3.9.2022 Sewer Commission

okay i think we all have our agendas in front of us first item on the agenda is uh citizens input oh yeah okay that's true pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio a video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or run perceived by those present

and are deemed acknowledged and permissible thank you for reminding me of that okay first item on the agenda citizen input is the will it be any citizen nobody signed up for citizens okay item number two tabled matters minutes of the july 21st 2021 meeting i think we all have been given that in our electronic mailings um i just need a little bit of clarification as to why why did we table this last

time i think was it something to do with renee not being uh questioning whether she

she wasn't at this meeting so wouldn't be able yes you couldn't yeah okay right um unless anybody had any questions or won't want to make any comments about it um i'll enter in a motion to approve the minute so motion is set second all in favor aye we don't need a roll call right paul okay very good minutes of the previous meeting held on december 7 2021 uh again you you've all had an

opportunity to read it through if you have any questions comments want to bring it up if not obtain a motion to approve the minutes of december 7.

second all in favor okay

okay item four fiscal year 2023 race and budget we've all been provided the proposed rates and budget for fiscal year 2023.

i believe what we're proposing is a a rate of 5.75 cents per ccf and um the stormwater rate which will remain the same at 47 am i correct yes okay this particular sewer rate uh is an increase of um i believe it's eight cents eight cents per cc pierce ccf over um the present budget we're in now correct correct okay um paul what is it you want to mention yeah so if you want i'll do a

presentation on the budget and uh how we got to this uh to this rate um so as uh the president mentioned we're looking for a rate of 5.75 to support the fy23 budget uh the total sewer budget is in the amount of 26 million six hundred and three thousand four hundred and two dollars that's the total amount of the budget it's an eight cent increase from past years uh what that uh what that

does for an average household per year is four dollars and 24 cents that's an increase of four dollars and 20 cents yes 24 cents to the average household okay increase above what they paid this cash so if you want what i'll do i'll go through run through some of the changes within the budget so last fiscal year as we were going through the budget process the council asked for a uh ask for

us to reduce the amount of retained earnings or free cash that we used as revenue software in the budget uh myself with the financial team at that time who drafted a policy that we would use ten percent less free cash uh than what was certified starting off this year and for the next five years we would drop that down by 10 per year until after five years we were only using 50 of the

certified free cash within the budget um not using all of our certified free cash within our budget is an excellent policy because next year we may not have that free cash to be able to use in the budget um you know so that's one time money is going into the budget that will not show whether we'll have the following fiscal year so we don't want to be reliant on retained earnings

but it always has been used in the past as a way to uh minimize rate increases so what we did so our retained earnings that was certified this past year in fy 22 were actually the retained earnings left over from fy21 those retained earnings uh were very high from fy21 so what i did is i took the amount of retained earnings that we used in last year's budget which was roughly about

1.9 million and i figured to use 10 percent less than what we had in last year's budget in retained earnings so we're using 1.73 million in the fy 23 budget of retained earnings we do have that retained earnings is certified so retained earnings that were retained this past year if you remember in fy 22 we did not have an increased rate for the first six months of the budget year so we took retained earnings

uh and we plugged it into the fy 22 budget um so 300 300 000 went from retained earnings uh into the fy 22 budget but we still had enough retained earnings leftover to be able to uh plug into the budget here so that was a reduction in a revenue source so that needed to be made up and it was part of that rate increases related to that one of the other things that uh

was a pretty big increase that we budgeted for this year was our chemicals and our sludge disposal yeah i saw that it's like a fight at least a five percent on the chemicals yeah you know chemicals uh are gonna be uh gonna be tough this year you know um coming out of coven and coming out of everything else with the supply chain issues and other issues that were going on um you

know we were already planning on some fluctuation within some type of some raw materials that we use within our process most recently with everything else going on uh over the past uh you know three weeks uh the volatility of the market is is phenomenal the budget that i've prepared uh for fy23 our budget process starts in december budget gets put together in january february is is when it's all worked out

and you know numbers come together the rates are done and this end of february is what i presented to the administration so you know i was looking back then trying to project out what the costs are going to be come july to june um but uh you know so i just want to make everybody aware that this budget was based on our projections that were you know two months ago you know things

that have changed since then look at the price of gas correct what's going on in the last week you know price of gas has doubled in the past week you know looking at our fuel that we put into our vehicles that increase is not included in this book in this budget i can tell you that much you know i think we're going to have trouble coming into fy23 to begin with big issue with the total volatility

of the market whether it be raw materials whether it be supplies whether it be fuel uh or anything in relation to anything fy23 is going to be a tough budget to manage throughout the fiscal year one good thing since we are reducing the amount of free cash that we're using as a revenue source within the fy23 budget that does leave us as a balance of certified free cash uh so that's almost a small savings

account i'm looking at it right now as a savings account so if we do have major disruptions in some of our supplies uh we'll be able to take that free cash and use it back into the budget it's not an ideal thing to do but it's a very very good place to be right now so it's good um so if you want what i'll do i'll run through the budget and tell you any

specific changes online items uh throughout i got one point that i was surprised in looking at um i really thought as an expense it would have been higher but um i guess i mean you know your numbers but um other purchase services uh i'm based on you know for this budget over the previous year i thought for sure would be more than about we're up 120 000.

but the way you know yep that a lot of that is it's a sludge going out the door being shipped out going to wherever in the world that we're shipping it and so forth and so on and yeah yeah so i'm surprised that it's that low it it the increase right now is is that low because we're doing um the major upgrades at the facility uh one of the things within um within the contract

too which is the one that we're doing now down at the wastewater treatment plant uh is all the dewatering operations for sludge and stuff like that so within our contract there's a certain responsibility for our we didn't want to we didn't want to leave the contract open-ended so there's a certain responsibility in a certain cost associated to assist us with our sludge disposal when we don't have uh

de-watering capabilities so that's why this did not change a lot because we do have that built a portion of that built within our contract for construction cost all right so what you're doing if what you're saying is you're anticipating at some point in this physical year that we're looking at that you're going to be doing some dewatering that will in a sense reduce the amount of tonnage or reduce

the amount of liquid going out which will reduce the cost yeah okay okay good so yeah um you know so that was one that that was mightily increased throughout the budget um our indirect cost paid back to the city uh has stayed constant um indirect uh transport to the general fund it's just over 1.4 million dollars uh the hundred thousand dollars that we've uh that the council wanted us to uh

include within our budget to transfer to stabilization that's included within this budget as well so um still a hundred thousand right a hundred thousand yep to go to stabilization um within our salary line items uh that's uh just contractual increases throughout that line item uh as you run through some of these other items uh the lower end of this page has been some minor tweaking just based on uh cost but

overall you get to the bottom of the line item there hasn't been a large increase the only other one is water sewer cso charges as we know the sewer department pays for water and cso charges at all capabilities as well as water department pays for sewer and with new water meters we have seen an increase in the billables to the sewer department for water uses down at up land electricity i think is going to be an

extremely volatile market from fuel prices as well as everything else the one good thing in relation to that we are locked in to a delivery rate um not a delivery rate but a unit price rate on a conglomerate contract for the city uh we're locked into an extremely favorable rate at this time so as long as there's no um out of the box you know there's no weird contractual obligation if there's major

uh you know foster azure or something like that um we should be pretty constant within our electricity that's uh that's our expectation at this point but again that could turn into one of these volatile uh changing markets so is the uh that rate that we're look that we have we're contracted to yep um is that rate only for the plant but what about the pumping stations of those those those fall all city all city

facilities also if it has the same rate yep so so it's a city it's a city rate uh school department government centers all of our facilities get the same rate we've verified our staff as verified because the contract was just done about a year ago eight months ago um and uh who would you contract with us is it constellation yes constellation solution yeah all right okay and uh yeah they're

pretty competitive yeah yeah it was really favorable rate okay because we got uh you know once we get one into the numerator i had the staff check all of our facilities make sure they fell underneath that contract we had one of the small ones that wasn't and to see the difference in the actual uh rate was it was skip rising that's good um question i see where debt services reduced by 400 grand which is debt service

yep that service we had we had uh one large debt uh come off the books yeah that's the best yeah that's significant yeah what we're trying to do yeah yeah exactly no you know and it's uh you know oh and it's tough you're always seeing some fall off now we're almost in the role where some of the beginning cso projects are starting to come off it's not going to be in every year dropping off

but we do our staff we do track it out with a full spreadsheet um you know showing when that service uh you know what was occurred the fiscal year that we're in uh and when the uh when the debt service comes offline so we had one that fell off it was uh 137 000 um will be the last payment we had one prior fiscal year 129 000 but we will have additional ones coming

on the books um you know we do have contract uh one that's just uh going to be coming out of the book soon and within a couple of years we're gonna have a contract too so contrary to is what 40 million right uh 50 51 is a total between the two yeah between between the construction and the uh and the uh uh engineering services okay go ahead so uh as we continue down the line other

professional services that's the year we increase based on the o m contract um we've spoken about other purchase services which is primarily related to our sludge disposal uh chemicals substantial increase there um we got projections of up to 60 for sodium hypochlorite which is one of the largest chemicals we use the most of that's for the disinfection of the water prior to us sending it out um so that will be uh

that will be you know we did budget at that time we haven't received any bids yet but we'll be moving forward with that uh other improvements state which stayed flatlined at 80 000 for capital improvements and as you said the uh debt service was reduced um well the water source cso charge yes um that went up like 36 thousand dollars yes what was uh was there a couple of new facilities

that come on board or something so we just did a meter a city-wide meter replacement project in the water department uh so there was some facilities yeah i forgot about that we're getting more accurate water readings alrighty so so this is this is already going up to the sixth floor yeah so prior to uh prior to the june uh prior to uh march 3rd which is uh was 120 days

prior to the start of the fiscal year this was presented to the administration okay so just just if you want a couple more things i kind of wanted just to mention um the uh free cash again um we do have uh we do have a reserve left over so if we need it throughout the year due to market volatility we will have it capital duty capital improvements i just want to run through what we have

budgeted it's a medium duty pickup truck uh an emergency repairs for twenty thousand dollars uh detention basin and swale improvements uh and then we uh budgeted fifteen thousand dollars for a cf cso notification program which is uh being required by tdp is that the 80 000. that totals up to 80 thousand those four right now i have a question on the postage yep so are we trying to get that reduced by having

people sign in for like electronic receipt of bills so yeah we the it's tough because the collections is done by the collector's office downstairs um we don't have they don't have the option right now for people to be able to opt out of their paper bills um that is something that we've had discussions with them about because i know a lot of people are receiving their bills by email uh prior to uh this past year

if you went to pay your water assume bill uh online you weren't able to view the bill we got it now where you're able to view the full bill so i think the next step is going to be to try to work with them to be able to opt out of the program i know one thing that we are doing with uh within the billing system is uh we're continuing to update email

addresses and stuff like that too because building that email database is another option of first hill to email out bills rather than do that so it is different things that we're looking at without a doubt uh and we're going to try to work them in over a little bit of time here paul if um would respect the natural gas for heat do we um do we rely on utilities for that what do we go out and

um that's through liberty utilities is it um

i know my rate for the problem utilities went up 44 percent um and you're you're i mean i'm not questioning or what you're saying it should it will end up being but you're saying it's going to be the same as last year yeah i don't know again it's a volatility within the market but the one thing that we do have is um in contract one uh we did install newer boilers so high efficiency boilers

we're expecting a substantial savings from the oldest style boilers so plus we have one less building now the incinerator building to heat for this fiscal year because it was demolished so i think i think we're gonna there will be increases coming again with that but i think we're all suffering from it when i looked at it i would have that we have that protection in the sense that we we belong to a group

do we have that for gas as well is that available um i'm not sure if that's available because i'm not sure if you can do that on gas with the electric grid how it works you can you know you can purchase the specific utility you can purchase the electricity from a specific supplier the gas is a whole entire system that's owned by one ownership i'm not sure if there's different you know

from what from from my past experience in my days when i was working in industry we used to go out and um contract gas we would um you know we would go to somebody like liberty utilities and say hey you know we expect to use this amount of cash what do you expect to charge us and then we go out and go to some place like direct energy or even constellation

but you're going to have a real high volume in order to be able to convince them that to deal with it um something like this seventy thousand dollars where you anticipating i don't think i don't think you'd have too much of a uh a chance of going unless you consolidated well you had to you got all the schools that are probably being heated by gas yeah unless we went with the city

you know somebody may want to take a look at that and say hey big combination that we got here what can you do yeah definitely i think that's something worth looking into just like we do with the electric yeah but anyway it's just just something to bring down yeah without a doubt okay so one other thing so go ahead okay two things um not to change the subject uh first of all the uh backup generators

are they diesel uh all of the sewer backup generators are diesel easier okay that's that's smart the other thing is i was always under the assumption that the city was self-insured so water and sewer we purchased vehicle insurance for our vehicles uh because of the life we just feel that the liability uh we feel that it's proven it for what we spend for a year for insurance um since we're enterprise funds

we don't have the same um you know size as the general fund uh and for a number of years now at 10 plus years long that i've been here we've been purchasing automotive insurance water and sewer does it the general fund whose dcm police fire they do not purchase in massachusetts the municipality has the option to be able to be self-insured um but i think because we didn't we never had a stabilization fund we didn't

have anything uh to back us up and since we're enterprise funds solely funded by our rate payers uh we didn't have the ability to leverage the tax or anything like that if any logical claims we've always carried insurance on our vehicles makes sense i think for us size i think it's proven in the cost i think it's prudent um so one other thing that i just wanted to to talk about a little bit every year

uh the question always comes out because you know myself or terry because prior to me always talk about the average household and what the cost to an average household we're always questioned about well how do you know what an average household is we always based an average household uses 53 ccf per year and everybody says well that's you know if people say that's not what my household uses that's not that's not the

average right so how do we get to that number that's something that i was really wondering last year i did a really small sample i took a set of 20 houses which i knew how many people lived in the houses you know we did a survey with with some people and we took single families three families four families and an eight family we averaged it all out to how many ccs were used per

household so a household could be a single family house or it would be three households in a three family house nine so we broke that down last year out of those 20 households and it came up to 55.25 ccs per house so we were pretty close last year you know i i talked about this and people questioned you know questions well that's only 20 houses that's that's not a very good sample size that's it's

so it was a total of 16 over 16 000 accounts that we pulled the water usage on the number of households was over 31 000 households that were part of this calculation um so the average household what we came up with was 50.69 ccf per year is used by the average household you know so last year we were close you want to take those statistics with you back down to the city council yeah

again exactly you know and you know i just i i wanted to do it for my own peace of mind because it's always been 53 ccf that's what we've always used that's what we've said and that was the number that was propagated a while ago and maybe there was some change you know i i maybe they would use it more or less i wasn't sure so i really wanted to be

able to you know work the numbers and figure out what the actual usage was uh so this was this was an exercise that was done by our staff um they did an excellent job um and actually i was pretty surprised that it was still uh right there where we were from a while ago so you know when we say that it's four dollars and 24 cents for the average household we're confident saying that that's the

average household number plus you know all those three families half of them probably had no insulation that's another yep so you know and that just shows you you know and again in a single family household with five people that live there that wash their car you know once a week that water they grasp they're going to be higher you know a multi-family with you know three single people living in the house that don't

have an outside spicket right they're going to use less but average worked out that way very good um so just the next thing that i wanted to talk about is the budget process um and how we're going to be moving forward how we expect to move forward this year with the budget and i included in everybody's packet a uh memo that i that i wrote to the law department

um and you know i went through it and i just wanted to make sure we were compliant with everything this year so i did some research so underneath massachusetts state law and there's a couple of different places there's massachusetts state law there's the charter and the ordinances of the city of fall river and guidelines and rules for enterprise funds um so all that states the budget really starts off 120 days

prior to the start of the fiscal year uh the um the budget and rates need to be submitted to the administration uh that has already been done for this budget and now i'm here with the board presenting it to the board that oversees it um if the board approves the budget and rates the next step would be for me to submit for the mayor to submit them to the city council so

my hope is if if the commission approves we will um by the 15th we'll put together a packet um for the mayor to submit to the uh city clerk for the council's review based on excuse me paul yep the clock starts for for i think leading up to the 45 days right yeah so where does the clock stop does this clock stop when it goes to the clerk to the city clerk okay all right all right

isn't when this when they finally have a council meeting any of the time no no from everything that i heard it's from what it's submitted to the city clerk okay from everything that i read excuse me um so by ordinance our rates any rate increase has to be submitted prior to um prior to april 1st and our budgets need to be submitted prior to may 1st so that's enterprise

funds uh for the city of florida not the general fund budget uh so to figure out our rates that need to be submitted by april first we need to figure out our budget first uh which has already been done um so prior to april 1st i'm expecting about the 15th of march somewhere thereabouts will be submitting the full packet down to them down to the city clerk and again that starts the clock for 45 day review

period by the city council city council will have 45 days to be able to deliberate and act on our budget and rates so by tune first should be done should be i mean yep i mean best case by june 1st things should be done yep from 45 days of submittal they uh they should act on our budget uh three ways to act on it uh would be approve reject or reduce our budget

those are the three actions that that they could take is it 45 working days or 45 days total 45 days total saturday and sunday count so again that that would be the process that and the council has the right in those 45 days to call us down to deliberate about them talk about them uh if they don't act on it within those 45 days uh july one the appropriation would be in place

uh and then you know it's going to come to the point where maybe our budget will be in place but we may not have increased rates based on massachusetts law and the enterprise fund regulations any unfunded portion of our budget so since we're an enterprise fund if our if our revenues do not fully support our expenses any unsupported part gets rolled onto the cherry sheet so in other words the

the tax rate the tax levy and the cherry sheet would need to support the sewer rate if the sewer department if our rates do not support our budget but now when when would that ever take place though i mean it's uh it's our duty to set a budget where we have to generate enough income to absorb the expenses that we anticipate right now if it's in this if when it goes to city council in a council

has a problem with an expense or a question with regard to our income and it doesn't get resolved within the 45 days and that and that discrepancy to our budget is is still in place am i hearing you to say that that that discrepancy has to be made up in the city budget has to be made it has to be made up by the tax levy okay the revenue which is a general fund

going in with currency correct it would need to be it would need to be generated by taxation okay so not necessarily not necessarily the general fund paying us but the taxes would need to be increased by that amount to be able to pay us okay so it's yeah it's taken from the general fund to give to give to us but but again but in my am i that to me that's that's the only time situation where

i can see that happening right and but you look at what happened this past year we did not have rate increases all the way to december if our rates were not approved in december the city would not have been able to get the tax rate approved without supporting our budget i got you yeah so that's what happened this past year luckily we were approved in december so the tax rate was able to go through

without any uh you know allocation to the to the sewer fund but if our rates weren't approved this past year it would have been on the cherishing on the tax levy in appropriation to the fund why were we not approved until december they have to prove in june i forget what happened there yeah they they finally approved the uh the budget was approved last year the overall and that's why you know i don't think

anything was done wrong in the past but i don't think this procedure was was followed our budget always got rumped in with the general fund budget which always gets deliberated typically in june so our budget wasn't approved until the general fund budget was approved um but then we never had rate increases the rate increases were uh taken were not acted on by council which took them

out of council came back to the sewer commission we increased them by one petty then it went back to the council which to get back into the council it's going to go through about three meetings so we can actually talk about it and then it needs two meetings still final approval so uh it's a long process so we were delayed in getting all those additional funding until december so that impacted your

budget but you would we were fortunate enough that we didn't have to go right we didn't go to tax in last year to make up that first six months where we did not have a rate uh we had enough the certified free cash to be able and we did a transfer from free cash into the fy 22 budget so um if your research is correct which i'm sure it is and

this goes to corporation councils i can see you've you sent them what you think is proper and he comes back and says you're right that's the way we should be abiding by what we need to do i that would be my recommendation for this year in the future yes okay so you know so so there's got to be this transition of the of the proper way of doing it has to be

brought to the council and to the administration's attention as training correct as training to say hey this is the way we've got to go yep correct 100 so my expectation of i've talked to the administration about this procedure i've said this to uh corporation council for their record for their recommendation on it my hope is that we'll once we submit this to council i'm going to include a memo

letting them know about the procedure that we plan on following this year i don't want anybody to be surprised or say that i did not know or anything like that i want them to be aware if there's questions we can answer them at that time but we're not trying to hide anything from anybody that's why i was wanted to walk through the whole process with the commission tonight i did it with the waterboard and we will

be making the council aware as well okay that's good um i'm so sorry for the lone wounded discussion not the budget but no it's good yeah it's uh relevant um okay so first of all i guess you need an approval on the um on the budget then we have to prove the rate correct and do you want us to well you you want us to acknowledge or give you some type of uh

acknowledgement or something to sending this new procedure you know this is an administrative procedure so if if the commission would like uh you know move forward that would take that uh anybody have any questions about wanting to do that with respect to this well do you have in here the enterprise the best a best practice guide so is that something you you obtained from another

from the state so from the state yeah so should we as a commission adopt that or um this is something that you should use so it's something that we typically always follow i don't know that needs to be adopted there is a couple of things within here that that lay out into the whole entire procedure but there's uh parts of the state law and parts of the charter too that are all part of the procedure

we acknowledge that we that we have in our packet and that we abide by the best practice i think that's a good way to go um okay so let's deal with first thing first with respect to the budget anybody have any questions with respect to the proposed amount of twenty six thousand six hundred and three dollars for it four hundred and two dollars any any questions would you respect on

that comments no the comment i'd like to make is uh i appreciate the detail that paul put behind the budget because when i had some questions and then i was able to look behind so good job in terms of doing that answer my questions through that excellent i would just say mm-hmm far as i never saw this before mission gold's objectives oh i love that oh thank you no and even if we post that

on our website on the you know to give the public absolutely this is what we're doing absolutely very good um okay with so we can take that as a as an item as well um so will anybody uh make a motion to approve the proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 at 26 million six hundred and three thousand four hundred and two dollars you make a motion second all in favor aye aye the close nun

okay uh with someone as has been stated by mr furland this all equates to a rate increase of approximately eight cent eight yeah eight cents per ccf which equates out to a rate of five dollars and 75 cents per ccf would anybody anybody have any questions for regard to that if not i'll attain a motion to uh approve that right second all in favor aye aye okay with respect to the proposed stormwater rate

uh we're proposing 47 per eru per quarter which is um the same rate there is no increase from last year so would then someone make a motion to approve the rate of 47 i'll make a motion all in favor aye opposed none with respect to the enterprise budget procedure um based on the presentation that mr frillin has made um i think and as suggested by commissioner howie act i think it would be

a good thing for us to make a motion to acknowledge the the procedure that is in place and should be followed with respect to future negotiations on the budget anybody want to make a motion to that effect i'll make a motion second all in favor aye um would you want to acknowledge the mission state i think so just a suggestion if we could get it up on the website definitely made a no hit okay um

i think i think we ought to acknowledge it i think it's a good point so i like to put that into emotion to acknowledge make a motion to acknowledge the um the mission we call it the mission statement mission rules and objectives mission goals and objective uh for the four of a sewer commission in the year 2023 as as presented second all in favor hi thank you anything else with respect to this well

okay item number four is there anything else you're gonna you want all right that takes us item number five the woodworking current uh we're looking for a uh an approval of 425 thousand dollars that reflects i guess a task order number 18 for controls review and input what do we wanna so um this is a uh this is a work order with water and current um to go in cooperation with contract two 2

upgraded the wastewater treatment plant woodward and current has been our skater consultant and manager down at the wastewater treatment plant they've been working with the multiple remote facilities they've done a lot of work setting up a licensed radio frequency updating our scada system contract 2 in the wastewater treatment plant is has a lot of skater involved components we're building a new control room

for the plant we're building a new laboratory rehabbing our administration building all of those different buildings are somehow how connected into data or have remote modules that review the scada system so this is for woodwood and current to continue to oversee that through the contract too and also you know review any rfis middles a attend coordination meetings factory testing of equipments and components um

and then also set up wi-fi throughout the plant so that we'll be able to uh remotely view skater on the wi-fi system at the plant it will also includes training of our guys for all of the new uh components and new screens and new options that are that are put in paul um this is task score number 18.

you have any idea of what we spent from 1 through 17 so far i don't have that number with it okay um this is this is a communication system basically okay pretty sophisticated because of what we're trying to do down there um yes scada is uh systems control acquisition data system control analog in data acquisition so this is kind of the brains the computer system that runs our facility

runs our main plan runs all of our remote facilities so you know this is a pretty pretty substantial uh pretty substantial system okay how far is the new facility uh called what they've been doing down at the uh bay street how far is that along now uh so we're currently in the mist of working on the uh gravity thickeners so two of the gravity thickeners are offline demolish uh demo has occurred in them and they're

starting to move forward with the uh with all the rest of the uh work uh the excavation for the new building is complete uh and so they are well well underway so it's a walkable area that we could go into yep look if anybody would like a tour yeah we can set up tours of the facility without a doubt yep um how far down the road do you think before this is done

so contract two is a three-year contract so this scatter thing is going to be as it moves along it's going with it and so forth so it'll be done at the end of three years yeah exactly so yeah you know a portion of it is working in the buildings that they're setting up now um you know a year from now the skater they'll be you know working on integrating all the new de-ordering equipment you know two

years from now they'll be working on setting up the new control room uh and you know bringing all the stuff from our existing control rewards so yeah it's going to be throughout the whole project that we involved question do you have a handle as to just just you know just with respect to the scatterpod what that's going to come out to roughly i believe in our integrated plan uh we budgeted uh

something like one and a half to two million i believe it was okay for upgrades throughout the system good okay does anybody have any questions yes i do on this uh contract for um section number 18 was that eliminated at the initial bid or is this something that came about after so the contractor has certain things in their contract that they're supplying so all the equipment being supplied by the contractor

this is the consultant that does all the computer programming all the setup all the testing all the verification so this wasn't part of the contractor's contract we have cdm on the project as our primary consultant but i've been using woodward and current straight through for all of the scada stuff i like having a although cdm is very capable of doing this type of work i like to have

i've found that it works out best and we get the best product because this is the scada system is something that our guys at the plant our operators interact with hundreds of times a day they need to be able to use the screens they need to be able to use the system they need to be able to work on it so sometimes when you get an engineer that's looking at so many different

portions of the project they're making sure that this is constructed right this part of the building is done right the elevator works the scada system sometimes gets drifted away a little bit you know and it's oh here's his this rather than working with our staff working with our people seeing what we need and building what we need uh in the scada so that's why i really like having this

separate consultant that's been with us for a little while working on the scada system to be able to focus just on this okay thank you okay um anybody have any other questions no that's not obtain a motion to approve task order number 18 for 425 thousand dollars for the um for the installation the portion of the installation for the scatter system everybody want to make that motion to make a motion a second

all in favor aye aye opposed none item number six cdm smith uh the route 79 improvement project change order number two of 75 874 from what i can was able to read up on it i guess this is this is expenses that was incurred by cdm and i got working with the state and working with i guess people in the city here uh to that has doesn't have an effect with respect to sewer that

as a result of it there was something that came up unexpected and it cost them seventy five thousand eight hundred seventy four dollars and they want to be compensated right and which which i can understand this is why we have them on site but um anybody have any questions with regard to this poll is there anything you want to mention yeah no so again so this is in relation to uh coordination with the route 79 uh

project the one that they're uh working on now actually dot just put out the rfq the other day it's a it's 110 million dollar price that that's gonna take um from the city pierre to veterans memorial bridge this mayor talked about it last night in his state of the city is going to remove that elevated expressway route 79 through the city and make a boulevard in either direction with

almost where the wall street is now it's going to open up a large section of developable area you know one of one of our major concerns as you know we have multiple csos and drainage that goes down through that car you know i didn't want uh drainage from this side the city side to not be able to be planned to go through so we hired cdm to work with trans system who was the president for d.o.t

to make sure that we got what we're going to need in the future to run through that corridor uh through there there was things that in the beginning trans system said that they were going to do which they needed as additional guidance from cdm on from separate different from what we originally scoped but again uh you know cdm needed to watch it needed to coordinate everything to make sure that

we were getting what we're going to need for the future so that was part of it um there is a portion of this which is still for some future work as well um so coordination work as they continue to move through the project yeah so this this boulevard is going to be ground level uh it'll be yeah it'll be lower it'll be lowered uh almost weird to wall street north and south almost uh

there'll be some other i was trying to create visualize this and they couldn't now have a question yeah you know straighten me out on this because i'm trying to picture this if you go down central street right you come to the satellites you either go left right or straight now if you go right right that part is that the part that when you're traveling on that that that works its way downward

the part that's elevated up 17. is that going to get dropped down so when you take when you take when you go down central street you take the right heading north um so that's gonna stay up um until you come to the bridge um so there's the bridge that has the turn around duval street north and southbound turn around underneath there oh yeah this is going to the cove yep so once you go over that bridge

the roadway is going to come down right and it's going to meet turner street so that's right where that new apartment building is built yeah so that's the road will dive down there and come down to that grade so all that elevated section of route 79 is going to be gone and that's from there it'll be down at a lower grade probably have to brighten this straight yeah it'll follow all the way up

it'll it'll go back up though right it'll go back up to get to the part where it's going to make a they go down to the water and all that stuff yeah yeah it'll stay it'll stay it's going to stay low um you know president ave it'll stay it's in that area it's almost going to follow what duval northbound kind of that same elevation that's right off to the side you have

and it'll stay that same elevation once you hit president nav it'll stay that it's going to start to rise up because they're making another tie-in from brightman street which used to tie in and go all the way across right right to uh the veterans memorial bridge being but that's going to fully tie the streets back back into those two corridors too so bright mystery will be a two-way eventually

i would imagine it's going to go back to a two-way and it'll come into davos street north on this side southbound on this side and all in between northbound and southbound to wall street currently where route 79 is will be opened up for developer blue fossils okay it's a huge a lot of earth movement's going to happen we um we we still have we still have ownership of of the property that's at the corner of

tone of turner and duval turner turner and duvall um that's simply but didn't we buy a piece of property right that goes up against the railroad we're we're working with the gas company to do our due diligence due diligence on that property yes uh we have we have not purchased it yet but we wanted to didn't we we're we're working through the due diligence because we would wasn't that supposed to be a staging

area for our equipment when we start tying in the uh so it was the cso or there's something that's going down there so within the integrated plan so that piece that's owned by the gas company on the southern corner of turner and duval street north that parcel as well as the parcel on the side of it the red brick building 609 duval street um that is was all slated for the city peer screening and disinfection facility

um right so that was about right that was about an acre large site that was swayed for that facility uh we've been working with the owners of the turner street property which is the gas liberty utilities we did just as early as last week we were given releases to be able to access the property to do uh to do some additional testing on the property um the property to the south of it 609

we were in discussions with that property owner for a long period of time there has been a another property there has been another um person that is that has just acquired that property um we have to probably have putts up against that lot right yeah and that was just purchased that whole proc that whole building going all the way heading south correct uh we're looking at our options within that area um and what uh

potential cost impacts may be of not having that property uh and that's an evaluation that we're gonna go through and look at and uh see whether there's another area where that facility could be cited but we're very limited because that's the low spot but we are evaluating that right now to see what our options are within that area so liberty utilities so loans liberty utilities still owns that lot but

we have the option huh we've been in discussions with him for a long time he's been working through these deals because i would think with what's going on down there there are a lot of people that just love to get their hands on it they have gotten a lot of questions about it am i right they have gotten a lot of calls but uh they have so far given us the first option okay

um all right so go ahead i'm sorry paul what's going to happen to the pond street bill the facility that the gas company had a pond street facility that the guests come oh are you talking uh next to the gate water and anawan yeah next to the gates next to the gates they moved out they moved out of there and uh yeah from my understanding they moved out of there uh and that's under

the control of redevelopment authority oh okay i believe don't hold me to that but i i believe i know yeah because they moved out of an authority i'm not sure what the plans are for us okay there's one question this um all of the land that's developable that's already been considered how it's tied in with this project right okay yeah so again the developable land isn't something that that we looked at uh

because that's not within our jurisdiction we looked at how to get our drainage through there to make sure that and to make sure that the drainage and sewer in that corridor was was taken care of uh other city departments and agencies are looking at the land and working with the different agencies to make sure that would there be enough pitch do we need another pumping station there um so if the screening

if a screening and disinfection facility is needed you know for the city pierre area we would need some type of pumping station to get the water through that facility we don't need a uh during dry weather flows there is no compensation needed for that area all that sewer continues on our interceptor drain uh heading to the south uh and then goes down to central street pump station which is down on pond street okay

thank you anybody with questions no okay so uh we need to approve this correct i don't think we've done it yet okay um if anybody has any questions if not uh obtain a motion to approve change order number two in the amount of seventy five thousand hundred and seventy four dollars to be paid to cdm with respect to the 79 improvement project i make a motion second all in favor aye opposed none

item number seven west construction contract number one change order number six in the amount of zero dallas um is this the last change order paul you think this is closing off the project very good yeah the project has not been 100 uh you know we're still i think there's one punch list item left um an administrative uh type uh work but uh other than that it's close enough project okay so you you still need that you

still need the okay on change order number six yeah i would like an approval okay um anybody want to make a motion to approve change change order number six with respect to contract number one any amount of zero dollars second all in favor aye i just had a quick comment it says here that the net benefit is a minimum of a million dollars i would potential up to 3 million so that's pretty huge to just know

yeah without a doubt yeah without a doubt and that's one of one of the things that took so long so this changeover has multiple things in it but it also uh extends out their timeline of the project one of the things that they did as a value add to the project the contract changed from a rotary compressor to a rotary screw compressor which would have which is going to have

great energy savings uh so far you can press since it's been online about a two month and a half now it's it's worked great with our systems if they're supposed to have huge energy savings very good okay item number eight updates on ongoing projects yeah i don't know if anybody has any questions we've talked to you know throughout the thing about contract two a little bit we've talked about contract

one is just uh just closing out are we still in the design phase for um the pump at stations on meridian and uh wilson road uh so wilson road where you should be out to bid probably within a month um so we have the uh we have the srf funding for sewer uh we have the mass works grant uh for funding for wilson road the other one that we're going to be

looking at is the ferry street pump station coming in in the near future okay uh south ends hold on right there yeah how many do we have all together i'm going uh how many so we have 17 punks um oh yeah yeah it's tough so ongoing projects we have contract one uh most of the other ones have been uh have been closed out at this current time uh but we do

have about three or four right here on deck that are gonna be coming up one being um pump station up the north end you know but projects that we have either in design or conceptual is a number of projects you know we um between water sewer and storm water right now i'm i'm probably managing about 70 million dollars worth of projects okay and and the staff in my office not just me alone

so you need to bring it

all right um okay any other if anybody has any questions we'll move on to item number nine other potential matters anybody have any other potential matters if not i'll obtain emotions with training i have uh uh an idea i don't know if we can do this um getting back to the gas gas company situation um maybe maybe we can initiate it uh and other departments will follow because the gas company can tell you how

many gas meters we have because they're all gonna cue on them for them and uh look into that for saving the city some money without a doubt i think that's an excellent idea um you know we're definitely gonna look into it just like we have with the electric uh right yeah we'll look to see what's going on would be somebody like matt zinni or some one of those fellas

but then again it has to come out of corporate so but at least get the ball started without a doubt you need that as a motion or what no that's something which is that's something that that's good very good okay anybody have any other things to want to discuss no i'll take the motion to adjourn second motion make the motion second all in favor aye thank you thank you