 Hi Dan this is Molly. Can you hear me? Yes. Good afternoon Molly. I was just going to say a couple of little things before we started today if that's okay I know we're just about to time so I didn't know if you wanted to open up. We have all the board members on the line. I believe that board member Grable is not on the line yet. Okay. And why don't we wait a couple minutes. Sounds good. Thanks. Perhaps Lisa or Mary could text Chris and see if he's going to be joining the meeting. Or I can do it right now. Thank you. This is Lisa. He sent a response saying that he is trying so we might we might hear him in a second. I'll remind him that the number is in his email. Thank you. Hi this is Roberta who just joined please. Chris Grable. Thank you Chris. Okay I think we're all here. So Molly if you want to start off before we call the meeting to order please. Yes thank you. This is Molly McLean from the City Attorney's Office. Hello everyone. I know this is really unusual times so I thought it would be helpful just to remind everyone that even though it still feels a little bit like we're in a dark room trying to find our way this is a public meeting that has been allowed pursuant to the governor's orders relieving us from some of the obligations under the Brown Act because of the COVID-19 threat and requirement for physical distancing. We have made accommodations for public comments and those will be addressed throughout the meeting and reminding all the members that we still have all of the city protocols and requirements in place should be accessing outside information or or anything like that and I haven't hear online if there are questions. So thanks for letting me say those few things. Thank you very much. With that I'll go ahead and call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order and ask Secretary Perez to please do a roll call. Actually acting Secretary Aitha today but the roll call is as follows Chairman Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Board Member Badenfort. Board Member Bannister. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Again a reminder to all of us to please mute your phones when you're not speaking and to please also put away all cell phones and computers. A reminder that this meeting is being streamed live so board members can follow the presentation on their iPads and staff can use the BPU's web page. So with that we'll move to our only study session item 3.1 Director Burke. Thank you Chair Galvin. Our only study session today is a review of the regional system budget and Deputy Director Kimberly Zanino will be doing the presentation. Welcome Deputy Directors Zanino. Thank you and good afternoon. Can you hear me okay? Yes we can. Every year we come to you with a budget study session. Sometimes we do all of our budgets together. Today we will only be looking at the regional O&M and CIP budget and the partner contributions. We do this every year to get to the point where we have a preliminary budget available and approved for our subregional partners by May of each year so that they have the ability to use those contribution numbers in their budgeting processes. So with that please Roberta go to slide 2. This slide is just showing you what changes there are in the overall budget. As you can see there are not there's not much. We really have a flat budget overall for the entire department and the regional budget is only going up by 0.6%. Next slide number 3 Roberta. These are budget changes that we will typically show you every year. Salaries are down slightly by about 2% this year and this is just for the subregional budget. Benefits are up by 2%. Electricity we are expecting that the cost for electricity will be up by about 20 to 25%. That is due to moving to evergreen. However as far as budget goes we are actually not going to see as large of an increase on the budget side. That is due to the fact that we have for the past many years been budgeting based on what we expect to use in a wet winter and have not had a wet winter to compare actual costs to and last year we had a very wet winter. So we have the ability to take a look at what our actual electrical costs were and how much electricity we were using and so we can budget now this year based on that example. As well as receiving some additional electricity from some of the projects that you have been notified about over the year and given reports on that are generating electricity actually out at the plant. We expect that vehicle expenses will be flat and that the IT allocation is going up by about 6.5%. Slide number 4 Roberta. I'm giving you this slide which is from the wastewater fund. This shows you the revenues that we are expecting and the expenditures that we are expecting on the revenue side. The reason why I'm showing you this from the wastewater fund is because Santa Rosa's portion of the budget for the subregional system is paid for by the revenues that we received through the wastewater or in the wastewater fund. Slide number 5 Roberta. This chart is just giving you a picture of where all of the money will be expended this year. As you can see we do and I'm adding into this chart the miscellaneous revenues. We do have some revenue that comes straight into the subregional system and we remove that from the operating expenses that are distributed amongst the subregional partners. So this just shows you where all of the money is going for the entire $16 million budget for this year. Slide number 6 Roberta. We show you this chart every year. This is basically an overall look at what the regional budget is. It gives you what our total operating expenditure request is. It shows you the regional cash funding for capital improvement projects which we have been increasing year over year by a million dollars in order just to move towards more cash funding for the regional facility because the operating expenditures are going up by a little bit. That also means that we need to add a little bit of money into our additional operating reserve because that is based on a 15% of operating costs. The next is just a grouping to show you what the various reserves are for the regional system and then you can see as I pointed out on the pie chart there are revenues that come straight into the regional budget and so those are taken off of the total before we determine what the contributions will be for each of our partners. Please go to slide 7. I don't see that yet on my screen. Is my computer maybe just frozen Roberta? Are we on slide 7? We're on slide 7 here Kimberly. Okay I'm just not seeing it on my screen. So slide 7 is total allocation. This is how the funds have been allocated out to each one of our regional partners. The ONM budget is distributed by actual flows from our previous year. When we have a total total flow for each of our partners we distribute the ONM cost based on that flow. The CIP contribution which is the seven million dollars of cash funding that is going into the CIP this year that is distributed by a set amount in our agreement and it's based on capacity per partner and then debt service is all based on when debt was incurred and the debt schedule that was set at that time and so you can see here this is just the total for each one of our partners this year and you can go to slide 8 please. I wanted to update you on not necessarily the project the UV replacement project but you have had some report items on this previously giving you just updates or I think there were staff briefings giving you updates on the project itself. The project estimate for the entire project is seventy million dollars. We plan to bid this project by early 2021 and in order to bid that project and go into contract for the replacement of the UV system we will need to be obtaining some bond funding. So we have been working with our partners they know about this we have been looking at the numbers all of the agencies Santa Rosa included will be providing cash funding to bring the total amount of the bond down so that we can reduce debt service for all of us. As we move through the year and we start working on the bond with our financial advisors all of the partners will be determining exactly how much cash they can contribute to the project itself and then we will go out for bonding for what is left for the project itself. Slide number nine please. As I said before the CIP this year will be seven million dollars of cash will be going into the CIP and if you go to slide number 10 this is just giving you a picture in a visual form just letting you know what projects that money will be going into. So you can see Geysers infrastructure will be getting 2.4 million and plant infrastructure will be getting about 4.5 million and we will also be putting some money into master planning and studies for the plant. And then you can go to slide 11. So currently I'm showing you the budget schedule here this will come to you on April 16th for a recommendation to city council and then we will take this to the city council on April 28th that will be so that we can inform our partners what their portion or what their contribution for the regional budget will be so that they can use that for their planning purposes and then the current schedule right now is that budget study sessions will go May 5th and 6th and then city council will be adopting the budget on June 23rd. Obviously things could possibly change at this point but that is still the current schedule that we have in place and with that I will take any questions that any of you may have on slide number 12. Thank you Deputy Director Zanino. Board members what I'm going to do is kind of poll each of you for any questions or comments that you have regarding this item. Let's start with Vice Chair Arnone. I have no questions. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Batenfork. No questions. Thank you very much for all your work. Thank you. Board member Bannister. I am good. No questions. Thank you. Board member Grable. No questions. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Watts. No questions. I just wanted to thank staff and board member Grable and Wright for their participation on the budget subcommittee. Staff has done a phenomenal job with providing us updates and and doing it in such an efficient way as always so thank you and I know this is difficult to be reviewing budget you know in this virtual manner but thanks for providing it in such a simple way for everyone. Thank you Board member Watts and to all three of you for your work on the budget subcommittee. Board member Wright. No comments. Thank you. That's my understanding Secretary Affa that there's been no public comments received by email or by voicemail. That is correct. Okay then if there's no further questions or comments thank you Deputy Director Zanino and that'll take care of the study sessions. And I note that I skipped over item number two which is Statements of Abstention by Board Members. Are there any hearing none? The minutes are being postponed to our next meeting. We have no staff briefings. We have a Consent Calendar that has six items on it. This is Board Member Arnone. I'll move the Consent Calendar. I'll second that. Motion by Vice Chair Arnone seconded by Board Member Banister to approve the Consent Calendar. I'm going to poll each of you individually. I am an aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board Member Baden-Fort. Aye. Board Member Banister. Aye. Board Member Grable. Aye. Board Member Watts. Aye. Board Member Wright. Aye. Thank you and again I'm advised that there were no emails or voicemails received from the public with regards to this matter. Is that correct Secretary Atta? That is correct. Thank you. That'll take care of the Consent Calendar. Next item is public comments on non-agenda matters and again I don't believe we received any. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. We have no referrals. We have no written communications. Any subcommittee reports? Any Board Member reports? Director's report. Thank you Chair and thank you Board Members. I appreciate all of you working with us and participating through this new virtual process and I hope you all are safe and well. I did want to take a moment just to update the Board on two things. One, the Board may recall that a couple of Board meetings ago we let you know that due to some corrosion that the Sonoma County Water Agency found on their Russian River Katadi Aqueduct Pipeline they were needing to do an emergency repair. They started that repair towards the end of March and this last Sunday the 29th they completed that repair and we had no interruptions to water service so just wanted to let the Board know that that has been completed. It was a great job by the Water Agency to get such a big project done so very quickly so we appreciate all of their work. And then second I wanted to just provide the Board an update on what we're doing in the water department and the staff in relation to the response to the COVID and the health order that in the shelter in place. I really need to just acknowledge that I am so incredibly proud and grateful to have such a department that is so dedicated to what they do. We know that we provide a critically important function never more so than right now and I really want to thank the leadership team, the deputy directors, and others that are in the water department for their grace, dedication, support, and guidance. They have done a tremendous job supporting our staff and figuring out ways that we can provide a staffing model that allows us to provide as much protection in place for our staff to continue to provide our vital water and sewer service as well as treatment of our wastewater. At this time approximately three-quarters of our staff is working from home on the water and sewer operation side. They have developed three shifts of about 17 folks that are able to come in a week on two weeks off to try and come create as much social distancing as possible. We are also continuing to staff over the weekends as well as staff the guard check. We're continuing to meet all regulatory requirements with our water quality folks. Our treatment plant operators are continuing to come in and effective this Sunday they're going to switch to two 12-hour shifts to further reduce the number of folks that are coming in and create more social distancing. On any given day at our regional treatment system we have about 19 staff working. We also have one to two staff working in the laboratory as well as two administrative staff supporting folks critical operations for water and sewer and water quality. We have three water inspectors that are available and come in as needed to support development. We have an environmental specialist that's out in the field supporting one of our crucial sewer projects right now and our stormwater staff are available for spill response. So we've done as much as we can to really reduce down the number of staff that are coming in and again I just really want to thank the entire department and in particular the leadership team for their forethought and creative ways to really provide as much protection for staff while we keep this essential function going. So that is my report. Happy to take any questions. Thank you Director Burke and I think it goes without saying that the board is extremely proud of everything that the department is doing to get through this crisis and we wish you all the best and hopefully everybody stays healthy and safe. Are there any board member questions or comments? Mr. Chair, this is Bill Arnony. I just wanted to express my appreciation for the quality of the board packet for this meeting. We had a lot of things on the consent calendar and it was important that we find out what was behind those things and I think the quality was excellent given the circumstances. So I just wanted to express my appreciation for a complete board packet that made today's meeting much easier. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? Yeah this is board member Grable. I would also like to just say how grateful I am and being and having folks in public service right now that this level of commitment and dedication is. I mean we're just all at their mercy and I'm very grateful. We've been getting a lot of feedback that Sonoma County and Santa Rosa has really some of the best approaches to these things currently partly because we've been through so much in such a short amount of time I think. I did want to just ask about scenarios and planning regarding our low income rate payers and going forward I know we're not we're not shutting off water and I know we have you know some plans in place but you know in the event that this goes on for you know six months or more which you know some of the modeling says we're you know the the surges and then the the easing up and the in the shelter in place guidelines etc it could be you know quite a long time and I was just curious to know what we had in place to try to figure out how to manage that from from the perspective of rate payers that are obviously not making any money right now but and their water won't be shut off but they're still accruing you know they could be accruing substantial debt especially since they're spending more time at home and probably using more more water than they would normally so what's our what's our scenario planning regarding that. Well and if I may this is Molly I know that we all appreciate the question and I and I want to give the director an opportunity to briefly respond but it is not an agenda item so that that may be something that we'll have to delve into more deeply in the future so maybe just a something brief at the moment would be appropriate thanks. Yes thank you board member Grable and thank you assistant city attorney McLean yes we do recognize that this is an issue and a concern we have as you noted suspended shutoffs at this time we've also reestablished service for folks that might have been shutoff prior to this shelter in place going being put in place we're looking at other options and as was noted we'll put this on a future agenda to provide additional information to the board on what we're doing in response to this. Okay I appreciate that I guess more more than anything I just would hope that we can plan for the absolute worst case scenario in the longest terms possible just just looking at the modeling and the data it seems like we may be faced with some fairly challenging worst-case scenarios just in terms of timeline so I guess my my question is more of a you know I hope we're planning for the worst and and knowing that this could be a real a real long road but thank you. Yes I understood and I think we are we are starting to have those discussions about implications and next steps and so we will plan to bring that back to the board at a future meeting. So yeah hear you very clearly thank you. Thank you I really appreciate it. Thank you any other board member questions or comments for the director? This is David board member Bannister just a quick question about flows since all of this started water and wastewater usage and also the storage situation. So yes I can briefly respond so we actually have looked at this time to see if we've seen any increase on the water demand side or the wastewater flow side we have not so that we're not really seeing any difference I think the the usage is just shifting from where it used to be to people being at home we also know commercial businesses which is a pretty big chunk of use is also pretty reduced down at this point in time too. In terms of recycled water storage we actually and again Molly please let me know if I'm going too far but we are back within and underneath our sort of average storage curve at this time so we're in really good shape in our recycled water storage. Thank you any other questions or comments all right if not we will adjourn the meeting please all be safe healthy follow our guidelines and we will see you online or on the phone in a couple weeks we're adjourned thank you all