Go ahead and call the February 12th 2018 Public Utilities
Board meeting to order.
First on the agenda we have a work session and the first
item in that work session is
to receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff
direction regarding the solid waste
departments landfill vegetative buffer and maximum landfill
heights proposed in the permit
amendment.
Good morning.
My name is Ethan Cox, I'm the director of solid waste for
the city of Denton.
So this morning's presentation as posted is about the
proposed landfill height and a permit
that we're currently pursuing with the TCEQ as well as some
of the landscaping and vegetative
buffer in the area surrounding the landfill.
These are being brought to the forefront because of various
citizen concerns have been brought
up with the council over the last six to eight months.
We really want to use this as just an opportunity to
educate the board and we'll be educating
the council next week as well.
Not any action required at this stage, we just want to give
you an update on where we
are with both of these items.
In regards to landfill height, that's really a product of
direction that the department
received from the city council in the 2006-2007 timeframe
which was to pursue landfill expansion
with the hopes of procuring or securing enough capacity to
allow waste disposal for an extra
50 years.
And the way you achieve that expansion or that capacity in
solid waste is through new
land development but also airspace which is vertical
construction for waste disposal.
Planning began in earnest on this expansion project in 2008
.
There were a series of land acquisitions and the permit
process has run for the last few
years.
We are very close to the finish line with the TCEQ on this.
I'll give you an update on the timeline in just a few
slides.
In terms of the buffer zone, just briefly, this is
something that came up fairly recently,
last six to eight months.
We did provide a staff report to council in the September
2017 timeframe and I'll just
kind of hit the highlights of that with you as we go
through today's presentation.
So I'm going to take these things in order first beginning
with the landfill height.
There's a few things here that I want to try to kind of
separate for you.
There's our existing height, there are some restrictions
that we have currently and then
there's what's going to be proposed in our pending permit.
So right now the tallest point, the tallest cell that we
have on the landfill currently
is 53 feet above ground level.
In terms of our current permit, which is titled 1590A,
again that's issued by the Texas Commission
on Environmental Quality, they limit our height to 80 feet
above ground level.
And so we are still currently underneath that restriction.
In addition, there's also a specific use permit that was
approved by the city a few years
ago that also has that same restriction.
Even if we were to alter that specific use permit and get a
height adjustment by the
TCEQ, there's also a settlement agreement with some of the
surrounding landowners that
limit our height to no greater than 95 feet until at least
2028.
At that time that settlement agreement expires and we can
exceed that height if we choose
to do so.
You would just need a new permit and a new specific use
permit to do so.
So currently the permit that we have queued up with TCEQ is
titled 1590B and the height
that's proposed in that that's been brought to the
forefront for council by some citizens
is that it's proposed at 213 and a half feet above ground
level, which is a significant
increase over what we have right now.
And so what I want to kind of walk you through over the
next few slides is kind of what that
looks like and understanding that there's no impetus for us
to get up to that height.
That's really a decision for the community and the council
and the board as we move forward
in these out years.
So what would that look like if we did achieve that max
height immediately?
This is kind of a visual representation of what that would
look like.
Thank you to our engineering firm PSC.
Frank Pugsley is here today if you want to question him on
his artistic renderings here.
So this is a picture of Mayhill over here on the right.
This is heading from the north side down to the south side.
Over here on the left is our landfill operation, a few of
the buildings there.
This bright green representation right here is actually our
current landfill height.
And so if you're driving along Mayhill, that's about how
high we would be.
And this dark green area right here is what would be the
final cover would look like if
we went up to that 213.5 feet.
A couple of things that I would want to put out there for
everyone to kind of consider
is in terms of height and expansion, like I mentioned
earlier, in terms of landfill expansion,
it's really a matter of new cell development but also
vertical expansion as well.
Operationally, we could delay increasing our height from
that 80 feet for another 20, 30
years if we chose to do so.
We have about 11 new cells that are proposed in permit 1590
B.
And so technically, depending on how we phase that up, we
may not need to make a decision
on any further vertical expansion for another 20, 30 years,
depending on how we sequence
that.
Does that make sense?
So another visual just to kind of give you a comparison of
what our height looks like
for other landmarks and other landfills in the area.
So right here on the right-hand side is our current height,
our current restriction at
95 feet.
The city of Irving landfill as well as the city of Dallas
landfill are already above that
at 129 and 139 feet respectively.
We have a couple of landmarks that we plugged into this as
well.
I think all of these are TWA buildings as a matter of fact.
And so you can see those two landfills are already pretty
much on par with those buildings
right there.
The max proposed height would obviously be a substantial
increase over what we have now
and would be pretty noticeable in terms of the landscape as
well.
Anytime we look at the height of a landfill cell, it really
comes with a trade-off is
what is the impact to the surrounding area, to the
community in terms of visual aesthetics?
But it's also a matter of how much capacity would we be
losing if we chose to reduce that?
And again, we're not asking for the board or the council to
take any action on this
now.
It's just something I want to plant the seed for you to
consider as maybe a decision
does need to be made in the future months and years ahead.
So right now, again, we're at about 80 feet in terms of
maximum height.
The estimated landfill life for that is 2048.
And so about 30 more years in essence.
And again, that's about the time that you'd really be
pressed to make a decision on increasing
height.
The maximum height that we are proposing is 213.
So we kind of rounded that off to 200.
You see that the estimated landfill life achieves that 50
plus years that was set out by council.
That would be closure of the full site at 2087.
You drop 40 feet off of that, you lose about 10% of your
capacity, and you lose about seven
years of landfill life.
Another 40 feet because these are slopes, so the further
you cut, the deeper the loss
in terms of capacity, you'd lose about 26.2% and you'd be
closing 2068.
And then again, this is our current high right here.
And so again, no action today.
Just wanted to kind of plant the seed is these are the
trade offs that you'd really be looking
at in terms of what does the community need in terms of
waste capacity?
And what do we need in terms of visual aesthetics for the
height?
Any questions on landfill?
Question on that.
So these are these with all 11 the 11 cells developed?
They are and there's also the height addition on our
current operation as well.
Okay.
So that's not just the sales we have now.
Exactly.
That's gonna be in addition to the 11 other cells to
develop.
Mr. Robinson, a good way to look at that is if we did not
increase our height on any of
the side, then these 11 cells are going to buy us about
another 16 years right now.
Our closure date for our existing operation is about 2032.
So those 11 cells without any height additions would give
us 16 years of additional capacity.
Question so can these the do these two issues the issue of
citizens concerns about the buffer
and making the buffer greener putting more trees in there
and the issue of maximizing
the height capacity?
Could these two theoretically be uncoupled?
In other words, I understand you're presenting them
together, but because the one seems to
me to be a present concern about the way things are present
and the other one about height
is is is future oriented.
You certainly can.
The reason why we're presenting these together is they've
been brought up together by citizen
concerns.
The other thing that I would say is typically landfill
height, the buffer zone.
These are issues that are discussed during the TCEQ perm
itting process.
I'll get into that on the next slide.
It's also something that both of these affect the visual
aesthetics of the surrounding area.
There's a lot of activity going on out there.
And so the vegetative buffer serves to kind of shield our
operation from public view.
And obviously, landfill height has a hand in that as well.
So just to clarify, so I understand we're not taking action
today, but when it comes
to taking action at some point in the future, could it be
decided to currently increase
the trees and make the buffer larger and greener and to
postpone applying for the new permit
to some future point?
If I might, I can answer that with my next slide.
Any other questions on this?
All right.
So to that point, we do have a few remaining steps with our
permit with the agency.
We estimate that the process will be complete in about four
to five months.
First up, the first step that needs to take place is the
agency needs to declare the permit
technically complete, which basically means that they don't
have any issues that we need
to go back and address.
There's kind of a back and forth nature of this is we found
an issue on this page.
Can you go back and cure that?
And we're working through that right now.
The next step up is public comment period.
There will be a mailing out to a variety of citizens that
they can speak directly to the
agency and provide their concerns.
It's not unusual as you go through this process for some of
the things that we've submitted
or proposed to actually change.
As a matter of fact, when our original permit was approved,
that actually took place.
We reduced the height.
There were a number of changes to the buffer, things like
that took place.
Once we work through that, then the TCEQ issues the permit.
And our recommendation would be to your point, Ms. Arment
ier, would be we would come back
to both the PUB as well as the city council at the
conclusion of that.
So here's kind of here we here's how we ended up with the
permit.
And if we want to, we can do another specific use permit
that tweaks that a little bit.
In other words, if let's say, for instance, the agency says
, yes, 213 feet is fine for
height, but the board and the council says we want to limit
that.
We don't want to go up to that for a number of years.
Then you can issue a specific use permit that limits us
locally as an operation.
And you can do the same thing with the buffer.
You can have more prescriptive elements for the buffer in
an SUP than the agency will.
And on my next slide, I'll point that out.
The agency typically does not prescribe trees or landsca
ping, things like that, in a buffer
zone.
They're more concerned about just making sure there's space
between public use and the private
property.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Charlie.
Do you have any idea in the timing of these things,
particularly the public comment period?
I'm hoping that we get the technically complete designation
within the next two months.
I mean, maybe sooner than that, quite frankly.
And so once that happens, when we enter the public comment
period, it should go pretty
quickly.
And if we have a contested case, which I believe is what
happened with the last permit, that
could drag on a little bit.
But really, what we're hoping is that we're through with
all of this by the end of spring,
and then we're looking to get our permit within the summer
time frame.
Does that help?
Yes, sir.
Question.
Brendan?
When we talk about the buffer, is this buffer just along
May Hill there?
Or is there a buffer prescribed around the entire perimeter
of the land?
I'll actually hit that in the next couple of slides, if
that's okay.
Great.
Thank you.
I had a question.
The TCEQ permit process, when did we start that, and how
long does it typically take
to go through that entire process?
Frank Pugley's here.
I'm going to ask him to answer that.
I don't have all the history on it.
He's been through all the battles.
I don't need an exact number.
I'll just...
Come on over here.
Yeah, please.
In general, for a landfill permit amendment like this, it
takes what we budget for is
about two years from the time we submit to the time it's
approved.
We'd like it to be shorter.
We submitted this permit to the agency in early 2017.
I believe it was January, February of 2017.
So here we are.
One year later, we've gone through already three rounds of
comments with the agency,
and we are completing our last and fourth round of comments
.
Following that, what Ethan said was they'll issue the
public notice that gives the public
28 days to submit written comments and request a public
meeting.
I would imagine we'd probably end up with at least a public
meeting on this permit,
and that usually occurs within another month after that.
So that kind of fits within that four to five months
remaining that we've got.
So we're looking at a total of maybe 18 to 20 months of
time for this permit amendment.
And that process is...
We hire consultants.
Yes, sir.
That's my job.
Okay.
Non-consultant, sorry.
Well, I'm not going to ask you how much we paid you because
I don't want to embarrass
you.
But the point being the TCEQ permit, time consuming and
expensive, and I don't know
that...
I think the height is going to be hashed out during the
local public comment period and
the SEP, really.
And so that's my only comment is we've got to look at what
's going to get us the capacity
to get us down the road as much as we can.
And so we'll leave it up to somebody who probably hadn't
even been born yet to determine how
high it's going to be because certainly I don't know if any
of us will be, at least
not on this board, but at that point in time.
But anyway, thank you.
I appreciate it.
Yes, sir.
Just for clarification, we're going to go for the max.
It doesn't mean we're going to go to that height.
Correct.
Usually what we'd like to do is ask for as much as we think
we can, knowing that at some
point in time we may have to negotiate that back a little
bit because it's kind of a factor
of scale there.
The more you ask for, the more you get per dollar that you
're spending.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Well, thank you.
All right.
So if there's no more questions on landfill height, I am
going to dive a little bit into
the buffer.
Like Ms. Armenter said, this is more of a pressing issue.
Just a few quick clarifications.
I'm not sure if anyone's dealt with the landfill buffer
zone before, but there is actually
a definition in our permit that describes what that buffer
is.
It's basically the distance between our permit boundary,
which is where private property
begins and the foot of our waste.
And so the permit, I believe, and I'm just going to look
for a nod of the head, is about
50 feet between the foot of the waste to the permit
boundary.
It's 125.
Oh, 125.
Thank you.
I'm glad you're here.
So that's really about as prescriptive as the permit gets.
Again, there's no landscaping requirements that are called
out in our permit with the
agency.
That being said, whenever this permit was initially issued
back in 1995, there was a
specific use permit that coincided with that.
Here's the ordinance number along with it.
And Wade described our landscaping and basically said it
needs to be sufficient landscaping
and screening to ensure harmony and compatibility with
adjacent property.
And that's about as prescriptive as it got.
Now that being said, there were a few other documents that
went around with the Planning
and Zoning Commission and also bundled with that ordinance
that said, here's what we'd
like to achieve or aspire to in terms of our landscaping.
And so this is the visual I think the council's seen a
couple of times.
What this calls out is typical landscape buffer.
This calls for about 20 trees per 100 linear feet, with 30%
being evergreen.
And it also calls for 115 feet wide along Mayhill Road and
100 foot wide along Edwards
Road.
So Mr. Carroll, to answer your question, the buffer is
really around the current operations
is when the requirement goes in.
And I'll show you an image in just a moment.
It really runs along that Edwards Road up through Mayhill.
And you'll see that in the next slide.
In terms of our history here is my understanding is we did
have a planning that occurs quickly
following the permit approval that did meet that typical
prescribed buffer as you see
here.
Unfortunately, a number of those trees have been lost to
drought and disease over the
years.
There was also a lot of construction and utility work that
's happened in the area.
And where we stand today is we have about 217 of the 780
recommended trees that we should
have on site.
So some of the comments that have been made to City Council
is we need to be planning
now.
And we certainly understand that.
So to that end, we have started taking some steps to get a
design going.
As you see these challenges down here, I'm going to call
these out on these visuals on
the next slide so you can kind of see them for yourself.
So over here on the left-hand side, this is an aerial view
of our landfill.
If you follow my mouse, all of this is our landfill
operation right here.
This road right here, if you can make that out, is Mayhill
running north to south or
south to north, I should say.
And each of these little boxes here represent 100 linear
feet of buffer zone.
And so the buffer zone wraps around Edwards Road, which is
right here.
Trailer Park right here is our neighbor.
And then it runs south to north along Mayhill Road.
So the colors that you have here, these are representations
, our urban foresters as well
as building inspections went out and did a survey of this
just to kind of tell us, are
we close to that typical landscape buffer or are we pretty
far afield?
So the red means that there is really no buffer or very
minimal buffer in place.
And so this number two here, if you'll follow me over to
this picture, this is kind of what
that looks like on the ground.
And so we have our buffer wall that was installed a few
years ago.
You also have your overhead utility lines.
And I understand that there's also underground utility
lines in some of these areas as well.
It's a very restricted area in terms of planting trees.
Even if we went out there to plant them today, there may
not be much we could do with the
exception of maybe planting behind the wall.
And you see that there are some trees up here.
That's something that we want to explore with our landscape
architect is when we run into
these types of issues, can we build up the behind the wall
area to provide that vegetative
buffer?
What the loss of trees to drought and some have to do with
construction.
I'm wondering, you know, looking back, was there any did
anybody discover that, oh, there
were certain kinds of trees that were planted that maybe in
retrospect, there should have
been hardier trees, you know, more drought tolerant trees
or was it?
I don't necessarily know the answer to what occurred.
What I can say is that's going to be a key factor in terms
of the recommendations from
freezing Nichols, which is the landscape architect that we
're working with.
We don't want to plant any tree in terms of a mitigation
effort here that doesn't have
a good chance of surviving.
That's really our goal.
Yeah.
So I take it they would also look at whatever specific tree
diseases were were common to
those trees and.
Right.
Yeah.
And I do know in terms of drought and stuff, we had a lot
of problems with an irrigation
system that was installed with all of this utility work
that was done.
That's been replaced like three times.
And so we certainly don't feel like that's a good use of
dollars to install an irrigation
system only to have it taken out and to redo the work.
So that's something else we want to be mindful of.
So the yellow area here means that we have what we call a
substandard buffer.
There's a couple of different areas.
Number one and number four.
So number one runs parallel with Mayhill Road right here.
Again, you can see some overhead utility lines.
You see the buffer wall.
We do have some canopy trees here, however, just not as
dense as prescribed by that typical
buffer.
That's the same case down here running along Edwards Road
and picture number four, some
trees in place, but not nearly the 20 trees per 100 linear
feet that we need.
And then the green shaded area down here near the corner of
Mayhill and Edwards, we do have
a buffer that's approaching standard.
That's visual number three right here.
We have some new plantings that have occurred.
We have the buffer wall.
So that area is fairly dense.
In addition to our current challenges, one of the things
that we partnered with Freeze
and Nichols on is we wanted them to take into consideration
some upcoming development that's
happening.
I'm sure the board is familiar that Mayhill Road is going
to have some work done on it.
There's going to be a realignment and some added lanes.
There's also some transmission work for DME that's going to
be done and some distribution
as well.
So this visual over here is from Freeze and Nichols.
I'm going to zoom into this here in just a minute, but this
is the same orientation that
I showed you just a moment ago.
If you follow my mouse, here's Edwards Road running right
here.
The existing Mayhill Road is underneath all of this color
and all of this busyness that's
happening right here.
And the new Mayhill is actually these black lines running
right up here.
Landfill operations are right here.
I'm going to actually exit out of this and kind of give you
a better sense of what that
looks like.
Bear with me for just a moment.
All right, so this is this busy little corner right down
here.
I'll pull that up and zoom into it for you.
Everyone see that?
All right, so a few things that are happening here.
We have some color coding and I'll call these things out.
We have DME transmission line buffer.
There's actually a new substation that's going to be going
in along Mayhill.
These are transmission lines that would feed that.
So as you can see, the easements for those are fairly wide.
This is this color right here.
And you can see if you follow my mouse, there's our buffer
wall.
It zigzags right through there.
And these dark areas right here are actually our trees.
So it's likely that as those transmission lines are
installed, you can kind of see a
pole right there, some of the existing trees are going to
have to be removed as well.
And so it's not just the trees that we've already lost.
We're probably looking at mitigating some additional trees
as well.
In addition, you also have this yellow strip right here.
Those are distribution lines for a DME project.
And then in between there, you actually have about 40 feet
of potential buffer that we
could utilize for tree plantings if we chose to do so.
Existing Mayhill roads there, so that may need to be milled
up if we're going to take,
if we're going to use that.
But there is potential there.
We also have an existing gas line easement for Atmos right
here.
This is a little blue shaded area.
And so we could plant between there for about 31 feet.
The upside to the Mayhill realignment is we do have a
significant area here of about 115
feet that we could use for new plantings once that
construction is done.
And so really what we're working with Frieze and Nichols on
is let's figure out a plan
or a path forward in terms of how do we want to mitigate
the trees that have been lost
already?
How do we want to deal with some of the trees that are
going to be lost?
And what's the planning schedule look like?
Planings behind the wall could technically occur right now
if we chose to do so.
Planning out here in the middle of all this construction,
we think that it's best to let
that all settle, let the dust settle both literally and
figuratively.
And then we'll come in, implement our irrigation system as
well as new tree plantings.
This visual is a little bit further up the road.
Whoops, a little bit too zoomed in.
So it does get a little bit less hectic as you move north.
But again, you have transmission lines running straight
down our existing buffer.
All those trees in there are likely going to need to be
removed.
We do have opportunities to plant behind the wall right
here if you follow my mouse.
We also have about 60 feet wide in the buffer zone here in
between the gas easement and
the transmission line easement.
So a few challenges that we're dealing with on this.
It's not an ideal situation.
A typical landscape buffer was meant to be 115 feet wide or
100 feet wide.
We're just not able to achieve that with the conditions
that we have right now.
Not in a continuous manner.
It's really broken up by all these other easements.
So again, what we're planning to do is plant behind the
wall as soon as we can.
We may have to do some earth work to build that up and then
circle back once these projects
are complete and plant in the buffer zone that remains.
So here's just a highlight of what we just talked about.
So Freezing Nickels, again, they're the landscape architect
for this project.
I mentioned earlier, survival of the trees is of the utmost
importance.
We know this is not ideal.
We know that the buffer is not where it needs to be right
now.
And really our approach with Freezing Nickels is we need to
do everything we can to make
this right as quickly as possible.
So what we've asked them to do is using the space available
, make the trees as dense as
possible with the right species, the right location, the
right planning schedule to make
sure that we're not having to redo this work again in a few
years.
We've also asked them to provide a design work for our
irrigation system as well as a
maintenance plan.
So again, survival of the trees is of the utmost importance
to us.
And again, just to reiterate, here's our project timeline.
Behind the wall, we think that we could hit the next
planting season if all goes well.
So that would be fall 2018.
And then the outside of the wall planning is just really
going to be dependent on the
construction schedule.
Questions on the buffer zone?
So I live in a neighborhood that's heavily treed where
recently there have been a couple
issues with squirrels and power lines where there had been
some outages.
And I'm just wondering to what extent that'll be taken into
account as the trees grow, what
kinds of issues, what can be done to prevent that from
being a problem.
And also kind of hand in hand with that, I would hope that
this planning will be done
to some extent in consultation with DME to check on, okay,
what kinds of maintenance
will have to be done on these or might have to be done even
on these power lines so that
to avoid such problems with the irrigation system and et
cetera.
And that's been a key point of our work with Fries and Nich
ols is we have been talking
quite a bit with the engineering department, CIP, DME.
There's a lot going on in that little corridor right there.
And so we want to make sure that all that's taken into
consideration that we're doing
what's the best plan overall.
And so what our goal is is again to mitigate as many of
those trees as we can.
It may not be exactly where it was prescribed back in 1995,
but our goal is to have as many
trees as we can that's still going to work well with the
surrounding area, the surrounding
utilities and also maintain the survival of those trees.
And then when a tree does die, we're going to replace it,
correct?
That's correct.
We do have a site operations manager in solid waste now and
that's one of the things that
is going to be top of mind for them is taking inventory of
those trees on a regular basis.
If we have one that's dying, let's get it out of the ground
, let's get it replaced and
let's do everything we can to stay on top of this.
It's kind of like letting things slide for a number of
years.
This is kind of a painful process that we're going through
right now.
And I know it's been an impact on the neighbor, the
neighbors in the area, but we want to
stay on top of it moving forward once we get this in place.
Thank you.
Ethan, one of the areas that were there substandard or
buffer was on the south side, yes, four,
I think it is.
Is there anything because it doesn't look I don't know is
that going to be in the construction
path or is there is there anything that could be done there
now?
Is it going to be behind the wall or can it be in front of
the wall to kind of shore that
up?
I think we're likely looking at behind the wall because
again on this right here, that
yellow area on that previous slide is transmission lines
are going to run right up Edwards Road
as well.
Okay.
And so I think it's probably in our best interest to really
just look exclusively behind the
wall in terms of buffer with that the trailer park that's
right next to us.
We do have the wall on our side of Edwards Road.
We recently installed a wall on their side as well.
We had a lot of children running out into the right of way.
And we also wanted to provide some additional screening and
kind of noise reduction.
So they do have a wall on their side, a wall on our side,
and then we can plant trees behind
it.
Okay.
All right, so we're talking about this buffer of what was
it, 125 feet wide or something
like that.
Does that does that buffer width have to change when you
increase the height of the landfill
at all?
I don't believe so in terms of what we propose.
Do you want to come up for a moment, Frank?
And I didn't introduce myself last time.
Frank Pugsley with Park Hill Smith and Cooper.
I'm the consultant for the landfill permit amendment.
But as far as buffer zone goes, when 1590A, the current
landfill was permitted, the buffer
zone requirement was 50 feet.
And since then, the TCEQ has expanded that to 125 feet.
Kind of what Ethan alluded to earlier is that what TCEQ is
most concerned about in that
125 feet is perimeter access for firefighting and
maintenance, groundwater monitoring, landfill
gas detection.
So the TCEQ doesn't necessarily influence us one way or the
other what we plant or how
much we plant.
So we are also trying to accommodate that vegetative buffer
in that 125 feet.
And additionally, even outside our prescriptive 125 feet.
And you asked earlier if it encircles the entire landfill.
Yes, we do have a 125 foot buffer around the entire waste
footprint that we have to keep
basically clear to some extent for site access and
monitoring.
Something I've noticed, touring the landfill a couple of
times and throwing away waste
is in that southeast corner, I believe, where we share kind
of a property border with the
creek and then I think it's the golf courses right there
are tons of plastic bags.
And I've noticed they build up along the fence there and we
bring in staff to collect them
from the fence.
But inevitably, they make it beyond the fence and into the
trees there.
It seems like if you go higher with your landfill mound
that those bags, which seem to be the
most popular thing other than just dirt, those bags are
going to make it over there easier.
Right.
That's a great point.
And one of the things that we're looking at in our current
CIP right now is actually a
fence.
It's kind of a wind fence that catches that.
I mean, you really attack that one of two ways is staff and
personnel, you know, climbing
up into trees to retrieve paper bags or plastic bags.
That's not the probably the best use.
And so what we're doing right now is a cost benefit
analysis to see would it make sense
for us to build a windscreen fence that would kind of
border all of our operations.
It's not going to eliminate it.
It's never going to knock it completely down.
But it does prevent us from having the abundance that's out
there right now.
We were turning the other day with some consultants and it
was pretty noticeable.
So we are good neighbors with the golf course.
They work with us pretty regularly.
They allow us onto their land to clean it up.
But we do have a number of those trees back there by that
creek that can be problematic
for us.
What do you think is is it wind direction that makes it
collect more in that area than
out on Mayhill?
I mean, because, you know, Mayhill doesn't isn't littered
with bad.
I think they're the prevailing winds do have an impact.
That being said, it's it's easier for us to collect the
ones blowing the other direction
once they get up into those trees.
It is a little bit more of an adventure trying to retrieve
those.
And so that's what makes it more noticeable.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
No.
Well, that's that's it for the presentation.
Again, we will circle back with you once the permits
completed and take your direction
on whether we want to do a new specific use permit and also
provide both the board and
the council and update as we get into freezing nickels plan
for planning and as those trees
start going into the ground.
Thank you for the time today.
Thank you.
Okay, next time we have is item B in the work session,
which is to receive a report, hold
a discussion, provide direction concerning a management
study for water, wastewater and
municipal electric.
Good morning.
My name is Kenny Banks.
I'm the general manager of utilities.
I wanted to give a brief presentation.
This is a somewhat infrequent situation that we're
encountered with here because our charter
requires us once every 10 years to actually go through a
management study for the water,
wastewater and municipal electric utilities.
And so I wanted to kind of give an overview of what that
management study looks like and
answer any questions that you might have and give you a
general timeline of how we're looking
at going through this management study.
So as I said, charter requirement is to have a management
study every 10 years.
Last study was completed in 2008 and 2009.
We have done situations where we have had water and
wastewater combined within municipal
electric.
We've also had those done separately by individual
consultants.
We did release a request for proposal on January the 29th
and responses are due by March 25th.
And I provided a summary of major elements in your agenda
information sheet.
This is a very comprehensive study.
There's a lot of components to it.
It's kind of divided up into some general areas.
I also provided some additional descriptions in the backup
as exhibit two to give you a
little bit more sense of what those individual topics look
like.
And so what I'd like to do today is just go through the
very high pass the major elements
and then answer any questions you might have.
And also if there's any feedback that you'd like to provide
staff, we've given a general
outline to the consultants.
But of course as we start working with them, if there are
specific elements that you would
like to see or have us emphasize, we'd like to hear about
those so we can start rolling
those in.
So in terms of general management, one of our major
elements, basically this is just
a review of how the utility operations are conducted as it
relates to the cost of providing
that service.
And so it looks at every individual aspect of that utility.
And so I've tried to put a list in here and I apologize for
it being a little bit of an
exhaustive, but it includes governance, organizational
structure, financial practices, development
policies, all the support services, the franchise and cost
of service transfers, our public
communication, public relations, our planning and budget
process, how we develop our rates,
and then the overall administration of the organization.
So a lot of elements there, a lot of things to look at.
Active analysis of significant operational cost is the next
major element that we had
for the management study.
We are basically examining the cost components of major
utility services and subunits.
So I've tried to divide these out by the individual
utilities.
For electric, this is mainly related to transmission and
distribution services.
For water, we will be looking at raw water supply, our
treatment, storage and pumping,
distribution, engineering, metering, and then our wholesale
operations.
On the wastewater side, collection, pumping, treatment,
biosolids management, wholesale
services for wastewater treatment and storm water.
And then support services are the internal services that we
receive as utilities, so
customer service, accounting, purchasing, warehouse, legal
information technology, human
resources, finance, engineering, inspections, and then also
fleet operations.
In terms of outsourcing, that's an element that we included
in this study.
It was also looked at in the 97-98 study fairly extensively
.
Basically if the consultant finds that any function of the
utility or city is now performed
by its own personnel is not comparable or competitive and
couldn't be made comparable
or competitive within a reasonable timeframe through some
adjustments, the consultant will
present that issue involved with those functions as a part
of our interim report.
Generally, the way these go, there are several interim
reports and I'll go into a little
bit more detail about that, but this is definitely
something that we wanted to target as a component
of an interim report so that we could bring that
information if it's discovered back to
the board.
If outsourcing is an appropriate recommended action, the
consultant may be requested to
provide a detailed plan for outsourcing implementation and
of course that's going to require approval
by the city and that would result in an amendment to the
consultant's base contract.
So in terms of deliverables, it's anticipated that we're
going to be completing this project
in phases.
It's a big undertaking.
We expect to have interim draft reports on key issues with
possible action items during
the course of this study.
Those will be prepared for review by the city.
We will receive a final comprehensive document that
includes all the interim reports and
all the action items.
We'll also have the cost of service and comparative
relationship which is basically a benchmarking
operation to other utilities of comparable size.
So in terms of the schedule, basically we are looking to do
the bulk of this work during
2018.
We'll be providing you as a board interim presentations
based on the information that
we get back from the consultant and we hope to have a final
presentation to the public
utility board for a recommendation and then on to the city
council sometime in the spring
of 2019.
So I know that's a lot of information.
I hopefully some of the information that was provided as
backup was useful in kind of seeing
the major elements of these studies.
I'd be glad to answer any questions that you might have or
if there's any feedback that
you'd like me to take a look at, start incorporating.
I will say that the way that we've released this proposal
is basically the respondents
have the opportunity to either respond in totality, meaning
that they would do an entire
study for municipal electric, water and wastewater or they
have the opportunity to respond individually
where one respondent could just choose to tackle water and
wastewater and another respondent
didn't municipal electric.
We felt that that would give us a little bit more
flexibility probably depending on the
respondents that we get maybe a better product.
So I'd be glad to answer any questions.
I have a question.
Yes sir.
So it's done every 10 years.
Correct.
Is the assumption that this is obviously to control costs,
be efficient, provide services
based on today's demand and looking ahead in the future?
Correct.
Which relates to how is all that going to impact the rates
to the citizens?
Sure, yes.
And so is this a 10 year projection out or does it go
further than that?
Well, what it's intended to do is look at the current
operations and basically how they're
managed and make recommendations where those operations
could be made more efficient, more
cost effective, et cetera.
And then those recommendations are to be implemented going
forward.
So in a sense it is a forward looking study.
Keep in mind that we also have cost of service analyses
that occur at a more frequent basis.
We're required to do those once every five years.
So the way this has kind of happened in the past is that
the management study has a whole
series of recommendations, we begin implementing those
during the -- as we go forward.
And then we have a five year cost of service that would be
in process.
Actually depending on the timing with this, we'll actually
have two cost of services before
this one comes back again.
Questions?
Yes.
Well, first of all, I'm excited that this is going to
happen and I really like the idea
about having each utility, you know, worked on separately
as long as there's some, you
know, coming together at the end.
A couple interrelated suggestions, recommendations.
One, and this is regarding the number six which says that
the support service review
shall include but may not be limited to utility billing,
customer service, et cetera.
One thing that I think would be worth considering is the
way that customer service has in the
past been relatively separate kind of the day to day
operations of customer service
has been separate from the day to day operations of the
various utilities and the management
of those utilities.
And I would like to see the consultant consider, you know,
what might be the pros and cons
of having a more integrated management approach where, say,
you know, the head of DME is involved
in a more regular basis in, you know, decisions being made
in customer service.
And the reason why, and maybe it's obvious, but because,
you know, when so many people
in the public, they think about, say, you know, DME or any
one of the utilities, often
they're thinking about their bill and or, you know, a
conversation they've had on the
phone.
And the things that people tend to take for granted are the
fact that, you know, when
they have, when there's a power outage, it gets turned
right back on, you know, it comes
back on relatively quickly, you know, and I mean, we know
that those are, that that's
what so much of DME is involved in, but for so many people,
it's a bill.
And so and then following on that on that same note with
customer service, I think it
would be a good thing for, you know, consultants to
consider what might be, you know, the advantages
of doing a customer service.
I'm sorry, doing a customer satisfaction, taking some
customer satisfaction assessment.
This is something I had mentioned in the past, but not
knowing that this 10 year assessment
would come would be coming up.
So that seems like something that could be really nicely
integrated into that for each
utility to see what people think about the the the the
utility.
And that, I think, would be really, really helpful.
And then and then the final thing would be about billing,
you know, in the past, when,
you know, discussions of say, DME rates have come up, you
know, we look at we compare to
other similar cities.
I would like for, you know, these consultants to at least
consider the possibility of one
focusing on comparing DME to co-serve, which is just again,
on the same principle of the
way the public sees it.
You know, people around here generally, they're comparing
people who are on, say, DME are
comparing their bill to their sometimes literally their
neighbor, you know, who has co-serve.
So I see it as that's our main competitor, and that's what
people are comparing to.
So I think that would be the most useful comparison.
And then secondly, to look at not just the rates, but the
the cost of service adjustment.
I mean, you know, you mentioned that before.
And of course, that's something that's considered on a
regular basis.
But to consider the ways that customer that the that the
cost of service adjustment combined
with rates affects people's bills, which affects customer
satisfaction, I'd like to see, you
know, more integrated approach to that.
So those are my recommendations.
But I think it's it's great that that that this is coming
up.
It just seems like a really opportune time.
Thanks.
Questions?
No.
Anything else?
Anybody like to comment on in here?
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
At this time, we have a couple of items to be discussed in
closed meeting.
The Public Utilities Board will convene.
Okay, we're back in open session at 1032 a.m. to go through
the regular meeting portion
of our agenda.
First, we have the consent agenda, which we have two items
on consent agenda.
Is there any member who would like to pull either items A
or B for individual consideration?
I'd like to pull a A. I'd like to pull B. Okay, there we go
.
All right.
So the first we'll move those then for individual
individual consideration.
So the first one is item A, which is to consider
recommending approval for the purchase of
one model LP873 vacuum excavator for the City of Denton
drainage department.
We go through the presentation or you just want to have a
few questions you want to ask?
I thought I read that we are this is a replacement, but we
're not going to sell it.
We're going to keep it.
So why if it's a replacement, are we going to keep it?
That's the next one question.
It's actually this game was shared by two different
departments, the streets department
and the drainage department.
And so the machine was purchased by streets.
The original machine was purchased by streets with the
agreement with drainage that they
would do the maintenance cost on the machine.
So drainage, I guess, figures they have enough work for
that particular type of machine now
that they would like to purchase one for themselves.
The street department.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
Sorry about that.
So the streets department is going to temporarily retain
that machine.
Now it still has a little bit of life left in it.
So we're not going to auction it right at this time.
But when they get ready to replace it, they may decide they
don't need it anymore.
I have a feeling the drainage department used it the most
of the time.
So that's why they're splitting it and they're going their
separate ways now.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'll move approval.
Okay, we have a motion for approval of item A, which is is
there a second?
Second.
And a second.
Any discussion?
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Very good.
Item A passes.
Item B. Same thing.
Charlie, you wanted that one pulled?
Yes, I just have a question.
And it's concerning the timeline laid out in the AIS.
Yes, sir.
It's really confusing to me.
Okay.
So these are actually fees that we should be paying from
the start of the fiscal year.
They're basically paid to the TCEQ on a per ton basis.
It's 95 cents per ton.
This is actually the first time the solid waste department
has brought this to the PUB
and the council for approval.
And we ran into this whenever we were issuing a PO and
found that, wow, we really should
have been bringing this to the board and the council on a
regular basis.
And so we are running a little bit on an unusual timeframe
right now.
We're actually trying to pay our first quarter with the TCE
Q, which is due March 1st, I believe.
So once we complete this year's cycle of payments, we want
to tee this up so that you all and
the council are seeing this with the fiscal year
information.
So we'd be bringing that back in kind of the September,
October timeframe and then issuing
the PO, the purchase order shortly thereafter once you
approve that.
Does that make sense?
So it'd be approved in advance for the year and you could
just issue.
That is absolutely correct.
That's how we present this moving forward.
Okay.
Any other questions?
No.
Do we have a motion on item B?
I recommend approval.
A motion to approve.
Is there a second?
Thank you.
Discussion?
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Item B passes.
Next we have the item A, which is consideration of approval
, consider approval of the public
utilities board meeting minutes of January 22nd, 2018.
Are there any changes, comments, questions about these as
they were distributed in advance?
Okay.
Hearing none, we can consider those approved by acclamation
then.
Item B is to consider recommending adoption of an ordinance
awarding a contract with Atmos
pipeline, Texas, a division of Atmos energy, corporations
to provide alternative fuel transportation
services and to install a metering station for their
alternative, too many descriptions
here, alternate fuel filling station located at 1251 South
May Hill Road.
I have to say it three times fast.
I know.
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right.
So members of the board, I do have a brief presentation for
you and the public this morning.
Just a little bit of a refresher in terms of where we've
been with compressed natural
gas as a fueling platform over the last few years.
This is a topic that was raised in 2012 and revisited
throughout those last few years.
The solid waste department had invested in about 24 CNG-
based vehicles in the recent
past and in 2017, this summer, we brought that to your
attention because we were utilizing
a mobile fueling platform that had some very high cost with
that.
And as we ran our financial analysis, we found that it wasn
't really going to have the financial
benefit that we thought it would because of where diesel
was in the market.
And so we proposed an exit strategy, if you will, to age
out our fleet and try to exit
the fueling platform with the least amount of financial
damage as we could.
And so it was agreed by both the PUB and the council in
August of 2017 that the best strategy
was to construct a fueling station at the fuel island out
at the solid waste landfill.
There are a few agreements that are going to be involved in
bringing this station online.
We currently have an agreement with Zide Energy.
They are there for station construction and maintenance.
This was approved in 2016.
And we are looking at construction being complete in the
mid-March timeframe.
The first additional agreement that we need to transact is
with Atmos pipeline.
That's for transportation and metering of natural gas.
That's posted for consideration on your agenda today.
When we do our calculations based on our volumes, we're
looking at about 16 cents per gallon
or per DGE.
That stands for diesel gallon equivalent.
In addition to that, once this is approved today, assuming
that takes place, we'll also
have a natural gas purchase, buying commodity, if you will.
And that contract finalization will be contingent on today
's vote because we need to have a
metering station installed before we can purchase gas.
Our projected costs there with what we've seen from the
submission so far is about 50
cents per gallon.
And so our all-in cost on a per gallon basis is going to be
right around 66 cents.
That's a significant savings over what we're paying today,
which is approximately $3.75
a gallon.
This is the annual fuel usage for our 24 vehicles in our
fleet.
And the annual savings come up to about $415,000 each year.
Now as we mentioned, we are going to be aging out our
investments in the CNG fleet.
And so those numbers will come down in the out years.
We plan to age out that fleet probably by 2023, 2024.
With that, I will be happy to stand for any questions you
might have.
Questions?
Well, I'll just say that's a lot.
That's a great cost recovery, especially if you look at
three to four years on that, you
know, for what we're paying now.
It's it feels good to have it presented whenever we're
saving money over what we're doing now.
It's going to feel real good when the gas turns on at the
station.
I would like to say a big thank you to Nick Vinson.
He's been the project manager on this, done a lot of the
financial work, terrific work
all the way around.
I'm really glad he's here.
And I know he's going to be very relieved whenever the
station comes online, too.
Thanks, Matt.
Very good.
Yeah, I just want to add my voice to that.
And, you know, thanking staff that worked so hard on this
to save ratepayers money and
make sure that we making sure that we're not sinking more
more costs into this.
This is really just excellent problem solving.
And it's just great to see this going forward that, you
know, I don't I don't see mistakes
like this happening again.
So it's great savings for ratepayers.
So thank you.
Okay, very good.
Do we have a motion on item B then?
Move approval.
Second.
I have a motion to approve and a second.
Further discussion.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Very good.
Item B passes.
Item C is ACM update.
PB members, I wanted to mention a few reports that we've
included in your backup.
The first is an informal staff report to answer some
questions that we receive on credit collections
and Tiffany Thompson is here from customer service if you
have any follow up questions
from her on that item.
And the second item is for some operational and cost
information related to Lake Ray Roberts.
We have some folks from water that are here certainly they
can answer questions if you
have any detailed questions on them from them.
And I also wanted to mention to you about the approach we
're going to be taking for
any kind of action items related to closed session
discussions.
Previously we've been able to have votes take place in
closed session on time to time when
the occasion required it.
The direction we've received from council is in the future
to have redacted copies of
any kind of agreements or actions that are being taken in
the open session.
So we'll be doing that in the future and we've provided a
short memo just to put that information
back up for you so you can see that going forward.
We also have the future item list and the new business
matrix and be happy to answer
any questions that you have on any of those items that are
there.
Any comments about any of the -- yes.
I just want to thank Tiffany for putting together all that
information.
I really appreciated it and it's really good to see as far
as the uncollectible debt by
category goes.
I hope that as we move into the future that this
information is collected category by
category so that all this work doesn't have to be done
looking backwards and sorting that
out so it's just kind of divided into those categories as
we go.
But this is extremely helpful.
I just wanted you to know that this was read with -- that I
read this carefully and, you
know, be sharing what I learned from that and that I hope
that I know that council decided
to take a more incremental approach.
I think that was the word that the mayor used in reforming
the deposits policy because that
was the context anyway in which this uncollectible debt was
first presented to us as kind of
-- this is how you can see, you know, how and to what
extent the deposits are working.
You know, it was interesting -- I'll just note for now that
one thing that was interesting
for me to see in these new figures, the breakdown year by
year, was how the multifamily uncollectible
debt decreases, you know, eventually decreases but then
remained relatively constant and
so, you know, without going into the weeds in that, that's
something that I hope, you
know, when we come to this next as PUB and council really
gets considered but I really
like the breakdown by category.
And I wanted to say, you know, as far as the payment
options, just for, you know, any public,
you know, watching this, you know, I had raised concerns
before because I had heard some people
in the community mention that, you know, they had been
charged additional fee for paying
by phone and an additional fee for changing their credit
card and, you know, what this
tells -- this report prepared by staff just points out that
those extra charges are only
for commercial accounts and not for residential accounts.
I just wanted to qualify that for the public that, you know
, that if you did get those
charges that that is policy, you know, across the board for
commercial accounts and, of
course, if anyone who has just a residential account finds
themselves being charged those
additional charges, then that means that that policy was
wrongly applied and then you have
something that you can point to to show that it was wrongly
applied.
But it's good for people to know that it's not just -- it's
not arbitrary and it's definitely
not universal.
And I wanted to add about the closed meeting, the note here
in the ACM update on closed
sessions.
I'm so happy with the new closed session policy that we're
not going to be taking votes in
closed session and I know that had been done in the past
and, you know, justified under
previous administration, but I really like the new
direction of transparency in the new,
you know, management and counsel.
So just thank you to, you know, management and, you know,
especially to counsel for deciding
on that.
And then final -- oh, no, yeah, so that's all about that
and then I have a question
that would -- sorry, that would go under concluding items.
So that was all, but anyway, sorry, I realize that was a
lot, but there were some really
good updates there in that ACM update.
I wanted to be sure to get that in that the public knows
and that, you know, staff knows
how much their work is appreciated.
Okay.
Go ahead, Susan.
I have a comment on the collections too and I'm assuming
that when we put in the new meters
that maybe we'll see a trend a little bit on that multif
amily.
That's always a difficult area because of the transient
nature of people moving out
of apartments.
So is that a goal of the new metering?
That is a goal and thank you.
I want to say that I just got through having a root canal
so I'm not having a stroke.
So if I start drilling, just go with it.
With that, so yes, that's definitely the intention to be
able to offer more services for our
customers and hoping that with the debt it can go down
because they'll be able to pay
as they go and they'll never get into that bad debt option
for them.
That won't be an option for them because they'll pay as
they go and we're hoping that's going
to be again brought forth in May for the prepaid metering
program.
All right, thank you.
And I also want to say that I like the new change on the
voting on the closed sessions
out in the open.
I think Brenda and I both kind of went sometimes before but
that's just the way it was.
All right, very good.
Any other comments about the ACM report?
Okay so as a closing item, any board member who would like
to look see future agenda items
that we can place or anything to add to the matrix that we
have published?
Yes.
Yeah, I would like staff to look into the possibility of
lowering our reconnect fees
now that all meters are going to be remote.
Maybe that's not feasible for some reason that I don't
understand but since presumably
the fee was decided because there was manual labor involved
in shutting off the power now
that remote metering is going to be ubiquitous across the
board, I myself don't see why the
reconnect fee needs to remain constant, why there shouldn't
be a drop in that as well.
Again maybe there's some good answer but it seems to me
worth discussing.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think I'd like to see the impact on the revenue
side, what that would be as well
because I don't know if that's a big number but obviously
that's a cost of service issue.
Maybe even be in our 10-year review part when they do that,
I don't know if they're going
to get that far down in the detail.
Probably not.
Yeah, I understand.
Okay, any other comments, questions?
Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn?
Thank you Brendan for that motion.
Is there a second?
Second.
Charlie second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Okay.