 I pledge allegiance to the flags of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, one God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'll begin our meeting, 201 according to what I got here. They need a motion to approve the minutes of our April 6th meeting. So moved. Is there a second? I second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. All right, financial reports, Joe. Well, because our audit was completed, Lisa has now finished January, February, March and April reports, which you have. I think I'll just focus on the April report for now, but you have the other months there to review for April. I think as you can see our cash balance is pretty steady. Our billing has decreased as we expected. We saw a decrease April 2020 compared to 2019 of about $118,485. That was expected due to the current situation. Our rate of return is down as well due to that reduction in revenue and much lower than last year. Otherwise, I don't have any other comments on the financials for April. We do expect May to be showing some increase. We've seen an increase in water consumption, especially in the latter half of May, but it will be down as well compared to last year, I'm sure. Do we have an idea why Sheboygan Falls is up? Yeah, that was interesting as well. I think normally that means that the Bemas recycling facility, their water recycling system is not functioning. That's the only information I have. Okay. Our return on rate basis slipped below one for that's been a long time since it's been below one. Yes, hopefully May will be a little better and then hopefully again June will be a little closer to normal. Okay. Any questions on the April financials? If you gentlemen have had a chance to look at them, I did. I'm good. I scanned through them. I didn't read them in detail, but I scanned through them. I saw nothing that was other than what we already discussed. I wanted to talk about. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the financial reports as presented? So moved. I second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Carried. All right. Moving on. Superintendent's report show. We'll start with construction maintenance. And we did have, although we were working with small teams, we did make progress and install Watermain down on Niagara Avenue near North Commerce. That's a very old part of town. It still had brick cobbles in the roadway. We were installing Watermain so that the contractors could proceed other work for the city. So we had about one to two weeks of weeks of work in that area. Completed that safely and brought it into service. And that's indicated on the construction maintenance report. We also were out, we now have a fleet of auto flushers on the fire hydrants. And we installed those in strategic areas where we know there's not a lot of water consumption and we want to move water, turn the water over and freshen it. So we began installing and calibrating some of those. We have other hydrants that we just flushed on a quarterly basis. We actually flushed quite a few hydrants to maintain water quality. That's an important part of maintaining the distribution system. So in April we were active doing that work. It's kind of ideal. It's a one person job. And there are many locations that we flushed. So we got to start on that work. We did have three lead laterals come out of service. And we did the taps for the replacement, water service lines at those three locations. We did a larger tap for the the Sheboygan Visitor Center location. And we did start some cleanup at our Taylor Hill reservoir site. A lot of tree removal and some pipe relocation was done there. And that's a pretty good summary of April construction maintenance activity. How many auto flushers do we have, Joe? No. I believe we're close to a dozen. I could be off a little bit on that, Jerry, but about a dozen. Okay. We did not have any main brakes for the month, so that was good news. We did, in distribution, add some new valves and hydrants. And those were, again, on the Niagara Avenue project. And we replaced some very old pieces of infrastructure down in that area. Moving on to operations, we have both March and April reports. I think I'll focus on April reports. And I think the big story here, again, is just reduced water consumption. We were down about 32% compared to last year. We were well aware of that. That's a huge difference. You know, the challenge in a water treatment plant is it really doesn't take a whole lot more water chemicals or activity to produce an extra 5 million gallons of water a day. So that reduction in consumption really affects our bottom line very quickly. You can see our average day for the year is only about 10.8 million gallons a day in the far bottom right corner compared to 12.3 million gallons a day last year. So we're certainly producing less water. That's not a problem other than in terms of revenues. And we're expecting to see those same results in, again, through about the middle of May. And then we saw a little bit of an upturn. And we're seeing a little more of an upturn now, where I think now we're probably down more like 15% compared to last year. So we're definitely seeing some recovery in water consumption out in the system. And I'm sorry. Just to say I've heard the production at DMACC has been on and off. So that would affect us quite a bit. Definitely. I have to apologize. I failed to download the customer relations and fiscal report this month. So I don't have that embedded here. But the financials for April reflect that we did, even though we did not have late fees that were being charged. Most customers continued to pay their bills on time. And we didn't see a massive change in timeliness of payments. We've not been disconnecting under the situation. And that affects our collections to some extent. But again, not a huge factor at this point. And I think that would conclude the superintendent's report. Anybody have any other questions for Joe? I don't. Not at this time. Moving on. Items previously held over for discussion. We're talking about the lead service line replacement program. Yeah, there I have an update. As the board is aware, the public service commission and after their legal department reviewed our initial lead service replacement program, they had an issue with our use of municipal assessments to pay for part of the lateral or service line replacement and utility funds to pay for the rest. They didn't like that combination of utility funds with a municipal process that goes to city hall and the city finance department. So there were discussions between the city attorney and attorneys at the public service commission. And they really heard that we take a different route and not use municipal assessments in our new program. Um, we may well be able to use them in the future for non service, non blood service line situations, but they don't want that mixing of the two types of funding mechanisms. So they directed us to reflect on the Sun Prairie Wadi Utilities program and I had relayed some information about that to the board members. And basically our program becomes instead of using municipal assessments and charging that benefit against the property owner and having the utility pay that money up front and having a formal assessment process through the common council and the money is collected by city finance and then directed to the Wadi Utility and repayment. Instead of all that, they really suggested that we modify that to a simple loan program that would be entirely in-house at the Wadi Utility. So instead of assessing a property for part of the service line replacement per foot, we would have a loan in place of that assessment. The loan money is still coming from the Wadi Utility and the payments on the loan would come back directly to the Wadi Utility and it's just a simpler process and they felt avoided some legal issues in mixing those two processes. So the main change they wanted us to make was that to not use municipal assessments and substitute an in-house loan program. So the utility accountant reviewed that in detail and actually preferred that process because it is cleaner, it's more simple, it's more direct. It doesn't cause the utility anything in addition because we're still funding that money up front regardless of if it's an assessment or a loan. So we were directed to modify the program and submit it again which we've now done and we would be waiting for comments to come back from the Public Service Commission as to whether they're going to approve it now or not. Most of the rest of the programs stayed intact. The program allows a grant from the utility revenues about to half the cost of a service line replacement not to exceed $2,500 in any instance and other similar requirements that we have been using with the DNR grant program in terms of approved plumbers doing the work and some other details like that. So currently our program is still under review by the Public Service Commission and I've been advised that we might have a decision by mid-June so we're hopeful of that. They might request more information, they might request more changes, I hope not, but it is moving forward with that element of delay that we've seen. Is there any collateral on those loans Joe? No, however we can, I guess you could say collateralize them in terms that we can put them on the property tax roll. Okay, all right that's what I was getting at because we had the with the assessments you could do that so okay. Yeah, we retain that and then when the property sale sells the loan becomes due and full so there's that mechanism also. That answers my question. Okay. Anybody else have any questions on that? No, I'm good. That was a good one, sorry. So do we need a motion to that effect Joe or not? I think a motion accepting that that has been submitted and we're waiting for the next step from the Public Service Commission. I will so move. I will second. All in favor say aye. Aye. My chair votes aye. For all water improvements intake project. Well here we've had a lot of ongoing activity, we've had a number of meetings and a lot of the focus has been on the building design and the building is where the intake pipelines come in and there's a large circular well on the ground and it has pumps in it and all the associated equipment with the pumps and some chemical fees and the intake pipeline and the challenge is we have a very small site by the lake shore trying to fit it into the site and protect it as much as possible. One of the things that we're more and more concerned about is shoreline erosion and in high water and wave damage which we and the harbor and others have seen a lot of this year. So we want to be sure we get this building in the best possible spot. Having said that it's a very tight geography that we're dealing with down there. So we have really a preferred layout and then an option. Now many years ago we had gone to the Parks Commission and I think this was probably I'm guessing maybe 14 years ago and the facility was granted an easement to build and operate an intake facility at that flat area north of the water treatment plant. We may have to request a slight change in that easement as we're trying to kind of shoehorn the building into that property. At the time we requested the easement. We didn't have a specific design. We just sort of had a very rough idea of where this might go. But later this week on Thursday we're having a pre-development meeting with the engineers, utility staff and city staff to talk about issues with the site. It's it remaining parkland. The utility was in fact the city didn't want to sell that land to the utility. They preferred an easement arrangement. But we have to sit down and discuss the various issues you know as this building is going to sit in that isolated spot of Alvoraz Park. Some of the issues are you know simple like the Frisbee Gulf Hole is in that area. What are we going to do with that? Other issues are a little more complicated. There is a slope there that's wooded. We might have to impact that to some extent. And again the shoreline protection is a big issue because that area was never really other than the old jetties. That area was never really rip-wrapped or or sheeted for significant shoreline protection. And then there's also a very large storm water outfall there. I believe it's seven foot or eight foot diameter storm water outfall right in that area that we're either going to have to relocate slightly or cross. That pipe was put in after the floods of 1999 and 2000. And it's kind of right. It is right between the water treatment plant and the open space. So that we'll have to talk about as well. But a lot of progress is made. We've had a lot of staff input. How do we want this building to function? There's been a lot of talk about the generators to back up the facility, the pumps. We've had focus on energy involved so that we're starting off with you know the most efficient system we can have because it's going to operate around the clock you know for years and years. So I think we're making really good progress. It will be it would be good to see what the other city staff concerns are as we refine it more. And that's that's kind of the summary of where we're at with the project at this point. Any questions for Joe on on that project? I don't have any. All right. Moving on items for discussion and possible action. You request approval of renewal proposal for the health insurance? Yeah I would just say that every June 1st is our renewal date. We have a one-year contract and every year our broker consultant Julie Meyer of HUB meets with prairie states and other vendors and presents us options for renewing our plan. And because of some HIPAA issues I don't have a lot of details to add but you do have Julie Meyer's recommendation on the plan which she developed talking with the utility accountant myself to a limited extent and prairie states. And I think health insurance is probably our biggest employee benefit and you know each year we look at various options self-insured fully insured you know this year was the renewal was more costly and then in past years however as Lisa count reviewed costs going back about 10 years you can see there you know years where we have lower costs on a self-insured plan and years where we have higher costs and at the end of the day it looked pretty clear that being self-insured had been a less costly way for us to approach the insurance in the in those 10 years of time. Anybody have any questions on the proposal that Julie not Julie prepared but at least are prepared? So to summarize Joe basically we're talking status quo but I'll consider possible change for next year's that's that was my interpretation of what I read. Basically Mark we did have a stop loss carrier a different one that came in with a much more attractive proposal renewal proposal so the recommendation was to accept the stop loss carrier called Northquen because they had a significantly less costly proposal and remain on a self-insured basis with Prairie States as our third party administrator and and evaluate fully insured plans up around the January 1st timeframe. The fully insured plans have some advantages but they also have this some disadvantages that we would need to understand before making that kind of change so the recommendation of Julie in that regard was the Northwinds renewal proposal and continue evaluating you know up through that that January timeframe. If this things look good we can continue if things don't look good with 30 days notice we can we can change. Well I would move that we proceed as proposed. The one thing that uh Joe did you want to discuss the the deductible at all or? The original carrier from last year had attached three deductibles called lasers and this is intended to further reduce their risk in case there are large claims. We had one laser in the past so this year they added two additional lasers and that total dollar amount was about eight hundred thousand dollars that had been lasered out at the potential risk. The Northwinds proposal had only two lasers at an amount of five hundred thousand dollars so that was a significant difference and and rather than three lasers they were down to two and this is one downside of the self-insured carriers is that they're now starting to attach these lasers as a way to shift this um and that's what they've done in this particular renewal. It doesn't mean that risk is uh guaranteed it means it's a possible risk possible exposure. The other thing would be the employee contribution. I'm not sure that everybody received that information Joe is that something we want to discuss at the present moment or just bring it up in the future? No I think I would ask that the board consider that as well if if the board determines to accept the consultant's recommendation then I would advise that we need to increase our employee contributions towards the health plan. We haven't done that for a while and it's now it's now dropped to a percentage that is is much lower than standard and I had forwarded on a figure that uh how we would need to get that up in either a one step or a two-step process and yeah I would have consideration on that issue as well. So I don't recall seeing that it may have been something that I missed but I don't recall that. I can quote it here for you Mark. Do you have it right up there Jerry? I've got it in front of me well I've got it in front of me here in pay in paper because I had gotten I'm still printing some of the stuff off so I can get at it at my desk no matter where I am but basically the the cost the contributions that employees you know I guess to look at normally we'd have to double the contribution that employees have right now as Joe said it's about five percent we'd have to double basically their contribution to get the 10 percent since the the costs and claims have increased significantly in the past two years. As Joe mentioned with what we're talking about contributions we bought five percent of the total cost. Current contribution is a single individual 75 dollars a month and 150 dollars per month for family. We're talking about doubling that increasing it to 150 for single and 300 for family and since that is that's a significant increase Lisa's you know saying that we could increase it to 125 and 250 as of June and then move it to 150 and 300 as of January of 2021. So we get closer to that 10 percent figure. Of course there'll be some communication plans for folks. Oh yeah we have to mention to them that they but they've got to realize that the costs have have gone up significantly over the last couple years and they can probably see that in the invoices they get from the medical community as well as you know just normal I guess scuttle butt that's how everybody knows that prices have gone up tremendously and the utility as Joe said this is one of the best benefits that our employees have better than the fact even when you're looking at a fully funded plan you know those deductibles have gone up as well so. I agree with what what both of you are saying I'm just thinking that there will be squawking. Oh yeah but and again we have to just make sure we're presenting it in the right light that they understand that if we move to a fully insured plan you know who knows what's going to happen with co-pays and everything else plus the fact that you're not sure that if we go to a fully fully insured plan the the providers that will be available in that plan right we're we're looking out for the employees but we also have a fiduciary duty to turn around and and look at what the utility is spending compared to you know the employees and things like that. That's still even at if you know you've doubled the rate that's still extremely achieved with a lot of people being industries for their benefits. Oh definitely definitely. I think a lot of companies do it like 25 percent employees 75 percent company or somewhere in that ratio. Right right right so phasing it in over a six month period you know doing one now and one in January is I think going to be very beneficial to the employees and they're still getting one heck of a benefit. I would agree with that. I would as well. So you had a motion out there I should have taken a second and then gone to discussion but so your motion still stands Mark. I will go back with the additional information we have here and I will move that we proceed as proposed. Is there a second? I second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. And chair votes aye. Motion carried. Okay a proposal for a mandatory American Water Infrastructure Act risk and resilience assessment that's a mouthful. That is a mouthful and what it entails is that in 2018 the federal government passed the American Water Infrastructure Act and it had certain requirements imposed on public utilities including preparation of a risk and resilience assessment. Long ago after 9-11 the federal government came out with what was called vulnerability assessments VA's and public utilities had to produce those at that point in time and in the interim there really hasn't been much focus on risk assessments. So now we're back visiting that topic. Part of it is to generate information for the federal government to help determine needs, financial needs, you know where are the risks, how can we enhance state loan programs to address those, you know it's an information gathering process but it's also an exercise for utilities to try to look objectively at their operations and find ways to reduce risk where risk is defined more generally as an unexpected and lengthy interruption of water production or water distribution in the community. So the federal government passed the act and we must abide by it and there's a fairly tight time frame that we need to present our assessment before the end of 2020. In this case the assessment is a pretty complicated process you know they don't want just a general well you know this could happen and this could happen they have a very methodical process to go through to evaluate vulnerabilities and resilience. So because of that we felt this was a case where we should probably work with an outside consultant that's doing these for other utilities and not try to just ram through it on our own. The vulnerability assessments we did on our own and it was a lengthy process and we have that information to provide into this updated process but we did ask AECOM provide a proposal for doing this work and this assessment for us and with us and that's what you see in the attachments. AECOM is the firm that we worked with on the water demand study and they did an outstanding job on that the 50-year water demand study they seem to be one of the more active firms in in these risk and resilience assessments and we certainly have a good working relationship with them. So Bill Swearingen our operations supervisor and I reviewed the proposal and we feel it addresses the needs. We do feel it's an optional item that we don't need that we can handle ourselves. We would recommend accepting the AECOM proposal so that we can launch them on this in the next six months here and get it completed and get it submitted and not have to bring this in house. Now I should add you know unfortunately we will have to pull this this was not a separate budget line item so we would have to pull this out of our water main budget but we have sufficient dollars there and we've already canceled a number of projects that I'm not overly concerned about pulling it out of that line item. You knew I was going to ask that question. I knew that yeah how many years I should know something. And with AECOM being such a big player in this in the DOS they have sufficient bandwidth to address our work? Yeah they do they serve us mostly out of their Stevens point office and with a little support out of Green Bay. We've dealt with them for years. Oh yeah yeah yes. Under various names. Yeah they did a lot of work for us. They did the design of the Ryzen Drive water tower and they did the comparison of water tower site and they've done some pump station upgrades for us so they've done a lot of work for us in the past few years. Questions of Joe on this proposal? I don't have any. I don't have any additional questions either. Is there a motion to approve the proposal as presented? I move that. And I'll second. All in favor say aye. Care votes aye. Emotion carried. Next approval right off due to bankruptcy and that was a separate mailing that Joe sent out earlier today. I just have a couple of questions Joe. Can you the one for the hydrant damage medical emergency that we're just basically writing it off? Is that something that? There's actually a state law that was revealed to us that if a person has a medical emergency and causes property damage like that that they're not responsible. Okay. They're not financially responsible. Pretty cut and dried. Yeah I must admit I didn't know about that. We did try to pursue it with that gentleman and we ended up with that legal roadblock. Okay. And the Hexion ones that that's writing off post bank was that the old board and chemical or is that? Yes. Okay. And they're nowhere to be found. No. Okay. I will make a motion to approve writing off as presented. I second it. All in favor say. Any other questions? I'm sorry. No. No. No. All in favor say aye. Aye. Care votes aye. Emotion carried. Request approval for our first quarter report to go to council. Everyone should have a copy of that in front of you and any questions on that? Nope not free. Financials and are they're operating statistics so no questions. We'll entertain a motion to approve that and present that to council. So moved. I second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carried. PSC code changes anything Joe? No. And vouchers we have the summary sheet and you're going to be getting us the detail? I will. Can we do a vote on approving the vouchers without looking at them or do we hold those off until our next meeting? I would recommend holding those off myself. Under personnel review plans regarding COVID-19 risk reduction? Well just an update on that. We did open the pay window today to the public. Was everybody happy and lined up? Well we have water drops at six foot intervals so they can maintain their distance and as they're coming into our pay. And they have to put on a bubble wrap. Yeah but that's a good sign of some normalcy. We did take some steps to further protect our staff. You know it's already a pretty safe area. It's windowed off. There's a small slot to have items. We've even crafted a cover for that so we don't have water from that foyer. Along with a lot of other entities we don't have to have a signature for credit card payments any longer. So we've done a number of things like that just to just to further reduce what risk we can. We have plenty of hand sanitizer both in the foyer and in the office. And we've got a process that every time one of our support specialists goes to the pay window that they disinfect after if they're handling anything. That does two. Now we have specialists in the office rather than just one which is how we've been operating. We need one on phones. So we now have two people in the office and they're kind of kitty cornered so they have more separation than they might have. But otherwise that seems to be going well. And we still have a number of staff members working remotely as they're able to coming in to the office at intervals. But mostly other than in-home meter work or in-home water sampling I'd say we're and we never really did lose hardly any of our capability in our in our production to the public. So you know the update is that so far things are going well. We are wearing masks and I believe the city is kind of following us and that and the we have taken a few other steps in the office to make some changes with our level of filtration filters and our HVAC systems and some things like that as well. But I'd say right now or continue to evaluate week by week and everything is okay for now. I would like to compliment everyone at the utility for I guess doing what they have been doing well since this thing began. I think the people at the utility have done wonders with you know what they've had to do for the people we serve the companies we serve the communities we serve. I think it's very important that they understand how much we appreciate them all of them. Thank you. That's critical infrastructure and there's life essential work. Next meeting would be on a Monday, huh? Monday is the 15th. How does that look for everybody's schedule? It looks good for me. That should be fine. Okay with me. All right. I just have one quick question. Are the solar panels online or are they still waiting for the software? We're waiting for our friends at Alliant to approve the system and then we should be able to turn it on. Okay. Okay. So we're very very close. I run by there every day and I see the panels and they look very nice. I also have one other item and it's not on your agenda in any way shape or form but I think Tom you never met Ray Hain, Mark you did. With Ray passing away I think that we would be remiss as a board as a utility without complimenting Ray and and I guess just pointing out that he served the city of Sheboygan in many different capacities over the years and having him as a member of the water water commissioners was a real pleasure and definitely an asset to the water utility. Agreed. With that I guess we'll accept a motion to adjourn. Go move. I second it. And the chair says aye. Gentlemen thank you very much. Thank you guys.