 My computer says it's 3.30, so we'll consider that official. Everybody will stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to each other, flag, United States of America, the Republic of America, and one nation. Oh, my God. Liberty and justice. Right. I don't know if I'm the only one who has a flag outside my window here across the street so I can stand in my back and look at the flag. All right, with that, we need a motion to approve the minutes of our August 17th meeting. So. I second it. Second, all in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Report financial reports for August you see we actually quarterly billing was up about $4,000 from last year. So that shows a nice recovery. We lost a little bit on the commercial sector, but we offset that with residential growth. I should note that does not include the rate increase. So that's, that's a real increase in usage that we're seeing compared to last year at this time and at the end of August. Even industrial being just about the same. Yeah. No, so we're pretty happy with that result all in all here. Immulatively for the year we're still about $474,000 below where we were last year in terms of billing for 2020. And again, a lot of that is due to this down turn earlier March, April, May in particular. I doubt we're going to turn much of that around. We will as of October 1st have a rate increase in effect and that will reduce that number a little bit for the remainder of the year. Otherwise the cash reserve is about where we anticipated and didn't see anything else unusual to note. Our return on rate basis is still positive. We're still looking just under 2%. So any other questions any comments gentlemen. Then for me. There's a motion to prove the financial reports as presented. So. I second it. All in favor say aye. All right. There you go. I'll start with the operations department. And as we, we could see in the billing for August, we pumped about 2% more water than August of last year. I don't have a lot of to note water quality coming into the plant was pretty comparable to August of last year. The water temperature about 53 degrees coming in. No major changes and operations for August terms of maintenance and ongoing work. We had a lot of it as usual. You know, we do a lot of checks heading heading into the winter season, especially on the remote pumping stations. We're doing that maintenance on our backup generator in the plant. We do most of that in house. We have one gentleman who was is a trained mechanic auto mechanic. So he brings a lot of expertise to our generator and motor diagnoses when those come up. It's just a wide variety of maintenance work done on the plant. Thank for distribution. It's been a busy month as well. A number of water main projects done by contractors where we were doing the inspection and documentation work. Healy Avenue in particular. Maryland, Illinois and South 11th as well to Avenue stand pipe style water tower was taken out of service drained. And it now is being stripped and repainted. We're focusing on the exterior because they were worried about colder weather. And they're soon going to, while they're going to try to finish that because on the interior, they can use heaters and such if the weather does get cold. We posted some photos and got a lot of it. Got some attention on that because they're using a robotic system to strip. And even have just shipping it. They have a vacuum that sucks away the debris. And then they also have a very quick way of priming that the bare metal. So my understanding is the bare metal out there is not standing bear for much more than 30 minutes before they're putting a primer on to it. And so far we've had no kind of, you know, neighborhood complaints about debris or dust or primer being blown anywhere at all is going, going very, very well. And I think the safety aspect is important because they don't have a person up there, you know, blasting and doing such it's really just being controlled from robotic unit. So that's been going very well. That tank when completed will look like the other ones it'll be the famous purple haze color, which is more like a dark blue. No logo on that it will just be the paint. And just kind of in perspective it's about a 20 year lifetime project so I think the way it's going. I'm quite confident we're going to get 20 years out of this job. The last time that stand pipe was taken there were some issues with priming adherence and it actually had to be redone and fairly short amount of time so we're hoping to avoid that. Number of lead services that were removed. Those were in addition to the Geely Avenue project. And some maintenance out in the field, no water main breaks for August. It's fairly typical that we don't see any in the warm months. And on the chart you can see a number of new street vows that we have for were removed as well a number of new fire hydrants. That were removed. And we had about 1200 feet of new water main go in the ground for August. That's pretty much the extent of distribution and let's just questions on that. I just one question Joe. I think it was last month, maybe the month before I asked about North Avenue just east of 31st Street. There was some work in the media in there. And one of the one of the people that drives there every day hadn't made a comment about the fact that it looked like it was half completed. And I go by there the other about a week week in capital and still looks like there isn't a curve there. If it was it was just some stuff that was kind of dumped there to make up a curve. Eastbound Lane, just north of 31st or just east of 31st Street on North Avenue. East of 31st on North Avenue. Okay. We'll check it out Jerry off top of my head I don't know the status up there. And then one other question I had as far as the property bought out. Behind Donald's and that stuff and just the mall near Burkart, not Burkart, but Brandmire Ford. I was doing anything with that. I noticed a bunch of gravel or stone had been dumped on the entryway there. Is that just for our trucks to get in and keep people off? Yeah, we put down some breaker run earlier this year. And our goal is to get a driveway in there this season or early next season. And then we're planning to store some road gravel and sand and material like that kind of a we put a dive in then a little bit of a bend around so you can't really see it from the road. But we're hoping to store trash materials out there. When we do have main brakes and such that we don't necessarily have to come back here for sand and gravel and stuff like that. Okay. Thanks. And moving into customer relations and fiscal you see kind of a continuing trend of fewer people at our payment window. That's when somebody's coming inside and paying to a utility staff member. So that's about cut in half from last year. More Dropbox payments. Some more electronic payments. So we're kind of seeing that ongoing trend. Fewer calls coming in. Still quite a few account transfers. Those are usually, you know, people moving in and out of places, apartments, homes, those kind of things. We're still in the cessation of our disconnection program for the state. We're not disconnecting water service. That does have an impact on collections, but you can see we're not doing too bad. We build about a million dollars. And we've got 91,000 outstanding at the end of the month. That's not, that's not horrible. That's only the water that doesn't include the sewer and all the other charges about that. That's only water. Yes. Connection inspections have picked up. These are again are done by our vendor out in the field. Three leak allowances. And then you'll see we're starting to get a little more active with replacing water meters. Social media. We had about 2,500 visitors to the website for August. And I think the other big note is that the we did implement the mobile work order system. So our service techs or or meters shop staff can now. I'm sorry, the service. The support specialist in the office can now create a work order and electronically send it to the service tech in the field. In the past, this was almost all done with slips of paper. Now they can enter it into their computer to the cloud and the service tech can access it in the field. They get their work orders by by a phone and then they can complete the work and upload the data directly to the billing software. So that actually is a huge step forward for us. It's been in planning for a while and in August, they were able to implement that. There's more to come to build on the capability, but it really is. Just one more step to the efficiency of staff working out in the field and getting away from notes and phone calls and, you know, information by paper. Also in August, we really implemented the the module to track our lead service line replacement loan program. You know that now is a whole new activity that we've added in house. And have implemented where we're now initiating and administering and tracking loans for lead service line replacement. So that's another big, big additional piece of work that we're doing. That's about my summary for August. Once there are questions. Any questions, gentlemen? Not for me. No or for me. All right. If not, we'll take a motion to approve those reports, the superintendent's report. All second. All in favor say aye. Aye. They're both. All right. Moving on to all our improvements. No update on that project. Yeah, I have a couple of things to report. We've had a lengthy preliminary design process and at the end, the engineers came up with a engineer's best opinion of construction cost. And the figure that came out of that process was $44 million. And that figure was well above our goal of about $29 million. Yep. So we're now revisiting the, the plan set. And I should say that figure includes a 25% contingency right off the bat, you know, which is $11 million. So that there's quite a lot there on the table, but the figure is still higher than we, you know, need to be at once a year. So we've had a number of follow-up meetings. One element that we're going to have to give up is a second or emergency intake to go along with the primary. That's about a $4 to $5 million add-on and we just can't afford that. So we're, we've now focused back on a very good primary intake, one intake pipeline. The means to add a second one in the future, but not under this construction. And then we would still have everything currently in service as backup. So I think that's a reasonable position to be in and when all the numbers shake out. That was a pretty clear piece that we would have to drop right off the bat. That is a lot of cost. There's other elements we've reduced the building size, you know, one of the things in the process, we got a lot of input and we added a lot of things and tried to kind of come to a, what we really wanted. And I think that's appropriate, but now we're trailing back to what do we want and what can we afford and where do those intersect? So we're having to cut out things that, you know, would have been nice, like a, like a restroom in the facility and, and a bit more workspace and a few more amenities. So we're trimming the building size down. Reducing some of those amenities. We had located it closer to the existing facility, but that meant relocating a, an 84 inch storm sewer. And now we're backing off of that location. Save the cost of relocating that large storm sewer. You know, we're adding a little more distance, but I'm, I'm confident that cost is going to be a lot less than rerouting that storm sewer. So we're looking at a lot of cuts in, in, you know, the first pass that a cost estimate for the actual project. And I'm confident we'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. We'll get it. I don't want to say I can guarantee that at this point. I think. It's important to remember that the 29 million came out of more of a financial assessment of what. We thought would be. I know you're talking about some. We're looking for options. And I think those are still valid. You know, but as we kind of. Come to a final. Project. You know, we may have to adjust that a little bit. Here and there. It's only started until you did these projects. You don't know what the actual price is going to be either. Engineers always try to be conservative. But the reality is that the first cost estimate came out much higher than our target and we're now revising, trimming, cutting to get closer to the target. And our goal now is for the October board meeting to have a presentation from the engineers to reflect all of that in a little more of a final determination of where we are at. One element as well in that is shoreline protection. And as we've seen higher lake levels and more concern about that, we had a figure in there of two to three million dollars just for shoreline protection. And that's an element where Mayor Van Esdien has been interested because as part of the Great Lakes Initiative, he's become more familiar with the FEMA BRIC infrastructure program. And they have a particularly interest in preventing shoreline erosion. So we've had some discussions with the people involved with the FEMA BRIC program and whether our shoreline protection for the raw water project might qualify. If it does, the grants pay up to 75 percent of the project cost. So there again, if we're looking at two to three million dollars in shoreline protection and a grant of up to 75 percent, that's a significant cost cut as well. Of course, they don't hand out these grants willy-nilly. There's the lengthy process to go through risk benefit analysis and things like that that we're looking at. Another element that we pulled out, we really feel that bidding the pipeline installation and in the lakebed ought to be bid separately from the overall project. And I think when we looked at that, we felt that a general contractor would just tag on a markup on the pipeline installation and just sub that out anyway. And we feel that's big enough and there are enough big pipeline laying firms that we can really bid that part separate from the site work and the pump station and the mechanicals on land. So we've all on the team looked at the project, proposed cuts, proposed ways to trim it down, and the engineer has done that as well. And again, my hope is that for October, we'll have the results of that and we'll have a figure that's much reduced from 44 million, how low it will be. I don't know, but it will be closer to a more realistic figure for the project. And I think as far as the funding, we are the utility accountant has been taking a first pass that the DNR Safe Drinking Water Loan Intent to Apply form or application. She's looked at that, the operations supervisor, and I have looked at that. And by the end of October, that has to be submitted to qualify for funding more than a year out. That process is underway. And again, we want realistic cost figures to put into that so that it's not, you know, way off of a final project. So that's my summary. You know, the financing aspects are being pursued. Preliminary design is being reviewed again to cut costs. And we're moving forward. Either of you gentlemen have any questions? I don't. Moving on. Here we have a developer Werner Holmes. They've owned some land on the south side for quite a while. And they're now ready to go forward with a subdivision addition or beginning of a subdivision. There are multiple additions later, I believe. When there is new development, there are really two options for paying for the water infrastructure. One is to assess the properties. And then we bid out the projects and have it installed by a contractor and assess the benefiting properties and go through that. Or else the developer can install the infrastructure on their own and pay for it themselves directly under a development agreement. And Werner has proposed to do that instead of assessment. The development agreement includes every aspect of water infrastructure, sewer, roads and everything. So the signatories are the utility, the city and the developer. And I guess for our part, it's basically just saying that the developer is going to install water main, you know, where we want it. And besides we want it and for our design and inspection and specs. The only other aspect is that we might want a larger main going through the subdivision to be more of a transmission main from east to west in that area. And under local ordinance, if we want a water main larger than eight inches, then the utility has to pay an up charge for that. So this language saying that if we want, for example, 12 inch water main, they have to bid out the project at the eight inch and the 12 inch. And the water utility would then pay the difference for 12 inch water main if that's what we want. So that is clarified in the agreement. And I should say the agreement was mostly drafted by the city attorney. We sought input from us and myself and I sought input from our distribution department. So I believe the agreement is in conjunction with all water utility rules and regs and and I would ask for authority at the appropriate time to sign and execute the agreement. So it's not asking, they're not asking us to sign it immediately? No, but it's coming. I believe it's going to council later tonight and it will be in fairly short order. Okay. And you're thinking that we will want to turn it on up, up side that that mean, at least part of it. Yes. And that's because of the expansion to the south. We have a very large main and highway okay. And we want to be able to move water towards the east. And eventually heading towards that south east area in the future. Okay. I would make a motion to give the authority to the superintendent to execute execute the stonebook crossing development agreement. Sounds reasonable to me. I'll second it. Any further discussion? Nope. None. All favor say aye. Aye. I'm sure both sides. Joe, looking at the legal description, this doesn't help me picture exactly where it is. Where was this property? See 64 acres? Yeah, it's the east of highway okay south of Wheaton Creek Creek Road. Let me see. I'm just bringing up my own map here a little bit better. It's in the north of the Wilson Mutual Insurance Company. Yeah, it's in that area. It's between Stahl Road and Wheaton Creek Road. So it's actually pretty close to the new industrial park. It is. Yeah, it's adjacent to that. Okay. Okay. I can picture it now. Thank you. Did we take a vote? We did. Okay. Moving on. Proof of annual intake, diving and cleaning. Every year we inspect and clean the zebra mussels off our intake pipelines off the entrance at the end of the pipelines. It's pretty much a manual process of using an underwater jet and scraping them off. We do like to visually check the intakes that they're not shifting, moving, anything like that, damaged or anything has gotten onto them. See this year we have three proposals for the work. In recent years, underwater construction has done the diving. They've been very good to work with very professional diving firm. And you can see they're quite a lot less cost than the other two that provided quotes at this time. That's almost makes you wonder what the other companies were bidding on. Yeah. The UCC is a good company. We work with them at three different power plants on the Great Lakes that I worked at. And they always provide a good service. And we've used them in the past. So I would proceed as suggested work with UCC. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Nope. I assume that's what you wanted, right, Joe? That's the recommendation. Yes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Interval say aye. All right. Moving on, we have the purchase meters for meeting. Yes, we have under the Homeland Security Act hospitals must have two connections to water systems. And due to the location of the new hospital in Kohler. They are both wholesale connections to our system and they need a meter at those connections. So we had sized out their the requirements to meet their flow capacity and such and it came out to be an eight inch meter. Mostly to meet fire flows if they were to have a fire situation. So we need to purchase under the wholesale agreements. The utility provides the meter and the wholesale customer provides everything else. The cost of the meter does end up going back on the wholesale customer in our rate structure. Eventually that's how the cost is recovered. But we would like to install purchase that meter now as as they're ready to install it. And some equipment that would go along with it. And then we also have some three inch meters for stock purchase. And some M 25 standard five eighths since meters for stock now that we're starting to install some some meters. We're talking a little over $30,000. Yes. I would move to approve. Second that. Any discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye aye. Terrible time. All right Joe. Moving on. Any PSC code changes? I have none. All right. We need a motion to approve the vouchers. Did we sign those? The ones that yes they were all sent to you including some ones that we hadn't signed in the earlier months. Okay. I move that we accept the vouchers as before as presented. I second it. All in favor say aye. Aye aye. Terrible time. Personnel review plans regarding our COVID-19 risk reduction. Well that's ongoing and I think as I mentioned last month we're having more situations where a staff member might have been in contact with someone who tested positive or a family member might have been in contact. We're trying to respond to those in a uniform way. If it's a first-hand contact, you know, like a husband and say that a family member had tested positive, we consider that a first point of contact and we're still using a quarantine period in those cases. If it's a second-hand contact, you know, a family member themselves was in contact with somebody who tested positive. That would be more a second-hand contact and there were being cautious but we're not. We're trying to look at the whole situation, you know, were people wearing masks, how long was it and things like that. We're handling those a little more case by case. But we have seen in the last month several first contacts and fortunately we have not yet had any utility staff members test positive. But we've had quarantine so. Yeah and if we do have that first contact we encourage them to get a COVID test at Prevea. They don't have to, it's up to them. That can just tell us a little more information. Sometimes. Well we still don't really know because it's that 14-day incubation period. So we're pretty strong if they had a contact with first contact with somebody who tested positive, we go from the point of contact 14 days and we're pretty much holding to that. Regardless of if their COVID test comes negative themselves. But we haven't had an employee, a direct employee test positive. No. Okay. And otherwise we're, you know, just maintaining our current systems and I think we're in good position to not have a lot of people go down if it were to affect a staff member. Because we're still alternating who's in at what time or what days and things like that. We're doing that in the office primarily. The other departments have less remote work capability and we're pretty much back to operating those departments more normally in terms of staffing. We have no problem as far as equipment. The PPEs at all? No, we're pretty well stocked. A few city departments have been looking at buying these either ultraviolet or kind of spray misting disinfectant units. But we, I don't really think we have a need for those, but we do have plenty of masks and other protective equipment and we're encouraging, you know, our policy is to be wearing those. And I, I observe that people are wearing them. And I think our staff response has been been very strong and trying to reflect the utilities role as a public health entity as well. Good. All right. Any other questions for Joe on that topic? No, sir. Nope. All right. Next meeting. According to my calendar, we're looking at what October 19th. That's good with everybody else. Yes, sir. What was that time? Works for me. Okay. Okay. It should be fine for me. All right. Next meeting October 19th. Next on the agenda is a motion to adjourn. So moved. I second it. And sure. Thank you. Good luck. Thanks. You're a very good addition to the board here. Your thought process. And you as well, Joe. You with your family. Yep. Yep. Thank you. Thanks. With that, I guess we're done.