Apr 09, 2018 Public Utilities Board on 2018-04-09 9:00 AM

April 9th 2018 public utilities board meeting to order and first on our agenda is we have a work session with a couple of items. Item A is to receive a report hold a discussion give staff direction regarding the location of the Ditten Municipal Electric Mayhill substation easement. Well good morning members of the board my name is Ethan Cox I'm the director of solid waste for the city of Denton. We have a joint presentation for you this morning I 'll be accompanied by Brent Heath from DME shortly. We're gonna be talking a little bit about the Mayhill substation and just to kind of refresh everyone's memory DM E has basically gone through a public input process in the 2013 to 2015 time frame and a site was selected for a substation that basically serves the Mayhill area. The proposed site at the time was approved through PUB and council and it was actually going to be located on landfill property. Thanks to some of our staff and our work with DME we've identified some issues with that location that we want to kind of bring to your attention this morning and then also request some direction from the board. So to start off I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of the land that we have out at the landfill that's going to be affected by the substation site. As you may be aware we are actually going through an expansion permit through the TCEQ right now. Public comment period is going to be up in the spring time frame and we're hoping that we're actually going to be approved with a new permit in hand by the end of summer. Very long and arduous process but we're getting very near the finish line on that . The goal of that expansion permit was to increase our waste capacity for the community to an additional 50 plus years and what you have here on this right hand side is basically an aerial view if you kind of follow my mouse. Where's my mouse? I don't see it. There it is. All right there's my mouse. So we have basically 11 future landfill cells and I'm going to kind of orient you with what you're seeing here on this side. So Mayhill Road runs north to south right here. This is the entrance to our facility. You have the fueling island right here. Pr att Recycling, our home chemical collection building, our administrative offices and then if you follow this curve all of our existing landfill cells are down here to the south. So all these little rectangles where you see like 7a, 8a, 9 a, all of those are future landfill cells that we would develop and serve as future waste disposal cells. Whenever the substation was brought to the board and the council previously DMU was operating under the assumption that none of the substation site would negatively affect any of these cell developments . They had the assurances of the prior director that that was the case. Unfortunately that's not the case whatsoever. Give you another visual here. This is actually an aerial same location. You can see the cells. This whole area kind of encapsulated in orange is all of our future landfill cells. Again Mayhill Road right here running north to south. The substation site as it exists today is proposed for this area right here. So you can see that number one that's going to cut out a bit of our access road, our entrance here. It's also going to essentially remove the home chemical collection building. So it would definitely have that impact on operations. These little red ridges here that ripple all the way to the top, what that is, that is our slope of the future landfill cells kind of at final cover. So the impact of having the substation at this location would be that we would essentially lose the use of almost two full cells and then you would also have because of drainage requirements a ripple effect that would impact as many as two or three other cells as well. As we identified that we felt like that's something worth discussion with the board as well as the council is what is the impact going to be on this. From a solid waste perspective DME paid solid waste about $775,000. That was for the home chemical collection building as well as the land that surrounds it. The impact to the airspace which is essentially the asset that is most valuable to a landfill that allows for future waste capacity. We'd be losing about 3.3 million cubic yards in airspace. In effect we would be losing about nine or more years worth of effective capacity. Now again reminder that we were shooting for 50 plus years so we'd be losing about 20% of what we're trying to get in the new permit. The financial value if you want to put a number to that it's about 53 million dollars would be the value of the airspace lost if we value that at about $16 per cubic yard. Some of the operational impacts that I mentioned the new entrance or the entrance road again if you kind of come back here this road was going to be taking out. There was actually a capital project already underway to construct a new entrance road. Whenever we identified this that project was too far along for us to put the brakes on it it would in essence cost us more to stop and restore things to the way they were. So if you drive by our site now you'll see that road is almost finished in terms of construction. In terms of displacing the home chemical collection operation there was also a project on our books for about four to five million dollars for a new building. We've since pulled that out of our capital plan. Regardless of direction today we feel like we have some other alternatives that we can explore but there would be additional expense for solid waste to basically bring a building up to operational standards for the HCC. So ultimately just from an overview we feel like from a solid waste perspective this is worth exploring alternative sites or alternative solutions. I'm going to turn it over to DME. Number one I want to thank them for kind of working through this with us. This has not been a pleasant experience for anyone involved and ultimately they've had a lot of work that have led up to this point. We're operating under the assumption that this was not going to have the impact that is having. So I appreciate their partnership and before I step down are there any questions from a solid waste perspective? Questions? Can you put the one with the the tier back up there please? So basically taking out the southwest corner as you say has a ripple effect upon all those tiers and so that's really the impact. I mean it doesn't because we have buildings where those other cells are going to be. I assume those are going away or yeah go away under new permit. We haven't decided in terms of phasing or the kind of the approach that we'll have in terms of cell development. I'll use kind of this visual is what we will likely do is start with something like 8a whenever we get into these cells. Now this is going to be in the 2030 time frame mind you if we continue with our current level of growth and then we would start wrapping around again I lost my mouse but you would wrap from 8a to 9a to 10a and then come back around to where the last cells that you're filling are the ones that we would have to remove existing structures. You know one of the things when we talked to DM E was well how long does a substation really want to be there? Well it's it's kind of a permanent fixture once you put it in you may replace some of the components but you certainly don't want to be taking a substation out. So even if that's 50 60 years down the road that's still not the the best decision was my understanding from them. So the picture with the contours on it is it so it's one it will eventually be one gigantic mound is that the deal? You develop the cells individually and then as you have slopes you can kind of infill in between those as more cells are developed. Is that what we're doing with the stuff just to the south too? Eventually that's the case. That'll be one giant mound. One of the cells that we're currently developing is actually in the middle of surrounding cells so you kind of build the border if you will around that and then you fill in in the middle. I guess I'm confused why we would start using this in 2030 if we really haven't done the infills or bringing it up to the new level that we've requested for that. That's correct and that 2030 is actually when we start finishing out the cells that we're currently in. And they'll be at their new the new requested level that we asked? That's something that's to be decided Mr. Carroll I mean that's something that we would certainly come back to the board and the council on is do we want to max out our height on our existing cells or do we want to have new development and kind of wrap around first. There's two schools of thought on that number one is you want to go as high as you can as fast as you can. There's also the school of thought that construction is never going to be cheaper than it is today so why not go ahead and start developing those cells and then we can grab that height later on. And so I think that's something that's worthy of discussion with both the board and the council as we progress. I guess what I'm kind of getting at is if we don't really have a clear plan mapped out with what we're gonna do with what we have then we may get into a situation like we're in now where we planned on doing something and spent money doing it or getting ready to do it and then we can't actually do that. So how can we really actually make a plan for that subst ation even somewhere else if we really don't know what we're gonna do with the landfill? Well I think what we have here in terms of these cells developed I think how we get there is not determined yet the sequence or how we go about constructing these cells and using them is not completely determined but from a permit standpoint we've looked at this and this is basically where those cells would have to be. I think the real decision is how do we sequence those up and do we actually end up using them or not? Or really the only decisions that we don't have made yet. Does that help? Sort of. I guess what I guess what if we've did you say 2013, 2014? 2013 is when the public input process I believe for DME brought it away. And I don't know so here we are it's 2018 and we're starting over again kind of with selection for that location and that doesn't really doesn't give me any confidence that we have any idea what we're doing so I can 't imagine it really would give anybody else who's actually you know spending the money or doing the work or bidding the jobs or responding to our requests for proposals that we know what we're doing. I'm sorry. It was more of a comment. I'm just surprised that we're having to redo something that's been on the books for five years for something as simple as oh it can't go there because we were already planned on using it. That seems like a to me. I understand the frustration and we're frustrated as well. I think that what we're trying to bring to you is our best analysis of the issue at this point in time and really from our standpoint it really shouldn't be on any part of the landfill site because of these issues that Ethan's bringing up and when they would be developed that would be our recommendation for you. We're gonna give you some of those options of where it can go and how we would get there but I understand the frustration we're just trying to give you the best analysis of where we are today and the issues that are involved. Well so how are we gonna build our confidence about how we're gonna move forward tomorrow? I mean if we spend time talking about it and having public hearings about it and then we really do how are we gonna have confidence that what we're deciding and what we're doing is actually what's gonna happen and it's gonna happen in a timely manner. How do we do that? Yeah it's a good question. I think the way we do it is to provide you all the information to be very transparent about what the issues are to make sure we show you the maps of where the landfill could be, the locations that are out there and the pros and cons of each site. I agree that that it's a challenge of how it was done in the past but we want to really reset that conversation show you where we are today and try to move us forward. That's the only way I know how to do it. Okay okay but by saying what you just said you suggest in 2013 we didn't do all those things. I'm saying that yes that we didn't have a good analysis of the site that's correct. Okay thank you. Sorry I didn't mean to make it tense. I think the you know I think the lesson learned here is you know we just the landfill part anytime we look at the going forward any any using any of that it's it's it's such a long-term effect that the dollars really add up the impact whenever you you know it's only 14 acres or somewhere around there 14.7 but that the impact is huge from a from a from an economic standpoint so if anything that's that's kind of what I take out of this. Yes. Yeah I would just like to say just in response to what what Brandon was saying and the presentation that we're watching to me my perspective is that this is another situation where y'all are trying to mitigate damage that was done in the past that you know we can't go back in time but I really appreciate the the efforts to you know not only assess the situation but also to be transparent about it and in being transparent we can show okay there are sunken costs that we can't get back but also that that's no reason to and I'm just confirming what the suggestion is here that there that's no reason to just keep throwing more money at it right so we can save as I think you say later on in the presentation you know ten million dollars by not you know continuing to throw money at these at these sunken costs so I kind of as far as confidence goes just as far as my own perspective is concerned you know I to me this gives me confidence I mean it's not happy but but it's for me it's positive to see the transparency the effort to mitigate the past damage you know one thing that I would like to see more about and this wouldn't involve my own input into the you know directive that I would want to give today and it's not because I don't trust it but I'm just curious about what you were saying about the new entrance road how you know there was that sun ken cause but you're at the but it's at the point now where it would cost more to pull out of it then to keep going and I I trust that I'm just here I would be just curious to see I don't know maybe in a in an email or on the appendix to the next agenda you know some whatever work you all did to look at to compare to compare the cost of right pulling out versus going ahead again I trust it I'm just curious sure but anyway and get something together great but I do I do appreciate that and just for what it's worth from my own perspective it it gives me confidence to see that we're doing this and you know we 've seen this before with other operations in solid waste and decisions that were made in the past so anyway that's all well there's no other questions for solid waste I'd like to invite Brent to the podium and I'll let him take it from here thanks Brent thanks Jason appreciate that good morning chairman Robinson public utilities board I'm Brent Heath executive manager for energy delivery based upon the information that we just heard about this expansion permit that has changed some of the criteria for the site that was selected it was kind of using a Star Wars saga slogan a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away but it's no reason to continue down that path if that's not the right way to go so Ethan did a great job giving a brief recap of how we got here back starting in 2013 with a public open house we had a 2015 public open house in January 2016 council went ahead and selected the site and then in June of 2016 council agreed to go ahead and fund the site with a fund transfer from DME to solid waste so that three-quarters of a million dollars that was transferred if this public utilities board and the City Council agrees that another site needs to be picked or different option picked then that would be refund ed back to DME and one thing I do want to mention you talked about the 14 acres chairman Robinson the substation site the six point two seven acres you see here would be the site that we're potentially talking about abandoning but the remainder of that acreage the easements for the transmission letter still be required and I'll go through that here in just a moment was that included in this price here this is just the same right the one point two million dollars included the other acreage for the easements there's a couple reasons that we needed the project for the substation and also the transmission line there's both primary and secondary reasons one is for the additional diversity and capacity of the transmission line through Denton and I'll show some slides and maps here in a moment we can talk about that also the substation was planned for future load growth for customer and citizen needs out there on the distribution system so we looked at some alternative projects when we found that the existing site was probably not the best solution long term for the City of Denton overall we were presented with five other possible sites that we looked at we researched and after doing that those are all in the landfill none of those appeared to be near as viable but on an economic and operational perspective is what had been selected so I think based on information that we all had at the city earlier the previous site was the best site and actually still is the best site for how it was intended however we do want to go ahead and be a team player so we've come up with a transmission line alternative that we'd like to present of how we want to move forward and that will go ahead and help us mitigate some high loading concerns that we presently have on the transmission system between the Paukris and Brinker subst ations and the ten million dollars for the substation cost would actually not be needed at this time we would hope that in the future as the needs arise that that would be a deferred cost that we could spend if that's needed in the future so this is a system map a one-line map of the city of Denton's electrical transmission system you're noticing the bottom left-hand corners are Denton West substation that is where the only 345 kv source the strongest source coming into Denton arrives into the Denton area get this mouse here that okay right here the Denton West station from this spot the southwest corner to get up to the northeast corner of the system the Arco substation there's two ways to really get there one is a northern route through the Jim Crystal Denton North area around Arco to get to Arco there's also a southern route to come around to get to Arco both of those routes are needed when the source comes into Denton West substation it's split between both of those routes if there is any switching going on or contingency cases where a line is out of service only one of those lines is is going to be loaded more than normal so the one that we're talking about today is the Denton West on the southern route around up to Spencer interchange and around Arco and the reason Arco is important to get the strong source through Denton is it a lot of it goes out eastward to Collin County and so there's two ways to serve not only the load in Denton but also the load outside of Denton through the ERCOT Texas wide statewide transmission system you may note there's double lines a green line a red line a blue and a red there's two different lines all the way around through the Fort Worth Teasley on around to the Pokra subst ation area from Pokra substation up to Spencer interchange there's only one line and that's pretty descriptive because all these two lines through here are what we call bundled conductor it's two different conductors two different wires tied together per phase it's been reconducted with higher impacity conductor to carry more current presently between pockress and Spencer this one section of line right here is the section of line that has been identified as being overloaded as far as under certain contingency conditions now we have done some temporary fixes to where encore TXU used to come out of Spencer interchange and come back down to then head south we have moved that point of interconnection that demarcation point from Spencer interchange through some of our substation work southeastward down to see this mouse down to pockress and what that has done is that has actually alleviated some of that concern due to the encore TXU load and so we had the capability which we took it was an option and we took it where we tied the two different sets of conductors together and kind of made them a bundled conductor and so that has helped us in this interim period but it has not been recond ucted it doesn't have the high impacity conductor and so we were looking for some alternate routes to help improve that situation and provide the diversity that I mentioned earlier so all wouldn't be on one path there's a lot of words for one map here's two more maps maybe they won't be as many words this time the item on the left the image on the left is zoomed in between pockress substation and Spencer shows that one red line that we just talked about the original plan it was to come out of pockress find a different route a diversified route around this direction by the landfill have Mayhill substation and go from Mayhill back to Brinker and the Spencer interchange complex so this was the original proposed route it would have solved the situation that I mentioned earlier the alternate route that we're proposing today over in the right hand side it looks essentially the same with the same route for the transmission system between pockress over to Brinker but it does not have the Mayhill substation here so we are proposing to still utilize the remainder eas ements for the transmission line along the landfill not put the substation there free up the space for the future expanded cell development but still mitigate the transmission concerns and the loading conditions that we have so that's what's being proposed is the transmission only approach at this time so the next steps if the board and the public utility City Council agrees is to go ahead and complete the design and the easement acquisition for the new transmission only solution there is one segment that has not been acquired yet for that and that's needed in any of these cases and that's for these along Spencer Road and we're proposing to mitigate and integrate that into the mobility plan for the street at Spencer and so that has not been acquired at this time and so we propose to complete that design continue acquiring all that working on establishing that entire route we have feature considerations that will perform a route study for maybe for a possible future transmission line between our co and pockress and let me go back a map here pockress is down here we're going to go ahead and build this transmission line that's what's being proposed but we also have identified in some of the FERC 715 transmission studies that we've done as a matter of fact we just submitted another annual report on April 1st of this year they're always do April 1st and we need to look at how do we get from pockress substation somehow potentially in the future up to our co substation on the far eastern portion of Denton and what that does is it would mitigate the concerns here it'd mitigate all this it takes all of these different transmission lines into account and we would have a straight path from the southern portion from Denton West to pockress all the way around our co to head out east over toward the Collin County area and so that would be something that we would begin investigating we we have no plans there's there's not urgent in any form or fashion is just something that we would like to be in the process on looking at that and so that would be a future consideration between our co and pockress and then we will continue to research possible substation sites whether it ends up being maybe on the east edge along this route once it's been defined and established and public involvement meetings have happened and the citizens help us pick a route we'd look for a new substation site that could serve future citizen and customer loads and so that's the proposal in front of you today is to help the city and solid waste with the expansion permit the potential loss of cell space in future years but we have an immediate approach that we can save and defer ten million dollars and allow the land to be utilized for future landfill space and still mitigate the transmission line portions at this time so that's all that I have it's it's a lot of information I know it's kind of overwhelming it's a little disappointing that we're at this point from where we began but we are and we do want to try to rectify and find good solutions moving forward I know that George and Ethan and Chuck and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have about the landfill or the electric aspects of this proposal to move forward with the transmission only approach yes so I applaud the transmission only approach it sounds like a good solution and as I said before this sounds like a good way to mitigate some unfortunate you know sunken cost from the past that can't be corrected I'm still not clear about as far as kind of future you know where to put the substation in the future I'm still not clear about the need for that substation in the first place and whether it's about growth here in Denton in that area which I don't quite see in that specific in that area or if it's about the generation coming from the new from the new the new gas plant and the effect of that on on the transmission load so if you could say something about that and and I'll just add kind of throw in there you know also kind of thinking back to as far as you know decisions made in the past that that can't be changed you know I I think about the relation of some of these substations to the gas plant and you know it looks to me that these certain decisions were made with the gas plant in mind before the public knew about the gas plant and that was by I mean the people who could answer to that you know many of them aren't aren't here to answer for that but I just wanted to note that just so in case the public is kind of scratching their heads at home thinking wait but we didn't know there was gonna be a gas plant then anyway but if you could explain for for us and you know and also for the public you know how much of this had to do has to do with the load in the area for Denton and how much has to do with what we're gonna be generating okay thank you those are very good questions I can assure you that the substation may whole substation when it was planned in 2013 was prior to any discussions beginning about the gas gas plant so it didn't have any relation to that it only has to do with the transmission line loading that we have identified through the FERC 715 studies so the the reason for the substation versus the transmission system is it does allow the substation allows for future load growth customer growth in that area there is undeveloped vacant area over in that eastern southeastern portion of town we do serve some critical loads such as the hospital the wastewater treatment plant and I see PS smiling about that and and FEMA has enough regional call center there and so the substation is for that as well as all the other undeveloped areas so that 's why we can not that's why we can get by without using the substation now because we presently serve all of those items it would just add a diversification and enhanced reliability but as new growth comes on we will need to look at another possible future site but that may be decades down the road yeah thank you thanks that helps a lot you answered my question on the hospital load so it's it's fine today but we may need a substation over there if there's more load growth in that area that is correct okay so this you know that the area that's just north of like along pockress and north or east or whatever it is of like we're post oak and all that is that is that a service area as well or is that on we do serve this area around the pockress substation there are you get in some areas when you get on the fringe areas there may be some dual certified areas with other utilities but all of this is in the single certified and that's that's been a high growth area yes a lot of a lot of growth going on there yes you know it's interesting I guess the other thing too on the I notice that were a lot of this ties back to the Urquhart reliability from the from the West coming in and I just wonder if that has a lot to do with the increase in the in the wind power that's coming from the West we do we do receive a lot of congestion to have better transmission for that yes sir you 're entirely correct we are seeing more wind energy coming from West Texas area into the Denton West substation from TXU and Encore and that does have to not only serve loads here in the Denton area but also east of here sure yes so you mentioned in your presentation that to move forward with the alternate plan we'll have to do some easement acquisitions did we begin easement acquisitions for the original plan we have all the easement acquisitions we need for the original plan except one small section okay and so just by looking at the map I mean it looks like maybe it's only in a different place so that we can see it on the map you're not real are you really moving it to the east the transmission line would stay in the original location is playing so you really so we really only have one more property then to look at even for the alternate plan yes and we have a possible route forward for that with with the city mobility plan okay do you have an idea and I guess it won't really impact the type of support structures used or the number of support structures really either will it there actually could be a reduction in some of the transmission poles by not having have a redundant path with this new proposed transmission only route kind of sounds counterintuitive but the way that it was configured there's some possible reductions and I'll take your word for it yes can you describe the support structures are they the big it'd be the rector set looking things or are they big giant metal it'd be the still mono poles single pole structures with the base size of those ones that are like this the ones that are like it would be the ones that you've been seeing installed around town all right thank you so yes ready I have a question because I've confused myself are you saying that the alternate plan solves the Mayhill landfill problem the alternate path the alternate plan with the transmission only removes the Mayhill substation it's not on this plan and that is the portion that is in question for cell development the transmission easements by the landfill they all still remain in place and so by just not putting the substation there and redoing part of the transmission work where we don't have the double circuit that I just talked to with about Brent about reducing poles we can still accomplish the transmission loading and help with landfill cell use with this expansion permit and save ten million dollars save ten million dollars today with a possible deferred need in the future yes so then how much more planning relative to May hill needs to be done if this gets approved what we'll be looking at the procure in this portion of the transmission route right here that we don't have and then we will begin at some point getting from pockress up to Arco which we've not done anything at all and that'll just be some preliminary preliminary investigations that is long term I my question was really about the landfill itself in terms of doing all this research and coming up with alternate plans if this is done then what's the next going back to the original presentation then what happens or needs to be done or looked at well I think for us again these cells are what's currently in our permit so if the substation does go in we probably have to go back and remove some of this it's always easier to go to the TCEQ and say we don't need landfill development than it is to ask for additional but essentially we would move forward with the permit as is I think the next step to answer your question and maybe circle back to mr. Carroll's earlier is we do need to do a master plan for solid waste we wanted to make sure we understood where the substation was or was not going to be before we proceeded with that but we do need to give back and start kind of understanding how are we going to sequence this bring that back to the pub as well as the City Council for your input as well but understand that these cells right here this is already part of the permit so we really don't need to change anything if the pub recommends us for moving forward to the council so yes thank you I have a question about the cost of so the the acreage that was purchased from and I'm not sure if this is a DME or solid waste I can see you're both standing there it's about the acreage that was purchased by DME from solid waste for the $774,682 is it is that in any way refundable since that's from that within the city that's all fund balance internal budget transfer that would just be the area shown here in the magenta the purple that's where the substations at that would be the section this 775,000 that would just be a fun transfer back to DME where it came from yes over to solid waste okay okay good good so that's something that the rate payers can see that that's not part of the the sunken cost right no that that funding is available whichever side of the city yeah absolutely yep okay thank you I was just kind of mentioned in that same conversation that would need to come back to the PB for approval and then to the City Council that we'd bring that back so you would see that okay just when this is kind of off-the-wall question did we consider possibility of a gas insulated solution to this that was discussed yes I mean that that is you know has two to two and a half times the cost sure and whether it goes on this site which we'd still would not want to put it on this site after knowing what we know about the expansion permit but considering other sites the alternatives I'm just thinking about alternative sites in the future if it gets you know if we 're crowding in to something it's it's something to look at right I understand it's more expensive but sometimes you have to do that so okay I wonder if we can add like we have in the past we've added an analysis for GIS to every subst ation I wonder if we can add this analysis that I guess we didn't do in 2013 about a transmission only possibility is that possible that we can now use do that in the future for every facility instead of doing it five years later and retro right yeah back in 2013 when we began this process we were so far behind the eight ball in the transmission system from the very first first 715 studies we did in 2011 and of course we had our all-time system peak load it just jumped like we have never seen before and so we didn't have any time to waste and we didn't want to get not only have the pendulum swing from being very far behind to exactly meeting today's needs but why would you not want to look at what could we do ahead of that to plan for the future and so we did look at planning for the future and that's why we proposed the May hill substation it looked like it was a good alternative it was on the new transmission line route we wanted to incorporate that but yes we can look at the scenario do we have to have it now or can it be deferred to the future and I know the landfill that the changes in what we're doing with the landfill is what precipitated the need to evaluate moving this or do you believe that we're gonna see any of this kind of stuff with other proposed approved substations that haven't been built yet for instance like the Eagle what is it Eagle and Eagle substation yeah I mean because we kind of had a lot of public hearing a lot of stuff and we picked a side and nothing's been done are we gonna reeval uate that one too do you think I don't see that that that's actually the same has the same aspects involved this is city-owned land and so it was solid wast eland it was designated through a lot of governmental and public involvement meetings as a substation site the Eagle substation site that you mentioned has been selected and we're in the procurement process for that it would be city site and so we're proposing the GIS station for that it's needed for the University of North Texas in the surrounding area and there aren't any other sites or other possibilities of how we pick up transmission loading and customer loading our general manager George Morrow may want to speak about that okay certainly George Morrow DME general manager just want to make a general statement you know we're relooking at our entire expansion plan for the T&D system I 've not found anything that's not necessary or needed but the question is what timeframes and so we may be pushing out some of the timeframes trying to smooth our financial impacts repair cost impacts of some of this stuff I mean there was a lot of synergies at one time we were moving forward with as Brent mentioned just a ton of expansion why not get it way ahead of the of the need but we may be coming back at some point and saying we're gonna smooth some of this stuff out and but nothing that's on the drawing board at this point is we're not saying that's not needed so you know the others are still part of the plan sure you can stay there one of the things that it does for me is as I when I came on the PUB and y'all started showing me these maps and the high voltage lines and how they run and we start proposing these things well people from this the public start coming they say were you really not supposed to put a substation right here in the middle of the city you know it's you know this the one that worked that you just were referencing is right there on Eagle Drive there's there's big tall buildings around part of it and this university and student housing and things like that and people are saying well sometimes people will locate those to the outs on the edges of town and bring them in with a high voltage transmission line and you guys actually not you personally but it was kind of the consensus of staff was no we really don't do that here we put them we're gonna put it here because that high transmission line doesn't really work like that and now kind of what we're seeing is actually you could do something like that and locate that substation in a different area instead of right there and bring that power in with a high transmission line so I'm now seeing something new a new way we could approach doing something that I thought really wasn't how we approach doing things just yes and no we're getting a little bit off the posting by getting into overall stuff and I know it's well that's I know but we're still posted a subject so we got to stick to that it's not a wide open if we want to do a work session is this the first time you've ever seen this high transmission line solution I'm just trying to learn about it no I agree and maybe we need a work session on on what George said what is our what is our overall capital improvement program and how do we go forward with that and it may include more and I don't want to keep she actually asked for that yes Deb asked for that and what we got it was in a memo in the in this ACM update we didn't actually get any kind of information we got something that we got to read and nobody actually got up in front of us and addressed it she asked for it yeah so she may have approached him and met him later and got more information but we never really got much information well we do we do intend to come back if I could jump in just quickly we do intend to come back at some point as we you know as I get my arm around all the pieces and we have additional dialogue internally about you know what impacts will there be to the TND plan that you've sort of adopted and seen before what smoothing are we going to be doing you know what time frames so we'll be back I think this solution is not going to be one that's adaptable in too many other if any locations you've got to have substations to serve customers you know you can't serve them off the transmission line so the substations allow you to drop down the voltage to distribution voltage to serve customers and customers turn out that they're in the center of most urban areas they're not on the fringes and so we really need to put the subst ations unfortunately because there's some impact in areas where we have the high load and where we have customers so I've struggled with that my whole career it's tough and it's tricky to have to drill and put that substation in an existing residential area but sometimes you know it couldn't have been predicted 20 or 25 years ago exactly how that growth was going to come and so we have to we have to shoehorn them in there and unfortunately for for that but we can't serve local center of town customers from the edges I guess simply put you just said you're struggling putting together all the pieces and we'd count on you to put together the pieces to give them to us and we're struggling to put together the pieces too and if you are I'm not struggling I'm not really not struggling but I'm you said I was just saying what you said right okay I'll pick a better word okay I'm very casual sometimes with my language yeah so we're working through that I'm working through that with the staff there 's a lot of pieces and moving parts want to be really sure about how if I'm gonna make any adjustments going forward I want to be very certain of the impact of those things and sometimes the leg bones connected to the different parts that you didn't you didn't realize when you when you start moving things around so yeah well I will I will say in light of we discovered today there was a new solution to these type of things that we I would like to see a work session dedicated to capital improvements and the FERC report yes if we can okay I'm sorry no I just wanted to add that actually that Brandon's question I had the same exact question that I was going to ask so I appreciate that question and I do think that it's it's relevant and I do think you know if there's one I mean there are a number of lessons to you know to be to be learned from all this but but I think that one is a lesson for the future is to really think about you know how much in terms of building out for the growth can can we defer and safely defer into the future because the the you know the O and R costs you know for instance if we build a substation now you know even if this wasn't a problem with the location right you know if we say this wasn't an issue with the landfill still you know if it wasn't needed you know in the immediate future so so that's just something that it's something I've always wondered about you know why the this why we had the timeline that we did for building out our you know our substations for the growth and from you know the amateur research I've done it seems that you know that the standard practice is to really wait until you know that it's going to be a need in the relative immediate future you don't want to wait too long right gonna make sure you have a site so you've got to get the site ahead of the need and and as you defer in the future costs go up right new construction costs escalate costs increase so that kept those two things way together I think as Brent said when he started this whole discussion that and I concur 100% the substation is still a good project for us at that landfill site it just gives some extra flexibility but it might be something we don't need till 15 or 20 years down the road it gives us some enhanced reliability we can do some switching of circuits to improve performance in an area if some things we didn't plan for happen you know that circuit goes out unexpectedly we have a little bit additional flexibility so there's some value to that and so I think the staff was trying to program in that value early and in return the substation would be there if and when the growth would come to that area so I know it's a little bit complicated so I think the substation you know when you look at it really hard for the you know the next let's say two decades I think Brent mentioned that probably not a critical urgent need but at some point in time something probably we would need to do out there and and we 'll be looking at that in the future thank you okay any other comments or questions so I guess the direction you need direction from the PB on I mean your plan is presented to we don't need actually need to have a vote on it it's not a voting item but if there's a direction I guess I like the new proposal myself okay yeah I feel I'm hearing yes to the transmission only option and yes to deferring discussion of the future substation placement okay thank you very much appreciate your time okay next next in the work session we have item B which is to receive a report hold a discussion and provide staff direction regarding an update to the existing municipal electric energy risk management policy George Morrill DMA general manager again you may recall early in my tenure I said I would be back to talk about our energy risk management policy and that's what I'm here for today the original policy the policy that we operate under today was adopted back in 2014 about six months ahead of us taking over our and establishing our own trading operation at DME and you know through that three or four year period things have changed the organization's changed the markets have changed we've learned some things and so it made sense to to update the policy and we had Deloitte who did a very nice job you remember the presentation from Deloitte late last year they had a lot of great ideas for us and many of which and most of which we agreed with and we wanted to incorporate into an updated policy so policies needed of course because it provides a framework and guidelines for the energy management trading organization at DME there provide some checks and balances it gives some like I said some structure to what we're doing in the markets and it also allows us to it gives us some direction on reporting back to the council the PUB internally what is what what would the framework be for this for this for policy decisions so real time here's just a little bit of what we do out there real time we're buying and selling selling power where we're balancing our resources to match our loads and we're looking forward and trying to make sure we have enough resources during periods and making decisions about hey if we're short you know do we need to buy something when that you know when the markets are supportive of doing that in the longer term we're trying to look at the big picture integrating a lot of these new renewables that we have that's going to require a little bit different paradigm for us managing the partners that we're buying and selling to making sure they're adequately collateralized and so forth and so that's those are the two time frames for for the risk management policy so there's three pieces to the Emo we have front office middle office back office front office is doing the real-time trading and the near red time real-time type transactional efforts the middle office a little bit like the traffic cop it's checks and balances risk control it's an independent as standalone type operation looking at what we're doing and why we're doing it and making sure that we have business relationships that are sound with other parties to do it then the back office is taking care of our contract administration paying bills making sure we have funds and so forth for that this is a little bit of what it looks like and have a few of those folks here today I wanted to introduce in the back office we have Michael Wilson who's our settlements and rate administrator so he's taking care of all the you know the calculations to make sure that we're being billed correctly by all the counterparties and by aircott in the front office we have Stephen Johnson who's our market operations manager he manages all the real -time around-the-clock folks that are keeping an eye on things and balancing our load and the we have Smith day who oversees the middle office and our senior risk control analyst Phil Deepestina he's here and Phil's going to take over a little bit of this presentation there's some nuts and bolts that I wanted him to go through but I wanted to talk about him a little bit because I was a bit surprised to find him on our staff Phil has a lot of experience he's got over 35 years in risk management for electric utilities he set up managed the front middle and back office at Pacific gas and electric at a time when PG&E was the largest electric utility in the country and I'm like pretty amazed to find he's here with us he also set up an enterprise wide risk management program at aircott he set that up and managed that for a number of years and so decided to come to DME and he's he's our traffic cop that I mentioned earlier so he's has that kind of background and so we're he's here to kind of take over Phil if you want to come up and he's going to talk specifically about the Deloitte recommendations we tried to integrate as much of the Delo itte recommendations as possible into the energy risk management policy now that we could but it's really a two-part process for us and we have some high priority low hanging fruit that is before you today that we've integrated and then we'll be moving forward to do a little more work on some of the middle or lower priority items going forward and I perceive even a further dialogue with the public utility board about what I'm calling risk appetite you know how much you know what should be our risk profile here as a publicly owned community owned utility and that's an area that we want to share some things with you and get your input at a later date so Phil if you want to come up and I dragged him out of the comfort of his office to do this so hope he hope he doesn't mind hi I'm Philip de Pastina senior risk control analyst for DME and as George mentioned we're bringing to you a draft of the risk policy which we've updated I'd like to go over a few of the kind of the highlights first of what what's different about this this version one of the things we've done is we 've streamlined it the first section and provided some clarification of what the why we have it in the first place what the program goals are which are to use the Emo to help integrate the renewable resources through short-term market transactions and to minimize the risk of in doing that of affecting the rate payer risks the rate payer rates adversely the second thing we're doing is we're consolidating what we formerly had two risk committees we 're consolidating them into one single risk oversight committee we're also highlighting the fact that we need a number of counterparties to diversify our the risk that goes with dealing with them and to ensure that we're getting the competitive market price when we buy or sell electricity one of the recommendations we received from Deloitte was that we needed to improve the quality and frequency of our communication with the pub and the City Council so we're incorporating changes in that risk policy to do that also we were it was a suggestion that we provide more specificity in our risk limits and how we control the the kind of deals that we the emo does as well as additional detail on the types of transactions that they can do and so we've incorporated those things in the this new risk policy in addition to the policy itself that we've included in your package we summarized the recommendations that Delo itte brought to you I think it was on December 11th they had a number of recommendations about 60 that were broken into high medium and low priorities and we 've taken those and and try to figure out where we can where we can address those in our risk policy and we've done that and this is just a graphic to show that yes we're gonna pull up the Deloitte matrix that was attached to the report let's see how do we have that's it how do we blow this up or do we okay as I mentioned there's a high medium and low priorities that Deloitte recommended some of them I've already discussed we've reassess our the policy itself we've updated a number of the of the policy and we're in the process of updating procedure operating procedures we've consolidated the risk policy the risk oversight function into a single committee medium priorities we've we're we've we're going to provide the minutes of our quarterly risk committee meetings to the council and the pub so you can see more of what's going on and and what the Emo is is doing we 've established a clear set of guidelines for how the committees work and established a more formal oversight process the Deloitte recommended that we institute some processes for more formally transferring knowledge around the Emo so that everyone understands what the rules are who does what and how things should operate and then there's a number of low lower priority items most of these will be brought to you and incorporated in the risk policy and what we're calling phase two later in this year and that's where we're developing reports and actually asking for your approval of risk metric measures and evaluate how how we evaluate the performance of the Emo so I'm happy to go into any of these items if if you have questions about them questions scroll back to something that was a procedure rather than a policy update that you can just give us some details about how you change the procedure and what you did because a policy I know you we could just read it and say oh well that's how you changed it but have you implemented any procedures based on the recommendations from Deloitte that you want to share with us the procedures are being updated currently okay and we're kind of waiting until we get the the risk management committee meeting so we can go to them and ask them for their approval okay on these okay okay so the most of those things that are phase two right okay right okay questions there's also a number of these recommendations that will be implemented not in the risk policy itself or in the operating procedures but for example we're going to bring to you a recommendation to purchase a new energy trading system a database that tracks things and generates reports and as part of that a lot of these recommendations we included in the specifications that we seek in that do any of the items cover business continuity or disaster recovery those types of things certainly that'll be part of the disaster would would include the risk management system going down and yes there'll be procedures on what to do when that happens we already have that if for example if communications fail in the Emo office we've got procedures on where we can go to to resume operations okay thank you would it be fair to say the first phase was setting up the governance and the policy so that the second phase you get more into the details is that right there's as the earlier slide mentioned it's the low-hanging fruit right and the immediate most high priority things which is refining the governance process and establishing more clear steps on how the risk oversight committee works okay question okay I'll just say I'm glad to know that we have somebody in house I didn't know that either with a risk management such a strong mission management background who can implement the Deloitte recommendations and I think if there weren't that many you know questions for you today it's because we got had the Deloitte presentation and we asked a lot of questions then and they were really helpful and it's good to know that there's somebody on staff implementing that and I would just say as far as I guess you're not quite asking for direction on this but you know I would recommend and it seemed to me that Deloitte the way that they were assessing the kind of risk in doing a kind of triage on what needed to be you know what was considered a high high risk and why I would recommend you know minimal you know the most conservative approach and minimal risk approach possible because because we're dealing with with public with public money and obviously there's no such thing as a no risk approach but you know to just minimize the risk I think would be the way to go and I feel like that's kind of how this was that how the what was in mind as these priorities were assessed by Deloitte. I was going to highlight a few things Philip thank you. Thanks Phil. You know I was impressed myself Philip and our other members of our energy management organization worked with enterprise risk consulting to update the policy so we had their eye on it but I you know we've tried to keep it understandable and readable and you know without a lot of industry cryptics and so forth and we're trying to be transparent with the policy so we're we're opening up this energy risk management policy at this point didn't find anything in there from my viewpoint that would cause us any risk from a from a you know a transactional standpoint you can see we've updated some of the exhibits that are really key to what we do you know what are the authorities internally what are the limits internally both for electric physical and financial electric and as well as for physical and financial gas we're gonna be doing more gas transacting as we move forward we're involved with that right now so and we're gonna be coming out with other things that I think will will touch on what I just heard and that's also my perspective from years of being in the the power business is to you know this is a community owned citizen owned repair owned enterprise taking a lot of risks and risk management are so critical I'm very conservative from the risk profile standpoint I suspect you are but we'll have that conversation again as I mentioned we come back to you and I'll hear comments from everybody along the lines of what you know what how much risk should we take and shouldn't take and I think because this has been a bit black box up to this point there's been a lot of folks thinking hey you know what's really going on in there how much risk are they taking what are they doing what transactions are they making and you know there's a very very detailed report that we look at internally every single day that documents every single transaction that marks the value of every single resource that we have going out several years I mean we do it every day based on market conditions it's Philippus manages that and there's just we're on top of it we're watching it very carefully and we're not predisposed and never have been predisposed from what I can tell to take a lot of risks in that area in fact calm and smooth it has really been the the guideline I think our Emo staff has had all along so it's just that it was hard to communicate and hard to bring forward in the paradigm that we were living in in the past so now we're we've got a new world we're want to be much more transparent and open and communicative and we want to get your input again as we come back so Philip thank you for your for the work that you've done to put this together I I think we dealt with a lot of what we heard from from Deloitte we've got the the next phase that was just talked about in particularly that first item which is you know making sure we're all comfortable with what we're doing the risks that we're taking and what's our risk tolerance and you heard my perspective a little bit but I don't run that you know it's not my call it's your call as the governance body for this agency and and we'll talk more about how we're going to communicate with you going forward to make sure you get information that you're comfortable with what we're doing so we're back probably in about September for the phase two we'll clean up everything and in between the time now and then we'll come in for some more feedback from you so that's our risk management policy if we get your support we intend to come back at a future meeting for formal approval we'll have our kickoff meeting of the new risk management committee and there's a lot of work for that committee to do going forward to educate themselves I think the chair of the PUB sits on that committee and it has a vote so look forward to working with the chair and and him communicating communicating back to you with what's going on having a little bit of experience with drafting policies and procedures and with compliance in several industries I've seen this happen a bunch of times where an organization will go through the procedures to do all this to write all this they bind them and then they go on a shelf what do you have planned as far as implementing training or at least some kind of acknowledgement from your staff that they've actually read these policies and procedures and are going to follow them good point yeah one of the exhibits of the policy is a sign-off sheet by employees that says we we've read and we will follow all the employees involved in the energy management procurement and sales but it's a living document it can't sit on the shelf there's too much at stake here there's too many dollars at risk the the energy management side is too large and so these conversations and the interaction between the front middle and back office is happening many times a day there's there's just a lot of oversight and input I spend a lot of time looking at what we're doing and why we're doing it and so and we'll be communicating everything back to the risk management committee and there's some general city folks that will be sitting on that committee also that you know it will be all of us will be managing that function so it's a real thing I agree with you a hundred percent you do the long-term strategic plan everybody you know says yes yes yes and it sits over there this disk that cannot happen here and have you all invested in a document management system that will allow you to update the living document and then let everybody know that there have been changes published and that they 're responsible for understanding them and knowing them and adhering to them yeah if we make any changes to the procedures and the policy everybody will get a copy of those and we'll have input into it internally but everyone will get a final copy of that and we do have document management system at DME there's centralized files for everything that we have and this will be there available for anybody that has that need but it won't be like we said we're not int ending it to be black box for anymore for this group and we don't it's not black box for our people either it's totally it's a living and breathing and it has we have to live and breathe it every day it's just too much at stake and it's too important and you know my review of the of the front office so that's the folks involved in the around-the-clock operation to match the resources with our loads I've been very impressed the resumes for that group are as impressive as Phillips resumes and we have a lot of folks that have experience at aircott and other large utilities and have come here that have you know might have taken them a little bit but they've kind of learned the public power community-owned ethic and they're as they sort of talk the same language that you know I'd like to talk and I think you would be talking about what we should be doing and why we're doing it and how we're doing it and what risk we're taking or not taking so thank you thank you since the new risk management committee is it you know crucial part of all this I was wondering if you could explain both for us and for the public who sits on that committee you know how the the constitution of that committee was decided and by Constitution I mean how it was how it's constituted and how that was decided what term limits are etc yeah Philip do you have anything you want to share on the committee itself I had actually had a slide on that I was gonna I don't know that we brought it okay let me just bring up the document here I don't think I can bring up the policy itself it's in the yeah oh here does this say no no actually don't have the policy Philip it's in the agenda so it's yeah well I don't well it's in the it's in the staff report but it's not part of the presentation so one of the things I you know I will chair that committee so we'll have the deputy city manager we'll have the we'll have the finance director or designee we have the pub chair or designee and and we'll have the gentleman in the back there from legal that will sit on that committee so that's kind of what I'm used to so it's basically those five folks they'll have votes and the other committees that I've chaired in the past are very similar I represent the department basically and then we have folks from outside the department so there's plenty of oversight and checks and balances we'll have a lot of staff members attending those meetings and being involved and presenting and here's what the market looks like here's our forward projections of what's happening here's the resources we're bringing online here's you know here's the economics of certain types of deals and try to and getting authority to do some transactions so did that answer any of your question possibly didn't answer everything yeah and and so this was the site so the makeup of the committee is decided internally and right in DME and will will the meetings of that committee be posted and open to the public no of course not yeah I figured no because setting you up for just to kind of explain you know also for the public I'm so honest that's I had to give you that no no no no no no our intention is okay I following the meetings something we're not doing today we're gonna put minutes together and you know I'm not sure how deep or how much and we'll make those available to the utility board in the council each quarter you know minimum quarterly meetings possibly meetings quite a bit ahead of that I actually have quite a few things in my mind lined up that I want to get some direction and input from that committee on so we'll be going through a lot of learning together and and providing the direction I think the department needs going forward so thank you for setting me up for that but so they so the the decisions of that committee will be you know presented you know not only the minutes but at some point yes but it's not an open committee though yes under I think that would not be a smart thing for us to do we're still involved in the committee you know everybody else we deal with there pretty much our private sector they have black boxes they're confidential we don't know we don't know what cards they have or what they're thinking or so you know we do so we have to be a little bit careful but some of the things there will be reportings kind of semi-annually to PUB and council providing quarterly after the minutes we'll be providing information about those but you know I don't I don't know that it'll be anything there that we would be that we review as confidential or would adverse us from a power marketing standpoint we did make the decision internally I think we had input from ERC I think we had some input possibly from Deloitte about the makeup it's totally up to the PUB if you look at that makeup that we have and you think that's not appropriate that's what these work sessions are for and you if you don't do it today you can do it in between like I say we'll be coming back at some point with the document for formal approval and I'd be open to hearing any thoughts now or later from the PUB on the committee makeup I see the makeup of the committee is very appropriate it's got all the right people at the table so thank you very much I'm glad to see it I'm glad to see how this is all being put together and that's being shared because I don't think any of this was in place prior to is that correct right we there was a different makeup there were a couple of different committees they were more internal than external and this is a whole new paradigm for us and I'm looking forward to it I like to say we want to be as transparent and open as possible and not impacting our cost benefits and that kind of thing Brian I just want to make one other point I think George and his staff done a good job taking a look at this from a fresh perspective with the new environment and then bringing something back and it really dawned on us too as we were going through this this was approved in 2014 right I think it was originally and it wasn't brought back on an annual basis back to council or PUB so we want to have at least an annual process to bring it back and say here's where the policy is there any tweaks we need to make to it how's it working for you guys how's it working for us is there anything that we need to change and constantly keep that in front of both the board and the council because board members change council members change staff changes always really have this at the forefront so we can make good decisions but I think they've done a good job of taking a look at all that and we'll bring this back to you on a regular basis so it's you know unlocking those mysteries of what's going on really have a good transparent conversation about what's happening yeah and there actually has been a lot of updates Philip had a redline version for you at one time attached to the report and it was just there was so much red ink I just that didn't help so we we didn't really provide the red line because there is so much so many changes in there but again we tried to make it understandable and and for for lay people not that you're laypeople but in general for the public or others that might want to look at it and for our own staff that's it's a roadmap for us to manage our risk well we can we can still consider ourselves as like people that 's not but no you know this is this is I like the structure because I think it's gonna provide excuse me better opportunity for communication to the PAB and the council and like you say there are certain competitive matters that you don't want you can't discuss but at least we can we can it's good to know that everything that's been done has been done correctly and the high priority part of this is that the governance and making sure that everybody knows what's going on everybody's informed and so I think again I'll echo Brian's comments that this is this is good I like them I like this thank you thank you very much okay anything else okay we have next part of the meeting we have a consent agenda with five items ABCD and E is there any member of the board who would like to pull any of these items for individual consideration yes I would like to pull D just because I'd like to hear more about that okay item D it's been pulled any other items D okay then item is there a motion then on the consent agenda for items ABC and E so moved we have a motion to approve those four items is there a second second second any further discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed same sign okay item D which is consider recommending adoption of an ordinance authorizing the city manager to surrender to Bloomfield homes LP a certain irrevocable standby letter credit dated November 12 2013 drawn on Texas Capital Bank in the amount of 176 thousand one hundred forty three dollars and ninety three cents in which Bloomfield homes LP is the applicant and the city of Denton is a beneficiary and further partial releasing Bloomfield homes from financial obligations concerning the construction of water and wastewater lines included in that certain letter agreement dated December 29 2000 by in between the city of Denton and when Jackson Lakes Development LP as a successor in interest in providing severability and an effective date yeah I'm not sure whether you want me to give a presentation or answer questions so I'll leave that up to you okay quite some time ago probably about 16 years ago there was a freshwater supply district created the far southwest side of the city of Denton it straddled the Denton ETJ strip annex that kind of defined our boundary with Argyle and straddled in Dargile they had used a provision in state law known as annexation so it was an annexed freshwater supply district city of Denton never provided the approval for that so they filed lawsuit against the freshwater supply district to challenge that that resulted in a settlement agreement in that settlement agreement there were provisions made for zoning and there were provisions made for providing water and sewer extensions to serve that development there were certain financial obligations that the development had to make payment and in that there were some surcharges to the impact fees that created income to help pay for those water and sewer lines or proportion of them during that time they had to file a letter of credit which was their financial guarantee that they'd make payment each year during the course of the project some of the momentum on it stalled for a variety of reasons and so then they sold the property when they sold the property they sold it to Bloomberg Homes as one of the larger purchasers the city then required surrendered the letter of credit from the seller and required it of the buyer that buyer then you know fulfilled those obligations through the remainder of the bond period once the bond period was done the city no longer needed to maintain the letter of credit since the letter of credit was transferred to the new owner by ordinance legal wanted us to go through a ordinance to release it the original terms of the agreement also called for a refunding of the bond selling costs which is usually your payment guarantee through the course of the bonds which was agreed to in that letter agreement from 2000 plus the interest costs so we'll also be refunding that as well but we do need to make sure that we give that to the right parties or party rather because the legal obligations and the benefits ran with the properties that that help so it's it's the the closure of a pretty long effort that we've had to contend with as a result of that this is the this is the closure of the financial responsibilities yes and refunding those pieces we still have probably about 30% of the development still remains under the new owners but they seem to have some new momentum and we look for that project to continue okay thank you so much and also I'm impressed that you seem to do that without no without notes I guess you you looked at so I was I didn't negotiate the arrangement but I knew the parties yeah and I was probably responsible for quite some time implementing it so yeah yeah well thanks I just you know it was it was it was so complicated and so but but what you said confirmed for me you know my own understanding of it and you also filled in some of the history so that that was primarily why I asked I just want to make sure I understood exactly what that was what what what had happened and to just confirm that this is the final chapter of that that saga so thank you any other questions questions from Tim no thank you thank you okay do we have a motion on item D I move have a motion to approve is there a second and a second from Brendan any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed same sign motion carries okay next item we have is the public utility board meeting minutes for March 26 2018 these have been distributed in advance for their any questions changes comments to those hearing none is there a motion to approve those is presented then to approve okay second second and a second discussion all in favor say aye any opposed same sign minutes are approved next we have the ACM update good morning mr. chairman and members of the board in your in your packet you'll have your future agenda items for the for upcoming pub meetings excuse me if you see at your second meeting in April you'll have some power supply items and then as we move forward into latter part early part of May you will be starting the some of the budget conversations on C IP with water and wastewater so we'll be getting into the budget season so a lot of more conversations about about the operating budgets and capital project budgets of those other various utilities so stay tuned more to come so that's all I have on the future agenda design future agenda items on the new business matrix some of the things that were listed still for outstanding on outstanding issues are to be discussed during the budget process I did hear over the course of today's meeting some additional information at the board requested on the landfill entrance the road the cost and some of the decision factors that were made there and also a work session on the DME capital improvement programs so and the FERC report and actually can can can I can we expand that and and because what we're seeing changes in solid waste as well I don't know if there's projects there that have been delayed or changed or modified significantly I don't know that wastewater or water has I don't think we've seen that kind of stuff come at us and some time ago we were presented with and I think it was you that gave it to us it showed all the projects and there was a timeline had some colored lines showing us maybe the project inception and maybe how far along they were and if we could get if we could get something like that that shows us you know when when we finalize these projects when we thought they would be complete where we what percentage completion we are now and when we think we're good they're actually going to be complete and the dollar amount associated with what we're gonna have to pay because it took us so long to complete to get them going I think that information will help me a lot is that strictly to DME projects or is that everything well I mean the things that I've been uncomfortable with have been DME projects and solid waste stuff so and more information which is you know all right concluding items I think we just covered but are there any other yes yeah yeah I would I would add to that so I second that and I would like to see you know even though we've we've seen mostly no DME and solid waste I'd like to know from water you know a presentation at some point and maybe this is just already going to be part of the budget discussion but about what their needs are because I know that there are needs in water you know to keep up with the growth and I want to know what what what those needs are and what the what the timeline is how pressing those needs are okay can we that'll be will that be part of the CIP discussion on on the in the budget process so we'll look at five years at least five five years great good and I had there was one other thing that I wanted to ask I guess for a staff report on a staff report should probably suffice and this was a question that I had it was has been partly answered I mean it says about about sponsorship procedure and there is recently so there's a so DME has a host table at a upcoming charity g ala and and I just found this out last week and they're gonna be some council people going and and PUB was invited to attend and I had I had requested I had asked if I could um pay my own way and I just found out I was able to pay my own way so that it so that it wouldn't be coming you know at least from my part from from public money um but I wanted to know because it mentioned in the email that it was a decision that came from that the the call to to sponsor that that table at the charity gala came from the city manager's office and so I wanted to know you know what the what the procedure was if if that ever went to you know maybe that's something that went to PUB or council in the past before I got on board PUB and and then whether that is coming from from rate payers funds from from DME funds or if it's coming from taxpayer money and you know in some other capacity so I'm really just curious you know kind of what how that decision came to be made and then what the protocol is for that we'll be glad to get you the staff report on that that's consistent with the sponsorship policy that we had brought forward to the PUB and the City Council a couple of months ago I did want also mentioned to you that the council's asked us to have a different process or consider a different process for sponsorships and approving those looking at using the hotel occupancy tax committee which is made up of three council members to bring those requests through and then make recommendations back to the council so more to come on that but we'll be happy to get you a more detailed report on it is that part of that policy I believe was was it a quarterly report we were gonna get that's right on all the sponsorships that's right we'll do that and then of course during the budget process all of the all of those are listed in the in the budget process when we do that okay very good all right any any other concluding items hearing none is there a motion to adjourn motion adjourned and a second second from Lillia all in favor say aye aye any opposed thank you