2:55:27 some information here sooner rather than later and then one more question regarding charging of electric vehicles i took a nice ride on my electric bicycle today and i'm wondering if there is an opportunity to have charging places where you can plug in your electric bicycle at parks or those types of things and if those would be eligible for those types of credits so um that that's an interesting observation uh commissioner i i don't know whether there's a standardized connector or not

2:56:12 if there is that's something we could explore um i know that the the connectivity is is part of that issue i'll i'll get with our customer solutions team and i'll get back to you on a couple of these items great sonia i had a constituent reach out to me about doing some kind of incentive program around um encouraging more electric bikes as well um just wanted to throw that idea out there you know i know it's not it doesn't feel like fuel switching because it seems like you're going from a bike to an electric bike but if you're if you really aren't pairing down from a

2:56:58 full vehicle to a bicycle that you can trans you know transfer then then it still is in that fuel switching category potentially so maybe something else to consider yeah it's thank you for the feedback i will i'm assuming that um juan serpa munoz is listening in or will listen in later and we'll get together and talk through some of those ideas hey frank i'm here if there's anything that i can add or if you would like me to add some to some of those questions um i i don't know there's a lot to add at this point juan but i i think you and i have a few things to talk about based on the suggestions okay sounds good yeah thank you

2:57:48 all right anything else about correspondence are we on to future agendas we are we're on agenda item 13. great thank you um i know one of the conversations that we wanted to have a little bit with the board was about some of the protocols coming up relative to the upriver meeting and just take a few minutes to at least launch some initial conversations i know that ann has looked into a number of the the logistics options and we wanted to share and present for your consideration a few of those so

2:58:33 um and i will turn the floor over to you for a few minutes thank you general manager lawson good evening commissioners in cooperation with our community partners at mckinsey fire and rescue we're planning an outdoor meeting on their property the night of june 15th we'll be using pandemic safety precautions such as face coverings social distancing limiting contact with shared surfaces and as such we're not currently planning to provide dinner or snacks as the date approaches though we will ramp our safety measures up or down in relation to coveted conditions the meeting can take place rain or shine our first choice is to hold the meeting

2:59:19 outdoors in the grassy area that you'll see shown in the red circle on the east side of the property we'll do our best to make everybody comfortable by providing chairs for the attendees the board and presenters will have tables with chairs along with the sound system to ensure everyone can hear the speakers in case of rain the fire chief has graciously agreed to let us use the fire truck bays they'll pull the trucks out and roll the doors up for us and this backup location should provide ample shelter with good ventilation we can also use the training center and possibly the community center also known as the library building which is that small building next to the

3:00:05 lawn and in there we would be able to provide socially distanced presentation tables where guests can speak with subject matter experts one-on-one discussing customer programs watershed restoration and other agenda items there's also a private conference room right off the training room that would be available if anyone wants to discuss their personal circumstances and confidence next slide please we're hoping for a really good turnout with lots of feedback from our customers so we're planning to promote the meeting early and often using our website river reflections newspaper ads email lists social media and flyers

3:00:51 we'll have a minutes recorder and also an in-house videographer on site who will record the meeting for anybody that can't attend in person next slide lastly as a reminder the draft agenda appears on your slide and next general manager lawson will discuss the proposed meeting format and receive your feedback thank you ann um really the intent of this meeting is to present just enough information to gather thoughts and do a lot of listening so i guess the intent would be light on discussion or presentation uh with lots of q a lots of interaction

3:01:36 with with the the citizens up river these are some of the ideas that we had for i would say a very quick elevator speech this is we will have handouts and backup information these are not going to be drawn out presentations it's just some very quick hitting here's the status here's what's going on in these various areas including you know programs for upriver customers that might include um undergrounding and reconnection and some of those kind of things that we think are are very relevant and like i said these are probably you know three minutes here's kind of what's going on in these areas and then lots of of opening up to

3:02:21 feedback listening questions we'll have experts there the board will be there um and that would be the the proposed format and uh topics uh for consideration and um we'd love to at least get some initial feedback on your thoughts based on what and presented and these as topics well i'm going to jump in i'm going to take my president's prerogative to be first um it it makes me feel better to hear you say that it's just going to be like short little presentations but really it's a listening session because when i look at that topic of things it sounds to me like a typical board meeting which isn't necessarily

3:03:06 appropriate when you're bringing a meeting out to the community so i think you know some of our powerpoint presentations um don't really meet the needs of like the general public when we're trying to bring information to them so um i would just want to make sure that it is more informal in the way that we present but that we're still presenting the important information and that we're listening to folks out there that's the first thing and the second thing is are we working with um like any community members to to vet this list or to come up with the topics that are important just to make sure that we're answering the questions or addressing the needs of folks up there um yes president schlossberg our intent

3:03:53 will be to vet a list with some of our key contacts upriver that this is the this is our initial shot out of the gate these won't be presentations there won't be power points there will likely be a a handout with a lot of detail a lot more detail on it for people who want it or need it but i would classify this as maybe a slightly extended elevator speech on kind of what the status of these particular items are these were our first attempt at what we thought might be relevant but we'll vet that with some of our upriver customers and and see what's on their mind great thank you other comments yeah

3:04:43 yeah i would just say thanks to ann for finding a good location and a with a safe alternative for uh in case there's bad weather um much appreciated um i would also say these topics here are thick right like there's a lot there they're very meaty um and i think it will be important for us to be super clear with folks who are invited to attend what we're seeking from them and what we're capable of in terms of responding to their questions etc just so that they're not expecting us to necessarily make decisions on these things but um just so that folks who are coming are really clear about what what this engagement will look like

3:05:28 i also think um skilled facilitation will likely be super helpful and you know i'm certain that that's planned i just want to flag that thanks and then john brofsky uh a couple of quick comments uh i i'm just throwing this out there i don't have to have an answer now but typically it's much harder for everyone to hear not the staff but the general public and if most of it's focused on questions from the community i don't know if that will have to make them at some somehow and they'll have to be some thought about

3:06:13 you know how to make that work so that everybody can hear i just want to make sure because and often times people come to those meetings and you know public speaking is not their thing and not everybody can hear the questions so um i don't know if there's a way to to do that um you know realistically but something there and then um i might recommend switching the order of these and not kind of ending with potential price changes uh maybe let's focus on something that's you know helping i mean it is helping but it's also that that might not be something that is one that we want to tackle right now i mean i'm still not i understand that

3:06:58 we want to do it i still don't feel like this year is probably the year to do it now either i don't know how others feel if others feel similarly um maybe that's just a quick you know we put this on hold sort of thing um i'd like i guess i'd like some feedback from the commissioners before that gets presented because i don't know what that looks like either and i want i want to make sure that staff aren't going out and making this presentation on this is the direction we're going when the board hasn't kind of weighed in on where we want to go this year yeah commissioner carlson this this list was not in any particular order and and certainly that's a topic that

3:07:43 would even if we're in a listening session you know i know that that the the cosa and the potential price changes were brought up at one point it was just anticipated that customers up there may actually proactively inquire hey what's going on with the pricing discussion and it was not one where um we were preordained to to set a direction on so we we could we could take that off and wait for inquiries um i think that's something we'll gauge with with the public we also are going to rent um audio visual there's not so much visual audio equipment and so that their part of the facilitation can be

3:08:28 a portable pass-around microphone for people to ask questions in their soft voices um or sometimes not so soft voices depending on the topic um but that will be part of the facilitation i think that you're looking for okay maybe maybe just having them come up to a stand and stand in a socially distanced line so nobody has to touch it sure germaphobe thanks okay john brofsky thank you um i guess one of my questions would be [Music] the timing of some of the actions that we're gonna be taking on this i'm i'm specifically thinking of the

3:09:14 item number four uh the generation and the libra canal discussions if we're just doing a 10-minute elevator speech and and you're going to ask us to make decisions on this maybe in august september i don't know when you're planning on that coming before the board but i would want more than an elevator speech on those types of discussion from those people and so i don't know if it might not be appropriate to do since we didn't do a meeting there last year do a second meeting maybe in the fall uh as things get a little bit clearer we this one can be the elevator speech bring people up to up to speed on a lot

3:10:02 of these things and then when we start digging into the meat of the some of these very significant decisions that are going to have to be made have another opportunity to hear from them once the the meat is on the bone and they can look at it and chew on it and really give us give us their thoughts that would be something maybe i would throw out there again i i don't want to have what happened at 40th and and patterson you know where we're giving them information and then we come back and and make major decisions um when we haven't had the full impact heard from them just just just a thought yeah

3:10:49 i think part of that um that decision or or or issue commissioner barofsky is that i'm i'm hopeful by the fall that we can have actually in-person meetings one of the challenges of the upriver community has been the the virtual format and the bandwidth and and they're just their connectivity into getting any kind of information um that the intent of the of the june meeting is is to simply share status and share information and to provide an opportunity for members of the upriver community to to interact on some of these subjects ask questions

3:11:34 and not to take actions not to state positions necessarily but to provide status and share information that they might not normally get the opportunity to in these in these virtual settings i'm i'm hopeful that by the fall we will be uh back into the type of operation for board meetings that it does welcome people including those from the up river into some of these conversations that are are relevant to them and if not maybe there's a second opportunity to travel to to them so i think i think we'll have to see how things progress through the summer but um i i would agree that i think it's it's it's a pretty constant interaction and a

3:12:19 difference between sharing information listening and then if we're making any decisions which was a whole different type of format and and level of information i agree with john about having thinking about having a second upriver meeting i know we don't have to decide on it now but we are talking about some pretty significant changes up river and i think it's really important to physically meet people where they're at and so um i just want to make sure that we don't bombard with too much information at this meeting here and and don't give enough time um i know that staff is constantly working on all these

3:13:04 it on all these topics and so it's really fresh for them but for people who are just kind of coming in and out um it's sometimes hard to follow the progression so um don't have to decide that now so yeah i i see the value in meeting the people where they're at and going up there especially around the connectivity issues um i also would caution you know a very very small portion of our customer base we're not doing a lot of these meetings you know in person for um you know the regular customer base down here and there's lots of big issues there as well that impact them i just want to caution that and hope that as we

3:13:50 have other large decisions of this you know that that impact that base that we look at things that we have done in the past around attending neighborhood meetings many of the most of the neighborhood meetings are you know virtual right now i know we've done in the past kind of concerted efforts to reach out um if we are looking at any budget or not budget but um increases again um to cost it might be a good time to towards the end of the year to really reach out to those neighborhood groups whether it's virtual or in person to re-establish those connections thanks sounds like tbd but good start to a plan

3:14:37 we'll we'll refine this further and we'll do some outreach to the community and get back to the board um with some further details on this and and i i do think this is i would almost classify this as a get reacquainted meeting with the upriver community i i don't think that you can get into a a lot of detail but you also want to be present enough that you can respond and with the have the right people i was going to say in the room in in the grass um that can respond to issues and questions that um the the people of that part of our service territory might have that's especially those that are unique to them and so that that's really i think what the

3:15:23 board is looking for and i think what we want to provide great okay thank you for your feedback and um also be an opportunity to give me more feedback during our one-on-one check-ins so that would be another time to give it some more thought great okay agenda item 14 board wrap up john brown thank you and um thank you for uh chairing another excellent meeting right on schedule mindy frank i forgot to ask this earlier but i'm still maybe i missed it and if i did i

3:16:09 apologize to others but when we decided on the per meter charge for the up river restoration did you ever get finalization on the people like river road water district and veneta and all that i mean i asked a question on whether or not they're going to get just one flat fee of 100 bucks a month or you know 20 000 people that are all have meters they're going to get the same charge we are to restore the watershed did you ever um clarify that i don't know that that i have clarified it yet for the board john but i i see the magical appearance of deborah hart who can probably provide the detail that you're looking for but it doesn't doesn't have to be tonight i mean we can do it because this is just wrap

3:16:54 up but i mean i just i kind of want to make sure that if we're all going to pay we're all going to pay i think it's a one sentence answer john okay we are all going to pay so uh district river road everybody's going to pay the same amount um it's longer than a one sentence answer sorry frank the their contracts um don't allow us to build their customers directly but we are actually negotiating with all of the water districts to pass through that total charge exactly as it looks for our customers what we don't have to admit is how much we charge them in total so we're all going to pay thank you

3:17:52 okay well i will just jump in and say that um this was a very long meeting so i want to thank everybody for hanging in there and um i'm just gonna i'm gonna keep saying this every time we have a long meeting that um i in the future would maybe appreciate breaking it into two shorter meetings when we have so much on the agenda because i will only speak for myself but towards the end of the meeting it just gets hard for me to kind of follow and focus and i'm tired and i know that we all have work commitments too that might make two meetings in a month difficult but i'm just gonna throw that out there in the future that we look to do that because four and a half hours is a long time to sit

3:18:43 brown and just say i think it was when i first joined e-web they had two meetings a month that typically got out at about 11 p.m is that right john you're muted john well that was absolutely correct and sometimes closer to midnight that was they were why do you think they had a special chair that's how my back went out we were sitting there for four years and we had some very very long meetings your comments are received and heard um president schlossberg all right all right anyone yes john barofsky yeah thanks for the great meeting mindy right on time um i would say considering agenda item 11 i think

3:19:30 frank's buying lunch for the river trip but other than that thank you to everybody thank you frank for helping guide the organization in the direction that we all are trying to make it go thank you thank you commissioner um well we will see each other in just a couple of weeks at our work session on carbon and i guess the last thing i would like to say is a huge shout out to holly and anne who make these meetings run so smoothly i often forget to thank them and um they really do an excellent job and if there's other people people that are helping behind the scenes thank you to them too because um they they make it seem so easy for us

3:20:17 and i know that they put a lot into it they do thank you all right so if there's nothing else then we are thank you commissioners have a good evening good night thank you good night good night