EWEB Board of Commissioners — May 5, 2026

0:02 I call the May 5th, 2026 regular meeting of Eugene Water and Electric Board to order. The first meeting um thing we have this evening is facility safety awareness and meeting logistics briefing. Um I'd like to thank everybody attending tonight's board meeting. Management and subject matter experts are present in the room and virtually. Meeting is streamed live and recorded. Please speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you if you testify. Public testimony is welcome. Signal forms are available at the back of the room. Visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and restrooms. Restrooms are located on the first floor exit to the right hand door in the front room and across the hallway. In the event of emergency, such as a fire or security incident, follow all instructions given by staff. If evacuation is required, please calmly proceed to the nearest safe exit as identified and directed by staff and evacuate away from the building to the

0:48 farthest points in the parking lots to allow clear and immediate access for those responders. Okay. The first agenda item is the agenda check. Is there any additions, corrections, or anything to the agenda? Not. I will note that we don't have a break scheduled. So, if any when when anybody wants a break, usually, you know, halfway through the meeting or whatever, depending on where we have time, just give me a note. We'll do it. If not, we'll just work right through it. So, I'll go from there. Um, next agenda item is item from board members and the general manager. Um, I'll start with you, Mindy. >> Um, I think the only thing is that I attended the resource adequacy. um webinar which I believe was last month and I found that very interesting. So thanks for uh letting us know about that.

1:34 >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Thanks uh President Br uh President Brad, excuse me. Um uh just wanted to highlight uh staff's uh I I've uh this past month in particular I've had a lot of customer um particular issues that they've been facing and some technology challenges some utility pure and staff has been absolutely wonderful in engaging with that and navigating around um schedules. So, I just want to uh Holly in particular has been inundated with emails from me um from constituents and I just want to flag that and say thank you for for all the work and and to thank the the team as well for for cons consistently working with with folks who are in need. So, thanks. >> So, >> well, I wanted to thank staff for the College Hill Reservoir tour. I found that to be very useful. Um it was great

2:20 to see the differences between what we did at 40th and Patterson and the similarities. Um it's mind-boggling how massive those tanks are and wonderful that it's going so smoothly. And then I also wanted to thank um other staff that are not here, but hopefully we can pass on um that attended the Reimagine Earth Day event that um I think was well attended by the community and I hope that Eb continues to participate. Thanks, >> John. I'll pass. Okay. Um I'll jump in. I'll say I I did attend a Calon neighborhood meeting. gave him a presentation and and uh it was wellreceived. They have a lot of really well-informed questions. Um I uh too drove by College Hill and I'm impressed with what's going on there. I just curious if you could uh somebody

3:06 asked me when the the water tanks coming down the metal and they were just wondering if whe you could get I could get back to them on that. So other than that, that's all I have. Um Frank. >> Yeah, President Brown. Good evening, commissioners. So, um, when I when you say the tank, the the tall tank that that has historically it's also had a cell tower up up there, I believe. We'll get you an answer on that one >> and I'll pass on the comments. >> Um, Commissioner Carlson, I'll to the to the team. So, thank you for that. I just had two items this evening. Um, one of them was this is uh national drinking water week and so we're doing some outreach uh to uh awareness to increase awareness of that and what that what

3:51 that means in our community. And then the second item I had was as of last Friday the customers in the Mackenzie Valley officially became uh the the assets and the are now serviced by Lane Electric. And so I wanted to thank a number of staff members for that. It's there there were thousands of details as you can imagine uh in that kind of uh change. There's still a few hanging chads if if you will to to get done. Uh but also wanted to in particular uh thank Lane Electric for their support. Scott Co, their general manager in particular. So um that transfer has occurred.

4:39 Um, next agenda items, correspondence. >> So, commissioners, there were a few pieces of correspondence in the in the board packet this evening. Um, mostlyformational uh items. Um, the annual reserve uh descriptions that will come back to the board uh next month. U most of those fairly routine um and uh some slight changes there. Uh the second item has has to do with a decision. It's really an operational decision uh associated with how we have a relationship with Bonavville that is above and beyond what we would call our tier one or at cost contract which I know you're very familiar with. Um we also um a clarification that we're including um in

5:24 the uh customer service uh policies around the city of Eugene and disconnections. had to do with just a clarification for uh issues associated with e-web only and not for other sort of code violations. It's it's to clarify that in the policy. Uh we also uh on an annual basis provide the board with an update on our Oregon renewable portfolio standard, the RPS standard and um our compliance report for that. Um including uh this year we did retire some wrecks. Uh we also the calculation um includes some exempted resources um that are called legacy hydra resources and so uh

6:09 we've continued to meet our compliance obligation um um for the state of Oregon. And then finally um the I I don't know exactly the the 80page quarterly report uh that includes a number of items. It is the first quarter. I think we feel like uh we know about where we need to be. Most of that there was there was no big surprises in there. U continuing to monitor our our KPIs, our key measurements operationally, uh pretty sound as far as where we expected to be financially. And so, um those are there's there's a few things that that warrant our attention and we're we're paying attention to those. Uh but again it is the first quarter and also the the goals for 2026 are are on track at this

6:55 point. So u I'd be happy to answer any questions or garner any comments uh from commissioners if necessary. >> Questions or comments? >> Sonia. Um, I appreciate staff looking over the uh public safety disconnect uh requests and clarifying that because there was definitely some concern from constituents around how that could be used and um I appreciate the approach that we took to it. Thank you. >> Okay. Anything else, John? >> Yeah, thank you. Um, thanks Deborah for putting together the reserve uh spreadsheet. always like to look at that, make sure that we're have enough

7:40 uh reserves to meet our requirements. Um, one of the things that kind of jumped out to me in the quarterly report is the capital spending summary for Q1 2026. And I mean, this will be no surprise to my fellow commissioners, but you know, you looked at you look at the initial scope and then how much we spent and then how much more it is every single time. Um it's kind of a product of these days, but the one that that um I'm just a I'm just curious on because I see things at the consent calendar month after month uh or or let's say quarter after quarter is uh the Carmen Smith relicensing and you know we've basically spent what our initial budget on that

8:26 was and then the total fine co final cost is a TBD. Um, when we're talking $140 million and then there's a TBD next to it, that just kind of gives me pause. I was hoping at some point we might be able to have a a little bit cl more clarity on the, you know, a ballpark of what our final cost to relicence that dam's going to be. Um, that's just something that stuck out to me in the correspondence. So if we can get back to that, I mean obviously it's a moving target with FK with dam safety with fish fish passages and all of the things that are involved with it, but at some point it'd be nice to have a little bit firmer number on that. So that that helps me when when Deborah comes with

9:12 our long-term financial plans and there's a big gap in it. So thank you. >> Yeah, Commissioner Broski. Um the the reason there is a TBD is we know that there's some upcoming events and opportunities to discuss that with the board. Um one of them is in July when we talk about the long-term financial plan and Carmen Smith is a great example of a long-term project that has had a number of scope changes as well as some inflationary pressures. And so that's an opportunity to discuss it. Uh we also um it's probably about time to have some uh two-on-one discussions with commissioners about the details of that project and why the the finances and the scope are falling where they are. And so

9:57 both of those are um very timely and we we do have a good feel for where the cost is going. Uh we just wanted to make sure that um it was the right time to share that with commissioners. Anything else from correspondents? >> If not, then next agenda item is a public input. And before I open the public input, I'll read I'll read the preamble. Um, welcome to the public input session for this meeting. E Web 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 a quote open back and forth dialogue, commissioners and staff value hearing diverse perspectives and receiving community input. Speakers are asked to keep their testimony relevant to eet business and request that and request that everyone share their comments in a productive and respectful manner. Should

10:42 speakers or audience members become disruptive, they may be muted and or removed from the meeting. Um at this time I have two callers and four u let's see three or four three um inerson speakers signed up to provide testimony. When your name is called, you have up to three minutes to provide your comments. And so the public session is now open. And we'll ask for the first online caller, I think, is Kathy Gang. >> Kathy, you there? >> Yes. This is Kathy Ging and um I'm a a co-founder of Families for Safe Technology. Uh we started in 2011 and uh if it weren't for uh

11:27 representative uh Oregon uh representative James Manning uh e webb would have forged ahead with a thoughtless wireless smart meter buildout but he was studying for a PhD in ethics online. He had retired from the military after 20ome years and he had a a remorse about the fact that there was some um hanky tanky going on with the smart meters and other countries and he stopped the vote and so Dick Helgerson uh Cassidy and James Manning all prevented the buildout and then what happened is once Frank Lawson got to be general manager within months of his getting in there he convinced the board that we should not have a who opt

12:12 opt in. Now, Eugene, Oregon had the first optin in the country. Hawaii had the second led by PhD woman over there. And this opt-in meant that you had to actually proactively want a wireless smart meter. Well, that got turned around 180 degrees because of Frank Lawson's uh leadership. And as a result now we are stuck with people not only not only not knowing how dangerous these meters are with eroding um the plastic around the electric wires can cause fires and you need uh surge suppressors. You need house uh grounding at the utility meter. And I just got off the phone again today with a radio frequency engineer in Virginia who worked many

12:59 years as a civilian for the Navy about the dangers of these meters. And she could talk to you for an hour about it. Well, what I wanted to say this is uh not fair at all for lowincome people or others to pay that $170 fee for you to do it and you should go back to a true opt. So I hope the new general manager looks at the history of this movement to understand that the people were gradually left out from the IERP meetings that was supposed to be done every five years. We had no more public forums. Uh there was a recommendation for a health committee to be working with e webb and writing the information about smart meters. It turns out that I

13:44 knew more than the e-web engineers after my thousands of hours of research in this topic and talking to people from all over the country. So, we are really in a in a lurch right now what to do about this uh uh uh this fee that's really uh you know, it's not right at all. And I know you think that $11 is pretty cheap for a monthly fee, but you don't understand. You should you need to reverse course and go educate people which is what we begged you to do. Instead, Frank Lawson's forbade anybody from family safe meters and technology coming to his office anymore because >> Okay. Can you wrap it up, Kathy? >> Okay. Thank you for your time. >> You bet. Thank you very much. Next

14:30 speaker is Alfredo Gormano. >> Hello. Hello. Hi, can you hear me? >> Can't. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. So, I'm also here to speak about these supposed smart meters. Um, you know, [clears throat] I've had my account since 1999. I've been paying every month a bill that includes a meter reader coming out to visit my meter every month to read it. to suddenly be charged extra for it when I'm already a low-income person struggling to pay my e-web bills is rather unfair. I think that if any fe fee changes going to

15:15 happen, maybe the people who are willing to risk their health by having their meter broadcast, maybe they should be getting a discount instead and we just pay our same rates. Definitely not adding anything onto it. >> [clears throat] >> I am unclear if this I'm not sure if it was $150 or $175 to opt out applies to us who have already opted out, but it should not apply to anyone. Um, you know, we have been paying in our bills, especially with all these added fees, these service fees, etc. We've been paying for years and years and years to have again readers come out. We've also been paying rates that probably are

16:00 higher than they should have been in order to implement this whole program that so many people in this city did not want. And if you've got the money to give millions of dollars out for grants, because I've been at meetings where people come in asking for millions of dollars for grants, you certainly have the money to lower our rates because we're the ones who are struggling to pay for those grants for people. So again, I will suggest because for many years, EWB's talked about how do we help low-income people? How do we help low-income people? Well, the way I've continually suggested and I see no action has been done is just drop off our service fees for for lowincome

16:45 people. If we qualify for customer care, if we qualify for EBT or anything else like that, just drop off those fees. Um there are plenty of people that have electricity that can afford to pay those fees. Don't do it on our backs. And let's see. Oh, and yes, and one store that I know, one local small business, um tells me that since they've got the smart meter installed, their electricity bill has almost doubled. So, I don't know what's going on with that, but something is wrong. I know my bill seems higher than it that it has been and that's with any without any extra charges. So, I'm hoping that instead of this just being a hot air session where we get to blow off our steam that

17:30 actually something is done with the things that we have been saying all along and that I'm saying right now. So, thank you so much for your time and wish I could be there in person but I'm feeling rather sick today so I don't want to get anyone sick. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. The next in-person speaker will be Sandy Sanders, followed by uh Rachel McKinnus. My name is Sandy Sanders and I'm I live on Maxwell Road and I'm here to discuss the meter reading charges. Meter reading these smart meters are insane to start off with, but this this will be my statement. Our

18:16 home has an e-web smart meter installed with RF reporting turned off with manual reading. The meter run resides just outside my small office home office window where I work every day sitting just 4 feet from the meter and windows in between. We are wireless and RFree using emerald broadband fiber optic cabling Ethernet going to directly to our computers. I cannot sit within six feet of a v wireless router. Having discovered this vulnerability to RF broadcasting around 2010, we must have an RF disabled meter. We understand e webb does not charge rural rateayers manual reading fees where RF signaling cannot overcome hilly difficult regions. We understand that e webb offers low-income discounts of $280 a year. As

19:04 I read the agenda, charts of the yearly costs for manly reading smart meters, $175 enrollment fee and $138 fee for manual reading equals $313 a year. EW estimates $220,000 in annual cost recovery. If those fees were divided equally among 99,649 e-web customers, that would equal $221 a year per customer or 19 cents a month per customer. Is 19 a month too high a price to pay for the cost of doing business in providing 1.8% of the rateayers the the right of consent for RF RF free electricity delivery? I think not. We know RF and EMF have documented

19:52 harms which we have the human right to protect ourselves from. I believe if EW owner customers had adequate information about the dangers of smart meter RF and EMF for sensitive people and ultimately all biological life, they would vote to accept a 19 cent a month burden as reasonable. Another option to avoid uh manual reading costs would be to have rate payers digitally photograph the me the meter on the same day as current schedule and send it via email or uploaded to the website charging only RM RF EMF sensitive owner customers MMR fees is purely political punishment for behavioral disobedience. The following statement by EW proves this

20:37 point. As participation in manual reading meter reading MMR declines, the per customer cost of providing this service increases. The fees will be reviewed annually with no cap established at this time. Fewer MMR customers per EW's owner cost analysis means lower cost per customer, not higher. E Web is understood by owner customers to be nonprofit, publiclyowned utility. >> If you could wrap it up, please finish your sentence. Thank you, Sandy. Next is uh Rachel McKinnus, followed by uh Joshua Corn.

21:26 >> Bravo. Bravo. I applaud you board. Well done. With great strategy and patience, you have slowly taken away our right of choice. First, you took away our choice by installing forcefully harmful smart meters on our homes under the guise that we would have the option to opt out and keep our analog meters. Then you took away that choice to keep the analog meter under the guise that we could opt out of the wireless signal signaling on a smart meter. even though we're still stuck with the dirty electricity. Now, you are taking away that choice as well because by forcing us to pay a monthly fee to have the signal turned off is really no choice at all. Your fees take advantage of those with less

22:12 resources like my neighbor who's on disability. His smart meter is connected to my home. So now I no longer have the choice to live in a home with no toxic RF signaling from a smart meter. I'm sure your plan to increase fees is only a matter of time until there is no choice left at all. So job well done. I won't tell you again how I began suffering from breathing issues and insomnia once the smart meter was installed on my home. I won't bore you with the mounting scientific evidence on the harmful effects of the smart meter. I won't do that because that has already been done multiple times and you have made the

22:59 choice not to listen. You have made the choice to believe outdated and industryfunded research. You have made the choice to ignore the concerns and the pleads of the public. You have made the choice to choose profit and progress and power over the people. You claim that the proposed fees are to cover the expenses associated with a manual meter reading. What about all the extra costs from the smart meter? job loss, system failures, constant updates, and device replacement because the smart meter doesn't last anywhere near as long as the analog meters. What about all of

23:44 the extra costs from the smart meter? As our board, you have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Eugene. So, I implore you to do just that. Protect us. Please do not impose this fee on the people who already struggle with their health. My only hope is that right now I'm talking to you people face to face, hopefully full of compassion and empathy. Please do not strongarm us into monthly fees and force us to live in a home with devices that are making a lot of us sick. If you impo impose this fee, you take away the only choice we have left. Please protect us. Please show

24:30 compassion. Please do not take away our last choice. >> Thank you, >> Josh. >> Regarding the smart meters, I uh I've been here many times talking to you all about this. This has been obviously an ongoing issue from the start. But I want to say y'all are really good at spending our money on wasteful things like this advanced metering infrastructure and depleting the workforce that relies on, you know, a a local public utility for for really good

25:17 work. You know, what happened to all these meter readers? Where did they go? still billing us for them, but you know, you seem to have a good way of spending that money on something else. And you know, as someone that really is concerned about my health when it comes to wireless technology, I like some of the others have have described, I I live my life with no wireless technology in my home. Got no Wi-Fi. Everything's hardwired. I I'm, you know, trying to help my mom who recently moved into a home that it has all this wireless technology and she's slipping into dementia. This is really common.

26:04 People are affected by these things without knowing that these are what is the cause or one of the primary causes driving it. And you know, you you're you just keep looking at the the industry funded studies and oh, it's all good and the we're we're under the threshold, which is our our our uh you know, regulations here in this country are ridiculously high as far as safety thresholds compared to pretty much everywhere else in the world. Europe for example, most countries in Europe have extremely low levels in terms of safety standards that are allowed and uh here

26:50 of course because the FCC is a captured agency. So you know they they just established these regulations in 96 before any of this technology existed and you know they you you're just embracing it and acting like it's all good and okay. Yeah, we can we can do all this stuff and it this is wrong. This is hurting people and these fees are you know it's like you go through this this whole thing of okay you're the mean cost of all these utilities we we've compared to is 115 and the median is 100 but oh we'll just charge 175 because you know you you come up with your direct labor cost of $123.

27:38 what you know where do you get these numbers and you know $1150 per month okay some of us can possibly afford that for the moment but when when is that wrap it up please >> when is that going to increase and we want we want data on how long any anyway thank you >> this is not this is not okay you shouldn't do this >> sheepard followed by Toby Sorry. >> Right. Hey people, it's me, Eco Cheek, otherwise known as Tana Shepard. Um, I want to um not talk about smart meters.

28:24 I'm going to actually talk about gratitude. Um, I appreciate uh all of the support for education in our area, in particular with the extreme budget cuts that are happening across um our community. I feel grateful to have not been cut alongside many of my other colleagues this last week. So, thank you very much for continuing to fund education. Um, and just a couple of little um things that have been happening. They're not little things, they're pretty big, really. um doing some work with Claire um and the um the Onewater Project. So, starting to look at um helping recreate some of those lessons and kind of um offer something that's a little more um streamlined across the districts, which will be

29:09 really cool. And it will be online and available for any learners in the area, not just um the districts that are being served with the grants. Um uh we've been piloting a field trip the last couple years in partnership with the Middle Fork Wamut Watershed Council with Emma Gardner. It's called the Wamut Wonder Wander and we've been doing that out at the Wamut confluence and wildly successful again this year. Um one particular quote that I'd like to share is from a a non-speaking student who lives their life in a wheelchair uh as a third grader. And when asked about their day being outside all day um in a salmon habitat, they did the more symbol to me.

29:55 And then they flapped their hands like a little bird, not like an autism flap, but a little birdie flap as their chair like got lifted back into the bus. And they also let their aid know they wish their whole life skills class could have been there that day. So it was really just one of those amazing moments that we get to offer kids. And um yeah, that accessibility is just beautiful. So um next on my list of um things that we're doing is the EV challenge. We are really desperate for volunteers board members. And so if any of you have some time to come and spend some time actually interviewing kids or doing some timings, um I'll send out an thing to an to just give you more information. Um we are

30:40 going to make some training videos so that it will streamline your ability to be there so you know what you're doing before you get there. Um but we kind of are running into some um issues or our UFO partnership is not as strong as it has been in the past through um retirements with Z lively Brooks. So um just throwing that out there and it it be you know a couple hours but um anyway so we would love your help and um that's kind of it for now. We're just in a wrapup. Um working on trying to figure out how to help our district move forward with science without our science specialists. And so I'm I'm kind of it now. Um so just sort of helping our teachers with that. So just that's kind of what's happening and I appreciate you as always. Thank you very much. >> Thank you Tony Gabroni followed by Eva

31:26 Edelman. >> Hi there folks. Um not a big public speaker. We're a little nervous. Um, but I just wanted to see if I could touch your hearts. Um, because for me, a lot of communication is about feeling, receptivity, and listening. I know that this is part of your job, and I understand that, and I'm not disputing that you're not doing your job well. However, I do have a couple of things that are coming up for me. I do appreciate gratitude 100%. I wish we were all in gratitude all the time, and then the world would be a lot nicer place. However, you might label me a hippie or a tin hat believer. Um, but uh when I first came to Eugene, I was very

32:12 impressed with e webb being what I considered a semi-democratic community orientated business. I'm not so sure it's there anymore. Um, but I don't know. However, what I've realized is that uh back in the day, I was probably the first or second person to sign up for the green energy, green power aspect, which I paid I think it was something like 50 cents more a month for uh or something like that. It wasn't very much, but I was like, "Yeah, or five $5 a month, I think it was." And I was like, "Yes, I'm totally up for that." Why? because I wanted to create a green movement uh or more a greener movement. Um however, I soon discovered that all the people who really cared who wanted a

32:59 greener city were paying more. And I'm like, wait a minute. Isn't that the the wrong way round? Shouldn't the people who want a dirtier city, one more polluted, one more full of pollution from the planes that are now going over my house? Shouldn't they be the ones who are paying a bit more? And the people who are actually wanting green power and trying to keep organic their garden, etc., etc. Sorry, like I said, I'm a bit nervous. Shouldn't they be the ones that are paying less? So, I looked at this and I'm like, you know, and years later now supposedly everything is green. I'm like, well, there's green and then there's green washing. Um,

33:44 and I I realized that when by paying $5 extra a month for my green power, I was actually getting the same power as everybody else for a start, which was kind of interesting. And secondly of all, why would, like I said before, why are the incentives not to encourage people to make the world a better place? Why are they castigating people who are actually trying to do the right thing? So that moves me on from green power to smart meters. And smart meters for me, I didn't know much about them. My wife, who's a great researcher,

34:29 um does know a lot more about it. >> Yeah, the dreaded buzzer. Sorry. Yeah. Can I just have one sentence just to summarize? I'm just going to summarize that I had two friends who came around and did my meters and they were great friends and I love seeing them. Now they don't have jobs. Just want to say that. And secondly of all, the cost of all these smart meters must be astronomical. And lastly, my head is right next to my meter and it's $15,000 to move it 10 yards away >> and I did not sleep when they tested it for two days >> and I didn't even know. >> Thank you. Eva Edelman followed by our list next.

35:29 Okay. Um in health they have in in new health research and technological research that affects the public that could have a potential effect there that might be detrimental. There is what you call the precautionary principle. I don't know if this world adhere or America here adhderes to it very much but that is you don't do the new technology the new smart meter the little nuclear power plants you don't do it until it's proven not to be dangerous not to hurt the public you don't just do it and do a mass experiment and let people see if they live or die or like me get Parkinson's and shake all the

36:16 time, especially those early days when they're testing the meter and I that was so crazy. And do no harm. Don't you know why install something that could be dangerous? I know you have studies, people have talked to you. Why is that there when there when it's believed by some researchers that this can hurt people? Why is it being installed like willy-nilly all over the country? Why? That's wrong. So, I thought it was forever. Now I'm like this,

37:01 you know, and it it's like why? Like I think you definitely don't charge. You don't charge people to try to not be harmed. You charge you really should charge the people who try to harm them. who not try to harm them, like kind of like obliviously allow them to be harmed by installing new technology that is potentially extremely dangerous on so many levels like the heart, the nervous system, the very ability to live a reasonable life with reasonable health. It's like so

37:48 dangerous and you're just going, "Oh, we're going to charge some people who think it's bad." Well, that's a mistake. So I just basically beg you to reconsider the whole smart readers much less charging people often low income who are hurt who think claim probably justly in my opinion that they are being hurt by them or [clears throat] they could be. So just a little moral re-examination would be great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. The last speaker is um Carlos Nick.

38:44 There's a chair back there somewhere. >> Hi. Um I don't want to revisit all of the issues about our smart readers, so-called smart readers, um a good thing or not. I mostly want to talk about the fee, which I think is coercive and inappropriate. Um, my my meter is about 8 ft from where I spend most my time in my house, and I will pay whatever you force me to pay to not have it be a smart meter, but I think that the fees are punitive. And I I'm not seeing anything in the discussion of fees that talks about the the difference. So, I'm seeing this thing about, well, it's going to cost us this much to send somebody and this much and this much and thus, but I'm not

39:29 seeing anything that says the difference between the cost of not using of opting out and having a smart meter is this much. So, um, one of the things that I think hasn't been addressed is to say what is the actual cost um, for people who have the so-called smart meters and then subtract that. Um I I think the fees are uh especially the sort of opt out fee is um absurdly high and um I I have also a question about the opting out and I I think um I would speak to sort of credibility at this point. I remember way back when I asked somebody from Ew

40:16 Webb on the phone if the signaling was constant and they said, "Oh, no, it's not constant." Well, come to find out that what they meant is that there were little sort of microcond or half second or whatever gaps, but it's basically 24/7 with those little tiny tiny tiny gaps. And I felt like that was sort of lying by speaking the literal truth, but being very misleading. and I found out later that that's what they'd actually meant. And um I would just like to be assured among other things. I mean, I'd like you to consider an absurdly lower fee, but um I'll pay whatever you force me to pay, but um when people opt out, is the meter actually not signaling?

41:02 I I'd just like to be assured of that in some way that's credible. Um because Having been um misled before, I'd like to make sure that I'm not just getting the hype that I'm getting a a real piece of information if I choose to pay whatever you choose to charge me. Um I mean, I will choose to pay it, but um I I just it doesn't make sense. It it just seems punitive and coercive, and I don't really can't really add anything to that. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to testify this evening that hadn't signed up? If so, there's a form there. And if not, um, then I will just close the public input session and ask

41:47 for comments from commissioners. >> Okay. Well, I I appreciate everybody coming out. This is partly why we are a public utility. We are here for the people. And so, I took extensive notes. I have comments on several of the points because I do want to clear the air and I want to make sure that you all get accurate and fair information and I also want you to understand where I'm coming from as well. So, um, one person asked about uh, does the $175 fee does that um, is that charged to people who have already opt out? My understanding is it does not. In the paperwork that we read today, it says that it's not. So, that does not apply to anybody who's already opted out. it's only for the people who we have to make

42:32 a change for because they have to physically go out and change that. So that's one point. Um so the rates and how they're calculated this covers I think two points that were raised by people. The meters the cost of this is actually the difference to serve that program to keep opt out functioning. So in order to cover the the extra cost of the staff to go out and serve this very small portion of the population that has chosen to opt out that is the cost to travel to the location to read the meter to manually you know update the that data in our system. Um that is the cost and so the cost the the rates that we currently have are actually lower

43:17 overall. we maybe we didn't see a decrease because we've had such other pressures that have raised our rates but otherwise rates across the system would be higher if we hadn't adopted this system. So that's that is the difference. Um there was a person that mentioned that they have a a business where their rates have doubled. I would encourage them to get an energy audit and see what's going on there because there there have been other fees that have gone on. Um, I'm sure there were instances where the old meters were not capturing, but they shouldn't have doubled. So, there may be some equipment or other things that have failed, and we have a wonderful customer service team that goes out and actually does business energy audits and can look into that for them. Uh, next, we um

44:05 this is not a political retribution. This is across the board the way that we operate with different costs in the system. So we charge different fees to customers in the South Hills, for example, that have higher elevations and we have to pay more to pump the water up. They pay higher rates in those areas because it costs more to service those locations. So this is the same methodology and the same fairness that we apply to others. Um, one person mentioned that there are rural areas where we still do the service. And actually, one of the things that Frank brought up today was our McKenzie uh valley service territory. This was something we were looking at. We were looking at a 14% fee uh raise on that portion of our territory in part because

44:51 there is a higher cost to service them. Now, we've been working with them for several years. We were looking at this back in 2020 or 2019 and then the fires came and we didn't feel like it was fair at that time, but we were going to continue looking at how do we do we apply a fee there because that is a fair model. That's what we do with all of our other cost implications. But instead, what we what we chose to pursue, and it took several years, but we did it. And thank you to Frank and staff who got that done. But we actually sold that territory, so they will have lower rates that they'll be serviced by um the electric lane electric, thank you. Uh lane electric in that region and get and and won't have that same level of cost because they have staff up there that

45:36 are already um in that region. Uh I also wanted to note that um this is also a safety measure for us to operate from an from a staff perspective. I my father personally was a meter reader in our town. Uh they get dog bites. They get unwell people with guns. They have other issues with extreme weather going out there. So this is also a safety issue from my perspective in in moving away from this. Uh, we looked at some of the RF frequency and we can I'm just going to leave this out there, but 12 cell phones is the equivalent of the amount of RF frequency that our service area covers in terms of the amount of impact that that goes out. So, there are more cell phones in this room that are

46:23 constantly transmitting. And when we talk about the constant transmission versus what we're transmitting, somebody asked about that. We transmit a tiny piece of data once every 15 minutes. So when we say constant, it's not literally continually doing it. It does do it in intervals throughout the day. That's every 15 minutes. >> Commissioner Carlson, that's if you opt in. >> That's if you opt in. Yes, absolutely. So that's if you opt in. If you're opted out, then your meter says opt out and then there is nothing transmitting whatsoever and that's why somebody has to physically go out and meet the reader. Um I wanted to talk about the the green energy portion of it. Um so we pay extra uh sorry the part of the reason that we have gone through this

47:08 system as well is that we have multiple phases of implementing our green energy projects. uh having demand response systems also servicing people um our water meter situation. We've caught thousands of gallons and saved uh because there are times in the day when water should not be running and so that has actually saved thousands of gallons and also then costs and you know costs for for homeowners and such. So there are other ancillary benefits for why we we move to this. And then uh finally um I wanted to say again I just wanted to say thank you for coming out. Um I know that this means a lot to all of you and this fee actually helps continue

47:54 that program so that we can offer the opt out option. Thank you. >> Other commissioner's comments. Mindy. >> Yeah. So, I'm not going to address smart meters now because that's our one of our next agenda items, but I just wanted to address um Tana with your um coming to thank us. I want to say that I know that this was a particularly hard week for 4J and Springfield school districts. So, I feel really proud that um Eb is able to continue to support science education in the schools because um we are all one community and um it's really important to educate our kids. Yeah, thank you. Um, yeah, I wanted to say thank you for those who came out and

48:39 testified um online or in person. Uh, it is scary. So, thank you for making the trip out here. Um, and I just wanted to to share that appreciation. Um, thank you for coming out and sharing the experiences that you see. Uh, it is a bright spot always hearing about it. Um, and and truly, uh, I I greatly appreciate it. Um, and I just wanted to we we have smart meters on the agenda, so I'm I'm going to withhold my comments for now, but um I do want to uh just mention uh fees and uh rate assistance uh was mentioned quite a few times. And I I just want to uh if anyone here has not heard of the customer care program, it's a low-inccome rate assistance program that the web offers. So um if you are concerned about your fees, if you are concerned about paying your bills, please go check that out. Um it is available to you every month. Thank you.

49:26 any comment? >> Uh, no. Thank you all for coming out. Um, my colleagues have expressed a lot of the views that that I would have had. So, u always like to hear public comment and lean into it when I can in our decision-m process. Thank you. >> I'd like to also thank everybody that testified this evening and uh Donna, thank you very much. Um, I'll encourage my fellow commissioners, if you haven't volunteered at like the solar challenge or something or go on a salmon watch, do it. It's It's really a really good expenditure of your time and the kids are just absolutely into it like and and they need help. And I'm sorry that the UO is not producing as many people as they used to to help. But, uh, any volunteers, I know it's it's not easy

50:12 just chasing those little solar cars and getting them back on track, but it's, uh, it's rewarding at the end of the day. It's it's, you know, maybe half of a Saturday or something, but it's it's well worth it. It's on a weekday. It's June. Tuesday, June 2nd. >> Okay. Thank you. So, you'll contact us. Thank you very much. All right. Any other comments, Frank? >> We're good. >> All right. Well, then the next agenda item is going to be the approval of your cons consent calendar. A um I did uh I gave Travis a heads up. I I kind of want to pull number two just if because I want to comment on that and while we're at it, I want to take number five on B. So, we knocked two off with one. Um, anybody else have any comments on uh consent calendar A? If not, I'd entertain a motion to adopt.

50:59 >> Second. >> Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Okay. Um, real brief. Um, you're asking for a total of $10 million for te technology above and beyond what we have scheduled. Correct. >> Six and four, >> but it's not above and beyond. So, this has already been in the budget for this last several years. >> So, knowing that AI is coming on leaps and bounds and changing daily, um, and we're going to spend 22 or$40 million on technology, an incredible amount of money on technology. Do we run the risk of buying all this and having it obsolete by the time we get it installed and implemented?

51:44 >> No, absolutely not. And in fact, what we're doing right now is so you know, EES so SAP went live in December of 2024. >> Um, and what we're doing now is where we've added scope to that to that work once it's been implemented. And so that's what this work is helping support. And one of the things in fact is this year we're required with our SAP contract that we have to upgrade SAP every couple years to maintain that modernization piece. And that's one of the things that we're doing this year is upgrading it. And since it's our first upgrade, um we need some help with that. And so that's what some of this dollars some of these dollars are going to. It comes with additional features like prepaid is an example that comes built into the next version um of SAP. The other thing we're doing is implementing

52:29 a data warehouse this year as part of the SAP and our analytical cloud so we're better able to use our data and make good data informed decisions. Um so this is adding scope adding functionality continuing to support the system we have as we grow into the future to maintain that reliability and and modernation with it. >> Thank you. Well, if there's no other questions or comments, I will move that we approve item number two in consent calendar A. There a second >> discussion. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Passes unanimously. Consent calendar B. >> Second. >> Okay. Discussion. Seeing none, I'll call

53:15 the question. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Opposed. Motion passes. Thank you very much. So, we're going to move right on to the next agenda item, which is going to be general um business items. It's going to be proposed updates to fees, rates, change of charges, including immediate fees. Number eight, Good evening, commissioners. Uh my name is Deborah Hart for the record, uh assistant general manager, and with me here this evening is Adam Rue. Uh he's

54:02 our rates manager. I'm going to pass it over to him and he's going to do most of the talking and uh we'll share a little bit about our proposed fees and then answer any questions you all have. Thanks Deborah. Um a couple years ago we consolidated a bunch of separate um fee proposals to the board into one package. So this is quite a bit of content. Um we had a meeting with all the people that contributed and there was about 30 or 40 people that met and and just to make sure that we were aligned with um all the inputs into this. It's a big project involving a lot of um interested parties. And so we'll just go through it starting with um this slide we presented last um at the end of last year on the

54:49 rate proposals and it provided a little bit of context of the interplay between rates, fees and customer programs. Rates are generally approved at the end of the year um for the subsequent year rate adjustment for commodities and standard um uh delivery services for customers. fees are um more one-time or nonstandard processes that we approve at this time of the year in the spring. Um those are things such as like connection charges. >> Can you talk closer to your >> Oh, yeah. Apologies. >> Thank you. >> Uh so the fees are more one-time or non-standard processes. Um typ I just wanted to highlight that the uh there is an interplay between these. When the fees are approved, we

55:34 incorporate those into the next year's budget process and so they offset some of the incremental activities related to those fees. Um, we update update these every year and annually bring these changes back to the board. So that we'll move into the specific fees. The backgrounder had um 11 different uh fees that were reviewed and and discussed in more detail. We've highlighted a few that seemed of particular interest, but we're open to feedback or comments or any questions about any of the fees attached in the background as well. Um, a couple of the fees um that are that have asterisks next to them are delayed implementation a bit. There was some

56:19 feedback a couple years ago just about the time of when um people get bids and then implement those. Those are kind of the service connection charges. Um those are fees connecting to the electric and water system typically. So if someone receives a fee and then um there's a time for those people that bids on the cost for those actually to go through it takes a little bit longer than some of the other fees. So we have an extended implementation of those connection charges. Moving into the um [clears throat] manual meter reading fee. Um advanced meter readings meter reading shifts costs um towards IT investments and technologydriven processes. Manual meter reading is no longer part of the standard operations and are covered in

57:04 that are covered in the general rates and that's shifted these cost to non-standard process. MMR fees follow typical cost of service principles and the services are require separate um staffing and vehicle and equipment that are captured in these fees and we're seeking to formalize a policy direction that was established in 2018 and that has been communicated extensively over the last couple years. >> Try bringing your mic a little closer to your face. It's still not um really >> sure. Yeah, the mic or one way or the other. Okay, the attachment three includes utility service charges and prices. This

57:49 is directly related to some of the um AMI investments. The zero cost for the automatic meter reading or for the automatic uh connect and disconnect reflects um that these do not require a service a truck roll or um to move in, move out or um transfer service. This happens remotely. Um the fees [clears throat] for the manual process for connect disconnect reflects the actual cost and the vehicle trip. Um the after hours cost reflects minimum callout times, overtime and on call costs. The unauthorized use of fire protection penalty is another is a new fee. Uh this

58:36 is presented as a financial uh penalty as an enforcement tool. The proposed $500 fee aligns with um pure utilities and provides a compliance tool that falls short of uh service disconnection. This fee is not cost based. It's purely as a deterrent similar to the tamper charge to discourage that activity. Um the next fee is related to joint use. There are three elements to the joint use uh pole attachment fee. Uh the first one is the standard um PUC dictated methodology that we conform to and update every year. We also reviewed the

59:21 wireless service fee which is similar in that it's a like a rental fee for attaching to ew web assets. The pole inspection fee is more of the one-time fee for um attachers connecting to e webb costs that includes inspection to ensure that there's capacity on the pole on the poles to carry the additional load and um any permitting. We might have rushed through those a bit, but we're open to any questions, comments on the fees in the background or on the presentation. Um we're looking for directions. The next step will be for us to incorporate any feedback or comments for JUN and then implement the the fees. >> Okay. I got Commissioner Carlson. >> Okay. Um on Can you go back to PA page

1:00:08 14, slide 14? >> Okay. >> There. So if the manual connection after hours is 160, why is that different than the automatic fee that's 175? What's the difference there? >> Oh, that's the current. So those are the proposed one is the $360 on the manual. You're talking about the bottom line on the manual meter reading after hours. >> Oh, because it's so it's after our regular business hours. So connection during business hours non-paper trip is 87.50. So why is that then? Oh, that the manual meter reading opt out fee includes two truck rolls, both for the disconnection and then the subsequent reconnection um at the end of that opt out period. So, this is just for the one

1:00:56 truck roll for either connection or disconnection during business hours for the manual meeting. So wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't people who are opting out only get like the 8750 because that's a a disconnect or is it not a the fee for the manual meter reading includes both the initial disconnect and then the reconnect at the end when there will be presumably a new uh st customer that would have metering. So you're saying that the the full cost of that so if a new customer came in they wouldn't be paying that >> they wouldn't be playing they wouldn't be paying to opt to opt in because they're >> that's the >> essentially it's standard practice. >> Yeah. So the mango meter

1:01:43 >> twice that. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Right. That helps me understand that. Um All right. Um the water service installation fee. Can we get just go back to that? I know that we I asked a question about it. So, it was 20 it was 2750 in 2024. That went up to 3,400 um for phase 1. It went up to 4,100 in phase 2 and then it went to four um 400 or sorry, 4,800 is the proposed for that that connection for the less than one inch. Um remind me again. So the these were the fees that we hadn't adjusted for a long time for some reason and going through the process and making sure that we're allocating each of these

1:02:29 fees appropriately to the service that's getting it. This is a a fix to that essentially. Correct. I I kind of remember this from several years ago, but >> yeah, correct. When we first started this process of the consolidating all the fees into one um board package, we went through and kind of audited all the fees that are in existence. We found that this one was one of the ones that hadn't been updated in uh roughly 10 years. So we um brought the proposal at that time. We had recently received feedback from the board to um mitigate some of the the impacts of these connection charges. I think that was after a system development charge proposal. So we phased it in over a three-year period. >> So then we we assume then or the the

1:03:15 idea then is that moving forward hopefully these fees will not be as drastic because that's like a quarter per you know it's like 25% increase every year. >> Correct. And then when we when we did the phase in, we also added the annual inflation to it to hopefully track with um with inflation as well as get caught up >> better instead of those being essentially subsidized by a different group. Okay. >> Correct. >> Um and then uh sorry, I guess I'm at at time. I did have one more question, but I'll if we have time, we can Thanks. Mindy, >> I have a question about the um the fire protection the unauthorized use of fire

1:04:01 protection services. And I know that John Brown had asked this in our premeating questions about why it's only $500 if they're using the water in that way. And um I just want to highlight in your response um you said that we're going to try this for a year and kind of come back to it to see if that fee is is the right amount. So just want to clarify that. And also um how often does this happen? >> It doesn't happen very often. There's only a handful of identified customers right now. Um, our intent was to review that fee annually along with others and ensure that it was working as intended.

1:04:48 The board though um could choose to provide direction otherwise this evening. The $500 aligns with the tamper charge on the electric utility. And so, um, they're they're not identical, but they're very similar. How do we know if somebody's tampered with the fire hydrant? >> We have detector meters that we that we uh then are able to spot usage flowing through fire lines. >> I guess my my feeling on this one is um if there are repeat offenders, the charge should definitely be more than that. I mean, I know this is just like a maybe a onetime fee, but to to

1:05:35 build something in where >> repeat offenders maybe $500 to them is nothing compared to what they would pay normally, but that seems like a I don't know, pretty big tampering of the system. >> So, um there are other costs associated with tampering. Uh however, something that some utilities do is escalate. It's not a $500 one time. It is proposed as a $500 for every month we detect water. Uh but we certainly could incorporate in our proposal a climbing that second month is higher and the third month would be even higher if the board would like to see something like that in June.

1:06:23 >> Go for him. >> John B and then Tim. Thank Thank you. [clears throat] Um I think I found another one that just jumped astronomically. Um and that is the current and pre-propo pre-construction inspections and admin fees. Um you know some of these went from so like the current and proposed for a post construction direct inspection fee visual driveby inspection was $40. Now it's going to be $300. Um, the pole analysis inspection was 175. It's going to 780. Um, I think this is probably one of those ones that probably hadn't been looked at in 10 years or something like

1:07:08 that. I guess what I would want to know is obviously you've done a cost of service to do this. I understand that. How many people and how is this affecting and is this one where we want to think about gradualizing it again? Um cuz to go up 750% on a fee to me seems ownorous. Now if it's one one time it happens or whatever but can you talk to those fees in that in that program? >> Yeah that's a good question. the um these fees are associ that's not the ongoing monthly fee or no >> it's the when when a telecom company attaches to e-web assets there are costs incurred um for e webb to um do the

1:07:54 permitting there is activities that we wanted to make sure every cost was captured so those um customers are paying the cost of attaching to e webb assets so that was a fee that hadn't been updated since it was originated quite a few years ago we um did a deep dive into the actual activities um that were involved with that to make sure that we were covering all the costs and the communications company. >> So tell me what a visual drive by inspection is and why it would go from $40 to $300 for one pole. So that would I'm not performing the inspections but based on the conversations someone in the engineering department's going to do a visual inspection of the pole ensure that we can attach the um the uh that

1:08:40 the telecom company can attach and and not and the the waiting of the of that on the pole will be sufficient. So there's the visual drive by and then there's some calculations and math that that occurred. So that's going to be involve multiple steps to come up with that. >> Okay. And these are mostly paid by telecom companies. Is that correct? >> Okay. That gives me less less pause. Um and then there was another one that was um make work and we had an NA on make work and now we've got a $1,400 make ready coordination. I don't I don't know what make if you could just explain what that is to me so I can justify a not

1:09:26 available to $1400. Sure. that involves um the full process of um preparing the uh the facility for um the the well it involves the permitting and the traffic control plan potentially, but all of the activities associated with um preparation for the construction that would be involved to um to have the attachers um attached to the FOs. Okay. >> Um >> Okay. Um thank you for that information. Um, I guess my last question would be, are there any other big outllayers that haven't been adjusted in a a long period

1:10:11 of time that had significant jumps that would affect significant number of our customers? UPs that were not um brought at this time or >> no that are in here that just you know it's like okay that one went up you know Sonia had one that went up you know 25% right are there ones that are going to affect 20,000 customers that have gone up a significant amount because we haven't adjusted them in a long time so that >> when when we put this on there my phone doesn't start ringing off the hook. Um the the other one not impacting a large number of customers but a larger percentage increase is the

1:10:56 transformation cost. That's based on um the utility plant and service for substation. So a handful of utilities that own generation in our or entities that own generation in our system or adjacent to our system might wheel over wheel through our substations. So as we update our um make make additional investments in sub substation assets those costs went up. So, that was one that went up that would be impacting other utilities or generators within our service territory. Um, that's the only one that I can think of that had a significant percentage impact. And and then the last thing that I'll say is now that we've got these kind of all figured out, this will be a rolling thing so that we're going to be looking at true cost

1:11:42 of service on a regular basis so that we aren't getting these big jumps so we can use use this new computer system that we're we are all embracing and be able to do that more efficiently over the next few years. >> Yeah, correct. That's that's the intention of bringing this back every year. We um had a recent retirement and hired a new staff, Kayn, who's in this room, who helped pull this together quite a bit um for this year and will be working next year. She got here within the last few months and helped quite a bit on this. And so any fees that haven't been updated will continue to Thank you. >> gentleman who just asked questions, please give his name. >> Yeah, my name is John Barski. I'm one of the commissioners.

1:12:31 >> Yeah. Uh thank you. Uh uh I wanted to mention I appreciate very much um the outline of the cost of the meter reading. Um uh specifically what the labor looks like and what the actual costs that are outlined that are there. Um in particular I just went to the dentist and had a fee added and the receptionist had no idea what the fee was about. So I appreciate that there's a very clear reason as to why these these numbers are what they are. Um I'm I I had confusion about what a an unauthorized use of fire uh protection s can you give me an example of what an unauthorized fire service uh looks like? What is that? >> There there are numerous ways in which that happens. Uh some may be deliberate

1:13:16 in which somebody is tapping into water on their side of the the fire line uh to make use of that water. Uh there can also be um accidents. Karen Kelly's worked in uh in water systems her entire career and one of the examples that she gave me was uh in areas that have been built out and owners of actually different buildings mistakenly tap into someone else's fire line or believe that that's just metered water and don't realize that that they're tapped into fire lines. I appreciate that uh example. And for this fe, what does enforcement look like? Is it a as

1:14:01 soon as it's identified that it's an unauthorized use, it is like um guaranteed to be charged or is it going to be taken on a case- by case basis? >> Well, I our customer service folks would like to understand and as soon as it's detected, they immediately will reach out. >> Fantastic. Um I do hear what Commissioner Slashberg is saying. $500, especially for our um more prolific uh our our more intentional uh folks. It seems like a a lower amount. I do see that it's directly connected to the electric tampering fee. So, um but that is is of interest to me of looking at and seeing how my other fellow commissioners feel about that. So, I should add that um we do add we add

1:14:46 other charges and those tend to be uh larger lines and so the basic charge that goes with that will add hundreds of dollars as well. Uh but please have the conversation about what you would like to see in June. >> Understood. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm I'm thinking particularly the the individuals who are very intentional, very harmful and are harming the infrastructure of e web by doing um unauthorized use of fire protection services. Yeah. Um [laughter] uh that's what I have so far. Thank you. >> My turn. >> So I have really a strong feeling about that tapping into that fire line because I suspect that it's not accidental. Um, and you say it's seasonal, so it's, you know, happens to be irrigation season and all of a sudden they're using fire

1:15:32 water and they're not paying for it. And when people are stealing our commodity, everybody else in this room has to pay for it. And it's not fair. And $500 a month is not enough. I would like to see it graduated. And 500 minimum up to 5,000 at your discretion because we give you the discretion to settle claims on insurance claims and things such as that at your discretion, which is in the best interest of the utility. And I'd like to see something where you had some discretion because if there's egregious repeat violators, go after them because number one, they're tapping a fire line, which is dangerous. And it's hard to believe that there's a lot of them that don't know that they're doing it because you can't tap a water line and hook up a sprinkler without, you know, certified people doing it and they know they're tapping a a portable water line versus a

1:16:17 fire line. So, I would like to see where we have the discretion to really hit them hard to to give them a disincentive to not do it in the first place because stealing water or tapping into a fire line, they're just totally not acceptable. So, that would be my direction. Um, the second thing is on the uh the joint use fees, they're they're only going up marginally. Um, when's the last time they went up? >> How many years has that been? 1981 and now it's going to 218. Oh, so that one is updated every year with basically a small amount and that and that's regulated by statute and so we don't have any discretion there because you know I'm not a big fan of the um the um yeah the communication line people

1:17:02 because they don't maintain the lines. They just hook them up to us and then we get stuck with cleaning up the trees and the poles falling down and and then we get blamed for it. So um that's but we can't change that fee. >> Correct. That's the one that we follow closely. This the statute. It's um dictated by um >> the PUC. >> Yeah, it's it's designated by FCC allows states to individually um take ownership over that and and set rules. We follow those rules. That was I think some of your comments, but actually were the driver of looking at the pole inspection fees and make sure if we're really dictated on that monthly attachment or that monthly connection charge that we're we're charging them that at least we're making sure we're covering all the costs for the initial attachment since that's the thing that they're >> I may have a few more years at this table and one of the things I'm going to

1:17:48 do is I'm going to if it kills me I'm going to get them to pay their fair share of tree trimming on the rideways and so I mean I'm I'm going to keep pounding on that until I get it. So somehow I'm going to get it and I don't know how but I'll get it. But uh thank you very much. That's all I have on the fees. Any other Sonia you wanted the second round? Go ahead. >> Thank you. Uh yeah following up on the the non-compliance rate. So same yeah same slide. So when explain when they're non-compliant and why how we get that rate versus the compliant rate. >> Sure. There's specific um rules and terms set in this PUC code that if they're um not following that such as not maintaining their their tree

1:18:34 trimming on their activity, they could be subject to those um higher penalties. So I think it's something that we follow closely just based on statute, but these are very prescribed. >> So this is the absolute max that we can raise it. >> Yeah, this is the Yeah. Yeah. This is based on the methodology prescribed by the PC. >> Okay. So they they dictate what we can charge. So if they're not compliant, we I mean, are there any ones where they're actually compliant? I mean, it feels like they they don't trim the trees. We're the ones that are trimming the trees. I mean, how many lines do we have that are >> um We could get a breakdown. I don't have the >> Okay. I'd like to see that. I'd like to see how bad it is because I would like to take this to John's point uh to um

1:19:21 our legislature next year. I mean, I don't know if maybe it's just a p, but Jason Huer could potentially do some advocacy work around this if we think that it's a a really stark problem. I'd like to see what the cost difference is from what this rate is versus what the cost is to us. And there is more a little bit more detail for the non-compliant rate because there's a a additional charge and a multiplier on it. So if we can provide more detail on that. >> Yeah, I'd like just like to see more data on it. >> And sure because if we're being capped, I want to know what that difference is so we can go talk to our, you know, legislative partners and the PUC and such to get them to think about some differences there. Um and and when you say

1:20:08 um well I'll leave that one alone. Okay. Uh back to the other chart, the water service installation fee, I appreciate that we moved that out to August 1st to give like a 60-day window. I do just want to note that um permitting at the city can take six months to a year. So, some of those things, um, it it's it's nice to have a little bit of leeway there, but there still should be a communication when we're giving that quote with, you know, people that are trying to go through this process because it's ownorous and it's heinous and we need more housing. And you know, these are pretty significant rate increases over a year um for a project, especially if they're, you know, low-inccome projects or they're single one-off projects like

1:20:54 that can be a significant piece. So, I just want to continue to look at that and kind of truth check that. Um, and then the the last Oh, the fire detect be the last piece I wanted to know. So, is it also is it only when they're actually tapped into the line so you can tell where the water is going or are these people that are also like opening up the fire hydrant somehow? I'm I'm just curious how we can tell who that water is going to if it's coming off of the fire hydrant, not like directed into a house. >> It could be both. One or the other. >> So, how would we know who to charge if it's just off of the hydrant? that's

1:21:40 coming up. >> Do you want to chime in, [laughter] please? >> 50 other people who helped. >> Uh, so it depends on the situation. We don't always know. I I've had circumstances like Deborah was explaining, old industrial properties that have since been subdivided. Lines are like spaghetti because there were no permitting, you know, at the time. uh people may be just opening something up to do like a industrial cleaning process once a year and you see this flash of water. We notify them what's happening um and they don't know where it's gone to because it was actually a neighboring property. That that's been one circumstance that I've had. So there

1:22:25 are cases where we don't know and then we have to have um you know put pressure on the property owner to have some private side locating done to try and figure out where these lines are going. It can get quite uh extensive and expensive both. Um, but there are also some simple cases of you need to take care of this and the incentive fee would probably help them be motivated to figure that out and stop utilizing water in a way that's not authorized. >> Well, I agree with the other commissioners and that, you know, if if it's egregious use, they're doing it constantly, it's a known problem, there should be an escalator there for them to fix it. But I also agree with, you know, there are situations where the it's all spaghetti like you said and maybe people don't know where it's going

1:23:11 and how it's affecting. So I do appreciate that there's some flexibility with them to be like I'm going to call you out on this or no actually you're you need to take care of this. So thank you. >> Hey Frank, do you have comments? >> Yeah, I was just going to comment that Commissioner Carlson on the sort of this compliant versus non-compliant issue. I do think that there could be some potential in Salem to look at this. We also know that when we brought that up in the past, there's a pretty strong communications lobby also in Salem. Um, and one of the things to consider in in sort of this decision-making process is we are sometimes the tenant as well as the pole owner. So there and we maybe we could get an exact count uh from our joint use department on how many we are

1:23:58 the tenant and not the owner and because it can work both ways. Um and so if we get overly punitive uh it potentially could cost us uh when we are um joint using somebody else's poll. So we'll we we should probably double check that. >> Okay. Um do you have from us what you need? I just want to clarify on the unauthorized use of a fire line. What I'd like to bring back is I'm hearing a general consensus that an escalating fee to curb that behavior is what uh the board would like to see. What I'd like to bring back is five and then a,000 and then 1,500. And we'll watch that and see where that gets us. Once we get much

1:24:45 higher than that, our administr administrative burden to collect that can become very challenging. Um, so I think we can monitor it. There's only three customers right now uh who would be subject to it and a dozen or so in recent years who we at least would have who we suspect might have been subject to it. So, um, if that works for commissioners, I'd bring back that, uh, first first charge, second charge, third charge, uh, at 5,000 and,500.

1:25:32 >> I'm I'm okay with it. I would start out more personally, but I'm the back guy, I guess. So, is that okay with you guys? 500,000 and500 and that's per month per occurrence per occurrence >> for for flow in any given month. >> Correct. >> And then we also um can charge the basic charge on the meter and we will charge for any uh um measurable water. >> That's right. Can you please clarify uh per occurrence or per month? >> If if water flows through and it was not fire suppression in any month, they would be charged.

1:26:18 >> Okay. For that, okay, thank you. >> And and you're going to come back with in a year from now, we're going to do the same thing. You're going to we're going to go over the fees again. We're going to look at like kind of the true up cost. see how it's how it's going with all the things that we talked about >> and hopefully report that this one was so effective that we uh we're no longer applying it. But yes, we will be back next year to uh review the fees again. And it has been a utility-wide effort to pull those fees all together and uh and under really the umbrella of finance and bring those bring those current. Uh so

1:27:03 we'll be back in June if the consent calendar works and then again next May with any updates. Okay, that good with everybody. Okay, before we move before we move on, I I noticed noted earlier we're we're done. >> Get to move on. >> You get to move on. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um there no break in the agenda and the next agenda item is 45 minutes. So, and then after that is 15. So, if you want a break now, we can or we can break at 7:45. It's it's the board's discretion. Or we can skip a break. It's all we got three choices.

1:27:48 >> Wait, it's 7:05. >> Okay, we're there. >> Yeah. Well, we're that's we're 10 minutes ahead. The next is a 45minute. Next agenda item is number nine. Annual major capital. >> I'm saying break till the 705 start. >> Okay, that's fine. All right, we're going to break now. We'll break until 7:05.

1:34:32 2026 meeting of Eugene Water Electric Board. The next agenda item is a major capital project update. >> Wonderful. Good evening, President Brown, Commissioners, General Manager Lawson. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on our 2026 capital plan. For the record, I'm Lisa Crren, chief electric operations officer. Joining me tonight is Karen Kelly, chief water operations officer, and Tyler Nice, electric operations division manager. Uh photos on the title slide here are the controls building installation at the Dana substation, that's one on the left, and the College Hill tank construction on the right. Our presentation this evening will focus on type two projects to give you a little

1:35:17 more detail on the information that you can get from the quarterly report. This is for information only and is part of the board's ongoing participation in our capital planning and execution. The board plays an important role in this process and we appreciate your guidance and support. The capital planning process has a couple of important drivers which includes a strategic plan specifically around resiliency and modernization and our comprehensive plans also known as master plans. Capital improvement plans take the prioritized needs from the strategic and comprehensive plans and then develop projects and plan financing to meet those needs. Our financial controls policy or EL1 defines two

1:36:02 categories of capital work. Type one is considered general capital and is budgeted yearbyear for recurring capital expenditures from January through December. Type one includes collections of projects that are less than 3 million and typically involves dozens of individual projects that total up to three and a half to four.5 million per year. Type two projects on the other hand have discrete scopes, schedules that can span multiple years and cost over $3 million for the project life. Measuring and reporting capital improvement plan progress is defined in our executive limitations financial controls policy which includes the maximum level expenditure authorized by

1:36:47 the board. This slide shows the board's oversight of the CIP. For example, the board oversees the budget through the annual budget process, the long-term financial plan and capital improvement plan processes, quarterly reports, and consent requests. Scope and schedule are driven and monitored by staff. Um, and the board has oversight over scope via the CIP and strategic planning processes. I would also like to point out that uh we have staff dedicated to strategic project management office and continuous improvement who are working with us to improve our project management skills to uh ensure that we uh can stay both on time and on budget.

1:37:35 All right. CIP planning and project project execution isn't easy. It's often very complex. Projects can be discreet and short in duration or they can span years or even decades in some cases. And in other cases, they can be even more of a program rather than a project. On the left, you can see spending over time as an indicator of our success. Uh year-over-year level of success can be most easily viewed in the year-end report. On the right, this is a table from our quarterly report. You can watch spending versus budget on a quarterly basis. Note that while type two labels aren't specific in this table, they line up pretty closely with single projects and these are the projects that we'll get into in the next slides. And with that, I will pass it over to Tyler to talk about electric capital projects.

1:38:21 Tyler, >> thank you, Lisa. Good evening, commissioners. Thanks for the time to talk about this this work for the electric side of the business, the electric infrastructure. Really, the focus is around the large substation replacements. That's our biggest bang for the buck as far as our sad and safety metrics go and reliability and resiliency for the system at bulk. Uh the first one up here that that's on the slide is Jessen substation rebuild. That one is on the west side of town right over here off belt line. This one has some important functions to the system. One is it does have some important loads on the west side of town connected. Uh so after this project it'll be more resilient. It'll be up to seismic standards. It'll have modernized controls and protections. It's also at end of life and beyond end of life for

1:39:06 some of the equipment. So, it'll have, you know, better reliability, less failures. It also is on the west side of the system is where we have the most pinch points as far as loading around town and where we expect growth both in large and small. This will have some incremental capacity increases to our new standards and ensure that uh we have, you know, be able to meet current load. Now, this isn't staging us up to accept a large data center, a large industrial load, but it is provisioning for future expansion of transmission lines and other substations we might need in the future. Uh, it is similar to the current project you may have been around for a few years ago where we flatten the earth, build from the foundations up. It is a much smaller substation, less of a transmission hub, more of a load center.

1:39:52 Uh, the first bullet on there is Danabo. The Jessen project was supposed to start a bit earlier later last year. Dana Bo is a precursor to that where it's needed to have some upgrades done to it to be able to accept the load that we're taking off Jess to put on Dana. So, we did start that last year. It's been a a piece we've learned throughout our program that we need to plan for those and the neighboring substations usually require upgrades to get there. We wish we could control these large construction projects, you know, fully, but the Danabo did experience a several month delay in that beautiful switch gear building that Lisa was talking about at the top of the plan. Uh, you know, for us it's really exciting to have those big gray boxes put down, but uh for most not. But uh that did come uh

1:40:37 recently and now we're back on track with Jess. So that's really happy. So Dana will commission here shortly in the coming months. Jess will start up. that'll last about a year, though not as large in scale. There's a couple bullets on here for two transmission pieces of work that are really important to the system as well. These are on the east side of the system. They feed Hayden Bridge to Walterville transmission line and also Thirst and Tap, uh the tower crossing we call it, and that is uh associated with, you may have remembered a tower that fell in the river over the winter in December. That that is associated with that to the Hayden Bridge Walterville transmission line rebuild. That was one that was damaged in the ice storm in 2024, about half of it. Uh after getting through some other

1:41:22 transmission work and some FEMA processes, we're moving on to that and that's in currently getting rebuilt, planned for next month uh to get installed that's going to allow us to move power onto that line and fix this other line. Uh that this crosses the Mckenzie River. It has an island structure in the middle of the river that was damaged when that uh when the tower fell into the river. the lines got pinched down and then bent the uh the island tower and now that needs repaired. So, we do have that made safe. We have some temporary structures in place on either side of the river and everything's braced. Uh we are going to do a temporary repair replacing the island structure this summer and then we're in the process of of the design for the permanent rebuild which we had one and it needed revised because the

1:42:07 river changed course about 50 ft because that's what mother nature does throws us curve balls. And so that will be replaced next year. So those those pieces of work are in progress as well. For our generation side of the business, you can see some a few major projects on here. IP is a multi-year uh program where we're rebuilding some of the infrastructure around the generator. We've done some of the controls for the generator. We do have generator work in there. the the near-term costs are around the generator stepup transformer which takes power from the generator, steps it up to be put on the transmission system. So that's in planning now and going to be fully executed in 2028. Uh for the emergent leak repair line for Walterville that uh

1:42:52 the liner repair design at the for bay has been completed and uh we are through implementation is pending with the outcome of reviews and additional analysis required by FK. So, more to come in the weeks and months ahead for that update. Uh, for the Leeberg Canal risk mitigation, that one near-term risk red risk reduction measures uh were restarted late 2025. So, those are now in progress, but in following FK approval for the drilling and the major canal modification work. Uh, that's to re reconnect Johnson Creek and back to the Mckenzie River and is expected to start in 2028. And then also generation for the Carmen Smith project. Large piece of work there

1:43:37 as we know and as it noted some of the costs still getting refined due to some of the moving parts there is why the TBD from the snapshot of the quarterly reports in there. But a lot of big moving exciting work happening there. One uh you know kind of cries of joy you may have heard late last year early this year was the turbine generator overhauls coming to life and those generators are back on the system and in operation of the traders making power. That's been really positive to see. Staff are really happy about moving forward there. Trailbridge debris broom design is still under review by FK and that could impact some of the plan installation in 2026 but we are monitoring that. Uh habitat projects were completed on the McKenzie bypass reach and the Karman reservoir in 2025 and more habitat work is under design right now for implementation

1:44:23 within the bypass reach over the next few years. Uh the load bank project up at Carmen uh connected the substation which allows passage of higher water during higher water flood times and is required is under construction uh anticipated to be completed next year. Uh, final recreation improvements, an exciting one, back open and ready for business in 2025 and open to the public on 2026, May 1st, just recently. So, if you haven't made it up there yet, go take a look, check it out. Ew Webb did reach an agreement with the fish agencies on a refined trap and hall solution. Uh, we'll be fi submitting FK license amendment application later this year. And, uh, so with that, I'll pass it over to Karen for some of the water updates.

1:45:08 >> All right. Who's thirsty? Who wants to talk water? [laughter] Okay, so we're going to start out here talking about some of our transmission main work. There are a couple main takeaways from the work shown here that I want you to hear. One is that the work is critical to connect and improve the systems resilient spine, which has been a multi-year effort. The other is that these pipelines also help provide redundance to the Wamut River crossings and improve the transmission of water between the new base level storage and the rest of our system. So starting out with project number one, Hillyard transmission. This work actually is done. The the lines are in and that was done last year. It resulted in about 4600 ft of 36 36 in steel pipe

1:45:53 installed. However, the close of this project is not quite there yet because it's pending some paving that was delayed by the city. You will note that there is some increased cost and that was due to additional water mane replacement and increasing in length of pipe necessary. Additional factors included material price escalation, unfavorable bidding conditions, and more extensive road restoration than what was originally anticipated for that project. For project number two, uh we originally received bids for the East 23rd project in 2025, but we did choose to cancel that due to some budget constraints. We will receive new bids for the project next week, in fact, for construction in 26 and 27. You will likely see the consent item in June. The project

1:46:39 includes installing 2300 ft of pipe and will help move water from College Hill and East 40th more efficiently, which will also result in improved water quality. And in addition, a bonus here is to reduce pressure swings in the system, which is important. We'll also help facilitate system operation when the time comes to take Santa Clara out of service. So, we are excited about having this project completed this year or early next year. Uh the third project here is College Hill uh the pipelines for that project. So this also has been out to bid and we received um this week those beds back. So we're going to start work at Q4 of this year and continue that into 2027. The project does install about 2200 ft

1:47:26 of pipe. Uh those are 30in steel mains. There is some additional cost on this one as well that was from unanticipated tunneling that was required to install the pipelines down Lincoln Street. Now we'll move into our uh water storage systems in those projects. So College Hill just last week tank one was uh received the tension wiring that that that we do to ensure the seismic stability followed by the shotrete treatment. Um construction is actually going really well. Sounds like you've all been out there recently to hear that for yourself. Uh, this work should be completed later this year with connecting the pipelines as I mentioned on the prior slide happening in Q4. We expect the tanks to be put in service in early 2027.

1:48:12 And then we are resuming work with the neighbors on landscape design which will take place also in 2027. I do want to point out here there's mention of market volatility on the slide. uh the market volatility is a threat to the pipeline schedule and that the backfill and landscaping can't occur until the pipeline work is complete. In this case, it relates to some issues that we've heard about from suppliers relating to the Middle East conflict. certain types of plastic. Uh the prices have skyrocketed and we're being told that some of the steel mills are preemptively shuttering, anticipating a recession and that's really due to lack of federal money and uh that kind of environment drying up. We haven't seen

1:48:57 anything concerning yet, but we are watching this and and wanted you to know we're paying attention to it. We should know a lot more in another month or so once we have bids in hands and we get schedules from contractors. Uh there was a question early in the board meeting about the elevated tank there at the site and I did learn from Laura through Chris through Mike that demo may happen actually this year but um probably 20 early 2027 and that's that is uh dependent on Verizon taking their equipment off the tower there. Uh okay so let me talk about Shasta 975. Uh construction of these two new tanks is also complete and they were put in service last year. Demolition of the old

1:49:42 tank there and restoration of the site including landscaping will be completed this year. And you'll note there was an increased cost there also due to um city permitting delays in this case and some unexpected geotechnical conditions as well as some soil contamination that was discovered during excavation. And that has since been remedied and we're ready to move forward on that demolition. Okay, second source. One of my favorite topics here. Uh we are here right now to talk about this year's project. So last fall we were tasked by the board to complete environmental permitting and obtain land use approvals and complete the 30% design for the WAMIT water treatment plant. The project is going

1:50:28 very well. We've had very positive responses to our environmental permit application and our 401 certification materials. And to date, we've had no project opposition. Next step in the land use approval happens May 18th with the joint Springfield City Council and Lane County Commission meetings to review and hopefully approve our proposed Springfield development code and refinement plan amendments. So, we're looking forward to that. The 30% design is wrapping up this month and the project team, myself included, are really excited about the resiliency that this water supply and treatment project could provide to our community. With the 30% design comes updated projected project costs, including contingencies. The details of this new

1:51:15 information will be shared with each of you individually prior to the July board meeting to give you plenty of time to hear about the project changes and hear about the potential impact to rates with the project. And then future direction of the project will be determined we hope at the July board meeting uh with your input. Talked a lot about AMI today already. deployment is going well on the waterfront uh after resuming last September. So currently we have 64,000 water meters that have already been installed. We have 3,14 as of today remaining to be installed in the ground. We look forward to wrapping up the work by the end of this year

1:52:04 for our shared service facilities. The main project I wanted to point out is our Burlesen uh property. So, you've all had a chance to tour that. Uh to date, we have finished construction on phase two that just recently concluded. Uh we are about to have approval for occupancy. It's just pending a final permit with the city and our update to the spill prevention and control plan, but we're basically ready to go with that. So the total spend to date included engineering, permitting, and phase 1 and two construction. And you can see that cost amount is 8.95 million. The 18 million total budget did include a phase three, which we chose not to go forward with at this time. So when you see that original budget 18, that includes additional work that we

1:52:49 are not currently doing. Uh the and the other good news is that construction budgets for those uh construction bids came in below budget for both of those phases. And what we got out of phase two is a new exterior layown yard with access road, security fencing, site prep, grading, lighting, and associated work. So, we're looking forward to putting those um those facilities into use and then after we've had a chance to live with that for a bit, we'll reassess whether future phases are needed. But the good part about that is that we did get the permitting should we decide to go forward with that um additional phases. And if not, we still have that in hand for down the road. Last slide before we open it up to questions. We did want to talk about

1:53:34 some of the risks that we face. So, we continue to try to anticipate and navigate through these many risks affecting our operations and our capital plans and projects. So, here's just a few of those. Uh, first, starting out with supply chain. The outlook has improved in some areas. We're happy to report with pipes and poles lead times coming back into more of a what we consider a normal schedule. However, there's still other items that we continue to see long lead times. Some items have increased dramatically in cost such as our large transformers which does result in delays to work while we try to figure out alternatives to those pieces of equipment or other ways alternative ways to manage the funding of those. The good news is that with completion of the Burlesen project,

1:54:19 we can use that space to maintain higher levels of stock for long leadtime items. And I also want to mention the threat of tariff impacts has generally been a bit of a roller coaster ride. You know, hear one thing one day maybe doesn't come to fruition. It's been a little concerning. Um we've been up and down on that trying to anticipate it but generally the impacts have been uh minor insubstantial. On the labor market front we continue to experience difficulty in hiring experienced and highly technical and skilled staff. To mitigate for this we are bringing in staff with lower experience and trying to grow that inhouse. Provide them the skills and training um with our own staff right here where we can. we're practical and

1:55:04 we also supplement with contractors and consultants um as usual where we need to with respect to the policy and regulatory environment. We continue to see grant programs being cut with a few being brought back here and there. We try to be ready for opportunities that come up but have also had to shift our planning for full eb funding in some cases when we had previously planned on some alternate funding. Our regulatory partners are also constrained by federal cuts which has resulted in delays to their responses to our various applications and planning approvals that has had an impact on our on our planning. And then I want to mention here electric on the electric side the we've had a few competing initiatives that have also caused some delays in in

1:55:49 projects such as the Mackenzie Valley transfer and some of our EES season 3 prep work. And with that I'll open it up for questions. Okay. Um, we've got 23 minutes left on this agenda item and there's five of us. So, everybody do the math and so I'll just ask for anybody want to get into the queue. I didn't look at anybody. I'm sorry. [laughter] Mindy, >> thank you. Um, I I just have kind of a general question. Find the slide where it talks about it. But I guess so everything costs more than we think it's going to. That that's my takeaway from this. So, is there a way that when we're budgeting that we can kind of capture

1:56:35 that so that we I don't know is there is there a formula? Is there something like certain percentage that we're usually within our margin of error? We do typically provide contingency uh in some projects, but Tyler would know more on the electric side what where that's calculated and probably Karen on the water side. >> Yeah, we we do whatever our current knowledge is because we get recent bids in and then we update our next year and beyond what you don't know what's going to happen five years from now. We also do with work with finance to ensure escalation is built into the capital plans u for some of these things with the larger increases that come. Those don't handle that though. But yeah, we try to keep it real time updated as we

1:57:22 get our new knowledge though. >> But it just seems like things are just so much more volatile now than they used to be. So that our methods maybe aren't necessarily capturing that. And so it makes me very worried when I think about our second source project because the the cost for that is already really high. And so if we look at some of those uncertainties like the the potential for going much farther over is greater. And I guess I'm just wondering is there I don't know is there new accounting now or something to kind of help plan for this? >> I think Frank wants to answer that question. >> Well I was going to going to weigh in a little bit. the commissioner. So there's a number of tools that we have uh that allow us to make adjustments as we go.

1:58:07 Uh we are seeing on an individual project basis um cost pressures and that can come from supply chain. It can come from contractor costs uh kind of the supply and demand curves and and in the long-term financial plan we're trying to put in relative um escalators for that. But within any sort of planning window uh we also try to look at the classifications of our projects. We know that some of them are up to us to schedule, some are driven by outside schedules. Uh some are are really fundamental to today's delivery of product and some are riskbased. We can turn the dial a little bit here and there uh to make adjustments across the the full budget that that we have. If you notice at the end of the year, we're

1:58:52 pretty close to being on budget almost exactly. Um the reason for that is we're moving projects around and we're looking at the risk and we're saying, well, if this one's more expensive, we can shift that one out or pull this one in. So, we have enough projects that we can we can do that. So, we have several projects. In the long term, we we definitely want to make sure we're accounting for good financial planning. In the in the more shorter windows, we have a lot of options. uh for for timing and scope that we can we can use as um mitigation for some of the variables we're seeing. >> Yeah, >> I'm still processing and I see

1:59:39 >> I actually just have one quick question. Can you go to the slide where it said electric type 2 T and D? Is that a typo? June 26. I mean, this project has been going on and it says $1 million have only been sp It looks like it's a placeholder. One, two, three, four. We've spent a lot more actual cost to date on that project, haven't we? >> Uh, some of the costs that are coming in are not fully operationalized yet, so they don't hit the books. And also, since that one was delayed so much, we're really, you're going to see in a month or two the construction contractor cost. So really it's been the design costs you've seen in some procurement. So that was that was the one that I explained was kind of shifted from last

2:00:25 year to this year that now we're in it. >> That's why. Thank you >> John. Any questions? >> Um thanks for the presentation. Um you know these two go this goes handinhand with our long-term financial plan. Right. for me, um, the major capitals and and our long-term financial plan as far as how those integrate into one another. [clears throat] And and we've kind of had this discussion in previous boards and previous board meetings is do you build that that contingency higher so that when it comes

2:01:10 in it's less of a shock but by doing so you're basically raising rates today because you're building in a contingency that you may or may not use or do you wait till it happens and then like Frank said well let's shift this one off and do it a year or two later, which also has con has costs to it as well because we all know every time you shift something down the road a little bit, it automatically gets more uh expensive. So I think that that's that's the question that I have when we marry these two plans together. When we married our CIP and our long-term financial plans together and

2:01:56 figuring out what is the right amount to have and for me that kind of goes back to what we approved in our consent calendar is our reserve levels is is another part that plays into that. So if we've got a gen uh if we raise our rates enough that we have a generous reserve policy and a generous reserve bank account, that's where we can draw on it when we have an unexpected uh you know straits of hormuz right something like that. Okay. So do you want that money in your reserves? Do you want that? Do you want to shift it to go to a later year or do you want to just suck it up? So,

2:02:42 those are the the tugs and balances that, you know, like Frank said, dialing dialing the uh the meters. For me, seeing the way that I've seen this happen over the last five years, I'm almost to the point where I almost feel like we need to dial up the the one that has our reserves a little bit deeper. You know, a smaller in, you know, it might be a half in half a percent increase in rates. And I'm just throwing this out. I'm not I haven't worked this all out, but a half a percent increase of rates, which would would increase our reserves so that

2:03:29 if there's a project that comes in at $10 million more than what we're thinking of, rather than pushing a pro another $10 million project off a year or two, which is going to raise that one to 15 or $20 million, we have the money to complete it on schedule and on time. These are the questions that are really difficult to answer and and there's a lot smarter people in this room than me. I'm looking at five of them right in front of me right now. But I think it's it's a conversation that's worth having uh put in front of us because we do see this. You know, it it kills me every month to see these consent calendar things that I need another $10 million

2:04:16 for EES. I need another $8 million for this. I need another $4 million for this to complete the projects that we've said are very important to our customers and to our utility as a whole. So looking at those dials, figuring out what is the appropriate way to do it that is going to be long-term best interest for our customers and our and our community. So, thank you for the, you know, these these open my eyes so that I know when that consent calendar comes in, it's like, okay, there's smart people looking at this and I can trust them. But I think as a board that conversation is something we might want to look at.

2:05:03 >> Yeah, thank you. Um, uh, yeah, I share Commissioner Schwatchber's concern if every single line item looks when you get to actuals, it's a bigger number than what the budget was. Um, and there are so many different factors into it. And also the outcome seems to be the same. Um, and so it is concerning just knowing that and knowing how many huge projects we have coming forward. Um, or that are midway through and not quite ready for completion just yet of of just exactly where where we are at. And also I want to recognize that I mean you your teams have been very forthright and intentional and once you know something is coming forward you are you are quick to let us know. And so I want to share that appreciation that this is a shared

2:05:48 understanding that this is not a like I don't want to create an us versus you moment here. So I really want to make sure that that's clear. Um I I do hear what Commissioner Brown or Barski, excuse me. I've mixed you both up today twice now. Uh uh what Commissioner Barovski is saying. And I I I mean my day job leads me to to working with low-income families and and that's just where my sort of hesitation comes forward is is um just how how really unfortunate our current economic system is right now for them uh especially these days. And I I know that our customer service team is looking at adjusting our customer care program to be a little bit more precise and less of a blunt blunt instrument. But um uh

2:06:36 yeah, I I I wish I'm now understanding the conversations of magic eightballs much more in depth uh I think this time around. But um yeah, I I just want to come forward with my my concerns of of many of these projects uh and the cost of them and especially um the beginning of of our second source and uh the continuation of Carmen Smith and knowing that those are going to be very high numbers and they're not quite ready for for finalization just yet. So that's where I'm coming. >> Frank, you want in? Thank Thank you, President Brown. Um, I think that the the conversation that that the B board is bringing up is is a good one. I I think when you look at the

2:07:23 oversight that that you have um of a utility, utilities are are unique in the sense of the the asset dependency relative to other industries. It takes a lot of assets to deliver the first gallon of water or the first electron and very asset intensive um organization and and really structure. Um, part of the trade-off um that uh Commissioner Barovski that you mentioned is is exactly one of it's not our money, it's our customer's money and how much do we lean into it and when and how much do we plan um flexibility versus cautiousness in in our budgeting process and those

2:08:09 are um uh I would think intentional decisions that that the board would want to make. Uh some of that has to do with reserves. Part of the capital reserve is to actually smooth that a little bit. We actually feed a constant amount into the capital reserve and then draw out based on projects. So there's a a smoothing effect to that particular reserve. Um but both utilities are in very different strategic positions on the electric side. Um Tyler will refer to the pig and a python. I I you always confuse me with that one. um where we had a lot of infrastructure that was built in the 60s and 70s in Eugene, that is all aging at a simultaneous rate. And so we have uh the next really 10 to 20 years of of

2:08:56 replacement of a very large number relative to to our history and our total number of assets. Uh on the water side, you have generational projects that come along uh once really every 50 to 75 years uh and those are investments with with long-term return. And so the the two utilities have different reasoning um but similar capital pressures. And so, um, I think really providing guidance around how we want to approach that, um, how much we want to lean into rates, where we want to place our priorities and why is something that, um, I was going to say we, you are are going to have to wrestle with. Um, and those trade-offs. Um, at the same time,

2:09:41 we hear constantly the big three from our customers. um water quality, reliability, and affordability are are by far the big three. And those are often intention. And so, um whenever we press against the the reliability or the investment side of the equation, we're we're putting pressure on the affordability sides. And so, um we know that all those things are important and figuring out an intentional way to create flexibility and agility. I I do think it's valuable to have different dials that you can turn as an organization. Tyler mentioned a great one, the the trade-off between Dana Bo and Jess. Um we had to work on one to prepare for the other. Um I think you heard that when you took a tour of the

2:10:26 of the current substation when we had to do transmission work and switching work at other substations to prepare for that one. And so um these are all trade-offs that we can make. Um, we do know that the later it is, the more expensive it is. Um, things are not getting cheaper. Um, but I think we're trying to mitigate all those in the in the context of keeping affordability in check. And so, um, July should be a very interesting, uh, month, um, at the board meeting because a lot of these things will require prioritization and, uh, really serious discussion about the the future of the organization and what's the priority.

2:11:11 >> I I haven't been in the queue yet, but go ahead. >> Okay. Well, I I have a technical question then a comment similar to others. Um, Alberto, it's budget is 18. We spent eight. What are we going to do there? I mean, we're going to do something there besides just store, but where are we doing that now? And what are we going to use with the property we're going to vacate when we move into Ber? I mean, I I I want to understand the justification for that $8 million expenditure. >> Well, there's a couple things. So, so spreading out a little bit, getting a little extra space, making the yard a little bit safer, also being able to store more of those long lead time items. Those are some of the main things that we're achieving with this first two phases.

2:11:56 >> Oh, okay. So, it's just basically we're going to increase our inventory and of of items that are expensive so we can kind of freeze the cost. Okay. I I just want to know because we we spent 8 million out of 18 and I just kind of want to know where we're going with that because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We're going to have to push back on you uh as a board and say we can't afford this. It's coming. I mean, we're going to lose some institutional knowledge. We're going to have a very challenging year, but the rateayers are going to be this is like Tim said, there's a lot of people that can't afford it now. And you look at everything we have on the board. I mean, we've got 136 million in in u the Carmen and we haven't done fish passage and we're getting sued or pushed on that

2:12:42 either 40 million bucks swing and I mean you know $40 million is a lot of month and so you do that and you look at these cost overruns we think 250 million for for Leeberg well think about that if if all of our costs projects projections are low and if that's 250 and it's 350 that's hundred million dollars and so I'm just looking at the bigger picture because I got I got Leberg, I got Walterville, I got second floor, I got a lawsuit, I got so many things happening that it's a matter of it's a matter of you're going to have to help us make this decision because we're not the experts. You're going to have to tell us, okay, we can't run to failure, but this is what we can push back on because the the pressure on rates on on on this is is um you know,

2:13:27 we're going to have to listen to the people that put us here. So, get ready for that. So, I'm done with that. tell you once more time. Okay, >> thank you. Um May 18th is the joint Springfield Link County Commissioners. Okay. Um thank you. I appreciate that clarification. Um for Carmen Smith, I remember our conversation the bid for the Carmen Smith project was out or older. Is there a new updated bid for the Carmen Smith project? Yeah, thank you, Commissioner. And that's why we have TBD in that table. As we've been discussing with you, I guess for probably about the last year, year and a half or so, as we were working

2:14:12 through the issues with the location of the trap and hall facility at Trailbridge Dam and came to an agreement with the fish agencies, um we expected that we would need to update those numbers. Um we have some numbers coming in, but we have some work to do to truly vet them. and but we do hope that we will have some additional conversations with you all in the next month or so. Our plan at this point is to provide you with uh as good of an estimate as we can at this point in time and then along with that the drivers for the the escalation in various areas. We have a lot of different things that have impacted the cost of that project, whether that be uh dam safety requirements, uh changes in scope for

2:14:59 other regulatory requirements, materials and labor escalation, uh and then of course the new agreement with the with the fish agencies. We're attempting to categorize the the cost drivers there so you can really see what's what's changed since the last time we updated that. We have been providing in the quarterly report updates on spend to date, but that total um project completion estimate has been kind of frozen while we worked through the agreement with the fish agencies and and received new numbers. So, more to come on that in the next month or so. >> Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate that. Um final question real quick, Burlesen. Um phase three, and I'm I'm looking at the map. This is very uh uh

2:15:44 manual of me, but uh that that third phase uh it's on page excuse me um 42 on the slides. Uh that that top right corner that is what was phased out. Correct. That was what is not no longer going forward with >> correct. >> Okay. Uh and that's like that I think the concept was like a shared office or some type of >> there was there was covered storage for some of our expensive backtor trucks, things like that. And then there was um an even future there were I think three more phases that were um we had to originally lay that out in order to get the the permits originally. So um you know it's it's our discretion board's discretion to move forward but yes there was eventual training room and some

2:16:29 office space out there as well. >> Right. And if you remember back to the there was a pilot project that was also planned for part of that property um with North Northwest Natural that has not gone forward. >> I do remember. Thank you. Um that's all my questions. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other questions or comments? So break. >> Yeah, just just one comment and and I know that um these all there's a lot of zeros after these numbers and it can get a little bit daunting that the rates that we have in place with the rate projection as was presented to the board last year included almost a billion dollars of capital investment. That's the rates that we have now and projected are already based on almost a billion

2:17:14 dollars of of investment. And so when we think about we're moving five million here or 10 million there, I don't want to trivialize that, it's still very important. But in the context of a billion dollar capital plan, um those are significant investments that we've already been planning for. There will be some additional ones that we have to consider, but um just for a little context um to the kinds of daunting decisions that are on your shoulders. Um, so it's a billion dollars. >> And may I just respond to that, too? That if if it's a billion dollars and we look at our average, what we're off, if if we projected a billion, so it's going to be a billion to >> um, we don't have because every one of

2:17:59 our projects has been over what we projected. And so if our rates are studied for a billion and we're talking about a 10 or 20% deviation, >> I think there's escalation in scope. I would say that we've done a a good job on an annual basis of saying this is our capital plan for 2026 or 2025. If you look back at the history, we've either been right on our spending or even under our spending for any particular year. That's why moving these around in pieces does make sense. I think there will be some upward pressure on the capital plan mostly because of scale and scope um not because of just escalation project to project. >> Thank you. Other comments, questions, happy

2:18:45 what you need. >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> All right. The next agenda item is a climate guide book version 4.0. Frank and Kelly. >> Oh goodness. >> Oh my goodness. Sorry for this socks.

2:19:41 >> My apologies to the audience for talking about socks before we get into this. [laughter] Good evening, President Brown and commissioners. U for the record, Frank Lawson, general manager. Joining me is Kelly Hail, who's our climate and strategy analyst and adviser. Uh we have an update regarding the climate guide book. Uh some of this um was it was actually good timing that um there were some questions last month about kind of what e webb is doing on the climate front um and some of the things that we are involved in across the the the community. It was good timing because of the climate guide book. This is revision 4. uh we publish this on an annual basis uh during Earth

2:20:27 week or Earth month rather. Um and the way it's structured uh kind of correlates with our uh SD15 climate change policy. We're looking at climate policy. We're looking at our power supply. Uh there's a section on customer decarbonization impacts to EW from a resiliency perspective and as well as updates on our internal operations. um numbers and so um we do update it annually. Um in uh for the most part we are on track to reach our policy goals and the goals associated with our voluntary commitments to the city of Eugene's CAP 2.0. Um roughly 93% of of our particular actions have either been

2:21:13 completed or on track. And then part of our strategy is to recognize also uh as mentioned is one of the because we have such a clean base of of supply on the electric side to start with really we do see one of the most important things we can do is to maintain the affordability and the reliability of the product while the grid around us is transitioning. And so um we are much cleaner than the grid at large. And so we think that's an important piece that that we recognize included just for a few kind of highlights and then we'll open it up for comments or questions um that Kelly can answer. I'm I'm sure um we do have a

2:21:58 number of customer options and programs available. Uh we call them the green options. When you when you think about those, there's live green, there's move green, um there's clean power, green power, carbon offsets, solar electric uh programs. Um and many of those the results have been reported as well as our operational uh reports that um um of which we are actually meeting our 2030 goal and have uh for some time now relative to our own operations. And so um there are a number of pieces of content here. This is a a pretty dense um piece of information. Uh we also included in the cover memo specific grants and awards and things. We we've

2:22:44 helped um other organizations with um some of those with varying um funding sources in including our own. And so um Kelly, did you want any add anything before we open it up for questions? No, I'm just excited to hear your questions. >> Um, and there's some of one of the things you'll notice is some of the information, especially the operational information, um, reports for 2024, some of that is because the delay in information that we get from people like Bonavville and others that contribute to our own operations tend to come later in the year. And so that's why we're one year behind on some of the information. And um Kelly's plan is to update some of those later this year. Not do a full uh

2:23:30 new version, but to update some of the operational pieces when we get those. And so um probably a full upgrade every year, but full update and then um probably later in the year do a a spot update with certain information that we have. We'd be happy, President Brown, to open it up for questions. That's that's really the reason we're here and be happy to do that. Yeah. So, I have a question. Do we know who is accessing this? Do we know is the city using it? Is the county using it? And who else? And how are they using it? >> Yeah. So, we've gotten great feedback. Um, it's mostly anecdotal. Um, but I've uh heard at various times throughout the year, oh, I read that in the climate guide book. Um the city of [clears throat]

2:24:16 Eugene uh has been a major uh consumer of this material and it has been able to selfserve some of the updates they need for their cup 2.0. Um so we have worked with them to make sure that the timing aligns and that they know where to pull information directly from the guidebook. We've edited the content that we provide in order to make sure that it feeds their systems as needed. And so they can do that in a much more streamlined way that requires less um bespoke editing from different staff. So um I hear regularly that um uh professors at the University of Oregon are using this in their courses. I've heard the environmental community read this. I've heard different people um actually a main user is internal staff. It really helps internal staff align on what we're

2:25:03 doing across many different fronts. Um, lots of folks know about their piece of the puzzle, but this really helps um, especially in the creation each year. Um, more than 40 people internally to EW provide content to this. And so it helps us all get on the same page as to what is it that we're doing on these different components. How does it meet the intent of our policy? And how are we moving forward together? And how can we all understand how these different pro projects, programs, initiatives relate back to the board policy, relate to the city of Eugene, relate to some of these other initiatives and it provides that holistic picture for staff. So that is a main user. Um, but it is well used throughout the community as well.

2:25:48 >> Thank you. Commissioner Schllothburg, one of the things I would add, sometimes you see corporations and they'll do social environmental reporting at at various levels. I don't think I've I've seen any other utility combine all of the different work that's going on across the organization on the on the climate and resiliency front into a single piece of of accessible material like like we've done here. Um, this this includes water emergency stations and things we're doing on the water side as well as the electric side. And and Kelly first started out, she was kind of doing this all herself and then we've really operationalized this um significant. She's she's done a great job of working with staff to more operationalize this

2:26:33 so that people are actually thinking about this in the course of their daily work knowing that we we pull all this together at at a particular times a lot like we do the year-end report. You you'll also notice there's some elements of this that are reported in the quarterly report that you just got. We have a section for example that that says 66 residential building electrification projects were completed in the first quarter. Um I happen to know most of those were heat pumps. There were a few heat pump hot water heaters, but we have a breakdown even further that then later contributes to the climate guide book. >> Questions or comments? >> Have a couple of really um specific questions, but I also wanted to comment

2:27:18 when we met with the city um I do remember them specifically saying, "Oh yeah, we read about that in the climate guide book." So um to reiterate that same point uh it is being used broadly which is greatly appreciated. Um I had uh just a couple of quick questions. SF6 is that the the uh refrigerant that is the worst one or is that the better one that we have been replacing in the system? >> So um SF6 is not a refrigerant or not refrigerant. It's actually a gap insulator that goes inside of switch gear equipment or in some cases breakers. >> Um, there isn't a practical replacement for that as of yet. There are a few utilities that are uh doing some pilot

2:28:04 work on a potential replacement, but that is a very potent greenhouse gas, probably 23,000 times the CO2 equivalent. >> So, and you'll see you'll notice in the history there are certain spikes where that occurs. And we we have I I want to say it's around 15,000 pounds of SF6 in our system. Um we have detectors that um will detect a certain leak level and then we have to go out and replace that level. That doesn't occur very often, doesn't occur all the time. So you'll see a little blip in SF6 every 3 to five years when if there was a really slow leak in a gasket or something. We're talking very small leaks that that gets captured in one particular year, but it's really probably happening over

2:28:50 several years. Uh we've also knowing its potency, we've we've done a lot of material handling training. We've gotten new equipment. I'm looking at Tyler back there because he was part of some of the initial work around some of the equipment we got that was um specifically designed to handle SF6, but very potent. >> So there is there's no other replacement that we can go to. Okay. >> Not at this time. The old breakers had oil and when when oil breakers fail, they tend to explode and catch on fire. That's not a great option. Um, but there are and I know Tyler's team is is monitoring in particular Southern California Edison and LWP. They're the ones and who have been kind of looking at alternatives. Um, some of this is

2:29:35 driven because we have certain substations with size limitations and this allows a substation to be roughly a third to a half of the footprint size. So, you'll notice where we have it was downtown at the Wamut substation and then at the UFO substation where it was a lot of size constraints. >> Is there any um possibility I noticed here, you know, like you were saying very slowly over time then we refill it and then it, you know, spikes. Is there any value in kind of going back and and spreading that over that time to say that, you know, it's maybe not. It just it looks like it's huge and then there's nothing and it it tells a weird story just because of the the way that we detected it. >> It does tell a weird story. That's um

2:30:20 unfortunate in just the way the methodology is, but that is in accordance with the methods that the protocols recommend. >> Okay. You'll see that it's also um categorized with the other refrigerants that we use in our vehicle air conditioning systems and um HVAC systems. And that's because the all of those industrial gases are considered refrigerants or excuse me, not refrigerants, fugitive emissions is what I was going to say. And so because those that's the technical term, it means gases that can leak into the atmosphere. >> So they're not being combusted like other fossil fuels that then release the CO2. They're just leaking in small quantities, but they have that large global warming impact. And so they kind of get uh classified together. >> Got it. Um natural gas at the rock. What do we use natural gas for here again?

2:31:06 >> Space heating. Oh, okay. I feel like maybe we should look at that at some point, but All right. Um, and then the last question I had, again, it was kind of an nitty-gritty one, but on GHG emissions from electricityowned facilities. So, we had a we had a big spike in 2019. Was that because of our the um ice storm and the the long kind of term just >> No, that was a very poor hydro year. And so, when you have a poor hydro year, you get more and more market purchases and other sources. And so, uh, 2019 was a a good example of when you have bad hydro

2:31:52 conditions, you're filling it in with with other kinds of resources. >> The main thing was not the kilowatt hours consumed in EW's own facilities. It was the emissions factor associated with those kilowatt hours and that was our highest emissions factors in the last 15 16 years. >> Got it. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the >> Y. >> Thank you. Uh, I had the same question about gas at the rock. So, thank you for for bringing that up. Um, I have a very very very specific question. Uh, in 4.2.1, which is the live green uh uh talking about that, it's uh it states um 2025 the energy efficiency program will save 14.5 megawws per hour. And then the next sentence says the 2026 targets will

2:32:37 increase 10% to 1300. Mhm. >> Uh is that an additional 1300 or is >> No, >> can you please? Yeah, I I this got >> 14,000 was above the target for 2025. The 26 target is >> that much above the 2025 target. >> Got it. Uh I uh >> and just from an accounting perspective, that's the first year of savings. We we capture this in the first year. We know that different um mechanisms have different lifetimes depending on if you're replacing a certain type of equipment. Some last five years, some last 15 years. That's only the first year of savings. If you wanted to look at over the course of some of these actions, you can multiply that out over

2:33:22 a number of years, but that's of the measures we did in 2025. That was the first year of megawatt hours saved of just the first year. >> Thank you. It was 11 p.m. This was the sentence I stopped reading at because I said [laughter] anymore. I was like, I'm good. >> You only made it to section 4 whatever. >> That was Friday night at 11. It was a It was a weekend. Uh, no, this is a a really great climate guide book. I do appreciate it. It's a lot of both very technical data and a lot of like values that are all baked into one. Um, and so I really I do appreciate it. I think that this is sort of a guiding star and um uh as well for the organization of just here's an explanation. Um I did have a concern though. I mean I tend to

2:34:07 sort of lean towards uh buildings and customerf facing programs and and um uh just development housing in that that regard. Um that still sticking with the 4.2 to the live green the the move um uh organ or excuse me move green work green um that there seems to be a lot of emphasis specifically around building decarbonization of why we don't want to do things of why we are um uh happy to deliver you know uh residential low-income uh decarbonization but also here are all the reasons we don't want to do it um that it doesn't reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as other projects and and etc etc and I Um, missing from that is a lot of the

2:34:52 health and efficiency side of the conversation. Um, and I know a completely unttrackable data point, but um, the more that we're supporting our especially low-income rateayers to decarbonize and have more efficient energy, um, it's possibly taking them off the customer care program as well and using other uh, systems that we also have available. Um, and I know that that would be almost impossible to actually track and put in here, but but there was I I I noticed a very significant um like lack of building decarbonization focus um that there was a a lot of emphasis on transportation de decarbonization, especially around um the requirements out of House Bill 3630. Um and so, you

2:35:39 know, which which outlined those three, but those were three major pillars. And so I I wanted to comment on that of um just from my perspective um that uh incentivizing decarbonization was sort of in a passive perspective in in this particular area. >> Yeah, I appreciate your comment. I think one of the things that when you look at limited income and and some of the the different decarbonization as well as energy efficiency programs, they're not all created equal from a cost of benefit uh perspective. The most expensive energy efficiency projects we have are limited income single family residences. Um if we do just those, we will actually drive up rates. Um which doesn't help

2:36:24 either. So there's this tradeoff between the investment you're making and the the the actual impact on the organization on rates and on those customers. It it may or may not actually help get them off of a limited income program. Um we that's why we're looking at the limited income programs the way we are and recognizing there are different kinds of needs there. Some more persistent long-term, some more situational. And I think we're going to uh turn that dial a little bit. Um but we also in our uh demand side assessment looked at where the dial is relative to cost per megawatt hour. We know that's a dial we can turn. uh we we understood the potential up to about you know 50 megawatt or $50 a megawatt hour.

2:37:12 Uh that's where it seems to compete with other resources and then we can turn that dial up to get higher and higher potentials as we want to we want to make adjustments to that over time. >> I appreciate that. Yeah. And and my hope is is just a sort of pursuit of you know helping folks decarbonize, getting off gas infrastructure, building our own customer base in that regard. Um, but also, you know, and I noticed that this was missing in the city of Eugene's climate action plan, but they also have a goal of decarbonizing buildings uh by 2045. That was not mentioned in that particular area. Um, but also that's a goal that we can participate in and be a part of uh as community partners. And so, um, just wanted to highlight that that I I noticed that those pieces were

2:37:57 were missing. Can I just add as well that um you know the climate guide book is trying to take a particular lens at our certain projects. So it's looking at what are the impacts specifically on climate change, but it's also doing that through a triple bottom line approach. So that includes the economic aspect and the affordability concerns, the social aspect and human health concerns as well as the environmental impacts and the greenhouse gas emissions concerns. And so that particular section that you're talking about is looking at, you know, it's easy to sometimes think that all efficiency projects are kind of equal from a climate change and greenhouse gas emission perspective. And so when you're looking at it through that lens, it's really important to remember that certain projects will actually be much

2:38:42 more efficient uh for a much lower cost and actually do a a better job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So if you're looking just purely from an emissions standpoint, where can you have the biggest impact? And then you have to also think about those human health concerns and the affordability concerns. And so we're trying to bring both of those uh perspectives into that um discussion. But um not every efficiency project is equal from that emissions perspective. And >> I I totally agree. Looking at it from just a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint is not the greatest. It's there's other factors, I suppose. So I appreciate that. Thank you. John, you got something? Um, and I think I'll piggyback on that. So, again, in chapter 4, um, you talked

2:39:29 about the focus was on bigger commercial and industrial projects. Um, and and we've had that presentation before that that's that's where we can get the most reduction in greenhouse gases for bang for the buck right now. Not that not that all these other ones aren't important. So I guess the question I'm asking for is what percentage are we hitting of these of these lowhanging fruits? I'll call them lowhanging fruits, large customers, those types of things. one, you know, are we at we've touched 20% of these these customers and we could touch, you know, we we hope to touch 20% more in

2:40:15 the next year, two years or whatever. And then the second part of the question is is how um demand management is going to play into that part of it as well. I mean, we can go in and we can say put in these this type of lighting and those types of things that'll get us so far. But the thing that I'm excited about is being able to have the demand management not only from our resource adequacy but also from our carbon reduction. Um so can you just talk a little bit about that as where we're at with >> I'll start and so the the first question last year we did a demand side potential assessment. This was looking at energy efficiency across our territory and what the potentials for the different segments were. Um, I'll have to probably

2:41:02 lean into to Julie and some of her staff to actually give you uh the the breakdown of how much was under under which sort of category and and where we are with that. Um, this this last year just happened to be one where it was a little heavier on the commercial industrial side. If you looked at the investment spending though, it wasn't. That was on the megawatt hours. Um, if you look at side by side compared to actually how much incentives we put into it, it's it's much different. Residential was by far the highest and yet a low percentage of the actual megawatt hour savings. So, we we turn those dials. We try to look at all the different segments and provide opportunities. But the demand side potential assessment did break out how much potential there is in our territory

2:41:47 for those different different sectors. And we can we can follow up on that. and and this year we're actually looking at more of an implementation plan and developing that which is what what's what you're you're asking for. So a little bit more to come there. Um on the second part of your question, second part of >> demand management >> demand management. So some of our incentives for and I'll give you the example of the the heat pump hot water heater um or or maybe also the um the EV charging incentive. um those have to have the potential to participate in it. They have to have the electronics and the connectivity to be able to do that in order to get the incentive. That's one of the conditions of the incentive. Um heat pumps, most modern heat pumps

2:42:32 have some kind of electronic capability. So that wasn't directly tied to the incentive, but part of the reason we are looking at some of those and an EV charger is an example why we have that in there is for potential future demand response programs. I was thinking more demand response on the larger commercial and industrial. >> Yeah, those those are something. So if if you look at how we're staging our demand um I I'll say working on the consumption side in 2026, we're we're focused on some of our large contract customers and working with them on on different kinds of demand response capabilities. U things that would free up capacity, for example. um next year

2:43:18 in 27 we're likely to shift to that to some of our larger commercial industrial um customers and then do the aggregated programs the year after that. That's where you would send a broad signal to 20,000 households for example. The the commercial industrial ones tend to be very application specific. One example might be so snowtemp for example. They have uh thermal momentum. they could actually reduce electricity for some period of time. They're interested in resiliency. So, they might want to to actually add a distributed energy resource or some kind of generation at their site or be part of a participating organization that could lower their demand for some period of time and still

2:44:03 not lose their product. So each one of those tends to be application specific and other than the two or three largest ones, those will really start to commence more formally in in 2027. >> Yeah. I mean, the the thing that I'm excited about is it kind of gets to two birds with one stone when we when we get into demand management, especially on those large large customers because if we're if we're asking them to lean in when we're at peak, chances are the the power that we we would be buying at peak is going to be some of the dirtiest power that is out there. So if we so if we can if we can get them to reduce it so that we don't have to buy it at peak, we're getting cost savings and we're

2:44:50 getting reduction in in our greenhouse gases and our dirty power. So, that's what I'm really excited about being able to lean into those and find, you know, that's that's great if it's my house and I'm I don't charge my car, but if we can get snow temp to shut down at or or move to a battery type of a thing from 7 to 9 in the morning on a 20 degree day, that's going to have a much larger impact than me not charging my car. Although those play in as well, but large levers, >> you're exactly right. It's when it's the most expensive and the dirtiest. Also, u one of the things that you learn um and the reason that we're staging this as we are starting with the the largest levers

2:45:35 first is that every time you do this, you learn something about customer behavior including commercial industrial and then you have aggregated programs which are you know what's the equivalent of a snow tent? 5,000 homes that you know you'd either have to work with 5,000 homes or one customer. you start with the one customer, you develop your systems, you see what your results are, and then you proliferate after that. So, that's part of the reason why we're staging it that way. Um, but you're absolutely right. The other the other piece of that is that we're trying to solve more than one problem. We're we we aren't just looking at the 4hour issue. Um, our biggest challenge in the region is going to be the four day to seven day cold winter snap. um when a lot of the

2:46:22 production from wind and solar in the region is not there and that's a different problem um other than you know there's there's the shifting of load but then there's the the other resource adequacy challenge which I think some of you probably tuned into the the challenge and how that gets defined and what it looks like. So um yeah more than one problem to solve. I'll just add if you're interested in um reading the specific results of the demand response or the demand side potential assessment, it's in section 3.4. We describe the specific potential that's available for conservation including average megawatt hours available for uh sorry average megawws uh up to the 2045 load as well

2:47:07 as the peak demand savings that are available for the conservation potential assessment. We also did a demand response potential assessment. The results are in there. Um the boundaries of that demand response potential assessment was mostly at large um aggregated scale. So those individual sites as you were asking about the commercial and industrial potential is not represented there well because of the limitations of the way that study was conducted. That is why, as Frank was talking about, in our five-year themes and in the annual U 2026 annual goal, we did make a um emphasis on looking at what uh potential is available with our large largest customers first. And so you'll see that that's connected back to our strategy. But you can see then the

2:47:52 results of the electrification potential assessment and the consumerowned solar fold to voltage potential assessment solar. Well, I'm go last. And Frank, I won't point this out, but the fact that I know that you've always when you this is your last presentation and you always talk to staff about being on time. This is a 15minute agenda item and right now we're at almost 30. So, not not bad for your last one. So, I do have just a small quick question. Uh the statistics >> Are you about to say you're fired? Is that is that what you're going to say? >> You know, I was going to say we have recognition of general manager, but that was that start. It's cut already. It started in 10. I guess we're out of time. We can skip that. As far as I'm >> Don't Don't catch the stones in the glass house. So, I'm just a quick question. We We met the 2030 goal a

2:48:38 while ago on our internal operations. Did that include the savings or or the carbon reduction from smart meters and not running 90 thou reading 90,000 meters a month with the vehicles? >> It does include our fleet uh total fuel consumption which would with fewer truck rolls. It would include that. >> Okay. So, it does that does include that. So we've already gotten credit for for the the carbon savings for smart meters. >> We are still implementing the AMI and so the full savings of that has not been fully realized, but any savings that we have achieved along the way has been captured. >> It's partly and and Commissioner Brown, there's still a truck roll until you get both the water and the electric up there. So it it is partly accounted for

2:49:23 but certainly not fully accounted for at this point. >> Okay. Thanks. If we delay this another 20 seconds and we actually went over by twice. So anyhow, thank you very much. That's a very good presentation and yeah, you're good. So any other questions or comments? If not, then thank you very much. And the next agenda item is future board agenda. >> Thank you. >> I think that's me. >> What's that? I don't care about future educ. [laughter] >> This can be a very very quick one. Um I think you you all all saw those. There

2:50:09 is a Mackenzie River trip coming up or so some of the the more immediate ones. There's there's followup. Um our intent was to um incorporate the comments that you had this evening on fees and put those on the consent calendar for for June um as well as some other agenda items. So I think that June and July are important um and and busy meetings and so I think if you had any any concerns about those we we can address them. Um, and then there there is the uh Carmen Smith official opening uh I believe let's see >> which what's date on that? >> Uh the 29th.

2:50:54 >> Yeah, May 29th. So I think that's a Friday. >> That's a Friday. >> So that's a Friday for the official opening of the some of the recreational facilities even though they're available to reserve at this point. So I didn't have any other comments unless you did, President Brown. No, I just have Go ahead. >> I just had a quick comment that um I think we had talked maybe at some point about having um putting on the calendar would look out to have maybe another joint e webb sub meeting with both of the new general managers. I just wanted to make sure if that if others were interested in that that we kind of got it in the lineup so that we can figure out a date for that down the road. Yeah, I heard they're close to a new general

2:51:40 manager. If not, they they haven't announced it, but Okay. >> Yeah, they we we have a cue at the beginning of the board agenda report and we can add um a joint e webb sub u meeting to that. Um I know the last time and the only time we we ever did it um there were a number of restrictions in that conversation. Um and um I think the hope and intent would be that the boards could really coalesce and and have open uh completely open conversations and um um the new general manager supporting the boards. I believe that they're supposed the new general manager sub from when I was supposed to start at the 1 of July or early July.

2:52:29 >> Okay. Um is that it? >> I hope so. So now now we have to we the next agenda item says recognition of the general manager but that has started today. So uh but we can uh we can do that. So Ann and Paulolly >> I have aged a lot haven't I? >> Yeah you have. So anyhow I'm just going to open the queue. Uh even though we have 10 minutes you guys have something. We're not gonna get teary eyed. I know I'm not. He ran over. He absolutely violated the rule. He's gonna buy him dinner now. I mean, I just So, uh, anyhow, Sonia, go ahead. You got two minutes. >> You You better not go over or you're

2:53:15 gonna be >> not. Well, uh, we kind of, uh, I guess the cat's out of the bag in the sock situation, but I did. [laughter] >> Oh, it actually says it. >> It does. Yes. I didn't get a chance to read yours. I was just like awesome. [laughter] >> Yeah, we we all match. We're taking a picture of that >> early in it was like I was a brand new commissioner and you were new as a GM. I think you had been at, you know, several months before me, but I remember that there was there was one particular meeting right after we had started recording. Somebody made a comment that the meeting was BS. Anyway, it was wonderful having uh having you bring the socks the next

2:54:00 time. I have enjoyed laughing about it for the last 10 years. And so uh our our prank to Frank was to to outsock you apparently. >> Well, it looks like it worked. Yeah, I [laughter] that's that's awesome. >> I won't say who said it. >> Commissioner is still here. >> [laughter] >> It's it's been wonderful serving with you. Be greatly missed. And I'm sure we have we will have more things to say at your later gathering. But um I'm trying really hard not to cry right now, so I'm going to stop. Thanks.

2:54:46 >> Great. Um it's really been a pleasure to serve on this board with you. Um, I've learned so much and I really appreciate your leadership and um, I wish you so much fun and joy in your retirement and I look forward to reading that science fiction book that you are going to write. So, thank you for making this a wonderful experience. >> I'll try to make it a good one. >> Yeah, it's on public writing now. >> Yeah. So, you have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I appreciate you and I think that you've been a wonderful leader for this organization. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. Um, you know, when I came into this position,

2:55:31 like most of us who are citizen citizen members of a board like this, we know very little about the running of an of a utility, especially one that's this size. Um, and you're being able to explain things to us as well as explain things to your staff and have your staff explain things to to me personally. Um, has broadened my knowledge of the utility, but also just the knowledge of how to run an organization. I think that that's something that that I admire most of about you is the way that you have run this organization

2:56:16 and guided and brought up the people in the organization and brought their skill skill levels up um advancing them and and helping move the whole organization forward. Um you've done a great job of that. our interpersonal comm uh relationships. I've I've valued I've valued the the one-on- ones that we've had over the last five years. Um, being able to talk frank back and forth with uh a person in your in your position, I think is something that I hope the staff understands is really rare to be able to have a board member and the chief executive be able to just

2:57:03 talk one- on-one open with no barriers or no boundaries to make sure that the organization is moving forward and doing things right. And that's something that I really appreciate about what you've done and how you've helped lead this organization. On a personal level, you know, I'm I'm trying to get semi-retired. Um, one bit of advice that I would say is don't try and run a political campaign and retire at the same time. It's does not it is not advantageous to to mental health. But I wish you all the all the best luck in in whatever direction you go and I appreciate the working relationship and I and what I

2:57:48 hope is a friendship that we've developed over the last five years. Uh yeah, thank you Frank for all of your I echo what John had said quite a bit of a citizen member walking in not knowing uh just the extreme depth of what e webb does and and you really outlined clearly everything that was there um and made it very uh approachable in in so many different ways and from my perspective I think uh a a great leader is really reflective of who is around them and who's who's with them and and uh the team that you've brought up has has really reflected some some incredible values and and uh really appreciate um just so much dedication, so much energy.

2:58:34 Um and I think uh the first story you ever told me, my fresh commissioner, was this meeting is So I appreciated the I was very nervous for my first meeting. I'm like, "Oh, great. This is a lot easier now." So, um I greatly appreciate it and um to to John's point, I think I read in our uh policy books that you can't run for a commissioner for two years. So, you've got a window and then you can join us later. So, um but thank you for all of your your energy and effort to that Eugene and team. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Great. So, thank you very much for everything for tolerating uh the the diversity on the board for as my tenure here and

2:59:20 everything else and and for allowing us to be who we are. I mean, we're supposed to be a fabric and a representation of this community, and we're such a diverse group, but when you we get in here and you get this staff and you get everybody together, you do such a wonderful job of of taking our ignorance and liquidating it and giving us the ability to make what I think are great decisions and and moving this this organization forward. Um, I hate to see it go. Uh, there's a couple things. Number one, you don't go don't become a fisherman, okay? I just want you to stay out of the rivers. Everything else >> fisherman, no politician. Okay. I've got my do not list working here. >> Yeah. And so you've been great and I wish you the best in whatever you're going to do. And I too would like to read whatever book you're going to write. Um I'm sorry for what I said 10

3:00:06 years ago. But u but I meant it. I actually meant it. But that's the only time I said it once. >> You've been very good. >> You got to warn me. I've been clicking this pin all night just to drive you nuts because I know that you told me that I I got to stop doing that and nobody said a word to me all night. So, sorry. >> And there was I was going to do my straw in my my big golf cup and commissioner story behind that. >> But we haven't had any fights in the last few boards and everything else, but uh thanks again for everything you've done and and but more importantly, thanks for making a foundation so we can move forward. you're going one way and you've left us with a staff that's going to be able to help us get John up to speed and everything else because we've got a lot of work to do and and staff

3:00:51 has a lot of work to do and thank you very much and I'm going to look forward to next week so we can't come up with something. >> No, I I appreciate it. Um I I think like like most of the comments I' I've really been fortunate um in this position um really honored to do it. Um you know work and it and it really starts with the people um starts with the board um the people that I work with the most Dan and Holly the executive team kind of build your team and then the branches work out from there. I I have a lot of relationships with uh a lot of people in the organization and I think that's really what makes it the most valuable along with recognizing the importance of the work that we do and the importance of the the guidance that you provide and

3:01:37 so um I'm proud of the organization. I'm proud of the people and it's it's been an honor to to serve in in this capacity but also in my earlier capacity u at e webb um uh as as an engineer um before I I became uh moved into this role and so I really appreciate it. It's been an honor and I think I do have friendships here as as well as as colleagues um and mentors. So um I'm going to take that forward and and really appreciate that as I do whatever I'm going to do. Apparently, write a book. I did have one more thing. I was going through my files. I have commissioner files. I have a file on every one of you. Um, just just so you know. And most of it was really, not that you're boring, but most

3:02:22 of the stuff I was saving was pretty boring, except I did find a John Brown disconnect notice. Um, apparently he had given this to me and it's dated 2018. And so um there was there was some kind of problem with our system before it was the old system. Um but um I think I'm going to somehow find someplace to frame this in my uh in my um home office. So that was the one interesting thing I found out was the disconnect notice for John Brown. So which he made sure I was aware of. >> You get that when you're on autopay. It's when when we did the time of use study and I and Matal and I had a bet and I beat him. I saved money and so ew web I'd saved they didn't like $30 and

3:03:07 they didn't bill me 30 bucks that they should have because I had saved it and so they put me in delinquents. I get home that night after a board meeting and there's a disconnect notice on my front door because they hadn't hadn't paid it. How can I get a disconnect notice with when I'm on autopay? >> John, you you need to let this go at some point. [laughter] >> Talk about letting it go. >> I'm I'm not going to let it go. That's why I saved this because I'm not I'm not going to let it go. But um I think we have wor we've worked those things out, haven't we? >> Yes. >> But everything except for John Brown's address, I'm sure. >> That was that was the one interesting thing I found. Other than that, >> uh really really appreciate it. It's been it's been fun. It's been most days are fun. Um not every day is fun, but most days are fun and really appreciate it. It's been very rewarding and and I'm

3:03:53 honored. Thank you. >> Okay. Well, one last item and that's board wrapup. Mindy, him Sonia John. >> No, >> John. No. >> Other than take a picture of the socks