 my computer says we're at four o'clock. Is that what yours says? I agree. I agree. Well we'll start with our Pledge of Allegiance if you'll all join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We'll start with the approval of minutes from our June 15th meeting. Is there a motion to approve? I make a motion that will get approved. And I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carried. Onto the financial reports. Everybody got copies of those. You all have a chance to look at them. Are there any questions? Otherwise Joe, do you want to summarize? Well I think to summarize we are still seeing reduced water consumption in the city and in the wholesale customers. Less, less so in the wholesale, well less so in Sheboygan Falls. A coal, a village of coal was using quite a bit less water. We're starting to see that turn around more now in July. You could see for accumulated billing for 2020 through the end of June was down about $505,000 compared to 2019. $505,000. So that's a pretty significant decrease that we're holding through six months of the year. Of course not much we can do about that except adjust our expenditures accordingly, which we've done. You should have received separately the detailed voucher sheet so you have those details separately. And I guess the only other comment I would make on the cash reserve figure that is still elevated due to the the ban bonds that we received just about six weeks ago of $3.1 million. We certainly haven't spent all of that in the time we've had it. So the cash reserve is still higher due to that. Any questions for for Joel as far as the financial reports? Any comments? None for me. The only thing I would say, Joel, is I'd really appreciate seeing the details in advance. Okay, we'll keep that up. Yeah, it definitely allows us to take a look, see if there's any questions or problems that we might want to want to bring up and probably expedite the process. So we still have a positive return on rate base. So which is a good thing? Yep. Do we need a motion to accept the financial reports as presented? I will make a motion. I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. And chair votes aye. Motion carried. Okay, Joel, superintendent's report. Well, for operations, you'll see that for 2020 June, we actually produced a little more water than in 2019. The reduction in revenues was for the whole first six months of the year. For June of this year, we actually are seeing that recovery. So we pumped about six and a half percent more water this June than past, which is good. We pumped a lot of water in 2018. I think we had a little more of a dry early summer. You can see we're well down from 2018, but compared to last year, we're doing pretty good. Our year today, high lift average day so far is about 10.8 million gallons. Last year was 12.4 and 2018 was 12.9. So that again shows the cumulative effect of the the decrease we've seen with the shutdowns from the pandemic. Otherwise, in operations, I don't have too much else to add. We do have all of our basins now back in service. We had the east sedimentation basin out of service for cleaning and then for some analysis and investigation work and that's now been completed. So everything is back in service. We did top off some of our filtration beds with anthracite that we had purchased in previous years and still had some remainder. You know, a variety of other maintenance work is as usual keeping everything in good condition. I think for operations, I'll leave it there unless there's any questions. No, I don't see anything that I care to ask about, Joe. Thank you. Tom, do you have anything? I have. I just had one question. On the when they on the East base, when they did the investigative work, would they find anything or is it just then or some concrete issue you thought you might have there? Did we lose somebody? I'm still there. Did we lose the other? I don't think Joe is good at all. Oh, I lose Joe. Microphone showing still active, but I don't see his video. My question. Joe, let's get a hard ball of question, Tom. I can see what I know. Yeah, I just figured what they found with when the analysis. Maybe I missed one of the reports. Yeah, I don't think we got a report on that, Joe. Tom, that I saw. Oh, yeah. Can you hear me, Jerry? Yep, we can hear you now. Can you still hear me? Yep, I can hear you. Did we lose you? Yeah, I think we did. He just blanked out. Yeah, just blanked out there. Wait for him to get back in. Here it comes. We thought maybe you didn't like Tom's question. You just didn't want to answer it, so you left. Well, I heard East and that's about all I heard. Well, you said you did an analysis. Are there looking at some concrete issues there? I was just curious if they if you got a report back on that. We've not got a report back what they did. They came out with a lift and they put up a crew and they painted every crack and every spalled area and every place where mineral had come through the concrete and deposited and then they came out with a laser and they scanned all that in. So once they kind of accumulate all that information, they should be able to give us a report about how much damage there is on that structure on the inside and outside. So I'd say the field work has been done, but no report yet. Instruction maintenance. Pull up my report here. I lost that for a second. I have to say, I think I have faster internet at home than here in the office. Yeah, so for distribution, we did have one main break on 23rd and Geely. That may have been related to some setup for the construction project out there, but that was a 12 inch main break that the crew repaired. Otherwise, I think June, a lot of work you'll see. We've been on and off of Commerce Street on where they're kind of revitalizing that area. We've replaced some hydrants in a variety of areas. The crew did work with vent and construction on a temporary water connection to Rockline. You'll recall that we're replacing water main there, but there was concern about damaging it while Rockline is so busy. So we laid a temporary service, I think like two feet in the ground and are serving them now on the temporary connection. That all went well. A number of taps for old lead service replacements, you'll see. We did a little assistance with the contractor that put up a temporary antenna tower at the Georgia Standpipe by Horace Mann School. If you saw on our website or if you go by, it's a pretty significant temporary structure. And that was primarily for US Cellular's antennas so that they could remain in service. But we also have some equipment up there and so does the police department. And I think otherwise for distribution, there was preparation for work that's going on now out at Geely Avenue and several other locations in the city. Do we have anything going on on North Avenue out around 31st Street or something like that? I don't think so, Jerry. Nothing big. Okay. Yeah, I had someone ask me about that and he said there's barricades or something out there, but nothing seems to be going on with it. And then another location on Mill Road, Eisner Mill Road, anything like that? Or is that out in the town? Yeah, that would not be us. Okay. I know for the Geely project, they have stockpiled some stuff further to the west out there past the project. If you drive out to Geely, you'll see some of the materials stocked up out there. Okay. All right. I'll get a little bit better handle on that from a gentleman that asked me today as I was just driving through. He flagged me down. He knows who I am, so he flagged me down. He says, what's the water utility doing out there? I don't know, but we have a meeting this afternoon. I'll ask. So, okay. Anyway, all right. For customer relations and fiscal, you'll see June of 2020 versus 2019, many fewer visits to our pay window in the office. More people using the drop boxes. Total payments are down by about 500, and we think that's due to lack of disconnection program and lack of late fees. We're expecting that to turn around. Fear of calls coming in, even though our office is staffed and able to answer calls is just fear coming in. We did have about $196,000 outstanding after the due date for the latest billing in June, and we whittled that down to $109,000 by the end of the month. Okay, because that's kind of disappointing. Yeah. That's our reality right now. People know they don't have to pay, so they don't pay. Yeah, and I think in some cases there's hardship, but in some cases there may be abuse of the situation. I'm sorry? On a PSE complaint? Yeah, that involved a payment that was received late, the late fee issue, which we've seen many times, but in this case, with the crisis, we're not enforcing those late fees as normally we would be. I think there are social media, no real big highlights there. We did begin the commercial and industrial cross-connection inspection program. We have a vendor hydrocorp that pretty much completes that work for us, but we work with them as to when to start it up again and how to communicate with customers about that start up, and that seems to be going well. And then we ourselves did begin meter change us for industrial and commercial customers just in July now. We're not currently doing residential changeouts unless there's an emergency, a leak, or a replacement of a lead service line. And I guess just generally you can see we still have a lot of people paying, you know, check by check one time, 82% of our customers pay like that, and about 18% are on an auto payment plan. We seem to have trouble budgeting those numbers much. And that's the extent of the superintendent's report. All right. Matt, I don't think we need a motion to approve that or we just accept that. To our items previously held over, lead service line replacement program up and running. It is up and running. That's the good news. The Public Service Commission approved our program and we were able to listen live to their commission meeting and hear their approval. So that was exciting. And the City Public Works Committee made a recommendation to approve the changes to ordinance to comply with the Public Service Commission's program that was approved on our behalf. And the Common Council also approved the ordinance change. So we now have everything we need for the lead service line replacement program financial assistance program relate to be in place. And we're very quickly rolling that out on the Geely Avenue water main project because that includes a number of lead service line replacements. So our utility accountant and customer service or customer relations and fiscal supervisor are working with the distribution supervisor to finalize the documentation for that program and project and get it out to the affected customers. We did notify the affected customers that the assessments would no longer be used to pay for the lead service line replacements and instead we'd be offering a loan program. And we had one or two calls about that but I think people understood it was not a setback. It had a lot of positives for them and the cost was pretty much the same. So I think we're now ready to use our own loans and our own grants. Just to complicate things, next year the DNR decided to offer grants again. So if we received those next year we would have WDNR grants, Shaboygan Water Utility Grants and Shaboygan Water Utility Loans as the ways to pay for blood service line replacements in cases where people don't want to pay outright by themselves. Well, Joe, on Geely Avenue how many customers are affected? With lead service lines I think it came in at about 35 to 40 mark. That's a rough estimate. Okay. Anything else on that subject, Joe? No. Okay. On to our raw water improvements intake project. Here I did embed a photo from the 3D modeling and if you look at that you can get an inside view of the raw water pump station and you'll see I think they're green. I'm a little color challenged but I think you'll see three green large. Okay, that's good. Pipes and at the end three vertical turbine pump heads. That's what you're seeing there and beneath the floor would be the large well where the intake pipelines deliver water. You'll see to the right a blank pad for a fourth pump in the future. You'll see a mezzanine with some air handling equipment. You'll see a door which in this case goes to an area where the backup generators would be located. I couldn't I think with the online board dock system put the whole video but we had basically a walk through tour of the new facility so one of our consultants had on the visual or virtual reality helmet and took us through and we could see on our screen as he was walking through which was really helpful. We identified a few things that we didn't want and we got a really good overall feeling for the space so it was a very good exercise. The other embedded file is what we used in meeting with some of our city colleagues to talk about the site and also to give an update to the public service commission. I just wanted you to have that for completeness and I guess if you go to maybe the fourth or fifth page in you'll see a plan view of where the building is proposed to be now and it's kind of the what we've decided is the best orientation. Initially we started it being a little further north in a flatter area closer to the lake but I think with lake levels rising and more and more shoreline damage and just the reality that it would be better to locate it closer to our existing structure than further away we ended up with this structure location which is a little more into the hillside down there and it does require the relocation of some large a large sewer storm sewer outfall that is right in that area. But we believe Public Works Department is okay with our relocation of that and this kind of preserves more of the flat shoreline area as well and it seems to be an optimized location for the building. You know as you look further you can see some details about the building a large pump room in the central area on one end electrical room and generator room on the other end chemical feed rooms a small work area a small rest room so there's not a lot of extra stuff in this building it's pretty much a pump station with some additional spaces as needed. We did want to protect it from the lake and that's another reason we try to set it back and make it more short dimension towards the lake and long dimension perpendicular to the lake than we had initially considered. Another item of importance there is a disc golf hole in that area so we've had some initial discussion about how to relocate that. I did not realize that disc golf course was that extensive. Yeah it's 18 holes it's pretty sensitive. It covers quite an area it covers quite an area yeah. Pretty cool. You got to move two tees it looks like down here. Yeah so we're still you know trying to be open on ideas with that with the parks people and starting those discussions. As far as architectural elements you'll see they've kind of taken at least the newer areas of the plant and tried to continue some of those elements in the proposed building sort of with stone above the windows block glass windows and door structures that resemble the ones we have. A little bit of a forgetting the exact term I call it a vaulted roof but there's a better term for it but not a flat roof a roof with some gable structure to it. But it's pretty much a functional building not occupied you know for the most part but we presented this or CDM and ourselves presented this to our colleagues with the city and with the public service commission and I think we got some good feedback and a good understanding of what we're proposing to do. Otherwise an entire site survey was completed for those details and they're incorporating that into the kind of completion of the preliminary design which really should take place before the next board meeting. Okay and I think that would be my summary of the raw water project at this point. Any questions for Joe on that over and above his report? What are the actual bonds going out for this project? Well those would come later so the the ban should cover a significant portion of the engineering costs and then when we move into final engineering we will evaluate either a safe drinking water loaned with the state. We'll probably you know recommend applying for that because you don't know if you qualify until you apply so I think we'll have to apply for that and see if we qualify and that would be you know a figure of close to $30 million roughly. If we don't qualify for safe drinking water loan or some federal monies that the mayor has some interest in as well then we're back to the private bond market you know which with rates so low right now isn't the worst ever solution. You can go to 40 years in private market bonds whereas the safe drinking water loan program is 30 years maximum and then there's the the issue that they're callable and have a few adjustments like that as well but that kind of the details of that funding Tom would we're about a year away from. All right moving on items for discussion and possible action. Request for approval of RO with drawing preliminary assessments on Geely Avenue project? Yeah so here you know again when we were preparing for the project our lead service program was not approved by PSC and we initially proposed using assessments. They then directed us away from that towards the loan program so now we I would request that the board request council withdraw the preliminary assessments because we're not going to enforce those or use those anymore on Geely Avenue we're going to use the loan program. Go ahead. This is a season entirely reasonable. Yes I would make a motion that we approve with drawing the preliminary assessments on the Geely Avenue project. And I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. And Joe will you circulate that for our signatures then like you've been doing or? Yes we'll do that electronically. We're good. All right next uh request approval 2021 preliminary water utility budget and everybody's seen it everybody likes it you know ready to approve it? And uh all the all the forecast are within a reasonable range of uncertainty. Well I would say of all my years working on the utility budget you know revenue predictions are really tough this year because of the the crisis. Um I think we've got a reasonable expectation you know we've uh our estimate for this year uh we dropped our expenditures by about 17 percent in in reaction to the situation and we're estimating our revenues for the entire year will be down by 10 percent compared to what we budgeted for 2020. The accountant and I both both feel that's reasonable given the information we have. Um but I'd say the level of uncertainty is higher than in some other years. First of all it's a little foggy. Little foggy yeah. And this budget has a rate increase built into it? Uh it has a rate increase built into it late in the fall Tom we we actually applied for a rate increase last fall fall of 2019 and it still is not through their system. Getting close. We had anticipated it would be in effect a spring of 2020 but that did not happen. Um we have had communication from the PSC we we know they're getting close but I'm guessing it's still one to two months away. Uh but yes we still were optimistic and included a little bit of it later this year. Um but not having that increase did affect some of our estimates of the 20 in the 2020 budget because we certainly thought we'd have some of that revenue this year. And what was the rate just to you just refresh me remember what was what was the rate increase was it a what was the percent intro how did you calculate it? Um we expect it will be close to 10 percent but we don't know yet until the cost of service study is is run by the public service commission. Okay so we request like an update in in the utility's rate of return which you know Jerry referenced that that's been dropping and dropping. Right. You know normally we like to see it around three and a half or four percent so when we go on for a rate case the public service commission will look at all those numbers and try to adjust our rates to to get us back to that rate of return and then we see what the actual rate increase is coming out of that so we have we haven't seen that number yet I think it's going to be close to 10 percent. Okay thank you. All right in looking go ahead go ahead. Still the smallest part of our utility bill. It is. I could highlight a few of the capital items if you if you want me to. I think that's where you know the operating expenses again you you guys have a pretty good handle on what's going on there and uh know where those things are good I'm more interested in the capital outlay. Okay I'm not sure how the other two commissioners feel but Apple investments are always interesting. Yes well and as we realized revenues were going to be impacted here this spring that the first thing we did was delay capital projects so as you see some of the budget 2020 and estimated 2020 figures if you see estimated 2020 being much lower that's most likely because we we delayed a project. Um so again for budget 2020 we had a figure of about 11 million dollars in total expenditures and we're now estimating our total expenditures to be about 9.2 million. Um for 2021 we budgeted about 1.23 million for water main projects hydrants. Um this does not include lead service line costs and this is primarily Georgia Avenue South 8th to South 14th Street. It also includes some transmission upgrades in the Barron's Parkway area to better link transmission in the industrial park and it does include monies to upsize uh a water main extended in uh South 12th Street to the proposed Kohler Golf Course. We're not entirely sure if that's going to happen uh most of the cost of that would be on the developer but we would like to upsize from 8 inch to 12 inch and in those situations the utility has to pay the upside charge so that's also included in that figure. So by and large it's a it's a fairly modest water main distribution investment for the utility but you know because we've got a lot going on more uncertainty I really challenged uh Supervisor McMillan to keep it as tight as he could and I think that figure reflects that uh effort to do so. Um one of the things that's been on the radar for many years is another river crossing, Sheboygan River Crossing. You know when you think of the city and and the network of water pipes and you want a robust network that's always great and then you hit rivers and the network starts to break down because you don't have multiple pipes going under the rivers in most cases. We we have enough um I should have counted before and I think we have maybe seven currently in total but much of our water supply now is south of our water usage is south of the Sheboygan River and it's really it's getting time to get another significant river crossing in place you know half of them date to the early 1900s and anyway you'll see some money for the engineering work for a river crossing near 11th Street. We've identified some construction happening in that area that would kind of tie in nicely with a directional bore like we did under the river to serve the uh uh the new art facility out on on the far end of Erie Avenue. Um we have that when you on 11th would this go I guess near the garden um apartments down there that's right sure it's in that area near the past the island that's no longer visible yeah that's right it would probably be a 12 inch because directional boring is uh really cost effective for 12 inch pipes and when you start up sizing it gets more costly so it would be north of the Penn Avenue bridge so yes we do have a small amount of radio meters yet to complete our systems they see 400 Orion radio generators that's what's going on there we're starting back in meter replacements so we've got about 125 thousand dollars and just meter replacements um you know the biggie is uh raw water improvements intake pipeline well pump station final design so we've got about 1.85 million in for final design of the raw water project we don't have a contract yet for that we don't have anything but a very preliminary estimate of that cost but we've included it in the budget in that way uh Barron's Parkway pit pump upgrade um Barron's Parkway uh near uh um what is it there business drive I'm sure yeah business drive I'm sorry we have an in-ground uh pumping station it's small it can pump about 400 gallons a minute from the non-boosted zone into the boosted zone to the east of NEMAC and it's kind of just a helpful little backup system but we'd like to upgrade it and have more capability there so we have some design dollars there for that project under structures we've got engineering work for retaining wall rehab you know if you can visualize when you drive into the utility to the left along the area known as the buffalo pit before my time and maybe maybe even before Jerry's time I'm not sure but I a wooden retaining wall was put in um that wall is gradually failing uh the heavy rains did create a small sink hole which we filled now but but the wall is failing it's a very sharp slope and as happens with all retaining walls they eventually fail uh in 2014 we had Donahue do a pretty thorough study of the wall and propose some solutions they're very costly we decided to wait a while but I would like to revisit that and take you know a preferred solution and get it into construction form because we uh we're going to have to do something with that wall and that slope uh fairly soon now we've I think waited about as long as we should wait uh were you here prior to that wall being injured do you recall oh yeah I remember the buffalo down there and everything else yes okay I think it's just become kind of a vulnerable spot so we unfortunately the our property line is right there as well so we need to work with the parks folks and come up with the solution that makes sense for everybody um yeah we don't don't want the road to to fall away so no um some ongoing rough replacement we have a lot of roughs we try to do a little bit at each year another biggie is the east base and structural repairs that that tom referred to we've put in three hundred thousand dollars that's a rough estimate um you know that project is important I wouldn't say it's it's urgent but I've included it for now our copy machine is getting to the point of replacement those have really come down in costs it's almost well I can remember the windows used to be like fifty thousand dollars now it's a fifty thousand dollar item and some other smaller office equipment um we use scanners for anything like that Joel uh they're there yeah we do have you know they scan in payments and engineering has a scanner to scan um you know note cards and things with old plumbers information okay um we decided to wait on vehicles so we have no vehicles in for 2021 and then just some we would like to replace our gps survey unit it's getting extensive use and it's getting old um I guess those are really the highlights another thing we we did not have in 2021 is money for um water tower stripping and painting um the last project we have that in that category is really Taylor Hill tank itself and we've decided to hold off on that a bit we've done the masonry structure at Taylor Hill but we've not done anything with the tank or the steel rough structure and eventually we're going to have to uh but not next year that's going to be very costly as well we're going to put the word sheboygan back up there well you can some of it you can just still barely see from those drone shots if you look I know that's why that's why I said it you you could probably go up there and paint right over those those spots well that's very interesting that that's still there you know still visible anyway we're having a good time with the drone but it does reveal uh you know problems that sometimes you don't want to see which which will come up a little later right yeah yeah okay any questions for Joe on budget I'm on for me thank you but I'm good thanks I uh I agree uh is there a motion to approve the uh preliminary budget oh I second it all in favor say aye aye care about sigh one comment um you know a budget our our educated guesses as best as we can do and um you know Joe always seems to find money when we have special things that come up so all that if we have if we have to move things around a little bit if something urgent comes up we can do that so anyway motion carried moving on uh approval of the if you're ready proposal on health insurance consulting service um well the board will recall we had a challenging health insurance renewal uh this year in June uh we we did get through it and I think we have a reasonable plan uh but part of our discussion was the need for some additional consulting service and maybe some fresh eyes to look at our health insurance plan and our process going forward with a little more of a strategic approach I think we've worked with hub as a broker for many years and I think they've provided outstanding service to the utility but I think they they also felt that you know maybe some fresh eyes would would be helpful um as we kind of look at fully insured versus self-insured and how do we maintain this very significant benefit for our employees while also doing due diligence and and being effective um so our broker led me to an individual at um the other accounting firm in town Jerry the name escapes me but the other one and well there's there's a there's a couple clifton larson allen uh yes and an individual at clifton led me to elsewhere to mr anthony ferretti and anthony has worked decades in the health insurance industry and is now um running his own consulting business so you you see a proposal from anthony um consulting services proposal for shibuya y utility um you'll see some of his background uh the utility accountant miss scott zekker and I interviewed anthony by phone had a good discussion with him um uh felt that he was very communicative and knowledgeable and and based on some basic information from us was was kind of able to zero in on our plan and have some understanding and insight um after our discussion and and kind of our description of challenges that we've had and and our staffing levels and expertise we asked mr ferretti to provide a proposal to the to the board for review which is what you have here excuse me as to how he could help the board and the utility with its health plan um so you see what what he does is not come in and and do like a one month evaluation he wants to establish an ongoing strategy uh and he prefers a three-year time frame to work with a customer client um he has to see you know the market develop he has to see the plan in action and you know that's his approach to to come up with more of a strategy not just you know here's the solution do this and i think as i heard that that philosophy i think that's you know we've seen a lot of changes i've seen some of my peers that all you know now let's do this and this is going to save us all kinds of money and now let's do this because this is going to save us all and there's just this hopscotching that i don't really think saves the kind of money that they think it's going to going in and i really think a longer term strategy is is a better investment um well as we know things can change things can change yes that's what we're both gonna have results in time so changes could be made for next year you know and and if recommendations are made and followed and they don't pan out then there can be a follow-up like you know what happened with this recommendation why is this not working and one follow-up Lisa and i both had was to check some references uh who have worked with Anthony and he provided three i was able to make contact with two i think the other one was out a lot i wasn't successful in contacting that person but i can communicate with two by phone uh both were with uh companies about two to three times the size of the utility and they were private companies um and they were at the one was the there's C EO and one was more of an HR director um and they both were very uh uh blowing in their recommendation of Anthony and the service he provides um i asked pretty basic questions you know about time frame ease of communicating what's the investment worth it in terms of cost um and and would they work with him again and you know down the line they were all very extremely positive about it um in some cases they didn't follow the recommendations for a variety of reasons but i think they still felt that they had a more full approach to their to their their plan um you know maybe other relationships uh were more important than you know making a certain change that he recommended and and they had that kind of flexibility in their approach the references were all glowing and i i guess you know i had indicated to the board that i would follow up with this and present um you know some other plan and and that's what we have here and i hope that go ahead Joe no go ahead well i do think you know myself our accountant uh our broker have worked you know to the best of our abilities but we're we're not experts in health insurance plans and uh i i think you know long ago in distant history we we always bargained over the health insurance plan and it developed from that kind of environment and we never really had in-house expertise um and i think that's what this would lend us for a three-year period or the cost of $12,000 it looks like uh per year yes yeah well that's per year yeah okay all right gentlemen i hate to we have a family meeting coming up at six o'clock but at six o'clock eastern time which is five o'clock our time so i'm going to have to talk about and i asked your forgiveness for that yep all right well i think we're do you have any thoughts on this at all i i think it's worth while from the discussions we've had regarding health care and the issues we had i think that it's good to have someone help out who's an expert so i would make and hopefully hopefully we can recoup those costs uh in in in savings over a period of three years indeed the future i would agree i would move that we accept the proposal and proceed with the accountant with with the consultant i would second that motion all in favor say aye aye and share both sides forgive me but i will see you next month all right mark take care all right moving on number four on this item update on latest round of lead and copper sampling yes so under epa requirements the utility samples for lead and copper in in drinking water every three years um so our sampling period is due this year and the monitoring period is from July 1st to October 31st and just as an update we're required to uh begin our sampling to comply with with epa so far we've distributed 28 of the 30 sample kits and again these go to homeowners for the most part maybe a couple small businesses and they collect the samples in their residences on our behalf and this is how we're uh to do the sampling we provide the instructions and the equipment um a couple changes that you know slowly came out of the flint michigan catastrophe uh all sites now must have a lead lateral in the past utilities were allowed to have a mix of lead and copper and i think as lead has become of more concern the epa titan bat which makes a lot of sense uh they've now implemented a new trigger level the action level is 15 parts per billion uh where you line up your samples and the 90th percentile uh is is 15 parts per billion or higher now they said if your 90th percentile sample is 10 parts per billion or higher you must review corrosion control treatment and re-optimize that's a new element from three years ago so if you're between 10 and 15 the epa is going to require utilities to review their corrosion control and and optimize it um if you're above 15 parts per billion then then you're into more public notification and other things that existed before um so all of our sites have been reviewed and approved by dnr for the tier one requirements we have 45 lead lateral sampling sites 30 required for sampling 15 for alternates or backups if for some reason the folks don't collect the samples or we can't get them um we've been maintaining our corrosion control program uh you know really without much change uh i i think when they when the epa talks about optimizing they're usually talking about feeding a phosphate at a higher level so we have since 2017 been feeding at a slightly higher level to kind of follow that epa lead that that we want to be sure it's optimized um in the past our results have always been below the action level of 15 parts per billion certainly where there are lead laterals there there can be dissolved lead in water and we notify customers of all kinds of ways that they can reduce that risk in their homes and we want them to reduce that risk you know on top of that we do the corrosion control to to minimize that effect but uh there are lead lines there are old lead fixtures in homes um and it's important part of our educational outreach the the whole uh issue of lead in drinking water um that's kind of our status update update we should have test results later this fall um our results have normally well they've ranged anywhere from a 90th percentile result of three or four parts per billion to eight um they can be a little bit variable because lead it depends on uh very particular circumstances it is not coming out of the water treatment plant or the lake but it is being dissolved in in private lead laterals and fixtures and that's a that's a variable process um but to summarize then we should have results by the end of the fall i'm not expecting will be above an action limit it's it's possible that uh isn't the expectation but uh that's our summary today okay any questions tom no i'm good okay moving on approval repairs the shoreline protection along the east basin if you saw the picture that uh joe sent out that was taken from our drone yes i did you'll see that that one area there's very little riprap there yeah and that is surprising and troubling the size of those boulders they're two to three ton boulders and over time that that high lake water can just just move them and it has they they were there i i know they were there um you know the city also has faced a lot of shoreline protection issues uh which which they're addressing in various places um as we build the raw water improvement project we're going to have to extend shoreline protection and and that's going to be an addition to what we have in place um but yeah if you looked at that photo you could see we now have our sheeting which is kind of the last line of defense exposed to to the lake water and that's not good so what we've done the the dnr allows an emergency shoreline protection permit and we have applied for that i feel we do have an emergency i don't want to see us go another winter with that exposed sheeting like that um what can we do about it well we reached out in a few different ways we know what was in place has been effective because it's been there for decades and until now it hadn't hadn't shown any failure so it's an effective uh structure and placement of rock so we basically like to replace what was there um so supervisors swearing gin met with some folks from Wagner excavating and they've been doing some shoreline protection work actually we're not alone in this certainly they came in and looked at what we have and what we'd like to replace um and came up with a proposal they would provide both the appropriate rock and place the rock um and rebuild the the revetment as as it had been designed and also extended vertically uh right now with those high with that high water the waves really just come up over it onto the drive um so we'd like to continue and add some height to it in addition to replacing the area that's now bare um i did also ask our crew to look at the project you know we can move heavy rock and such um so what you can see is sort of a comparison if we uh had Wagner do this work or if we did it ourselves um i think you'll see there isn't a huge cost savings to do it ourselves uh but it is about 90 000 estimated for for Wagner to provide and do that work um one thing we still have to look into is are we required to bid this out or in an emergency situation can we consider a sole proposal like this so we have to do a little more homework on that but i wanted the board to see this kind of cost figure and again i feel like we would be remiss if we do not address this uh this fall i agree um we've got a a large investment in that facility and we do not want to turn around and look at uh you know have some major major catastrophe our guys um can i i'm sure they can do it i mean but if Wagner is doing it for for others and that stuff along and i mean there's people putting rocks all up and down the lake michigan shoreline um there's got to be some uh expertise in just how those things are placed yeah i think that's exactly right sherry that the placement is is important as important as the shape of the rock right you know Wagner's developed some of that expertise i i guess if we run into a problem where we would have to bid this out and we and i feel like we're running out of time you know then we might feel that the crew doing the work would be the best solution right but i think you know i know the crew can place the rock but it their time might be better spent elsewhere right if right unless we have no other choice is what i'm trying to say right yeah so do you want uh approval for the Wagner proposal or uh at least tentative approval pending your your research uh whether we have to go to competitive bidding yeah i think tentative pending for the research would be ideal sherry because i we do have some work yet to do in that area and i wouldn't want the board to prove something and then we find that we need to put it off i wouldn't i wouldn't find either because that would turn around and only delay things so i would make that motion to provide tentative approval based upon further research on whether or not this needs to be competitive bidding or if we can just accept Wagner's proposal i second that i should say all in favor see i hi chair votes i all right um any other comments joel tom well the only questions that you know we know what we know what's bad right now um is there any other areas that are that are starting to decay or are starting to fail no that one area seemed to take the brunt of the damage so far but uh further down and if you walk along the road behind the plant you'll just see stuff been strewn up in that whole area uh but but not the shoreline protection structure itself oh yeah okay i think that drone was an excellent excellent investment yeah for five hundred dollars i think we've got our money's worth out of it already right what what makes the hydraulics so different in this one place versus the other i wonder is there i don't know there is yeah well there are are those structures going out into the lake i don't know if they've been flooded now they've kind of channeled more wave action to that one spot i it's almost like that the thought has been targeted right yeah that's what is that underground structure i mean you see that shadow there what is that oh that's one of the the groins that were put in by the army corps oh i see okay when you see further with the old one of the old jetty type things yeah yep that's exactly yeah i see further further north there there's another one okay yeah yeah and they've rarely been flooded and you know when they're flooded they're they're not very effective right okay shows you just how deep that water is how high the water is i should say right yeah all right moving on the agenda next we have got just psc code changes uh are any i think you missed one item jerry oh okay what's that what'd i miss um should be a change order approval yeah right for them oh yeah okay sorry i i had a print out of it here i'm sorry i wasn't going by the one on screen um approval change order on south 11th in illinois water main project yeah excuse me yes what happened uh vinton is down there doing some water main work we've been doing some ourselves uh it was discovered that there was a large storm culvert at a location that we we missed in our design uh and we we have our 16 inch water main going right through the box culvert okay which isn't going to work uh in that area it's very close to the river and it's very deep so here again i i asked uh excuse me one minute okay sorry about that um the uh as we did on the shoreline protection i asked supervisor mcmillan to compare having the crew do this work and also get a change order from vinton who's out there to do the work um the cost difference was about 12 000 but the problem is this work is really really deep like 12 to 14 feet yeah and it's wet and our crew really does not work at that kind of depth we would have to rent equipment and probably get larger trench shoes to do it and i just don't think from a safety point of view it's worth it i would agree so i i would recommend this change order you know honestly it's probably a little bit high but i think it would be the best overall solution for us yep i agree i would move for approval of the change order i second it all in favor say aye all right moving back to the agenda that's actually on screen rather than when i print it off update on late payment charges and disconnection um the public service commission has now moved to to allow utilities to start um accruing late payment charges again and to start disconnecting again i think if we as we've looked at it timing wise for us it didn't make sense to do that right away and i also feel that you know again given the situation and given um challenges in the local economy that we didn't need to rush right back into that but i think in our next billing cycle we would start um accruing late payment charges again but i think we would like to hold yet on the disconnection program for a little while yet because that that just doesn't seem like the right thing to be doing at this point in time would it make sense for us to do um some public notification of the fact that you know that these will will be required again or we are you're going to start charging late payment charges like effective what September 1st or something like that yeah and we would put it we would put it on the bills that people would receive and we can put it on our website and and facebook and such and let the news media know so yeah okay all right i think that's uh a good public um i guess a good move publicly uh public image and everything else uh definitely with the disconnection we don't want to be cutting people off when uh you know it may be that not as bad as in winter but still um with everything that's going on so okay so you don't need a motion or anything on that do you joe um no okay um tom anything else on that subject no i'm good okay psc code changes i have none the psc continues to work remotely but they are available and we've had a lot of good communication with them lately okay and the vouchers you've the board board members have seen the vouchers and the backup detail i would move to approve the vouchers i agree i second call in favor say aye aye chair votes aye on to personnel review plans regarding COVID-19 risk reduction um not a lot has changed for us we're still implementing all of our uh precautionary steps uh we have had two cases well we've had one case where a staff member uh had a significant other who had family members that were positive and was that an event list of family members uh but the individual tested negative later and and that was all resolved uh we had another individual with a concern and and the of a family member but that test also was negative and i i think you know as we all know these numbers are going to keep building for a while so i think you know we're going to have more situation like that but yeah not a matter of if it's a matter of wind right yeah and the way we structure personnel we're still you know we have some resilience to that happening right yeah and i'm glad your employees are very transparent about being forthright about the uh being exposed yes definitely because i have a friend of mine where else in california he had a supervisor went to a casino was feeling sick they were doing daily temperature checks he abated the temperature check two days in a row then he finally tested positive for COVID-19 he was going to say he was terminated and they asked me why did you you know go around the line and not get tested for your temperature he goes well your job is to catch me okay yeah i give her give your employees credit for being forthright after hearing that story i agree and i know right you know otherwise we are still wearing masks and and working remotely we're able and it makes sense and i think i think we're in good good shape yep no tell everybody everybody there we appreciate their um their cooperation and and their uh um sticking to things so that we are following procedures and uh it's only going to be benefiting the the whole organization down the road so thank you all right our next meeting um will be in august and according to what i see the third monday in august is what the 17th at least that's a tentative date joe okay not the 15th not the 15th okay um 17th of august it is and you can check with mark to make sure that works with him okay if you don't mind i will do that all right with that the only thing left on our agenda is a motion to adjourn i make that motion i will second it and uh joe i guess um close the meeting unless you have anything else to share with us i do not thank you all right thanks okay bye bye thank you very much