EWEB Board of Commissioners — October 3, 2023

0:03 okay I'm gonna call the e-web meeting to order [Music] it's a facility facility awareness and meeting Logistics briefing thank you for attending this evening board meeting eweb management and subject matter experts are here with us in the room and virtually during tonight's presentations remote speakers will appear on the screen please make sure to speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you guests are invited to sign up at the table in the back of the room if they wish to provide public testimony here visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and the restrooms restrooms are located on the first floor exit through the right hand door at the front of the room across the hallway the story um in case of an emergency such as a

0:48 fire alarm exit through the garage door at the back of the room unless it is not safe to do so the alternative alternate emergency exit is located at the rear of the building just beyond the restrooms it's an evacuation follow staff instructions and stay together for safety will be recorded the recording will start when the meeting is called to order and we'll continue until adjournment knitting room will be muted during the break aside from that period virtual participants on the screen and the public audience will be able to hear conversations in the room until the meeting is disconnected is that so first up we have an agenda check

1:34 we'll move on to items from board members and general manager and I will start over here and go this way the tour of the Grand Coulee dayak that was very informative it's a long day but we learned some things I think we could have cutting some things a little bit better and I think going forward we can make lessons from that one of the things that I was pleased to hear about in a negative way is that other people are are struggling with supply chain issues as well we're talking about how long it takes

2:20 them to get Transformers how long it takes them to get windings and these types of things so it's not just specifically to our small utility here so that was like I said encouraging and all at the same time yeah it was a very informative clip yeah time is making some squeaking noises if you can please mute yourselves that would be great all right uh the only thing I have to report is that I had a meeting with fossil free Eugene

3:07 similar to the one that um a and raw cat I believe um I guess we'll go back over here okay to me um I Echo what John said about the trip up north I just wish we could have seen the third power plant because those generators are like three times as big as the one we saw I think they hit the tops off [Music] oh well um I just have a quick question to staff I know a car went into Walterville canal and sunk did we deploy the um boom and everything else to contain all the pools in the gas and all that I know we responded and um but I didn't have all the details could you maybe just let me know I just

3:53 was wondering about what our reaction is because we have it happened if it happened in the Walterboro Canal it happened very close to a wall to go fire station and then we have a deployment trailer here I'm just wondering if it wasn't the point going on I know that we did an assessment of the potential leakage and we can get some yeah why would we just look on that we would do it for environmental I mean even if it wasn't going to get a treatment plan just to keep it out of the room next uh completely add for me just uh likewise thanks for setting up the tour and I appreciate the staff effort that went into making

4:42 isberg mentioned to the meeting was possible for Eugene thank you to all there was a number of staff that also participated it's great meeting love to hear from the community so appreciate that I really appreciated the damn tour and I have a lot of work went into that it was a very long day that was almost 24 hours for us a little burned out on that but great stuff to do that I did uh some of you may have heard that there was a hijacking of the El Cog meeting very unfortunate and I just wanted to say thank you to staff here who prevent that sort of experience because I never want to live through that again

5:32 I'm sorry okay and then um finally I today I attended a tour with LCC they had an open house uh their plan for Energy Efficiency and one of them mentioned that worked with them there were some rules and regulations around the limits or the cap on solar configurations and other generation and that we did quite a bit of work to raise that to the state level and I was just curious what that what that used to be I think for some reason I was thinking it was 20 or 25 and now it's 200 and so I'd just love to hear a little bit more about that because that sounds like we're doing the community

6:18 thanks a couple of nuances to it um the net metering limit is 25 KW um with LCC it's a little bit different because it's a single campus you do get into some different limitations around the 200k not necessarily the state because the Bonneville gets involved at that point so there's some some others and we were working with LCC to be able to do it as a campus even though they have some configurations across several meters and so it was really for us a metering slash administrative issue and we want some more details we can get some more details and and of all of you thank you to staff and those who make them you know work even you know when we

7:04 have other rules and regulations that are in place for a different purpose so barriers um yeah just just a couple of other things um there is a particular segment steps impression of the meeting that that uh supplied by Rod a kind of a summary um staff summary of the meeting that was held with um president Carlson and so that said the GM report if you didn't get a chance to read that I also wanted to thank our our safety staff Workforce Services our administrative staff we had our annual safety Expo

7:49 in mid-september I heard it went well I was actually on vacation which leads to my final item I did want to thank Broad and Ann and Holly and the executive team and another number of others who filled in as AIC while I was gone and it was a great opportunity to attend my daughter's wedding and so I felt like the utility was in great hands while I was gone and I didn't think about well I only thought a little bit about utility stuff while I was while I was gone but really appreciate that and wanted that team we did attend that too when it was it was a great event there's lots of interesting and informative booths there for staff and

8:35 okay great so next up we will move to public so I have a number of people that have signed up via telephone do I have any that are in the room okay so I'm going to uh read the public input Spiel and then I will go through the list of people who are signed up so you know what order you're in look at that when your name is called speakers are invited to and then we don't have any that are standing so clearly state your name and optionally your address reward each speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony please keep track of time and we don't have any in person so skip that part all speakers can listen for the audio notification when your time has

9:20 elapsed uh if you're participating by telephone remember to unmute your call press star six if calling from a landline or simply use the unmute button for your cell phone after all testimony is heard each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if they choose although by policy we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue please note that failure of a commissioner to speak shall not be considered as supportive or opposition to any speaker's testimony the board May request to respond to specific questions or comments posed by the public those responses which are for the public good please whoever's online please note for the public good it may be posted on eweb's Internet site

10:05 that is that and now I will say um so the first person up is Mark or benowitz followed by Tana Shepherd then Craig Patterson happy gang and Sabrina Siegel [Music] can you hear me now sir please okay thank you very much um I have two quick things for your consideration one is Weck the Western electricity coordinating Council which I was glad to find a couple mentions on the website but they did not see you mentioned that

10:51 wet also mentions that natural gas combustion is the largest energy source for the Western power grid not hydroelectricity hydroelectric is of course locally abundant but not in the rest of the western grid and the Energy Information Administration of the U.S government also mentions that natural gas is the single largest energy source for electric generation we do have a lot of dams but there's also been a number of large natural gas installations added in recent years one at Boardman in particular where the last coal burner in the State closed about three years ago it's now a large natural gas generator there's another

11:36 large one at Klamath Falls near where poor dams are being dismantled and the existence of that natural gas generation is a key facilitator of the dam removal eia also mentions that 2022 was a new Peak for U.S electric generation surpassing the 2018 previous Peak and natural gas was critical for that increase so when we're talking about electrification we need to talk about where the electricity comes from and since eweb is touring with the idea of embracing new nuclear reactors is the answer I recommend you consider attending next Monday night the Eugene premiere of the new documentary Atomic bamboozle at the Art House theater on

12:23 13th Street formerly The Bijou at seven o'clock it may be the best documentary about the plans for smaller nuclear reactors so for the only documentary about smaller nuclear reactors it also covers the rise and fall of the Trojan nuclear reactor on the Columbia and also the outrageous Legacy of the Hanford nuclear reservation the most polluted place on the planet the filmmaker will be there in person along with legendary energy activist Lloyd morbett who helped get Trojan closed and it also help with the citizen initiative in 1980 that makes it illegal to build new reactors in Oregon until there's a national nuclear dump for the irradiated fuel rods

13:08 so Atomic bamboozle next Monday night seven o'clock Art House theater on 13th Street and I'll close with a quote from the legendary David Brower one of the great environmentalists of the United States who said is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major Hazard of exposing the next 20 000 generations to this lethal waste thank you for your time thank you okay next uh Tana Shepherd hey are you there to your second unmute

13:58 actually we are not hearing Tana so we're going to move on to the next person and hopefully she can figure out I'm muting oh wait I'm sorry I'm here now okay all right great thank you you're up okay thank you hi I'm Tana Shepard also known as ego chick here in Eugene 4J I'm in Ward eight and um I just like to come a few years to express my gratitude I guess and my attitude for all the support that UF gives to school district 4J each year with with our education program um we're hello yeah we can hear you yep okay sorry I thought someone said something um so so far things are up to a smooth beginning but it's pretty busy and without a program assistant again so I'm kind of judging forward as a soloist

14:44 making it happen but we have our salmon Susan underway I'm serving 45 teachers this year around uh 50 almost 1600 students and are going to be raising salmon in their classrooms and learning about the importance of salmon as a keystone species and then we are taking 610-ish third fourth graders on salmon watch field trip so to enhance their experience and see that adult phase of the life cycle and learn more about the importance of water quality and all the things that they need to survive in their habitat and what's the big idea with riparian zones things like that the next um this week we're actually starting our student 4J climate Justice

15:30 team um up again and we have some returning students from next year we'll be inviting new ones for your reference this is high schoolers representatives from each of the high schools that come together around climate education and action items within our district it's the third year of a very successful newsletter called Eco experience so it's going out to all 4J staff and we're over a thousand readers now it's basically monthly resources and tips and ways just essentially to help our have a more Eco experience in your life and we've been a really big part of getting the 4J love food not waste program off the ground and we currently have 100 percent

16:16 participation last year we were able to keep out almost two million pounds of food at a landfill and so this is a great climate mitigation strategy that 4J is embarking on and so yeah just I would just like to give an update several times a year just so you know what we're doing what we're up to and yeah I just appreciate the support and the ability to be able to share my passion to the students across our district so thanks very much thank you all right next up we have Craig Patterson

17:04 I'm gonna give Craig another second to unmute I'm still not hearing Craig so we'll go come back but we will move on now to Kathy gang you hear me hello Craig yep we can hear you it's it's echoing a bit I'm not sure why I don't know why okay should I continue yeah you can yes please thank you yes my name is Craig Patterson and I've lived in McKinsey Bridge almost 50 years I've seen many changes I also have extensive background in forestry and energy adding over 45 years today there are two contrary issues I

17:52 briefly speak with you tonight about by contrary I mean opposing views with actions are credits forestry lab and Seneca Sierra Pacific biomass plant and the Kinsey water quality and new houses and Foundations on the Riverside of the highway I see eweb is supporting and advertising an attempt to counter global warming and carbon sequestering through its forestry lab in carbon credits I had a long talk with Andrea Wade today however I questioned the validity and

18:39 integrity of such an effort in light of e-webs buying supporting the non-disclosure Seneca Sierra Pacific biomass contract paying almost two and a half times the BPA a wholesale rate as re as released by The Register Guard and then Eugene gets the pollution for free 40 times dirtier than coal and biomass is 40 times dirtier than coal and 300 times dirtier than Natural Gas animal study which is a function of energy density a key factor with which is literal

19:25 little understood it makes no sense to buy support biomass and then attempt to address the issue with the forestry lab a questionable value particularly in a in a cut over Plantation remember the largest and oldest forest service experimental Forest is just up the road the H.G Andrews experimental Forest this contradiction needs addressing as Integrity is important second Mackenzie McKinsey Waters some of the finest in the state as a resource to protect however seeing the number of Foundations and houses on the Riverside of 126 where there isn't sufficient room for a septic

20:12 tank is very suspect what is eweb doing to monitor Lane County and building permits to ensure proper setbacks also what is eweb doing to monitor the pentaploom Under The Old weyerhouser Mill as rainbow and sub have water districts have put in extensive carbon filtration systems these issues need to be addressed in a coherent and and integrated way and not as as contrary positions and and perspectives thank you

21:03 next step we have Kathy game okay I'm here um yes uh thank you tonight for allowing me to sleep you're very quiet if there's any chance you can speak up a little bit I'll try to sneak up my first comment regardless of happy King my first comment regard my concern that the public was essentially left out of the integral involvement in planning the energy to integrate energy integrated resource plan at least in the way it used to be involved essential and missing is the citizens involvement committee that would lead every month for a practically a year historically he was conducted a robust ER movement just a list of public participation via

21:50 having a Review Committee with staff overlooking the committee's discussion it would have been particularly significant this year that small nuclear plants are being considered an eweb long Parks long-term portfolio this is that it is especially egregious that a citizen committee was overlooked a few years ago two hundred thousand dollars was spent on this committee as a Sumptuous meal and attendee facilitator were hired which would be done for a lot less a couple months ago about my concerns that Eve web is not educating people or emphasizing the need to have hybrid cars

22:37 that run not only on battery but on liquid fuel research I've done I would only buy a hybrid Auto using the battery and liquid fuel although hybrids more spending they are more resilient as aging grids will not be able to handle the increased electric load warning about all electric cars especially if battery-only energy policy the author of alcohol can be a gas to save the bloom has been working on title fuels for over 50 years which is also the name of his book stated our national Radio Show in 2022 the batteries only will not be able to supply 100 of our transportation needs so I'm wondering

23:22 why eweb is leaving the side of their educating education to the public and my next comment is I would like to hope you would get behind Lisa ARF and then her Beyond toxic proposal to send it by 15 to 22 million on solar electric cells at the former West Virginia back to sites do um members of the community who were both associated with the University of Oregon International time including Sarah Motley and there's a guy named Josh Dove had presented papers about community supported energy they had done with their respective institutions and companies and eweb and everybody totally had enjoyed that finally our Grapevine is section about shutting down the

24:07 leaders Lake in the vociferous opposition for people I think you would need to take another look at the current position personally I think he was taking the wrong direction and letting go of reflex or minus five percent of electricity towards at a time when grids are vulnerable to disruption the natural and man-made causes thank you for your time perfect okay next up we have Sabrina Siegel and then we had a person who um is in the room so we will end with Elliot Gray so Sabrina are you on oh okay okay not on so we will move to a person in the room Elliot gray please

24:54 approach the stand here you can sit at the at the table if you like or stand whatever you like good evening uh thank you for doing my testimony my name is Elliot gray I live in Ward one and I own two people businesses in Eugene I also own a monastery investment and I have a home type 2 charger I recently drove my um in favor of eweb adopting the EV and Dr standards I recently drove with my wife the Tesla across the country we drove through Eastern Oregon Montana South Dakota Michigan to New York and then we drove down through Kentucky Arkansas Mississippi Oklahoma

25:41 Texas Arizona and Nevada Oregon through that we had absolutely no trouble charging the Tesla yet in Eugene there are no high-speed Chargers in our service interview yet in Podunk Arkansas sorry Arkansas or um way Eastern Oregon there are high-speed Chargers um you wear this behind the times here high-speed charging and solar and demand response across the country use you see the it happening

26:26 um we saw Community solar in the midwest we saw Community solar in we saw a solar charging on lampposts in Princeton New Jersey we saw solar charging Community solar in small communities we saw big solar we saw solars we Roots we solder in parking lots we saw solar in all different kinds of locations um we talked to people who in rural areas and in small communities such as ours where the utilities were allowing the

27:11 people to put back into the grid I also wanted to comment that um EVS are coming on strong I just was surprised to hear that through Car and Driver magazine that the number one selling vehicle in the United States right now is the Ford F-150 electric vehicle the number one selling sud in the country is the Tesla why the number one selling car that's a car is the model 3 Tesla so EVS are coming on strong the number one trade-in right now vehicle in the country is the Tacoma um

27:57 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and it's being turned in for electric vehicles I also wanted to mention [Music] sorry thank you you can finish your thought sort of a negative thought that um the enterprise software has been being worked on for more than 10 years the comments that I read have said that you expect that the enterprise software will be up and running for Demand by 2030 that means that it'll be more than 17 years before it'll be ready to go or be up and running that's 17 years that's a long time whereas other areas they're already using enterprise software thank

28:42 you thank you so that is it okay okay so we will end the public comment does anybody want to jump in here yeah Mark if you're still there thank you I always appreciate your testimony and uh it'll be interesting to see if uh how that presentation comes out Donna I really appreciate you doing uh giving us an update on the educational programs I remember 15 years ago when that was on The Chopping Block that was the very first time we ever heard from anybody ever since then

29:27 I really really appreciate that tell us what you're doing what the kids are doing thank you very much for your testimony I think the majority of this board Drive CBS and I concur with the lack of um there's a few in Springfield and that's the highest charge there is in the state that I've seen so thank you very much I think one of your observations about solar maybe electricity Associated communities that have more sun and our utility rates are a lot higher and so we're in that way and I appreciate your your testimony thank you

30:17 all right and I'll um also want to say thank you to tana and to all the presenters or all the speakers tonight I appreciate you coming out uh Tana will be reaching out to you I have some questions some other questions about the program so if you're still on soon Craig I did want to just mention that we do have a program eweb has a program to incentivize because we don't actually have full control over the building codes on the up in the upper McKinsey area we don't have controller with building codes there but we do have an incentive program for homes that are being rebuilt to move back off of the riverfront so we are aware of that and we are trying to be proactive about that we also have a long-standing septic

31:02 replacement Pro Loan program that we have had in place for more than a decade at this point um so always watching that upriver um thank you to the others to who have testified oh and uh to uh Elliot I did want to mention yeah it's it's interesting that you brought that up about the EV um charging we were literally just talking commissioner Brown and I were talking about that on the way in from the parking lot about not having um Chargers here so you know we do toss around ideas we're not um particularly in charge of those but in the ways that we can help um get more around the region we absolutely need them so thank you for the testimony okay and we will now close

31:48 that and move on to the approval of consent calendar a we have any from consent calendar a that people wanted people I moved to approve consent calendar okay second any discussion no okay all those in favor of consent calendar a say aye okay passage unanimously okay moving on to consent calendar B is there any that would like to pull those at this time yeah I'd like to pull item nine resolution 2319 and I also had

32:33 said in a correspondence that I would uh like to pull item six but that was answered in the correspondence that we got this afternoon so I would just encourage the other Commissioners to read the correspondence that went out that answered my question about items okay great and for those in the attending virtually we as Commissioners we submit questions to staff and get those answers published and those are available for you to read as well so this is not something Penn stands this is something that we did to make it very clear to the public what information we have when we make our votes read the premium questions for what commissioner barovski is talking about okay so any others

33:23 okay all right I moved to approve consent calendar the last item nine second any discussion on any of those all those in favor say aye okay passed unanimously okay moving to resolution nine thank you um resolution nine is a resolution approving the annual investment policies of the of the utility um the reason I asked to pull this was uh this last weekend I was at a conference and was in a a breakout session with them Economist from Eco Northwest he was talking about the economy of the Northwest and

34:10 interest rates inflation rates and all of these things and it was actually very uh it was very pop it was very positive but where we're going and saying interest rates if you look at them over 75 years or on average and inflation rates are odd average the one area that he did say that we would be stressed in the coming years is community banking Community Banks in our in our areas are the banks that that lend to local Builders small businesses large businesses and they've been challenged lately with the with what we've all seen the higher interest rates on CDs and bonds people have been taking a lot of

34:55 their savings out of those Banks and putting them into higher rate CDs higher rates than the the Community Banks can offer on there one market accounts and those types of things has been a multi-billion dollar Exodus of cash from these types of Institutions so when I saw that the investment policies was on our consent calendar today I'm not asking us to change anything in there but what I would hope is that as a utility we can look wherever we have funds that may be able to be put into some of our Community Banks and kept in our community here to help local businesses and local individuals Thrive I would I

35:42 would hope that we can look at whatever accounts that we have that we could put in those I know a lot of the a lot of what is in here is very regulated and I I agree to that but I think there might be some room for us to to help some of these banks that may be have it facing issues going forward so I just wanted to bring that up I'm not putting a forward resolution or anything that I just hope that staff can look into that and see if there is an opportunity for us to to keep some of our money that we may be just sitting on in a in a savings account and if we have the ability to put that into a Community Bank rather than t-bill or whatever I would encourage us to do that so that's why I pulled this item and I think in the past we've had we have done that yeah

36:30 do have local deposits Aaron might even have the exact number in just a few weeks ago we did deposit an additional 2 million with a local bank so we do keep an eye on that and be happy to provide you any follow-up information I mean it's just any opportunities that we have that we can do that I think is a positive thing for our community uh yes I'm president Carlson thank you I just um Commissioners and I guess I might ask our CFO um how relevant this would be to our our just standard processes typically in the spring we go through and we look at our our cash accounts and um sometimes we we of course come to the board if we're going

37:15 to move between those accounts I don't know if if it's possible during that those cash discussions that we could provide information on where we have present deposits it's not it's not the accounting piece of it but it's the where where the money actually resides just to do that as far as standard practice um is that sure if that would be if that would be helpful that would be a standard time of the year and we could maybe break out where we hold the deposits as as a part of those materials and then we can also follow up directly on where we are now just to give you a snapshot if that's acceptable yeah and restricted unrestricted funds type of that type of thing it's like you know this this chunk of money could be

38:00 invested in Community Bank but right now it's sitting in tea bill or whatever and and the cost to us I mean I don't want us to be investing in in a local bank that we would losing you know interest or whatever but also I don't want to because wherever possible to see you know the opportunity I appreciate that thank you and with that I will put it back on the table I moved to approve resolution number 2319 second all right any discussion no okay all those in favor say aye

38:45 we have a resolution 2318 the diversity equity and inclusion policy yes president Karsten Commissioners good evening I was just wondering if you could allow me to keep not be on my oh thank you somebody's driving this for me so I don't have to limp up to the podium um just wanted to this item is uh for your consideration this evening just a little bit of History um the commission as well as certain members of Staff the executive team feedback from our diversity team over the past couple of years have had a number of interactions driving us for

39:30 this this eventual policy really starting in early 2022 through a number of different processes which lands us at this point where we have proposed language to the Commissioners really developed in conversations with you we had a work session a month and half or so ago resulting in some some edits and guidance on your behalf and so this evening after not hearing any additional feedback from Commissioners after the revised language was put forth last month The Proposal is that there's a motion

40:15 tonight to accept this policy important policy sd23 that that by definition has to be done through a resolution which is resolution number 2318 and so the the language for that motion is is proposed here or alternatively a motion for a resolution that would have some Amendment associated with it for the board's consideration so without president Carlson I did want to thank the Commissioners for their work on this over an extended period of time the important part will be how we execute that going forward especially as we start to develop our our annual goals and objectives and how we move this from

41:00 policy to action and I also wanted to thank Rod price Kelly kale um and are the members of our executive team have participated in this as well so with that President Carlisle turn this back to you to manage the process all right okay sure um like I want to say thanks to the staff team rod and Kelly especially who kind of work in and met with us

41:46 a tremendous amount of work for staff and consultants in the board so I appreciate that because it's gone into it um I also appreciate the um edited language the way it was upgraded based on the feedback that we provided at the last meeting I feel like it reflects the comments that were provided these were spot on in that the implementation you know how [Music] the commuters I'm not interested in that so I'm certainly prepared to support the adoption of this resolution I would love to see a time frame for which we would see um or get a report it could even just be through correspondents what have you um just detailing you know here are our

42:32 whatever 10 next steps to actually of sorts I think that's going to be really important I'm here to see that just wanted to comment too that I appreciate everybody who's involved in the process difficult and challenging and they're not easy topics and it's really critical that we tackle it and I I'm proud that we took this on and this is you know the first step in a Learning Journey and I look forward to continuing down that path together so all right and with that oh you're gonna make a motion okay I'll move the passage for resolution number 2318 a resolution approving new board

43:17 policy sd23 diversity equity second session okay all those in favor say aye this is unanimously they messed up we have the purpose standards initial analysis command response vehicle electrification all right good evening Commissioners Chief Equity resource officer here at

44:04 uweb joining me from the great beyond I hope is and in Russian energy resource analyst and our power planning department we are back to talk about the purpose of 1978 last time we were here we talked a little bit about purple and I may have undersold it's a its importance just a little bit so I did want to give it a to do purple is a big deal and then it took what are today best practices such as these cost planning which we use in our integrated resource plan

44:53 these things became mandatory or industrial utilities because of purple and consideration of these things became mandatory for Consumer on utilities because of purple so that is a Nuance we do have these new purpose standards that are out and because we're a consumer owned utility they're voluntary for us but considering them and having a public process which we would normally want to do anyway is not so here we are to talk about the new purpose standards uh involving electric vehicles and demand response with that I don't know which way to face but Aaron over your shoulder uh Aaron is going to take it away okay uh thanks Brian yeah I'm Erin I talked about this a bit last month uh we

45:39 could do the next slide uh so this is just a very quick agenda um just want to do a refresher on purpose kind of level set again um you know overview of the timeline that we're going through that was proposed last time and that's what we're using now and then really dive into that initial analysis a little bit next slide so purple Brian said it but I'm going to say it again Public Utilities regulatory policies act uh passed back in 78. and at the time it included a handful of standards for Public Utilities to consider around rape design and practices and it's been periodically updated over the years so the most recent ones right are these EV and Dr standards uh part of the infrastructure

46:26 investment jobs act in 2021 um and the broad purpose of the standards and purpa is to promote conservation and the efficient use of resources and Facilities so like Brian said for eweb the thing that applies to us that we have to do is we have to have a public process and that the goal of the public process is to consider the standards and determine whether they're appropriate for e-web and whether those standards align with purpose purposes um again as as Brian has mentioned we talked about last time EV is a non-regulated utility under purpa so the the point there is to distinguish us from utilities like Portland General Electric that are overseen by the Oregon Public Utilities Commission in that case the Utilities Commission would be the one to

47:11 decide whether or not folks have to abide by the standard in this case it's up to us we have authority local authority to decide what's appropriate for our community and our utility and just also wants to reiterate that the determination is a snapshot in time so it's looking at whether the standards apply and appropriate for us now uweb has adopted a number of purpose standards over the years but our policies and operations have changed over time and we haven't had to go back and revisit those standards so again big part of purpose the standard the process that we use to think about these that involve the public next slide so this is that timeline side that I showed last month I just want to reiterate that the the major event for last month was that we passed the

47:56 resolution on the process that we're going to use to consider the standards and then shortly after the September board meeting we opened public comments so we had a public notice um and have received a handful of public comments there's going to be some additional time just after this item for folks who want to comment on the standards and that comment period will run through October 14th at which point we'll kind of consolidate everything and really bring those comments in to consider for our analysis tonight the main thing is just presenting some kind of initial thoughts on how the standards apply for um whether they're appropriate and next month that for you is the board is the the key timeline so we're going to be bringing a staff recommendation and then the board will be asked to pass

48:43 a resolution on whether the standards are appropriate for us so next month is going to be an action there next slide so staff analysis we've brought together staff from several departments to think about the standards and and ewebs practices so customer Solutions those are the staff that actively manage and Implement our EV charging programs power planning right that's the integrated resource plan folks thinking about what resources we need over the long term uh Financial rates and services climate policy Communications so the goal was to have a broad swath of Staff looking kind of at the Strategic direction of the utility as well as a lot of customer facing uh colleagues and staff members

49:29 um so from our initial analysis it shows the standards are broadly appropriate for eweb but we would need to include some clarifications if we're going to to kind of move forwards with implementing or finding them appropriate one of the more consistent themes and is telling given uh you all are just passing the Dei policy is equity showed up a lot in our discussions what does it really mean to implement these standards how do you balance the different interests that we're going to be looking at so that we want to be able to have kind of the eweb lens on all of these things as we move forwards next slide so demand response this is kind of the The Boiled down version of the band response standard the purpose of the standard is to promote demand response

50:15 so basically shifting energy from peak times to lower usage times uh and the standard like many things in purple gives us the ability to recover costs so here the main main point is the purpose of the standard is to promote demand response next slide so again staff analysis uh initial thoughts is that the standard team is broadly appropriate but we would need some clarifications as we talked about last month demand response broadly aligns with the Strategic Direction we've talked about in the context of the integrated resource plan it also aligns with the expected Energy System Dynamics so when you think about the retirement of fossil fuel plants and more Renewables coming out of the line we expect to see more variability in

51:00 pricing and fewer resources able to meet those Peak loads and so the ability to shift load from those peak times might be valuable in that context and that's the third bullet there to really reduce the need for new peaking resources right building building new stuff is expensive and to the extent that we can not do that demand response might be very valuable for U.S um if you could click next so some of the clarifications here we talked about last time those those Billing System upgrades and advanced metering infrastructure that we still need to actually implement the standard as well as just recognizing that there hasn't been price signals for customers to implement demand response natural gas prices were pretty cheap over the last decade and power prices were depressed

51:46 because of that and so we're seeing that Dynamic change and we're expecting it to continue to the Future right some of those pricing events we saw this summer are key times where something like demand response might be really valuable for UAB in our community next slide so for the electric vehicle charging standard the purpose of the standard is to promote vehicle electrification and all those sub bullets there are basically things that you could do to help Implement that to carry it forwards right so affordable rates improving charging times third-party investment and again a piece on cost recovery and rates um so again the purpose of the standard promote vehicle electrocation and then

52:31 give us some mechanisms for that next slide so again initial analysis shows that broadly aligns with our strategic Direction and one of the key things here is that we already do a number of things related to vehicle charging right we have programs and incentives for residential and Commercial and for electric bikes we also have grants and programs like that so we're already doing things that align with this also when you think about cat 2.0 and the community goals around emissions UAB has put some support to try and Achieve those goals and some of those are around supporting electric vehicles as a way to reduce emissions so there's alignment there and the things that we're doing kind of the conceptual

53:17 framework that we're approaching it from some of the clarifications if you could click um again going back to equity some of the things that we do address broader Equity concerns that are kind of called out in the standard um just saying you know affordable doesn't necessarily mean accessible or Equitable right if you just put out charging stations but folks can't afford a electric car doesn't do much good so we need to consider this kind of in a broader context from eweb's point of view um also the sub bullets can work across purposes so the the clearest example of this is affordability and reducing charging time right affordable rates on the one hand

54:02 but as you reduce charging time you tend to nope uh you tend to increase the the rate of power supply which tends to increase costs so there's pieces here that we would need to be able to actively manage and think about the the value to our customers and what UF is trying to achieve so again broadly appropriate but there's some clarifications next slide uh so we want to really call out here a public feedback part we've received a handful of responses that are actually pretty helpful in US thinking about the trade-offs and I would say equity and charging availability all those things have been mentioned um we really want to incorporate public feedback we're actually going to reach

54:47 out to a few more folks especially those who have engaged in the IRP to get some public input um and given that we want to incorporate it into uh our analysis include uh consideration but pending that it seemed at this moment it seems like that staff would recommend finding the students appropriate but we really I want to call up that these clarifications these pieces that would make it appropriate for uweb give us the ability to do what's right for our community are pretty important uh so next slide so discussion feedback there's going to be some time right after this for uh Republic input and then it's a little additional time for questions if there are any but right now I'm happy to take

55:33 any questions or thoughts that Commissioners had okay do you want to do questions now or I mean typically we do questions after the public okay I'm going to open in public uh public hearing on the purpose standards and Analysis signed up to testify Kathy gang are you online yes I am great we can hear you you are up okay I'll continue to shout thank you okay thank you that's awful this is Kathy ging from Amazon neighborhood and it's a sensible reason

56:21 for imposing Wireless Smart Meters was to eventually Implement time of day pricing now being considered installing wireless devices on private residences and Commercial businesses with um concomitant health issues by occupants that have emerged particularly in those unfortunate individuals with Advanced electromagnetic sensitivity whom I have heard from Nationwide since nine or since 2011. it has been a considerable throwback for people who have experienced that health hazards who have called me from all over the country be reminded that citizen Utility Board

57:06 in Oregon wrote a statement opposing time of use pricing and I am not clear what the current position is but a central reason for their opposition was the lower income persons and those with families kids going to school senior citizens would be more vulnerable to the economic directs of such a pricing schedule independent consultant for those with more flexible schedules to more easily wash clothes dishes Etc in all times years ago I sat at a community meeting at eweb with commissioner John Brown at the same table I recommended then that e-web contact local major social media and start

57:53 educating people including students that all education levels to change habits I also suggested that the daily paper could publish best time to use electricity so there's lots of words in the grid it could be at the bottom of the front page or next to the weather I've lived here for 43 years and never until this past summer to TV news mention the expense advice bought electricity during a recent Heat Wave instead of 50 bucks it was seventeen hundred dollars to buy x amount a kilowatts an eye-opener please adopt this consciousness-raising endeavor instead of opposing of the most vulnerable rate payer owner budget another expense non-commented that he fought the

58:39 publishing this comment next to the weather was a good idea it was the only suggestion from our cable that he mentioned at the flattering no follow-up occurred by Board of Staff as a result however if eweb would choose this media blitz now explaining through a social Main and newsletter media pros and cons about timer J pricey our utility May set an example in the country for this another kind of alternative to the uh the band pricing that you're considering right now and a short URL on the downtown Banner one hat two pairs of soccer three jerseys and sweaters keep the thermostat down that's my answer to the energy crisis and also please and

59:25 treat rental weatherization thank you and I will close the public hearing on the first standards and open it back up for commissioner comments on either the testimony or precautions um you can start with a clarification on the presentation on slide 16 I think there's a list of um what I think you mentioned is like the rules that thank you perfect um I am curious if number c there is supporting third-party investment I assume that means in Chargers

1:00:12 but I don't know I'm curious to what extent webs investment in charging infrastructure is one of the tools available you want to build that one Eric uh so your question is sorry that we can support others investing in third like in in charging infrastructure I'm not trying to stand the question and yeah another question is really like uh use eweb direct investment in charging infrastructure one of the tools that could or should go on this list they certainly could um I think this is the context of what is appropriate for us I think the broad uh vision for purpose kind of

1:00:59 getting getting that utilities out of the way but allowing others to invest right if you're trying to allow uh charging infrastructure to be implemented as widely as possible you want to allow other parties to also invest so it's not precluding you of doing anything uh in that context so we certainly could look okay yeah I guess it um some of our comment tonight was about the lack of charging infrastructure in Eugene I've heard that in multiple locations and as somebody who drives an EVC sometimes at work and run into that myself that fast Chargers are just scarcely available in our area and I don't it'd be interesting to me to have a conversation about where or how that lands is one of our tools for

1:01:46 supporting the transition to EP S I don't know if it belongs up here because I guess I'm not I'm not exactly clear what you know specific focuses I hear you're saying like we're trying to get out of the way I appreciate that but is there a way that you can also lean in in appropriate places to help catalyze investments in in charging infrastructure yeah I was going to say that um the statement as it is written there would include opportunities like that there's a number of different ways that you could look at supporting third-party Investments one would be simplify our processes make line and load connections easier things like that some of it might

1:02:31 be direct investment we do that with home charging for example at this point where we're aiding the investment of a level two charger some of that is so that you could charge faster and we can move that charging around which supports this initiative and presently a lot of that is is driven through fuels credits we're an aggregator here and feel it's appropriate to put that money back into electric vehicles themselves that we haven't made a conscious choice in the and the board hasn't directed us to make a conscious choice to own operate or maintain charging stations but really take more take the this approach where we're facilitating others to make that investment

1:03:16 there's a number of different mechanisms I would include charging as part of the third party know it all if he has wanted to put in a charging station in our policies the only example that I can think of was from a number of years ago where there was a large demand charge and that was out off of my life but that one that was an exploratory

1:04:05 so I don't know customers willing to pay so far but it's definitely an issue that we're going to start going back to the board with policies all the way pricing working with um a lot of opportunities thank you and some of this will roll into when we start we I really think that one of the most important things that we need to work on as an organization and board is our redesigned work over the next couple of years and this is another example these if you have a fast charging

1:04:51 station it has a very high very short period demand associated with it and so the pricing that that we have now you pay for that Peak demand it could be used once a month and you're paying for that Peak demand use even though it might not be used for accidentally well the hope is that um as these Investments move forward that those are used more and more and so there is more and more incentive for third parties to put with the type of charging in so but it's a great design piece of that is going to be

1:05:37 I'm hearing from Rod that this is likely to come back before it soon some conversations about Insurance infrastructure I guess I just I'll say I would support that I think that'd be valuable a couple more um Kathy ranking brought up questions about the impact of Dr on lower income households and nowhere to

1:06:22 have a conversation at some point in a not too distant future about Creative Design so I don't want to unpack all of that but um my guess is that if we do it wrong that is a real potential intentionally lower but if you verify for us that if we do that writing perhaps it's the opposite opportunities for lower income households to their their control cost of utilities I I didn't actually meeting you but I don't I really shouldn't be on that I feel like a leaded witness you know yes I think well great design if done properly um incentivizes activity that helps the general population

1:07:07 and so it oftentimes is viewed as a punishment where the other way to look at it is as a reward for those who do have the opportunity to be flexible and that reward is actually benefiting eweb as an entire organization which is eweb and our customers and then that can be shared so if done right to answer your question redesign can mitigate that or even improve the overall effectiveness of how we're how we're pricing our products and so the goal is to not leave certain parts of the population out or penalize or have some kind of punitive impact but also to potentially reward those who can and

1:07:53 then share in that report amongst the community all right one last question uh it's the barrier of advanced reading infrastructure I know we're in the process I'm actually starting to think that there's like an international conspiracy to keep you up from rolling out all of our Ami but I'm pretty sure that's not true but I would love to know where we are on that because I know it's we're still waiting for final confirmation of enough meters to show up to a critical mass to start so I'm still shooting for two months here and what percentage is rolled out at this point really about 70 percent electric mean getting towards 70 in one

1:08:40 there'll also be an item in November when we talk about Deborah starts talking about rates and fees there'll be an initial discussion around opt-out fees which would be something we need to daylight so these probably you know she's pointing at me like I volunteered on that one so that's great so many questions thank you I just like a make a comment historically up in 10 or 15 years ago we have handed out to the Commissioners so it's a response challenged each other see who can save money and things like that it's actually quite easy

1:09:29 show your demand the time of day and then you know this hypothetical incentivization of uh you know how much money you could say I actually white people tall that was my goal but more importantly he did you demonstrated that it's really easy it's not that hard and then my second comment would be about to win the responsibility so we subsidized level 2 Chargers you give us 5500 bucks to set that cost but nowhere I mean we saw how the community responded when we had the heat wave and people voluntarily shut down nowhere in that communication like at least with me did you say program your Tesla so it charges from Midnight to two because there's no Financial incentive for me you know I just call them plug it in and shame on me I should program my Tesla just pushing a button and to have it

1:10:14 charge when there is not a peak and I would hope that through public information we can say look we just gave you 500 bucks we'd appreciate it if you would you can't require but we appreciate it if you would oh because this is a very responsive community and if they knew and we just heard a testimony about how many Teslas there are if we can charge not at five o'clock but you charge it from two to four in the morning it doesn't matter it takes two hours to have been a supercharger a couple days to electricity check back check check me on this but I believe in our list of suggestions we did have regarding us one off peak as one of the suggestions and where when we reached out to the public oh okay I was just and then that event but I know when

1:10:59 you get like you gave me the subsidy nobody said right um your car and [Music] just um president Carlson a note for the public the the pilot program that we did that uh commissioner Brown would be commissioner Mattel in savings that savings had to be returned to eweb because that was not available to the general public and Commissioners and certain staff who participate in that

1:11:44 program while we did achieve savings we had to give that savings back to the organization since it's not our money to to save in that in that case he won but he really didn't win financially first off I thank you Kathy for testimony I hate it when we have a public Orlando Public hearing and nobody shows up and wanted to know second thing is you mentioned that we haven't received some public comment from some people when and where will we see that will we

1:12:31 see that as Commissioners I I would assume that we should um yeah we have written comments that we've received I'm looking in your way I assume that those the commissioners okay thank you um and then I Echo Mr mcrae's concerns about demand response may be having impacts on some some lower income people I too am worried about that but the other the other thing that we also need to consider is our business Community when we start doing demand response on commercial

1:13:17 there's there's industries that can take advantage of Commerce of command response but there's other industries that have no possibility to curtail their energy uses I'll give you an example I know that uh you know if we're looking from five to seven as a time that we want to curtail electricity use the it's really difficult for the restaurant industry to curtail their energy things when that's the peak time of making their business work so those are other things that we need to consider it's not just the low income people and please turn your lights off here let's consider our business community and the

1:14:02 the engine of our economy and making sure we're not penalizing those people uh with demand response because you know if if my power goes up from five to seven exponentially I have no way to you know affect that you know how we want it to be affected so just consider that when we start thinking about these demand response things there's other people there that just cannot turn their lights off at a specific time so I just wanted to bring that up of something on that kind of comment I wonder if when we when we do actually get to redesign looking at time of year

1:14:47 stressing which we recognize our systems have not been upgraded and that is part of the reason we haven't done some of this other work so to the conference earlier in the room um but once we do have the capability of being able to to do that I wonder if we can have it so that those who do have the flexibility can opt in to that program which means that we could share the benefit with them and they would you know in part share that benefit throughout the rest of the community as well because we would save on our our higher rates so then you know that that becomes a shared benefit across community and you know to the point of those who don't have the opportunity or would be

1:15:32 negatively impacted they would be the great you know great people to opt into that anyway because they don't have the flexibility to shift yeah just a couple comments on on that I think that the system will be ready way before our races I work this is going to take several years and there's going to be a number of different stages relative to creating alignment between different cost impacts the other one create looking at and how we price capacity as a mechanism um and then product design and it is very possible president Carlson that there would be several different

1:16:17 products that customers could choose from or choose to participate in as a result of that um and so having CIS um late 2024 that particular implementation will be much ahead of where we are in our you know probably several years of rape design work that that we have I I would probably estimate we have two or three years worth of rate design work too to implement in steps and stages the thing I think is important if we do get into issues where you may or may not want to participate in a product um is that one business might choose to do it we don't want that business's choice to penalize another business we

1:17:02 want to be able to create and share the value that can be created across the organization through through really socializing the savings but we also want to make sure that one person's Choice does not become a place in an inadvertent burden on another one and so that's part of the intricacies of good rate design which I think is going to be really one of the most important things that staff and management in this commission works on in the next couple of years it'll it'll set that up another comment on when you'll see a public comment the the report that comes out next month with the recommendation will include the public feedback that we perceived

1:17:50 yes so just a clarification I think I hear you right I just want to be clear that the demand response will take a few years to roll out to get to completion right it's not waiting three years before any demand response rolls out no that well I mean I suspect yeah I suspect that you'll you will see some very specific action elements um in this next year's plan we got what I needed uh we do have a new rights manager in the wings it starts in a couple weeks conversation there we will move to the 2024 draft budget

1:18:37 and um good evening Commissioners my name is Deborah Hart for the record and it's October already and we are here with uh 2024 draft budgets and long-term financial plan updates Erin Balmer are acting finance manager

1:19:24 is here with me this evening and then Daniel Davidson and Janice Lee who did the the heavy lifting on this work that we're sharing tonight are here as well um so with that I probably don't want to look behind me last time you saw the long-term Financial plans was back in July when we brought the plants with their respective assumptions this evening we're here to review the updated long-term Financial plans and our seeking board Direction on the 2024 draft budgets next month we'll return with a more detailed budget document along with pricing proposals and we'll hold the first of two public

1:20:10 hearings on prices the second public hearing will be held in December at which point we'll be asking the board to adopt the pricing proposals and approve the final 2024 budgets so since July we've completed the 2024 draft budgets and those have been incorporated as the base year in these plans Additionally the plans include 2023 projected year-end cash flows to establish the 2024 beginning cash balances we've also updated labor costs Revenue forecasts as well as interest earnings on our cash balances we refine

1:20:55 some of our assumptions around infrastructure Investments and funding for those plans as it relates to debt issuances reserved refunded capital the Investments uh Concentra are concentrated on work to replace our aging infrastructure and support a resilient spine all metrics are above board Target throughout plan though day's cash is strained in 2024 as well as again in 2033 cash balances approach Target in the near term while Debt Service becomes strained for the electric utility in the last two years this is due to the use of cash to funder infrastructure Investments as well as increased Debt

1:21:41 Service from the issuances in 2027 and 2030 that we have in the uh even so uh with the debt issuances we are within board Target for debt service coverage while remaining within the current rate trajectory bounds a significant investment in Liebert has been incorporated into this plan and it includes 158 sorry 158 million in inflows and 148 million in expenditures over these 10 years now that does to early 2040 between the work is expected to be finished the early 2040s not necessarily early in 2040.

1:22:29 the plan does assume a compound a 10-year compounded rate increase of approximately 41 percent that is inclusive of Weber which is lower than we showed in July and due to budget updates we made to the plan we're now modeling the lower rate increase of 5.7 for 20.4 and both utilities although the rate impacts are unloaded the higher rates are front loaded they have been smooth wherever possible uh so here's a summary of the electric long-term financial plan metrics this

1:23:14 was also included in your board packet in the attachments section this is a stressed model with an annual contribution margin risk tolerance of about 14 million in the first five years and then returning to expected conditions in the last five years of the plan where you see yellow that does indicate that metrics are nearing our targets as as was intended in the first two years of the plan we're modeling the use of raid stabilization funds for capital projects inflation is easing somewhat with most recent reports having it at 3.7 CPI and C point at 3.7 and so

1:24:00 accordingly eweb is taking a milder approach on labor is at three percent for next year before it normalizes at the that two percent forecast Capital does stay up five percent for the first two years before it returns to three percent for the remainder of the plan and then labor is a combination of inflation factors and that includes expected Market comparators anticipated benefits increases as well as our collective bargaining agreement the 10-year rate trajectory is displayed at the bottom of the table and again I wanted to highlight that pre-funding for labor decommissioning is modeled beginning in 2024 and those increases

1:24:47 are expected to be sufficient to fund the decommissioning efforts in their entirety so I'm just going to pause for a few moments because there's a lot of numbers up there before we move on to water last question now questions now you want questions now or I can answer a question about this slide yeah any question but okay well in July you gave us a proposal that said our electric rate was going to be 7.75 no it's 5.7 so that's like 25 30 thank you very much for going in the right direction but to have that much of a spread from this presentation in July

1:25:32 presentation I don't know what triggered that but I also my second part of that is that we stated in there that 2.8 million planned for 2024 for Lieber and that's a four percent rate 24 24. but then we go to the next 10 years is 147.9 million which is a compounded eight percent over that period of time that math doesn't work for me how does four percent only equate to 2.8 million and 8 over 10 years are quite 147 million question so going to the what's changed since July in terms of the long-term financial plan we've seen some refinements in the

1:26:17 labor forecasting so labor costs has been a contributing factor to that as well as other revenues that we've cited in and improved our assumptions around well we've seen the need to change our assumptions around some of the other revenues since the July presentation so those are two of the contributors there and then in terms of the Liebert question I'm not sure I quite captured in 2024 we have Labor pre-funding for four percent in your July presentation you said that equates to 2.8 million dollars and then the next 147.9 million dollars equates to eight percent

1:27:02 um in in so I'm having trouble with that math how we four percent equation to 2.8 doesn't equate to 2.8 I think it should be more like four percent should be more like 10 million it says 2.8 million is planned for 2024 an additional 147.9 is over 10 million 10-year period oh I'm curious what you're referencing I'm just just hand out that you guys gave us spending for the Bergen 22 4 but that would be separate separate from this then okay well I'm sorry for the confusion I just did sorry if we may be no no I'm really easily confused so

1:27:49 thank you for the clarification that's all I I have on that thank you yeah so I'm going to be on the same line a couple things leave early pre-funding I see us getting the car next year and then diminishing down and stopping pre-funding by 2028 . so those are the increases that are scheduled so we're not actually bringing the amount of pre-funding down it would be what you're looking at here is four percent this year plus another one percent next year plus another one percent right right so it doesn't actually diminish down throughout this plan we collect 158 million so some of those out years

1:28:36 you're going to be collecting eight percent and throwing it into a bucket for labor yes through what year um I was just pulling up a spreadsheet and I believe it's 24. so 2041 so does that mean that that will be enough of a funding source that we won't need to bond for Liebert yes okay good that's that's I think that was kind of the direction that we path we set you down the next question I'd have is and this I know that commissioner Brown sits on this committee but you mentioned uh

1:29:21 wages and and benefits have you uh does the purse rate and hit us is it hot hits other municipalities when they get us and have you have you are you pretty dialed into what pers is going to do over the next wow if you would have stopped it pretty dialed in well I mean that's one of the main drivers in a lot of municipalities so um so how we're impacted by purse one of the things that this board did or at least some of the members of this board was make a decision to join the state and local government pool and that maybe

1:30:07 uh dampened the impacts that we would see as a single employer because I can't I can't go back and get our rates I can't promise that that was better for you but we're part of a larger pool so we do see the same impacts our budget though is uh the Lion's Share of our budget is in purchase power costs and in capital Investments and so while our rates may go up at the same rate we're not as sensitive in our overall budget okay um I think that answered my questions on this slide

1:30:54 I have a question about the BPA increase so is it just standard that there's an increase every other year or are we estimating that and also with the what the information so it is do you expect a BPA increase every other year we make an assumption about what that rate increase will be for planning purposes and then in the summer of the year that that we're anticipating an increase that final number comes into us and then just with that increase I don't know maybe this is slightly off topic but all the discussion that's going on about the need for increased electricity sources and

1:31:41 you know what BPA is going to do or what kind of investment is going to be made resources would that potentially equal a bigger BPA increase I guess does that get affect dinner how do we pay for that well it could um as I think as Deborah Hart mentioned purchase power is is a huge part of the electric utilities budget in combination then with with capital as we go through the understanding the new contract more and how that gets structured what our allocation for power is and I don't mean allocation that we can't get it but allocation at the tier one rate and how

1:32:27 that gets structured at this point we model it based on history but as we learn more the next year or two we'll start to model it into the IRP we'll start looking at the financial impacts of that as well it is it is a significant number and they do a rate case every two years and so we're continuing to model that even even that is not statutorily driven but that's been their historical practice so as they get into the the final definition of the different electives or product offerings by late 2024 early 2025 is the timing

1:33:12 that we'll know a little bit more and then one last really quick comment I know this has been asked for before but um when we look at what our rate increases it'd be really great to see like what the average customer pays for electricity and just look over the years and what that number it's not that maybe it's in our background or and I didn't see it but just for our information we do have the average increase Arnold for next year Carol Aaron will show that an impact when you do that if you do have the historical I wonder if it can also show

1:33:57 um in today's dollars so that it's relative to purchasing okay um as always thank you for the presentations and very complicated for me to understand um I I just want to recognize that of this board to pay for the Berg on the front end and not to the can down the road to avoid as much as possible taking out loans to pay for it and then paying extra I just feel like uh I feel like it's a great move I feel like it's all reflected here and I really appreciate that effort you all put into

1:34:43 smooth this your degree possible I can't believe I'm going to say I'd throw up with a 5.7 increase but I am compared to where we were it's great to see that moving down as you said um I know this is going to be hard to bite off over the next few years but a great move and I appreciate and and staff support for for going that direction um I do have one question I know six percent and five point seven percent are gonna be hard for low-income households we had a presentation a few months ago about another community's programs for low-income households I'm super interested in how we you know not only what we're doing now you know kind of a quantification we

1:35:29 talked about the sum but not all kind of in one setting but what we're doing now and what potential there is to further buffer lower income households so that they're not getting and at risk of locking up our agendas in the future is another thing I feel like would be reasonable for us to put on the agenda in the next few months to focus as a border how can we how can we take aim at these big numbers especially for low-income households so if there's support from other board members I would think it is it's already there okay I don't know we have a correspondence about analysis of eweb's Energy

1:36:14 Efficiency there's a couple of things um that's some feedback on this mud program that's that's to take you know we we did a side by side what do we do what is because the Commissioners um wanted to some feedback on that I think there'll be a couple opportunities to look at the vsap direct budget impacts so I think Deborah maybe we can explain sort of the philosophy of where we get that number it is it is not a number we just pull out of the air we actually have a certain number of our population that we're targeting with that and I don't know if you want to go through that but I mean we can talk about this more either in the context of

1:37:01 the budget or in the context of rates either either way I feel like we do a pretty we do a good job of establishing what that is and what the purpose is um but I think when we look at rates in particular that that's part of the equation so we we have made some changes in the way that we calculated if you'd like me to share that now Aaron said don't open up my big ugly spreadsheet so let me know we have one let me let me try this so we're using census data about the community is poverty levels to help us understand what the what the utility burden to our ratepayers are so we look at what the census tells us and we

1:37:47 extrapolate that to our own population we did that by comparing the average U.S bill to the amount that a limited income household at different levels could afford before they became energy burdened our plan is to make that an annual calculation so that as what bills rise the pool of customer care funds will also increase so we'll be capturing our increases in cost and uh adding to the customer care pool this year the calculation informed about a hundred thousand increase in Customer Care uh overall we're targeting about five percent of our total customer population which is fairly consistent with what we

1:38:34 see with many of our peer utilities [Music] I had a chance to ask my questions you have something related yeah well I just comment tagged on to what Matt was saying and what we do talk about affordability and things you know two of the four elements of the e-web bill aren't ours and they are scheduled to go up exponentially every year if you look at their budget increases and they give zero Financial relief I don't think stormwater has a customer care fund and neither does mwmc and so when we're having this discussion I for one am going to try and say well that's all we're all in this together so if the city can give up some storm water relief to some of these customers and some mwmc relief as well because they have the

1:39:20 same thing we have they have budget challenges and always you know not half of it but two of the four on ours and are totally out of our control so if we could spend some of this to others I was just gonna have part of the reason what what our objective is that that um whoever is describing is to move the percentage of the population that we call Energy burdened out of the energy burdened range for for the energy utility burden in our case we're doing it for water health y that creates two things one is as our rates change it becomes part of our calculation on the right side but also as poverty levels and the economy shifts

1:40:06 that also has an impact on so we're trying to in essence move people out of a burdened position into an unburdened position and that's how we create the the level of funding we also recognize there's LIHEAP there's a number of other resources and there's only a certain percentage of our population that actually participates with our programs too so that we take all that into into account when we're coming up with this this number and so maybe the objective of is to sort of pull this out from behind them you the Deborah curtain and and so we can see how this is done but that's spreadsheet

1:40:58 um I did just want to clarify something we do get some reimbursement from the City of Eugene for the portion of customer care because it gets applied across all the elements of the bill so they do show up on our bill and they are raising their bill but they are contributing to we're contributing to customer care just a city but not mwmc um I don't want to make the claim that it's fully covering us I haven't done that math [Music] there was a program for high heat that was extended to water as well and that

1:41:45 pilot program and about whether or not it's coming back that will have an impact on those line wall and my understanding that is not coming back so we looked at this though as a utility burden not just electric so customer care covers we're not looking at the help that they're already receiving and what that he's a bit offsets of what we're what our burden is basically understand we're looking at them they are futility whatever other help they get well

1:42:30 we've we've looked at a need and from that need we we do subtract what is coming in from other assistance sources so you've already taken into account the water as well we did understand yes that that would be falling off um I have a question a few questions about um inflation specifically do you have a sense of how much the inflation of we said it's easing has pumped up these numbers and you know it has decreased lately does that decrease across the board or was that just kind of a recent decrease and then the rest of it we assume is more of a standard

1:43:30 that's in your model in in the model we've looked and said inflation has been easing off and so for next year it's a CPI the most recent CPI was at 3.7 so for next year um we do have we do have forecasts that say it should be lower than three percent but using a more conservative three percent the FED long-term targets two percent so after next year we're reverting after 2024 we're reverting to two percent as it applies to our non-labor own for Capital that's been a little um stent maybe and we're keeping keeping that five percent for the next two years before going back down to three percent so that's the that's the way that we

1:44:16 forecasted it is that we have seen some Cooling and we're modeling that it will cool off to three percent next year so when we talk about CPI we're literally talking about the CPI that's the consumer basket of goods there's not which includes things like food and toiletries and other things like crap that are completely unrelated to the vast majority of the things that we actually purchase there's there's no separate basket of goods that's related to utilities or construction purposes we're not using separate baskets um I'm just curious for the majority of the things that we purchase Construction

1:45:02 you know our big ticket items I wonder how much that's actually coming down and it was the labor shortages there we still have shortages and building materials concrete supply chain disruptions overseas so I feel like that using the CPI and that basket of goods is not very not particularly reflective of the things that we actually purchased so I would just you know maybe wash on that or look at how that relates over time and I know you don't have the crystal ball for that side of it but some of those things are bigger challenges that

1:45:47 for sure and part of the way that we address that is that we acknowledge that we expect construction materials to stay higher and that's the five percent for two years and then we did just uh finish our collective bargaining agreement and so at least a portion of the labor for the utility we we can see in a contract where we'll end up so there are some places that we have mitigated that risk and then um how do you pick the five percent is that just okay well we think it's going to be higher and that's a number or or are there other underlying factors that kind of like together there's research that goes into it so there's a

1:46:32 lot of assessment of different economic drivers and so there's a degree of research that goes into it but kind of at the end of the day Circle you see the circle where everybody's kind of going around it basket of goods for construction and inflation anyway um the the last thing that I wanted to ask about has there been any we've talked before about there might be grants or opportunities for dam removal has there been any more thoughts on the research done on it finding that there's

1:47:17 anything out there um we're gonna pursue all that we all that we can there we modeled in here that we're paying all of it but as we get into which process we're going to use once we get through December and which process we're going to use that'll determine the potential options to go take a look at whether that's we're not in a place to know which James might apply it yeah we're not we're not at that stage yet so we modeled this fully fully burdened um and and I think your comment about the inflation numbers are are correct there there aren't I mean there's about 100 different cpis that you can look at for different different types of products and services um this seems like a pretty good balance

1:48:03 for us if if we over represent that then we artificially inflate rates during a period so the fact that we revisit this on an annual basis well more than once a year with these assumptions and we can throttle work up and down I think gives us a little bit of a witness well and I mostly ask just to understand I fully trust people the experts in doing the best that you can to forecast something that is inherently not going to be correct but you make it more correct than anyone else that I would trust in that position so thank you for doing that and when I cited 3.7 it was just a point to something that we have seen in the news recently but there are

1:48:48 a variety of I'm not even sure there's a hundred cpis but there are a variety exaggerated videos doesn't cross it I'll just add something real quick so if you look at the way we budget capital projects you the the projects that are budgeted out in the out years are are you know 30 estimate kind of within what's your minus 30 so the the near years though uh will feel pretty good about those numbers so as as it moves through the plan the these construction changes Will Will Roll in through those calendars

1:49:34 okay well we took a lot of question time please continue your presentation um well thank you we've also updated the assumptions to the wire utility plan in a similar way that we do the electric all metrics for the water utility uh are above Target but when we look at the numbers chart or if you had a chance to look at that you'll see that cash is strained early and that service becomes strained and that's really the result of a large debt issuance in 2026 that is intended to fund a second treatment facility on the Willamette River maybe in the vein of an earlier question I heard I did want to note that the model does not include any advantageous

1:50:22 uh funding from Grants or Lithia loans as our ability to access those funds comes into Focus though we will incorporate those so so we've assumed for both the water and electric utility that we're for it all but as we know more about what might be available or particularly with the second treatment plan our ability to utilize the Lithia Loan program we'll incorporate that favorable information into the plan we are modeling an increase in the revenue requirement for 2024 of 7.8 the 10-year compounded rate trajectory of 75

1:51:09 is to fund those significant Investments that are going to replace the Aging infrastructure and improve the water utilities resilience market comparator analysis does continue to indicate that we have a large degree of Headroom amongst our comparators and Aaron will show you a little bit more about that in a minute here to the table this is really a summary of the metrics this is also a stress model with a contribution margin risk tolerance of about 1.2 million annually so for the first five years it's stressed and then

1:51:55 in the back half of the plan we reverted back to expected conditions the yellow area are are as our metrics begin to approach Target stress is in the plan are due to large investments in our infrastructure we're modeling a drawdown of the rate stabilization throughout the plan for the water utility that's helping us to reduce borrowing and manage our debt service coverage debt service coverage really does become the driver the rate driver in the water utility in the lateral portion of the plan we have the 10-year trajectory at the bottom of the table and you've probably already noted that the initial six years

1:52:41 increase CIS are steeper than the latter four years and that's due to the timing of those investments in our system the early rate increases are necessary for the large planned issuances that are beginning in 2026 and again wherever it's been possible for us we have we have smooth those rate impacts pause for a moment and let you look at this and then I'm going to hand it to Aaron after I answer your question [Music] just so the debt service coverage ratio the target to the 2.5 as it gets closer to two does that

1:53:28 affect the rates that we pay to our debt issuers so two is still within the range of where we're at now but there are many factors so that's just one our management our cash balances our governance here our financial forecasts it's a piece of it higher debt service coverage and these are forecasted at service coverage higher debt service coverage is better but at two percent we're still in the range to maintain our rating okay and then I guess the other question I would have is if water puts stress on

1:54:13 our ratings does that correspond to the electric if we have to if we have to apply for electric I was just going to add it's not a linear scale a commissioner there's the fact that it's a round two is that it's a nice benchmark but as our CFL mentioned there's a lot of other factors that collapse all those okay you've seen 2.12 versus 2.03 you're not going to get a difference based on that um this is the second time we've done this we've raged to put money away for AWS the first time it was kind of a false start we had to get the money back are we confident to the degree of doing this again that

1:54:58 we have the landing to cook here so we can do this I believe that I'm I'm very confident Brown we don't have the approvals per se you know in in hand we also don't have the barriers that we had before and that's the process thank you Aaron okay good evening Commissioners this slide is really meant to emphasize a shift in the conversation and presentation tonight and so um yeah I'll see a shift from here moving into November and December we've been

1:55:43 discussing the 10-year long-term financial plan and that's looking forward to 2033 but as we continue this fall we shift Focus to the upcoming Year's budgets and prices for each utility budget approach for each utility is twofold there's an operations and maintenance budget o m and then a capital budget that's inclusive of that service again our ultimate goal in December we'll seek Board of action on 2024 budgets and price proposals so diving into the electric utility the draft budget here for 2024 is one million dollars more than 2023

1:56:30 the budget segments are shown in the graph comparing last year to this year's draft figures it's either very similar year over year local budget is inclusive of ongoing General renewal and replacement activities to what we're doing today already making here inclusive with major projects such as Carmen Smith eweb Enterprise Solutions Ami and Liebert risk mitigation efforts and that's just to name a few looking to The Debt Service component that has declined slightly year over year we saw a final principal payment on a prior issuance mature this year so it drops off for next year but I do want to

1:57:15 note that we've modeled in 2024 a new issuance with the electric utility and that we anticipate following a similar calendar as to what we did this year with the water utility so we'll be back in late winter early spring with more there looking at the bars that represent the purchase power coming over budget you can see as was mentioned that's the Lion's Share of the budget and that includes assumptions for energy market prices that have increased slightly as well as it models increases in our BPA rates taking effect this month the remaining o m budget the far right columns there that increase there is

1:58:01 driven by in costs here so with electric utility draft budgets being essentially equal in total year over year that really kind of begs the question how does that equate to a 5.7 percent Revenue requirement increase the answer being that budget totals speak to spending Authority exclusive of changes in reserves or approaches in funding there's three big drivers of note one the spending increases due to BPA price changes those will not otherwise absorbed and planned in the planning process two we're using rate funding to support capital projects more so than last year

1:58:49 and then finally we have an addition to reserves in the 2024 budget we've again modeled a Liebert pre-funding and establishing a reserve to navigate decommissioning efforts going forward we've also increased targets for working cash that was part of uh approval earlier this year when we had conversations around reserves and passed and best use of cash looking to our comparative affordability we can see that we are evaluating about 11 a month as the average residential customer bill increase this doesn't change our position among comparator utilities I want to point out

1:59:34 that we don't know what the changes are and be among those blue bars there I know we see a lot of we're experiencing a lot of similar pressure that we're seeing across the northwest last item I want to note on that 11 in that chart I want to throw the disclaimer at the cost of service analysis the results are going to be presented next month so the customer class impacts are to be determined and really just emphasize this as a preview foreign the draft budget here is three million dollars less than it was last year and

2:00:19 again budget segments are shown in the graph comparing with prior year figures Capital budgets see a slight decline year over year but they still include ongoing General renewal and replacement activity that's inclusive of mains and meters and service lines as well as investments in major projects such as completion of the East 40th storage project starting on College Hill and Shasta storage projects the Hilliard Street transmission main work as well as the Willamette treatment plant and we have Enterprise Solutions are all included in the capital budget figure there for next year

2:01:07 The Debt Service budget increased and that's following the issuance we had earlier this year so that's the driver there and then Watershed recovery efforts continue on the holiday Farm fire although they've shifted down from 2023 budgeted levels The Watershed processing and grant funding are not modeled in the budgeted it's not yet being assuming those grants are awarded a budget amendment to support increase of spending would be proposed to the board and looking at the additional o m budget that is shown there increases there as for electric are driven by labor costs

2:02:01 again with the budget declining by three million dollars how does that equate to a 7.8 revenue requirement increase and again similar to Electric we see changes in reserves changes in our funding approach and trying to manage key metrics is that service coverage so the revenue requirement increase supports ongoing Financial resiliency in several ways as mentioned The Debt Service requirement increased following this year's issuance you also see increasing Revenue requirements needed to support increases in rate funded o m compared to last year this is mostly driven by labor as mentioned before also we're modeling deposits to reserves

2:02:47 for Budget year 2024 in comparison to last year this is a notable change a prior year budget included significant Watershed recovery efforts funded from Reserves and it also modeled and draw from reserves to support operations flipped this year so yeah and then finally here in terms of the increasing Revenue requirement part of the increase now is the means of employing gradualism in rate increases to position the water utility to meet that service coverage metrics following the Future Finance we're going to see big steps in near-term debt service coverage or big

2:03:33 steps in near-term debt service requirements that will need larger annual revenue generation to maintain the debt service coverage targets looking to our comparative affordability we are evaluating a three dollar increase for the average residential customer with these figures It's a Small Change in our position among comparator utilities and I do want to emphasize that we still have remaining Headroom and also that we don't know the changes that the other utilities are going to make at this um and yes the disclaimer I want to emphasize that again and said it will

2:04:18 bring back Cosa results all right so next steps there's a public hearing scheduled for this evening and then following that staff look forward to board direction we will be back next month with one detail around budgets and price proposals there will be another opportunity for public hearing and for direction before we're back in December with some more of the same what we'll be seeking board action at that time thank you okay so I will open the public hearing on the projects and

2:05:03 budget assumptions I know that during the last public hearing from there was one caller who did not get her email to testify live so I will be forwarding that to the board that was um so the board will give that tomorrow we'll ask her for her comments and writing on the other topic got it okay thank you did I miss no she didn't get her instructions that opportunity for her to speak all right well I will close the public sessions

2:05:53 so you're just clarification monies were putting away in Modern Electric is that a sinking fund future number or what it not and what range of growth are you assuming you're putting this money here [Music] free bird on this slide I know it's an eye chart but I'd highlight the second row there that shows the Liebert Reserve balance so that shows what the balance would be at the end of each year there so in terms of it being a sinking fund um it's getting used as we're putting it you're using the money as you're going in you're not sitting on it and

2:06:38 investing it and I was just wondering what growth rate you've compounded we were using but if you you're building that Reserve up and how much are we gaining through music yeah well part of the investment policy earlier this evening well I'm saying that to say that we're limited by what we can invest in a lot of fixed income securities low risk and screen that our factory shows me what our investment assumption is [Music] neighborhood

2:07:24 information for for modeling four and a half percent but then we're declining a little bit of what we're seeing as well in treasuring you because good return thank you okay well um is it on the same topic okay just quickly but clarification I believe the limitations in what we could invest in right those are it's not by choices because we're required to invest in things that are super safe and therefore relatively yeah there's a high degree of Statute thank you that requirement around welcome investment

2:08:17 thanks and Watershed recovery you mentioned that we used reserves to get in 2023 is that why that number is so high as 10 million and and the reserves that we pulled from is that being read said we were going to be putting money back into Reserves for because we pulled it out the direction is to put it back in is that the three bucks that everybody's paying on is that what we borrowed against basically when we thought we'll pull on our reserves because the need is now I just want to I just want to know why that 8 million deficit is there to change year over year right so not necessarily A deficit

2:09:02 what we've seen this year as Watershed efforts have played out is that we're not going to need to do any kind of a draw on Reserves so that's part of the Improvement that we see in the water utility going from July to now as we're remodeling double half those reserves for next year to move towards capital efforts of the three dollar Watershed recovery fee dot in 2024. the two points 2.4 is a little bit more than what is uh

2:09:49 three dollars in Watershed recovery of Grants are can play a big part that's pretty much passive where does the administrators of that the money comes into us and then we pass it through to Kenzie Watershed Council or those types of tech correct I mean I know there are grants that are like that that we administer right we are also the recipients of Grants ourselves as opposed to just pass through I think on the Watershed instead to make sure that we clarify is that we've got expenses that are are matched with the with the Watershed recovery fee

2:10:36 and then there's also potential expenses that we haven't secured grants from and so those are actually missing from here because we did not want to model expenses that were not yet funded the board would have a choice then at that juncture because I mean I know that there's projects that are in the works up there that again it's a it's a double-edged sword you know last time we had a plot when we had holiday Farm fire we had a bunch of bird wood that we was available to us to help with some of our recovery projects I'm afraid that that's going to also be

2:11:23 the same case with what we just had with the lookout there it was going to be a lot of burnt wood that's coming out of there we may have an opportunity to leverage that and I just don't want to miss those opportunities you have to get that's available because there are you know they are talking about doing doing courts Creek and that's going to be a long way of those types of things just so a couple of ways in which we continue to look for those opportunities we do have we do have a dedicated staff person for Grants we have other staff people that participate in a cross-functional group to identify what opportunities are available and what would be appropriate for eweb to pursue and then we even have

2:12:10 engaged some consulting services from from a national firm that is very familiar with the federal money coming out helping to point us in directions I did have a quick question on the Watershed recovery when we voted to support the you know the plan for that wasn't that a Time yeah okay so that falls off then modeled it's like we we dropped off but we're still increasing right so we're using three dollars but increasing percent off of a decrease to three

2:12:56 dollars okay no okay if you've gotten what you need from us this evening I have you so yeah great well thank you and we will close this uh this topic and move on to the future board agendas Carlson um just two things of note relative to upcoming agendas one we do have an executive session scheduled um for November with the exception of you related to some ending legal action and then the other one I just wanted to

2:13:41 um we we did have a work session scheduled in October that was dedicated to the EI and development work it doesn't look like we're going to need that so if the board is okay with canceling Network session that would be you know you need to have a meeting show up and do it alternatively but that would be our recommendation would be to cancel all right then we are on to board wrap up start this way and um the one thing that I wanted to bring up is that President Carlson and I had

2:14:32 are going to be liaisoning with this with the City of Eugene this week or next week so if there's topics that you feel you want us to bring up the past we've kind of had a bucket list and we really haven't gone through that yet as to what our agenda going forward is I hate going into a meeting and just saying hi it's good to see you again what's going on uh how can we help you I mean if we have specific things that we want uh addressed with our city leaders this this would be a good opportunity um and we can just spitball around here if you want or we can I don't know what the best way to move forward with that but I like I said I don't I hate going into a meeting that we have so infrequently and not being prepared so if there's some way to do

2:15:18 that that would be helpful for me can we discuss like priorities yeah that's like nine months ago sometimes my only concern is that I know that the city still has a huge budget are we looking for looking for other sources of income uh I personally think of stayed in our own perspective departments and if there's some effort to try and say how can we make eweb you

2:16:03 know help us I think that that does nothing but pressure on rates and we're already dumping rates a lot more than I'd feel comfortable with but we have to do it and so is that if that copy comes up I would I personally would like to make sure that consider it the entire spectrum of what they're talking about I don't know if it is going to come up but you can't get what you don't ask for I personally would be very curious to know what what other drivers they have that are increasing the sewer rates and performance like is it is it just construction are there other drivers

2:16:50 say no either maybe they will yeah I liked your idea of asking them to help kick into the kid to the fund a little bit maybe we'll get a little bit more from them to help offset rates because if their rates are going up say we've got a mechanism to help alleviate that on our bills you will give them a little bit more I know that I know that the storm water funds and Wastewater funds are a little bit less challenged than the general fund is they've been if you look at their budgets five to seven percent every year that period of time you know we can't dictate their budgets

2:17:36 but um just want to make sure that you personally stay I want to stay out online so to speak and let them oh okay okay yeah one comment on those other bills that come through our goal I actually I don't know how problem they are how problematic they are for us as utility I don't I don't I mean at this point collecting them like those but in terms of politically I don't know how big of a deal is as we all get pushing into increasing those rates how

2:18:21 much are we going to get back about the illness to other costs going up for our repairs yeah and so actually I would propose if we feel like that's an issue that maybe we want to consider now that all of our bill collecting is done electronically it's not 20 years ago where we were sending out a mailer CV chain can just as easily do electronic building as we do I actually don't know if it's unreasonable for us to ask them to start collecting that separately I think it'd be a conversation worth approaching if we feel like the collecting it ourselves is a political challenge given the inflation

2:19:06 and rates across all of these different metals [Music] so there's there's a couple of things in in Play It's either in the charter or the city code that we are required to be the billing agent for the City of Eugene for I don't remember the exact term Wastewater services or you know in in that so there's there's that element and then we do charge them for the cost of whatever it is that that we are building to as for the political or customer perception of it I think our communication staff has done a really good job the last few years of trying to break this out on the bills and and highlight you know where does your

2:19:51 dollar go from a from a billing perspective but when you open the say open the envelope when you when you open the the email and you see here's an e here's e-web and here's a number there is a certain perception that oh my e-web bill is this amount and it's it's not necessarily all ebooks so there's there's that to navigate in in many cases Commissioners have to navigate that as much as the staff does but um we will be having some discussions with them on billing coming up and I'm not sure exactly what the topic is we're not quite sure either but the city has reached out so we're gonna we'll be talking to them about something actually going to come out of the same since the billing layout changed a few years ago

2:20:38 I've heard far fewer people links about it I think it's just a lot clearer you know you know where do those rates are coming from and I would not advocate for splitting it up I understand there's kind of a political thing there but as a consumer of having to pay I don't want to have to pay another place follow this um this weekend we all got a email from a customer who was kind of in a dire situation about having their power shut off and um it was resolved

2:21:24 but my question is when there's emergencies like that for customers over the weekend so you have customer service open or what happens there is the ability to call eweb um on the weekend now there's also policy in play that we don't do shut-offs on certain holiday weekends if there's certain cold temperatures if there's certain high temperatures of holiday weekends that we will not do shut offs on Fridays for that particular reason they don't call the normal number they call dispatch number and then there's the option to there's a there is a mechanism

2:22:13 and this is on future agendas and stuff I don't know if everybody knows this but I kind of have a passion for water what you know this agenda and I've got a whole lot there on the Watershed in the next six months and there's things that are important to me that the 52nd Street firm and the potential of that breaching the movement of the lower McKenzie when the mayor came to us like six to nine months ago and that's just for help because eroding that and all those types of things that I'm not saying I want something on this and I just don't want you to forget that because I can do without electricity I can't do without water and that's really complex and want to be pretty simple but I still want to make sure that we don't forget water yeah absolutely agree and you know you I think you got an update in the general

2:22:58 manager's report on on some of the work emergency work going on out at East 42nd some of the programs and simulations I also expect that when we do our quarterly reporting there's going to be a significant amount of water updates as part of that on a on a regular basis so even though there aren't quite as many complexities the Waterside has its own complexities and we need to make sure we're staying on top of those and and so at least quarterly There's an opportunity to dive into these issues that we to me complexity is one thing importance is another and and to me it's it's more important than electricity is is the preservation

2:23:43 that will be an ongoing debate you know how you're going to get your water without electricity how are you going to treat it there's all kinds of things I think I have a good feel for what your position is thank you okay so I guess that's um and now we have four wrap up that's right I'm sorry we didn't go through that well then do you have anything on board Rapids we didn't quite get around we kind of jumped around that topic okay well I have a few things I will make it quick because I know who wants to leave um somebody took a picture of us for the damn tour I was just hoping they could actually share that with us

2:24:30 that I don't know if it's camera that ended up because as somewhat regular and I was curious if anybody would be interested as if you would go in and do that tour yes the municipal waste the facility yeah if there's an interest in making a new Webmail I would not then I'll reach out on my own I'm interested okay so we got three okay all right

2:25:16 and then um I failed to mention that I attended the United Way breakfast on behalf of eweb it was a great breakfast thank you for opening that up to us to participate in they do work for community and then last two things before covet hit and we moved over here we used to have um our meal situation was a bit different and we like you know I don't think I don't know if it's possible but I was just curious if there was a way we used to have the like love food not waste Tana brought that up and it kind of reminded me that we used to compost and stuff do we compost here those kinds of things are not at all well we have recycling containers at this point

2:26:01 this stuff's probably not being sorted and then finally um I'm curious about some point we can find out what brands had been after we're getting a lot of like push and questions from the public too about like you have are you doing anything around great president Carlson you should expect some kind of formality to our our I'll call it a grant Clearinghouse process something I've spoken with Rob Price and Debra about formalizing a little bit we do have a queue we have recipients

2:26:46 there's there's all of that that's that's being tracked um but we haven't really made it formal as as far as as communicating all the details of that with the board so expect more on the horizon coming to that we also know that we're getting pressure from the public to do more with grants we want to make sure that that whenever we pursue grants that there's strategic alignment with what we're doing that we're not just chasing money and adding overhead so so all that'll be part of the process