Mar 08, 2021 Public Utilities Board on 2021-03-08 9:00 AM

Okay, it's 902 and we do have a quorum, so we're called to order the Public Utility Board meeting for the City of Denton on March 8, 2021. The first item is public comment. Do we have anyone on the phone waiting to have public comment? Hi there, this is Tyler Smith. At this moment, we do not. Okay. All right. Then we will move on to consent agenda. Does any board member wish to pull an item from the consent agenda? Okay, I do. I'm going to pull item C. I have a potential conflict of interest, so I'll step out when we get to that point. Do we have a motion to approve items A, B, D, and E? Move approval. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, Billy, it's all yours. Text me when you're done. I will do. All right. Well, Susan's stepping out, and as the vice chair, we're looking at consent agenda item C. Are there any questions? We may like to discuss anything about this. I have one question. Oops. I'm new to the board, so I just wanted to ask. I presume this has already been discussed in past public utility board meetings. So, Mr. Rybeck, I'm Tony Punt, I'm the executive manager of utilities and the facilitator for the PUB and staff, and so I'm going to ask Pritam Deshmuth in our water/wastewater department to respond to that question. Okay. Thank you. Since I'm new, I just wanted to ask. Appreciate it. Hi, this is Pritam Deshmuth, deputy director of water and wastewater. Can you please repeat the question? I've kind of heard part of it. I was just asking if the board had previously considered this since this is my first meeting. Not this particular item. This is a decommissioning. It's for design of the actual plant. We have a 0.5MGD plant out on ropes and ranch. This item, particularly for design, has not gone through the board. Okay. Well, I live at ropes and ranch, so I need to recuse myself. Tony, or I think Ms. Susan, she's on the board there, right? Is that why she's recusing herself? Yeah, I'm not really sure what the matter is there, to be honest with you. I don't think living in an area causes you not to be able to vote. I think that'll... I'll see if Catherine Clifton can respond to that. That's something that you might want to consider, but that's within your judgment to make. Okay, so if I don't vote, will we not have a quorum to approve the item? It appears to me that you'll still have four, so you'll still have a quorum. Okay, then I think I'll recuse myself from this vote as well. Okay. Is there any further discussions from other board members? No. Okay. After we take this vote, quick discussion about that recusal, if you don't mind. I entertain a motion to approve item number C on the consent agenda. So moved. Second. We have a motion from Karen, a second from Barbara. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's four to oh on that one, with two abstaining. I think if each one of us had to recuse ourselves over anything that affected us from a utility, none of us would vote. So that's my opinion. If you felt like... I think Lee's new, so let me text Susan. I just think we're all affected by rates, we're all affected by water flow, sewer flow, drainage, electrical. So unless you have a direct interest or a direct effect on what happens in that vote, I don't see the reason. I'd be surprised if there would be some sort of conflict. Susan, are you on the board of Robeson? I'm actually employed by Robeson. Okay. See, that's a good recusal. Yeah. I'm actually... The legal entity is Robeson Communities, but they're all under the same larger umbrella. Okay. I would think that there would have to be an adequate financial interest for recusal. So for instance, if I was a consultant to the engineering firm that's being awarded the contract under this item, then that would be the kind of thing. Okay. I think in the rewritten ethics ordinance, there's a set financial number. $600, I believe it is. That's correct. Yeah. Yes, I remember reading that. Right. The other component is just, is there an appearance of conflict? This other kind of catch-all provision where you have to make that determination for yourself. That's not something that we give any particular direction on. And that's where I said, I think maybe I should just step out on this one so that there isn't an appearance because a lot of people don't know the difference. Hand it back over to you. Okay. Hand it back over to me. Okay. Items for individual consideration. Are there any changes to the February board minutes, February 8th, 2021 board minutes? All right. Do we have a motion to approve? So moved. And a second? I'll second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Next item is consider adopting an ordinance for the city of Denton, Texas, a professional services agreement with Fries and Nichols Inc. for engineering related on-call professional services in the amount of not for three years, not to exceed $3,031,783. I'm back here. Pretend they smoke again and let me give me a second, I'll pull up the presentation. Please let me know when you can see the presentation and I move forward. Okay. So it's a professional services contract, quick overview. The objective behind this particular contract is we are seeing a lot of growth in the city and we have to continue at a fast pace implementing some of our water and wastewater capacity enhancement and upgrading for the entire infrastructure, not just the pipes in the ground, but also the treatment facilities, both on the water and wastewater side. The reason I did allude to that high growth rate, we are growing at a much faster pace and we have a lot of backlog on projects that we have to quickly complete in the next two to three years. So this contract will help augment our staff. It is primarily for project management, pushing some of these projects through. And it's critical that we get these move forward in a timely fashion. Here's a quick list of projects that it is not necessarily all of these projects or some of these projects may drop out, but definitely these are projects are currently on our books. There are several others, but what we want is have the ability and flexibility to add more capacity to our staff. We currently have only one engineer that was involved in delivering capital projects on the treatment facility side. So a lot of bandwidth issues there with the staff. And that's the reason this contract is in front of you. And there are several large projects, if I may kind of highlight, there's a Mayhill 35 utility relocation based on the widening of I-35E. By tech start, there was another larger project, I-35 North, that's from the split to Milam. That's a 30 plus million dollar project. So you can see there are several large projects and we necessarily don't have staff to move these projects forward. A little bit of detail on this, I want to explain what the differences, the Lakeview Ranch Interceptor and then the Robeson Decommissioning, those were in front of you earlier today. The contracts were just only for design. This particular is staff augmentation to push those projects, to manage them, to process invoices, help us review engineering design and stuff like that. So there's a little bit of nuance. I'm sure you must have caught onto that. So we went through a process of selecting and short listing firms. We had a pre-qualified list. This is 6590, you might have heard that number multiple times. It was back in 2018, about three years ago, that we went through council and a formal approval process. And out of that, five firms were shortlisted for the project management piece of it. We've ranked those firms and we have selected, or at this point recommending, Fries and Nichols as the highest ranked firm for this particular item. So at this time, staff does recommend moving forward and ask the PV members and the commission to recommend council for approval of this particular contract. It's a three-year contract. And then it's capped at $3 million, a little over that. I will be happy to answer any questions if you have. Questions? Yes, Ed, go ahead. Yeah, I was just curious if in the future the city has any plans to hire any more engineering staff so that we're not so shortlisted in that area. Absolutely. I think this is our first step. We want to make sure that we have a consistent 10-year CIP and master plans that back all of that. So as we move into that transition, we don't want to hire someone and in a few years then think that we don't have the need for what we thought we had. So as a first step, we're going to have a consultant and consistently track that work over the next year or so. And then accordingly make recommendations to move forward and hire permanent staff that will be required. Great. Thank you very much. And add all that to that. We had at least one vacancy that we were attempting to fill and really had a hard time finding applicants that kind of believe it even in this job market. We looked at different options. And I think at this point, this is kind of the route that we'd like we'd recommend. And then certainly we'll be looking at that as the job market continues to improve. But for now, we just need this additional help to get these projects going. Thank you, Tony. Barbara, did you have a question? Well, I did. And I found it in my notes. An hourly this would be an hourly way it would be charged, yeah. All right. Thank you. No other questions. Do we have a motion to approve? Move approval. Second. Okay. I hope Kim got all that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Management reports. Tony. So again, this is Tony. I'm an executive manager of utilities, before we get into this item, I just wanted to just communicate something to the board. So many of these items that are on here, and certainly if you have questions about these items, their staff here that can respond to each of those items, I want to be clear that our process and certainly our preference is that these items not go to the council before they're seen by the PUB. But unfortunately, just because of the recent events that we had, I did communicate with Susan and we talked about canceling the previous PUB meeting. And then I did inform her that we would be looking at the agenda and that there might be some contracts that we would have to take directly to council just because of their nature and the need to have them approved so that projects and other efforts could continue. What Susan and I then subsequently discussed is that, you know, it probably made sense for me to communicate that to the board rather than her because of some of the Open Meeting Act rules. And so going forward, I just want to assure the PUB that when those types of issues come up, I will normally speak with Susan as the chair of the PUB. I will make every attempt as well to communicate with Billy Cheek as the vice chair. But then going forward, what I'll do is I'll then communicate that to the PUB as well to all the other members to let you know what's going on with the meeting, why we arrived at canceling the meeting, and if there are any contracts that will be going straight to the council as a result of those discussions, that I will communicate that to you. And so that's something, again, that Susan and I did talk. But again, just wanted to give you that explanation and let you know as well that as issues come up, and if certainly like three weeks ago, just know that I'm in constant communication with the chair about what's going on and responding to her on any questions that she or you might have. So, again, just wanted to let you know that. But again, we have a number of items here. If anyone has a question about any of those items, please let us know. And like I said, there's ample amount of staff here. On the future agenda items, I think we just had the really our intent was to come back to you and kind of give you a wrap-up of where we ended the budget with the utilities, specifically DME. But as a result of the events of three weeks ago, we're pushing that back and do plan to come back to you and give you some additional information about how we -- where we ended up the '19-'20 budget, but then also kind of let you know where we're at for the current year's budget and obviously the forecast. And so that will be forthcoming to you. And then the new business action items, as you can see on there, are just items that we've had already on the table. The one item that I did not add, and my hope is that you have already received, is that we are planning to have a joint PUB and council meeting on the 23rd. And so that's already in the works and being scheduled. Two presentations will be made at that meeting will be an update from DME on the winter storm events, which will probably take us some time, and then the other one will be an update for water and wastewater to do exactly the same. And again, that'll be a joint council and PUB meeting. And again, the agenda and those types of things will be forthcoming to you. Like I mentioned earlier, for those of you that weren't on, if you have specific questions about those utilities, please send those directly to Kim. My request to you is to send us all your questions all at once so that we're not piecemealing them. And then our intent would be to either incorporate responses to your questions within the presentations or to have a separate memo that's attached to that agenda item that addresses those specific questions. And that way we have a little bit of time so that we can get those together. If you can get those to me by the middle of this week, it would be very helpful. And then we will compile those along with any questions that we get from the council as well. But with that, I'll go ahead, Susan, that's what I have. If there's any questions, let us know. Questions. Karen, go ahead. This is pretty minor and I don't want staff taking time away from the storm related stuff. A while ago, I brought up with Larry the fact that we're approving minutes as the state record for our meetings, but the real state record is going to be the video now that we're doing, I think. Didn't he change that? I believe. Well, he said he was going to look into it. I thought he circled back and said the, am I wrong there? Well, I missed one meeting. So maybe that... Okay. I think at that meeting, he circled back, maybe Catherine, can you shed some light on that and said that the written ones are the official document, but we keep the video. Okay. So if the written ones are the official document, I would like them to be more extensive. Right now, it says so and so asked a question, so and so answered it. If that's going to be the official document, then we need to know what the question is and what the answer was. And I know that's going to be bringing more work on staff, but it just seems like the minutes as they are now are not fulfilling their job as the record of the meeting. And I think, Karen, that my recollection is that Larry put a memo together. Let us circle back up on that to make sure, and then we can kind of share that with Catherine, unless Catherine, you remember that memo and you can respond. I do not remember that off the top of my head. I do remember some discussions about it, but we'll get that memo and provide that for you. I mean, I know that... We track that under new business action items so that we can keep track of it. Okay. We can add it on there. Yeah. I know that people can go to the video, but there's not going to be the attention paid to preserving the video as an archive, if it's not the required record. Catherine, correct me again, but aren't they... You're keeping them in forever, the video, under the records law, records management? Sorry, circle back. Thanks. Okay, Seb, go ahead. Yeah, I had a question for Tony. I was just curious if there were any updates coming up in the future regarding the development of the high BTU landfill facility. Yeah, we have Brian Borners right here, so I'll let him respond to that. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, Brian Borners, Solid Waste Director with the City of Denton. I appreciate the question this morning, Mr. Sof. Thank you. We are currently in the process of finalizing the RFP to go out for consideration. So internally, we have not put it out to find out specifically what the bid might be once we get the information back from the potential proposers, we will be bringing information to the PUB for consideration and moving forward with contracting. Thank you very much. You're welcome. On the other hand, yes Barbara, go ahead, you're on mute. I read in the minutes about my asking for maps when you're talking about locations, so that if we wanted to go visually look at what we would be talking about in our minutes and our meetings and I appreciate very much that that was included and it is helpful. And just a word, I know you've got thanks from a lot of people, but I knew when I was sitting in my house, though it may have been without electricity, that some of you guys were out there and what a staff we have and I appreciate it so much as everybody that I've talked to have been impressed with the city staff, so thank you very much. Thank you, Barbara. Yes, Billy. Yeah, I guess I better thank you as well for this item and we're adding added the little simple description of where the money's coming from for each item, the fiscal information, thank you for adding that. All right then, concluding items, does any board member wish to have something added to a future agenda or have any congratulations to the staff? I guess we've all been doing that. And under this item, Lee, welcome. Do you want to tell us a little bit about you and why you were interested to join us? Well, thanks for asking. I was recruited by my predecessor, Russ Bafford, to ask me if I'd be interested in helping out with the board, since I don't know most of you, I'm a commissioning project director for the McKinstry Company. My current assignments include Charles Schwab's DFW headquarters there at the 114 and 170 Trophy Club. I've got 30 plus years experience with building systems, including HVAC, heating, ventilating, air conditioning, lighting controls, emergency power, and that sort of thing. And so I have some interest in and knowledge about the functioning of utility systems. So I thought it might be a good fit and I'm happy to add my two cents for my civic responsibility. So thank you. Sounds like a great fit with your background. Thank you. Any other board members? All right, let's go into the work session. We're going to receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction regarding the processes, impacts, and results of service delivery during the February 2021 inclement weather event by Solid Waste and Recycling Department. Good morning again, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Brian Berner. I'm Solid Waste Director with the City of Denton. I do appreciate the opportunity this morning to talk a little bit about our service delivery during the Snowvid event that we had here a couple of weeks ago. So if you give me a minute to pull this up. All right, hopefully everybody can see the presentation. What I want to do is talk a little bit about how we went about developing our response plan with regard to the inclement weather that we had the week of the 14th of February, review a little bit about what actually was happening in North Texas with both the public and private solid waste providers, and then give you a few little results of the results of what happened as a result of the service change that we had during that week. The development of our program and the way we approach service during that week all circulates around safety. Solid waste industry is the sixth most dangerous profession statistically that you can be involved in right now. You are more apt to be injured or killed as a result of a solid waste accident than any other public service right now. So again, we have to think about our employees and the citizens that we serve, both curbside and out on the road. So as we approached and saw what was coming, we were thinking how will it affect our customers and how will it affect our operators. The question we ask about our customers is, you know, can we actually get the garbage to the curb with minimal for potential entry to the customer? You know, it's icy, it's slick, there is a slip trip and fall hazard, and with the record low temperatures that we saw, there was also some exposure potential. We wanted to minimize those risks, and secondarily, for our operators, the question is, is it safe to be on the road? We operate some of the largest pieces of equipment in the fleet of the city of Denton. We drive on a weekly basis the most miles of any department, and as a result, we have to ask our question, you know, is it safe? If we are going to be out, how do we minimize equipment damage? How do we minimize potential impacts to private property? And then again, how do we protect our drivers? Again, if they have to get out, there are slip trips and fall hazards, exposure issues. At the end of the day, we don't want to create a risk obligation to the city as a result of injuring a driver when it was something that we had really in our control. So again, safety first as we approach this issue. We actually started preparing for that week, the snow, during the week of February 8th. Again, that weather affects us significantly, we're a little bit of a weather nerd. We saw that looking through all the apps and all the TV stations out there, there was this convergence that was coming of cold weather, and the forecast weren't changing. They were getting worse and worse. So we had internal communications talking about, you know, what are we going to do? How are we going to approach this? We started discussion with our public, discussions with our public and private counterparts to determine what was going to be required as a result of us, and then we began weatherproofing, looking at our equipment, our facilities to minimize any long-term damage as a result of the cold weather. On the 14th of December, which is a Sunday, we made a decision to curtail all operations during that week, only because from a safety issue, it was the right decision to make. We did open the landfill shortly for a few hours on Tuesday the 16th. As you know, we do receive sludge from some wastewater treatment, third-party wastewater treatment plant operators, and their sludge boxes were full, and in order to keep wastewater flowing throughout the region, we needed to be open so they could dispose of the sludge. We did open full-time on Thursday, February 18th. Operations resumed, and at that time, we were operating the landfill full-time. On Friday, February 19th, we resumed our commercial operations, focusing on hospitals, warming centers, other places that were high operation, and then moved into multifamily and grocery stores and other commercial operations to get at least one empty of the dumpsters during that week so that we continue to operate over the weekend. We reopened residential collection the week of the 22nd. This was a double week, so all the trash that we missed during the week of the 14th, we picked up during the 22nd. We did defer yard waste in bulk until the following week. Any HCC home chemical collection appointments that were called in previously and during that week were serviced on time. During March 1st, that week, we resumed full service, picking up all the yard waste, the garbage in bulk, and as of this week, we're returning to normal services, collecting garbage recycling, everything within the service standard that we had previously committed to. We look across the Metroplex. Most private and public operators did curtail operations during that week. The cities of Fort Worth, Arlington, Dallas, and any of the other cities that were serviced by our private waste haulers, whether it be CWD, Frontier, Republic, Waste Connections, most of them did defer throughout the week. Again, it was simply unsafe to have drivers try to get to the yard and then have the trucks out on the streets, so with few exceptions, everybody was closed that entire week. We saw, again, just as the city of Denton, commercial collections start again on the 19th and then full residential collections start again the week of the 22nd. This is just a few examples of what presented itself to us as we started going through the neighborhoods and the multifamily and the commercial during the 19th and the week of the 22nd. We did allow excess bags outside the containers, and again, we did get all this off the curb and got it picked up within our service standard. When we look at the weather impacts to our facilities, we did have water leaks in several of the buildings that are on the solid waste facility, our administration building, home chemical collection. We have a warehouse at 651 Mayhill, what we're calling the electronics building, our fleet building, about $100,000 worth of damage both in the plumbing as well as the ultimate repair of the drywall and things of that nature. We look at the solid waste collections as a result of pushing back the collection, two weeks collection into one. We did realize almost twice the tonnage collected in a regular week, and that makes sense, but it wasn't quite twice, it was right at about 80 percent, so where'd the other 20 percent go? Well, Amazon wasn't delivering, people weren't going out to pick up food, there were just some things that weren't characteristically waste generating activities that occurred during that week. So we saw that if it wasn't available to go in the trash, it didn't go in the trash. So it was a nice little data exercise for us, and we're still evaluating what happened last week with the bulk and the brush, and it'll be interesting to use it as we plan for the future. So with that, I'd be glad to answer any questions that you might have regarding our service standard and the inclement weather in our response to it. Questions? Go ahead, Ed. Yeah, I think that your policy over the storm was, the extent of the storm was admirable and really better, it's better to be safe than sorry. So common sense came through, and I appreciate that, do a lot of people. Thank you. The idea of wrestling those carts out over the icy driveway was, I can't imagine, disaster. But my question is, has there been any discussion of further winterization of the facilities that received this damage that had the broken pipes, so that if there is another weather event like this, which they say there will be, we won't have that expense of fixing busted pipes and ruin drywall. As part of our after action report, we're evaluating not only what happened, but trying to evaluate the root cause. We do know that in one, it was a pressure swell due to the ice dam and caused a pipe burst, but the other, we actually had a failure in a joint. So it was really inconsequential to the cold weather, it was going to happen when it just happened at the same time. So there are a couple of things that we are looking at, as well as our weatherization. So we will be coming back as part of that after action to include that information in there. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Other questions or comments? Yes, Lee. Yes, ma'am. I wanted to echo the previous comments, I was really glad we didn't have to go out to the curb during the storm, so my thanks for postponing, even though it was all for the good reasons of safety, but not only for your guys, but for us as well. You're welcome. Appreciate that. And those heavy trucks on the highway is not a good idea, nice, so they don't stop either. All right, any other questions? All right, did you get what you need? Good job. Thank you. All right, that's all the items. So do we have a motion to adjourn? All right, motion, Ed seconded. We are adjourned. See you next week or next time.