Jan 08, 2018 Public Utilities Board on 2018-01-08 9:00 AM

The January 8th, 2018 public utility board meeting will call to order. It's nine o'clock and the first piece of business we have is a work session to receive an informational report regarding the DME program for underground electrical lines. Good morning Chairman Robinson, Public Utilities Board. I'm Brent Heath, Executive Manager for Energy Delivery. We received a question at a recent City Council meeting concerning the underground utilities in Denton, so a presentation has been created and will be presented to them tomorrow evening and we wanted to bring it to the Public Utilities Board today. The work session will discuss the comparisons and differences between overhead and underground utilities. I will briefly touch on a few of the things that have to be considered whenever we engineer projects to go underground, when we draw them up, convert them, especially when we convert from over existing overhead facilities to underground facilities, and then the associated cost. There are several documents that we follow and that we have policies that govern how we handle overhead and underground utilities in the City of Denton. The first one is the City of Denton Municipal Code, section 34-122 is the underground electric utility policy. The very first item on this code says that 's the basic policy of the city to encourage installation of underground electric utilities in all new subdivisions and for commercial development. And there are several other bullet points down through there that you can read in the presentation. One of the things that we do utilize and along with the municipal code is we do have an electric service standards policy that's come before the Public Utilities Board and City Council and has been adopted. It does give the criteria of how we handle the differences for underground and electric utilities. Another document and governance policy that we follow is the Denton Plan 2030. It was preceded by the Denton Plan 2000 and you'll see here in just a little bit how I think some of these documents have really helped us here in the City of Denton to install more and more underground. The very first thing you might want to note here in section 9.5 of the Denton Plan 2030 is it does relate to install an underground electric distribution facilities wherever practical. In 9.5.3 that's inside the box at the lower left -hand corner of your presentation it says fund the conversion of existing overhead electric facilities to underground on a fiscally responsible basis through electric service initiatives. And so we do look at costs before we just ran them we go out and try to pick places to do that. We try to incorporate them whenever possible to include it with the revenue or customer based project that's coming in where it makes sense and it would help keep the cost down on those items. We do budget each and every year we have a specific budgetary category code for overhead to underground conversions. This fiscal year 2018 that we're in we have $350,000 it's budgeted for overhead to underground conversions and we do anticipate over the next five years and this is in the budget book that that will be steadily increasing. This is a map over on the left-hand side shows the overhead primary conductors in the City of Denton and on the right hand side of the map in green is the underground. One thing you might notice is that we have 43% of our primary distribution system in Denton is overhead. More than half, 57% presently today is our underground lines and it kind of shows the locations of where those are at. So it's not just all grouped in one part of the town it's actually scattered across all of Denton. We were asked at the council meeting when the question was posed well how does DME rank in relation to other cities with the amount of underground and so we're proud to say that we're actually ranked third best in the state of Texas out of 72 electric municipal utilities and so we're very proud of that. I did go back in the history and looked in the 2001 TPPA Texas Public Power Association directory and if you look at those numbers it shows that we were at 36% and this is where I think some of our governance policies that the Public Utilities Board and the City Council has done has really helped DME to help get more and more underground here in the city of Denton. An example of underground everybody's familiar with the downtown courthouse square everything contained within this gold boundary or box is shown by some dashed colored lines those are all underground that's all underground electric utilities for several blocks around the downtown square. I think that's pretty pretty unique and pretty good allows us some opportunities to help make it a very visual visually appealing place to go visit. Okay this map we're not going to touch and talk about every one of these numbers we'll just pick three or four I know it's very busy I think the thing that really is to take away from this slide is that it compares the electrical liability between overhead and underground circuits. The bottom left-hand corner over here talks shows the Katie which talks about the customer durations of out ages when outages do occur and it shows the overhead number is 26 and the underground number is 31. What that indicates is that there are actually less outages on underground than overhead but when outages do occur on underground because it's more difficult to find the duration to restore those outages for those customers is actually longer because you can't just drive by say oh there's the problem and go clear it up and get it back on you have to locate and identify the problem. Another interesting thing is we all know that we've heard that we have a lot of outages here in Denton recently especially due to squirrels and you know they're there are on our number one hit list and so we're doing a lot of things to try to mitigate and improve the squirrel issues that occur in our overhead lines. One of the things that we've done recently is we've used a new product that we've evaluated and we've gone through and started installing across parts of the town to help mitigate that's wildlife protection, it's die electric devices that you clamp on overhead conductors to help try to keep the squirrels from hitting a hot conductor and a ground wire at the same time which causes a problem for the electric system. We've had very good success with that and so people say why don't you just make it go underground instead of overhead and you won't have those issues. Well there actually are squirrel related issues even on underground circuits. Sometimes squirrels love to chew through insulation on underground cables they get down in the riser conduits crawl down in them and you can actually see that on the overhead we have a column called squirrel events we had nine squirrel events on these 12 overhead conductors that are 80% or more overhead and on the underground circuits that are 80% or more underground there's actually more than twice as many underground circuits 26 and we had four so it 's about half a little less than half of the number of squirrel related events on underground circuits but they do occur thought that was kind of interesting. Overhead and underground comparisons between overhead on the left and underground on the right I think the most significant differences that you'll see on these two columns is of course the appearance underground does look better cost and system flexibility. Underground conversions to go from overhead to underground it's just complex a lot of moving parts to make that happen we do it it can happen and we want to continue doing it but it's just a difficult thing and very timely and costly to do. A lot of research time is required we need to know where all the existing underground utilities are at before you begin and that's when engineering department planning department other utilities have to be consulted where are their lines at we needed to find out where is the best place to put the new underground line at that misses as many of those underground utilities that we can't see. So we have to also consider not only the existing load that how much electricity is needed to serve each customer right now but what might it be in the future so we have to plan for future capacity. One of the difficult things with underground is when you put a conduit in the ground and you put a cable in that conduit you want to make sure it's large enough probably much larger than what they need right now because you can't just pull that cable out and put bigger cable that didn't fit in that conduit so we're gonna make sure you put large enough condu it and cables that can plan for the future expected capacity of that area and maybe even the surrounding areas you might be feeding through this area to serve another area. We normally because of the cost and the time that's needed to help put in underground facilities we put our underground facilities and easements rather than street right away. There are many times if we're in street right away with a pole a street widening project happens they just move the pole back pretty cheap pretty inexpensive easily done but on underground you have to dig it up and find another place to go and when you're running at a higher cost you want to make sure that if you're protected by an easement whoever's asking you to move that would help pay for that. Textodd is a prime example. We on underground facilities a lot of times they'll say you need to move that line well where we're gonna go well I don't know you just to go buy some easements somehow and we'll try to reimburse you for that and so we do try to put underground and easements. One of the things that's interesting about overhead conductors when you bury overhead conductors you have joint pole attachment users such as telephone and cable TV that's already up there. If you bury the electric lines which we have done you want to work with those other communication companies and say how do we bury your facilities they may not be incentiv ized as much as we are to help bury their facilities so sometimes they ask for some additional funding to help them do that so a lot of cooperation and coordinations are required. There is also the physical construction impacts to dig everything up put it in underground it does disrupt the location that you're putting them in it and one of the things that's rarely thought about is the electric meter bases. The electric meter bases are mounted on the outside of the house that the overhead service is tied to and it does have a weather head that goes up through the roof and all of that has to be electrician has to be hired to help relocate that. They have to rip all that down in each house or business and converted to underground and so that's about two to three thousand dollars per house and the meter base is owned by the customer. We have some project cost examples of how much underground cost to put in two of these are actual costs that we've done on some big projects and one of them is an estimated cost that we've looked at on a smaller project. Western Boulevard on the west side of town there was an industrial customer that came in recently close to a substation we had to plan for future capacity and what their needs were so we put in multiple circuits underground and you might notice that the actual cost per foot was four hundred and thirty seven dollars per foot and so that ended up costing for the 1.2 miles 2.7 million dollars just to install the underground facilities along this one section of Western Boulevard. H ickory Street downtown on the square or southeast of the square a very nice area down through there that was a six hundred and forty six dollars six hundred forty seven dollars per foot to put that in so it costs three quarters of a million dollars to put that in that one section of street. It looks very very nice a lot of work went into that we also plan for future capacity and needs there's festivals that occur down through there and so we have buried facilities that can handle festivals food booths vendors along the street similar to what they do over in grapevine so those types of things are thought about whenever you put an underground. We've also looked at a possibly converting an overhead area to underground in a residential area for a block or two and we want to see how would that cost this overhead area that we looked at is in the rear lots it's in the back of the yards very difficult to get to and so for 2300 feet for 23 homes that was going to be five hundred and fifty dollars per foot to do that or fifty seven thousand dollars to cross each of these 23 lots for 1.3 million dollar cost so that's still being looked at and evaluated to see is that really a good move or not and how would that work with the other surrounding areas so I wanted to throw some of these numbers out to you that underground can be done has been done and hopefully will continue to be done it's your direction it is very expensive there's some challenges but they can all be overcome. We do have several active projects underground projects right now DME the top three here are some that we're doing for University of North Texas there are two of those are in the construction phase one is supposed to start this spring we have underground projects that are planned for McKinney Road the loves travel where we went across the interstate on the north side of town guy or high school that just got through being put in for the textile project around the curve and Windsor and Duchess Drive so those are some active underground projects that we have right now here in the city of Denton. So I'm gonna go ahead and summarize this as far as we do have an ongoing underground program here in Denton our approved budget right now is three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that we're working under this present year we currently per the TPPA listing was at 56 percent we're really at 57 percent right today amount of line which is ranked third best out of 72 utilities in the state of Texas overhead does have lower installation cost it's easier to find and repair problems when they occur underground has an improved appearance and I think that's one of the main reasons people want to put in underground it does have less outages when those outages do occur it is longer to restore the power back to the customers to try to isolate and find the problems one of the things that does occur on underground outage troubleshooting is you have to if you can't find something visually you can't find what caused it you have to maybe open the underground circuit halfway close the fuse in see does that solve the problem or not if it doesn't well that means that the problem has gone at least that far you have to continue on to the end of the circuit and isolate and try to refuse so many times if you are in an underground circuit you might get several blinks after the initial outage that's just a utility crews trying to find where the problem is at so that they can isolate it so I'd be happy to answer any questions Jerry filter our electric engineering division manager is also here to address any questions is is is George more our new general manager so with that I'd stand for any questions question could you go back to the slide about the place that we were going to do that back of the residential area so it was almost 60,000 a lot and the homeowner also has to pay then two to three thousand dollars to get it converted either that or the we would have to help fund that okay how do we typically do that a special assessment or on their bill or I know that we've done some of these in the past we haven't really done a lot of that type of work recently because it is very complex a location off south of Hercules east of Stewart was done recently well not recently I would say back in the late 90s I'm not sure what really initiated that we did go back and look at that it's in your AIS agenda very expensive to do we did go underground it's underground today it looks very nice today it's a very heavily treed area but you'll notice those poles are still in the backyards of all those people not because electric electric did what we needed to telephone and cable TV did they said we don't want to go underground and so today cable TV goes all the way through there and telephone goes most of the way through there so those poles are still there even though we spent I believe it was 1.3 million dollars you on that so but as far as how we would build the customer or in you know that would be a topic we'd need to discuss to figure out the best way to do that I can't match a lot of don't want to do that so well we heard comments from some of the crews that are still around back from the late 90s and they received a lot of grief when they were out there doing it from the homeowners well we didn't ask that this be done we have to move our storage shed it's you're tearing up my yard to get back there and those poles are still there and so but it can be done and it has been done good question I mean it almost seems like unless telephone and cable or whoever's got lines running through there also you know coordinated with us to do that I don't know that you I mean we I guess we gain less outages but from a from a homeowner standpoint like you say you still got a pole we still got a line and it is expensive and the communication companies don't want to convert because it's expensive and it's harder to maintain they they have their plant that they pay the capital cost to install and they want to depreciate it and get the full benefit of the plant and if it's not depreciated and they need to replace it before it's fully depreciated there's some associated cost with that and so that's where sometimes working with them they can say you know we have a project in four or five years maybe wait we wait four or five years and then that's when it's optimal for everybody to work together and make that happen either that or incentivize them to help do it sooner that can be done as well. Is it safer to have underground lines as far as for our workers who go out there and work on the lines to repair them and whatnot is wouldn't it be safer though to have them underground than overhead? There are some safety differences in overhead and underground I meant we've had some accidents and serious injuries on both and so it's not like underground is safe because it's not electricity but it is for the most part with the dead front switch gear and equipment and transformers that we use it is insulated and so from that perspective it is safer the overhead conductors do not have any insulation on overhead wire so I caution everyone here and that might be watch and please do not ever get near or touch any overhead electric conductors it's just not a safe thing to do. In underground facilities a lot of times we'll even see kids you know sitting on the green boxes the pad man of transformers the switch gear and even though they're grounded anything could happen we don't encourage that that be considered playground equipment because it's not and so they both have safety concerns with both of them but yes underground does have some safer aspects. I have a two-part question first do you know on average what the difference is in repair times between underground and overhead and the second part of the question is are you aware of any technological research or maybe anything existing underway in terms of you know robotics or whatever that that could improve in the future the the repair time on underground electric? Good questions on this busy busy chart that I showed earlier you can look at the overhead customer duration of outages on an average and it was 26.3 minutes per year that an overhead customer would experience an outage duration to last and it's almost 32 so not a significant difference but there is a difference just like you can tell the the outages I meant the nine squirrel the four squirrel 41 total events on underground 56 those are fairly close I mean everything is somewhat close but at a much higher cost to do that so I don't know if that answers your question not so. That does actually and I didn't realize that that that that's what those average numbers were for the time so thank you thank you. You're welcome and as far as the robotics or automation I'm not sure about the restoration times there are some things have been looked at as far as what causes outages do some predictions as far as items that are getting toward their end of life we do have our GIS system where we know the vintage year that the equipment's put in and and we go through our engineering department to look at that in operations department are we having issues in some certain areas and we try to put projects forward to help address that before it becomes a very chronic issue one of the recent ones that we did a few years ago was to replace the direct buried cable over in the South ridge area it was put in direct buried was put in without conduits it was in the in the back lots rear lots that was a three-year project for us to replace all of that direct buried cable with conduits and cable in conduit we also replaced old live front transformers which are not as safe as the dead front transformers we replaced the transformers and did a lot of other maintenance in the process so we're always looking for opportunities to help improve the electrical system good question. One other question that I have is what are the maintenance costs between overhead and underground because I mean we're talking about and you know the tree trimming and all that other kind of thing what's the most of the underground circuits at some point will have some overhead associated with that you'll notice even on this slide the 26 underground circuits on the right hand column if you if you will and the 12 on the overhead and these are circuits that are 80% or greater overhead or underground is how it got split up into these categories so it's very rare to have strictly nothing but a fully underground circuit from the substation to the end customer most of them do have some associated overhead so you're never going to get away completely from the tree trimming cost with that you need for overhead but as far as the maintenance cost the tree trim is definitely one of those items on overhead and a little bit for the underground use as well. We have to go out and replace light and arresters on overhead when they blow very easy to find replace the $ 70 device on overheads it's much more expensive when something fails on underground because it costs two to three times as much to put it in you have to buy that equipment find the time to locate the real issue and then replace the equipment and so the cost of maintenance is higher on underground I'm not sure the actual percent difference on that but it is it is greater. How much is the cost offset by the projects you showed like UNT and is it is any of that cost offset by those entities? Some of that is there were some agreements that were put in place things that UNT did for us and we did for them years ago to where we're fulfilling some contractual agreements on that UNT those three items. Sometimes customers will come in with a project that they have proposed and they'll want to put in underground but it's in an area that's existing overhead and that's where electric service standards comes into play that says the difference between the cost of the overhead and the underground sometimes that 'll be paid by the customer in a form of aid and construction that they'll pay us to to go with the underground facilities if it would we would have normally put it in an overhead because it's an overhead area. And if it's a new development is that the developers? All the new developments according to the plan we put everything new for residential and commercial in underground according to the governance policies that we have. Now there are some costs that developers do pay us for street lighting to put the street lights in and that was changed by council I guess back in the early mid-2000s to where they pay a cost with the street lights. Street lights have to be put in on the streets before the streets accepted by a third-party contract with the building inspection at the city and so we do charge that and that's paid up front. That's all in the electric service standards policy that's available to look at on the city website if you go in there and go into the electric and look in those categories you'll see the electric service standards policy and if you haven't looked through that if you're planning development I encourage you to do that. We're always available for people to call us we'd be happy to work with any customer and walk them through that process. With the fiscal year 2018 budget of $350,000 we're really only looking at being able to bury 500 feet a line or something like that. Was that rough estimate? Yeah. You know this wasn't intended for large areas to be converted to underground it 's for areas where it makes sense on as the dent plan 2030 said on a fiscally responsible basis and so that's to help supplement some of those costs. So would you guess then that the increase from what was it 36% in 2001 was it to 57% now so the lion's share of those were done by developers? We've had an enormous growth in system and customer growth here in Denton over the past 20 years so yes I think that that's a large lion's share of that. And I just wanted to clarify something that that Alan asked if I'm building a neighborhood and I want to bury the I want the electrical lines buried I pay for that you guys don't pay for that I pay for that. If it's a brand new subdivision that's going in that's never been there on some greenfield property we will put that in underground. Now if where does the budget come for? Well if if there's an error if if everything around there is all overhead one of the policies does say item number E on the municipal code underground will not be installed on the perimeter of a subdivision or plan development unless the adjacent areas has underground service. So to your point on that if everything around there is overhead and it's going to be a small development we would go ahead and put that in overhead because the perimeter of that would be overhead. So that might be where you're so yeah we do follow that as well. But if the customer wants it in underground we'll put it underground they would pay that difference the aid and construction put it in underground. Okay okay that makes sense. Okay thank you. You're welcome. Can you go back to the other one? Which one? The the one with all of the outage the busy slide. Yeah the busy one I like the busy one. Okay . Maybe you could explain what each one of those the Sadie and the Katie and the safety and and what their significance is. Okay let's just pick the overhead for an example from left to right. Feeder this would be BB the Bonnie Bray substation. 213 that would be the number one transformer on the number three circuit out of the Bonnie Bray substation. So that would be one circuit on one transformer out of one substation. Says 80% of that circuit is overhead. Sadie which is the system duration it's different than Katie for just that customer this would be for the system duration outages would be 46.15 the Katie would be the 22. 54 of the minutes of duration so system versus customer seen outages if outages occur. The safety the F is frequency how frequent do outages occur on that one circuit and so that would tell you how many times that how frequent it would occur. The ASAI you'd see some numbers close to 100% nearly every time this is the total number of possible hours in a year the electricity could be provided on that one circuit. And so this is the availability of that service and if you look at nearly any electric utility company across the country that's always going to be 99.9 something. It's however many nines you have after the decimal place really tells you the differences because for the most part electric utilities are very very reliable. Yes we do have issues storm related what weather squirrels vehicular damages accidents but for the most part very good success rate on keeping the lights on. That's where I was going because you see that there's 20 events on that one feeder but yet you're still at 99.991 percent. That's correct. It's pretty good. Yes it is. Thank you for bringing that out. Other questions? No? All right thank you Brent. Okay thank you all. Okay excuse me although we have it shows we have a closed meeting following work session for the benefit of our televised meeting rather than interrupt and then have to come back after that. If it's okay we'll just put the closed meeting the executive meeting at the end of the meeting and we'll go right into the regular meeting. That's okay with everybody. So the first item we have item one is the consent agenda. We have two items on the consent agenda. Any member would like to have those pull for an individual consideration? Hearing none just one thing I don't we have to pull it but just as a comment on item number A for those for the for the Derek truck for DME that is a replacement of an existing vehicle. I don't know if that was clear enough in the backup but that is a replacement of an existing vehicle . Okay so nobody needs anything pulled so is there a motion to accept or approve the consent agenda as presented? I'll move. Second. We have a motion and second any any questions or discussion on that? Hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed same sign? Okay consent items are approved. Items for individual consideration we have public utility board meetings of December 11th 2017 have been distributed and is there any questions changes comments on that from anybody? Hearing none we'll we can consider those approved by consensus then as presented. Item number B which is consider recommending adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton approving a real estate exchange and abandonment agreement between the city and Marsom property excuse me Marsom Enterprises Incorporated. Good morning Paul Williamson real estate manager before you for your consideration today we're going to be talking about a an agreement that we've put together with the Marsom folks the people that own Briscoe Tire here in Denton the corner of Eagle and Elm Street. Associated with the Eagle Drive Drainage Phase 2 project on the screen here we've got the initial phase of the project was was on the from Elm Street over to Wainwright it's it's now in place and the the phase that we're presently looking at is phase 2 which is a connection of some existing boxes that were put in when quick trip went in on the south side of Eagle and and the dashed line is the project at hand we're hoping to get to real soon. The solution here is is y'all may well know is that this area is somewhat of in a bowl it's it's a low point at Carroll and Eagle and there's some a lot of localized flooding there even with a very minor storm event we we have a foot of water there at the intersection of Carroll and Eagle and this this project will help mitigate that. Paul real quick question this would you go back to that slide we just saying is this kind of the completion of that section of drainage project is it does that get us all the way to Pecan Creek? Yes, yeah it goes all the way to the outfall the project that was done many many years ago you know obviously with any drainage project it's always a segmental solution you know there's parts to the west that are will be in some future CIPs. So the particular transaction is hand is that we've worked out a prospective settlement with the Mars Am folks to the drainage boxes in this instance will be going along the east side of Myrtle Street from let's see the new drainage boxes will will be sorry the new drainage boxes will be in this area here and they 'll wrap around and go project over to the east along the north side there's an existing channel here that snugs right up against the building so the the idea here is that we're will be building a new set of boxes larger more cross-sectional area to carry more flow underground around the building and we're proposing to exchange outright exchange what we call the San Miguel tract which was a small house lot that we purchased in 2016 it's in the green and the Mars Am folks are agreeable that that will do basically some exchanging will be abandoning some of the existing easement that will no longer need and they'll be acquiring fee fee title to the area in green and then this little red strip which is what we call a margin tract it was a tract that dropped off the tax rolls many many many years ago should have actually traded with the Mars Am track so so the idea is that we're basically going to exchange like acreages for the land rights the city needs to do the project so the essence of the transaction is that Marston will be conveying to the city a right-of-way track along Myrtle for the the Myrtle Street right-of-way the ultimate Myrtle and then the drainage easement and the city would be conveying the fee track the margin tract and then we would also abandon our interest in those segments of the drainage easement that we 're going to bypass with moving the boxes to another location sure yes sir and that's that's an easement yes it was a planted easement yes sir so that easement will go away once the projects complete will the ideas that were released the easement in that track rest of that is all of that property or is it just the easement over by the street it's being exchanged the exchange tracks are are this this area here where the existing channel is so it's an open channel actually right there and then we have some there's a portion of that channel is closed here which will also be abandoned and then there's a there's a an additional easement here with it where they put in a catch basin many years ago an additional catch basin so all of the dotted yellow area is to be abandoned upon the completion of the project and and the hatched drainage easement is to remain because the boxes will actually be going through many portions of that area and then the areas that the city is to acquire is the right-of-way tract which is this blue tract and we need the we need a little bit more at the corner to work out future sidewalk landing and then this purple or magenta tract is also just an outright drainage easement that will be acquiring from Marsom so that actually I mean basically we're taking one easement exchanging out and then picking up right away on Myrtle which we don't have that now right no correct no and then exchange for that it's basically the the the green track up at the top yeah this this green tract and then also this little which which is gonna have is that gonna have that will have an easement through it as well we will retain both drainage and utility easements and all those tracks it'll it'll be pretty much fully encumbered with easement okay all right any other questions comments no we have a motion for item B recommend approval we have a motion to approve is there a second second discussion all in favor say aye any opposed same sign okay motion passes thank you Paul thank you next item we have for consideration is item C which is to consider recommending adoption of an ordinance rev ising parameters within the credit and collection policy of the city utility system good morning happy new year I'm Tiffany Thompson the customer service manager bringing forth the credit collection ordinance revisions today in November 2010 we did update this ordinance based off of the amount of uncollect ible debt that we had and just overall enhancing the credit collection policies that were in place over the last several months we've had discussions with the Public Utilities Board and with council on how we can enhance the policies and also add additional programs to assist our customers the first change that we have is updating the plus one program we're going to be increasing funding from 100,000 to 125,000 and allowing funds to be allocated towards deposits and the contract we're also going to be updating specific guidelines and criteria to be able to understand the barriers that our customers are facing to in order to get more data on a monthly basis for the vendor that's going to be overseeing the contract and then also being able to assist families more than once in a 12 month period and also regardless of tenure at the address all of the changes with plus one are contractual changes and so you won't see that in city ordinance but we are going out for the request for a proposal right now that's actually going to be hitting the newspapers within the week or so for us to get the competitive bids on that and we will bring forth the contract recommendations for you and council's approval and late spring and that contract will go into effect in July of this year we are adding a homelessness deposit waiver to be able to address a specific community need for those individuals or families that are experiencing homelessness and are working with a partner agency to be able to be permanently rehomed and we've already crafted the application process that the organizations we're going to partner with to fill out in order to make sure that they qualify for it and the form letter that the customer will provide to customer service to get that deposit waiver done so everything's ready we're just waiting for the approval to get that executed the parameters that we're updating for the credit and collection is the overdue interest points associated and they're modifying the rating scale points accrued and the deposit required for our existing customers so for overdue interest that's when someone brings forth a balance to the next month's bill the points currently are 100 that's going to be updated to zero points associated for that event and then for existing customers we are going to be eliminating the F customer rating and then the the scale for the C and the D customers or it is shifting a little bit and then we're only going to be requiring a one month deposit for the D rated customers and then a two month deposit for the e customers for our disconnection procedures customer service has internal policy that we've been following in regards to disconnections during holidays weekends and also during times of extreme weather we wanted to take this opportunity to get that verbiage into ordinance it's not an ordinance now just for transparency and for our customers to be able to know exactly why or when we do not disconnect services so for holidays and weekends we do not issue disconnects for the weeks of Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's nor the weekends or the days before after those days for extreme weather if the forecasted temperatures fall below 32 or 100 and above we do not issue disconnection of services as well and we're adding also the additional parameter about the heat advisory so if there's been a heat advisory issued for Denton County we will not be doing disconnection of services and so we're adding that new into ordinance for your consideration as well today the implementation timeline the plus one again that's all contractual changes we're doing the solicitation process now we'll be bringing that force you in the next couple months for your consideration the homelessness deposit waiver we have all the applicable forms ready to go as soon as we get the green lot we'll be able to execute that immediately and the credit and collection policy changes once we have their approval we do need a partner with our customer information system to get those modifications into our system we hope to have that done at the latest the very beginning of February but potentially could have that done much earlier with that and so with that I'd be happy to answer any questions yes ma'am can you go back to your ABCDEF how many customers are then not are gonna move to not having the two-month average but the one month average for a C rating we did an initial analysis of what the change is the proposed change would be it's about 1800 customers okay total would go to the pardon me let me clarify for you that are be going to the the rating where it would only be the one month deposit and then 710 of our customers actually would not qualify for an additional deposit now so that's going to be the impact with that we'll have final numbers once we put because it's very fluid it changes with that but that's the initial assessment right now for that thank you with the weekend and holiday policy is that a is that a change I guess is that a significant change there's not change the only addition that we added was the heat advisory we weren't previously following that and we thought it would be important to follow that as well because that's one of the things customers would bring up it may not hit actual temperatures of a hundred but the heat advisory may be over that so we wanted to make sure to place that in there as well I noticed that in the actual verbiage of the ordinance it says that it service shall not be disconnected on the whole weekends and holidays if there's not a staff member present to accept to accept payment yes and what we follow is we don't just connect during the those times with that pardon me we follow that if we're not available to take payment we don't disconnect but we follow this very strictly in regards to we don't disconnect during holidays weekends with the day proceeding or after that so even if you had a staff member they're available to accept payments you wouldn't just know we're following the what the ordinance says right here I understand what you're saying well the ordinance says it actually specifies that if that a staff member that you won't disconnect if it's a weekend or a holiday and a staff member is not present we could we could definitely change I'm just saying if you feel like that's present then you could disconnect on those days if there was one present understood what we follow is we don't disconnect with that so we can definitely make that change and just another question have you had anybody asking for holidays that we might not recognize traditionally in our community like other religious holidays no sir that question not that I'm aware of okay thank you so that brings another question is there a definition of what you all deem to be the holidays the holidays we articulated is the week of Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's and it's that whole week that that's observed question yeah so just as a clar to clarify kind of stating stating the obvious but just but also for the benefit of anybody watching it if somebody's power is has already been disconnected during times of extreme weather or holidays and weekends obviously it stays disconnected if it was disconnected previously like the week before and they haven't reconnected yeah yeah yes yeah it remains but of course we would get that reconnected if they contacted us and and we would issue the reconnect for that but we're not doing any proactive news yes no no no disconnection yeah but so there are customers who have had their power disconnected who are without power at times of extreme weather and over the holidays only no new disconnects during those times yeah I don't know the exact number of who would not reconnect services most times what we see is if they didn't reconnect services it's because they vacated the property with that but we don't we 're not aware of anyone that's been disconnected and didn't reconnect prior that isn't isn't there with that so I don't have exact numbers on that but correct we don't do any new disconnections thank you I just I just I'm sorry I have to clarify something about holidays so it says holiday and then it says also enlists Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's but I believe we just asked a question about what are the holidays and then you said Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's so I was actually assuming that if it was like a national holiday where ordinary businesses would be closed that that counts as a holiday in this capacity as well that's a good that's a very good point we do observe like Memorial Day for the third day that's coming up that's a very good point so that might be an opportunity to update that so those are included yes sir so it's really holidays that the city is closed plus the weeks of Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's I was seeking that clarification too so thank you very good thank you any other questions comments I just I want to say thank you thanks to to staff and my everyone on PUB and council for these improvements to the deposit program I I've been very openly critical of the deposit program I'm happy to see these improvements I think there's a long way to go but I really appreciate these improvements and I appreciate the the creativity that I saw at the council work session where those parameters were changed and it's you know looking at the numbers that I think you said what 1800 customers will be changed from one to two months and for the 710 customers that correct no additional deposits so those those individuals those customers will experience a real change there were and of other customers who won't and I just want to add that I'm going to keep pushing for more reforms to this system and also for something that I mentioned before which is the idea of a low income deposit waiver however we define low income and I have a map and I would be happy to share this with staff and people on on on PUB but a map and this is just taken from US census information dot provides information about average income median income sorry based on neighborhood and there is a striking correspondence if you compare median incomes of neighborhoods in Denton to the map that that that you all provided with which I appreciated that showed where the multifamily and residential and commercial deposits are there's a remarkable correspondence between clusters of multifamily deposits and our lowest income neighborhoods which you know according to this the census data you know count is to 29,000 to 39,000 or 29,000 or less so there is correspondence between these clusters and and that's significant enough to me to suggest that that we need to keep looking into you know who are these these customers are who are in these lower ranked deposit categories and you know as we plow ahead and also as we consider you know what we want to ask for from the new whoever is going to facilitate the plus one program you know things for them to look into so I see this is a work in progress I 'm happy with the direction that that it's moving in and I just wanted to thank people for for working on this so thanks motion I move motion to approve in a second any discussion I just one question yes Brendan's question about clarification on when staff is is present is that going to be addressed in a change yeah that's what I understand we'll address the this was the new language in the ordinance correct right right yeah that there's not going to be any disconnects where there's their staff there or not okay thank you thank you thanks for that clarification all in favor the motion say aye any opposed same time okay motion passes next item we have is item D which is to consider recommending adoption of an ordinance approve a contract to supply for the supply of work so a gas engine lubrication oil and cooling system glycol for DEC good morning I'm Chris Ludrick I'm an engineer with DME and I one of the project managers for the Denton Energy Center so I have a very short presentation here to to highlight the information provided in your packet for IFB 6632 it's the purchase of two fluids for the didn't gas engines that's the lube oil and glycol so I'll kind of go over an internal combustion engine overview to kind of show you what we're buying and why we're why we're buying it the summary of the bids the staff recommendations and then any questions you may have so a short presentation so I had to jazz it up here a little bit so here's an animation we have of a four stroke engine very very similar to what you have in your autumn in your car or truck down here is the the rotating part so the camshaft rods and pistons so or this engine looks a little low on oil here but this area is where the lubrication oil which is probably the most critical fluid in an engine provides lubrication for the moving parts it also has a secondary function as it's used to absorb heat so the second second item we have is for the glycol so up in the head area of an engine you have water circulating just like again very similar to your car so you have water circulating in this area of the engine to remove heat but also on the lower end where you cannot have any water the oil provides a cooling a cooling function so once again those are the two the two functions for the two fluids that we're buying I just thought it throw a little kind of one oh engine 101 in there we received seven bits on this IFB and it was a dual-purpose IFB so we set out one IF B for two purchases both of these items are usually supplied through a distributor that supplies both the engine oil and glycol and other and other fluids so kind of made sense to send it out as one bid so we received seven bids for the l ube oil and seven bids for the antifreeze or glycol the oil bids ranged from five dollars and seventy nine cents per gallon up to a seven dollars and thirty nine cents per gallon and the glycol bids ranged from seventy nine thousand nine hundred fifty three dollars to a hundred and seventy two thousand eight hundred and twenty five dollars the oil was it was a fixed quantity this will be a single purchase of fifty seven thousand gallons of lube oil so each engine is gonna contain will hold about four thousand gallons of oil so that's about forty eight thousand gallons and then we have some on-site storage tank where we'll keep in a maintenance amount of oil on site so this purchase should get us through the first couple of years so it's a single purchase glycol on the other hand is a as you see the amounts here are the total amount so we went to the manufacturers and everybody's products a little different the molecular weight of their product is a little different so we said we want to freeze protect our cooling system total cooling system down to 15 degrees Fahrenheit so therefore we had different values or different quantities that would be supplied by each manufacturer so the bid that we would that we want to go with from O'Rourke their quantity is eight thousand seven hundred gallons of glycol so our staff recommendation is the lowest cost bid was submitted by Reader distributors Inc. they're out of Fort Worth Texas and that's not to exceed three hundred and thirty thousand dollars the glycol the lowest cost bid was submitted by O'Rourke distribution company also out of Fort Worth Texas and that amounts seventy nine thousand nine hundred and fifty three dollars so at this time it's pretty short presentation any questions you may have in the documentation it looked like there are some pretty specific specifications for the oil yes sir and it didn't look like there were that many specifications for the glycol product no sir that there is not so there is there were there is two main choices that you have in the antifreeze coolant realm that's a monopropylene glycol or ethylene glycol ethylene glycols most people are used to is the bright yellow it's it's it's more toxic the prop ylene glycol is more environmental friendly so Wardzilla you can go with either one some parts of the country if you're a little further south Arizona you wouldn 't have to have any any any antifreeze in there but but where we where we said in North Texas a prime example would be last week where we experienced temperatures below freezing for you know 60 hours the inside the engine hall of course that's heated so the engines there wouldn't be a problem of a freeze there where you would damage the engine that the antifreeze is needed on the exterior part so the radiators are sitting outside so that that cooling fluid and in a time when maybe you're not running in the winter would be exposed so our recommendation was in a 15 to 20 degree range so that's the quantity of glycol that we put out today what what do you think accounted for the bid despite I mean disparity there was one hundred and seventy six thousand and one for seventy just there's quite a few bits and and and I would the answer to that would be is is most everybody bid on the oil so the oil is the larger purchase and then they may have to they may have to go out and sub out or or broker out another ant ifreeze purchase so I would say for the ability to bid on both even though they didn't have to that they chose to put a number in there to see okay so you don 't feel like there's any quality differences no between the lowest bidder product and the highest better product no sir no sir they'll be provided with a data sheet and there's a instrument I think it's called a refractometer so just like in the old days you had a little press dome thing you take out the sample and see where that where the balls float in there there's a little more scientific method we have that the plan that Jason will have at the plant he 'll be able to take a sample and he'll be able to tell what its freeze point will be at that point thank you we put that in the contract that they needed to supply their their product to meet this this rating okay thank you question go ahead yeah I have a question about cutting costs and you might have looked into this all already outside of the bidding process or maybe as part of the bidding process but I think you mentioned that the lube oil is enough for one to two years is that correct yes so did you look into the possibility of purchasing it and what the price difference would be if we were to purchase it in a smaller amount in considering that we that we now know that all 12 engines aren't necessary possibly say it's just hypothetical say we end up divesting some I mean you know just to look into saving costs making sure that we don't end up with all this lube oil that we don't end up using or is this one of these situations where you pay less to get more what's what's the most cost- effective way to get the least amount that we need and have the least waste very good question so we if I understand it right we this oil purchase there's about 4, 000 gallons per engine so we have to fill up all 12 engines through our construction commissioning phase of the project all the engines have to be filled with oil so that's that's the bulk of the purchase from the beginning from the beginning got it and then once and that oil also provides you some protection features so all of them those that's all steel in there all gets coated with oil so it needs it needs to have oil in it so that the purchase the reason we were bringing it up now is they're they're getting close to ready to fill those engines so at that point here at the end of the month that they will be filled with oil if you didn't run them the oil the oil still be in there so the extra amount we got it is the maintenance amount so we have a tank on hand so we use the bulk purchase of all of that oil to go ahead and fill up our maintenance tank so that we could take advantage of that large oil purchase we were getting some quotes or kind of we're just talking around that oil you know if you buy a gallon it's probably ten or fifteen dollars a gallon so we kind of maximized our purchase by buying our amount we needed for the first couple years of maintenance all in a single purchase and how much and apologies if you have already mentioned this but how much will be in the maintenance tank after you fill up I think it's gonna be about ten ten thousand gallons ten thousand gallons roughly two engines okay and that's enough for maintenance for one to two years yeah yeah we're determining so this oil is a little different than your car Jiffy Lube's not gonna come put a sticker on there that says three months or three years or 30,000 or 3,000 miles you have to change your oil so like I said that the oil is very key to the life of these engines so they'll be taking oil samples so there's not really a change like a a point where you have to change the oil out they'll be taking samples of this oil send it off it'll come back and there's some condemning factors so if you have a leak so say your radiator is leaking or the cooling system leaks a little water in the oil you're gonna degrade that oil so when we send that in for tests they're gonna come back and say yeah you're still above it's still it's still good oil or it's not good oil so these engines are gonna develop a characteristic of their own you know if you hope you have no water leaks or anything like that but but so it'll be like on an engine by engine basis so we do have some abilities in this plant it's a very expensive purchase so we have the ability we have a maintenance tank so say the engine gets in and it needs some maintenance well you got to get the oil out so we have a maintenance tank we can transfer that oil as a large quantity to a maintenance tank do the repairs and then put that oil back in the engine so the plant set up to maximize the to maximize the life of the engine one thanks for explaining how that works you're welcome okay any other questions no hearing none is there a motion then to approve item D I move motion and a second to approve any other discussion hearing none all in favor say aye any opposed same sign okay thank you very much thanks sir okay um all right ACM update yes good morning members of the board in your packet you have the municipal electric transmission cost of service right filing that will be made with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas if you have any questions we have George Morrow here along with his staff to be able to answer any questions that you may have about that filing if not you have your future agenda items one thing I'd like to remind you all is that that next meeting on the 22nd of January will be at 6 p.m. so it just will send that a reminder but 6 p.m. on the 22nd in the council work session room so we'll be here that evening at 6 p.m. on the 22nd and then we have the new business matrix and I believe there were no items added in the month of December and so if there's anything that you want to add or or comment on we 'll be trying to respond accordingly don't hear any okay very good all right conclud ing items any member that has we'll actually I guess now is the time to put future agenda items or suggestions for future agenda items from anybody hearing none okay then we will now move into a closed meeting we're before for the purpose of deliberations regarding certain public power