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