EWEB Board of Commissioners — March 5, 2024

0:16 adjustments on items from board members and the general manager this Friday is the elog appreciation number given out still time to sign up if you'd like to participate the cage gr H than that had good meeting with the rotary the at the airport rotary R so thank you rod for coming and supporting me on that I that's what I've got

1:13 [Music] any okay um the deals I really like that change way we're doing it and so I don't know how others feel about that but I'm sure that uh if we can continue to do that that's a nice touch thank you very much um number two uh the when I put PR meeting questions together I really appreciate staff's ability to get back to us but I really want to compliment WR out a lot of things that I work aware of and an awareness and you know I'm going to be aware of now because the river shifting and what's getting into the river water EV and the monitoring and and the doing on so I'd

1:58 just like to give a shout out to staff for that that and then whoever is taking my place at um neighborhood association meeting tonight they asked me to be there and present on the emergency preparedness but I had to be here so we did that I thank you for E web staff we showing up and taking care of that thank you um I attended the keny wat head council meeting last mon uh nice presentation on Pacific BL pre work they did tagging them and moving above the dam and following them all the way up the river to Point Way is they've got one all the way up almost to Cougar Reservoir before it came out so that was good work is continuing

2:45 uh design uh for the quarts Creek restoration they've got the bridge built and put in there and so now it's the next step it will start construction in 2025 but it's going to be similar to what Finn Rock was but at courts Creek where we heard before and so that's an exciting project and one of the bigger ones that they've done it was a good meeting well first of all welcome to Super Tuesday um we'll see how that works out um I did um separate from the general manager's report I I just wanted to let you know I um had a follow-up meeting with one of the uo students who was here uh last meeting one of the

3:31 journalism students and uh answered a whole series of of questions um and really enjoyed the conversation so um really appreciated having them here last month and um hopefully we can provide some some useful information for them one more thing I know uh McKenzie river trip is coming up in May and this is March and we only had one more meeting and we're thinking about who's going with us how many inbox we have and things like that i' just like to put a reminder out to process whoever does that us to think about who we would want to join us on that particular experence so we that one more meeting or two

4:17 more we have Clarity around the process for how we're who weing there the priorities from what I heard um are um County Commissioners uh um any local state representatives some that have helped us um with certain bills um we'll definitely want to reach out to the City of Springfield City of Eugene potentially um if there's enough if there's enough room on the votes looking for both legislative Representatives but but also for uh potential local Partners so that's kind of our our priority and staff has that all covered thanks anything

5:03 else all right um moving on to public input and before we do public input I'm going to hit the facility and safety awareness uh briefing that I missed at the very outset um so just thanks everybody who's here for the meeting um EB management and subject matter experts are here and in the room and virtually um and the meeting is being live streamed and recorded for all of us please speak loudly clearly so everyone can hear you I know it's important for folks listening remotely that we all speak loudly and clearly uh public testimony is welcome we're going to go to that in just a moment sign up forms are available at the back of the room if anybody's here to sign up and hasn't yet now is the time visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and restrooms the restrooms are located on

5:49 the first floor uh and you would exit out the the door here and someone can direct you to the restrooms in the event of emergency please listen to instructions provided by by staff and if an evacuation is required please proceed to the nearest safe exit and follow directions from staff and um once outside move away from the building to the farthest points in the parking lots so that's safety and then I'm just going to say a few words about uh public input um again thank you for being here um this portion of the agenda is dedicated to providing community members an opportunity to address the board about any EB topic or issue we respectfully request that all speakers adhere to EB's public input instructions

6:34 which are up on the screen here um and code of conduct that are provided during the sign up speak process uh right now we have five people who are signed up to provide testimony we're going to start with the folks who are calling in first and then come to the folks who are in the room when your name is called you'll have up to three minutes to provide your comments uh just one point before we get started I know for some people who have provided public testimony can be maybe less than satisfying this particular format isn't great for a diverse dialogue it's great for us to hear what folks are concerned about but not really a space for us to get into a conversation so for that reason we don't by policy engage in conversation not

7:19 because we're not listening um it's just that this is a great format for that so I can't speak for other board members but for myself if you want to have a conversation um more in depth about something you're concerned about I certainly will make myself available to meet with you and and hear concerns and and share with you what um eweb is is doing related to the concerns you have um and I think that's it so with that the public input session is now open and we're going to start uh with the first caller if she's here Sabrina SE hello that's is that Sabrina hello can you hear me yeah is

8:06 that Sabrina oh hi thank you so much um H I want to say um it's imperative that you not implement the smart meter program roll out because the country has no safety regulations for RF for the radio frequency the microwave radiation exposure uh and it's in violation of the law presently um and you could see the DC Court ruling argued January 25th 2021 decided August 13 uh in 21 number 20-125 Environmental Health Trust at all petitioners versus Federal

8:52 Communications Commission and United States of America and um the uh uh the Federal Communications Commission was told by the court uh the FCC has not answered the court order which reads uh for the reasons given above we Grant the petitions in part and remand to the commission to provide a reason explanation for its determination that its guidelines adequately protect against harmful effects have exposed Ure to radio frequency radiation uh is um I'm sorry it must in particular provide a reasoned

9:38 explanation for its decision to retain its testing procedures for determining whether cell phones and other portable electronic devices comply with its guidelines addressed and impacts uh R sorry RF radiation on children and the health implications of long-term term exposure to RF radiation the ubiquity of wireless devices and other technological developments that have occurred since the com commission last updated its guidelines which was 25 years ago so we have no no uh protections um uh from RS on

10:23 the books not one therefore eweb is endangering the public for rolling out something on them for which no regulations exist and it's a violation of the law and now um I was charged with reading um uh Eva Eva um bot Nick's um letter uh she called and has an accommodation with you so shall I read it shall I go ahead yeah thank you and I'm just gonna really briefly let every Everybody in the room know what's going on so we had um somebody who want to provide testimony but who has um is unable to testify tonight and so we agreed to have Sabrina provide their testimony um in in their

11:10 place so that's what Serina is going to do now so another U three minutes up to three minutes Sabrina thank you okay thank you so much um okay um so hello my name is Eva and I have an impairment which substantially limit a major life activities and which is caused by exposure to man-made electromagnetic fields as determined by medical doctors and the Social Security Administration I was forced to leave my home and live in the farest far from all radio frequency and electromagnetic fields including power lines cell phone towers and neighbors transmitters uh

11:56 just to live uh for for almost two decades if you can understand there is no housing there I had to live in abject conditions in a tiny trailer with no electricity running water or neighbors I found out through a foia to the Department of Housing and Urban Development that fully 60% of of disability accommodation claims related to electromagnetic fields from 2000 to 2020 where to get smart meters uh were to get smart meters removed from homes because they were disabling people and no complaints about utility meters were registered prior to the roll out of smart meters in 2013 five were

12:43 registered in 2013 and 21 in 2016 these people were forcibly evicted from their homes until and unless the normal meters were returned the analog meters uh in other words the smart met leers caused the sickness and disability this does not include the people who did not know their more mild health problems such as cancer neurological conditions ADHD sleeplessness infertility Etc were from the radiating meters in other words if you go through with a smart and digital meter roll out lots and lots of people in eug gene will become sick and including babies and the incapacitated who are now who are not able to speak

13:30 for themselves and get away many will lose their homes and it is it is not limited to those meters on their homes but that of their neighbors the Oregon Bureau of Labor and industries settled a radiating radiating meter claim for HUD in 2013 wherein The Meters were not only replaced on the affected person's home but on those of the neighbors too they put the analoges back you do not want to have a legal and Health crisis on your hands especially since we are giving you the documentation please keep Eugene healthy and retain the analog mechanical meters if it is not broken please don't fix it

14:15 I will provide this data for the public record thank you so much thank you Sabrina thank you all right uh next is Kathy G you hear me yeah go ahead Cathy you have three minutes this is Kathy ging from Amazon neighborhood uh stops smmart meters. org um has a site called Electra health.com and mentions that only four USA utility customers have had the utility shut off due to rejecting a smart meter eweb would be number five and six to Frank Lawson I am not

15:00 involved in legal action against eweb but want to ask for a meeting with you to discuss peaceful alternatives to having eweb get involved in a messy National bad PR campaign and a loss of its role as a paragon utility that used to lead the country in renewable energy and socially responsible initiatives if rank does not agree to a meeting with rayer owners he is on the wrong side of History epad net store allows op do for initial $95 fee switching back to an analog meter and $10 a month meter fee and Austin Texas also 10 bucks a month many rate payers recently received threatening letters from eweb and Louis cob their legal counsel informing them

15:46 that their utilities may be shut off and they were only given two weeks uh they said March 13th you have to decide if you reject the smart meter your electricity may be turned off um I have filed a complaint today with Governor kotek about these letters received by rate payers who are calling me asking me what to do the state of the utility is that eweb has declared war on rate payers who refuse a digital smart meter staff and board have failed in the due diligence to continue to do the discovery of information that shows up regarding Tech problems which uh was indicated by the engineering study at OSU Corvalis last year documented by assistant law professor uro um Brian

16:31 bull where it only takes 2% of the smart meters to be hacked in an area to disrupt and sabotage the power lines so why aren't we looking at this before we continue this full deployment and why hasn't this board been informed about the 140 page report that uh took 18 months and 600 articles by a codre of Eugene uh medical and it professionals that warned about radiation in the houses now uh your public records request is prominently mentioning a cost of a return a review I have a forum from several years ago it does not say that and then I I just say that Frank lawon um I have a comment a document you know was published by eweb in which you're

17:17 saying you're pounding your chest boasting what a great utility you work for that you interact and engage with my customers but you know what neither the Citywide commissioner Mindy schlosberg or Mr barovsky would return my phone calls when I asked to have a meeting with them for the first time in the 42e history that I have lived in Eugene and I have interacted benignly with them thank you Kate thank you Kathy Bye Bye thanks next is Gavin McComas if Gavin's on and then Allan Al on no all right so we're GNA move on to Allan gorano [Music]

18:07 again um so once again I gave up a first Tuesday night to come on my bicycle all the way out here instead of going to the Eugene's SCBA diving club meeting which is a lot more fun um the reason I'm here is I'm one of those people that's received an ultimatum a threatening letter that if I do not comply I will not have electricity or services that is almost like it can become death to people from hypothermia death to people from not eat drinking what are you people trying to do to us there are so many people in this town that have so many objections to these smart meters and you insist on just steamrolling it over all of us why what is the problem why can you

18:53 not hear why can you not understand what people go through and and follow it we elect you people what are you doing to deserve our votes we need we need response we need responsive people in your positions you know i' I've seen I used to enjoy going in to eweb to pay my bill other than the fact of having to Fork over a lot of money every month back when he was downtown you know when I got back from being away for so long I look at my bills like why are they so high and now I see oh service fee service fee I'm paid $50 a month just to have service not what I'm using but just to have service and then what I'm using is piled

19:38 on top of that that didn't used to be the case or at least I never noticed it that much what is this company becoming aren't you supposed to be some kind of public company here we need you to respond with us so thank you and my time thank you thank you and next is Cindy Allen California Arizona Texas Maine and other states with huge utilities such as pg& in California have successful opt

20:25 out programs that allow people to keep their analog meters and to replace a smart meter with an analog Lane County's epud has a smart meter opt out there's extensive video history at families for safe Technologies friends of Amazon Creek and other internet sites that document Dr Paul dart's presentations to eweb the 2013 opt-in vote public comment sessions the smart meter documentary take back your power numerous lectures in Eugene with leading experts in RF radiation and smart meter concerns Josh Jou director of takeback your power daff attack over Katie singer and Dr Martin

21:10 Paul videos of these programs were sent to the ewb board and are part of the Eugene smart meter record they document health issues of RF radiation increased inflammation changes to the heart and brain altered endocrine function trouble sleeping increased rates of cancer Etc the smart meter cyber security risk and vulnerability of a centralized grid fires DC to AC switching causing dirty electricity on the wiring Fourth Amendment violations increases to the bill Etc January 2024 FBI director Christopher Ray testified before the house select committee warning about the Chinese hacking of our grid system

21:55 electric and water He also mentioned malware computer components it was the same warning that General David betrus made and take back your power the ew opt in change to an opt out in 2018 and I sent my letter in wanting the analog and not a smart meter and heard little from eweb about Smart Meters from 2018 to 2024 to send out a letter during the winter months saying that I must choose the smart meter options or my utility will be cut off doesn't Inspire any confidence in your program why this sudden urgency to put a smart meter in every home in Eugene let the people who want the analog meters keep them that's

22:41 what other utilities have done and it stands by your 2013 decision to give customer owners Choice thank you I don't think we have anybody else signed up so that is the end of the public input period for this meeting closed at this time we'll give an opportunity for Commissioners to comments if you so choose um I'll just take a moment and uh say thank you for making the time to be here um I do regret that this is not a great spot for dialogue but as I mentioned earlier happy to meet elsewhere for um a conversation on the

23:28 topics of your interest um I we've had a fair amount of discussion among the board I like it's uh it's a positive mood that eweb is providing an option for customers to get a GE that is in Communications mode so it's not using smart meter technology to um to send information wely wirelessly I feel like that's a positive move um that's all I have I appreciate you all making the time to be here just real quick that that policy has not changed voted to do the opt out that was a number of years ago but

24:13 people are getting now because we actually have the time stock of years to install and so that's where people are getting this disect no policy has changed soed thanks all right moving on to board action and general business items start with the approval of a did I miss something no I'd like P all right let's go ping number two uh is there a motion to approve inent calendar a minus number two well to approve minus number two moved by Sun Carlson second second by John barovsky

24:58 uh so all in support of approving consent calendar a minus number two yeah I unanimously discussion on number two yeah thank you and here thank you for the great explanation this is one of my premating questions about you we spent $400,000 doing this cultural review on the first license and we got the license issued 2019 now we're back to another $469,000 $400,000 for I kind of want to know what changed because we covered everything in the cultural review and from 2018 till 2019 for $400,000 why are you spending another 400,000 for a three-year period when the geographic area doesn't seem

25:45 commensurate with the same amount of money we spent um because I read it it talked about where we're going to do the tra and hall or whatever that wasn't in that first one but I just don't see the Nexus connecting one of them for 400 grand for 10 years of studying the large geographic area and now we got another 400 Grand to a company that's out out of state to uh same company to do what I believe is a much much smaller geographic area so did you just give me the 10-word version of well I'll either lean into Karen or Lisa one of the two yeah I I can start and then call on Lisa to fill in the gaps but um I asked the same question of staff and it really

26:30 comes down to there are project areas that have been expanded such as the transmission Corridor as expanded so any anything that you are dising the ground where you haven't assessed it in the past you have to assess it again another example is the load Bank where that's going has not been assessed and so there's more beyond that that's my example but Lisa do you want to fill in um some additional info yeah sure Karen you got that um got that perfect uh the scope of the project has changed pretty dramatically since um we assigned the initial contract in 2018 so any additional ground disturbing work requires archaeological surveys we have expanded scope in projects and uh a

27:15 decent number of new areas that need to be surveyed in addition to that we have other needs when we're doing ground disturbing work to have archaeologists on site Etc should there be um something discovered during that construction so uh I would chalk it up to the scope of the Carman work has expanded and with that um the archaeological needs that are required per the license can I just get an understanding so you're going to widen the corridor where our transmission lines comes down a little bit because I know that we had the contract recently to kill 900 trees that in a side so we're going to widen it by what 20 feet on each side and it's already 150 feet wide and the first 400,000 covered the 150 ft and now I'm

28:02 just trying to understand the magnitude of this Lisa because to me it just doesn't sound right yeah understand so the the widening plan has been altered with changes in what we know to be occurring on the ground on the transmission line so our original our original plan included some widening in areas that now are covered under reparan Reserve sections and so we've had to go through through and sort of alter our plan the transmission line cultural work is just one component of this contract uh anyone who has a license uh typically has a fair bit of um cultural and archaeological work associated with with any uh construction so I I personally

28:47 don't think that this is above and beyond what we would expect given the changes that we've seen on site up there transmission line is just a portion of that but that scope has changed okay one last little question comment so when does this stop Target stop moving we got our license in 2019 and now they're changing uh the I mean the magnitude I know we got the fish ladder issue but when do they stop changing things so we can stop this type of spending you know po a million bucks on this already yeah this the scope changes um commissioner Brown are really um aside from the transmission line that's a slightly different story but this scope changes to the project are related to Dam safety issues for the most part that is something that could

29:33 not have been foreseen when we started this this work a number of years ago the work on the transmission line the scope changes on that are are again directly related to um on-site conditions and what is classified as repairing Reserve that was not understood at the time of the original agreement so you know as with everything you make assumptions when you go into a project and then once you get into the details sometimes things change but I do recognize and and understand the concern over increased costs and increased um project scope but can point directly to those scope increases um being justifiable related to either Dam safety or or unforeseen site

30:24 conditions yeah these are just a different way of asking a question just get some context um other than the scope has the rate of which we're paying for this work changed dramatically over the last few years um obviously this is a multi-year contract we're paying based on the services as they're provided has the rate escalated significantly that's something I would actually have to check on I can check with Patty or Chris dentel on that I am not uh familiar with the hourly rate that's charged I think that's what that's what your question is Frank whether the the labor rates have have for the consultant have gone up we have seen significant escalations in almost all of our contracts so I think it's

31:09 probably safe to assume that that is uh at least driving some of the this um cost but I'd have to get the details before I said for sure so I'll finish it with so this company's coming from Montana and so do we we have pum and everything else because I know we had a lower bid from a company from Portland so and they this one from Montana probably got it because they did the first one but just thinking of the logistics of coming from Montana to do this work the archaeological surveys things like that so we're paying them to stay here and meals transportation and all that so commissioner Brown that's something I'll have to double check on but I believe they do have a local office which is

31:54 what is resourcing um our workup at Carmen but I can confirm that and and get back to you yeah I'd like to know that because it seems I like to keep it local if we can but it seems like it's quite a bit of money to to do that and I'm done K commissioner Brown um we're actually using the same firm for historical research at College Hill and they do have local you want to move on number two I'll move to adopt item number two the consent calendar a all right moved by Brown second by schlosberg all in support of approving item number two

32:40 from I I and it passes moving to consent calendar B move to adopt conent calendar B moved by Brown second by barosi all in support of approving consent calendar B say I have a I have quick question on that yes please go I needed to pull it it was just one item um so this is for truck beds and bodies um I know that at last month's meeting I I made a a reference to a lift truck that was a smaller Lift Truck that the the crew that was working on the line near my house was very happy that they had does this prohibit us from

33:27 use having different sizes of trucks that may be accommodating to different areas of town kind of just you standardized trucks and I understand the the reason for that but again sometimes standardized trucks don't always fit down alleys those types of I'll defer to add some flavor we have multiple different classes of trucks and this covered one of those classes and the premating questions covered this a little bit as far as as how and why we do the customization it creates flexibility for this particular class but it doesn't mean it's the only class of of truck

34:13 that we have okay just Karen yeah I don't believe that it prohibits us from from other resources that's all that's all I need thanks so uh we had a mo from Brown a second from schlosberg to approve consent calendar oh sorry thank you motion from Brown and second you second all right second from schlosberg to approve consent calendar B all in support say I right moving through Bond Mr general manager yes president McCrae um there were three items of Correspondence in

34:59 your in your packet U I'll lean in uh a little bit to Ovi um relative uh to the meeting and and with the City of Eugene I think we've got that down later it made it down to the calendar all right never never mind that um retract that um we also had a correspondence item on our participation uh with the equity Community Consortium uh that's something that you been a participant in for at least a decade uh that that I'm aware of appreciate um assistant general manager price uh being our active representative in that um Rod

35:46 did you want to add anything to the memo that was provided no we have uh I guess I I shook my head no but I will say yes there's three other people people from from EB that are participating more at the at the the work level um and I participate more at the the leadership level and then we get together and uh come up things like the the uh first Friday which we'll be hosting uh in April so we'll be inviting everybody to that so look forward to seeing you and then that the third correspondence item was um Jason fusers State Legislative update I know Jason's um on the line if uh anybody had any further questions about any of those than you president

36:33 mcra questions comment on correspond I just want to say thank you for these correspondence memos they're the legislative update from Jason is super helpful to understand where we're headed with thec so I really apprciate the work that goes into that and how clear um those members are so thank you for taking the time to put them together I have a quick question for Jason if he's online Jason are you online I am here I'm in position right question from Brown so the the ability to expand Urban growth boundary by it's 100 or whatever that number of acres is will that come into an issue for us eweb providing services to areas outside of uh our our normal Service District because I know if we go off will Creek

37:19 Road you got Lane electric and and how is that going to transform into uh our ability to serve that or is that anything I mean came into that conversation about expanding ugb because it's you know if they go in the South Hills we've got reservoirs to think of and if they go um rest uh we've got jurisdictional issues with other utilities so has any of that come into the conversation or is that too too early uh commissioner I I when I left the City of Eugene and came to U in 2006 they promised me I'd never have to work on land use issues again but uh yeah I I I don't have an answer extemporaneously but um I would love to volunteer uh to take that up as a homework assignment um

38:04 we we have uh the electric sector in general has tried to parse through the housing package to identify uh implications um for our sector um as a result of the State trying to tackle the housing crisis and and get supply and demand um under control but I don't have an extemporaneous answer um I'd be happy to work with the general manager to you get a followup answer to that question because I think if they're serious about increasing the inventory of hold the lands that that's I mean they can't do anything without what we do and if we haven't even been you know if we're not into the conversation yet that takes five and 10 years and that's top of the timeline I think everybody's on so I'm just wondering if just planting the

38:56 Jason curious on the recreational Community what what's going on there if you can let us know yeah uh it's a it's a I guess I'd call it a Tim limited Bridge solution so as I understand it um the deal that was struck would um sort of uh unring the Bell or or provide restore recreational immunity um but with a Sunset date and that's sort of a way to uh ensure that um uh public entities or or private land owners can make their land available for recreation this is Oregon we love to recreate in Oregon right without fear of losing their recreational immunity um but it'll be time limited and as you know this was a short session they just couldn't agree

39:42 on what the permanent solution would be so this is a uh would have a Sunset date and there will be some kind of interim workg group to Jin up a more sustainable long-term uh legislative solution that could be considered in 2 so you may have seen the newspaper stories about uh some communities I think particularly in the Oregon coast it seemed to uh you had quite a few anecdotes of people closing down um Parks or Trails uh no one was happy about that this is a way to uh let people open up their property again and then uh a long-term solution will be pursued in 2025 so it it passed then our last update was famously improved in Senate went to the house in the 26 I believe it

40:28 just passed this morning I I'll go back and look uh either passed it was either yesterday or today uh I I I I I know that it did pass both Chambers and should be on its way to the governor's desk fantastic thank you thanks Jason anything else on correspondence move over to the next item the East 40th commissioning update so um Commissioners um as I think you're aware we um have water in our tanks at East pth appreciate that but I wanted to to take an opportunity to specifically thank a few staff members um there's a

41:15 number of different ways that we recognize um our Workforce and employees for their contributions for their their hard work and we have a uh an extraordinary effort award that that we give out um as part of that recognition different different forms that we have and so we have we have three Awards this evening um this this particular project involved an incredible amount of communications as as you all know we we've done pretty much bi-weekly newsletters uh we've had multiple meetings we've had uh all the way back years worth of walking Commissioners through the beautiful Forest um and um incredible amount of

42:03 Outreach um and transparency in particular with with the neighbors uh which we can apply to other projects and so have uh one extraordinary effort award uh to go to Jen Connor's um here you go so and there's one other I don't at the Santa Clara water district okay meeting it said a word I can't repeat here be late the other one well we have a thing tomorrow so I'm not gonna let another form of recognition that we have um is the general managers um it's

42:52 really the highest honor at e we um and it's really entitled The achieve Integrity in Achievement Award and so the general manager award is the highest honor achievable at eweb and it's my pleasure to present it to Laura fary so Laura found her calling as a water engineer during a period of volunteer work when she was in Africa where she saw the effect that clean water and reliable water had on individuals and a community this was F and following that she got her degree at Oregon State nice job um and then joined eweb uh in 2008

43:41 as a senior civil engineer in the water utility bringing with her not only engineering expertise in water infrastructure planning design and construction but also an appreciation for Reliable drinking water and its required infrastructure router time at EB Laura has taken the role of project manager for many critical infrastruct infrastructure projects affecting the safety and reliability of our water system these include numerous pump stations the upgrade of e web's River intakes uh and the new on-site disinfection system at Hayden bridge in 2015 the waterm plan identified the need for eweb to focus on distributed water

44:26 storage and an approach of which she started working some point after that on East 40th I got the long version I thought that was short version this is the short version um while on the surface this project may look like many other water infrastructure projects Laura has already successfully taken on as a senior engineer the reality of the project is that is unlike any other that EF has has completed for a number of decades Laura had to to um e EB owned this property for 60 plus years it was a mature neighborhood that enjoyed the open space throughout its history and she had to construct 27 and a half

45:12 million gallon water tanks while Laura had excellent support from her project team she assumed ownership of the project resolving issues and making decisions daily to keep the project moving knowing the importance of the East 40th storage project to reduce the public health risk posed by the College Hill Reser board Laura demonstrated strong leadership skills in her management of the project by keeping all stakeholders up to date on the status anticipating and daylighting the challenges the project faced while taking actions to mitigate those risks Laura even kept our youngest customers interests in mind by ensuring safy places to watch the tank

46:08 this for all this and so much more thank you Laura for your professionalism empathy and caring and integrity and achievement no problem been a great project and I appreciate all the trust everyone in this room had for me to finish it the whole Community gets to benefit and it's so exciting it's in service so thank you thank you that was it unless you want a griller I do but I feel like after that maybe you off a

46:56 hook pleas um thank you Frank for bestowing that honor on as the commissioner who had to endure the uh tanks being built in in our Ward i' I'd also like to say thank Laura there were several times that I went up there and visited her at the job site and every time I would drive up she'd be there in her boots cracking the whips to on people that were a lot bigger than her and they listen they would she Mark she did it so thank you for doing that and then the other thing that I'm really happy about is that the lessons that we learn doing this will translate to the to our next projects coming out uh College Hill and either Hawkins or the other ones uh again the the public Outreach was fantastic um that's

47:43 something that we heard we'll bring up later when we talk about our liaison with the city of regene they're very interested in in dub tailing with us on that because they get calls just like we do and so again thank you Laura for putting that together look forward to it being all finished up and done and being uh a thing for our South Eugene Community to enjoy for decades to go thank you I just want to say on behalf of you know some of the little ones I brought my little one there and it was really remarkable to get to see you in action and just see what remarkable job you did with the community to you know bring people in and really make it a teachable

48:29 you know opportunity because it is a legacy project that we're going to enjoy for so long so thank you I'm very ter in support of you so GL you're doing this I think this the first time that I've seen us in the seven years that I've been here actually give out this award so it's a really high honor and I'm so appreciative that you are thanks than uh next item going to the state of the Watershed annual

49:26 report good evening Commissioners general manager Lawson thank you for having us tonight to talk about the state of the wed our annual report for 2023 um for the record I'm Karen Kelly uh chief operations officer and with me Susan fricky uh water resources and compliance Assurance supervisor and Mike Masters water operations manager um wanted to start off by reminding folks that eweb adopted the source attap model of the multiple barrier approach to SA drinking water and as the name implies it starts with the source um this is how we ensure a safe drinking water supply for our community uh we invest in Source water monitoring and protection efforts to ensure that safety of our single drinking water supply this investment

50:12 prevents reduces Andor mitigates or adverse impacts on water quality in the Watershed thereby controlling costs for drinking water treatment while it's difficult to quantify how much avoided cost we have in drinking Water Treatment from investing in Source protection um there are many different studies that do do look at this uh cost avoidance in specific watersheds and I just wanted to share one so keep in mind that as they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so one study in 2016 found reductions in sediment treatment costs and water losses alone offset 80% of the public water companies investment in Watershed conservation programs and um 60% of the programs total overall costs in a 30-year time frame and I just

50:59 wanted to note that that is just one constituent with sediment um not everything that that we do try to protect from as well as did not account for the multiple agency efforts that we have here in M Kenzie which I think is U really critical and you'll hear more about as uh our presentation continues but the bottom line for 20123 is that we continue to be blessed with a wonderful drinking water source in the McKenzie you decision decades ago to invest in Source protection has led to it being a normal part of our operations water quality continues to be excellent it is better Upstream than Downstream areas where we find quality is degraded is not unexpected our treatment capabilities are robust but we must continue to invest in protection and remain Vigilant

51:45 in our monitoring um with that I would like to acknowledge that this is our first state of the Watershed report since our uh our leader Carl Morgan Stern who's a foundational leader of the program retired um if Carl happens to be listening I highly doubt that he is uh we do want to thank him for all he's done to bring us to where we are today uh I I would also mention that he was also a recipient of the general manager's award uh before his retirement and I know that was not presented at a board meeting but um you know he has he helped lead this group to be leaders not just in Oregon in Source protection but actually nationally and then I also want to thank my and Susan and all of the source Protection Team they have carried this torch that um that Carl began and

52:32 uh helps us continue to make these Investments and make this difference in our water quality not just for ewb but for the entire community and up River as well with that I'm gonna turn it over to Mike and Susan thank you Karen good evening Commissioners president McCrae um really happy to be here with you tonight to share some of the highlights of our state of the Watershed report for 20 23 um can't say much more than Karen did but really appreciate Susan and her team they're absolutely excellent in compiling this information and caring for our Watershed so thank you to you and of course your team um I'll just go over our drinking water source protection goals that we have in place

53:19 uh number one is to work with Partners to maintain Source quality um number two two prioritize benefits to water treatment and electric generation in the McKenzie Watershed and number three is to promote public awareness and stewardship and I think if you look at the way Susan and her team work with external Partners I think you it's really a partnership like no other that I've ever seen anywhere else so again commend you and your team and also all your external Partners on that I'll turn it over to Susan to get into the the details some of the highlights and points of interest the weeds a little bit so just for the caveat is I'm not quite going in

54:04 the order of the um report I just pulled out some highlights for you all that I'd like to talk about of course can answer any questions afterwards so Karen already said we have a wonderful uh Watershed we have a healthy functioning Watershed did we see some impacts in 2023 from the holiday Farm fire and other fires that have impacted our Watershed yes do we expect to yes generally your roots start degrading three to five years out after a large fire we're three and a half years out now so we do expect to see some impacts and that's why e web has invested so heavily with our partners and why we're receiving so much funding from um other agencies to be able to do these kind of Investments post impact up in the Watershed um we also did see some so

54:49 overall for 2023 for harmful algo blooms the good news with that is we had very little um cynobacteria that was present on the watershed this year we didn't see any cyanotoxins at all so none of the toxins were present um so that was good news for our watershed this year the Baseline conditions were pretty much the same as they normally are so where we saw the impacts were during our storms if you all remember we had a really decent rain on snow event in December it was probably one of our largest ones that we' had since the fires and so as you can see in the slides on the where we get to go oh I can use little thingy woohoo let's do that okay so you can see over here where we're looking um that's you can see some your highas this is our total

55:34 suspended solid so it's you know like kind of how dirty the water is so we definitely saw levels that were higher in that December storm event um you can see here Simmons Creek in the picture we had a little bit of debris coming through there we did have some banks destabilized and again that's why we're investing in these areas up there and doing some of our larger scale restoration projects it's why we did lots of planning because we are expecting to see some of this is post fired the other thing that we saw is um I don't know if you all remember but after April we didn't get any rain normally we would have another rain of it we would have something in May or June we need pay attention to it because we want to go out and do like a pesticide monitoring where we'd go out and grab the pesticides After People sprayed in the spring we never were able to do that sampling so after April we had no rain all the way into August and then we kind of had a little crazy uh

56:19 summer thunderstorm event that mobilized some of the urban areas so because we hadn't sampled any of the pest decides we went out and grabbed a sample at a time we normally necessarily wouldn't grab it and we found some really interesting stuff from that sample of it um so when we were out there we found some really high bacteria and uh tkm levels which is kind of nitrogen and so but again this is just one sample event and it's a time we normally don't sample so to us that says that's something to pay attention to so we reached out to the City of Springfield we're coordinating with them on a monitoring program for looking at these Urban outflows um we're going to start sampling this month monthly we're going to look at bacteria and tkn which is that nitrogen and we're also going to go out and look to see what kind of bacteria was is it human is it dog um a

57:06 few years back we worked with the City of Springfield because we did another similar study of this I think it was 16 or 18 somewhere back in there um and we found out that it was a lot of um dog was causing the bacteria issues so they went out and did some more education put out some more places for dog bags those kind of things to you know try to reduce that and it was really effective we worked with thirst High School on it so we're already going to we're going to go do that again for this to see what's going on we also want to make sure there isn't some kind of like sewer cross contamination happening because again this was just one isolated sampling event um so we'll let you know what happens with that in the report next year can also provide other updates and we're also really excited to work with the City of Springfield they'll be doing um a lot of the Outreach and education once we find out what's going on so

57:51 again those Partnerships are what's so important we also have our Urban Waters and Wildlife program that we can work with as well on this issue um once we need to do the Outreach and education component um as far as operationalizing John Brown we have your Kaiser is pointed out um we have this lovely s right here that was installed so that we can keep an eye on um Kaiser Sloop and thank you also to Laur for helping us with the permitting on that one we've also got this really neat system that's a database that's called Aquarius that we'll be using um that'll show some of our realtime data publicly I'll let you all know when that one comes out I wanted to highlight our spill drill we do a spill drill every year this year it was on the McKenzie at Hendrick's Park what was really special about this year

58:36 is that we had um a bunch of folks from the Rogue River come up and they're interested in this they thought it was really impressive and they actually want to take it and do a training down there and get their folks all up to speed on spill drills to be able to do spill response so they actually want to pay for our folks to come down this summer to help train them that was a nice little highlight as far as the pwp we have over 200 land owners now with the seven-year Watershed stewardship agreements I think this is our last big planting year because again a lot of the stuff is regrowing naturally we've hit most of the properties that we want to pit enrollment slowing down and right now we're trying to figure out with the pure water Partners how we're going to strategically move from that emergency postfire response to more of like you know just operations again that's kind

59:21 of the direction we're going as far as plane restoration as um Mr Browski has told you all about we've been doing some exciting stuff this year uh finrock is officially done it this was a picture that I took in August when we were opening up the MacKenzie River to the finrock project it's 150 Acre Wood plane project um during that big rain on snow event in December it fared really well no wood exported out of the project which is great it's how we designed it um the sediment moved around a little bit in between but not much these projects are so important for juvenile rearing that's our number one thing that we're missing in the Watershed so they provide lots of that and it functioned really well in December for that we want to grow thriving baby salmon but then we're also there for those Reds too which is the

1:00:07 salmones so before the project we had about five to 10 Reds per year in this area it's two months after we opened up this project we had 65 Reds this year so this is just the first year so we're very excited to see how this keeps working and then we've already talked about fortz Creek today thank you for bringing that one up um this was a very much a partnership effort this time Mackenzie Watershed Alliance applied for a Noah transformation Grant and it was A7 A5 million doll Grant they awarded this time they will carry the contracts for it and uh they're overseeing this project and one part of it was that the bridge was installed this fall and then the implementation for this project will be in the summer of 2025 so not this year but next year um but we needed a bridge that spanned a little bit wider

1:00:52 so that we could do a bigger restoration project because the bridge I think we all went out to the field trip was pretty much a big choke point for that so we need to have a wider Bridge as far as septic assistance what I wanted to highlight for that is um in 2023 we were able to expand the DEQ septic assistance to go outside the holiday Farm fire footprint which was really exciting so we were able to serve other customers as well with that funding source um the difference that you see between the two project totals um between Q in Lane County is because the DEQ funding has a lot lower income threshold Lane counties is higher and then once you hit a certain point they still pay half um unfortunately we don't have any flexibility to adjust that but we were able to expand that geographic

1:01:37 region we also have two projects that were not part of the didn't qualify for the grants um so we decided to fund those out of the rate fee let's get to the numbers um we're talking about the budget what was exciting about 2023 is we had this amazing in Department effort between finance and grants and my department and so I'd like to give a special thanks to Matthew Miller tan Devol and Gina D because they worked together so well to try to figure all this out not only did they figure out the numbers they were able to finally get more reimbursements so we have more Revenue last year than we had expenses because as you all remember e web has done a lot of frontloading for the budgets for all this work because we had the investment

1:02:23 to be able to do that and then with the hopes and the you know we wanted to get that money back as well so we were able to get money back from Oregon Department of Forestry from Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board but it was this team effort at eweb that was able to get those reimbursements back because it wasn't quick or easy so big thank you to those folks that worked on it and then I just wanted to do our last slide is a little highlight of the budget kind of see the different expenditures through the time and what I really want to highlight is the budget for 2023 was we spent about 4.6 million for 2024 we're only planning about $2 million because we do have strategic work that we're going to keep doing for another few years however the big emergency response push of doing all the

1:03:09 planting and all the invasive treatment and all the things out there is starting to slow down for that part but we still do have funding that we're trying to use strategically to do some more of those big restoration projects planning and design for those um which will also be FEA reimbursable um as well as you know still working with the land owners making sure that they can get free to grow and finally I just wanted to say thank you to my staff they're the ones who write these reports and put together the presentations for me I just get to C up and talk about them with you um David Donnie who is pictured here Nancy to Lisa ardt and Gina D they do so much for us and of course our lab staff as well that are processing the samples so thank you all so

1:03:55 much thank you you comments on the last slide we were talking about the budget and Y you said some of it how how much of it is female reimbursed uh we haven't spent that part of it yet that's project and design that will be coming the stuff that was FEA reimbursable that was at the very beginning of the response we've already received that funding and how much of that was uh I think it was about 1.5 million is that correct deah 1.5 it was somewhere in there was that very initial response that we did where we did a lot of Bank stabilization and erosion control that was the part that's been feel very rible so far we have two other grants that we're working on right now um but we need to get the those work PL it most of it's planning and design it relies on some other

1:04:40 pieces that haven't fallen into place yet to be able to do that work to then get reimbursed I also saw it's oh sorry I was just going to clarify it was 1.5 million the first time this um and then um in the 2022 I see we had plan for 150,000 but we spent one 1 million can you talk a little bit about that and how that about it seems I think that was a very guesstimating I would have to go look what that was but what I'm guessing is that was a lot of the plan of design for quartz cre Rock and I could go back in and check on that one I don't know those ones off the top of my head

1:05:25 it looks like I mean some of it's land but then we didn't spend very much on land so maybe we were able to do more we were and a lot of the stuff was super gessy it was like let's just try to come up with something and then stuff got shuffled around and so you know it's not quite reflected in the plan part because we didn't Shuffle the plan around we just shuffled around the actual at the end of the year got it okay and then I'll Min thank you um again a great report but my reading of it it looks like our greatest concerns are the very lower River the last couple miles our intake that's where we're having the challenges you have City of Springfield engaged do they have storm water fees similar to so I mean I'm just thinking about what's their funding source because they're challenged financially just like every

1:06:11 other municipality is and I I didn't hear you the word sub coming to the table of helping us you know fund any of this again and I'm not going to let that go because if they're going to be taking their drinking water out of the same Source we are why aren't they paying you why aren't they helping us with the drills and the funding and everything else and I I still want to keep banging on that table until either somebody that they don't want to do it or something but I think they need to take some stewardship as well like you shouldn't be putting the whole bill now that they're taking drinking water out of McKenzie so that aside so the river's shifting at 42nd and there's a big concern about how that's happening that's where the pent of plume is so is there concern that the by the river shifting and going west and threatening the 42nd Street area which is right

1:06:56 above her intake is there a worry about that activating the pent that's just migrating under under the during the actual event itself well whenever I mean the river pushing West yeah and you look where the monitoring Wells are is there a concern about that my understanding is when we actually have the emergency that the water will get pulled away from where we are so there's not a concern in that moment however um I haven't looked into the pent Plum concerns like getting excavated and like pulled into the river for like more of a longterm thing yeah because I I read your Penta report it said that there was one increase of one deep de there's one deep one that has been increasing a little bit but the other ones have been decreasing right and I just wondering do know know if it disappear

1:07:43 we can ask about we could ask Q about that that would be a good question next time weet I think to me the greatest threats are the last two miles above the river that's where we and I'm glad you're concentrating on finding out if there more dog candles being dumped into the storm drains that's what happened last time yeah so thank you very much appreciate it and I would say I would add um that we do work with sub they are in a part of our Urban Waters program and that restoration Project D and I were talking about that could happen above the intake intimately involved with that one as well so we do Loop them in through those methods and they are good for like my team works really well with them so we appreciate our working relationship that we have I'd like to see a check thank

1:08:29 you I have a question um so when you mentioned the forts Creek project talked about how there's A7 a half million doll Noah transformation Grant yes and I'm just curious if you think that once we decommission lb you start to do some of the work there with transforming the river back to what it was do you think that there's going to be opportunity that grants out large grants out there to work on um thring them sh or crystal ball I mean I think what this money is this is um some of the infrastructure act money which has been a great benefit for a lot of these that we've um our partners are putting in for another grant that would help fund some of the South pork McKenzie work as well as some things in other watersheds that are around here um so we're excited

1:09:14 about that I can't predict that part of it I think that the if you talk to anyone who's into Fisheries they're very excited for the opportunity to look at restoration projects around that area area um we do work very closely with the forest service that has the models that can look to see where these kind of these particular type these stage eight stage zero type restoration projects where they can occur and we can have a model of those areas to see what would be the biggest benefit because there's some areas that restoration type makes a lot of sense there's some areas that it doesn't so we can I imagine that we will be looking at all of those things to see what the potential opportunities are and then I was just going to add it I I do think that when we put our crystal ball look at the crystal ball that we have um the grant opportunities

1:10:01 tend to be associated with resiliency and environmental Improvement so continue when we get work down the leeberg road that we'll look for all opportunities we can for Watershed recovery uh for environmental recovery uh when it comes to Grants and so I I think it's fair to say that there will be some level of Grant opportunity available as compressive as we can and then just to comment on John you keep bringing up that we should get Springfield to help pay for some of this because they're GNA be building their water plant there I 100% agree and I don't know why that they they would though I mean they get like a they get

1:10:47 great clean water that there's no there's no incentive for them to pay so anyway anything you can do to get them maybe to participate I think great but I just can't imagine why they are starting to talk with partners because again all these Partnerships that we've built that are awesome over the years um they're starting to talk with Partners about potential restoration projects that could be around their treatment plants they're building as well so that might be an opportunity to for them to invest in some really great projects they're building it right down where right where our challenges I think are and and would be I don't know where their intake is with 62nd Street or the 72nd Street outow but you know um either way they're

1:11:32 building their treatment the plant right where these problems are showing up so I would hope that they work with us on that I think those those talks are about ready to start like any minute and so once they will we'll definitely get intimately involved with those as well um having their you know inviting their board to the B Trip might be another opportunity to this topic I know in the past some of them have not been able to come and um I'm also curious if the r Tri will actually include Hayden Bridge again one one of their board members noted that they have not been in a tour of Hayden bridge and like to see it I that's a opportunity but I don't know if

1:12:19 the map and where we're starting and stopping is finalized it's historically been a pretty busy day to do the raft part um we can do tour of Hayden Bridge almost anytime I I'll just get with Mike um whenever that's necessary if if we want to do a more organized one um where we can invite a group of people we could pick some dates and P of Commissioners as to potential opportunities to do that but we can certainly accommodate that

1:13:06 support thanks for the presentation um I got three things written down so hopefully I can get through them all um other communities have uh have weighed in on water quality with the draw Downs of of the dams um you know you saw what happened with with in sweed home in those areas are are we thinking about wanting to have our voice be heard on those issues as well I mean I know those communities and those water districts sent some correspondence to to the governor to the legislature saying that these draw Downs do have a a dramatic impact I mean it may not be as bad as bad here as it were the twet home but I know when they draw down cougar our you know the cleanest water that we have you

1:13:53 gets turbulent and then also we're we're looking at the the wamit and they're bringing down Lookout and they're bringing down Fall Creek and if you saw if you saw the wam when they brought down Lookout it was it was there as well has there been thought of us being sending something that you know we know this is court ordered but we have concerns about these draw downs we have not um mostly because they are for ordered um and um we have weighed in specifically on the wamit projects relative to their power generation capabilities um and more specifically the allocation of how their costs are

1:14:40 divided between power customers um and the core and other other uses but we have not um played in specifically on the water quality impacts um of those draw Downs now I mean that'd be something I don't know if we like I said I know other communities have set that up uh to the to the courts there's been letters that have been sent to the courts and there's been letters that have been sent to the to the governor and the legislators so I don't know if that's something if we get head knots we want to do that did talk with our Communications folks about keeping an eye on that because one of the things that I saw very very lacking in that and because we met we have a source water protection utility group that means from Southern Oregon up to Portland area that

1:15:25 we reconvened as well and the big concern was Communications and their Pi it was not communicating with the utilities on the severity and extent of these the duration of these blooms blooms sorry um sediment discharges so we've had talked with our Communications team about connecting with them so that we can get that communication better because that's a good first step commissioner barowski there what what we can do is take in an action item and see if there's probably uh most effectively through the court process to file an amus brief or something to that effect with potentially some some other partners as well to for something I don't know if allers are but

1:16:11 that would be something that I'd be interested in um as somebody who actually saw Foster link this summer it was so for point of clarification are we proposing that we would uh write a letter just saying that we're concerned about this or that we want them to stop the draw Downs or what are we asking for you for me it would just be that there is concerns uh about the impact of the siment that comes out when we when you do a hard hard drop down into to make let people know that that is a concern for our our source of our water source not that we're trying to to this let meating not that I'm against what the draw Downs the the reason why the draw Downs are there but to note

1:16:57 that there are other impacts that were not Rally seen when when the judge put that in the judge didn't know that that Foster Lake was going to turn into a mud pit when when he ordered that um and so you know I'm all in favor of of trying to restore the the habitat but just letting them know that there's other impacts besides what it's doing to the jenal fish is is what I would hope to see um and I'll let that drop that's a I was going to commissioner there this is also a fairly Hot Topic with the Oregon water utilities Council so we're monitoring uh I'm active in that and Jason huser's active in that so um as you can imagine it's a very very

1:17:42 concerning topic for the overall water community so we'll monitor it through that group as well and like Frank said take an action item on that than um the next question I have is this is all great what we're doing on the on the McKenzie have we started to figure out a plan on on some of these same action items that we're going to want to do on the wamit as far as monitoring as far as restoration as far as you know if we're going to build a $100 million plan on the on the wam are we thinking long term enough to figure out what kind of budget we're going to need to be doing these types of things on the land yeah well the quick answer is yes we're thinking about it I don't think we're to

1:18:28 budgetary stage yet you want to elaborate on some of the stuff we've talked about yeah I think some one of the thing we're waiting on is our permitting and to see what mitigation actions where and when and how much are going to be required to figure out where we're going to be doing some Investments and I think that's very strategic on behalf of e web um permits I heard are going to be you know in by June so that's that's very timely we brought up um what we're also doing is working on our drink water drinking water source protection plan we met with just like two weeks ago on the person who works on those so we need to develop one of those for the Middle Fork and the coast fork for part of this so it's something that's we were just talking about it's part of my goals for the year for our department we're starting these things we're going to start drafting them um one of the things we go back to again is the Partnerships I've been meeting with

1:19:13 folks like the coast Watershed Council and those because they've already established working relationships with a lot of the potential land owners we might um you as you know it's different kinds of land owners there we also have a good working relationship um with some of the land owners that are right by the Confluence property that's just right Upstream as well as MacKenzie River trust so definitely we something kind of we're waiting to go with the green light to get rolling on that but it's um yeah we're ready and the last thing is an easy thing um for the uh setic tank uh re and financing the threshold is 300 % of the poverty level can you tell us what 300% of the

1:19:58 poverty level is and I think it would also be helpful to have that on our on the website so that people know you know okay you're you're you are uh eligible if you're making this much money rather than them having to dig in and say oh what's the poverty level in my 300% well so part of that why we don't tell people is because we have different funding sources so we let people come in and we've got Misty who's amazing who takes applications and figure out what buckets they go in so that they don't have to have that stress so we have funding that will help them regardless of their income like I said with the Lane County even if you're at the higher threshold you still get 50% um it's just for us we have a bunch of DEQ funding DEQ would like us to spend it we would like to spend it but that one is for a lower threshold the lane county is higher and

1:20:44 then you get that 50% all the way on up so we get to fund people for something no matter what I don't know if you have anything you want to add is 300% of poverty depends on family size but if you just pull a family of four it's GNA be roughly um so poverty level would be 30,000 90,000 for part we actually use area median income at least for Lane County D2 I think is that one you guys use a different one yeah as as Susan said like there are different metrics here which makes it a little bit confusing because Federal party level and area median income are are different yeah honestly a little frustrating is they're all coming from the same funding source yet we were required to use that

1:21:29 lower income threshold for DEQ and we have asked and tried to get it bumped up Matt's been working on that actively as well through his stuff and we just there's no flexibility for that so it's really unfortunate okay yeah and I mean I was just going through it reading through it it's like okay well how much is that yeah I I I'm thinking of of a customer saying oh gosh great I could get this thing and you know it's like when we had the EV when we had the all of the the EV rebates right I thought oh my gosh good look at I can get a I can get a vault for $15,000 with all these and then it's like oh no that one doesn't qualify well that doesn't qualify that doesn't qualify so this was something that I noticed thank you

1:22:20 for others I'm going to um take a minute as well for those who aren't aware as sus just referencing in my day job I work for Lane County on Wildfire recovery up the McKenzie so we worked together on um on some of these projects and I appreciate the opportunity to get to uh highlight the amazing work that ewe is doing on this front and and you've done it already I'm just going to hit a couple of points and and then ask a question of the of the board um first of all the the decision by this board which was before I came under this board to invest in a community that The Watershed restoration fee I think was really old and really wise and I just commend this board for making that decision I think um it was just Co thinking and and has enabled eweb to

1:23:05 leverage a bunch of other funding that we just otherwise wouldn't have been able to leverage so um and then also the community was supportive of that fee at least as as far as I saw it I wasn't hearing concerns about that and I think our community is really uh unique in having such an appreci and investment in the Watershed um as somebody working on Wildfire recovery in my day job I also see that the purewater partners is incredibly unique among fire affected communities in Oregon when that fire happened eweb and pure water Partners jumped right into taking action to reduce errosion to do um uh toxic spill um surveys to do a whole number of things to try and protect our Watershed the folks in the sanum did not have that

1:23:51 benefit the folks in other watersheds in Oregon did not have the benefit but we um we did and and our team um hited there in a way that helps us on and on um the septic repairs and Replacements um I just want to highlight that e web already had a pre-existing program for no interest loans to enable people to do repairs and Replacements of septics and it was an obvious choice from where I sat at Lane County to say hey why don't we take that program and turn it into a grant program and he said yeah of course let's do that and so um the the Stars really aligned and the the partnership was super obvious and has been really fruitful and I want to highlight what you just said Susan that there are number of different funding sources and different criteria and the

1:24:36 team at ewab is sorting that out for people and just saying hey tell us what you need and what you make and we'll figure out how much money we can give you and there's a lot of money moving out the door to replace and repair septic systems in the Watershed that are helping all of us in the water quality and then last lastly I want to highlight the um the flood planate registration work that you mentioned the partnership with the US Forest Service MacKenzie River trust and others that is not only helping the fish population but also dropping out sediment and doing all kinds of great things for our water quality so um I just I'm couldn't be happier with the the partnership that I see working in Lane County with eweb and couldn't be prouder as an EB board member of the work that we're doing here so thank you and the last thing I'll say

1:25:21 is that um as someone working on wildf recovery recovery doesn't just end um and I see that this um gared restoration fee is going to end and it makes me think about the potential that we have here um you know certainly we can we can go there that was the the promise that the board made is hey it's a temporary fee and we're just going to do that uh there are investment and jobs act funds and there are inflation reduction act funds that are once in a lifetime Time Investments that we're leveraging right now and that are going to continue for the next several years and so from my perspective it would make valuable for us to consider at least extending all or some portion of that fee for some period of years I don't

1:26:08 know what's useful to the utility I don't know what's reasonable to expect of our customers I would look to staff to suggest something if that's something that the rest of the board feels like would be valuable as well and I would also offer that as we're looking at um Watershed protections up the wamt that perhaps we use some portion of that funding to help make a lumpsum investment up the wamt as well I just want us to consider that as a group I um I know I didn't bring this up to anybody beforehand so my apologies I should have that would have been far um more prudent but I just want to put that on the table that I I at least would be supportive of a proposal from staff to think about how and and win and and uh to extend that

1:26:55 fee if that if that would be valuable from the organization's perspective that's all I have you looking for head nod uh yeah I'm looking sure yeah I'm looking for head nods I see one over there yeah I just want to make sure that if staff takes the time and effort to consider extension especially that it includes the wholesale water people like the and River Road water district and all the we sell bulk of alam water and everything so everybody's paying is that a headd from you yes head for yeah just just a clarification I'm I'm viewing this that staff will take back and do an assessment where we at

1:27:41 how do we potentially provide some options to go forward this particular fee was created because we needed to pivot from Source water protect or Source protection to Source recovery and so it had a very specific purpose which is the reason for driving the timeline the way that we did if the Commissioners simply want to look at um how we develop and expand the budget in particular for this kind of work to facilitate the kind of Investments that you're talking about um there's a number of different methods that we can we look at there from just rate basing it where it it uh potentially could have impacts

1:28:27 on cont contracts for example um or we we could uh look at how we want to structure a create a a fee structure but it it was created by a board for a specific purpose and at some point I think we're about two years away from the end of that um particular funding source um but U we can bring back some potential ideas for the board to consider John so didn't the upper Soil and Water Conservation District get on our property tax bills two years ago so we're paying and and I I've understood that they' got millions they're on mine yeah they're online yeah uh and so they've got millions of dollars and I don't know if they've got restoration

1:29:13 projects but to me the just the name of the organization would would imply that there may be a a revenue Source Andor a partnership there to help us work on that because that's going to be part of our property taxes from now on and it's just for that particular quite a bit of money and and they're involved I mean they they work really well with the with the McKenzie was Council and the the longc they're they're in there they're they're excited about doing the work they've been you know on a shoestring budget for years and years then when they got the tax base they were like wow we can really make a difference and they're excited about it at least that's my that's my understanding as well they are part of our Pure Water partnership they've also just recently joined the Upper Land stewardship Network which was

1:29:59 the Coalition of all the um Watershed Council nonprofits MacKenzie River trust and Isa I think and they just joined that as well um what they're using they're trying to make sure from what I hear is their tax base covers their whole service area which includes not just the Mackenzie so I think Partnerships on up lamut would be good as well for that um they've been working with a lot of smaller grants right now and um working on that no I guess from my perspective you were talking about the kind of unique uh pivot to recovery which I very much appreciate the time um sensitivity there uh maybe it's just around um trying to provide resources to help us Leverage The iig and IRA funds that are and also

1:30:45 time limited um I president McCrae I I really appreciate the fact that the board recognized um the necessity to do this with the sense of urgency um that was really thrust Upon Us in late 2020 and so being able to leverage that uh in the immediate um just from a a funding and a cash flow perspective was important um but then to take that and leverage that into uh purewater partn ERS and um the ability to to gather more grants U and Collective grants from through the partnership was was another benefit so

1:31:32 um I just want to make sure that what we're presenting back to the board has a very clear purpose and that we can coales with the board around what that purpose should be the funding sources can then be created to support that and B is just one mechanism ever can get us anything that that we want after that other comments on this topic yes I'll have to get with staff as to what the timing of that looks like um couple months okay that seems fig out thank

1:32:17 you thank you Commission all right uh we have 10 minute break um so we'll come back at quarter after

1:45:20 to order for the Tuesday March 5th meeting of the Eugene Water Electric Board and we're going to go right into the state of the utility and for the three strategic goals report so uh president McCrae Commissioners staff members of the public joining me up here for the audio record this is Frank Lawson the CEO and general manager joining me is Rod price assistant general manager and Deborah Hart assistant general manager and our CFO I wanted to open with a few comments before we dive into some of the specifics of the results uh from 2023 um just to sets the tone uh this evening at a time of turbulence and political

1:46:05 polarization I'm proud to work for an organization that places high regard not just on what we do but how we do it we attempt to operate in a manner consistent with our values of safety reliability affordability environmental stewardship respecting our community and our culture that starts with you Commissioners and we thank you for your service and your respectful way of providing guidance and oversight EU is a strong organization because of our people past and present including boards and staff who have had the foresight to make prudent decisions and Investments on behalf of our customers and and our community we are a

1:46:52 confident organization one that has the conviction to make and see through tough decisions working for the collective good of our community at large while also recognizing the need to acknowledge and learn from our mistakes be more Dynamic and Nimble looking for opportunities to continuously improve for example eweb completed 57 continuous Improvement projects in 2023 not to mention and including the ueb Enterprise Solutions EES project that in it that in itself is a continuous Improvement and modernization program as for a few highlights from 2023 over the past year we codified our

1:47:39 commitment to resiliency including the ability to mitigate the impacts of disruptive events through our planning Investments response and Recovery we didn't know that was going to be tested so soon a couple of weeks ago being resilient isn't just about infrastructure it's also about money it's about Workforce it's about information and the resiliency of our decisions resiliency is becoming a one eweb rallying cry and part of our everyday thinking from a Workforce Workforce perspective I'd like to thank the team team including the IBEW leadership union

1:48:24 membership and members of the eweb bargaining team who completed a new collective bargaining agreement in 2023 another highlight of 2023 was a commitment to and a recognition of the importance of diversity equity and inclusion in our success upfront the policy directly States why this commitment is important highlighting the benefits necessary to effectively fulfill our mission EB has challenges increasing risks from climate and a hard to navigate regulatory environment aging infrastructure Supply constraints and at times scarcity

1:49:10 changing energy markets cyber and physical threats inflationary pressures on materials and contractors and a tight labor market are just a few but with challenge comes opportunity and the people of eweb are poised to continue to fulfill our mission whatever the environment with intent and purpose navigating the tension between focus and scale that comes from being a little big utility with lots of complexity and lots of choices Communications are critical to how we eweb operates I can't express more my gratitude to our Communications Department for their growth and success

1:49:55 in 2023 for communicating the complexities of an integrated resource planning process to the leeberg decommissioning decision to East Foria to College Hill to rate increases and internal Communications to the list goes on sometimes we self-create problems for them as well the quantity and quality of their Outreach achieved a new level in 2023 eweb has two drivers of our culture one for those who fulfill our daily mission keeping the flow of drinking water electrons money and information and another for those who

1:50:42 are committed to ensuring that we can continue to provide these Services next week next month next year 20 years from now all while navigating the multitudes of threats and changes of which we are presented Commissioners I'd like to close by thanking all of you and all of the EB staff for how you conduct yourselves you are fostering a culture of intentional actions and outcomes continuous Improvement and diverse perspectives that is respectful Equitable and inclusive you are all dedicated to your public service your professions the local governance model and your commitment to

1:51:29 serve our community if I appear confident in eweb it is because of the people of which I have the pleasure of working thank you I think now we'll get into we'll transition to the operational results for 2023 in this report R and and I with the support of the executive team and subject matter experts will provide more details on some of the specific noteworthy results from 2023 so that was the picture that was supposed to show talking s you catch up but uh a lot a lot went on and really appreciate um Commissioners and staff um

1:52:15 for all of your support in 2023 BR ready to contain yeah sure um so obviously there's a lot of stuff in this report I think it's always a challenge how do you present this kind of information and and have it sound fresh and different there's a lot of details going on uh so we talked a little bit about um the presentation and so Deb and I are going to talk about the uh goal number one basically in the um and how we're going to talk about it is through the values you know the mission at EB is to deliver drinking water and electricity for the Vitality of our Community for our values right so we're going to at least what I'm going to do is highlight some things uh through those values um and hopefully just catch a few of the things that Frank did not

1:53:00 catch so uh one of the big uh values we have is safety and and it used to be safety was thought about it you know your physical safety and uh that's still a huge part of of what we do in our company and our culture just take care of people's safety and so um we have some external uh um markers that that tell us how we're doing in that so the ocean dark award for instance uh we're we're at really basically our our alltime low from the dart as so there's more about that in the the work but we also get some recognition from our our insurance carriers like safe uh we also get awards from awwa and AA for recognizing the the

1:53:46 wholeistic safety picture what um what we do now is it's not just the physical safety it's the mental piece and the engagement and these things that that are important across the board um we work so uh just as an illustration of that uh in May uh coming up is mental health awareness month and so last year you have initiated a program uh an awareness program through Workforce Services to to bring messaging out to the uh the employees about mental health and so what to do what to recognize and and how if you're feeling mental health stress and issues so one of the things we did notice uh in 2023 the uh EAP

1:54:32 assistance uh counseling utilization went almost double from still what it's directly related to that Outreach or or uh whatever I'm not sure but but I think that's a good example of some of the benefits we apply to our market so um besides uh just our our physical safety generally we do have some uh security um uh programs and activities that help keep employees safe and our public safe too out in the um out in the the field uh cyber is another area uh which you may not normally think of as as safety but there's another program where we um I

1:55:17 have mixed metrics down here we uh our internal operations programs are are very effective and things we got some external Audits and some kind of things that say maybe we have some gaps and so there's some areas of opportunity work the the pictures uh what I really wanted to illustrate there is uh uh we had a great event uh the health and wellness safety event last September those are a couple pictures from it that event brought a lot of these things that uh I'm talking about together physical little all kinds of light and balance kind of things together in one room so I hope to um see if that next safety event because it really is a good Nexus for for what we think about

1:56:03 safety uh reliability uh is another big thing right uh we wouldn't be here if we weren't reliable so um um Karen uh talked a little bit about this the source tap kind of the model and she's brought this in in uh expanded it to Electric as well so we talk about reliability and we normally think about reliability is is uh you know how does our customer receive our product and how do they they get Services some of those things and so I just tried to pull out some of the things from the the report that um illustrate you know uh we are very responsive in outages we're beating National outages uh you can't really compare these Water and Electric it's not Apples to Apples the stats and the metrics and those kind of things but

1:56:48 they both are illustrating for instance we had 96 outages 8 average durations that means people are responding and fixing their problems on average in 84 national average is 112 the same way we're doing really well there and so uh we're working on our U uh response time to customer service requests and so um again they're I'm sorry they're not Apples to Apples because it looks a lot different the one week to six week with sign cues for instance but we're meeting and beating our Targets in both I think one of the things when we talk about reliability we do think about

1:57:33 the customer and so uh the people AR maybe directly involved in the source to tap um what I want to say is uh don't be this utility by accident all support reliability and product delivery in one way or another now or into the future Frank mentioned that and talk about resilience um so there's a lot of things going on we won't be reliable to our customers unless we're reliable to ourselves and I I think this uh if you look through the the quarterly report and the yearend reports you'll see lots and lots of information that tells us how good we are doing for ourselves and I just picked a couple uh Departments of csas for instance uh just

1:58:18 the the the word they've done over the last three or four years and improving how they they answer calls methods they do and and and adding FTE and all the things that they're doing uh you know if you ort kind of shows the historical improvements over um Leets another one uh this not necessarily some of the stuff wasn't in the work but we can't do anything without vehicles right we have 263 vehicles but nothing happens without vehicles and it's just a good illustration that um they're so good at what they too I mean 182 million gallons of fuel that's crazy most of that's biofuel too so um we can get into that a little bit but I just want to say kind of like Frank a good shout out to everybody here for a reason everybody's

1:59:04 going going to work um last one I'll touch on is environmental um our our values around uh preserving our Watershed which we heard a lot about um that's off to that program uh are role in reducing greenhouse gases um we last year completed a a climate guide book uh it's already in in rev 2 process right now so um that's another uh really a very useful and helpful document it's a great reference I use it um just another example the environmental product line we had 163 solar projects and sometimes we here we don't do solar projects but we've done a lot of we're spending

1:59:50 one and a half times the amount on EVS this year that we did the previous years our Fleet reduced its greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 by 1300 metric tons um and even down to the the what I thought was really interesting the Hayden Bridge talks about they've increased their efficiencies to to reduce their their carbon f um I thought was really interesting um was the Leak Detection highlights 162 million gallons of water was saved through the leak detection program so that's some of the benefits of the smart meters uh in the on the water side you convert that to cash that's roughly half a million dollars uh from a perspective

2:00:35 don't quote me on that because it's a it's a funny money kind of thing anyway but um that just gives you some perspective on on uh how much water that is and how much that's saving customers and how much that's reducing in so so the Energy Efficiency um programs uh 100 7% of our Target uh 143 megawatt hours toal save so that that's great news um these programs are affected doing well so those are just some of the examples and I'm going to turn over for to talk about money of course usually they don't let me run this so bear with me um so while the

2:01:22 results are still preliminary our annual audit is underway in those uh final results will come to you uh next month at our April board meeting both utilities did finish the year with a solid performance the electric utility had favorable net income to budget as did the water utility reserves are strong for both utilities with the exception of rate of return all metrics are in BO within board Target the rate of return uh on electric was due to the poor water year that really um uh significantly lowered wholesale revenues the water one though is a is a really good story in that um we had a bunch of our expenses

2:02:08 which do show up in the rate of return offset by Grant income that does not so bringing in Grant income came down outside of our Target was actually a good story about our ability to save our late pairs money um the electric utility stayed within its onm and capital budget Authority the water utility was within for omm and in December the board did approve a capital budget amendment uh that was driven by combination of things including some timing and then some uh price pressure um both utilities really are

2:02:54 experiencing rate pressure and that's being driven by things like increasing regulation ongoing supply chain issues um the significant Investments that uh each utility is making in its infrastructure and that inflation did not as fast as the FED had hoped for or had forecasted really there were rate increases that we did implemented 2023 and it averaged 3.25 for electric and six for water uh even with those rate increases though eweb is near the bottom of its comparators for the water utility and in the mid middle of the pack uh for electric and as we look back uh to 2017

2:03:41 which is when we first started calculating the utility burden our utility burden has fallen from 4.6% uh to 3.48 and that really is coming from uh working to control costs uh because uh our local income is not it really lags behind our comparator uh communities um so there are many noteworthy things going on in our community culture and I just want to call out a few I should have probably um read what Frank was going to say uh because now I might

2:04:27 duplicate him uh but one of the highlights for me really was the uh number of continuous Improvement projects that we completed uh in uh support of our goals around operational effectiveness Workforce and culture and particularly EES and EB supports the community in many ways which you'll see the whole list in attachment G uh of your of of your report uh but we have outstanding loan balances of about $6 million that have helped our customer owners fund Energy Efficiency conservation and resiliency and uh

2:05:14 impressively then we no loans last year so set right off uh we delivered approximately $3.5 million in customer assistance through the various programs that you see up there and we've offered grants for things like Community Education and Mobility just to name a few our electric utility supported pg& and PGE with mutual Aid and the water utility got in on the mutual Aid action as well this year uh supporting last year in 2023 supporting uh uh

2:06:06 Mableton Deborah so uh specifically uh we've gone through and um identifi the areas of the goals that you all assign us and approve at the beginning of the year and um um we in a process of to operationalize those those further um felt like we overall the goal accomplishment was was very good um there are a few areas where we didn't feel like we made as much progress as we would have liked so those you see in yellow the the light green is basically they were on track we felt like we are where we are and then if um

2:06:53 an item is dark green that's where we felt like that's completed and now we can move on to to something else and an example of that was the collective bargaining agreement that was that was uh signed March of last year um rod and Deborah just highlighted a little bit about gole number one which is operational effectiveness uh the first two goals are really about establishing the fundamentals of an organization if you are not operating very well dayt day it is really hard to work on strategic items so these two goals really uh are intended to build a foundation and give us uh the ability and the and the right quite honestly to pursue more strategic Endeavors um

2:07:40 really appreciate uh the board's uh participation in the the Dei work this last year as one of the examples that fell into Workforce and culture we did do an employee engagement survey at the beginning of the year but identified a number of different action items um highlighted where we feel like our employees are are engaged and where we have opportunities to continue to improve we just uh that was the first one we' done in a in a long time and so it's one point does not make a trend and so we um just completed another version um of that same survey um and are just now getting

2:08:26 the results so we'll have more information on that going forward the the other goals um the newb Enterprise Solution that's our um integrated um it system starting with the customer information system and the finance systems those um were the goals for 2023 are on track um a number of significant amount of process work um we're minimizing customizations um we've made hundreds of decisions documented over a hundred different processes that are part of our customer

2:09:12 interaction how we do our accounting we are seeing this year a little bit of of pressure that we're mitigating as we move from the um design phase into the actual implementation phase integrated resource plan um the 2023 plan was completed um there was a significant amount of Outreach to the community throughout the first half of last year um we didn't do it like we did in 2011 where we had had a very sort of elitely selected group we actually went out broader than we had in

2:09:57 2011 many of you were part of different presentations that were given to different organizations um some of them very specifically to certain groups some of them more General um did a lot of of Outreach in the first half of the Year and that concluded um with the board endorsing the action plan approving the action plan portion of that and acknowledging and recognizing the analytical work that supported that continue to make Pro progress on the design and land use and permitting process as part of the second drinking water source um we are um just just now learned the little bit more emphasis on

2:10:42 the public Facility Services plan starting up um being funded again um through our city Partners so we'll expect to see a lot of progress on that and preparation for the construction years down the road the leeberg hydroelectric decommissioning plan board was very uh involved in that decision previous year then the development and check-ins on the actual action plan or as they refer to it the plan of the plan uh highlighting the various schedules and events um and opportunities for the board's role going forward and

2:11:27 so overall if you look at the goals there were 20 goals including all the subg goals we feel like we fully accomplished 16 of the 20 and made progress on on the remaining sub goals that were characterized here I also wanted to acknowledge um in 2023 the important role that you all play um in providing moments and Direction uh for the organization um really appreciate uh the leadership of President Carlson ex former president Carlson vice president barovsky last year a number of

2:12:13 significant decisions and guidance was provided to specific specific policy developments and approvals and then oversight and Direction on Just a whole slew of uh plethora of items that uh you get to have a routine interaction on including some things like a perpa hearings process which that may be Brian Booth's favorite subject it is definitely not the rest of our favorite subject um something that hadn't been updated in about two decades um and ultimately adopting and saying that thepa revisions were appropriate under certain conditions for for E web to

2:13:01 pursue so thank you for your policy work your guidance um and your direction in 2023 um including a number of things um that will now continue into 202 for so with that um really want to thank staff um thank the board I felt like 2023 was a a very successful year for the organization um it's not that all the decisions we made were agreed to by everybody um but I can say firsthand that pass boards and in particular this board takes a lot of consideration and

2:13:46 looks at decisions very thorough thly um and researches decisions works with staff um to develop an understanding of using a triple bottom line approach where necessary and makes a de makes decisions based on what's good for the community overall um and we really appreciate that guidance um and so with that um president McCrae um I'll turn it back to you if Commissioners have comments or questions um we do have a number of of the executive team present um and um as well as staff if you have questions that r or Deborah

2:14:39 questions um a couple questions and then comment it's 1.3 million miles and 183 Gall is that one year the on the loans on the Zero writeoffs when we do a loan do they repay us like through their bill is that how it's done okay that that's probably help that helps yes without a doubt but zero is still really good because people move out oh yeah I was just I saw Zero Zero false and I was wondering if if that was the the mechanism if you don't pay it there's other consequences like that um and I guess

2:15:24 the last thing that I would like to say is a question the question is is there anything else that you would need to this board help you maintain or achieve the goals that are up there either the yellow ones green ones or whatever is there anything that this board can give to you that you can articulate that would help Mo move the needle I don't think from a board when I when I look at where we made progress where

2:16:10 we where we didn't make progress some of that is just simply around the trade-offs between focus and making choices um I feel like this board provides really good direction when it comes to the major priorities of the organization and some of that is through our regular full development process we started it earlier this year we will probably start it even earlier for next year um but I I don't feel like we were we were lacking support or guidance or direction from the board um that's good I just you it's a question that i' I've asked to to other boards and and and staffs is like is there something that you need that we're

2:16:55 not giving you either direction wise financially wise or whatever if there is let I I think a preas commissioner barski if we do get into a situation where we feel like there are major tradeoffs between the prioritization or conflicts either there's there's always tension you know the rod and Deborah went through the the values but there is there is often tension between those values and there's times when we may come to the board for guidance if there's for example there's tension between reliability and affordability you know we could have perfect reliability at a cost um but we we have to be able to balance those and the board is is significantly helping us to

2:17:40 to balance those if we are the the preas is if we get in a situation where we're finding a major tension between resources to fulfill some goals that that we've identified as um as priorities for the organization um we will come to the board and identify that that as a as a conflict or as um as an issue that we need to resolve we won't just come to the board and say it's a problem we will uh come to the board with potential solutions that we would like guidance on so that's a preas not that I'm expecting to do that anytime in the near future but um I do think that that's part of the role of the board um we want to have

2:18:27 goals that are not easy to achieve we want to we want to stretch ourselves as an organization but we don't want to create too many goals to where we're losing the focus of the organization so there will be times that we have to balance that thank thank for all the work to put this together I just had a couple of quick questions on some of the metrics that were shown um 6.6 weeks to approve on the electric side I think it was slide like I'm just curious what when we're talking about that that's like a permitting process for a new is that correct or what is the 6.6 weeks really

2:19:13 represent that was basically the so if you think about somebody calls and they want something to the time they they get it you go through a process so the first part is the design time which is what that represent when you say something that is getting a new electric service uh rewire you know almost anything division buing Renovations building Renovations um I'm just curious if there are if there are anything I understand that we're you know below other metrics then what not if there are anything things that we can can do given that we have a housing crisis to help move that along further are is it just a matter of like the amount of staff that it takes to bring

2:19:59 that number down or are there other steps that we have to take that have like we have to wait three weeks here and then we have to wait for another thing three weeks here I I'm just curious if at some point we could maybe get some more information if others are supportive of that um because I to figure out if there's something else we can do to help getups done so we can get housing active that's like the one place where we touch it so we can't take a deeper dive into that there as part of the process there's customer wait time as well included in that so typically we will do an estimate we will customer has to decide whether the project moves forward there's design there's a design queue there's a

2:20:44 construction crew queue and so this is the accumulation of all of that um we did have some staffing challenges mid year in the group that did that work I think those that there's been some some hiring in that area so there is some that is resource um directly related to Resource but we we can certainly take a deeper dive into what that H process looks like yeah fely understand you know things are outside of that number that's why I asked what the kind of the breakdown was of there's things are in our control there's things are outside of our control just get a little bit it um on slide 30

2:21:30 41.6% reduction in the fleet just m on itself Fleet admissions reduction 41.6% oh my goodness what are they doing actually I think I I probably misquoted that I think um not to get back but it it's not that they're reducing it's the half monthly half oh the fuel itself is okay anyway if you could clarify that I'm just curious I mean I I would like to know what they're able to do I know that we have a very um know Progressive Fleet they're always looking for ways to do better and that seems like an

2:22:18 they had a 23rd goal I believe and so they're that's part of what thats to getting down below certain level commissioner Carlson the the the upcoming update to The Climate guide book will include um where we're at with some of our annual reporting of ghg emissions and so that'll be part of that process okay and then um on the slide we were talking you know we always look at these comparators between you know our rates and the other utilities and one thing that occurred to me I'm just curious do we have any data or can we find it on the other utilities and how carbon intensive they are because I do

2:23:04 Wonder as we're looking at if we had the goal to hit 95% um three are we comparing Apples to Apples in here we already have a very clean and you know many of them also buy from BPA so some of that's the same but we have done other things to kind of go above and beyond and I'm curious how that how that mix looks yeah all of the U Utilities in Oregon um Supply information through the DEQ that is then published on the department of Oregon Department of energy they have a carbon intensity page and we can send you that link you look up city of Ashland you can look up us you can look up Pacific Corp most of the bonnaville based uh

2:23:51 customers are similar to us sometimes we're a little bit better because we have some of our own re resources which diminishes our need for um just Market purchases U Pacific core will tend to be much higher PGE is is higher in their carbon intensity than than eweb the one thing about this this as well um is just this year for example some of these utilities have increased their on the electric side increased their rates by double digits um for example last year Pacific Corp raised their rates 23% they they put in raise them another 16% this year um that's significant

2:24:36 year-over-year um and Portland General Electric um just recently raised their rate 177% and so um there is significant upward pressure on particular Electric utilities but it's not unique to Electric utilities because of a number of the risks that we're mitigating including Wildfire risks and some of the other things U we have very unique supplies the equipment that we have is is um you know you know raw materials intense um and so uh we're we're all feeling that but I think um EB has done done a good job of our staying within our our budgetary limits and trying to

2:25:21 limit our rate increases to as as close to an normal inflationary number um as we can unless there's some specific I wish there was a way to even measure resiliency because I know that we've done a lot of work to make sure that our system is more resilient to these different shocks I don't know if we have access to any of those kind of data no what's the acronym for it the um skate assist yeah of of some of the other utilities of like you know days out of service you know when they do get those same shocks are they less able to deal with them like we were able to keep our water system running because we've made some of those Investments That doesn't get

2:26:06 reflected in these dollars very easily because it's just one dollar figure but it is a real impact to the community when we have those shocks and we've put Investments and yeah cost then cost Community less when we do have those shocks thank you very much for the hard work and I'll look forward to he I don't know commissioner Carlson um BR price me able to weigh into this um on the electric side of the utility um some of the standardized metrics which are based on the Institute of electrical electronic Engineers I standards um some of those exclude some of those measurements exclude major event events because they're looking for long-term trends but I don't know there may be some that actually include include

2:26:53 because a long-term event would just drown out your base business so they but I I don't know if some actually do we could we could see if there's any baselines for that um I mean we often say that that the cost to us is insignificant you know compared to the amount of cost that it costs the community when we have a major power outage you lose an entire grocery store worth of food you know a business is out of power for 5 days you know those are real economic impacts that AR as easily quantifiable in here that's correct and quick question um keep ever since Co we've been using this term

2:27:39 about supply chain issues and being an impediment to meeting our goal so what is your crystal ball or what is your position on I see we just got delayed again on Emi water in 2025 because of supply chain issues are you anticipating that phenomenon to continue even into the next into the future or how are you planning on dealing with that your planning thought he had a crystal ball I do have an answer for that um I think is um you know all this the basically the the pivot is to global economy to more of a a North American economy right so um um from my perspective and and that probably has a

2:28:24 different um point of view on it but you can see manufacturers pivoting to uh more local supplies but I really see is the price uh is not coming down the pricing is is pretty uh impactful you know the price of hamburger is not the only thing that's gone up and so we were looking at a small short Jun of transmission line that was a million ounce fortunately now was only two three years ago so so between uh labor and and um the price of materials all that's gone up a lot I do see the materials though not being as much of an issue although again this room we were supposed to have it ready for prime time you know with our new AV systems is is a victim of that too so so

2:29:10 there are still iups on electronics and those i' also add that operations has been working closely with the procurement group to um to identify Supply needs that we don't end up uh with last minute orders where we do have more issue and to make sure that we've really identified um what supplies we need and whether or not there are are alternatives uh that are equally satisfactory to get the job done so there's been some work in that area as well I would say just anecdotally too that about comparisons to other utilities we're we're doing that ice storm we we started helping people wither so as opposed to

2:29:55 taking so we're um doing a lot of things to be resilient um it's starting to pay off and I'm just worried about upward pressure on rates and our five and 10 year Capital plans and when we we were using three and 4% inflation and now your example you just gave a million bucks went to there's that a lot more and and that's just standard stuff so um just you know bringing up the point I I don't envy you to have to try and balance that keep going but that I just chain issue I I do think that there will continue to be public pressure on those

2:30:41 things that influence our rates supply chain is a is a piece of that but um I I I see that continuing for a number of years and I think we're going to have to take a look at how we do our Capital planning um and look at more of a scope based Capital plan as opposed to a monetary based Capital plan and see if we maintain that scope what's the monetary impact going forward it's it's a little bit different way of looking at it um and so I I suspect that that will continue um for a number of years um if in most businesses inventory is evil it's it's sort of considered a waste um I I think in this industry where to commissioner Carlson's point

2:31:28 the cost of disruptions far outweighs the Lost revenue for our organization the cost on the community is just is magnitudes more that that inventory um because of the standards that we have to adhere to is is viewed much different differently and to view that differently going forward it's it's not evil in our in our case and in fact it's it's beneficial thank you um I think it's fantastic how many of our that were either On Target or On Target or achieved um so that's great I have a question about the dynamic Workforce model I know You'

2:32:13 talked about this a little bit but in the past few years we you heard about how hard it was to hire for positions and we had to have Consultants we had to go out and P more for consultant and hiring internally and I'm just curious if you're seeing a change in that Trend go ahead so specifically the we called it the dynamic Workforce model because we didn't want to te call it telecommunity um we wanted it to be something that we could evolve over time depending on on industry Trends um Workforce Trends um we are seeing in some Industries um ours included that um

2:32:59 organizations recognize the benefit of sort of in-person collaboration in some form or another we have about 20% of our people are fully telecommunity and I think 40 roughly 40% are some hybrid and then 40% are uh field based and so we we have a mix um the cultures that I mentioned are part of that um we're going to evaluate different ways of how we evolve that going forward but to answer your question directly about um does that help with recruiting yeah in some cases it helps in recruiting but the door swings both ways uh we also have people that can reside in Eugene that can go work for an organization in Portland so um we have to view

2:33:46 our organization to be an attractive uh place to work sometimes independently of where you're actually located and so that's part of the Dynamics that we're going to have to look at going forward we're going to have to look at how we design our our workspace we're going to have to be more flexible um ever Hart's work group is is reorganizing their workspace to facilitate uh a lot of hybrid work in combination with collaborative work and so um that's what we mean by Dynamic I think we look at it I honestly I think Co taught us a lot it provided some really interesting opportunities from a technology and a Workforce perspective uh We've we've learned from that we we have also

2:34:32 learned that there's vulnerabilities with that um an example was during the ice storm uh when we thought it it's great to have people who can answer the phones remotely because they don't have worry about traveling into a facility up until they lose power and so we we discovered a different vulnerability when 3 quarters of our people um during the ice storm lost power themselves and so um um broad mention our cyber security some of the areas that uh we feel like there's more work to be done is there's a lot of software as a system uh we don't actually own or have the server with the software and we need to to work with our suppliers on on that

2:35:17 side of it but that probably more than in well and I guess to follow up or to ask an additional question what about some of the more technical or fieldwork based positions because I feel like that's where we were having trouble and reacting or recruiting and has that changed at all or are we still in the same position well one of the things we uh the dynamic Workforce stuff did illustrate quite clearly in in the engagement survey work we did show we've got several cultures right you got the field work and and sort of office work if you will or hybrid work um but overall um we're starting to fill some of those positions but they're still out

2:36:02 there just it's still flat out of shortage not necessarily how you work or or where you work it's just a shortage of the talent U so workfor Services uh lenux stopless uh reforce uh report recommendation that will take in to all these factors we've been talking about safety and engagement some of these things that you know what keeps people here what attracts people here how can we tap into the you know people in Portland OR weing so we're working on that and that's part of one of the goals this year um organizational goals so you'll be hearing more about that it's probably in a month or so when we get into the next cor report right yeah we we've made a a some good progress on the hiring and and

2:36:48 recruiting front it doesn't eliminate the fact that there are certain positions and some of those are facility based positions that are from for the specific reason that broad mentioned is the availability and supply and demand at at play there powerful break that uh was that a question yeah no I'm try to turn it off um I'll just chime in very briefly and say thank you as well for the report there's just every time I have read through one of these here I'm learning something new um is borderline ridiculous but also

2:37:33 fantastic so thank you um and then I I just want to say to my fellow board members just how much I appreciate working with you all um I don't always agree but I have a tremendous respect for well most of you um uh no I have a tremendous respect for all of you and I really appreciate the opportunity to work together and and the same the staff team the the team that we engage with on a regular basis all of you who are in the room um just the the level of professionalism and and respectfulness uh is really remarkable um so really appreciate the work and then you know of course there's uh hundreds of people that we don't

2:38:18 engage with regularly um but also just want to acknowledge the the remarkable work this this winter storm was just a prime example I think of um how our team Works to make things happen and to um you the lights on or get them back on as fast as possible um so I just feel um really fortunate to be here really fortunate to work with eweb um and I'm really glad that all the hard decisions are now done so no more hard decisions in 2024 and thank you for that I I only heard we're going to bring you easy decisions one thing I I we didn't mention in I just I wanted to call it out was over 14,000 megawatt hours of Energy

2:39:04 Efficiency work was done in 2023 that's that's a really significant number over 6,000 of those megawatt hours were in the last quarter and so some of that is timing some of it is that we work with Bonville to get some additional funding for that work and i' say funding we fund Bonville and they give it back so it's not like they're paying for everything but um we're paying indirectly but that was a a really phenomenal effort at the end of the year um by that team so thank that team Julie thank you it's a pleasure to work with all of you most of you um

2:39:52 tonight I didn't named any names all right uh the next item is the 2025 integrated resource plan and energy resource study kickoff scope in analytical plan fun stuff Ben and Brian wow good evening Commissioners I'm Brian Booth Chief energy resource officer here

2:40:37 at UAB uh let me warn you now my 5-year-old Bing at about 2: a.m. and then I leave there about work during all the hours afterward back to sleep so I'm going to try to turn it on for one last spread before I go home and uh sleep like a log uh so let's jump into it um we were here to kick off the 2025 energy resource study we're going to provide some key context our Rel in 2025 decision we're got an update on the 2023 action plan and also laid out what's our analytical plan look like for next cycle uh lastly we're going to touch on Communications and stakeholder

2:41:23 engagement uh so you may see some new uh new vocabulary this time around the energy resource study is a new one uh used the industry standard integrated resource plan language in the past and I really dislike it integrated is kind of a $20 word and it doesn't really add anything if someone could tell me the difference between an anyr Source plan and their resource plan you'd be the first one uh second of all the word plan is kind of a misnomer and that the study is a study and the actual plan is a plan but when we got this document that says plan at the top of it people the kind of think but the study is also so we're trying to be more clear this next time around so right now we are taking off

2:42:10 the energy resource study which is the analytical part of this this is where we do that Le cost study to uh determine what is the most efficient way for us to deploy resources um into the future for the next 20 years keep the lights on at the best rates possible so this combines with the action plan which is uh what we ask the board to endorse at the end of this where the rubber actually meets the road we go out and do some of the things that study recommends when you put those together then we have that standard integrated resource plan which I hope is the last time I'll have to say that for a while so with that I can hand it over to Megan

2:42:56 who's going to talk about the BB product decision and hold on a second the lack of sleep caught up with me I introduce myself this is Ben Ock our lead on the IRP team also Megan kapper our energy and resources manager so with that Megan yeah I'm just gonna give you a fair quick um update or um kind of some uh con context around the vpa product decision and those uh discussions um as it gives you some um that's going to be a key input into our energy resources study I got to get used to that um so staff continued to engage in the BPA provider of choice Regional discussions to define a PO post 2028 contract BPA

2:43:44 contract the regional discussion process involves over a 100 Northwest Public Utilities who all have a right to cost based power from bonnaville the process is well underway and utilities are advocating for things like the BPA system size allocation that they'll receive power product options a new rate design and contractual terms um that they'd like to see offered in this next contract I want to introduce a couple of Concepts that um we will talk about um later um around BPA contract uh that will uh is just kind of a little bit of an an introduction first of all baville is governed by federal statutes uh these statutes say that BPA can serve a public utilities net requirements and the net

2:44:30 requirements is your total retail load plus your own generating resources used to serve your load so that is would be like Carmen Smith for us um as an example because a federal system is limited EPA has developed a rate structure to limit the amount of cost-based power a utility can receive this is called the tiered rates methodology and BPA plans to update this methodology for the new contracts so it's strictly a rate structure and it recognizes that the federal system is limited and it encourages utilities to seek alternative sources of generation for their load growth provide by providing a cap on the amount that they

2:45:15 can access at Cost based rates so in this tiered rate methodology there are two tiers the first tier of power is set at cost-based rates and is only accessible up to that capped amount the second tier of power is priced at market and is and is an option for utilities with load greater than their cap they can either purchase Federal tier 2 power at market prices or they can arrange for non Federal power or just their own go out and get their own resources to serve their load drop so in order to access the tier one power BPA has to is defining products offerings uh for a variety of service

2:46:01 levels that as they do today these are things like um the load following which is a higher level service and the slice block product that has a l lower level level of service and mtil has to do um um how these products are priced is also being discussed at length in this Regional process and what BPA uh what EB is advocating is um we advocate for fair pricing that accurately reflects the cost to deliver and sends the appropriate cost signals so there's no cost sub subsidization we'll be keeping the board informed as BPA and the region clarifi terms and they will get incorporated into the energy resources study that we're discussing today and the goal is

2:46:47 um for contracts to be signed in December of 2025 so now I'll pass it off to great thanks Megan so before we dive into the bond gold product decision in the 2025 energy resource study I want to briefly touch on some uh progress we've made on the 2023 IRP action plan that the board approved back in August of last year so BPA contract negotiations are underway that's a really big one but the board also approved doing a deeper dive into the potential for demand response and conservation in our community so we actually have an RFP out right now to do a demand side potential assessment that work is expected to be done the next 12 to 15 months and we can roll the results of that study into our

2:47:33 P planning processes we also uh had an action to reach out to our existing generators like International Paper um and in December actually the board approve the extension of the joint operation of the 25 megawatt steam turbine generator that's located on International property site we extended that through September of 2028 which aligns with our existing BPA contract and helps reduce our need for resources in the future uh we know those conversations aren't done though because we've got Sierra Pacific coming up in 2026 so we know we need to continue those conversations with local generators uh UAB has also made progress in looking at how New Market will impact us uh we started a a market impact

2:48:18 analysis so we engaged utils to perform a market Gap study for us that help identify the gaps in processes people and systems help us understand what it takes to go from our operations today in bilateral markets to function in like a day ahead organized market and then of course I can't miss an opportunity to talk about modeling and modeling improvements as you'll recall in the last IRP we really focused in on those winter Peaks and so modeling change that we're working on integrating is switching to monthly capacity targets instead of annual capacity targets and what's that means is we can better align with the new Western resource adequacy program which really looks at things on a seasonal and monthly basis um and we think it'll help us better identify e

2:49:03 web's summer Peak needs in addition to our winter Peak needs so we think that's an enhancement I want to update the board about so let's talk about our energy res Source study or 2025 study so the goal of our analytical plan here is to quantify the differences between those future vpa product options so as Megan said the contract negotiations are underway and E is going to have some choices to make about what products and services we want to receive from BPA we want to give stakeholders the data and information they need to understand the financial implications of that BPA product decision but to do this we need to make four uh to make forecasts of our future resource needs we need to

2:49:48 estimate the cost of eacha product so the first step in our analytical plan we're calling our BPA Bill calculator the goal of the calculator right is to understand the power services that we're going to get from BPA and each product and we want to estimate the cost of each of those products you can see I've got four to five scenarios here one for each of the different BPA products we would estimate the cost of those different products over the next 20 years to understand how much it would impact the utility financially by selecting a given product choice we also want to identify those other product optimization services that we might need in addition to that so for example today is a block slice customer and we actually pay a consultant to help us

2:50:33 optimize the value of our slice product with a specialized software so that's a kind of a a hidden cost of that product decision so we want to try and itemize those costs in here to create some transparency around the finances of a product selection as Megan mentioned we're subject to a cap the BPA tier one cost-based power is subject to a limit and so as we foresee load growth in the future EB's going to need to decide to either purchas tier 2 power at market prices or continue to invest in non-federal resources so the next part of our analytical plan is identifying those supplemental resources that EB will need over the next 20 years to supplement that BPA product choice and that combination of those two things

2:51:19 together kind of paints that more holistic picture of a portfolio choice so we've got four to five scenarios one for each of the different BPA products and that tells you kind of on the bottom line how much each product decision would cost you I'm calling that comparison Matrix where we could line up those products a decision variables Matrix and I'll show you an illustration on another slide but the goal is to line up the products next to each other so that we can understand how they compare to one another how they're different how they're similar and this is also an opportunity to do some risk analysis where we change our assumptions we see how the products May respond differently to uncertainty and C try and create more product differentiation so that we can understand the impacts of the given product

2:52:08 Choice uh so uh we know though that these uh cost estimates alone won't determine our product Choice uh as staff gather information about the terms and com and conditions of each BPA product choice we want to gather those non-numeric considerations of the board and stakeholders to consider each BPA product will offer a different level of service and we know that those qualitative considerations will Factor heavily in the decision these levels here illustrate just some of those qualitative considerations like the level of local control that U has risk management procedures for the utility managing a given product resource diversity direct Market access or indirect Market access through BPA or environmental attributes so there's just

2:52:53 many considerations that we want to uh learn about and as we learn those things we want to document those considerations as part of the energy resource study because we think it's relevant to that decision uh I want to put the decision in context so here's here's an illustration of what that decision variables Matrix can look like we're going to work to populate this Matrix with useful uh useful estimates to illustrate those financial differences between the products this is just an illustration so I don't want people to get high centered on the dollar figures they don't mean anything they just plug figures at this point uh but the the key Point here is that we need to put things in relativity relative to the level of service that you get from bonab bille so an example

2:53:39 of like a high level of service is the load following product that's an example of something that Springfield Utility Board has UAB currently is maybe more of a midlevel product you have a sliced product where they don't provide all the services for us we do some of those things ourselves and so the goal here is to kind of itemize each of those costs as I said the BPA cost through a build calculator the non-federal supplemental resources as well as those optimization costs and give you a bottom line picture and then we need to put that into context before making a BPA product decision so the goal here uh management will ultimately consider both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the BPA product Choice before making their recommendation in late 2025 to

2:54:26 show you a timeline of how we see that all fitting together but before I get into the timeline I also want to make sure we take some time to talk about our stakeholders engagement and our Communications process so I want to give a shout out to Aaron Orlowski he's our Communications person you I'm sure you've seen him out the community talking about the integrated resource planning um he is actually out on paternity league right now which is wonderful and we're excited to have him back when he's back um but Aaron and the communications team are going to be spearheading all the stakeholder and Communications efforts associated with this IRP and so really similar to the last IRP you're going to see board presentations about key topics you're going to see correspondents coming from us you're going to continue to see the

2:55:11 publicity and earned media um as well as the educ campaign so the goal is to again draw in the community and continue educating them about these power supply decisions that we have coming up so they understand what's going on how they can influence that process uh but we also have a new enhancement this year that we're really excited to roll out as we looked at the diversity equity and inclusion policy we saw an opportunity to improve our our engagement across a diverse set of stakeholders so we're rolling out A New Concept called the community table um our vision for this is that it' be less than 20 people and the goal would to be represent our community's diverse interests and that could be involved uh from low-income uh Representatives

2:55:57 environmental communities Civic organizations business Community the gole is to have that diverse representation that is learning about these energy resource study results and assumptions everything the board's going to learn about learning right alongside the board we want to be really clear though that this is not like the 2011 Advisory Group that Frank mentioned whereas that Elite group of selected individuals the goal is everyone along in this process and so the community table as a focus group is a place that we can share those energy resource study results findings prior to a board meeting we can share those uh Community initial gut reactions with the board uh when we come to present on a given topic so it's kind of a way to test the community's reaction to things and

2:56:42 solicit some good discussion uh and the communications team will start working on forming that group very soon here and send out invitations to join in the in the spr uh so last slide here the the timeline and so we're here at the kickoff uh March uh we're we're doing our kickoff and then we won't be back to the board until June where we're going to gather an educational overview of all the different BPA product choices as they exist we know it's kind of a moving Target um and the products are negotiated currently but we want to make sure we educate the board as much as possible in the community about different PPA products as they exist how they could exist in the next uh contract and then we'll be back in September our annual IRP update which is a standard

2:57:29 process but we thought that was a great time to do a deep dive into the assumptions that we'll be using in the 2025 energy resource study and December we want to bring back that Matrix kind of populate it with the information that we have so far provide those initial results to share with the board and start getting some reactions and some questions and then come back in q1 of 2025 uh share any sensitivity results any answer any questions that come up from the December uh initial results and then targeting completion for summer of 2025 so we complete the study gather all the relevant information give management time to sit down and review the study results form a draft action plan and make a BPA product recommendation and ultimately we would bring that to the

2:58:14 board for endorsement uh of the action plan and the BPA product decision in late 2025 and then as Megan said the goal is signing a new BPA contract in December 2025 at this point that's how we see everything coming together for our analytical plan as well as our stakeholder plan and we're seeking the board's support tonight on the overall direction curious to hear your feedback and reactions and with your support we'll plan to execute on these PL we play out question we just do this okay you warned us that this was going to be a continual process I couldn't

2:58:59 help myself um I'm I'm curious about one of the slides on2 showing well it showed kind of the cost versus scal reference case looks like there's only a couple of them that actually have um change in energy is lower I'm it's just a a graphic for graic illust an illustration of anything that we're actually doing right correct we're assuming that we will have low growth correct yes sorry some of the scenarios actually have you know a decreased load yes we want to look at like load variability the sensitivity for the product choice so this chart is an illustrative chart from our last IRP to kind of show how we did sensitivity

2:59:45 studies to look at how different different cases that we analyzed had different impacts from the change assumption so uh yeah I don't want to get high centered on this particular graphic is borrowed from just wanted to double check and then um in the the options that you're talking about for BPA is one of the options looking at them being more of a full service provider where they do like the trading portion of it because we have a trading floor I know that's been talked about the past of you know given the size that we're at does it make sense to have the trading not or is that not of the options that are like on the table for this plan not plan sorry energy resource study I'll get there yes

3:00:30 I the short answer to your question is yes I the way that we go about serving power acquiring power for our customers is entirely discussion BPA offers that wide variety of products last time around it made sense for us to go the direction we did we know more about what the next generation of product is going to look like simply don't know what will make sense for us and so some of this ties into what BPA is offering right I mean it's it's what we anticipate that BPA will offer but it's also BPA hasn't has they have they actually released the products that we think we will give to you they have they have

3:01:16 released uh structures of products that they will give to us but as with everything it's the price I might like a red car more than a white car but if the red car costs another few thousand bucks I've got to think about it right yeah it Mr Carlson I was I was just gonna add that um the short answer to your other question about the business model that it creates for youb I think where you're going with that the the short answer as Brian said is yes the interesting part about the bonnaville decision is the bonnaville decision could facilitate certain Futures depending on which Bonville product we take for example the fact that we have a slice product uh from Bonville where we're managing water lends itself to where we have to manage

3:02:03 water so we have to have a trading floor to be able to have that product so it's not just the business model part it's the the Bonville piece can influence the eventual business model part so they kind of work work together and because we have a cap does that mean that we I mean we're not the holding to that slice product necessarily but we are the the cap is separate from that yes so the the the it's a contracted high water mark as they call it that's hunt there um and um that is independent of the product we select within that cap okay if we go with a full Services option then bonnaville could be the supplier of both

3:02:48 the tier one part which is capped but also whatever growth we happen to have um they would they would manage that obviously at a cost and that's what we have to figure out what is the best cost what gives us the most opportunity to to deal with the I'll say the unknowns that that you know we're going to have to test the resiliency what happens if growth increases more than we thought or decreases one one might cost more than the other in that scenario so um we'll have to test all that out and I can tell Ben's just like ready to go already and and uh Megan is is arm wrestling with a federal agency so you know what how much more fun can that be okay last question based off of that then um we have our own owned generation

3:03:34 if for some reason we chose a product through BPA we were managing more of it and we didn't have a trading floor I mean would they then manage Carmen I don't know that works yeah sorry BPA BPA has expressed zero interest in managing utilities resources so we either need to manage Carmen or we would need to contract out with someone else to manage it or we would have to sell K and acquire something to replace that energy thank you I'm done like I said there you remember when I said there's lots of choices and all the these are easy decisions for for you

3:04:19 commissioner thank you general manager Brown and then over to great question on between the tier one and tier two when they have a low water year and they're just tier one has one allocation amount and tier two Market has a different so they have a little water year do they proportion that or do they generate they keep that same amount of tier one in the kitty and cut back on tier tier two so um tier 2 is completely market so it's completely different products we don't know what these will be they will go do different price strips for I think what you're asking is tier what is tier one and tier one is um based on their firm output right firm output but if let's just say it's so many megawatts yeah gigawatts or whatever they produce and then they have

3:05:04 a little water year so tier one you they're not going to generate as much electricity there just so much that of the inexpensive stuff the expensive stuff do they allocate that or do we still get our full quota of the tier one we get our full quota of the T tier one um and then that's where the Surplus comes in anything during in those better water years anything that is is above is that is anything above what they're what they call critical it's their critical firm um then we uh then they go out and that's when we get the Surplus and then my second question is about um one of our largest customers I think is the University of Oregon don't they have a Coen facility that they're not using and I have never never heard that capacity discussed in any of these things and so is that something that we're just not talking about I mean

3:05:51 because they've got a natural gas Coen facility sitting there and it's not generating electricity so why does that we just forget about it or what's happening in our community about that it's one of my favorite subjects already it is something that we're privately talking about f asking because I haven't seen it in in in the hierarchy of conversation so we're having discussions resiliency talking about ideas good thank you that's all I got so first of all I really appreciate the modeling update that we're going to do up monthly and we're going to look at summer P we think that will be super overall um but back to this idea about

3:06:38 energy generation we know that you're going to give us all of the quantitative all numbers and everything but something that keeps getting kind of mentioned every once in a while is how much local generation do we want to own as a utility and I'm just wondering what do we have that kind of discussion it's it's not just qualitative but it's more a values based thing especially as we're looking to um just decisions like how much local dispatchable energy do you want I don't know just seems like a much bigger broader conversation and I'm wondering do we ever have that or do we just thr it out there I'm looking your way I'm imagine

3:07:24 that as part of the rer business model discuss certainly one product lends itself better to that than others yeah I think it's to to steal back um Brian's term that he threw out about thre out integrated he got rid of integrated I'm GNA I'm going to pull it back in because I think there are some parallels between this process and the discussions that we have to have as an organization in the context of this so sometime over the next uh 2024 and 2025 as an organization we need to get a sense of what the board's feeling is about owning generation versus buying on a market or uh long-term contracts or

3:08:11 you know we need to understand what priorities the board has that could influence a product decision so um it will have to we'll have to have a feel for that um as part of something that provides context to this so that that'll be scheduled slightly separately from what Ben showed but he also showed that there was a phase where there was a quantitative or sorry a qualitative discussion and we need to have our conversation about a business model before that great um and then my last last question is about the stakeholder Community engagement piece and um are you envisioning that we're going to have a bunch of small groups with 20 people or we just going to have like 20 people that are representative of different

3:08:57 parts of the community I think right now we're picturing a a single group self to do recruitment to see who we can find um I think that's underway but our I think our verion right now is a single group just I am a little C ious about that maybe I'm stereotyping but I can imagine what people from each kind of Silo might have to say and so how will we get anything that's helpful or useful from that I've got a lot of thoughts on that I think I think we heard a lot from certain stakeholders in the last process and I think we see you need to be more intentional with our Outreach and to try and I think one of the was to try and

3:09:43 put people in the same room together because I think there is some benefits to having a shared conversation and I think that's where we see those values tradeoffs the trade-off kind of conversation kind of comes to light and I think those are kind of the learnings that we want to get from the focus group and then share with the board say these are some reactions or these are some conversations we saw I it's not an Advisory Group we don't need consensus but um I do think it'll be interesting I see Frank can jump into yeah I I was going to say one of the values of having a focus group is that it gives us the opportunity to understand the tensions between these these groups and for them to understand and have some of those debates this does not eliminate the fact

3:10:28 that we're going to be doing a lot of Outreach to the general Community as part of this process so a lot like we did with the last one we had meetings with environmental groups we had meetings with uh neighbor Hood associations um you know various rot rotary groups I mean that that will still exist but this is kind of our way of saying okay we're gonna test some of these ideas so that when we come to the board we can say these are the tensions that we're feeling between groups with different values and so it's a tool that we wanted to use to enhance our knowledge before we come to the board and say okay board go out to the world and um we don't we don't want to

3:11:14 Blindside um you and your word we want to understand that more um so when we talk about the tier one PPA and then the tier two let's just let them let them figure out our load when we go above what alloted we would have no control over the carbon intensity of the the market energy that they're providing to us it seems to me right and so I think that that would be difficult with some of our policies that we've integrated if we say we want to be reach

3:12:00 95% carbon free by this day and yet we're entering a contract with with BPA that they're just going to give us the power they're not going to tell us where it's from right so with with here too there will be various product options that they'll go out and they'll they'll Define and those we we have asked that those have specific carbon Associated to with with them okay so we we've asked for some carbon free options so those will have different prices so if we want if we want the red car with a that's a Tesla it's going to cost us more than if we want the red car that's the 64 Ford yes okay um good to know the uh the other thing um this probably goes

3:12:48 to so I'm some of your bubble slides one of the biggest bubbles was risk management um and so I would like to have an opportunity to meet with staff at some point and have that drilled down to me what risk management means other than a big bubble um uh just because that's the kind of the kind of geek I am um but I'm wondering if if when we're looking at this I mean a lot of our cost of this stuff is cost that we can recover by selling wholesale selling excess on the wholesale market and if we take a specific product this the product that we have today provides us with Bonville

3:13:35 Surplus power right and we can combine that with our own resources and sell that right and so that that is another part that's another bubble right that when we're figuring our costs which bubble is that in is that in Risk Management the market access bubble I think too is who's marketing that Surplus power is it Bonville doing it on behal of their load following customers for example or is it us doing it ourselves with our own trading so so if we have Excess power from bonnaville they'll sell it on our behalf and give us the the profit percentage of the profits that they make under the loan following yes okay and the block we we get that today under under certain prodcts right okay all right so that

3:14:21 that answers my questions and at some point I would love to have a tutorial on the risk management Tim our risk manager is sh's attack and I'm sure Deborah would love to off thank you I just have um a couple of comments I guess one with the community focus group I think that's a good idea I'm super eager to see you know we end up um getting to participate in that way I do think that um we should think about paying people to participate if we're not already um especially if we're looking for lower income households um or renters and I think both of those uh we need representation from both of those groups um because they tend to not

3:15:08 be as well represented in processes and then the other thing I wanted to bring up is um uh and this kind of gets back to the local it's not so much the local ownership but what we have local control over um and it seems like if we're thinking about what we're going to be buying from BPA which has I I guess I'll assume a Rel a relatively low level of local control compared to contracts for example for Generation that's here in town um that it would be valuable for us to understand or for me anyway to have an understanding of um how much generation or other resources we have that are local that we have local

3:15:54 control over in comparison to our um essential functions so U the things that I would put in that category are like 911 call centers right um cold start capability uh our water system operation of course uh emergency response functions hospitals and most importantly sewer operation uman most importantly but as importantly we want that to keep functioning anyway from from my perspective as we're thinking about making decisions about longer term contracts for relatively remote um resources it would be valuable to have a comparison of those two things yeah president McCrae um a number

3:16:41 of years a ago and and I'm going to speak sort of in gen General at this point uh we can go back and quantify this more for sure um we looked at what our top loads under emergency conditions would be Emergency Services drinking water and waste water that was in included in there um hospitals Police Department there was there was some Bas basis and this was the really essential level you could also say that there's tiar to this as well but that essential level if I remember right was around 20 megawatts or so when you look at um senica for example senica is 20 megawatts um Carmen Smith on average we

3:17:28 don't run it average we ramp it up and down on average is somewhere between 25 and 30 megawatts now I'm not sure if that's local it's 70 miles away um on average Welter bille is eight seven and a half seven and a half so you IP is 25 25 so you can see it it definitely at the lowest emergency level our local controlled surpasses the basic functions but we'll we can go and as part of this discussion that commissioner schlosberg talked about and the the quality of of that we can we can quantify that further for you yeah that'd be great the the tiered version would be super helpful if that's possible and it's great to know

3:18:13 that we have locally controlled resources that can probably cover most of our primary functions um I would if it would be valuable for staff it seems like having some clarification around what our board level expectations are there could be that's something that could potentially provide right right the the state also does allow for utilities to have resources that that they procure for a certain number of hours a year for emergency purposes um and that's something that um will tend to be dispatchable resources like a natural gas facility that you're only using in sparing or emergency situations

3:18:59 and there's there's actually um the state facilitates that through through some of how they manage um and how the laws were written so U not that that's where we would go at first but we need to in this context we need to be able to evaluate what options we have probably Italian restaurants are like right below hospitals they're somewhere in that tier and a half range you know we just check it it be very essential and it's tie above or below uh all right that's all I have uh did you get everything you need from us I'm sensing support so with

3:19:45 that thank you all right uh we're gonna discuss the yeah C Eugene Le on update and I just want to start by saying I was planning to attend this meeting um and was unable to because I had a last minute word conflict so thank you Mr barasi for thinking it and uh making that meeting appreciate it you want to start or you want go ahead um it was a very successful meeting I think it went long you know anytime you put three and a half electeds in a or four electeds in a room to talk about things and always will go long I think that a lot of what we

3:20:33 talked about was the storm you know because the storm had just just happened so the city was very interested in our reaction and our response to the storm and was very appreciative about that um and impressed I would say one of the things I came across um one of the tangible things that I got away that I took away from something that the city is looking for from us um was we brought up the the reservoir in Foria and how our Communications team and that all of that worked really well they were the at least the electeds were in interested in being able to have that information conveyed to them so that

3:21:20 when their constituents call and say what's going on at College Hill they're they're ready with that answer um and so that's something I think that we learned really well and and we they would love to have us be able to relay that in a in a fashion that they can use going forward because I think that when we do start doing College Hill it's going to be a different type of reaction than we had at at East 40th um but I think it's going to come from not only to us I think it will come to to the city as well um so that was something that they were interested in um electrification was something that we talked about in the our

3:22:07 our climate guide book there they were really the mayor was really excited to have that shared with them when the new update comes out so uh I'll I'll pass it to Frank put his notes he thought um thanks commissioner barowski the I'd add two things uh one is we asked for support when the time comes for uh changes to the public Facility Services plan um giving them a little bit of a heads up on that and they they seemed very receptive and totally understood the the need for um an alternative drinking water facility and the other one um was they they actually volunteered um to

3:22:52 potentially look at their franchise agreements with telecom companies and adding requirements for them to um improve their vegetation management included include that in the franchise agreements so that's something that we'll have to look into I don't know quite what that means or what the timing is or or how that would be administrated or if they can do it but um I thought it was um a nice thing for them to offer and um at least the council president uh vice president um city manager mayor seem to be um open and receptive to that idea so we'll we'll have to do some perect follow up on

3:23:44 that I have a question about the colil reservoir stuff um I know that Jen and CHR a really great job of engaging their community and um have or will any of City staff be invited to some of those um events that we have I think it could be helpful to them especially as um people start talking about the things that they have control over like the amenities and designs and some of that will have to be in partnership with the city I'm assuming so yeah so right now I know and Laura's Laura's not here I know that um we're coordinating a lot with the city around the the permitting process and all the details associated with that

3:24:29 the the the land and how that's structured and all that so there's a lot of coordination between our our project people um from a Communications perspective um you know I'll I'll um talk about how we can further the people who maybe aren't involved in the project directly but or there's other others who would have an interest um the other thing I might suggest is they sign up for the email list which which will give them probably updates um more than they will ever read uh I have a suspicion but U we're coordinating really tightly with the city on this project it's because it's so important and um and impactful to a

3:25:15 neighborhood uh Laura and Jen and their teams Wall-E Etc are um coordinating really tightly with the city on the new on update I was just curious who who are the people that you're now going to be me meeting with so was Randy Gro uh eting mayor uh and Sarah okay so it's the same group that we but it's it's uh Matt is different last year it was was It was supposed to be Matt I'm just curious if they had yeah m is President and Randy's vice president

3:26:00 okay so that's good got thanks just a suggestion I know the city's doing this Outreach with all the commercial buildings and industrial buildings and things to Electrify them and I participated in one of those and and I wish somebody from eweb could have been there because they there's a lot of people that are clueless about what our capacities are and what the options are I mean they're talking about well we can put some solar panels on the roof of 100,000 foot building and heat it cool it all winter all summer and it just things like that that were coming out of some of this discussion groups were um I sat there and I said I just wish some somebody from E would be there and they're having three or four more of

3:26:45 them they're done through the Chamber of Commerce City staff and they're taking input from people like myself that are in some of those businesses and so I just with throw that as a suggestion because I I suspect there's going to be a lot of misinformation or mis misconceptions coming out about what the capacities are what the options are City Planning uh this the city it's you know better the followup to the gas National Gas band um they the council said to go back out and and learn from the the community from the targeted businesses so they did one with the hospitality industry they did one with the warehousing industry they did one with housing complexes and stuff

3:27:32 like that roundtables to gather feedback to be quite honest the the people that I've talked to that have attend Ed those kind of felt that there some of their feedback wasn't being received very well from some of the city staff but um you know we'll see when they come back and and present to council if their recommendations my only concern is if it gets back to council level and adop an ordinance that's not achievable from our perspective you know from our our capacity to supply it or even you know you know four or five we've got to have to look for other energy sources and really I thought you guys had more power and you know what to

3:28:17 do with we thought and so those are just little information things I think did this group because this group's going to go back to council they counc up more and I'd like to see it be successful I didn't I don't I'll ask for potential concurrence for commissioner barov I didn't get the impression from City leadership that we met with that they were looking to create an ordinance to to force um this this kind of action I I just didn't get that impression um I got the impression that they were looking for feedback but um what they use that

3:29:03 feedback for I didn't I didn't get a strong de for it I mean I mean yeah the idea was after the after the natural gas uh you know was ruled against in Berkeley and they they pivoted on that on that ordinance they they still wanted to achieve their climate goals and so they were looking for ways to implement their their cap 2.0 and their ordinance that they have on the books and so it was a way to gather more input and see what ways there are to help achieve those goals kind of the direction that Council gave to staff and so staff was going out to to try try and see

3:29:48 what part of of electrification in the building Community could play a part in that role is kind of what the message points let us know if you hear more on that front yeah I mean I um I'll reach out to Sarah and what's going on and if we can play a role in that if there's a decision point that you become aware of I think we probably all i' be interested in hearing about it trying and track it too it's not your job to and I think we can put that on the the agenda for the the next quarterly

3:30:38 meeting yeah um any more update on the city's efforts to use our bill system for an additional tax be updated on that I know that that came up last time that was not discussed at this particular meeting they their staff has been sending questions and we've been answering them they're they're looking at ideas so they're still exploring the option of using ewbs of buing entity for a tax yet to be identified I think they're considering a lot of options and that is you have as possibility from their perspective um thanks for the update the only thing I was thinking when you were

3:31:24 talking about um keeping uh City staff and others involved is Jen and Laura did a great job of helping us understand the water storage project on 40th and I wonder if inviting um City counselors to get that same kind of uh tour experience might be valuable I for me being able to speak to um folks in my ward about you know exactly what's going on up there it was much easier having been up there seeing the project hearing directly from the um engineering team so just something to anything else on this item um

3:32:12 approved our bonds that we asked for last month which was uh I represented us and and said thank you I literally said you know when you go in and ask for $64 Million worth from Dad it's always nice to say thank you appreciated it just to be clear they they authorized us to go out we are not borrowing money from the city yes we are going going out for revenue bonds on the market because of the charter and we're structured we have to so just be clear we're not we're not bar still need to say thank you yeah yeah

3:32:58 agreed uh on to future board agendas Frank I don't have anything to say about that and awesome word wrap up any anybody else have anything to say I just have one thing I ran to Dick Helens who's a former um EB commissioner and he just wanted me to say hello to everybody for him he didn't say it that question a longer than that wasn't it anybody else last items not all right meeting