EWEB Board of Commissioners — May 3, 2022

0:02 [Music] uh call the may 3rd 2022 regular meeting eugene water electric board quarter uh the first agenda item even this evening is the agenda check is there any commissioners or staff would like to comment about the agenda make any changes or propose changes second agenda from board members and general manager so why don't we start with the general manager please well could even be mr president commissioners i had a couple of items this evening one of them is uh introduction of a new employee like kelly hale this is her second day with eweb so she's already 50 emails behind that's what she told me this morning her position is

0:48 climate policy analyst and advisor in the general manager's office so there are a number of these issues that um we need analysts and advisors on and so she's going to be very specifically helping us navigate through some of these complex issues so welcome kelly the other one is earlier this week there were two awards that were given to eweb at the pacific northwest section of the american waterworks association one of them was related to the communications team and our response to the holiday farm fire and the watershed recovery work that we

1:33 initiated with the board so that really a credit to our communications team and so we received that earlier this week and the second one is for just our general support we lend staff to american waterworks association for research and development on a number of issues and so this is in this general support and leadership that eweb provides and particularly you know people like karen kelly who's right behind me this evening who's on the pacific northwest board so we participate in the american water works association and receives no recognition so thanks to to staff for their their participation with aww that's it okay thank you

2:20 for you sir uh well one congrats that's wonderful love to hear that um and i attended an elkhog meeting we talked a little bit about some some of the challenges that are coming up around the low income teaming assistance program electric assistance program apparently the lien council or the the county county is setting up a water assistance program similar to how light works they were looking at the cost of that anyway i've connected them with frank and frank's connecting with different staff to see if there's anything that we could do probably the costs of running that program are not

3:06 covering they're not covered by the 15 that they're allowed to charge so um see if there's any help that can be done there on that side and i was excited to hear that there's a water over and it's coming for existence as well second thing attended the climate town hall with 350.org it was a really good event glad to see you web staff out there and see more of those types of events that's it for me i attended virtually the mackenzie watershed council's last meeting it was a master class at micro invertebrates it was i had to pull up google up some

3:52 things to see what they were talking about but it was very interesting um they will be doing a tour of the deer creek restoration this thursday so if there's an invitation out to any commissioners or anybody who wants to join on that i think i'm going to do my best to attend that and even though something else comes up but other than that um i also attended 350's climate town hall um and it was um fun to walk around and see all the evs and the electric bikes i know that we're coming out with incentives for electric bikes and we already got stuff for our charging um and i think that is it

4:38 thank you and i noticed we have an agenda item but sonya and i are going to talk about the city between liaison update so that's something else but uh i do um i noticed it has been before some members of the board have asked about our investment policies and things such as that and i'm your hope wrap a meeting tomorrow we manage about 18 million dollars in investments for uh benefits and if anybody wants me to make that request to the u.s bank to find out that how we're invested i mean energy sectors we've got i mean you know different types of things if you want to see where those investments are that's fine i can ask a question or i can just go does anybody have an interest in knowing what that portfolio is

5:24 okay so i think they're listening to me now they'll know that i'm going to ask the question tomorrow so the fact what's been asked the diversity of the portfolio so with that and that's that's all i have so the next item is going to be the city city liaison update and frank you want to take that away and just kind of summarize the remaining ones or share that order so myself the city manager the mayor and president along with president brown and vice president carlson that to talk through some of the issues that we share in common this was the first time that this group had gotten together so there were some some just introductions looking for

6:11 some common interests i think there are some common interests around issues such as climate for example um i wouldn't say that we walked away with particular action items um i will you know maybe vice president carlson talk a little bit about the discussion around the city's budget and how it relates to silt remember this this board was interested in potential uses of uh increases in self for certain purposes and so that was brought forward by vice president carlson and i'll let her summarize the response but

6:57 i would say that talked about a number of common issues but there were no specific action items there's one thing i will mention we did hear from the city that relative to the discussions around policy local policy related to natural gas that e-web should expect to receive a series of questions from the city that'll float from the city manager to myself related to the impacts of further electrification or drivers from the prohibition of natural gas on new construction for example so we'll be ready for those questions when they run

7:44 so i did inquire about the opportunity to dedicate some of the silk funding to shared uh shared responsibility around climate change and the response was basically that because we put out a five-year we have a five-year forecast that we put out for you know changes and what that looks like that they have all that built into their budget so it's not a one-year thing so it's not like a fall to them because it's already part of their planning so they didn't feel like it was necessarily something that was undedicated already and they they also said that there was a budget shortfall coming up so that would i think further impact that situation we did ask about other

8:30 opportunities around building codes and rental assistance as well you know thinking about how we how we deal with the rental stock and partnering together um there wasn't a lot of compliment on anything but it would i think they felt like this was more of the first time this group was getting together in their so yeah i'll just expand on that they did mention a 10 million dollar budget deficit and that there's no way that they're going to use the silk money basically implied that they're not going to use silt money for weatherization or anything like that i kind of hear out of the room for a second when i said there's some frustration that we haven't seen anything done i mean

9:15 nothing's getting done and i think that that was kind of countered with police there is a lot going on fine i mean i you know to summarize it we walked out of that meeting and it was tapped and there was nothing nobody said this is what we're going to do and that's how we're going to do it or things such as that so i share your frustration you know you you we want to get something done and uh you know it i don't know where we're gonna go with it but i'm all ears to open up to if people have any other ideas because it took us four months to even schedule a meeting and uh and then we just talked a good friend the one one commitment that i did make on our behalf is that and this is going to be actually part of

10:01 kelly's initial work is that one of the questions that comes up often is the city has a climate action plan the cap 2.0 eweb is listed in there 95 times according to the most recent assessment and what we're going to do is we're going to go through that and analyze the expectations or at least the assumptions around what eweb's role is in this and follow that up with what results we've achieved it's one thing to have a plan it's another to pursue it and we a lot of them are very direct things such as energy efficiency and conservation for example our first quarter uh about

10:46 12 of our energy efficient work energy efficiency work was in uh rentals um and so i mean these are things that we track so um that was a commitment that i i made i made it really on our behalf as but it doesn't come as a result of the city's climate action plan so we'll take some action any other comments or questions about our meeting well i'll just comment as somebody who's dealt with the budget on the city side for the last dozen years or so that's the answer you're always going to get from from budget staff there's never enough money uh and there's

11:33 the city has has council priorities that they've put out cap 2.0 is one of them if you look in 2.0 there's a bunch of things that are in there that are unfunded and for us to try to help persuade the electeds on the other side of our counterparts is one way to to help that balance you know the city manager and and and the budget and the finance people and their fiduciary duty to do what they can but there's also if there's a directive from the budget committee and it's and it's forwarded by by the city council they they can't make those things happen so i don't want to push the lever too hard but i think we can still lean into

12:19 some of the things that we feel will help move the needle on some of these important issues and i think it's i think it's imperative that we do that in any opportunity it did seem a little bit like the the building code issue was being pushed more towards the state side that people didn't really want to touch it and the mayor did mention that she's a part of a working group that is looking at the state at the state building codes and that perhaps there might be some opportunity there so that was another yes um so this is the third maybe iteration of people from eweb who

13:04 are meeting with city council so there's always going to be like every two years or you know always going to be getting to know each other group and maybe the strategy for us could be um once kelly goes through the you know and um that we have been working on where it mentions us and what we've been working on maybe just if we could identify i know we have identified low-income housing but maybe there'll be more some more specific things that come out of it that um also help further our own interests that are maybe not as huge of a lift that we try that the next time i feel

13:50 like um if you have like one or two blue wins maybe that would open up to something bigger but i do think kelly review coming on that will be a hole to yeah there was a comment at the end where they said well you know we've made it hard on them because our we're so affordable and so green it's hard to make any headway in in meeting some expectations into reductions because we're basically we're we're almost there you know you know with our carbon free portfolio and our affordability and things like that they say it's challenging to make certain

14:35 things work i get that but um certainly not going to raise rates because of it so go from there all right anything else on the city of eugene liaison update if not i'm going to go to the next agenda item and that's public input and i'm going to public input and let people know that there's two people in the queue on the phone and present and so i'm going to call on the the phone people first they were there and basically um if you're participating by telephone please uh remember to unmute your call because star six if you're calling from a landline or simply use the unmute calling from your cell phone after everybody's testimony you're going to each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if they choose although by policy we do not engage in the back and forth um everybody has three minutes at 2

15:21 minutes and 45 seconds you'll get a notice that you're getting close to the end just note that the failure of commissioner to speak will not construe to support over opposition to your testimony if your question is presented by a speaker the board did not provide an answer anywhere staff member will contact the speaker so the question can be addressed at a later time the first person in the queue is uh prom peck on the phone tom yes i'm here yeah we can hear you can i start now yes please great thank you very much yes my name is tom peck i live in ward 1 in the friendly neighborhood and i would like to thank you with for the opportunity to address you tonight

16:06 first as an e-web customer i want to thank you uh the uf staff frank lawson the general manager and all the commissioners for their hard work and keeping eugene's homes and businesses electrified secondly i'd like to thank f for the for increasing the net metering rate for solar energy production from 3.5 cents per kilowatt to 6.79 cents per kilowatt uh this makes rooftop solar much more affordable lastly i would like to thank you for having the vision to consider expanding our renewable energy and solar infrastructure during the ir this irp process i'm a strong advocate of solar energy production in combination with

16:52 lithium-ion batteries because it is clearly a primary solution to the climate emergency that we are facing some say that solar energy doesn't doesn't pencil out however the cost of solar and lithium ion batteries continues to decline as non-renewable energy continues to skyrocket as the cost of lithium ions batteries has decreased by 84 since uh 2010 and california has now received 25 of their energy from solar and hawaii is 30 of their energy from solar some say

17:37 with the abundance of hydroelectric we don't need solar but the client climate scientists at noaa state that 75 of oregon is in severe drought the oregon the fifth oregon climate assessment report and the oregon department of energy predict uh the temperatures of oregon to increase by five degrees by 2050 with a decrease in precipitation soap snow path and river runoff this could dramatically affect our hydroelectric power loops top solar will make our critical municipal services businesses homes more resilient

18:23 from power outages drought and wildfire and earthquakes i think this irp assessment is monumental it will have a profound and lasting effect on our ability to prepare our community for a challenging future i strongly urge the u web staff general manager and commissioners to support a robust expansion of solar energy and storage batteries to supplement e-widths u.s hydroelectric portfolio during this irp process okay very much thank you very much tom next is center bishop

19:11 good evening can you hear me we can thank you okay thank you my name for the record is sandra you bishop i just found out there's another standard bishop so i have to use my middle initial my address is 4096 hilliard street in eugene thank you for allowing me to testify tonight i'm here to request and to find out whether there has been an update given to the board on the water storage reservoir project at 40 is in patterson and i have three specific questions that i hope will be included in the next update that the commissioners get number one what is the financial status of the project at this point and

19:57 what are the timelines when does the actual construction start is this project under budget is it over budget what's what's the status there number two how much of the water rate increase will go directly to pay for this large infrastructure project and number three what is the status of replacing the water reservoirs at college hill the reason used to justify pushing forward with the project at 40th and patterson without any city-wide or utility-wide public hearings was the urgency of the need to shut down and replace college hill

20:44 e-web just for the record does not have permission in the metro plan to build two water storage reservoirs at 40th and patterson the idea was to build one here and then move immediately on i have the quote somewhere of commissioners saying this to build one reservoir four days in patterson and then move immediately to rebuild college hill so when is that going to happen so great we appreciate being able to testify tonight thank you thank you sandra um nobody else on the phone is that uh right in that's it all right next person will rutherford

21:29 how do we do this here right up to the podium okay put your money right in the little slot good evening i'm will rutherford and i'm a fighter resident uh any web customer electric electric only and i just have a few comments about the upper meeting that we posted here a couple weeks ago generally all good comments too starting with the staff i think you were really really well prepared to do what you did in a positive way that night and i think that uh the tone of the presentations were all positive the way the presentations and the tables worked uh neutralized some potential arguments by putting facts in front of

22:15 folks before the meetings i think the meeting was built nicely staff did a tremendous job there was a lot seemed like a lot of e-web people present at the meeting and i was listening for reaction to that but i heard none so i think you had the right people there and in the right numbers close anyway i had a couple questions for the billing staff and they just did an outstanding job of uh satisfying what i was searching for the program package agenda with the attachments was was excellent also although a lot of people haven't accessed that yet my intention is to let that be known a little bit more uh commissioner brown you did a great job of facilitating that meeting which i

23:01 thought was going to be a little bit more controversial than it was and i think commissioners listened uh and i think people understood you were actually listening to what was being said so it was not a confrontational meeting and i think it was i think it was pretty positive these are just my comments from a resident perspective it was i think well attended and i think the meeting went well in both the present and hybrid versions of it because i got good comments from several people about the hybrid version also so i think that was good i think this is the best meeting we've probably had in the

23:46 10 or 12 years that i've been attending those kinds of meetings the years that we've had i know you stayed away from the business end of the triple bottom line and i'm sure that was by design but i think there's a lot of information that folks need about the economics that this commission has to deal with the business itself because that's the prime purpose of ewing and so i think they need to know what percentage of electricity is generated by lieberg and what that means in terms of dollars and income to the to e-web because we think the impact of that is maybe greater than it really is sometimes okay

24:31 so in summary um i think we've come a long way in 10 years there's need for more dialogue on exchange i think some of the questions showed up people didn't really know a few facts and uh mr commissioner schlossberg and i are going to try to figure out how to have some less formal roundtable type meetings within the community so that we can get a better handle on that information facts so thank you very much appreciate it thank you uh last speaker is david hilton my name is uh david hilton and uh i'm an ewing great pair i believe i'm in ward one i'm embarrassed and i don't know exactly what word i'm in but um this is a formal request to the board to

25:17 postpone the referenced rfp for the eweb building for one year for the following reason and i should say we've handed this out so my words i'm just putting in for the record but the commissioners have copies of this the e-website site location and building are too important an asset to the community and the e-web rate payers to be developed by a private developer this is a significant asset and must stay in the control of the community and the e-web ratepayers this community has a regional performing arts center but it does not have a regional cultural activity center eugene is one of the largest cities in this country that doesn't have an art museum or a major cultural center the current site within the riverfront park development the connection to

26:02 downtown eugene the state greenway the large riverfront parks the connection to the university would all be supported by a cultural activity center the current building is significant architecturally and has a very strong visual connection with the community as does the hulk center and the new federal courthouse our intention is to form a non-profit foundation to confirm the community's current and future cultural needs in addition to raising the resources complete with letters of interest for this project a very large task committed by community members and worth all the effort necessary prime is needed in order to provide a deliberate high scoring real and documented response to your proposed rfp

26:49 this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the community and the ratepayers and it must be given time to germinate and be achieved this concept is important and can be a valuable asset for the future region in the community the additional time support and involvement allows eweb to be a more effective partner with the very limited risk to our community and its ratepayers so we hope you understand this concept and it's important and we'll address it with the requested postponement noted item 10 on your consent calendar b uh we wanted to keep our time brief we were available for any quick questions and we are also available for any questions or discussions

27:36 thank you um anybody else signed up or on the cube well then i'll close the gift book and i'll ask for comments from commissioners they'd like to respond to the providing testimony matt really quickly uh thanks mr rutherford for joining us uh and and bringing the comments on the meeting i think you're probably aware that we're going to be reviewing that up river meeting and have some conversations so stick around will you comment sonia one thanks for the comments on store also comments on the 40th project there was some information in the packet i'm sure there will be other packet information the financial status of the 40th project of the water rate increase that we adopted this last year none of that went

28:22 to this project that was also that was to support the upriver watershed protection that we have done now i mean there is a portion of that it actually has a financial impact but it's not raised rates because of that so i just want to make that point and then um my understanding for the college hill portion of the question so we haven't i mean we we have to have these projects up and running so that we can actually decommission college hill so no we haven't started decommissioning because the 40th projects are not up and running yet and part of the reason that we have two on that site was strategic and that we wanted to make sure that we could shut one down and do maintenance on it

29:07 when the other one was still operating so that's why we have two there we're doing a series of these so i encourage the look back at some of the other information we've had we have had many many town halls and other other support community events around the the topic and there's a lot of information on the website about it as well so that's that piece and then uh will to your point about um the business end of the um of the work i don't think we were shying away from it so much as we're still analyzing and figuring out what those costs are so we don't want to put costs out there and then once we get the analysis so your point taken let's share that information with those folks up there too once we have those details

29:54 thank you thank you and um appreciate the the thought on the rfp as well i always love it when we have community members that are involved and come down and actually pay attention what we're doing and what that's what helps build a stronger community so thank you for that conor mindy any comments i just thank you everybody for coming out thank you for the talk on headquarters property that's going to be one of our heavy lifts trying to decide what goes on with that property and we've developed the rfp and we'll i think we probably will move it forward hopefully they'll be great

30:39 projects um if there are great projects i know and it may not may rise to the level that we feel comfortable moving it at this point i know that there is a carrying cost to that building than the ratepayers pay even though it's empty it costs us it costs us a lot of money just to have it sitting the way it is so that's a consideration that we have to take into as well for our ratepayers and the community so empty buildings in my view are not something i like to have sitting around a lot of times so thank you for the input i'd like to also thank everybody for the testimony this evening both on the phone and in person uh sandra if you're still

31:24 there i think all your questions have been answered if you look at the uh follow-up information on the uh packet this evening a public record because commissioner carlson asked questions about budget about timing and things such as that and i think that the vast majority of your questions will be hopefully adequately answered just in that uh response from staff um and uh we all thank you for the kind words that's that's very nice to use to say that i appreciate that that was a fun meeting and i too had anticipated a little bit more challenging things but it worked out well so thank you and and thank the people from up river for for doing that it's a win-win and uh david natto thank you for your testimony this evening um it's going to be a tough tough conversation for us to to talk about

32:09 delaying that and i can't get back back and forth with you but um to move forward because we can always reject whatever we get i i really applaud your efforts on what you're going to do and i remind the other commissioners if there is going to be an effort to acknowledge this and delay it then that's going to have to come from you through emotion because we're moving right now the path with the timeline and so uh it's just so you know that's the process the protocol of the procedure is what we have to take to do that any other questions or comments regarding um what we've heard right just just one comment you'll hear a little bit more about the eastward project as when we go through

32:54 the first quarter's results but that is that is on track to be completed in 2023 the oregon health authority requirement to shut down college hill is bringing understanding together and so but you'll hear more about that when rod talks specifically about some of the capital projects later okay that's it well then i guess i closed public hearing yes i did so the next agenda item is approval consent calendar a uh minutes into routine contracts anybody have anything they want to pull if not i would entertain motion to adopt move to approve and think calendar a second discussion all the favors signify by

33:39 saying i and raising your hand unanimously consent calendar b non-routine contracts and other consent items anybody want to pull anything to discuss [Music] thank you all right the next a general item is upriver meeting follow-up discussion agenda item eight um the board of commissioners so frank you want me to take that you want to take it yes please you might want to turn your camera say again

34:41 my camera shows it's on but so i i apologize about the okay good all right thank you well as far as the meeting i i you know will uh kind of gave us a good good summary of uh perception it was and i too i i'd anticipated some people getting uh pretty aggressive with us on the estimated reads on the meters and uh some of the i know that some of the people in the real estate world weren't happy about process and i heard about quite a bit of that but um that aside i i would like to echo what people said about staff and preparation that was of all the meetings i've had up there that was probably in the top two if not the best meeting we've had because people were there they were engaged they were asking questions uh and it was

35:26 packed and that was really a good thing to do and so whatever we did let's do it again in my opinion do it again and do it right and uh and engage with people because they do and we we are the single largest impact on the mckenzie river and yet they don't really have a voice to us are they i mean they do but they don't you know and uh so it's good it's good to make sure that they they still have that um that voice through us collectively so sonia uh my only i mean i thought it was great meeting i really i think that the right topics were discussed there i just wonder if maybe we could do something that's like a town hall type style

36:12 obviously people can come and testify and do that down here and it's much easier to be around but um i'm throwing that out there i'm curious if any other commissioners have had those same thoughts but if not no big deal um i just i really appreciated the the presentations how easy it was and the fact that we had such you know an easy time being able to talk with other comments john yeah um for me a couple of the takeaways were um after being engaged with the mackenzie watershed council for the last year i think that a lot of the good work that we did up that we've done up there since the fire really helped the tone in the room i

36:58 think a lot of the people really appreciate the fact all the good work that that we've done up there with pp per water partners and the other things that were related to the fire so i think that that is a testament to our staff that have been doing that work up there the other thing that i that i took away was of the four scenarios that the breaching of you know the return to natural thing was the one that brought up the most concern among the the people and to me that one was almost new you know when i was when i was looking at the ones that we were seriously considering before it was

37:44 stormwater conveyance return to service or a hybrid of both and we we talked you know oh maybe there's the run of the river type of a thing and by that making it into the four scenarios i think touched a lot of nerves up there and and i think it touched nerves that may not have needed to be touched that hard because in my view i think that that's that's pretty extreme and extreme uh lift on our part and so i think we could have conveyed that a little bit better if we had talked about it before and said you know this is one very very end of the spectrum at least it is in my mind and so and that was the one you know whenever

38:30 you go to the very end of the spectrum that's the one that people get scared about right because it's the largest amount of change so that was the only takeaway that i felt a little bit uncomfortable with up at the meeting i think we could have conveyed that a little bit better but i think that going forward you know as we move along i think we have a good trust with the people up there and i just want to continue to build on that thank you any other comments about that from so many um i also thought it was a great meeting i thought the turnout was fantastic um i appreciated that staff was very solution oriented so when people stood up and had a question or there was something that he said that they've been trying to figure out that staff was

39:15 really helpful and kind of identifying um who that person should talk to and i thought that was a really great part of the meeting my comment is that so this is my third upriver meeting that i've been to and there's always it seems like there's always like a sense of tension before we go up there like we don't know what we're gonna walk into or people are gonna be angry at us and i'm just wondering going forward in the future if we can figure out a way to approach this meeting a little differently maybe that's something that will and i can talk about ways that maybe we can have some more informal reach out to the community up there i feel like

40:00 uh there's always like a sigh of relief afterwards like that wasn't as bad as we were worried about like there was gonna be some angry people so um i don't have a specific suggestion but i just think that maybe we can rethink it and start planning for it a little bit further in advance next year so that we can kind of like think about these issues or different ways to reach out so that we at least often for myself go into it not so nervous that it's that tension is going to erupt that's all [Music] yes well said uh i completely agree if there are things that we collectively

40:45 can do so that it doesn't because it does feel like as we go into that that there's a lot of again if uh all speak seems like anxiety about negative comments or criticism and we certainly received plenty of that i mean i don't think that uh expectation is unwarranted exactly we certainly you know heard some folks are pretty frustrated or concerned um but i i agree if there are things that we can do as we're planning our next engagement with our community i think that would be useful uh i also would just say uh well done to the staff who are there and well prepared and engaging with people one-on-one i thought that was really facilitated um brown you said that people don't have a voice and i i will say that they don't

41:32 vote for us but i think our effort to go up there and listen to that community i feel like they do have a voice you know certainly through mindy but i think through all of us i think we're there because we're trying to understand how it's going to impact the community and i think their voice does count even though they're not voting for us um and i think that was said a couple times but i guess i would reiterate that at that same point um i would propose that we consider another meeting upriver once the financial analysis of the various options is done um i i hear what you're saying well is that we paid for that but um yeah it's because we don't have that done but i think it would be valuable for us to consider

42:17 uh another upriver meeting once we do have that because i think it will help us all understand you know what the tradeoffs look like it'll help that that community also understand kind of the trade-offs that we're wrestling um i hear what you're saying broski about the returning the water to its natural flows being a heavy lift my guess is that in the long run that's actually the less expensive lift because it prevents us from having to operate as much storm water conveyance so i would hope that the project team as a project we would look at that option even though the upfront purchase price is likely to be more expensive and i would also hope that we'll consider options that we can take

43:02 to compensate or otherwise support the most affected residents up there you know folks who are losing access to water you know i i recognize it we have to think about the implications for that and the precedent that sense but i'd like us to at least think about how can we make an adjustment whatever we do there are people are going to have to adjust and how can we make that as reasonable as possible so that folks aren't left that's all i have thanks great you want to jump in yeah thank you president brown so first of all a couple things i did want to thank staff for their preparation and i i will say that you start preparing for this meeting months

43:47 in advance and um and as part of that we have to try to predict what the emerging issues are going to be there's there's always an emerging issue whether it's in town or upriver i think part of the i wouldn't i wouldn't necessarily refer to it as we're anxious about the meeting part of it is is that we don't go there but once a year so when you go there you want to put your best foot forward and we recognize that there are there are issues that directly impact people um in the mckenzie valley so i want to complement staff for their preparation but also their response to what were some difficult and challenging questions that were phrased

44:33 in emotional ways and i thought that they were very professional in their responses i will say we if we want to start getting into the specifics of the alternatives relative to lieberg we have a couple of key dates coming up um this this was uh we we prepared an overview based on um the work that is in process so june 16th is a work session where you'll get a tbl update you will also get another one on august 2nd and so there's there's two upcoming meetings where more and more of the the details behind the financials for example will be discussed with the board so i you know want to compliment staff for

45:19 that i know this is a complex issue it touches a lot of fronts um and there'll be a lot of details to work through but i think staff's prepared to work with the board on what those details and impacts and the future looks like so rather than get into the details here we do have some some key meetings coming up where that's discussed i thought the probably the weakest point of the meeting was i i really thought that we could have emphasized the fact that we do have representation up there in fact if you look back at the history which i did after the meeting four of the five of you represent specific wards and e-web has always had some service

46:04 territory outside of the city limits and thus the fifth position was actually part of its creation was to represent those who are not directly in the in a city ward and so i think commissioner schlossberg has that opportunity to really step forward and say i'm i am your liaison here i am your representation even though i think we we all genuinely care about that community and and show that by having a meeting up there every year even though they're you know three percent of our certain number of customers so um you know whether it's town halls or whatever i think there's a real opportunity there to your point commissioner carlson

46:51 uh pre-kobit we had some open houses um here in eugene and i think that um as we covet sort of um has uh put a a much thrown a wrench in this folks there but i think that we can look at potentially getting back to some of those types of outreach forums so i think we're open to that thank you sure um so i'd just like to kind of wrap this up because i know i heard some people saying they want to maybe have another meeting up river and give them the opportunity to see what the tbl is well pbl on bleeberg in 30 minutes for wildlife wildfire mitigation that's the only part of the network

47:37 but we go to august 2nd we're already over subscribed by a half hour and we've got a ton of other stuff on the agenda so if we're thinking about a meeting up the river to let people up there listen to what we're talking we're talking about the money and in the economics uh it looks like june would be the one but if that would be a group of conscience you guys do you want to try and hold that meeting i mean logistically frank could we do that hold the june 16th work session up there i do not know the answer to that right now we don't we don't know the availability of the facilities if we do hold it up there up there or just at all i'm still going to try to make it here but if if it's up there then i

48:24 won't be able to make it okay all right others well just one idea um i don't know what the availability is of the various spaces there but it could be have these um meetings broadcast like we could invite members of the community to go to one of the spaces there and as a group participate virtually it's a work session right session session and a regular agenda on the second oh we do well june 16th is there's not really a time there where it's public feedback necessarily it's really just it's our conversation i mean

49:10 we can accept public hearing public comments in a whole number of ways i mean people can email us they can call us they can you know do that kind of thing but that meeting is not specifically a public input sort of meeting people i don't know of any of them that are i mean we have public input before meeting but if we're in the work sessions we don't typically have the public okay so august 2nd and there's a bazillion other things on there that would have no interest up for other people so do we have the was there like a sign-in sheet or anything were people able to sign up to so we could communicate with them about some of these issues this maybe would be a good opportunity

49:55 to email them okay here's follow up on this topic i've got john and then yeah i i think if we could publicize you know what we're going to be talking about tragedy something in the river of reflections you know saying hey this is what we're we're going to be following up on that there's going to be a lot more information on it this is how you can tune in and see it and if you want to come and sit in the back of the room you're more than welcome to do that i think that would at this point with it being such a short turnaround i think that would be our best in my view that would be our best strategy whether it's taking an ad out river reflections

50:40 you know letting letting our partners up river know mackenzie watershed council i'm sure they could blast it up they've got a ton of emails do a lot of outreach to let people know i think that would be our best and easiest way to go about it i don't know that it necessarily has to be coupled with one of our existing meetings i think you know if mindy's looking at doing some kind of town hall meetings up there it might just be part of that to just to try and simplify the logistics that we try and bring some expertise some staff expertise to to join mindy and mindy invites any of us that want to come up and if there's a quorum then we announce it and there's not a big deal but i i think separating our existing meetings from a community

51:27 meeting up river might make it easier i don't know if that sounds reasonable especially as we have more information about the weaver and the options um just having like a separate session up there people come and ask questions so what i'm hearing is a desire to get a lot more information make sure we communicate well with the upper residents so i mean we've got will here but we've got other forums to do that in and then staff and everybody has heard that we have a desire to potentially meet up river on this topic when we have more detail to do that and totally separate it from everything else does that sound like a summary of what i just heard or am i still out in the traffic yeah and just make it more

52:12 informal i think okay so president brown we do have again a number of upcoming sessions relative to getting more information and making that available what's available to the public these meetings are recorded so there's people can review those later i would think that similar to when commissioners visit neighborhood associations that's essentially what commissioner schlossberg will be doing we can have staff available to support various topics as as needed to support that so i i think we're prepared to do that um i don't know that we could go through the the logistics of having the entire board meet up there for another meeting at this point

52:57 [Music] but you know we we may as we get through and dive through the information um i also would know we do have a communications plan for this um we'll review that and make sure that we can incorporate things like like um town halls i guess i'll call it a quarter hall um mckenzie hall whatever we want to call it uh for that and just make sure that we advertise we make sure that the word is out that this topic is coming up at certain times so i'll um and i hope the communication plan isn't just totally directed upriver because this whole community utilizes that valley you know i i'm not

53:43 i don't live up there but i feel connected to it and i know that a lot of our ratepayers and our customers do as well and so just to say you know the people that live in the mackenzie valley that our customers are the only ones that we really want to reach out to i think we want to hear from the broader community because like you like frank said the meeting this is a legacy project and and you don't want to just hear from three percent of our of our customers i want to hear from as many customers as we can on this to help make an informed decision okay next agenda item is the representation fund status and transfer use of reserves deborah

54:39 you're not it looks like i need to bring my own chair all right so good evening commissioners we are here this evening to talk about the highest and best use of reserves i wanted though to start off with an introduction of our new finance manager tamari harwood she's new to this role uh but not to eweb and some of you may have may recognize her from

55:26 earlier board presentations as we head into budget and planning season uh this is a face you can expect to see a lot more of uh so with that i'm actually going to turn it over with you thank you thank you good evening commissioners aaron ballmer general accounting supervisor and i are here uh this evening with our annual discussion on reserve transfers after the year in audit we bring the december 31st cash balances to discuss what the best use of reserves might be moving forward origin that this evening is a short one i will provide a brief overview aaron will provide the recommendations for reserve transfers and the remainder of the time is for board discussion and we look forward to your direction

56:13 ford policy sd6 provides reserve targets and uses at december 31st both utilities were above their respective target balances for working cash and the debt service coverage requirements were met for the year the utility is also delegating ongoing issues such as lingering covet 19 impacts and increased supply chain constraints materials required to provide water and electric services are a growing hardship to source without delay and at reasonable prices investments in source protection following the holiday farm fire have also increased expenditures for both capital and maintenance work this continued state of uncertainty is the basis for management's recommendation and that i will hand it over to aaron to go over the recommended reserve transfers for both employees thank you tia good evening commissioners

56:59 so the slide in front of you shows balances of water reserves at the end of the year and there is a lot of information on this slide but i'd like to draw your attention to the far right column and note that the current year budgets included a drawdown of 10.2 million dollars from working cash and designated reserves so while balances are currently well above targets management has and continues to model strategic uses of reserves and will align balances to target over time as a current year example the capital reserve surplus is modeled as a funding source this year and its anticipated use is designed to bring the balance closer to target by the end of the year

57:47 traditionally this presentation has emphasized the recommended use of cash column here and i'd just like to highlight that the uh the net effect uh is zero we're removing money between funds uh to explain this column further i've got a storyboard slide if you will and so i'd ask that you would envision this tap water image as water's working cash quarter utility has had a string of strong financial years even during coven and this has placed balances especially working cash well above target the most notable transfer recommended for the water utility is 5.3 million dollars from working cash to the rate stabilization fund as pictured by the

58:33 calculator and coins transferring reserves above target to the rate stabilization fund provides future flexibility in the long term financial plan looking to the near horizon several projects related to water storage and further out a second treatment plant will require rate increases increasing the rate stabilization fund can help ease the rate trajectory i would like to note that long-term financial plans will be presented to the board in july and they will include strategic uses of these funds as a means to defray rate increases associated with borrowers next proposed transfer is 151 thousand dollars from working cash to the pension

59:19 fund this is driven by policy so in years where there's a difference between actual purse contributions and the budgeted amount the excess is set aside in this reserve to liabilities in the future finally there are transfers from the operating and self-insurance reserves and these are intended to align balances to target and are considered housekeeping items shifting gears to the electric utility again a lot of information shown here but i'd like to again draw your attention to the far right column and note that current year budgets included a use of 13.3 million dollars

1:00:04 acknowledging the surplus in reserves and actively managing to draw it down i will note that management anticipates the rate stabilization fund draw will not be needed in 2022 i'll touch on that in the next slide and traditionally this presentation has emphasized the recommended use of cash column and again the net effect among ashes is zero so following our storyboard approach i'd ask that you'd envision the electric system working cache as a light switch and the story for the electric system is headlined by price volatility and energy markets management is recommending an increased

1:00:49 target and corresponding transfer to the power reserve to bring the target and the balance from 17 million 21 million following form with the water utility the larger in scale management is proposing a 258 000 transfer from working cash to the pension fund this again is driven by policy as noted earlier and transfers from the operating and self-insurance reserves to working cash are intended to align balances to target and are considered housekeeping items with the electric system and making some room on the storyboard for the capital improvement reserves

1:01:35 staff recommend increasing the target from 23 million to 23 million this is to account for budgeted meter replacement reserve and as noted earlier the current year budget did include a draw of 9.9 million dollars from the rate stabilization fund and this one's for federal progress spending projections from the latest quarterly these funds will not be needed this year the staff will continue to monitor the need any corresponding transfer will be evaluated at this time next year for today remaining funds above target in the capital improvement reserve present an opportunity to deposit the rate stabilization fund management is

1:02:21 recommending a transfer of 2.2 million dollars from the capital improvement reserve to the rate stabilization fund large infrastructure outlays on the horizon notably carmen and lieberg and future debt service coverage ratios being a stressed metric in the long term financial plan transfers today to the rate stabilization fund further flexibility in the long term financial plan and specifically ease stresses on the debt service coverage ratios and i'd note that the 10-year long-term financial plans will be brought to the board in july and will include a strategic use of these funds as a means to defray future rate increases associated with bonds with that i will pass it back to tf4

1:03:06 next steps thank you erin so we are asking for board direction tonight on the recommended transfers for both utilities we will seek court approval at the june 7th meeting anticipating that this would come back as an as an item on the consent calendar okay thank you very much good presentation i'll open up the queue and see i know john b he loves this stuff so uh he just loves and lives budgets i do you want to start to kick it off we do so first off thank you for the presentation and the recommendations again i haven't gone through a ton of these you know this is my second year

1:03:51 going through these it seems like pretty large uh year on that we're being asked to allocate here is do you see this as a norm or is this outside of the norm to be having this this type of uh excesses water utility has had back-to-back really strong years that has given the board an opportunity for some rather large numbers um move do you want to go to the electric utility

1:04:39 four million dollars on the electric utility to move around is probably not a great deal it's interesting this year and that we had planned for a draw right that doesn't look like we're going to need it so the delta is bigger yeah so that's almost 13 million basically so the quest so on this slide here if i look at the rate stabilization fund target of 5 million that's that's said by board policy is that correct yes and we're looking to have it be 26.6 million dollars after if this moves forward and i understand that you're going to come back to us with uses for that ongoing how did it get from a targeted five i mean how many years did it take us to

1:05:24 get from five to 26 million dollars in rate stabilization so the original um money maybe for lack of a better word was actually existing cash on hand that had been intended to fund carmen and so the board has designated or has anticipated expressly the desired staff to defray future borrowing costs with that uh and we had intended to start doing that this year with the nine million dollar draw but because of supply chain issues they're not needing that money and we'll model it for a future use but

1:06:09 then over time but there was a large deposit and i would have to go back to the history to make sure i gave you the right numbers yes frank i was just going to add in a commissioner barofsky that when we redid our bond covenants a few years ago part of that was the seed money that deborah talked about and we were able to actually transfer money into the rate stabilization fund without a sacrifice to debt service coverage it was sort of a one time only when because we redid our covenants that's why it didn't start at 5 million it started with this this money that was previously targeted for carmen to offset borrowing that's that's

1:06:55 how we got to that point okay and then i guess so when you come back to us with the targeted uses for these are you looking at refinancing debt now before interest rates go up before for some of those types of strategies for this this money so our debt uh the lion's share of our debt was refunded a couple of years ago and there's not we've looked and there's not savings to us at this juncture so what i'm anticipating will come back with is reductions in what we would have needed to borrow for some of

1:07:41 those large projects and we'll look for strategic timing of those uses in order to maybe better smooth out the rate trajectory okay great thank you other questions comments sonny i had a similar thought in that there were really big balances at the end and so i will look very closely at that because if we're asking people to raise rates and and that we're not using it but i do appreciate that you are have listened to our request in the past to smooth out those increases and that

1:08:26 this is part of that work thank you thank you for following through on that i have a question that made you know i don't know if it's appropriate or not but i'm going to ask you uh so uh we've got a stranded file money on labor against multiple 150 million bucks we've borrowed or 20 years ago or a period of time ago we're halfway through it and we have no revenue to offset it so we've got for math purposes about 80 million dollars that's that's we're serving debt on that we're not generating any revenue from and uh is that when we talk about these reserves and things such as that and that's totally outside of this conversation uh i mean what is that what does that uh

1:09:14 gap sit in our overall budget because i'm looking at the other holes we got coming up but we borrowed all that money to license them and now we're not generating half the revenue we thought we were for another 20 years so is that something that we need to think about in when we're moving this money around because i know that you said you had 9 million 10 million bucks you were going to use for the electric and you're not using it this year i'm just thinking about how we're going to crawl out of that so when when we look at uses we're looking at what our future borrowing costs will be what we're really paying on debt and so there have been times when this board has used a large chunk of money to

1:10:00 refund debt because that um produced the greatest overall benefit we could use this nine million dollars to pay off existing debt but likely would pay more to them to build for one of the major projects in the future so that's the kind of we look at those opportunities yes we do frank i was going to add in that when we consolidated some of our debt a few years ago that the any remaining debt associated with leeberg was absorbed into that debt service coverage for the for the refinanced amount from a go forward budgeting perspective we do incorporate in our long-term financial plan forecasts associated with

1:10:46 generation for example we have several years where we're not forecasting any production out of leeberg and depending on the direction that this board takes we may um either extend that forever or pull in to some future time frame where libra could uh start producing what is likely not included in present debt coverage is any additional costs associated with with leiberg whether that's storm water conveyance or decommissioning or regeneration so that would have to be forecasted depending on on which direction the board takes but um we have right now in our forecast no production from leeburg for a number

1:11:32 of years i think it was 2028 or so if i remember right thank you other questions comments quick question when did you say that you would um get to us the ideas of ways to spend the money uh july at the uh when the fiscal department brings back the along with the financial plan uh thanks for the presentation my sense um over the last year of conversations uh around budget i have been super nervous just about inflationary pressures and these huge capital expenses that look like they only get bigger

1:12:18 so it's good to see a surplus although some of it is really just because we can't move forward on projects right so we're going to need that money down the road to do projects we just haven't been able to do uh it makes total sense to me that we just put these into um stabilization fund and move them in ways to buffer the bumps that are likely to come my only question is what was their debate among you all about other ways that we should allocate this you're giving us a recommendation and i you know it makes total sense to me but are there other like similarly uh wise uses that we haven't had conversation about

1:13:04 so one of the things because it is um likely that those funds will be used for capital would have been to leave them in the capital reserve and the reason why that didn't come through on the recommendations because we have a unique opportunity to make deposits to the rate stabilization fund today without impacting our debt service coverage to a level that um bond covenants and then should we have that debt service coverage pressure in the future which it looks like we will on the electric utility we benefit when we withdraw it so it was a way to save the money for the purpose that that we've been signaling it would be used for um and take advantage of uh future

1:13:50 opportunities to improve that cervix okay um we're out of time thank you what john will be just one quick question or um i have like bad questions but that's okay um so refresh me on leighberg if is that operation if if we go through and start fixing that is that o m is that capital is it water is a generation where where is that bucket that we're gonna have to pull money out of and are we reflecting that in our reserve transfers

1:14:36 so first of all it's electric not water and secondly i think we would have to dive into the the specific type of work to understand the mix between capital and o m or expensed items so i don't know i think that's going to be part of the financial analysis that we present to the board and i don't believe and correct me if i'm wrong deborah that those that lump of investment whatever it is what there was a token amount put in the long-term financial plan last year but but that is is not going to be represented in these numbers here it is o m money bondable for capital assets you can bond for capital but you can't bond for o m

1:15:22 correct [Music] so that would be where you can pull out of rate stabilization then okay thank you great stables this is kind of like a general fund of the general fund and best use for things that are one-time expenditures thank you okay it's important to have what they wanted from this presentation and does staff have what you wanted from us are you comfortable with a consent item coming back next month i believe we are all right any objections to it or any recommendations so we can always pull it at that point if we have more further questions yes you can thank you very much thank you very much mr barrowski still has seven left under two of those things

1:16:10 okay frank annual strategic plan review someone needs to pass me the clicker foreign commissioners good evening this is an item that we historically like to bring back this time of year before we enter into the capital discussions as well as some of the financial discussions resulting from that this is probably a little bit soon for the board given that we spent a number of work sessions last year uh going through the strategic plan and providing updates um for it

1:17:03 paulie can you just advance that for me thank you so um the plan originally from 2017 covered 11 years 2018 through 2028 and next month we are exactly halfway through the strategic plan that was originally developed one of the the key challenges that that we are facing is that the the planning and the operating environment of which we are dealing with is is very dynamic at the moment there are a lot of changes occurring in the industry there are a lot of changes occurring within the environment both the physical environment with climate change as well as the political environment and the social environment around customer preference

1:17:48 and so all of those you know our inputs to the plan although in general i think that we feel pretty comfortable with where the board landed on the plan last year thank you where we are in the planet given that we're we're midway we're in the mid-game portion of the plan relative to how we laid out the different phases the phase that we are in the first phase was around building a lot of customer confidence we knew that how we interacted with customers as the utility was going to change how how we participate with customers

1:18:33 relative to how they use electricity and water was going to change we're now in a position where we're trying to build the foundational pieces that are going to facilitate the link between supply and demand both of which are becoming more dynamic from from a resources perspective as well as from a consumer behavior perspective if you look at the mid game and where we are in some of the specific actions that were identified as part of that phase of the strategy almost well every single one of those uh is somehow captured in the the goals that the board approved earlier in this year so i think it's fair to say that not only

1:19:18 do we have a plan we're working that that plan and the board is is helping us to navigate through that the the next you know putting the foundational pieces together that's where we are it's probably you know i was asked earlier today when do you know when one phase ends in one phase the next phase begins um really you never end the phase you can't for example say oh we our customers are confident we're done with that so it's it's like the first phase leads to the second leads to the third these are indeed pieces that will build toward the next products and services the next um things that we we work on with customers to

1:20:03 then make efficient choices especially relative to some associated with with generation also relative to resiliency on water and electricity and so those are things that were in the middle of it and we're working the plan the plan also we rehashed some of the organizational values last year to go along with the mission and the vision these are just listed here for reference just in case we need to refer to them but there was there was some discussion around that significant discussion around that last year and then the the go ahead the final slide were some things for the board to consider relative to opportunities again

1:20:49 this is a relatively new revision but given the fact that we're we're in the part of the strategy where we're building the pieces to create flexibility especially around consumption there's a few things that i wanted the board to consider whether we could mention a little bit more specifically especially in that sort of mid-game piece one of them is we recognize that the bonneville power administration is and likely will continue to be a pretty significant portion of our generation we're just launching into discussions around what the future contracts and products and services may look like eweb's an active participant in that

1:21:36 and one of the opportunities for the board would be to list that specifically in this this mid-game region along with the potential um or positions that we might want to take relative to organized markets uh in in the west and those those can either be something like a an rto and a market operator these can have impacts on um things such as how we we go about building our portfolio the ir it will impact the future irp uh the base case we're not making assumptions around that in this case but uh it will facilitate significant investment across the region and will also garner some new requirements for eweb as

1:22:22 a participant in in the system we also a few other items just to consider some of them related to the values we know that the board has expressed an interest in expanding and developing a policy around diversity equity and inclusion those and how we capture that a little more specifically and the values can be part of the discussion or you know there's there's no rush to this the board might want to wait until we do a little bit more policy development before we go back and try to align that with the plan um and then the last item there and by the way the other piece that that i think we're wrestling with a little bit is

1:23:07 the notion of psychological safety or emotional safety is it is it fair to say that you know we value the health and safety and not specifically call that out and then work um internally to develop kind of what does that mean it could be could be you know safety and security of your character as an individual part of this relates to the last item which is our community value we tend to think of that when we when we read it in the values oh we care about our community at large but e-web in itself is a community um you know our our employees are part of a community we're imparting we're part of a a federal nation that's a community so we we wanted to give a little bit of

1:23:53 thought to how do we are we capturing community correctly um by really talking specifically and really only about our governance and our relationship with our customer owners as opposed to the fact that we are indeed a community on our own and maybe that would be a spot to work in some of the diversity equity inclusion comments so these were some potential things for the board to consider um i honestly feel the plan's in pretty good shape i think we spent some time last year sort of running through it there's not a huge sense of urgency we are working the plan those are captured in our goals but there's you know this it is this time of year and if there were any other suggestions

1:24:38 or changes the board wanted to consider this is the time to do it before we get into prioritizing uh investments and long-term financial plans and things like that so uh with that president brianna i'll turn it back to you thank you very much open fq questions i mean for me i think we are working the plan i don't see a huge you know personally i don't see a huge change to kind of one through one and two i really like that we specifically call out physical and psychological health and psychological health is one of those things that just is not as much a part of our dialogue as a as a

1:25:24 society and so calling it out specifically feels to me like we are intentionally making sure that that's a part of what we focus on as a community um for eweb and also for our you know for outside communities so i really like that we call that out separately uh we're finding values more specifically around diversity equity inclusion i think there might be some opportunity there i know that you sent out some information that i haven't had a chance to read yet from some other uh from some of the other groups in the area so um maybe um some other work there and then for the community piece let me personally i like that it's a little bit vague and that it could be used for both

1:26:09 um you know maybe the i mean the government's piece i think we i like that that's called out because we are a public utility and i continue to find people in the community that think we're this profit center that we're out to get the general person it's like that's not who we are so i think it is good to pull out that we are locally governed i don't know if maybe local governance is exactly the right word i mean publicly own something there but um i like that it's vague and i i hadn't really thought of it as including the eweb community um but i don't know that i mean for me i don't know that it necessarily needs to it i like that it kind of it can encompass both

1:26:54 so those are my thoughts thank you mindy one thing i really appreciate about this organization that for an organization of this surprise it seems pretty dynamic and able to incorporate new ideas or pivot or refine along the way and that is certainly true with the strategic plan uh in terms of these potential opportunities that you've listed how crucial for any one of them for us to make a change right now are you just like pondering aloud or like if we didn't specifically say that we want to include more specific

1:27:40 development of bpa options but something came along and you wanted to present it to the board would you say no because that's not specifically in there i guess i'm just wondering like are you are you thinking aloud or are these things that really drive you and uh so i would say that um there are not sort of gaps that that we see i think as part of the process we are constantly refining continuous improvement even at a strategic level and looking at opportunities that we see is is there a gap here or not i don't think there's any sort of large emerging

1:28:26 gap we're going to continue to work the plan we're going to continue to talk to bonneville for example but that's that one in particular so the number one item up there that is a really important ingredient in getting to the third phase so you know by the fact that it's it's really important it would probably warrant being in being listed as part of the mid-game deliverables short of that the others are opportunities they're working process and there's things that up there that we think will evolve and if there is a point where we work with the board on further diversity equity and inclusion

1:29:12 work and we we come to a point where we feel like we're really on some policy work we may look back at the strategic plan and go we need to align these two so but there's there's no gap as you would describe it from a sense of urgency perspective um another question is you specifically called out psychological safety and i'm wondering is that because your issues have come up it's a staff it's an area that staff feels needs to be addressed well i think that we recognize a similar situation and that was described by commissioner carlson in that that the mental health of

1:29:57 of our employees of society is is important to us the the struggle with any term especially something like psycho psychological safety is it can mean so many things to so many different people i i think it's almost one of those things where it's so much that we need to wrestle through and maybe by having i do agree that by listing it there it focuses some attention so um the any challenges that we've had there has has been really you know how do we apply this and and i think that's going to be natural in any part of a strategy is is how do you take it from the strategic into the tactical and that's that's that's something that we're just going to have to wrestle through

1:30:50 thank you so on these questions um i'm definitely behind number one in the bpa i think that that definitely should go into there there's just too many things that hinge upon that um on the second one i did have questions do you really think that an rto will be up and running by 2024 or do you think that that's just something that we want to keep our finger on the pulse of with with that one there and then i'll finish the answer on the three four and five again in a strategic plan for me personally i like to have be able to measure you know the success or or failure or how we're doing along those three four and five

1:31:36 seem like really tough ones to figure out what is success and what is not success so i where i would like to you know put my finger on those it's you know we're moving in this direction but i don't see any of those three as this is we're done on that one like you said this that one is an ongoing constant thing so it can be part of the strategic plan but measuring that is going to be difficult for me so the first two i'm really really encouraged behind and and the second one i would love to be able to have an rto up and running that we could that we could tap into and figure out how that plays into our

1:32:21 irg but i don't know if that's going to happen by 2024. yeah well 2024 would certainly be optimistic there there are a number of states throughout the west that are requiring certain utilities to participate in an rto or organized market by 2030. the mid game or even the the second part of that is more i think at this point especially given eweb's ability to to influence the larger grid is something that would be more of a monitor influence where we can work with bonneville where we can and other partners i don't see an rto forming by

1:33:06 2024 and i would point out your comments about three four and five a little bit about the difference between the strategic phases and the and the um the values the values really guiding how we operate within the strategy strategy being a little more definitive into the results piece although one of the the articles or the link that i did send you this afternoon shows some examples of how diversity equity and inclusion can be measured by the by the energy trust of oregon was the example matt yeah thanks uh just to confirm the time frame here our next opportunity to look at this the adjustments will be next year that's not

1:33:51 right we're doing this on an annual basis yeah that would be the typical time although you can raise your hand if there's a big gap that you see along the way oh okay uh okay uh so just a handful of comments then i would agree with karofsky that adding number one is deliverable i think is it gonna be useful just to keep us focused on it um in terms of the dei uh goal i think for anybody who's been watching this board it's clear that we have made a commitment to uh wrapping our heads around what that means with this utility it feels a little early to try and wedge something in from my perspective i'd rather see us uh do some work as an organization and then put something in

1:34:36 that's really targeted and focused and thoughtful and well-informed um not that we're not a well-informed bunch but we certainly have more to learn on that that said it seems to me like the most important place for us for some statement of our dei uh goals or values is going to be as we're thinking about the irp um and so i you know i hope that we can keep in mind those values generally i know we haven't really made an organizational statement of those values but um that as we're working on the irp we're thinking about how is this going to affect the populations that are often left out or not considered or proportionately impacted

1:35:29 yeah i think that's oh and then uh one comment on number three there i think where that gets hard i i think we're all on board i'm on board with psychological health and stating the importance of that and i agree it's something we don't speak enough about enough it's the psychological safety that i think it's a little difficult in here because it's not something we can actually necessarily protect as somebody's psychological safety and it probably becomes worthy if we start separating those out and uh but but i think the psychological health is super valuable and important and even if it's a little bit clunky um having that all together i think having that

1:36:20 we value the safety of our staff and the physical and physiological or physiological health of course i mean something like that where you put safety at the beginning and then you separate those other two offs you don't have that kind of what does psychological safety being because it's really physical health and safety and psychological health if there's something to be done of sorts but i don't know i mean i didn't get the sense that the plan was to wordsmith this tonight but to get some feedback on it and then maybe take it take another round of it and then you know if and as we do that you know i love what you were saying too the dei work i like to look at that a bit more and

1:37:06 not pull that up tonight but if we really want to do that and i would hope that it would be after that bigger conversation and some of the other information that we're getting and i'm convinced on the bpa so sorry that i tossed that away i appreciate everybody else's perspective and i'd love to see that in there too i think i got what i need and i certainly do understand the point and it's part of the struggle we've had sometimes you can feel safe and you're not and sometimes you know um so the we'll take a look at that the purpose tonight was for me to get a feel that the board has certain things that they're doing differently than the organization i don't i don't feel that in general but we'll

1:37:51 take this feedback and see if there's some adjustments we can make to this to the working and we will bring that back to the board at some point in one of these okay i concur with everything that's been said that's the fun part about going last sometimes you don't have to say a word um time you know we're we're scheduled for a break now we're a little bit ahead but not much so i will just return the meeting in 10 minutes we'll come back and reconvene 708 so we'll see you back here at 7 18.

1:49:33 mainly the third 2022 regular uh session of eugene water electric boards the next agenda item is going to be the water supply forecast and john thank you uh good evening president brown commissioners general manager i'm matt schredinger webb's power supply our excuse me the power planning supervisor and staff council now as you know in the northwest we are fortunate to have access to an abundance of hydroelectric generation which is why as noted in the memo accompanying the presentation eweb is able to serve roughly 75 to 80 percent of its customers annual consumption with electricity sourced from hydra however this incredible resource base comes with significant level of risk

1:50:21 as a result in the interest of ongoing risk management and to enable informed decision making power planning actively tracks and forecasts regional water supply and provides regular updates to e-web management committee uh following the latest update we are asked to provide the board with an overview of the water supply formats and the process with that said it is my pleasure to introduce mr jonathan hart our midterm power trader and undeniable brains of this particular operation uh following the presentation we look forward to answering any questions you might have the evening commissioners thank you for the opportunity to present as matt mentioned my name is jonathan hart i work in our power planning department giving ongoing discussions mckenzie

1:51:06 projects our upcoming irp and the bpa 2028 contract would be good to share with you some information about how we track hydro resource at a high level and the risks they can create financially for e-web how we track and manage those risks to do this we're going to talk about uweb's water supply for electric generation how it changes over time and how those changes translate into energy and financial impacts for ewebs this presentation is going to focus on a single water year specifically the one that we're in right now but keep in mind that while all water years have differences they share similar risk drivers and management practices

1:51:52 which are important to understand when thinking about our portfolio in any year um thinking about eweb's 20 so think about us 2022 water supply forecast for both slice and eweb owned resources we're over halfway through the year which started last october in an average water year we expect about 70 percent of annual rainfall by may so by this point in the year we should have a pretty good idea for where our water supply is headed today we're going to recap and discuss what happened with our water supply last year what our assumptions were going into this year where we are now and then in the end we should have about 15 minutes for questions but before we go on i want to attempt to

1:52:38 contextualize what we mean by financial risk as we've mentioned 75 to 80 percent of eweb's resource comes from hydroelectric dams hydro resource costs are largely fixed but the generation produced by those resources are variable with water supply this directly impacts eweb through resources with variable hydro output like slice and eweb hydro and indirectly through bonneville rates and our block contract reports resource production can fluctuate quite a bit on an annual seasonal and monthly basis today if we have experienced the worst water year on record we could expect a reduction in contra contribution margin of up to 20 million dollars in a single year this is the

1:53:24 largest source of financial variable risk in eweb's energy portfolio you may remember that you have budgets conservatively to buffer against financial uncertainty caused by portfolio risk i'm just to remind you for 2022 this buffer is about 8 million dollars market prices influence our valuation of hydro risk by example i've included some risk numbers for 2021 which were nearly half of what we're estimating for 2022. the amount of hydro uncertainty hasn't changed year over year just what that uncertainty is worth to eu prices are higher now than they have been in previous years long story short high drivers can be impactful to eweb's finances and how we manage the portfolio

1:54:11 an additional piece of information here i mentioned the columbia river basin which is where all of uweb's hydro generation come from this is a map of that basin that covers most of the northwest on this map you have received a portion of all the generation created by federal hydro projects through the bonneville contract those are those uh gray and brown dots i know they probably project really well um we also have five projects on the willamette sub basin as you well know and contracted output from two projects in central washington collectively known as the brief rapids project we're going to be bouncing between information about slice and eweb owned resources throughout this conversation and just to give you a sense of the magnitude and community here i just want to remind you that e-web resources produce close to 45 average megawatts of energy where slice produces about 155

1:54:58 average megawatts of energy another way price produces about three to four times the amount of energy produced by e-web-owned resources so thinking about where the system was this time last year climatologically we expected colder and wetter conditions due to strong la nina temperature differentials in the pacific ocean but the winter was a little warmer than normal and by may precipitation was coming in well below average for both slice and ewov owned resources we saw a large shift starting in mid-february when precipitation rates fell the water supply dried up and generation declined dramatically here are some charts that illustrate what happened for both slice and eweb-owned resources starting

1:55:43 with the chart in the upper left-hand quadrant this chart shows cumulative percent of average rainfall by month at the dalles which is a point where we measure the performance of the slice resource there's a dotted black line that breaks the year into before and after may periods there are blue numbers that indicate how much cumulative water supply we should have received by that in black numbers that show what we actually got so by may we should have seen about 70 percent of total annual rainfall the actual rainfall is closer to 50 percent of the total annual rainfall you might notice that around february is when that gap begin to kind of widen between normal and actual and you know that's when things

1:56:29 got a lot drier than they normally get by the end of the year we realized 70 percent of normal precipitation for the whole deer river basin the chart in the lower left quadrant shows the same type of information but measured at harrisburg which is the proxy that we're using for the willamette basin and our local resources it shows similar patterns to the columbia river basin but just with a larger deviation from normal on the right hand side of the slide we show actual generation compared to historical averages and a conservative budget number all resources finished below average but uweb resources did much worse likely due to a lack of geographic diversity long-term storage and outages due to maintenance wildfire risk and water conditions

1:57:16 shifting our thinking to 2022 what did we assume when we set our budget this fall well coming out of a prolonged period of low precipitation we had poor initial conditions which generally means that we will expect less generation in the following year these sorts of things are typically reflected in forecast data that we get from bonneville and our other data sources that feeds into our generation models and our budget planning process climatologically we were still projecting la nina conditions which means there is a potential for things to improve but as we saw in 2021 vaults are not guaranteed so we don't adjust our modeling for this climate pattern but we do monitor it as a potential leading indicator for water supply especially in el nino years where we

1:58:02 expect things to be drier and warmer than normal and just again as a reminder some of this information gets set into our budget uh when we set it up so where are we now thinking still about 2020 2022 first la nina conditions are present and are currently expected to last through the summer that's why temperatures have been a little cooler than average which is good because cooler temperatures help to support late summer water supply note again last year was a little bit warmer precipitation is still coming below and below normal for both slice and e-web-owned resources though things are better where they were last this time last year for uf-owned resources the improvement

1:58:47 is maybe only a little bit better i should say um this next chart shows this is a fun show for eight o'clock at night 7 30 at night this next chart shows the probabilistic ranges of annual water supply as measured in million acre feet for the slice resource starting in october the y-axis shows the range of forecasted water supplies as displayed in a box whisker diagram here's an example of one of those box whisker diagrams on the right hand side of the slide the x-axis shows how those ranges have changed over time the forecast gets updated every day so by this point the season we're about 200 days and the plots are looking pretty smushed together at the start of the water year in the left hand side the red median

1:59:32 line appears below the green historical average remember poor initial conditions were present at the start of the water year moving to the right you can see that expected water conditions have bounced around a little bit moving up and down and currently on the far right of this slide the median forecast is pretty close to where we started the year slightly below you can see that the range of potential water supply outcomes has consistently shrunk as we've moved through time from left to right and now the min and max values are much closer to the median outcome we've lost some potential upside to our water supply but we've also lost some risk as well for comparison purposes i've added the blue line which represents the water supply we realized for water year 2021 which appears well outside the current

2:00:18 range of forecasted outcomes at this point in the year we would expect slice water supply to be better than last year by a substantial amount uh slide number 11 is very similar but for you have owned resources and it's a little worse off it appears that we are as likely of achieving an average hydro year than three line as we are last year's water supply the blue line but both are kind of in the extreme of the expected range you likely end up somewhere moving from water supply to forecasted generation for calendar year 2022 this chart shows our current slice generation forecast by month there are gray box whisker diagrams which illustrate the expected range of

2:01:03 outcomes and black dots that show eweb's current generation forecast q1 finished around 105 of average overall slice is currently forecasted to generate near 97 of average for the calendar year thinking about eweb owned resources we have some similar information where green and red lines indicate the expected range of outcomes and the gray line is the current forecast for the year q1 finished around 86 percent of average and we would expect the rest of the water year to look pretty similar to that note that for eub owned resources results can change pretty quickly with unforeseen outages the federal system has a lot of diversity to it but for uf owned resources

2:01:48 you have a generator go down or something like that that's it there's no other generators to back that up um so with this generation information in mind we can think about how eweb's projected financial outlook has changed for the year by measuring changes to contribution margin from hydro risk there are three columns on this chart which reflect dollar valuations of uweb's opportunity and risk with prices assumed at the time that we set the budget how much money could eweb gain or lose changes with hydro generation the first column indicates our initial risk and opportunity related to hydro generation note that the black line at the zero dollar mark is what we'd expect to occur

2:02:34 we saw an average hydro year um if our generation doesn't change from average there's no change in our risk or opportunity and again we assume that prices remain constant in charts the green area shows the maximum potential financial result or opportunity the red area shows the maximum negative financial result or risk and remember the presentation i said that this year we calculated our maximum financial risk from changes in water supply alone to be about 20 million the second column shows that some of the red area has been turned green by the amount that we budget conservatively said another way we rebalance the amount of positive and negative financial outcomes that you have experiences by shifting our budget expectations

2:03:21 the last column shows how increased confidence in our hydro outlook is shrinking the range of financial outcomes since the start of the water year it appears that eweb's financial opportunity has reduced by 5.5 million dollars where e-web's financial risk has reduced by about 8.5 million dollars at this point the year between changes in hydro uncertainty and conservative budgeting our residual hydro risk appears to be about four million dollars with some potential positive upside we have other variables like changing market prices retail load variants and unexpected outages that can also impact our financial results but again water supply uncertainty is our largest planned portfolio risk driver and right now that risk appears pretty contained compared

2:04:07 to where we started the year so last slide here just some key takeaways for 2021 before march 2021 conditions trended below average and then we essentially realized critical levels of precipitation for the year in generation for both slicing the web owned resources finished below budget for 22 regional conditions are moderately better than they were last year more so for slice than e-well-owned resources overall for all of our generation we expect to finish it at this time contribution margin risk and opportunity from water supply that range has shrunk low budget outcomes appear unlikely at this time uh but there's still some

2:04:53 uncertainty and uh and this is all based on information that we have in our historical records today we kind of make history every day every water year is different so we're learning new things about ourselves all the time questions okay well thank you very much appreciate the presentation and this has been a historical topic of this board sometimes it got very heated about 85 water and things such as that long ago we've had a lot of fun conversations amongst the board members so open it up to others and see if they have questions or comments sonia uh a couple of quick questions one uh you talked about kind of the range that we bugged in the

2:05:39 variant and over time are we it seems like we're seeing that range is increasing that we need to increase that is that the case or is that not the case because the variance in in with climate change and temperatures and such it's just that that range of risk is greater is that correct or not so so right now when we when we plan for our budget we're looking at the next water year but we recognize that over time our water supply can shift for things like climate conditions and um and those are not necessarily things that are modeled in our long-term financial plan right now that is a topic

2:06:25 of discussion that is kind of happening in the region at large something specifically that bonneville is working pretty hard to start building into their financial planning process and eweb is a part of that conversation we um we don't yet have anything operationally from them that they can share with us from that typically when we look at these ranges they're based on these long-standing historical data sets that bonneville remodels every year with current operating regimes okay so that range that we 70 to i think it was that is based on modeling that that's redone every year

2:07:13 okay and then at one point you talked about that there was a fifty percent uh we should pull back up um this slide it was back towards the beginning okay here um so this was 50 below average this is so i was anticipating that you were going to say that we were actually going to be below average this year because it seemed like our actual is below average but is it because we have done other things to budget conservatively is that that we're actually potentially going to be above that because we were anticipating to be blue ever so there so there are uh different types of information that are being presented in

2:07:58 this presentation i apologize for that so we start uh talking about water supply and precipitation and then that gets converted magically into generation yes um and so so so what we what we budget for generation is a conservative outlook and so we may be doing better than what we had budgeted conservatively but we may still be coming in below kind of the average expectation of that data okay i think that's what i was trying to say i just wanted to confirm that that's what happened we were because even though it was lower than what we thought it was in terms of the generation and other budgetary measures to protect us we're actually above where we thought we were going to be

2:08:44 way less water than we thought but because of the way we planned from a budgetary perspective okay i think that's what i needed to know thank you yeah i'll jump in thecube you know we used to do this at 85 percent now you're doing it 90 and i noticed that if you go back to that slide you just had that um we didn't uh you know look at 70 on ours and 88 on bonneville is that correct and so we were basically we budgeted money that we never got because we didn't generate uh we did i believe realized below budgeted levels of generation last year by a small amount so what happens now i mean the state sued bonneville or somebody and we can't spill like right now

2:09:30 there's a lot of snowmelt and everything and there's tons of water coming down we got a lot of precipitation but we can't nobody can generate power because of the uh that nitrogen saturation thing and everything how does that factor into our budgeting when we've got the water but we can't nobody can generate power from it yeah so uh river operations are factored into our generation forecasts every year so uh some of the things that have been changing at least for the federal system is that they have shifted spill regimes given environmental concerns and they uh so so bonneville produces a new study every year for us that includes that sort of information embedded into it and so that also works its way into our budget and one quick what's the status of the

2:10:16 treaty with canada on water i know that they were worried about that a few years ago about the the treaty wasn't uh signed with canada and we're just kind of winging it they have yet to pull the trigger as it were so far as a notification determination there's a 10-year runway you get 10 years notice to actually terminate the existing treaty that has not been done so we've got at least 10 years out we've got 10 years but we still haven't signed it right so it's evergreen and less terminated and so as i understand it several years ago i want to say three or four years ago and negotiations kind of fell apart uh we're coming from very different periods

2:11:02 very well informed and uh pretty well aligned uh across the board bc is very good at that meets the hydro in particular whereas we've got a lot of different interests we want to kind of but we do have an assurance of 10 years before we'd have to figure out how to get supplement that loss if we lost that canadian water well so uh depending on what the water is for the flood control water shouldn't be able to go anywhere not to go too far into it but the latest analysis is showing that um based on um the changes in the timing of precipitation and the timing of water flows and it's going to be reduced significantly and so the latest recommendation that i've that

2:11:47 i've seen or that i'm privy to is basically let's do nothing because effectively the amount of value that we're sending their way is going down whereas we're getting the same amount thank you question basically our intent for quite a while has been to encourage our state department to issue the notice of termination we we actually would like that because we're overpaying the canadian government think of it as you took out a mortgage on your house you've paid off the mortgage and you're still making the mortgage payments that's actually what we're doing and at some point why do you keep making mortgage payments if you've paid off the intent there was to pay off canada

2:12:32 for the construction of the dams up river we have our meeting with the northwest delegation to encourage a little more transparency around where the negotiations are the flood control piece is is going to be changed in 2024 we also don't want to get stuck with the bill for flood control so that's that's a risk factor but it's has been an ongoing saga at least a decade thank you other questions comments john b and then mindy so what i took away from this he's on the risk slides

2:13:17 so it seemed to me that we budget for risk he said the maximum risk worst case year would be a 20 million hit to us was a slide that i saw and and we're we're about 8.4 million as our we're gonna our guess is worst case scenario that we're budgeting for is 8.4 we reduce our our budget needs by about eight point four million dollars and and what actually we think is going to happen is only about worst case scenario would be four million is what i saw in that last slide at this point if we realized the worst water that you think we at this point in the season and assuming uh that we used all of those

2:14:02 conservative dollars essentially for this purpose and yeah it would be about four million but there are other factors right involved in our budget goals i would just add in that the 8.4 million is not just water risk it also includes pricing risk and consumption risk so for some reason if we have a bad retail year very mild winter it covers that so it's not just for water it's for a number of things yes yes but the the point that i wanted to make was that it seems to me like you guys are doing a good job if you can if you can take a 20 million dollar worst case scenario and and mingle it into a four million dollar worst case real real world scenario so i

2:14:49 think that that shows the good work that john is doing and and thank you for letting him drive the bus it's it's mother nature it's precipitation but we but we are but we are actively trying to plan and trap around those things and communicate proactively if it looks like things are going against us mindy um so i realized that this almost seems like an impossible job to me i mean you have like historical data and you have a forecast but you have no idea what's going to happen and you do your best i'm curious how often are we like accurate like accurate enough that you would say like we did a great job this year of

2:15:34 predicting so in every water year we can experience a result anywhere between that band of about 72 to 118. and so you know we we try to we try to pick meaningful benchmarks to us what do we want to set our budget at and but then also tracking what's the worst kind of scenario and we track those things the the models that we have to track those things are pretty simplistic because we're kind of relying upon bonneville to tell us what that reasonable range is and i would i would only say that it's kind of hard to see how accurate we are in a single individual years even a collection of years for a hydro system that we're literally getting close to 100 years worth of data on

2:16:21 climate patterns are long ranging weather patterns you know will play out over multiple years so it's kind of hard to know and the system changes all the time spill regimes from uh you know that we are experiencing this year didn't exactly exist in the same way only three years ago or something like that it's changing quite a bit so it's hard to answer conclusively how accurate we are we and um i guess i guess your methods have probably changed too much to be able to say that we've either become more accurate or less accurate at predicting than we have or are there any trends that you're seeing i know you're i know you're dealing with a lot of years i

2:17:06 don't want to think that but i'm just curious if there's something that's kind of rising to the top for you there there is ongoing discussion about what is the potential impact of climate change on our water supply it kind of does potentially two things that can change our water supply and there's been a lot of talk about are we getting the same amount of generation each year relatively speaking but it also changes the timing of our water supply when we see that generation show up if you have warmer winters should we expect more of it and you know it's it's my sense that you know in terms of having accurate models for the future we're going to need to you know invest more time as a region really exploring how climate change is going to factor into our forward forecasts and

2:17:52 not just you know regressions to the warm sorts of analysis there's a general consensus as in so many other aspects of the industry that uh when it comes to forecasting this uh relying on historicals is is increasingly insufficient the amount of volatility we see in the markets at the same time as we see changing precipitation patterns and so forth as a result of climate change and changing weather patterns so it's it's an ongoing it's an ongoing discussion uh john mentioned earlier that that was taking a look at the impacts of climate change on forecasting water years and they're moving uh proposing too it'll

2:18:39 see where it actually ends up moving from uh an 80-year historical uh and kind of pulling it up to take a look more at the last 30 years with a probability factor applied to that yeah there's we're adjusting as as new data becomes available please thank you another comments question matt yeah quickly uh thanks so much for the presentation um i have a bunch of questions but i'm going to try and whittle it down to just a few if we see shortfalls in generation from bpa or our own stuff how are we typically backfilling that is that market purchases and what was the fuel source is it usually so sometimes short falls in either

2:19:26 generation just generally regardless of the source sometimes shortfalls will mean that we just have less surplus to sell at other times we will have to procure energy in the market and typically that isn't from us a specific source of energy it's just generally from the market as an unspecified purchase uh and does bpa buffer us at all as a customer of bpa right we're buying a whole bunch of hydro did they have buffers built in to manage this where they're purchasing other resources to reduce the amount of volatility so bpa manages a hydro system and uh and uh in terms of the two products that they offer to us one of those is

2:20:11 essentially just a straight slice of the on the system that they manage we pay system costs and we get whatever the output is that's the slice product the second product we receive from bonneville in almost equal size is a block product where bonneville does buffer some of that risk in the way that they essentially manage the system directly on our behalf and the secondary ground is associated with that um yeah i was just going to add one also as as our balancing authority bonneville has the responsibility to balance us as well as everybody else and if for some reason that we were short in a particular period they would fill that would be very

2:20:57 expensive right like 200 okay um are we seeing uh increasing diversification in the region of generating resources are we have it been pretty well the same hydro for the last i mean does it look like we're building diversification over the next 10 or 20 years that will reduce some of the risk from the volatility that comes from this from the water supply i don't think that there is an easy answer to that question there are not a lot of new things being built in the northwest not right now we had a large wind kind of boom uh about a decade ago um there are retiring resources in the

2:21:42 northwest so to some degree we're becoming more reliant on some of the reasons the resources that remain including some of that existing hydro but i think a part of our irp process is exploring what the region looks like and certainly we have more information on that i was just going to say i just recently got a northwest regional forecast that i can share with the board and it shows what's being retired and what's coming back on based on a collection of all the utilities irps and there is a significant difference between the level of retirement versus the planned replenishment and i can share that with the board okay yeah i mean i i certainly hope that our

2:22:27 i mean we actually had a brief memo that came in this packet that was talking about our financial rating and one of the punch lines there was our dependency on hydro right was like the biggest flag that that third party had and so i hope that as we're looking at our irp diversification to reduce some of our dependence on hydro is part of the conversation um all right last question you wrestle with this stuff thank you for doing it on our behalf um does does this make you nervous are you kind of this is normal not i mean you're managing risk right we're collectively managing risk does this keep you up at night are you just like uh that's part of the part of

2:23:12 what we're doing and we're in within the bounds of what what's workable so every year is different and the market's different too right part of how we value risk is predicated upon the market um we see these kind of scale of numbers all the time yeah so we are somewhat familiar with them that doesn't necessarily mean we have to be comfortable i think we do have as a hydro utility a lot of experience budgeting someone conservatively because we understand these risks and i think we talk about how we balance uh there's but um but yeah the numbers are big and i think that they are reasonable that uh there's there's reason to be um

2:23:58 aware of them and especially in the context of the epa 2028 discussion irp and uh and our mackenzie projects i have a one-year-old so i don't see it anyway um but um so this is this is the forecast of something that is tangible right water uh it's a real thing i think what what makes me nervous is the context of um of our risk as it pertains to markets because of the psychological aspect and the fact that you see you know when there is scarcity of any kind and you're going to use forecast markets react seemingly without any rational basis because because we'll get scared and stop selling or demanding higher prices and it's

2:24:44 um because because we are not in an organized market it's the reality of the northwest and that's and that's okay we're generally very lucky that's not an issue until it is and so i would say the market aspect of it makes me more nervous than the hydroelectric or the one yeah right the fact that everybody's in the same boat at the same time right is what makes this an issue when that happens good okay i just um i wanted to push back a little bit on um the the accuracy comment because i think there is a fairly easy way to see whether or not it's accurate over time you can look at what we budgeted versus what we ended up losing i'd love to see that actually over time um as as one

2:25:31 figure i'd also like to see the the different ranges that are expected over time to see how they've changed because as we think about the irp and policies around what resources we keep and don't keep i think this is a critical piece of information to think about and analyze so if if we could bring that back as part of that discussion i'd i'd like to see it if others agree [Music] another question for comments if not you have from us what you need if anything it's not good all right well thank you very much we're gonna check with you next year and see how you do

2:26:20 thank you uh frank and rod quarterly operational strategic goals report for q1 you want to do this up there rod i'll just sit up here but i didn't felt funny so one of the things i'll mention just tied the last presentation into earlier part of our recommendation earlier from the finance team was to bump up the power reserve and part of that is looking at risk and the volatility of the prices as well as as risk related to water so when rating agencies do look at us they say oh yeah there's this hydro risk but they're also mitigating that risk partly through

2:27:06 reserves so that's that's kind of what that's for to balance that out and we will when we get to the irp all of the resources will have operating characteristics and so now you know a little bit more about some of the things at least the water piece that drives some of the hydro characteristics so that's this was information share so that when we do get to irps and we talk about variability of water and the slice of the system that there's some basis to understand so um just quick uh kickoff here this is the report out of the first quarter results with me this evening is rod price the assistant general manager

2:27:51 i'm going to cover a few initial high level noteworthy items from the quarter and then rod's going to dive into some of the specific projects and start off a little bit we did see some impacts probably the largest number of quarantines covering 32 departments at the end of january specifically based on the omnichrome virus on the flip side of that we have started to see some economic recovery a little bit more than we had originally planned if you recall a couple years ago we were going to be pretty conservative in our revenue revenue budgeting for a couple of years

2:28:36 and we've actually seen some pretty strong revenue so far i'll get to that in a second but that'll be part of the discussion in july when we come back and start to look at forecasts and budgets for for this next year we have seen kind of a wide range of impacts relative to some of the supply chain issues um you know water uh treatment for example chemicals two to eight weeks transformers um you know over a year and so uh the probably the biggest impact with supply chain is just delivery on certain items uh and that's that's been across the board we're trying to mitigate that through how we handle our operations and replacement and other things

2:29:22 but that's still something that is noteworthy even affecting some of the projects that that rod will go through here in a minute inflationary pressures we we did an analysis looking at pre-covet versus 2022 and some of the inventory levels in general we saw a nine percent uh increase in in those prices i would suspect that most of that is within the last year even though the data covered two years we will again talk to the board about some of the near-term assumptions around that when it comes to the long-term financial plan we have historically baked in about three percent across the entire period of the plan but it looks like we're going to have to make some

2:30:07 near-term adjustments to that which are a little bit higher probably in the first few years before we return to more of a normal rate we did it was a conscious effort to it was in the goals as well to improve some of our customer service response we've seen some good results in the first quarter average speed to answer for example in our call center went from 8.4 minutes in january down to one one and a half minutes 90 seconds or so by the end of the quarter and achieved our less than two minute benchmark across the quarter we're still working on some of the building and renovation response and some of the other things so that's that's still on the radar and to

2:30:52 continue to improve and we're starting to look at some of the surge events uh relative to customer service the first day of the month for example was is a surge for us because of all the people who are looking for like assistance you have customer care and some of those so we're looking at how we respond to that the labor market it's been an interesting one on the on the good side we did fill 15 positions in the first quarter almost half of those were female and a third were minorities just to give you a little feedback on hiring but what's interesting about the the applicant pool is if we compare 2020 with 2022 with roughly the same amount

2:31:37 of active recruitments 25 and 26 so roughly the same in 2020 we had 855 applicants for those 25 positions and this year we had 360. so 40 we're getting 40 percent of what we would see historically for applicants and some which is really indicative i think of the the tight labor market pretty much across the board we're seeing that in particular in some positions just operationally um again a strong or a pretty strong financial position relative to um that operating income as well as revenue that five percent is is more significant

2:32:23 on the electric side because that 10 the first quarter tends to be a pretty these are seasonally adjusted and so the first quarter because of the winter tends to be a higher consumption period for us and um five percent we you know we did uh going into this uh drop our expectations around covid not quite to five percent um but it's it's starting to indicate that it's returned into more of a normal consumption um kind of a pre-covered level water was was ahead of the game again water is sort of in the winter it's kind of the opposite there are heavy periods really june through september or so so we'll continue to monitor that reliability you see the charts on the on

2:33:08 the right uh the the sadie and the safety which are the uh the frequency and duration of electric outages is within the sort of band we would expect this time of year we continue to monitor on the water side our treatment processes as well as as breaks per 100 miles and some of those types of things the the brakes for example tend to pick up in the spring the shoulder months when either the soils are drying out or becoming more saturated so we tend to see more breaks for example in the late spring and then the fall as the weather conditions change but reliability looks good i did talk a little bit about some of the community services

2:33:53 we we are on track for our energy efficiency i think earlier i mentioned that about 12 was from rental properties we executed 310 residential projects in energy efficiency in the first quarter about 14 percent of our annual goal overall there are some projects that usually picks up through the summer and we have some large projects so we think we're on track for our energy efficiency work and then one thing that we're noting from an information systems perspective going into the first quarter of 2021 we've had a backlog of over 108 projects within the

2:34:39 is department and these are operationally built projects things related to things like backflow testing or or whole assessments and things like that basically operational projects and the is department working with across the organization moved that from 108 now down to 32 so making significant project progress on our our operational support of the organization with that i'll turn it over to rod to talk about some key projects and then i'll sum it up with how we're doing on our annual goals so thank you frank uh good evening commissioners and everybody in cyberland

2:35:30 traditionally we had usually come to the board about this time to set the stage for our long-term financial plan and goals and budget process and we usually talk about the 10-year cip in june and july and so we usually come to this point about the projects and the current status capital plan what we're trying to do is more and more quarterly reports so you'll find some more details within the quarterly report what i thought i would do here is just highlight a few different projects start with the shared service projects service projects are projects that are charging both the water and electric uh capital budgets so

2:36:16 typically they're the ones that are probably more comfortable the hqs is not a big project apple wise but it is a project right into it another thing i did just if you note the little uh underscore blue letter fielder you've seen the new headquarters are major projects for instance so if you need more information from the quarterly report uh there's some details for some of these projects

2:37:01 so next year and then the information prices out so that that's where some of the short calls another unfortunate um

2:38:14 how can we use data as soon as possible so that's that's work that'll shift to the emi project the other big project that's on shared services but we're calling it ees now it's been branded some of the coloring but i talked to a really star um

2:39:14 electric wise uh so we're looking at about a uh prediction around 30 percent understanding the capital that will cover pretty well and some extent i guess my depth discussion some some reasons for that one is that we're still doing a lot of work we've got a big outage another big project we have going on and so john it's not magic the water gets converted to electricity

2:39:59 so just to let you know it takes 140 million dollars in some physics and so right there's one of the projects in the middle there that's pictures of so those need to be maintained that's the second one all kinds of civil and dozens of projects going on lots of coordination some of the other things too supply chains really impacting um

2:40:48 still keep ours two years out so one of the things that uh water's maybe a little bit better shape overall but still suffering some of the same things both their contractors so uh replacements is being impacted by that

2:41:39 so it's a damn but um hopefully starting in june uh with completion date of 2023 um

2:42:37 another thing that came up was the second source i'm going to talk a little bit about that grew up there in the right-hand corner of the little computer lab and that project was essentially completed last year uh out at hayden bridge and i think some people would have to cover that um but in the quarter one it finally got all the way up to speed he's really doing some really cool stuff so we're

2:43:22 getting some good work out of that so that's really appreciated that's all i have i'm going to turn it back to frank thanks rod just to run through our progress on the goals with the board you'll notice there's some color coding here and there's quite a quite a bit of gray the gray doesn't mean that something's not being worked on it's just we're pretty early in some of these processes um and so there's there's some notes around um supply chain and spikes and other things um being able to integrate data um and so and some of this like i said is in in process uh we actively monitor this and discuss these they're laid out for the year with the board and um

2:44:08 and then so you can see one of them that's that's listed in yellow is is the willamette drinking water treatment plant now that's that's listed in yellow because it's sort of a painfully slow process at the moment relative to the land use process eweb staff is working with city of eugene staff and the city of springfield staff to make updates to what's called a public facility services plan that is then used to update the metro plan and then there's a number of other amendments that we would have to request from the city of springfield around the glenwood refinement plan for example president brown and i did meet with

2:44:56 the mayor of springfield and the city manager to talk about the process of getting involved with with council they agreed to schedule a work session for later in the year we're hoping before the summer break but it might not be till after the summer break to talk to council about their role in eventually approving the public facility services plan and then some of these other actions there was a question from the board relative to a related item but it's not specifically part of the willamette drinking water treatment plan and that's that we are working on an application to apply for federal water which is stored behind the

2:45:41 dams there's it's part of the federal water plan that is not related directly to the treatment plan although it's it does relate to the potential to get rights to more water on the willamette system so um that was just listed as as part of the update even though it's it's not part of the drinking water treatment plant itself so that one's there is progress it's just a bit painfully slow at the moment but there is progress being being made especially on the public facility services plan at the staff level the others i think the board is fairly familiar with because of all the various meetings that we've had on on some of these goals relative to

2:46:26 liberty direction headquarters buildings and then some are yet to come so with that i think rod and ike and staff would be happy to answer any any questions i will note also that we found a piece of ann was at code or charter that we are supposed to buy biannually supply the city of eugene an operational update this code i think it might be [Music] 2.195 that's exactly right this is 2.195 now that you said that thank you and so we've actually started just

2:47:12 sending them our quarterly report just as as routine um just so that they have that update and then we'll incorporate some of that into the leadership meetings as well but anyway okay thank you um open up thecube um i asked a couple of pre-meeting questions about the differences between the initial budget and who expected to be and i just wanted to highlight that it seems like from the responses that there was a strategic decision and an approved budget that changed it even though the documentation made it look like we were like double over budget so maybe in the future we could have

2:47:58 something in there that notes that you know the board voted to take a different position and it's not due to some you know crazy cost increase or um gouging or supply chain issues things of that nature other than that it looked like a really great update and i mean it seems like there's a lot of supply chain issues which i think we're just gonna have to muddle through for the next however long this takes but i mean china's shut down again so if a lot of our materials are coming from there it's really hard to predict where we're going to be at so thank you for continuing to keep staff engaged on that and finding new plans

2:48:44 because i think it's just it's something that we're all dealing with right i'll just say overall these are super helpful and yeah just give me confidence you know in understanding how things are moving over the course of the year so i don't have any specific questions about this but i really appreciate the work that goes into them yeah just just quickly i i would like to thank ron price and then our our executive and management team there was a little bit of a different flavor to this report if you looked at the electric side for example it talked about the entire flow of the system from

2:49:29 generation all the way down through distribution same on the water side so rather than look at this by department you can actually look at this more by water electric shared services and so looking at it from a flow perspective was was something that we wanted to do so i wanted to thank staff for that and i do appreciate the point especially because this is also a publicly facing document that there are we will look into ways how we can highlight intentional changes as opposed to sort of either gouging or mismanagement or whatever unintentional things so changes in scope or budget or schedule that are that are intentional decisions we'll we'll explore ways that we can we can

2:50:14 highlight that or identify that in some way i think that's a good point i had another comment yeah just along those lines i think we ran into something similar with one of the contracts that was coming up at the last meeting and it was just a change in scope largely and so yeah i think if there's some conventional way that we can flag that that's both in this for the report but also in those um the contract approvals come to us we did do that on the consent items if you notice now they have a reason code in there and um thanks to quentin for for jumping on that immediately so now when you see the past history if there's a difference there's a reason code that could be scope it could be some other reason three or four codes

2:51:03 thank you i really really really appreciate these this is just light years ahead of where we've been in the past and everything but it does allow me to get into the minutia and the weeds which you don't like i love it okay so what's the 80 000 bucks cleaning up county parks i'm not looking at you i was looking at somebody else i i don't know i'll have to let the february contract for 80 000 lane county to clean up the parks i'm just wondering why i know the difference that was your lease would probably be the one i think karen may it may be i honestly don't i'd have to look it up as well i'm curious i'm not saying we shouldn't do it but it's 80 000 bucks is a lot of money and i don't know why we're cleaning parks thank you

2:51:48 other questions or comments so mindy and then maybe because i'm somebody who works with children and a lot of picture books but i really appreciate the format of the plan um just because i visually for me like a lot of stuff we talk about is really dense and dry but i just want to say i really appreciate all the graphics and everything because it kind of tells the story without getting lost in that thanks to the communications department yeah great job thank you um so as somebody who also is dealing with supply chain issues

2:52:34 in my business on a daily basis i think i mean the strategy that i'm using going forward is if it's available buy it if you've got room to store it and it's something that you can buy walk both because you don't know if it's going to be available next week and two the chances are that next week it's going to be more expensive so i would encourage you in procurement to to use that type of a model i mean you told me that you were holding back projects because you might need them in case there's a storm and i think that's very that's great great thinking but i also think that hopefully we'll see some things coming up in our consent calendar

2:53:21 and purchase things that it's like hey i can meet now it may not have been enough in our budget but if you can get it both because of the inflationary part and just the supply chain part of it i think that's the new reality that we're going to be dealing with in the next few years i wish i had more sports storage space but i i see here you got you got plenty of space to put stuff so i wouldn't understand but other than that i really liked the looks and everything that we're seeing most i didn't see too many things that were in the where the dial was problematic to me so yeah i'll just give you an example that i think on the consent calendar tonight we had a thing on generators

2:54:06 where we kind of we dealt with and that's that proactive going out buying them getting a good deal and good for you yeah that i think if you in the past we've talked about capital projects where we have compulsory and we have strategic and we have risk-based i think what we're trying to do is to recognize that the compulsory work is is that's keeping the lights on and the water flowing and those will tend to be and we have to plan uh with limited supply with some scarcity around prioritizing that um and the the days of just-in-time delivery where inventory is evil that's not quite quite the situation we're in right now okay thank you very much thank you rod thank you

2:54:52 correspondents and board agendas president brown we had a few correspondence items um i know we answered a few questions about a couple of them they were let's the wildfire season preparedness the board policy around gp7 which is some parliamentary parliamentary procedures specifically around if a commissioner were to resign mid-term what would be a potential process for replacement that was part of the original policy discussion we had in january just for review or comment our renewable portfolio standard

2:55:38 compliance report which we did not have a compliance obligation in 2021 the proposal for monthly smart meter opt-out fee for residential customers was a correspondence item and then our annual assessment of again water flow in the mckenzie and the recommendation to ensure and adjust operations at walterville to ensure that voluntarily assured that flow is 10 percent greater in the main stem that is than it is in the in the canal project so that that oftentimes impacts our production of walterville again the design there to keep salmon and other fish

2:56:24 going toward where the water is flowing and out of the canal so those were the corresponding items and we'd be happy to answer any questions questions comments i just had a question on the op out fee i wasn't sure if that was a monthly or a yearly fee so 17 a month if you want to opt out that's that's a monthly fee that's an assessment of the operating costs and the media reading fees associated if especially as we get fewer and fewer the cost per um so that's that's an anticipated monthly cost so that i understand that and i and i am on board with that but i think that

2:57:10 that may be uh again a communication thing that we really need to to get out there in a in a way that we don't get a lot of blow back on it because i know ami has has been a touchstone or touchstone type of a project and then now if you start saying that you want to opt out it's going to cost you 17 more a month i think that's going to fill up the room again so i just that's a big piece of why we're talking about this now we hadn't originally expected to talk about this after complete deployment but before we pick up the training again start having these conversations so that we could give

2:57:56 customers plenty of lead time too and so what kind of again getting back to that lead time what when do you anticipate us starting to implement those fees for that i was thinking next year or at the end of full deployment but it could be either and that's the some of the things we're still working with for our finance with that would allow us to have a number to give customers when they're making that decision um so they would they would have that as they made their choice yeah that's fine um if it's like a multi-family dwelling or apartment building and the owner has opted out

2:58:42 then each residence would have to pay that fee the if i recall maybe the customer service can help me here the account holder is actually the one who makes that determination for us to talk about this now because when we do resume installations a lot of people upon installation well i i want to opt out well now okay you'll know that at some point when this is implemented there's a fee associated with opt-out so we we're trying to get ahead ahead

2:59:33 would we send a letter to all the people or notify all the people who have previously opted out and they could choose to opt in then yeah we'll eventually need to reach out when we have an implementation implementation date and do a lot of educational and outreach and communications on this and this will this will actually be part of the fees that the board approves as part of your normal feed process take my phone off the hook matt nice um i'm i guess i am pretty concerned about starting to

3:00:19 are there other alternatives for folks who i recognize that a fair amount of the folks opting out you know are concerned about the um the radio frequency radiation are there other ways for us to get communication from those without using wireless technology no no not i mean there's there's only a few choices there's manually read the meter there's a drive by approach which isn't probably as costly or more costly than an opt-out approach would be and then there's the the automated approach through through ami these eventually i mean these will be based on cost so if you walked out

3:01:06 um your neighbors would pay for that otherwise yeah no i get it and it's a bit we have like 5 000 meters it says that would we would expect to not okay i think if you look at other utilities that have completed their full deployment they opt out rate tends to be about one percent so early on we might have something a little bit higher than that but one percent is probably a pretty good good estimate based on what we see from other utilities historically okay okay yeah and we won't we won't be implementing this until we go through all these other processes this is to give people a heads up this is where it's heading this is looks like it's the level it's it's

3:01:51 actually within reason what other utilities are charging so um it's it's not like other utilities are charging five dollars and we're charging 17. you know asking people to pay the costs and not putting the costs on others and achieving the same thing i think that's worth looking into but maybe i think the alternatives are probably as expensive or more expensive and so that that's part of the choice you have as a customer

3:02:40 yeah i'd like to echo sentiment i've heard here a long time and i got a feeling we're gonna get absolutely killed so i mean i hate to say that but it's i i think it's they're going very very strong opinion and so we have a good pr department i think we need to get out way big time in front of this just like college hill because you know a lot of you haven't experienced what happens when we raise rates because we haven't done it so long but when i see people go to the podium and say i can't you know i have to make a choice now because it's two or five dollars a month it's significant that that resonates with me and then when we turn around and say it's 17 uh of the inflation it's kind of we're going to have to really get out in front of this i think well the related thing to that

3:03:25 president brown to start getting in front of at some point is we are going to talk to the board starting in july around rate design rate design has a number of impacts it's it's starting to look at basic charges versus consumption-based charges potentially looking at resident time abuse potentially looking at residential demand charges where you can you can look at the cost of peak for example is much going to become much more expensive so some of these subjects which is why they're in that second phase of the strategic plan are really building block pieces that are going to be for some people

3:04:10 painful and so but they're also eventually designed to to be fair to the choices that customers can make so there is a lot more to come on redesign and fees and some of this work and and i suspect we will get some people who don't agree with some of the discussions that we're having okay thank you any other questions or comments but of course yeah um i chime in a little bit on that i'm curious about the cost over time uh one you know obviously it's fewer and fewer people are on it the cost to have

3:04:55 you know to supplement that entire program get higher and higher and fewer and fewer people i need to think about what the plan is long term as we implement that i'm supportive of it um but there may be a point at which we just say okay this is the level at which we're going to go to provide the service because it really is a service that we're providing you know we've done this now if you don't want this other then we will provide you this other service for a fee and you can choose to be in part of that service or not but this is your choice and here's what the cost of that service is like any others but this one's more of a choice than many of the others and that there are other options like can you get electricity or not

3:05:40 um the the other side of it is if we can give as much notice as possible so that we have enough time for any that would like to actually opt in at that point that we can actually have the capacity to fulfill orders for people who want to do that before we actually implement it i hope that we do that and we have a good sense of what that timeline looks like obviously we have no sense of it right now because we have no we have no meters to install so i really think that we need to have the supply chain figured out before we even start thinking about where this conversation is because we have we have a whole bunch of meters that we still need to install before we're going to implement this so once the stock is back in and the installation program is

3:06:26 back up and running that's probably the right time to start talking about this again because then we can more accurately say okay we're going to have we're going to be done with what we think is our main part of the implementation now it's everybody else who's opted out outside of that conversation i wanted to bring up a couple of things in the correspondence one around the i noticed in the community investment there was a number of events that were located in here i don't know if it's just me but maybe other board members have this but i i don't end up getting information about what events are going on like it just happens that somebody asked me but i don't care about it from the e-website and i was just wondering if we might be able to if we

3:07:12 know that there are events that eweb staff are going to be a part of and the big that that could be part of maybe our weekly when we get weekly kind of invitations even if it's a monthly thing that goes out so plan ahead because some of these look really neat and i'd like to participate in them and i often find that we invite state representatives other people but then board members aren't invited which seems a little odd to me

3:07:58 i think that's a reasonable request to on calendar events of the staff to figure out how to best inform the board ahead of time of what we know that that we're participating in and then i think it's also fair when we get to the point of of opting in or opting out to make some assessments of what we think those costs are based on the participation level so if there's a half a percent off that opt-out versus two percent off that versus four percent what how does that impact the the cost of opting out and maybe it could even ramp over time you know if it's lower at first we're not you know spreading all of that in so that they can

3:08:47 just to be clear too i want to make sure that we are getting meters enough for sort of day-to-day use just not we can't get enough to launch into the full deployment rate again okay thank you would wrap up i'll go around i'll start with mindy anything for the good of the order um it's been a while since i've been to an interesting board meeting like an actual board meeting and i just want to say it's nice to see everybody's faces uh yeah i i would like to see more of the public and uh i think that that's something you know we moved it out to rock i still think this is a uh

3:09:32 as long as we have headquarters i don't know if at some point there's an opportunity to do at least one board meeting there or before we kick the tires and and move it along but um i think that that's more cohesive for community involvement than than this room here i i think hybrid works really well here but i still long for more community engagement for me one thing i do have is that we had a request this evening for a delay on on the process and i want you know

3:10:17 like i told you that procedurally the will of the board is to delay that this is the time for somebody to make a motion and have the discussion and if not not but i just think it's fair to the people that asked us to lay it to make sure that we asked the question and [Music] we're not going to go there we're not going to go there but it's up to the board and they asked us to land for a year i don't want at this time to make a motion for that but earlier i would if we get uh the rp's in and we don't feel like there's a robust mix that really meets what we need then i might be able to get at that point but

3:11:04 right now i want to see the process play out and see what we get first any comments yeah i um it's interesting to watch before wander back into that conversation i guess i'm i wasn't sufficiently convinced that there was a reason that they wouldn't have known it seems like anybody in real estate in this town who's looking at what's going on would see that this property was coming for sale not prepared for their proposal you scratched my head and i didn't hear anything from them about that and didn't really want to jump in that conversation with folks who were providing testimony to us another thing is they still could

3:11:50 put their proposal partner with developer or other entities to see something that our goals i was just going to add president brown that at the board through the liaisons and working with staff has tried to develop an rfp process that took um the public contribution of whatever future direction the building is into account and by the time we work through this process it'll be august before the rfps are closed and so to your point commissioner mcrae there is all kinds of opportunities for them to partner with people and present something as part of the rfp process even if that includes

3:12:37 some aspect of financing that they can't secure that's that's available to them so i appreciate at this point the board's uh support for the process as has launched into now i agree um i i've read the letter and there's a couple items in there that i didn't agree with about this should that the building should always remain under the control of the web and we shouldn't you know i mean i don't want to manage whatever it ends up to be personally but that's the will of the board but a lot of things in there so i agree we probably should just move on and and if we don't have the proper what we think is adequate then we can delay it but i think we kick a can down

3:13:22 the road right now then what happens if somebody comes to us in nine months and said well i really want to do it too and so it'll just i think adequate let's do it and see what we got other questions or comments right just one more thing um the mckenzie tour is may 20th so that's that's coming up and then i appreciate your your your love of the headquarters building um and we might have to have one last meeting there at some point just for fun um the acoustics there and are and the camera and the whole situation is is quite challenging based on feedback from people who've tried to listen to this virtually in the past and we're

3:14:07 willing to make some investments here relative to cameras and acoustics and other things that we probably wouldn't would make there but we i i can't speak for the rest of the board if the board wants to move it there's some some sacrifices in going back to them well maybe this could be something that you bring up at your next liaison with the city of eugene so the city of eugene just spent a bunch of money to renovate their council chambers at the lcc building and it's wired in beautifully and stuff like that maybe there's an opportunity to partner with them and use that facility on sometimes when they're not there so that we're closer to downtown closer

3:14:53 to a lot of our our customers just again they wouldn't give they wouldn't let us they wouldn't give us the three percent silt maybe they can let us borrow a room once or twice a year we only meet monday and wednesday and otherwise statutorily we meet tuesdays sometimes they have uh public hearings on on tuesdays but not city council but like the the planning commission in here is the hearing's additional but again there are other opportunities out there i remember the other thing that was to mention uh when we have community events and e-web staff are there i just wondered if they could also have these topic cards because

3:15:39 people in the community don't know that people are from a particular section and they just think that you know you have all of the generating facts and all of that memorized and i just think it would be helpful for staff to have access to these index cards too because a lot of it's like well how much power do we get from this generation source it's like no i don't remember that i always look them up in the cards and i think it's really helpful and i just thought it might be helpful to stuff that was it other questions or comments if not thank you adjourned