Mar 22, 2021 Public Utilities Board on 2021-03-22 9:00 AM

Okay, it is nine o'clock, and we do have a quorum, so we'll call to order the public utilities board meeting for the City of Denton for Monday, March 22, 2021. Do we have anybody who's waiting on the phone to speak? No, ma'am, we do not, not this morning. Okay. And we'll go on to the first item, which is the consent agenda. Does any board member wish to pull an agenda item? Okay, I see none. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Okay, Ed has moved, Barbara has seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any nay? Aye. Okay, that motion carries, this might be a record today, Tony. Plans for individual consideration, the approval of the March 8th, 2021 minutes. Were there any changes? Okay, I see Ed's been a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Okay, Billy's got, Billy got to second this time. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? All right. Management reports, Tony. Okay, so the first item that we have for you is the Den Energy Center dashboard ending December 2020. We should have folks from finance on the phone if anyone has any questions. I will just say that these tend to be a little bit late just simply because finance is working on closing out the previous fiscal year and so things seem to be a little bit delayed but we have this report to you and then we'll have the January report coming to you here pretty quick and so, but you know, if anyone has any questions, of course the finance team is on and they'd be happy to answer any questions you may have or I can. Questions? I don't see any, go ahead. Okay, so the next item is the Public Utilities Board agenda items. We've added quite a few items on here primarily from finance but I do want to point out that on the 12th of April we are planning to come back with a end of year summary and just a general discussion about the budget for 2021 and rate discussion as well, kind of brief you on those items related to all of the utilities that's electric, water, wastewater and solid waste. And then the other item that I wanted to point out really quickly is for April 26, you know, we did have, we had a short meeting just so that we can let the full PUB know we, city management met with Susan Parker and Billy Cheek, Chair and Vice Chair, and we had a very productive discussion about the PUB and its role with the city and certainly as an advisory role to the council and one of the things that we agreed on is that we would put a utilities budget priorities discussion on the agenda and so we scheduled that for April 26 and just want to know from this board what kind of things you'd like to see in the upcoming budget for 2021-22 and we'll certainly be discussing that, you know, taking that forward to the council but we'll also share with you some recent priorities that the council established and there was a couple of items there that we'll highlight for you that pertain to the utilities and hopefully we can have some synergies there between the board and also the city council but again that came out of a, what I feel was a very productive discussion with the Chair and the Vice Chair. So happy to answer any questions that anyone may have on any of these items. Good to see we're starting the budget discussion earlier than last year. Yes sir. Thank you. Karen, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just, I don't know if this is the right place but I just wanted to confirm when the joint meeting is tomorrow, 1130? Yes ma'am, 1130. And that's a non-voting meeting, right? Well it's just to provide direction, so there'll be items on there, there's going to be items on there that we're going to ask for some feedback on, certainly on the D&E side specific to some of the legislative priorities that we've listed out and I'm assuming that everyone's received that backup. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, thanks. Okay. Just so I can clarify, but it's not an actual motion and vote, it's a provide direction. Correct, correct, just by consensus. Yes. So, and just so the PUB knows too, you know, Susan and I spoke a little bit about how those meetings tend to go and kind of the structure for them but certainly if there's any changes I'll visit with her but generally speaking, the mayor will open up the meeting, it'll be a meeting of the council and then Susan will open up the meeting for the PUB, generally the mayor will kind of take the lead on questions that people may have and he'll pretty much be the moderator. But again, he'll work in tandem with Susan on making sure that the meeting flows in good order. I thought Mr. Rybeck had his hand up. Did you, Mr. Rybeck? Yes ma'am. I had my hand up. Thank you. Two things. One, Tony, it's so much easier to hear you without a mask on, I really appreciate it. So much easier to hear. The second thing is you asked about any priorities we might have or interests in the upcoming budget discussion. Having never seen the budget, I would like to know where I can get a copy of the current budget so I might be able to generate some questions. Yes sir, we can, I'll send you a link and also send it to Mr. Jumper but it's on the city's website and there's about five years worth of budgets and also our annual financial report is on there along with a number of other financial documents but we'll send you a link so you can get to this. That would be great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yes sir. So the other item, Susan, if it's okay for me to jump to the new business. So under the new business item again, we have a couple of items on here that we continue to work towards and hope to get that back to you soon. I did want to just briefly speak to the minutes and we could not get a memo out to you this time but we'll try to get that to you next meeting but just to give you a little bit of heads up on that, spoken with the city secretary's office, the minutes are the official record of your meeting but the minutes are not intended to be verbatim. They are in keeping with the directives of the city secretary's office. Obviously, we do have the video archive that then serves to provide additional context to the minutes but the minutes are the official record and we'll provide some additional detail on that in a subsequent memo that I'll be working with our legal department to make sure that I state that correctly. So I just wanted to follow up on that and then the last item that I'll just speak to under this new business, for the meeting tomorrow, we obviously have a joint meeting and you have the agenda for that. I did want to just briefly just tell the committee that in the council's special called meeting, you're in the regular meeting, there is a closed session discussion to talk about some competitive matters related to DME along with some legal matters. The competitive matters, we did not bring that to the PUB and the PUB at this time will not be part of that discussion. We do plan to visit with the council in keeping with some direction that we've gotten from them before to see how much of the legal information can be provided back to the PUB and then subsequent to that, based on that direction, we'll come back to the PUB at the next meeting and have a closed session discussion with you on those items that we are able to visit with you on. Again, they specifically pertain more to the legal matters, not so much to the competitive power matters, but because those are tied pretty closely, we just wanted to make sure that we kind of stayed in keeping with what the general direction from the council was. I wanted to just let the PUB know that I'd already spoken with Susan and Billy about that. I just wanted to be clear and transparent in case anyone saw that on the other agenda and said, "A, why aren't we part of that discussion?" So happy to answer any questions that you may have. Any questions? Okay, I don't see any this time, Tony. Okay. Thank you. So that brings us to concluding items. Does any board member wish to have something added to a future agenda item or have something to say? Seeing none. Okay. No, this is the time where... Oh, sorry, Billy. Go ahead. You were delayed. I guess so. So, Tony, how's this going to run, or we're going to go a little bit more into Robert's rules here with this meeting tomorrow, or is it still going to be just casual? Well, I think Robert's rules probably always apply. I think that's certainly going to be up to the chair and the mayor, but certainly the mayor will take pretty much the lead, and I think he'll recognize folks as they want to ask questions. The presentations tomorrow will flow pretty much like the way you've seen them. The DME presentation is very long. It's about 40 slides. We've tried to break that out into two segments to allow for questions in between that are pertinent to what we believe are areas that there'll be a lot of questions about, specifically our system operations and dispatch, and obviously then we've broken out the DEC and the energy management organizations separately to allow for questions, and then we have a separate discussion on kind of financial matters that the finance team will present. So, yeah, again, Billy, I would say that Robert's rules of order always apply, but again, the mayor will kind of see how things flow and work with Susan on making sure that we keep good decorum and a good process going, good flow going. Okay, because if I have to raise my hand with this virtual program, I'm not sure how to do that. Okay. Well, we'll see if we can get you some instructions on how to do that. I can look those up. I'm just saying maybe a little slow for me. Okay. Just whistle. Whistle. I can do that. Okay. Well, welcome, Ben. This would be the place where we'd say, "Tell us a little bit about yourself." Yeah. Well, my wife and I have three kids currently, and I graduated from UNT back in '07 after a little tour of Texas. That was my fourth college here in Texas, but finally made it out. And I just fell in love with Denton. So I've moved away and back a couple of times, and hopefully we're here for good now. Who doesn't fall in love with Denton, huh? Exactly. Oh, I would assume you were cheering for UNT then last night. Absolutely. Heartbreaking. All right. Well, I guess that's the agenda. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Billy? Okay. And Karen. Okay. We are adjourned. Bye. Bye.