EWEB Board of Commissioners — April 15, 2025

0:02 going to call it to order. I don't see anybody in here from the public, so I'm going to just do away with the facility awareness. Everybody here should be aware. Um, do we have anybody online from the public? Yeah. Okay. Then, uh, item number one is organizational goal number three, our energy resource study. We're going to get presentations from staff on this and then we'll dig in and ask questions. So, I'm going to just turn it over to St. All right. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Brian Booth, Energy Resource Officer here at Eb. Thank you for joining us tonight. We have a another thrilling uh

0:47 presentation for you. Joining me at the table today, we have energy resource analyst, Aaron Bush, and our planning lead, Ben Olrich. Uh they are part of a part of a larger team that's made this into more of a uh more of a lifestyle than a job for the last six months. Uh so we are excited to be getting down to what at least feels like the home stretch of it. So with that, let's go ahead and jump in. On the agenda tonight, uh we're going to take a a quick review of the product timeline. We are getting down to the back half of that. Uh we have the quantitative modeling results which are the headline of tonight's story. A quick refresh on the qualitative considerations that we dove into last

1:32 fall and then we'll talk shop on next steps. So here's that timeline. uh we keep getting down toward the further and further down the timeline, but it somehow stays about the same size as we just zoom in on it. I feel like it'd be helpful to leave like all the boxes that we've checked off on there just to show our progress. Uh but here we are. It's April. Uh we're at the work session. We have coming up the May regular board meeting. We'll be back for another work session in June and then we'll be asking you for an authorization to allow Frank to sign a new BPA contract at the July meeting. We're going to spend uh the fall and early winter hashing out legal ease with BPA attorneys and then we hope to be signing

2:17 in December. So, a a quick table setting on on what this is. Uh you've probably seen this table before, but I wanted to pull it back up uh just to highlight exactly where we're where we are. We have a number of different quantitative variables that are going to go into like the all-in cost of this. And what we have tonight is the top part of this table. We have the cost of the BPA product itself. We have the non-federal resources that would be needed to fill in the gaps around that product. And that's it. We've got the car. We've got options of of leather, the V6 or not. But stuff like gas mileage and the maintenance plan, those

3:02 are things that we're going to get to next. We've got just another layer of numbers that are going to come after this. So, let's go ahead and jump on and I can hand it off to Ben and Aaron. Great. Thanks, Brian. So for the energy resource study, it was like a 60-page document which I'm sure you all enjoyed and we put it in the board backgrounder and the goal tonight is to just give you the high highle takeaways from the document and provide some context which will be useful because in just a few weeks management's going to come to the regular May board meeting and present an initial product recommendation. So, as Brian just pointed out, the energy resource study is a really important part of it, but it's not the only factor in what's going

3:47 to go into that product recommendation from management. They're going to think about strategy and other factors that Aaron will talk about later. Um, so again, high level takeaways from the study is what we're going to cover tonight. I do want to give a recognition to John Krider, who is a senior energy resource analyst on our team. He's on the the phone call tonight and or listening in. um and he along with Aaron did the vast majority of the modeling work that went into this. So it was a tremendous amount of effort and I want to make sure we're all recognizing there's very much a team effort in the power planning team and it's not just this small group here that was doing this big study. Um so let's recap on methodology. So the goal was to look at 20 years in the future what would your all-in cost

4:33 be for each of the BPA products? And so in order to forecast that amount, we had to break up our modeling into two chunks. The first would be estimating the cost of your BPA bills. So get here's your load following product. Tell me how much that you think that'll cost over the next 20 years. And so that's what's shown here in blue. And then BPA offers different levels of service with their product. And so some products require more nonfederal resources to supplement that BPA product. And so we had to estimate the cost of those supplemental non-federal resources. So got that here in orange. And we used an optimizer tool to help us calculate that least cost mix of supplemental non-federal resources that would go with each BPA product. And then you add those

5:19 two parts together and you've got your total portfolio cost. So the results we're showing you tonight are the 20-year total portfolio costs for both these components. And that's what all of our study results are presented in. I do want to call out that EW Webb does have the ability to switch products midway through your contract period. You can do that one time. You have to provide BPA several years of advanced notice that you want to switch. But for our energy resource study, we just assume the same product all 20 years in a row. Just makes it easier for comparison purposes. So when we came to you in December, we had a base case model set up. And when we set up the base case model, the goal was to talk about which assumptions were

6:05 key drivers of differences between the products. We were just kind of choosing it could be low, it could be high, and then we would choose mid or median values for that base case. We really emphasize we haven't looked at likelihood yet. So we just want to understand what's important. But then obviously everyone says well what about most likely futures? I want to be able to make a comparison between the products based on likelihood. And so what we did is we took the base case results and we took our key learnings from that and then we said okay let's create a most likely expected future. And so we worked with the executive steering committee to come up with management's view of what we thought that most likely future would look like. And so, um, I'm going to highlight three key things that are core assumptions

6:51 that drove these expected case results. And the first and most important is that we assume that we would have modest load growth thanks to e webb actively pursuing demand side resource options like cost-effective conservation and demand response programs. And so from the March presentation, the March work session we did on the demand response potential assessment study or excuse me, demand side potential assessment study, we're presuming that EWB's going to pursue that under $45 per megawatt hour category. It's just a modeling assumption, but we want to show that future where EW manages load growth actively. So that's the purple dotted line here in the chart. It's just you'll notice that it's lower thanks to that management. We also assume that the block with shaping product, the peak

7:36 load variant service won't meet all of our wrap needs or all of our resource adequacy targets. And I'll show show that on the next slide. And uh the cost of new non-federal resources that you need to go out and purchase cost roughly double the cost of what BPA provides in their tier one capacity service. So hopefully this next slide is somewhat familiar to you, but this is a recap of um EWB's resource adequacy target would be the orange dotted line at the top of the bars there. And that's our goal. That's how much capacity you want to have to meet reliability targets. And you'll see that the load following product uh is the service level from BPA helps meets all of your wrap needs. And when you look to the right and you look at the other products, you'll see that

8:22 they all have some small some orange capacity gaps there. And you'll see that the block with shaping plus peak load variant service product has the smallest capacity gap and that's a key driver of our financial analysis. So that's why I'm emphasizing this as a key understanding. So how does that impact the financial results? Um so this is your our expected case modeling result. Uh total portfolio cost for each of the products. Um and this is just that single scenario the expected case broken out into two key components. The tier one BPA tier one cost in blue and that orange non-federal resource cost uh shown here as well. And you can just see it's a key driver of the differences

9:08 between products and that our two leading products, the load following product and the block with shaping plus peak load mar service have no or very little non-federal resource costs over the study period. So that's a key driver of why those are our leading candidates. And so next I'm going to pass it off to Aaron to talk about uncertainty and the range of outcomes we saw in the expected case and how that adds some context to these expected case results. All right, good to be back. Um, so this is showing basically the same information from the last slide. So the little black dot is kind of like the top of the bar chart, right? It's that point single point of the expected case. And then this is the range of outcomes that

9:54 we saw given the sensitivities under that expected case. And the sensitivities here um were focused largely on capacity. We'll talk about that in the next slides. Um, one of the other pieces you'll notice there's a couple of additional product options on this list. Bonavville decided to offer multiple versions of the block with shaping and peak load service. Um, so that is the light blue, the yellow, and the light green. Uh, we just we looked at all of them. Um, and basically saw the winter option fit the best with ew's load and resource profile. Um, and so that's what we're going to be zooming in on. So the rest of this presentation is going to be zoomed in on that load following the PLVS winter and uh just for comparison sake the slice product

10:39 that we have today. So this is zoomed in on those three product options and uh looks at the the sensitivities there. So uh want to refresh again this is the expected case. It's a specific set of assumptions and really the sensitivities looked at the cost of capacity right we saw that as a key difference in the Bonavville products and so when you have the different kind of rates or areas that you can purchase capacity when we vary those how much does it move the results um so the sensitivities that we tested are on the left there so focus on bonavville rates so the PLVs billing and demand charge those are capacity related charges then we have non-federal resource costs market capac capacity

11:26 costs and PRM says the planning reserve margin uncertainty. So the RAP that western resource adequacy program that we keep talking about participating meeting that obligation is still in development that exact obligation that we'll have isn't exactly determined what it will be each year and so it could be a little higher or lower and so this is testing what is the cost impact of that difference. So you notice that load following on the left here has a smaller range of outcomes given the sensitivities that we tested and that's due in large part to Bonavville's rate design. They specifically designed their rates to be pretty stable. They've literally put in governors to buffer them from going too far in one direction or another. Um it's also due to the fact that just given the way the information

12:11 that we have about bonavable rate design in general, load following has the most certainty. there's some things they've determined for that product they haven't determined for the other. Um, and so for the other two products, right, you see the bigger range of uncertainty. Um, and so that's largely due to the amount of non-federal resources that need to be procured and again that planning reserve margin. So this is zooming in even further on those two leading candidates, the load falling block with shaving. So again we have this single point uh estimate of the black dot which is the expected case. This is thing where we said hey this is all the things that we we think are roughly going to happen but there's some unknowns here and specifically focused on the differences in capacity for these two products. What

12:57 is the range of outcomes that we might uh see and so um while blacklist shaping is expected to be in that case about $1.6 $6 million per year more. It has a range that could be plus five or minus five compared to load falling. And in the lower left, we've listed out those key drivers there. Right? So that market capacity price, the RAP program is new. There's not clear uh liquidity in that market of like how much things are going to cost. They could be a little lower than we expect. They could be a little higher. So that could drive the total cost up or down. Um same with the capacity obligations. And then you'll see support rates. So these are kind of the main drivers of the uncertainty. It's like what is the target we're trying to hit and how much is it going to cost to get there. Um but at a high level I do want

13:44 to note that like there are worlds in which blockless shaping can be less expensive than loadfall. Right? So in this one thing that we've chosen with the set of assumptions it's more but there are actions that e web can take to mitigate those costs. Right? So if we're choosing that product, it we probably want to have a pathway and a strategy that says, "All right, if we're going this direction, we would take specific actions to limit our uncertainty or drive down costs." So there, while we've shown kind of a modeling result based on assumptions, real world is going to differ from that. Um, so we just zoomed in for a while to show some differences because there are a lot of ways this products are very similar. They share a lot of building determinants. they share a lot of the same amount of energy from bonds. Um, and so like here the point is, hey,

14:30 we're talking, right? We we showed we zoomed in on the million dollar difference, but this is zooming out to show, yeah, but they're both about $90 million. Um, so in the big picture, they're in a pretty good ballpark of one another for total cost. Um, and just that context again, $2.5 million per year uh is about a 1% rate impact and use customers. of this product decision like this piece by itself is unlikely to be that major driver of hotel portfolio costs and then just the context of you know where what are the Bonavville products relative to everything else right our 2023 IRP we did all this analysis we said yeah actually we do want Bonavville right that still stands today that's what we're going to come back and talk about resolution but you know if the Bonavville wholesale rates are projected

15:15 to be 40 bucks compared to new resource costs that are often over Um, so we just talked a lot about the quantitative parts. This is just a brief refresher on the qualitative. We talked about this last year. Um, I think this will be a bigger discussion in May as well. Um, but just to refresh load following, right, the product Bonavville is managing more of the portfolio. they're meeting the the real-time load variations and um they are the ones that see kind of the market signals whereas as a load falling customer you see more Bondable rate signals so you're much more dependent on Bonavville um for the actual price signals you see and Bonavville holds reserves to flatten volatility it's really a poolled product

16:00 right so if it's like hey I'm okay being in the pool seeing bonal rates um that is a qualitative difference with shaping um right you have those market signals which in some cases may provide a clear connection to demand or sponsor type of use rates they're thinking about. Um, also given some of those non-federal resource needs, right, there's going to be more portfolio management needs on ew webb's part, more non-federal resource needs. So that might fit into the overall strategy as well. Just noting as well that cost uncertainty um that is a part of you know you can take actions to mitigate it but day one if you select it you haven't made those decisions yet. So it's a it's a part of that process. Um and then wanted to note the two bullets at the bottom here. Um I would be willing to bet this will be part of the

16:45 discussion may as well is that bondable product choice doesn't dictate other e webb actions right we can still implement whatever rate designs that we want. We can still enter other contracts as we see fit. Um so it's not going to dictate other actions that we take but it does create the environment that right those actions are taking place in the the signals that we see for the the load service. Um so there's potential there to create alignment with our overall strategic direction and which way we think we're going. Um so next steps um just wanted to put this energy resource study so that's the ERS uh kind of oval there in context right so we kind of got these quantitative and qualitative but we've also already brought additional

17:30 information to the executive steering committee with Frank and Deborah and Brian and those include the portfolio management cost and revenue so those line items that Brian was talking about right there's there's potential to um optimize the US portfolio in certain context more than others. There's portfolio management costs. So there's the line items for those um that are quantitative. We also have the feasibility and implementation, right? These are new products to EW. You're going to have to do something to implement them. There's requirements from Bible, requirements for markets. Um so what would it take for EW? And then again that strategic alignment piece. Where are we headed? How do these products fit with that? So that executive steering committee is weighing all of these pieces currently. Um, we've

18:15 got all of this information and we'll be coming back at the May 6 board meeting to discuss those, especially those those trade-offs and qualitative pieces a bit more. Um, and then give that initial product recommendation. And then side note, uh, we're going to ask for a resolution to uh, basically ask Apple for a contract offer. It's just part of their process. Doesn't get in the way of any of our process at all, but it's just something that people check the boxes. Um, so unless you wanted to add anything right now, that is our our set spiel. Pass back. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation, Mindy. Great. Um, thank you for taking a very

19:01 complex topic and making it relatively easy to understand for all of us non-experts. I really appreciate it. Um, and I know we've seen a lot of this before, so I actually appreciate the repetition. Um, so I had I took a bunch of notes and I have a bunch of qu like small questions, but actually it's really just under one big umbrella, which is uncertainty. And so you are all numbers people, analysts, economists, engineers, and you're operating under the assumption that the laws of physics apply and that you know the way things normally work. And obviously right now we are in a very topsyd time. And so my question is like we have to make a decision. We have we have two choices. They're not actually that different.

19:46 They're just a little bit. So it's not you know but so much of what we're basing our assumptions on are first of all what are the BPA rates going to be which we don't know. And in a normal time you could probably estimate what those are going to be but nothing seems normal now. Um, and then also like the costs of federal versus non-federal resources. Again, like you can look historically, but who knows what's going to happen? And who even knows what's going to happen with BPA? I know Frank, you've said that we go through this every administration change, what's going to happen? But it really feels different this time. It's not just um the kind of proform of somebody wanting to make, you know, set a different tone.

20:32 So, how do you think about this uncertainty? Um, so I heard two pieces and we'll probably trade back and forth here because I know we all have thoughts on this. Um, first is the Bonavville rate piece. So, you said Bonavville, what's happening with Bonavville at a high level, right? We talk about how similar these products are like they share most of the same costs and like billing determinants and cost pools in Bonville's world. So when something happens with Bonavville like in general that that cost for kind of existing tier one system that we all talk about that's shared among all customers and then even beyond that these two products share a lot of the

21:18 billing determinance. So any impact at the bottom level is going to be very similar there. So in the context of like I think this is the broader strategic like how much do we want to lean into Bible versus not that is a relevant thing but in in a product decision context I don't think there's a huge separation there right so it gets into some of that bigger strategic piece of like all right we've got separate decisions on load growth we've got you know block with shaping has a little bit more um kind of local opportunity to move away from bonal but it's not a huge difference um you want to stab what the non-federal person stand uh yeah I I've got some thoughts on the non-federal cost risk because I think we spent a lot of time talking about it so

22:04 you asked us like from a modeler you know we're very quantitative so risks and opportunities are just two sides of the same coin and so part of our work of modeling is to show okay worst case best case scenario and so you'll see that block with shaping plus PLVs has that wider range of uncertainty and And I think we kind of viewed it as our duty quantitatively to show those range of outcomes so you more informed. I think the actions that e webb would take to mitigate those risks were very we we wouldn't uh we wouldn't uh take on a bunch of risk I think without actively having some plans to manage that and mitigate it. So I think our goal in the modeling is to to hold everything constant in order to compare things. Um, so I I

22:51 guess I don't want to presume that there isn't risk there, that cost could be higher, but I also wouldn't presume that EWB's going to do nothing about it, I guess. So if that's kind of how I would say it is we want to show what could happen, but I want to recognize that EW is a take action utility and we would probably really zoom in on that non-federal resource risk and think about how to manage that very actively. I know we're all going to have a discussion or people are going to ask questions, but to me it just seems like the best option is to go with the block with shaping plus PLBS because it gives us a tiny bit more of control in this time of uncertainty. And it might cost us more. We might be able to save some money. And I know it's only a small

23:37 piece, but um that's that's just that's just what jumped out at me when reading the report. I don't know if eventually you're going to after we all talk about it if you're going to say what what you lean towards. And I'm also curious what everybody else thinks. It just seems like in this time it would be nice to have at least a little bit of control instead of like throwing everything in with Bonabel. all right? Well, thank you for the presentation again. It is um there's a lot going on and I do appreciate how you've uh modeled it. I'm curious uh I was looking at the one of the slide uh

24:25 one of the pages in the report that talks about the revenue offset and the revenue kind of leading up to 2028 is a lot higher and then it it kind of like just peters off and is this tiny little thing. Can you tell me a little bit why it does that? Yeah. uh that is uh related to our existing portfolio in comparison to future portfolio. So we are currently a slice customer which means that we have a lot of surplus hydro like upcoming springtime we're going to have a lot of h surplus that is currently modeled up through 2028 that product ends. So that is a revenue source in the model because it's modeling our current product and then the switch to a new product that doesn't have that surplus. Similarly,

25:10 the uh the modeling has are some existing uh contract options and resources that are not continued throughout the study period. So there's some length in our current portfolio that then provides additional offsetting revenue if it's not needed to serve load. Okay. So it's a it's a transition between existing portfolio those contracts ending and then new portfolio doesn't have surplus. Okay. So this all assumes that we still have our current generating cap capabilities like Carmen and and others that we haven't decided to decommission. It is not a decommissioning study or anything like that. Okay. Yeah. So there are some assumptions like with karma and other

25:55 things where we said we expect that this resource is going to continue through the duration of the study period or however long. So that is built in but a lot of existing contracts and things do roll up. Okay. All right. Okay. So that and so then the the energy that we were before selling now it's kind of assumed that it gets taken into our portfolio. Uh the energy that we were so in the context of this it was like long to our average needs. Um and so when those contracts ends we we don't need to sell it anymore. Um I would say it's more of a right sizing of the portfolio right the the modeling is just acquiring enough energy to serve our load and not have additional length. So that's why

26:41 there's a draw. So when we buy the like if we chose to go with the load or with the um the other the uh block with shaping it's just the quantity that we would purchase. we would either take that extra into account or well either in either way we would take that amount into account to say we're only going to buy this amount from EPA. Yes, there and there's yeah there's multiple moving pieces here which is like separation of energy and capacity which are two different parts. So our our tier one energy amount is fixed, right? So that's kind of what you're seeing in the surplus revenue piece is all energy. It's just literally extra megawatt hours. The capacity is the

27:26 ability to flex up and down. Um and whe how we need that to meet different like geeky obligations. So if we thought that we I mean and so this is only to match our our load. This is not a there's no um kind of thought there that we would if we thought that we were going to be in an energy constrained future that we would buy extra and keep the amount that we have and sell it on the market when it's valuable to offset any of this. That doesn't that doesn't take like an arbitrage type situation. Okay. I was just curious because it looked funny that it just disappeared. Um I'm curious about the winter shaping over time. So when you say the winter shaping um

28:11 model, does that so we are still a peaking winter peaking utility. Um, does the way that it kind of models energy change over time to account for climate change? I guess be that on the load forecast side, it does assume that the that U becomes more summer peaking over the study period and I think right now our current load forecast thinks that we'll be dual peaking by 2050. So we will remain winter peaking for quite some time but the gap is slowly uh it's becoming more of a tie thanks to air conditioner load. Got it. Okay. Um the range that you're talking about in this slide here, you said that that

28:58 that's only to account for the nonfederal res or primarily the non-federal cost. Um it's a bit of both. I would say the non-federal cost is the major driver of that range because there's more uncertainty. Okay. Um um oh the kind of like um Commissioner Slashberg was asking like on Bon like other things that happen in Bonavville. This is zoomed in on like a very specific future testing key differences that are going to drive differences between products. And so there's a whole bunch of other stuff that might drive overall like if eweb's load grew 10 megawatts on expense

29:45 that's going to increase portfolio costs you're not offsetting revenue. That's not in in here, right? This is literally just the hey, we've got a single load forecast. We're just bouncing around the cost of this capacity, which is a a key driver product difference. So if we had a a communitywide initiative to actually bring in a large customer that would take in a lot of that then that there this wouldn't model that. That is just like steady state where we're currently at and we would basically be in a like we need to go do something to okay deal with that situation. Okay. If you go back to the base case and you look at some of the analysis there that had some different load growth trajectories. So that will show some of those different pieces, but you'll see

30:30 that it's a much broader range of cost outcomes, right? Okay. Um is load following what Springfield has? Is that closer to what? Okay. All right. And then um when we have load following, we still need some of our own generation, right? Because we we we can't fully load follow. We have a partial commitment here. Yeah. you're speaking to the dedicated resources like Carmen Smith and Walterville. Like those are contractually designated under the under the BPA contract. They're our responsibility and we have to if we were to lose those resources, we have to backfill them with other resources. Bonavville won't supply tier one energy to meet that. But we did do something a

31:16 few months ago where we kind of limited the amount. We said we're not going to we took that dollar amount or that figure down I think. Yeah. So I've got my correct on that. I have my finger on the microphone there. Okay. Yes. We were able to remove Leeberg from our exhibit A undedicated. There is a fairly rigid test that can be used to undedicate resources. They have to be uneconomic, obsolete, or a third one that I'm gonna look at Erin and hope it get lost. Lost. There we go. regulatory loss. Uh we probably could have made all three of those arguments for Leeberg and that it was uneconomic and well lost. Um okay, we only did that for Leeberg. We did not

32:02 include Walterville because we were looking at that trail bridge was the most recent one. We were able to mostly undedicate Trail Bridge. It is still on our exhibit A. It still has a very small amount associated with it, but by and large that obligation is off of us. Fun fact, we still have Smith Falls on our exhibit A. It was sold. It did not pass any of those three tests. It is still operating. So, we do owe if we were to go load following, we would owe Bonavville replacement power that's of the same kind of size and shape as Smith Falls. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that refresher and understanding. It's there's a lot moving. So, thank you, John. Thank you. Um Oh, wait. Frank

32:47 wanted to weigh in quickly before Yeah, I was just going to weigh in on a couple of things. Uh Commh Commissioner Carlson. Um part of the difference between E Webb and and Springfield is that um Bonavville to us has a net obligation. And that's because way back through the history, EW Webb brought to the table our own generating resources to begin with. Uh Springfield is a what's called a full requirements customer. So they lean into Bonavville for tier one for all of their resources. And that's probably a key difference. Um if we're in a position where we need um growth, um there's going to be an obligation that we have to go serve serve that through another resource that's independent of the products that we choose. Um, and so there there are

33:34 some differences I think when when you look at the history of how that came about. But I think the important thing to remember is that Bonavville to us has a net requirement. It's not a gross requirement for everything. It's a net requirement independent of the product that we pick. I have one followup question. Oh, the other the other one one other comment and and the other one had to do with really our emphasis with this part of the the study was um on meeting what we thought was projections for load. We we did not intentionally go out and create intentional surplus to go after a market that by the way can be very high or very low. There's there's lots of risk associated with that. And so our

34:19 emphasis with this part of our decision-making process was to really focus on what we thought our obligations to our community was um relative to load. Just if if Springfield had a large growth um based on their uh their uh product that they get from BPA, would um BPA just be required to match it? No. Okay. No. there's um so there's certain limits to to that growth and in fact and I think the new contract is is much more strict. Um they would have to use tier 2 um what's called a tier 2 resource. This would be where they would still lean

35:04 into Bonavville but Bonavville would go out through contracts and and other means to fulfill that. Not it wouldn't be a costbased product. I'm it's yeah I'll maybe fill in a little bit. So we've been talking about the tier one product, right? So that's capped amount of energy at that low cost rate. We will have a separate decision next year that says, hey, do we want Bonavville to fill load growth for us or not? So this kind of might fit in the overall strategy discussion. I don't know where that's headed. Um there's a separate piece which is new large single load. So there's a separate policy that says, "Hey, if something big pops up that's over 10 average megawws, you got to carve that off and serve it differently. It's not um it's not going to be in the same cost buckets or served the same

35:49 way. But in general um when a utility grows, it's not through this tier one product, right? That it's this got to make a separate decision on that. and new large single load is we would only we're only voting on the tier one two tier two next year thank you next year and the new large single load is a statutory requirement that Bonavville has that's not something that there's just sort of discretion at and that that came out of when Bonavville was formed the Midwestern part of the United States was worried all the industry was going to move to the northwest and so they created these limits that goes that goes way back and he was for us um met the new large single load requirement um when it first started in I don't know when exactly you would probably know

36:43 thank you all right you thank you um just for the math 1.6 Six million delta is about a$150 per customer on 90,000 customers. So I don't think it's a big deal, you know, to the to the rateayers. Um, with the ramp, help me with that concept. So that's the adequacy that we have to go out and buy additional power beyond what we have. Do we have to buy that contractually or is that just buy whatever we can? I mean, how because I mean, how set is that cost in in this analysis? Yeah, that was a key uncertainty that we explored. So the RAP program, the idea is that everyone needs to make sure they have enough resources. So it kind of holds everyone in the region to a standard and in order for EW Webb to meet that standard, we are

37:28 likely to need to purchase some supplemental resources or market purchases to make sure we hit that standard. We're we're expected to be a little short under the block with shaping product here. So that's what we tried to quantify was the cost of that compliance. Load following does fully comply with RAP. Bonabil takes care of that on behalf of load following customers. And did you factor in that to be green carbon neutral or just power when we we when we when you looked at that cost? So I mean is coal and solar going to be pretty much different? Yeah, they they are. Um there's a few pieces here. So one the capacity part that we're talking about the wrap obligation is a capacity obligation for reliability. It's not as attached to

38:14 energy as much and this is a but so like a battery right there's no energy until you charge it but it has capacity to discharge when you need like at a peak time. So that would be like a capacity type resource or a thermal plant that doesn't run very often. You turn it on on like that one winter day. So that's the type of obligation that we're talking about everyone meeting. Um and so we're not talking about like going out and buying a lot of energy, right? A solar farm provides a lot of energy relative to meeting these wrap type standards. Okay. Thank you. Last question is Bonavville is uh I mean after we went through Gran and stuff, they have still some controls up there from the 40s and they I think historically haven't been keeping up with replacing things and this is a

39:00 20-year time frame. Are we confident that I mean because whatever it costs them to generate is what they pass on to us. Are we confident that in the next 20 years there's not going to be some big capital expenditures that will get passed on to us if we're totally dependent on Bonville. So this is a subject that I've has been a passion of mine. Um let me let me give both sides of my mind on this one. On the one hand, yes, we were at the tour Grand They were 40% understaffed is what we were told. Um clearly their maintenance plan wasn't as uh robust as we might have liked it to have been. Our capital expenditures at Garman were at least as large as

39:47 their capital expenditures at Gran Culie. Now while we might like our Karman numbers to be a little smaller, we'd probably like the Gran Koulie ones to be a little bigger. Uh certainly after the recent excitement with the federal workforce, it's very easy to imagine that they're more than 40 40% understaffed. Now that said, if BPA were to fail, for lack of a better term, they are likely to fail equally among all of their products. So the question for us is less about which product we choose and more about what e webb does to make sure that we're in a position to still succeed if BPA were to fail. Thank you. That's all I got. Yes, Frank. It's a a question related to the modeling. Commissioner Brown was asking

40:33 about sort of the carbon content of of certain resources and I was I was going to um just confirm with you that we put constraints in the modeling relative to the carbon direction that the commissioners have provided. So even when we go out for external resources, we have to keep the total portfolio within the guidelines that you've already provided. Yes. Thank you, Frank. That was the piece that we we moved on before. Yes. So the I think it's in if you feel like reading the report go for it. Uh it's in there. It's 95%. Yeah. So basically all the constraints the Oregon RPS the 95% carbon. So we set the series of constraints that we know we're trying to hit and all portfolios do that and they're going to select resources within those bounds. Thanks

41:25 Tim. a lot of questions but not that any have been formed into a sentence in my brain. Um, thank you for the present. This is a great presentation. I have seen some of these graphs before and uh definitely appreciate the repetition. Um, and as the newest commissioner, I will say this is well explained. So, thank you for for bringing it to um an eighth grade reading level. Um, I suspect that I will have a lot of 2 a.m. uh in middle of the night questions that will come up at this moment. I I want to just share my um my concerns that Commissioner Schoffberg also has concerned or has shared as well um our flexibility, our ability to change midstream. I still

42:11 remember a a specific uh um number that was shared or a timeline that was shared I think during the ice storm of how uh how very close we were in terms of generation in terms of our own capability to be able to keep the lights on. And that is still something that echoes in my brain um when it comes to BPA. And so uh I just share a concern of of I I share an excitement of flexibility. I think is is how I'll phrase that. So, I'll pause there. Thanks, chair. Thank you. Um, I've got several questions, but you know, I'm going to preface this, I think, the way that I did the last time. So, the two choices that I see, um, uh, I equate to kind of what we

42:58 have, what people would have in their 401ks or whatever investment accounts we have. So load to me would be bonds where you know what you're going to get. Well, not last week's bonds, but bonds historically. Um, and the other one would be a lowrisk um equities portfolio, one that is, you know, high cap uh lowrisk equities. And that's what I see slice with the with the PLVs. Um, and so I guess that's where I kind of look at it, you know, how do we want to have a little bit of play and wiggle room where we might be

43:43 able to get a little bit more re get a little bit more money be by selling some of our excess things. the the $5 million swing, you know, if we're really good at that, we might be able to realize three to5 million a year um in in good years and there may be bad years where we don't. as far as, you know, the concerns that that you guys have about what's happening in Washington today. Again, I look at it I can't look at my my portfolio today knowing that I'm going to be retiring in five years or seven years or two years, right? I have to look at this as a 20-year game that we're looking at and which which way do I want to go? So

44:29 that's that's the lens that I'm looking at it through. The questions that I have go to rap. So we're entering into a a contract or a collaboration with a bunch of other utilities throughout the region saying we're going to basically say we're going to buy extra capacity. When do we get to use that extra capacity? That's the question I have is if we're buying it for California for when they have when they turn their air conditionings on, how much are we going to utilize wrap? What is the dollar amount that we're we're spending those

45:14 those gold bars up there to to have the extra capacity? And we're spending millions of dollars for that extra capacity. How much of it are we going to realize? And if we if we are buying that for other utilities, are we how do we reap that back is one of my questions. And the second question is are we I mean it's kind of the thing to do. But from what I've heard is we are not bound to do that. So if if you guys could speak to that, I would be very interested in that. I'll have I'm gonna have them chime in as well, but I'll explain the conceptual my my conceptual buy in I

46:00 guess for the rap is that it's um there's a benefit to everyone being held to a standard that already assumes from sharing. And so the bigger we make the wrap map, let's say, so the more utilities that participate, the cheaper it'll be for all of us. Because if each utility has to be fully reliable on its own, there's a lot of overbuild in your system. So the RAP program says, "Wait, wait, wait. Let's let's look at California. When it's warm, when they've got surplus, the Northwest should use it." And so the RAP program factors that into the targets they give everyone and they say, "Hey, there's some efficiency here that we built in that you can move en energy around to where it's needed." So it gives you lower reserve margins

46:46 because your pool is bigger. So that's kind of the benefit of a big program to participate. And then as far as like um when do you get rewarded for it? It's kind of it's not as rewarding. It's kind of like everyone eats their vegetables, I guess, is how I think of it. and and um some people will have surplus and you can get value from that surplus when you have it. So EUB may be in positions where some month we have surplus capacity now we could go sell it to someone else who needs it because they're short. So it goes both ways. It kind of creates this uh it's not a market formally but it creates a a need for resources for utilities to share among each other which is overall more efficient while maintaining reliability. Okay. So, so let me just quantify that.

47:33 So then if we've got if we've got capacity of wrap at $50 a mega 50 $50 is that I guess I don't know uh it's in a different term. Yeah. I don't know if this price matter. So summertime or summertime we're not using all of our capacity. California needs our needs energy. Are we able to sell that at a higher rate than what we what or is it just sold at the the whatever the wrap rate is? Um, so yeah, I guess there's a lot of moving pieces here. Um, so California is not in the WAP program, right? So it's

48:19 California. I'm just saying a a user a higher user than us. Um, so there's multiple time periods to the RAP program. Um, I don't know if you guys want to jump in on this or just let me go for how how how far are we going in the rap? Okay. Um, go ahead and start and and I'll try to interpret and put it back into an analogy afterwards. Um, okay. So, the purpose of the w is to have everyone bring like be help be adequate, right? It's a reliability program and e webb has been within Bonavville's balancing authority. So they have been in charge of reliability for us and we haven't really thought about it. The rap is now taking that like concept of reliability planning and extending it to other entities like ew

49:05 webb could elect to be wrap facing. So this is part of like you take on additional responsibilities as a block with shaping customer. So just like now we serve real-time load if we chose that product we would be responsible for meeting this new obligation. Um, Bonavville does that on behalf of loadfalling customers. Um, so this is this is a new paradigm to Ben's point. It is a reliability. We're all chipping in. Um, it takes place over multiple time frames. So there's a a long-term like we got to show a year in advance that you have enough capacity to meet the loads you think you're going to have. You have to hold on to that until you're almost at real time when actual like weather events and things show up. And then they say, "Oh, okay. It's a pretty mild day out. You don't need it.

49:50 go sell it. The benefit to EW Webb, aside from just the moral like, yep, we're supporting the system, is we can sell on a long-term basis, right? If a year in advance, we're like, we have s access, we can sell it. Or when you get to to real time, you can share it. If someone else says, hey, we need this, you can provide it. It also allows us to call and say, ah, we're a little short right now. Not everything showed up. Someone else will share with us. So there's multiple levels um in the program, but in general it is intended to serve reliability. It's not a function we've had to take on before. And I don't know if I can transition to the next part if you wanted to add. I was going to add a couple things, Ben, if or if you want to show the diagram with the dashed orange line at the top.

50:35 So uh Commissioner Barovski, you know, you used some analogies earlier, so I'll I'll add a little bit to it. I I almost think of this as an insurance policy. If if we had to go out and make sure that we were adequate to load all the time, um there are times when we would be buying power and the capacity above the orange line, which would be more expensive than if we're part of a poolled group um that we could manage the diversity of that group. A lot like insurance. you know, you can you can go and you don't like to pay the insurance rate, but if you ever get in an accident, it's it's very helpful to have. And and so um most of the organizations that have looked at the economics of doing it either by

51:20 themselves or joining something like the RAP program have found some pretty significant economic benefits to joining the RAP. even though a resource adequacy program I'll just say in general even though there is an increased um amount of capacity that we have to have now if we don't use it there is an opportunity to share that to get some of the money back there's different time frames um as was mentioned and so it is not just cost and no benefit there is benefit that is realized from that and then the last question on on wrap would be how how many other utilities right now are committed to it and do we foresee that that that

52:05 insurance pool is going to be big enough for us to maximize the benefits out of it? I I think there's there's two ways to look at that. Um one of them you said 22 behind us the maj the major organizations across the Northwest the major utilities have have committed to it. Um the other and Bonavville committed committing to it which isundred and 40 different utilities as part of Bonavville's balancing authority are now committed to it if Bonavville is is a participant. Um the other thing is if there you you hear about organized markets being developed. Um any kind of organized market will have a resource adequacy program associated with it. It might be a slightly different design than the RAP is today but the future

52:52 will include all utilities having to have some kind of resource adequacy program. Um, and and this is just where the Northwest is for now. Thank you. That that helped me. That'll help me when when we make that decision because one of them basically it's going to come down to the two it seems like to me. And you know, one of them we have exposure to the wrap. I'm calling gold bars because gold's expensive. Those bars are expensive. Go. Those are those are rusted bars. That's gold bars when you start talking millions of dollars. Um, so one of them Bonavville takes that on for us and then the other one we're doing that as far

53:39 as internal what what I would like to know and and you touched on it in in the report but when we make the final decision is the impact to our organ our local organization here as far as if you know right now we have a trading floor. We have, you know, a bunch of people doing that type of thing. I think with block shaping, we're going to keep a substantial part of that. But if we went full load following, our commitments to some of those in-house things would would change. Is that correct? There are there are ways to separate out what we're calling the management of

54:24 the resources. So those are related but they're not exclusively if you go this way it's one if you go the other way it's not. So there's there's some separation of that decision. Um they are related though and certain um types of decisions from a Bonavville product perspective might give you slightly more or less flexibility or they might drive internal activities or they might drive customer programs differently. There there are impacts. Some of those we'll talk about next month or two weeks from now. two weeks from now. Okay. Um and so when we start to get into this is kind of we're leaning this way, it'll be because of this flexibility or that strategic input. When you think about the fact that we're really talking about a few

55:09 million dollars a year and I don't want to diminish the value of those gold bars as you describe them, the first quarter last year because of weather, we had a $22 million issue. So if you take a step back, economically, these are relatively the same, but they have different risk profiles. That's that's for sure. And they have different opportunity profiles to Ben's to Ben's point. So that that'll be probably what drives any kind of initial leaning or recommendation. It won't be because this one's $1.6 million less than the other one. That that will it's a consideration, but but it's not going to be the driving factor. And my final my final uh comment will

55:56 be I learned a lot. I'm understanding more and more, but I'm going to lean into the staff's recommendations because this is what you get excited about, right? Uh I get excited about different things. um this this isn't one of them. I I enjoy it, but I wouldn't say I get excited about it. And so myself as a commissioner and the way I'm going to vote, I'm going to lean heavily into staff recommendations on this. So that's where I just just commissioner um just so you know how much fun we're having with this. Um we have pulled a lot of bits and pieces together over time. the

56:42 demand side potential assessment. We're looking at a lot of strategic issues simultaneously and some of the questions that you ask about impacts on the other organization and our options going forward and impact on major customers. You know, we're we're we're talking about all this and we did a quick straw. We pulled the jury the other day. Um just so you know, and it was about 50/50. There wasn't a we're all going to go this way or we're all going to go that way. um the each kind of went around the room and said, "For this reason, I like this one. For that reason, I like that one. This one gives us this option. That one gives us that option." So, literally, we have the the choice between two good choices. Um but it's going to come down to some judgment around um which is the best path forward. And it I'm I'm glad that you're

57:29 asking about the impact on e-web. The other piece of this is we aren't going to pick the easy answer. We're going to pick what we think is the best answer for our customers going forward. That's the recommendation that we're going to really try to focus on. And um I'm not going to I'm not going to let you know which way I'm I'm leaning because that would be kind of cheating. Um but um I I do think it's a choice between good choices. It's a matter of how much we want to lean into the diversity um and kind of cost structure of a of a Bonavville and how that presents risk and then how much we would want to um I think in the report we referred to it go it go it alone in some ways. So those are going to be the drivers of the

58:14 choice. Great. We're almost at time but I'll I will give any other commissioner a chance for another question please. Couple of other quick questions. So in the current um amount that we get there that we pay to Bonavville per year, what is that? How does that compare? I can remember those off hand. These uh so roughly today we spend around $80 million on our Bonavville bills alone. Um this is the 20-year forecasted load growth. So total portfolio costs are going to go up over time as our loads grow. And so we took the total sum of all those years and then divided it by 20 to give you these annualized results. So that's why the this is at 90 million versus what we're paying today is 80. Okay. You didn't and

59:00 it's not like a net present value of that. It's just no straight divide. It's just a straight divide. Yep. Okay. Good. We did everything in 2024. We the the thought of discounting and like doing the inflation back. Okay. Just wanted to double check. Um I'm um so one of the things that when I I like the analogy that you gave about the risk and opportunity side of it. The only difference for me is that we actually start using this in three years. So even though we make the commitment and then we kind of set our portfolio unlike a retirement portfolio where you I mean you may be three 20 years out. I mean we have to start using it in a few years. And so for me it's it's thinking about

59:45 okay I'd look at my crystal ball and see okay the next you know few years we're in for some really big changes on regulations most likely or just lack of um adhering to regulations or maybe we have to still adhere to regulations but there's no staff there to actually support that. um that you know we've talked before about AI being uh putting a big uh demand on energy regionally and probably just in general across the entire um portfolio. Um so you know I think when we've when we've seen technologies come in like fracking

1:00:32 that really kind of tanked the energy market generally we don't see prices go down. we did during that time which is really you know unique. So you know how likely is it that a blue ocean technology will come in and kind of ultimately change the entire market? I would say we save our reset for that kind of scenario. Is that something that we can do save that if there is a type of like blue ocean technology that like fundamentally changes the demand for energy or does that kind of reset not really allow for that? So there's um as I think Ben mentioned early on that as far as the BPA product choice there is a an opportunity

1:01:19 midcontract if you want to change your product selection. Um, I would the analogy that that President Barovski used I might use a slightly different one and that's that if if you're in investing in something in the future, let's say it's a retirement fund. That's what what he was using. You could go with a mutual fund which diversifies your risk or you could get on Erade and go I'm going to do it myself. Now, there might be opportunities that come out of Erade because or you could lose a bunch of money um you know, one one way or the other. There's there's strengths and weaknesses to both approaches and that's there's opportunities like that here. There's how much do we lean into the diversity and the sharing of risk with a

1:02:04 large organization like a Bonavville or how much of that do we take on ourselves? There's both strengths and opportunities and weaknesses with that and that's kind of how we're looking at it. Um the other the other piece of the decision has to be um around um resiliency of decision- making. So if if you make a decision that boxes you in a corner in an environment that is um incredibly dynamic and maybe even turultuous, that's probably not a good decision. You want to have decisions that give you future flexibility. And I think that's going to be an important part of our consideration as well. Right. So does the block with shaping um plus the LVS does that give us the more flexibility versus the load following or

1:02:49 does load following because it follows it can deal with more variance? I I think either choice, commissioner, um if if you look at block with shaping and the the peaking service, there is probably more opportunity for e webb to take a certain degree of control over our own future resources um managing the risk um dealing with some of the the flexibility turmoil issues than you would find in load following. However, with load following, what you're doing is you're saying, I'm not going to worry about that particular risk. Now, I can now focus the organization on other things like customer relationships and programs. And

1:03:34 so, it you're how you manage that risk is more the issue than which one has more more risk. I think they're just they're just different profiles of it. Okay. So, I guess that gets me to my um my last concern. Um, so we have we have fantastic staff and I, you know, I think that when you go after a risk portfolio where you think you can uh shape it more and get some of the yield from that opportunity, you have to hire or have a lot of confidence in the people that are managing that portfolio. And I do have that now. Um, but when I look 20 years down the road, I don't know how I feel about our pipeline. Our

1:04:21 institutions of public education are under attack. Um, from the lowest, you know, youngest level to our higher education, um, our universities and such. And it's really hard to build programs back up. It's really easy to tear them down. it's really hard to build them back up and make them robust. And so that piece scares me over the long term. Now, I don't want to be operating in a place of fear, but um I do wonder how much we will have the capability to be able to take in those opportunities and and have a portfolio that we have to manage

1:05:07 more. So, I just put it out there because those are some of the the kind of crystal ball sorts of things that when we make this decision and we do our due diligence to pick one of the portfolios, um I think these things weigh in and I don't fully understand how they because like this when I look at this variance, it seems split evenly around the so it seems to me like some of the risk might be higher on some side and the opportunity might be different on the other side, but right now they're evenly split. So, I don't know if that will change as you factor in some maybe other um kind of components of it, but it it

1:05:52 it kind of boggles me that they would be evenly split. Yeah. Well, and I think that they're kind of intentionally evenly split because with some of the questions that that we'll have to ask as part of our recommendation is if if you look at one, it's fairly narrow and you go, "Okay, that's that maybe has less variance. It's less risky." You from a at least from a financial perspective, you look at the other one with a wider band. The question becomes, what are the things that we can do to actively push that down the band and avoid going up the band? And are those practical? Are, you know, do they is there an opportunity cost associated with those? To to your point, not just tomorrow, but through a 20-year window. Um, and so those are those are the kinds of

1:06:38 questions that we're getting into when we're starting to look at some of the strategic pieces and the likelihood and the managing of the portfolios and a lot of these other things. So, um, and so you'll get into some of those drivers of risk and the drivers of the I head now, but I I want to see I I would like to see some of the like what those drivers look like and how, you know, maybe actually we think that this is a pretty mild si, you know, this this really isn't a concern. I'd just like to see a little bit more of some of those factors and how they're I I think the initial leaning that we kind of um present to commissioners will be we're leaning this way because we feel like this this and this are more likely or less likely to

1:07:24 happen and this is the outcome we're looking to drive toward and this is the one we're looking to it'll be great it'll have as much logic as we can apply to it. um that then may generate some questions from commissioners. Okay, why do you think that way? Or you know, for example, the other day we did a scenario where we we looked at the impact of external on external resources of things like the investment tax credit going away. What's the impact of that? That's something that we need to understand. And so that those are the kinds of questions that we we kind of have and then we go, well, is that really impactful or not in the big picture? Um, and so, um, those are those will come along with the recommendation kind of why we think we're leaning one way or the other. And, and don't get me wrong,

1:08:10 I mean, I will also be leaning very heavily into staff's uh, I just need to understand it so that when I vote, I feel very comfortable and can defend that position. So, thank you, Commissioner. I had been bouncing a thought back and forth in my mind as you brought up both sub and and staff and our ability to essentially play this game and and win. Um so e webb's rates are about 3.6 cents a kilowatt hour higher than sub. Of that 3.6 cents power supply is 1.3 1.4. So, a chunk of it of that 1.3 and a

1:08:56 half, there's really two big components of that. One that won't surprise you at all is Leeberg. Certainly, nobody at this table uh was behind the decision to build Leeberg. Um and the other is a a local contract that well cost too darn much money and we expect to roll off of our portfolio next year. Like that was an opportunity for staff to well staff and the board to go out and sign up for something they probably shouldn't have. On the other side of that spectrum like sub has the second lowest rates in the state I believe the lowest rates in the state or class IPD. They are a slicer. We work for them. We uh provide their trading services and they have extremely low rates because they've essentially won the game at power supply. They've built cheap resources.

1:09:42 they have gone out and found customers other than their own to sell those resources to like they're a nice example on the opposite end of the spectrum. So to your point, I am very glad to hear that you have faith in us to go out and and win the game. Clearly there's been opportunity to lose it in the past. All right, anybody else before we wrap up? Thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to do this. I did want to mention one thing. Um, at our our May meeting, I am going to put an I talked to Frank and I I'd like to put an agenda item on there to talk about the possibility of us putting

1:10:28 uh fees or things on our bills that are outside of our charged thing. And this kind of goes to the fire fee. so we can have it at at least have a discussion about it um in a timely manner because I think some of the is decisions that will be happening outside of us are kind of contingent on on where we land on this and so I think it's it will behoove us to have that conversation. So just a heads up we'll have a deadline that's and I may be late or not able to make it to the May 6 meeting. Yeah, just wanted to let you Okay. How much time?

1:11:17 I don't know, maybe 20 minutes or or whatever you feel is appropriate. Yeah, me it's a forever decision. It's a forever decision and uh it's it's establishing a president. So, it's going to weigh heavily. Uh you know, I'm going to have a lot of questions and a lot of comments. So, I can take 20 minutes. Please chair. Is clarification is the conversation in hopes of the fire fee in particular or just the discussion of whether or not e webb as an organization should put fees on bills? Well, this this is my my feeling on this is one the decision is a broader decision than the fire fee. I think it's do I think the

1:12:03 dis the discussion that I would like to have and get direction from the board and I think staff would like to get direction from the board is do would we be open to putting other fees on our bill outside of what we are contracted you know obligated to do water sewer and our our other obligations that we have under charter um so that's again That's opening as as Commissioner Brown that's opening a door. What those fees are can be I mean we have an instance where we probably will be asked to to maybe facilitate one through the city of Eugene. So I think that that's kind of

1:12:51 the the horse that's driving this card. Frank, just to answer your your question, um we haven't sent the agenda item yet, so I I don't know exactly what um President Barsky had in mind. I I do think that um it's a broader question for us that that would be helpful to get guidance on. Um I do think we have a very practical right now example. Um but I I do think it's a it's a broader question which is do we you know is the board acceptable to having nonutility based charges or fees on a utility bill. I

1:13:37 think that's the and I think commissioner Schlober actually kind of teed that up um at our last board meeting. I think that would be very helpful for staff um because we do have a very practical right in front of us example of where we would apply that but I don't think it it starts or ends with that the particular um fire fee that's that's been presented. I would just ask um President Barovski, are you looking for an agenda item where you're actually looking at action or a decision or just discussion? Um, I'm not sure because things are going to be playing out in regards to

1:14:23 the fire fee. Things are are in in progress as far as what will happen with with the the fire fee. There's conversations going on with with council. There's the M with the mayor as to now that it's been referred, is there another option moving forward which would which may it may be repeal it and put another type of an ordinance forward that would be more acceptable to the community um and and the public as a whole. In that case, probably one of the lynch pins would be um us being able to us being able to

1:15:08 collect that fee. And so if if we came to a consensus that no, we don't want to put anything on our bills that may influence that going forward. I just have a question. I find it really curious that we're driving this when it it is a like a city thing like I don't know if it's possible to get more information from them what they're thinking. Um and I'm just really the thing that I'm just want to make sure that whatever it is we decide it's not it doesn't seem like we're weighing in on what we think of the specific fire fee. And I also don't want I don't like that pressure either that if we decide that if we decide as a board that we

1:15:54 only want utility related and and storm water fees on our bill then that means that we killed fire fee. Right. So I don't know how to get around that but I am just a little wary of how we enter in a conversation about that. Yeah. Thanks Sarah. Yeah, I it sounds like there are two different conversations happening of us making a because at the last April meeting, we essentially deferred the conversation of the fire fee because the city was discussing it. Thanks, by the way, for joining us at the table. Hi. Um but uh that's a different conversation than should e webb take a long-term position

1:16:40 as a board um as our board and as an organization to not have um a fee on bills that is not generated from within e webb and that is that's two different conversations for and I recognize how they're familiar but so I am wary of putting an agenda item that is a long-term discussion when we may have a short-term discussion that's on our agenda as well. So my recommendation would be to put a a city of Eugene fire fee discussion on the table and then if the city decides to defer or repeal their ordinance then we can have a longer but that we can have a longerterm discussion but that discussion can happen at a a later date if needed.

1:17:26 Good. Thank you. And I'm concerned that we will go down this rabbit hole and divide and potentially have a very contentious conversation for something that we don't ultimately have to decide on. And I don't really want to go down that path in some respects if it ultimately means that we don't actually have to make a decision on this. nor do we absolutely need to have a long-term outlook on how we handle this because this will not maybe I mean how many times does this come up not that frequently and a future board is going to potentially make a different decision because they can make a decision at a later time if they have

1:18:12 something like this come up I'm going to have a ton of questions I mean who's going to maintain the database who's going to generate the database? I mean, I just think of the University of Oregon and we go in and figure out how many buildings and how big they are and when we add a building, we subtract a building and everything else. Is that going to be our responsibility or the cities? And I mean I and you know what about shut off notices because people can't pay these fees because now they've gone up. I've got a ton of questions and and uh for me we're in a catch 22. If we don't make this decision and they do say, well, okay, we're going to refer it to the voters or whatever, then they're g bottom of the ninth or two out, we're gonna have to make the decision. We're not going to have time to vet it properly. And so, but if we do make the decision and they kill it, then they're going to blame us for killing

1:18:57 it. Number one, I still say it's not a fire fee, it's a general fund fee. You look at where the money is. Why are the firefighters asking for a new district? Because there's not a penny going to them. It's just they're taking the money from the fire department, back filling it with general fund. That's what this is about. And I have very obviously a very strong opinion about it. Um, keeping the utility utility. I mean they, you know, they just got to notice waste water and storm water both going up 5.7 and 5.9%. They're going to go up every year. That's Niwa bill. Nothing to do with us. So, we've got rate pressures and uh I just don't want to shut people's power off forcing them to pay for something that's optional in our community. Yes. I mean, I guess if we're going to weigh

1:19:42 in, I I mean, I fully respect and don't want to put something on there that puts more of our vulnerable population at risk. Um, and I I don't like that the concept either to be frank. I'm I I would like to make sure that we protect our citizens. On the flip side of that, I also know that we need money and a lot of the services that we support are absolutely essential to a functioning society and we don't know if we're going to get federal funds that are going to cut off and and make all kinds of other challenges for our local services that we rely on. And so, um, I don't want to put it I mean I I

1:20:27 don't I don't feel like there's a good option right now. I truly don't. It all seems bad and that's part of the reason why I said I wanted to shy away from it. Apart from this being one of our opportunities that we can take moving branching into a a different uh sector which would be billing. Um I guess I would also need more information like if e webb did take on that billing portion does it have to go on the e webb bill? it possible that there's a a different city bill than that gets sent out or do we have to have everything lumped together? Anyway, it just opens up a lot of questions for me. I too don't want people to have their power shut off because they're unable to pay this

1:21:13 larger bill. I mean, to me, that would be um it'd be irresponsible of us, I think. And at the same time, I do know that our city needs more more revenue. So, It's a terrible position to be put in. I'm just going to re-emphasize my encouragement that I I truly think we need to have a fire fee discussion on the next agenda unless there is a swift and strong action by the city. Yeah. That they have repealed it or they I avoiding this conversation I think is not a great a great outcome. Yeah. And I mean for me I I've been pretty wrapped up in this in the conversations on several levels. I was on the revenue committee. I'm on everybody knows that I'm deep into

1:21:58 this and so that's why I'm I'm hoping that there's a resolution that does this is me personally that there's a resolution that can move us forward and protect some of our our city services that we all are are hopeful to keep maintain while also looking at the city needs to have a sustainable budget going forward. And whether that's a gap type of a funding type of thing that may not be a forever fee, but something that is a transitional type of a a funding thing, that's kind of the area that I would like to hopefully see something move forward with that. I know there's been conversations about that. Um whether

1:22:45 that comes up or not, but if that were the case, I think that us having that conversation is appropriate because we are a part of our community whether we'd like it or not. We're elected body that looks over our utilities and our ST water and stuff like that, but we're also community. Yes. Well, since I may not be here on May 6th when we have this discussion, I'm just going to go on the record saying that I would vote against putting on the bill right now as it stands. And hopefully that'll bring others to the table to get a fix that will work for a broader portion of the community. All right. Well, it sounds to me like there's enough interest in having a conversation. What that conversation will be remains to be seen. I think

1:23:32 there's going to be things that will transpire before our meeting in in May. So there may be more information available to us at that point. So thank you for indulging me. One of the biggest decisions we've ever made up on the board a 20-year multi-billion dollar thing and we're talking about $10 a month fee. It's a principle. It's it's fun times. Thank you. You all have thoughts of the