EWEB Board of Commissioners — August 6, 2024

0:02 right I'm going to call to order the August 6 meeting of the Eugene Water and Electric Board I start with a quick uh safety briefing for those of us in the room uh thanks everybody for being here for tonight's board meeting eweb management and subject matter experts are present in the room and virtually and the meeting is live streamed and recorded um thankfully with these microphones we don't have to speak loudly anymore hopefully everybody in um who who are here tonight can hear us so all right please speak up if um if you have any trouble hearing us um public testimon testimony is welcome sign forms are available at the back of the room for those of you who are here tonight to provide testimony were scheduled to begin public input at 550 um but please

0:49 make sure and and sign up visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and the restrooms the restrooms are located on the first floor please exit through the interior door here in the back uh and a security officer will direct you to the restrooms in the event of an emergency please follow instructions given by staff and if evacuation is required please proceed to the nearest safe exit as identified by staff and evacuate away from the building to allow First Responders to access the building uh and with that we'll start with an agenda check any questions changes on the agenda nope hearing none I'm going to go to items from board members and general

1:39 managers I'd like to just like to comment on um the grounds I see a lot of properties that I know eweb owns but we don't use I think the ground main This Crew is doing outstanding job they're removing all the findes that are there illegally they're keeping a mow they're keeping the vegetation down and over the I don't think I've ever seen a better job of doing that so I just like to make sure that the staff um knows that that's that's uh noticed um number two um I had a recent incident not an incident but an inquiry from a a riverfront property owner that want it has a legal nonperforming use septic system 10 to 15 feet in the water very close to our close to our intake and he applied for grant money from arpa money that that there's two pots of gold and nothing in

2:24 our information says there's an income requirement so we applied and they said make too much money point is is that riverfront property is the most expensive property in the county you have to make money to afford it and if we want to incentivize people to replace these systems that are causing threats to the Integrity of our water system why aren't we funding and even if it's not the AR of money that has 80 ma citiz an 80% income requirement if you don't mind telling me that I mean you gave me a great good explanation saying it's not your rule it's the deq's rule but it makes no sense because um there there are a lot of people up there that I know have qualified and they've got very large assets but they just draw Social Security so they meet the income requirement and uh they get the grants

3:09 and uh other people that are being hon us trying to be proactive and move in this septic system away from the water that's down by Hendrick's Bridge which is close to ENT tape doesn't get funded so you know that's something that dear near to my heart and then the last thing on my inquiry about money that we spend it is part of the we li ing 50 Grand 250,000 bucks every five years for a game officer for the force service up on the upper river and uh I asked we know what they do the last time we checked we found out they were using the money for trail meance and they're supposed to be using it for fishing game enforcement because they do have the power to site so why don't we at least ask them to tell us if they've ever even issued the citation or if they're they're even patrolling because um say this but maybe

3:55 I don't trust what they're using on money for 4 million bucks if you could with me on that I appreciate it thank you others um just had a a good meeting with the City of Eugene leadership the last week and I think Frank will probably touch on on that in his report but Matt and myself and Frain and Sarah Mader the mayor and Council Groves had a meeting last week and I think it went very productive they're very happy with the the Liaisons between staffs and that went

4:41 thanks well my my big experiment is to to try out the mobile mic uh this evening so if you can't hear me I'll I'll have to switch Technologies but um I think we can probably move into correspondence unless you had something pres mcra good Commissioners there were two items um of Correspondence um the first one had to do with uh a preview of the annex um EB's Annex to the Lane County's natural hazards mitigation plan um our present joint plan with the city expires in early 2025 um this plan will have to be filed by Elaine County to the federal agencies it's part of of the requirement to receive uh reimbursement and Grant funds uh we did add um you'll you'll note in

5:27 the background memo we did add a few new uh hazards that we're mitigating for um such as um some additional pump stations on the water side just just for example and so if you had feedback or questions please get back to uh me on that um if you have specific questions or comments on that we'd be happy to um work with you on that or we can um discuss that during our check-ins um the second item of Correspondence had to do with our registration of the trail bridge um generating facility this is part of the Carmen project overall uh but the plan according to the license was to reduce the

6:12 capacity uh of uh the trail bridge generator itself from roughly 5 megawatts to one megawatt that was part of the original license agreement and thus we are in in essence registering that um so that bonab can lower our net requirement um or in sorry increase our net requirement according to to cover that particular reduction in capacity and so that was really an informational item for Commissioners and if you had further questions on that we'd be happy to answer those as well yeah I had a couple questions on the trail bridge one um so one deadline is October 2024 uh I know we've been having some issues with Staffing and

6:58 stuff like that is there any problem with us meeting that not to my knowledge no okay and then the second question on that is so we so we're going to tell BPA that we're taking Trail bridge offline basically as part of our our license settlement so Trail bridge is is rated at 10 megawatts will we but we're actually doing 3.3 megawatts on average out of there will we be eligible for the full 10 megawatts of the lower power rate or how does that that calculation work I will answer but you can got answer that better than I can the the amount of power on our exhibit a with Bonville is what matters not the name plate of the generator the amount

7:45 of power on that exhibit a is based on critical water you get super nerdy bear with me which is a one in 10 bad water year believe that's you said 3.3 megawatts that sounds correct so the 3.3 is the amount we would be eligible to replace okay thank you other comments on correspondence I just said one item I just want to acknowledge um the the natural Hazard mitigation plan Annex um one I think it's great that we're putting this underneath Lane County's plan I think that's a solid move and and as somebody who has worked on these plans before I just want to thank um the team Sarah and Rod and Janine worked on this it's it's a lot of work and what's

8:30 provided here is really solid thank you yep we'll pass that on and um if you have any comments or questions on either of these items just let me know appreciate it thanks else all right we're going to move on to public input then we're a little bit ahead of time if folks um show up please um make sure that we get them signed up I have nine people here in the room um who are prepared to provide testimony so uh I'm going to give a very quick quick um description here um just a welcome to the public input session for this meeting eweb is a public not for-profit organization whose Charter is to deliver drinking water and electricity to our community although this forum is not used for an open back

9:15 and forth dialogue Commissioners and staff value hearing diverse perspectives and receiving Community input speakers are asked to keep their testimony relevant to EB business and request that everyone share their com comments in a productive and respectful manner should speakers or audience members become disruptive they be muted or removed from the meeting at this time we have nine folks here in person when your name is called you'll have up to three minutes there's a clock here in the front of the room you'll have three minutes to provide your comments um and that's all I appreciate the uh the respectful um testimony this evening um so I'm going to with that I'll start the public input session now opening so we'll start with Charlie Leb

10:01 and that'll be followed by Joe Maul is it here I take ite thanks very good good evening everyone my name is Charlie lob I am a resident of board two uh I am uh here representing the Emerald Valley Electric Vehicle Association and as a longtime active member in that organization thanks to eweb for all the support you've given to uh the transition to electric vehicles over the years in rebates grants we received money from you due to education programs it is awesome that is why we've been somewhat Disturbed recently to find that eweb has a policy that's actually working against this uh goal we have as a community to run more cars off of electricity that is uh when folks are

10:47 installing a level two residential charger at home they are asked to contact eweb distribution engineering um and if according to the policy if it if that uh distrib engineering determines that this is going to place a significant enough load on the the local grid that upgrades to the neighborhood uh Services required then that person installing the level two charger can be liable for covering that cost there is some eweb grant money to offset it nonetheless it seems extremely unfair you know why Target just those people installing level two residential EV Chargers as opposed to anyone installing any other kind of 240 volt load why is it the last person who pushes the neighborhood over the threshold gets

11:32 built instead of the 10 people who may have installed level two Chargers ahead of them and you know this is becoming a point that at which uh you know we've heard of auto dealers uh talking to their customers and saying oh yeah if you want to install a level two charger be aware you may get a huge bill from eweb uh for the cost of doing that which then discourages EV adoption all together uh I sent a letter to to uh my word commissioner a few of us the rest of us also sent letters to our commissioners uh our president Phil Barnhart sent a letter to the general manager and all the Commissioners which I brought copies of here in case it uh didn't get well distributed Flor you didn't see it and we're really looking

12:19 for a response we haven't heard we started these contacts two or three months ago we haven't received any kind of word about how the commission or even if it's just a staff level issue that can be resolved at that level this is pretty minor compared to everything you deal with but it's really important to us and we intend to kind of keep pushing this we're going to be back uh asking about this till we get either some good answers about why this policy is in place or hopefully in our preference would be to see the policy changed so that we're not penalizing those folks who are installing level two electric vehicle chargers at their homes and with that I can I don't know where the best place is to hand out the I've got uh leave P copies I can just pass a few of them

13:05 down the here thank you so much great thank you Mr Lo and next is Joe Maul followed by Dan Patch good evening everyone for the record I'm Joe Maul I'm the executive director of the Mackenzie roof trust and I come before you today to thank you for EB's commit constant consistent investment in the health of river water community that depends on it I come before you also to encourage your the expansion of your vision to include the Middle Fork at Coast Forks of wam in line with the significant investment you were making in water resiliency with the Second Source wam river water plant that's moving closer to real on your agenda this evening as a

13:51 consideration of updates to your strategic plan including the expansion of the idea that customer owners to that instead of the larger community which I I lawed I know that as a board in utility subject to regulatory expectations um you must pay attention to what paying customers and members like me need and desire but at the same time I appreciate that for 20 years uh I've worked side by side in the field and around a lot of these tables with me U staff and their eyes are consistently on the larger Community getting your strategic plan language in line with that reality is an important thing something that is both reassuring and energizing in that same strategic plan discussion you'll consider a mental shift away from Watershed recovery to Watershed protection staff leadership again in the

14:37 aftermath of the holiday Farm fire has been exemplary not just in its creativity and success in securing financial and other resources or recovery but just in the day-to-day commitment that they have shown to tackling challenging problems and opportunities from Community recovery to landl conservation which you supported including both protection buffering the rivers from our influences and stewardship the long-term care of this place writing by committee is the worst thing ever uh but nonetheless I'll I'll suggest one change you might consider perhaps Watershed conservation rather than Watershed protection because again I think that better reflects the range of efforts that UF has supported and Lead LED for decades at least that

15:22 I've been here which brings me to the future of the coast fork and middle Forks of L which join just above the site where e will begin drawing water in the years ahead McAn River trust Coast Fork Watershed Council the Middle Fork L Watershed Council friends of Buford Park mpis Arbor the upper liit Soil and Water Conservation District Lam Lane Parks District Springfield Utility Board orgon Parks and Recreation Department Lan County there's a long list of Partners already invested and investing in the health of those two tributaries I encourage you to invest as deeply in these Partnerships as you have done it's going forward there are large gains to be made in water quality quity and Watershed Health there and over the years I know you've queried your rate payers about funding commitments even sear charges for Watershed protection

16:07 they have always responded we have always responded positively people see the value of investing in the source but more are truly believe they see the value of investing in the larger Community I know you're nervous about the overall rate increases needed for the utility that's fine and responsible to be thoughtful let's just continue to be smart about Watershed investment it's a high return investment for the rivers for for those of us whose Taps you supply and for the many people who will call these waterers sheds home for the next 100 Years thank you all thank you Mr mole Dan Patch followed by Jim

16:55 new I'd like to challenge you to start being more honest you want the public support you want rate increases you have a real problem with your image for decades you've done nothing but lie to us you've cheated us you've misled us you have contempt for us when we speak you act like somehow we don't have even right to even hear what you have to say you set this room up in such a way that you're talking to each other but we're on the wings we're not part of the process this process right here is ridiculous because there's no actual exchange you could just forget what we say the second we say it we have no voice and I think it's your responsibility to give us that voice we are supposed to be in control of this and we haven't been for decades your

17:42 secret contracts that cost us millions of dollars you won't disclose the details of them your constant rate increases to enrich yourselves with your employee benefits and you're not stopping construction with absolutely you never actually put a bid proposal together for us you're actually in bringing in so much money you can just put up buildings like this without even having to talk to talk to us about it we have no control of what you do and it's been that way for decades it's obvious that you have contempt for us we're in the way we're in the way of your greed and it's your responsibility to fix it and I think I speak for tens of thousands of eugenius that are frustrated and tired of this

18:27 circus that's been going on for days decades and they're just so pathetically tired of it they won't even show up here because we do it year after year and nothing ever changes this is the same conversation that I had over 15 years ago and you're still doing the same behavior enriching yourself ignoring us and building an empire and I think it's time to for it to stop it really is it's criminal it's thuggery intimidating people with penalties and fines as a borderline on fascism it's disgusting you have nothing but contempt for us when we ask you to speak up we're not part of this process because we're on the

19:16 wings do something it's your job otherwise don't take the job stop serving the administration serve the public thank you Mr patch next is Jim new followed by Peter smile here McCrae eweb Commissioners and staff thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Jim new I live March 7 Eugene airport airport submitted two applications in May to Oregon Department of energy for Community renewable energy program grant funding of community resilience projects eweb customer Solutions wrote letter of support for the ooe community renewable energy

20:02 program stating it would be a welcome invitation to the city of Eugene's energy resources we thank you 350 Eugene thanks you for that support the grants submitted by the airport staff are a $100,000 odoe Community renewable energy program planning grant for the development and design of eight dual electric vehicle Chargers and an associate solar energy array a $100,000 odoe community renewable energy program grant for a proposed renewable and resilient project to explore feasibility of pairing a photovoltaic power plant and battery storage with micro grid control and a digital management system the second Grant was in collaboration with 350 Eugene through with solar consultant reimagined power according to

20:48 airport director Katherine Stevens these two grants have been moved up in the ooe consideration process and a final decision is due in early September one of the top six themes City of Eugene sustainability manager Ian pen presented at the July 10th Council electrification work session was to ensure clean reliable and affordable energy such as Community solar and geothermal energy Network a photovoltaic system with battery storage and micro grid controls coupled with a digital energy management system would provide the Eugene Airport with clean backup power during a Cascadia subduction zone event or other major disaster we look forward to Odio 's decision on these grants and hope the airport in the City of Eugene can benefit from financial assistance of

21:34 State renewable energy funding we hope eweb will continue to be supportive of this renewable energy sourcing and project at the airport another note I support Mr L's testimony and also am an Eva member I also reached out to board members regarding the EV charger rebate possibly occurring more costs than the rebate provides and I got no response as well and I hope eweb addresses the EV charge of rebate cost thank you for your time you Mr new next is Peter dragich followed by Danny Nan good evening Commissioners my name is Peter dragovich I'm a rate payer and

22:20 a resident of w five I request you develop an effective Community solar program Community solar programs allow any rate payer owner renter or business to receive credit for solar energy from publicly or privately installed solar panels the rate payer does not need to install any panels and many cannot because of expense renter status inadequate orientation of a building shade or other reasons but everyone can participate in community solar your existing solar incentives would be enhanced by adding a community solar program and two important objectives would be achieved increased production of renewable energy and Improvement of e web's lowincome based assistance programs there are many examples in

23:07 Oregon and Across the Nation where utility sponsor Community solar brings 10% or more reductions in electricity bills for low-income rate payers asley Municipal electric utility offers a community solar program where low-income electric users can save $500 a year off their energy bill via a lottery system and there is the state authorized Community solar program that provides rate relief of 10.4% off electricity bills to all participating low-income households per state law that program is only offered by the large investor owned utilities but there's no reason why eweb cannot copy components from it and draw from examples Statewide and Nationwide to give great relief to low-income Eugene households while increasing carbon free generation the current

23:53 upgrade to 's Billing System may be an opportunity to facilitate Community solars and there is an important tie-in to the city of Eugene's decarbonization efforts where the need to reduce the cost of decarbonization on low-income households is currently being discussed a majority of electric utility rate payers in the state already have access to community solar programs that give rate relief to low-income rate payers let's have one here that would benefit everyone in our community and Beyond next is Danny Nunan followed by Micah

24:39 Anton uh president mccraine eweb Commissioners thank you for the opportunity to give comment my name is Danny Nunan I'm a climate and energy strategist with the local nonprofit breach Collective and I'm a renter and resident of Ward 7 in the whiter uh at July's meeting I gave public comment regarding a letter that was sent by 18 community organizations calling for expanded lowincome electrification subsidies more Progressive and Equitable rate design reforms and improve community outreach and engagement ahead of the rake design directional discussion that's on the agenda for this evening I wanted to come back and offer some brief comments arising out of those letters recommendations so regarding the uh rap design principle of sufficiency that was

25:24 discussed uh in the memo prepared for that discussion um I'd like comment that eweb should be cautious not to think or operate too much like an investor on utility when it comes to designing its rates Public public utilities are public for a reason and do not have identical legal and financial obligations to invest your own utilities for example profits or shareholder Dividends are not considerations for Public Utilities this alone should allow eweb to go further and be more creative in keeping customer rates lower than IUS are able to do ewe's climate guide book version 2.0 States in several places that keeping rates low is climate action and climate

26:11 action should be an imperative that eweb balances in determining what rates are necessary for operational sufficiency I also want to comment on the rate design principle of efficiency and the Memo's reference to rate and payment choices that support quote smart electrification this term does not appear to be defined in the memo or in the climate guide book uh but I did notice that eweb has at least in the recent past had a program that rewarded customers for installing off peak EV charging infrastructure uh as a similar smart electrification initiative Commissioners should direct staff to explore rate design options for incentivizing installation of efficient heat pump appliances converting from Electric resistance to heat pump based heating with lower bills and free up space on

26:57 the grid for electrifying gas homes and transportation Utilities in other parts of the country are adopting special rates to encourage heat pump adoption and eweb should explore how such initiatives could be adapted to our Region's Peak load Dynamics lastly regarding the rate design principle of equity aweb should look to other Public Utilities in the region and adjust its fixed charges so that they do not fall as heavily on residential customers and small businesses specifically e should look at creating income-based fix charges for residential customers electrification of gas heated homes can also play a complimentary role here by growing EB's residential rate base helping keep fixed charges for that class loow look forward to continuing to engage in this

27:42 process thank you Mr n and next is Micah Anon followed by Molly B Commissioners and general manager last my name is Micah I live in ward 3 I'm a community organizer and an artist as a young person living off a low income and living in rental housing I've been struggling with the rising cost of living here in Eugene I'm here to ask you to support low-income folks such as Myself by implementing a progressive rate design and a percentage of income payment plan these changes will help ensure that our community can afford to meet our energy needs and invest in a clean energy transition a progressive rate design could minimize residents

28:28 current energy costs and make efficiency improvements more affordable raising commercial and Industrial costs could support the lower rates for residential homes while ensuring the largest energy users pay their fair share and encouraging Energy Efficiency here in Eugene residential homes and small businesses pay a proportionately larger share of based service charges than in other areas with publicly utilities such as Seattle adopting a public adopting a percent of in payment program would reduce this energy burden on our community percentage of income payment plans are in place in 10 states and have been shown to be effective in addressing issues surrounding affordability a percentage of income payment plan would more reliably support

29:13 low income households than 's current bill assistance program in addition to a progressive rid design and a percentage of income payment plan EB should invest in programs to support weatherization and heat retrofit in order to ensure the long-term Health efficiency and affordability these changes could help low-income households and renters like myself meet our financial needs while investing in a more healthy I've got a little time so I'll add that especially it's like one of the youngest people in this room by a large margin um expecting to experience the worsening effects of climate change throughout my lifetime and the um yeah changes that people have mentioned surrounding climate change and Environmental Protection are super

29:58 important to me yeah the comments around Community solar I think Community solar would be like a yeah really positive and impactful change for a community um yeah mostly here to talk about U yeah adopting a progressive great design and a percentage of inment plan thank you thank you Micah next is Molly Babcock followed by Alan gorano my Commissioners my name is Molly Babcock and I'm grateful for the opportunity to provide testimony before intering with eweb Communications Department I worked in leasing at one of the largest and cheapest student housing complexes in Eugene my position focused

30:43 on leasing to firsttime renters many of whom could not afford to live in dorms or luxury options closer to campus these 17 18 and 19-year-olds are signing leas for their very first time many of them unsure of what they're getting into St strikingly around half of Eugene is youo students in addition to leasing I solved hundreds of Resident issues one of our most common complaints were electricity costs costs that would change drastically from month to month regularly exceeded student budgets and for students to choose between tuition food and electricity even though I worked for the apartment complex there was nothing I could tell them and this is just students who don't worry about debt children caretaking for relatives or any of the adult challenges that are are exacerbated by high and

31:29 unpredictable energy costs around 25% of us households experience energy burden meaning they P 6% or more of their income on energy bills every month as family budgets get tighter utilities must act to protect the quality of life of their residents by establishing race systems that work for Resident budgets I strongly urge EB to establish Progressive rate design and to ensure large Commercial Energy users pay their fair share and replace insufficient bill assistance programs with percentage of income I appreciate the opportunity

32:15 Gazo again probably your least your favorite least favorite commentator anyway um last month when I came and spoke you know I used a few words that word how sure picked out of what I said in the comments afterwards I was not calling anybody fear a Nazi like a stop anything like that I was saying that looking at efficiency alone leads us down that road to dictatorship why and instead of just picking on my words ask yourselves why are so many people in this community using that those words right now you know every time I talk to people about

33:00 these smart meters being forced on us that's the response I get from people it's like oh my God gapo tactics extortionists all sorts of things it's like ask yourselves why it's not just that we're crazy and we like to throw these words around look at what your effect is on the community here and it's taking our money rates being raised up so we can pay for these projects that we don't want that's crazy that's ridiculous it's painful for us I'm very low income it's summertime I don't use air conditioning I can't afford my bill right now even there's all these little padded charges added on to it you know

33:46 service charge electricity delivery charge this and that and the other thing it's like if I use no electricity I still can't afford the bill with all those padded charges so many people in our community in that same state and I'm also in a lot of pain today because this morning one of my friends who was taking people up on power to hang gliders not too I'm not sure exactly when it happened but he had a person with him went down to the river came up hit a power Lan they didn't see and his person that was with him drowned he almost drowned today he was sent sented to a year in prison over that I'm hoping

34:31 that our money goes towards putting those orange balls on all of your power lines to cross rivers I don't know if it was a e web line or some other power company's line but it's really important because people do use the airspace above Rivers they they do these things and my friend that's going to prison is a very beloved person in this community very beloved and it's it's absolutely painful to see this happening so please you're using our money use it on things that we really want that really benefit us not things that many of us feel are going to be harmful for our health and wellbeing thank you thank you

35:19 mran all right I will close the public input period and give commissioner's opportunity to comment if choose s I guess um well thank you everybody for coming out and testifying tonight um I have a question I know staff will address this but I do have a question about the EV um uh what's going on with the Chargers so um I guess I know that this letter went out and maybe I missed it or something but yeah I do have a question about that especially as somebody who um benefits from one of these EV Chargers in my home I think that it is um kind of it's um makes having an e really

36:06 workable to have your own charger at home so anyway I do have questions about that and then um the other thing is for the people who come and testified tonight about rate design um stick around hopefully for the rest of the the later in the meeting but um I appreciate your input for sure about that and um I doo have concerns about um energy burdens for people and also um efficiency and climate change thanks others just really quick I I really appreciate the thought comments this evening and um I also agree that there's I'm very concerned about folks

36:52 who experience um energy burden and and even with that I know that we have some of the lowest rates in the country and we also haven't raised rates much in five years well we had a what six out of the last 10 years we didn't raise rates we actually lowered rates so and even with that I know that this is something that is you know with the costs everything is going up so it's always something that we have to be mindful of when we're protecting the the rates and uh for people because it's it's what we're here to do that's why we're at public uh utility so I just really appreciate the comments and um I apologize for having not gotten back on the the EV charger

37:37 one I fully agree too that needs to be part of the conversation um didn't feel like that answers that I got really warranted um more so it's it's part of what we need to do is to discuss it more and that's what we're I think doing tonight and in the next few months um on these rate design conversations because I F agree the last person on the line shouldn't be the one that's fully burdened with the with that charge it's just it doesn't make sense so that doesn't mean it's not it's an easy fix um but I I do agree so anyway thank you very much thank you um thanks for coming out people um Joe thank you for your partnership with eweb over the years uh

38:25 the trust has been very influential in helping protect our our Watershed and I think the partnership is is very valuable and I hope we can continue on and I I agree with trying to do as much as we can on the coast in the Middle Fork as well um you know we can only go we can only spread so thin you know how you know how that goes there's there's a lot of of miles of of river that needs protecting and and we'll do our best to do what can um as far as rate design goes you know we're going to have that conversation tonight and over the next several months it's a very complex discussion um and there's lots

39:10 of people that are weighing in on it um you know we got a list of questions that are being put for us as policy makers and I looked at them and I thought these are very complex issues you know um one of for example tonight you get we heard testimony about people saying that large corporate users or large large users should should pay their fair share well what is fair share that's one of the questions that we're going to have to be to answer or help help direct but you know yes large energy users should pay their fair share but how do we Define fair share these are these are

39:56 complicated questions and and we I I like the input that we're getting from the community on this and I it's going to be a tough conversation going forward because there's so many different uh Community needs and and values that that will play into this so I'm looking forward to the a robust conversation over the next few months as far as whittling those questions down um tonight is just the first whack at it because I looked at those questions and I had every one of those questions made me ask three questions and so I think it's going to be a a long and uh fruitful um conversation but

40:41 thank you for coming and giving us input out there Brown thank you all for coming out I have a one comment about mik thank you very much for coming out I have grandchildren probably that your age and thank you and I know you've got a challenging future but I also encourage you I appreciate you coming out telling us because we we can't control all of it but I also encourage you to go to state level too because right now you know in eastern Oregon we have these Big Data Centers Ai and everybody else is sucking the life out of all the cheap tier one power they're getting it for three and four cents you know and we're paying nine and 10 and they're subsidizing in it you your elected officials are Subs look what did Intel Happ we gave them billions of dollars of Grant they land off 15,000 people so this isn't a conversation just for us for everybody

41:27 because we buy our power from those sources where they're giving away all these big you know Microsoft and Amazon everybody has their data centers in eastern Oregon they're using all that cheap renewable Hydro power and we're going to run out of power in 2027 we're gonna have to figure out we're G have to buy and so costs are going up it's a big Challenge and everybody wants something we have to choose pick and choose what we can do so applaud your efforts but keep them up keep them on a macro not just a micro we'll do what we can we listening to you but also reach out to people that are making bigger decisions and making subsidies to what I don't personally believe in give those big outstate corporations all these grants and all the cheap power so thank you very much for coming out

42:12 testim thanks yeah so um appreciate the comments we heard tonight um I'd like to offer a couple of pieces of information that I think might be useful to those who testified in particular uh um some of the ones around the the EV and the the EV program and the letter I think the timing is good for us uh we are taking a look at at how we approach uh our EV program uh whether that be simple incentives or whether we look at uh what kind of infrastructure we need to support to be able to facilitate EV adoption um we um Commissioners I uh had planned on meeting with staff over the

42:57 next several weeks uh and providing an update to the board and and the public since it's a public forum in October um if if that works um there are a number of of issues around the infrastructure question I think that came up um for a number of years it it hasn't been just EVS but eweb has um impose the liability of adding load to the system on whoever adds load to the system and so there is a liability I don't you remember if the the program let us know before you grow um that was that was had to do with the influx of of marijuana grow operations which were blowing Transformers and other things so this wasn't necessarily

43:43 unique to the EV uh question um but it came up it comes up now because uh customers are asking for an incentive a rebate of which part of that process is to evaluate and let you know that um um take a look at the system ask distribution engineering what the status is of the system around you it hasn't limited the actual payout of the incentive um though um and so all of those kind of wrapped together is what we're taking a look at and whether there um is alternate or different uses potentially of the clean fuels credits that that we use to um help Finance the EV rebate program and so there'll be

44:30 more to come on that over the next um several weeks and I'll come back to the board with kind of where we are and what direction we're planning to take with that when you when you come back to the board I'd like to know um if you have the information you know how many people have gotten bills of this nature last couple of years if that's available and so we kind of get a sense of how big and then um if there are are areas in town like how big is that is that problem are there areas in town where we know that it's particular challenge or like you know most of it is okay but there's a few areas where it's more energy constraint or capacity constra yeah we we'll have um both of

45:15 those pieces of information I do know that we we have already looked at how often it occurs does not occur very often um but that doesn't mean that someone who is trying to push a different technology might not leverage that to push the technology they want in particular dealer could say well this you know this happen so um but it happens rarely um um that that that sort of alternate um accompany and investment would be required but we'll we'll have the data on that the other thing that um we're doing is analyzing um where in Eugene down to the address um EVS are being um um purchased based on DMV records so we

46:00 can actually tell where the hotspots are in hotpots is probably not the best way to describe it but um where those are being adopted in Eugene and so we'll have a much more granularity um part of the rate design discussion will one of the questions that we teed up at what point does the individual pay versus at what point does um the organization which is the collective rate base your neighbors uh us in a community in total pay for so that'll um that will help inform certain programs like this so um I would offer just as a timing we'll be looking at this over the next several weeks and planning to come back to the board and the public in October uh with where we are today and where we would

46:45 like to take the program going forward um the other one that's that's relevant and it has more to do with things such as Community solar and the 16 strategies that the City of Eugene put forward um later this month we're having a sort of a management climate Summit with the City of Eugene um so with with Ian in the city um Kelly hail on our staff and then um management within the City of Eugene and eweb to talk about um those strategies our climate action plan where they're at and what potential opportunities we might have um to work together on certain things or where we don't want to overlap um or where we do want to collaborate so um that'll be

47:32 that'll be coming up uh we have that meeting later this month um and that'll that'll take a look at some of the issues the rest of the things I heard have a lot to do with some of the real basic questions around rate design and some of those are teed up um I will I will say that the discussion just so people here who made comments on it the discussion today is really to explore the boundaries and the impacts and the situations and the scenarios around rid design it it's not to actually position anything today um there are a lot of things that the Board needs to discuss with each other and just kick around the tradeoffs that can happen when you start to to make changes and adjustments to the thing that is probably most visible

48:18 to every customer and that's the rates that they're paying and so the discussion today is really around uh exploration checking the boundaries understanding where trade-offs might exist and what challenges might might exist so that we can listen and understand what types of information we might want to bring back to the board you know our rate design plan um first draft in October um so and that that'll start to lay out the sequence of things that we we want to do over the next probably three to five years so I'll just preface that with we're not coming out of the meeting the discussion later with a oh here's where we're going with rate design that's what

49:04 we we also don't want to provide judgment as as to oh well commissioner McCrae believes this that's not necessarily the the intent either it's to push each other and check check the boundaries and talk about the wha ifs and the and the trade-offs between them so want to add one last thing and the the the gentleman left who gave the testimony about um um many things he was unhappy with and one thing that he talked about was the way that we're sitting and I guess I feel a little bit like I want to explain that because I pushed really hard for us to have a configuration that's somewhat like this because when we were in our old space um we used to all sit kind of in a line and

49:49 we would address the public and that felt to me a little bit like we were royalty or something above everybody addressing the commoners and that felt really weird and also um public testimony is really important and also so is a lot of other stuff that goes on in this meeting and a lot of it is back and forth or things that happen amongst us Commissioners and it just feels so much better to be able to see each other when we're having a conversation versus discussing things and we're kind of all in the line so anyway I just wanted to state that because I feel like this is kind of like a win for us that we can actually see other all right with that I'm going to move on to um board action items starting with

50:35 consent calendar a calendar a moved by Brown second second by Carls um all in support of aop consent calendar a say I I pass unanimously consent calendar B calendar B moved by Brown and second by Carlson any discussion n in support of adopting consent calendar b um thank you that was quick two general business items uh City of Eugene leison

51:21 update president McCrae you're the president why don't you start all right uh well barovsky started us off um during comments earlier uh we so John Browski and Frank and myself sat down with the city manager and the mayor and um and counselor Groves was it was that I think it was it right yeah um just to discuss areas of M mutual interest especially policy related we had kind of a wide ranging conversation um I mean there a whole bunch of takeaways and I don't want to spend too long rambling on all of them but I would just say the biggest ones from my perspective were um around our water systems and where we're looking at the secondary water source and upgrades to our water storage and then the other

52:08 area of primary conversation was around our our climate respective climate programs um electrification impacts there um efficiency incentives and the like that the city is is considering and with that I put to either of you to add anything items of note that you want to share John um yeah the only other thing I would put on there we we I did uh mention the work that we did on on our fire and emergency planning uh you know that we've done because the South Hills is an area of of concern for our fire mitigation so we got a memo that we that were for that forwarded off on what was presented to us last last month by Janine you know all the stuff

52:54 that we're doing as far as trying to to minimalize our risks of fires in our Urban interface so they were happy to hear about that um but yeah no I think it was a it was a productive meeting one of the uh commissioner uh grov said that he he felt it was one of the more productive meetings that he has as a city counselor um with he looks forward to that more than any of the other ones that he has I shouldn't say that I guess I'm sure he has many that are they're very important but he he felt that it was a very valuable meeting and he's going to be phasing out of leadership and he uh regrets not being able to be in those meetings going forward so I

53:40 thought that was a positive takeaway yeah commissioner the only thing I would I would add the city shared their 2023 update of their climate action plan um with us um it um uh we we've also just been in contact at a staff level as I mentioned we're going to meet with the city to talk further about o overlap and opportunities and gaps in in what uh each organization is doing so they they shared that we also discussed a little bit about some of the economic pressures that um we are feeling as a utility um which has some uniqueness uh from the city we also know that the city is has some Financial

54:25 challenges and and our is really being D driven by the the significant Investments that we see in front of us for for different reasons but both on the water side and the electric side over the next five to 10 years just this uh the the level of investment needed to uh continue to deliver our services um drinking water and electricity being a significant driver at a time when the inflationary factors associated with uh construction and heavy equipment uh that we tend to deal with is is not a an opportune time to to be in that situation so um we both um shared our

55:10 situations there and and um as well as as looking at some of the climate activities and Welfare mitigation which is the other big topic you talked about the the thought that they wanted to put more on our bill and just wanted to yeah find out if there's any updates there because I want to make sure that it's very clear that I'm not supportive of it unless it's absolutely 100% like they're going to divorce it on us and also be like if they're gonna have to go out and find another service for it um that's inefficient and and also we need to be able to have some kind of mitigation for those who can't pay it

55:55 and I'm guessing if people can't pay the other portion of the bill on the storm water side that that that doesn't matter like it's all then then it gets shut off they get the notice so um you if there's no mechanism for being able to put that aside or protecting the low rate payers the the lower income rate payers that's concern so anyway I'm was just curious if there was discussion on that we touched on it briefly but we didn't go into the level of detail that we had a couple months ago when the city manager was here going want to use your green button when you talk to turn on your microphone as well I think some of the people at back were having problems

56:45 thanks yeah Frank please yeah so um commissioner Carlson the topic did come up um the city um has two pieces of this obviously one is is sort of mandated on eweb related to storm water uh and Wastewater fees um the other one which would be a a fire fee specifically an addition to what we are actually required to do under under City Charter um that is one that they I believe they're investigating the costs of different alternatives to that and so um as a community we won't know until they know okay here's option A here's option b eweb what would be the costs and charges we we do charge them for the billing at cost that we do today but it

57:32 overall would that benefit the community um how would the details work relative to um partial payments that you know those are details that would have to be worked out John want quote the idea in plant the seed about Regional water suppli having been through when ewb went through providing Bonita with water uh knowing that Cottage Grove presswell Junction City cobber and all the out big challenges with water supplies look at the cost put a cost for covert and pral and things knowing that that's that's not going to be something that we're going to be if we're reactive or proactive but if we have that discussion amongst us and also through the city because it'll be an integral part of that because we have tons of surplus

58:18 water it's a fixed base come on you wonder why on the water rate charts why Medford is way way down there and then we're the second most because Medford of regional water supplier we have a commodity that's lifegiving that we have Surplus on Surplus water Vice what is it if we pull our full water right out of Kenzie is no more than three or four% of flow but and we're going to have a second water source and we already have the infrastructure going south and if Junction City needs it or Co cobor needs it are we going to be able to do that we haven't had that discussion but I think maybe if we plant that seed with the city or if this group wants to have that discussion I think maybe we should think about that because that's five depend you know Way Beyond my tenure I think it's it's something that that uh these smaller Communities aren going to have

59:04 to think about where they get the water the ground water's going down so just plan that for WEA on for conversations John Frank yeah commissioner Brown I think that's that's a really important note on really two fronts um one is we have been approached by some other communities or um have other commun ities have expressed some interest in having discussions with eweb about those types of things um and so it's uh a relevant topic um the other piece of that is I think that's a a very relevant topic when we launch into our new strategic planning which um um I won't get too far ahead here um but one

59:49 of the things that I I feel like the existing plan's getting a little long in the tooth and it's an opportunity for Commissioners to to take a step back and really look at some of these issues uh with a fresh set of eyes and um that would be part of looking at what our role and what our business model looks like on the water side so uh do we actively pursue that would be part of the strategy thanks others all right um on to our next agenda item which is rate design directional discussion than and nobody's interested in rate design I don't know about that

1:01:08 ready please yeah president McCrae um Commissioners uh for the record I'm Frank Lawson and joining me uh as part of this discussion uh Deborah Hart assistant general manager and Chief Financial Officer and Adam rou who is our rates manager um and has also been a rates manager for an IOU as well as well so he has some background in in both um this was a disclaimer I was talking a little bit about earlier um I wanted to just recognize that this is really a Roundtable discussion uh for Commissioners to um have an interactive exploration of the concepts and philosophies that come into play uh with rid design it's not specifically around the principles um including we we had public comment around the principles I

1:01:54 expect those to evolve um pretty significantly over the next number of months and and years U but this is an opportunity to tee up some questions that really highlight some of the tradeoffs and considerations associated with rate design and have Commissioners talk about their their various perspectives and questions associated with those we're we're hoping that this is not a grill staff moment for Commissioners although we can provide some insight as to where we are and how things get developed what other utilities might be doing um but we want to have uh give Commissioners the opportunity to explore the boundaries of a really important touch point with with

1:02:39 customers our next plan would be to come back in October um with kind of a path proposal uh this would be kind of what different elements of rate design we could see evolving over the next number of years as we put together some of the other tools in including a customer system and a financial system which we'll be launching in in December and then ultimately get to uh a rate proposal and recommended implementation plan uh before the end of the year this is consistent with our organizational goal um which also talks about our cost of service analysis and some of the other aspects of of rate design um but this is really an opportunity to kind of zerob base and look at this from a

1:03:25 holistic perspective and from a commissioner and um a customer perspective again this was the the principles they were listed in the background memo they they're more historical base there is is um some basis to those um some of these um have been developed some of them are intentions some of them are are um um things that we have have worked to implement um over the years um but also feel they a little bit stale and need some refreshing and in order to do that we're going to have to understand some of the trade-offs and impacts of a rate design itself and the rates that customers pay and why after tonight again we'll come back in October um and we're here really to

1:04:13 facilitate U this discussion uh and um ultimately developing a path forward and then also an implementation plan um which uh as I mentioned earlier May take a number of years to phase in depending on which elements of rate design that we're looking at and how we want to make sure that our costs are equitably distributed or distributed with a particular purpose and that that might be U part of the discussion that the board has we've teed up a number of different areas of questions um and I I will lean in a bit president McCrae to you to how you want to actually manage the discussions around some of these these

1:04:58 different areas um I categorize these um as opposed to just listing 20 questions for the Commissioners to to pick and choose although there's really no particular order uh there's a lot of things that interact um relative to uh who pays for what investments um we are by Statute uh cost based um in Aggregate and so but that does not mean that if you look at any particular element or any particular price that is in itself cost based there are are and they exist today there are cross subsidies that occur um even within um usage patterns and I'll give you an example of that and then I'm going to turn it back to you

1:05:43 president McCrae to pick and choose whichever ones you think create the most Lively conversation um but I'll give you an example not all of our fixed costs are captured in the variable portion of the rate on the electric side there is a fixed charge little it's in the low 20s um that does not cover the fixed charges or the fixed costs that eweb experiences U some of the fixed costs are actually captured in the delivery charge and the energy charge which are based on a kilowatt hour consumption if you use a low amount of of kilowatt hours you are not paying for your full portion of the fixed costs that eweb has if someone is consuming a

1:06:29 larger amount of kilowatt hours you are actually subsidizing those who use very little kilowatt hours that's that's an that's in existence today um now that's that's something that um through the years that keeps the the fixed charge low but there are other utilities uh locally which have uh fixed charges two and a half times ewbs and so um part of the discussion around rate design is how do you handle fixed versus variable charges that's a very specific thing these are and I just used that to point out that while we're cost based in aggregate there are um a number of

1:07:16 different questions around rate design that uh would be good to to understand the the commission's perspective on and those many of those have been laid out here um we will see how far you get um there are a number and hopefully you have some interactive discussions on these uh and we would be happy to answer any particular questions that you might have around um data or Asis conditions or what other utilities might do um some of those we may just have to go research if if needed um but um we're here basically to help facilitate and have you discuss some of these issues all right we'll see what we can do um I I would propose just because you

1:08:03 left us with the fixed cost versus variable cost that thank you um propose that we start there just because that's where we've just been discussing um one question is that all right with everybody go there um one the questions I have is can you remind us of the tradeoffs of increasing the fix fixed cost versus decreasing that F fix cost relatively like my understanding is that increasing the fix fix cost overall disincentivizes uh conservation right that if people have a high fixed cost then the amount they use matters Less in terms of their overall Bill and so it may not be as conducive to incentivizing conservation is that accurate and then what's you know on the other side of the

1:08:48 end um you know what are the trade-offs if we have very low fixed costs well I think the trade-offs come in is depending on whether you're a low-end user or a high-end user um you know the what what we found with conservation was um it's such an after Thea it's it's not doesn't tend to be a real-time interactive issue um and so while we used to have tiered rates and um um when we looked into it further it wasn't necessarily a driver of um of conservation or Energy Efficiency at at the at the levels we were talking about in fact it was almost a disincentive for people who were wanting to convert from

1:09:34 a natural gas system to uh a heat pump that they were pushed into another tier and it became a disincentive for them to um to make that choice um there is also a bit of a misunderstanding that low consumption means low income um we uh other utilities Tacoma for example eweb we've we've looked at participation in our customer care programs and consumption is very much consistent um kind of across the board so it the the distribution of consumption is pretty similar independent of income level we have in in fact some lowincome people live together they have high bills um

1:10:20 and so uh in in Aggregate and and so um that's not necess necessarily A trade-off either um there's also um if if you're going to make a choice so uh if you're going to make a choice that results in lower consumption on your part so what that essentially does is push your pushes your fixed cost onto your neighbors and so um that's been one of the challenges uh and I see Jim in the back of the room who's who's advocated for some of the issues to um related to solar and building up solar credits in the summer paying the paying your bill off in the winter and why do we have this monthly true up um some of it is because when you lower your

1:11:06 consumption what you're doing is your fixed costs are shifted to somebody else and when that happens basically your neighbors are paying for your system and um rate design is actually a barrier to that so it it kind of comes back to some of these other questions I I don't know that I would encourage commissioner to just talk F fixed versus variable I think some of the issues around who pays um is part of this behavioral versus actual cost I think those are probably more relevant discussions this is just that's was just an example yeah okay just a clarifying question so our fixed rates around 20 Lane electric is

1:11:52 42 latcher Lanes like 50 I don't know what sub is but they're rural they don't have generation conceptually I would think that ours should be much much higher than theirs because we have generation in all of those things so and I know it's been a conscious decision of ours to keep our fixed rate low because when we tried to raise it we had quite a bit of push back back when we had tiered rates and things such as that but um you have you done any research on why I mean i' they've raised their fixed rates all of utilities have every year and like you said they're two and a half times ours um can you try and rationalize why that is I think it's philosophical I their cost would their fixed cost would

1:12:39 likely in some ways be higher U because of the line miles per customer so they're more spread out um our generation costs tend to be um there's a certain fixed amount in that but I think those are amortized tend to be amortized over kilowatt hours and so those those really become energy charges as opposed to fixed costs so that itself wouldn't drive that difference but I think they they may but I think also philosophically we have chosen not to do that um and I think in the long term when we look at um how we want to distribute costs um relative to customer choices um that will be be one of the areas that we we have to look look at

1:13:25 that'll be driven by some of these other questions it's not so much the in question I think that's a result of some of these other questions it's not the the C you know where we would start but I don't think it's necessarily because um we have a lower fixed cost or we have a higher fixed cost because of generation that's V I know that you want some answers from us but I have three questions for you actually um I guess so my first question is what is most typical so there's a lot of different utilities do a lot of different things so what is the most typical um I would say in this region second one is uh in places that

1:14:11 communities that are considered more Progressive or more in line with say our values what is their rate design and how is that received by the community there and then thirdly like we're supposed to answer these individual questions but like how how do we design what is the best way to design a rate that encourages conservation doesn't hurt renters who have no choice and kind of Energy Efficiency and also influences everyone to invest in Energy Efficiency including landforms you know that's a tall order and maybe we can type it into some generative AI thing it'll come up with an answer but for me

1:14:56 like if you were to optimize that what's the best I'll start and Adam as well Deborah um first of all if you ask AI it would be one of these data Farms that would be consuming a lot of energy and I don't know if you want to go there um they I I think there's a couple of so we we do live in a region if you look at the West Coast where there are very ex there are extreme views of raid design and I'll give you two examples that I know you're very familiar with on one side you have SMUD Sacramento Municipal utility district and you um were aware of some of their programs I use the term I here in this very first

1:15:41 question of socialize for a reason um they have very high rates and they socialize a lot of things across their customer base so they they rate base a lot of they they have very robust significant programs that they then distribute across their their utility um they also have rates designed to facilitate certain behavior um for example their on Peak versus off peak rate is significantly different it's probably not driven by cost today it is driven by the direction they see future cost going on the other hand there's SMUD and then there's sub and sub you see very much the the approach that our approach

1:16:26 to limited income our approach to to anything related to costs and rates is to keep all our rates low and be as the simple and most economically as as as we can now there's a number of different Utilities in between Seattle is much different than than uh Tacoma in in some ways um also there's Snohomish which is large utility up there there's also some IUS and and so um there are a lot of different programs I think that's why some of these questions are important for us because right now there's a pretty wide book end and um none of the things that we talk about are free it's

1:17:11 a matter of who's paying the bill um and we're we're seeing um that it's really important depending on where you want to go as an organization how you design the the rates that that answer that question so kind of answered your question but it's it's a very it's a pretty broad spectrum um and you see a lot of different examples of it yeah the only thing I'd add I guess to the um what what would be kind of one uh starting point for what's the ideal solution I guess from my perspective would be um from like that purely rates analyst approach we look at just aligning our our prices that we charge

1:17:56 customers to our costs and we could get very in the weeds and say like okay this is like our capacity costs we're we have capacity in these specific hours we're build on bonil transmission once a month on you know on bonab Bill's Transmission system Peak and we design our distribution system on one basis it's going to be you know different design criteria so each one of those is going to like pick different hours and we so we could have the most like in the weeds customer specific our specific that would be kind of like the most optimal because then everyone's going to do things that aren't impacting anyone else and they're getting those you know ideal price signals for solar and conservation and stuff but at some point we just have to do something that's manageable and like average all of those some way so that's kind of where the tradeoffs and the values strategy weighs in so I guess

1:18:43 it's kind of like what do we average and to fit those into reasonable buckets and commissioner I I would I would add that you know we share a lot of the things that you hear whether it's uh Danny or Jim or Micah or whoever we share a lot of those those issues and concerns um but the example he points out is one and I I would say there's not consensus within staff on a lot of these issues either the these are these are complex and I'll give you the one number five driving behavior present versus future costs if you just look at what what Adam mentioned about capacity right now if we were to charge a different level of capacity versus a peak and off peak capacity charge it's

1:19:30 not significant enough in a difference today to drive Behavior but we look at the future and Brian boo is going to tell us capacity in the future is going to be worth a different amount than it is today and if we're setting ourselves up we're going to look at this and say future capacity is going to be worth something and we want to drive the behavior that helps all of us as a community to maximize the resources that we have that's the difference between what Adam just said which we appreciate the analyst driving into the detail today saying This is what we want which is true but it's a conscious choice to then say this is where we think it's going and that may be a future cost driving behavior

1:20:16 approach versus a where we are today cost but you supporting what Adam said is we do have to understand in detail where we are today which is the purpose for refining our cost of service analysis and some of the things that that Adam is working on and I I want to say I strongly support that rate should be geared to drive the behavior that we want to see in the future because I think the behavior we want to see is to use less energy use less electricity and no matter what happens in the future it's always going to be beneficial for us to use less electricity and I think it takes a while to build habits and people and so even though we might not need to do it right now I think it's thank you for answering our first

1:21:03 question here we we got an answer I I think it's also the future the the future from a cost perspective is not just dollars but if you start to look at things like cost of carbon there's um I know there was a question in the testimony about what's smart electrification smart electrification is also using less electricity which is the most carbon pre resource of all but using it at a time when the most most carbon free resources are available so there's the combination of those two and driving behavior takes a

1:21:48 while so I agree with Mindy about time of use and some of you I don't know well participated but long time ago EB gave us us feers to put in our houses and we get to use behavior modification to see if we could adjust our our living patterns I guess Isa better term on using less electricity and it's not that hard to do you you just program things to come on at night and and do that and and you can actually save save money and but you're right the financial incentive right now I did it I went a big bet with commissioner matal about who would win and I did but uh that's s aside but behavior modification through cheer rate not you know to time of use I think is very important because it's not only going to be the cost it's going to be the availability and if if you know if

1:22:33 it cost it you know 10 times more than it does now if we don't have it we're gonna have the brown outs and so I'm all all for that and um um also if there's a way that we can incentivize the big heavy users to cut down during peak times um and you know give them a fixed rate because I know we have contracts with some of the big users now on and then they'll power down I think we had they did it voluntarily last summer but to do that as well um should be there and then um I'd like to I don't know how we would do the income uh base I know that's not up there right now but at some point here I want to see because that's so complex that I I'd really have to understand that better how would we the verification who would do the verification and such as that can we

1:23:20 come back to income demise um um but I I also so what you said commissioner Brown is something that I would like to kind of get the the broad perspective from the group you said incentivizing behavior and I just want to throw something out let's say that even a large user use the large user example a large user um changes a pattern of their consumption that is beneficial and so there is some kind of an economic and or climate and or both benefit to that who should get that benefit should that because of their behavior should that go to incentivize their behavior because

1:24:05 there's a benefit to all of us or should some or all of that so it should it go to the person or the organization making that decision or should some of that be shared amongst our community at large and to what degree because not everybody has the same opportunity to shed load and and I we we'll come back to the to the question around income but it relates to other customers as well but should the participant gain the gain the uh the incentive or the benefit or should part of that be shared with the community well I think participant should be because there's a big user that's one of our top 10 within you know quarter mile here right now if

1:24:51 they change their hours of operation and shut down at four o'clock in the afternoon so they weren't sucking to much electricity out of the system during Peak that would make a lot more affordable electricity available for everybody so everybody's benefiting indirectly in my opinion but it may cost them extra to do that to shift their hours of operation so they don't do that same thing with like you know firing up the University of or you know or Lane County Courthouse or anything else just changed hours of operation just in government alone and you know shut those buildings down earlier or and doing things like that but if it costs them more I I think to me the entire consumer benefits because it makes more affordable electricity available to us rather than the expensive renewable stuff during

1:25:36 Peak how do how do you answer the question that someone goes well you're getting you're EB's you know rewarding you for that behavior but I I can't do that because I don't have that same opportunity um your response it sounds like is that there is a benefit there's an efficiency benefit gained from that that keeps generally keeps rates low and that's the ancillary benefit to you I'm using you as the example that argument but I to me the the individual consumer H have that opportunity not on the same scale but time of use if it's if it's good for one

1:26:22 it's good for all and if you're telling me that you're you're going to charge me 10 cents a kilowatt to use power non dur during non- peak times you're can charge me 20 cents during Peak I know what I'm going to do I'm G put timers on everything and I'm gonna you know turn off my hot water heater at certain times and you know run dishwasher at Mid di things you know things such as that behavior modifications same thing with the big the big users and everybody will benefit from it just directly from a rate but also availability because if we all don't change our Behavior you guys are going to have to go out and buy very very expensive power and that's going to cost us all because the rates are going to go go up old so I've heard two votes for for rates that drive behavior um right and

1:27:10 then specifically around thinking about future impacts and future costs which is one of the questions here I guess I would just add my vote for that that I think we can and should use our rates to drive behavior in the way that Mindy and John just suggested at least a we're thinking about using that as a tool and that we should be to the extent that we're really confident in what the future costs are going to be that we should be driving towards um a future with lower overall costs for all of us so anything that can help us avoid you know additional generation costs or transmission or whatever those other other costs are I think I I share the perspective there Sonia um yeah a few thoughts um I also

1:27:55 agree I mean I think any any rate that you have it it can't it can't actually it can't be bold it can't be all in one side or all on the other think about Societies in general you need to think about self and the benefit that you get and you also need to think about the community you have all on one side thank you sorry all on one side or the other it just doesn't function so to the extent that we can incentivize the individual and also capture some of the good for the general public that that helps offset some of those some of those costs the uh on socializing across all rates I mean it's challenging right because we're we are set with picking

1:28:41 winners and losers no matter how you play it we're picking winners and losers there's somebody that has to pay and and so I think why we have gone towards the what I think is in irly um called equity in here or we try to match to the best extent possible if you incur the cost or cause cost to the system you pay that rate or that you know that benefit um and I think it's probably better to call it equality in some respects because our rates are our rates are not changed depending on what your needs are and and the outcome that we want to achieve we give a payback to those who need it so that's a little bit

1:29:28 different for me but we definitely I definitely want to recognize and and understand in our rates I mean it's we want to be able to protect the people but we also need to charge people and so somebody has to pay and businesses struggle too so how do you pick who gets the charge and who doesn't um one one thing that came to me in in some of the conversations you had uh was around designing so most of the charge of a home or a business is set up right from the very beginning in the design phase so you once you build that home and you install equipment in it that

1:30:14 drives the amount that you're going to use I wonder if there's some in in the interest of um incentivizing the behavior we want to see in the future if we could do something around charging higher rates uh maybe system development charges or something to that effect for installs that are not as efficient as we want them to be in the future um I don't know if anybody has interest in that but I mean we really need to think very critically and be bold about how we're going to drive it in the future and um I think it I just think it's it's very challenging to both protect the lowest income people and also you know

1:30:59 recognize that businesses have opportunities to go elsewhere we're not you know we're not a large San Francisco type um Community like those businesses can say okay well it's too expensive for me to do business here I'll just up and leave so sending all the burden on to them also doesn't help income low income people here because then there's no jobs so we have to have a balance that has support for all of those groups again it can't just be only one group or only another we have to come together with all of those different groups to find something that's reasonable and so to the extent we can whatever process this looks like I hope that we include low-income people and businesses and the because they're going to have to be a part of the the buyin and

1:31:46 everybody's going to have to recognize that there is no perfect solution that we're going to pick that's going to fix everything and get us to the in the future like everybody's going to have to give a little bit maybe a lot in order to get the right design that that we need to put us in a better situation in the future um uh my last the last thing that I wanted to talk about was you know we we've looked at the the rates for individuals um that do put Power on their own homes solar and whatnot that is a huge cost they're essentially subsidizing their own system I know that the payback on them that we've looked at is not great but I also recognize that our climate is just it's

1:32:31 changing in very different ways and we're seeing some of the impacts that we thought we would see 20 and 30 years from now today and I I do want to look at solar and more localized generation again so as we look at what rates we're incentivizing um for homes I would I would like to see I would like to have some more robust discussion thank so one comment commissioner Carlson um um we do plan to use kind of a par a similar process that we're using with our integrated resource planning studies um where we're using the community table um to bounce

1:33:18 different ideas off and the off of and the community table is really well represented of people across across the community so we'll we'll do something similar as we get into the implementation part of of rate design I I do think that your observation around Equity as it stands today um the difference between equity and equality um is probably you know where we're looking at present rates that do not arbitrarily discriminate within a class that is more aligned with the definition of equal as opposed to Equitable which tends to be outcome based so that's that's a good observation as to where we where we stand today um the solar piece I think

1:34:05 is one where we're going to have to look at where does where does the cost align with what we're trying to do not only in our integrated resource plan but customers participation in that that the reason that the Payback right now is very challenging um in Eugene is that the rates that people are displacing are pretty low low um if we had 30 Cent power and I've actually had someone in the in the community suggest we raise our rates just to get people to generate their own electricity which is a philosophy um not everybody would agree with that philosophy um but the rates that we're displacing are pretty low compared to the installation cost um and also just the amount of annual output versus some other places you just look

1:34:50 at that and you you compare that um even taking all the incentives into account um the payback period is very long um and so that doesn't even account for the fact that um what you're displacing there's a fixed cost component that would be um would be also would still be there um and so um there's some there's some challenges but it's it you know it sounds like from your perspective it's something that from a resource planning perspective and you know how does that weigh into rate design it's a consideration for sure should be looking at one other thing too is we look at kind of unique scenarios and situations I know a number of years ago we looked at um how we were implementing our low

1:35:35 income program and we had a lot of overhead costs because it was you know very creative and it had all these different things that we did but ultimately it was the admin cost of it was so creative that it it was not we weren't getting enough money to the people and so whatever we do in this system I prefer more Simplicity because the best we can do for our public is to keep the rates down I mean if we really care about lowincome rates that keeping it more simple and and keeping it affordable for businesses and community members because that incentivizes people to switch from natural gas and to get these other more efficient systems that drive around climate change we have I I

1:36:22 would prefer that than the alternative of let's raise rates because then it becomes a disincentive to switch we have very clean power and whatever we do in our energy portfolio I would like to keep that that way and and continue to incentivize people to do the switch and so that's why some of these concerns or some of these issues where we're talking about you know burdening that last person who gets onto the system with that huge rate is less appealing to me because we want more people to use clean energy that's what um for me some of the points that I would like to push forward um as far as

1:37:11 Peak non Peak I think that that that's that's a good conversation to have I think what I would like to see is if the incentiv the incentivizing of it can be a lower rate if you slip to off peak rather than a higher rate to the person who can't go off peak right so if if my restaurant if it cost if the power that we're buying at two in the morning is cheaper and we can use that lower rate to incentivize that person to turn on their dryer at two in the morning I'm all for that but I don't want to charge me 20 cents a kilowatt hour to to cook dinner for for

1:37:56 you guys so that you can charge 10 cents an hour at two in the morning for somebody to dry their clothes if commissioner what if you're using power when it is 20 cents then then charge me the 20 cents and if if you can push it off and and and it's 10 cents at midnight that's fine charge me what it cost cost but don't charge me more to subsidize the person who's off peaking that's what I that's what I was leading to this is where one of the tensions comes in because today's cost versus the behavior that I've heard in the future is different right so I'm this is one of

1:38:42 the tens this is the wrestling match that occurs is right now it might not be 20 cents versus 10 cents or maybe it is 20 cents versus 10 cents but it's going to take more than that to incentivize the kind of behavior that gets people off peak to a to a more adventages time so that's that is a rest that's a thing to we'll have to wrestle through and and maybe that that okay and yeah wrestle through that but that's one so outcomes that I would like to see um are one you know we heard people tonight talking about uh moving to an income

1:39:28 based uh rather than a the the way we do it now as a form of subsidy looking at that and figuring out what's the best way like like Sonia said what's the best way to incentivize and help out our low-income customers right whether that's switching a model and looking at other models that other utilities use or using the model that we have and and expanding it or or tweaking it or whatever but figuring out some way that within our rates that we can afford to help the lowincome people the other thing that I would like to see us subsidized towards is helping to weather and this is something that I said when I got on the

1:40:13 board helping to weatherize and incentivizing the rental stock to move to more efficient types of uses for heating and cooling um just because that help to me that helps the system as well if if you're going to be using subsidies and we can figure out a way to do that I'm I'm all for that the way that we do that I'm not sure but if that's systemwide we say okay there's going to be this much and that we're g to use that money to incentivized which helps us lower our you know like you said the most the the cleanest kilowatt is the one that's not having to be used and so if we can do

1:40:59 that by sharing the cost all the way across the whole uh customer base to a small percentage that's something that I would be interested in pursuing if that's possible because of right now there really is no incentive for a landlord to put in a heo to weather house because they're not paying BS and so and that's been a and that's been a a quandry that we've had for years is how do you do that and and where is the money to do that so if there is a way to get to that that would be something that I would be interested in in pursuing I don't know the rest of Commissioners

1:41:44 um and well go ahead yeah um commissioner I did sort of want to touch on this should who and what matter question um and this this do should the customer specific profile or the consumption purpose matter so an example of that you brought up should we charge a different rate based on your income it's not based on the service we're providing it's based on income or should we charge a restaurant a different amount from a hospital or a brewery or should who are and what you use the electricity for should that matter to us or should we

1:42:30 focus on the price for the service provided that's that's a fundamental question that I think Warr for me no for me a kill an electron costs so much and if I'm buying that electron it it doesn't know if I'm John barovsky or if I'm John Brown or I'm Elon Musk and it it should in that's my opinion I I don't think it should it should be based on that I think that there are we can do it on amount of usage as opposed to amount of income or specific industry I I don't I don't I

1:43:16 don't like that way but that's just okay well I'm that's a fundamental question yep and that's that's where I land on it Mindy and then I'm gonna take a shot um I'm really curious if if you're going to be able to take anything away from this because what I'm hearing is that we want it all basically course true um I think I mean when I try to dig into your questions I kind I think what it for me what it comes down to is do you want a socialized system or do you want more of a capital based capitalism Bas right like how much do you want to um how much you want to subsidize everybody for individual customer choices and I feel like that's what you're getting to in a lot of these questions and for me personally I land

1:44:03 on the side of more socialized costs because I think that even if John puts in a heat pump in his house and that's gonna um lower his bills and use less electricity that ultimately benefits me because I think it benefits society as a whole I think that's a lot of people wouldn't agree with that I don't know how to do it with the like income equality or income Equity piece but I think like we have to keep our eye on the prize and our eye on the prize is to use less electricity and to make sure that we use as much carbon free electricity as possible so however we get there I don't know if that's using a more

1:44:48 socialized um process or not but that's kind of how me I just want to I want to focus on how do we get to that end goal the easiest but personally I lean towards more socialized system but I would be willing to give some of that up if it gets us the behavior the um and the patterns and the costs that we so just I think that's a I appreciate Mindy you've answered two questions which is great um I think it's important to understand that perspective and I think that's something that as as the the CEO of the organization understanding that perspective from the rest of the board is going to be helpful

1:45:35 because lots of the programs that we're talking about and we share the interest of a lot of the people that again those are not free there are there are various degrees of return on investment with those but they aren't free and so what I'm hearing you say is if if we want to apply our values to a community that you tend to lean toward let's let's absorb those in the in the utility rates to do things that is of value to the community and that's that's kind of what I'm hearing there's wow that's woke me up um there are there are a few things that we socialize now which is um for example the school grants this this board

1:46:20 approves in the budget fact that we give money to 4J and and the other school districts around to do things that we think are of interest and aligned with the organization and I'm gonna quickly I know you're waiting Matt but quickly answer your other question about this customer specific profile matter I'm a little hesitant on that one because again my leaning towards the socialized system and the greater good I I do feel that there might be some uh businesses or institutions that serve the broader Community but I would hate to impose individual our individual values on that because I think that while somebody might value a senior center

1:47:05 more than a restaurant somebody else might value a restaurant more than something else right I mean so I he values both I'm not saying I I value either of those more but I I think that you have to be really careful there um but I would say that if there was some kind of community amen it or something that really broadly uh served the entire Community I could see having a different rate for that but it would have to be some kind of extraordinary circumstance commissioner McCrae I would love to hear perspectives from the rest of the board on sort of Mindy's view of of sort of this it's a spectrum between sub and SMUD and it's not it's not just

1:47:52 discreet there is a spectrum here between the more socialized utility and the and the um sub so you know it sounds like commissioner schlosberg you're a little bit more toward the socializing of of things uh so I just want to check the time um I think we have till 7:35 right on the agenda just want to make sure that we're we're not we were a little ahead with our other items so if it's okay with you all I I'll hope we can use this time continue to um use that extras for the rest of this conversation so we have about 20 minutes left um so probably answering as many questions as we can

1:48:37 for Frank and team would be useful um including that question which I think overall I would aim towards the SMUD side of things personally um largely because I feel like anything where we're just trying to make the system as efficient as possible um for today it it makes it hard for us to anticipate and prepare for the curve balls that are coming and um so to the extent I mean I think we're a really sophisticated utility that understands the curveballs that are in front of us and I think we should use every advantage to try and anticipate and prepare ourselves for those curved balls um you had one question about the sharing of benefit for time of use um

1:49:24 rates and I think from my perspective at least 50% of the benefit that should go to the customer maybe more than that it does feel like some amount of that benefit should go to the utility as a whole um because I think there's there's benefit there that we can add on to provide incentives to you know further um enable more people to use time of use pricing to their benefit um quick question for you about rates versus incentives most of our conversation here is about rates and I but I hear us sometimes talking about incentives for um for high efficiency uh appliances for example um but that's not really what we're talking about today right we're really talking about the

1:50:10 rates piece how how do we tease that apart well the the two are related in in the sense that um a rate can be a mechanism for an incentive either behavior-wise or otherwise um and and also uh the more incentives you have uh the defects your rat your Revenue requirement which which is part of kind of the philosophy part of of rat is um you know we I I'll say that that SMUD you know their their rates are significantly higher just in in general um because they do a lot of the things that that they feel the community wants so so um there are tradeoffs there including incentives so

1:50:56 some it's it's not necessarily lost Revenue to the community but it flows through the utility and then back there's a there's a revenue recycling piece there that is part of that but what people often see is they see the rate and that's what you hear feedback on in many cases um not necessarily just the incentive so they are they are related um although there you can approach them slightly differently at and how you do the mechanics of them and we've had conversations here at this board about talking about rates versus Bills which kind of gets that right and from my perspective to the extent that we can use rates to shift Behavior but then also at the same time provide incentives to enable people to use less

1:51:42 electricity so that their Bills remain affordable right um and especially when we're think about high efficiency you know heating and cooling For example it just feels like there's a yes it costs us more collectively but if we can especially for lower income households um enable people to install high efficiency appliances I think there's a a huge benefit not only to the individual but societally um along those lines I know and we've talked about this too we have really good programs for um weatherizing and and insulating lowincome households including rental households um and for replacing uh heating systems in rental households low-income households um I feel like in

1:52:27 addition to paying attention to our rates there's a huge opportunity to take those programs and turn them up and by that I don't mean put more money there I mean just um just do a more aggressive um campaign to advertise those programs to help people um access those programs I've used the water heat um the I purchased the heat pump water heater hybrid water heater several years ago which is amazing like it's just a crazy Contraption um that does amazing things but it was kind of hard to navigate took me to another website took us from our eweb website to another website that you're like is that actually eweb it's kind of awkward um and I think there are

1:53:13 some ways in which we can make the programs we have right now that would enable people to access more um efficiency programs make it easier for people and along with that we have huge Federal subsidies that we've talked about so I think to the extent that we can you know not even necessarily well yes touch the rates work with our rates but also you know dial in our programs to make them as effective as possible to get those incentive incentives in the pockets of our customers so that we're all moving towards lower consumption overall um I think there's huge benefit individually and uh across the utility and Society um and then I know Brown has another round and then soon you come be I just you know I know we do things for a reason and I'm assuming there either

1:53:59 something fundamentally B with what we're doing now something that a drastic change in Behavior or some something in the future and that's why we're doing this I haven't heard that yet but I I from you but i' I'm I'm sure that that's you can answer that question because uh having been through this board when we did have tiered rates and how long it took us to go from tiered rates back to a flat rate but we still have tiar rates with water and um and just about but we had a reason we did that and I haven't heard that reason why we're doing this I'm not trying to throw water on the fire I'm just trying to understand the motivation behind this is this because anticipated change or is this because we have a flaw on the system and we're trying to

1:54:48 correct there are no what what what's the robot movie there there are no ghosts in the machine here uh commissioner that um what we're really trying to and I think this is one area where the Strategic plan is is right on and that's a recognition that the Dynamics um that are being created around scarcity in the system is going to require us to behave differently and our customers to behave differently the the pricing mechanisms that we use to really align uh the the use of the services that we provide and today it's electricity and at some point it's going to be water is going to be scarce as well if you look look at other areas of the country um how we manage that

1:55:35 scarcity uh pricing is a piece of that and so having to look at time of use having to look at things that will drive consumption a certain way that's most beneficial is the reason that we're exploring this now it's it's one of the pieces that is going to be necessary in the future it's we we haven't done anything wrong um we've recaptured our prices there are certain sensitivities that I think we are a little bit vulnerable to uh in not capturing all our fixed costs with more of a fixed based charge we missed opportunity we will at some point have the tools necessary to be able to look at to manage these Dynamics that's the difference going forward so that that helps me immensely because if there's not an incentive for reducing

1:56:21 consumption because if you have a a lower rate because of a particular position you have in society then we've not accomplished our goal and so I think we have to have something that that invokes not only incentivization based upon your capacity to pay but also your Your Capacity to use less consumption because it's a scarcity issue that we're trying to address yeah it's truly optimizing and and the the challenge that we have today and um is that right now the the marginal cost difference between 1399 kilowatt hours and 1400 kwatt hours is pretty minimal um and right up to the point where you get a massive charge so your marginal costs

1:57:06 are really small up to the point where you have these huge Investments to make in new facilities in um new infrastructure I mean we're we're talking about we were talking about earlier about areas of the city that might be vulnerable to capacity one one answer to to build capacity is to manage your Peaks manage your loads because your system is designed for Peak capacity we can't design it to do deliver electricity 90% of the time we have to do it 100% of the time and so one of the mechanisms one of the important mechanisms that everybody sees all of our customers is their bill and if their bill drives behavior that that helps manage that that's what we need to explore

1:57:54 so to answer the question that you proposed specifically around the socialized cost um I I think I kind of touched on it but maybe that wasn't as clear so um I'm more supportive of socializing some of the costs for residentials specifically so we can take care of low-income people um people are the underlying piece there they they need to survive um when we talk about the business side of it I'm less inclined to have um socialize costs or pick and choose this group over that group because I think you know to your point too it's just it gets way too messy we all have different values who does what when that's not something that we can dabble into so I have zero interest in in that side of it um but I

1:58:40 also recognize the the the dichotomy between the SMUD and having this pie the piece of pie that you the pie that needs to be paid for so that we can have those benefits versus the maybe the smaller one where we have like the sub types where you just have less to pay overall that is um again for me I I tend more towards the simple side of it given our size we're what four times the size of sub roughly maybe three times um but we're nowhere near what SMUD is we still have the ability to incentivize change and so for me in whatever way that we can design rates that spe again

1:59:26 specifically gets at the underlying infrastructure maybe we can I don't know if it's possible I know that our mechanism is when we charge people using the electricity but the Hess has the connection could we charge the owner of homes a different rate if they are are either a rate or some fixed fee because we are now giving their renter a $280 credit because they have not put in the correct infrastructure and so their renter is just blowing hot air out the windows I don't know if that's possible but I would look like to look into more creative ways that get it connecting those two

2:00:20 pieces I'm worried about the SMUD model because of the implication that that has is the c as the cost the rate you know if we're if we if we go to the high socialized method it go it gets away from in my view it gets away from affordability because somebody's got you know to pay for all the programs you spread it over everybody but then everybody's bills go up and what it what effect does that have are you really are you really or do you go the smaller piece by like Sonia said so I think that our

2:01:10 community can tolerate a certain amount socialization and incentivizing and using that but I don't think that our community can go the 16inch pizza know I think we can we can figure out what what size that is and I think that that's something that they the community has been accustomed to us doing and figuring out where and how is the best way to do that by also trying to keep the rates as low as we can is something that that I'm so I I'm on socialized light as my as my uh

2:01:55 default um because I mean we're talking about a huge increase next year and then one's going further and we have no idea where what the bonal contract is going to cost us and then if we pile on all these other things to try and incentivize it we won't need to we won't need to do it it'll be the rates will be so dang high that people will flock to demand management because because that's what's going to happen it's like what they said when gasoline gets so high they said gasoline get $6 a gallon that's when it's going to be best to have electric cars and we're at $4 a gallon and seeing a lot more electric

2:02:42 cars I I just I'm I at socialized light not the 16inch pizza not the not the Giant I can go with the medium I I will point out that that well rate design and I think the pizza model has started to come into play here um the the pizza there's there's some toppings on the pizza that are related to this yeah exactly but the pizza is going to grow anyway because of the costs that we're seeing at on the supply side and in the infrastructure side the the pizza is going to be become more expensive overall it lets you take topics oh jeez yeah I guess so um but in

2:03:31 in general I you know rate design is is about how you're allocating costs what kind of behaviors you might want to drive but there is still a revenue requirement that we're dealing with overall um now that can grow under heavy socialization versus light socialization um and that's something that um that we have a light version now to consider and the the way I read that commissioner and correct me if I'm wrong is that we need to be very intentional with that and um surgical if if there's things we want to do and commissioner schlosberg really focused on rentals and

2:04:16 low income then that that's a piece of it and and maybe that means other things don't happen but it's it's more you're saying more Surgical and calculated and intentional with that I sort of interpreted yeah I think so all right I'll just take a moment to make a couple more comments um I think the idea of an income based rate um that was proposed tonight uh I think is an interesting thing for us to chew on I personally would be interested in further conversation about how we deal with low-income customers how we support low-income in customers in particular we've had a few conversations around the table about that over the last few years

2:05:01 but we haven't really zeroed in on you know I at least that I can tell really significantly shifting our programs and my understanding is that um most of our assistance it's oversubscribed at this point and I would anticipate especially with a rate hike that we're going to see more of that so from my perspective I'm very supportive of us ensuring that low income customers are not buried by um High electricity costs so I'd like to I'd be interested in speaking you know have more conversation about that and at the other side I'd be interested in conversations about our really large customers um and how we're um you know how we're charging them and how much of the uh the collective water they're carrying that's probably mixing metaphors you know how much of the burden um of paying for our whole system

2:05:47 is carried by our larger customers and whether they're carrying the appropriate amount or if there's um ways that we might incentivize or disincentivize their Investments um as well so to me the very larger customers and our low income customers are places where I'd like to have more conversation commissioner McCrae I I will make just one a couple quick comments one is overall our systems not necessarily overprescribed it it may have Peaks and valleys certain times of the year no I mean sorry I mean the the um subsidies for low-income customers they're over subscribed that's what I was right I don't think they are okay but okay um and the way those were designed was we looked at this we call

2:06:34 it a utility burden because we include water but but equivalent basically comparing income levels with um typical bills and there is a certain percentage of the population that falls within a utility burden category and we allocate enough budget to be able to shift those people from burden to unburdened that's That's the basis of our Revenue requirement at this point not necessarily how we distribute it but that's that's how the revenue requirement is based um the other thing that you mentioned was um GNA comment on oh large customers I would say that because large customers are large customers we do probably a

2:07:21 more specific cost of service analysis with them than we do with just sort of a general class of customers not not we do the class but when we look at large customers we actually analyze and allocate cost very specifically to them and I feel pretty comfortable that when someone says pay their fair share they're paying their fair share of the cost um because of the analysis that now some of that shifts a little bit over time with a larger a longer or shorter contract but they are scrutinized pretty pretty well um when it comes to really looking at the cost that they are incurring versus um what we're

2:08:07 charging thank you others last comments um well this this was helpful I I I know that it we don't walk away with a specific action item but it really was helpful we we didn't even get to the second set of questions which is something that maybe you can think about you know when you think about up River rates there's a there's a cost difference that we we've talked about um and so um any anyway these were more design related related questions um does level of service matter was another one let's say you live in you know the downtown Network has to some degree a

2:08:53 higher degree of reliability should they they also have higher fixed costs associated with their connectivity to it should someone downtown pay a higher rate because it's more reliable should someone who lives in an underground service territory pay more than someone who lives in an overhead service territory based on level of service those are other considerations don't expect the answers for that one this evening but um there's lots of questions associated with rate design really this discussion was really helpful for me um again I'm not sure what you're going to take away because we want everything but it's just really it's really helpful for me to just have a conversation about it and to hear the questions that everybody else asks um

2:09:38 and I know I I know on our calendar we have a work session in a couple weeks that I think is not happening but um I would just encourage more of this kind of discussion as we talk about rate design and even the questions that we haven't answered um it just helps me think things through to have a kind of open-ended question but really to hear what other say as well so I don't know if next time that we talk about this or if there's another opportunity to maybe address those other questions there will be a number of other opportunities to do that uh commissioner I this is a really I mean we've had it in the Strategic plan as part of um this period of time this number of

2:10:25 years I don't feel like it's a oneandone kind of issue it's something that impacts every single customer as well as people who aren't customers who are in our community and um it's something that we're going to have to understand the tradeoffs in order to be able to set a path forward so um I don't know if we'll get to an actual how how the plan will come together at the end of the year it may be that we're starting to do two or three building blocks with a general Concept in mind or it might be more more well laid out we'll we'll see how far we get but it's um I think we agree it's not a oneandone so more discussions like

2:11:12 this thanks and we have yes thank you we have one more item before we take a break um so the customer service policy um um on Race one all right good evening everyone I'm going to do my standing thing because uh I'm the last presentation between here in the bathroom break I try to keep the

2:11:57 energy level pretty high as we're talk about something as enthusiastically named his customer service policy power purchase rate schedule so with that let's jump into it um I'm Brian Booth Chief energy resource officer here at eweb cohort in this effort were BR de our agms along with Adam R our rates manager uh let's get to the overview uh eweb has been approached by a number of large customers who are interested in building a solar generation relatively large solar generation on their new and existing facilities our current policy we offer net metering for facilities up to 25 KW and for projects greater than

2:12:46 25kw and less than 200 uh we offer a direct generation rate that is the generator can connect directly to our system and we pay them a generation based uh price for that I this is typically a said that second bullet but for the uh the bottom one for customers with large sprawling campuses the cost of directly connecting to that system can be quite large you can imagine University of Oregon they want to put in a solar array at the back end of the campus we said it has to be on its own Service drop so you get to trench in a mile of primary line that would cost significantly more than the Sol R and uh we kill the project so

2:13:31 the point of our recommendation tonight is to avoid exactly that situation for the purpose uh we want to clarify the existing policy uh we have provided updated policy language to clearly address the treatment of customer owned renewable generation especially for public agencies we want to Support Compliance with State requirements enable these public agencies to meet organs mandate to invest one and a half% of new building costs in green energy technology we want to address technical challenges that's a very nice way of saying those expensive challenges uh and resolve that impracticality and cost issues associated with direct reconnecting to the grid we also want to

2:14:17 maintain our price of philosopy ensure that consistent application of current pricing structures as we move this forward so a little bit more on that pricing philosophy since I know you all are in the mood to talk about pricing uh customer owned direct generation it's predominantly solar power not a lot of rooftop wind turbines here in Eugene solar is great it's clean it's quiet uh it can be located almost anywhere it also only produces when the sun is out it is fundamentally different than load Service uh which is delivered in exactly the quantity you want and exactly the moment you want it eweb like other utilities we meticulously calculate the

2:15:04 exact retail service cost through the budget and cost of service analysis Adam agonizes over these questions day and night I assume Adam uh and he runs this cost of service analysis that looks something like this we start out with all of our costs and we start in them up into little pieces so that we can allocate them as most fairely as we possibly can the direct generation rate it doesn't look like this it is based entirely around the value that these intermittent generating resources provide and so the price that we pay through that direct generation rate is different than that retail rate so if there was any point to take away from this it's that the DG rate and the retail rate they're apples and

2:15:50 oranges we try to keep these different because they are different so let me give an overview of how these systems look uh for direct generation we have over there at the far right maybe that button will work no the button doesn't work over there at the far right we have the grid ew uh we connect to this customer through two different meters we have separate service drops one for the consumption meter and one for the production ma for this particular customer their solar array generates 10,000 kilowatt hours in that month and their consumption meter shows the building consumes also 10,000 kilowatt hours in that month so for the

2:16:36 month they are Net Zero on their bill we charge them for that 10,000 kilowatt hours that they consumed uh based on our retail rate and we also compensated them for the 10,000 kilow hours that they produced at that direct generation rate or a behind the meter system this array uh this looks a little bit different so for net metering we have instead of two service drops to two meters we have one Service drop to a bidirectional meter in this array we've got the exact same building uh they are also producing 10,000 kwatt hours from their solar panels and consuming 10 ,000 kilowatt

2:17:21 hours on site but because they consume some of that solid that they generate at the time that it's generated it doesn't all flow back to eweb so we don't see 10,000 in and 10,000 out we see it this by directional meter 5,000 and 5,000 out so with a net metering Arrangement uh which is what our residential customers typically have it's very cheap and easy uh their build with the separate line items at the 5,000 in and the 5,000 out okay for the larger customers that we're trying to help with the recommended uh updates that you have in the packet uh we are proposing to do a a

2:18:06 virtual met virtual metering Arrangement where we can rely on a production meter located here to measure exactly how much power they are producing from their solar array so by doing this we can then calculate how much they must be consuming on site so we can do the math to look at that production meter look at the B directional meter and say okay we know this much is being produced We Know This Much is flowing back to us or not therefore on an hourly basis we know how much power that facility must be consuming so then we can do that calculation and we can compensate them at the DG rate for what they're producing and build them uh the retail

2:18:52 rate for what they are consuming so this presentation um I will confess I made this very late at night and it doesn't have a proposal next step on it this is a pet PE Franks to not have next step slide on this uh the recommendation is to adopt the updated language that we have in the packet uh is all laid out Adam is the expert on that WR the language um but if you have any questions we are happy to answer uh yeah indeed okay I'm going to need you to simplify this a little bit for me which probably think it's already simple but let's say for instance if we can just use like a University of Oregon

2:19:37 because you brought them up so University of Oregon wants to what would change so right now with the University of Oregon we have two things we can offer them they could net Meer which would be to put in a 25 KW rate which is a drop in the bucket compared to University of Oregon's energy consumption or they could directly connect a generator to our grid which is what they do now with their existing on-site generation the PowerHouse there is quite convenient to our distribution so if they add something new at their power facility they could but if they wanted solar in the back of the campus that would be a nightmarish problem for them so the proposal is to allow them to put

2:20:24 it in the back of the campus we'll put a meter on that generator there then do the math to separate out that generation from their load I would say the big the the difference in this I'll I'll call it a calculated approach is that the solar generation does not have to be near the eweb system right now if they started putting throughout campus and we had to meter this we would have to meter it back at a at a singular location we would require these these generating um meters whereas now we can put a meter by it and we can act in

2:21:11 essence calculate their load from it that where this becomes beneficial is um really and that's where it was designed these sort of larger entities that want to do solar in some cases the infrastructure piece is more than the solar piece and this simplifies it basically so would this increase large scale solar installations here in Eugene yes I believe so and then what's the downside or what would somebody think is the downside to this automating it in the buing system is a pain so the key key account staff will have to do the math I could see them not loving that it's a cheap price to pay though then I absolutely

2:22:00 suppi thanks um yeah I I I think that this is being driven by the state's 1.5% uh green energy and I think right now that their solar just doesn't pencil out to do that to F fulfill that requirement so that people are looking at other options to to to hit that 1.5% um and I think this is a good way for it to make it more affordable um to to use solar to hit that that number especially on public Pro projects and I hope that that would also help to incentivize nonpublic ones that are not forced to do that um what's the

2:22:46 difference in the cost of the retail and the and the generated price so let me uh give you a teaser we will be back next month to talk more about that right now though uh we set the DG rate last year when the power Market was extremely high uh so the direct generation rate is currently 10 a half cents a kilowatt hour compared to medium commercial with something like seven sets a kilowatt hour so they are in fact being paid more for their generation than the retail rate right now that has not historically been the case right power Market has cool off some that would expect it to come down pretty substantially next time but yeah right now it's quite good it historically has been whatever

2:23:32 the retail rate is you know the low teens totaled all up versus three four six cents that's been the difference historically and then I guess the other question that I would have is existing customers right now that have the two-way meters could they switch and and uh get uh when it incentivize them as well to switch so the proposed language would make the uh this behind the meter direct generation available only to arrays that are between 25kw and 200kw that's an interesting thought on whether smaller arrays might want this or even a large one so you know there

2:24:18 are we do have few that are large no yeah we do there because a lot of the cost that's being saved is the installation cost there would be no no real benefit to doing it after so so the rates wouldn't change okay thank you right thank you just a clarifying question about difference large scale solar give me a geographic U footprint of what's called large scale solar sure a typical residential rooftops installation might be 5 to 10 KW uh this would be 25 to 200 okay that's kws with the how much land area or roof area we talking about doing this on rooftops or we're taking because I know there's a lot of opposition project and um is that is are we talking about projects of that scale a commercial solar installation is

2:25:05 probably more like a MGA water larger okay so that's 10 acres 20 acres for a megawatt gosh I think it's more like couple acres per megawatt so this this would take for a 200kw let's a fifth of a megawatt um I would guess this should mostly be on rooftops or commercial build Brown this is going to be on industrial building roou Pepsi is a good example I think it's about 200 if you you know that building API those fine I just needed to know that definition because of the Muddy Creek project and see what's happening there and the reason that there's a cap at 200 is that at 200 we start to get into specific

2:25:50 specific billing requirements from baville so we have a lot of freedom between 25 and 200 that's why that cap was set it wasn't a physical limitation I thought we I thought we had some different um regulatory uh things that hit at 20 sorry I thought we had some other regulatory uh rules and regulations and such that set in at 25 that that was another reason that piece was set what's what's that difference or I think I know but if you know you know you should go there's a there's a state requirement for net metering up to 25 U kilowatts um there is no requirement Beyond 25 kilowatts so if

2:26:37 utilities are required to offer net metering which displaces the retail rate which is typically higher up to 25 kilom not not beyond that so that's the 25 kilowatt threshold that you're talking about okay and so there's no I mean other than the admin cost which there is a slight admin cost it sounds like that's pretty nominal compared to the overall cost there's really no other costs it's just uh a savings in putting in giant infrastructure that's unneeded necessarily yes okay great then I'm supportive then thanks uh so I just have one question and that is why haven't we gone down this road before

2:27:25 math math yeah combination of of math competing priorities and getting organizational alignment around making the change okay I would say also we we've had a number of cases um in the last year or so where this barrier was kind of became enlightened for us I know this is an issue that that you kind of this one and a half percent's been on your mind for a while but you know we've we've had a couple particular cases where this particular investment barrier was one that came up that it isn't always the case but we've had a few cases and it really made um you know rod and Brian and Adam and others get together and say well this this is a barrier with with our new systems and ways of metering is

2:28:12 there a way we can solve this so we had some specific cases to build off yeah yeah I appreciate the thinking and problem solving to get us to this spot I think this is a great move I'm certainly supportive I do wonder if there's any thinking about moving that 25 KW limit up that's part of this convers I mean I know it's not on our agenda tonight but is there is there any rationale in in revisiting that at the same time we're thinking about updating this I would say that's part of a rate design discussion there there is cost associated with that move um especially when you can consider in the retail rate not all the fixed costs are absorbed in the variable piece so now you're talking about expanding Credit in the variable

2:28:59 section so um it it's it certainly is something we should be at some point addressing but it is very much related to rate design um and so I would say that's a topic that we that will come up in that yeah kind of comes for me it comes into the question too about Community scale solar you know opportunities to do larger installations that people can buy pieces of if they don't have up available um my perspective that'd be a valuable conversation to have around all of those I know in the past we haven't had a growing load but we're seeing an increase in load you know now and into the future and so it seems like there's more opportunity for us to think about where and how we might fill some of those gaps with that kind of project and

2:29:46 although it wasn't in this context there's always a little bit of a hidden hidden U theme in some of the questions that you just got asked around what about cost today versus cost in the future but what about avoided cost today versus avoided cost in the future um solar in summer peaking conditions with a combination of storage might be worth more in the future than it is today well it will be worth more in the future than it is today and do we do we start to incentivize or capture that um even though there might not be that cost justification today so there was some of the things that you don't think you answered earlier you you did answer in

2:30:32 some way so indirectly uh yeah motion i' move that we adopt resolution 2411 moved by Brown second by schlosberg on support say I I pass of s uh we'll take a break up to 10 minutes but if people are back and ready to go before then we'll get started uh

2:39:55 and going right to eweb Enterprise systems you hi hi Commissioners Julie MC Chief customer officer Travis canab Cil we are here to update you on eweb Enterprise Solutions so we are going to talk about a status of the project we're going to remind ourselves why we're doing this project we're going to talk about what's been happening in the last few months since we we've seen you and then we'll give you a preview of what's coming next so if we jump right into it so we wanted to give a quick 10,000 foot View and so what we're looking at here is my uh my tri creativity of the three the the three legs of the project management stool right scope schedule budget so

2:40:41 scope as you can see is very green and we'll talk a little bit about that later in the presentation too of how scope can create some tension um with other things that are happening schedule a little bit yellow oh and I also want to remind scope we took a we we bit off a pretty good chunk here with the scope of this project we did we're doing our customer information system which is a Billing System um as well as a pretty massive upgrade to the um customer portal and then our financial system so this is a pretty significant effort the reason we have schedule a little bit yellow here is we're still on track to go live in Q4 of 2024 which is uh what the goal says we did originally have a a plan to go live in

2:41:27 November at the beginning of November and sat and looked at work work that needs to be done and we did we did post pH five month and now our current likely it's scheduled for the beginning of December and so that's why partially too we have a little bit of yellow on the budget the month delay does cost a little bit of money and and the other reason there is we made some estimations on sap estimations on sap license costs and those have gone up a little bit as well I am happy to report though there's not a slide at the end of this asking for Budget we're still well within our our board policy and approv budgets and and what we all talked about over the last couple of

2:42:12 years so just a quick reminder of why we're moving from Legacy to Modern and there's obviously a lot of reasons in there in the middle but we we wanted to throw a couple of them out here just as a reminder security controls as you've seen on the news I'm sure cyber security the climate we live in it's important to us that we protect our customer data and so that was one of the the big things right remembering Legacy systems being 20 and 30 years old for our CIS system and our financial system uh security controls component a big win for us here centralization we talked a little bit about do we go best to breed do we have a product like sap which is where we ultimately landed where we have centralized applications centralized

2:42:57 data we do look at our data as an asset it's important to decision-making processes and so we wanted to centralize that data we also looked at we're in the mid game of the Strategic plan and how this was a building block we also talked a little bit about how it was a ticket to participate in the game in in general and customer opportunities so you had very robust conversation about rate design we talked about things like time of use and what this allows us what a modern system will allow us to do is Implement those standard um programs like rate design but it also allows for some creativity in customer programs and services that we might offer that we just haven't been able to do based on our current

2:43:44 technology so what's been happening we've kind of killed ourselves with these slides a little bit because we had some late breaking news we tried to go from one slide to the next and then we've inserted a tangent and so I'll talk about the tangent when we get there but we did kick a pro kick the project off addely in Q2 of 2023 and went through about a six-month design phase where the teams were looking at what do we need to do how do we take what we're do today in these disperate systems and Implement them Implement them into sap and then at the end of 2023 around December we started building and are wrapping the build phase up and starting the test phase and then we'll go into training so that's where we're at right now we're in our second of five test cycles and this is where we'll take a tangent in a few slides to talk a

2:44:31 little bit about testing I do want to also mention uh commissioner Carlson you asked a question early on in one of the presentations that was what's different this time and one of the things we talked about a couple different things that were different one of them was change management and is the business ready for the change are we ready to to adopt something so massive as this transformation project and so I wanted to talk a little bit about that did a change Readiness survey well sorry don't want to get ahead of myself we started a very robust change management pro pro um program prior to the kickoff and so the arrow really is pointing back into 2022 and then we did a change Readiness survey the first of three our second ones will happen here in August and this

2:45:16 was a cross-section of the utility not just people that are focused on the project or dedicated to the project but across the utility so do you understand why we're behind EES and as you can see 90% of the respondents said yeah we understand why we're doing this 75% said they're aware of the goals um 75% noted that they're regularly updated and then the big one in my mind here is 86% agree that they're well equipped to manage the change that's coming and it is going to be a big change it's going to be a change from process it's a change of an application that people are used to using every day and if you remember from the previous slide training hasn't even started yet and so we feel really good about these numbers and we've been told um by our our Consultants that these are

2:46:02 really high numbers and so of course then the teams also adjusted their change management strategy because we do want to bring these 75% up um and continue with the high numbers and now we're going to take this weird tangent that I talked about VOR VOR slide so um back on the on the timeline slide it said test test test and that is not an understatement we are doing a lot of testing pretty much the whole project team right now is involved in various different kinds of testing so it is a very timely detour into one of these tests that we just want to talk to you about it's late breaking news we just got these results Thursday of last week and we're kind of excited and proud about them so a parallel Bill test is how we measure Bill accuracy to our customers probably the most important as

2:46:49 we Embark Upon A Billing System changeover is making sure that our customers are getting the right Bill they're saying the right things so this is what we do we do two rounds of parallel build testing this is the first round that we just completed and what it is is you take in this case two cycles so billing cycle one and billing cycle four and you run a whole set of bills out of that system and then you do the exact same um Cycles during the exact same time and you run it out of the sap system and then we have some kind of tool that compares them and so the results that we got were a 91% exact match for cycle one and 98% match for the next cycle and according to our um Consultants this

2:47:34 being the first time we've done this extraordinary results like off the charts like people were speechless that we got results like this and we really attributed to a lot of work that was done in the front end by the team to do data cleansing to do data matching to do data conversion um so we're really proud and happy about it and what we'll also do then so this was the automated kind of match that we do we'll also have people on the billing and the customer service teams who will actually put eyes on these sets of bills like make sure the bill looks right everything is where it's supposed to be there aren't any anomalies on the bill and that's another round of checking deoy our consultant will then go back in and try to figure out in Cycle One what was the 9% we got

2:48:19 wrong make some tweaks and then we have one more round of parallel Bill testing parallel Bill test two and we'll actually go in and run all 21 of our bill Cycles just like this to make sure that we got it right we got the glitches out um and we'll do another round of visual site testing so that's what's going on this is just one this is one example of what we're doing to ensure that we have quality data it's a quality product that that we can feel good about so what's next we are coming to you one more time before go live in October and we're going to talk to you about our go live plan all of the activities leading up to go live it is not lost on us that our go live date is the weekend of

2:49:05 Thanksgiving so we will be making some special plans with our staff with our customers to do some things on the front end during the cut over and afterwards to make sure we have a really smooth transition um Travis mentioned this is a big project that impacts a high percentage of the people at the utility so we'll also talk a little bit about utility and staff impact customer impact acto alive and Beyond what's going to change and how we help them through that process and then we'll come back to you with a Communications plan that the team is actually working on right now it's Communications out to the customers Communications internally but we also want to help you guys feel comfortable in that as we're getting ready to launch and

2:49:50 afterwards you have some tools that you feel comfortable taking out and talking to customers in the community about the project and then what's next for EES I don't know if you caught on the first slide I was supposed to highlighted and forgot to we've we're calling our phases seasons and so if you remember early days we had season one was customer information billing portal season two was was the Wham replacement and then season 3 was our human resources replacement through reflection Lessons Learned as we talked about scope being green and I talked about tension there we've had to say no to things we've had to be very disciplined and maintaining

2:50:35 our scope and so we have this list of things over here in the parking lot that we would still like to get done that have come out of these design sessions and have come out of the build sessions and have come out of the out of the testing sessions and so we want to do a couple things and so if we start at the top yep we're going live this year as we go down to season two we want to take the time for a stabilization period of the system we want to look at what we built we're calling it The Year of continuous Improvement what did what did what did what we build meet the goals and Achieve what we were trying to do are there things that we need to adjust and then also look at things that we had to say no to and things we had to take off the table and when we talked about

2:51:20 this program being a transformative program we also want to look at doing projects differently at eweb where people don't feel like they have to get everything they want done right away which then extends timelines which extends costs as opposed to saying we're going to maintain our scope and then we can come back and fill in the gaps that we either missed or were later identified the other thing that we want to do that we think is really important is really look at the strategy for the next phase before we jump into it and I've got it starting in 2025 but really Karen Kelly has already started an asset management strategy and as you know managing a billion dollars of assets it's important that we have a good strategy for doing that and so we're so

2:52:06 we've started that process and then we'll kick off in 2026 the Wham replacement and the field service management implementation and then again we're going to rinse and repeat and do that stabilization Again The Continuous Improvement and then develop that strategy for human resources and then we'll go into the human resource implementation and then rinse and repeat the the stabilization and continues Improvement Bas again and as you can see we're out into 2029 like this is a you know a big deal and it's been a lot of effort and so now I'm going to throw the next slide in that was also not planned surprise everybody so I want to talk a little bit about the people and I'm already struggling with

2:52:51 this because we've got 25 staff that have been dedicated to this project fulltime they've taken they've stepped away from their jobs that they were hired to do they've not taken vacations they've taken they haven't taken days off they've missed time with their families and now to thank them we're going to go live over the Thanksgiving Day weekend and I just really want you all to be aware and and to feel so proud of this team that has dedicated so much time and effort into this project and maintain that scope and maintain that discipline and then that's not even to mention the trickle down effect where we've asked people to step up into roles that we've

2:53:37 moved people out of right so you've got this this movement from one step to the next and we just couldn't be more proud of this team and we want you all to just understand how proud of them we are and how proud of them you all should be this is a it's kind of a thankless job right now you know you think about building a building and you can see the floors going up on this one you can't and there's just going to be this kind of unveiling at the end of the year and people are going to get an opportunity to play armchair quarterback and say oh we should have done this and we should have done that we just need to provide this team so much support and then the 45 staff again training is going to come up and we're going to ask these people to help do user acceptance testing and training and it's just it's I it's just

2:54:24 a joy for us to see and we're just so proud of them and wanted to share that with all of you I would just add on and say we do get emotional when we talk about this and you know we see how hard these teams work every day and we see their dedication and I think for me what's really special is we're working with Consultants who have done hundreds of these projects and they regularly tell us that the people who they work with at EB care more they they care about the quality of the project and of the product they care about a legacy that they're leaving behind for their peers for their friends at e web for their customers and even when it gets really hard that's what they're driving

2:55:09 towards it's just this sense of responsibility that they have who apparently not all projects people feel that way so I think it just makes us very proud to be sponsors on this project and that's it right well great presentation wonderful outcome thank you for the acknowledgement on you know how it's different because it's interesting it definitely has felt different you know things are moving forward we're getting good updates it's not this back and forth It's like here's where we're at on the timeline and it's still going so that's perfect um I I had a couple of questions and comments one um so why

2:55:57 Thanksgiving specifically is that a so we kind of looked at two really bad options and tried to pick the best of the two some of it's cost another month delay well first of all we want to go live at the beginning of the month right we want to close the books in one month and then start the next one I think that there would actually be strong desire from Finance to go live at the beginning of the year other holiday but then you're doing it over the other holiday and and then there's additional cost with an additional month delay and so was kind of the best of a couple bad choices okay all right um I am curious if there's been discussion uh because my assumption

2:56:42 is that when this goes live that they're you know as any project they're the unknown Unown knowns and so you go live and it might cause some hiccups for uh our customers is there a plan in place to like suspend turn offs and such because it's during the holiday time period too so people are already emotional and it's the end of the year people have higher costs and all those things so I think that's one of the benefits of working with uh that was me um yeah that's one of the benefits of working with a system integrator like deoy who has done this they have templates for us to use and they have history to show you know when we should stop turning people off when we should stop taking movein when we

2:57:28 should um a whole bunch of things um they're helping us with how to staff out because we know that these calls are going to take twice as long with people who are just new to the system so they have a whole ramp plan for us and we'll definitely share that in October and so when you do the switch over when do bills then come out typically after that month I don't have it yeah so one of the things that we talk about having a little flexibility we know it's Thanksgiving and so we have a couple lovers we can pull I mean we can stop doing things a little bit before the whole Thanksgiving weekend and we can delay turning things back on a little bit further after the Thanksgiving weekend if it makes sense and if that's something that we choose to do so um you

2:58:13 know if if we don't want people working on Thanksgiving we have a couple options there Bills should come back on pretty quickly after but we can choose you know to keep our collection cycle off for some amount of time I just meant so for customers receiving the bill after the transition happens do they get it a couple of days after there's a number of Cycles so I'm assuming there's kind of a chunk in each and then you know some people get it the first week some people get it the second week some get third and so forth yeah okay my understanding is that after we go live we could send bills that first week okay okay so hopefully I mean obviously the goal would be to have a seamless transition no customer see any change but the reality of any project is that you know

2:59:00 there will be some things here and there unforeseen um situation so I was just curious some of those people are going to get the hit right that holiday time period um do our customers we we did you know great internal knowledge change management what are we planning for our customers in this transition letting them know so the communications team has a plan that that they're rolling out and it's really more around um you know the the customer and the financial system will be an internal change we're trying to mask as much change as we can you know we're going to have a bit of an upgraded portal so they're going to have

2:59:46 an experience there um a couple of the programs may change how we communicate with landlords and ahus we may communicate a little bit differently there so those are the really specific pieces that the communications team is trying to do some targeted Communications to customers as we get closer here's what you can expect here's where you can go to get more information so there is a difference in how it looks maybe not the bill but the behind like if you log in the portal itself looks will yes it'll look a little bit different okay so I definitely want to make sure whatever we do there that customers are very well informed when that change over happens um okay and I can ask my other questions there thanks Brown congratulations on

3:00:31 your success rate I wouldn't run it again if I got 98 that's good that's why you're not the chief customer officer don't it again you make get 75 next time so um just a quick question on you know when we instituted Wham we got we got some challenges from our Auditors on on that are you bringing our auditing team Along on this or so we don't get like a $500,000 audit bill because this is all new with them because uh this is going to be a big learning curve for them too to do an audit on our performance with the whole new system on every aspect and so are are you coordinating with them are you talking to them or we just going to surprise them we were looking at each other

3:01:16 figuring out who was going to answer this uh so yes we have been in communication with our Auditors and our on our um internal controls uh specifically I I'll get better at that uh on our internal control specifically we work with them to identify potential vendors uh to help us build that system out so um there will be uh there it'll be new system for them but that was part of continuing with the same audit team for another year to make sure that we had at least business continuity and uh we should not be being hit with a surprise

3:02:01 bill because they actually quote the work for us thank you I just bringing them along I know qualified audit you know if they find mistakes and they don't have compassion sometimes yeah commissioner Brown I when we went through the the audit this last or early part of the year I did ask Keith um Simo simic the part simovic the partner if he felt comfortable that we were bringing them in and Consulting with them and informing them of what we're doing and he said absolutely yes that we were they were coming in we were Consulting with them uh I would also point out that deoe has an auditing background as well so um between the two

3:02:46 of them we feel pretty comfortable that um that they're going to be comfortable with it so thank youy I have a question will the will the update for the customer information system and the customer portal is it just for billing or will it also like kind of modernize some of the clunkiness of our website with like accessing um in like what incentives are available to customers or things like that or is it strictly just the bill so it's not just the bill but it's also not the website so we're upgrading our customer information system there's um you know it's meant to give us a 360

3:03:32 degree view of the customer so what it's going to give us is all of our systems kind of feeding into one place so when they you call in or when we send a mailer to you we know some things about you and we can Target our Communications and we have more information so you don't need to share as much information we're also going to deliver some more self-service options on the portal so you don't have to call us if you don't want to um so those will be the improvements what we'd like to do though is over time take our portal as the basis and start integrating our website there so it is more of one experience as you move through maybe it's from the website to the portal if you need to call a CFA you need to you know have an email back it's all one experiences what

3:04:17 our goals is that one might take a little time though with the website thank you thanks um couple of things one when you when you're running the test you got the 91% and you got the 98% when you had ones that didn't match there weren't any real big outliers were there I mean I don't want to have on the front cover of the San Francisco Chronicle Eugene Water and Electric Board customer charg $1.2 million for the month of December we haven't gotten any huge outlying ones correct we haven't seen any of that we

3:05:04 also they haven't done a root cause analysis yet they just did the parallel Bill test like I said we just got the results last week they just ran it last week and then they're going to look and see why did these kick out but we haven't heard anything of the realm of okay and that's great I mean I just likely more out sorted or something wrong with the business partner or what I can tell you about cycle one which did have that lower match rate is it's our cycle that has the most Variety in terms of rates residential general service water only electric only we kind of have one of almost every rate in cycle one so it's not surprising that it had a little bit lower a pass rate if

3:05:49 you're just going to get flagged on a decimal point that you know wasn't set to Round right it's going to be in that in that building cycle one and and I figured as much I just a nightmare I don't I don't want to see that the other thing that we we hear um and I'm hoping that it's not going to be a problem is uh the roll over the of the auto pay is everybody going to have to go back in and re-enter I I know credit card uh information is TP you know security and and all that kind of stuff so is everybody that's enrolled in autopay when we switch this over are they going to have to go in and resubmit or are we going to be able to roll over their their CR their credit

3:06:34 card information into the new system so you all received the email last week about the big change that we were making on the merchant services we I think Julie sent a note out was that last weekend or the weekend before last that was a massive step in that direction where we moved a big chunk of that of the wallets over so we now have to to take the data that's in the current system and convert it to the new system I know I'm not answering your question with it yes or no but there's definitely a conversion process for autopay schedules users those types of things B a big huge step in that direction was was achieved with

3:07:21 this latest migration of the wallets so we did when we migrated the wallets we didn't lose their information we could actually migrate it over they don't have to read that submit we had 100% success okay great because that's one of the ones that when that happens we hear about it because the people but you well you you hear about it but we also hear about it so that's that's good to know um and then I guess last question so we're Contracting with the sap the data that we have that's going up into the cloud are they do they have the ability to monetize that data or do we have the ability to monetize that data or is

3:08:06 anybody ever going to be monetizing the data that we're collecting so the software that we purchased is sap and it's in a private cloud that we um pay a monthly fee for so this isn't our data isn't mixed with any other sap data and they don't have access to market the information that's out there okay and so I other than not KN exactly what you mean by us monetizing that data well I mean data data is a commodity absolutely data is a commodity and so I just wanted to know if you know at some

3:08:53 point we we were moving it to off offsite so is I just want to make sure the in the in the agreement we have that there wasn't something that they said they could monetize that that data or or move that up so that's that's just was the question I had thanks I I believe it's in a I I want to say even a board policy somewhere that that or in our some of our principles somewhere that said is that um we are not using customer data for any other purpose other than our own and you know Julie mentioned a few things around programs and services that would be for our own use we are not going to be selling customer data I think it's in our customer service policy yeah that's what yeah the very Forefront of that are there regulations as well that prevent I

3:09:39 mean I remember we couldn't even send an email to our customers about certain things because of how they often like there are certain privacy regulations as well Travis we talked about this system and the need for the new system when I first started on the board like almost um it's been a huge amount of planning and work to get here and congratulations for sure you get this step where you're so close to flipping the switch um and thanks to the team who's done all the like you said you know just behind the scenes really not you know not sexy we're not seeing it we're all just kind of waiting for it

3:10:24 but um you know really appreciate the effort of the um that's involved and and your leadership to get us here with really great results so thank you um I'm also super excited about the doors that this opens for us I know we've been talking about time of use pricing and in the past it's been like well even if we had automated metering systems we don't have a billing system that can do that so um you know this is a foundational system for both utilities and uh the doors that are going to open up with this are are huge so thank you for all the work to get here it's been a long W um so thank you appreciate that anything else yeah

3:11:09 please Brown could probably John can probably tell you it's been even longer than that um the I'm curious will we have date payment flexibility now with this new system uh if people wanted to like switch the date that it so it's not on the third week it's on the first week so it better matches when they get paid so that so I don't know if that's something yeah I know what you're talking about I know we have a pay lader function I'm not sure if we'll have a full choose your own date when you choose when you pay like the bill is due here but I want to pay it a week in advance to make sure that it goes out I can check I'm not sure yeah what the exact goals are I'm curious if the new system might be able to handle over time not

3:11:55 initially but the situation that we just made with this new policy 1.5% I know we have to handle it beforehand but is it is there an option that we could potentially automate that so it's not an issue for staff with the flexibility we were sort of putting our heads together as you were talking about that and um Anna way it actually chimed in and said she doesn't believe it's going to be really manual Even in our current system so I kind of think if our current system can do it our sap system we' be able to do it in a little automated fashion but we could certainly check great will our past bills be carried over too we'll be able to see those that like wipe it out so if if yes I think we should let people know so they can download

3:12:46 bills we're definitely pulling over 13 months of billing his and then the Legacy data is is being managed um there's still some strategy de development around data warehousing and and that kind of thing we would definitely have to look into what the plan is for actual downloading PDF bills okay right and then um I'll just thank you this is really amazing I've been my whole time on the board we've been talking so I'm very excited thanks great both on to the item holy strategic and operational report for Q2 Mr Lawson it's actually the Strategic Plan

3:13:32 update no I jumped ahead annual strategic plan review commissioner perspectives I tried TR yeah Commissioners thank you um the the one thing I will add just on the last subject as well um um I was commissioner Brown was not the only one who was around during the work and asset management process that that was done in the in the early 2010ish um the 2014 kind of time frame one of the other uh big differences because I know commissioner Carlson you asked about the big some of the big differences um leadership is a big difference and I have to credit you know

3:14:19 uh Deborah and Travis and Julie and their teams for really taking ownership in in this uh program because it's not just one project but the the overall program the organization as you can see 70 people working on this um a recognition that it is is both tactically and sort of fundamentally important it's foundational but also to your point commissioner it's opens up the opportunity to do new things and so the discipline required around the scope creep creeping Elegance as we might call it um recognizing that you saw continuous Improvement mentioned several times the fact that we're changing the

3:15:05 cycle of development here um you don't have to put everything in the first revision and take years to do that which creates a whole another problem um and so really have to commend Travis and and Julie and Deborah and their teams for what they're doing here and that's that's a huge difference um not just the the fact that we're we're looking at change management differently but I think that's that's a big piece of it so now on to on onto my part so um really uh appreciate the opportunity I know you got this information probably a month ago we postponed this from from last month's meeting um just just a couple of of kind of the bottom line up front um we I

3:15:52 have recommended uh in our present time frame that we look at um developing a new strategic plan primarily focused um starting potentially a little bit later this year to try to capture whatever brain cells we can uh from commissioner McCrae um but also really launching into uh the development of a new strategic plan throughout 2025 um I've been working some with Kelly hail on kind of what that might look like in a from a process perspective so far we have at least six touch points with the board throughout next year uh and really feel like it's the appropriate time to do that and and the reason it feels that way is that the

3:16:37 present strategic plan for example talks about rate design it talks about metering it talks about BPA and that contract it talks about e s and the building blocks from a customer and a finance system but the question becomes how do we now use that what's next how do we optimize that to commissioner Brown's question earlier around why you know why are these the building blocks that they are and how do we now apply those going forward and this is really the time to do that um under under the the real scope of of a strategic plan which should identify what we're doing and maybe even just as important what we say we're not going to do and so how are we going to be intentional um even the conversation around rate design and

3:17:23 being intentional with that I I think has to be driven strategically um from this board uh in conjunction with with management and Leadership um there are under the existing plans uh a few recommendations um one of them has to do with just really looking at um we had some some phrases in there around intentional outcomes we we've kind of changed that to linking it a little bit more to to two terms one is fulfilling Mission which is what we do today but also pursuing Vision which is the future so we're kind of trying to to set that and tighten that up just a little bit because we do have both of those are important and that'll be an important

3:18:09 part of new development um and then there's a couple other things reflecting some conditions and changes um and um and other things the the goal would be to get whatever feedback we can today and then um either via consent count or if we need more discussion as an agenda item come back uh next month um won't talk uh this is really um that kind of schedule I just I've already talked about that um we do have a history with this strategic plan um really developed throughout um 2017 um revised a number of times for sort of continuous Improvement

3:18:54 evolutionary kinds of of work really appreciate the Dynamics and the and the fact that the board is willing to tee this up and um re-evaluate and check to make sure it's it's still applicable and um in essence we see it it it is still applicable um we don't expect a new strategic plan to be a you know student body left shift there will be a lot of things that continue but it is an opportunity to refresh the basis of which we want to now move forward um we did develop phases you can see actually um we're in this sort of central phase down in the bottom right um Advanced metering sounds familiar um

3:19:39 all those things integrated resource planning rate design informational systems uh looking at resiliency both Water and Electric those should sound familiar because if you look at where we're investing those are the things that we're investing in and so um it's really a credit to the to the board over the last number of years and the development of this that we've been able to uh work through this strategic process and have these things be pretty consistent with what we started out to do now there's there's more to come and now we have to figure out what's next and and we will um but feel pretty good about the fact that we're we we're in the middle of this time frame and kind of in the middle of the plan so when you look at the the scope and the results

3:20:25 versus the schedule we're U about where we thought we would I can't say we're exactly where we went we're probably a year late two years late on a couple of things but um Co also snuck snuck in there on us uh sort of a minor distruction um again a couple of the the things I I know that um the board has seen this so uh recognizing uh some of the issues that that we're dealing with around the Dynamics of the operating environment recognizing that there's kind of discreet events and then there's gradual events that we're dealing with um tying it to the vision um I know that there was public testimony around customer

3:21:10 owners um we're recommending replacing customer owners in the mission with Community um including a number of different categories of the community this definition actually came directly from the work that the board did on sd23 uh which was the um definition that we were working on around the the Dei policy and what does community really mean and really appreciated that and and part of that is that when you use the term customer owner people tend to think that individually and we think of customer owners collectively or at large and you as a board represent all of the

3:21:55 customers you don't re now you appreciate the fact that individual customers contribute and that you take those into consideration but in general we are looking at the impact we have collectively at large of the community and that was the basis for this for your for your consideration um I did appreciate um Joe M's recommendation around uh Watershed conservation um have no issue if the board wants to make that change I would uh defer to you it seems to to make a lot of sense um what we were trying to demonstrate here was we had a very specific issue that we were addressing a beginning in 2020 and we think there's

3:22:40 now a transition to something that is more sustainable uh at a more sustainable level long term building upon what we what we um had transitioned to when we went from Watershed protection to Watershed recovery uh based on the holiday Farm fire but recognizing that um there's some different objectives and intent going forward um and then also um uh really recognizing that the first phase of the Strategic plan was around customer confidence I would include employee and commissioner confidence in that as well and the fact that one of the basis for developing and strengthening that has to do with compliance and that was not

3:23:25 listed originally but when we think about the environment we're operating in and the importance and the Reliance that we have and the dedication we have to being compliant that seemed like it warranted um the highest level of recognition in the Strategic plan um I think the oh that that's that's where I was going I did have um the exact text as a reference if you if you need to refer to that but um president McCrae I I would just um defer back to you if Commissioners have any other gaps or that they see that need to be filled right start with brown I think just for reference Joe's comment was

3:24:11 4.3g okay for protection to conservation the rest of it thanks for the clarification I'll I'll double check the the uh formatting yeah uh if you go back to the previous on the protection versus recovery I mean I I appreciate moving from recovery to protection that makes a lot of sense to me on the conservation side for me protection is just stronger language um so I would refer more to the protection side but maybe it's a different section um and then I think we had had customer

3:24:56 owners specifically because we were trying to call out that we are a public utility and so having that so that people understand that this is their utility was a part of that language and I don't know if we maybe most people don't really read the mission so maybe it doesn't really matter but um to me that was kind of an important distinction so I'd like to know more about why Community has more of a meaning than customer yeah commissioner I I think it was originally developed to sort of reinforce that as as you mentioned I I think when we would look at the definition of owner and even in our case individual customers are not owners in the sense that that maybe they think

3:25:41 they are under that term um communities seem to be a little bit broader way of representing the fact that we are a community owned utility um and so um that that was the basis for looking at this it was just a little bit more more Broad and yet it defined the key stakeholders uh without sending maybe a mixed message which is no you really don't cash out your stock in this particular situation that yes we are part of the City of Eugene and its Charter and and that I would say would be part of our discussion when we get into a new strategic plan is when we look at our mission um there's some work to be done around the mission um when it

3:26:26 comes to what we're doing and who we're doing it for and what we're not doing um but the basis for using Community was and was um kind of transition that a little bit but but you're right that was that's the risk that you bear if you don't put that in there is it is it super clear um it's a little more friendly I mean customer owners sounds kind Cluny so I guess I'm take it back I'm supportive Community commissioner Carlson the only time I've really heard customer owner is when someone individually wants something from us I I'll just say it that way I mean it's and and we all deal with the collective and and that means individuals are important but the only time I've really heard it used by a customer is when they

3:27:12 individually want their way well and other than that I mean still very supportive of what we have going on in the Strategic plan like you said we're kind of in the middle of it and we have a lot of projects that are underway that keep moving forward so I don't feel like there's a big turn here or there and I'm sort of all just changes rski yeah thank you um yeah I'm in favor of these I do like the idea of conservation over for uh protection I mean either one's fine

3:27:59 but I heard it it sounded good to me especially from from who it came from um somebody who's been protecting our Rivers for years felt that that was a more appropriate term that so again I Le lean into the people on the ground that are doing the work and and they're they their uh expertise um so yeah that's in a couple places it's one in it's in 4.1 but it's also down in the other part um and then customer owners yeah no I'm I'm totally on board with it it's the new language there um the smart meter opposition people used the fact that they were the customer owners again and again in their filings and in all

3:28:45 kinds of things and really didn't ring true to me um on compliance I think that's important are and I'm just wondering if you feel that that I guess oan ex except put it in there yeah I think that that's important too so I'm I'm on board with all these changes been moving to conservation um one one thing I'll do before submitting something for next month is um I'll I'll try to understand what the difference is between conservation and protection um Joe referred to all the

3:29:32 things that eweb does and and maybe all the things we do are too much um but I um be before we before I come back with either conservation or protection and um I'll understand really the definitional difference between those two and present present something in that context knowing that uh you have the final say on it I would support conservation to if that seems right after you take a look um I just have and the other changes that are in here Community I think is is an appropriate term to use um the one thing that I'm excited about that's not reflected in here but I think could be fairly easily um is that we're doing an

3:30:19 Energy Efficiency conservation or conservation potential assessment um and a demand response um potential and um we I know those are reflected in here that we're going to design U plan and design new products and programs um I think it'd be valuable maybe to add also establish goals for both um efficiency and demand response just so that we're all clear about where you know what we're expecting to get out of that so I don't know that that's a huge change but I think establishing goals would be valuable and that's yeah yeah one more thing um to me the success the most successful

3:31:04 strategic plans that I've worked with over the years things always drop off that's the that to me that's the most important part of a strategic plan is hey I mean certain things will never drop off but there's also things on there that are goals that we want to achieve and we've achieved them right and so seeing the ones that drop off you know eventually smart metering will drop off or EES will drop off you know I mean these are in this in this specific case a lot of these things are long-term things but to me that's the best part of a strategic plan is when we revise it we say hey we accomplished this goal and it's not in our strap plan anymore because it's done and so that to me

3:31:50 that's the most exciting part of updating a strap plan is saying hey we we accomplished what we want set out to do like I said certain ones will never fall off because they're core goals and core functions of the organization but a strategic plan to be is working to to get to an end goal so that's as important as as what's on it you have what you need from us I think so I'll take a look at your suggestion um and um to commissioner barsky's suggestion there were certain things especially in phase one that we did not want to fall on in fact we felt like it was it was important to continue those

3:32:35 at the as the basis to move forward so understand where you're coming from that was uh section 4.2 h on new Energy Services okay yeah thanks anything else and if not we'll roll right into the next item I was jumping the gun on quarterly strategic and operational report yeah Commissioners um again I'll I'll be fairly brief with this um just U as the audience may may or may not understand um we do publish a pretty extensive quarterly report um first of all it's an obligation of management to the board uh we also as

3:33:21 part of our obligation to the city we provide that report and I don't know if if Commissioners recognize this but we do a quarterly update to the city so we send them our quarterly report um as U part of what we feel is an important obligation um to the city under the under our Charter just a few highlights uh operationally um as you know we had a really challenging first quarter uh from the electric um Financial perspective um I will also point out very specifically that the water utility did not have that same challenge in the first quarter now some of that is because of bulk of the revenue for the water uh utility comes in the summer months and so uh but the a

3:34:06 number of reasons for that we think we talked about that last quarter we did see some improvement um in our financial position uh moving from a negative change in net position which is really uh I'll say net income if you want to look at it that way to something that was that was now positive um still a gap in the budget that um staff has identified a number of different potential ways to close close that improve the I think we mentioned $3 million it looks like we have identified some some means to get there U before the end of the year that's important from a long-term persp perspective because it launches the long-term financial plan and has an impact on on

3:34:51 cash flow which is impacting rates in particular what's driving that 2025 increase is not our historically challenged number of debt service coverage it's it's cash and cash flow especially going into 2026 which is when we're planning to borrow again and so um having good Financial metrics before you hit 2026 is why we don't have haven't done and proposed our sort of traditional instead of 15 go with 556 or it's because it's a different challenge that the electric utility is facing we are working on a number of different ways to mitigate that uh we're hoping to come back with to the board with something better than that part of that is how we're addressing this year so

3:35:36 that our cash position going into next year is is more favorable um a number of different and I said me a number of different projects continue uh we have um finished up our our contract with with UPA around the deployment of of smart meters on the electric side we are now working with staff on um the remainders of sort of this the the I don't want to call them hanging Chads but because I would date myself I think everybody knows here what a hanging chad is but um you know just sort of the residual effects to that um so we're more than 90 % deployed so we will be able to take that off the list pretty quickly from a hardware

3:36:21 standpoint uh using an acquiring and handling the data will will continue um College Hill Reservoir has kicked off um I really have to commend um our our marketing and Communications team for how they have handled the launch of that project um the fact that we had a celebration um really mitigated this the what could have been a very sad public and yes the you know we're all sad that something built in 1938 that's a big slab of concrete is going away but there's good reasons for it and we really provided an opportunity for a little bit of both personal staff and

3:37:07 Community grieving as part of that process and and uh also highlighted the reasons why the the new work is so important and so we've launched into the College Hill Reservoir and current substation I I would like to work with staff to get the Commissioners back out to the current substation I know all of you went there when it was kind of a destroyed hole in the ground uh I think we had uh Philip Peterson kind of walked everybody around like to get you out again and see the the bright new shiny substation that uh is going to be commissioned um Rod I believe is October is when that will energize is that roughly the plan so we'll have 115,000

3:37:52 volts coming in from all direct types of directions um into that site in October um the some of the operational improvements some of the metrics you saw have a little bit of a hangover from from q1 uh there's a few things uh some of the time loss days for example are are high compared with normal but then you compare that versus the amount of Expos hours we've had and it's actually lower than our our average so some of you have to look dig deep dig a little deeper into some of the the data but we are even on call response the year-to date versus the second quarter significantly different some of that because we had um tens of thousands of calls um in the during the ice storm so

3:38:37 a little bit of a a hangover there you you kind of saw a little bit of that in a few of the reliability metrics on the electric side um but those are pretty uh um both the sad the the sort of the system average frequency of interruption and the duration of interruption are within the fiveyear sort of rolling window that we that we look at and then the water metrics are are um are good including really no cyanotoxin reports uh this year uh we have we have seen some and heard heard about some in other parts of the state um and then you know go through uh really some of the operational goals the first two very very much

3:39:22 around um some of the operations with with mixed results I think I've talked about most of these already uh the compliance is also you know we know we have some challenges on the dam safety side which is also impacting the Carmen license side uh and yet the nerk audit was a a very favorable result we went through an audit with a consultant learned a number of different continuous Improvement pieces from that but because of our track record with nerk they did not do they decided not to do an odd site audit at at eweb because of of the fact they felt we were responsive to and proactive in how we were looking at compliance um same very favorable with the with the lead and copper rule master

3:40:08 plan and that's that's on target um we are making and investing some and the board approved a contract recently to help with our Oregon pu Corrections and just to give you a little bit of background what happens there is the Pu comes in um they do not govern rates as you know but they they do govern some standards that they come in with with polls and they measure clearances and and customer services and they say well this crossarm isn't good or this clearance isn't good and they kind of go through different parts of our system um and so we have a five-year plan that that deals with various um Corrections over over those five years and we're we're a little bit behind on that in the five-year window but have contracted and

3:40:56 and you have helped with that to to recover um and catch up on the on the Pu compliance side really most of the rest of the the goals are pretty much um On Target uh we're we're looking as you know some of these should sound familiar e s which you just heard about raid design uh integrated uh resource plan actions which we've we've talked about some of those more recently with the BPA being kind of the focus um the evolving Workforce is something that that that Rod is looking at particularly around some of the the principles that we're we're developing to continue to evolve our our mobile and and um hybrid

3:41:41 Workforce and how that uh interacts with people who are both field-based and facility based um and then the alternative funding and the reason really that is is slightly below Target is that we're still evolving some of the processes to govern that that's not that we haven't gone out and and done uh pretty a really good job of of uh both pursuing acquiring supporting grants um but it's to to develop more intentionality around which of these we will be more aggressive with and and and which ones that really are not strategically aligned and putting that process together is something that we're that we're working on we feel a little bit behind on that so um I think with that um I'll open up for questions

3:42:28 comments um you know appreciate the update from staff I know there's a lot in there um and um be happy to answer any questions or research anything that that we need to research for you further right thank you sharing with Sonia comments we uh I was pleasantly um surprised to see that we asked candidates the reason for their interest in eweb and that making a positive Community impact was the number one reason by far um and that EB's reputation was second and wasn't even you know benefits and total compensation was fourth I think that speaks a lot to

3:43:14 the people who work here and to what Travis and Julie were talking about earlier about the commitment and the passion uh it shows in a number of different ways and I love that we have that Community culture here and I know that we have this is probably one of the more mixed reports that I've seen during my time here but I know it's because we're doing a lot of really big challenging things and we're getting into some of the nitty-gritty that know when you're making progress and and trying to deal with those challenges it it happens but um overall I think you know great work from the whole team and forward to seeing you next time thanks well I appreciate those comments I do I do think that um and I I won't

3:44:03 use this in the context of what we do now but if everything's a green light then maybe you're not stretching yourself enough and and so but if you have too many red lights then you get so there's this line between frustration and being you know bored and overwhelmed and I I think we're we're teetering with that because we're neither bored nor nor overwhelm well sometimes we're overwhelmed but um I I really appreciate the board's support on on these we know that we're doing a lot of things and we're doing a lot of things kind of simultaneously and a lot of those require kind of even like our discussion earlier it's we may have some ideas rate design is a really good example we may have some ideas we hear from the public regularly on their

3:44:48 ideas but we need to understand where the board is coming from when it comes to the sort of the tradeoffs and the tensions between some of these things and so we know they're not easy for you also so really appreciate the the guidance we are definitely not Bard your board b o a r d maybe yes but there's no board in this room I don't think anywhere great thank you thank you uh right into our last item on future board agendas any questions or

3:45:33 comments yeah Frank I will only I don't know this this works wherever I go but um that's a little scary because I was down the hall earlier um so um one of the things I did here earlier and I mentioned earlier and I we'll make sure and I I'm going to look over at an for a second we had talked about doing something for the board around the EV feedback um in October so I I wanted to make if that's not on there that's certainly in our thought process um staff has been looking at this they they know we have some commitments there's clean fuel credits involved in this um but we also were hearing some questions and it goes beyond just the EV program

3:46:18 it goes to a couple other conceptual um things around the kind of the who pays and where you have that dividing line um and so um there'll be a little there's going to have to be a little bit more background there to your point commissioner Carlson earlier you know what what are the real numbers behind this you know what I think those are things that I know Rod price has already looked into previously that we'll that we'll update the other thing I'll mention I think's coming up that I'm I'm I'm both excited and I'm a little scared of is the conversation around the business model um and what that what that means you thought rape design was fun Imagine you know setting the whole course for an organization's geology going forward what is it that um

3:47:06 uh you know the eweb universe is going to look like now versus what's it going to look like in 10 years or 15 years um 20 years so uh that will be uh a very important piece that feeds rate design it feeds strategic planning as well as a number of other things so decisions around resources which I know Brian Booth cares a lot about just a little bit um I know we all care about it a lot right Deborah Deborah cares about that's so um that's that's another thing that's coming up that I think is going to be pretty important so lots lots of you're not bored hopefully saysky thanks

3:47:52 um yeah you know you just touched on another big subject um so last month we talked about BPA this month we talked about rate design business model it was brought up last month you know that some of these items for at least for me I don't know about the rest of the board but may be more conducive to a work session type of an atmosphere where it's a little bit more free flowing um again you you also mentioned the fact of of getting commit getting the last brain cells out of commissioner McCrae before he leaves I really think it would be ho us to do a work session or so before the

3:48:38 end of the year maybe we pick two of these things and say you know we're going to do an hour on the or an hour on that I don't know just something to put out there because for me you know the one we did today we got a lot out of it but I think that it's still a deeper dive at least for me and I'm I'm willing to you know do an extra meeting for a month on a on a more different type of a structure if that's the will of the rest of the body um so I just wanted to put that out there that that's something that I think these these really deep issues all four for me because I walk away say gosh I wish I had said this or I wish I had ask that question and and

3:49:23 then doing it on one ones doesn't the the collectiveness of the of the board so I just wanted to put that on I I think we're we're willing and supportive to do that I know we do have one schedule in October I think specifically around the BPA and and resource planning um but there's no reason we can we can either we can also structure sort of backto back within this time slot as well that's if you can get through the business items quickly um or just which should be a longer period of time for deeper Dives or staggered um or just separate word section we'll we'll look at all those and we'll do them all before the

3:50:08 end of the year I mean I alone Al this commissioner BR like another meeting for me it would be very helpful I think Mindy's voice support for that I'm certainly supportive I feel like deep Dives and there's plenty to work on here game and one thing for Commissioners to think about and I I would appreciate this and the feedback can come during our one-on ones is in a work session what do you see is the key differences between a work session and what we did earlier today earlier today was supposed to be about interaction and listening to other people is it time frame deeper dive is it we have a round

3:50:53 table and there's no s of Captain at the at the end um I would be interested in knowing what the characteristics are that are different so that we can facilitate that me it's just the amount of time dedicated like to see more scenarios where like we have talked a little bit the H about it I'd love to see um just more of the diagrams of like okay well if we did this area what would that look like and then we can tease out well how do you how do you how do you feel if it does this or how what do you think about you know if you choose this path or this path so we can kind of tease out

3:51:38 oh well I see if we do this then it has this other impact and having white boardy type situation would be very helpful to me um in those did you copy that from my office no but I'd love to see what this look like now thanks for me it's more it's more informal setting it's maybe sitting in more of a circle and not having the minutes thing up there so that it can be more of a free flowing conversation so that if if John says something or poses a question I could I don't know ask John what did you mean by that I feel like this setup still is more like you're the teacher up there and we're raising our hand and waiting

3:52:23 our yeah I'd like to also say that to me that you know rules the unwritten rule is that we have 30 minutes on the clock you get 15 and we get 15 that's three a piece it never works out that way and then you're sitting there say wow there's only two minutes left and three people to speak so you don't say things and you're not you're not allowed to the allocation isn't there it's not not against anybody but that's the way it works out because we'll get on a tangent you'll take 20 response and say oh wait a minute burn up all our time so if we have one agenda and one topic we know we've got an hour we can figure it out but to me that you know that's a little intimidating saying we got five other agenda items and know I have to go fishing at three o'clock in the morning and I don't like sitting here past 9:30 so I just B

3:53:09 that anyhow the other thing that that I might suggest and and it's not because Sonia showed that really sort of nifty looking piece of paper is that maybe even having a huddle around a whiteboard um because I know we I can only speak for a few of us and I'm looking at Rod is we tend to think through visual concepts a lot of the things we do are almost three-dimensional in their nature and to be able to to draw things and talk about things um while it it it isn't necessarily sort of overly formal it it can be certainly informative and um so I think I'm understanding I'll take it off our one-on-one check-in agenda

3:53:57 list all right miny yeah I just have one wrap up thing and um I just want to say I know that we live in a time where people are very mistrustful of our public institutions and we have people come and say really angry things to us that we don't care but I just want to share two things that happened this week with web that shows that we do care about our customers and our community one is that I heard from a customer who moved into his house within the last year and he could not find the water M for his house he had a contractor out they couldn't find the water man so he called eweb and was talking with some customer service person who said that they would put in a request for somebody to stop by if possible but was walking

3:54:42 him through just some different places that he could look so um in his front yard and as he was on the phone with the customer service person the EB truck pulled up because they happened to be in the neighborhood so that was pretty cool um and the second one is that there was some anti-semitic graffiti on a EB poll out in West Eugene and somebody had been trying to report it to somebody for a couple weeks and didn't know who to report it to so called the city several times and the city either told them they couldn't help them with it or didn't know what to do um and this person saw that there was a little BPA sign on the poll socalled BPA and BPA said actually it's a EB poll but we'll alert EB right

3:55:28 away and the next day the graffiti was taken care of so um I really appreciate that and pass that along yeah thanks M uh I also wanted to take note that there was a comment next door somebody had a question about um they had said their bill went up $150 and you know did anybody else have experienced this and I read through the comments on it and many of the comments said I didn't have that problem my went down but you should contact eweb and talk to them they're always very supportive they're always very helpful um maybe they could have somebody come out and take a look at it and so there were many comments in there

3:56:14 overwhelmingly of call them they'll help and I I wanted to share that ski so on board wrap up for me um last month I was virtual so I didn't interact quite as much as I do yeah quite as much as I do when I'm in person here um but I just wanted to put out there to staff um with with the uh rate inre increase that that we're looking at going forward you know that we're going to be looking at over the next few months um it it's really important to me that you guys really look at that hard um you know that that number that I saw I was I

3:56:59 was pretty uh intimidated by that um and I want you to I I understand the pressures that we have and the cash flow and those types of things but as a as a commissioner this is the one area where I really need to lean in and say rates are something that's really important and if we can look at I know that there in the longterm uh you know the capital Improvement plan and stuff like that there's a lot of projects on there that are big money projects you know how much did current cost us you know and we've got five more of those in there I know every time we push something out it costs a little bit more but if we can look at that and sharpen our pencils on that when you come back to me that would be something that I'm really uh

3:57:45 concerned about you know when I when I saw that number and I'm not even GNA say it because I I don't want it in the ether as much as it is because I had I had a I had a person today come to me and say what's the rate increase going to be because I've got to figure out how much I have to budget for my hotels their their budget going forward and I need to know how much it's going to be to you know set my room rates and so I I said you know we haven't landed on that number yet but the one that was put out there was a little bit scary so anything we can do to to look at that and give us options moving forward would be helpful for me as a as a board member thank

3:58:34 you anything else right being ger 29 snuck it in snuck it in I was watching the clock I should have waited another