 Hi chair Galvin, do you want to do a camera check briefly? Hi chair Galvin, do you want to do a brief camera and audio check? Sure. Okay, I heard you and I see you. Okay, dope. Great. Thank you. And I see you board member Walsh. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's nice to hear you. Looks like we're just waiting for board member Grable, is that correct? Secretary Manus? That is correct. Okay. And he's just now being promoted. Chair Galvin, we are also just waiting for our city attorney to enter council chamber. Thank you. We'll hold off. Looks like we're ready, Secretary Manus. Chair Galvin, we are still waiting for our city attorney to enter council chamber. Oh, I thought I saw him sit down. I'm sorry. That was our assistant city manager, Jason Knutt. He's sitting in a different spot because he's a presenter. Chair Galvin, while we're waiting and I sent an email before him, but I'm under the weather and I have a doctor's appointment at 2.15 so I will have to log off a little bit early from the meeting so I apologize ahead of time. No apology necessary, Mary. Hope you feel better. Okay, Chair Galvin, just to let you know, the city attorney, bigger staff is now in council chamber. All right. We'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please. Thank you. Board member Wright. Here. Board member Watts. Here. Board member Walsh. Here. Board member Grable. Here. Board member Batenfort. Here. Vice Chair Noni. Here. Chair Galvin. Here. Let the record show that all members of the Board of Public Utility are present. Thank you and just a reminder to the board members to please mute your phones and microphones when you're not speaking and to put away all your cell phones and personal computers and try and keep your video on. I also want to announce that item 8.1, which was a public hearing to adopt new miscellaneous fees and increasing certain miscellaneous fees is being continued to the December 15th, 2022 regular meeting. So we will not be holding a public hearing today. Next is statements of abstentions by board members. Do we have any? We have no study session. We have the minutes from the November 3rd meeting. So I'll open it up for public comment on item number 4.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. Chair Galvin, there are no public comments from Council Chamber and I'm seeing no hands being raised via Zoom. And there are no prerecorded public comments. Thank you. Then the minutes will be adopted and entered. We'll now move to item 5.1, which is water supply update. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. As mentioned, our first item is our water supply update and deputy director of water resources. Peter Martin will be making the presentation. Right. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Very happy to be before you with another water supply update today. If we could go ahead and to go to the next slide. Yeah, just a quick update on Lake Pillsbury Storage. Storage still continues to remain just below the target storage for this time of year. Just to remind the board, PG&E continues to operate under a variance from their fur-commandated flows. Those flows have been reduced down to a minimum of around five to 20 cubic feet per second of releases from the project. Pillsbury Storage is continuing to decline, but not at such a rapid rate as over the last few months. I think the week over week changes about 161 acre feet. It's very much expected that PG&E, due to these storage conditions, Lake Pillsbury will continue to operate under that variance through the beginning of December. And then also just a reminder that the project continues to remain down and is anticipated to do so for the next couple of years until they can make repairs to the transformer bay for the hydroelectric project. We did hear from Snowmawater that their expectation is that that is going to continue to impact the storage of Lake Mendocino, and they'll be relying very heavily on the water that comes from the watershed rather than the typical bypass flows, or actually the flows from hydroelectric generation that have traditionally come in. So I can go ahead and go to the next slide. It's a good tie-in to Lake Mendocino. As far as Lake Mendocino, the current storage is about 37,500 acre feet, which is about 68 to 67 percent of their target water supply curve for this time of year. The outflow is about 25 cubic feet per second. They've been able to reduce those flows quite a bit, and it's starting to level off a little bit in terms of storage. Storage is a little better, obviously, than the last previous couple of years. So they will potentially be able to carry over a little more storage this winter in hopes that at some point it begins to rain. And then the week over week change in storage is about 66 acre feet. Storage changed lowering storage over the last week. Next slide. And then, again, just conditions continue to be challenging in terms of storage in Lake Sonoma. It's about 41 percent of the storage pool for Lake Sonoma. And I believe the storage as of today is just a little over 101,000 acre feet. And the pretty much daily losses in that was more or a little less than 200 acre feet per day. So it's continuing to see declines in storage and, you know, just waiting for that rainy weather. And so, you know, releases are about 100 cubic feet per second right now still to maintain the minimum minstering flows and the lower watershed. Next slide. So, you know, this graphic is updated every two weeks. And, you know, storage is actually lower than some of these figures at this point. But, you know, definitely not. This kind of illustrates very much, especially in Lake Sonoma, as far as Sonoma waters reservoirs, that they're seeing substantially less storage at this time compared to where they would be in the last 10 years. And so we could go ahead and, you know, just like actually, I'll just, you know, conclude with just, you know, we're continuing to, you know, hope that this turns around a bit. But, you know, really starting out behind this year. And, you know, Sonoma water is taking some proactive measures, which I'll talk a little bit more about in my presentation later in terms of their management of the resource. Next slide. Some good news in terms of our targets as a city. In the last month, Santa Rose residents reduced their water use by 25% when compared to 2020. Excuse me, that says that June 2020. I apologize. That's October 2020. I just got that. And then, you know, saw, we saw the cumulative water use reductions tick up by about 19% student from 18%. So we did see some gains in terms of our cumulative reductions. And again, we remain in a 20% mandatory reduction under stage three of our water shortage contingency plan. And the community really is continuing to do everything they can to save water and get out there and we're messaging that as much as possible and we'll continue to do so through this winter. Next slide. So on October 28th, we learned that some water did file a temporary change petition. This is very much the exact same temporary change petition they filed similarly last year at this time of year. They obviously get these orders over a term of 180 days. And this existing order will be expiring on December 12th. As I mentioned earlier, they're anticipating continued reduced transfers of water from the river by the Potter Valley project. And so as a result, per the terms of their water rights contracts, they're requesting that the minimum in stream flow requirements be based on Lake Mendocino storage and that as opposed to the existing water rights, which dictate that it's based on cumulative inflow into Lake Pillsbury beginning January 1st. With that, it's very likely they will have, you know, requesting the same terms, which include reporting monitoring, fishery conditions and water quality conditions as well as storage monitoring and reporting as well. So and then, you know, this obviously stipulates that there will be continued consultation with the fishery agencies, State Water Resource Control Board and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The difference is at this point, we concluded in October the 20% reduced diversions requirement in the last order. There won't be any requests for additional diversions as it's, you know, wintertime. The expectation is that at some point natural flows will return. But however, the contractors continue to have, you know, the existing conservation measures in place and will continue to do so as well. Next slide. I just wanted to give a brief update in this figure here. We received a fish monitoring report from Snowmawater at the most recent Water Advisory Committee meeting. An underwater video camera was installed at Snowmawater's Mirabelle Dam fish ladder on September 1st of this year. This graphic is a little outdated, but I do have some updated figures at the beginning of November or this month, 185 adult Chinook and nine co-hosts salmon have been observed. As far as the fall run goes, you know, Snowmawater was said they were saying a slow start to the spawning migration this year. The Chinook salmon migration is triggered by rainfall. And so, you know, they need those increased flows typically to kick that off. So, you know, obviously during times of drought, the migration is often delayed until a decent amount of storms arrive. But and then, you know, furthermore, the co-hosts salmon do tend to return slightly later than the Chinook salmon. You know, they are more of a tributary spotter, so they much more rely on that rainfall to access their habitat. So, you know, a lot of the lowest sections of the tributary still sort of remain dry. So until those natural flows return, may not see many co-host returning. Next slide. And then I just wanted to highlight, we're very much booked out in terms of our water audits and follow up regarding turf replacement rebates until the end of the year. But we are seeing, you know, a little bit of a lull in customer calls and things like that. So we're taking this opportunity to start to circle back with some of those folks that have recently participated in the Green Exchange program. We're really looking for a variety of input on, you know, their experiences, how they instituted their project. And really, the intent is to try to find ways to make perhaps improve the programs, of course, and then look at ways to market things or maybe perhaps change the way we deliver our programs in the future. So if we could go to, excuse me, just before we move on, you know, we're obviously asking the questions like if they're doing a lot of the work themselves, if they're utilizing contractors and then really just targeted questions about their customer service experience. Next slide. So what we learned is that a lot of the customers don't necessarily rely on a contractor for everything, but they do typically rely on a contractor to do a lot of the labor in terms of the turf removal. But they tend to like to have a design and do some of the work themselves in terms of plant selection and things like that. We did see 19 of the 21 customers rank in the program is very excellent. There seems to be very good feedback about how we deliver things. And we'll just continue to survey participants and really just determine how we can continue to improve the program and see if there's other program opportunities that we should be pursuing in the future. Go ahead and go to the next slide. That will conclude my water supply update and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin. Any questions or comments from the board? Very good. We'll keep praying for rain. All right. That'll take care of, excuse me, let's now open it for public comment on item number 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Anas? Chair Galvin, there are no public comments for this item, Zoom or in person or in advance of the meeting. Thank you. We'll now move to item 5.2. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.2 is a staff briefing on project labor agreement overview and assistant city manager Jason Nut will be making the presentation. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the board, Jason Nut, assistant city manager. I want to talk to you briefly about a program that we at the city manager's office, city attorney's office, public works department, water department and economic development department have been working on for the better part of this year, which is the development of a project labor agreement. At the beginning portion of this year, the economic development subcommittee had requested that staff proceed with the evaluation and potential development of a project labor agreement policy. Staff took that initiative and began to do research and develop some criteria that we ultimately ended up bringing forward to the council. Next slide, please. So the first idea was to try to better understand what the problem statement would be. I mean, what is it? What would the value of a project labor agreement be? And both the economic development subcommittee and ultimately the council at their July 12, 22 study session made an agreement that there were three primary criteria or objectives that related to our problem statement. What is it? What was the value and the benefit of a project labor agreement? And we agreed that it would be successful if we could enhance our highly skilled local workforce and increase access to apprenticeship programs with the benefit of diversifying our workforce, providing greater equity and broader inclusion. It also was a discussion about reducing the carbon footprint within our community. And what that means is we want to keep that local workforce local. We don't want to export our local workforce elsewhere, nor do we want to import workforce from other communities. We want to keep the amount of carbon emissions relating to those operations as low as possible. And then lastly was to create that positive economic impact. What that means is we are taking monies out of our capital improvement programs and we are giving it through contract services to local companies with the idea that those local companies and employees would reinvest in our community and create that circular economy. Those were the three primary objectives that we arrived at and ultimately provided to the City Council during a July 12th study session. Next slide. During that presentation on July in July, we went through a number of things and that's predominantly what I want to do today. I just want to provide you with a little bit of an education about what a project labor agreement is. Under state law we have certain contract provisions that guide and require the City to implement our public works contracts with certain conditions. And you'll see a number of those up on the screen. Project labor agreements do provide a higher level of work protection where you have work stoppages, strikes, lockouts, or other types of disruptions. And it also more uniformly distributes the type of work force or craft labor that would be assigned to a particular project. So that was one of the identified benefits of moving into a project labor agreement above and beyond our standard contract provisions enforced by the State of California. Next slide. So to go into a little more detail, a project labor agreement is a collective bargaining agreement. It is an agreement between the City, the contractors, and the unions to assign and specify the work conditions associated with a particular project that relate to the hiring and utilization of unionized or signatory labor. It does help in the governance between both the City, the contractor, and the labor to ensure that proper work conditions exist and that that labor is complying with the conditions of the job that they've been hired to do. There are 18 unions associated with North Bay Trades Council, which represents our region. Those 18 unions have been in contact with us through the course of this, as well as communication we've had with the North Bay Trades. And so we've been starting to develop policy and program based on those dialogues. And you'll see some of the specifics that project labor agreements can be a benefit for. Next slide. If you look on the websites of a number of different agencies that have gone through this process or you get onto the internet, you'll find that that project labor agreements have a large laundry list of potential advantages and they have a large laundry list of potential disadvantages. And that's why that's part of the reason why the discussion of implementing a project labor agreement can be so controversial in a various organization because there is no clear path forward depending upon which agency you're looking at as your predominant guide. What you see up here are snapshots that we pulled from the internet. These are not specific to our region. They're not specific to our organization. But they're just the types of feedback that we saw as we were doing our research relating to some of the pros and cons that we wanted to make sure we addressed through the course of this process. And we feel we accomplished quite a bit of that as we prepared for our July 12th study session. Next slide. Another component of project labor agreements, if you could advance one more slide please. There we go, is a community workforce agreement. And that is a designation of a certain percentage of employees working for that particular contractor that live within the definition of local. You can see a couple of examples, the city of Los Angeles and the port of Oakland at one point in time through the course of their project labor agreement. Policy adopted various levels that assign specific local workforce requirements. The community workforce agreement can also be more minutely defined where you can actually identify specific sectors of the population you want to focus on. You can go into a much more granular definition. And there are organizations around the state that have taken that approach where they want a certain percentage of veterans or a certain percentage of particular classifications of groups or the workforce. And so we contemplated how we would incorporate this and we did quite a bit of research to determine who our local labor force is. We both went to merit shops, merit shops being non-signatory or non-union shops. And we also looked at the unions that exist within our county. And we asked for information from each of those shops to try to understand what the percentages of local labor is. And what we found in most cases is we're about 75 percent of all of our labor between whether merit or union live within the five counties that we ultimately end up defining as local. The good news of that is that means there's a healthy local workforce whether signatory or merit within our community. Next slide. So then where did we end up with this? So we ultimately took the final policy to the council on October 25th. We utilized data and feedback that we have received from the July 22 or the July 12th study session to make a presentation and a proposal to council. Council made decisions on the 25th that changed the proposal that staff presented. And what you see on the screen are criteria specifically designated by council during that final decision process. Council expressed that they wanted a project labor agreement to apply to all capital projects, both vertical and horizontal. Horizontal are projects that you would see come to the Board of Public Utilities in most instances. They are water and sewer projects. They're storm drain projects. Vertical projects are what they sound like. They are projects that are above ground. But it could come in different forms. It could be an electrical project. It could be an HVAC project. It could be a construction of a pump station or a reservoir. Those would all constitute vertical projects. In this particular instance, council described that they wanted all projects to be in the application component. Staff following the conversation in July had originally represented the council. We thought a $3 million threshold would be acceptable in order to establish where a project labor agreement would apply to certain projects. During the council meeting on the 25th, council requested that staff set that threshold at $500,000. In this particular instance, what that means is all projects moving forward that are major public work, as defined by the State of California, will ultimately have a project labor agreement applied to it. What does that mean? That means all construction craft trade that our signatory union affiliated will be incorporated into each of those projects, consistent with the collective bargaining agreements that exist between the unions, the contractors, and those particular employees. As I mentioned before, we talked about the local definition of labor. We knew that Santa Rosa and or Sonoma County in and of itself wasn't likely going to have the density of unionized labor, or quite frankly, even if we went and just talked about merit shops or non-unionized, probably didn't have the density that we needed in order to be able to focus the concept of a local workforce agreement. There was agreement by council that we would establish a five-county definition of local. That incorporates Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino counties, and we felt that that seemed reasonable when we looked at the data. That encompassed what I mentioned earlier, which is a fairly significant percentage of the workforce. Council did agree that starting off with a lower percentage within the contract agreement or within the project labor agreement was a good starting spot. We council approved a 30% local workforce hiring requirement. That means any contract that comes forward under a project labor agreement would have 30% of the labor have zip codes within those five counties. During our research over the course of the last six months, we don't think that's going to be a difficult threshold. In fact, we think the threshold could have been higher, but this is a great starting spot for us to get our feet wet as we start to learn and develop more what that project labor agreement ultimately will mean for us. Next slide. We did talk about the potential of an escalation factor. When we were thinking about a set dollar amount, as we originally presented at the $3 million, with inflation, costs continue to go up. What we didn't want to see was that the cost and threshold vary over the course of time simply because of inflation. Our initial recommendation was to establish and set the threshold associated with an inflator. Given the fact that the council adjusted that threshold to such a low level and applied all projects to it in essence, we don't necessarily feel that a threshold is necessary at this point in time. We'll be addressing that along the way with council if we feel that there's an issue that ends up arriving over the course of time. We had originally proposed an initiation period for the PLA in 2024. Council requested that we start that earlier with a implement by July 1st, 2023. And then instead of a three-year turnaround as staff requested, they requested that we move forward with a five-year revisit cycle. It is not a sunset date. It is merely a revisit cycle, which means council would like more information. They'd like feedback and they'd like some data that documents how we're doing with project labor agreements. We fully intend to provide feedback along the way. We're not going to be waiting the full five years before we provide council with any feedback. But that would be the time with which if staff had substantive change that we wanted to incorporate, we would come back and provide it at that time. Lastly, we had requested a series of exemptions that we felt would help the utilization of our knowledge when it comes to local contractors and the type of contract work that we have. Council asked us to streamline that and so we did. There are just a few exemptions that exist, and those exemptions exist in certain forms. So for example, if we have an emergency or an adjacent circumstance where we have to act immediately or we stand public health risk, we have the opportunity to enter into a contract above that $500,000 that would get us into a safe position or condition. If we have state, federal, or local funds that have restrictions or timelines that don't conform with the process associated with project labor agreements, or if we actually have legislation that prohibits the use of project labor agreements, we're also given the authority to be able to make an exemption associated with that. And lastly, there is a component, you'll see, negative impact on project delivery. That was a little bit old language that I transferred over from slides, but that primary goal there is if there is a lack of unionized density for any specific project type, then the City Manager has the authority to exempt that project from the utilization of a project labor agreement. And so these are some of the conditions that have been incorporated into the policy. The Attorney's Office is actively working on finalizing the feedback that they heard from Council, so these are just some of the high points and not necessarily the level of detail that we'll ultimately be able to see over the course of the next several weeks as we finalize that direction that we were given from Council. Our hope is that this is of limited impact to our staff and to our contract community and that we're able to implement this in a way that allows us to continue to proceed delivering all of the projects that we know are currently on the books and into the future without any additional delay or cost. And so with that, Chair Galvin, that is the end of my presentation. Next slide, and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you, Assistant City Manager Nutt. I'll open it up now for Board Member Questions or Comments. Any questions, Mr. Chairman? Vice Chair Anoni? Thank you, Mr. Nutt. I like the way you started the presentation with the statement of problems, the problem statement, and trying to do, what are we trying to achieve here? That makes sense to me, and I like that the three that you picked out about positive economic impact, reducing carbon footprint and increasing skilled workforce all makes sense. My question is, how are we going to monitor those things and track whether or not this project is whether it's achieving its intended goals or not? Vice Chair, great questions. These are things that we are going to be working on developing procedure for along the way until we have defined and completed template on what the project labor agreement looks like and know how that's going to be incorporated into our contract processes. It's going to be harder to understand how we're going to track some of these components. But having talked with some of the other partner agencies out there who have implemented, there are mechanisms for us to be able to get information from the contractor about the type of the workforce, where the workforce comes from the type and number of apprentices, for example, that may exist on a project, and it will allow, and there are other aspects relating to some of the training organizations. We have an outstanding local unionized trade training center here, and that particular organization is more than happy to provide us with feedback and information about the number of individuals they have coming through their program, how they're expanding, where they're going, and it's going to be in our best interest to try to help partner to the best of our ability to make sure that those apprenticeship opportunities and the pre-apprenticeship training programs continue to expand. So Vice Chair, it is a work in progress. We don't have a defined metric monitoring program at this point in time, but we will be developing one over the next couple of years. Thank you. Board Member Watts, are you waving goodbye? Okay, feel better. Any other Board Member Wright, please? Yes, thank you for the presentation. I'm just curious, will this impact non-union contractors when bidding on our projects? And secondly, I'm curious, you know, forever we wrote out arbitration in our contracts. We did not allow arbitration. And why is that back in there? I'm just curious what the thinking is on that. Thank you, Board Member Wright. I'll answer a couple of questions in different ways. So when it comes to the arbitration, I'm going to defer that, and we can get back to you on how we're going to make those. Assistant City Attorney Mullen has been our predominant counsel on this, and I can ask her to, once we have a final document, or we're getting close to a final document, it would be much easier for us to come back and describe some of the definitive details associated with how this will be implemented. Right now, you know, we're looking at still high-level issues. We have primary criteria, but we don't have the nuanced or detailed information. That's something that's still in the works. So just want to know, we'll return with the information about how we're going to incorporate disputes and discussions along the way between the three parties. And I'm sorry, can you repeat your first question? Impact on non-union. Impact on non-union. You know, I think that's to some extent unknown, and you'd get a different answer depending upon which organization you asked. If you asked the merit contractors, they would tell you this is going to be a substantial impact, and there were a few speakers during the council meeting on the 25th that did talk to that. If you spoke with the trades council, they would explain that non-signatory companies have the opportunity, as do signatory companies, to bid on a project. There is a mechanism with which a non-unionized employee would join a union during the course of that project in order to comply with the project labor agreement. And so there is a mechanism for a non-signatory company to participate and to bid on those projects, whether or not that works for that particular company is up to that particular company. But there's nothing that specifies that a non-signatory company can't submit a bid on a project. Remember Grable? Hi, thank you for the presentation. My question would be how many of the, I know it's a substantial number, but how many of the overall projects that we're talking about fall under the authority of the Center of the Water and the Board of Public Utilities? Just roughly. So typically about 60% to 70% of our capital program relates to the water enterprise and would fall under the authority of the Board of Public Utilities. And that will remain unchanged. The project labor agreement doesn't actually change the award authority. All of those will continue to come to the Board of Public Utilities. And that includes projects where there's both the capital improvement on the water and sewer infrastructure side, but then also the public works and paving that is contiguous for that project or included in that project? That's correct. Okay. And currently, I just I'm curious because I know that this was sort of a funny coincidence at the SRJC where right contracting, for instance, did a lot of both the non-PLA and PLA projects. And it became apples to apples for as far as that contractor. But in our experience, how many non-union or merit-based contract, would you say, percentage-wise are typically responding to our requests for bids and proposals? You know, Board Member Grable, I actually don't have that information. I can tell you that there some of the largest contractors that produce a majority of the work for us are all signatory contractors. And even though they have not operated or bid under a project labor agreement for us, the incorporation of a project labor agreement doesn't impact their ability to continue to bid on our projects. And so as far as percentage split between them, I really don't have that information. We didn't go into that level of detail. So I apologize for that. No, no, I understand. And, you know, we get, I know we get a lot of responses from local contractors like Argonaut and Jalati and one, just a, and I know that there are signatories in most of the larger companies are. The reason I asked the question, I know it was last year, the year before, that had a sort of an issue with, across the sector, we were having an issue with how many responses we were getting to our, to our requests, our RFPs for different capital projects. And, and we, I think there was an exit study as well, just comparatively about, you know, why regionally we seem to have a lower number of respondents to our RFPs and projects than maybe other like jurisdictions. And that's the only reason I brought it up, because I'd be interested to see, it doesn't sound like it will impact that. And so it's just something that's on my mind though, you know, while we're doing this, can we be working to also on that, on that the outcomes based questions we had before about respondents, can we be working on that to make sure we're, we're still getting a competitive number of respondents on those RFPs, which that sounds like we will be. Yeah, Board Member Grable, that is, that's something we're interested in and we're going to keep track of. Intuitively, you know, we have heard that the incorporation of project labor agreements in most organizations did ultimately provide, or it resulted in some reduction in the total number of bidders by project. Whether or not that was consequential is really the question. And so we would anticipate that if we had 10 before the action, we may have eight moving forward. Again, there's no specific number. We don't have that information because we really haven't gone through this process, but we do expect some attrition in the total number. One, because of the PLA conditions of being a signatory company, but also the condition of a community workforce agreement where we're requiring a certain percentage of local employees. We've been told that that's not necessarily a huge issue for out of the area corporations because they do usually hire a substantial number of local subs. But nonetheless, you know, we would, we will be tracking this moving forward so that we have more detail when we come back to council in a few years. That's great. And just on one more specific cost question. It sounds like most of our capital projects or most of the city's capital projects, the vast majority land in like the what the 1.5 million dollar range. Do we know just on the water on SR water side, do we have any projects below 500,000? The threshold, I was a little confused by the why they landed on that threshold amount and where the majority of the projects land versus maybe the higher dollar projects, you know, like for instance, the UV system that we just put in, which is I think a little different in terms of the project typology, but do we know just within SR water, what's the average, what would you say is the average cost of our typical like project if you if you're doing a mean average? Yeah, Board Member Graham, I actually don't have that data. What I would say is when we did our research, there are very few water oriented projects that will fall below the $500,000 threshold. Most of those we already operate as small public works projects or minor projects. And we have different authority to move those forward. So it with half a million dollar threshold, it will impact nearly all large major projects for centers of water. And when you say the small, sorry to get into the weeds on this, but I think it's that's that's the nature of the of the sausage rate. But the those small projects that you mentioned, do we just do those in-house with our own staff? Is that how those work? No, we can issue a minor public works contract. And so for example, if we had to replace a boiler over at the treatment plant, that particular projects likely under $380,000. And therefore, we would issue under minor public works, which is more expedited methodology and would not would not be would not conform with the public with the project labor agreement policy. Okay. Thank you for the the detailed answers. I appreciate it. Thanks. Member Walsh. Thank you, Chairman Galvin. There's a couple of comments and then maybe one one question. The first is I appreciate the degree of difficulty that Assistant City Manager Nutt and Deputy City Attorney Mullen had in this project in navigating the formulation of the policy. So this one is definitely without it's not without people having opposite views and perspectives of whether whether or not it should be undertaken. So I just want to appreciate the degree of difficulty of their work and their method of navigating this through. The second comment is the DPU as far as our scope and our limits, you know, I'm looking at the City Charter section 25C, we're limited to awarding contracts under the procedures adopted by the City Council. So, you know, although we don't really get that much of a shot and affecting this policy itself. I just wanted to put that out there, but we have to, you know, we're going to implement it because we have to work and then that leads to the question of timing on our projects. I think we have some constituents specifically Mr. Harder that spoke to us about that, you know, the timing of projects and how we get things done. I just wanted to ask staff is there mechanisms or methods we're looking at implementing this so that the policy when in its final form doesn't affect our ability to get stuff done in a timely manner? Are we going to have kind of pre-approved methods or are we going to go up earlier? Is there anything that we need to do to help navigate that? Thank you, Board Member Walsh. I will say I feel fairly confident in stating that the first two, three or four projects that go out under a project labor agreement are going to take more time. As it's a new procedure, it's going to be new for staff, it's going to be new for our contracting community within our, at least the way we're going to be implementing it. It's going to take time up front to be able to make sure that we've crossed all our T's and dotted our I's in advance of awarding those contracts. Once those first few go through and we work out whatever kinks may exist or whatever road, you know, whatever stumbling blocks we may have, my belief is it will be smoother from that point forward because it will be part of the routine and I think we'll be back on track as far as being able to deliver projects in a concise way. We don't have specifics. I can't tell you what level of delay will occur or quite frankly, if it will, my gut feeling based on the feedback and the research we did will show that, you know, show that at least the first few are going to cause some level of delay just because it's a new process for us. But our hope is everything will be smooth moving forward. And I will say there's a high level of credit to Assistant City Attorney Mullen. She did a fantastic job bringing together a lot of complex legal issues. It's one thing for me to be on the public work side and understanding the implementation component, but the legal side of this is equally as complicated. And when we have more of a detailed product that's ready to roll out, I would love to give her the opportunity to come and talk to you about that specific aspect of the Project Labor Agreement implementation. Well, I very much appreciate your ability to carry this big administrative load. Thank you for your work. Other board member questions or comments? Board member Bownford? Thank you. And for the presentation and the detail, I agree with my colleagues on the gratitude for the thoughtfulness in this entire process. Forgive me if I heard it incorrectly, but it sounded like they're either staff or whether it was stakeholder input that requested a handful of things that may not have been incorporated. As this kind of went back to council, whether it was around the ramp up time, the time to revisit, different exceptions, which I assume were proposed for a reason. And as a noncontractor myself, if we zoom all the way out, what concerns are you really watching for? How will we know, you know, what pitfalls do you see for us? Obviously, the nature of our work is in many ways public safety and many ways vital services. We have very long substantial projects that are multi-year projects that may even kind of get caught up in some timing here. And I understand that there's a five-year return to reconsider, I guess, and the data and the reporting that happens along the way. So certainly not saying that the BBU should be proposing changes to anything before then, but it does strike me that it does seem to be quite a substantial change for a substantial period of time for the department that has the most substantial amount of contracts in the city. And so I guess broadly speaking, I'm interested in how can we, at least as a board, have a good understanding more consistently than every five years about how is this affecting our ability to be able to serve our customers and maintain a safe and reliable water supply to our customers in our city along the way, and to be able to really provide straightforward, meaningful reporting and data back to council more often. So thank you. Thanks, Board Member Batenford. I will say that I have no concerns about the quality of workmanship based on the implementation of Project Labor Agreement. Whether it's the contractors we've already been working with that will be working under the union lens as opposed to the merit lens, it's the same group of individuals and the same employees. I have a high level of confidence and the level of skilled workforce that exists under the trades. I think that that craft labor is skilled. I think that they have the talent to be able to continue to progress our capital improvements and get projects built in a very, in a high quality way. Where we don't know and what we have some concern is the increased time of delivery, not from the contracting side, but from the initial contract preparation side, and the potential cost increase associated with Project Labor Agreements. Those are the two areas that I think we're utilizing and collecting feedback and information from partner agencies that have gone through this before. We're interpolating materials that we're reading from many of those agencies, and we're going to be working with our local entities to try to better understand what those could be so that as we start to prepare for the upcoming capital improvement program that we're incorporating our best information at this point in time, I would expect and I believe we will likely be returning not only to the council but the BPU, at least on an annual basis as part of the capital improvement program to be able to describe whether there's been any challenges, concerns, or where we're at from a statistical standpoint. So I think you can be assured that we will not wait five years before you hear how this new program implementation is going to benefit or impact our organization. Thank you very much. And if I could just add, board member Badenport, thank you for your question. And as assistant city manager, mentioned my intent and part of that is based on when we have a permanent director in the transportation and public works department, but been having discussions about having actual semi-annual updates on CIP to the board. And so we'll incorporate any information we learn and things that we're tracking as part of those updates to the board so that you're aware. My hope is that at sort of the beginning of the season and the end of the construction season, in general, we can have updates to the board. So that's my intent going forward. It's just hopefully we'll get there soon. Thank you very much. Other board member questions or comments? I too would like to applaud the work that's been done by the city manager's office and the city attorney's office. I'm very disappointed that the staff recommendations weren't followed. I have to tell you that I'm against project labor agreements. I'm on the board at the North Coast Builders Exchange. We've been studying PLAs for over 10 years, a lot of statistical data. We have members in the builders exchange that are both union and non-union. And the exchange came out eight, 10 years ago opposing project labor agreements. The union dues that get paid for non-union members don't end up in the non-union members pocket at the end. The PLAs have not been proven to lower costs. It's disappointing that this threshold of 500K was used. And I'm hoping that it'll get revisited by a new city council or new mayor. Any other board member questions or comments? If not, we'll take public comments on item 5.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus? Chair Calvin, we do not have anyone in council chamber wishing to make a public comment, but we do have a hand raised via Zoom. Joe will be the first public comment. Joe, your public or your permissions to speak have been enabled. Please unmute your mic. Oh, hello. My name is Joe Lubis. I am a policy analyst with Associated Builders and Contractors Northern California Chapter. And I actually had two questions for City Manager Nutt. It said that there was a no discrimination, like union membership was not a requirement to work. I'm just wondering, does that mean that apprentices don't have to come from union apprenticeship programs and there's no core workforce requirement for unions? And I'm also just wondering that he said 75% of workers come from five counties. I'm wondering what percentage actually come from Sonoma County. Just, yeah, those are things that need to be, those are questions that need to be cleared up when they say that it's a local workforce and that there's no bias towards unions. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Mr. Lubis. Assistant City Manager Nutt, did you want to respond? Yes, thank you, Chair Calvin. So the statement relating to union affiliation is that there is a mechanism for a merit shop or a merit employee to participate in a PLA-oriented or approved project. It does require that that employee participate and pay dues for that union that that is performing the work. It does not, so it doesn't keep them from doing the work. They just have to perform the work under certain conditions relating to the project labor agreement terms. And so as far as the percentage of the local workforce, I don't have the data that specifies how many are Sonoma County. We do recognize that within Sonoma County, as I mentioned early in the presentation, we felt that Sonoma County was too narrow of a focus for the definition of local and that we needed to grow beyond that in order to determine what a local workforce looked like for us. And so that was the reason why we brought that specific definition to council for approval. Thank you. Do we have any other public comments, Secretary Manus? We do not, Chair. Okay, that will conclude item 5.2. We'll now move to the consent calendar. We have two items on the consent calendar. I'll move adoption of the consent calendar. Second. I have a motion by Vice Chair Armoni seconded by Board Member Grable. Do we have any comments or questions from the Board? If not, we'll open it up for public comments on items 6.1 and 6.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing it in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus? There are no public comments on the consent calendar. Very good. May we have a roll call vote, please? Thank you. Board Member Wright? Aye. Board Member Watts has left the meeting. Board Member Walsh? Aye. Board Member Grable? Aye. Board Member Ben Fort? Aye. Vice Chair Armoni? Aye. Chair Galvin? Aye. Let the record show this vote passed with six affirmative, or this consent motion passed with six affirmative votes. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move to item 7.1, which is a report item. Director Burke? Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Item 7.1 is a contingency increase for contract number C02105 Laguna Treatment Plant Chillers and Climate Control Upgrades at Administration and Annex Building. And Tracy Dwayness, Supervising Engineer with our Capital Projects Team, will be making the presentation. Just want to sound check, make sure everybody can hear me. Love and clear. Great, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the Board. My name is Tracy Dwayness, Supervising Engineer with Capital Projects Engineering. Today I bring before you the report item, a contingency increase for contract C02105 Laguna Treatment Plant Chillers and Climate Control Upgrades at Administration and Annex Buildings. Next slide, please. So today I'll briefly outline the project background, an analysis, and close with a recommendation. Next slide, please. So back in December of 2016, the city acquired from Costa Engineers a report titled the Water Chiller Assessment. The intent of this assessment was ultimately to determine the condition of the existing water chillers serving the plants, admin and annex buildings. Chillers, in essence, remove water, remove heat from water and via a heat exchange process that essentially produces cool air that, in effect, can be distributed through the ventilation system. So Costa analyzed and with consideration to the building's equipment age, efficiency, physical condition, and noise, the assessment concluded that the existing chillers had reached their effective design life and thus full recommendation for floral placement was proceeded and recommended. So in that sense, this assessment was a partial basis for the project in itself. Next slide, please. So the project consists of pursuant to the assessment replacement of 150 ton chiller serving the annex building, 250 ton chiller serving the admin building, and then two boilers and the programmable logical control system within the admin building. The boilers provide basically a mechanism for heating the domestic water and the programmable logic controllers, if you will, they're the engine that provides the means for system automation for the various equipment. Next slide, please. So this history, this project, excuse me, has had previous history before the board dating back to August of 2019. In 2019, we brought before the sole source specification for the Siemens type PLC equipment as required for the project. The board approved it then, moving to October 2019. We proceeded with approval, bringing forth the construction contract in the amount of $873,216, along with a 15% contingency in the amount of $130,982 to the lowest bidder, Matrix HD in Nevada, the board approved that. And then in November of 2019, we issued the notice to proceed for the project. Well, with their emergence and the response to COVID-19, we put the project on temporary suspension, approximately from March through May of 2020 via a force-major change order. And then in July 2020, we brought again to the board an approved recommendation for a subcontractor addition for Wunderlich Malik Engineering for the work specific to the climate controls upgrade portion of the project. Next slide, please. So between March and October 2020, six contract changers were effectively executed, mounting in the total of approximately $77,000 amongst those six, which left approximately $53,000 remaining in available balance. Of the cumulative $77,000 spent in those six change orders, approximately 53% were related to design modifications or requests internally. 40% was attributable design oversight and the remaining seven was a result from unforeseen conditions. So in July of 2020, also the contractor Matrix submitted a potential change order that claimed the contract documents were deficient, specifically with regards to the climate control portion of the scope of work. Next slide, please. So leading up to March of 2021, city staff along with plant operators, the design engineer and the construction manager all collaboratively proceeded with analyzing and reviewed the validity of the contractor's assertions with extensive research and investigative efforts primarily around the existing climate control network, its processes and the system operations. Ultimately, the findings did confirm that the contracts were incomplete and did lack specifics primarily with the climate control element. So with that, we did request an additional scope of work, which included adding three additional PLC controller equipments, an interface panel, additional programming and software, as well as operating manuals. So this was all memorialized in contract change order seven, specifically just for PLC scope. That PLC, excuse me, that change order approximately was in the amount of 86,000. At the time, our current approved balance was approximately $53,000. So staff brought before the board the request for additional 15% contingency and it was approved by the board in March of 2021. So between March and October, four change orders were executed. I show six on that. I apologize, just four were executed, one being the change order seven. So seven through 10 were executed. Between all four of those, they accumulated approximately $166,000, which left approximately 18,000 remaining in available balance. In review of the $166,000 that was spent, a majority of 70% of that was attributable to change order seven, as well as residual work or impacts resulting from the added PLC work, as well as granting the contractor an additional 230 days to the project. So 18% of that money spent was also attributable to other design modifications and the remaining was due to unforeseen conditions. Next slide, please. So in July of this year, the contractor submitted another potential claim specific to additional programming efforts. The contractor this time asserted that through what is known as a sequence of operation process, which is essentially an effort undertaken to define how the system will function through its operating modes, that multiple clarifications, multiple resubmittals occurred over the course of essentially this past year, which resulted in ultimately multiple PLC reprogramming efforts, which after the analysis showed that was essentially above and beyond, which is typically industry standard for this type of work or submittal processes. So with that leading up to last month, October of 2020, staff, including the design engineer and the construction manager, we went through another effort to analyze, review, and validate these assertions and ultimately did find that the extra work was legitimate as a result of the extended sequence of operation processes that also more or less primarily involved this new integration into an existing system that has been developed over multiple phases out of the plant over multiple years, multiple projects at different buildings, some of which have in some cases minimal of no existing as built as reference. So the scope of the work in question is approximately $21,000. It is memorialized in the pending change order 11. Currently, there is approximately $18,000 remaining contingency and the need is approximately $35,000, which puts the overall authorized balance in the approximately negative $16,000 in available balance. With this, because the work, although not all fully complete, is partially done, the work is deemed as an administrative change order to the extent that it does exceed the authorized amount. In all, to date, approximately, accumulatively speaking, over 50% of the contingency spent is related to the additional PLC work or residual impacts caused by the additional PLC work. Next slide, please. So pursuant to Council policy 100-07, essentially an administrative change order is a change order to a public work contract, which does not change the scope of work or the intent of the contract as awarded by the original award authority. Administrative change orders may include extra work required for the proper completion, essentially, of the project. Next slide, please. And further, I'm sorry, last, if you could back up one last one, and further, if an administrative change order exceeds the funds available within the authorized contract amount, it shall be returned to the original award authority for approval, in this case, the Board of Public Utilities. Next slide, please. So it is recommended by the Transportation and Public Works Department and the Water Department that the Board of Public Utilities by motion pursuant to Council policy number 100-07 approve an administrative change order and approve a 5% contingency increase of $43,660.80 for contract number CO-2105, the Laguna Treatment Plant chillers and climate control upgrades at Administration and Annex Building for the total amount $1,178,841.60. Next slide. With that, I would be open and would love to hear any questions if you have. I do have the Project Construction Manager in the event. I need additional support. Thank you, Mr. Dwaynes. We'll open it up now for Board Member Questions and Comments. Board Member Walsh. Thank you, Chair Gelman. Just a comment. I appreciate the specificity in which Supervisor Engineer Dwaynes has been walking us through the project backgrounds in the past. This is a very large project in managing, seemed like the scope of work, the timing of the deliverables, and then the resources required. I think it's a very admirable job. Generally, I'm much in support of the recommendations of the engineer Dwaynes and our water director. So that's my own comment, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Walsh. Other comments from the Board or questions? Yes, Board Member Wright. Yeah, I also support this. I just know from my own experience about the HVAC at the plant, it's been a headache as far as long as I can remember, and it seems like it just continues to be one. And so I guess I'll say I feel your pain and I will support this modification. Thank you. If there's no other Board Member Questions or comments, how about Board Member Wright making a motion? Yeah, I'll be happy to make a motion to increase the contract contingency by 5% for the Laguna Treatment Administration chillers and various pertinences. Second. We have a motion. Board Member Wright and I believe a second by Board Member Walsh. At this time, we'll open it up for public comment. If you wish to make comment on item 7.1, please raise your hand via Zoom, or if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus, do we have anyone? We have no public comments for this item, Chair. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote, please? Thank you. Board Member Wright. Hi. Board Member Walsh. Hi. Board Member Grable. Hi. Board Member Badenfort. Hi. Vice Chair Arnone. Hi. Chair Galvin. Hi. Let the record show this motion passes with six affirmative votes. Thank you again, Mr. Dwaynis. Thank you. That'll conclude item 7.1. As I announced at the beginning of the meeting, item 8.1, which was to be a public hearing to adopt new miscellaneous fees and increasing certain miscellaneous fees as being continued to the December 15, 2022 regular meeting. We'll move to item 9, public comments on non-agenda matters. We're now taking public comments on item 9. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. There are no public comments on non-agenda matters. Thank you. We have no referrals. We have no written communications. I believe Director Burke, you're going to give a budget review subcommittee report. Thank you, Chair Galvin. Actually, Board Member Wright is available to give that report. Oh, great. Yes. In the absence of Board Member Watts, I will give the budget review subcommittee report. So the budget review subcommittee met on November 7th to receive an update on proposed changes to the miscellaneous fees. The subcommittee provided feedback and directions of staff. The subcommittee will meet again prior to the public hearing on miscellaneous fees, which is being continued to December 15. That's my report. Thank you, Board Member Wright. Any questions or comments from the Board? One comment, Chair Galvin. Sure. I appreciate considering the item later, and I was, as a member of the subcommittee, attended the meeting. And I just wanted to say to staff that my comments during that meeting weren't positive enough, but were more insistent that we do things in a particular way. I apologize. Normally, I want to have a positive inquiry method, and I did have enough detail to make a decision, but I certainly support and approve of staff's quality of work. And so I should have indicated that during the meeting. I didn't, and I apologize for failing to do that. Thank you, Board Member Walsh. Any other Board Member questions or comments regarding the subcommittee report? All right. If not, we will take public comments on item number 11. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. There are no public comments on subcommittee reports. Thank you. Do we have any Board Member reports? Doesn't appear so. We will move then to the Director's Report, item 14. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. I have two items to share with you this afternoon. First, I wanted to let the Board know that the epidemiological studies of our wastewater are continuing to provide a wealth of community health data. We are starting to see much less COVID than in the peak, but we are seeing rapid increases in both respiratory, since since chill virus. I knew they were going to do that to me or RSV and influenza A. This information is shared. We do share it with the County Department of Public Health, and they've used it to direct their outreach to the public and local health care providers. You probably recently saw some information about respiratory illnesses that the local health officer was providing to the public. And also, our regulators are very interested in this data and Water Department staff will be presenting the latest results of these studies to our North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board at their meeting scheduled for December 8th and 9th. So a very nice kudos to staff for their work on this and being invited to present to our regulators. And then second, I wanted to let the Board know that on November 14th, the North Coast Regional Water Control Board staff came out to the Laguna treatment plant and conducted an inspection of the plant, the meddling pond complex, and our delta pond. The inspection went very well, and I do want to note that the inspector commented that he appreciated staff's dedication to meeting our permit requirements and that there were no findings from the visit. We are continuing to find ways to work with our regulators to meet our common goal of being stewards of water quality in our watershed. And in particular, I want to compliment our Environmental Services Division as well as our treatment plant operations staff for their great work and especially for their work being noticed and acknowledged by the Regional Board staff. To have them come out and do an inspection and really have no findings is pretty remarkable. And that is my update and my report and I'm happy to answer any questions that the Board may have. Thank you for the report and that's great news with regards to the inspection. Any Board member questions or comments? Board member Grable? Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you, Director Burke. I think I messaged you a while ago asking about the monitoring data and it's certainly been helpful for me and my family just to inform our own decisions about how to protect the family and certainly seeing the the reality of that data reflected in my daughter's classroom attendance which is is about half what it should be. But it's just really fantastic that we have that data now both from the verily and the biobot. That's what an amazing 21st century public health improvement to have that data. So thank you again. Thank you Board member Grable. Any other Board member questions or comments for the Director? All right. We'll now take public comments on Item 14. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand for dialing in via telephone. Please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus? There are no public comments for Director's Report. That will take care of the Director's Report then which brings us to Item 15 which is an adjournment of the meeting. So we will be adjourned. I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. Safe travels if you're traveling and we will see you in December. So we are adjourned. Thank you Chair Kelvin. Thank you Chair.