 I'm Royce Shannon. I'm the Operations Manager for Columbia. Mr. Mayor and Council, thank you for this opportunity to present our vegetative management process. I apologize for our technology problems. Hopefully you'll be able to follow along. And if not, hopefully my description will help to understand exactly what we want to present. So one of the first questions that we have was why we trail. Well that ties directly into our priorities as a company. And our number one priority is safety. The safety of our customers and the safety of our employees and the safety of the public. Our maintenance programs, including our vegetative management is part of what helps us to run a safe electric distribution system. Another priority is reliability and the resiliency of our system and that ties directly to customer service. That reliability is directly affected by our maintenance program, which includes our vegetative management. Another question that we were asked to discuss was what gives us the authority to trim on our system. We have their state requirements, their statutes, state law that requires us to run our system in such a way that provides safe, adequate and sufficient service. And part of what we have to do in order to provide that safe, reliable electricity is to perform various maintenance activities, including vegetative management and line clearing of our system. We also have the general terms and conditions that all of our customers agree to when they accept service from the utility, which provide for us the rights to there's the slide search. So I would be this would be on slide number four. Okay, thank you. Without reading our general terms and conditions what it provides us for is the right to maintain our system to provide safe and adequate service to our customers, as well as other customers served by those facilities that are on our property owners on our customers property, as well as on state and municipal right of ways. And along that, with the maintenance of that system goes the line clearing and vegetative management program. On the next slide. You'll see what goes into part of what we achieve by doing this process so part of one of our priorities as I mentioned before, was to provide customer service and part of that customer service is a reliable system. We are, we are mandated to provide reliable electric service. And this chart shows one of the metrics that we use to measure our reliability. And as you can see, over the past 20 years, one of those metrics has improved that safety number what that means is the average number of minutes that a customer that your average customer has been out during a year. And so over the past 20 years we've improved from 146 minutes to 91 minutes now that's your average customer. Certainly there are some customers who have experienced different things both better and in some cases worse. So that's one of the ways we measure how well we're able to provide reliability to our customers. On the following slide, we go into some of the ways we communicate with the customers and with the community. And one of the things that we do is we meet with city staff at the end of each year, and we review all upcoming tree trimming line clearing programs that we have. And in which neighborhoods we're going to be performing those activities and in which neighborhoods we're going to be performing major construction. In the January of the following year, the city city staff will host a public meeting, invite all the neighbors that are affected by those activities. We will attend those meetings and speak with any customers, any residents who have any concerns who attend the meeting. We also will send postcards and emails to property owners weeks prior to beginning work and we'll meet with those customers. Any customer who wants to discuss an issue, when they contact us, we will go with them at their request to their property to talk about any issue they have related to either our construction process or our line clearing program. And we meet with those customers every single day, including today, or most of the day leading up to this meeting. And we communicate, we have an ongoing process where our foresters and our operations personnel are communicating with city staff about both of those activities, but especially about our line clearing program. And we will communicate both with city staff and again back to customers and make sure both parties are aware of any issues along the way. The following slide kind of highlights a couple of points, reiterate some points. Again, we safeguard our system and what we mean by safeguarding is both to make it resilient so that we can provide reliable service, but also make it safe for both us, our employees, and the public. We have to do that to provide reliable service. It gives us the ability to provide for faster restoration during outages, including storms, increase the safety for employees and the general public. We follow industry standards for the health of the tree. Now that's one of the things that was asked about as well. Why do we follow ANSI standards? We follow ANSI A300 standards. Those promote the directional pruning methods to minimize pruning stress, focus on the tree health while obtaining necessary clearance from power lines. One of the reasons we follow those ANSI standards is because we're obligated to through an agreement that we have with the city of Columbia that was signed in 2011. There's also yet another that agreement that we had in 2011 is another reason we're able to trim the trees, to prune the trees, to perform our line clearing activities. The following slide shows our tree trimming clearance, and while it probably would take too long to go into all aspects of those clearances, you can review those as necessary. Those are the standards that we utilize, and it goes to the fact that we do have a particular standard that we're trying to achieve, that we're trying to make sure that we provide for adequate clearances from our power lines, again to promote safety, again to promote reliability. And we have a standard that we go by on a uniform basis across our service territory. The final slide on the presentation, which is the next one. It shows a tree and this tree has actually come up in some of the emails that we've seen. The point of this was, I think in some places we saw that that Dominion Energy after they had acquired SCANA or SEMG had changed the tree trimming, the pruning, the line clearing practices to a greater clearance standard and that's not the case. That tree, it was trimmed in 2016 and was trimmed again in 2021. And as you can see, the same limbs are clear. We've cleared to the same extent in both pictures. So the clearance requirements have not changed. We're still following the ANSI A300 standard, and nothing's changed there. There were a few additional questions, I believe there was a question about undergrounding lines. And that is certainly, certainly an option. And we have worked with city staff and actually the city of Columbia has taken a very proactive approach to undergrounding power lines within the city limits. As a matter of fact, they've done a much more undergrounding of power lines than any other municipality in our territory, including you're probably familiar with some of the projects North Main Street, Dervais Street, Lady Street, the five five points area, probably about 15 years ago, and then more recently, Washington Street, they've just been a very proactive approach in areas that in my opinion, achieve the largest amount of benefit for the most people get the most amount of benefit out of all of the efforts that the city has put in to take advantage of our non standard service fund and use those funds to put lines underground. So in my opinion, the city has taken great advantage of that opportunity, and it's still out there and we certainly consider continuing to partner with the city on that. The question came up about utilizing herbicides in backyards. We do utilize those and the intent there is to spray low line vegetation with the with the intent of not having to come back and perform line clearing up activities in the future to limit the amount of time and amount of impact to our customers and to again just promote the clearances that we require and make sure that we're going to be able to maintain those rights of way to provide safe reliable service because that's what it's all about. And that that concludes our planned presentation. And I thank you for your time for the opportunity to present this and thank you for everything you do in our community. Mayor, I had a couple questions. Mr. Mr. Brandon then Mr. McDowell. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Shannon I appreciate your team, putting this presentation together at our request I am. And I guess the main is not too new to the air, but pretty new. And so, as you take over the cng. I guess role for our energy provider. We'd love to see a new approach to how you do maintenance of our, of our wonderful tree canopy and Google search. We'll pull up that think we're 41 years Howard 42 years in a row of tree city USA. Okay, there you go. And all the other components that are in place for us to meet that expectation or residents want every year for our healthy tree canopy. And the fourth one is urban forestry management maintaining a tree board for department, having a community tree ordinance. And the fourth one is dollar capita for urban forestry. I want to point out the sound urban forestry management is very important and to take that to another layer. We at the city for your department can only do so much if we don't have a good partner that goes the extra miles and my hope is that now that dominion is our energy provider. You will continue to go that extra mile for us. We have also Google search some of your operations with municipalities in Virginia have seen the give and take how you work with municipalities up there, when it comes to the cutting of their, their, their treasure trees. You know, we have some very old trees in our old neighborhoods throughout the city where we're very lucky to have that so so carrying that approach forward is something that I would like city staff to work with y'all on. You mentioned 2011 was our last agreement with you I know we have an agreement being negotiated now with you on a future energy use with y'all and rates. So, to ask city staff to please take in mind moving forward, the wonderful points that the residents from all over the city of Columbia, made to how we could do a better job at maintaining our tree canopy when it comes to this important maintenance of our power lines but don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of being connected to the credit and not getting offline but the give and take is what we're looking for here and I'm sure that john might have provided you with the wonderful ideas approaches that our residents have put forward that we hope you consider when it comes to our rate negotiation with you. Instead of five years, why don't we cut that timeline down to one or two years, when it comes to special older age trees, and of course, undergrounding lines and special areas with special tree canopies is something we would like to talk to you about. Thank you so much, residents for some great ideas that we hope staff brings to you that they will bring to you as we talk about our new purchase agreement with you. Mr. McDowell. Yes john let me just say a word of thanks to all of all of what you've done to you guys and the whole team of course, you've availed yourself and making sure our trees are manicure. No question, because I think what I've seen in the area that I serve are trees that have been for lack of a better word butcher. We talk about safety issues. And of course, you maintain the lines and you make sure that those safety issues are are applied. I had our tree person from syrup to come and visit two sites, three sites actually, particularly the one on the one on forest drive where you have a large branch, and I'm not just exaggerating a large branch. Three branches actually on forest drive that could potentially become a hazard, a safety issue. You have trees in the lion street community. And of course Sarah has seen those trees, and it's regrettable that the manicure and the ghost trees were done in such a way that you've got large, huge limbs hanging over the street. I think that's make padding street. But it's really, it looks dangerous. So it's not what you all have done because I think you all have done a good job, but in some areas, those trees in my estimation have been butchered. And I need to understand why and how those majestic trees and the limbs hanging over the tree over the street that could supposedly purposely cause a real hazard. If something were to hit those. Yes, sir, Councilman now, we would, I can't speak to those particular trees because I'm not familiar with exactly the ones you're talking about. But we will certainly be happy to meet with city staff to address any tree issues as we always are, and, and get an answer. If there's anything that we can do to help ameliorate any safety issue with that, then then certainly we'll take that into consideration and see what we can do to help and absolutely get an answer back to you as quickly as possible. Please do. I spoke with Sarah. Actually, I met with Sarah. It's almost been a month ago. And of course, her intent was to be in touch with you all, because the president of the lion street community has also complained. I don't know whether or not they complained to Dominion, but chase told up who's a new president, a new president, a president elect, called it to my attention. The trees on Forest Drive represents that that that breezeway with three trees huge trees are hanging on side of the road, not inside of the road in the street, which could possibly pose a real. So please, I would ask that you be in touch with Sarah Sarah has seen this. And of course, we need to understand if something could be realistically done. To trim those trees back so that it does not pose a pedestrian or a vehicular accident. Absolutely. We'll reach out to Sarah and make sure we understand the situation and the location and the trees involved. Thank you, sir. The other questions are coming Mr. Duval and Mr. Rick. John and Royce, thank you all for coming. And I suck at what Councilor McDowell said. I think one of ways that Dominion could help us is to educate the tree cutters, not just to go 20 feet, but you might need to go 18 feet sometime to get to a place on the tree where is legitimate to cut or might need to go 22 feet to make it cut. What I see out there are just people that are told cut these things 20 feet back from the transmission line, and it doesn't matter where that 20 foot falls, you're going to cut it. Sometimes you see it's a legitimate cut at a joint on the tree, but a lot of times you see a massive trunk, a 10 foot, you know, 10 inch. Just cut off at the 20 foot level. If they would have a little bit more common sense to know that the public's watching and do sensible cuts, it would help a lot. The other thing I wish you would explain to the citizens of the City of Columbia is how little authority the City of Columbia has over the operations of Dominion and your ability to cut. Do we have anything in our arsenal other than telling John how nice he is all the time and asking him to help us when we need to? Well, I'll let John comment on how much he wants to be praised and if you have any other things in your arsenal beyond that. But I will say that to your first comments where we have made errors and certainly, you know, I know that we're not always going to, we're not going to have zero mistakes. When we make errors, we certainly meet with city staff to make sure those cuts are achieved and that is the intent. That is the standard, which is that we cut back to leaders. We cut to a certain distance, but that we make proper cuts, which it does exactly the way you described it, Councilman Duvall, which would be to cut back beyond that 20 feet or that 10 feet in certain situations to make a proper cut to promote both the health of the tree, as well as the directional growing to limit the pruning in the future. So that's the intent. That's the specification. That's what we're going to continue to do. But if we fail to do that, then we want to meet with the city of Columbia. We want to meet with city staff and rectify the situation to what extent it can be and not do it in the future. So we want to be called out on this issue. Walk down Park Street and walk down Pendleton Street and walk down Forest Drive and look. Yes, sir. I believe the area on Park Street between Lady and Jervay might be what you're referring to. So those trees were cut directly underneath transmission power lines that falls outside of my scope as being the distribution operator in Columbia. And it falls under first jurisdiction. It falls outside of the city of Columbia tree agreement that we have. We have to handle those transmission lines in a different manner due to federal jurisdiction over maintaining the transmission grid. And the same thing happened there on Pendleton Street, which was referenced in many of the emails, which is getting somewhat confused with our line clearing program, which is what we have a tree agreement with the city of Columbia. Councilman McDowell, this is John Cadena, just to kind of reiterate your comment. Yes, we are governed by Park on a lot of the tree trimming issues. We're also governed by the South Carolina Public Service Commission. So you're correct in saying that the the city doesn't have regulatory authority over the tree trimmer. Mr. Rick. But first of all, I want to thank everybody for getting on and echo some of Will's comments. I think the other thing, you know, as we're moving forward on a franchise agreement, I do think that we have the ability to put in there a process about training on the tree trimming and also putting a process about where lines are going and how it's been maintained. I do think that is in our purview to put our own type of regulatory system based on our franchise agreement. That's something we may need to work out because there needs to be a balance as we all know because the one thing we don't want to do is create an opportunity where we don't have power for our residents but the same time we don't want to see what we've seen lately. And a lot of that has to do with who the tree trimmer is, the training and the requirements and their contract should reflect those that are ours. We have an opportunity to work with Dominion on that and I hope we will as we move forward. If I could kind of address couple of those comments. The 2011 tree trimming agreement does have training requirements. So, you know, we do train our tree tremors. The city also communicates with our tree tremors. Some of those issues I received an email earlier today. Some of those issues are actually already addressed in the tree trimming agreement to include the trimming more frequently. That is already addressed in the tree trimming agreement. Absolutely we're willing to sit down and and talk with y'all further. And Mr. McDowell you about to say something before Daniel. Thank you very much. John, look, I'm appreciative for all you do in terms of tree trimming my, my reservation is simply this. I think in collaboration with with Sarah, our person who looks at our trees and the, and the, and the chemical and the canopy that's there. There needs to be some collaboration on how those trees are trim. The appearance of those things and the possible safety issues when you've got large branches hanging over the tree, which could very well pose a real problem, if something were to happen. And this, and those trees are not. I mean, they are not impeding lives. They are just hanging over the street. So I think an observation of those trees could very well benefit this conversation in terms of the training of tree tremors and that sort of thing. Thank you. Thank you guys and the team. We can always I'm sorry, Ms. Divine, please. Just one thing. And this might be more for Erica. This is a long meeting for somebody to watch the whole thing I wonder if we can take this presentation and cut it out and we can provide that on our station, or on our YouTube and then I was wondering if John and Royce and maybe they could do. I think that there's a lot of angst about what happens with the tree trimming and I think to be able to provide as much data I know you say you have the meetings and you email out but until it happens and in your neighborhood. People are probably not paying attention to come into those meetings so I think if we can just push for more transparency and information to the public that will be helpful. Absolutely, we'll do that and just to let you know we do have videos on our website we can make sure that the city has access to those who can put them on their website. It describes the entire process of line clearing, and I think would be very helpful so we'd be glad to do that. Yeah. And I'll start at least as watching but we'll make sure that we all connect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I think everyone understands the importance of having an efficient safe system and reliable system obviously is is paramount. We just know that the ability sometimes ensure a beautiful and robust and safe and environment that allows us cool these famously high streets in the summer and maintain the integrity of our neighborhoods is so important so I think what you hear and the current from council is obviously. Let's have as much as much as we can from the public side and the private side. We can put some information on our website on channel to insert the question about social media channels so that people are aware, but let's just make sure we also have some serious synchronicity. And the dialogue with our forestry and beautification staff that does really good work to make sure john, you guys make sure that we're doing everything we can to avoid the situations that can be avoided when they can. And I know we all work hard. We can always do better. Let's let's see if we can all do better and certainly I agree with with Daniel know this obviously is as we work our way through the franchise agreement we don't get we don't even buy it at Apple Air all the time. There are a whole lot of major issues and including some months I know that staff has already been talking to you guys about that we look forward to resolving that will benefit the city for a long time so thank you guys let's. Let's let's find ways to push this out as much as possible as many citizens as possible really appreciate your time today. Thanks for your time there. Be well.