EWEB Board of Commissioners — July 9, 2024

0:02 the July 9th 2024 meeting of the Eugene Water and Electric Board going start with a facility and safety awareness and meeting Logistics briefing just for those who are here tonight in person uh thank you for being here e management and subject matter experts are present in the room and virtually the meeting is live streamed and recorded please speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you public testim testimony is welcome sign up forms are available in the back of the room we're here for those that would like to provide publicly testimony um that's a couple items down in our agenda visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and restrooms the restrooms are located on the first floor exit through the interior door here in

0:47 the back of the room and a security officer will direct you to the restrooms in the event of an emergency such as a fire or security incident please follow all instructions given by staff if evacuation is required please calmly proceed to the nearest safe exit as directed by staff and evacuate away from the building to the farthest points of the parking lots to allow access for First Responders and with that we're GNA just jump right into our agenda um start with an agenda check any changes or questions about the agenda before we get going no not hearing any moving on items from board members and general manager

1:37 that the city council invited us end last night uh to lovely picture work to give up the LLY headquarters building so they have a very beautiful city hall I recommend anybody who hasn't been there to go check it out it looks drastically different than what we used to sit in so it's very nice space thank you yeah thanks yeah just to follow up on what Sony said I was there last night along with John B uh Roski and uh if you haven't been there they they're having official open house on the 18th but that boardroom I mean I sat there for 16 years I've devastated anything like that it was amazing and they they've absolutely done an incredible job with it and I'm sure they've done the rest I the technology

2:23 and and the way it sits and everything and the crowd can see the river and the board and Council can see the river it's are pretty nice so anything from you yeah I was just um going to comment on the city's gift um it really was a gift to the organization um and the collaboration with staff and so I wanted to pass along to staff as well as the board the appreciation that was has been shown by the city um for the acquisition and the transition that has occurred between eweb and what is now the riverfront City Hall and really wanted to appreciate the city for that but also wanted to appreciate staff for

3:09 um having a really good relationship and working well with the city to make that happen so um thanks to Commissioners and thanks to staff for that and uh Vice President John barowski is joining us tonight by phone His Image is on the back of the wall here um anything from you Browski um yeah just a couple things one I uh attended the Mackenzie Watershed Council we're doing a lot of good work up there in collaboration with the council and the trust and a bunch of other agencies and partners up there so that's going along well um just a technological thing commissioner Brown when you turned your camera on on your computer it basically I've got a huge I've got your face huge and then there

3:54 and then the uh rest of the room was uh so you're still there you're huge there we go that's better and it it goes to whoever's speaking so that works well just just new technology and on remote user using it so thank you for the record I just turned my camera off yep and look and I see you right now talking and it works great great thank you uh and I attended remotely for our last meeting I just want to thank vice president barowski for facilitating the meeting and um and you all for putting up my with my attendance by phone because my uh bandwidth was not sufficient to make video work so thank you all for making that work on my end it actually was pretty seamless so I appreciate the new

4:39 technology in this room I feel like it's a huge upgrade um anyway so thank you all right moving to correspondence yeah Commissioners there were two items of Correspondence um one is part of board policy sd20 it's an annual report on just various risk assessments that we go through across the organization there are a plethora of risks that we mitigate in various ways and this is an annual report to you as to various uh issues that we are considering and addressing in different forms and so wanted to thank um rod and Sarah and Ken for that information and then the other one was a an operational

5:24 update relative to compliance with uh revised lead and rule revisions um and where we are with that which is really excellent news that there's no known lead in the eweb system it also includes an inventory on the customer side of the meter of um not including the inside the house but uh when we do go out assess meters we we do uh had to do as part of this work some sampling of their customer side so and that that um is part of an ongoing process that that we do that it's continuing yeah there's customer side service line identifying the material the service line materials yeah I had a

6:09 quick question on the L coer rule revisions um it sounds like there's some pretty straight requirements that we have to meet and we're on track to meet those it's good to hear those Le least not suff substantial lead in our system I'm curious with these requirements are there funds from the state to help us do the assessment work that's required there are funds for small systems I don't believe there are funds for systems our size thanks you have something yeah I just had a quick question so I know we did a random sampling I'm sure it was advised by all agage and that sort of thing um is there a is there any mechanism that citizens if they were curious about it they could get it

6:55 tested or is there any reason for stat like for just regular residents to go and test on their own if they weren't part of this um yes we can sample for them uh if they want to reach out to our water quality line we can put them on a list uh for folks with homes that were built before I believe it's June 30th of 1983 those are the homes that are at risk for lead solder and those would be the ones that we would Target for samp any before 83 I read some I thought there was something in there about uh 1940 is it between 40 and 83 anything before 83 for lead service lines it

7:41 would be even older home so 1940 yes but for lead solder the ban came in I think it was June please don't quote me on it but I think it's June 30th 1983 thank you all right thank you all right uh mve moving on to public input we have six people signed up if anybody hasn't signed up but wants to testify tonight now is the time to throw your name on the list well I'm uh giving you a bit of overview on the public input um so uh I'll welcome to the public input session for this meeting this portion of the agenda is dedicated providing community members with an opportunity to address the board about any web topic or issue

8:28 we respectfully request all speakers adhere to EB's public input instructions and code of contact that are provided during the sign up to speak process they're also here on on the screen if you haven't seen them uh this time we have uh six people signed up to provide testimony including one caller when your name's called you'll have three minutes to provide your comments there's a a timer here in the front to help you keep track so now starting the public in input session we'll begin with Kathy ging by phone followed by Carla Herbert

9:13 Kathy and Kathy we can't hear you so don't forget to pound six to unmute your microphone okay can you hear me now we sure can go ahead Kathy okay thank you um I am I invite you to listen to uh free for one more day or buy and listen to a new docu series mind control and fifth generation Warfare organized by Sarah westall I heard episodes including Harvard law professor Governor government insiders and women journalist and had my Consciousness raised about the increasing invasion of tech and our lives and business now we all know positive history but many are unaware that

9:58 Oregon's largest publicly owned utility has failed in a tragedy of the commons to provide distributed generation via micro grids Community solar Homesite solar as intrinsic intrinsic strategy meeting resilence and triple bottom line memes if grids fail due to hackers noted an OSU department of engineering 23 study eweb will not be able to provide even a modm of power because if its head was stuck in the clouds in the planning stage and they relied on top down dictatorial management decisions instead of engaging positively with one of the most enviral aware and intelligent Us

10:43 customer bases now finding their wanton even nasty strategies being spread across the nation appalled appalling the people when this utility was once a paragon regarding smart leader implementation policies rate pay payers considered to be Legacy created and crafted over several years by Eugene's finest medical and it professionals citizens including eweb Commissioners one who had worked on staff for 40 years then on board who made it clear the customers should have an analog installed even if initially opting for digital allegedly reversed capriciously under the current GM February 200 18 with the help of the

11:30 board then mutated again early in 2024 only one time former eweb manager uh re Roger gray who C curiously became GM although a former VP of pg& one of the most vilified utilities he used the word social engineering to describe Wireless digitals Smart Meters if this angle had been fleshed back it may have caught people's attention those who read books like Agee of surveillance capitalism by a Harvard Professor ameritus understand the gravity of ensuing issues that can result from granular information collected with unexpected consequences these include Fourth Amendment violation of privacy a

12:17 big reason why my Georgetown educated attorney brother questioned this techken holes when brought to his attention in 2011 thanks Kathy okay thank you very much bye thank you Kathy next is Carla Herbert followed by Joshua col can you hear me okay okay hi my name is Carla Herbert I'm speaking for Carla Herbert and my husband Fred Herbert

13:03 thank you for allowing me to speak tonight both my spouse and myself are electromagnetic radiation for RF radio frequency sensitive to both the smart digital meters and will and the meters will and do affect our health in a negative way that is why we must keep our analog meters we both have had serious neurological damage from previous illnesses diagnosed by several neurologists and are both at risk of exacerbation of neurological symptoms with exposure to emfs on a continual basis with the meters emitting this electricity I developed gamber syndrome after required immunization as a nurse and was wheelchair bound for almost a

13:48 year after a long rehab process I have been able to return to most of my activities um but I do have some residual issues my husband developed periphal neuropath after a tetanus shot and has numbness and tingling in his feet and it can limit his daily um activities of daily living both of our neuropathies are exacerbated by EMF exposure uh we did fill out um a declaration for ABA both of us so EB turned off our power on May 22nd seven weeks ago got all out this heat wve for not accepting a smart meter on our house we had to pay $250 for discontinuing our service though we didn't ask for our service to be stopped

14:35 we received a very nasty letter from eweb on May 14th accusing us of threatening or aggressive behavior um I'll read the paragraph on that uh the letters to inform us that based on our non-acceptance of the standard meter ew will connect your service without further notice um unless we take immediate action okay additionally this is from eweb we have received reports and evidence indicating someone at this service address has engaged in threatening or aggressive behaviors towards eweb staff or threats to damage Utility Equipment due to the severity of the reported incidents you are disqualified from electing manual Mee so we are being punished so now we can't

15:20 have a non-communicating leer and we being punished for aggressive or threatening behavior which we had not anytime I call the you have to when they were going to come read the meter they talked to somebody so this was very nasty and very wrong that you're threatening public for no reason whatsoever so we didn't have too many other options so we are now in a lawsuit against eweb with other plaintiffs our attorney responded to e web's attorney Eric def saying that it would be like a trivial task to put on our electricity our power back since we are in the middle of an injunction since we still have i s the three minutes okay thanks

16:05 car Joshua porn like Carla you guys have accused me of of threatening you with physical violence um which has never happened and you know it's never happened if it had happened why have I been coming here for o over a decade I've been coming to these board meetings there's never been any threats of physical violence clearly I would have been arrested if there had been so why why create this false testimony in the legal proceedings it's just ridiculous and and frankly I

16:51 consider it slander so we'll see where that goes my only threats the whole time have been legal and you know this this is ongoing and it's going to keep going until we win you claim that a smart meter emits less radiation than a mobile as some sort of justification to radiate my home with with this smart meter that you've now installed on the own um but you are apparently unaware that a lot of us put our phones in these in these fa bags use things like an air tube headset to minimi minimize our exposure to radiation and put the phones in airplane mode all the time unless

17:37 we're receiving text messages or on a rare occasion making a phone call and and it's like if you want to radiate yourselves in your home environment then go ahead and do it you know we that's that's your that's your free will and but but for you to force it on us and act like this is some just Jus ification that that's just that's just ridiculous uh so so so again so stop assaulting us with your radiating Smart Meters again you you you use this as some justification to not have my meter turned off that's just completely ridiculous you need to turn off the meter and put it in non-transmitting

18:22 mode like plenty of other uh Eugene residents have already received me ERS that are working in that fashion um so yeah and and um and and by the way um you know I've been coming here for for years where um you know speaking against this there's a number of us who have been coming here since 2013 speaking out against these meters where are all where are all the people speaking in favor of them obviously these are not popular Technologies this is this I mean even eweb employees don't seem to 100% agree with this this whole

19:09 plan that you guys have and universally support this thing it just proves that that this technocratic future that eweb is part of rolling out is not popular among the public thank you is Danny Newton followed by Mark Danny Nan by Follow by Mark hero I forgot to tell you who was on Deck last time uh president mcra and eweb Commissioners uh thank you for the opportunity to give comment uh my name is Danny Nunan I'm a climate and energy

19:55 strategist with uh the local nonprofit breach Collective and I'm a resident of w 7 in the Whitaker uh on July 2nd I sent the Commissioners a letter signed by 18 Community organizations uh and that letter called on eweb to expand it's low-income electrification subsidies Implement more Progressive an equitable rate design reforms and improve community outreach and engagement um I believe some of my colleagues are going to speak to those first two points but I'd like to speak to the last theme with the time I have here this evening which is about Improv community outreach and engagement uh through my work I formed relationships with a number of colleagues from around the country or working on campaigns to

20:55 municipalization change and Sh a path to a 100% clean energy future so they Envy the situation that we have in Eugene and I personally have a lot of gratitude and and see a lot of potential for eweb as utility that is beholden to the community rather than being beholden to to give some real world examples black rock or The Sovereign wealth fund of of Portugal um however I do think there is even more that eweb uh could and should be doing to not only deliver services in an accountable manner but to be seen to be doing so and and that is the thrust of the recommendations in that part of the letter and I'm just going to speak to one of those uh recommendations in particular uh which is about creating a community advisory panel um I'm aware that eweb has

21:42 received and continues to receive some intense criticism from a section of the community on a particular topic and so might be leery of creating more channels for public input um but I would encourage Commissioners to see a stipended advisory pannel with specific dedicated positions uh the different sections of the community as a way to make sure that you are hearing from a broad range of stakeholders not just those that have the time availability means and proclivities to turn up at these meetings so in short this part of the letter and in some sense the letter as a whole is asking the Commissioners to Envision a larger role for our utility one that of a truly Keystone public institution and a leader in a chief an

22:28 equitable energy transition so I hope you take that recommendation into account even though it's one of the shorter ones and also give some consideration to the more technical recommendations that were contained within that P thank you next is Mark Rabinowitz followed by Dennis corer the group that is suing ewb that the smart meters is represented by an attorney who is also trying to stop mail and ballots in Oregon a reflection of farri talking points he's also sued on behalf of a pediatrician who correctly

23:13 had his medical license revoked by the state of Oregon due to his malpractice he had counseled parents not to immunize their kids the Facebook site of this group has a long list of hoaxes about public health which makes it hard to take seriously their concerns about radio frequency energy if there are real claims it's hard to notice them when they're mixed with extreme denial about public health lacking discernment on scientific evidence their Facebook page even promotes a group that claims polio virus is not a problem which is the biology equivalent of Flat Earth

23:58 here in Lan County we are fortunate to have had one of the lowest covid death rates in the country while Douglas County had one of the highest covid death rates due to Far Right Far wrong disinformation today former Senator James inhoff died most notable for being a leading opponent of admitting climate chaos is real he also left Congress because he caught long covid despite being vaccinated a reason to take the disease seriously it's notable that nearly all the Republican leadership was first in line to get protected and even if the rank and file chose to remain unprotected and they died disproportionately two resources you may

24:44 find of use to understand this phenomenon the conspirituality podcast and Naomi Klein's new book Doppel gag about the convergence of new age movements with farri politics and this distracts from the real reason for smart meters which is that they can impose rolling brownouts for blackouts if or when there won't be enough electricity to meet demand natural gas is the largest energy source for the Western power grid wet which I'm sure you all know what that is and hydroelectric is not increasing because all the best sites to be damned were damned a long time ago this gas resource is sustained by fra tring since

25:29 conventional gas peaked in 1973 it has declined 2/3 since and now 34s of the natural gas is wed turning off an electric hot water heater for a short while might not cause disruption but as the climate destabilizes and natural gas depletes we Face a future of constrained energy which means we need to think about how to reduce demand not how to find new sources to meet our over consumption and there's more to say but that's enough for Mar next is Dennis Turner followed by Dylan plumber hi my name is Dennis Turner and

26:14 I've spoken to you before um I on June 27th Eugene Weekley published a letter to the editor I wrote which I will read in a slightly shorten version to the editor I am one of the smart meter resistors who implicitly ridiculed with your snarky reference to tinf foil hats there are a lot of us very different individuals who nonetheless have a common purpose trying to stop e web's irresponsible smart meter mandate and reprehensible enforcement actions in 2013 eweb Commissioners adopted a statement of principles for the advanced metering infrastructure project that included quote customers should be able to refuse the installation of a smart meter devel programs and services that

27:00 give customers choice not mandates that principle is exactly what we are asking we eweb to return to besides choosing now to ignore the numerous smart meter health safety and privacy issues eweb has harassed its rate payer owners by sending threatening letters and emails dispatching security guards to our homes and even shutting off many people's power including seniors with significant health issues because EB has reversed por and dismissed its customers valid concerns and acted aggressively against us we have had to resort to legal action people elsewhere in Oregon and in other states from California to Maine have

27:45 been challenging the lockstep imposition of dangerous smart meters on our homes education matters our website families forf technology.org provides local information and use resources a comprehensive site I recommend is smart meter education network.com I encourage your readers to learn the details of what this technology involves end of letter and you too Commissioners refer to the handout that I brought for you tonight the that gives lots of inconvenient facts for you that you should know about sadly the article that about this controversy that the weekly published quoted eweb public relations statements 95 5% of the time and just a

28:30 couple of critics very briefly that imbalance of coverage is typical of all the media I only have time left to point out one of your egregious PR PLO the so-called opt out arose by any other name would smell just as sweet a smart meter By Any Other Name such as transmission turned off is still a smart meter and is still stinks any smart meter causes significant dirty electricity in home wires and even with the radio turned off it still collects usage data and it still emits RF radiation worst of all your customers have been told that you cannot you will not guarantee in writing that the non-transmitting meter won't at some

29:16 point be turned on all it takes is another backstabbing turnabout by some future board thank you tiing president McCrae youf Commissioners thank you for this opportunity to testify my name is Dylan plumber and I work at the CR club and I'm also a resident of board 2 here in Eugene I'm here testifying on behalf of the S club's thousands of members and supporters that live within the city of e and to voice our strong support to advance the speed of policies that will

30:01 reduce greenhouse gas emissions ensure the largest energy users in our community are paying their fair share and protect the most vulnerable members of our community while my colleagues will cover some of the other policy recognitions and Danny nun has already spoken to some of them uh in the letter we submitted to the board earlier this month I'm going to focus my comments on ratee reform specifically and our recommendations to one establish Progressive break design to ensure large Commercial Energy users are paying a fair share and two replace the current bill assistant pro bill assistance program with percentage of income payment plans or tips um as communities Across the Nation take steps to reduce emissions and to Electrify homes and buildings many other publicly owned utilities are already implementing Progressive break design measures

30:46 designed to protect those least able to pay for high energy bills while asking larger commercial users and wealthier residential users to pay more excessive energy burdens for cugene res often times to choose between paying electricity bills and paying rent buying food and accessing healthare 25% of all households in the United States experience high energy burden paying over 6% of their income on utility bills thankfully Progressive ratemaking policies can alleviate existing energy burdens while also ensuring that historically disadvantaged communities see reductions in future energy costs of suene homes and housing transition from polluting CA gas and other fossil fuels to renewable electricity one of the easiest means to reduce energy burden on low and moderate income households is

31:32 modifying base service charges to lower residential charges while raising commercial and Industrial charges in addition to revising the distribution of Bas service charges across residential and Commercial tiers EOP could explore an income graduated fixed charge approach to rate making which is gaining popularity in other jurisdictions for example this year California's Public Utility Commission established a residential income graduated fixed charge system for the largest three electric investor on Utilities in the state creating three income based tiers for residential customers in California um who are customers of that of those three utilities another approach compatible to protect low-income households from increasing costs is the establishment of a percent of income payment program for pip when e while

32:18 eweb already has a bill assistance program in place it's a one siiz fits all stien and a pip offers a tailor solution in order to protect um rate payers by tailoring the amount that they're paying based on their salary um we look forward to discussing Solutions I mentioned as well as others that are detailed in the letter in more depth with you in individual meetings thank you very much for your time and I'm sorry i' gotta run after this thanks next is Samuel Tepe followed by Alan Alfredo Bo and girls I am here present here for the first time speaking in front of all of you souls and I see a

33:03 diminished light in your eyes I don't understand perhaps what the apathy is but maybe the collective Consciousness where you all are feeling a pride for being stood upon a board seated upon a board you are understanding the most controversial topic here in the atmosphere is of the smart meters why is this a Defiance where you are starting lawsuits with people turning people's power off in the middle of the any season what is the health benefit of the smart smart meter if either public this public service is not healthful what what are you here doing

33:50 other than harming people and understanding that we are all people we all have biological function circadium rhythms tuning into these natural rhythms is absent of turning on a meter in having your own life be in touch with the natural cycles of plants roll your eyes and assaulting no no no we can't we can't tolerate that if you clean if you clean your language you can finish yeah okay yeah it is a violent aggressive roll out tyrannical situation and permitting me to speak for three minutes on behalf of Humanity's Soul as as the only agenda that you all

34:39 have here that keeps you straight faced is the profit driven reality that is creating your livelihood I really really want to point out the karmic disposition when somebody's children is being harmed by your own complacency with the system so as much as you will gang up on the community and act like this is some sort of permitted democratical experience like really from a standpoint of somebody who is nervous system is obviously shaking here in the sense that like it doesn't take that much sense to consider what is

35:26 healthy and is it healthy to put your child next to a radiation device is it healthy to put your head next to a radiation device why in the X-ray room are they giving us gear to protect ourselves from radiation this is as simple as anything we have never seen this sort of Technology there isn't accurate information you're proving to me that is that this is safe in any sense and no apologies for the woman roller mahand well again and yes indeed I feel so strongly about this issue that I rode

36:12 my bicycle through this heat through this vast desert to get out here um you know smart readers about efficiency who made the trains run perfectly on time in Germany when all he thought about efficiency ADF Hitler the technology the science that we use to create these laptops that science the predecessor to that science was used to keep track of people at concentration camps science gave us nuclear weapons gave us biological warfare gave us all kinds of horrible things just pure pure science we need science with morality with Consciousness with awareness of the effects that it has on humans if we

36:59 don't go that direction we're in danger of running the same route that Germany went in the 1930s we don't want to go there you don't want to do that to your own people here you know we also talk about the fees yes a graduated fee for income levels for your for your services would be wonderful like I said in my other meetings like what's this electricity delivery charge for it I don't see anyone coming to my house with a wheelbarrow full of electricity you know it's like it's coming through the lines already you're charging me for that why this at charge why the service charge that's killing people like and then also another thing of talk about science and just pure science versus science with more

37:45 awareness I spent the last well up till October I spent six and three4 years straight on Hawaii Island through the pandemic we had a quarantine which worked wonderfully uh our rates really low when did our rates get high when vaccinated people started coming to the island it didn't stop the spread it kept the spread it actually created a spread on the islands uh what it did maybe for some people was it might have lowered the intensity of the disease lowered the chances of death but to foret among people that's what is pushing these new agers over to the far right because they were the only ones that were listening like I have a healthy body my whole life I worked with herbs and energetic

38:30 healing in myself I used to do acupressure as living and for me to have some vaccine thrown into my body that I don't know what it's going to do really in the long run no thank you I did it without that I used herbs when I caught covid I knocked that intensity down overnight in half just using some herbs I had picked on on Hawaii island so we can't just think purely of Silence Pur of efficiency we've got to think about the human effect of what we're doing here and yes people are affected by the radio frequencies from these smart meters whether they're on or off thank you thank you alen next is Zach

39:21 malland hello you Commissioners thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight uh my name is Zach M Holland I've been working on the betham clean energy project trying to connect low-income households in the bethl area near J backer with energy efficient appliances and weatherization upgrades and connecting them to existing resources we've identified a number of gaps in E web's existing rebate programs that could help expand the uh uptake of those programs uh including that low-income natural gas customers are currently rebates uh that uh the Lo terms could be uh extended and then allowed to to have moderate income customers allowed to access them and theying you pump water deer program or streamline uh so first low-income

40:06 natural gas customers with Eugene are not able to access 's low income rebates uh because of how the state has separated reates for natural gas customers and U customers uh but Natural Gas customer Lo natural gas customers being able to get the same deal that all electric customers are currently able to get uh would incentivize them to make that transition uh extending loan terms from four or five years to 10 years for gas customers would also make it more their financial interest uh Not only would it lower upfront cost but would allow them to pay those costs over a longer period of time and allow the energy cost savings to help pay uh the entire cost of that project over that longer time period uh currently only low-income

40:53 customers are able to get both rebates and loans if you're moderate or higher income you have to choose between a rebate or a 0% interest loan and if moderate higher income customers were able to access both rebates and Loans at the same time uh that it would really incentivize them and help them make that transition for some very large expensive grow projects uh in terms of making the uh programs uh more streamlined and easier to access for the heat pump water heater program uh if you're in a emergency water heater situation ordering uh heat pump online and waiting 10 or more days for it to arrive is really not a viable option so if there were heat pump water heaters that could actually be picked up uh at eweb rather than having to order them and wait for them to arrive uh for those emergency

41:40 situations would be valuable as well as trying to create a all-in-one program where uh installation is included so doing an RFP for installations for heat pump water heaters time that together with your existing purchase agreement with General Pacific so so that a customer could get their rebate their low-income rebate the 0% interest loan and the installation and purchase all rolled into one package for a low monthly fee built into their energy bill that would make it much simpler uh and more streamlined for those low-income customers especially in an emergency situation to take that opportunity rather than trying to navigate buying the water heater getting multiple bids and waiting potentially make I'll happen thank

42:29 you that concludes the public in session uh so at this point we have opportunity for Commissioners to make comments we don't um by policy engageing a back and forth um but comments from Commissioners barovsky uh thank you uh thank you all for coming out and giving testimony tonight I just have to say something that that I feel very uncomfortable about uh Allen when you made references to our board our organization and comparisons to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler I felt was very not appropriate and it makes me not want to take your serious

43:15 testimony to heart when you start making those comparisons I think that is a is absolutely disingenuine and I just had to say that because the people that are sitting in front of you as board members and staff are working hard for our community we're the board members are unpaid elected volunteers and if there's an issue with us there is a a way to get rid of us and that's vote us or recall us but by comparing us to Nazi Germany and the things that we're doing I it was just inappropriate and I just had to say that I'm sorry a technocratic future is absolutely a comparison with Nazi Germany no question thank you barowski anything else from

44:02 you right thanks comments from others Brown yeah thank you all for coming out this evening a couple things um Carl I know you had written testimony and you did get to finish it so we have I don't go back and forth but if that's something you want to submit to our staff and then they can distribute it to us we can hear the rest of what you want to say so I'm sorry well I timed it t i obiously just so you know that that there's that opportunity thank you very much and uh mark thank you very much for your information I always think that what you have to present whether I agree or don't agree is good and it's it's I think it's factual so thank you very much Zach thank you very much for coming to something like that I notic I don't know if you notic all our agend down we have another quarter of a million dollars for

44:48 the pumps in the program and so how that will work with what we're doing is uh it's very kindly and uh thank you and thank you for your efforts I'm sure we'll get thank you um yeah likewise thank you for those of you who took time to come here and testify um for those that are looking at uh rate design I just call your attention that that's on our agenda for next month um do you want to say more on that about that there's a number of things that that relate to the letter that we received um some of those are things that are upcoming some of them are in various stages of review and taking a look at we have rate design schedule for August and then I think again in October so great uh yeah I appreciate the

45:35 comments and that's it so we'll move um on to our next agenda item Senate calendar a moved by Brown second by schlosberg uh all in support of adopting consent calendar a say I I passed unanimously moving to approval of consent calendar B Brown I'd like to P three things apologize to staff that I didn't get a chance to fully read all your responses to my questions but I'd like to pull 5811 all right remainder moving the remainder of consent calendar B minus 58 and

46:27 11 is there a second second second by Brown and all in support say I iously so moving to 581 okay fourth Motel AB sharing program um it's a great program but uh can somebody help me measure how we determine it's successful there's no metric in there I mean I looked at the usage on the pilot program we had minimal usage by some and then you know almost 3,800 hours by at IA place and so we're to expand this program for over quar million dollar but how do we know it is there a threshold a benchmark or how we know that this is working and it's meeting our expectations of uh of that and we're not

47:12 just pay $350,000 for cards to sit there I'm GNA defer initially to either Julie or Anna and or ju looks like he he appeared and then um I may have some follow-up comments go ahead ju yeah good afternoon U members of the public Commissioners and fellow staff general manager so the car sharing effort uh that we started back a few years ago initially was to help people who perhaps may not be willing to go to like a dealership or engage in kind of like a more pressure environment to purchase an electric vehicle or evaluate one and those who just may not have that

47:57 opportunity to get a chance to test drive them um and then as we saw what was happening in the multif family sector but we started seeing that really the advantage was to bring accessibility to a population that perhaps cannot afford the regular vehicle ownership model uh and we started it was there's quantitative data which is some of the numbers that we share but there's a lot of qualitative data on the feedback we actually got one uh yesterday um just customers the accessibility that this program is bringing and like limited income programs such as Energy Efficiency where you see that we spend sometimes over 10 times the amount of money that on the

48:42 commercial side we be spending it's the metric I would say it's it's more than the number of utilization but how it is affecting and allowing individuals who otherwise could not afford uh to purchase an elect vehicle and so for this program we have the metrics that we share but I think we have to go beyond that to see again the aess that is providing and we have some quotes and information that we can provide but we can look at other metrics as well um and and bring that information back to you I'm looking at some of the information that we have on utilization and you can see that on Irish place I think it's 1.5 the amount of utilization for example that Santa Clara had Broadway South uh there were some issues with the vehicle

49:28 and so the amount of limit there was more limited data in that specific place and that's why the numbers are a little bit lower than the other locations but again this is really has become a social Equity accessibility programing effort more so uh than trying to increase EV adoption and for Ev adoption which we have other programs like the test drive events increasing our incentives unlike the multif family sector for charging infrastructure on the residential sector and make ready programs that we are also expanding to support the upgrades that are needed so that it's not a burden on the customers so I think there's two different um paths that we're taking and this is again more on the social equity and accessibility to a technology that

50:13 otherwise would be unreachable for several populations due to the cost primarily all right well I'm just thank you very much but I'm just confused a bit because I noticed it's a two-year period we had 29 people use it uh and drove almost 10 9,000 miles and that utilization rate if you do it and look at the cost we spending now we're going to put another 375,000 into it um is there a a metric that you want to beet to to that that's my concern is that just go out and whether it's 29 people in two years or it's 100 people in two years where's that threshold is where you can say this is working or this is working or this is worth the expenditure

50:58 because we we'll be into it for you know 400,000 bucks before this gets too far yeah and so yes the 29 users um the Santa Clara station they all kind of have the same amount of users but what we' be aiming for is more hours driven on the multif family sectors uh rather than necessarily the amount of users like for example irisl has I think 50 units so we would like to see a higher utilization from those from the multifam uh buildings for example we're expanding to Irish place so a metric that we would look to for a successful program would be more to match the ratio of the units of the com of the complex to the amount

51:44 of users but really is the miles driven in the hours as well um the new location that is going to be on peace Village which just on River Road I think that has 75 units and so that's what we would be targeting but again it's it's a difficult metric to it's a difficult program to evaluate in that way um because the success is not so much about how many users are using it but how effective how much is helping those individuals are able to use it but the cost is High um and it it it comes like most programs that offer accessibility they come at a much much higher cost than others but again the metric that we will likely be looking at in the futur is to match the number of residents to number of users and trying to increase

52:30 that and the feedback that we actually got yesterday was that a lot of people may not be aware of the effort one lady that provided uh that feedback and so an increase in marketing is definitely going to take place and more efforts in that way to try to bring other individuals who may not realize that these vehicles are available and definitely have more at the multif family locations more marketing to be added to ensure that those individuals are able to try it some of the comments that we had with was that I had no idea that this was for me I thought this was something different and they didn't realize they can actually take advantage of the vehicle so I think increasing ridership by adding more marketing efforts not only locally to Eugene but also within the multif family sectors can help that metric and show more success by having a higher ratio of

53:15 usability from customers than what we currently have right thank you what I'm I'm GNA vote to approve this but I do want to say that I in the future i' would like to see something that could tell me whether or not this was a wise expenditure of dis amount of money I think Anna has comments you want to yeah I just uh thank you for the question commissioner Brown couple of things I do want to call out is a reminder that these programs are all funded using clean fuel credits so these are not rate payer dollars that are are going to fund these programs I would also call out the The Ramp rates that that Juan touched on this was a pilot program for the first two years so uh some of the intelligence that came out of that was one that no surprise location is everything so we did see uh

54:01 much better results in multif family housing which is you know definitely a unique benefit to the community and also uh that participation rates did ramp up um as with eveve adoption in general uh folks tend to be a little bit slow starter um but uh we did see um participation ramp up so as with any pilot program we look to the success of those particip ation rates and how it impacts those those communities um but again so I would point to funding um we are looking at those metrics and and how well utilized th those are I would also point out that the contract gives us a lot of latitude um at any point to to ensure that if if the programs are not meeting

54:47 um our needs as a community uh or it's not the highest best allocation of those clean fuel credits then we do have out Clauses in that contract thank you thanks Anna and general manager you have comments I was just going to um add a little bit Anna touched on the fact that when as an aggregator of these clean fuel credits there are guidelines around how uh we're really suggested to use them um what I'm hearing from you commissioner Brown and I think this is a reasonable request is that um as we start to look at the clean fuel credits um in Aggregate and holistically um we need to be more specific and as to the intent and the outcomes that we're looking for and I think that's a fair request um because

55:32 at some point it is also that the transportation sector has changed significantly in the in the last few years um we also recognize that electrification and in fact it would be a legitimate use of those clean fuel credits to look at the infrastructure that we have that's necessary to support that increase in in load and so um we'll continue to look at this uh along you know your your and other board s uh members suggestion to be more specific in the intent that we have and there's a question from Sonia yeah um the so the C clean fuels credits um what were some examples of other uses that we for is it that this portion of them can only really be used for transportation type

56:19 the states guidelines are around because those come from the Transportation sector um those who are aggregators should be using those to support um the electrification of Transportation those also fund our charger rebates for example um but um there is there is no restriction that would say that we couldn't use those if we wanted to deal with infrastructure to support further electrification of Transportation so that may be other kinds of infrastructure we we'll need to take a look at with because we do know that it is going to increase load okay so then how many uh how many of those those credits do we have and how predictable are they into the future I mean do we get them every year do we already have a bucket of them

57:04 that's good for three years well we have um I believe those are are uh we I believe that we get those annually is that correct Anna now those those are legislatively driven um so they they could go away um but Anna some clarification around those a a couple of things about that so they're allocated based on a number of factors including you know uh charging infrastructure but also primarily the number of electric vehicles that are register that are registered in our service territory so it sort of leads to the the the better job that we do on encouraging EV adoption the more clean fuels credits that were allocated as to the value of

57:50 those clean fuels credits they are a commodity like any other um they're sold on wholesale markets so it's contingent based on demand so we have seen um prices fluctuate as we do with all of the Commodities with which e web uh manages so as to the overall value market-based but we have seen a significant uptick obviously in the amount of clean fuels credits that we do receive uh because of EV EV adoption throughout our community did I get the whole question I thought there was another piece uh commissioner Carlson yeah how much um our is this the entirety of our budget for this year it's just a portion of it um so as a as a department we aim to

58:37 expend at least 80% of uh of of the overall proceeds from from the year prior we do have a bit of a bank um as you know Juan has been very active in his position the last couple of years um uh we work with our friends in finance to make sure that we are allocating those dollars as they um as the clean fuel credits are liquidated to ensure that they're going to as Frank pointed out an appropriate uh use which is tied to uh uh accelerating EV adoption I don't know I don't recall the bank off the top of my head um onean may have that information yeah some of the projections are about $2 million in the few coming years um coming from clean field credits

59:22 uh and so it's a substantial amount of money and anything that we don't spend can be leveraged for other programs in future years uh but anything that is defensible in transportational application and as Frank mentioned including for the infrastructure piece is something that EB can leverage we try to split these credits and the funding across social Equity increase in adoption uh Community uh grants for example as well and different projects that we have with the city Eugene where they may requests some financial assistance for infrastructure that they're looking at doing so we try to EXP expand that across all kinds of sectors uh that involve transportation electrification and now we're starting to look at how do we help um some of these infrastructure upgrades and how can we leverage this funding a percentage perhaps of the funding to

1:00:08 support that and not put the burden on the customers but also get give EB a chance to be ready to as these increases in adoption take place thank you want to do these one at a time I'll um you want to talk about the two yeah yeah let's do all three all right number eight uh the another half million dollar design for Miss Bon there's no buildings there's no asphalt and this is to design a there so there's no drainage and now we're in a million dollars into design what's the project cost is that a question for Scott or I'm yeah waiting to see if anybody else is answering um so uh we have John

1:00:55 Marshall and Scott movich both available to answer questions so what I understood the full buildout of all the phases was 40 million we have not put all of that into the uh CIP to this point we've put the first few phases into the CP um and you can see that's like five million a year I believe John is nodding his head yes that's that's what we're looking at right now so it's we're we're spending a million dollar design $5 million project this is just for design on phase two on phase two right the first of the Architects P then this is mati which is like Biser a foral company I'm just wondering how much money we're spending if we're spending um a million dollars

1:01:42 design of five I there's fencing and there's lighting but there's no asphalt there no drainage and I'm just thinking about the cost of of that so that is just to kind of get me in context of a million dooll design or John do you w to sure yeah so um we're doing phase one through three construction costs total are estimated at around 122 million $4 million approximately each phase is what we were targeting uh trying to hit a a goal with our capital budget of that $4 million per per year so that's the first three phases of construction costs about $12 million total you guys are cou with when we get no other bids if this would have

1:02:29 been 650,000 would we have approved it I mean what's the Benchmark when when there's nobody else bidden and we've got just one number how do we know the get a good deal Scott is pinging me I'm gonna call on Scott let him answer your question because we we did get that from you um and I do know that these are the same firms that did phase one just mati is as the civil engineer is now in the lead um and that uh it did it was in line with our estimates Scott do you want to chime in uh yes thanks Karen um commissioner this is Scott milovich I'm the support services operations manager and um so

1:03:14 this this contract for mazetti is for um for design of an engineering of phase two and three um in your statement you said that um there's no asphalt um there's just fencing and that um there is asphalt there's curban gutter there is drainage uh there's significant grading um uh fair amount of curb work um it it's it's a it's a significant project just in terms of of site work um responding to the the question um that was put to us first was around there you are correct there is no um U building or structure in this um in these current phases those are later on for cupboard storage and then some um um heated space for back trucks so those are those are

1:04:00 far out and as Karen said you know what we budgeted for in the CIP is all of the all of the lay down space and storage as well as the security fencing and lighting thank you and the the design part for that um will get us past um the next two phases which are that part of the work all right thank you support I just you clarified it and Frank yeah president McCrae and I think this is really a statement for all of us in in management as well as staff is that it's a fair question when you only get one proposal or one bid that commissioner Brown is asking and that is how do we know that it's a

1:04:45 fair price or in this case I think what we looked at was the rate of which they were charging um for their time and so we have to have some Benchmark that we can reference I think going forward um this is under this particular consent calendar B because it only had um one bid and I think it's a fair question that going forward um we should be a little bit more clear on relative to that kind of situation um how do we know that this is a reasonable response I think that's that's a fair thing for us to to improve on last little rant is on wild we just approved that habitat contract a couple months ago now we're asking for another

1:05:30 $200,000 and it's hard for me to comprehend that they changed the specs in 60 days and we didn't know about this when we approved the the $900,000 contract but that's my one first comment that why didn't we know about this when we had this contract two months ago because Boulder size is almost increased and then all our wood was dead that we cut two years ago but um I I looked at your response you've already spent this money correct that this project is going to be done in the next two weeks yeah good evening commissioner um yeah thank you hello good evening uh so uh just to clarify um commissioner Brown the change inspect did not come from wildish that came from FK Dam safety we were under a bit of a crunch to get this all uh designed and

1:06:17 approved from FK Dam safety in order to be able to construct this year which is very important to us to meet our compliance deadline uh with under FK license uh Dam safety uh a plug for them they worked very quickly to review this project they did have concern over the abrasion specification that was originally identified so that that took us all by surprise is not something that we would have expected wildish um or eweb staff to to uncover prior so um so just a note on that uh we have spent about half the money this is a three-month long project mobilization in May uh the work in Smith Reservoir in uh June and then what we have remaining this month is pretty much all the work

1:07:03 in trailbridge Reservoir plus qaqc of um the work in Smith so we're about half spent we haven't already spent it um and and just to note we we came to you um just under the required board threshold of 25% um because we are under a time crunch again for this and should we don't anticipate changes but again this is a really important and critical project for us to get completed this year prior to the shinuk salmon run so uh we wanted to cover our bases uh so that we had we were able to complete um over the next six weeks that answer your question commissioner Brown yeah I just procedurally I mean to me it's challenging when you come to us for a

1:07:49 budget amendment request if you've already spent over half the money that you're asking for um I I don't know how that works in protocols but it just something that yeah I guess it is what it is I understand your time constraints the fact that we only meet once a month but I know that we went through this a long time ago and and I didn't know if we would continue to do that but I'm not gonna play I'm gonna pass it but just so watching and I'm Tire now I'm tired of being BR be so I'm done with my questions okay thank you all right thank you just just one one more point there commissioner I think the if I recall correctly the change in Spec came mid to late May so and we did need wildish and

1:08:34 others to be able to mobilize um in May in order to be able to start work in June so when we came with the original contract we did not have information that the change in Spec was forthcoming thank you thank uh my comments were back on the uh the other one and the Misti contract did I hear you say this project is $40 million all six phases and we we have not like I said we did not budget for the later phases because we want to get this first piece done and see if it meets our needs then decide going forward if we still need the additional phases that's why why we didn't want to do it all at once because we don't know that we need

1:09:23 that I'm I'm throwing myself under the bus potentially I did any of the other commission did you know did you have this on your radar because I this was like where did this even come from I I knew that we were doing improvements to that lot I don't know that we talked about the all the phases that you just referenced I I knew that there was a like a vague inclination that something was going on but I feel like for a $40 million project if we started down that I want to know up front before I commit to phase one two and three I I just personally would like to know before up here on the board like we have a presentation we're going to vote on this it's $4 a million doll potentially here's the plan for it instead of it being on a contract that I don't feel like we've discussed I maybe that's just me I just wanted to check in with other

1:10:09 Commissioners but that's how I felt when I read this and just heard that number so you look for a motion yeah i' like to move to adopt consent calendar B items 5 8 and 11 by Brown second by schlosberg all in sport say I I I ask unanimously uh all right on to our next agenda item which is the integrated capital and financial

1:11:27 is it working is it just for those who are listening remly or does it amplify in the room but just turn it on it'll light is off okay green light now it'll yes Magic president McCrae Commissioners good evening joining me uh Frank Lawson general manager for the record joining me this evening are Karen CH Operating Officer uh and Deborah Hart uh pres general manager and CFO I want to walk you through a little bit of a journey this evening um relative to our Capital plan and our long-term financial plan and just to

1:12:12 kind of give you a little bit of a a preview of what this what this looks like we're going to go through a number of different sections here we'll pause at various points to gather feedback uh from Commissioners on some of the various uh guidance documents guidance comments um assumptions that we've made um again relative to uh the view that we're trying to to look at here um just from a an overall perspective I think it's really important to recognize that we deal with typically a combination of very short responsive time frames as well as as long time frames so when we think about uh the the long-term financial plan we're really looking out

1:12:59 uh over the life of many of these assets at least 10 in some cases 20 years and we want to be able to understand and the impacts uh for you going into the following year uh which is the the period of time that that you're looking at relative to the approval of an annual budget um so just a couple of the highlights and we'll go we'll cover these throughout uh this presentation in in various forms uh we are looking at some uh really challenging um Financial pressures a number of those are not unique to eweb when you hear about Pacific or raising rates at 18% or 20% year after year uh more recently some of

1:13:44 the other utilities Clark in Vancouver 14% uh just in a very instantaneous way this this last January um and you look at pg& 178 18% so it's um it's not unique to eweb um although we also want to look at this and say what are we doing to manage that and um we are looking at at some some key drivers uh that impact um our rate projection going forward um on the water side um and just just a little bit of indication um on this this particular slide um blue is water naturally green is electricity and black apply to both utilities on the the capital much of this is driven by

1:14:29 Capital um we employ about a billion and a half dollars worth of Capital Equipment to deliver our products and services um drinking water and electricity and information and support um on the water side we're looking at some pretty significant once in a generation type of capital Investments Investments that are 50 plus years in their lifetime time uh Second Source uh which is a resiliency project on the wamt river and base level storage College Hill East 4th and some others that we use to deliver water throughout the service territory on the electric side uh you have to look a little bit at our history to understand the pressures

1:15:14 that we're going to face on the Capitol Front over the next 10 years in particular 10 to 15 years Eugene was uh one of the fastest growing cities in the United States in the 60s and 70s and in response to that uh also during a time of sort of the first phase of electrification uh in the 60s and 70s our Electric System was built out very quickly and very dramatically if you think about the age and the simultaneous aging of that equipment that is all coming to its end of life within the next 10 to 15 years and that level of ballooning of simultaneous simultaneous infrastructure aging is reflect Ed in the Electric System Capital

1:15:59 plan just as one specific note we did include um the board's decision to prefunding uh also as part of our financial assumptions as well as capital drivers which is really a significant part of what we do uh we're also looking at some external conditions uh labor markets certain Workforce ch challenges um non-labor expenses we're seeing higher than your typical CPI in our sectors uh some of that as we deal with materials that have a heavy raw material content uh a lot of Transportation issues and so we're seeing um some some pressures there as

1:16:45 well as some of the others um we are seeing rate impacts from this as well as from in particular on the electric side from some of the position that we're facing um in our financial uh in the financial side um from a combination of weather storm response and other conditions uh this year and the fact that we're dipping into our power Reserve which is really designed for that uh but then we need to refund that that Reserve as as part of our condition for a little bit of context U this is part of a process that we that we go through and provide different touch points for Commissioners uh along the way we look

1:17:31 at Capital plans we look at Financial assumptions uh those are driven oftentimes by our Master plans our our asset plans um integrated resource plans there's other there's lots of plans in in what we look at going forward uh we work with the board around different guidance and assumptions uh you know there's there's various aspects in yellow here which is where the board interacts uh with uh management and subject matter experts uh that ultimately ends up in a rate design and ultimately ends up in our customer customer rates and so this is um a continuous really a continuous effort by the time we get into one budget we're already planning and working around um

1:18:18 for the next budget this is where we are we'll talk a little bit more and get get guidance around the assumptions we'll get some guidance around Capital Improvement plans uh where there potentially are dials to turn I think that's um part of commissioner Carlson's question around uh the property the Burleson property is that that's uh specifically designed to be able to turn the dial uh based on the need that we see as well as the financial conditions and constraints that we have going forward um and so this is this is where we are and more to come will be back um throughout the course of the next several months uh along with several um rate hearings late in the year uh ultimately leading toward

1:19:05 the uh proposal and plan and U hopefully approval absolutely necessary approval of the board for the 2025 budget the some of the the impacts that um affect the utility our finances um are around some of the assumptions that we'd like to get some of your initial feedback on uh these are representative of our where we see our investment priorities uh where we see some of the assumptions that we make um the electric and water investments U Karen Kelly will go through the capital plans here shortly uh and then the actual in impacts of those Capital Investments as

1:19:50 well as some of these assumptions um will be reported by Deborah Hart as to what those are yielding uh from a rates and dollars and projections and financial metrics perspectives uh relative to our compliance with board policy um and and rates uh rate guidelines going forward we'll note a couple of things um relative to these Investments I won't go through all of those I think you're you're aware of those uh but also one of the things uh that's mentioned here is um um customer care is designed specifically around uh moving the part of our population that we call utility burden is pretty similar to energy

1:20:36 burden um but we also include water um moving uh those that percentage of customers from the burdened category to outside of the burdened category so when we look at rates for example relative to median incomes and what percentage of our population Falls within that burden category that can have an impact on how much we allocate to the uh customer care program and that's built into the calculations that our financial team and our customer Team Works through it doesn't specifically design how those are distributed but it identifies the amount of funding that that would that would need we also um looking at benchmarking

1:21:21 relative to General inflation um which that we're in we like to over the course of a number of years look at something that is is consistent within the industry benchmarks that tends to be in the sometimes two to 4% range um over the course of the of the plan which is 10year compounded ends up in the 22 to 48% range um um and that's U specific to just sort of basic infrastructure replacement uh that would be what would be outside of that some of the lumps in the oatmeal would include things like a second source and some of the other

1:22:06 things that are identified as as type three projects um which are which are large strategic projects if you look at one of the impacts with both Water and Electric um and this is something that we've we've been working with Commissioners on for for a number of years specifically the last few years we do make assumptions around uh what we see as general inflation versus what we see in our our own sector with our own equipment and you can see on the electric side on the left there that we were tracking fairly close to our assumptions up until the last couple of years some of that driven through supply chain and other inflationary pressures where we saw a

1:22:51 definite deviation to uh Revenue requirement on one side which was where the the money was coming in and what rate of which we were assuming and spending on the other side that has created uh some need to recover um and get back to something that is typical within our industry from a replacement cost perspective um on the water side let see more of a steady income um there was a significant amount of of rate control over the last few years U but we also are looking on that side the pressure coming from um the the fact that we have some once in the generation type of type of

1:23:39 projects so some of the specific feedback before we get into the exact Capital plans and the outcomes is are there any particular guidance pieces that the board would like to amend or discuss anything from assumptions or around external conditions um to um any other guide posts that you believe should be considered um as we start to get into looking more specifically at what Karen goes through and and the outcome that that that results in um from from Deborah's opportunity to provide or ask any questions around some of the assumptions that we've made any questions on this part Brown um

1:24:25 so on the budgeting so I go back to the old 20 years ago when Ron farmer gave us all the lecture on you know spending money that we don't have by 85% water put put to 90 so this year we're at 80 correct this is the um I'm gonna look at Brian just for a minute we we make we do make it so um just to be clear um commissioner Brown we do make conservative assumptions uh around the amount of availability of water for Generation Um and that is captured in what we what we call the um contribution margin risk factor and that can represent a number of different things it can represent uh 90% water which

1:25:10 would be one example it can represent a significantly lower um amount of of consumption let's say because of weather so it can be or we can also it it's represented if we have sof soft to market prices uh when we have Surplus wholesale opportunities so it it represents a combination of all three of those things but it is roughly 90% water if you just looked at the water the availability of water for um for Generation so and this year we are at roughly oh it's pretty miserable I bet John knows though it's like 85% the region locally just above 100% so just concern about budgeting or

1:25:56 projecting projects that spending money that we haven't made yet we're budgeting on um on something that's not there because that was a big fight with this group years ago when we went from 85 to 90 and now that we're we're experiencing low water levels and low generation levels is that the assumption that we're going to stick with when we bring in all these projects I think that there's a couple of ways to answer that so um I think what you're really um trying to get to is that how do we build in conservatism um and um I I'll say other ways of dealing with volatility in our budgeting process and so I think our

1:26:41 assumption is to continue with the contribution margin risk factor um at roughly those levels um but there's also I think and and Deborah will go through this later in the presentation various other ways of which we're we're being I'll say prudent and conservative in our in our approach the other way to look at that is that's why you have a power Reserve which we which we do have um specifically to deal with some of that volatility so there's a number of tools there's not just one tool to do that but Deborah you want to elaborate on that and that and that was the tool that I was going to talk about and we are going to talk a little bit later about where that conservatism is also layered in and the power Reserve is primarily where we would address this sort of volatility

1:27:27 and built into the 10-year plan uh that I'll share tonight there are several increases along the way acknowledging that power markets are becoming increasingly volatile and we need to reserve against that I just clarify just make sure I read it remember read 15% electric and 9% water for next year is that what that's it UL yes ultimately now there's a number of drivers the the 9% is is fairly close to uh what we've looked at on the water side um and the water and the electric utilities are in much different positions um relative to their their comparators as well as what's driving those two part of the 15%

1:28:15 is the fact that we have to replenish the power Reserve because of some of the conditions we faced recently so that is actually a piece but the the budget the budgetary outcome that you observed was yes next year specifically 15% 9% last the $3 million the cuts that we have to find in the next nine months do you have any idea where they're coming from we have some ideas yeah but nothing you could share with us we're we're working through that okay I just so some of it is how we I'm in concurrence with what what you've done up there it's just that I'm concerned that it's got we're putting a lot of pressure on a lot of people but we're going to raise the utility raise 15% next year and I want

1:29:00 to keep that in mind in the context with others when other people are trying to add to the eweb bill the EB bill is going to get pretty big and we have other things attitude is getting bigger so I'm just doing a little little campaing here so thank you that subliminal okay I think also um commissioner Brown when when we look at uh we we've looked at a number of different ways of how we handle the financial pressures that that we're looking at many of those driven by the fact that we do have a heavy capital investment that that we need to do um and the longer we wait the more

1:29:45 expensive it gets and so there there is that in combination with doing it sooner also facilit Ates uh the recovery of those metrics which is necessary to go out to the bond market in 2026 to facilitate this so there's a number of different drivers that sort of optimize around doing that sooner rather than later barowski thank you um no I think I'm just well a couple things I am concerned obviously a 15% uh bite is a tough one on the electric side um I understand why we need to get

1:30:30 there we had a we had a tough year um I know in the future we're going to try and smooth that out as much as we can um one question that I had and it kind of goes to something the commissioner Brown said um when we're talking about energy or uh utility burdened do you know I looked at the chart earlier and we're doing pretty good on as far as that goes however you said that we we look at the number of people that are utility burdened and we adjust our incentives accordingly does that include the when somebody says they're utility

1:31:16 burdened does that include the storm water fees that are uh imposed by the the City of Eugene and if so or if not either way is that something that we should maybe be discussing with this the city since we're helping them we're helping out these people who are energy or utility burdened and that is basically part of their utilities and for me that's one of the bigger parts of the bill um so maybe we can talk to them when we have our intergovernmental meeting and say we're we're throwing a bunch of money towards this to help these individuals and this community uh but your part of the bill is adding to that

1:32:01 burden and is there something that they could do just a food for thought commissioner barovsky I think it's a worthwhile discussion um I will say that when we look at um what we call utility burden it's a comparison of the electricity and the water charges um on a on a typical basis versus median household income which gives us um an initial starting point but then we look at what percentage of the population that we're serving actually has an income substantially below that at a threshold and we compare that with um the the average or typical Bill and

1:32:48 that's how we come up with utility burden it does not include the storm water fee um or the Wastewater component and um so we're we're doing it specifically to cover the electric and the the water portion and then we we use that as the basis to determine the the funding level not the exact uh distribution um methodology and that's something that that we we handle

1:33:36 I really appreciated the inflation um illustration so it just shows how much you know we plan for versus the trajectory that's upward trending um that's that's really scary are there are there forecasts of that that go beyond the 23 that we are using and how are we using that data well one how does that data actually compare to what happened so how reliable is it and how much are we adjusting our own forecasts to better match that yeah I can with that uh so those are those are the CPI numbers that electricity and water services experienced over the time

1:34:23 period that was uh charted there we uh we have uh kept our assumptions elevated for uh another year on onm and two more years on Capital costs to reflect what we think is going to be an ongoing trend for some of those utility costs to continue to go up uh and I know you've heard me say this before the FED continues to use monetary policy to try and drive down those rates of inflation but we are using assumptions that are higher than uh their uh goal of 2% and I'll share that a little bit later this

1:35:11 evening with they're much SM smarter people than I am but it just seems like a lot of the challenge that we're facing is that there are fewer and fewer suppliers of the products that we need and constraining capital limits competition so just I fear that that number is going to keep Rising that's and aside so I appreciate that you are continuing to elevate that number to make sure that we are trying to match it as best we can with the crystal ball that I know nobody actually has so frak yeah commissioner Carlson it it really is a good observation that you're making around the the Dynamics around a a assumptions versus reality as we go

1:35:56 forward um one of the big benefits of having a long-term financial plan is to do exactly what you're talking about and that's to forecast forward and look for areas that we need to keep an eye on the the tricky part about we could just say well let's let's go with a higher assumption what that can result in is an overc collection of our customers money on our part versus what what we're doing so we I think looking at this on an annual basis as we roll forward over a five 10 15E view um really does give us the the the visual uh ability to look and and adjust going forward um the the

1:36:41 reality of it is if we look at financial management we look at proper reserves we look at this process that we can manage that um as we go forward but is it is a concern you you see numbers and you look at Trends and you go well you know what if and so I I think it's a fair assumption and it also is something that I think we need to to be constantly looking at relative I know we've talked about reserves and highest and best use of cash and when you when you use those and when you replenish them you know creating buffers um which part of our Capital plan can you adjust the dials on the take and look at risk versus uh the fin Financial constraints that you have and that I I think that's the purpose of

1:37:26 these kinds of conversations and it's great feedback to get from you that that um when we look at potential areas of risk having higher more constrained Supply chains and what that means for us is something that we need to continue to consider I guess I'll I've been sitting on this for the last little bit since we had the conversation about the uh the consent calendar and uh I was going to wait until the end but I think it it makes sense here while we're talking about the capital planning because it's a a large figure you know I I have so much faith and so much trust in all of you you are such brilliant people and throughout the years you've

1:38:11 given me nothing but that so maybe I'm a little bit spoiled so just tonight hearing that that dollar figure just threw me off a bit um so I do appreciate the approach of having the the faced in purch so that if we want to not move forward we can um but it also makes me wonder if we've uh just as a board become a little bit more placent about large dollar figures like that $40 million such a big number and that that drastically impacts the rates that we're getting in here um I guess it doesn't right now because it's not a part of this so that that is like even another um ding against it

1:38:57 but I I I just want to make sure that we are fully scrutinizing projects like this because I still don't fully understand what we're doing in the Burleson project and that that scares me when we just voted you know essentially to continue with potentially $40 million project um again because I have a lot of faith and and Trust in all that you've done I just this project seems like a deviation so I'm I'm still struggling with that I let others I'll provide some psychological assistance for you here so um first of all you haven't heard the $40 million that that has not been something that that I believe that we've

1:39:42 talked to the board specifically about um the Burleson prop property and developing that has been an opportunistic kind of uh look at for us so um I think when we look at that it's not in the capital plan which is by the way a billion dollars if you if you add it up um and the fact that it is phased is to do just that is to say okay does when and where and why would it would it make sense um I'm not sure I would even call it a $40 million project at this point I think you know if you look at where we are in the phases it's it's not anywhere anywhere near that but you haven't heard the 40 millon milon at this point and and I don't think that we're asking you

1:40:27 to say yeah we're we're going ahead with the $40 million it is an opportunistic thing that uh or project that that we've looked at and Rod I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that approach that that we're looking at yeah I'll just add one thing real quick um so when we went to do the uh permitting and everything for the the property uh they uh the way the permit and and uh planning and all the stuff rolls out they asked for the full buildout so uh we provided a full build out um you know over a 20 probably 30y year period or something like that so that it was designed out so the the six phases are are I'm not going to call them mythical

1:41:13 but um they are uh NE they're they're they're able to to adapt and dial in but we had to go ahead and project out what we thought might the prop be after X am years so the the the portions we are doing now are just what we need to expand the yard and and get the um uh the uses that we have now the next couple years five years and what and what do we get for that I mean do we get increased resiliency because we can store more to deal with you know increasing storms is that part of what we're looking at doing with this or or is there another benefit there that I short term uh um benefits are are being able to expand and uh use our our

1:41:59 warehouse and our yard layout we're overflowing with stuff you know as as we buy and build in gr customers right we need more stuff so uh it's congestion that kind of thing um the ability to Stage for construction is um we're spread out in different places around town so so that's the immediate effect but the the full build out would include things uh other buildings shops those kind of things like I can't remember that I haven't looked at the uh I think the same thing is we have some of those drawings if we could give a a correspondence I take on yeah can can we just formally asked for that a correspondence of just what you suggested it's just some sketches of

1:42:44 kind of where we think in the overall time frame Karen and then I know Mindy had before we carry on with the presentation I'm not sure if you're answering a question Karen or if you're going to the next part of the presentation um I did just want to add that uh in your Q&A there is a rolling sheet of the different phases so it does give you an idea of that we have provided some correspondence to the board in the past about the progress and we'd be happy to continue that I just have a quick question that about the um the uh BPA rate increases that we pass through and I know that they're anticipated and my question is how far

1:43:32 in advance do we know when these are coming like is it is it possible that uh first of all that it's greater than we anticipate and also that they come more frequently than we expect so historically um bonnaville has done a a rate case um through their processes every two years and that's um been their historic pattern there's nothing in their statute that says that it has to be two years or three years or four years that's that's been been practiced this this was um um not typical of recent history where they said we're going to do a three-year um and it's going to be of this level uh

1:44:18 which was which was higher than than we had built into our assumptions um now there's a couple parts of that process that um go through some vetting with with customers so you know while they're saying 13 it might end up at 12 or they they go through a process similar to what we do what we have and need to include in our in our sort of forecasting um is the fact that um oftentimes going into a contract negotiation period they tend to suppress and be very conservative with their view of rates and then um post contract they tend to be a little bit different than

1:45:04 that just leave it at that um and so we need to um make those assumptions and understand the impacts of those assumptions so um again those are areas where I think when you look at Power reserve and you look at some of these other operating reserves that um we can make assumptions around but we also have to recognize that there's a little bit of volatility in that and I think when you'll actually get another presentation here later uh in this meeting that talks about the different kind of product options from Bonville and there are um when you think about risk um you know there's different degrees of support or sort of volume of the product uh that Bonville can provide and that would be

1:45:49 something to cons to consider when you're listening to to Megan and Brian and others talk about the Bon ofil options I just want to say um nobody wants a 15% increase in electricity rates and also um looking at the in the inflation compared to our increase in rates I feel like we're doing all we can to you know uh control our increase in rates and I appreciate the effort here to do that um yeah I guess I mean I guess that's it I feel like we're we're doing our darest to keep this under control and um and I appreciate appreciate the effort I guess the last thing I would add is that um I

1:46:34 think it's going to just be increasingly important for us all to keep a track of those who are utility burdened I know that's on our radar that's why we talked about it and um to my from my perspective as long as we're keeping an eye on that and making sure that we're doing all we can to avoid pushing those lower inome households into into a bad spot I feel like um we're doing all we can president McCrae the one the one comment that I would I would make about that observation is that we do recognize there's some pretty challenging external drivers we also recognize that that we have some U some of our own drivers around capital and and other things that that we're planning around um we also um

1:47:22 want make sure that we're actively managing this that we're that we're not just going through the motions and saying oh this you know we have to do we're we want to actively manage our financial situation we also don't want to put the organization in a in a bad position a few years from now so we we need to be active and sometimes that means doing things sooner rather than later which can be a little bit uncomfortable now um but we also appreciate some of the decisions at the board has made around prefunding of leeberg for example and that that um I think shows really prudent Financial considerations from the board so appreciate your comments um but we're also not just going to rest on our Laurels we're going to we're going to

1:48:07 look in and evaluate our situation as we go forward thanks thank you Commissioners okay I think it's on now all right okayy so we're going to talk about the capital plan I think that the uh right side of this is that there's really nothing new in this plan this plan about really three years ago we brought this before the board um same plan few updates just to give you so just as a reminder to continue safely carrying out our strategic plan we do need to continue investing in our systems through the capital Improvement planning process uh this year's 10-year

1:48:54 plan continues the progress on the projects we did put forth over the last three years and meets our strategic plan goals of completing all the compulsory work things we must do while maintaining reliability from source to tap and source to switch and targeting increases in our resiliency so to start out with water um just a a note here the plan components again are the same we continue to invest in the system and ramp towards the Second Source Construction beginning in 2026 uh reminder here our type one work is generally less than a million and can be completed in about a year you can see here on the slide this is our compulsory service and pipeline work emergent and planned minor facility work and um some work through our is and our

1:49:40 Fleet type two is discreet typically over a million dollars and also takes multiple years to complete in type two we have our base level reservoirs uh transmission upgrades that um are part of our resilient spine EES and our Burleson project that we were just discussing type three is our large strategic multi-year projects and that for water is our wamit treatment plan so in water this current 10-year plan when compared to the last 10-year plan we are up about 17 million um that is about 4.6% overall and as Frank and Rod mentioned last month the water utility is experiencing higher rate

1:50:25 pressure due to Once in a generation projects like our base level Reservoir work and our Second Source they're stacking up early in the plan as well as increasing construction costs primarily from higher inflation rates in materials and labor So the plan has been adjusted to the current construction climate in the first couple of years uh a few highlights here as we've discussed for the last three years um and as we complete our major capital projects at Hayden Bridge we have moved out into our main Replacements trying to increase those to keep Pace with national benchmarks on Pipeline renewal and replacement and other key performance indicators around frequency and duration of main braks so this is really resiliency work here our base level Reservoir work goes

1:51:10 down because of slow ramp up on College Hill and the completion of construction at the East 40th Reservoir site uh we do though I want to make note continue to work in the upper level Reservoir storage while um we are focusing on these Spas level um storage as well so in the in the upper pressure zones there is additional storage projects happening um as transmission projects have regressed in planning costs have also gone up and estimates have been revised so you can see a slight increase there then we did discuss Burleson uh we are investing in developing this property in phases to expand our equipment and material storage and construct secondary access to the Roosevelt operations center while trying to keep cost smoothed out in the first few years of the plan the increase here

1:51:57 reflects progression into phases two and three of design and construction and I would just add that um along with what we discussed earlier Fon also provides more U Secure Storage for us we do store equipment around the city in some of our fenced in locations but we have a higher uh rate of theft and um incidents with that so we do believe this would help with those and then with our second source project um it has gone down slightly as initial design and permitting work progresses leading into construction and one thing that you don't see on this slide this year as compared with prior years is Ami our costs have um been going down because we do anticipate project completion for deployment in

1:52:47 2025 moving on to electric again looking at this 10-year plan the components are essentially the same and we continue to invest in the system and make progress on our kmen Smith relicensing for type one we're focusing on ramping up asset replacement and moving from a reactive to a proactive replacement along with stabilizing equipment and resources and including Communications equipment fiber downtown network fleet Information Services equipment and much much more and one of the things I wanted to mention about um becoming less reactive and more proactive I was in the field this morning with the subsection sub substation cruise and uh they were talking about um a time when they they took out a 70-year-old Transformer and

1:53:32 they ended up keeping it we still have it apparently um as a spare but the joke was it's not really a spare it's a prayer and I think that what we're really trying to do here is is make sure that we maintain and improve our reliability by planning ahead and not being reactive having you know major shutdowns but trying to to make our system more resilient and able to heal more quickly when we do have interruptions for type two we're focused on enhancing resiliency for our highest impact loads risk-based rebuilds and renewals that um include the substation rebuilds and reconfiguration that we have um kind of coined as uh 10 substations in 10 years it's still a goal we're also managing emerging risks to the system such as dam safety Wildfire load growth with

1:54:18 electrification and other transmission and distribution needs earthquake ET plus strategic initiatives such as ewb Enterprise solution EES and our Ami U River deployment our type three uh includes the relicensing work for Carmen Smith uh both with the plant and with risk mitigation efforts and you heard a lot about that last month so I did want to just cover some of the changes the the main drivers on the electric plan you can see overall this 10-year plan is up 21 million or 3.3% don't try to make those numbers quite uh equate like they do on the water side there are more lines to incorporate on the electric side than we have room for on this slide plus I'm only showing the

1:55:04 ones that had some major drivers as raw discussed last month the electric utility continues to face challenges with Rising costs from inflation long lead times for materials and Equipment labor shortages specialized fields and both new and revised compliance requirements so for electric infrastructure this is up due to updated project estimates construction and materials inflation essentially though it's the same targeted work as in past years it's just become more expensive lead uh is shown this year this is is new as a driver it's about timing of Replacements um for vehicles the current impacts of vehicle shortage uh and long lead times have moved costs to build up in this 10-year plan so for example purchases from 2021 we haven't

1:55:51 actually received yet and then those uh new vehicles need to be outfitted costs go up can see where I'm going here uh Gary um Gary Lynch our Fleet supervisor reports he's even seen as high as 40% increases in um costs for vehicles for is we're actually down here showing a drop in the plan from completion of season one and updated information on the remaining Project work for Seasons two and three for buildings land is increased due to more defined project scope and phasing again this is uh primarily the Burleson project in the first three phases of the material storage is shown here for to make this a useful laydown equipment in material storage and then um then we'll

1:56:38 evaluate the needs going forward as we mentioned so again um having spares and not prayers that's another purpose for this and what we're hoping for so a couple of things that you will note are not shown again on this slide again Ami it is not exactly a major driver any longer our investment has slowed down um but it's still a high interest our investments uh have gone down to level out this year with the completion of in town deployment and we just reached a benchmark of 98% deployed reasons for a similar spend to last year include um purchasing new meters for development plan development and also for um deployment up River and that is uh scheduled for next

1:57:24 year we also as in Prior years have been planning on redeployment already you know we've been at this deployment process for a long time so redeployment begins in 2028 so there are um there are expenses shown in the plan for that the other thing that you don't see in this list is Generation Um which you did hear a lot about again last month but it's primarily flat in investment due to project timing in that some type two projects uh are more in the front of the plan and have a lesser impact on inflation from in terms of project costs but overall the increase in the 10year plan is only 400,000 so I did not show it in this slide so that is the summary that I have for you and we are open to questions I do have experts all available if I can't

1:58:10 answer your questions great thank you brown thank you can you go back to your first slide I just Mental Math me we had um 45 million - 11 so 34 million were above 24 to 25 your first one that showed 17 18 this water or electric that one water yeah okay uh and so we we had 45 in positive 11 in negative so we have a net change of 34 but um just wondering about the base level Reservoir work minus 10 million you said it was because partly because 40th was complete but mostly because we delayed um College Hill is

1:58:56 that correct or did I hear you right because that 10 million really is that a negative number or that cost didn't go away it's just pushed into another year can you say that one more time I'm sorry okay so can you also my mind went to what you were saying initially about the the delta in the plan yeah between 24 and 25 the plan went up a net 34 the 10 year went up a net 34 million if you have you have 45 in pluses and 11 in negatives on that chart that's a net 34 and uh and so but the 10 million sorry go ahead yeah but the 10 million really is is that really a negative because that's just a cost that's deferred to next year because I

1:59:43 thought I heard you say that that was because we completed 40th but most of it was for calling Hill that was delayed because L reservoirs yes yes okay so it went down because of slow ramp up to College Hill right yeah pushed pushed forward yeah got pushed forward so that cost really is it's not something that went down it's just something got pushed into a another year well it's in the 10year plan so we so these are all this is the Delta this is the differences in the 10year plan beginning 2024 to the 10-year plan beginning 2025 so explain to me how we went down $10 million is the cost

2:00:28 savings right I just don't understand it I'm sorry last year had East 4th in it and now that's gone because that is in surface and was the total cost of that project $10 million less than we expected no it's on budget it's not completed there's going to be some work left you know in landscaping thank you so wasn't tracking that no that's I just was thinking about this the fact that in one year we go up 34 that $34 million in cost over 10e plan is um pretty alarming to me want to chime in yeah sure on the um we're actually the plan is is $17

2:01:13 million higher the that that top line is just a summary that the whole um 10-year plan is $17 million higher and all of the items below that are just um kind of the major changes within the plan okay so if you add all those up down below you'll get to about $17 million okay so yeah I apologize I wasn't reading the Top Line correctly but thank you for the clarification there still 17 million bucks that higher than last year at this time you're talking and on the on the reservoirs it's really you know we had a a a trajectory on our base level Reservoir work and really we completed

2:01:58 one year of reservo work that we didn't have another year to slide into it so it just that completed work slid off so it's 10 million doll less than that that line item for last year thank you right okay I was just going to say uh commissioner Brown if you look at 10 year versus 10 years the fact that 2020 4 rolled off of this year but 2034 rolled on 2034 is more expensive than 2024 so it would be natural that your next 10-year view would have some sort of inflation area even if you were doing similar work what fell off versus what's replaced in the 10e view would be

2:02:48 higher it seems like we're doing a lot of there's a lot of work in this 10year plan prob more so my question is then after this 10year plan can we expect to be spending less like are we are we kind of doing that work that was done here on the electric side at least in the 60s and 70s when the city was growing and and a lot was going in and then there was some maintenance work but there weren't like really big projects in the meantime so are we just in like a Time period Crunch and then it's going to ease after that I have a couple com sorry and so Karen and Rod can wait on this in this as well I think

2:03:34 for probably a number of sequence of years we're going to be looking at a a 20y year sort of infrastructure piece of this that is specifically related to replacing that balloon of infrastructure if you look after that point there are like probably other pressures we we really haven't um fully accounted for the tradeoffs of Revenue versus infrastructure costs on electrification we've done some minor incorporation elect electrification not really a full assessment completely of that um so I think it's going to be at least another decade of 10year plans that you're going to see this kind of a window this kind of a of a agep system um kind of issue

2:04:22 um after that um Rod can solve problems Rod is that a fair assessment you Karen Rod it's all years it's not just this 10 years and it's over there's probably a at least a 20y year based on age of system I I think when you're talking about electric that's it's a different story than the water so here we're talking about the water so we are talking about generational projects over a 20-year period you know 2010 to 2030 there's the pen Bridge Second Source all the reservoirs uh all the piping to make that happen so that that's definitely a a another lump in the snake for somebody

2:05:07 80 years for us uh but but Frank is correct on the Electric System it's a slow uh Slow Burn and we're sort of at the end of that bath up curve of of what's next so replacing the entire system at one point was estimated at you know $400 million do or something like that so uh obviously that's not not what we're capable of doing so it will progress uh probably pretty steady for the next and that's not talking about U acquiring New Generation resources or or anything like that that we have or may have the option to do yeah not not to um diminish the scale comment that commissioner Carlson made

2:05:53 earlier around sort of the meaning of big numbers um if if you look at the electric side specifically around replacement cost there is a Delta of what you have in service versus what your replacement cost is what's your original cost versus the cost to replace it and we've seen factors where we've looked at specific assets of somewhere between one and a half and two times the replacement cost versus the original cost if you think about 750 to $800 million worth of assets that means we're talking about 1.6 billion dollars worth of replacement to do on the electric side over some period of time um and then rods correct on the water side there's a

2:06:38 different issue around generational uh projects barowski anything from you thank you um yeah a couple of things that kind of have questions about and kind of worries on the electric side the typ3 Carmen Smith seems to me that Carmen Smith is a a wild hair um you know trying to budget for that over 10 years with all the things that pop up seemingly monthly with that project uh I don't I don't have any I I don't know what to say about that other than good luck with that one

2:07:24 um the the question that I do have and it it res it revolves around uh the leeberg project and where that falls you know it's it's not it's Capital because we have to do it but it's not Capital it's on andm and and where does that fall into these long-term Financial plans and what since we are prefunding that what percentage of that 15% increase and that 9% increase on water is attributable to the prefunding of

2:08:09 leeberg was it like 3% is what I recall 8% over the course and for uh this year actually we're recommending that and we've looked at the timing of spending and the inflows associated with that increase and we're looking to push out that larger increase to 2027 so none of the 15% is specifically dedicated to leberg on the electric side and there is nothing on the water side dedicated to LEAP

2:08:54 Park so we're not prefunding in 2025 or 2026 We are continuing to pre fund from the rate increase last year and then in 2026 adding a percent and then 2027 3% as the plan is currently drafted okay okay so that the increase when was part of last year's increase and we're not going to bump it this year Okay so it's not part of the 15% um so you know one of the slides said uh property Acquisitions and it was had had to do with the Roosevelt ones does that if we have to do property Acquisitions as part of leeberg is that in the in

2:09:41 this plan or is are those all separate books the is that omm and we're need to look at that in a different work workset I believe the property acquisition some of that is in the plan in the generation side I'm going to call on Lisa to verify that yes good evening Commissioners uh yeah we do have about approximately 20 million doll in uh the leeberg CIP that's type two for property Acquisitions okay so so Leber kind of crosses both on and M and capital depending on which portion of the project we're talk we're

2:10:26 talking about yeah okay and so do we know what percentage of it is in this in this budget in the capital Improvement um I could pull up the table but memory serves correctly we have about 49 million in type two for this 10year CIP that includes near-term risk reduction measures and property Acquisitions and then the remainder of the decommissioning work is either om andm or will um will be Capital after this 10-year plan okay so then that leads me to the question of of that $40 million that is in the

2:11:12 CIP is that funded through rate increases or is that funded through the prefunding uh Glide path that we're on I'll defer to Deborah on that one so I I did want to just clarify we we have captured the decommissioning costs for leeberg in the long-term financial plan um mostly housed in capital because that makes sense as we think about a construction project that's separate maybe of how ultimately it goes to our books uh and it is captured the decommissioning costs are matched with the revenues we're collecting from

2:12:00 prefunding okay okay um thank youing go ahead it it prefunding through rates those specific designated percentages uh that are dedicated to prefunding okay okay um I guess I guess that's that's all I have at this point um thank you for the presentation I just have got everybody I just have one question about where Watershed restoration Falls in this I know it's not exactly a capital project but sometimes it's purchasing property I don't where when we think about combining the long-term financial plan

2:12:45 the capital Improvement plan where does that reside yeah they do have some property acquisition funding um wasn't enough to make the list in here um but most of that work is all ow and in and that is being budgeted now okay yeah so that's one I guess the question I have is around um I know a few months ago we talked about continuing the search charge that we currently have in place um and I'm just curious um at what point that comes to us for conversation this probably isn't the right spot um but I'm looking at we're um looking at the budgets and long-term Financial plans in October um

2:13:30 and just eager to see where where we have that conversation about a proposal for continuation of that we have been uh Gathering the options for that to bring before you but since the fee doesn't expire until 26 we thought we would take some time to really think about it um a little more critically what those options are is it um does it matter the timing in terms of when we make a decision on that my only question is if we're looking at Grants that are a couple years out you know or or options or potential Investments does it do we need certainty about whether or not that continues or not again I know

2:14:15 you're way closer to this than I am I just think uh if having some certainty about board support or um or lack of support for something like that would help us with our long-term planning feels like doing that sooner than later might be useful but up to you all I do think it would be helpful we need to spend some more time on it anything else on this item you have all everything you need from us what just one other thing I wanted to mention that back to commissioner schlossberg's question um I know that there's a topic later about strategic planning so I just wanted to mention you know I do agree with what Rod said about ongoing

2:15:01 Investments on the electric side and it's G to come to the board at some point to think about you know those strategic Investments do we want to modernize the grid to the level where would be a true smart grid and that would tell us that we need to turn the dial up um or we don't so that I think those kinds of things would be thinking about going forward I was just going to make a comment about the agenda check and we are a little bit behind on this item um president McCrae and um we'll we'll do our our best to to get through this but we can also look at some adjustments later in the agenda if we need to all right sounds good yeah we're about 10 minutes behind we have a 10-minute break planned I'll propose we just break as

2:15:47 long as it takes for us all to get ourselves comfortable and get back here so if everybody's back here sooner than 10 minutes we'll we'll start then does that work so I'm sorry is there more yes sorry I didn't realize there was more my apologies carry on thank you and actually you all asked really good questions and lots of them maybe maybe you've covered all of my slides at this point uh so the summary of the water long-term financial plan that you're looking at up here uh as drafted does remain within uh for Target metrics it's worthwhile to

2:16:32 note The Debt Service becomes the strained metric beginning in 2027 and that's uh because the utility is poised to take on substantial debt for Planned Investments of almost $360 million so that's why you see that yellow in the plan of there we also have assumed conventional borrowing for uh the second treatment plant uh but we are pursuing other options and as uh as any other alternative funding becomes available to us we'll begin to incorporate that in the

2:17:18 plan uh so for uh the electric utility as presented uh we are just below days cash in 2025 but you can see that cash is recovering uh in 2026 that's really largely a result of poor financial performance in the first quarter of 2024 where we're we started off this year uh with a little bit of a Hole uh but it does it does recover as modeled in uh 2026 rate increases in uh this plan compounded are approaching 50% that is inclusive of decommissioning of the leberg project so that 50% does include uh the 8% that we are dedicating to the

2:18:05 decommissioning of that facility this plan is supporting 635 million uh in infrastructure Investments for the electric utility uh and the rate increases that are dedicated to leeberg are sufficient uh to fund those costs as projected trying to save us time here uh we talked about a lot of this already and some of this conservatism uh you've seen But there are some new things that I do want to highlight I did mention that we're extending the uh 5% Capital inflation for a year further

2:18:52 than we had the last time that we showed this plan and then 3% on onm uh as uh we we may finish the generic CPI finished at 3.3 so the FED continues to uh work monetary policy to drive that down uh but we've been more conservative in the next two years uh as we've seen that really lag behind where the fed and EB wanted that to be uh we are modeling the creation of an emergent regulatory fund uh $5 million next year uh growing to $30 million over the life of the plan and we incorporated BPA rates

2:19:37 earlier than we normally would uh because they were signaling a number that was much higher than what we were forecasting we won't know until uh much later next summer how that will ultimately play into our rates uh but we did incorporate that initial number and uh we're also modeling an increase of our Capital reserves reflecting that construction costs continue to go up of $4 million over the tene uh of our power Reserve uh to mitigate uh volatility in our power markets in our generation and our

2:20:22 working cashes costs go up so we're capturing that that we believe in the future that those reserves will have to uh rise so those are some of the new ways that we're capturing some conservatism in this plan and working to mitigate some of the risks uh that we see out there I am in a hurry tonight let's try that why they don't give me the clicker uh so this uh the the increase in Revenue requirement for the electric utility would result in approximately a $28 increase on the on the average bill and for the water side just under

2:21:08 $4 uh these numbers that you see here are as of June they do not reflect any increase for eweb or any increases that uh we either know or anticipate our comparators uh will Implement if uh blackle Lane were to do nothing we would overtake them on the comparator chart uh and uh same on the water side we would Mo up over Roseberg but again uh we don't have any information at this date as to where th as to where our comparators will come in with rates

2:21:55 and that back to you all for questions thanks questions what I hate to do this because we're running behind but I was here you know this organization almost went bankrupt during Enron and you guys budgeted 85% water and said never again now we're at 90% and seems to me that the water's getting lower so what does it do if we want to take a conservative approach and budget for 85% water like we did historically for years and years in fact I'm going to share that position paper that farmer we had a big discussion about it when we went from 85 to 90 years ago but what does that do to this I mean just generally speaking how how much does that tip us over so we go conservative and go 85 instead of 90 I would really

2:22:40 like to um get back to you with so that I make sure that we um properly calculate that for you um one of the things uh that we are doing so we balanced that collecting what we think that uh uh we will need for the coming year from our rain pairs in that year with that need for conservatism and that's part of the reason why you see the power reserve it went up this year and it and we have modeled $4 million more in increases to that Reserve so that uh we are able to withstand like we did this year uh a rough start to the year but we get that sensitivity the other two I saw in your

2:23:26 projections leeberg um it looks like there's large Capital expenditures on L decommit 26 27 what's that the the reserve the amount was way down that goes like from two million back up yeah I I can get back to you with um details but uh I'm pretty pretty sure that's a combination of near-term risk reduction measures and possibly some um property Acquisitions but I believe the majority of it is near-term risk reduction measures I can get back to you with that if I am Incorrect and then the last real good one is fish ladder was 40 million bucks eight years

2:24:11 ago that comes into sorry go ahead I just was wondering if U the fish ladder gets thrown in here at Carmen Smith yep uh the the current um CIP includes our current license requirements which is a trap and Hall uh not a fish ladder the uh cost for a fish ladder uh back when it was originally scoped I can't recall I think you're about correct um but that 40 million might have been the floating fish screen I think the the fish ladder was um less expensive although we would expect it to be more now but the current C P again is our license requirements that include trap and Hall thank you

2:25:09 questions just oh yeah I'm sorry Browski thank you thank you um couple of things on on your last slide um it would have been helpful if that had the the price increase on there uh it looks like that's what we're comparing to now um so 190 but you got to add 15% to that so just for future reference if you are anticipating put that putting that in that would be helpful for me to see where the actual competitors are even though we don't know what our competitors are going to be doing it's it's just that that slide does nothing for me really at this point um the most most important thing that I think I I am going to

2:25:54 hopefully that we can get out of this is we need to really be able to have our communication uh planned down for this um getting the word out to our customers and our and the community about a 15% uh you know electricity and a and the water increase um it's a big jump telling the story is going to be important uh you know we've already seen some some negative things we've had a lot of good positive reactions coming out of the The Ice Storm and I want to just continue on that our Communications team has been doing a really good job but I think that this is another one where we're going to really have to work hard to make sure

2:26:39 that we get our story out and and tell the story about the Aging infrastructure and the reason that we're doing this all of the good reasons that we understand in this room but getting the public to understand those and not just see a 15% increase uh plastered across the headlines like we see from the other utilities um I know when I read a a a headline that you know Portland General's going up 177% that's as far as I get right and so telling that story I think is going to be very important for what I would like to see going forward thank you than John all right Commissioners I'll just be really quick with this we appreciate the feedback

2:27:24 around the priorities uh the issues uh the questions um these the the intent of the long-term financial plan is to provide context around the Investments that we need to make and and commissioner barovsky is is correct these the difference between an expense and an investment is that there is a an expected return on that investment and so we understand that both the obligation and the opportunity that comes around communicating this we appreciate your feedback around everything from concerns to questions that we know if you have that the public will have um because of who you represent and the governance that you provide and so um we appreciate again

2:28:11 your feedback uh we'll take this and start to address some of the questions there are a number of related topics coming up uh such as rate design follow up on long-term finances Capital Investments and all that will continue especially and around the communications plan associated with this so I think I can I can speak for Deborah and Karen that we got the feedback that we needed and we'll expect that um much of this conversation will continue over the next number of months so we appreciate that unless you had anything further for

2:28:59 thanks thank you we'll take a shorter break as we can muster

2:36:36 the order of our next two items so we have the energy resource study next but we're going to we're going to put that down to the next item and instead we're going to go next to the Wildfire season and mitigation Plan update with Janine and Tyler guess we got to skip through the slides a bit more yeah that may require a little jumping ahead sorry spoilers all over wait oh stop right spoiled ours too work here we go nope that's even the lch lines of the F other

2:37:22 one hi jine looks like you're on you want to kick it off oh sure sure we have not rehearsed this part very well so um hello everyone thank you for making time uh for this important topic in your busy agenda um we have a quick uh Wildfire season update um by way of introduction I'm Janine PES I'm the resiliency program manager and Tyler if you want to introduce yourself yeah t of nice electric operations manager so we'll just get right into it if you jump to the next slide for me Tyler are you driving awesome thank you so much um well greetings from uh Asbury Park it is a 96% humidity but in Oregon

2:38:10 where you guys are having a heat Dome I thought I would start with a little bit of a seasonal uh forecast this is from the climate Prediction Center and uh nice to start with a little good news so for this Wildfire season we are moving into um a year where there's significantly less drought compared to the past few years when we've started going into Wildfire season last year we had an average amount of snowfall average amount of precipitation for all of Oregon so we are looking good on that front if you go to the next slide please um this is from the climate prediction center from back in June before this recent heat Dome and what they saying at that point was that compared to the rest of the country our section of the um Northwest were looking

2:38:56 like we would have about average temperatures maybe slightly warmer average precipitation and you know that would equate to kind of a typical Wildfire season um you know things can change a lot and they have recently but if the you know the prediction centers are also suggesting that we're going to be moving into a lenia pattern and what Len typically means is that you'll start seeing cooler wetter temperatures so my hope is that these uh precipitation patterns arrive and time for Peak Wildfire season brings up humidity levels and lowers the chances for catastrophic Wildfire so that's the hope but as you know um these are forecast and predictions and we have to get ready no matter what so I'm going to let Tyler take the next couple slides and talk

2:39:42 about some of the preparation we've been doing for this year's Wildfire season thanks Janine well again thanks for the moment to give a reminder hopefully on some of these things hopefully this is a bit repetitive because we're getting into a Cadence of how we operate during Wildfire season but also as we'll share in this and and Beyond some some improvements we've been making so really we start our operational radius we started in in may we had Oregon Department of Forestry come in and do some training it's a picture from the training they inspect all of our tooling make sure we have the right equipment on the trucks uh our water cans our water trailers check our chainsaws for the right you know fire safety and then another thing we did uh prior to Fire season was a PSPs drill Public Safety

2:40:30 power shut off drill uh centered around a scenario around U River in our McKenzie territory and so we worked through that with all representatives from all the different sections of our IC and also field staff and really use that opportunity to imagine through that and using uh the one we did in 2012 21 and and kind of using those hot wash items to and we did make some changes and improvements even before we have one so that was positive uh fast forward to last week uh we had on July 3 we moved to ifpl level two which is industrial industrial fire protection level that odf specifies in our in our protocols that that enacts our protective settings Wildfire

2:41:15 protective settings and those will remain in for the season until it goes back down to level one last year we were in that level until September so likely something similar uh so we put those in in the third they went into the the ifp went up midnight the 4th and we did experience two red flags over the last weekend I guess I'll count Monday as a weekend U and for those we didn't have any trips within those red flag situations but but we did have a trip up river that we did enact another protocol we have which is to P every Patrol every inch of wire that ended up being a small bird that caused it but we did verify no other ignitions or no other trees uh involved uh other things we did in preparation was collaboration we've been

2:42:01 uh we participated in a couple roundtables with local utilities also some uh some of our staff went to Wildfire conferences this year to stay up on new techniques new analysis and we also participated with Al Lane County and a table toop exercise another section that we've beening working on heavily the last few years is around our annual proactive maintenance another standard for utilities is to in in requirement for pu is to up your frequency on patrols and inspections around lines both vegetation and the components so the charts kind of demonstrating an hfz is high fire risk zone so all of our circuits that are defined in those zones we do what we call safety patrols so we Patrol those same same as we would for a pu

2:42:46 inspection but annually that identifies equipment could be rotten poles rotten cross arms insulators and that becomes a work queue that we work through in the first couple quarters of the year so you can see first couple years cross arms is a really good example we found quite a bit of those because some of those may have been anywhere in our 10e cycle of pu and so we kind of uh get all caught up on that maintenance and so last year at vegetation management similar we do similarly we do that annually now we are behind on our routine m maintenance around the city because of uh the different events fire events we've had the last couple years in short staffing with the contractor but as far as vegetation Management in these circuits those are all addressed at this point

2:43:31 prior to Fire season so that's a good way to start our area there uh the the other ones are around some of the customer support is something we've been continuing on uh you know our generator program and supporting the secondary undergrounding for uh holiday Farm fires uh impacted folks and then also our fuels work is starting that program is starting to come to an end you can see the the acres and sizes the sides going down another notable is around our Transformer upgrades that one is up last year and this year uh for a different reason just noting that we did experience some loosening I'll say of the supply chain issues with our distribution Transformers got shipments of those in and started back up on a

2:44:16 program replacing all of those up River Transformers two benefits in that allows us to reconfigure it for a lower risk uh configuration and and also the these new Transformers that we have committed to have F fr3 which is the trade term for soybean oil instead of mineral oil it's got a higher flash point better for the environment all around the benefit and kind of the final layer so I talked about the things we do before Fire season and then some some ACT some Preparatory measures some work work we do uh along the inspection side and then this slide's kind of giving you an example of what we see daily so we've contracted last year and again this year with a daily weather forecast from from the

2:45:03 Western weather group and so what they do is they give us this kind of custom sheet for our area using vetted weather stations that are applicable to our zones and including our Hayden Bridge weather station they highlight High fire danger for us so things like red flags unless they're really surprising we usually see them coming that can allow us to prepare a little bit more this is kind of in lie of of you know larger utilities may have a meteorological staff so this is really helpful for us last year and we're going to continue doing it to just it just puts your antenna up gets you in the game and and stays situational awareness is just really Paramount in these to to prepare uh get staff engaged and then also allows us to check on availability going into weekend or holidays or if something's coming that's kind of the key to a good response is being

2:45:50 prepared uh it uh another notable that we're working towards is another weather station that we're planned we under contract with for later this year in South Eugene and the uh near Blandon Heights that's going to be added to this and just increase our accuracy of of the forecast that'll toss it back to Janine with the community side sure and you know part of our operational Readiness is really helping our customers get prepared for potential summer outages you know that could be due to the higher sensitivity settings where you often see more trips and a little bit longer outages because of the patrol times or an actual PSPs event so we've updated our communication strategies after the 2022 PSPs based on some feedback we got and Lessons Learned

2:46:36 so we're providing way more summer outage tips that are really specific to electrical outages in the summertime and now we have a PSPs watch and warning it's a colorcoded system and really the goal here is even if we don't enact a PSPs if we enact a warning it gives people that Preparatory time so they can go get ice or fill up their cars and make sure they have fuel because um when power goes out the gas stations don't work um you know all of that all those secondary issues we just had the emergency preparation newsletter go out to about 5,000 customers and it completely focused on um stuff like PSPs and um summer preparedness um so and part of that was also a call to action to promote our PSPs enhanced support program that's our

2:47:21 program for vulnerable customers so I'll get to that more later but just to say that Communications and Outreach is an important component of this work next slide I'm GNA give you the Highlight Reel um you know I'm very enthusiastic about this work I could go on for a long time but I'll go very quickly through some new mitigation work you might not have heard about since the last time we met in July um one of them has to do with um our vendor that we're working with overstory we did a pilot project last year to acquire satellite imagery and this vendor uses machine learning or um artificial int intelligence to assess encroachment risk on our overhead lines and that tool kind of helps us identify where we might be seeing more vigorous tree growth in between those trimming cycles for extra attention so based on

2:48:08 last year's imagery um the analysis found that less than 10% of the overhead lines they looked at fell in that higher risk um category meaning like there was veget within 6 ft of clearance and what that tells me is that the work that our vegetation Management Group is doing is doing a really great job at maintaining clearance and we can really use this tool to Target and prioritize our maintenance work next slide uh the other thing this tool does is it gives us a heat map and clusters of where we are seeing dead and dying trees that compose a fallen risk to our overhead line so this just shows you an example of what the tool Prov you can see those red spots those are um areas where we have a lot of high tree

2:48:53 mortality and we used this and checked out this area it's just kind of east of thiren uh Crews went out look took a second look at this area and were able to do some additional Hazard tree removal this slide so this map shows the larger area we have planned for the 2024 analysis so the satellite IM imery is collected annually so in addition to South Eugene and our UPR River territory we are also capturing more of Northeast Eugene and the entire Carmen Smith ter um transmission line as part of this analysis and I believe that you know especially after the um winter storm we

2:49:38 had the ice storm that these heat maps for the hazard trees is going to be really helpful in taking a look at that Caron line and actually more of Eugene so we're looking for to seeing some of that analysis come through later this summer next slide um we have PLS underway for a number of new reliability enhancements that will reduce the number and length of outages hasten restoration protect birds and hopefully reduced ignition risk the first thing I wanted to talk about was replacing our fault indicators and our high-risk fire zone circuits The Fault in indicators help locate faults for quicker restoration and these newer devices also coordinate with our Wildfire safety Fast Trip settings so as

2:50:26 part of that installation we'll also be using last year's load analysis to right size nearly 200 fuses up River these smaller fuses just release less energy so if they do blow you have less ignition risk so and that worked to replace the fuses about 200 fuses and 160 fall indicators we hope to get that underway this month the second project I wanted to mention is the trip Savers you can see a picture on that middle slide this is a recloser device that helps clear temporary faults so those transient faults don't result in a full-blown outage and you know our analysis shows that and vendor analysis that anywhere around 50% of your faults can be transient so we expect significant reliability improvements especially in

2:51:12 the winter time in the spring when we have a lot of wind storms come through and you have those branches touching the um overhead lines those uh should clear much more frequently which means fewer truck rolls it means more staff efficiency and we've selected locations that have a history of High um repeat outages and higher Downstream customers to optimize the benefits of these devices so there was a three to four month lead time on these devices so we hope to get those in maybe August September and have them in place in time for this winter um last thing wanted to mention is a pilot project to try different types of protected coverings on equipment that our equipment that's below nesting platforms and the poles on

2:51:59 either side so depending on how our pilot installs go we will expand that pilot to about two dozen other nesting platforms and really the goal is to reduce the potential for arcing and sparking from an nesting materials that drop down onto our equipment and the Aven coverings are actually a best practice to reduce bird mortality so here we have a potential win-win-win to address ignition risk to protect our equipment have less equipment failure but also to protect um our feather Friends next slide a lot of these projects I just talked to are potentially eligible for reimbursement through the Federal grant grip grant that we've received so the weather station the satellite imagery

2:52:44 project the trip Savers I've just talked about so in addition to getting some re urement for some of those projects we've just applied for a new round of funding through the state grid resiliency Grant and that project that uh Grant request will do a couple of things one it will um fund additional fault indicators to fill in the gaps um on Long spans of overhead up River and to purchase more advanced recloser devices but really the bulk of the funding is for a grid hardening project on about 9 miles of older primary wire up in the Cedar Flats area so at the bottom of that screen you can see that yellow highlight that's um Cedar flats and that area was really identified by our fire Partners as an

2:53:29 area of higher risk because of poor erass and it's kind of in a communication void so um when power goes out folks don't have good self service so from the our Public Safety officials this is a really high priority area for additional work it was also hammered by the ice storm so it's a good place to do some taret targeted work so what that work would look like is um the hardening would be a combination of reconfiguring those older lines to a streamline format replacing older PS we're going to Pilot Advanced conductor Andor Target do some targeted undergrounding were feasible so we're looking at about a $1.2 million project that would be about 70% funded through the state next

2:54:14 slide so I mentioned the PSPs enhanced support program earlier the the grant that we just put in for would also um build on that program that we launched last year um which is really um supporting those who are most at risk for power outage and those are folks who are medically reliant on power so what I've asked for as a reminder this program for people who are enrolled in our enhanced support program they will receive direct notice from a customer survey agent in advance of a PSPs event if we have 24 hours notice obviously so as part of the Grant application the additional work we would do is we've asked f for funds to purchase small portable battery generators to power that medical equipment during outages so

2:55:00 there's about 15 to 20 people currently enrolled in our enhanced uh PSPs program and those folks would be good candidates for outreach to see if they're interested in having that additional piece of Mind of having that battery back out back up for their medical devices and not having to hustle with diesel generators especially when uh Wildfire risk is High and um next steps we're wrapping up here just getting back to that foundational Wildfire mitigation work you know to effectively Target your Investments you could spend a lot of money on this but really to be strategic about where you put that money you need to know where your wildfires are most likely to happen

2:55:45 in your system and where they create the most hazardous conditions to Public Safety so we have a fire risk modeling experts that are working on updating our Wildfire analysis our modeling work to validate and refine where our high-fire RIS zones are and we anticipate that we'll have early results um this fall from that work and then we have a pipeline of work plan for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025 including more work in South Eugene um both non-explosive fusing and hopefully another targeted under grounding project in the South Hills I'm trying to use up the last of that 2016 FEMA funding that we got many many years ago but we're working through that process and you know anything with FEMA takes some time

2:56:30 we're in discussions with the U ofo for another alert Wildfire camera up River and if the state Grant is successful we will have that cedar Flats project to both plan and install so there is quite a a lot of work to ahead of us so if we go to this last slide I'm going to wrap up just to say that um um we have time for some questions but really the takeaway is that 2023 was largely a planning year and now we have quite a bit of work in motion and none of this can be done without a team effort so I just want to give a call out and thanks to the engineering staff have been working closely with me my communications team who is always um in my back pocket and supporting the work that we're doing standards group and the operational folks who are willing to try

2:57:15 some new tools out in the field and give us feedback on how it's working um in terms of next steps for the board we'll be back to you with an updated Wildfire mitigation plan for your review and approval in early 2025 because that's when we'll have that updated high-fire RIS zone maps um which is part of the Pu compliance we have to have that and then we'll have that full year of 2024 metrics to share with you so with that I will stop and that was just an extra slide so you don't even need to go to that one but you can look at if it's it's a pretty slide you you're you're happy to you're welcome to take a look at it thank you thanks Janine questions

2:58:04 comments uh so um real quick uh on the the generators read a headline recently about the risk of them actually starting fires I know part of the generator Loan program was started that we had power outage I think specifically when it was really um cold but I obviously in the same situation when we have to turn the power off um for those who need them um do do you have any sense about the risk of the generators and if that's Contin if that will additionally add to the risk in a fire season season situation my supposition is that a battery powered generator is going to have less fire risk than a diesel powered or Pro P power generator so I

2:58:50 think this should and the these are not the size that can power an entire house they're really you know smaller generators that are devised for more Appliance use so I would imagine that these would actually reduce fire risk from some other traditional generator types and that's that's what the incentive is for it's specifically for the batter the battery types for the uh for the folks that have medical issues that might need it can yes and would say it's not necessarily an incentive what I you know we haven't designed the program yet if we get the grant there's some program design work to do but the intention would be for people who are um income eligible these would be more of a grant funded here is a generator oh I see okay because I know

2:59:36 that a while ago we started having these severe storms up River we started a a loan program for generators so that's a separate okay I was conflating the two thank you Frank I was just going to mention commissioner Carlson as part of that Loan program we do have some requirements that the customer use automatic transfer switches and there's there's some protective um P it's it's not like you're just going to run a bunch of extension cords there's there's some other requirements qualified for the loan okay thank you it is a good point though too you make there are a lot of folks with standard generators gas generators diesel generators and uh do have to be cautious about that and think about think it through not putting out a dry grass field but you know as

3:00:22 long as it's installed and operated is something that the odf talks about too is a trade-off you know of not having comms and not having resources but thinking through that a little bit you see already if I talked in public about what perception was of one of the basis for the lawsuits River the olden Creek substation power i' rather you not until we check in U we we have a check in Thursday and I I'd be happy and we can it shutting things off so it's

3:01:07 done I think I know where you anything from you John barowski go ahead thanks uh thank you for the presentation to excellent work uh from you and all the staff going forward um as somebody who represents the South the South Hills in my District's W two and three um you know I I I think that we've done a pretty good job of of getting the word to the UPR River people about the the risks of you know when we have to do a a power shut off they understand it um I think that there's more work to be done for that if we were ever to have to do one in the South Hills um and so I'm hoping that we can uh can work on that

3:01:52 in the future um something that would be really helpful for me is getting some sort of a memo from you that kind of breaks down this stuff this this presentation that you had into not necessarily an elevator speech but we will be meeting Matt and I and and Senior staff are going to be meeting with the the leaders of the City of Eugene right now in in the upcoming month um and I know that the board President and Vice President of Eugene chamber are very keen on these issues both Matt uh Matt and Randy Groves are both uh really uh intense on this and so

3:02:37 if we could have if I could if you could Whittle it down so I can share some of these things that we're doing especially when it comes to the South Hills because for me you know UPR River it's more sparsely populated if if we were to have a wildfire in the South Hills you know it could be much more devastating although we have more resources to put them out we also have Hills that are Steep and can go up as we've seen in in many communities in California so having that information to share with them I think would be a great topic to have uh for us to share in our upcoming meeting so that would be very helpful for me thank you sure can when is that meeing commissioner we're working on a date on that but it's coming up fairly soon it was supposed to

3:03:22 be in a week or two but and I could have condensed your plan into that but I think we're pushing it back we haven't really had it set yet yeah and I'll just make one quick comment I really appreciate the team uh seeking Grant funds to help with the battery generator program um and but I also know there's a proliferation of small batteries with inverters that are really relatively inexpensive for what they do I have one myself they're kind of amazing little Contraptions and uh I would hope that if we don't get Grant funds that we might see a proposal come to the board to fund some small pilot project to do that because I think helping folks with medical devices you know that most vulnerable group as we

3:04:07 look at more Public Safety shut offs um is is an obvious thing for us to invest in so thanks for pursuing the grand funds eager to see that program happen anything else great all right on to the next item which is the 2025 energy resource study um and the BPA product Choice overview Brian Megan Ben Aon mccre just while they're coming up um given the timing of the agenda and the importance of this item um we can postpone the Strategic discussion if you would like and until August there's not a specific driver this evening for that

3:04:52 and um rather have your full attention on this particular item than to be dragging this out for too long just offering that for the board's consideration is that all right with you barowski if we um postpone item number 12 he says yes boy vigorously supported by barowski all right if you'd like we could postpone everything on here and just pick it up one thing you know we don't we don't ever get a break all other other commissions they like take a month or two

3:05:37 off than okay all right good evening Commissioners I am Brian boo Chief eny resource officer here at EB from my left on down I have magnet chapper resource manager Aron Bush a senior analyst and Ben ol our lead analyst on this project I'm gonna go ahead and hand it off to Megan to get it started and I'll be back at the end to talk uh talk timeline great thank you good evening Commissioners we are here tonight to discuss the upcoming 2028 bonnaville power contract decision which is in alignment with our board goal number six goal number six outlines actions from the 2023 integrated resource plan where we recognize the first step in defining our portfolio of the future is to

3:06:23 analyze the BPA product options through an energy resource study or ERS overall the intent of this presentation tonight is to educate the board about the product options coming from the BPA and secondly discuss our plan for management Executives and the board to align on a BPA product decision as a reminder uh back in March we provided context around the bonnaville power Administration our analytical approach both qualitative and quantitative decision criteria and we discussed our stakeholder um engagement process tonight I'm going to update you on changes to our timeline Ain will provide you with information on our current understanding of the Bonville product options recognizing that discussions on these products designs

3:07:09 are still um ongoing and we also want to update the board about the creation of an executive steering committee which will help Ensure internal alignment between the workg group and the board and the months ahead later in the presentation Brian will also talk about the inner connection of our BPA product decision our business model in and our business model in terms of resource strategy and uh markets so let's go to the thank you timeline uh before handing it off to Aon to educate on the product options I want to quickly touch base on our timeline the most significant change since March is BPA is requiring a product decision by June 2025 while contract signing still is December 2025

3:07:55 our current timeline is shorter than what we showed you in March because BPA requires six months between product decision and signing there this is driven by two things the first thing is BPA staff need time to prepare individual utility specific contracts and Exhibits and secondly BPA staff need three years between the signing and the effective date uh of the contract to implement um given new products and new markets for this reason we've condensed our approach to making this decision um as represented on the timeline I'm G hand it off to Aaron to talk about the BPA product options before Brian will dive into the new timeline and business model decision okay thank you Megan and I will

3:08:40 admit I have more versions of screens up here that I'm used to so hopefully I don't lose myself in all of my Graphics uh so I'm going to talk about vable products um just want to start off like Megan said uh we're still developing things these things right there it's ongoing discussions I was literally in a meeting today talking about the rate design uh and we're GNA try and finish a lot of that up by this fall and we're going to incorporate all of that into the modeling analysis going forwards um for the products themselves one of the things to keep in mind is that Bon's broadly said that the future products are going to look like the offerings today but there are some pretty substantial updates around kind of the market compatibility so we talk about organized markets coming the future products need to be able to work with those uh the rate design bundles

3:09:25 changing some of the ways they do rates uh and specifically new product options block with shaping uh that would give uh you have an additional option to what exists right now um so this is the list of products so there's basically five options uh in different ways to pair things but the the first up there is like block then block as a alone block with some shaping capacity so that's the ability to move energy up and down whereas the block Standalone is kind of a flatter product it doesn't move energy up and down very much to follow load uh and then that new is block shaping capacity and Peak load variant so basically that's providing some ability to move energy up and down

3:10:10 to follow load but also some additional service from bonal to meet more extreme Peak events uh and then finally the load following product um where Bon literally follows the customers load um and so as you see that kind of fit to load shape uh image there up in the top so the slice block the product that we have now is bov's providing the lease service right so it's kind of the the shape of what the federal system does EB is taking a lot on a lot of that management uh and reshaping it to fit our load so we've got a lot of local control over that uh and as you move down that product list bonable is providing additional services uh and you're paying additional rates for those Services until you get down to load falling or Bondville is kind of providing the most service

3:10:55 for one of the other things to to kind of keep in mind between these products is on the very right hand side there that non-federal resource flexibility so for eweb this would be resources like Carman Smith and Walterville other resources that are dedicated to Ser our load um and you see there's four green yes boxes uh that's for kind of all the quote unquote plan products so for those products baville is offering power on a planned basis they're not trying to meet our real- time load uh and in exchange they give us more flexibility about how to operate those resources uh for the load following product where Bonville is trying to literally follow our load they need more certainty on the amount of energy that our resources are bringing and so there's additional requirements on some of those uh resources for

3:11:43 us okay so diving into some of these images uh this one again is that list of the five product options and kind of this this image is showing on a planning basis so you kind of think about heading into a year uh how much capacity so in this sense how how much is the product able to flex and help you have meet Peak loads um and so you can see those varying amounts that's those stacked bars each product is going to offer a little bit different ability to do that uh and the context I want to provide here is that as we move forwards and look at the Western resource adequacy program that's the W um that's a common standard that the region is looking at to ensure reliability and ewb has said yep we're looking at that we think it's

3:12:29 a good thing to participate in and that would have some obligations for ewb about meeting those capacity needs that ability to meet Peaks uh and in the past we've focused on energy uh but really now this piece of capacity meaning Peaks is going to be one of the differentiators between products um and for this specific image if you look at that red line across the middle that's EB's uh kind of average annual energy so you can see uh at this base level all the products are intended to meet our energy needs and it's the ability to kind of flex and meet Peak loads and variable loads it's a little different between the products um as for the the stacks themselves you can see that the green bar on the bottom there that represents our dedicated resources like Carmen again so there's a piece of that

3:13:15 that Bonville is going to expect us for those resources to to serve our load with those and now moving across this image kind of from left to right um so the block alone right we talked about that being a a flatter product it doesn't Flex to meet different loads uh and so that dotted purple line represents kind of an average Peak load for eweb and so for that specific product um there would be a gap we would have to go fill that with something else a quotequote non-federal resource there a lot of different options to do that's the kind of thing that we do today but it's just recognizing that for that product there's a gap to that specific uh load and then next is the slice block product combination um you see the block on the bottom there and the slice in the lighter blue so that's showing that

3:14:01 basically the slice has more ability to help beat Peak loads uh there's some more complexity with slice and water gear variability but in general the thing to take away there is that slice does offer some ability uh the next product there is with shaping so that option from Bonville is basically saying okay we're going to provide you with roughly the energy you need to meet Peaks but also some ability to flex that up and down um some some hourly flexibility to help meet loads uh and they've said roughly the intent is to try and meet an average kind of one and two peak with that product uh the next one you'll see has a little light teal section on top um that is the peak load variant service so Tech

3:14:48 a lot of Bonville jargon here but basically it's an additional service we could purchase from Bonville to help us meet another kind of higher Peak again so we're basically adding services on from Bonville to help uh cover different load events uh on the very far right is load following uh and again you see that that is uh meeting kind of all the the different load events uh and I want to add in a couple additional lines across the top here just as kind of a a barometer it to look at the the different amount of on a planning basis what these different products are doing so this one in 10 load that's basically saying uh an infrequent load event uh that's the intent of that Peak load variant service it's intended to roughly align with that you can see that as you

3:15:33 get to a more extreme event there's gaps um that we would need to fill with non-federal resources and then the last one on here is the W planning Reserve margin so that number is basically looking at again a reliability standard that e is opting in and saying yep we want to participate in this and it's something that we are looking at as kind of a standard metric in the energy resource study that e would look at needing and so the various combinations of like B and then a combination of non-federal resources fill any gaps so um moving on to kind of that was a planning basis

3:16:18 looking at IND kind of an individual Peak day um so on the bottom here you'll see 1 to 24 those are the hours of the day on the left Y axis is megawatts and basically showing a single day load profile and how a resource deack under each of these product options might meet uh that Lo and these are all examples this not actual is kind of made up to to represent what the products would do um so you can see here that that flat block the dark blue on the bottom it's super Dependable but it's not responding to the load right it just is what it is and we have uh it's not moving to meet a load of that the slice again with there's some water gear uncertainty and variability there uh but you can see it

3:17:03 is responding and we can reshape that to help meet the PE loads uh the dark green that's our dedicated Resources with this type of product again we're operating them efficiently to try and help meat Peaks uh and you can see that dotted salmon color line is roughly the one and two peak so you can see it's in that ballpark and then the dotted red line is kind of a more extreme Peak so again with slice block this is going to vary but in general as you get some more extreme Peaks there's a there's a gap that we need to figure out how to fill and that could be longterm purchases it could be shorter term but it's something we need to figure out on our own how to manage uh so the next one here is the block only product um so you can see it's got that kind of big dark blue band

3:17:48 across the bottom the block isn't moving to respond to changes in load um our dedicated resources in the dark green like Carmen are still being operated efficiently to try and help meet that peak in the morning uh but then you can see the light gray color there that's the kind of other non-federal is a bit bigger so because we didn't have bable responding as much we have to go out and figure out how to fill the Gap with other resources uh the next one here is the block with shaping uh and then also the version with dra service so the dark blue is the block with shaping uh and basically this is showing hey bot is going to give us some energy and some ability to move that where we need it uh so you can see that the dark blue is

3:18:34 responding as the load moves uh and with our dedicated resources like Carmen that dark green they're still being operated efficiently and the intent of that base product is to help us me kind of an average Peak load so you see it's roughly in line with the the light C out of line there but then there's the light teal up on top um and that light teal represents kind of the additional service we could procure from bonaval to help us meet more extreme Peaks um and then at the very top there's a light gray sliver um it's more complicated but there might not be an exact crosswalk to the most extreme of Peaks um still working on exactly what that look look like for this prodject uh and last is the load following

3:19:19 product um you notice this image looks a bit different from the others and that's because the load falling product is a different kind of product again bonable with load fing is trying to follow our loads they're actually meeting our hourly loads and so in exchange for that they want more certainty on what our resources are doing so you notice that the dark green is at the bottom of the image there that's basically showing that bonovo would give you a more restrictive requirement and how we operate what we need to bring or does not resource energy and capacity amounts but then on top of that bonil is filling all the gaps so whatever our load does bonab bille really is going to fill those gaps so again there there's a distinction here in kind of how we actually meet load whether it's vonville

3:20:05 or other resources but again as you get additional service from vable you're paying additional rates from that and that's going to be part of the energy resource study is looking at that combination and how those pieces fit together um so as a kind of a broad summary of those different products right the products have different levels of cost and service and risk um and the product choice is going to have some implications for our overall portfolio decisions you kind of saw that in the the VAR and the operations and the non-federal resource amounts across the products that energy resource study we're going to put together a rates model we're going to look at how the products operate and what we get from Bond and non fedal pieces and we putting all of that together um the one thing as

3:20:50 we've talked about this tally keeps coming up those are like capacity and this this peaking ability is an important piece but it's not capturing everything there's a lot of qualitative discussions and other pieces that factor into this where that being can control over some of these things B where see values locally what are we trying to do in terms of local control R management Brian's going to talk a little bit more about some of those pieces in a minute I just want to highlight that this is kind of the overall operations of products there's a lot of details that I'm leaving out but trying to capture at a high level the distinctions I'll have it to ran talk about

3:21:36 you all right that's better now I can see the screen so we're going to start off really quick checking on the executive steering committee um management and staff have form the ESC this is a very high priority very expensive decision that we were facing on a pretty tight timeline uh so we thought it necessary to bring in both AG's and Frank uh to help make this decision between now and next summer so the ESC includes again both agms and myself on the support side we have staff from Power planning Finance rates generation and consultant help um again this is a couple billion dollar decision in pretty uh pretty short order

3:22:22 so we were trying to give it every bit of attention that it deserves on the business model context uh we want to speak just a little bit to what this is and what it isn't so on the right we've drawn out this circle of what we think of as the larger you know electric business model here I should say power supply business model it includes things like resource ownership whether we own and operate our own resources contract them out or operate entirely through BPA it includes things like Market interaction are we out buying selling trading doing all the things that we do and our BPA product itself I do want to say what this is is that this is a study

3:23:07 of specifically that BPA product and how it fits uh within that larger business model I do want to say that while we're trying to look at this you know very much within its own confines all of these things they're interconnected one does impact the other and those are things that we'll be considering further down the line so the deliverable on this uh we're going to be coming back with both quantitative and qualitative results on the left we have a rough outline of what the quantitative analysis on this might look like which I can't quite read from that far over um we have you know different products with different levels of BPA service more

3:23:52 expensive products come with additional levels of service like we talked about the the car analogy before uh yeah they're all cars that are for sale one is a box van uh the other one has you know a third row seat and if you want to upgrade to leather and the LA Wheels that'll cost more as well uh but they are all cars um at the same time we'll be looking at the non-federal resource cost that would be required to fill in those gaps that Aon highlighted in the previous slide and we'll also be looking at additional services and costs it would take to really uh maintain those portfolios thank you uh on the right we've called out some qualitative factors that we'd be looking at uh a few of these could probably fall under a single umbrella of

3:24:37 local control so we'll be thinking about how our product Choice supports our strategic plan how it supports Advanced rates how it supports local resource choice and our ability to control where our power comes from and the attributes associated with those generators so back on the timeline um here we are we're out in July uh and we're talking about our BPA product choice we're going to be back in September to talk about key assumptions and try to Define some of those qualitative decision points uh we're going to have uh some additional board engagement with the ESC over uh this time period as well uh the ERS will be back with initial results in

3:25:23 December and then final results in February we'll be asking for a Board review of Management's product recommendation in April and we'll be coming back again uh with a BPA product recommendation and action plan that fall will'll be looking for a board resolution authorizing the GM to sign the contract and then of course signed the contract that December all right so we've got a few bullets up here for discussion before we start I did want to lay out what exactly it is that we're looking from looking for from the board um this is a lot there's going to be a ton of information that comes through

3:26:09 here the financial Stakes are huge the implications for how we operate our side of the house are tremendous it's a 17-year contract uh even the cheapest contract is a couple billion dollars so what we need from the board is to ask all your questions let us know what you think along the way because when we get to next summer we need to have no surprises we'll have a decision that needs to be made and we'll we'll need to be there to us or is there's more presentation so that's over to you I I see Mindy's got her hand out all right Mindy please

3:26:55 thank you your presentation so I guess I just have concerns about the line seems like it's really fast so basically in a year we'll be making a decision and um we keep talking about like talking about that we need to talk about the business model of the organization and and also every month on our consent calendar we're made more money into Carmen Smith so I just wonder when do we have when do we have time to have these kind of bigger conversations about what we want the business model to look like because it seems like what we're deciding a year from now kind of locks Us in to um in the

3:27:44 path so let me answer that in two parts Frank I know you've got time on the board agenda I believe in September to talk about resource ownership as part as it pertains to the business model um with kmen Smith that's honestly a great example to talk about that uh the dedicated resource stack that was at the bottom of those charts uh legally speaking kmen Smith is a dedicated to load resource and we are obligated uh from the start of this nice contract on into perpetu to deliver that much power to BPA whether or not car Smith exists so for us we have the choice we can maintain Carmen Smith or we can go out and find that power elsewhere but we do not have

3:28:30 the option to buy That Power from BPA question about Carmen I mean that's like a whole other multi-year discussion it seems like yeah Frank yeah I I was going to say that probably for this board to expect probably an Ever every other month kind of cadence around this issue it'll get broken up into a number of different qualitative and quantitative factors um one of those for example commissioner commissioner would be of these choices which do create

3:29:15 business model Flex ability and which do not and how does how is that realized and some of it um Brian classified as local control but and that's why it relates to the business model um but the implications of these choices there are some that will maintain flexibility there's some areas where it it will have less flexibility so I think understanding the qualitative factors will be part of those discussions um and I think you know really starting probably September to understand the board's perspective around what the risks of different business model choices are and I think that so Eugene

3:30:02 has a long history of being in our own generation so say long history our entire existence so you know back to 1911 or whenever was that that we started we have recognized that there's a certain Independence that we want to have around the the resources that that we procure there are there are costs to that there's also risks if you move away from that and those are the discussions that I want to tee up for the board in September um I think there are so because I I looked at kind of the key question here for for us to really sort of launch into

3:30:47 is what are the pros and cons qualitatively and quantitatively of Leaning into bonil to a greater or lesser extent that's that's really the essence of what we want to get from the board and I I understand and I fully I I have thought about this for since you hired me I don't I don't even know exactly how long ago that was when we put together the plan the Strategic plan that we have now a lot of it centered around preparing for this decision and it got accelerated a little bit I you know 20128 became 2025 so we we have to we have to look at that um and I do think there's some pretty

3:31:32 clear it it would be easy to look at this chart and say oh well let's just lean into bonabo because they'll solve all our problems it creates other kinds of risks and other kinds of costs and so the those are that's where I suspect we'll start and we'll use the business model as the the way to sort of tee that up and then we will progress through the various issues and I just to set the expectation I I probably will expect that every other month probably at the least Cadence there might be some where we have three months in a row we're sitting down for an hour talking about a specific issue so um I think I can't think of on the electric side any other

3:32:17 decision is more important for this this board and this organization to make and when um we talked about the executive steering committee it wasn't just oh who has the titles to be on this it's no we we've got to raise our right hand and say this this is this is a priority for us and we're GNA into it Brian didn't mention the community table piece of this which is a public Outreach part but I can talk about that at another time yes um couple of quick questions um do we have any indication from BPA on the costs of the I'm assuming that the further right you go the more expensive they become

3:33:02 but that is correct in fact uh Erin and I were in a a rates all day workshop today I love rates and all day workshop on PPA rates is a lot here uh yeah I would say so we're never going to have perfect information Bonville so on anything right like we're going to be making decisions with some uncertainty on every ASP what we're going to outline as part of the process or the rate design is what are rates going to look like in general and what are going to be the principles for setting those rates for vable and I mean I've already got a model set up to start looking at that I'm going to incorporate all the changes that happen um and we're going to do sensitivities

3:33:48 on what happens if this piece moves or that piece moves so the goal is to really give the executive steering committee and the board an idea of like what are the major things that might change and what happens if they change right so and we have a good sense of like what those bounds will me when you talked about uh the kman Smith uh decision or you know our general General ation overall it's assumed on here that we you know keep that going we have other contracts and such that are part of that mix if we sign those in does that also commit us to a certain level I think it

3:34:34 feels we've talked about what so the this this team and the executive steering committee are ramping up when Frank says it's going to be engagement I think way know is after the shower right yeah I'll be we can hear you um we I I think I will follow the executive team's lead on like the frequency and exact topics um as staff we are bringing rocks to the executive steering committee of like hey let's talk about this the next one is qualitative Ben and I were literally just sitting and going through like what are the quality of things what how do we want to think about these and R rank them what type of format of chart is most useful to talk about them um for

3:35:19 the dedicated resources that is one of the topics we need to talk about with the executive steering committee and with the board because they the bonable statute and the way all this stuff intersects is weird uh and so it's it's it is very simple on one hand and complicated on the other and I don't want to get wrapped around the axle on like a detail of it I would say at a high level um are Hydro resources are in our bondable contract as dedicated to load they are there to serve until we go through some big bond process other resources that are not those Hydro are not dedicated to load uh and they kind of blow out in a more simple fashion and

3:36:04 that there's other decisions that so we can resources that L me Peak or yes or not um but if we just with Carmen Smith that's considered a dedicated load specifically and if we you know continued with that project which mostly point to yes we put a lot of money into it but there is still question there of you know can we complete the process I mean for me that's one of the biggest risks if something comes through and they say hey you can't even complete that and then we're on the hook for that as a dedicated resource so if that scen happened and we couldn't complete it um we are we we buy out on

3:36:51 the open market uh I I would love to have followup conversations on this I'm gonna look at it gets I'm just trying to understand how it all asking you're asking good questions and may it sounds like you want to jump in I don't want to get to In The Weeds on this no no I think it's a really good question I think um how um uh these are choices before we were were going to go out and um buy any kind of uh having any resource Acquisitions will go through a process that I I think we've even talked to you about at the end of our integrated resource planning process when we say when are our needs what are those what is our resource strategy so I think that um what what Frank kind of uh alluded to earlier is um and and Brian you when he had the three circles you

3:37:36 have your resource strategy you have your markets and then you have your BPA decision and so we're really kind of teeing up the Bonville decision first and then we're going to will move into as now once we've made that decision where are these gaps and how do we fill these gaps and then totally get that just trying to understand the mechanics of like are we stuck if it so the short answer is yes or no the short answer is we are not always stuck there are statutory requirements to get the resources out okay and to discuss those is complicated so I'd rather leave that to another time there are options yes or no answer well you I think you already said Brian that Bonville will not replace this so we need to find okay so if if we you know just from a risk mitigation perspective

3:38:22 is Bonville able to take on more of our load or we already locked into to holding some amount of load as of October this year we as of October this year bpa's tier one system will be fully subscribed and even if one of our dedicated hyro resour is were to go away we would not have access to additional tier one okay that's what I want to thank you I but we have some followup conversations on this yeah I think there's more to dig into we have about 20 minutes left for this you know topic as a whole there's a lot of questions so as we're thinking about agendas in the future maybe we pack some more time in for this Frank yeah I was gonna just mention Carlson that that there when we

3:39:07 refer to a bond Bill allocation or a tier one allotment that is the bond of Bill access to the federal system that's cost based Bonville can also go out to the market and Supply us with things we might need it's called tier two is where they actually go as a procurer to fulfill an obligation that they might have depending on the product that we select we will we will not be stuck somewhere okay but how we approach individual resources decisions would be different for example with Carmen Smith and I think the backgrounder listed out all the resources that that are dedicated to in in eweb I believe those are all Hydro by the way but another example would be the senica senica is

3:39:53 not dedicated to load and therefore we have more of a free choice depending on on what kind of business botel we want to have or if we want to use that to lead our own Peak or that's that's a little bit of a of a that's different than say a car span and so well there's quite a few details relative to I don't want to take any time but I think it would be really helpful to have an A next go around like Risk is risks Associated and the flexibility or lack thereof of each of the kind of resources for for my own understanding that would be helpful okay done barowski thank you sorry about the interruption earlier

3:40:38 um yeah so for me this is a a topic that absolutely calls for work session type of a meeting where we can have a dedicated hour or hour and a half where it's more of a free flowing back and forth rather than ask us for our input and three minutes later we are done giving input um even if that is over three or four months I think it would be definitely something to look forward to um so one of my questions would be right now we have a model set up where we have control over quite a few things and that gives us flexibility in the marketplace I'm wondering if one of the

3:41:24 things that you guys are going to be looking at is the the cost of moving to a different model from BPA and how that would affect some of our programs that we have going forward so for example one of the one of the uh packages would have less risk but right now now we're using hedging to mitigate some of that risk so is the cost that we're going to that we would be paying to baville for the less risk be more than what we're do paying to hedge our our risk with our internal staff and and the the model that we're using today those are some of the questions that I would

3:42:10 have to ask when we're talking about cost you know this bille Pro product cost us this much more but right now we're doing some of those things already we have people in the building that are doing that um and if we go away from that one are we losing are we losing people and are we losing you know if if we go to one model we may lose our power trading Department altoe right and so what are the costs and benefits of all of those so those are the types of questions that I would like to know moving forward um you know we've already got the infrastructure in place and how much is it costing us and how much more would it cost us if we let BPA do that work for us those are all questions for a future

3:42:57 meeting I'm hearing rather than questions the field right now any comments on that before I go to just that the math on that would be really tough and I'm pretty good at head math but let me come back to with better yeah Frank I would just say that we we have got to look at a lot of these decisions holistically and based on different scenarios so to to John's point if if you look at this over the long term you may be sort of reducing risk or cost in one area at the same time transferring that cost or risk to another area and I think that you have to almost look at this end to end as opposed to um and and

3:43:42 not based on where we are today versus the past but where we are today versus where we think we're going to be in 5 10 15 years because it will be different looking forward than it is backwards and so um we have to do it in that context and one example of that is an organized Market in the Northwest um that is a much different requirement for a trading operation than it is looking backwards looking forwards it's just it's a different um different way of operating so we have to look at holistically across so John's John's point is absolutely correct Mindy's point is absolutely correct around the fact that it has to be looked at altogether add organized Market to the topic of discussion yes yes and what what that

3:44:30 what that means I think it does support barsky's proposal of a work session in this topic and it's we do have a work session scheduled in October great you catch that John work schedule great uh Braun so yeah this the analogy I have is there's a group of neurosurgeons asking the patient for advice medical advice so I'm sorry but I know what I don't know um I got a thousand questions so this thing is gonna a work session is going to be great but things like you I look where we are on the rate trajectory right now we're the only local entity that generates but we're also the highest everybody we we've surpassed Lane electric UT sub everybody we're the highest electric thing now and if we go and our our capacity meet load growth

3:45:15 because I know this 10 year plan you say we're going to meet it through conservation for the first two years then we're going to have to find more resources we find those within Bonville or do we find those outside in our own Market because we have this 95% carbon free and uh and so I'm GNA want to know all about that and all about um and Bonville told us that they were going to give us the capacity we lost out of leeberg is that tier one or tier two uh that is tier yeah tier one we so we've got the official letter um on leeberg last mon um so yeah the next rate period will behe and replace by power at tier one early so that's tier one they're replacing that that that whatever that capacity was okay so so I've got a thousand questions and I know

3:46:01 where we timeline so I'll I'll wait for the work session but I'll I think that the yeah the I would say the one thing that we didn't get too into today so you mentioned kind of the load growth piece and this like tier one tier two that is a separate decision than the product so we'll talk about it more there's a lot of material to cover but um essentially the our product decision comes first next year and then literally a full year later we say how do we want to serve load growth so this product decision is who do I want to manage this with in your risk variability meeting Peaks do

3:46:47 we want to do it or do we want bonil to do it how many additional services do we want to get bonable and then the following year is going to be a decision okay do we if we need resources to serve load growth in the future do we want to do that or do we want so there's multiple pieces here going to get back to said was all of these have to do with how we want to how we want to position the various futures for the organization what and again it's how much are we going to lean into

3:47:33 bonnaville to either take care of our load go growth we would might be looking at this much differently if we were dealing with lots of data centers and other kind of just explosive load growth in our future maybe versus you modest load growth through electrification or other things these are going to have to be scenarios that that we look at when I said looking forward looking forward is different than Looking Backward and load growth is a part of that and the product Choice um does matter because what it does is create flexibility for us to partially do that or lean into Bonville to do that and so um we have to as part of this work create some different Futures

3:48:21 looking forward and then test those Futures with different sensitivities and product options and business models so U it's going to be a great big three-dimensional Matrix that uh the brain surgeons are going to have to figure out what colors they are and but just I'm just kidding this is going to take a lot of work I think it's manageable um but let's be prepared that we're just going to have to put some time effort and we're going to have to have lots of exchanges of what about this what about that I don't get this I get that um so that when we get to next year that you're comfortable if we say this is why

3:49:06 we think and where we think we should go you're okay with the logic behind that and so is guy in the back back of the room there calling you out that the uh Walterville if we can that or that boat has sailed we haven't made a decision on Walterville is in the next through that baville has a very specific set of criteria for a replacement of a tier one dedicated resource I'm not sure whether we have

3:49:52 the the runway to be able to do that by the deadline that's been created which I believe is this fall they're all shaking their head um and what kind of criteria we could actually create or not create within that window and even then it is a submitted request to the babil administrator so and and other utilities can weigh in on support or not I mean there's we we leeberg was pretty clear we were decommissioning there was a number of reasons it was uneconomic there's there was a lot of rationale for that um well we'll get we'll get back to you on that I have a few questions um that I

3:50:40 you know don't have to dive into but the questions that come up for me when we start having this convers ation I think you said the contract is seven years is that right 17 17 yeah 2028 through 2045 wow my retirement date is 2046 so I'll have the pleasure of doing this again I hope condolences um so just a couple questions that that I have uh about our assumption about heat pump uptake do is that a significant driver here and I'm not even thinking about electrification I'm just thinking about uptake of heat pumps within people that are using like resistance heat I know the state has like a statutory goal now of like

3:51:26 500,000 new heat pumps by 2030 right I don't know what proportion of that is in our territory but is that significant or not I don't know I want to jump in on that one because the board approved a demand side uh potential assessment study those are the types of things that we're doing a deeper di by the consultant on now and so those are the we're trying to gain an understanding of our service territory to have a richer understanding of that which we hope will help us understand the potential for conservation and maybe get a sense also for the electrification side as well yes so that was my next question was the time frame for the completion of that study because that seems super critical to any kind of decision in June of 25 right yes the um the current timeline is

3:52:13 getting that done at just the initial deliverables at in December and so these timelines don't line up very well currently to feed that in that said our resource acquisition strategy our strategy to supplement the bonov products is still up to eweb so eweb still have will be able to invest in conservation regardless of what product we choose so we can as we have load growth in the future we will need to supplement any bondable product that we choose among these five options because we've had load growth how U chooses to about meeting that load growth is our strategy to decide but doesn't it's not only how much load growth we have it's also how much with doesn't that affect the Peaks as well right if we invest a lot conservation I'm gonna I'm gonna piggy

3:52:59 back on go for oh I was just gonna say part of that assessment is to do an assessment of the potential demand response and the the customer side of what we consider resources which does get back to this if we can if we can have the opportunity to manage that then that um impacts the amount that we might lean in to either our own resources um supply side resources or bonab bill so they are related um in um the degrees of which the sensitivities start to take place so um that's that's why it does matter that um and better information in December

3:53:45 and hopefully we'll be ready to just play the tools right right away and start informing I thinking about a June decision for a 17 year commitment and and I will so I want to note on the 17e commitment yes but there is a product switching option it was a brief brief sentence of the memo but like we have the ability to change paths I will also say uh I have so many things I we have followup conversations to to Ben's point on the demand response the a lot of this analysis comes down to we're looking at bondable products which like as you get more service it's like well that's a bondable rate construct is what can e web do separately how do that

3:54:31 how does that fit together yeah so there's both this kind of quantitative and qualitative pieces that we have to fit together in all of this so your question on like how's demand response program fit in like well is are we comparing it to a vill rate that says is how much you pay for demand or is it you have we're going out we're buying capacity on the market and that's our avoided cost so there's there's these different pieces that fit together we will have options to switch and while you feel like you're being in we talking about business like we are thinking about business model like we our heads are in this yeah yeah and so we've got diagrams of like I don't know what like what you've shared so far but like there is a range of bable customers with a range of business models with range of resources and so I think there's some pieces of this discussion that you

3:55:17 probably haven't seen yet that will help to lay the groundwork that you w't Pro quite so like just so you know it's not an an infinite ability to switch products a one time it's a one it's a one time ability to switch products well I just want to say um I think it's been we we came we've outlined what where Bonville is today and it's really exciting that you guys are this engaged because you could tell we are as well uh and it is this really important um really important conversation and what I also really liked is I think as each of you spoke you know I wrote notes to make sure that we we can follow up we we need to know what are those specific areas that you

3:56:02 want us to start addressing first and uh so so I think we have some really good takeaways than yeah one quick question so we're talking about rate design too does it matter what we choose for BPA that's going to then affect rate design Frank can I give a specific example on that one yeah I'm gonna say it does let me get this out the rate design the initial part of the rate design that that I think that I want to understand with the board is more fundamental principle initially but eventually how you design your rates creates the flexibility to be

3:56:49 able to do some of these demand side resources and other things and and look at Cross subsidies and specifically do you want to have rates that guide customer Behavior or do you want to have rates that are pure cost based I mean there's there's some fundamental questions like that and those do those are impacted eventually but I think we can have some initial conversations before that go ahead so let me a very specific example of that would be whether or not we have Market exposure if we have a load following product the price that we pay for using a little bit more or a little bit less is based on a forecast it tends to be very soft compared to actual market prices during an extreme weather event uh our largest customer we have a

3:57:35 contract with them that gives them Market exposure if they use more or less than their contract this past winter they lost power they lost many many millions of dollars in operations but because of this contract they' lost power during an extreme weather event and we were able to essentially compensate them at the real-time price for the power that they weren't using of their contract so they made several million dollars back on their power bill now that didn't that did not pay for their losses but that was a nice benefit and that was many times greater than anything we could have gotten from a load folling contract

3:58:22 I'm just going to nickname this the OMG presentation because this is kind of like wow all this is in front of us and I know that it's it was just anend oh BPA products and I know you probably all walked in going oh this but the there's there's a lot here and it's kind of uh pulling back of the curtain saying we got to roll up our sleeves and makes metaphors there but all of our sleeves will get to it well I'm hearing interest in doing that it sounds like there's you know for interested spending the time there so that by the time we get to June we're all on the same page and R in the same direction all right well unless there are any really important last comments to drop in here I'll propose we cut this off so we can wrap up by uh 940 anything from you

3:59:09 barowski or we we good all right um all right so then we'll go into our next item which is future board agendas thanks team fers there are a number of things on here some related to things we just talked about I I think in the context of looking at priorities that we will uh make some adjustments to this I'll go through with the executive team some of the different key stakeholders what some of this might look like so and it may include starting to fill in

4:00:01 2025 okay any questions or comments on future agendas all right then uh the last item board wrap up comments questions nothing from Brown anything from you for board wrap up no okay I I have just a couple of items and I'll be very quick um one the AV improvements in this room are awesome thank you for making that happen to the whole team of people that I'm sure it took to make that happen um the question about a um a authorization to spend that may have been some you know partially spent already I do wonder if we should

4:00:47 consider an urgent um procurement policy where you know we frontload some spending limit for things that are really time sensitive like it sounds like this one was I just want to throw that on the table for something for us to consider um and the last thing um is I want to apologize to the board and to the staff who are here I've run this tape so many times in my head during tonight we had a very incredibly rude um completely unacceptable um testimony tonight and in hindsight I should have ex invited that gentleman to leave I appreciate our security who were all clearly ready to do something but also

4:01:32 following my lead which I really appreciated um but if should something like that happen again I will promptly invite somebody who uses that language and who attacks our staff in that way to leave so I apologize for uh not doing that I I was following my instinct and in hindsight I'm like I think I think that guy needed to go anyway um thank you all for giving me Grace and next time we won't allow that kind of behavior again that's all I have thank you you learn