recognition for the hurricane support. Thank you members of
the board as you
know over the last four to six weeks the states of Texas
along with many states
along the southeast portion of our country have been
affected by hurricanes Harvey
and Irma and so Denton responded city of Denton responded
to those disasters to
assist in the cleanup efforts along with the saving of
number of lives and
rescues throughout the the flooding there and so I wanted
to take a moment
to as requested by the board to to recognize the number of
those employees
that participated we have a large group of folks that are
here representing
several city departments and so so apologize if employees
come in and out
it's just because of the larger group and the size of room
that we have here
so with that being said I'd like to bring Drew Huffman with
wastewater
utilities to be able to talk a little bit about what they
all did I've got a
few slides here that show some of the names of the names of
the folks that
participated and some of the pictures so again I don't want
to get in the way of
Drew's to let him come up and talk a little bit about what
they did and what
they experienced there and during the Hurricane Harvey
efforts so hey how are
you I'm Drew Huffman I'm the manager of the wastewater
collections department
and we were one of the besides for our course our fire and
rescue teams we were
one of the first from Public Works to go down to help with
the hurricane relief
and what we did is we we joined of course with the Public
Works response
team and our main focus was to help restore water and
wastewater so we
weren't there really to clean streets up or anything else
we were there to get
the water back on and the wastewater back flowing again so
we went to three
different towns while we were while we were actually
deployed we went to
Refurio Texas first which is a small town just north of
Rockport where the
hurricane actually hit where the ice storm went through it
was about a her it
was about a level two or category two whenever it did pass
over Refurio most
of the homes there were affected not a whole lot were blown
down a lot of trees
scattered everywhere but due to the the power outages and
the the just the way
the kind of the surge of the the storm went through Refurio
it took their water
system out and because of their aging infrastructure like
most of our cities
now they couldn't handle the surge of the water pressures
on and coming back
and forth so there were eight main water water breaks and
this picture here on
closest to me is we were in Refurio and so we took all our
own equipment we did
take supplies but for the most part we used the city
supplies that we went to
and so here we were fixing a water main break here in Refur
io we also went to
Lake Jackson and Lake Jackson had a lot of flooding Lake
Jackson south of
Houston and so it was it was taking a lot of flooding from
the Brazos and what
they call oyster Creek and so here on the right hand we
were we started
clearing drainage dishes for Lake Jackson and they were
because of the
flooding they had a lot of wastewater issues which is our
specialty so here's
another here's two more pictures here of us and Refurio it
's a pretty cool
picture there we were working right next to the Chevrolet
dealership and Refurio
on the far right and they had they had hung American flags
up you know on the
front just to show their support and their their resilience
to bring their
city back so I just want to thank you and thank you for the
opportunity for us
to be able to go down there it was a great experience and
then I know our
guys had a great time we really came together we worked in
long hours but you
know we got up every morning and you know together and it
was an awesome
experience and just the hospitality that we had I will tell
you one story we're
here so the the picture on your furthest from me on your
right or I'm sorry
pictures closest to me over here we're fixing a water main
break there we're
getting ready to dig it up the water was coming out of the
ground and we had the
hole open we're next to the road of tracks and out of
nowhere we had all
the you know the street blocked off and out of nowhere our
car pulls up and lady
kind of pulls her car up sideways she runs out from the
front runs to the back
opens the back hatch and she pulls out two bags I brought
you lunch thank you
so much for coming so it was an awesome experience and I
just want to thank my
guys you know for coming we have Brian Meadows Rivers Earls
Glenn Harrison and
Byron Rashard also we had David Warren and William Hubert
go with us those two
couldn't be here today but I just want to thank them
further and thank you for
your support and allow us to go so thank you for going I
came from a
municipality myself and so I know how much is appreciated
when somebody can
go and help you out when you're overwhelmed like that and
and thanks to
your families because I know they're the support behind you
too so thank you
can I propose a standing ovation for these guys who I just
I just want to say
you know I know you guys in the work you do you're really
humble about it but to
me you're like doctors for the infrastructure of a city and
you know
just as we need our organs to live as individuals we need
water functional
water waste water electricity to function as a city so you
guys are going
in there like that group doctors without borders and you
are fixing the
infrastructure you know the organs of other cities and you
do this here in our
city every day so hats off to all of you thank you so much
and then if the
street strange food services and parks team could come in
if you don't mind
this is Keith Gabbard our street superintendent and you can
see the names
of the folks that participated in this effort on their team
and then after
this do we see a few slides as well I don't know Keith if
you want to say
anything about what you all did and and what you saw just a
few moments for a
few minutes and that way they can the board can recognize
you all so and then
there's two slides are you running the slider and want me
to okay if I can get
this to run we had a combined effort of streets drainage
parks and one fleet
service member we went to Vita Texas as you can see we
assisted in large debris
removal and we were fixing some different streets and
helping them get
access back to the community for the emergency vehicles and
the citizens
because they were totally devastated with floods it's an
emotional thing
until you actually see it you can see it on TV but you see
it in person it
really tugs on your heartstrings these guys did an
excellent job we were able
to help some of their vehicles were down due to the
flooding so our fleet
gentleman was assisting them and us as well so it was a I
kind of skipped
through those quickly that's not a I'm going back what
that's not me sorry sorry I guess I should be looking at
the screen yeah we
had a large debris lot of large trees they had a lot of
their equipment down
and still without power everybody was extremely grateful
that we were there
and the guys did an exceptional job so and we greatly
appreciate the
opportunity to go down and assist that city of Eider so
thank you okay thank
you I know that you're the ones who have to clear the
streets so everybody else
can get in and do their job so I really appreciate what you
've done hopefully we
never have to ask for that but that's why we do this we're
as Texans and
Americans that's why we do this
thanks you guys are heroes to all of us I think and every
day and what you do and
thank you so much you you really save lives by what you do
and you're humble
about it but we admire you so much so
oh and thanks to your families who supported you to go not
sure if the it
was a wide broad effort for the organization we also have a
an employee
from the police department that it was that was part of
that process as well I
don't think he could make it today but but he was part of
the public
information office component to assist and disseminating
the information out to
the communities about what was going on here's some photos
that were provided
for us of their emergency operations center and just
keeping track of the
storms and news media outlets etc and so as you can see it
's all hands on deck on
the on the on the public information office fire department
also deployed a
number of crews down I don't know if they're here this
morning many of them
depending on their shifts but but they did quite a bit in
regards to swift
water rescues they actually were deployed prior to the
storm come making
landfall to be ready because knowing that the storm surge
will be coming
there needed to be an efforts to be able to rescue folks
and and when you rescue
when you rescue humans you also have to rescue pets and and
that's one of those
things that our employees are prepared for and so you can
see there all the
things that they did over 2,000 folks there at the bottom
and 300 dogs so it
is an effort that's a it's a full family effort there when
you're removing them
from their homes and it was quite a bit of an effort here
there in the various
parts of southeast Texas and here are some photos of what
they the fire
department did
and then the last group to be recognized are the folks that
actually they were
not deployed down to southeast Texas they're actually
deployed to Florida and
so if the DME folks would please come in and as they're
walking in I can
briefly tell you that you know we were actually able to to
through our
interlocal agreements that we have with a variety of with
the electrical utilities
there in Florida were able to ramp up prior to the storm
actually making land
fall so several of these of these folks were deployed prior
to the storm hitting
and make their way down to Florida to assist in the in the
cleanup efforts to
restore power repair any utility poles that were that were
fallen so if if
Rowdy if you don't mind coming here and saying a little bit
what you all did
after this slide where it shows all the names there's a few
slides that show
some of the pictures of what you all saw okay
they all like this side of the room better I guess. This is
almost all of our group we
had two individuals that were sick today I think it was
because we told them that
we were coming here and we were a little bit nervous about
being up in front of the public so this is a
list of the group that went we took a very seasoned group
if you can see we
took a lot of crew for them and a lot of senior linemen and
we normally do that
because of when you go on these hurricanes you don't know
what to
expect you're out of your element you're out there working
on a system that you
are not familiar with you're working with another group of
employees from that
utility that you're not familiar with so you want your most
seasoned people there
doesn't mean we don't take some apprentices every once in a
while to
give them that experience also. We were called by FMEA
Florida Municipal
Electric Association about five days prior to landfall they
called and asked
us if we would be able to help in Florida and we got the
okay from from
upper management to provide assistance and we they gave us
a date when they
wanted us down there they didn't want us to be there during
the hurricane itself
they wanted us to leave as soon as it got through the issue
with that is we
also were coming back in with all the residents trying to
get back in so the
second day was a very long day for us trying to drive back
through there were
several small towns that it took us two hours to get
through just because of the
traffic. This is a picture of the group before we left we
knew it was going to
be a long journey so as you can see we were in shorts and
we knew we weren't
going to be working that day. There is a sign that at the
entrance to the
facilities in Ocala that thank you for all of the linemen
that showed up. These
are just some pictures of the damage as you can see the the
one on the right
there's a bucket truck that's driving through an actual
flooded area that's
the one good thing about having the large vehicles we can
get those in some
places that the smaller vehicles can't. Here's some more
work at night there's a
as you can see there's trees trees were everywhere we had
tree trimmers there
from all over that were helping assist also and that makes
our job a lot easier
because these guys aren't tree trimmers they're linemen you
know that they're
there to get the get the lines back up. Just some more
pictures of damage you can
see the one tree that fell across the shed a lot of it a
lot of the work that
we did was at night I mean we worked from six in the
morning till ten at night
every day a couple of days we went over you know because we
were right at the
point of getting somebody's power back on and there's no
need and them being
off all night if we can stay an hour or so extra. That's
pretty much the end of
the slideshow there was you know this is every time we go
on one of these trips
we always say this is this is probably one of the best
groups and everything
like that but I can I can honestly say this time the town
that we went to
Alcala there wasn't a day that went by that somebody didn't
stop and give one
of these groups either a cooler full of soda pops water G
atorade I think every
day we had at least one meal that somebody from the
community brought out
and fed the group so the the guys from Ocala they were
working right alongside
of us they worked those days as a matter of fact the last
day we were there we
helped do cleanup so that some of those guys could go spend
a little time with
their families and rest up because of the uncertainty of
Maria and Jose that
were coming in they they didn't know if they were going to
get hit again so in
this group we had no issues no issues whatsoever it's a
great group of guys
they did an outstanding job of representing Denton as is
attested to by
the numerous emails and stuff that I'm sure Todd that you
've received on this
group and you know these guys enjoy it they love getting
the lights back on and
that's the thing at the end of the day whenever you're
sitting there and it's
pitch dark and all of a sudden you see lights popping on
that means that they've
done their job and they've done it well thank y'all for
allowing us the
opportunity to go and to represent Denton. Thank you for
going and thanks
for your families letting you go I worked for a utility in
Minnesota I don't
know if you guys know that and I know you're working in
conditions that you
are not used to and and how difficult that can be so I
really appreciate your
going and applaud you for doing maybe you even were working
next to our old
crews but thank you thank you very much for going. Thank
you I want to stand up
and give you guys a standing ovation.
I think that you know electricity shows how connected we
all are all over the
country and you know those those lines are like veins and
you know connecting
all of us and they really are literally a life source for
people so you guys are
like emergency doctors saving multiple lives at a time and
I'm just I'm amazed
and in all what you do just every day not just this but
thank you so much so
glad to have this opportunity to recognize you. Thank you.
And as they are exiting we'd like to also recognize the the
groups that came
in today at next Tuesday's council meeting so we'll be
doing similar type
presentation next Tuesday evening so just thank you all for
your time on last
allowing us to do that and recognizing those employees.
Okay our next item is
the electromagnetic inspection from Lake Louisville to here
. Yes I'm going to do a
brief introduction try to give you a little understanding
well why are we
doing this project and then I'll introduce our presenter.
We have two
raw water transmission lines between Lake Louisville and
Lake Louisville water
treatment plant. That plant is about 60% of the city's
water treatment capacity.
It's a twin pipeline system one first pipe was a 27 it was
built in 1950 or
excuse me at 56 and then the parallel pipe was the 30 inch
that's the topic of
our discussion today and that was built in 1975. We've had
some failure history
on the 30 inch pipeline. We had a failure probably pre-89
wasn't real well
documented but we had some heavily corroded pipe two pipes
were replaced.
Then we had a series of more recent failures between about
2010 and 2015
that basically raised our awareness level and concern about
the health and
condition of the pipe. It's not a lot of technology
available to help diagnose
that. When the DCTA train was under construction we went
out there and did a
Sahara technology which was a tethered listening device. It
only picks up active
leaks so you have to have an active leak and you have to
have a leak signature to
pick it up. So that technology really didn't accurately
pinpoint any real
issues. In fact it went by an active leaking pipe that we
weren't able to
pick up so that was a discovery. We had two failures after
that inspection with
the DCTA in 2010. One of them we had to contend and deal
with when the light
rail was active. We did a presentation to the PUB back in
2013 when we
encountered that problem and some of the challenges that we
had and then more
recently in 2015 when the interstate was replacing the two
pipe sections, the two
locations on the 27 they cut in found good pipe it wasn't
an issue but on the
30 on the west side we encountered some similar bad pipe.
So we've always been a
little bit suspect over the last five years about the
condition of this pipe
and we've searched for available technologies and we
selected Pure Technologies Inc.
They're the patented provider of this technology. We went
with a dewatered pipe
inspection that was a robotics and the robotics went
through and did
electromagnetic which would pick up corrosion or broken
bars within the pipe
itself and then we also did the video and that's part of
why we went robotic.
Dewatered was the with a raw water environment we weren't
really sure the
closed circuit TV would give us very much to work with. So
Brian Ellis is the
project manager with Pure Technologies and he's got a brief
presentation on
what they found and then I'll do kind of a wrap-up of what
are our next steps.
So Brian. Thank you Tim. So I think what's I know it was
just dumb luck but being able to kind of
follow the a group of people and see how many resources it
true it truly takes
to oh sorry to and just use the arrow keys here I'm sure I
'm sorry to manage
emergent situations when you're under the gun unfortunately
pipes don't break
on a you know Monday afternoon they break when it's raining
and it's the
middle of the night and you have your customers calling for
a pipe failure so
the goal of our inspection is to try and give people a
heads up as to what the
condition of their pipe is so they can start managing that
asset proactively and
not reactively. Just a little bit about Pure Technologies
my name is Brian Ellis
I was the project manager on this job my colleague Dave
Kurtz has about 20 years
of actually selling pipe in fact you were probably with G
ifford Hill when this
when this original pipeline was built but we do work all
over the world here
locally we do work for everyone you've heard of North Texas
Dallas Austin San
Antonio so we have a lot of experience our focus primarily
is on the
pre-stressed concrete pipe of which this bar wrap pipe is a
type but we do a lot
of work with metallic pipes as well. Just a real brief
discussion of bar wrap
pipe it's a type of pre-stressed concrete pipe this is just
a cross
section right here you basically have a steel cylinder with
metal bars that
provide a lot of the structural integrity around the
cylinder and then it of
course has a concrete mortar coating to protect those
metallic pieces from
corrosion. A few of the the specifics about concrete or
about bar wrap pipe in
particular is when you start having corrosion of that
concrete protective
coating it allows acidic groundwater any kind of corrosive
environment to start
to penetrate that and you start to get loss of the
structural components. Of
course as you break through the bars then you start getting
into the metal
cylinder and that's when you start to see leaks. Now one
thing good about bar
wrap pipe is because it's mild steel you don't typically
have catastrophic
failures there are a few other types of concrete pipe where
you actually have
the main breaks where it basically just catastrophically
blows apart and Main
Street is flooded. This will typically the signature of a
corroding pipe for
bar wrap is typically slow leaks progressing into moderate
and then
severe leaks. So the goals were basically to use our
proprietary EM technology to
not only look at the state of the bar wraps but also to
look at the pipe wall
thickness. We work out the great thing about our robotics
technology as Tim
mentioned was that we do provide a visual assessment of the
inside of the
pipe too and then using those things in tandem we're
basically able to give you a
full condition assessment of your pipe. The goal being is
that a full replacement
of this pipe is very expensive especially in where this
pipe is as
we'll see it's right next to that fancy hike and bike trail
but even more so
it's right next to a railroad it'd be a very costly
replacement. We want to go in
we want to identify your weak spots allow you to go in and
replace just
small sections of pipe and effectively increase the the
usable life of that
entire pipeline. This is where we make our money that's our
robot we basically
this is about 8.2 8 points a little over 8 miles of
pipeline what we're able to
do this is a tether tool that we bring in and insert
through access manholes.
Could you stay for the mic? Sorry I'm used to my wife
telling me that I
talk too loud so we're basically able to insert this tool
into the access
manholes and run all of our data collection and video both
upstream and
downstream to get a full assessment of the pipe. There's
another view of our
tool our data acquisition system and this is actually if
you look here on the
upper right hand corner that's actually where the money's
made that's actually a
detector that has 24 different separate detectors and
effectively what we're
doing is we're inducing a magnetic field into the pipe and
then we're quickly
measuring the response of that magnetic field and we're
effectively doing a
continuity test. When wires are in good shape they give us
the signal and we
have electrically continuous when they don't we know based
on our experience
that and we can estimate the number of wire breaks that are
associated with
that certain region and this is just this won't make any
sense to you but you
can see the perturbation in one of our sensors here and
that to us highlights a
section of pipe that we need to evaluate. So the D4 that's
saying? Yes yes
that's that's a typical signature of a non-continuous set
of wires or bars in
this case and this is just a another piece of our of our
analyzed data that
shows as we're going down we take the data and it's about a
four to six week
process where all the data gets analyzed by a group of
trained technicians that
know how to filter out the data and tell us exactly how
many wire breaks and
where they are in your system. This is not your pipe I just
want to highlight
that this is actually from Flower Mound but you can see
here where based on
verification we we found some some some issues with their
pipe and we excavated
the pipe and you can see where the structural components of
these bars have
been have been basically removed so this pipe is in really
bad shape. This is
basically what we do once we identify pipe we can then go
and support Tim's
group to go excavate locate and then we run additional
tools to make sure that
we're on the right pipe. The worst thing we can do is give
you a false
positive or a false negative so we are always aimed to be
on site whenever we
start doing some of these field validations. You can see
here some
additional damage I believe this is also Flower Mound right
so this is where
we've come in we've excavated confirm that it's the right
pipe so then the
decision can be made about replacement point repairs but we
we work with with
Tim's group to identify what's most cost effective. Here is
basically some
longitudinal cracking this can be due to improper bedding
when the
pipeline was was built it can be due to source loading from
the top I know one
concern here was now that we have an active railway near
our line and there
was some modifications that were done by DCTA recently
making sure that we don't
run into this case because you can build pipelines to have
trains run over them
but it's difficult when they come in after the fact very
similar to the
build out of I-35 there just making sure that the loading
condition is still
proper. Now I mentioned that once you start losing your
bars which is a big
part of your structural integrity you can then start
getting wall loss in your
cylinder. Now this is a prime example of wall loss we can
we can measure up to
50% wall loss or I guess the correct word would be down to
50% if you have 10%
of your wall thickness at this point our technology does
not do that but anything
50% and above wall loss we can we can measure. So this is
specifically the line
that we did I know the north arrow is kind of in a weird
spot but you can see
down here to your lower right hand corner that's the intake
out of Lake
Louisville and it effectively runs right up underneath I-35
just north of the of
the lake and then essentially follows the hike and bike
trail all the way to
the plant and here in green I mentioned that we had
multiple insertions we
basically would take the tool run it upstream pull the tool
back and then run
it downstream from star to star effectively. Now for what
you really came
for this was the results of our inspection we had two
sections here that
we or two pipes two specific pipes where we identified five
wire breaks that's
also a minimum in our inspection technology to measure if
you have one
wire break that's really difficult for us to see because of
the additional noise
in the data but down to five wire breaks we're very
confident in and you can see
here just on the east side of 35 there and then up here
near just south of Colorado
Boulevard the red is where we found two pipes that had five
wire breaks. I
mentioned we can also do wall loss and we have we have I
believe it was total
nine nine or ten sections where we had wall loss. Now there
are a few different
types of wall loss but these are all things that should be
in investigated
some could be as a result of a point repair in the past
some are associated
with features like air release valves things like that
potential issues with
joints and then some but it's all something that we want to
highlight to
you. So as I mentioned we had we did 8.62 miles of pipe
starting just upstream
with a pump station there at Lake Louisville and proceeding
all the way to
just outside of the plant there. Thirteen hundred and seven
or it was a
total of thirteen hundred nineteen pipes thirteen hundred
and seven pipes were
okay we had two pipes that we had five wire breaks and ten
with cylinder
corrosion. So we're telling you that out of this length of
pipe you have less
than 1% with any measurable damage to it.
So the takeaway from here is we don't want you guys to go
out and pull up eight
miles of pipe. Right now this is a much more manageable
situation and we would
certainly recommend in the future addressing these issues
going and
validating these issues and we'll work with with Tim's team
to prioritize which
ones we want to take a look at because even point repairs
are not free. Manage
those and then you've effectively kind of put yourself
pipes never going to be a
new condition right but you've certainly managed it a lot
better than just pull
and replace. That's about it just in in in general I do a
lot of work with pipe
and I want to say a couple things one the pipeline was very
well designed
including these sections that have been modified the access
is is great to it
but operationally you know you guys have done a really good
job with your scour
procedures and things like that. So just kind of give you a
quick wrap up we've
got to do some spot investigations and figure out what our
repairs are based on
our prior history we're probably looking at removing and
replacing pipe. These
pipe sections are pretty heavy they 32 foot long and so
accessibility within
that corridor is a real challenge. The last repair we did
was actually about 30
foot from a roadway. We had to shut the roadway down just
to get the truck in to
unload the pipe. So this is going to be a little bit of a
challenge for staff to
go in and do this investigation but we do have some priorit
ization. We initially
budgeted about 10 million which was a big big guess for
replacement repair
whatever that was. If we had significant problems with the
pipe to where the
point repair strategy was questionable we had budgeted to
have engineering
analysis done engineering design and package it up and put
it out to bed
because we've had a little more favorable results a smaller
percentage of
the pipe appears to be you know of immediate concern right
now. We can try
to schedule this we're going to attempt to do this with in-
house resources we'll
see how that goes. We've scaled the budget down to about 4
million that may
be in excess of what we need we'll see where we land on
that. The other issue
gets into the other pipeline which is 20 years older the 27
. We haven't really
had the history of failure on it but we are looking at
potentially doing a
similar investigation probably about 2020. We'll see if
that technology
approach makes sense for that pipe and the mode of failures
that we've seen
with them so that's kind of where we're at. All right thank
you. Out of the 10 and
whatever 10 and 2 thank you which is the worst than the
corrosion already
occurring? Probably the bar breaks we've experienced some
failures where the bars
haven't corroded through but the cylinder has and so some
of the heavily corroded
pipe that we've removed that was an active leak then you
know the corroded
bars appear to be probably the more severe and so they
became the two
priorities. I'm not exactly sure if they're the most
accessible location so
we may try to pick some areas where it's a little easier to
get to and we can
verify what we see because if we have to get down into the
middle of the rail
trail and have to remove and replace a section of that
trail system that'll be
a bigger project. And the in the report did a hierarchy of
prioritization based
on this condition. Any other questions? Are there any cont
iguous sections or all
individual pipe sections? Well the pipe was all built in
pieces and most of them
are long pieces with the smaller fittings so I'm not sure
if I've
answered your question. When you start digging holes you're
gonna have to dig
12 different holes or you're gonna have one? No we actually
have GPS pinpointing
to get down real close to the specific pipe and then as
Brian mentioned they
have an active interest in proof testing their technology
so they'll come out and
try to use above the pipe technologies and ultimately you
may end up having to
chip away the concrete to see the problem.
Are some of the top priority pipe sections located around
the train
track? I think the two with the wire brakes are under the
rail trail next to
the DCTA so accessibility is going to be a challenge. We
have I think some
sections that are actually away from the rail trail that
are in open areas where
we can access and they're probably not high priority from a
condition
standpoint but they might be high priority from an
accessibility standpoint.
Any other questions? Thank you Tim. Thank you. Let's see in
the next one is
receive a report and discussion on the credit and
collection policy.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen I'm Tiffany Thompson the
customer service
manager and today we're going to talk about the credit and
collection policies
that we have in place for utilities customer service. So a
little bit of
background this ordinance 2010-292 was adopted and improved
in November of 2010
and it was a direct result of a Navigant consulting group
that came in to look at
just a lot of our business processes and what was going on
and they specifically
focused on credit and collections for us and so some of the
things that that came
up from that consultant is that our uncollectible debt was
very high
considering how small of our utility was and so the
contributing factors to that
bad debt was an effective customer credit screening we didn
't have that in
place and equity and that pardon me deposit policies and
just overall
ineffective collection efforts and so prior to
implementation we had 1.4
million dollars worth of uncollectible debt and then in 09-
10 we had one point
million one point one million dollars and so the purpose of
the ordinance was
to reduce that uncollectible debt by implementing fair
credit and collection
practices and making sure that we were also verifying
customers identity and
collecting adequate deposits on accounts based off the
account that they were
signing for service for so for fiscal year 15-16 our
utility debts has now
gone down to five hundred and thirty six thousand dollars
compared to that one
point four million that it was and so this presentation is
just going to go
over some of those results that the ordinance achieved for
us so I'm going
to go through this presentation is I'm going to focus on
our active collections
so how our customers come into the utility system how they
progress to the
utility system what programs and offerings we have for them
and then get
into how we handle accounts once they've finaled out and
they go into that
uncollectible status and then some things that we have
coming for our
customers so starts out with the active credit collection
timeline on day one we
issue the bill day 16 that bill is due on day 25 we're
going to give you a
friend friendlier minor call letting you know that a
payment hasn't been received
on day 28 to 29 a late fee and overdue interest would be
placed on the account
and then the second bill would be generated on day 30 and
that's going to
include a disconnection notice to let them know that there
's an unpaid balance
and it's subject for disconnection at this point on day 34
we're going to do
another proactive courtesy call to let you know about the
balance and then day
37 the account would be subject for disconnection and if
payment or
reconnect is not received then we would close the account
on day 44 so credit
screenings I'm going to talk about new customers coming in
and then how we
assess customers as they establish tenure with us one of
the things that we
did not have prior to ordinance 2010 to 92 was a way to
verify the customers
identity whenever they came into the system and then also
assess what type of
customers are coming to our utility system so with that we
charge every
single customer a deposit who came into the utility system
previously with that
news $150 and it didn't cover the normal usage that was
occurring at the address
so everyone was charged this deposit and we weren't ver
ifying identity so with
the ordinance when it went into place we started leveraging
a program called
online utility exchange and what they do is they verify
identity and they also
give us a score for that customer not only based off of
their credit score but
also based off of any unpaid balances they may have left
with other utilities
so it is really specific to our industry as well and so you
can see that 70% of
our customers coming into the system are good or fair
pairing customers so that
means 41% of our customers do not have to pay a deposit at
all the 29% may have
to pay one up to one month worth of deposit and then the
remaining 30% would
pay up to two months of what the usage is at that specific
address that they're
going to and I'm going to talk about ways that we can work
with our customers
and avoid deposits as well coming up so for existing
customers as they start
establishing tenure with us we want to continue to monitor
how they're doing so
we have internal credit rating you see a through Z just so
you know Z just means
that we haven't billed that account so whenever I first saw
that was like Z I
don't want to be Z customer but that just means they haven
't billed yet for
in the account and so 86% of our customers in our current
utility system
consistently pay on time and then we have about 11% that we
want to make sure
that we have adequate deposit coverage for them so deposit
assessments and
refunds one of the things prior to this ordinance
implementation is we didn't
have an effective way to make sure that we were run refund
ing deposits what type
of deposits we had on accounts we really didn't have a
balance there and so what
the ordinance provided to us was specific policy on how we
're going to
refund deposits too because the goal is not to have too
little too too much but
just to have just enough on our accounts and so for July
2016 through January
2017 to present 14,000 of our customers have received a
deposit refund 71% of
those customers got their refund on their final bill that
means that we need
to keep that deposit on the account until they closed out
the account and I
wanted to note that 57% of those deposits refunded on the
final bill
actually paid off their entire balance so they didn't have
to pay those last
two months that they had so they were able to walk away
with either having it
completely paid or and sometimes actually a credit refund
to them and then
almost 4,000 of our customers during that same time period
got our deposit
refund without closing their account so that's showing that
we're proactively
looking at the account to make sure that we have the right
deposit amount on
there and so we've refunded those to the accounts we
currently have about 21% of
our customer base that have deposits on file with us and so
there's ways to have
a deposit waived when you're a new customer coming into our
system you can
provide a letter of credit from a previous utility saying
that you were
good standing with them we also do co-signers or someone
can co-sign on
your account if you want to sign up for credit or debit
card or checking draft
will weigh the deposit for you as well for that way and
then if those options
don't work for you we also offer deposit payment
arrangements so this is where if
you can't pay the entire deposit upfront we will split it
out over three months
for you there's been circumstances where we've gone longer
depending on what that
customer needed so we really try to work with them to give
them options for that
and so for that same time period we offered about 3100
deposit payment
arrangements so payment behavior one of the things that was
pinpointed was the
number of delinquent accounts that we had and so the late
fee through
counsel direction was increased from ten dollars to twenty
dollars and we
immediately saw started seeing the decrease in delinquent
accounts at 29
percent month after month and so you can see from 2010 to
now we've decreased the
number of delinquent accounts that we have significantly
and also that's with
a 9% increase in our customer base with that so that's
actually a genuine good
influencer on the the late payment being increased that way
so discontinuance of
service this is absolutely I want to note the last thing
that we want to have
to do on a customer's account but we wanted to show you
this is the credit
timeline that I started with with that but if we haven't
received a payment or
customers contacted us for a payment arrangement on day 37
the account goes
into a disconnected status and we've notified the customer
on four occasions
prior to that disconnect notice and we've done that first
bill the friendly
reminder call the second bill with the notice of disconnect
ion and then also on
day 34 with that courtesy call and I wanted to note with
those two different
call types that we do we have a press one to pay option so
if the customer
gets that call and they're on the phone they hear that they
're able to press one
make a payment we have a 30% response from our customers
with those two
different phone calls with that so a lot of times our
customers are waiting for
those phone calls to make payment as well and on the left
hand side over here
I wanted to point out this is just some different areas on
our bill whenever you
get that second bill notification that says pay me to avoid
disconnection at
top and at bottom and also as you progress to the system
and create your
tenure if you have late fees or events on your account we
're going to give you
a special message on there letting you know a late fees
benefits on the account
you know remit your payment so you don't have a deposit
that's in essence what's
that saying because we want to make sure they're aware if I
continue to to pay
late or have events on the account that this is what could
happen if I don't
already have adequate deposit coverage on the account so
with the ordinance
also we wanted to make sure that there was clear payment
expectations set up
and so this is actual a copy of the back of our bill that
we have with all the
different ways that you can pay we have over two dozen
locations that you can
pay anywhere there were there's a fidelity express money
gram we have a
24/7 hour kiosk now a drive-up dropbox and most recently we
launched a new
payment portal payments us where there's new and added
features that customers
can pay they can set up reoccurring credit and debit card
which was not an
option a couple of months ago they also can schedule
payments so if they know
I'm getting paid on Friday they can go in today schedule
that payment for Friday
now and that's a new option as well and I wanted to note
that on our previous
portal that we had where you could log in and view your
bill we only had about
6300 customers registered for that and in the two months of
this has been live we
have almost 12,000 customers registered so you can see that
there's a very quick
adoption to this and people are really liking our customers
are really enjoying
the additional features that it has and so again we want to
continue to add
additional payment options and features for our customers
to be able to pay so
now I'm going to shift to uncollectible debt so this is
when the account goes
into a final status we generate a bill on day 16 that bill
is due on day 33 we
do a proactive phone call to let you know that there's
still an outstanding
balance left and we actually get a 37% response rate on
that one phone call
alone so 37% of our customers pay once they get that phone
call and then on day
40 they get a collection letter letting them know there's
still a balance we
offer payment arrangements please contact us or make
payment and we have a
33% response rate on that on the collection letter prior to
going to
collections so day 60 to 119 we're doing those calls
specifically with those
accounts that may be over five hundred dollars to let them
know that this is
potentially going collections and then day 120 it does go
to collections and
then finally after day 180 we deem that uncollectible debt
and it's written off
with that so you can see how the that the policies and
processes have
influenced our debt over the last several years and another
item to note
is we actually reduce the amount of accounts that go to
collections by 87%
just through in-house resources because again the intent is
not to send them to
collections we don't want them to send them to collections
we want to give them
every opportunity possible to make payment or payment
arrangement with us
prior to that so in addition to making sure that we have
good payment channels
expectations that we work with our customers we give them
payment
arrangements we want to make sure that there's established
programs for those
people that that need help financial assistance and so we
do have the plus one
program which is prevent loss of utility services and what
that program does is
the city allocates a certain amount of money a hundred
thousand dollars a year
to be able to help families in interfaith ministries overse
es the
contract for that right now and fourteen thousand dollars
of that goes to the
administrative costs for interfaith ministries and the rest
of the eighty
six thousand dollars goes to helping our the families and
so with that increased
funding over the years we've been able to help more
families and increase the
amount when we help them so previously was a hundred
seventy six dollars a
month and now I'm pardon me not a month but when we help
them it's a hundred and
sixty seventy six dollars a month and now it's up to three
hundred and thirty
two dollars and I do want to note that our September data
hasn't come in yet
but we're anticipating that to be about two hundred and
twenty to two hundred
thirty families helped this fiscal year so with this we
wanted to open up
conversations with plus one to make sure are we helping as
many families as
possible and why are people being denied when they do go
into plus one or pardon
me interfaith ministries to get assistance and we found
that eighty eight
percent of the customers going in do get denied for that
and so we wanted to
really kind of drill down as to why that's happening and
there are some
criteria in our current contract one of those is they
cannot get more than
assistance more than once in a 12 month period but there is
a caveat and they're
saying unless there's extreme circumstances and interfaith
ministries
was taking kind of a hard stance on that because they
wanted to help as many
people as possible with that in addition and other reasons
why people are turned
down is the applicant doesn't show up for the appointment
they don't provide
the documentation that's needed or they don't need
assistance any longer and so
two specific opportunities that we have here is being able
to assist those
customers more than once in a 12 month period and then also
another part of the
criteria in the contract is based off of tenure if a
customer hasn't been an
address more than six months they weren't helping them they
were again
trying to help more families and there's autonomy to make a
decision on that so
in discussions with with interfaith we're like let's help
as many people as
possible with us so we're able to address that and then
also the contract
is actually expiring with interfaith December of this year
and so that'll
allow us to incorporate your feedback and the council's
feedback on any of the
criteria that we may want to change or whatever feedback
you may have in
regards to that whenever our customers again and we've
worked with them on
payment arrangements we've told them about the plus one
program we also want
to let them know about other hail help agents my Texan
accent came out just
other help agencies that customers have available to them
that are not funded
through the city and so this is not an all-inclusive list
but I think it's very
worthy to note that these agencies that help almost 1200 of
our customers with
payments up to almost $150,000 this fiscal year so we work
very closely with
these agencies making sure that they have the proper
documentation that they
know what the customer needs are so we can be able to help
them and we document
those pledges and payments on the accounts to avoid any
type of interruption
of services for our customers while they're working with
those help agencies
so other things that we have coming down the pipe that we
're really excited about
for solutions for our customers is a prepaid metering
program and what this
is this is a page-you-go type of model for utilities works
just like the
prepaid cell phone and it was very exciting again about
this is this is
going to shift the conversation with our customers so
versus the postpaid
environment that we have now they'll be in a prepaid
environment and it'll
avoid any deposits late fees due dates they'll be able to
have more control over
that and greater flexibility with that as well and so we're
testing that right
now it's in a testing integration phase with the with a go
live anticipate go
live in May of 2018 I wanted to highlight the screenshot
right over here
this is readers account I'm gonna give Rita five bucks
after this meeting
disconnected this is a live account that we're testing for
Rita and it's showing
that she's being notified that hey if you don't make a
minimum payment of
$4.59 you're gonna be disconnected with that that's
extremely manageable for a
customer who may be you know struggling to pay a bill I
could do five dollars I
can do ten dollars something interesting with the readings
account is she was an
existing customer of ours and she had a balance owing on
the account and so
we're gonna be able to work with our existing customers and
say you have a
balance on your account if you have a deposit let's refund
the deposit to the
bill if there's anything still outstanding we can put that
in what we
call a debt recovery module and so we'll put that in a debt
recovery right now
Rita has 183 81 a debt recovery and a percentage of every
payment that she
makes is gonna go down to paying off that debt and so she's
never gonna
incur new debt with this system she's gonna be paying off
that debt that she
has and then creating that credit on her account with that
so again that helps
our customer current customers that are in the utility
system maybe working with
them on getting their deposit refunded putting them in a
debt recovery module
and helping them work through that and there's multiple
notifications that you
can get there's a mobile application there's text messages
there on the
left-hand bottom of the screen you can see the different
type of activities
that have happened so you don't have to log into a portal
to manage this you can
do it on your phone you can call on us to make a payment
but another interesting
thing about this is that you can see that your daily usage
and what that
daily usage cost and this is for all of our customers all
of our residential
customers this is new customers coming into the system and
our existing
customers so there isn't a target customer base that we're
reaching for
this it really is for all of our customers so we're really
excited about
that program to come on board so takeaways and
recommendations based off
the results that we've seen with the implementation of the
ordinance and
specifically being able to continue to work with our
customers through those
you know one-off situations where they need additional help
and payment
arrangements and making sure that they know the resources
that are available to
them staff is recommending that the ordinance stay intact
based off the
results that we're seeing and then in efforts to increase
assistance to more
families to address those two opportunities I talked about
with plus one
about the tenure at the address and also with helping more
than once in a 12
month period and then incorporating any feedback that you
and City Council may
have into the contract request for proposal that will go
out in a couple
months and then that with the prepaid program coming on
board continuing to
offer those solutions more robust solutions for our
customers to be able
to have more autonomy and management of their accounts with
that so in addition
to the city's core values customer services mission is to
help serve and
educate and we take great pride in treating our customers
with dignity and
respect whenever they're working through whatever situation
they are going
through and so we appreciate the continued support that the
board
provides us and council provides us to be able to do that
so I'm happy to
answer any questions that you may have
does this include single-family and multifamily yes and
commercial on we
have some data on the on specifically on commercial in the
review that I
provided which which part are you asking on just your total
debt yes does
include commercial so the 1.4 million and the five hundred
thirty six thousand
that we're at right now that does include all commercial
okay so just for
understanding so do you do you have an idea of what
percentage of the debt
collection is commercial and what percentage is multifamily
versus
single-family we can I don't have that here today but we
can break that down
I was just I don't that doesn't really have any effects for
me on the
recommendation but I'm just curious to see one of the
reason I'm curious is it
would seem that I don't know if you do you all go so far as
putting the lien on
residential no the lanes are not applicable for residential
we've only
done those for commercial and I think we have three
accounts right now that have
lanes on them and they really it only really works when
that commercial entity
is ready to sell and we've collected I think eighty nine
hundred dollars to date
on that so that's I pointed that out and in the review that
it's not necessarily
effective but it is one additional way to help and those
are specifically on
the commercial okay that doesn't have any bearing on I
think your recommendation
is good but doesn't have me I was just curious I'm
impressed with the change
that that you've seen over the time period and I know how
hard it is working
some some families just have a real hard time some days and
just need the help
now state of Texas doesn't have any energy assistance
programs or anything
like that it's usually comes through the faith communities
yeah for us because
we're governed by the PUB and those are mainly for the
retail segment that we
see like TXU reliant they have some of those different
programs like light up
Texas I think was one with that we rely on the the plus one
program and then the
various health agencies that are across the state and
locally for us there you
there used to be a statewide assistance program that was
recently canceled okay
did you have another question did oh yeah okay yeah so
first of all thank you
for giving this presentation and and this is as a result of
my having raised
this issue in my my first PUB meeting I understand that
this policy with the
deposits and the and the disconnection and the the timeline
and credit ratings
has been effective in as I understand it reducing the 1.4
million in
uncollected down to about half is that correct yeah so by
about half so I
understand that benefit my concern and the reason why I'm
opposed to many
aspects of this ordinance is because of the cost to actual
Denton families who
even the ones who end up as you say you know many people
who make the deposits
they end out using that deposit money to pay right so and
but anytime somebody
who does not have a disposable income puts down money up
front they're
sacrificing somewhere else to and you know I don't think it
takes that much
imagination on our part to understand how how that ends up
happening so if you
get somebody to pay the deposit it means they're not they
're gonna be laid on a
credit card which means their ratings gonna get worse or
they're not gonna
pay be able to pay a medical bill etc and we've got a lot
of people living
hand-to-mouth here and so what I don't like about this is
that for the savings
of you know five hundred something thousand were making a
number of
people's lives really miserable and and you can see in one
in one of the
attachments that came with with the item for today there
was a kind of year-by-year
chart on that number of disconnections and you can see the
number of
disconnections increase from 2014 2015 to 15 16 and 16 17
at the same time as
those as you know uncollected debt you know delinquent
accounts or problems are
going down so there's there's that side to it and so I have
a couple a number
specific questions based on kind of input that I've gotten
from from people
I've gotten a lot of feedback from rate payers one of whom
and I will just read
what what she writes she says and this is talking about the
credit ratings how
the credit ratings are used to establish whether someone
needs to pay according
to the certain instead you know it puts them in one of
these three categories
someone says I want to know what credit score they use when
I first moved to
Denton despite having a 750 credit score which is that's
pretty good you know
800 they said my credit score was low and I needed to pay a
deposit they said
it's from Experian but not your act not your actual score
but some random others
score that we have no access to and they refuse to supply
and then somebody else
writes this happened to me too this is this is on social
social media this
happened to me too my credit score was in the low 700s
pretty good and they
said they didn't use that score that there was a score they
used that didn't
have to do with online scores I said what then to top that
off I could etc etc
so I'm wondering you know what what credit scores are are
being used if not
the ones that that we ourselves have access to in addition
to Experian we
utilize the online utility exchange that does use Experian
credit scores in
addition to utility industry if a customer has left a
balance at another
utility their payment history with another utility so it's
combining that
in addition to the credit score and giving them a score for
for risk for us
if we do charge a deposit on an account we do provide what
's called an adverse
letter to the customer where they can actually find out
more information in
regards to how that credit score came up and so we do
provide it's a two-page
letter let them know what their score came back as and some
of the factors
that may contribute to that and so we provide that to them
so if those
customers if we can go I think we might be able to go back
in and look at the
specific accounts and we can provide make sure that they
got that letter and
if they didn't but it we don't want to get into the
business of getting into
someone's credit score as to why it is that score we
present the information
that were provided based off of utility industry and their
credit score with
that but it does give them based off the fair credit trade
act information on how
they can find out additional information on that so that's
how that that score is
come is created and presented to us and Tiffany they can
get a letter from their
prior utility or a co-signer to waive the deposit also so
you know they just
bring in a letter that says I wasn't good standing before
yeah the problem of
court and I understand and appreciate that you know the
problem of course for
for for working working poor people is that you know many
of them can't get such
a letter because it is so hard to pay and so just in the
pragmatics of everyday
life you know and these are not people who are mismanaging
their money and
just because life is so expensive and rent is so high that
you know they
prioritize their spending and so they're gonna wait you
know if you have to pay
$200 you're gonna wait till just before and often even just
after your power
gets turned off to to pay it so and we do offer I mean I
talked about that but
the payment arrangers if someone needs help paying out a
deposit we offer that
and just to go back on the disconnected on the residential
accounts that does
fluctuate dependent on whether so you we can have a real
drastic drop in which we
did for a couple years because if it's extremely hot
outside we're not going to
disconnect power so that greatly influences how many
disconnects we may
have with that and so I wanted to point that out that that
's very weather
contingent for our disconnects as well yeah and that I
understand and I saw
that and appreciated that that chart yeah so I and I
appreciate the calls and
the notifications too and you know I would like to to see
some you know what
what staff thinks the effect would be if we had just had an
an open grace period
and no no disconnection if if we didn't disconnect people
for for late payment
at all if we only disconnected for for safety for safety
reasons or because
electricity was no longer being used there I think that
this would also do a
lot you know at the cost of you know whatever this five you
know five hundred
thousand that we're saving I think this would do so much to
improve DME's
reputation with the public you know a lot of people when
they think DME
they're not necessarily thinking of our you know hero lin
emen who are who we saw
come out here and who do so much to keep like electricity
on they're thinking of
the bills that they have to pay that they keep piling up
you know for me it's
not a problem to you know I didn't have to pay deposit if I
did that wouldn't
have been a problem but for other people that's the this
you know that means you
can't can't give bring your kids to the doctor you can't
make your car payment
you know poor people have the worst credit ratings and it's
just I feel like
it just perpetuates economic problems that we have in this
city so I feel like
it would be good for our for DME's reputation for our local
economy also
the the reconnection fee I know that I've heard it from
anecdotally that
private that many private utilities will not charge for a
reconnection fee when
you have to when you move from one address within that
utility to another
address you know what I mean so I wonder connect fee
connect me sorry sorry sorry
not yeah not not reconnection fee sorry connect me connect
me so for instance
somebody and because because poor people tend to move move
more on average you
know within the same city then middle and upper class
people you have people
you know moving to another address and then having to put
down a whole other
deposit so I would love to see that looked into as you know
changing that
policy to be more like that of other companies who just
once you pay to
connect with DME and if you move to another apartment that
uses DME you
don't have to pay that again so those are just some things
well those are my
questions and things I would like for you to consider but
anyway thank you so
much and thank you also for dealing with there was another
family who had come to
me and you were really helpful in helping work through
their problem and
they they appreciate that I think a lot of people don't
know because they see a
bill and they want it the last thing they want to do is ask
the people who
are charging them for help so you know there's a lot that I
think that that we
can do here on pub to spread the word but thank you I I
would I'm not sure how
much the well anyway that's I guess for discussion that's
the last of a
question so thank you thank you very much and thank you for
answering my
question I would like to see more about the those those
credit score ratings
what a letter like that would look like maybe I could
request my own yeah I
think it's a copy we can copy of what the adverse letter
looks like that would
be excellent yeah because people are really confused
because they think they
have good credit rating because of the number they have so
thank you very much
okay and any other questions thank you Tiffany thank you
okay the next items
are on the consent agenda and looks like most of those are
routine IT
maintenance contracts or the items we've discussed but
having said that any board
members want an item pulled
yes no I would like item I pulled from the consent agenda
not for I don't know
if that means that it has to have a separate discussion
this is just because
I it would then if I pull it does it mean there has to be a
whole discussion
on it or it can just be voted on separately without a
discussion okay
great thank you yeah then I would like any others all right
do we have a motion
to prove items a through H second all in favor I'm opposed
okay and then item I
you don't have a question you just want to separate vote
okay all right do we
have a motion to approve I to move all in favor I opposed
abstain abstain
abstaining okay all right items for individual
consideration item a
approval of the minutes does everybody had an opportunity
to review those any
changes and they stand approved as presented and item B
consider
recommending approval of contract with quality excavation
limited I guess
nobody wanted to see my presentation they all don't take it
personally gonna be
exciting so good morning I'm Chris Lutrick with DME and I
have a short
presentation here to highlight some of the information that
was provided in
your in your backup information there this is for IFB 6503
it's the Den energy
center phase two water and sewer improvements so today I'll
be going over
the public improvement requirements for the Den energy
center phase one waterline
summary that issues already come before the board and we've
already completed
that project phase two water and sewer project map and that
's probably will I'll
do the most discussion and kind of show you where
everything is is that the bid
summary and any questions and feel free to stop me at any
time if you have a
question the dead energy center located out west of the
airport had some through
the through the the design review portion of the project
some public
improvements came up so of course she needs sanitary sewer
and water at the
plant so the the first item here is a looped city water
main to feed the plant
fire loop so what we had is the dinner just any your energy
center is located
an area where the city does not have a lot of
infrastructure it's it's right on
the on the western edge of the city's resources so this
loop loop requirement
will provide water from two directions and a key component
of that is it
eliminated the need for a large diesel fired fuel pump at
the Denton energy
center so without a looped water main feed we would have
had to put a very
large water tank and a fire pump so in the event of a fire
that system would
kick in to to put out the fire a city water main tap for
the plants raw water
so that's part of phase two that will provide the potable
water supply wash
down water and cooling water for the plant and then finally
the connection to
the sanitary sewer so there's showers bathrooms other
facilities for the
workers at the plant so it needed a sewer connection for
that phase one
waterline summary vertical construction of the Denton
energy center required
fire water to be on site so when we analyzed the project
and as you'll see
on the next slide getting water to the plant was was was a
pretty big task so
the project was divided into two phases phase one was a the
shorter phase and it
was less complex so we brought that to the board that was
an RFP that was
awarded to Wilson contractors out of Denton construction
was completed in
early May 2017 and the big thing was it allowed us it kept
our plan on schedule
so we got the the fire water loop pressurized and we were
able to go
vertical with the building as scheduled
okay so to orient you here like I said we're west of west
of the airport you
can see the airport down here this is Jim Crystal Road 380
would be to the
north a couple miles and I 35 would be to the east a couple
miles so we'll
start with phase one it's the yellow line down here at the
bottom so we made
a connection on Tom Cole Road to an existing water main
right off the edge
of the airport property and we came on to the city's
property and this yellow
line that I'm following is phase one so that was about 5,
000 feet of pipe and
that was completed in in May 2017 and then the blue line
here is the fire
water loop so we were actually we built to that point and
charged the fire water
loop and construction continued so on phase two we have the
sanitary sewer so
that's the Scion line here so it comes it connects to the
plant facilities near
the water connection point run south and then continues
over across the airport
so to the east side of the airport so we had to we had to
coordinate this with
the FAA and the Dent Enterprise Airport we have some
specific construction
requirements safety requirements it must be met times a day
that we can work to
comply with the FAA's regulations and you also notice like
any developer when
you put in any kind of public works you have to build for
the future so this
line that runs to the south extends the sanitary sewer to
the property line so
developer would develop this track to the south would have
access to the
sanitary sewer so on to phase two waterline so we're going
to start here
and end up here so as you can tell it's going to be a very
very simple project
this is a 12 inch water line we'll connect to the to phase
two and it'll come
up north of the plant extend over to the property line and
run to just south of
Jim Crystal so again you'll notice we carry the utility to
the to the western
edge of the property for future development along Jim
Crystal it will
then turn to the east and we'll stay just south of the Jim
Crystal right away
and it'll carry continue all the way over to Mosh Branch so
being that we
have a deadline on the plant we've asked the contractor to
start on the sanitary
sewer and in a second crew we'll start here in this red
circle and we'll build
up to the the plants tab so what that allows us to do is be
ready to to
operate the plant in the spring and it takes some pressure
off the contractor
to build to finish this loop all the way over here so with
this initial
construction we'll be able to to give raw water to the
plant any questions I
know that was a lot can you say more about the the future
development
expected around Jim Crystal no that the if there is so kind
of a general thing
that we've done we've done it on McKinney Street substation
is any
developer that comes in and develops a track of land so say
the the water line
is just to your east you can't just build the line to your
facilities what
you have to do is you have to continue that on to the next
property line so
that's a way that cities like Denton they get public
infrastructure built so
it's the cost of the developer to carry the the public
water line to the edge of
their property so any future there's houses out there then
they would be I
mean it's once we're done with it it's a it's a city asset
so we turn it over to
the water department and and we're just building it for
them in essence okay yes
I understand I was just wondering if there was specific
development that you
know ma'am I would know okay thank you thank you in case
there is they'll have
it though I was stuff out there anything else yes sir and I
stepped out for a
minute so maybe I missed this but the recommendation is for
the alternative
bid is there yes sir when we when we set this up we we got
with the city water
department and so they asked to include an upsize as the
main bid so I believe
Tim I think it's starting here and it's the the 16 inch
pipe correct from here
yeah to here would be upsized to 20 inch so the the main
bid and was for the 20
inch pipe and then an alternate bid is for the 16 inch pipe
so the way that
works is DME would pay for the 16 inch portion and then the
difference between
the 16 inch and the 20 inch the water department has funds
an upsize charge
fund that they would fund that part of it so they're gonna
go ahead and do it no
sir they as in the write-up mr. Fisher determined that the
cost for the
upsize was was high per foot and so he elected not to ups
ize and go that so
therefore the alternate bid is what will be constructed
okay
all right anything else any other questions do we have a
motion no okay
did second all in favor all right I opposed abstain abstain
okay well thank
you for your time thank you ACM update thank you in your
packet there are
several items that are included for the ACM update we've
included a a an article
that was provided by PS Aurora to recognize didn't for its
efforts we've
included some previous reports that were requested by the
board members website
analytics in there as well if you'd like to take a look at
that the other thing
too is some board members had requested to give the board a
heads up or a future
notice regarding consult consultants as they would come
forward for
presentations and an upcoming board meeting we thought we'd
take that step
for further by including a future agendas worksheet in your
agenda so that
if you can see if you were to click on that link it does
not it has future dates
it's not currently populated we'll be working to populate
those things so it'll
be an effort upon staff to plan obviously plan ahead and
incorporate
that for future board meetings so that way it gives the
board members an idea
of what's coming forward whether it's the next board
meeting or a future board
meetings and please keep in mind that those things do come
do are subject to
change based on consultants or bid availability and things
of that nature
but just to kind of give you an idea of what's what's to
come in future board
meetings and then the last thing I would like to say is
where's two more things
one thing is I did notice on the new business matrix item
number seven there
was supposed to be a memo for ordinance on right of way in
person your right of
entry I was mistaken I thought that was going to be
included in this meeting
and it's we'll have a memo for the board in the next
meeting so I apologize on
that error for making that's fine this covers some I mean I
would like to see
that okay the right of entry to you okay but this covers so
much that's
connected with that okay okay well we'll still go ahead and
include the right of
entry component and the last item just on the new business
matrix item number
12 there was requests made about having all proposed
expenditures to be brought
forward under individual consideration and and I think from
staff perspective
we'd like to have a conversation with the pub as a whole to
get some guidance
on that and certainly like today there are a number items
that were routine in
nature that were that were approved by consent and but we
want to make sure that
we're appropriately populating the agenda in accordance
with the with the
board's wishes so if those things are so we'd like to bring
a work session to you
if you if you see fit about that just to get direction from
the board whether
it's to continue the methodology that we've been doing to
incorporate those
routine nature items for consent or do you want to have
everything on individual
consideration we just want to get some guidance I'm not
interested in seeing
everything for individual consideration if it's a routine
maintenance type item
we had a previous discussion or a work session on it those
are the kinds of
things that I think should be on a consent agenda and maybe
it'd be helpful
if you tell us how you go about it and then get some
direction from the board
okay we can do that I wanted to thank you for bringing that
discussion to PUB
I'm looking forward to having that discussion and I see us
as a kind of a
vetting committee for council so I understand the council
doesn't have the
time to consider every single item and and we don't we don
't have the time to
spend an equal amount of time on every item but I think it
's definitely worth
discussing see if we want to put a price tag on it you know
to say anything over
50,000 even just to have somebody from staff say just a
reminder here's what
this is all about any questions now before you vote you
know that's that's
the kind of thing that I would like to see us discuss but I
'm just looking
forward to hearing what everyone else in this committee
thinks discussing it so
thank you thank you and I wanted under this item I think
that Barbara Russell
had previously been elected the secretary to this board and
under the
Charter we might need to look at that and then have this
board elect a
secretary okay we'll look into that right away okay thank
you does that mean
that she's the one who would take the notes no no no no you
just act as I know
the charter yeah yeah yeah no no we we have Kim for that we
have a blessing for
that okay then concluding items this is the area where
anybody from the public
are present here can bring up another item yes I wanted to
see some some data
on the in terms of topography geography you know district
by district the those
three credit categories by which deposits are required you
know I would
like to see a map of where the where clusters are of the
people who pay those
deposits versus you know the the 70% that doesn't it doesn
't have to be
extraordinarily detailed but I just want a sense of you
know areas I think that
would be helpful for all of us because well and I would
also like to see some
sort of you know census data on that specifically in terms
of race and
ethnicity I know that you know nationwide that that people
of color
tend to have lower credit ratings because of you know doing
part two I
mean things that are improving now you know we all remember
the subprime you
know the mortgage issues and all those things that on the
one hand have nothing
to do with utilities but that affects credit rating and
that affects this and
so I I would like to see that to to see exactly who who
this policy is is
affecting so I think that would be helpful then I I assume
this is more kind
of question that the the the issue of the contract with
interfaith for plus one
she mentioned that that this is me is coming up for renewal
in December so is
that something that will just that will just come before us
and then agenda yeah
I don't have to do anything to request that okay great I'll
be interested for a
discussion on that and to tag on that I'd like to see a
work session on that
prior to a vote so that we can provide a little more
feedback yes yeah I agree
yeah I agree and I you know I hope we you know continue
this conversation
about this this policy I believe it's going before councils
is that right yeah
so I I really think that we need to have I mean most of our
council really needs
to hear from the citizens who are affected by these these
policies so you
know what what the car what is ice as I see it the cost is
of this you know half
a million in in savings because I hear all kinds of stories
and I I don't think
everybody is necessarily hearing those stories so it'd be
great to be able to
have people come in and tell their stories to council can
we have pub doesn't
have public hearings right is that yeah so thank you
anything else all right
motion to adjourn all favor