Mar 27, 2017 Public Utilities Board on 2017-03-27 9:00 AM

[PAUSE] Okay, I'd like to call to order the March 27th, 2017 Public Utility Board meeting. We have a quorum present and we would, our first item is to go into work session on an item to hold a discussion concerning TMPA transmission line on the premise of medical city health care. So, we have Elizabeth Ruiz who's going to make the staff presentation. Okay. Good morning. Good morning. So, this morning I will be seeking direction from PUB regarding a project that involves TMPA and Medical City Health Care, formerly known as Denton Regional Medical Center. We'll start out with the location of the transmission line. The reason that we're here, which is a vertical clearance violation that exists at the moment, responsibilities of each party's involved. And then staff options. This is Medical City's property on the corner of Mayhill Road and Colorado Boulevard. Mayhill is right there to your right. Colorado Boulevard would be on the north side of that. The transmission line are what is, or the lines, it's what 's colored right here across the property. What's in that square or that rectangular box is where the vertical violation is, vertical clearance violation is for the transmission line. And I have a survey that will follow that up, but I just wanted to show you guys where exactly we're talking about on Medical City's property. So, in 1994, the design for the transmission line was done by National Electric Safety Code standards. The vertical clearance at that point was 25 feet from the ground to the first line. While DME and its contractors were working on the Pokrus Spencer CIP project, they resurveyed the area. They realized that there was a part under the transmission line that was in violation, which was what was in the rectangular box in the previous photo. It's supposed to be 25 feet clearance, and right now the ground is elevated by five feet, so right now there's only 20 foot clearance. Grading is going to be required under that area. We're looking at removing five feet, which is about 4,400 cubic feet, cubic yards, sorry. And just to put that in perspective, it could fill potentially 200 dump trucks with the dirt that needs to be removed. This is a survey that was performed. This is the entrance to the hospital, so this would be the Mayhill area. The red vertical line, the first one is the first pole that is on the Mayhill side, and then the second vertical line is the pole that's on the Colorado Boulevard side of it on that corner. This solid line that follows the ground elevation was the original elevation in '94. The dotted line, I'm not sure if you guys can see it very well, but there is a dotted line right here. That is the additional five feet that was found, bringing that into a clearance violation. We took our DME model out to the area and wanted to take some pictures just for some more perspective. This is right under the line where that five foot is, so you can see where the truck ends and where the line begins. And then these are the two areas where if you were standing at the pole that's off of Colorado Boulevard facing southeast, you can see how the elevation increases and likewise from the pole on Mayhill looking northwest how it decreases. So responsibilities on this project. TMPA owns the rights of the easement or to the easement. DME is responsible for all the operations on TMPA lines within the area. And Medical City, because they own the property, is responsible for the costs associated to bring this line and the clearance back into compliance. We've had some discussions and this is where we really need direction. There's really two parts to this project. One would be the execution of the work and the other is the reimbursement of it. We feel because DME has the experience and is able to do the outages, all the work period, that we would be able to perform that while our contractors would and then Medical City could reimburse us. So on the execution side of it, what we're thinking or one of the options are to use an existing contractor that is already working on the substation transmission parts of the CIP. We could use a contractor that already has an existing and open contract within the city of Denton that would be able to do the excavation of it. I'd also like to keep in mind that there is a high pressure gas line, sorry I forgot to mention that before, that runs, that's pretty important, sorry about that. That runs in the easement also. So we'll need a contractor that has that experience also. Another option is to issue an RFP with a new contractor, go through purchasing protocols and have it specific for this grading. And the last thing would be to delay work until fall. Our timeline is pretty short right now for reliability issues. We wouldn't be able to do any of the work after mid or late April because of the summer loads. And we would still need one of these options, but it would have to be after or at fall or afterwards. The reimbursement part of it, we were thinking about executing a letter of agreement with Medical City, whether to do a payment plan or a lump sum payment. If for any reason Medical City is unable to pay the lump sum, maybe do a letter of agreement with TMPA to where they would reimburse DME. Or perhaps maybe seeking a prepayment before the work is done, which would also delay it into the fall. We have had discussions with Medical City, they are willing to pay for it. Their preference is a payment plan. But again, we are seeking direction to see what you guys think would be the best way to go about it. Any questions? What's the estimate of how much it's going to cost to do that? It will be about $88,000, a little bit more than $88,000. And Medical City, they want a payment plan? I mean, is that a five-year deal, a ten-year deal? We were discussing a five-year deal, maybe adding that amount to their electric account. I forgot the amount right now, but I think it was somewhere around $1,300 monthly for five years. That was their preference because they had not budgeted the $88,000 in this year's budget process. So they're not completely opposed to paying lump sum. They would just need more time in order to do that. >> Would there be a penalty? >> A penalty for them to pay out interest or some sort of? >> Carry costs. >> Carry costs. >> No, no, this is a straightforward cost for them. Whatever it costs, the ME will cost them. It's what will charge them. >> Is there any specific deadline that we have to have this done by? >> We wanted to do it by, have the work done by mid-April because we wanted to avoid any outages during the summertime. But there's nothing really that stops us from delaying the project. Of course, this is a safety issue. >> Right. >> If for whatever reason there was work to be done and whoever it is that's doing it didn't let Medical City know or DME know and somebody hits that line, then it will cause some issues. >> Okay. >> So how long do you think it will take to do the work? >> To do the work? Two weeks? Two weeks. >> And how long would it take to do an RFP and get somebody engaged? Does that push you into fall? >> Absolutely. If we have to do an RFP, there's no way we can hit an April timeline. >> But if we use existing, we could get it done by the end of April? >> Right. If we were to use the contractors that we have that are already working on CIP, we could go ahead and have that completed. It was through the CIP that we found this issue. And it is for a project involving the POCRAS substation to the Spencer. So it could potentially fall under that project altogether. >> Do we know if they have the experience to work with the extra? >> The high pressure? >> The contractors that we have? Yes, we did an RFP, I think it was last year. And they all qualified, they've been doing our substation transmission work for the past couple years or last year. >> More than that. >> More than that. Well, on this RFP. >> On this RFP. >> On this RFP, it's one year. But before that, we have contracted with them prior. >> I guess that the staff would have an idea if the estimate that you've given would be a reasonable estimate. >> To charge them? Yes. As a matter of fact, Medical City decided to do their own RFP process to see if it would be more cost effective for them to do it on their own and just coordinate with DME. Their price was much higher. They came back to us. Part of that is the coordination. They would have to pay extra money for the coordination, but also they would have to pay to remove the dirt. And with the CIP project that DME has going on, we have plenty of areas where we could use that dirt. And so that's a discount to all of us. Since we know the vendors that have qualified for similar type things to the CIP, it would seem reasonable to use them. And that way it could be accomplished in a more expeditious manner. >> I agree. >> Any other questions? >> Just some additional background. The vendor that we're talking about, the vendor we use in all other CIP projects for all the dirt work. We have a multi-million dollar contract with them to do all the dirt work on all our substations. And so that's why they can be much more economical than any one-off vendor could. And they've identified or identified that needed dirt for another substation. So we just moved the dirt from this point to that and be part of that substation project, part of our capital improvement program. Just one other thing to point out is there are a couple of consent agenda items. And if you decide to go forward with using this contractor, agreeing with Medical City to let them pay it out, and then agreeing to agree with the TMPA that in the event that Medical City didn't pay for this, that that's a TMPA expense. And so those items are also, just want to point out those items where you can see if we agree to go that way. Phil, if we, I mean, how quickly can we get that from TMPA? Is that, they already approved it? Yeah, I think so. I think I read that somewhere. Excuse me, I spoke with Carl Shehady, the TMPA lawyer. It's done. We already went through the agreements with him and we've already got it documented. So we didn't have to do an agreement. Okay. All right. Very good. Any other questions? We do have a couple of consent agenda items that follow this. Do you need a motion? No, we'll take action in the meeting here. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we do have consent agenda. Items number A, B, C, and D. Is there any member who would like to pull those for individual consideration? A, please. Item number A. It's pulled. Any others? Okay, then is there a motion to approve consent agenda items B, C, and D as presented? So moved. Motion from Lillia? I second. Second. Charlie? Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Okay. Okay, item number A. Barbara, you had a question? My question for Larry is Dodd-Frank, that's mentioned in the backup, how do they enter into this disagreement? I don 't understand. Dodd-Frank, there are minimal compliance issues with that and we wanted David Portz to vet that out, particularly as we get into the ISTA contracts, and that's part of what he 's working on. My familiar Dodd-Frank is that it deals with banking primarily, so I didn't. With some of the derivative contracts that DMA will be executing, particularly regarding gas, there may be some issues that come up on that. I've spoken with him about that. It's going to be minimal, but it's going to be a documentation issue on our side, primarily. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Motion to approve item number A. Is there a second for that? Second. Second from Susan. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion passes. Other items for individual consideration, we have the minutes of the Public Utility Board meeting of March 13, 2017. These have been distributed in advance. Are there any questions, additions, corrections to those minutes as they were sent out? Seeing none, then those will stand approved as submitted. Item number B. We have a consider recommending approval authorizing city managers to execute a First Amendment to the Professional Services Agreement with T. Ignal and Per kins. We have William A. Bunselmeyer to make this presentation. Good morning. This morning we're going to talk about the Professional Services Agreement for Engineering and Surveying Services. This will be the First Amendment to that contract. We'll give a little background, some current status, staff recommendation, and our next steps going forward. At the end of this we will be asking for a recommendation. A little background is the Engineering Services and Surve ying contract is inextricably linked to our Capital Improve ment Program. As you've seen in your backup, there are a lot of things that these people will do for us, but this contract, the important parts are, as they work as our go between for the city's platting process, which is a big part of this. We pre-plat. We have permitting, special use permitting, text dot, building plans, building permits, special use permits, the environmentally sensitive areas. People will take care of the land, the construction staking and support. The big part at the end is, it's a catch all, serve as DME 's professional representatives in all capacities needed for support development, design, construction support. This is a very big part of what our Capital Improvement Program is. A little more background, on August 6th of 2013, the T.G. Nolan Perkins contract for Engineering Services and Surve ying Services was approved for $4,160,000. To date, major CIP projects completed is 15. There's 22 that are partially completed and there are nine to be started yet. It's important to note that this professional services agreement is not linked to the Denton Energy Center and another important note is $272 million is our 2017 transmission substation CIP budget. Now you see on the left, this is the list of the capital improvement projects that we've been working through that are completed so far. Like we said a while ago, there are 15 of those that are complete. There are 22 that are partially complete. That's this row all in the middle. You can see they're all between 10%, 80%, 90% complete. That's where we are so far with that $4 million contract. To be started yet, we still have nine more projects on the right hand side. Now, to switch engineering firms, our concern, well I'm just going crazy here, is we want to continue with our engineering services contract that we have now. That's why we've asked for an amendment as opposed to starting over with a new engineering firm. We feel that there is benefits to not switching firms and this list in the middle, some of that will be redone by a new firm that might come in to take this place. And so there's benefits to staying with the same engineering firm. So our recommendation is for the approval of a $4.36 million contract amendment totaling $8.52 million with T. Ignal and Perkins. And that would get us, finish us out over the CIP hump. So we can see we're over halfway done almost. Once we get through a little bit more of this column in the middle, it looks like it's downhill from there. Our next step would be to go to City Council on April 4th for an approval of this amendment. And you have any questions? Questions? I've got a question. When we did the agreement back, how long ago was that? We did the 4.3. 13. Did we, I mean, did we only do 4.3 because we thought that 's what it'd be or just because that carried us out? I think it's a work in progress. It gets us started. The capital improvement programs continue to grow. We've identified more locations, more sites like the Eagle substation, splitting that transmission line in half. Yeah. It's all part of the process, I believe. Yeah, I agree that, I mean, there's change in engineering firms is not what you do at midstream. That's not good. I would just want to make sure this is going to finish it up. We're hoping so. We've gone out and we've worked extensively with this company, a great group, on where we think we'll be over the next few years. I think this is a really good number. Don't find any more new projects, right? You just keep approving. You approve them. Okay. All right. Any other questions? This is an action item, so we'll need a motion on this item . Move. I have a motion to approve from Allen. Second from Barbara. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, same sign. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Brings us to our ACM update. Yeah. Chair, members of the board, we have several items for you in your update this week. The first item is a recap and an update as to what staff is doing to address the dumpsters and the location of dump sters on the square. We, for some time now, have been trying to co-locate as many as we possibly can. We provided you a report that gave you kind of a summary of where we are today and a little bit of background on this issue. And so we wanted to provide that to you. The second item that we've provided is a memo that gives you an update on the landfill gas production situation. As you know, we're doing a little more flaring than what we would like to do at the landfill. And we're currently in process of trying to work through some contract issues with a current electric generator, DTE , at the landfill to see if we can make some improvements to their collection of the gas that's coming off the landfill. And the final item, of course, is the business matrix. And we have, I think, after today we'll have one outstanding item related to some staffing comparisons that we'll try to have to you in the very near future. If there's any questions about that, we'd be happy to discuss it. If not, that's the report. Any discussions? Barbara? I wish we talked a lot about the dumpsters downtown and about encasing them. And there's so little room where they are now to encase them. It just takes more room. Has anybody, I mean, we're an art city, has anybody thought about any type of decorating or painting or using, we paint curves throughout the city that look quite attractive? And I understand there'd have to be some standards, but perhaps we could just, if you can't hide them, decorate them. Well, I can't put some lipstick on the pig, so to speak. Put some lipstick on the pig. I don't know if we've had any, I'm not aware of any discussions we've talked about actually allowing the dump sters to be used for art purposes, as you say. But I can tell you that when we have consolidated dumpsters most recently, William Strait Square, for instance, we did build a revetment. The site that we've located, which used to be in the former central fire station location, we hope to have another consolidated site there that will include a revetment. So our plan has been to, when we consolidate these dumpster locations, is to build a revetment. So while there may be some challenges we have and some quad rants of the square, there might be something we could look at in the future. But right now our plan has been to try to provide a full revetment and just cover them completely. I guess my concern there is if you have kind of simple located ones, no one's responsible for them. It's not mine, it's theirs, and you run into that type. As well as for some businesses, they're going to be hauling their trash and that's going to be amazing. I mean, in reading the backup about at night when they're trying to do that, it may not be the safest. Well, it's certainly something we want to monitor as we go forward. I would say that there was some initial reaction to the consolidation at Williams Trade Square, but now that folks are using it, I'm not aware of any issues or concerns that have arisen. And there may be out there, but we're certainly not aware of them. But it seems to be working well. Well, I can tell you where there's a dumpster, even though you may pay for it, everyone feels like it's theirs to use. That's a problem across the city. Yes, it is. Okay. Well, and I think you're exactly right. I mean, you monitor the situation and all the vendors and just kind of watch it. And I don't know that you talked about decorating them. Maybe this is something the public art committee could look at as part of their deal. Okay. Any other questions on any of the other ACM items or any updates to the matrix, anything to add to the matrix of items that you'd like to see discussed or reported on in the future? Okay. If not, is there any other item that needs to be -- any member would like to see on future agendas? No. Hearing none. Okay. Is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. You did. You pointed that to me. There's a little clarification on item number B on the consent agenda for repayment with Medical City Health Care. And that is that -- was it the TNPA part? Yes, it's the payment plan with Medical City. There was a few options provided to the members of the PUB, the staff report, and just one confirmation that the five-year plan be made part of the motion, that that is acceptable. And then I think the other question is with or without interest. So we're being advised by our legal counsel that the motion needs to be a little bit more specific. Okay. And that was approved under consent. So let's -- reconsideration of item number B, which is on consent. Would anybody like to talk about that or you want to -- Can we talk about it first? Sure. Would it be appropriate -- I raised the question about is there any carrying costs or whatever. And if it makes sense not to do that, could it be a best effort to try to get the payment up front with approval to finance it over a five-year period if it comes to that, or are we really down to over time? I think the answer to that question is that it's really -- it's been our practice historically, as far as I understand , to try to work with our tenants, especially our large customers. This was a request that they had had. In terms of the carrying costs or the interest costs, it's not going to be a whole lot of money on $88,000 over five years. However, the question really is should the city be made whole on that. So the staff's recommendation is to go along with the five- year payment plan. But the question about interest being charged was not necessarily answered. There was not a specific recommendation from staff. We feel it needs to be clarified. Okay. Historically, how has that been taken care of? I'll defer to Mr. Williams. So historically, within our rate structure, we have a special facilities rider, and we've utilized that in the past for situations similar to this. If a customer required special equipment for their services , then we would work with them and add that on to their bill and let them pay it out over the bill for that. So it's not unusual we do this for large commercial industrial customers. It's unusual for our residential customers if a residential customer came in and was behind on their bill or suddenly required additional deposit that we'd work out a payment plan for those residential customers to pay that out over time. And then for commercial industrial, same thing on credit issues or in this situation, if there's additional service issues, they need an automatic throwover switch or something like that, then we would incur that cost but then pay it out over a short period of time. Without charging interest? Yes. For both residential and commercial? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you. I would clarify though just Mr. Bishop's point. This is an easier staff recommendation with our interest income averaging about 1% today. So it might be a very different conversation down the road to pay on interest rates. No, I'm not trying to make it an issue. I just wanted to... Just clarification. Clarify. Okay. Thank you for saying that. I was going to ask how much do we make off of our investments? We're all finding 1%. That's what I was thinking. I guess I shouldn't answer that. Yeah, it sounds like we have a precedent of facilities charge or that we've done before through DME. I don't know that we want to reset precedents by trying to figure out what the rate's going to be and how that's going to be done. So I mean that's my opinion. No, I agree. I would recommend that we five years no carrying costs and stick with precedents. Relative to that item. I don't know how we need to redo the whole thing or just clarify that item. Clarification. Clarification. So the clarification is that item number B was approved assuming there'd be no carrying costs associated with the repayment. Okay. All right. Very good. Oh, we did have a closed session. And we can't adjourn yet. We've got a closed session. Okay. Okay. Okay. At this time then we will adjourn the regular meeting. It's nine thirty five and we have a close close meeting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll go back into regular session at ten o'clock. And the only thing we have on the agenda are our concluding items. So is there any any inquiries from the public or from any P .B. member as to any kind of policy or anything we have or is there any other items be brought before the meeting. Okay. Well, hearing none. Then is there a motion to adjourn. Motion for Barbara second second and second. All in favor say aye. Any opposed. Same sign. Thank you. So.