EWEB Board of Commissioners — March 1, 2022

0:09 the first agenda item is the agenda check does anybody have any conditions or requested changes to the agendas items from the board members and general manager i'll start with commercial carlson all right uh so this last month i attended the alcohol the general el call meeting and we've got an update on the senior disability services program i want to let you know that i'm serving on the budget committee the audit committee on the executive committee they are there a couple of things that were brought up one was that i let them know that we're working on equity and diversity inclusion policy they mentioned that eweb is a part of a group ecc that is

0:54 looking at how we can do that kind of broadly so if there's any way that we can have our work have a broader impact or get information from that group and others that are also doing this work i thought that was an interesting connection and then i also thought it was interesting that e-hud is looking at doing we do kind of a roundabout and all of the different agencies report and uh e-head is looking at doing a generator program for their customers some somewhat like we do like a loan program so some of their staff may reach out and let them know that we kind of doing that they were trying to figure it out and we've been doing it for house it was a nice thing to share

1:39 that's my thing thank you thanks mr mcgregor thanks mr schlesberg nothing for me nope i'm all good thank you i got two items number one um tony and i have been meeting weekly with dan spearheading herding caps so she's been doing a wonderful job and it's been a very fast-paced uh thing but you know time kills deals and i'm glad that she is doing what she's doing between her and the best um frank and i had a meeting with the springfield mayor and the city manager yesterday at a very productive meeting we talked about second close water and land news challenges and then such as

2:36 that's basically the buffer that keeps the river from me entering into springfield that's right above our intake and that's right we're i mean there's a lot of challenges going there he's talking about maybe a ten year project maybe frankie do you want to collaborate on that a little bit but uh that's first i've heard about it but what it means is the river once again is going where it wants to go if we don't deal with it it's going to be a pretty big problem thanks president brown conversation around 42nd street levy was one where they're initiating some project planning shortly they are looking at the availability for federal funds and other kinds of financing as commissioners know and as much of you have staffed those urban runoff is

3:22 still one of our highest risk areas for our watershed i agree to get the appropriate people connected with the city manager as part of that process so i would expect probably susan fricke who's our supervisor of water quality to be part of that team and potentially some others but i haven't connected with staff on that but agreed that we would work with the city of springfield on the whole potentially a whole series a whole decades worth of projects thank you thank you if nothing else i'll go to the next agenda john b i'm sorry didn't see it thank you

4:08 um not much to report i did attend them at kenzie watershed council's monthly meeting uh they did a report on some of the uh restoration projects that we were a part of uh and got some reports from od odef f w and some good good numbers on returns of reds and other promising things that are going up in the watershed great group of people very committed the trust the watershed council down to the to the guides and the mackenzie fly fishermen a whole bunch of people upriver that really care about uh the watershed and the water quality so it's great being a part of that

4:54 commission thank you thank you and i apologize for running over you there john i'm trying not to do that so yeah um okay the next agenda item is public input

5:52 at a later time okay we have uh one person signed up in person [Music] okay tom shepard thank you teacher on special assignment it's a long title and um as the u of education partnership grant coordinator and educators and work seven two hundred northwest the address today for work um so i just wanna thank you for the word as usual partnership with teachers and students back in

6:38 person this year time is actually flying but we're still in mandatory visitor mode so the students are not really having very many enrichment um activities but because i'm a 4k teacher i can go in so i have been getting in a bit and just a small report the virtual salmon education even though it was virtual it's still super successful probably do a hybrid form next year because some people liked it more than don't be a person so conserve more people um and they're actually requesting a similar climate related unit um i started doing some things called wonderlocks give me an a and steam some art projects and particular waters like murals and then um realizing that most people don't understand we have three water

7:24 systems and so trying to bring that in in a gallery walk format of the watershed model also and then middle school the wind energy unit is out and i was out at monroe middle school today and it was so fun and so that's out and kids are testing blade designs to capture the most wind and learning about that alternative energy source and we're revving up for the ewebee challenge this year formerly known as the solar challenge it'll be site based this year um we have 25 teachers across the three districts signed up and they're super excited to offer this and then and i think it will actually be a nicer equity lens and so we're just going to kind of work with this new model um and then also something that we added last year

8:09 in the spring is cooking um with the sixth graders and so that's something that we'll use some of the panels left from the solar challenge to do some little tv arrays to play around with and then with the high schoolers it's primarily the 4k climate justice team and so i meet with them every wednesday um and students from all four high schools we're trying to get echo involved as well so they have some pretty big projects this month they have organized a clothing exchange with each other across the district so yeah the schools are going to meet and then let's see what else um continuing the eco experience eco check newsletter and the website stuff

8:55 that's pretty popular with the teachers outside of the state of what we're doing i've been invited to be part of a summer school planning team to develop an enriching environmental age summer program and so that's something that's just starting and it's kind of exciting and dreamy actually of what school can maybe be like all the time and then continuing collaboration with my colleagues across the district in science and math to stem it up and then once more recently connected with pharmacy and ufo around shift and hopefully finally getting some emergency preparedness lessons out next year but eighth grade is moving forward and so i'm kind of aiming for maybe fifth grade for this so overall we're continuing to adapt to this current education model and we're

9:40 that we are really serving and exploring lots of ideas to continue on with what we've learned over this time and again it's just a great honor to you know be a teacher and a web person and um yeah i just love the city and i love being with youth and i love my role and so i really appreciate continuing support and i didn't see the timer so i probably went over you're doing just fine okay all right thank you very much okay thank you so that's that's it then i'll um well i just want to thank you for all of your work and um

10:53 appreciate hearing what you're up to i love hearing how it's modified and changed throughout the years to match you know our goals strategic roadmap so thank you for you know turning into that and always coming back and reporting to us i don't know if you just do that on your own or somebody prompt you but anyway i really appreciate it and if i was just curious if at some point tonight but at some point i can find out what which schools actually are kind of opting in to participate i'm guessing that it's an often sort of time and it's not like i'd be really just curious to see which

11:43 um yeah i just want to echo everything that everybody else has said and i'm looking forward to uh maybe when you have somebody on a nuclear engineering class that's going to split an atom and put a reactor up for us with wind and solar you know teach our kids just joking thank you very much i'd like to make a couple comments about that number one i've sat here for a long time and prior to you the only time anybody would come to that podium is when we were considering cutting something to come here and be proactive and say this is what i'm doing thank you and everything it's really a breath of fresh air trust me that those miles with myself on that and so i think that's a very smart thing for you to do and it's smart for you it's part of the program so thank you very much number

12:28 two i know that in the past i know that this is funded by ratepayers we have hundreds of thousands of students in this community that are part of the public school system and are they and i've talked about this before are they benefiting is there any way that they can benefit from this program like i'm thinking about marriage things like that plus some of the private schools so um i recall we did take a look at that i believe it was a couple years ago roughly what the equivalent funding would be if it wasn't a substantial amount from a financial perspective i think this the original funding for the

13:13 schools came out of a similar history that you would like a silk where we were actually paying schools we decided to turn that into more of a grant program we didn't have that same arrangement historically with private schools so we we don't do anything presently with private schools that would be something that the board would have to weigh in on and we could provide the board with what the equivalent level of funding would be for that if the board agrees that that is something that refuses in your interest i'm just thinking of the scene of dei and the equity conclusion making sure that we treat as many people

13:59 if the board you know even three head nods would like that's fine too i'm just saying i'm just trying to make sure that all the repairs have as much access to these types of programs and it wouldn't even i guess for me one of the things i would be interested in is

14:44 what other school districts outside of 4j that we serve not necessarily with the private schools but the public schools like some of the schools of the mackenzie uh that we serve or is there a santa clara area that is is methyl you know do we do we electrify bethel that would be just one of my questions are there public schools that were serving as eweb providers that are in that are not covered by 4j that would be helpful information for me commissioner borowski the bethel school district and the mckenzie school district are included in our educational grant program

15:30 yes good thank you thank you very much appreciate it and it's so good to see all of you i just i'm thrilled and i'm thrilled that i got to be the first one in person yeah literally well thank okay the next agenda item is the consent calendar day um

16:54 so yeah yes go ahead um i just i noticed that a number of the items that are on our consent calendar have had increased in price significantly i mean 40 to look like even 100 in some cases i i just want to make sure that you know we're looking out budgetarily that we're still understanding i know that we made some adjustments here and there but that seems like a lot but that's a much bigger challenge so um i just wanted to flank that as a forward keep aware of and if staff continue to see this yeah and i'll just piggyback on that too by that because i know that some of our budget assumptions are three percent and i just attended the construction cost

17:40 seminar average construction costs okay um city between joint initiatives agenda so subcommissioners um this this has been provided in your background or this was the follow-up to a discussion that commissioners had last month we tried to capture the essence of that in a

18:25 roster of agenda items that was consistent with the conversation so that the board could approve general direction to the president and vice president who will be meeting with city regime leadership that is one of the attachments in the board items and i'll just turn it back to president brown for any liberation adjustments and hopefully approval questions or comments about this um we did go over this last meeting and uh this is an action item so if uh questions or comments i wouldn't entertain the motion to adopt the uh city regime liaison agenda

19:19 about the ability to address uh or the desire to convince qualifications

20:05 a number of buildings [Music] the process the protocol is that we go through

21:13 originally this came out of the liaison discussion in january where commissioners in general wanted to provide some guidance to the liaisons president and vice president during discussion specific leadership last month it was discussed disgusted it doesn't have to be overly formal but sometimes light rails would be inappropriate some of these topics fully expect will evolve over time so i would expect the liaisons to come back to staff on the board with potential issues that feed back the other direction as well so we just don't see this as a one-and-done kind of document or interaction but something

21:59 that will evolve yeah and so it might warrant uh us providing some time on the agenda just carving out time every few months just to check in on where that conversation was and then we check in as board members at the beginning about what's going on but it feels like this particular relationship is especially important in terms it just takes three heads and instead so sonia and then i'm just curious

22:52 i think the target was to meet the after the month where we do our quarterly reporting so we have sort of the most present data i guess i would look to quality check and see where we are with the first meeting

23:37 i think that's super key because in the past three years or whatever that we've had this um relationship with the city i just wanted to keep going around and around specifically so i think that we [Music] to see my recommendations and so far to me it seems like i believe everybody

24:22 gets interested but there just doesn't seem very clear to know giving them a lot more than we've given in the past and now it's going to be pushing pushing it a little bit more and push yeah yes i would also point out that there there are now two resolutions that have been passed through city council we've already clarification and specifically

25:10 its impact or how to count there's two related to natural gas one is in new construction so there is actually a mechanism cities in hopefully provide guidance you know how to fade that when there are new counselors elected that i don't know if we ever do any short orientation or meeting with them just to talk about what is it uh intertwined with the city i know not necessarily our responsibility

25:56 but if you're a new um person you might not fully understand that and so i'm just wondering when there are many people or nightmares people who are on there okay any other questions or comments if not without the um commissioner uh yeah i i'm i'm fine with the agenda as it's stated i i think that i haven't sat in on any of these uh meetings

26:42 particularly with with the city councilors i've sat in on several meetings with city councilors and i think the idea of keeping the agenda short and to the point and having clearly defined goals uh and not and not getting too many of them out in front trying to convey what our feelings are and what they want from us is is a great thing so i'm in favor of moving the agenda forward and i would make a motion to that extent okay thank you you're saying thank you say goodbye carlson [Music] discussion

27:27 thank you very much next agenda item number eight state of the utility address and operations thank you president brown if anybody should be interested the basis for this presentation and discussion comes from our published year-end report which because of the many e-web contributors to it is probably the best public utility-based year-end report that i've read it's incredibly interesting and informative as to what's going on in the utility if anybody wishes it is linked to the agenda on eweb's website so i would entertain people

28:12 advise people to go read that report they'd like to good evening commissioners eweb teammates customer owners and interested members of the community last year i used the term healthy to describe eweb as we were learning to perform in the midst of a pandemic which was having tangible impacts on our community and our organization for 2021 i would describe e-web as persevering resolute persistent and accomplished there's only one reason i have the fortunate opportunity to use these words to describe e-web and as our people including front-line contributors supervisors managers executives board

28:59 members community partners union non-union operations administrative management and support it takes an entire team to be successful i'll use most of the presentation portion of this agenda to describe the results issues opportunities and trends so i'll focus most of my state of the utility comments on high level thoughts and culture i'd like to start by thanking all the commissioners for all of us in the organization it is a pleasure to work with the board that is respectful hard-working and caring about the services we provide and the legacy that we need there were times that challenged you this past year

29:44 we appreciate your support leadership guidance and advice as we tackle some important issues in the years ahead saw some incredible results from e-web as we delivered over 2.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 9.5 billion gallons of high quality drinking water to roughly 200 000 people in our community we did this in a matter consistent with our values of safety reliability affordability environmental stewardship and community we did this under conditions that trust stressed our supply chains put new inflationary pressures on our costs

30:30 and in a treacherous workforce climate that saw the great resignation in some cases the great migration and a new labor market tightness putting additional strain on ub's already loyal and professional workforce in 2021 keyweb incredibly achieved eight of our nine annual organizational goals and sub goals with the supply chain issues associated with advanced metering being the only notable exception financially we are sound and because we use a comprehensive source to tap or source to switch approach to delivery reliability is solid and water quality is good

31:19 in 2021 we worked with the board to update the strategic plan further identifying key three to five year milestones and revising our values we collaborated and aligned with the board to develop direction and decision criteria on watershed recovery and protection lower mckenzie hydro projects and their future information systems and technology investment planning wildfire mitigation planning and multi-year cost of service analysis we published an electrification impact analysis report that will inform certain aspects of our integrated resource planning building program we also experiences some challenges in 2021

32:04 and are working to address these issues transparently and intentionally most of these challenges manifested from specific issues and were contained with within discrete trends milestones or issues we recognize our opportunity and our obligation to take corrective action and work towards sustainable improvement for that reason many remedial activities are already included in our 2022 organizational or department goals as i review the specific results later in this presentation i'll elaborate on some of these challenges further to close my comments the way i begin by thanking my um teammates the board and our many partners throughout the

32:49 community and region i personally like to thank the executives and managers with whom i work most closely with and frequently and also ann cobb and polly sugar with whom i probably would go insane without them um thank you anne and ollie but really thanks to all of the uh employees for their efforts this past year when i asked the uf managers yesterday if they had anyone that they thought i should mention in the state of the union address the response was so overwhelming with so many names and departments that i know president brown would cut me off for overrunning my allotted time so instead i'll try to incorporate and

33:34 recognize some of the departments and people as i go through the 2021 results next thank you commissioners and with that i'd like to run through a few specific results issues opportunities thank you next slide thank you oh next one i just did that so a few notable things from 2021. um first of all we continue to operate in some ongoing and new emerging issues with covet as everybody knows the results and including the safety really a spectacular performance given the environment that we are operating in

34:20 i would like to that's that's lance hughes walking with the mask i would like to thank lance hughes and christian for their work kind of their being the center pieces the focal points for our ongoing coveted response and adjustments and more response and more adjustments throughout the year so the metrics on safety were solid our good catch reporting in particular which is a proactive method was 40 higher than the previous year reliability and delivery was pretty critical continued to operate well

35:06 the oregon health authority did award e-web with an outstanding performer recognition this is a phenomenal accomplishment for the water department it's like an audit that you go through every three years now five years because we were considered an outstanding performer and really leverages years of work from the water department so i'd like to thank them for that and included in safety was the national institute of occupational safety and health total worker health affiliate status there's only about 50 of those nationally so our safety record and that's really also about health and welfare not just safety

35:52 itself so that's a pretty distinguished honor safety program all of our mentors financially were solid all within board policy except the electric rate of return the we did have rate increases in 2021 the first in five years we still remain in the middle of the pack on the electric side and one of the best most affordable on the water side so even with those rate increases from a community perspective it's incredible the amount of touch points we have with the community at least 167 000 direct customer contacts throughout the year

36:37 i would like to congratulate and thank angelique reel and the customer service department for really wrestling through a whole bunch of issues some of themselves some of them not that our customer service department worked on this last year including some health issues within that environment as well and so i appreciate that energy efficiency met our objective of more than 10 000 megawatt hours also a peak impact we delivered over two and a half million in incentives to do that um and another 1.8 million in loans for energy efficiency work

37:22 customer care delivered 1.3 million helping more than 4 600 customers directly i would like to thank again great caliber and the solutions team for the work that they've done in the communications team and i'll get to some of them next slide please there's also some things that don't necessarily always make the list of objectives a number of those include the mgp site which really was not a published goal something we accomplished last year as well as a transfer of some sales and assets from good utility board in the lightwood area our response times increased this year

38:08 despite some of the heroic efforts from our customer service group i'll talk about some of those a little bit later we had a number of different uh building and renovation requests especially on the electric side and our lead times in that area and stretched out longer than we would like so that's an area that we'll be working on the stepping staffing decisions as well we also some of the issues we did have 95 successful recruitments despite a tight labor market we still as the board knows have some challenged positions that we're going to look to get creative on and work

38:53 work toward philly and 70 internal promotions one of the really fantastic things about working for an organization the size of uweb and the construction of the ub is that there are internal opportunities for advancement attrition was a little bit higher than normal in the area of um people leaving the organization voluntarily for non-retirement reasons um 9.2 percent was total attrition some of that is [Music] for those who voluntarily left we also have some some

39:38 efforts to put forward in the hermann smith project um 62 75 of the 75 projects are on schedule nine completed we are out of compliance on the bishop passage work um we have improved our relationship one of the things that it is important that is to recognize your contributions commissioners we did welcome two new commissioners they're still welcome um barofsky and mcgray and welcome back to commissioner carlson

40:24 throughout this year a number of accomplishments for the board some of those having to do with increased investment in watershed and watershed recovery not just this year but going forward we definitely appreciated your support on the east 40th water project um and that's that's one where laura harding jeff connors communications team janine parisi and wally appella really have done an outstanding job on that project and we really appreciate your support on that one sd50 was updated on climate change policy and you have helped provide guidance on our wildfire mitigation plan as well as significant guidance i actually approved our operating version of that plan so

41:10 thank you another version based on the evolving compliance requirements will be upcoming later this spring have provided guidance on a number of topics here so we appreciate that support very much next slide please a lot of green on this one this is pretty uh incredible results given that we had nine goals and feel like eight of the nine are either fully achieved or on target the difference there being on target all the initiatives for the year all the milestones for that year were accomplished we know there's further work there as the work continues but a number of different accomplishments here pretty incredible

41:56 given the environment i'd also like to talk a little bit about some of the trends that you're seeing here we are seeing inflation cost impacts and pressures across that earlier there are some items which have incredibly long leak times and or are expensive not everywhere and we aren't sure about the length of private we'll continue to see inflationary pressures as you know in our long-term planning we've averaged that out so some of the near-term effects some are isolated some are not we are seeing significant pressures well above that and are adjusting our work flow accordingly

42:42 i would like to to recognize our purchasing group um quentin burrow and raymond mackayer and sarah gorsinger for some of their incredible work to deal with supply chain issues that have just um required a lot of patience and navigation and intuitive thinking this past year you kind of see on this sort of heat chart some of the and this is not an absolute chart this is a trend shark so for example you can see water quality very high kind of in the stable range in the middle water is above the colors and electrics below it doesn't mean water quality is poor it means water quality is stable watershed conditions slightly improving so some things are slightly improving some things are

43:29 slightly decreasing and we are seeing i said specialized recruiting our customer responsiveness is one that 2021 wasn't where we wanted to be we are seeing improvements already this year workforce morale workforce resiliency those are i think our workforce is becoming a bit more resilient given all the changes at the same time it's exhausting and it's tiring especially when you have issues that are hard to recruit for where you're putting a lot of pressure on those who do remain in the organization we're going to have to pay close attention to that going forward i i will say that there's some real bright spots in the organization as

44:15 well the communications team jim connors and her team really did a lot of outstanding work this year in outreach some of them specific projects some of them related to issues that are upcoming irp's electrification and some of the work around carmen smith and leeburg and just go down the list and we can tell that they're being pulled into more and more projects proactively which is which is always a good sign damn safety and the damn safety program those are slightly different things gum safety as you know there's there's emerging issues we found more sinkholes and this time and trail bridge

45:00 that always causes issues with others but really daniel wang and was our chief safety you know safety engineer really done a phenomenal job and lisa and mark zenicker and others working on carmen have really really done an outstanding job there so i appreciate that um and the garmin license i guess a little bit more about that earlier but i think we go into this eyes wide open we recognize that there's challenges here that we want to address um some things that we know are improving and some things we know

45:52 again you know i just go through this and looking there's there's always a human behind the data behind the metrics a lot of different people involved chris taylor and generation and the work that they do at the generation sites from an operational perspective we've improved our relationship with our largest electric customer ip a number of that is because of the work we did in our electric operations group and also eli bala manager customer relationship manager so you look through i think the 116 pages of this report and whether it's it's good or whether it's

46:37 improvement really appreciate how transparent it is the fact that there are people who are working on these things very directly and owning the success definitely want to thank them and would be happy to comments or questions and if i can't handle them all pass them off to ron price or someone else who's in the room who can answer better than i can but so many so many opportunities thank you very much that's a great presentation and i think the way this report reads is a testament to not only the staff but our general manager

47:22 his leadership yeah thank you i mean it really was riveting at 4am so thank you to everyone i know a lot of work goes into making the support of me and just running the change in having you know more kpis and actually being able to track and see how we're doing as an organization not because we know that everything is going to go well or it's not i mean it's it's really a full look at it these are the things we're going well these are the things they're not going well here's the reasons why and let's you know learn from both experiences so i really appreciate the celebration that

48:16 given that there are supply chain shortages high price increases and stacking constraints i just wonder if it and we have so much that we've loaded into this year i just wonder if it does foreign there are real real situations that are out of our control here

49:32 yeah and you did plenty of thinking of the staff thank you um yeah thank you for the presentation and all the hard work that went went into presenting the uh the staff report uh i'll be honest with you guys i went through that and i appreciated the little gas gauge uh meter on there uh and i will uh be honest with you when i saw a gas gauge that was in the acceptable or up above i paid a lot less attention than

50:17 ones that might have been on the lower end you know if you if you're on a quarter tank of gas i might have read that section a little bit deeper and i was encouraged that most of them were half a tank or fuller which is very encouraging and the ones that were at a quarter tank like i say they were that way for a reason it wasn't because we weren't doing a good job i think it was because there were things that were out of our control that that put us into those positions and i think we can can learn from those i'm looking forward to a day where i can skim through those with full tanks of gas and and read the 180 page report in

51:02 20 minutes and just move on but i think we're getting there i think that the uh the organization is doing a fabulous job uh it's a big boat sometimes it's hard to turn a big boat but i i don't see that we need to make any big corrections to the direction that the organization is going i feel comfortable with it and i want to keep moving forward like like some of my other commissioners have mentioned we do have a lot of uh big things on the agenda coming up on the horizon uh but with the staff that we have in place i think we'll be able to get managed to steer the boat the right direction and it's gonna and

51:47 we won't have to come in for fuel because our tank's going to be on three-quarters full thank you thank you um well good thank you thank you also to staff i think that it's pretty amazing that we it hasn't um affected your enthusiasm and a lot of these big big topics and big issues and i really appreciate that i also appreciate that you highlighted

52:49 and um i know one of the things you highlighted with workplace morale you know most places people are feeling that but i hope that um employees can hey you know number one i didn't catch a little slip there when you talk about the state of the union rather than the state of the utah did i ever love myself no yeah well that's there is a state of the union which channels seriously i

53:39 yeah there's a number of reasons some of it is it's our own planning and where we were at that process and the other part of it is being able to operate within work requirements when you have emerging issues like sinkholes okay it's a combination of both i don't want a totally blind bird but i also they're they're contributing for that and we are going to have to work with our settlement parties the other settlement parties to the license and on on new timing adjusted timing it looks like it's a number of years out

54:24 simply because there's just there's a lot going on at harmony a lot of the other projects are fine um but there's a couple of them that are are going to just going to be delayed so thank you any other questions or comments right i i will address the fact that i know there's a lot this year i think that we feel that as we all feel that as leaders of an organization i think we're we're paying attention to it i don't think we have issues and have never felt like we could not approach the board and readjust from time to time if for some reason

55:10 there are issues that prevent us or require adjustment and one thing that i know we all appreciate about the board on the other hand there is a lot of work to be done and we want to recognize that the things that are on our organizational goals some of those are operational and some of those are are truly the positioning utility long-term strategic perspective and there is a nice mix of that and there's a mix that sort of cuts across the utility it's not all on one department for example but you know please understand if there are conditions where you're feel like we're driving an organization into the ground

55:55 um we are obligated to come back to the board and talk about that as a separate issue and i have full confidence in the managers executives that they will be looking at that as well and employee morale is incredibly important it's why it's part of our 2020 the last couple years for a number of reasons um understands that and but when you take a step back and i know some of us get the opportunity to do that more than others when you really take a step a step back and see all of what this organization

56:41 does it is incredible thank you thank you thank you um okay uh decision time for an hour ahead uh we can move on skip the break the next agenda item is the headquarters rfp process but we can take our break come back and do that or whatever whatever is the world i wouldn't mind a quick break

1:03:17 yeah uh if you could ask matt when he's talking if he could speak up a little bit or i don't know if it's his mask but he comes through really garbled i'm having a hard time understanding him everybody else is kind of coming through pretty good so if he could just talk a little bit clearer that would be very helpful thank you

1:05:34 okay i'm going to read for being thank you president thank you general manager lawson good evening commissioners tonight we're taking your feedback on the draft solicitation process and associated documents for the sale of eweb's headquarters property over the past couple of months president brown and vice president carlson have been working with the project team to incorporate the feedback that we received from you last into the process and we're returning to you tonight with those results

1:06:24 as a reminder we're hoping to take the feedback we received tonight and come back once again to the board with the next iteration of the rfp process that will earn your approval hopefully at next month's board meeting but most importantly we want to get this right to ensure that e-web creates a process that's fair and equitable on the screen you'll see our timeline which lays out the upcoming board meetings and events does anyone have questions about what's coming up shall we move right along as we review the rfp process and related documents we'd like to call your attention to a few things that have changed since we were last before you

1:07:09 we've um taken your input and recognition recognizations from the team and we made several updates to see here on the screen you'll recall that we originally proposed an open-ended closing date but because this had the potential to unnecessarily prolong the process we've pivoted to a firm closing date 90 days after issuance and to mitigate the risk that proposers may be challenged to complete their offers within that 90 days we'd like to offer them to express an intent to propose and by doing so this will give e-web awareness of proposals that are expected and the purchasing coordinator if the necessary could extend the closing date

1:07:56 by 30 days via addenda at her discretion depending on what we're expecting and what's actually come in we did include a protest process although we don't expect to have any protests we did include instructions in the timeline for doing so if desired legal counsel has drafted a non-disclosure agreement and this would allow proposers to mark sensitive information as confidential that they'd like to have withheld from the public and then after the um competitive process is finished and we've issued an intent to award we recommend making the proposals public spams that confidential information

1:08:41 as far as acquisition options go we've removed the long-term lease without an intent to purchase as well as trades with the notion that a long-term lease could be explored in the event were unsuccessful at selling the property and trades were removed due to the time and money to do our due diligence and also the unlikelihood that ewok would have a viable use for any properties and trade the evaluation criteria was expanded as we discussed in executive session and the rp now reserves the right for the board to request test and final offers the board is under no obligation to do so that this would provide you flexibility to negotiate with more than

1:09:27 one party in the event there's not a clear award selection do commissioners have any questions or comments about these recommended changes yeah um no uh thank you for this uh a lot of hard work thank you to sonia and commissioner brown for uh helping to steer

1:10:12 and work on that committee it sounds to me like you guys put in a bunch of time and effort on it i really want to thank you for that as well as the staff that that also had to sit in those meetings with you guys they they deserve extra extra credit point for that uh but no on a serious note i think that this gives the the community and interested parties a fair and open process for us to look at how to dispose of this very important community asset and i look forward to seeing some really great proposals i think there'll be some really great ones out there i've i've

1:10:58 like i said in previous meetings i've sat in on several rfp processes and the hardest part is there's always more than one really good proposal and the hard part for us is going to be i think weighing in between two or three or four really uh great options that will move the community forward and and put this piece of property uh to its highest and best use so i'm i'm really looking forward to it and thank you all for the hard work thank you another questions or comments for jimmy yep um i am probably very naive but it seems super straightforward and clear

1:11:43 i know that once we start getting because we have to um score them and whatever it might not come but we it looks um very transparent and good any questions or comments the other direction for committee um that we prepared in advance and then i was just going to open it up to the board if there were any other areas they'd like to address that we didn't cover um so the next two slides have those questions on the first one's displayed

1:12:28 on the screen and his question is should eweb reserve the right to place a deed restriction on the property to limit certain uses do any commissioners wish to comment on that i will because i'm the one that instigated it i'm sorry and it's created a little bit of a dialogue between me and legal counsel but i'm not ready to back down um you know 4j we've done that with the y we've done when we city alliance doesn't because they want certain uses

1:13:18 and if we want to put those in now is the time or it's to say that there's certain uses that we don't want we don't think would be not compatible with the overall values of the community adjacent owners

1:14:14 out there um you must have some thoughts on this well i'm just doing what other public agencies have done because 99 times out of 100 public agencies buy stuff they don't sell it for sales but when they sell it if they want to either preserve the legacy or the integrity of the adjacency i mean the school district's primary intent was to preserve that they don't want if something happens at the while and they're no longer the why they don't want that to be a juvenile detention center or a private athletic both of which could happen and so there's a provision in their pay that they get to buy it back we structured it so we preserve the intent of that we have those provisions in there so if it's not a why we used to buy it back and try ourselves something else they can't

1:15:01 same thing with um they wanted to kind of make sure that whatever was there if it's not continuously alliance it's still fits with the vision and values of school district 4j we don't have that issue here because we're not going to know anything but just whether or not we want to put that in right you know i um if it's not too broad i don't see anything against it and one of the comments so far is that the city is gonna what's the comment that they said and the city is gonna go nuclear

1:15:47 we you saved adult books for us said really i want to hear that there's a roster of things that are in present if the board this this is a legacy project for the board we have been up at this site for 100 years this building has been in

1:16:32 existence since the 1980s if the board felt like there were some certain restrictions that you wanted to run with the land forever because of the legacy you want to leave that is perfectly acceptable to do independent of what anybody else thinks from a legal perspective or a public interest perspective you have the right to do that some of the restrictions could expire in a certain amount of time but most of the time if it was

1:17:27 that's not enough for the board are there certain uses that you think shouldn't be allowed on this property or would you rather have a conversation you know that's uh no that's that's really hard to discern because once if we start saying certain uses and the lenders get if somebody's going to try to get a little well the lenders get really nervous because they're always looking that side and they say okay we have to take it back i want to sell it i don't care if it's the superstore or

1:18:25 norm that could affect people's marketability we could say uh we could go there and end our negotiations with the final three we could ask the proposal do you have any objection to us let's say no adult bookstores no massage no canvas oil extraction things such as that and see what they say i mean that this is a devotion we don't have to throw a restriction on it now we can just say we have a conversation but i think we've got to have it here first

1:19:25 there are some some restrictions that we can place that are reasonable that aren't discriminatory in other ways um i would like to ensure that proper use right i believe the question for the board as far as our guidance has to do with do you want to reserve that right as part of the process and it sounds like yes we'd like to reserve that right to potentially look at this john b as far as deed restrictions for me what the thing that i would be interested in is if we're putting out these criteria

1:20:10 for community you know the scoring that we've we've established i would like to see whoever buys it have some sort of a time frame before they could sell it again that would be a cons and i don't know if that would be part of this conversation or not but as far as putting use constrictions on it the city of eugene has has gone and done what are pro one are permitted uses in different areas and zones and the the community had an opportunity to weigh in on those and set you know in this particular zone these

1:20:56 these things are permitted um and i don't believe that it's our job to decide what uses can be used on a piece of land that just because we own it you know i i think i'm thinking back to the scenario of a ccnr right we're basically putting a ccnr on this piece of property ccnr has conditions comments and restrictions where people can say you can't subdivide your property you can't you you have to paint it a certain color those types of things and cc and ours and those types of things have been found to be can be

1:21:42 discriminatory now i'm not saying that what we're putting on here would do that but i just have hesitancy to to go above and beyond what the community has decided as appropriate uses for any piece of land uh in the community so i would be you know yeah we can reserve it and see and ask questions but i'm leaning against putting any kind of deed restrictions on the and yeah what do you need from us on that i do and we have just one more question okay this one's around a customer survey in response to the board's previous interest in better understanding customer owners opinions about the sale

1:22:27 of the property staff has looked into a range of options for surveys depending on the options selected consultants say it could take between 6 and 12 weeks to execute the survey from start to finish and we do understand the importance of moving the rfp process along so the board directs staff to proceed with the survey that could be done in tandem with the rfp solicitation so at this time we'd like to hear from commissioners whether or not you'd like us to conduct a survey if yes what level of engagement is appropriate to meet your objectives and also if you'd like to comment on what you'd like to gain from the survey and how you'd like to use that information that'll help us make sure

1:23:13 our questions align with your intent and we get the information you need i'm not sure that the information that we would get from that wouldn't be necessarily meaningful um not that i don't think that it's important to know what customers think but um i i feel like i'm trying to think of what would make me um weigh my decision given that we're going

1:23:58 to have like a scoring rubric that's um i i just wonder if by having a surgeon kind of open ourselves up to um more disagreement or controversy i mean um if the survey came out that like for whatever reason people that we surveyed want to put up i think that we should use this to put up a high story parking garage or something like that like i just don't know that that wouldn't cause me then to evaluate differently yeah so um i don't mean to sound like i don't

1:24:46 value engaging republican things but i think i just don't know that we're gonna get anything that's gonna be super helpful i don't know if i'm being clear but um that's just my reaction to this yeah i i kind of agree with with mindy um you know if you do an open-ended survey people are going to want things that we can't deliver especially if we're waiting the value of the the to that we're going to get to our customers you know people may say i want to have a

1:25:31 an art center there that kindergarteners can go and do finger painting or whatever and and have a no-cost thing that may be great and good but people don't understand that we have parameters that we're we're looking to meet and one of the main parameters is giving giving value to our customers and so i've seen surveys in the past uh where people you ask people what they want and they'll tell you but they don't realize what the economic impacts of those are it's like i want to have this and this and this and this but they don't realize that that this this and this costs a lot of money well in our case it would be like yes i want

1:26:16 this this this and this for the e-web property but if we were to give them that we wouldn't realize the the value to our customers that we're trying to reach um and so if we have an extensive survey that says we want all of this those types of things and we can't give that because we've set up these criteria then it seems disingenuous right that we're not listening to the community so i i i want to hear from the community i want to i want to get the message out to the community of that we are doing this in a responsible manner and we would love to hear from them especially once the rfps are submitted i

1:27:01 think that that's the point as to where we can get input which one of these might be best for us but it's it's tough just putting out there what would you like to have at the eweb property because you get a million different answers thanks well i suggested that we do a customer survey so i appreciate that's why i kept quiet for a little bit [Music] i suggested it in part because i thought that we were going to have the opportunity to as we looked at the different buckets and rfp proposals actually get feedback from the community on how to weight those but i don't think the timeline is really aligning with that and i think we kind

1:27:46 of ended up investing you know there's there's some ideas there about which buckets so it feels to me like like maybe that is not the way to go with it but i do want to make sure that whatever you know when like here we're here we are tonight there's the opportunity for public feedback i just don't know if people really even have a sense of what you know what we're doing you know it's i know that we put it out there and we publish it but it seems like people don't come out of the woodworks and say anything until we've already made a decision and that is where i get that's where i get a lot of feedback of like we're just making all these decisions and closed

1:28:32 doors it's like probably not i mean we're here all the time talking about it people have the opportunity to come but unless we're proactively asking for their feedback then we just don't get that but the the kinds of things that i would like particular feedback on are really around you know how do we weight these these proposals and the scoring on it and i feel like the timeline that we've set up maybe isn't conducive to that but maybe when we actually have the proposal there and doing more work around here's the three that the board has been brought back based on you know we've set up all the process and then the three or whatever that come

1:29:17 back to the board for review maybe that's the time at least an email in some form or fashion because they met our criteria then maybe that's where we can get public feedback and i would say not i mean obviously not a phone or an online opening maybe normal online yeah i have kind of mixed feelings uh party feels like this is such a

1:30:03 significant i wouldn't be surprised if the results we got were similar to what we were seeing here to your point which is exactly spot on that we won't get feedback until afternoon decision maybe he says sarcastically we should put out a press release that we just sold the building to the seattle

1:30:48 developer and then we'll get input on what we should do he says sarcastically oh yeah go ahead doing that and then as soon as we sold it they changed and i think the proposers are going to tell us that they're going to do their homework this is a big deal they're going to do their homework that makes economic sense that where the greatest demand is the greatest demand is

1:31:34 whether that's a public private partnership or whatever it is they're going to do their homework and see but if we start telling them what to do that's going to certainly affect i mean if the community says or not i mean i do know this in our future agenda i wonder why you only have 10 minutes of public hearing on the headquarters position 10 minutes scheduled for public hearing for that and [Music]

1:32:32 can be really helpful when you're trying to answer specific questions in a specific context i think what's going to happen here is we're going to get a set of proposers that will give us some information as to potential uses that they're proposing it's going to be a relatively limited evaluation process from the standpoint it's not going to be to your point they're going to do their homework it sounds like though the board is very interested in ensuring that there is public awareness in this process and there's a communication plan that we've developed and more time for the public who wishes to weigh in at various stages throughout the process agree the tendency as we learn as public entities is that people tend to show up either when

1:33:18 you're making the decision or right after you've made the decision and so what i would actually propose here since there was even some money attached with this was we ensure that this is highly visible highly promoted in all all sorts of media which our communications plan will do to ensure that we're receiving public input especially when we start to see the proposals for someone as a versus b that they can start to provide insight into the interest but it doesn't sound like at this point it would be the specific answers in a specific context

1:34:18 survey something like that since then because five years ago i feel like if we were going to go started maybe we do have a customer survey and sometimes all right

1:35:26 uh well that's the end of the prepared questions we have for the board our goal is to take what we heard tonight and come back next month and present you with something that we hope is at a state that earns your approval so if there's anything else that you saw in either the rfp the non-disclosure agreement the process we really want to get your approval on all of that so if there's any other guidance you'd like us to incorporate into those before we bring them back for potential approval i'm all ears otherwise i have what i need and i you know i was had a little contention about the ability to accept the promised land versus cash are we going to get into the weeds on that

1:36:16 because i know that council said they don't like promissory notes and i said well then that eliminates could eliminate some proposers because i think based on the way you described it the other thank you other questions and comments well here we go thank you anna and thank you for doing such a great job of hurting us and

1:37:02 keeping us in line and thank you um president brown and vice president carlson for your participation so far and uh i did make a comment about employee morale i'm not saying that there's any links between thank you president brown and vice president carlson for your participation with the team and thank you commissioners for your feedback tonight um for next steps we as president brown mentioned we have a public hearing scheduled for next month that's a step that's in our internal property procedures so we'll take care of that

1:37:48 that'll raise a little more awareness and we'll see you next month with something um potentially for approval thank you thank you all right thanks correspondence board agendas so there were five items of correspondence um everything i i will make a comment about full time so you've got uh number one old times we're doing one of the sort of sidebars to that and i know that i just wanted to mention into the board and to the public we are looking into how we do and how we explain estimated repeats

1:38:45 estimated reads um oftentimes if you underestimate and you get the true up it's higher than expected if you overestimate then that's higher than expected either way there's some customer interaction and that has contributed some this past year because we've had some tired and normal estimates for a variety of reasons but that's why i just want to mention in that context the other one um information on the limited income household water assistance program which is similar to water leicester jason's legislative update an update on the state of mckinsey

1:39:31 watershed annual report which was at a number of interesting things about the state of watershed and then yeah i don't know if jason's on the call or not but um is there any update i know we're getting towards the end of this of the legislative session was there any update on senator manning's ask for the 20

1:40:17 million dollars for the second treatment plan um and i i saw he was a i don't i don't know if he's attending but is there any more information on that is jason on he actually mentioned something to me about one of the other projects um commissioner barofsky actually earlier today in passing and said he was going to provide further updates on that so probably by the time we check in next week i'll have much more of an update for you and the rest of the board but i know that he he did say that we had received funding for one of the projects it was not the uh he did not mention specifically the

1:41:02 atlanta treatment plan option but a different project so i'll get back to you on that yeah and just for the re the record of our other board members we when we met with uh commissioner brown and i and and staff did a zoom call with senator manning and and put out a request for some funding for the second treatment plan he he seemed like he was all in on it so i'm hoping he carries that enthusiasm up to up the board i know that the state has uh quite a few sufficient funds this year so hopefully there'll be some sort of money that might help to fray our cost of building the second treatment plan yeah there

1:41:47 he we provided senator manning and some of the others on the budget committees several project levels and options we also know that the university of oregon apparently is going to be awarded several million dollars for wildfire cameras which will also have some potential benefit to our situational awareness so there's there's some things strictly out of commissioner and i'll get more details thank you on the board again to report one one change that we made to this is the very first section um highlights changes to the board agenda report from

1:42:32 the last meeting so that it's a pretty pretty long report so if you want to know hey what's different now versus last time you can see where some things have been added some things rescheduled so it's a little easier sort of the decoder ring of the board agenda report and and as we go through this it looks like president brown is running some very efficient meetings so where we have zero time schedule there might be a little bit of flexibility to add things as we go so don't hesitate to work on potential other topics or if you see things that you might need more or less of there's gonna be some possibilities

1:43:28 are we going to get a report on the hydrogen uh the site in western gene and our collaborative efforts with northwest and bonneville do [Music] at with the hydrogen piece and some of their recovery and some of the other things that go along with that i suspect that meeting will get scheduled between now and our next board meeting so i can staff i also know that the executive team is taking a tour of the new property

1:44:14 and some of our existing facilities and the plans the bertelson property just to take a look at what some of the interests of the utility in general are relative to that property so i suspect between this month's maybe um so uh brad and i have met with a project food from bethel that really highlighted for me some of the opportunities that exist uh as you all know public buildings

1:45:06 efficiency projects and um some of these projects are having a hard time finding a valuable cost-effective way to spend those dollars in a potential adjustment in the way that we price or that we incentivize power could change that to the benefit of the school and therefore without going into it too far but happy to discuss more if there's any revelations um

1:45:53 i would just propose a future agenda on our solar incentives specifically as they relate to public projects i'm not i'm not asking you guys to borrow the whole conversation on all of our soldiers and just those public projects where there's this kind of clearness

1:46:41 discuss other we've got to have three head nods we've got three four five john b okay but my question would be a little bit different timing i know that at least what appears to be pretty full agenda items up until roughly this summer we also tend to review great kinds of issues as part of our fall process so typically july through december it could really be anywhere in there in the context this depending on what structured it could be a reclassification is different something else my question to the board would be having some initial discussion in sort of earlier mid-summer does that work

1:47:27 with the intent that if the board wants to go a different direction we can incorporate that without a problem does that work for the board in general and if so yeah from my perspective we're not going to change anything quick enough to affect this project so this is really the projects in the future and so you know you all figure out when the best time is i'd like to see this to have our discussion change in our rates and pricing discussions that will typically be involved

1:48:18 yep okay we're wrap up more around john b the only guy that's stuck here again nothing from me thank you uh just you know as i often do appreciation for staff make these meetings run it's just seamlessly uh the interface that we have in this hybrid is really um it's really seamless and well done and thank you to brown for getting us out of here really doing this just over scheduled

1:49:15 and i know that um all the tech help has been doing a great job and maybe it's us and not talking loudly enough so um i know that this is all once in progress as we figure it out and maybe next thank you i have a couple comments too i want to just remind the other board members we've got a couple things coming up um we're going to have to do the general manager evaluation and we're going to get that and you get it the sooner you can do that the better because then we have to meet an executive session to discuss about frank's performance and things such as that and so that's kind of a

1:50:00 time-sensitive deal yeah i was just going to say it part of the process is a little bit different this year in the past it's actually done scoring you don't have to do scoring this year um most of the evaluation has to do with am i fulfilling my obligation under the contract sort of a yes or no and then most of the evaluation in executive session is for us to interact for you to provide feedback guidance for me to do the same so it's a little bit different there's it's not the averaging of scores and the comparing of all that process we try to simplify it and make the discussion more meaningful because it's a little bit

1:50:46 different in the way that i'm handled through the contract so should be a lot easier this year but as part of that i will supply some comments around self-evaluation the performance of the utility which you just got once met a month ago at dinner and it was probably one of the best things we've done in the last couple three years get to know each other you know do other things such as that and we that objection

1:51:31 maybe talk about maybe doing that in another couple months or so because it's hard to get us all on the same page with vacations and things such as that but to have a board dinner and do that without objection i see heads nodding good okay all right well with that i will join the meeting and say thank you to everybody and have a safe thank you