EWEB Board of Commissioners — August 2, 2022

0:03 i'd like to call the august 2nd 2022 regular meeting at the gm1 electric board uh for the record we're a little bit behind it's 554 and so first agenda item uh is the agenda check for anybody that wants to make any recommendation changes to the opinion all right then uh i'm from board members and general manager called um yeah so i had the um pleasure of attending two of the upriver listening sessions last few weeks with um and the room's muted i think it's not muted let me do it

1:01 um anyway i went to two up river listening sessions um with um that were led by adam spencer jeremy simoji hopefully i pronounced your last name right mark zinniger frank was at one of them john brosky was that one of them and i think that um thank you for those of you who helped put them on because i think that you did a really fantastic job and as a board member it was really helpful to get out there and talk with people hear what people's concerns were people had a lot of questions and both jeremy and mark and adam were able to answer their questions so well um i thought that you guys were so so patient and thorough with people and um

1:46 so i i really enjoyed thank you for doing that thank you john bye uh just one item i suspect several commissioners may be paying attention to the city eugene's conversations about new northwest new gas going into new buildings um and i'm not proposing that we get involved in any way but i do i am um i guess cognizant of the potential for misinformation about e-web role or e-ramps ewib's capabilities and i know we've been proactive about that in the past and i'd just like to encourage us as a utility encourage staff to continue to be proactive if there's if we find

2:31 that misinformation is produced and them do what we can to uh address that thank you yeah i've got several items um number one the worst session last week i thought was one of the best things i've done i mean the enthusiasm from the leadership up there was infectious i really got a lot out of that and thank you to everybody that participated in that excellent job in my opinion um the pew um i'm your open post employment retirement benefits guy and the last financial report we got uh we're down a couple million portfolio and initially we had thought that we you know we're gonna go through the money part we thought we were just gonna make a couple hundred thousand dollar contribution this year november we'll figure out what it is

3:16 hopefully the market will feed it down but we took a pretty big thing so definitely i don't know if you have anything you want to add to that but um it just that's what the report says it's just it's like every other portfolio is down and a couple things on the waterfront you you notice that um and i think the 29th of august deq is going to have a hearing on creswell foster farms application to reintroduce a chicken processing plant in crestwell and dump a lot of chicken by products into the feeder stream into the coast fork that goes forward empties right into where we're going to take out our water for our second source whether or not eweb wants to make comment on that or anything i just want to bring it up because you know where i stand on water quality we are

4:03 we've got urban runoff we've got municipalities that have sewage systems and i just want to make sure that whatever we do at least from my perspective i want to do everything i can to protect the integrity of that water i'm not saying we should object to it i'm saying that we should be aware of it or hopefully we can be aware of it and and participate because we're not going to meet again before they have that hearing and they're they're trying to re re get it running again and crestwell and it's a pretty significant impact on the body levels things like that so anybody else wants to chime in on that that's uh not one thing um my second thing on water is uh you may have saw when we had the um camp report this huge camp right above our water intake again on ip property uh

4:50 before i say what i want to say about ip i just want to acknowledge that the work eweb lane city of springfield they've been proactive with this but uh you know patrols have reduced that but we've um have a meeting i think frank has one on 23rd of august to meet with ip and the big people there but they've never been proactive they've always been reactive and it is as again and we had a um we're doing the cleanups i think we had one ago that was four thousand dollars and on ip property we paid for it and so um i just don't think that if the ip is going to continue to not be good stewards of the river especially if they own that land right above our intake that we should pursue

5:36 that i've been involved in it before about there's a bunch of riparian areas that are floodway there's no economic things about taking it over because if they're not going to do it somebody should or at least hold them accountable i know they're a big customer and everything else but to me that doesn't matter i don't care how much money they give us or we give them or anything else i just don't think anybody should continue to allow their property to be used illegally that results in the waterways so for the record just wanted to put that out there so sorry to be about but you know my where my priorities are it's clean water and uh i just don't want these things to happen to our waterways so thank you very much and then frank thank you president brown um just a couple of things um i did want to thank

6:24 staff whether it was part of their normal functional duties or whether it was a volunteer opportunity for those who've helped with the world championships those who've helped with the jefferson west side neighborhood picnic or the lane county fair a lot of opportunities to reach out and participate in the community over the last few weeks and staff's really stepped up on a number of fronts and so wanted to thank the staff for that the the two water issues issues president brown there's kind of two different things going on there one is i think that at some point we need to understand our role on the willamette like we understand our role on the mackenzie

7:09 there there is a process that deq is going through they are the enforcement agent um the application um uh what you know depending on um and you know what the track record is and what the enforcement is um i'm not in a position to have researched it enough to provide the board a recommendation on on whether and how to act in this particular application but it is correct that we do need to wherever the situation is understand what occurs up upstream of our water source independent of where that is so more more to come on that i think from from my perspective the the meeting on august 23rd with

7:55 international paper i think gives us an opportunity to explore some solutions that would be better long term whether that's developing some potential agreements on how to handle situate the specifics whether there's an opportunity to explore um the donation of that particular strip of property to someone who can manage it in a different fashion i think those are both reasonable things to put on the table for for internationally so i appreciate the feedback and gives us some things to do thank you very much anybody else have any comments if not the next agenda item is public input so i will

8:41 public input and read the protocols for public input when your name is called please come to the podium clearly state your name and pick up your address authority reward each speaker will be offered three minutes to present your testimony please keep track of the time by watching the time and you follow the room by nothing for 20 minutes you have uh if you're participating by telephone and then i'll leave your call for a star six you're calling a landline or simply use the unmute button to propel himself on um anybody on the phone after each test will have an opportunity to speak if they choose although by policy we do not engage in a back and forth please note that the failure commissioner doesn't speak or not be should shall not be construed as support of or opposition to any speaker's testimony the request is

9:27 presented by a speaker the board does not provide an answer eweb staff member will contact the speaker for the question um be addressed at a later time so we have one person signed up to speak this evening uh jerry ester would you like to host the podium we'll start the clock welcome my name is jerry aster four six one five one you passed your road in vita and i've lived on the banks of the mackenzie river since 1996 i'm an active community member and i value the quality of life on the rip that the river affords me with that in mind i wish to stress how leeburg lake is a distinct and valuable feature within the mackenzie valley not only to the community members but to visitors as well

10:13 if leeburg dam is removed and the lake is lost there will be an enormous impact to an area already struggling from the results of the holiday farm fire and economic impacts to tourism the primary industry in the mackenzie valley leeburg lake offers local and accessible recreational opportunities uh one not a day goes by without fishermen fisher women and fisher children lining the banks or anglers dotting its waters in all manner of watercraft in fact many locals recount stories that the first fish they ever caught was on wiener lake kayaking and paddle boarding are often mastered on leverage lake because of its easy waters

10:59 and manageable size from october from may to october a group of 25 or more women who we call ourselves the ladies of the lake paddle the length of the lake and through the bayou and then lunch at the visitor kiosk mackenzie bible fellowship and mckenzie valley presbyterian churches utilize the shore of the lake for seasonal outdoor church services and other community groups use the lake for their gatherings as well the lake lures locals and tourists to the demonstration pond where children of all ages delight in feeding the trout and viewing the giant sturgeon fleiberg lake contributes to the local economy of the mackenzie valley situated somewhat halfway between cedar flats and

11:45 mckenzie bridge leeburg lake serves as a community anchor weber store ike's pizza vita community center and everyone's market are frequented by locals and visitors to the leeward lake as visitors travel along 126 we're drawn to linger in the area a bit longer due to the presence of leeburg link they can buy fuel at mathers market have breakfast at the stage stock or lucky lager restaurants pick up supplies at the lieberg store and then spend the day on the lake once the discovery center is operational the visitor experience to leeburg lake will be enhanced without the presence of the lake however center aims to tell

12:31 will be greatly diminished property values are enhanced by liberty well i do not wish to speak for those whose property properties rim the lake uh leeward lake serves as a beautiful focal point for our entire area and there is definitely a wow factor to suddenly seeing the lake as you walk your way along the highway the view is priceless every season of the year i encourage the boards to consider options that preserve the williamsburg lake and i am personally willing to do whatever i can as a community member to assist in that effort and i participated in some of the listening sessions and appreciated the opportunity for some

13:17 back and forth and i shared some ideas that perhaps will be discussed at another time thank you very much um and is harley anybody else signed up for okay well then i'll close the public hearing in commissioner feedback thank you for your testimony gary i want to say that um one thing that was very apparent in um into these listening sessions is that many people stressed about what a different community you are up there like it's not a very um close-knit community there are a lot of different groups overwhelmingly people express love for the lake so that was definitely something that binds you all together thank you for

14:02 your testing comments i would like to thank you on behalf of the web board and staff for your testimony and uh we really appreciate it thank you very much i know it's a track to come down here so thank you um the next agenda is the consent calendar a is there anybody wants to remove anything and if not i will gain a motion to adopt them [Music] thank you thank you pull uh the item for the bill assistance income verification can you identify

14:47 which one that is please yeah community services exactly catholic community services and the one for um western utility teletubbies number three and number seven uh absent those two of the entertainment marks to adopt the remaining part of the calendar b move to adopt the remaining [Music] um so [Music] number one which is the catholic community services um i'm just really curious about um so we're paying 350 thousand dollars over the course of five years for

15:32 catholic american businesses to verify um of people who are applying for low um uniform assistance on their bills i understand it and my question is uh one how many people are we serving currently with assistance on their bills and how many of these are being denied it's um it's you're paying 70 000 a year for this checking service and i'm just curious the amount of work that's involved there it's about to provide any background on that and and i also want to apologize i i should have notified staff that i was going to ask about these so if there's not immediate answers okay

16:17 thank you um i'll defer some of this to julie but i i would also add that part of this service is the is the system that they work within that we would have to go purchase if they did not provide the service so there's income verification that is shared through that service that that we garnered from them and i'll let julie is julian or is oh great scared i'm your friend okay very can verify the numbers i was gonna give you a great thank you uh so how many people do we serve what's the question yeah with the low income system we've got the um the loan and bill assistance and and i'm just curious how many people are applying for that but not actually we

17:03 turn out to not be eligible question thank you we serve approximately 4 200 customers per year through um that's what we call ecc that's equal customer care at the niles very few around 38 here we also use the same system for customers who are doing weatherization their limited income additional incentives for weatherization and there are approximately 100 customers per year can go through that great thanks yeah thanks it's super helpful to just get a sense of scale of where the the service provides for us thank you very much that's all i had on that one so sorry

17:48 uh two questions real quick on that so do they provide they're the sole provider of that service we currently have two providers we have catholic community services for all of our customers who do not have someone thunders or over 60 in the hospital the remainder are served by the city of eugene through campbell community center those are for anyone who has a member of their household 60 or older okay and then we have also tried to save money by deeming customers so if a customer is eligible for liheap or they're eligible for snap benefits or some other benefit

18:33 that fits our the same income qualifications that we use and we are able to deem them eligible it gives them faster service and it also saves us money but not having to incur that expense with catholic work with cmg and this is a flat amount do they you know if they have a lot more or fewer it's a change or this is just a flat amount of year that they get from providing that service no matter how many or how few people apply that need verification currently paying them a flat amount per income qualification like 50 i believe so we can control how many we refer to them

19:19 but we control our costs pretty well there yeah number seven um the question is about this particular um so this is her um work on a substation and one of the issues that's brought up is that this this particular piece of equipment that we would be installing is more uh is less unsightly than the lattice structure that is in that location and my question and i think i know the answer is this has to be replaced anyway right we're not just making this for cosmetic reasons we're replacing it and while we have the opportunity we're also making the cosmetic upgrade i'm just clarifying because it wasn't the answer is yes this project is as uh

20:05 i figured that was to rebuild the current substitution that was the case and forgive me i was maybe too dense to read how it was written that's all i have thank you okay i'll entertain the motion to adopt items number three and seven on consent calendar b thank you discussion although your favorite signify by saying aye all right fast is unanimously thank you very much the next agenda item is going to be paper canal tbl lisa mark and jeremy yes good evening commissioners i'm lisa krentz generation manager joining you all in person tonight is mark zunecker our generation engineering supervisor and jeremy simoji our library strategic project manager

20:50 in addition to that we have most of the project team either in the room with you or joining remotely tonight we'll be providing an update on the decision-making process for the long-term fate of the liber hydroelectric project next slide please shown here is the roadmap of deliverables ultimately leading to a decision from the board at the end of this year on whether to return the leader lieber canal to reservist or decommission it the red line denotes where we're at today and i'm happy to report we're still on track with the next major deliverable which is a complete draft the triple bottom line report coming to you in october now given the limited amount of time we have available this evening we won't be presenting all the information that was

21:36 provided in tonight's board memo we will be giving you a brief financial and triple bottom line analysis update and encourage folks to read the board memo for more detail with that i'll hand it over to mark zuniker for a financial analysis update great thank you lisa and good evening this next slide here is providing you a summary of our baseline capital costs um along with their negative 30 to plus 50 range these are unchanged from the information that you saw at the june 16th workshop minor refinements are still expected but essentially we have a capital cost tie at about 250 million for either pre-project conditions

22:22 decommissioning or the full return to service and attire roughly 180 million in capital costs for the partial return to service and storm water conveyance options next slide please as you know those upfront capital costs are not a real story we need to understand all in costs so we analyze the net present value the npv captures the upfront capital with ongoing cash flows the o m expenses ongoing equipment replacements power sales revenues for the return to service scenarios and summarizes those future cash flows in terms of total current dollars and we bring those future cash flows into current dollars using a discount

23:08 rate a percentage rate as that's defined by um as our weighted average cost of capital and note that for our revenues on these npv analyses we are using the wholesale market power price even those upfront capital costs are not all spent at once with this type of project we expect the spend to be spread out over roughly 18 years spend is drawn out over the front end due to complex settlement agreement licensing and permitting processes the spending curve for the return to service looks different than what we

23:54 showed you at the june workshop in june we were thinking that water right preservation issues would motivate urgent progress on the return to service but have concluded that there just isn't a viable way for us to advance regulatory licensing processes any faster than our assumption for the decommissioning process so the spending rate assumptions are now essentially matching next slide please then here are the preliminary net present values um they are better across the board than what we showed you in june but for different reasons the decommissioning scenarios are better because we reduced the ongoing o m cost assumptions for those scenarios

24:41 and the return to service scenarios are better because we pushed out the timing of major construction next slide please and this table summarizes the compounded effect of incremental rate increases over the 18-year period 2023-2040 compounded rate impacts range from 11 to 23 and involved borrowing of 238 million to 355 million in order to smooth out the major capital major lump of capital expenditures note that these rate increases are for the liber work only and which and

25:27 they are not included in the 83 compounded rate growth expected uh increases in general rates and incremental increases in bpa rates over during that period um also want to note that there's lots of best guesses factored into these estimates but they are indicators of what we would expect in terms of relative impact for each scenario and then slide eight brings us to the topic of sensitivities we have just started our sensitivity analyses and have some preliminary results to share we looked at a couple of combination scenarios of high and low capital estimates with high and low power prices we've also looked at each variable

26:12 individually along with discount rate and inflation rate sensitivities slide nine and then here are the combination scenarios of high and low capital estimates high and low power prices in each case the alternatives maintain their relative ranking meaning that you would have to combine a low capital range for one alternative with a high capital range for example for another alternative to get a different financial winner and that is not very likely next slide please when looking at each variable individually and explaining the results in the tornado diagram you can see that the capital cost

26:58 uncertainties have the greatest potential for impact to the npv results power pricing uncertainties have the least potential impact shown at the bottom and the inflation rate and discount rates are in between but also that the inflation and discount rates tend to move together offsetting each other's effect on the npp analysis these conclusions apply to other scenarios as well though power pricing of course is uh has zero impact on the decommissioning scenarios and then we have some additional sensitivities in progress we will consider the effect of potentially higher in-stream flow requirements for new or amended license

27:44 that would drive down the amount of power we can produce we will consider the effects of a sinking fund for the return to service scenario intended to fund either a decommissioning effort or a new re-licensing effort at the end of the future license we will also consider the effect of lower o and o m costs if power generation were to see set both lieber and walterville and we'll consider renewable energy credit values carbon values and capacity values for the return to service scenarios that are not currently reflected in the baseline npv slide and the bottom line we do want to identify here is that we have more important financial analysis and progress

28:29 so would ask the board to withhold judgments on the alternatives at this time for example we'll be factoring in the effect of a sinking fund and financing for future re-licensing or decommissioning of a project that may shift opinions on the return to service options and looking at the situation from the perspective of eweb's future replacement power needs without reverb generation many shift opinions on the decommissioning alternatives results of these additional analyses are intended to be provided to the board by the next or by the october board meeting and again we can't emphasize enough the wide variety of uncertainties that influence the financial analyses this slide identifies a few more that are difficult

29:14 to fully investigate via sensitivity analysis there are regulatory uncertainties general economic compliance climate and energy industry uncertainties climate change uncertainties and water right uncertainties we will also discuss these types of risks in the next round of board correspondence with that i'll pass back to lisa for the triple bottom line discussion thank you thank you mark i'll now give um an update on our triple bottom line analysis over the last many months we've been identifying economic environmental and social issues to consider in the decision-making process now it's important to remember that all alternatives have both benefits and impact in various areas

30:01 at the june work session we presented 25 attributes for further analysis and i'll show those briefly over the next few slides as a reminder next slide please shown here are the preliminary economic issues that we presented to you in june they range from rate impacts to operations and maintenance costs to value of hydropower among other things next slide please and shown here are the preliminary social issues that have done have been identified know that some of these impacts are more localized to the upriver community while others have broader impacts to our entire customer base and we do continue to collect feedback from the community to ensure that we've effectively captured social impacts and

30:48 we will continue to update this list as new information is available and the library listening um sessions have been hugely important in allowing us to gather a comprehensive suite of social issues next slide please and finally here are the preliminary environmental issues that have been identified ranging from climate impacts to water quality next slide please a previous slide thank you again it's really important to note that all four alternatives have both benefits and impacts in most areas and that's largely dependent on the stakeholders perspective and values weighing trade-offs is not straightforward due to this and any option is likely to result in perceived

31:33 inequity amongst interested parties unfortunately there is not one single option that will be preferred by all stakeholders during the board work session on june 16th we proposed providing a recommendation on triple bottom line issues to focus on based on staff and subject matter expert opinion as well as public impact foot received from our outreach essays now this approach effectively narrows the list of issues to those with the potential for greatest impact to the broadest customer base and enables the board to focus on the subjects most likely to sway the decision tonight we'll provide our recommendation for three focus attributes in each category based on the results of a recent ranking exercise for subject matter experts and keep in mind this is

32:18 a recommendation only next slide please from a financial perspective the issues most likely to impact the broadest customer base are rate impacts financing and bond impacts and power price risk reduction advance please thank you and from a social standpoint public safety local economics and recreation rose to the top for our subject matter experts and finally for environmental water quality carbon emissions and aquatic resources were ranked highest now this isn't to say that we propose to discount the other issues and we recognize that all issues are important to many stakeholders and to eweb

33:03 we will continue to collect feedback to ensure we're accurately capturing the impacts and ultimately we intend to provide um and identifying potential mitigative actions to reduce the effects of various impacts now the next step is for the board to give their feedback on the list of most impactful issues and we've developed a tool to assist you with that next slide please so shortly after this meeting staff will provide the board with an excel formatted tool that will allow you to weight the attributes according to your perspective and see how modifications to waiting influences the selection of an alternative each board member may come to a different conclusion on appropriate weighting for example some board members might feel that their top issue here is a lot more weight than the next

33:49 issue while another board member might feel that their top three are equally important and should be weighted evenly again our recommended focus issues are those that are most likely to have impacts on our entire customer base as opposed to localized and individual impacts however each board member may have a different perspective next slide please that's the end of tonight's formal presentation we'll be coming back to the board in october with a complete draft triple bottom line report followed by a multi-hour work session later that month and now we'll open it up to questions and comments thank you lisa um okay we've got about 16 minutes left there's five of us do the math who would like to go first

34:35 quick clarification the time frame for the net present value calculation was it to 2070 or 2040. so yeah it was actually out to 2075. 2076 okay great thank you um i'll jump in real quick i had technical problems i i submitted some questions i never did see the answers and so um your projections on the cougar flow regimen historically or no i mean if they're not going to pound water probably not going to be having the flow in the summer that we used to have and so we're not going to be able to generate what did you use we used the indicators that they've given for the future operations okay and then the license status when you say uh sinking fund to recapture we're not

35:22 going to recapture the lost thing since we're halfway into labor right now and so are we going to get a 20-year license or a 40-year license when we do this we would we would seek a 40-year life okay so we're going to start over and so all these costs also include what they're going to require us to do to walterville as well because it's in the license that's true so we have budgeted for the re-licensing effort the and the impacts on lieberg it's only right we should

36:08 i'll just chime in real quick on that commissioner brown you're absolutely correct because libra and walter are licensed together under one ferc license walterville does need to be considered we have kept this analysis focused on lieberk at this point however we do recognize that there um that ultimately if particularly if a decommissioning scenario is chosen we will need to consider um what that means for walterville as well like likewise for the return to service scenarios so we envision doing a similar analysis on walterville following a decision on labor so in closing these costs could be significantly higher than what we're looking at because we're just looking at leeward they fert turns around says you could do the same thing to walter bill or you i mean last time when we did it we didn't have any of these issues it was 150

36:53 million 140 million and so i'm just doing the math if we don't have any seismic issues just to redo walter bill could be hit another 50 or 70 million and we have a separate set of studies underway to look at all some of the same questions that we're trying to answer for labor uh walter bill as a next step i appreciate that thank you i'm done others yeah thank you thanks for the presentation um yeah i guess kind of my questions we're going for the licensing so we're going to like the for return to service the 238 million dollars

37:38 would give us return to service nine megawatts of power at bieber and a license through 2076. just one correction correction i think it's six-man loss for this partial return to service nine megawatts for the average bag once you have it yeah return full full return to service back to where we started was 238 the other one was 186 or something like that we are making some assumptions on what we would be able to what licensed term

38:24 we would be able to get it's all again part of a negotiated process with stakeholders and regulatory agencies and so none of that is certain so there's a fair amount of uncertainty associated with uh what we would ultimately end up with with a new license so i just want to make sure that that is not forgotten no no i heard uncertainties mentioned about 19 presentations yes and that makes me very confident in a wise and certain decision on this uh it's it's going to be very challenging so i look forward to getting more of the information that you asked us to hold off on our decisions until we have those for our opinions and do we have

39:09 those decisions but um thank you been here um thank you i look forward to getting more uh information as well and if anybody's familiar with the show cutthroat kitchen where there's always like a little twist i feel like that's what happens every time we get a presentation on this um it just gets more and more complicated or i always expect there's gonna be more clarity in each iteration and it just seems to like there's always like some other twists so anyway hopefully it will get clearer or at least the options will um

39:58 echo that was the uh coupling of walterville and so that's a that's a huge issue that's been overlooked um so i really appreciate you bringing that up uh the only other thing that i was curious about you said that there were the two uh pieces the inflationary side and the discount rate they were conversely um kind of situated but it seems like in the short term they're not i mean we're seeing we're seeing rates actually increase at the same time as inflation is increasing in the short term so it's the expectation over time that those will adjust down and that this is a long enough time frame that will balance itself because it's over the idea is that the inflation increases

40:43 those future costs but then we're discounting them back at a higher rate as well somewhat offsets the sort of okay great thank you for that clarification okay okay matt we have another problem uh yeah so first uh thank you for the tbl analysis it's helpful to have kind of a full comprehensive picture of the things that we should all be considering here also thank you for the economic analysis that every time that i learn more things so i appreciate the way this is done the way it's presented um the link to walter walterville is um super interesting to me in terms of how we make our decision as a board and

41:28 um i know your this crew has already got a full plate and then some um and i wonder if if we could get some kind of sense of what information might be available to us during our discussion in october about how we might consider walterville as we're thinking about leigh berg like you know how how interconnected are they if we decide one are we automatically deciding the other um i know it's uncertain um but i guess kind of some guidance as to the level of uncertainty a level of clarity if we can just have some kind of sense of what information you'll have available to us in october that would be helpful

42:15 we can work on explaining some of the implications of the libre decision on walterville that'd be super helpful john b and then i have equivalent too go ahead first i just so i want to make sure that we throw another 200 250 million in debt on this with no revenue to upset it does that change our debt covenants our you know our debt coverage ratios and we're not able to maybe make them and we lose our bond rating is that a real possibility that was one of the economic impact factors that we identified and maybe deborah you can join in on that so anytime we borrow money and impacts our debt service coverage we have talked with our financial advisors at piper jaffrey about any

43:02 concerns they have about borrowing on a non-revenue generating property and i think we are okay there the debt service coverage though will be um it's something that we're going to have to keep our eye on for sure it looks like frank would like to comment president brown um part of the rate impact is driven by our requirements to maintain our debt service coverage so when you see a rate impact some of that is driven for a number of reasons you have to create the revenue to create the debt service coverage you need to execute the project so the answer is yes the answer is yes we're going to keep our rating and to do that we have to be willing to raise rates to do this

43:47 thank you yeah so that kind of goes back i'm looking at the slide that shows the compounded rates and incremental funding so on return to service number two and alternative number three we're looking at 21 or 11 that's over 17 years not over the total re-licensing okay but that would be longer than 17 years correct so i guess that's what that's what i'm not clear on 21 would be a 1.2 year rate increase per year um but

44:34 if that's going out and then the other thing i heard you say although i didn't see it in the text was that you anticipated our rate increases would be 83 percent without this over that same 17 years right so so we're going from 83 to 101 increase over 17 years if we do return to service 2 or 94 increase if we're talking the other one oh my way in so the those are compounded so if you take that 83 and you were to look to divide it over that number of years it averages about three and a half percent per year eighty-three percent

45:19 three percent that's that's based on our normal capital projections we're trying to be somewhere in that three percent range so that's where the eighty-three percent come so each one of these would add a percent between between three quarters and one percent one that happened those would add on top of that and um the reason that it doesn't cover the full 70 year period is that you need to start recovering that earlier and once that's added into your rate base it stays there it's not like it it falls off so that whatever that accumulated compounded it it remains over the life of whatever you're financing which could be 25 30 35 years another piece of information that would be helpful for me

46:05 is industry-wide what what people think the rates increases will be i mean if if we're if we're on the low end of what regionally wise rate increases are going to be that may help me make a decision to go to a higher cost one if if you know if rates regionally are going up five percent over that time and we're looking at three point diagonal that would be helpful too we'll get you a specific answer to that um the the impression is that based on our principles and trying to make sure our rates are in line with inflation i would be surprised if that's out of line with with other utilities

46:51 what is different is when you pack on top of that things like this project which is something that a cost that has been um incurring over a number of decades that we're now having to to pay for so that would be an incremental up and above what we're seeing from bonneville which is included in that that 83 as well as a sort of a normal escalation on on top of capital so that first part is probably fairly normal it's the the packing of extra baggage on top of that that is is going to be unusual for us the final thing is second source considered into that three and a half percent rate increase no that's um this

47:38 is only the electric um so the water side is um a different calculation that was included in the long-term financial plan that we visited um president brown i just i just wanted to mention one thing since it came up specifically around walterville what i think we can do is differentiate between which walterville issues will create differences between the alternatives there might be some walter bill issues that are there independent of of which alternative is selected and then where it matters we can highlight um how and where it would matter between sort of alternative one versus alternative three or just just to highlight what those issues are

48:23 um and when everybody's done i do have a question for the board that that i'd like to get some feedback on i think as long as staff has do you have what you need from us so reason good okay um you know one of the things that i wanted to see if we could get a little bit of clarity on is that we have the objective to work with you and understand as much as we can about the impacts of the community and and our customers at some point uh this year i wanted to find out from the board whether you're looking from management for an assessment um without a recommendation or whether what we

49:10 ultimately bring back to you is a recommendation it is a recommended course of action going forward is this do you want an assessment and you can decide or do you want manageable people with you after going through all this after hearing you working with you on this working with the community this is the course of action that we would recommend do you want a recommendation or an assessment i guess that's my question i want to go first assessment i'm fine if you just bring us the information such a big decision have to do a lot to vet that with the public and so i'm going to have to give us as many details as possible about the pros and cons of each

49:57 section and then others have a difference yeah i'd like to add some uncertainty and tell you i'd like to give you that answer next week when we meet because i got to stew on the implications of that question i'd like an assessment and a recommendation i mean people we kind of to me we're supposed to reflect community values but i don't know anything about the technical stuff per se you guys do this that you and your staff and just because you give us recommendation doesn't mean we have to follow and so we still get i mean we're not afraid to i think this board has got enough i agree behind us to where if you say do alternative one we say no we want three we'll do it but i i don't want to

50:43 foreclose having recommendation from a group of what i think are highly trained experts to give us because this is this is the biggest decision i'll ever make and this board i think will ever make i mean hundreds of millions of dollars and you know we're strapping the future with what the past has done and there's no revenue from it so i think it's very important so i would like a recommendation that doesn't mean we're going to buy it but i'd still like to see what you think about what your option is i would also like a recommendation i think that um i don't know if there's just going to be like as a group you give one recommendation but i'm really curious of how all of you think about this i mean you're the ones who are really delving

51:28 into the details and we can ask our questions um so maybe with nuance too because you might not all think the same thing i don't know if you're allowed to differ from each other when you're here are we allowed to differently that's weird i mean it it really helps me to hear how you all think about it as well because your perspective is so different than ours that would be being confident thinking about making a decision um yeah i think i'm kind of in alignment with

52:15 brown although i think a recommendation in getting to mindy's thing perhaps ranking a little bit maybe this is our this is our top tier recommendation this would be our second tier recommendation would might be helpful especially if they're close and then the other thing that probably should be considered that if you're giving a recommendation that general manager should have to uh be an elected official so that that decision can be recalled at the ballot box

53:01 i don't i you know i only think i think it takes three votes to recall me but you know i think i think a record i think the the hybrid approach goes well i think we are like like john said i think that i've got a feeling that i may come down different than what staff's recommendation is and i have seen in the past elected officials come down opposite of staff recommendations on numerous occasions most times it doesn't work out very well but i may be willing to to go that route if if that's what i feel my conscience says so thank you

53:48 frank i think so um you know i i appreciate the fact that there are a lot of nuances to this we're we're asking for a direction you know going forward um there will be nuances to it and we want to help educate the board as to what those are what mitigation can take place because we we do understand that this is this is a complicated issue there there is expertise that this will trigger internal debates by the way which is really healthy to have um it's healthy to have because it allows you to explore the differences i think is what you were calling those um which are very reflective of of differences within the community as well

54:34 so i think what we'll do is as we'll position this that based on discussions and feedback from the board based on information from the community as well as internal analysis that we can provide some guidance and some recommendations to the board fully knowing that you're the board making the decisions ultimately on this direction and we want to ensure that you have what you need if if we don't bring you a recommendation or the information to support that recommendation then you should send us back uh to do some more work so that's that's another alternative you don't have to agree or disagree you can say we need some more information to do this so

55:19 we're going to go into that with our eyes quite a little bit but i appreciate the feedback saying better late than wrong so thank you uh sonia that was the dissenting opinion i just wanted to clarify that i very much appreciate all the staff's opinion it was more to the point that it's going to be such a monumental issue that it's really on us but and i'm fine with the recommendation coming back that's absolutely fine and i value the opinion there but ultimately it will be on us to make that and it does seem like it's going to be a doozy so i appreciate all of you going through that process too to bring us a sort of recommendation i also feel like if you've done the work

56:05 and bring this the pros and cons to the extent that i trust that you will that the recommendation will follow i could be wrong but um it's usually when i walk away with the presentations that you provide so that was fine thank you thank you so so good okay thank you very much thank you agenda item number eight irp resource profiles and performance mega man and aaron

57:09 good evening commissioners i'm megan i'm here with ben ulrich we have aaron bush on the phone sign example of the questions later as you'll recall we are here to talk about goal number five and to deliver a public draft of the integrated resource plan in december we come to you and talked about con consumption characteristics earlier in the year we had some small group discussions and last week we provide us we played a portfolio game tonight we're going to talk about uh different types of resources and their characteristics and then in november we're going to uh have a work session and put everything together and come with some portfolio options that we can discuss and then in december we'll be providing that

57:55 public draft so i'm gonna hand it over to ben to talk about research characteristics great thanks megan so tonight we're here to talk about those new resource options that you have might consider as part of our future portfolio and the characteristics of those candidate resources as we've said there's no perfect low-cost low-carbon highly flexible resource option out there but instead we're evaluating a mix of resources as a hypothetical portfolio tonight we're going to talk about the characteristics of these resources individually bear in mind that we're only discussing hypothetical new resource options and not specific generators or power purchase contracts we worked in collaborations with the consultants at e3 the leading energy consulting firm to develop a list of candidate resources that are commercially operational today or likely

58:42 to be operational within the next 10 years the board backgrounder provided in the appendix a new re the new resource options under consideration the energy cost and carbon attributes of each resource type this is much too small to read on the slide it's just for reference in the table showing key performance characteristics we focused on direct or just scope one carbon emissions associated with the generation of electricity some may want to consider total life cycle emissions but these upstream and downstream carbon emissions are not associated or not are outside the scope of this irp although we didn't include those as explicit attributes in the appendix we know that the board may want to consider other environmental factors like the

59:28 impacts on fish and wildlife or social justice considerations in future decision making we believe that as the irp focuses our strategy in the years ahead there'll be an opportunity to begin considering additional criteria as the irp helps us narrow in on those best-fit resources in addition eweb's triple bottom line decision making framework be applied during the research procurement process to make sure that our energy supply matches our community values as we look to build a future resource portfolio we're trying to meet eweb's needs at the least cost so we want to be sure to break down two key cost performance metrics that were included in that attribute table levelized cost of energy simply divides the lifetime cost of a resource by the lifetime power generation this cost

1:00:14 metric includes capital investment financing costs taxes and operating and maintenance costs associated with the resource levelized cost of energy does not include decommissioning costs or transmission costs this metric is helpful for considering comparing resources but it's highly dependent on the assumed power generation it also ignores the seasonality and timing of energy production which for eweb as a winter peaking utility the ability of a resource to generate during our 8 am morning winter peaks is really important second metric tries to consider resources value in a way that levelized costs might ignore the cost of peak capacity contribution looks at the cost of building a resource divided by the peak capacity contribution that that resource provides

1:01:00 this metric changes by season and considers how a resource could be used to contribute towards grid reliability we thought that looking at both these metrics is a helpful way for the board to consider the potential value of resources and how some may be ideally suited to meet energy or capacity needs or some combination of the two so let's dive into those future candidate resource options epa is eweb's largest provider of energy and capacity today it provides services services to eweb through two distinct products block and slice block product provides a fixed quantity of power for every hour within a given month with the slice product eweb receives a fraction of what the bpa system produces and has flexibility over when that power is generated and delivered

1:01:46 today we use slice to ramp up and down to meet changes in our daily demand slices a flexible product but does vary based on the water year that we're having and requires staff to manage that flexibility chart to the right illustrates how the two products work together on a typical winter day with the block in blue remaining fixed over that 24-hour period and the slice changing up and down each hour based on our demand our existing contract with bpa expires in 2020 and there are concerns that bpa's ability to provide power to eweb in the future will be limited to fish passage and other environmental litigation as as a conservative assumption this irp is assuming that epa will not be able to provide more power to eweb in the future as our loads grow

1:02:31 for a reference case we are modeling the block and slice products as they are today after adjusting for rate increases and inflation however we believe that the 2024 irp will need to do a much deeper dive on the bpa product offerings as negotiations begin to provide us more clarity around those future bpa product choices moving on to wind so we partnered with e3 to estimate the costs and energy profiles of new generation technology and for wind e3 created hourly energy profiles future wind projects based on a sampling of five different states and five sub-regions of oregon using data from the national renewable energy laboratory in rail as you can see on the table to the left the annual capacity factors vary by

1:03:17 reason by region excuse me the higher the capacity factor the more energy that a wind farm could produce utility scale wind farms provide low levelized cost of energy and do provide some winter capacity or some summer capacity depending on the location of the wind farm we'll see that we did include offshore wind on our list of candidate resources but it should be noted that it costs nearly three times as much as onshore wind in the near term the cost of wind has increased due to inflation supply chain issues the e3's cost projections show that in the long term the cost of wind is still expected to decline slowly over the study period the biggest risk of wind energy is the need to develop new transmission

1:04:02 because of the best sites for wind or far from e-wood loads we're assuming that the true cost of energy will be increased due to transmission costs we'll be adding in estimated transmission costs to each of these locations to account for this solar also also has geographic diversity but maybe less so than wind in our analysis the biggest difference is assuming solar production either coming from east of the cascades or located here in eugene utility scale solar energy can be produced at low cost solar's peak capacity contribution in the winter is very low in addition utility scale solar also has transmission cost risk associated just like wind because the ideal sighting is often far away from eugene in addition to modeling utility scale

1:04:49 solar in multiple locations staff have included community and residential solar in eugene as a candidate resource overall community solar projects are estimated to cost double compared to utility scale solar and residential rooftop solar is estimated to cost anywhere between four to ten times as much as utility scale the primary difference for this is due to the lower capacity factoring eugene which you can see in that chart at the bottom of the slide community and residential solar do not have the transmission costs associated with utility scale solar and community solar programs do offer opportunities to consider diversity equity and inclusion in the program offerings which make those projects appealing however it should be noted that community solar programs would require some investments

1:05:35 in our billing systems to implement so let's talk about batteries utility scale batteries are starting to appear in regional irps as a way to integrate the anticipated build of renewable renewable resources lithium-ion battery costs have declined dramatically in the last decade and are expected to continue decline another 30 percent the next 10 years in addition batteries can be placed within e-web service territory which reduces transmission risk in the chart at the bottom of the slide you can see an example that solar energy production can be complemented with a battery to meet the evening demands in california this example can illustrate how a solar plus battery solution could meet summer peaks however our reliability challenges in the northwest are different than california because

1:06:20 most utilities west of the cascades are winter peaking eweb's new resource options include a four hour lithium ion battery which means that the resource's ability to meet those peak events is four hours this isn't always sufficient to meet those multi-day cold fronts that can drive our winter peaks unfortunately longer duration storage lacks market availability and remains much more expensive than four-hour storage even with limited the limited capacity contribution in the northwest batteries are still one of the lowest capacity only resource types that we have modeled among the candidate resources lowest cost excuse me let's talk about thermal generation natural gas generators are commonly used in electricity sector because they have relatively low upfront costs provide

1:07:06 base load capacity and have the flexibility to meet our peak loads including those multi-day cold fronts all thermal generation has some fuel cost risk natural gas generators today still use mostly fossil fuels and are subject to gas supply risks which is front of mind this year with the war in ukraine putting pressure on domestic gas supply oregon and washington have legislation which prohibits or discourages the building of new natural gas generation which makes development risk for those projects high despite these challenges e3 and other energy thought leaders have found that natural gas plants play an important role in maintaining grid reliability as more as more renewable energy is added to the grid these plants have the potential to remain idle more often and could be used as peaking only resources

1:07:52 there are two types of natural gas generators that we've modeled simple cycle and combined cycle simple circuit cycle type turbines are less efficient are less efficient but have lower capital costs and more flexibility whereas combined cycle are more efficient but are a little bit less flexible and can take longer to come online biomass and cogeneration thermal generators are very site specific and evaluation of those hypothetical resources can be nuanced the fuel mix can be waste products like woody biomass or a combination of waste by products and natural gas the emissions level of those co-generators could be difficult a subjective debate depending on the methodology of carbon accounting and the unit's contribution towards local air pollution typically those generators

1:08:38 have qualified for renewable energy credits as part of oregon rps laws overall these plants could operate in a similar way similar way to natural gas generators but there are often other operational considerations other than just the production of electricity for those resources we've also included small modular nuclear reactors as a candidate resource in this irp these modern facilities have a much smaller footprint and passive safety technology to find designed to be a fail-safe in the event of an emergency included smrs and our modeling work is a good proxy for firm generation that's also carbon free the carbon policies continue to become more stringent will be a point at which those more expensive emerging cleaning technologies become financially viable

1:09:27 for demand response programs they're similar to battery batteries and that they can provide important peaking capacity but have a limited duration it can also help defer investments and transmission and distribution infrastructure we've compiled a list of likely likely dr programs that you have might consider in the future all demands response programs offer financial incentives to customers to change their electricity consumption i've categorized them into pricing programs or event based programs pricing programs give customers a price signal and use rates to influence behavior these cust these programs don't require formal sign ups and have lower cost to implement you can exclude the cost of advanced metering and billing systems that you need to have in place event based programs use software to

1:10:12 allow the utility to lower energy use within the community during specific hours of the day these programs typically are only dispatched four to six times per season for just a few hours and often require the utility to offer incentives to get customers to sign up there's only a limited amount of demand response potential in our community these programs can be costly our modeling shows that demand response is part of our least cost portfolio we would want to consider doing a demand response potential assessment study to better understand the quantity of energy that could be shifted and refine these cost estimates conservation is the last resource we're going to be discussing tonight the last irp the board prioritized energy efficiency as the preferred resource to meet our organic load growth for the irp we're modeling conservation potential

1:10:59 six different cost bins for both residential and commercial this method will allow us to determine the tipping point at which energy efficiency is no longer the least cost solution to meet our needs there are some small amounts of very low cost energy efficiency but historically programs in the more expensive levelized cost bins have been implemented due to their peak savings potential for example conservation programs geared towards ductless heat pumps can help replace inefficient electric heating which contributes to our peaks today conservation is part of our least cost strategy a conservation potential assessment would help us better estimate the amounts of conservation still available in our community and refine these cost estimates as well so with that we can open up for discussion

1:11:44 we provided some key metrics from the appendix for reference on the slide if the board finds that useful for discussion thank you thank you very much now we just took a drink out of a 500 that's a lot of information thank you um questions comments sure i'll start thank you for the presentation that was a lot but i thought you were pretty clear and boiled things down to the bare essentials thank you also for the memo because this is super clear and out of all the details so well communicated much appreciated um i really only have two thoughts at this point um yes i think a conservation

1:12:29 potential assessment would be very valuable i was reading through this we saw that our current estimates are based on some um regional estimates which i think is useful but for our purposes of planning energy i feel like the you know more concrete more localized study would be valuable and the same with the command response potential it feels like my perspective we need to have as as granular data as we possibly can our irp so that's my opinion that's all i got christian's comments mindy well i agree with that that's what i was going to say is to me it seems obvious that we should really look into the fan response into conservation and try to max those out

1:13:15 especially given the information that you've presented and this board has set a target of having 95 i think it's 95 carbon-free electricity so yes yeah so my my question is when you come back to us like can we do that based on all the you know stipulations and fatal flaws kind of in every every category that you've given how how do we make that happen i know you're going to be asking us to give input but that's my question back to you like what is that what does that look like your question is about the 95 carbon free and how do we make it happen it's going to be um

1:14:02 it's it's in the program it's it's we're only going to bring you portfolios that meet at 95 i like the game we played that's going to be the criteria and we will not bring you anything that doesn't meet that that criteria frank i just wanted to clarify one thing just just for the board is that when we turn this crank there's going to be requirements to that such as the 95 percent and we'll take a look and bring a number of portfolios back to the board and those portfolios will have different characteristics in some cases those may lead to a certain degree of demand response for example um or conservation

1:14:48 as another example um what's what's going to be interesting is when we get those back there might conservation might be one of those things that boils to the top and says conservation below 50 is definitely part of this portfolio we need to pursue it that's where another step would be well how what what's the total potential for that fifty dollars so some of this informs the irp and some of it comes as a result of the irp the irp sort of puts this big stew together and if you have to go investigate you know the kind of vegetables a little bit further that's that's maybe a next step so not all of this goes into the first

1:15:38 some of this comes out and says oh and i'll use conservation as an example we need to achieve so much conservation and meet all these needs and and that's the portfolio that that will be preferred we then have to go figure out what's the potential for that fifty dollar conservation and how do we how do we achieve that so it is a little bit iterative um but it's one of those things where they'll probably be multiple portfolios that that meet the criteria and that's where we can talk to the board about what's the commonality between those those are sort of low-hanging fruit that we should be doing no matter what that goes into the action plan and then some of the other ones are what are the differences and how do we tease out the differences further

1:16:26 i'd like to jump in i just have a couple questions and tutorials maybe understand it so when we talk about transmission and things like nuclear these things don't exist new transmission lines and nuclear plants don't exist and they take 10 to 20 years to prevent why are we considering them as resources now well first of all when this transmission is so site-specific that when we get to a point um if our gaps are being filled with let's say we see that a small modular nuclear is the right lowest cost resource to fill a gap then we will go out and then we will look at what are the options and where are they and then we can see if we have transmission existing transmission capability to bring it home um so i'm

1:17:12 thinking about the time frame if if nuclear facility is 10 to 20 years or whatever it may be and that this is a 10-year plan i'm just thinking about the logistics if we're considering a resource that doesn't exist and we're going to use it to fill a gap but the probability of it existing probably is slim and doesn't that given i mean what's it taken 17 years to build that last transmission line is still not permitted no i completely guess i think it takes a long time to build transmission sorry question yeah all of the resources that are identified here are going to be available within the planning with the small nuclear and small modular reactors uh the present projects um are looking

1:17:59 at early 2030s so we aren't looking at some studies will look at sort of mystery resources we're not we're not concerned with that the the issue with transmission i'll say near-term versus long-term your term there is scarcity in the transmission system your term is probably a cost issue long-term is probably a build issue so depending on the resources that are selected we'll have to identify the risk associated with that and it could be either a cost risk or it could even be an access risk which would be more of a longer term thank you got a couple other to hear from sonia i just wanted to say that i'm very sorry

1:18:44 that i was not able to be here last week and my vacation january so i'll look forward to watching the video and seeing what i can clean for that not gonna be as hands-on but i'll get what i can out of it sounded like it was a really good event thank you for all your work on this but i also think it's very clear maybe yeah so i i guess i need some clarity as to what my role as a commissioner is going to be in this um because the exercise we went through the other day was great but i feel that that is something that staff is going to be doing and bringing us back these

1:19:29 recommendations i think that you know we've kind of already set some sideboards when we said we want 95 carbon-free portfolio i mean i mean i guess the question i have is what more sideboards are you going to want from us and are we am i particularly the best person to give those answers or the people that deal with this on the right path on a daily basis the better wants to do that i mean i i can give some feeling that yeah i want to go this way or that way but when we were putting our things in the work session you know we

1:20:15 threw them out there in that first round we were sky high off the board and then you know we narrowed it down and narrowed it down i don't feel that i will even even with the games that we played and all these backgrounders that i'm going to be able to be able to make that the best decision better than the people that are sitting up there so i guess my question is what are you going to be looking for from us specifically are you going to say i want no natural gas or i mean where what am i going to be giving you guys when it comes out i think i think it's a really good question um let me take a couple examples when when we come to you in in november

1:21:02 in the work session let's say we have 10 different portfolios and they meet all of the criteria already and we have one portfolio that may say we need our least cost resource and we we have a 25 megawatt gap in four years and uh and that's energy efficiency another one may say hey you you can put a little gas in there in start you know in three years and and you're going to look at those and you're going to and you're going to say okay what are the common themes between between all of the portfolios wow it seems like we may need to be prepared um do we want to be prepared for gas or do we want to make a statement about that do we want to be prepared for storage because that's the least cost i don't know i don't know what it's going to

1:21:47 come out but let's just say it says you need this cost is going to be energy efficiency well then we'll see what is the what are the bids that are the least um uh the least expensive and so but it but as a board you would look at what are the themes that you're seeing and what are some actions that we might take and you might say i don't think there's enough information about energy assistance so why don't you guys go out and do a study so that would be an action item that we might have is to do this conservation potential uh and that so so we would do that and then um we would have uh you would give us direction on how you would want us to do it and then in the 20 irp in 2024 then we'd come back and we'd report out to you how did it go what did we do and then what are we doing as a result of it and we'd incorporate that

1:22:33 in the next irp so it's a um it's around uh about it's about helping you guys deciding what direction you want us to go in let's say you guys um as a result of the portfolios you want to research more batteries you're like wow batteries kept coming up in here so you might give us you can give us directions um to staff to go out and do in our rfi to collect information to find out what it cost and what what was viable um or you could have us do uh just do some research and come back it's really what you're the theme that you find i i think that was a great response i'll i'll be a little bit more direct with you because i think it's a really good one

1:23:18 because i just asked when you watched the last issue i asked the board uh what you were looking for us on liber uh turn around is fair question um we're not going to come to the board and ask your approval on an irp plan that's that's not the intent what we are going to look for is that there's potentially multiple multiple pathways up this mountain and from representing the public perspective what guidance can can you provide to us on these the trade-offs between these these paths um that's what we're going to be looking for we could come up with a scenario that was super cheap and it was all hydro and natural gas well um and it maybe it accomplishes all

1:24:05 those things and there's another option that might be a combination of three or four things there's going to be pros and cons to risks there might be some things that are common across those and we all sort of look at each other and go gosh it really makes sense to to create an action plan because that's really workable in all the portfolios so it's really a guidance really good we're going to look for guidance we're also based on our approach to this a lot of organizations actually create committees with the public on irps our approach is to work with you and then go out for a public comment period to see to see what people think of it we actually have the opportunity to do

1:24:51 that because we don't have a major resource decision in the next couple years the most urgent one is probably what products and what electives we take from bonneville that we can't model in this because we don't know what that is yet if we will probably know within the next year or two so that's kind of another another step but this is really about guidance for us and one last thing on the energy options i didn't see else put in there at all and we're talking about doing a hydrogen project right next door is there some reason that hydrogen isn't going to be

1:25:37 an option within the next 10 years we haven't modeled it as an explicit resource but when i said like the small modular reactor was a good example of kind of clean emerging tech that's a good proxy resource and so that's an example of where our modeling kind of picks that that's something that i could see hydrogen kind of fitting in that clean clean firm generation category but still kind of emerging and that could also lead into storage as well i mean the battery has four hour storage but we got a 100 000 cubic feet of hydrogen stored in a pipe that could be a lot more than four hours stored energy i think that's a really good example of valuable feedback right right now

1:26:23 because i would see hydrogen as something we should probably model generically in the in the storage category as opposed to the smr category and that will be within the 10-year window um there there's a number of different hydrogen projects and um you know work going on across the west for that so that's something that we will add into the to the model from a storage perspective thank you very much good presentations you have what you need from us thank you thank you thank you very much the next agenda item number nine located in red merchant customer service and payment services you endeavor

1:27:33 good evening commissioners i'm greg kelleher customer operations manager here with angelique greel that's her service supervisor and we have hearing billing operations manager on the screen we're here to talk about selecting an interim site for in-person services to get feedback on the process and provide you with an update on payment options that we're developing so as you know in 2020 uh the law of the united headquarters which i guess would be very 500 fourth location was closed through the code 19 precautions and as a result we

1:28:19 streamlined some ways to conduct business with our customers over the phone mail to your dropbox sometimes appointment outside depending in person when in person is required lobbying was permanently closed to customers in 2021 and later that year we launched the customer portal to provide some additional options for customers to combat transactions customers may still desire an in-person visit if they don't have access to technology or the internet there's a complex billing situation that's better explained in person if they would like some assistance signing up for or using the portal and if there's some kind of a

1:29:04 communication issue or challenge and then on top of that there are several scenarios where an in-person visit is currently required when we have when we need a wet signature something notarized identity verification this is something like social security verifying when there's a need to exchange paperwork and it's something that's urgent time sensitive when a customer doesn't have access to email when they need to pay their bill in cash or when they need to pick up a key for a water station those are two examples today we strictly limit those appointments and we do about 20 a week if we follow the customer preferences and expanded that a bit we would be

1:29:50 looking at 75 participating 75 appointments so a potential interim location would bridge the gap until we develop some long-term plans for what we'd like our intern in-person customer presence to be two to three years next slide please hear me out good evening everyone marianne mcelroy billing operations manager as we navigate these changes to where we serve our customers we are also looking at how we can continue to provide the billing services during this time of transition and ultimately provide a larger range of options for our customers in the future

1:30:36 eweb will continue to offer cash payment options we are working with our current payment processor to extend the opportunity for e-web customers to pay e-web bills in cash or via debit card at any walmart location we're expecting the service to be available in the coming weeks the walmart bill pay program will be new for both employees and customers a full communication and training plan will be complemented with the launch of this program next slide please okay the current dropbox will remain at this property until the an alternative input in person site is available for customers as seen in the photos on this slide

1:31:21 billing operations continues to work closely with customer operations to evaluate best practices security and functionality of the existing dropbox service with a focus on minimally disruptive transition to an alternative in-person location it is our plan to communicate changes about dropbox options in concert with other customer education materials about locations and in-person service offerings dropbox is a popular service for property management companies who prefer to drop off checks it is eweb's intention to offer a dropbox option at future in-person sites next slide please

1:32:06 as i've said before interim location would initially serve about 75 customers per week by appointment as we're developing other cash options this facility would not need to handle cash and that simplifies several things for us however it's a good place to add a non-cash drop box as marian has mentioned and possibly a future atm style payment kiosk they also consider some level of walk-in service just for logistics such as safety lunch breaks and unplanned absences we would put about three to four customer service analysts here plus a leader or supervisor and those who aren't currently serving a customer in person will be taking calls or doing other work next slide please

1:32:52 so these are the the criteria that staff have developed to consider for an in-person location for this business purpose so i'll go through each of these location should be near our customers easy to find on or near main road we did a 2021 survey of former lobby patrons and just to give you some idea of where they're coming from about 36 percent from west eugene twenty percent from third street in central ut and then on so far about eighteen percent from river road santa clara at about fourteen percent from south eugene uh do you mean ten percent are either

1:33:37 unspecified um convenience should be easy to access by car by bus by bike on foot um should have some convenient parking and we have a dropbox there and atm style klc should be available 24 7. security should be visible well-lit safe to ingress and egress and in some sort of a popular populating area cost that are below average do you know your standard release cost per square foot added with space workstations reception area restrooms break room a conference room or an office where we could meet with third parties

1:34:22 would be a plus that's just there's a lot of times when staff might need to meet here and it's it might be more convenient to have an easier location for that so we're looking at a minimum of 800 square feet here so readiness many kinder available soon minimal construction is what we're after flexibility short term is desired two to three years uh and some flexibility in the space for changing evolving needs um there's no features are plus there's a variety that might add value for us customer restrooms in some kind of a common area maybe chargers shops or restaurants like maybe like

1:35:07 stuff that customer might visit anyway um our employee could go to lunch that kind of thing is just that's kind of a plus next slide please so here's an example of a proposed selection matrix that we might use here staff will review several sites and then score the criteria from each site from zero to five um all want to meet all criteria so something that really doesn't do well in one criteria um squaring like a zero or a one we would eliminate that site and in this example besides t and d considered because it failed one of the necessary criteria furthermore if the site didn't do well

1:35:53 on three or more criteria in this example c and d but also not consider those because we need something that does reasonably well so in this example we would look to consider negotiating with the owner of side a or site uh next slide is looking at a total cost over three years of around 230 000 range uh not including a future atm style kiosk um the cost includes construction if needed a monthly lease and maintenance

1:36:40 next slide please so sum it up investigate several possible sites read the criteria for each site eliminating those sites that aren't really all around uh and then look to enter into these negotiations with a site that meets all our criteria and then um bring that back into the workforce approval of release next slide please so at this point um like some any questions you might have and to give you get you feedback on our select process and thoughts you might have them

1:37:26 yeah thank you for that um i have a question about the number of cash paying customers we have do you roughly have an idea of how many people paid each month marianne do you have those numbers handy i don't have them handy but i can uh get the information and get back to you for sure but i guess i'm just is it a lot of people is it not a lot of people i'm like do you have any idea what the off the top if i just had i don't have a refrigeration in front of me but if i had to guess i would say um 50 to 100 month they fall into a couple of categories one is um anyone in the cannabis business they're they're dealing in cash so those are particular sums of cash or the other is

1:38:12 customers who don't have bank accounts don't believe in bank accounts things like that so it's it's a sliver of our customers but it's fairly significant i guess that's the thing that kind of comes to mind like looking at some of these i don't know if the uh we're already doing the walmart bill pay with the two dollar convenience fee we're already doing that that's a proposed thing we haven't started it yet it's currently in planning i guess i just want to make sure when we come up with these policies like some people pay cash because um they might not they might be on the lower end of the economic spectrum and i would hate for them to like two dollars convenience fee for them might be a lot

1:38:58 um i mean you mentioned a bunch of different reasons why people might pay in cash but i just want to make sure that we're not disadvantaging people more because they're they're cash based only um and then if our in-person um options don't take cash then if somebody who is a cash only paying customer so they have to go to the walmart bill pay but then they have to come to another location to talk to somebody in person that's where the kiosk would come in yes i would cover that i was going to say that there's there's multiple there's a dropbox there would be a kiosk there would be walmart there's a number

1:39:44 of options but i was going to say the 50 to 100 is about right so it's about 50 to 100 months i have some updated information there just to sort of keep you all timely with stuff just to offer it so about 10 cash envelopes per day on average so far this year and we've only had less than 20 cash appointments this year to date so i definitely get the sensitivity um and this is an interim strategy we got to look at all kinds of options and so this is the beginning of a bigger conversation for sure yeah i totally understand that and i also know that it's complex like there's a lot of needs you're trying to balance but i just want to just discuss i just want to make sure that that one doesn't get lost because i

1:40:29 think that that two dollar fee could be a burden for some people we will process cash payments coming out of the dropbox and we see there's something there we highly discourage it and we make people know that we discourage it for security i'm going to jump in if i um i i just want to understand the math and the logistics you said 230 000 over three years i'm kind of doing the math three staff and a supervisor um that doesn't include that okay so 75 people uh five days a week eight hours a day that's less than two people an hour for four people what are they gonna do the rest of the day

1:41:15 they're gonna have their verizon laptops there they're going to be taking phone calls they're going to be doing that we don't have four people there proposed because we need four people for the appointments we have four people so that they can feel safe and comfortable so that if somebody called me sick we're not scrambling so that they can be properly supervised so they will be doing what they would normally do if they weren't in that location okay so my math is getting more like to 850 000 for this three three year deal if i burden it with sap you know average of fifty thousand dollars per person four people and then do that for three years and i'm just wondering if we've been doing this for the last two years without a location

1:42:01 what is the drive to do this now certainly i think there's two things there the first the first thing to address there is the 850 000 this is staff that we have on staff anyway we're not hiring new staff it's the same fte and they're going to be doing the same thing they're doing now these people are taking appointments currently at headquarters the problem is um headquarters is going away and we're no longer going to have that option so right now we have 20 customers a week we're being served at headquarters who will won't have a place to serve them after headquarters is gone so this is to replace that the additional 55 a week is if we're really strict on the criteria that we use for those 20 customers per

1:42:47 week to make sure that we minimize that that amount of customers that we're seeing that way but um we have heard customers express a desire and so we estimate now that we would be seeing 75 per month and that's very question yeah i just maybe just to plant the seed is if we're going to have these proposals we're going to make this decision on headquarters that we have a non-profit that has a financial challenge and we say okay this is just a three-year deal and we said well we'll rent back part of this to help them financially for three years is that an option that you guys have considered that we just stay there and we rent some space for customer service and help whoever there's non-profit hopefully if it's a non-profit let's say if somebody comes in and you know we say here instead of

1:43:33 giving 230 000 to some private sector we give it to this non-profit and help them that's definitely an option we would entertain okay i mean i just want to make sure before we go out and please the space that because we're making that decision here hopefully the next three or four months i just want to make sure that i don't know about timing frank sorry to feel that into the mix but i know if we can help somebody supplement rent um why give it to the private sector when we can give it if it helps somebody get over the hump and serve debt or make operating costs and we're in there and it's only three years we have it i think anything totally agree i think we're looking at this and part of the requirement here would be flexibility on exit for example we want to we want to have the ability to adjust given that we don't know right

1:44:21 now the dis the ultimate disposition of headquarters so this is this is definitely interim is to prepare for that but we also i think flexibility is probably one of the key criteria that we look at here but yeah absolutely if that makes sense we'll go there i'm sorry if that disrupts things but i'm just trying to think no it's it's so consistent with our thinking okay thank you so much other questions and comments sonia i appreciate all the different options and how we're trying to serve the community because i think that's really critical from an equity um perspective and lens i'm i'm curious if we through this process if like you know the city you do the library it's very close to public transportation if there's any

1:45:08 options there they have this i think the city has offices upstairs in the library building i don't know if there's been any discussions there but that's something that you know they would need to partner with us on well just have cases there and then maybe we have as many stuff maybe we would still i don't know um thank you for that um that's an interesting idea it's a certain consider looking into that i would say again that the staff are going to be on our payroll anyway these are existing staff we're not hiring you today for that um the other thing is going back to our criteria um what we need to do is meet all those

1:45:54 criteria in one of them is is convenience so so we'll be looking into are we meeting everyone's convenience criteria um an example is if you're arriving by automobile does it work for you so i would leave it at that just just saying um we need to make sure we meet these criteria if you have any suggestions for other criteria i'm sorry no just one last question on the walmart side so would it be would the staff that are walmart staff taking payments then for you yes okay and how does how will that training work is it a particular set of staff or

1:46:40 like any cashier what what did that look like i'm just curious how that will sure i can speak to that so this would be through not the cash register service team but the sort of like behind the counter service team that usually also offers their layaway services uh our payment processor has a very large extensive network of other utilities and they do transunion other types of payments so it wouldn't be where you do your point of sale but it would be sort of that enhanced customer service behind the counter additional services option there walmart is very familiar with this and has a training dialed in it is more on the eweb side that we would want to make sure we just understand how all the payments go through and the customer experience to do the actual sort of transactions of that nature

1:47:25 and just make sure that they're aware that they can only take payments they can't they're not answering any questions about bills and things yes they would be an e-web brand ambassador but they would not be eweb that's true so however we ensure that that's a good process for them and that doesn't end up reflecting badly in us that would be awesome but otherwise i appreciate that we're spreading it out and giving people different options yes and all they would need is the eweb customer number and so there is a certain part of all that that i think does make things a little easier but yes uh definitely appreciate what you're suggesting uh thanks for the presentation i appreciate this crew leaning in to make sure that we have uh in-person customer

1:48:12 options and it seems really important to me to make sure that we're providing an option for folks so thank you um and the only thought i have is on the the convenience side i guess i would echo some of the thoughts about downtown is if we're looking for um convenience for for people driving or taking bus um you know doing bus transfers can be a pain but if it's you know within a block or so of the bus station downtown to me that brings a lot of variety of people um i know that the city is at least in some conversation about buying the former llcc building so i suspect there's capacity there it seems like there are a number of partners right close to that

1:49:03 appreciate the conversation and the work that you think of providing that service other questions or comments thank you i'm going to respond a little bit to mr brown because i recall back when i was a younger lad having to interact with eweb to to pay my bill you know ride my bicycle down there because i didn't have a car to pay the bill because the next day i was gonna get shut off right and and there are people in our community that are at that point where it's like okay i've gotta go and i've gotta get this money to eweb tomorrow or they're going to print it off or i've got to go talk to the people at em to let them know that i get paid next

1:49:49 monday and please don't shut it off until next monday and that is something that i have done in person in the past it was a long time ago thank goodness i'm not in that position today but i know that there are people that are out there that are in that position and having face-to-face interaction is something that's very important you know i'm in the service industry and i think that we also are in the service industry here that's and you can't do service in my opinion on a phone train okay it's very important that we have it to me as a commissioner that we have an opportunity to have face to face as far as what some of the other commissioners have talked about as uh working in partnerships with some of our

1:50:36 other community uh either the city or the county um i know that one of the things you mentioned was the possibility of having a space that has public restrooms in it i know that the city of eugene has been strong public restrooms in the downtown core one because if you just have public restrooms without staff in that same building it becomes problematic but if you have a public restroom that is you know that will have staff there to kind of keep an eye on it maybe partnering with city of eugene or lane county i think might be a good option i know matt mentioned the lcc building in the city going in there

1:51:23 lcc is also going to be using there so the space constraints there might be tough but i know the public service building at lane county the city was in there before and has moved out and so there's plenty of extra space in the lane county public service building which is adjacent to the courthouse so i would i would say perhaps look to them i know that they're into short-term leases because that's how they did it with the city the city was in there for three years something that could be easily maintained with them so i would say look into these these uh partner agencies and try and leverage that to the best of our ability questions or comments right

1:52:09 thanks commissioners i i did just want to mention that we are because of the timing that was mentioned earlier with the headquarters building we are uh with this particular discussion looking to respond to a present need we fully suspect that or anticipate that we'll have a broader discussion with the board about a downtown presence in general and what kind of services we would plan to offer downtown and what kind of presence we really do want to have i think that'll inform um some of these other things as we progress through through things like prepay and some of the other options that we're talking about for customer choice going forward

1:52:55 this is in response to a timing issue and a need right now we will reach out to partner agencies but there's also expect that there might be a little bit broader discussion with the board about what kind of presence do we really want to have downtown and in what way and in what location and that type of thing so more to come on this issue over over time especially as we learn more about the disposition of the headquarters building say x headquarters building other questions or comments do you have what you need from us uh are you okay with the criteria with the score criteria sir i'm fine with it

1:53:40 others make sure you don't have anything more good thank you all right thank you very much we're scheduled for a 10-minute break so i'll adjourn we'll be back 10 minutes just a few minutes before

2:04:29 the next agenda item is number 11 potential death restriction for the riverfront property can't point anywhere else my apologies um that's gonna cost you three votes at least in your election all right well that's been great not these three votes three votes until the general election when i when i go public so um president brown the board was provided um

2:05:16 background information on this including uses and non-permitted uses for the present zoning of the of the headquarters building the purpose of this discussion was to give the board an opportunity to talk about this amongst commissioners whether there were additional items which you would choose as a board to to restrict going forward lead restriction does run with the land so this would potentially survive there are also potential restrictions that could be part of a purchase and sale agreement which might

2:06:01 be handled a little bit differently if there's a proposal that the board sees a particular risk with that we wanted to provide some restrictions going forward as to the future course relative to that proposal we could also do that so um this is really for the board to talk about if there's any restrictions that you would want to see or to ensure that staff would explore going forward you don't mind i'd like to give you a little background on why this is probably on the agendas because i'm on the committee that did that and i've got some experience in selling some of these and things like the ymca when 4j did it they have a criteria there's a deed restriction

2:06:46 that says it can only be used that are where uses are compatible with 4j because they have that but there's also reversion clause if the y doesn't um you know five years from now if it doesn't succeed and rather than selling it to somebody else the um it's a trick called the triggering event the poor j has a right to buy it back that's the same thing with kid sports they put a restriction on that when peace health sells properties they say no adult entertainment establishments no massage borrowers no adult book stores things such as that those are above and beyond because those are permitted uses in zoning to allow they're called retailers and there's no there's no differentiation or delineation on that and so i thought we might as well at

2:07:31 least have that conversation if that's something you want if you want if we sell the headquarters building this december and whoever buys it doesn't make it we want the right to buy it back we want them to sell it i mean they can sell it to anybody they want and they can be converted into condos or offices or some use that doesn't we are what we're trying to you know focus on and so i just want to make sure that we're aware of that that uh that once we sell it if we don't have an event or the right to buy it back first ride reviews or anything else they can sell it to anybody they can tear it down they can convert it into million dollar condos they could cover the opposite of whatever they want with it it's permitted in there so we want the right to buy it back

2:08:17 we want to put any restrictions on it that says we don't want particular uses that we don't feel would be compatible with either community values or things such as that and sonia i mean i would personally think that it would be a good idea to have a restriction for first right of refusal those that are i am curious his examples include failure to complete inability to obtain adequate financing if they weren't able to obtain adequate financing would not just mean that they didn't buy it from us or is there another way that they could have purchased it in some way but then it seems like that would be more of a failure to complete the development that's like tied in together yeah i

2:09:02 don't think that i mean we're going to we're not going to carry a contract i don't think we can and i think we're going to get cash and so then it will be ours we won't have any say in it or anything else in the future that could come in mr carlson is if they they bought the headquarters with a purpose in mind that we really understood they paid us but then failed to execute on the remaining of the finance necessary absolutely which is the deviation from the proposed plan which i also agree with i think it would be great for the deviation from the proposed plan um unsuccessful business venture it seems like that would lead to potential prosperity refusal

2:09:50 the the only thing in the deviation from the proposed plan is how do we measure how much deviation is too much what does that look like i mean if they say okay i'm going to put in this art this amazing art installation and they put in an art installation and a music store is that a deviation that's too much or how does that work like so i guess with some caveats deviation to propose plan you know it was in the community's interest to benefit this group but now it's not doing that at all um we need to i just need to think about how we put some clear side works on that so whatever happens with it um it would be clear um

2:10:35 and then i also like the idea of having a restriction against some of the other similar types of uh to what 4j did yeah i think i gave staff an example of what peace health did when they sold the blood bank on 700 block of east 13th they put restrictions in there no escort services no things like that it was pretty limited to about eight or ten restrictions they just didn't want that on property that's in close proximity block built so they just threw that deep restriction on them and um and so that was the end of this board and i just thought we could have the discussion and people will want that's that's okay too yeah so i've got your feedback and mindy

2:11:22 that sounds good to me i i i agree with what sonia said or the question she brought up and um i think it's important to have something in place so you're talking about having a limited range of uses similar to what we talked about and you're talking about maybe having a first right of refusal if they go to sell it to a third party that's you know that we have the first right to to negotiate to buy it back yeah and then the only other thing which i need to bring up if they deviate from the plan i mean i feel like this board here we're a pretty tight group i can't imagine we're going to nitpick little things but um yeah what does it mean to deviate from the plan if it's

2:12:08 well you know if i may just do the dialogue that's going to really be i mean because they're not going to be able to finance it if we put restrictions on that a lender will touch it and so we're going to have to be careful there i mean that's like saying helen's a piece of strength how we define it very very we can't answer it and so i think we're going to have to uh so part of this has to be good faith but uh and we have to look at the integrity of the people doing it i know a couple of groups that are coming up and they're they're solid people i mean if they say they're going to do it they've got the horsepower to do it and hopefully we'll make the right decision but future is hard to predict yeah we want to make sure how far we want to go with this i don't want to get into telling people well you said you were

2:12:53 going to do the arts but you only did music so therefore it's not the art site you know that's yeah you know i i think there so okay john i'm a little hesitant and i'm a little the reason i'm a little hesitant is well first off i think that there would have to be a a time specific i don't want an indefinite deed restriction on this piece of property if i'm buying if i'm buying a piece of property with an intent to use it and i use it to that extent for 10 years and and my needs and my changes have come across have have changed in that 10 years i don't want to be beholden to a elected board that was put the community's values 10 years ago

2:13:40 on my piece of property so i think that there needs to be some sort of a an end date to it if i were if i were to vote for it buying it back are we going to be in a position to actually say okay we we will buy it back that what the question second question is is at what price do we buy that back at do we have to pay for all the improvements that they've done or is it buy back at 15 million dollars or whatever the price that we sold it to them for it's the option i know that it's it's an option but so i mean

2:14:25 right of first refusal you know science center bison next week the encrypt they have financial problems every recession continues and they decide to sell it the developer that wants to put in multi-million dollar condominiums we want the right to uh at least negotiate with them to buy it back before they sell it and and i i i can do that to a certain extent maybe for the first five years but i don't if if i'm stepping up to that table and i've got that deed restriction i don't know what's going to happen in five years another restriction it's only if they go to sell it right but that's what i'm saying if i if i'm in business and i i think my business is going to succeed

2:15:12 and it doesn't succeed or it doesn't go the way i want beholden to a more that i don't know and and that may not be the board that's sitting here i i just have i have concerns about an open-ended deed restriction i'm just gonna put that on there number one right first refusal is not a deed restriction it's just a right if they sell it and they say they're going to sell it to well no i know but we're talking about we're talking about right to match that i i understand i know what a rate of first refusal is i've had several of them but we're talking about if they're not using it in the way that we're saying that is a deed restriction yeah that's the one i have problems with too

2:15:57 and if that's the case i definitely you know it's like a time frame on that would be something that i would have i don't want to have i just don't have a problem with saying no adult bookstores no escort services no massage parlors if we want to say that that's forever italian i'm restaurants putting those the same category he just did for a restaurant i'm sorry no real no real estate offices no uh you know yeah i know i i get it so i i understand your concerns uh no that's that's a good discussion bet you got it yeah it's actually pretty clear to me i have no interest in need restrictions i think um

2:16:42 i just don't i don't want us to get into that level of detail but i do think um the first round of refusal for the first 10 years is a good idea okay so we got kind of difference of opinions i have no deed restrictions but first rod refusal for 10 years i've got feed restrictions on uses and i've i kind of you know legacy i don't want somebody to go in there but that's something i don't think will ever be acceptable in the community for community values but that's my personal thing but with the deed restrictions though like are the things there's already things that are not allowed there right so industrial use it's like mortuary thing you can put any kind of story you want to need ranges any kind of bookstore you

2:17:27 want there first of all because it's restricted privately whatever would be allowed in retail or burger that's about there's retail you can't have a pot shop within a thousand feet but if that's restricted you can have one but you can't have another one within a thousand people i think what's the zoning success but i want to you know matt's got a good point i don't want to get too far into the weeds either so i would lean towards ten years first ride refusal and let her go that doesn't mean we have to buy it just means we have the right no no no and and i i'm fine with that that you know for the dean restrictions for what some

2:18:12 of you community value uses this is probably going to be one of the highest square footage cost per square foot buildings around i would imagine if you're leasing it out i don't think those types of businesses are going to want to pay but you know there's saying that this is a community value property i wanted to attract yeah and i don't and i don't think that would dissuade anybody from i don't think those uses would dissuade somebody from doing it it's just in the interest of finding consensus let's kind of pull the group so i'll start i i

2:18:58 wouldn't i would say okay i'll give up on the detox the deed restrictions fine let paper take its course but a 10-year first right of refusal if they sell it to a third party it would be put up my proposal matt yeah you're good with that mindy i would be okay with that explain what that cost would be cost so so first rate of refusal somebody goes in buys it for 15 million and puts 20 million dollars into it puts it up for sale for 40 million dollars we get that first rate of refusal no we don't we get to match any offer right

2:19:43 we get to match that we offer okay yeah it's not what they have what they want it's what if if nike comes and says i'll give you 40 million we can buy it for 40 million it's only good for 30 days because it really effectively takes it off the market it's not a good thing and buyer may push back on it and we'll have to give up on it but we think we can't get what we don't ask for i've tried to get that leases and had people yeah it's challenging you know because you know who's going to want to make an offer on something somebody else has a right to buy so then i guess my question would be is how how wedded are we to this that if if we put this into into a a contract and somebody walks away over this

2:20:28 i'm not going to let him walk away or it would give up well that that needs to be that needs to be put out there that this is something that is useless that is negotiable right because if we can ask for it we can ask for it and if they if they push backs it's a deal killer then we drop it okay well that that's not what you put out there you said a a restriction a deed restriction of a right of first refusal for 10 years is what you proposed to us that's different than asking for a asking for that in a purchase and sale agreement this is what we're having the discussion right

2:21:13 so i i think that um when we get to the point where we're evaluating proposals it sounds like from what you described and what you moderated or mitigated here uh president brown that adding further deed restrictions doesn't seem like the board has an appetite for that because there are permitted uses and unpermitted uses presently as as sort of governed by the city there are a couple of situations where i could see some type of triggering event that would give us the option to to to claw this back you know right at first refusal one would be sort of i'll call it a flipping situation um the other one would be what i would

2:21:58 describe as some kind of substantial failure to perform whatever whatever that and it's not a difference between art and music it's some sort of you know there was an intent that we feel was substantial enough that that we were sort of deceived here's your proposal and here's a different direction here both of those situations we could approach the purchase and sale agreement contractually around if these sort of triggering events happen here's going to be our response to that and it could be a right of first refusal matching an offer it could be a right of first refusal at a price that we set and it could be the price that we sell i mean those are

2:22:44 those are options that we will have at the time but what i am hearing is an appetite from the board to incorporate into a contract that you want whoever buys this to fulfill the intent behind their proposal and if there's a triggering event of a couple times that we will we will negotiate that into a contract to the best of our ability that's that's kind of what i'm hearing interesting because i just heard that they didn't want any deep restrictions other than the right of first refusal so if they date and switch us hey we're giving you all these wonderful things we'll give you this low price they flip it and then turn around and sell it for 40 million dollars and we just lost all of that money out for our customers our ratepayers thinking we

2:23:29 were gonna get some community benefit that never transpired so that's why i want a deep restriction i want to make sure that there is something there there's some sort of way that we can claw back this is supposed to be that for the community benefit whatever comes out of it if we're taking less money to get more community benefit i want them to follow through with that can i say that that would be a negotiation if we think the threshold's just say 100 and we decide to accept aid because of the community values thing and then they want to flip it because it's really worth 12. i get it

2:24:14 and i don't know if we can protect ourselves against that uh i mean we can negotiate that in i mean when we're negotiating we say look you know it should be paying 12 but we're going to give it to you eight but we're going to throw on a first round refusal reversion clause if you don't fulfill your your goals within the next five or ten years then somebody comes and buys it from them at 12 and we are now paying them 12 and we just lost four million dollars for our repairs you've got to look at the intent of who's buying it if it's a public sector that buys it or a non-profit they're not buying it to make money but if it's private sector you buy real estate to make money and so that you know it's implicit you pay 8 million you want to flip it for 12

2:25:00 of them and that's the way well i'm not answering the business side of it necessarily but if we give a benefit or you know we had all of this work around making this criteria boring for community benefit if that doesn't transpire and we give some other amount then that just doesn't quite seem maybe i can offer a compromised solution that now that we've had the discussion and we all understand the concept that when we get to evaluating them we look at that and we know that that's a tool at our disposal but we don't have to mandate it that's unacceptable to others that we have a minimum threshold and we decide to take less than that because it meets some community value goals and we say okay if you're going to do this we want to make sure you have

2:25:46 you're going to do it and we have something to keep their feet to the fire to do it that's a negotiation thing but it's not mandated i get i get your point i feel better doing that because right now we're just talking in hypotheticals and we don't know what it is that's putting in proposals or what we're even leaning towards and so um i think it's good to have this discussion to kind of bring up these issues and just know that this is this could be a bargaining thing for us just let it go by the way say no deed restrictions no reversion clause but we know we have those tools in our at our disposal when they're sponsored does that sound acceptable to others does that sound like we're done yes it sounds fine i think there when we get into that discussion we can talk about

2:26:31 the mechanics of this whether it's part of a contract or whether there are certain things we get regarding flipping that you could put as a deed restriction with a with a timeline for example so once we get to that point i agree with the hypothetical comment we can explore not only what restrictions and how but we can also the mechanics of how that's fair pretty good with that all right move on thank you very much all right number 10 12 quarterly operational strategic goals for q2 thank you president brown good evening commissioners um really as a routine part of your board

2:27:17 packet now you did receive staff's quarterly operational and strategic update so go ahead with the next slide please you know expecting that we were potentially stressed with time i i tried to be brief in the presentation thought i'd run through a few high level results first of all you know 10 of the 14 goals so far this year are on track and those that are not or are making progress uh they're just not specifically where we wanted to be at the mid-year halfway point you know one example is the permitting for the willamette treatment plan we made a lot of progress there we're just not quite where we

2:28:02 wanted to be at this point in time but we are making progress on on all 14. we did you know additionally a number of items that we made progress on and and the board has helped us with things like wildfire mitigation plans lieberg analysis despite the uncertainties that we bring forward uh continues to to progress uh integrated resource planning all of these things are progressing and feel like the organization is continuing to move forward on a lot of these items so we have also you know we've transitioned as an organization from being in responsive mode related to covet protocols to more of a

2:28:49 proactive intentional dynamic workforce model presently you know 14 of our workforce is telecommuting uh 40 is in hybrid mode and 46 are facility based a lot of that is driven by the specific work and what the work allows employees to do but we also have recognized the uh the benefits of providing and looking at those kinds of options relative to how people interact with the team and their work groups and and the equipment and the work that they do and so we're we feel like we're much more in a proactive mode than we were um in cobit where we're really responding and reacting so if you like that

2:29:35 continues to to progress supply chain issues have to give a lot of credit to different parts of the organization for their creativity for their ability to respond we are looking at a number of different scheduling of priorities some shift from work that is more material intensive such as some capital work to more o m work in some cases that varies a little bit between water and electric we are seeing some capital projects our capital spending so far this year is off compared to where we wanted to be from a budgetary perspective and much of that

2:30:20 is because of the supply chain issues but we also have to admit that we are facing some delays uh in the impending impending customer facing work building and renovation work this is something we've done a lot of outreach and communications on but the the reality of it is when you have limited equipment you have to prepare for emergencies for response for some of these things and you have to prioritize that so we're we're in the middle of that but i really feel like staff has has done a good job of looking at how we do our work how we prioritize things as well some of the customer facing programs couple here just a note and i wanted to mention this specifically because some custom some

2:31:06 commissioners have mentioned in the past regarding commercial energy efficiency work you'll notice that so far from a megawatt hour saved we're at 50 57 of our target but only 36 percent of our budget and part of the reason there is more bang for the buck when you look at commercial and industrial opportunities eighty percent of our results so far this year are from the commercial industrial side and so um you know rather than aggregate a whole lot of little projects um so far this year we've concentrated on some of the larger ones and you can kind of see the result here uh the amount of megawatt hours saved per dollar is pretty is is higher than our than our budgetary projection which is which is a mix of those two

2:31:53 and then as some of you know the e-bike rebates have been uh so so far very popular this this year green options is has been launched off to a little bit of a slow start in other areas but you know things like e-bikes is are popular um way past what other utilities have seen in their results so far it could be a reflection of our community um but it is something that uh we're excited about and it's a great touch point for the community and some of the work we do and how we uh spend some of the funds that we get from the state for clean energy fuel credits um clean energy peel credit so appreciate the work that's going on in that arena next slide please

2:32:38 just there's a couple of slides here that give you a snapshot of the status of each of our sub goals uh so far this year just to kind of reiterate i think we're making making progress on those go ahead with the next slide as well um and so um you can see we are in process with a lot of these i would say that the commissioners are familiar with with these because you've been participating and we really do appreciate your guidance and and time we have asked a lot of commissioners so far this year and we know that we're entering a fall season

2:33:23 really the remainder of this year you have some pretty substantial guidance to provide and decisions to make for the utility and we appreciate the dedication that you all have and so uh go ahead with the next slide and so with that commissioners we are halfway through 2022 as amazing as that sounds and feel like we're making good progress uh we're uncovering and addressing issues challenges that come our way you know i would like to to thank you again for your oversight and really thank staff uh who really on a day in and day out basis serve our community and

2:34:09 who are also helping us position the utility uh for the future and so with that we're definitely open to observations and questions and comments back to you mr president open it up question um i guess one quick one and this may john or frank can probably answer um as far as the land use applications for the second treatment plan the ps the public facility services plan yeah um does that go greenfield is going to be the initiator of that are you going to have lake county initiate that and what's the status of that going yeah as of right

2:34:55 now i know i mean i know how it goes once it's initiated but we got to get somebody to kick it kick the can i will follow up to see who the actual initiator is going to be i know that the city of eugene and springfield i believe the dialogue was started between the city city of springfield got with the city of eugene those two organizations are working with eweb and others so it really is a mutual effort at this point to open up that that plan for revision but i i don't know off the top of my head who would be the official initiator at this point but if i can find out and again just for somebody who's worked on those in the past it can be a drawn-out affair

2:35:40 and it's appealable and and if we can get that going the sooner the better obviously i i mean you know we can't initiate it right but we can not let grass grow under the feet of the people who who need to because it's just getting the process started originally i had heard that we were we being those parties was looking at we're looking at later this year appreciate that but i would need to confirm that and and the only reason i bring that up is because we let 10 years go by and it costs us another 120 million dollars so i mean yeah and i mean a land use a change to the metro plan with appeals could be two or three years

2:36:26 yeah we're also simultaneously commissioner borowski working um with the city of springfield and with within their development process so there's there's permitting there's changes to the glenwood refinement plan there's a number of of things relative to permits and land use on the city of springfield site as well so we have opened up a dialogue with with them we met with their city council that that went well and we're working with city staff to try to schedule a development issues meeting which is a prerequisite to a number of their processes so see a couple of different and that was one that was in yellow and part of the reason in yellow was the progress of all these simultaneous

2:37:13 things although there's been really good progress specifically relative to city of springfield leadership um but we we understand that there's more work to be done there so if it if it would be possible to send out a memo as to the progress how that that progress is going on right yeah if you don't mind i can put it in the gm report um and if maybe not sooner when we have our one-on-ones i can provide an update next week thank you another question to comment lindy yeah um comment wow we're busy that's a lot in there i feel like this is the my fourth year on the board this is by far the busiest a lot going on um and i have a question about the um

2:37:59 the customer facing programs the energy efficiency and you say that we're 50 of target do we have like a target number of projects like what is that target so the target is megawatt hours saved and that's based on a projection for what the first year of savings would be so and we typically right now it's been around 10 000 megawatt hours is what our annual target is for savings so it's a mega watt hour savings um and that number comes from the original ir let's say original the last irp officially from 2011 which said we

2:38:45 were going to offset load growth through conservation that's what developed that target and is it just happenstance that we have more commercial customers taking advantage of that right now or do we have a concerted effort it's just the timing of some large commercial projects that are that are coming forward we try to keep a good balance and make something available to everyone and right now this year we're just really strong on commercial projects thank you any questions or comments done thank you frank thanks agenda items yours for uh correspondence board and chapters

2:39:30 be president brown i'll get to my focus here there was um one item on correspondence and that was some information for the board on customer service policy sd3 we do have a little more in-depth discussion coming up that was really a preview if you had any initial responses or guidance be happy to hear it this evening the other thing we could do is talk about that during check-ins that's another option but we are bringing some information back to the board next month to talk about that specifically and any changes that that you made with that so this was a guy inside him and it was it was there to give you a preview of coming attractions

2:40:18 so if there were any comments now i'd be happy to hear those okay we'll move on and then the the board agenda report is also attached you'll see some upcoming things really looking forward to giving the board some feedback on our customer survey next month i think that's going to provide some interesting insight like i said the second half of this year is incredibly busy for you and so thank you in it or my condolences in advance i'm not sure which of those uh probably both but um appreciate your data and answer any questions you might have

2:41:03 questions uh i was just looking back to december because i know that that's always a gigantic board packet and i noticed that the uh the state legislative agenda policy is always in december which is interesting to me because there are things that we would like jason to work on when he's up at salem they have to submit i think they have to submit they have to work with other legislators to get drafts in prior to that board meeting i don't know if there's i mean if there are big things maybe there's not but it does seem like it would be somewhat better from a process perspective in general to have some of that conversation earlier so that he can work with those legislators prior to that there is something else that comes out

2:41:48 of the board i know a lot of it is typically j you know driven by jason and what he's seeing up there and um you know the landscape which is fine and i get that but we do want to be proactive and there are things that we think that we would like to say it's too late at that point are you saying pray to the december meeting i know we have an update next month the legislative agenda up for for september but the setting the agenda for the next year in december we oh maybe you and i can talk further about what that might look like to move some things up to facilitate that a little bit further yeah if other people

2:42:34 want that capability just next excuse me just a question on the agendas i know that we have a placeholder for for august 16th work session are we having a work position then um no we will not we'll give you a couple weeks off you mentioned the second half of the year is going to be busy that including the first half of the year wasn't busy yeah i think when we dig into labor and walter bill we're going to be busy

2:43:23 others so questions or comments on uh correspondence support agendas if not then we'll head to uh board wrap up mindy thank you on v2 um i just i would just like to say thank you to staff that put together all this work you know we're busy but for every hour that we're here it's probably 20 hours that staff is is working on on these board agendas so i just want to definitely give my uh shout outs to them looking forward to dinner next week we really don't have an agenda set for that but it's just kind of last one worked out very well

2:44:08 i'm looking forward to that and the work that's gonna be upcoming um i'd like to do a couple things just for the record of december i'm going to be remote uh i'm going to go on vacation and i can get logistics aligned but hopefully the internet has improved where i'm going and so i'll be able to do that if not i've got a really good verse but i know there's a big decision that i mean lieberg's vinyl may be there so i will participate no matter what it's just how i i'm going to try and do it this way so um the other thing i'd like to just reiterate my staunch uh concern about water quality both in the mckenzie and the willamette and hopefully stay on that because you

2:44:54 know and i just don't want water quality to get degraded anymore so thank you and i'd like to say to everybody else i really appreciate the dialogue i've been doing this for a while the dialogue we have challenging each other and having this back and forth like like minnie said is have to have these discussions rather than us and staff but amongst each other i think we push each other and we challenge each other and it's done in a respectful manner thank you very much because i think we get the better decisions doing that and so i think it to me it's working well so would just like to say thank you very much and don't ever hesitate to to speak outside like it you know or we should do this i think we're getting the best results and you're right we're busy and i think we're going to be busier so um with that is there anything else that

2:45:40 we need for the good of the order sorry it's about 10 o'clock but i'm going to be good i know thank you thank you