Apr 24, 2017 Public Utilities Board on 2017-04-24 9:00 AM

April 24th 2017, Public Utilities Board meeting to order. Our first item on our agenda is to hold a public hearing regarding and consider making a recommendation to adopt a resolution for proposed construction expansion and use of a transmission power line located in Bernard and Eagle Drive. So I thank Brian is going to lead us in this the presentation. All right good morning board members. I'd like to take just a minute to give a quick overview of this Eagle Locust transmission line project to remind you this is generally on the south side of town, south of downtown and then southeast of the University of North Texas campus. Those who were at the public hearing will be familiar with this graph that shows the load growth in Denton over the last 50 or 60 years. This is no surprise to anyone who's been here any amount of time as we've had new residents come in and new businesses come into town. It's certainly there's been a corresponding growth in the amount of electricity we've used. It's our responsibility as the electric provider in town to anticipate that growth and to plan for it to make sure that we have good reliability and of course this is nowhere as true as it is in this downtown area where you've had infill development and the University continues to grow. We had an open house on this project about a month ago and based on the information and discussions that we had in that meeting and also just looking at the the facts of the project DME recommends rebuilding this line in its existing route and its existing alignment. With that said we did propose an alternative route and that's certainly still a viable route so while we recommend one and I'll give some specific reasons for that recommendation none of that's to say that the other route isn't viable indeed it is. So here's the two routes that we're discussing and this connects the Locust substation which is currently under construction just just off this map to the to the right there with the Eagle substation which is soon to be constructed. You can see that these two routes share an alignment as they cross Carroll Boulevard but then as they get to Cleveland Street the yellow route goes up to the north and along Eagle whereas the blue route stays in its existing alignment going up Bernard Street. There are a few advantages to leaving it in its existing alignment one of those is certainly the landowners who are currently affected are already affected by it. They already see this in their in their area and when I say affected let me be clear we're not anticipating removing any structures or relocating any individuals as part of this project so the the effect is more aesthetic than anything. There are also fewer landowners that will be affected by that existing blue route it'll be 3 versus 11 on the on the yellow route. Now the one of the issues there is the more landowners we deal with the longer it would tend to take and the longer before the project was completed. Fewer trees would be removed on that blue route versus the yellow route . Seven trees we anticipate having to remove on the blue route and 25 on the yellow route so there's an advantage there and finally these two routes are about the same distance or right around 3,000 feet but nevertheless that yellow route has a couple of extra corner poles and there's a premium that comes with those so we expect a higher expense. Well unless otherwise directed we 'll plan to have a public hearing in about a month from today with the City Council and I'll put that map back up in case you have any questions for me. Okay any members have questions Brian? The just one question on the on the blue route the is there an expanded easement required? Yes sir that's that's a great question so this is changing from a 69 to 138 KB and with that comes an expanded easement. Okay so there'll be some right-of-way acquisition there? Yes sir that's right. For those property. Either route we take will have to require easements. Okay and the just to click just to make sure the decision has been made to do gas insulation at this point. Yes sir. At the corner. That's correct the Eagle substation we're moving forward with the gas insulated substation. Okay. That's right. Okay any other questions? Thank you Brian appreciate it. We do have one request to speak Steve Stone is here Steve. Just state your name and address into the microphone please. Steve Stone I'm 6827 Freeman Road in Cr um. Essentially I represent the owner of this of the track at the substation location. Have for the entire time went through the previous hearings and so forth that that actually caused that that station to be selected. So I only signed up to try to decide if if I really wanted to say anything. I went to the meeting and I thought that the yellow route was the better route. But having to establish new right away the loss of new trees may mitigate that thought a little bit. So you know I might really be amenable in my mind. It doesn't matter to us who have the the corner substation it doesn't matter. It seems like to me it's more I want to say commercially applicable because you're going from what what what is the the size of a line going for up to 137. Okay I guess my only thought and since none of the residents are here no one else is here to speak for them is that you're going to increase that that electrical I guess radiation if we should use that word in this meeting. You're going to be even closer to those those town homes that are going to be right there along Collins. The ones on Cleveland Street sit back off of the road. I did understand there was an additional mitigated expense for probably an anchor corner post or something to that effect. So I guess I'm speaking on behalf of the general public at this point but only to say I think the yellow line is a if new acquisition has to be acquired for the blue line then I would think the yellow line would be more applicable. It's at least to live with if I live there you know hopefully there 'll be no puppies being born with five legs or anything there. So being so close to that line and it's going to increase the radio effect if there is such a thing. I know that I was blessed to get with the sub to get blessed with a subst ation almost in my front yard out in Crum which I don't know what you guys call that station out there. What do you call that station out there? Not that one the one way west. Oh that's an encore substation. My apologies. Your competitors slipped in across the street from a piece of land that I like a lot. Part of my my rural homestead but anyway we hear the hum at night you know and I know there's going to be some effect that this is going to have on this neighborhood. So I think the only thing I can really say without saying really anything this is going to affect a neighborhood. So do anything possible to possibly mitigate and reduce the effect that it would have on personal lives. That's pretty much it. Okay. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. Any questions? No. Thank you. No thank you. Thanks for coming down. Okay is there anyone else I don't see anyone else from the public for comments but I'll go ahead and make the ask and I'll ask again if there are any other comments from the public that so seeing none and we have no other cards for request to speak or indication of for against or so we will close the public hearing portion of this agenda item and comments from the utilities board members. Still no comment. All right then is there is there a recommendation to make an action to make recommendation to the council on which of these which of these routes would be we feel be best. I'd recommend to go with the blue. It's impacting the few est people. It's the lowest cost and it doesn't cut down as many trees so that I would move to go with that recommendation. Second. Okay so we have a motion and a second that we make a recommendation that the blue route be chosen as a route of the transmission line. Any discussion on that? Comments? Nope. Hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Okay thank you. Okay next item we have is our consent agenda. We have looks like five items on the consent agenda. Items ABC D&E. Is there any member who 'd like to pull any of these items for individual consideration? No. Hearing none then is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Move approval. We have a motion from Barbara. Second. Second from Susan. Any discussion? Hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Okay at this time we have an item for a closed meeting so we will go into closed meeting at looks like it's about 12 minutes after 9 and ask everybody anybody who is does anything to do with the items being presented at 936 and under items for individual individual consideration item a is to consider approval of the public utilities board meeting minutes of April 10th 2017. These have been distributed in advance and would ask if there's any comments questions changes to those minutes. Move approval. That's okay but I appreciate the thought. Hearing none those will be approved as submitted then. Item item B is to consider recommending to the City Council the adoption of an ordinance authorizing the City Manager or his designee to execute an amendment to the energy trading risk management contract with ABB V intex. Yes Dr. Lance Cunningham will present that. So we're here to discuss the ABB Vintex energy trading risk management contract amendment approval. The current system that we have for energy trading risk management software we purchased in June of 2014 and it was procured through a competitive bidding process. In January the council provided direction for the renewable dentin plan to move to 70% so it's you know considerable time later. The existing system is not flexible enough or robust enough for us to utilize when we move to our renewable dentin plan. The reason is is because of the protocol requirements with ERCOT whenever we have our wind assets and our solar assets we have operationally have to do a lot of changes, hourly changes and the existing system is just not flexible enough to be able to handle that variability. Are there any questions over that? Because of this the staff is recommended that the Public Utilities Board consider recommendation authorizing the City Manager to amend the contract between the City of Denton and ABB Vintex. Questions? The was there a second slide in there? That's all of this. Okay so I thought we had the the one that had the the savings and the cost and the continued cost. Page three. Oh I'm sorry I skipped a page. My apologies. Once we move to the renewable dentin plan we 'll have a much larger volume of transactions because of the way the variability of the wind and solar assets will be coming in and in working with with ABB Vintex there's the existing software we have now is an older piece of software. They do not anticipate spending any more development dollars to bring that up to kind of more of a modern standard. They're developing a different product that they're going to utilize so in working with them and having conversations with them over the last three years it's it's become evident it's just not going to meet our needs moving forward. This software is our system of record for all of our transactions and the best analogy I can come up with is it 's very similar to JD Edwards that the city uses for its accounting system. That 's the city's official you know system of record for all of our financial s and this is the EMO system of record for transactions and related financial s. The original contract price was 1.6 million and what we've paid to date is 971,000. The cost to amend the contract or shorten the contract terminate it whatever the term you'd like to use there is $204,000. The savings so if you take the the 971 and add the 204 that we would continue to pay then that approximately 1.1 million compared to that 1.6 it'd be 443. So that's that's where the saving comes from and out of the 204 it's probably important to point out that of that six months of that would be it's a prorated share of the annual fee. We currently pay about 280 thousand dollars so 140 of the 204 is just what we would have spent anyway it's just a six month prorated share. Questions on that? Comments? Just to clarify so we're getting value for the 204,000. Yes ma'am. We're getting value. Yes ma'am. We will continue to use that software until a replacement is implemented. Thank you. Yes ma'am. Okay thank you. That's good. Thanks for making that. Any other questions? Okay. Is there a recommendation or motion on this on this agenda? Adam? I'll move approval. I second. Motion from Susan and second from Charlie to approve and recommend we do this amendment. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Okay thank you. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. All right item number item C is the ACM update and we have the comparisons of employment metrics for water, wastewater and also DME attached. Questions on that? Comments? I appreciate seeing that done. It took me a little bit to follow it because there's a lot of information there but I was very pleased and thank you so much. I know staff worked a lot on that and I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah it's hard it's hard to bring apples, bananas and kiwi and make them look all look like oranges. I understand that and no utility looks the same and so that that's a difficult part. You can't just look at the raw look at the raw numbers and make a draw really a very well very good conclusion but anyway. I'd like to just make you also aware that we're planning a same similar report for solid waste. It wasn't quite ready at the time we wanted to go ahead and get this information to you so to the point from the last meeting we're going to provide that as well. It should be coming next meeting. Okay thank you. Okay we also have the new business metrics. Any additions to that? Any member would like to make? Okay if not then we have concluding items to come before the board. If not is there a motion to adjourn? Motion by Lillia. Second? By Charlie. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thanks guys.