 my clock says 3.30. I'm assuming that we can start our meeting. With that, if you will join me in the pledge, please. I pledge allegiance to the tribe and to the republic which it stands under God. Thank you. Senator, to on our agenda is the approval of minutes from our February 15 meeting. I'm going to take to approve the minutes. I move that we approve the minutes from the February 15 meeting. I second it. We'll be second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right, financial reports, Joe. I would report that the audit of 2020 has been completed. It was done on a virtual basis this year and that included a virtual walk around for some inventory checks and other things on site. We should have the audit report next month. But everything was indicated to be sound. And then we do have for, we do have Lisa's updated now through February for the report billing and some of the other financial reports. And I don't have anything unusual to note. Everything looks as expected. And no big surprises. Sorry, just got to close the door to my office. Any questions on the financial reports as far as what's been presented? No, we're looking forward to seeing the audited results. We need a motion to approve the vouchers. They were submitted by email to everyone. So moved. I second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right, Joe. Superintendent's report. We'll start with operations. And you'll see for February, we were down in production by about four and a half percent compared to last year and about seven and a half percent compared to 2019. I think we're just seeing some economic variability there. We don't have a big reason underlying that. Otherwise, we had a pretty normal February. The year today to date average is 11.7 million gallons of water per day. And that's down from 2019 where we had an average to this point in the year of 12 and a half million gallons per day. So hopefully as the year goes on, we'll pick up and increase on that number. We did have an unusually mild winter in terms of water temperature. We really only went into our winter operation mode. Maybe just for a couple, maybe four or five evenings was all. Normally we would be in that several months in the winter. And this is when the water temperature drops below about 32 and a half degrees, the raw water temperature. And we kind of switch our production to daylight hours to reduce the chance of icing at night. But again, this year we only did that about four or five evenings was all we had to do that. So unusually mild winter. We did not have any intake icing as a result this winter. And I think I can safely say now we will have none for this winter. That's probably a pretty good guess, Joe. I'm gonna go out on a limb. And that that's pretty unusual. Most years we've had a few icing incidences by this time. In terms of maintenance, you can see the detail log as usual, all variety of work from electrical to physical, mechanical maintenance, security issues, all kinds of things like that. That's the extent for operations and distribution. We did have three water main breaks. Two were back to back on the ninth. And then we had one nine days later on the 18th. And as usual, those those usually occur on smaller mains, six or eight inch mains. And those were two on six inch main and one on the eight inch main. And the crew was able to mobilize and that was during a colder stretch and they were able to repair those in pretty short order. They do continue to have good results with the electronic correlator that that the board had supported the purchase of last year. So let's let's turn out to be one of those tools that they're now using all the time. I think the only time it can be a little harder is if they're on a very busy road and there's a lot of street noise or a lot of traffic noise and the system can pick that up. Because basically it's listening to sound in the ground. So they had maybe one instance where I think they're on self business drive during a very busy time and the traffic was causing some interference. But otherwise the system's been very effective. They're very happy with it. Other highlights and distribution. The Stomberg subdivision water main was installed by by the developer actually and the water utility staff conducted the inspection of that water main. I'm sure it was going in perspective. And that now has been tested out and is mostly in service. And then just a variety. It's still catching up on water main brake service holes and hydrant broken, valve broken, a few issues like that for February. And then finally for um. So can I interrupt one second? The other day I noticed the hydrant laying on the ground. It's on like the frontage road off of South Business Drive where Taco Bell and Burger King and that stuff in that area. Is that private? It was actually on the ground? Are you like disconnected? Just laying on the ground. How far off the road? Right next to the corner, whether it turns into the parking lot for one of those businesses, a long self business drive, but on the back end of those businesses. There's a road that kind of goes through from the south side, Piggly Wiggly, all the way from Wendy's actually, all the way through there. Yeah. If that's private rather than public. That is private. That would be mostly private if it's, you know, more than 20 feet off the edge of the public street. Okay, yeah, okay. I mean, there's no water coming out or anything like that. It just looked like the hydrant was laying there. Yeah, they shouldn't be, you know, we'll take a peek at it and see what's going on, but they shouldn't be leaving it. You know, it may have been hit and came off, but it shouldn't be sitting there. So we'll take a look. Could have been buried under a snow pile too for that matter. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Sorry, didn't throw up. I will pass that along and we'll take a look at it tomorrow. Okay. Customer relations and fiscal. We did reopen the pay window and we're still saying much less activity at the window. Dramatically less at the window, more dropbox payments, more electronic payments. And we're still catching up on the liquid accounts apps at the disconnection program. We have seen more delinquent accounts building up and that's reflected as well. Number of calls coming in was a little bit down, not a huge difference. No complaints filed with public service commission for February. Leak allowances, this is where a customer has, you know, a leak going on that they're unaware of. Usually it's a toilet that's leaking. Customer doesn't know about it. We pick it up on meter reading and inform them. We did have one leak allowance. Customers are allowed an allowance every two years under certain criteria that they have to fulfill. We did start a little bit with some commercial meter replacements. 35 of those were completed. We do have one active private service lateral that is leaking and we're attempting to work with the owner to get them to hire a plumber to repair that leak because it is not utility asset. We can't just jump in there and fix it, but we will be working with the customer to get that accomplished. Is there a risk, Joe, with a leak like that that you could get some backflow into our system? Not backflow because it's under pressure, but there is a risk of undermining, you know, the right of way and the road depending on what's going on. So we do watch them carefully and if we feel like there is property, you know, or health hazard, we will occasionally get involved and physically make an emergency repair, but we try to avoid doing that and it's pretty rare that we do that. Okay. I think otherwise it's a summary for CRNF for the month of February. Any additional comments or questions for Joe on the reports? I have kind of a bunny trail if you don't mind. I was wondering if you were following the water problems in Texas and Oklahoma and all the mains breaking down there. Are they just burying their lines that much closer to the surface? Yeah, that's the main problem that I was aware of, Mark, that they're, you know, here we bury at least five and a half feet down and southerly, you know, maybe two feet, maybe less. And yeah, those can, you know, a couple days of freezing weather, the frost can dive through that down very quickly and start causing problems. What a crisis. Yeah, some may have been above ground crossing bridges and such and you know, a big problem, the mains might be a little bit deeper, but often the laterals are, you know, even more shallow, maybe two feet, foot and a half. And those start freezing and, you know, customers have problems immediately. Yeah, that was a real crisis. Yeah, it sure was. All right, moving on with our agenda, if nothing else under Joe's reports. Could we need a motion to accept them? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, we'll need a motion. So moved. I'll second it. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Approved. Okay, items previously held over are raw water improvement projects. Yeah, update in several areas with the project. First of all, we did have a meeting utility staff, the engineering team, and some staff members from the public works department to discuss the impact of the project on the disc golf course at Volrath Park. And there's definite impact. The project will displace one of the disc golf holes. So we had reached out to the parks superintendent and the disc golf kind of volunteer coordinator just for some communications. One of the things we wanted to be sure was an understanding about time frame, because they do plan events. We didn't want any confusion that way. Now there's no construction anticipated for 2022, so there isn't any immediate issue coming up. But we wanted to be sure there was understanding there. And then on the hole that is displaced, just due to the location of the RWI building, there's a feeling that they may need to redesign that portion of the course to kind of squeeze in. They don't want to lose a hole, which is understandable, but they need a little bit of redesign work. How do we fit this hole back in and change the other holes or courses or whatever? I'm not a disc golfer. I don't quite know the terminology, but the gist of it was a good understanding about what the impact is going to be. And I need to develop a plan laid out by a firm that does disc golf design to accommodate the impact of the project. So that should be forthcoming. Other developments we do now have in our hands 60% design drawings and plans, and we're reviewing those. And we'll be meeting with the engineering team next week as follow up. That's 60% of final design. So we're getting a lot of details now. We're getting very far along in the process. And I would say they're on schedule to meet the June deadline for final design being completed. We should have an updated engineer's opinion of probable construction costs by the end of March. We'll be able to report on that figure next month. I'm hoping it's in line with what we've seen. I don't have any reason to think it would not be, but they are updating that now with those details. And that'll be important to have. They're also sending us a virtual reality headset. So the operation staff is going to use that and do their virtual walk through the facility and get a number of people involved with that. So that's kind of a nice tool. The third item related to the project, we do have an easement in place with the city of Sheboygan. And that was recorded in 2007, very early infant stages of the project when we recognized the project would be coming. And the board had requested about that point property to build and operate the project. And the city preferred a permanent easement agreement, not a property transfer. So we will be building the project on that easement. It looks like the building itself, due to high water and the interest in fitting a service road on the east side, the building is probably going to be 10 to 15 feet beyond the easement on the west side. And we may have to request a modification to accommodate that. But certainly the bulk of it is within the original easement that was laid out 13 years ago. And we didn't have all the details of what the project size would be in the precise location. And then the other update, one of the other approvals we need is from the Public Service Commission. We need a so-called construction authorization on the project due to its size and financial impact. And I've begun working on that document. It's pretty lengthy, probably end up being a 20-page report of the project addressing all of their questions and concerns about a project with this magnitude and basically a lot of justification. So we now have a rough draft of that document. And pending more of the 60% details coming out will update that once more. And then I would anticipate submitting that at the 60% design point, which PSC says it's allowable, in order to get that process moving because that is probably going to be a nine-month process with them. And I want that to be going in parallel as we apply for the safe drinking water loan and everything else is moving forward. So I would anticipate in the next month being ready to submit that to the PSC. And again, we've met with them at least two times in person and talked in detail about the project. So they know a lot about it. They know it's coming. They've anticipated some questions and communicated with us very well on the project so far. So the next month, we'll have more information, more details, and everything is moving along. The only other item I should mention, we've talked about the FEMA BRIC grants. We did apply for one on the shoreline protection system for the project. We're not going to know about that until probably late summer. There's been some consideration, maybe we should apply for the whole project. And we're still having discussion with the State Division of Emergency Management that is kind of the state manager of FEMA BRIC as to whether the whole project is really going to fit the criterion or not. There's a benefit analysis. And if your numbers and that don't come out high enough, there's no point in continuing forward. So they've kind of thrown up some red flags because FEMA BRIC is intended to mitigate natural disaster impact on infrastructure, public projects, and shoreline protection falls under the realm of high water and flooding, both of those. The overall project itself would only fall under possibly flooding because our current low-lift pump station is close to lake level and could, in theory, flood. But flooding has a very high or standard to make it through their benefit analysis. So they've kind of started to indicate that they're not sure the whole project is even going to make it through the analysis to move beyond that. So we're still evaluating that. And I'm hopeful within the next month or two that we'll have a better determination. I don't want to spend time on FEMA BRIC for the whole project. First of all, if it's not even passing the benefit analysis. And second of all, I kind of want to know that as soon as we can because it does impact when the project construction could begin. So we're trying to resolve that part of the financing question. And if we could get a 75 percent grant, obviously that'd be a wonderful thing. You know, there's a limited chance of that happening and possibly we might not even qualify to even apply. So I'm still trying to work with Lisa and others and resolve that question. Anything else? Any questions on that, Mark? No, I'm good. All right. Thanks for the report, Joe. On to number five, items for discussion, possible action. First, we've got approval of a bid on Georgia Avenue Water Mean project. Yes. Here we have a bid tabulation. Due to a number of factors, we teamed with the Public Works Department on their project in this instance, which we do, you know, not infrequently. If they're digging up a street and bidding out a lot of other work, it makes sense normally for us to join with them. So we did in this case as well. And the low bidder of the overall project was Fenton. And you can see the figures for the water main portion. And those did come in under our engineer's estimate. One risk is that when we bid out under a larger contract, that maybe the low bid for the whole contract isn't the low bid for our portion of the contract. But in this case, it came out as a reasonable on the water main. And we would certainly recommend moving forward with it. Do you recall what the budget was, Joe? It was about $850,000, if not a little more, maybe $875,000. Good. Any questions or comments? That was my big question. I'm good. All right, with that, we need a motion to approve the $788,000, $39,000 for the project. So moved. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carried. Next, number 5.2, approval on bid of Georgia and the lead service line replacements. Yes, in addition to the water main, one of the reasons we wanted to do the project was there are a lot of old lead service lines in that stretch of the city. And it provides us a good opportunity to replace an old main and replace a number of old lead service lines at the same time. Due to, in this case, receiving funding from the DNR grant program for lead service line replacements, we have to bid out the lead service line replacements separate from the water main work. This is due to some federal legal requirements that help clarify costs for just the lead service line grant projects. So anyway, what you have here is a bid for the lead service line replacements on the same project, but the prior bid was for the water main replacement. So in this case, we specced out the lead service line replacements. I believe there are 65 to 70 homes with lead service lines that we would be replacing. And in this case, we were happy to receive, I believe it was, it's five bids for that portion of the work. And we have a low responsive bid from a new company for us, Elfson excavating out of Reedsville came in low, and they came in at a bid under our local firms that have done projects like this in the past. So we feel it's a, it is a responsive bid and they're able to do the work. And we would recommend accepting their proposal. Do we have any testimonials from other folks that have worked with them? We have their bidder's proof, which lists other projects similar in nature that they have done, you know, type of equipment that they have. You know, they, they're certainly capable of doing this work. Is there, is there a way for us to check with a couple of those other projects just to make sure or you feel that what information we have is sufficient? I think under a publicly bid project, it would need very strong reason to, to deny a low-cost bid that's responsive. So I'm not sure that we'd be able to, you know, so to speak, have reference checks on them. If they were on the State Debar List, that would certainly be disqualifying. We could certainly ask for some information, contacts with past clients and kind of get a sense of maybe areas to, to, you know, watch out for so to speak if, in working with them. But I don't really think we could comply with State Bidding Law and, and do a reference check like that. Okay. All right. So we're looking at approving that bid for Alson, excavating out of Reedville. I will move to Kru. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Next, Joe, you said we have two, two projects as part of that or on this understanding? That was it for Georgia Avenue. Okay. All right. So 5.3 approval for bid on hydrant painting for 2021. Yes. So each year we put out an annual bid for, excuse me, blasting hydrants down to bare metal, priming and painting them. So here we'd like to do 200 hydrants. We were delayed due to COVID last year. So we asked for an updated price of, and our vendor held same prices last year. So we're simply requesting to continue with work that was delayed and just wanted to be clear that it is a new year and they had bid it last year, but they're holding their price and we'd like to continue it for 2021. Does this get us back on track with the hydrant maintenance? It does. Yes. Excellent. All right. Any further discussion? Not for me. If not, we'll accept the motion to approve from Davies. Is there a second? I will second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carried. All right. The engineering design on Indiana and the Waterloo Project number 5.4. Yes. So the DOT is doing a rebuild on a state highway, the Indiana Avenue state highway portion in the city. Forget what state highway number that is, 28 maybe, but whatever it is. DOT is doing a project and it's encompassing South 24th Street, South Taylor Drive is the relevant portion for us. They're doing road reconstruction entirely in that section. We have a very small old water main there, eight inch water main that used to be the sole supply to the UW campus. So if you imagine that water main coming down Indiana Avenue, crossing Taylor Drive and then going to Lutheran High and the campus area, that was the sole feeder for that area for many, many years. It's old main. It's very deep. I think portions of it there are 15 feet or possibly a little deeper than that. What we'd like to do is replace that and start to build up a better corridor. Eliminate that very deep water main, which is safety hazard and start to kind of strengthen our water distribution in that area now that we have the hospital. And we still have the UW campus, which no possibly will be growing. The hospital and the campus are fed from the north as well. I'm sorry, from the south as well, but there isn't much networking or backbone so to speak. So this Indiana Avenue really serves as the backbone to that area. And we do envision in the future more water transmission along South Taylor Drive in that area, possibly linking to the Urey Avenue water reservoirs, Taylor Hill. So it is an important corridor that's just been undeveloped with water main. But the extent of what we would like to do is replace from White Forest Street to Taylor Drive. Unfortunately, as this is a DOT project, we can't just jump in with our engineering department and comply with their specs and drawing details. We don't have the means to do that. And nor do they want individual utilities doing that. So the consulting engineer on the project is a strand. And they are certainly reputable Wisconsin Civil Engineering Company. So we asked strand for a quote to do the water main design in compliance with DOT specs and all of their criterion, working closely with us and reducing a lot of their work because we know what we want in that area. They don't have to start from scratch. So what the supervisor of McMillan was able to see from them was a proposal to do that design work and make it comply with DOT bidding requirements. We do have an hourly charge-out rate not to exceed $25,000. I think it can come in somewhat under that figure, but there is, you know, it is a significant stretch of water main to design and lay out and take some time, certainly. Are we envisioning, what size are we envisioning and putting in there? Probably 12 inch. Well, okay. And at some point, will something have to run to the Kohler Arts Preserve or anything out there? We do have a water main serving the Art Preserve. We had installed a river crossing a couple of years ago from the Lutheran High area, but it also is served by this 8 inch kind of substandard main in Indiana Avenue. Yeah, you're right here. We have a 12 inch, basically brand new river crossing right there that is feeding the Arts Center and whatever else might come in that area. Okay. Any further comments or questions for Joe? One second. An exciting project. Yep. Yeah. There are no comments. We'll accept the motion to approve the Stranding Associates and the Water Main Project. So moved. I'll second it. Move to second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Terrible time. Number 5.5 approval of water meters. So with the startup of the disconnection program in mid-April, we're starting to think about returning to our water meter changeup program. We're required to change water meters up per PSC specs. And that program has been on hold. We now want to start that up when we feel it's safe to do so here. And I think that will be in the very near future. But we do want to lay in some stock of our standard M25 batch or meters, a few larger commercial 3 inch meters and such shown on the requisition. And these are just going to be replaced on an as needed basis. Yeah, that's right. Most of the meters we're running 20 years now. Okay. All right. I will make the motion to approve the purchase of the meters from Badger meter. I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Terrible time. Terrible time. Moving on to the agenda. Nothing under personnel. I want to compliment everybody on wearing the water color today. Anyway, we're making an assumption, Tom. Yeah, we're making an assumption. Exactly. Next meeting scheduled for April 19th that work for everyone else. Yes, I'm good. We're still going to be around. Yep, I'm good. Not going on vacation. All right. We'll see everybody on the 19th of April. Okay. For those of you who don't have the second shot, enjoy. How do we do on water utility personnel could get shots? Correct, Joe? They have direct front line contact with the public and are unable to socially distance. Yes, they're in 1B. Okay. All right. With that, I will accept the motion to adjourn our meeting. That's all moved. I'll second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Terrible time. Enjoy the snow tonight. After that, that's the last one. So, we all hope. We all hope. Joe, I got to tell you, I do like this board docs process. I can look at the documents here on my iPad. This works well. Yeah, I've got two monitors, so I'm looking at them on one monitor and looking at you guys on the other. I'm not sure which is more exciting. I'll just say you're not checking the baseball scores on that third monitor, there's someone here. Well, the season hasn't started yet. Okay. All right. Have a good day. The rest of it anyway, guys. Thanks. Bye, guys.