 Good afternoon. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. We may have a roll call, please. Thank you. Board Member Wright. Here. Board Member Watts. Board Member Walsh. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Badenfort. Here. Vice Mayor Arnone. Here. Chair Galvin. Here. Let the record show all members are present with the exception of Board Member Walsh and Watts. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Just a reminder to please have your microphones muted when you're not speaking. Put away your cell phones and personal computers and try and keep your video on. Any statements of abstention by Board Members? Hearing none. We have no study session. We have two sets of minutes to approve so we'll now take public comments on item number 4.1 and 4.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus, do we have anyone? We have no hands being raised via Zoom. Thank you. The minutes will be entered. We'll move now to item 5.1. Staff Briefing, Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Item 5.1 is our Water and Recycle Water Supply Update, and making the presentation will be Peter Martin, our Deputy Director of Water Resources, and Mike Prinz, our Deputy Director of Water Reuse Operations. Great. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Happy to be here with the Water Supply Update. That's December. It's the last Water Supply Update of this calendar year. Go to the next slide, please. In terms of storage in Lake Pillsbury, storage is at about 29,500 acre-feet. The target storage curve for operating that reservoir is typically just a little bit below that. Over the last week or so, storage has increased in Lake Pillsbury. You've seen it declining over the last couple months of about 1,500 acre-feet, so these storms did happen to bring in quite a bit of storage in Lake Pillsbury. But just to note, PG&E continues to operate under their variants issued by FERC that gave them relief from their mandated releases in the Upper Russian River, effectively reducing their requirements for 75 cubic feet per second down to a minimum of five cubic feet per second in the East Fork of the Russian River. The variants that they're operating under will not conclude until Lake Pillsbury reaches the storage level of 36,000 acre-feet. So perhaps sometime next month, given potential for rain, at which time they will then be obligated to release 45 cubic feet per second, so it will ramp up a little bit. But just notably for the board, at this time, PG&E is going to need to reassess their requirements for the transfers under the FERC license in April of next year. As we've heard previously, since the powerhouse is non-operational, PG&E does not intend to make any additional discretionary releases above and beyond their minimum requirements. So something to look out for, you know, this particular constraint could, again, with the powerhouse non-operational next year until it can be repaired, could potentially have substantial impacts on the supplies in the Upper Russian River and Lake Mendocino next year. Next slide. And then at our last board meeting, I did mention that Snow Mo'Water's Temporary Seachange Petition, order dating back to last summer was going to expire this week. Snow Mo'Water did file another temporary seachange petition in October, hoping to receive relief from the requirements for their minimum and stream flows under Decision 1610 that dictates minimum and stream flows for their water rights. We did hear that they received that order yesterday. So I think, you know, primarily, you know, to allow them to continue to operate and make decisions on the water year classification based on storage in Lake Mendocino. So as you know, current storage in Lake Mendocino is about 37,000 acre feet or about 64.5% of their target water supply storage for this time of year. And reservoir flow is about 25 cubic feet per second. Storage is gaining slightly about 800 acre feet over the last week. But you know, I think for the order, it's notable that since storage remains low, 45,000 acre feet, the water year will now be classified as dry, you know, absent any substantial rainfall in the coming weeks into January. So Snow Water will be able to operate under a dry year classification based on the hydrologic index and the storage in Lake Mendocino rather than Lake Pillsbury. Next slide. So yesterday, some water did receive a temporary seachange order from the State Water Board. The prior order did not cover the in-stream flow requirements for Dry Creek between the confluence of the Russian River. So you know, as of right now, storage remains critically low. And Lake Sonoma, it did get a bit of a pickup, but it's at about 98,800 acre feet right now, which is about 40% of the water supply pool. That does represent an increase of about 1,500 acre feet over the last week. But what has changed through that order that was issued yesterday is that they were able to reduce their releases from the reservoir down from 105 cubic feet per second requirement on Dry Creek to 80 cubic feet per second. So the hope is that that change will allow them to hold back more water like Sonoma and perhaps, you know, wait for some additional rain. And obviously at this point, the good news is that through the storms we recently had, everything is charged. So the hope is that any runoff that comes off of the next few storms is going to reach substantially to any storage in Lake Sonoma. Next slide. We continue to track our targets consistent with the stage three of our Water Shores contingency plan. In November last month, Santa Rosa residents did reduce their water use by 19% when compared to November of 2020. Sorry, that's a typo. So good news there. Folks are still continuing to conserve quite a bit and we're seeing those numbers that reflect that. And then cumulatively over the last 17 months, water use has been reduced by 19% when compared to that same time frame in 2020. Forget it. Go to the next slide. So in terms of messaging this month, we're really going to be starting to, you know, we've made the change over the last couple of months to focusing on indoor water usage. Right now, the messaging is really focused around having folks find and fix leaks in their homes and, you know, swapping out toilets with high efficiency models and saving water indoors as much as possible. Next slide. And then I just wanted to note from the board that we last month launched for the direction of the Water Conservation Subcommittee, the new high efficiency toilet rebate expanded marketing will significantly increase in January, but it is live right now. And so customers will be able to receive a rebate to upgrade their toilet. It has a one rating of 1.6 gallons per flush or greater. And the rebate will leave $50 for a 1.1 gallon per flush toilet and $75 for a pointy. The reason why we did provide them with those two options is the fact that in some commercial settings, there's something called drain line carry. And you do need some additional water to keep things operating in some scenarios. So I want to make sure we were consistent with the needs of all of our customer classes as well. And I do want to note in the trailer bill for the state last year, the city of Santa Rosa did receive $1.5 million in state funding. That was specific to installing high efficiency water fixtures in folks homes. So we'll be pursuing a limited term direct install program when we receive that money. And so tentatively we're targeting 2023 to 2024 to pursue that program. And also we have targeted and put in for additional grant funding from the federal government as well. So and, you know, we'll be marketing with this fix your flush marketing campaign to I don't know about you, but high efficiency toilet does make a good Christmas present. So you look out for that too as well. So with that, that concludes my portion of this presentation and I'll pass it over to my friends. Okay, thanks Peter. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of Board. I'm happy to give you the current update and next slide please. I wanted to start out by talking a little bit about a project that was recently completed on the Roner Park pump station. Roner Park is a very significant recycle water customer of the sub regional system. This map shows the Laguna treatment plant complex and campus in the upper left hand corner of the map excerpt. And then the red circle shows roughly where the Roner Park pump station is relative to Roner Park, which is more or less on the lower right hand side of the map here. So this is just to orient you spatially. Next slide please. The Roner Park pump station has a pretty significant filtration system on part of the plumbing manifold there at the station. On the right hand side, you see a photo of the previous filter canisters and manifold. And on the left hand side, you see the new configuration. The right hand picture is of equipment that was at the end of its useful life not functioning very well. And over the course of the past year, staff in house replaced the entire filtration system and some of the manifold. It's very robust replacement stainless steel material and demonstrates what we can do in house. We have a lot of in house capacity for this type of stuff. And staff did it when they had time, which is why it took ultimately a year to do. But I think it's a good example of work that staff do that is sometimes unnoticed because it's not visible to the public and isn't always highlighted because it's not a capital improvement project and and publicly bid and awarded. So just few visuals of that. Next slide. This is just a different perspective on the stainless steel canisters and some of the manhole plumbing. Obviously, as you can see, we do have some paint work to do some coating work to do, which we will get to when time permits. But this more or less just highlights other views of the stainless steel filtration canisters and plumbing. Next slide. Just some other views from different perspectives. Again, kudos to the in house staff were involved in our mechanical team and reclamation team who work on this project. I'm proud to see the kind of work that they can do when they're given the resources and have time to work on it. Next slide. Moving on, I wanted to talk a little bit about our recycle water production. This chart shows the trend over the water year for multiple years, which is sort of the the oscillating light blue lines. The gray line shows the average recycle water production from 1986 to 2021. Drawing your attention to the red dotted line is the last water year. We had a fairly low average dry weather flow of just over 13.1 mgd, pretty low production year overall. And then on the left hand side, you can see the current trend, which is still pretty low. And that's just the first month of the current water year. So low production and puts us in the context of the average and other years. Next slide. So this is our recycle water storage period, which I have shown you various points in the past. I think you're pretty familiar with what the lines represent. The black line is last water year. And I want to speak about that a little bit. Last year turned out to be a pretty good year in terms of delivery to our customers. But weather was very favorable. We had a very large isolated storm in October, which really was a game changer for the year. Had we not received that flow? And I think that contributed nearly 200 million gallons to the overall storage trend for last year. The balance of the year would have played out much more challenging. Also, we had a late peak in our storage. Late peaks are generally good news. Low peaks are generally bad news. So we had a low late peak. But I wanted to point out those two aspects of last year's storage curve just to highlight how things went and how weather dependent our system really is. Last summer was not quite as hot as it could have been. And we did have some hot days without a doubt, but humidity and overall average temperature for the summer played favorably into demands for recycled water. Also on the left hand side of the chart, you can see the current storage trends, which I'm going to speak a little bit more about later. Next slide. Here are some statistics and notes of interest regarding our agricultural irrigation season summary. As I mentioned, we did have a very good year. Weather, as I mentioned, was very favorable. Irrigation supply ended October 12th. Allotments were guaranteed until prior to that, September 30th. We let customers irrigate beyond that due to weather and storage levels. I think it's great to point out that 89% of our bulk agricultural allotment satisfied the need of our agricultural customers this year. They did not use all their allotments on average. Our highest use was over 100 million gallons, actually over 112 million gallons. But that only constituted 74% of the allotment for that particular customer. That customer uses for a variety of uses, pasture, vineyard, and some vegetable irrigation as well. Our lowest use was 0%. We have some very small hobby farms, if you will. And in some seasons, this one being a good example, they don't always tap, recycle water to support their operations. So we did have some customers who used no water. Our larger customer usage varied quite a bit, from on the low end to two thirds to well over 100%, actually over 130%. Again, that's associated with late season irrigation generally when we would go over an allotment based on weather and storage levels. But suffice to say, I think it's a pretty good year when we have ranges of usage overall like that. And with the total bulk allotment consumption of actually under 90%. Next slide. A little bit of a summary about urban irrigation and our geysers operation. Urban irrigation tapered past October 12th due to weather. Runner Park's usage as of Halloween, October 31 was only two thirds of their 450 million gallon allotment, which is 297 million gallons. I believe there has probably been a little additional usage, but I'm sure it's tapered off significantly since then. For reasons we're still deciphering, we haven't got the Santa Rosa usage updated yet. That's generally fairly low. I think the mathematical allotment that we use for calculation purposes is around 30 million gallons. So does not have a significant effect on storage levels. I can present that data when it is available in a subsequent update. Our 2022 calendar year geysers contract projection will be, it is above 90%, which is our minimum requirement to meet contract compliance in our agreement with Calpine. We will easily do that by the 31st of December. We're currently running four pumps and we actually expect it will come in in the neighborhood of 91 possibly as much as 92%. And the end result, depending on the weather, and there's not a lot of rain and forecast, is I predict that our recycled water storage will be on the average storage trend. Next slide. This chart is a twin of the prior chart that I showed you with the exception that it shows the geysers flow since October 1st. And I'm going to be zooming into the lower left hand corner of this chart and kind of explain why the flows to geysers step down and up the way that they do. On the right hand, vertical axis is the actual geysers flow rate. I want to emphasize that while that axis goes up to 40 million gallons a day, that greatly exceeds the geysers flow capacity, we really only deliver up to nominally 18 million gallons a day. So it's just the way the chart was built. So I don't want anyone to learn from that axis that we have greater capacity than we actually do. Nonetheless, moving forward, I want to zoom in on the lower left hand portion of this chart. So next slide. This is just basically blown up to make it a little more visible and show that we have five pump strings, if you will. We have three pump stations up on Pine Flat Road. Each pump station has five pumps. So we tend to operate in the vicinity of certain flow rates based on the number of pumps that we have operating. And as we were tapering down in October, you can see the steps where flows would have been constant for a few days or even a week or so at five pumps and then four pumps and then three pumps is just over what's shown here is the 400 million gallon storage level. But that's I think in the neighborhood of 11 million gallons a day. And then there's a short step at two pumps in late October. And then you can see where we would have the system off. And we did have some shutdowns that we needed to do for certain maintenance reasons, not the large scale annual maintenance, but some issues came up where we had to shut the system down to do some urgent maintenance. And what I really want to point out is particularly in the second shutdown in this trend is when geysers goes offline for whatever reason, the storage climbs and it climbs quickly. Next slide. That's generally attributable to especially this time of year are at the end of the season. Our average dry weather flow at the plant is pretty low. And so when we have the geysers dropping below that flow rate and then significantly in the event of a shutdown, that water is going almost directly into storage because there's no ag irrigation going on right now and little if any urban irrigation. So this trend while it is a little bit busy, I wanted to point out the influence that shutting down geysers has on our storage trends. This shutdown phenomenon is less significant when temperatures are high and we're in the agricultural irrigation season because there's a demand on storage from ag irrigation. But this time of year, where when we have no rain and a geyser shutdown storage levels can jump up fairly quickly. Normally, I don't bother you if you will with the geysers information, but this is just to show you how when you take out other variables and you you shut the geysers down, it can't have a direct effect on storage levels, despite no precipitation. When we do have precipitation storage levels will climb noticeably as well, generally, even when the geysers is online. But just a way to calibrate you your perspective on the chart relative to geysers influence on storage levels. That is the summary of my update for today. Thank you to both the deputy directors. I'll open it up for any board member questions or comments. Seeing none, we'll open it up for public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. We have no public comments on item five point one. Thank you. That'll take care of the staff briefings. Next item is item six. I'm going to ask that the item 6.1 be removed from the consent calendar so that we can have a presentation by assistant city attorney bigger staff. So please proceed. Thank you, Chair Galvan. So we just wanted to point out this one substantive change that was made to the agreement since the board saw the original version. Just to clarify what occurred, we drafted this on behalf of both parties and then sent it to Windsor staff for review and final approval. And at some point on the back end of the process, they had their outside counsel review and transmitted it back to us and generally indicated approval of the agreement as proposed. So upon my review, I noticed just a few days ago that there was this one additional provision that deviated from the version I had originally transmitted or given to staff to transmit. So at any rate, we called up Windsor and clarified that we'd prefer that 7D not be added and they had no problem removing it. And so we are introducing this as amended from the last time you saw it. And I'm happy to answer any questions and I believe Deputy Director McNeill is also available. Thank you. So you all should have received today an updated bed line version showing the most recent changes and I've reviewed it. I think hopefully you all have and I'm supportive of the changes that have been made and prepared to vote in favor of the agreement. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments. Vice Chair Arnone. I just want to make one comment, which is that these kind of unintentional changes that sometimes happen in drafting completely validates our contract review committee. I mean, thank goodness we have a contract review committee where things like this can come to light and be discovered in time to fix it. And I just wanted to thank the contract review committee and it's our chair for their work on that committee. Thank you. Other board member questions or comments? All right. We'll now open it up for public comment on item 6.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9. We should have had a motion first. My apologies. I'll call for a motion. I'll move to adopt. I'll second. Okay. We have a motion by Board Member or Vice Chair Arnone seconded by Board Member Grable. Now I'll open it up for public comments on item 6.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. We have no public comment on item 6.1. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote please? Thank you. Board Member Wright. Aye. Board Member Watts. Aye. Board Member Walsh is absent. Board Member Grable. Aye. Board Member Baden-Fort. Aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Chair Galvin. Aye. Let the record show this motion passes with six affirmative votes. Thank you. We have no report items. Item 8.1 is a public hearing. I will now open the public hearing and allow for public comment on item 8.1. Public hearing adopting new miscellaneous fees and increasing certain miscellaneous fees. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Chair Galvin, we need to do the presentation first. Oh, I apologize. Okay. Director Burke, do you want to introduce Deputy Director Zanino? Thank you. Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 8.1 is a public hearing adopting new miscellaneous fees and increasing certain miscellaneous fees. And Deputy Director Kimberly Zanino, Deputy Director of Administration Kimberly Zanino will be making the presentation. All right. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. As Director Burke said, we are here today to look through the request for approval of an update to Santa Rosa Waters miscellaneous fee schedule. Next slide, please. As well. The background miscellaneous fees are charges to our customers for services that are not citywide but specific to a customer or a property. We develop these fees so that they are not spreading the costs of the services to the entire rate payer base. And there are currently 79 existing miscellaneous fees on the schedule. The typical calculation for developing these fees is based on staff time, vehicle costs and materials, but there are other methods used. And today we will have a couple fees that are based on a different methodology and we will look at that later on in the presentation. The fees are adopted through a public hearing with the last one being held in March of 2019. Next slide, please. We are proposing several new fees that have been developed with this round of updates. And I will go through them and I will also go through the calculations for each of them. So the first one is a payment plan processing fee. We have various payment plans available for demand fees. There is a downtown area payment plan and then there are also residential payment plans. These provide customers the ability to pay their fees over five years. The residential plan was developed for existing properties that have health hazards and are required to connect to our water and wastewater systems. The downtown area plans were developed as the city began to implement measures to increase density in the downtown corridor. In March of this year staff brought you an update to the guide to water and wastewater policy and at that time approval to create this fee was given to staff. And now that we are updating miscellaneous fees we are including it here. We are basing the processing beyond four hours of labor from a civil engineering technician. This would be to process the original application and then the follow-up invoices that need to be processed each year following. The next fee is a manual water meter reading fee and this is for properties in the city that are not on our automated meter reading system. We have 12 accounts currently without an automatically red meter and while we don't have an official opt out program we have allowed these customers to retain their manually red meters upon their request. In order for them to have their meters read manually however we are proposing a fee based on a meter technician having to specifically drive to a property to read the meter monthly for billing. And the fee is based on 15 minutes of labor and vehicle costs. The next fee we are proposing is a credit card charge back fee. We have customers that pay their bill by credit card and then request a stop payment with their credit card company. And when they do this the bank charges us $25. So we are proposing to recover that cost. This fee is only charged when the customer initiates the stop payment not when the credit card company denies payment because of a suspected fraud. Next slide please. We are also proposing a new fee when a customer is disconnected for water waste. The disconnection happens after the customer has been notified multiple times and warned that they are not complying with our water waste ordinance. This fee is based on a meter technician labor and vehicle costs to drive to the property, lock off the meter and then return to the property to reestablish service. Two additional fees are being proposed. These fees are for the water demand offset. When the water demand offset policy came before you for recommendation in March of 2022 and then was followed by city council approval later that month. Staff reported out that there would be a fee developed for processing the applications. There are two options for developers in the offset policy. The developer can pay the demand fee for the offset that is approved with the policy which that money is then applied to a city run program or they can develop their own program. If they pay the offset fee they will pay the smaller application fee shown here but if they choose to develop a program there will have to be an evaluation of the proposed programs water savings which will take significantly more staff time and is therefore a much higher fee. The first fee is based on two hours of civil engineering technician time and the second higher fee is based on 10 hours of time by a sustainability coordinator for the evaluation of the proposed program. Next slide please. In addition to the new proposed fees that we've already shown you we are all at also asking for your consideration of the modification to the high strength waste tipping fees. Staff hired a consultant to review and evaluate the program and with that study they developed a fee schedule and in that fee schedule there are two new categories and other categories that have proposed updates and we will look at the proposed fee schedule in a later slide. Next slide please. We have provided with your agenda packets the full report that evaluated the fee schedule and many other components of the program but with this slide we are just providing you with a summary of the various components used in that evaluation. The consultants considered the effect of the increase on the waste haulers and as a little background the fees were intentionally set lower in the past to increase program participation and it's possible for us to do this because the waste that these haulers provide increases our ability to generate power so there is a benefit to the regional system as well. In addition it provides a local option that decreases the distance large trucks have to travel to dispose of the waste which helps with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These factors were also considered in the development of the revised fee schedule and is also the reason for the extended implementation. Current capacity was evaluated, expansion of the program and market and regulatory conditions were also considered. Next slide please. The proposed schedule we are asking you to consider is only three years which you will see next. However we have the consultant produce a 10-year schedule for us which we're showing you here. We are only requesting three years of the schedule to be considered with this round because we would like the opportunity to reevaluate the fees more regularly and because processes can change a 10-year schedule is just too long. This chart provides is also provided to put into context the increases on the three-year schedule which may have looked a little inconsistent in various categories. So we thought showing you the full 10 years would provide a little more clarity on the three-year schedule. Next slide please. This chart identifies the three-year schedule that we are proposing and any annual increases. It also includes two new fees. I want to point out that the new fees are not new waste streams. It was just determined that it would be appropriate to separate them out and develop a new fee category for each one of those waste streams and those are the medium and the low strength categories. Next slide please. Since the waste hauler fees are based on volume unlike the other proposed fees which are just a one-time fee that we collect based on whatever the labor is or the work is that's done. This is actually done by volume. We thought you would like to see how it will affect customers. So we are also providing you with some sample billings for the various categories. I will also point out that these are monthly billings. Next slide please. So because there are so many miscellaneous fees we just want to let you know and make you aware that the resolution that you are approving also includes the existing fees not only the new and modified fees. We do this because it makes it much cleaner for staff and for our customers so they do not have to search through multiple resolutions for a complete list of these miscellaneous fees. Next slide please. And before we move on to recommendation we wanted to provide you with information on our public outreach and the schedule for the process for the public or for the public hearing and for the effectiveness of the fees. The public information was first seen at a subcommittee meeting on November 7th that was publicly noticed. We also held a second budget review subcommittee meeting which was also a publicly noticed meeting on December 1st. We held the second meeting because we had some questions that came up on November 7th and the committee wanted to see a little bit more information. So we held two of those meetings. There have also been three public notifications in the press democrat which has my contact information so anybody who sees this can reach out directly to me and I can provide them with additional information on any of the fees that they would like to get from us or they would like to know about. We in addition sent letters to the affected customers so they were able to request information as well regarding the fees that will affect them and they were also made aware of the date of the public hearing today. This is the schedule or sorry next slide. This is the schedule for the fee process. It provides you with the publication dates, the dates of the subcommittee meetings that we held and also the first scheduled public hearing that we had that was continued and then today's public hearing and the last thing on here is the date that the fees would become effective if they are adopted today and that would not be until February of 2023. Next slide. So it is therefore recommended by the budget review subcommittee and Santa Rosa water that the board of public utilities approve Santa Rosa waters miscellaneous fees and charges schedule as proposed at a public hearing and with that I am here and willing to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you Deputy Director Zanino. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments. Yes board member Watts. Thank you chair. I just wanted to let everyone know that the budget subcommittees saw these items two times and this last meeting we did vote unanimously to recommend this to the full board for vote today so I just wanted to let you know that before we continue our discussion today. Thank you. Thank you board member Watts. Any other questions from the board? All right now I will open up the public hearing. Oh I'm sorry. Board member Grable. No Gavin. I tried to raise my hand in there I know it's hard. My questions I said a few details. First I was a little surprised to see the the manual meter is mentioned. Is that in perpetuity? Is that is that something that either in perpetuity or change of ownership or what and then with that with that sort of understood surcharge for those six or eight customers does that mean that we're obligated to have our staff show up at a certain time every month to those properties is that the arrangement? Yes so that's a monthly fee and it's based solely on labor so we have to send out a meter technician to read that meter every single month it does have to be read at a specific time every single month because it's based on the billing schedules that we have and so in order for them to stay within the required reading schedule that they have our meter technician will have to go out and read the meter between I think it's 20 and 32 days now as the longest our schedule goes so they'll go out every month read that meter come in then staff will do the work to manually get that read into the system and produce the bill. So whoever that account holder is is charged with the fee. Okay okay and if they decide to have a meter set then no more fee. Got it so in the in the case of change of ownership or something like that we could reach out again and offer a smart meter to avoid this sort of perpetual drain I would say our staff resources is that something that could be considered later? Correct. Okay it was a worry to me when I just heard things like I can't remember if the word is forever or something. Oh no you know yeah that's very strange is it what was the were there a variety of reasons given or was it like a 5G sort of? There are basically two reasons typically one is there are some customers that have some concerns about radio frequency and choose also not to have their PG&E meter be automatically read as well that's one of the concerns ours are on the frontage of the property and in a meter box so by the time it gets to the house there is no exposure anymore from all of the information that we were provided when we looked at the system to begin with so we feel comfortable in requiring the meters. The second reason is there are some customers who feel that it is a privacy issue and that they would prefer not to be monitored that closely. And that just because I'm curious it lead with with our legal counsel and everything that that sort of right to privacy issue holds up in terms of the their right to say no we don't want that installed. So we could move to a policy that would force them to have the meter there has been you know strong feelings from the few customers that are left and so we have decided not to bring that forward to you yet but to give them the opportunity to just pay for the service that we're going to provide which is reading that meter and then look at that in a future date. But there isn't really when you look at what comes from the meter the meter is completely separate or the the customer information is completely separate from that information that is sent to us. So the meters are read every hour that data is sent to us it's all just numbers it doesn't associate with a customer until it gets into our system and is combined with the actual customer information inside of the system. We as we talked about during the project felt it was very important to try and get most of our customers or all of our customers on the automated reading because especially during drought this is a very important time for us to be watching for leaks and for any water waste that may be going on things that are happening you know outside of allowable times like irrigation it also gives us data that we'll use in the future for fire flows to determine you know fire flow and pressures in our systems and so it provides us with a lot of really good data it also provides our customers with some really great tools to watch their own water use. We have 50 over 53,000 customers so we're really not looking at this unless there's an alert that comes to us that really lets us know that there's something going on that needs to be taken a look at. Right right no and I I guess it's it's so few customers that it's not a a huge issue I guess it's just just a concern of mine is that that beholden you know the staff being beholden to these customers to go at a certain time every month is you know sometimes really really challenging with you know priorities based supervisorial practice where you you've got to stand staff where they're needed not necessarily to go read a meter that day right so but yeah I understand that it's very few customers so you've got to do what you've got to do thank you for explaining it you're welcome my my other question was on two other questions one is on the on the high strength waste fee schedule part of the nexus sort of nexus fee the comparative study that you did is is it still are we still in the in the good margins of having an incentive for people to come deliver high strength and other ways to us as opposed to you know it doesn't seem like it's a very high or a big increase but yeah my only concern is that that people aren't then saying oh I'll bring it somewhere else you know what I mean and I I think I'll I see direct deputy director meals on his team was the one that ran the consultant study that looked at this but I will say you know knowing and looking at it these fees have not been raised for many many years so they'll be very small increases to the customer and that's why we provided you with some sample billings as well and it's it was very important during the process to make sure that we didn't take away that incentive actually to come to us instead of to go further and and discharge that waste in other places and specifically the high strength waste was because I remember some other meetings where we were talking about trying to incentivize more high strength waste deliveries and then more the more I read about some breweries shutting down and this and that it just some just a concern that pops up make sure that we're still incentivizing more high strength waste coming to our facility because it is of use to us yeah I I think that that's correct and in our our study we looked at the cost of treatment and what we found with particularly the high strength waste which is the stuff that does not go that goes straight into our digesters and makes gas that we convert into electricity you'll see that the the cost for that type is not going up and that's why we came up with these low and medium strength waste as separate categories they kind of lumped in which doesn't have that same energy generation and you'll see the cost for low and medium strength waste going up higher because it's the cost of treatment is higher compared to the high strength waste it's it's different than how most of you know treatment of high strength of our waste stream works if it comes in a liquid form that has to go through our full treatment process and we need to separate it from the water so that's exactly how we looked at this and about being competitive we believe in comparing our rates to east bay mud which is probably the next closest large volume high strength waste we are much cheaper than them on this so we did we're not looking to make money we're just looking to cover our costs and pay for necessary upgrades to the program to ensure continued operations and that the high strength is what it stated like 46 dollars or something like that is that what the fee was kind of over that schedule it's actually at 40 40 okay oh cool thank you so much my only other question was on the on the offset fee I think it was the application fee right for the this you know the do-it-yourself the DIY version of an offset plan I guess it would be what's the what's the name for it's a it's a demand offset fees it's a processing fee for the application but they can develop their own program and we just need to evaluate how much water savings that that program would provide and honestly there would probably be to follow up afterwards as well to make sure that it is providing that sort of savings we don't expect to see those in all of the research that was done through the offset policy no none of the developers were offering that up they'd rather just pay into programs that are already developed and run by us instead of having to develop a program of their own but it was requested that we have that available as an option and so that's why that fee is in there yeah exactly no that's I knew there it was a sort of prohibitive to begin with to have to kind of come up with your own plan program for that so that was my only concern is that yeah it's you know even it could be even more prohibited if for instance there was a a large affordable development on the footprint with enough landscaping and bioswales and things where you could prove the metric adequately right which you know eventually we'd hope that most developments are doing things like that on site especially large scale large you know footprint developments but that was just just something that popped up for me and then the only other thing I was going to ask is if it sounds like it's not likely but if someone was to apply you know to have their program done on site and have that reviewed by our sustainability and other staff that review would not necessarily hold up the project the project could still move forward to just be whether they're paying the full demand offset fee or whether they're doing it in-house on site improving the metrics correct correct but it doesn't it doesn't like just in terms of permitting process and timelines which I know are a huge issue for development specifically of residential and affordable it doesn't extend the the timeline to where your project could be approved right I would imagine the only extension would just be the work back and forth between probably the coordinator who needs to evaluate the program and the developer if they provide all the right information it's just allowing that the sustainability coordinator the information they're going to need to determine whether or not there are going to be enough water savings from that and it's only a one time fee it's just during the application I think that those applications get started fairly early in the policy or in the process and they only are going to happen if we are in a specific stage of drought as well so likely uncommon also you know that we'll well let's hope it's going to be very uncommon that we will be in a stage of drought where that's going to be needed the stage four to five and yeah it would typically be included in there and their grading and landscaping plans and other and in their fixtures and all it would be included to where you could review it simultaneously right they could it depends on what they develop I mean they could decide that they want to provide low flow toilets and have enough savings that come from a program that they put together you know from that that's it's got to be something though that's outside of what they're required already in their own project so it's kind of like a mitigation project that they would have to develop so they could come up with all kinds of things I'm sure but that's probably part of the reason why it won't happen is because it's much easier just to let us run a program that's already proven and solid and and moving forward and and most of those efficiency standards are already built in a code probably so correct all right well yeah thank you for for the deep dive on that I appreciate it you're welcome thank you chair chair galvin yes just if I could add in response to board member Grable's question just for clarification the demand offset policy is in place and all projects that go through right now do you have to do the application it's just they don't have to pay the fee or put the project in until we're at a higher stage but all projects since we adopted the demand offset policy that goes through development now do you submit the application and we process it and then they know exactly what the fee is going to be they only have to pay it at occupancy if we're in the appropriate stage of our shortage plan thank you for that clarification any further board member questions or comments all right seeing none I'll open it up now for the public hearing and allow for public comment on item 8.1 public hearing adopting new miscellaneous fees and increasing certain miscellaneous fees if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand and I note for the record that there are no members of the public here in the council chambers so secretary manis do we have any public comments do we have no hands being raised via zoom okay I will now close the public hearing on item 8.1 and ask the board for a motion to approve the resolution I'll move a resolution of the board of public utilities the city sanarosa adopting a new and changed miscellaneous fee schedule and charges and waives reading of the text second thank you we have a motion by vice chair anoni and a second by board member watts may we have a roll call vote please thank you board member right aye board member watts aye board member walsh is absent board member grable aye board member battenfort aye vice chair anoni aye chair galvin aye let the record show that vote passes with six affirmative votes thank you thank you again deputy director as an eno for the presentation and all the work on the miscellaneous fees we'll now move to item number nine which is public comments on non-agenda matters if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand secretary manis we have no hands being raised for public comments on non-agenda matters thank you we have no written written referrals or written communications we have two subcommittee reports board member watts yes thank you the budget review subcommittee we met for the second time on December 1st to review the new miscellaneous fee updates that you just saw presented today at the public hearing and staff identified and updated all the new fees which you were privy to today and we were received more detail on the calculations of these updated fees and as mentioned we did vote unanimously to recommend approval to the board which is now moving forward from today and that's it any questions for board member watts with regards to the budget subcommittee report all right I will make a report with regards to the contract review subcommittee we met on December 5th to review one agreement which was unanimously recommended by the subcommittee and was on today's consent calendar the item was a proposed agreement between the city of santa rosa and the town of winzer to allow for the purchase and sale of phosphorus offset credits to each entity to comply with the phosphorus discharge requirements contained in the entity's national pollutant discharge elimination system wastewater permit any questions with regards to the contract review subcommittee report all right we will now take public comments on item 12 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you dial in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand secretary manis there are no hands being raised for item 12 thank you item 13 is a board member report do we have any board member reports hearing none we'll move on to item number 14 which is the director's report thank you chair galvin members of the board I have a couple items to report on to you this afternoon first I wanted to just give a very brief update on our ultraviolet disinfection replacement project or our uv project I'm very excited to remind the board that the project is underway and we've had mobilization as well as start of construction you may notice if you go out to the treatment plant that we've actually changed access so we are now using the middle gate for entering the treatment plant and using the north gate for exiting the treatment plant signage is available and in place and all construction activity is entering and exiting through the southern gate which used to be the main entrance to the treatment plant so just reminding everyone that that change is in place especially if you go out to visit the treatment plant because you'll see a lot of big equipment and we don't want cars to get damaged in any way so please use the middle gate for entrance and the north gate for exit we are about to make our first progress payment so that's very exciting and we've also had a lot of utilities relocated to start the construction so we've removed the previously abandoned original plant discharge pipes and that effort is nearly fully complete we are starting a temporary plant gas service relocation that should be happening in the next couple weeks and be finished by the end of December and then we also have our existing plant effluent lines that bisect the new facility and will need to be bypassed prior to completion of excavation the bypass planning is nearly complete and the bypass piping construction will be our next big effort that will be going starting this month so we're very excited that this project is very much underway and just want to think all the folks that are working on this project as it's a big undertaking to keep the board informed of this nearly three year project or two and a half year project probably now we are planning to do quarterly updates roughly quarterly updates to the board so you can be informed as the project continues to progress I also wanted to let the board know a wrap up on the 16 inch water main break that we provided you some information on earlier this week so as you may recall we had a 16 inch water main break on Carissa Avenue early Monday morning at 3 10 in the morning the water pumping station on Summerfield Road that feeds the area as well as the water storage tanks above Anadel Heights went into alarm that notified our standby staff and they arrived at the site to begin the investigation upon discovering the break they had to use extreme caution as well as be incredibly careful to isolate of the valves on a 16 inch main because that's a lot of water and so they very carefully isolated the leak shut down the valves and made sure that they didn't have any subsequent breaks occur by doing anything too quickly staff did a great job and isolated the main at approximately 5 a.m. and then crews were called in and mobilized to start the repair repair started at 5 30 that morning and the crews worked all day Monday and we're able to complete the repair and open valves again at 7 0 5 that after that evening so it was a it was a major project and a major repair I will note that this was a the 16 inch pvc pipe was installed in 2003 and it serves as a transmission main from the pump station to the water storage tank so we had very little interruption to our customers as there are no customer service lines off of that transmission main our crews also cleaned the debris on the street the sidewalks and the storm drains made sure that residents in the area maintained water service we ensured that there was no impacts to water quality and then on Tuesday temporary repairs to the roadway were completed and we will be back out in the spring to do final paving because we can't do that during the winter I did want to note just because this was such a big job and our crews did such an amazing job repairing this all the folks that participated so if you bear with me I just want to recognize the following utility service operators seniors and supervisors that were called out and helped repair this that includes Jose Valencia Dave Ward Kyle Sheetz Jason Dyer Eric Anderson Jared Wertz Cody O'Brien Sky Chan Ben Alexander Alex Mora Andrew Razo Jesus Soraga Dwayne Linwood Jose Magna Flores Franz Hilmer Troy Aether Jason Leaf Paul Gallardo DeSanne McKenzie Jesse Lewis Mike Watterson and Marcello Vasquez as you can see this was a major major effort and our folks did such a great job I cannot commend them enough for the work that they did especially with such a big big main and keeping customers in service that whole time is is phenomenal so very well done to the team and I thank them so much for their effort I also wanted to let the board know that we are planning based on Chair Galvin's approval to cancel the January 5th 2023 BPU meeting so you will be seeing a cancellation notice and then last I just wanted to take a moment as this is our last meeting of the calendar year to not only thank the board Chair Galvin Vice Chair Anoni and all board members for your leadership and your support during this past year we so greatly appreciate working with all of you as board members and I just wanted to wish you all a very happy holidays and and just have a have a great holiday and thank you so much and that's the end of my report and I'm answered happy to answer any question thank you Director Burke I'll open up for any board member questions or comments all right seeing none we'll now take public comments on item number 14 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand Secretary Nannis there are no hands being raised for item 14 thank you that concludes our agenda I also would like to join Director Burke in wishing all of you a Merry Christmas a happy Hanukkah and a happy new year to you and to all your families we'll see you in 2023 and we are adjourned