Jun 13, 2022 Public Utilities Board on 2022-06-13 9:00 AM

>> Good morning. I would like to call the meeting of the public utilities board of the city of Denton. In order this morning at 9.01 on June 13th. Do we have any presentations from the public? >> I would like to call the meeting of the public utilities board of the city of Denton and to call the meeting of the public utilities board of the city of Denton on June 13th. >> Seeing none. On to the consent agenda. Would anyone like to pull item? >> I would like to pull item A from the consent agenda. >> Okay. Any others? Let's go forward. Oh, yes. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the all but agenda A? >> I move we approve items B, C, D, and E. All in favor say aye. Opposed, same sign. Thank you. And now we will go to agenda number A. >> We have Randy key from the municipal electorate for item A. >> How is everybody? >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. Does anybody have any questions? Do you want to go over the full presentation or just like a little gist of it? >> I want to request pulling item A. I was wondering if we could at least get an overview of this. I thought it might be nice for us to be updated a little bit about more details about this. We can go over the full presentation, but just to let you know, there's the lead times normal. It would be like a four week lead time for certain type of transformers. We're asking for 2.75 million for this. Mainly we're trying to get our three phase transformers in. It's almost a two year lead time now. So we're trying to order in bulk, and if we don't get this, pretty much a lot of our projects will go to a halt. So we're trying to get them here, get in bulk, and then that way we won't have any stoppage of projects. So that's the gist of it. >> I understand the need under today's current wonderful supply chain. But I'm just curious, this thing seems to have been an outstanding contract with the city for some period of time. And I'm reasonably new to the board, less than two years, so I'm not familiar with it. So could you give us just a little background about this? This is strictly a material supply contract? >> Is the contract itself? >> So we've had this contract for two years, and sorry, psych, three years. And the price has gone up, I think, 10%. Like once again, we have two orders coming in. We're trying to order in bulk off of this contract. And we're also going to be getting a new contract pretty much as soon as we can. Because once we order this, we're also going to be behind the eight ball again. So we're going to have to hurry up and get another contract as well. >> So will the new contract have to take into account longer lead times, higher prices, all of the above? >> Yes, sir. >> So there will be further price impact? >> Yes. This is -- with all the conferences and talking with other utilities, it's just -- I think it's going to get worse. The lead times are going to get longer, and the prices are going to go a lot higher. >> Sad, but understandable. >> Yes, sir. >> So again, this is strictly -- this is a material procurement contract. >> Yes, sir. >> We're just doing this right now in order to, shall we say, speed up or enhance our ability to get this equipment in the time frame we need it. >> If we didn't do the amendment, I'll be honest, there would be multiple projects that we would have to -- pretty much we'd be picking and choosing which ones to go forward with and which ones to not. That's why we're doing the amendment, just to try to buy some time for our next one for getting our new contract. >> And when will we be looking at this proposed new contract? Will it be later this year, next year? >> No, it's going to be this year. >> This year? >> Yes. >> Okay. Well, those are all the questions I had about it, the time frame, the dollar amount, the amendment. I would hope -- I wish that I could say that the lead times would get easier and that prices would go back to normal, but that's not the case. >> I think in the short term, it's unlikely. >> Exactly. >> So are you sort of stockpiling so that you would be sure that your projects can continue to go forward? >> We're trying to. We're trying to stockpile. Right now, we have certain sizes that are stockpiled. Certain sizes, not so much. And then kind of what I was hinting at at the very beginning of this is we are in the need of a lot of three-phase transformers. We made some orders that are going to stockpile our normal sizes. But then, you know, you can't just take into account for projects. There's a lot of outages, you know. >> Yeah. >> I mean, you guys feel how hot it is outside right now. That's when the transformers start to pop. So this is not just for projects. This is for maintenance as well. >> Thank you, Chair. Is there funding in place for this anticipated growth? Or are we looking at coming before city council, whatever, to get all three days for more funding? Is there funding in place for this now? >> There is funding in place. And are you asking if we're getting a new contract? >> Well, if we're anticipating trying to stockpile and anticipate costs and stuff like that, has that been factored into the funding that's there? >> Yes, sir. It is a factor, yes. >> We don't need to, in a crunch, go before the city council or any other board commission to -- >> Any procurement item that comes forward to you, we've already verified the funding to ensure that they have it either in a capital project account or in their operating account. We won't let anything come forward to you without having that funding already in place. >> Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, sir. >> Move to approve item A. >> Second. All in favor say aye. >> Aye. >> Opposed, same sign. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. That takes care of the -- >> Okay. Now we will go on to the items for individual consideration. Having had an opportunity to read the minutes, is there any discussion? Seeing none, I believe, Kim, do we take a vote on that or we can approve them as presented? Okay. Any motion to approve? >> Second. >> Second. All in favor say aye. >> Aye. >> Opposed, same sign. Thank you. And now we will go to the management reports. And Christine, I believe you're handing it. >> Yes, ma'am. So we have a couple items for you all this morning. The first one is from the procurement department. It's a memo for the rejection of a channel grinder provision. If there -- are there any questions on that one? We have Laurie from purchasing here. This one comes to you retroactively. So there are a couple conditions in which sometimes items need to go to council prior to PUB. So this one is an FYI that it did go to council and now it's coming before you retroactively. Yes, sir, Mr. Begg. >> We're just canceling this simply because the only contractor out there couldn't meet our budget bid and we're just canceling this completely and coming back at a later date to hopefully get somebody that will fall within our budget on purchasing this. >> I think Brian Burner is going to answer that question for you. >> Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. Brian Burner, Solid Waste Director with the City of Denton. This has been, for lack of a better term, a headache trying to acquire. We had talked about, you know, the issue with our supply chain, parts, finding qualified companies to actually build and install this unit. The funding for this actually came through some grant funding from the North Central Texas Council of Governments. And this was the bid that we got in for this project was almost 10 times what the grant funding was proposed on this. We felt that that was ludicrous. For lack of a better term, we feel that there are potentially other options out there. And we're going to take a little more time to identify something that's a lot more responsible to the grant and to the residents of City of Denton. >> So it doesn't put us in a bind not having it right now? >> No, this is for a pilot test project anyway, so we just keep kicking this can down the road for just a little bit longer before we install it. >> Got you. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> The next item on the management report is the same situation. It's an item that needed to go to council prior to PUB. This one was due to timing. And I'm not sure if there are any questions for this item. This is their outage insurance. Okay. On the future agenda items -- >> Christine, I have a question. >> I'm sorry. >> That's all right. Is this an ongoing thing, this outage insurance? >> That's correct. >> Okay. So this is a typical annual expenditure? >> Yes. And it does go through the procurement process. There's just a very short timing period in which we get the agreement and need to bind it. So typically we've had to get that through council approval, get the binding. And it just depends on if PUB is the day before. Likely in the future you'd be able to see it before. But I think the past two years we've had to bring it back retroactively due to the binding issue. >> Thank you. >> Sorry. Okay. So the next item is our future agenda items. And we've got on there -- so today you're going to hear budget presentations for several of the utilities. Then again on June 27th, finance will be bringing those forward. And on July 11th, you've got additional utility budgets. I apologize. I missed one. And then on June 27th, there was a request for -- to have a work session on the item of possibly moving public utility board meetings to once a month after the budget period. So procurement will kind of lead that item and bring it forward since they typically have the bulk of the items on the agenda. So we'll be ready to discuss that on June 27th. And our last item in the management report section, of course, is your new business action items. We still have the item on here for the electric -- electricity generated by the solar installations. I believe Tony touched base on that one. They are still working on that. And then the next one, as we discussed, will be on the agenda for June 27th, led by procurement to explore with you all on pushing public utility boards to meet once a month instead of twice. Any questions? All right. Thank you. All right. We will go on to the work session and -- Concluding items? Okay. Okay. All right. Then I need to read that correct. Any one have anything to contribute on concluding items? Okay. All right. Then we will convene into a work session and we'll be considering the following items. Receive a report. Hold a discussion and give direction regarding the customer service. Water, wastewater, drainage. Solid waste and environmental studies for the physical year of 2022-23. And preliminary budgets. And we will start with the agenda information. Nick, I believe you're going to take care of this. Yes, ma'am. I'll kick it off and then I'll turn it over to Stephen Gay to start the water presentation. So as Barbara said, I'm Nick Vince at the assistant director of finance for the city. We have four presentations for you today. Like she had said, customer service for any new public utility board members. Customer service comes forward to the board because the majority of their budget is funded by the utilities. Next, water, wastewater will be one presentation this year. We have solid waste and environmental services. Just wanted to let the board members know that this is a work session, so we encourage you to ask questions. If you have questions, definitely have plenty of staff here to address those. If it's something we can't address, we can definitely follow up with you in the future. So with that, I will turn it over to Stephen Gay. He'll present the information for water and the operational budget. Thank you, Nick, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the board. I'm Stephen Gay, the director of water utilities for the city of Denton. So let's get started here. This is going to be a department overview. So the utilities department was established in 1866. The department's divided up into four functional areas, water administration, water treatment, field operations, and asset management and infrastructure. The department treats surface water with our two raw water treatment facilities. We then deliver that water, the treated water, to our customers through a network of roughly 647 miles of distribution system piping. Then once the customers are finished using the water, it is delivered to our wastewater treatment facility through about 546 miles of collection system piping. We have 31 elevated storage tanks, and then once it reaches Pecan Creek wastewater reclamation facility, the water is treated to meet both state and federal standards and return to the environment. So Denton Water Utilities, we strive to provide our customers with exceptional water and wastewater services. And you may not realize this, but we're also the regional service provider for the cities of Argyle, Crum, Corinth, and Lake City. So we treat their waste as well over at Pecan Creek. This is a caption of our service area. Essentially, we have roughly 98 square miles within the city. We have an additional 140-some square miles in the ETJ for water, and 167 square miles for wastewater, which are CCNs. That's our Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. So that's where we're the service providers within that area when development occurs. This is a snapshot of our production. As you can see, the blue line -- oh, yes, sir? >> Just a quick question. So do those other municipalities pay a service fee, or how does that work in terms of our doing their work? >> Yes, sir. We have metering stations where they deliver their waste to us, and then we charge them based off of the strength of their waste and the volume of their waste. Does that answer your question, sir? >> It does. What percentage of your budget comes from that income stream? >> That's a good question, Nick. >> It's -- Nick Benson, again, very minimal, and I would say 1 to 2 percent comes from wholesale contract agreements. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. So this is our water production graph we're showing. The blue line shows you where we're at. That's our budgeted year. The red line is where we're at year today. As you can imagine with the weather, that red line is kind of -- is above the blue line right now. It hasn't been updated to our current flows right now, but we're seeing an increase in demands right now. And then we have our 2021 average there. This is -- this matrix shows you our production capability and where we're at with projected growth. If you look at that dashed line, if we weren't doing -- to do anything, you would see we would soon run out of capacity at our treatment facilities. We do have two major projects going on over at Ray Roberts, which will increase our capacity to make sure that we can keep track with growth. >> Are both of those projects underway now? >> They're in design right now. One is the Ray Roberts performance improvements is about 90 percent right now. And then we have a chemical project. So we're on track. We should be -- we should be coming to you within the next two to three months asking for authorization to award a contract for the construction piece of it. >> And is that that 26 -- that 6MGD increase there? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. So that is not yet approved, but it's planned for next year, it looks like? >> That's correct. It's in design right now. We're finishing the design, and then we'll bring those -- once we finish the design, we'll select a contractor, and then we'll bring that contract to you. And it's all been budgeted as well. It's part of the budget. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> So this is our wastewater volume forecast. Over time, again, you'll see that there needs to be some enhancement. Now, that project is currently underway. That is our pecan creek sept. It's a chemical enhancement improvement, which is going to add the additional capacity. We're working right now with TCEQ finalizing our permit. We have the design has been done, and we've awarded that contract. I believe about three months -- two months ago, we awarded it to Archer Weston for those improvements. So, again, we're keeping pace with growth. Here's some performance matrix with regards to the breaks per hundred miles of pipe. That's an industry standard. We look at 15 breaks per hundred miles of pipe is considered to be a well-run utility. You can see that we're below that mark right there. Same thing with our sewer chokes. So those -- we call them chokes. Those are essentially overflows, sanitary sewer overflows. And then our hydrant meter -- not hydrant meter, but our hydrant flushing program and our valve exercising program are lacking a bit. And you'll see in the budget where we've requested some additional resources to help us improve on those performance matrix. Yes, sir. So improving on those metrics, are the resources internal or external? They're internal. What we're asking for is we're essentially purchasing some vehicles that are equipped specifically for valve exercising. And they come with equipment to actually perform repairs out on site so we don't have to tag a valve as being out and then come back at a later date. So it really improves our efficiency. So we'll be able to pick up those numbers quickly. Thank you. These are the drainage matrix. As you can see, with regards to street sweeping, debris removal, those matrix are all in line with where we expect them to be. And then I think that's it for me with regards to the operational piece. If you guys -- if you have any more questions, I'll be here until Nick is finished. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. I will walk us through the rest of the presentation. As you can imagine, this is my favorite part of the presentation, the financials. So I'll walk you through it really quick. I think one thing I wanted to show you here was the leadership team in the water department. And these individuals do a great job and definitely are great partners of the finance departments. We appreciate their hard work. Here's an FTE summary for the department, so you can see for any new PV members that may not know, of course, we do everything by fiscal year. The fiscal year starts October 1st, goes to the end of September. So we do budget on a fiscal year basis, not a calendar year basis. So in 2022, which is the current budget, you can see we had 218 positions approved. 2023 in the preliminary budget that we're working on and talking to you about today, we have 223 positions. So we are requesting some new positions that are listed down here at the bottom. And we will talk about them a little bit more in a few slides. This is something we've shown for the last few fiscal years, presenting the budget, great, great work. I mean, really goes to a great sentiment to staff and the hard work they put into making this department and this fund efficient and really finding the efficiencies where they can. So you can see from fiscal year, excuse me, this is a typo here, this should be 13-14. But from fiscal year 14-15 to 16-17, you can see we had some pretty steady rate increases in the water utility. Starting in fiscal year 17-18 going forward, we have not had rate increases, actually some rate decreases. So great work of staff, but this is something we're definitely proud of. It's definitely something we're proud of. So what are the major assumptions of the water utility? And of course, we'll get in. Yes, yes, sir. What do you attribute the rate decreases to? So good question. So in fiscal year 18-19, when we looked at that 5% rate decrease, it was just the fund's health. We had a healthy fund balance that I'll review with you here in a second. And we deemed it necessary and got guidance from both PUB and City Council to reduce that rate that year. So we thought it was a positive thing for the community. I believe we had some increases in other areas. This helped offset that. Now in fiscal year 20-21, the 2%, if you recall, we actually had another rate increase or decrease, excuse me. It was very similar. It was just fund balance related. So very healthy fund balance in this fund. How did we get there? We can talk about that in a second. It's really a shift from debt funding to cash funding. The debt payment in this fund continues to decrease as to the very healthy fund. So we'll talk about that in just a second. One other thing I'll say that's not included on this table here, and I was looking for, in fiscal year 21-22, if you remember, we actually redid the water rate structure. So we introduced a new tier for residential water customers to help incentivize conservation. So that was actually a decrease, well, I say decrease. It actually kept most customers bill the same. There were a very small percentage, about 14%, that actually saw an increase. So hopefully that answers your question. But this is a healthy fund. We thought it was necessary at the time that we could give back to the community. Thank you. Financial assumptions for the water utility, of course, we don't have to review the rates. We've already talked about that. The forecast itself, so this is a volume-based forecast. We are actually an average growth forecast at 2% over 10 years. What you'll see today is a five-year pro forma, but I do want to point out that we do plan everything in a 10-year period. So we are looking forward and seeing what's coming forward to the community out there. You know, IE, for example, the Hunter Coal Ranch development is one of those things coming forward. We have a 2% to 3% increase in expenses and non-rate revenues. Of course, we know the inflationary rate is higher than that. So we have been conservative. Hopefully the 2% to 3% will be sufficient, but that's apparently what we're forecasting. The Hunter Coal Ranch accounted for in 2024. So we do see rooftops starting to pop up in 2024. Of course, it's not all at once. And they start coming in at 2024 and, you know, carry on for the next 20 to 30 years, however long the development takes. The plan expansion, I know Stephen had mentioned this earlier. So there is a 6MGD plan expansion that is currently underway or will be coming up pretty soon. And then we do have the lake expansion that's out there. So over the last couple of years, Barbara may remember anybody else that's been on the Public Utility Board for a few years. We've talked about the need to expand the Ray Roberts plant eventually. So that does start in 2024, doing that design for that facility. And I'll show you in the pro forma here in a second. So these are the revenues. We categorize the revenues in the water utility based on the different rate classifications. So, for example, you can see water sales for residential customers, commercial. You can see water for resale, some tapping fees, and just some miscellaneous income as you go down the page there. As a reminder, we are in fiscal year 2022, so this is the current fiscal year. This will end this coming September. We are estimating that water revenues will come in just slightly below what we budgeted. So we budgeted about $52.25 million in revenues. We're forecasting about $51.4 million. So people are using water, of course, this year. We've had some rainfall, but it's been pretty dry the last couple of weeks. So we're hoping we meet this mark. In fiscal year 2023, of course, a supplementary budget until the city manager's proposed budget comes out in August. We're currently forecasting about $62.2 million in revenue. So there is an increase here. I will say, you know, what is this increase attributed to? You know, one may ask, why are we jumping from $52 to $62? And the answer is, is we do have some cost participation coming into this utility from some textile projects. So we are pulling that money into this project and expensing it out for those appropriate projects. So it is making that number a little bit higher this coming year. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. Try to get this a little – in case I'm not loud enough. So fiscal year 2022, so the current fiscal year is here in this column also, $51.2 million in expenses. You can see how we group our expenses. Probably the largest category is the personnel and then the debt service you can see down here. We do have some capital outlay, capital outlay being revenue-funded projects in this utility. So in the current budget, we have 13.7 revenue-funded projects. Estimate for expenses, we are estimating about $50.3 million in expenses. Of course, we have a few categories that are coming in really close to budget, if not at budget, some of those being fuel expenses. Fuel expenses are up drastically, about 50 percent. So we are accounting for that in this budget. In 2023, you can see we have $62.4 million in expenses. This large increase, if you remember on the revenue side, was associated with those TxDOT contribution projects. We are accounting for the expense here. You can see $22.4 million in capital outlay expenses. That's to expense this money from the operating budget to a capital project. So it's just accounting for that expense authority. Just want to make sure I pointed that out. So this is the pro forma, and I know this is a lot of numbers, and hopefully this is pulling up where you can see it here. So I'm going to walk us through it really quick. Well, I say quick. I'm going to take my time, and as long as we need to, if you have any questions, please ask me. So in the 2022 budget, it's right here, we've already reviewed these numbers. You can see we have the $52.2 million in revenue. You can see that number right here. Moving now to expenses, you can see we have $51.2 million in expenses. So in net income, you can see the current revenue surplus and deficit. So the current adopted budget that we're in, we had about a million dollars in positive income. In the end of your estimate, we've already reviewed these numbers. We are estimating to come in about 1.1, so a little bit better, not drastically better or worse, but about on budget. And then 2023, the preliminary budget here, you can see we've got that cost participation that we've already talked about. We've got some impact fee funding coming into this fund, so about $6.6 million. So as we see that new development come into the community and they pay the appropriate impact fee, it helps us cash fund some projects. So I think that's something important and definitely has contributed to the health of this fund. So I just want to make sure I pointed that out. On the expenditure side, you can see down here about $62.4 million in expenses. And then we're basically planning to use about $207,000 in reserves. So basically a break-even budget moving forward this year. Moving down the page a little bit more to Mr. Ryback's question, I want to make sure I answer this, or actually Mr. Beck's question maybe. But you can see the rate increase is 0%. What has contributed to those rate decreases in the last few fiscal years? The fund balance. So you can see we have an ending fund balance, right, in case of an emergency in this fund, about $24.5 million. What is our targets for the water utility, right? What has been talked about with the Public Utility Board over the years? And actually last year we revised that policy. The minimum is 18.5 and the max being 27.8. So you can see we're well above halfway to that target. So we're well within the range, actually towards the higher end of it. And then going out in the future years, you can see we stay within that range. So like I said, this fund is healthy. We've done a great job. The department has done a great job looking at projects. What can we cash fund? How do we utilize impact fee funding to revenue fund projects instead of issue debt? So this is really a good fund and something for all of us to be proud of. This is the capital plan. So, of course, this is a summary. One thing I will say this year, just I know Danielle's here, the interim budget manager. She presented last time. You may remember her. Her and her staff have put together a capital budget this year. We actually have a thick capital book now. So we're very proud of it. Engineering pitched in. Everybody pitched into it. So it's a great document, right? It will provide additional detail to you regarding these capital projects. But today, we're going to give you an overview of the funding for each one of these projects and hit some of the high level projects. But once you get that book, you'll get a copy for the utilities. You'll have that detail. So there's $56.1 million in projects that the department is proposing this year. You can see how those break out from the different debt funding or revenue funding. So you can see debt about $33.8, revenue about $12.2. We have the aid in construction coming from that TechStop project that we talked about. Actually, it may be two projects, I believe. Impact fee funding, you can see that here, about $3.5 million. I anticipated this upcoming year. And then vehicle replacement of $359,000. And then this just breaks it out by different unit. You can see the production department within water. Water has different departments. This breaks it out by department. You can see distribution and metering and laboratories, of course. So I won't go through all of these with you here, but just to hit some of the high level projects here. You know, talking about the capital budget earlier and putting that together, one thing the staff has done this year and did a great job of is looking across the city and making sure that these projects make sense. Making sure that they line up with the projects that engineering may have. You know, we're reconstructing a new street. Are we accounting for the water/wastewater line? So that has been done here. You can see some projects that support the 2019 bond election that was approved by voters. About $8.7 million. And you can see some other projects. You can see the capacity re-rates and performance upgrades. And you can move down the page here. You can see that TechStop project that I talked about a little bit, about $4 million. Here's another one down here for $2.2 million. So definitely making use of those outside resources. And if I go too fast, just let me know. I'm happy to slow down or answer any questions you may have. So now we're going to move into the change request. So each year during the budgeting process, the Finance Department asks departments to submit any change request to a baseline budget as a baseline adjustment or supplemental package. A baseline adjustment may be something, for example, as, you know, needing to increase the production power budget, the trash service budget. Supplemental package could be a new position that we talked about earlier. And we'll look at those in just a second. It could be a new initiative that the department's wanting to do. And we just, for transparency and to be clear with everybody, we separate them out just to be transparent. So baseline adjustments are $147,000. You can see those listed out here. Of course, Stephen can talk in detail to any of these that you may have questions on. Supplemental packages, just point out the positions really quick. You can see we have a plant asset management specialist there, one FTE. You can see we have, let's see here. We have some lead and copper rules outreach. We have some valve trucks. I know Stephen had mentioned that earlier about servicing those valves and so forth. Those are accounted for recycling education. And at the very bottom, we do have a compensation study. So you may be, Mr. Ibeck, you have a question? Yes, the first line item, various. Yes. What is that? So great question. So this year, the city received, or the finance department received, various pay adjustment requests from the departments. So in the city, right, when a department has a position, they want to modify the pay for that position or change it, they submit a request to the finance department and to the human resources department. What we did this year is we combined them all, right? We received $150,000. I think Stephen probably can talk to some reorganization stuff if you got questions about it. But that's a large part of this, right? And what we've done is we've taken them, put them forward here to you to be considered with next year's budget. But I will say in addition to that, and what I was going to get to at the bottom, the compensation study, is one thing the human resources department is doing in the city is we're actually engaging with a consultant to complete a compensation study, right? Looking at the market. What does it cost to retain employees? What should we be paying? Does the city's pay plan make sense? So that's something the city's currently looking at. We just wanted to make sure we accounted for it appropriately in the financials in case they come back with a recommendation to increase pay. Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. So I also have a question. Yes, sir? The valve trucks are listed as one time where the inspection truck is listed as a vehicle. Are the valve trucks not going to be on a replacement plan? Oh, actually that's a great question. I think this may have to do with vehicle replacement. I'm not sure. I think it's vehicle replacement funding. Cassie and she's nodding her head. But I think the four-by-four inspection truck, if you're questioning the $40,000, is probably coming from our vehicle replacement fund. So we do have a fund within this fund, right, that we buy vehicles from. A lot of times those happen to be light-duty vehicles because that fund can only sustain so much. Usually when you get to those larger valve trucks, they cost more. So, for example, and this one is $500,000. So we're just going to revenue fund that from this fund instead of taking the vehicle replacement. So does that answer your question? Yeah, so basically light vehicles come out of the vehicles fund. Yes, sir. And special equipment comes out of it. That's correct, yeah. And you'll see that across the utilities and solid waste especially. We try to buy the collection vehicles and stuff out of the vehicle replacement fund. But when you get in some of those dozers and compactors and they cost a million dollars, it's just kind of hard to do that out of that fund, yeah. Okay, and we'll get into wastewater. So does anybody have any questions on water or maybe move right into wastewater? Okay. So wastewater is a little definitely proud of this utility also as we are all of our utilities. But we do need to do some rate increases in wastewater in the coming years, not this year. The starting and fiscal year 2024, we will have to start looking at some rate increases for this utility. And I'll walk you through the different scenarios here in just a second. So very similar to water, right, consistent 2% growth over 10 years. We have that 2% to 3% increase in expenses. And then we have a plan expansion or plan addition. I think Stephen hit on a little bit included in the 10-year window. So looking at the capacity of the wastewater plant and needing to expand it. So I just wanted to make sure I pointed that out also. Revenues won't go through as much detail, but I wanted to point this out. Here's the current budget that we're in. So we had adopted revenues of $38.7 million. We have an interviewer estimate about $45 million. I do want to point out that large increase is from the cost participation. So very similar to water. We have a project that we received $8 million on to construct in the wastewater utility. If you have questions on that, of course, Stephen can answer them. But we are anticipating that. We've already received those funds. The preliminary budget for 2023, we're estimating about $55.3 million in revenue. About $12.6 or $12.7 million in cost participation. And then we do have some use of reserves. You can see there about $6.1 million. Our total resource is $61.4. And we'll look at the total reserve usage here in a second and put it in context with the fund balance. So we can kind of see how it impacts the fund. The expenses, you can see in 2022, we had expenses of $37.9 million in the different categories that they fit in. You can see the interviewer estimate about $37.5. And then 2023, about $61.4. This large increase, which is almost double, is mostly contributed to that capital outlay or those cost participation projects that we're accounting for this coming year. So a lot of projects, a lot of them associated with TxDOT. I'm sure you drive down 35 and you've seen the fences and stuff moving. So getting ready for some of those projects. This is the five-year forecast for wastewater. So very similar to water. We do do a 10-year forecast for wastewater. We did, or for space purposes, really showed you the five-year here. Just maybe make the numbers a little bit bigger. But let me walk you through it. So in 2022, you can see the adopted budget that you approved or recommended approval last year. And council approved about $38.7 million in revenues. Expenses about $37.9. Positive income about $741,000. We are estimating the end of this year we'll have about $45.8 million. That does include that $8 million in that contribution from that -- I think in this case it was a developer. So about $45.9. And then you can see expenses about $37.5. So finishing year about $8.3 million. This is going to go to the fund balance for this year. We are anticipating, though, to pull it out next year as we construct that project. So we're going to put it into our fund balance, save it for a year, and use it next year for that project. So I wanted to make sure I pointed that out when you saw that large number on the bottom line. The preliminary 2023 budget, you can see total revenue of $55.4 million. That plain use reserves of $6.1 million. You can see expenses of $61.4. This large increase, of course, being associated with that outside contribution that we talked about. You move down the page a little bit. This is a very important thing in this fund. You can see the ending fund balance about $17.7 million. The targets are down here. So in this fund, it's the minimum of $11.2 and the maximum of $15.7. And you can see we're actually above the maximum target for now. And then when we go out into the future years, you can see we maintain at least within or a little bit above that target. But you can see those rate increases start popping up in fiscal year 2024. So currently forecasting at 3% in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Now, one thing I will say is that we're only adopting the 2023 budget here. So if we can get into this year, we get into this next year, and we perform really well in revenues, we don't hit all of our expenses, we have some cost savings, we look at those projects and push some things out, we can reevaluate this next year. But we just want to be open and transparent with you that we do foresee some coming up if we can continue to trend like we're trending. Does anybody, I know I went through this fairly quickly, does anybody have any questions on wastewater? So no increases this year, but we are forecasting some in the future years. Okay. Drainage, so drainage is a component of the wastewater budget. So what you just saw includes drainage, and we have Ethan here, of course, if you have any questions regarding the drainage fund or any of the street sweepers that you heard about. But you can see in 2022 about $5.6 million in those revenues coming in, so from impervious surface fees, $5.6 million in expenses, any of your estimate about $6 million, and of course, $6 million. So this is a balanced budget, right? We balanced this budget because it rolls up into a wastewater. They can use their resources to do channel rehab maintenance, to maintain those drainage channels, very similar to what you see out here, out this window. So they do a great job at that. 2024, about $6.4 million in revenue, about $6.4 million in expenses, and we maintain a $1 million fund balance in this fund in case something happens. So just in case something happens to drainage. Capital plan, very similar. They have a little bit more capital need this coming year than water, about $71.7 million. You can see how much of that is debt funded, how much is revenue funded. Aid in construction is about $20.6, so a lot of contributions coming up this year. We have some impact fee funding. We'll say there's not quite as much impact fee funding budgeted for in wastewater. The main reason for that is timing. So every five years, the city completes an impact fee study. That study tells us which growth-related projects are eligible in the city for this type of funding. So just not as many eligible coming up this next year, but we do look at that every single year. And then major capital projects, so this summarizes $64.5 million of the $71.7 million that I mentioned. And you will get detail on the entire amount when that book comes out. But you can see some of the major ones here being that Milam Creek. I believe Stephen may have mentioned that one. Solid's handling improvement. You can see a $12.1 million. We have some Elm Street sewer line replacement. And then here's that bond election. So looking across the city, making sure that we're accounting for the funding and the various funds to support that bond program. And this gets into the change request for wastewater. So baseline adjustments, this includes both wastewater and drainage, keep in mind. So about $331,000 in baseline adjustments. Most of that is attributed with a chemical contract increase. And then we have some mowing increases in that contract. Yes, sir. My apologies, but on the previous page, there was an item, annual field service replacements. I don't know if you could just tell us what that is. So, and Stephen, do you want to speak to it, Stephen? Do you probably speak to it better or not? Let me let him speak to it really quick. Stephen Gay, Director of Water Utilities. Yes, Mr. Ryback, the field replacement program is what we do is when we inspect the collection system. We evaluate its condition and then we determine if there's some projects that we can do in-house with our crews. And that's what that project is, is our in-house field replacement. Thank you. You're very welcome, sir. Thank you. All right. Let me see here. Any more questions, Mr. Ryback? You were good? Okay. Okay, no problem. Just wave or stand up and you'll get my attention. So supplemental requests, so in wastewater and drainage, we have a total of about $1.1 million in supplemental requests. You can see we have four positions, so a few more positions in this fund than water. We have a water reclamation tech. You can see a drainage manager down there and you can see a street sweeper operator or some of the things. And, of course, we have the compensation study accounted for in case they come back with a recommendation increase, pay adjustments or stuff. And then next steps, so electric is not being presented to you today. I meant to say this earlier, but I didn't. Electric's operating budget will come back to you at the next meeting. So towards the end of June, we'll have that back in front of you. We'll follow up with you, the rest of the utilities also. And then when we get into July, we'll start having rate discussions. Even though there is no rate increases in the water utility or wastewater, there are still some contractual rates that we look at every year. And some of those are based on some CPI adjusters and so forth. So we bring those forward to you and seek your approval each year. So I just want to make sure I said that. And then, of course, city council, this budget will go forward to city council in July. Then we have the budget workshop coming up, city manager's budget workshop in August. Then ultimately it will be adopted in September 27th. That concludes water/wastewater. So the next presentation, we originally were going to do customer service first. I think we'll go to it next. That's OK, Barbara, if no one has any more questions on water/wastewater. OK, I will pull it up and invite Krista Foster, the customer service manager, up to go over their operational information. Good morning, board. Krista Foster, customer service manager. And I will get us started on the customer service budget. We're going to start with our organizational chart and just a little bit about what customer service is. Customer service is made up of three primary divisions. One division handles all of our billing for the utilities and for a lot of the non-utility revenues that come from other city departments. We have our collections and cash operations to help make sure that we are collecting those billed revenues. And then we have our customer service function, which is our public facing group that interacts with the public, assists with their accounts, questions they may have with payments, those types of things. So just to give you an idea of where we are and kind of what we've been seeing over the last few years, I have some of the highlights. You'll see that our account, total number of utility accounts has gone up by 12 percent over the last four years. We've seen a steady annual decrease in the percentage of our customers who are wanting to actually come and do their business in person in lieu of doing things either by telephone or through self-service. And you'll notice that our call volumes have gone up significantly over the last four years. And when I was looking at our performance from October to April, we're actually trending toward 275,000 calls over this fiscal year. So those call volumes don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. So the three stats that I am always most proud of with our contact center, our first contact resolution are very satisfied and are very dissatisfied customer rates. What you'll see in the listing underneath each of those metrics is the benchmark standard for all call centers for the utility sector, public and private. And then in the columns, you'll actually see where our performance is against the industry. I like to capitalize on these numbers because these are customer reported numbers. They are collected at the end of contacts through a three question survey. So we get about 10 percent of our customers responding to that, which is a good statistical, you know, number to say we have a viable results. And then our e-bill adoption rate, which is continuing to go up since we have made the switch from invoice cloud or from payment is to invoice cloud in February. We've already seen our e-bill adoption rate jump from about 25 percent where it had been holding steady to nearing the 30 percent mark at this point. So we're hopeful that we will continue to see that help us control some of those bill print costs. Changes over time as we look through this from 2010 to where we are today, you can see that we've seen a 34 percent increase in the total number of accounts. Internal work that we do for other city divisions where we help bill for, say, an ambulance bill or things that maybe the engineering department needs. Those things have gone up 800 percent the amount of time that we're doing some of those one off billing functions for other groups. Work orders that are bill related that have to be touched in order to make sure that bills are produced accurately have gone up almost 100 percent. We've seen a 72 percent increase in just new businesses and new residences that have to be programmed into the billing system and now bills being created for these locations. And we've seen a 71 percent increase in our billed revenue citywide over that same period of time. The one thing that has not changed from 2010 to current is our dedicated billing staff. So as you can see in 2010 2015 we've had seven dedicated billers for doing those cycle bills and those miscellaneous bills. Twenty twenty one we had increased one. We moved a greatly needed resource from the call center to a critically needed resource in our billing department. So you've seen that that change has been about 14 percent in over 10 years. So we're also talk just a moment about some of our priorities. As you can see our call volumes are continuing to go up. Our account numbers are still going up. One of the top priorities we have is to implement technologies so that we can better meet the expectations that customer has. Customers have for self-service and for managing their accounts while we improve service to our customers. They may not have a choice of their utility provider but we still need to compete with the choices they may have had elsewhere. We need to be competitive. We want to increase our abilities for self-service options so that customers can get better control of their own resources. We want to implement strategies to help manage the significant account growth that we've already been seeing but that we anticipate seeing over the next 10 to 15 years. And we want to empower our customers with better information and more information about their accounts so that they feel like they're partners with us and not subject to having to work with us. And then just a summary of our FTEs. In our 2020-2021 we had 43 FTEs. Our estimate for this year was 51. Right now we're actually at 48. And for next year we will be requesting a few additional FTEs so our preliminary for next year would be 55. And then with this I will turn that back over to Nick. Certainly I am so sorry. That's all right. Just out of curiosity the customer calls. Are they a combination of billing questions and problems with their service? You know that's actually a fantastic question. It is a mix. It could be a billing related question. It could be a problem with their service. It could be questions about how to conserve their utilities and get a better control of their bills or to get assistance. But we also take calls for Dino Dirt. We also take calls for the main operator line at City Hall. So those come through. So it also includes some of those calls. As we move into the next year we are in the process of implementing a new customer relationship management software. And as that software goes live we will actually be implementing a more of a 311 type strategy so that we will be taking calls for a lot of those infrastructure groups. So if there's a pothole or a problem with a water line a potential main break all of those calls will be coming as well. So just the numbers you see don't only represent a utility call. About 20 percent of those are actually going to be calls for service for solid waste. Maybe they need to schedule a bulk pickup. You know maybe they have some construction debris. Those types of calls are also factored into that. What would you say is the percentage of billing problem calls? Right now it's going to be a little difficult for me to tell. I will make a note and see if I can come back with that information. Until we get that customer relationship software it's a little hard to get those classifications just yet at that level. But I can get you an idea of that. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to comment while you're here and I'm thinking about it. I've had reason to call and I've received very good service. So thank you. I am very glad to hear that. That is my favorite kind of feedback. But I certainly welcome if you've had less than that please do also reach out because we will take care of those problems. I do have also a few more questions. So I love the statistics and you know the growth is obvious. You know we've had tremendous growth in number of accounts and obviously number of calls and so forth. Does the engaged into an app is that under this department or is that a separate. So currently the way engaged in works is when something comes into engaged in it's reviewed and then filtered to the appropriate department. Certainly many of those requests do come to our division. And then we handle them and each of the departments handles their own. As we move into that customer relationship management software it will ultimately replace engaged in and it will have a customer facing app. And that software will actually interact with each of the individual departments work order systems so that instead of coming down and someone reading through it and filtering it out it will interact directly with those divisions so that they get better into and service. But currently we don't we get a large number of the engaged in but not all of them. Yeah I was I don't know if it's possible to see those statistics or we might have to wait until this year. I was going to say once we get the CRM in place you will see much more robust statistics in terms of the types of contacts and where those things are coming in for. Thank you. Of course. Anyone else. Okay. So I'll walk you through the financials really quick. So as I mentioned earlier the majority are actually 70 80 90 percent of the funding for customer service comes in the utilities hence why it comes forward to you each year. So in twenty twenty two we had seven point four million being allocated out as an expense for these departments but a revenue for customer service. So you can see General Fund pays about three hundred and nineteen in the current budget with the largest person being DME for the majority of those phone calls going out in twenty twenty three. So the current budget that we're in you can see the allocation that each of these departments will pay customer service for the great work that they do. So you can see General Fund is a little portion DME then you can see water and of course solid waste has a portion also about eight point one million in resources. Those are those based just on a simple percent of revenue or number of calls or how does it revenue. So so great question. So right now it is a simple percentage with the city did last year. Actually we got a consultant to update cost allocation models for us for our internal service funds in the General Fund. So we do look at metrics. So you saw the metrics earlier in the presentation about call volumes and different things that Kristin her staff are doing. We take all that in consideration and doing these allocations. So hopefully answers your question right now. It's somewhat of a placeholder. We get the model completed at the end of this month. We'll have these refined but these are definitely close and that would be something like solid waste was 40 percent of the calls last year. So they're 40 percent of the allocation this year. Next year they're 38 percent. So exactly just kind of it kind of it kind of lags a year right. Because this year 2023 is allocation will be based on twenty twenty two information just because there's a lag period. But you ought to answer your question is exactly how we do it. So if you were tech services for example it would be based on the number of PCs that your department has. Maybe the number of telephones that you have. How many times do you call them for tech support. It's all those different allocation methodologies. Yep yep expenses so you can see personnel be in the biggest category here in the preliminary budget about three point nine million operations being the next biggest of one point eight million. And then transfers these are cost allocation transfers going to different departments so they fund a portion of the you know human resources finance city manager's office and so forth. So we do account for those for full cost accounting. So eight point one million expenses. And then baseline adjustments so not very many just a couple about thirty seven thousand two hundred dollars. So some postage increases and then we have some bill printing and processing increases that we need to account for this coming year. And those are reoccurring as be accounted for in each year going forward. And I believe Christo wants to present the supplemental packages. Krista Foster customer service manager customer service does have three supplemental packages that we're bringing forward this year. The first I kind of addressed as we looked at some of our metrics and that is the need for some additional billing staff. This is going to be absolutely critical for us to account for some of the growth that we've seen over the last 10 years. And it's going to help us to stabilize our operation to improve service over the years. We had continued to just rely on tenured staff to say they're great at what they do. We're just going to give them a little more and a little more and a little more until we've now created positions that are more than one person's job. When we had two of our employees retire last year it was very scary. So we need to address that. The next thing that I wanted to bring up is we're looking at creating a key accounts concierge desk in the event you aren't familiar with what our key accounts are. Our key accounts are those very large industrial customers and those very large business customers that if you look in the right hand corner at the bottom of all utility accounts they make up 1.38 percent of all of our utility accounts. They make up less than a half a percent of unique utility customers but they make up nearly 34 percent of our total revenues. The billing for these accounts can be very complicated. There are 80 different rates that apply within these 1,000 bills. So just regular spot checks of these accounts is not sufficient to ensure the level of quality that we need to ensure. And we don't have the availability to be able to meet with these customers on a routine and regular basis to help them understand their accounts discuss any billing concerns or take care of them in the manner in which we would expect that they should be taken care of. So we have requested some additional staff to create a key account concierge desk that would serve as that single point of contact. So if they need to speak to the key accounts specialist in DME they can make that contact. Or if they need a different utility or they have billing questions somewhere in the middle of the month there's someone who can take care of those problems for them. Additionally we would guarantee with this staff 10 percent audit monthly of all key accounts bills and we would do a quarterly meeting with each of our key accounts customers every year to make sure that they can have a chance to sit down and talk about where things have been where they're going concerns they may have to help them better understand their accounts. And then the last thing that we have is a supplemental request on modernization and redesign of our bill. We know that the industry has standards. Our bill hasn't changed in many many years and we want to be able to use some of those industry best practices to improve the level of communication that we have with our customers give them greater amounts of detail and reduce the need that they have to make a phone call to get questions answered. Let's make it as simple as possible for those customers. And so those are the supplemental that we will be presenting and I'll go ahead and turn it back over to you. I think that's actually it for customer service. I'm sorry. Oh OK. Let me let me do it really quick. So we get something on request. Yeah. So total what Krista just discussed with you for 2023 is four hundred and forty three thousand. You can see the positions called out. So a total of four FTES and these are already included in the expense numbers that you saw on the previous slides. So that's actually for customer service. If you have questions Mr. Beck. Yes sir. Oh great question. I should have I spelled that out here full time equivalent. So these are employees that we anticipate working full time. So again. Thank you. Are these people that you're looking at hiring them to increase their staff or is that what you got now. Because I am curious you're saying that you're meeting staff and that's fine. I didn't hear a number. Yeah that is the actual number we would be looking at adding to our staff is we're requesting to add to billing positions. One bill or one which helps with some of those routine cycle billing type things that happen each month and one bill or two who does more of the specialized functions that require more individual touch than for the key accounts desk. We currently have one key accounts biller who functions for seven days a month solely dedicated to billing those key accounts. But the rest of the month they're part of that seven billing staff that we have to try to keep everything afloat. So in order to meet with you know that hundred customers representing a thousand accounts doing the research doing the independent audits we would need to add an additional two key account staff so that they would all fully focus their time on caring for that important customer base. And then the billing redesign is just a thousand hundred thousand one time. So the total number of staff you need to meet your needs is four. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions. Yes, did the two, the two that retired. Did you replace them. We were able to replace them. And we've been shuffling a lot of staff to try to make sure that we can take care of those extra responsibilities. In the interim, my billing supervisor spends probably 20 to 25% of her time doing frontline billing activities to help make sure that we can get all those bills out as they have to go. But yes, we have replaced both of the staff members. They just don't have 20 years experience. Understood. Anything else. Right. We're going to pull up solid waste next and Brian will come and present the solid waste operational information. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Brian burner I'm solid waste director with the city and I do appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today about our proposed budget for the next fiscal year. About solid waste and recycling as we move forward. This department is the exclusive provider of solid waste and programmatic residential recycling services in the city of Denton, we also are the exclusive provider of commercial waste services. Recycling in the commercial sector is open market. So, but it is not required so if you are at a multifamily business, if you have a commercial opportunity, you're not required to recycle but you can either go through the city of Denton, or contract from third party provider. That being said, we do have a very large suite of services that we do provide from the landfill where it's more than just disposal we partner with our wastewater, water and wastewater groups to promote that the downer dirt program. Trash cycling drop off home chemical drop off electronics drop offs residential we're picking up garbage recycling organics bulk waste hazardous waste. So again, there's really relatively little at your house that we won't manage. And then from a commercial multifamily sector, trash recycling organics again bulk. We have our valet program in our downtown for our street area. And then we are also we are operate roll off and construction demolition services collection in the city of Denton. We have a few metrics here to start off with if we look at our residential growth over the past few years. You'll note that we had a little bit of a dip in the first two years we attribute this to coven, but our estimated. We anticipate ending this year at about 38,000 residential units that will be servicing on a weekly basis in the city of Denton that we anticipate with growth into next year will be 39,000 or 330. If we look at all the service stops that we do from a residential standpoint in a year, we have a little over 4 million touches at the residential level. So again, I want to take an opportunity to say thank you to all the drivers, the operators, crew leaders, supervisors that help make sure and maintain this level of service. You'll notice at the bottom. And again, thanks to customer service for helping us here but you know we're well over 99.5% successful in this service provision I think we're actually higher. One of the reasons we need this 311 system is so we can get a little bit better metric to dial in on that. But again, you know a lot of these calls in our educational calls. They're not because you missed my service and with our new Rubicon system. We do a whole lot better in identifying where the service misses were made. We go to our commercial multifamily sector again you'll see a little bit of a dip in our commercial sector due to coven, but since we've come out of coven we've continued to grow drastically. Currently we have about almost 3,300 individual customers that we service. Now that's either once a week, it could be six times a week, it could be with a three yard box, it could be with an eight yard box, it could be with a 40 yard compactor. But again, if you look at the growth in this area, not only are we anticipating growing to almost 3,400 customers into the next year, we anticipate our tonnage from each of these customers growing to almost 40,000 cubic yards of material that will be billing for. And when we again we apply this to service stops, because again some one that one time a week some six times a week it's almost 300,000 service stops that we do in this site same time period annually. And then finally, what's Brian before you move on my apologies. So what do you attribute the growth in the commercial side. Well, since we've we've come out out of out of coven, a lot of people are, you know, wanting to to relocate here to Denton to provide. So, you know, we're going to have a lot of construction going in. So a lot of a lot of this growth will probably be attributable to the multifamily. Okay, so again when we go to the landfill again, you may remember from the other two graphs, we had this little dip in coven were volume sort of drop here, you'll see the exact opposite here in in the landfill transactions. People were staying at home. They didn't have anything better to do so it appeared they cleaned out their garage, and they came to the landfill in droves. So when you look at that just our customer count it continues to grow, not only because North Tech Denton in North Texas is a rapidly growing area. But, you know, here within the last year, the DFW landfill in Louisville has closed is not accepting public customers Camelot landfill again is gating the number of people it will take in trash has got to go somewhere so fortunately or unfortunately depending on which side of the coin you're looking at we are the recipients. We do anticipate again increase in the number of single transactions that do come across the scale. But again with this last year. We're seeing close to 500 transaction today on average our peak days are close to 650 transaction a day. The tonnage that we estimate receiving at the end by the end of this year is for 480,000 tons so almost a half million tons of material into the city of Denton landfill. As a result of the material that's being being collected and delivered. One of the exciting things that we're going to be integrating in the, in the next few years is our comprehensive solid waste management strategy over the past 18 months we had opportunity to come before you talking about the strategy was actually finalized or is actually completed in May of this year, and we will be bringing forward the actual documents to accept it formally into the city here over over the next month. But again, it is a Denton centric strategy to minimize disposal and maximize material diversion in the city of Denton and across North Texas. You'll notice that we have some fairly aggressive goals of, you know, diversion goals we want to be at diverting at least 30% by 2030 40% by 2040, and then aspirationally, looking at 75% diversion by 2075 and to do this. We're not only going to have to look at what we put out curbside but also these non programmatic things such as textiles, large metals, just things that don't normally go into blue bin looking at organics. All the different things that make up our garbage stream to do this what we'll be doing over the next fiscal year is actually creating administrative control so first and foremost, updating our chapter 24 which is in the code of ordinances is really what drives and define what the solid waste recycling department do within the city of Denton and one of the big things is a comprehensive diversion ordinance, you may remember I talked that currently commercial and multifamily aren't required to do recycling, what we want to be able to do is not require them to do recycling, but to require them to maximize diversion. If we required everybody do recycling with the city of Denton companies like Peter built Tetra pack some of these large, I mean, they have zero waste facilities right now. And when you look at Peter built, they're not throwing away plastic cups, they're not throwing away water bottles, what are they having to recycle. That's part of what this diversionary you know what do you have, how do you maximize that diversion, we're going to be looking at applying for grants and funding, enhancing education and outreach, looking at pilot studies and again creating partnerships with our school districts universities county municipal government this regional piece. Everybody that's bringing material into the city of Denton landfill, working cooperatively to reduce that material maximizing the diversion that we have. And then 23 and and and beyond if I 23 and beyond what we're going to be doing is looking at programmatic improvements, those things that finding third party contractors to manage some of the C and D material that we're currently bringing in to beneficial reuse, can we take the lumber that's coming in and create new strand board out of it fuel pellets something of that nature asphalt shingles that we currently take in and throw away. There's got to be something that can be done with that so working with the third party to allow opportunities allow competitiveness in the open market to drive that that cost down but create resources and opportunities for the business and residential unit units to to partake in. And then, beyond that, in your 10 to 20 we're looking at potentially a creating a transfer and diversion station in Western Denton as we grow traffic is becoming more and more congested. We don't need our trucks sitting in congestion trying to get to the landfill. So again, creating a closer zone for them to take material to and then we'll haul it to the appropriate disposal diversion spot using much more efficient vehicles from there. You may remember, back in in March we talked about the metrics for solid waste and recycling directly related to our comprehensive solid waste management strategy, these are the metrics that we're going to be using to drive, whether this this strategy is a success or failure. And based on that building our, our, our budget around. Most importantly, if you look at the bottom to the city of Denton diversion rate. We anticipate being at the end of the year at about 27% with our goal of being 28% by next year. If we're looking at a comprehensive diversion rate everything that's coming into the landfill right now. We anticipate it right now that it's 8%, but if we are hoping that some programs that we're going to be putting in place will bring that up to 10% by the end of next fiscal year. We took a little bit of look a little bit at the department structure or FTE count or organization again we're fairly, we're a lot programmatically into two groups our Deputy Director which is Eugene McKinney, very talented gentleman is over our collections landfill basically that resident or that residential commercial multifamily service sector, as well as disposal, and then our assistant director Tammy Klausing, she's working to promote basically the administrative and selection or implementation of enforcement sector administrative keeping our way station running. I want it while coordinating our metrics. And then finally we have a safety officer working to keep us as safe as we possibly can, there's no other department in the city of Denton that drives as many miles and touches every household on a weekly monthly annual basis currently right now the solid waste industry is the six most dangerous industry in North America, you are more likely to be hurt or, or killed in a solid waste incident than you are as a police firefighter logger, something of that nature so again it's important for us to ensure that we're keeping our folks safe as possible. Just rather quick question. How many types and valet service for pickup do we currently have and what are your plans in that area. We currently have one type that's in the downtown and fry area, where we have the mini reloaders that go back in and service basically residential to businesses. We don't anticipate expanding that to to to any means, because that program was built to to address a shared container and congestion standpoint, other parts of the city they don't meet that criteria, we can get our trucks in there and, and it doesn't create the same issues that we were currently encountering downtown and frustrating. Okay. As we move forward with our summary currently we have 128 very talented professionals that work for the solid waste recycling group I'm proud of every single one of them. We want to increase that that FTE count by 35. Again, excuse me that by 35 but by seven over the over the next year, hopefully, a few more and disposal we want to have at least two heavy equipment operators to account for growth we're looking to put to add an additional commercial truck operator. We're also looking at taking our home chemical collection facility, regional operations so we're going to ask to add another field service worker to help manage the material there. And then finally, field auditors, we've been very successful with our part time interns going out and doing trash audits what we want to do is add at least one field auditor to go out and do that on a continual basis. Because of the increased traffic that we're seeing both at the scale house and at our home chemical collection facility, adding scale house operators to come in and be the first point of public contact to those folks. So, with that, before we go into the financials any questions about the operations department. Okay, a few questions. So, if you go back one slide to the FTE summary here. So public outreach was moved over to sustainability department. Correct. And several slides back you include trying to trying to increase diversion rates and reduce contamination rates and one of the things you have is is like a punishment method you get three strikes and you lose your trash bin, or your recycling bin, or something like that you know those are, I know those are ideas not necessarily complete. And, and I, I'm not really seeing anything on like an education fund anymore, where that was those three positions that used to be in solid waste were recycling transportation, and I want to, I'm trying to remember the numbers but it was something like 40 or 50,000 people in like 30,000 households were reached every two years I think was what it was. So, it was it was a, it was an education program that that reached half the households in Denton every two years, versus now we're looking at like an auditor, who's going to go out and check, you know, eight houses or four houses a day, or close to 300 houses a day. So they're, they're opening 300 recycling bins a day and looking in them. Yeah, with with our program and again you know we have driven contamination significantly down and again, you know, in the past year, as a result of just doing the, the open the cart and the flip and you know that really that what makes the hay is in part of that is the discussions that we have with with the customers, either directly at you know when they see us out there working or in the follow ups. Both and it's not an either or it's the, it is the education outreach and the very dynamic piece that we, you know that we've grown into with that, coupled with the auditing positions. So, you know, sort of sort of belts and suspenders, you know, public education outreach is significantly different than it was four or five years ago you know gone are the days where you have a truffle you stand at a table and you hand it out. You know now we're talking about mass marketing, we're talking about social media, we're talking about video we're talking about the outreach that we're doing in the schools currently we're rebuilding, you know our against sustainable schools program because again it basically had imploded on itself, based on on the programs that we had going back in going from a quality to a quantity type mindset. The schools, you have to admit have gotten lighter, you know, four years ago, didn't record Chronicle, what'd you get six days seven days a week and you got four sections and it was fairly fairly substantial. What do we have now, one day a week that may have eight pages if we're lucky. So again you know weights and how we go about managing that material and those diversions. And that's really what we have to look at is we're looking at our outreach is not only you know who are we reaching, but what, what impact we trying to make and what challenge are we trying to change. Well just having a little trouble with this, the auditor, who works 450 minutes a day, looks in 300 trash bins a day and talks to talks to customers in. So in between driving house to house. So they walk to 300 houses, spending 90 seconds, walking, looking, and then going to the door knocking on the door and talking to person inside. What they do is they tag the carts. A lot of times like I said, residents will come out if they see us operating and they'll will have will take that opportunity to help them clean out their cart physically teach them how to separate materials out what is programmatic what is not programmatic clear up any questions you want empower them basically to be the teacher on the street for lack of a better term. If they're not there we we provide significant outreach material, opportunities to actually call back we do return trips to make sure that that you know the carts that we cleaned and the residents, you know sort of got the message got the education if not we'll reach out again. But again it's it's it's it's like everything else it's location location location you basically have to touch a an area three times before you know you get that retention of that that that material. So again you know it's it's we have not cut any education, we you know we've moved it to a different area where it's still fully funded. But again we're having to do it just a little bit differently in the in the current light of way education is managed. Hi Cassie Ogden director of finance if I could just jump in on that. While you you will see the expense in this budget, as Brian mentioned they're still fully funding that education and outreach piece, but it's showing up in the sustainability budget so you'll see that in the next presentation so I did want to clear that up. Other questions. All right, Nick. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. So, financial assumptions are solid waste very similar to water wastewater, a little bit different on this one about 2.5 to 3.5% majority that is that outside ways that Brian was talking about a little bit different this fund revenue projections so we are including the wholesale agreements about 4.7 million. You may be familiar these are up for renewal, they'll be coming back I think for PV and Council's approval in the next 6060 days 30 days. Okay, or less okay, so they'll be coming up for your approval so if they're approved they'll stay in the financials if PV and City Council do not approve those agreements and of course we'll, we'll take them out and bring back a modified picture to you. Financial projections. So we are projecting 100% revenue funding of vehicle replacements in this coming fiscal year. I'll point that out to you shortly. We are seeing a 50% 53% increase in gas and oil. So, as you can imagine this fund is a huge user of oil products right or diesel and gasoline, probably one of the largest in the city so this is a huge impact to their budget. The revenues. These are the different categories within the solid waste funds so you can see residential for the current fiscal year 4.7 moving down the page you can see we group it by front silo containers. Some commercial recycling and of course that Lee and Phil gate traffic that Brian was talking about so in the current year we have about 39.8 million revenues, we are forecasting to come in really close to budget about 39.6 and then next year about 43.8. And we'll point out and we'll look at it the five year forecast very similar to wastewater. We are planning to use reserves in the coming fiscal year for solid waste about 4 million reserve usage, and we'll talk about that a little bit, a little bit later in a couple slides. Expenses so for the current fiscal year we have 37.2 million in expenses. We are forecasting to come in a little bit under budget this current fiscal year and of course we'll continue to monitor this in the coming months, about 35.9 or 36 million in expenses. We have a 23 preliminary budget about 43.8 and this 43.8 does include some supplemental packages that Brian had talked about a little bit with some new positions, and just a few based on adjustments and we'll talk about those a little bit more also. The forecast for the solid waste fund very similar actually this year, very proud of staff for this is the first year to have a 10 year forecast with solid waste funds so even though you're not seeing 10 years here you're just seeing five years we do have a 10 year document internally that we use also so this is a five year picture for the solid waste fund. So you can see the current fiscal year that we're currently in here in this column. We were forecasting about 2.7 million in positive revenue set number here into your estimate or a little bit more about 3.6 million to finish this year. So that leaves our fund balance if you go down here and it's a little bit different, that leaves our fund balance about 10.4 million. So that reserve targets being five to 6 million. So moving into 2023 and talking about the usage of reserves. And ones that we needed to fund for this coming year. So we did look at that reserve and we said hey the reserve is healthy right it's above that reserve target, we can revenue funds and projects this year coming up, and that's exactly what we're proposing to do. With the expenses you can see we are planning to fund 100% of vehicles about 3.7 million for collection vehicles. We do have some additional revenue funding here which is for that heavy equipment that I mentioned earlier, which could include compactors at the dozers, some of those high price pieces of equipment. You can see we have cell constructions, this is something new that we've introduced this year, the cell construction funding. What we're wanting to do is to build up the cash funding to pay for the next cell and cash and not issue debt for it. So when you see here in the current fiscal year we've got 1.5 budgeted, we've got another 1.5 and then we've got 3.4. So that would give us that money to construct that cell. Mr. Ryback I think you have a question. I do if I can get my mic to work. What is cell construction? What is the cell and why does it need to be constructed? We have one cell that hasn't been constructed yet, hasn't been lined, so that will be the beginning next year we'll start that process of saving money, starting the design, so that here in a couple of years we can build it and be ready when the current cell is full. Thank you, I just wasn't familiar with the term, I don't know if I missed it from earlier or not. We have a lot of jargon here, so we apologize if we weren't clear. Yeah it's funny talking about all the different terms, you're so familiar with it sometimes we forget to explain it, so yeah that's definitely what a cell is. So going back to the financials, so in fiscal year 2023 as I said we are planning to use about 4 million in reserves. Just wanted to let the PBB know we are cash funding a lot of projects this coming year, so you can be assured that's what it's being used for, but definitely wanted to point that out. So moving out into the future, looking at the five-year forecast for this fund, in 2023 we're projecting even though we're using 4 million in reserves, we would still be well within our reserve targets, about 6.4, so just above the minimum there of 6.1. In the future years we do dip below in a few years, if we continue to see that waste come into landfill, this could change of course, but in the fifth year we are back in that reserve target within that range, so this anticipates no increases to residential or commercial customers currently. So just wanted to point all that out, and then capital plans, so we do have about 23.2 million in capital plans planned for the solid waste fund coming up in 2023, debt funding about 16 million, and then revenue funding 3.5 and those vehicle replacements that I mentioned about 3.7. You can see how that breaks out into the different categories, administration, having 10.5 million of those projects, and then some of course in site operations and so forth. So capital plans here, this 23.2 million, you can see some of the major projects here, one of the big ones being the solid waste fleet facility, if you have questions on it, of course Brian can speak to it, but helping to create some efficiencies there with managing and maintenance and that equipment, so about 10.5 million for that project. The equipment purchases I mentioned earlier, which is that revenue, a little bit of debt funding of 3.2, and then vehicle replacements of 3.7. And then change requests, not many baseline adjustments, just some processing fees and travel and training that we're seeing increases in that we would like to add into the budget about 72,000, and that would be a reoccurring cost. Supplemental request, I know Brian talked about these a little bit, some new FTEs that are being requested, but you can see those full-time equivalent positions out here on the right hand side of the screen, seven positions, and you can see how they break out. So scale house operators, some field auditors that we've discussed, field service workers, the truck operators, and heavy equipment operators for the landfill facility. You see some different pieces of equipment down here also. And then next steps, won't go through these in detail, but just coming back to you in the next couple months to talk about the budgets, to get your feedback, and ultimately getting your approval in July. And that concludes Solid Waste. And I don't know who this is going to go to, but in lieu of the fact that we're looking at increasing costs for gas and oil for our vehicles, I didn't hear anything. Is there any discussion in the departments dealing with electric powered vehicles? And I realize, you know, we're looking at cost increases, but down the road, I'm thinking, you know, this is going to be saving money because I don't see fuel costs coming down. In fact, they're probably going to go up. I think the best we can hope for, and I agree with you, is we get some sort of stabilization so we're not seeing the spinning dollar over dollar over the few weeks that we have in the past. From an electrification standpoint, I think that we see some opportunities in our small and midsize fleet for implementation there. Currently though, the big rig type of equipment, that is well out. We were looking at a vehicle on Thursday, brand new electric vehicle. It had a range of 100 miles and it can pick up 225 households. Currently each of our trucks service between 1,000 and 1,200 a day. So if we buy six trucks to service what we're currently doing with one truck at probably four times the cost, then yeah, it makes sense. But, you know, battery technology and weight are going to have to make a tremendous strides. We want to be a test bed out there. We want to work with the designers. Because again, if we can provide the opportunity for electrification of the fleet significantly, especially on the heavy end, then I think that it's an opportunity. But right now to maintain the service level that we enjoy here at the City of Denton, we've got to keep doing what we can do to provide, to have a relatively new fleet with the highest level of mission controls on those vehicles as we possibly can. Okay, but the idea of electrification is something that's at least in the back of the minds of people that are going forward. Well, it's really in the front of our minds because we're actively talking with people, but we're doing that cost benefit analysis. We're not just saying, you know, waiting until we want to be on the, we want to be somewhere on that edge. We're not at the cutting edge, but again, we don't want to be at the trailing edge either. So nothing like the Back to the Future DeLorean vehicle that can throw you waste. I want the Mr. Fusion. You can put the garbage in and make the electricity. That's what I'm looking for. Thank you, Brian. Cassie Ogden, Director of Finance. Just a tag on to that conversation. Fleet will be as part of our CIP presentation to City Council. Fleet does have a plan for increasing our electric vehicles throughout the city. So we'll be presenting that presentation June 28th. All right. That's all of solid waste. I'll pull it down and we will talk about environmental services. Let me get it pulled up. I thought Michael up here to go through the operational information. Members of the board. I'm Michael Gagne, the Director of Environmental Services and Sustainability. Nice to meet you this morning. I'll be going over department overview, just to kind of keep it simple. One of the key things we do is we provide core services or core support for debt and water utilities through the laboratory services as well as our industrial pretreatment program. So we're a core part of what they do. We also manage our watershed protection group, which works across all departments to keep us in compliance with our stormwater permit. We also do our environmentally sensitive areas or our ESA program is managed through staff through our group. We do regulatory support for the landfill services we just heard about from Brian. We also do gas well inspections. So we inspections both in the city of Denton as well as in the ETJ for gas wells, and we also operate and maintain the West Nile mosquito abatement program. We also do all of the sustainability efforts, which includes our simply sustainable framework, our greenhouse gas reporting, our natural resources consumption, recycling auditing when it comes to multifamily and commercial, I mean in schools. Also, we do education outreach. And lastly, we provide environmental support across departments for things that they might not have the staff to do. So we actually work on things like due diligence if we're buying or selling property, we help on those couple things. Some key things just to remind you of you heard about a little bit with Stephen's presentation, but within our group are primarily focused within the city of Denton, but we also do things in the ETJ when it comes to ESA gas wells and some stormwater issues. And then within our industrial pretreatment program, we provide services to our four customer service customer cities, as well as within our laboratory, we provide water sampling analysis through a lot of other entities across the general area, just to make sure you're aware of that. Some of our key metrics, some things I'll point out on here is the recycling audits for schools and multifamily restarted, so it came online last fiscal year, so about a year ago, it's on track to do really well this year. We're still refining that as far as a goal and what we can reach, but we've set a target or a goal of 1500 per year. That includes going out and meeting with teachers meeting with property owners, tenants, whatever we can do within the multifamily get them to understand. The nice thing about touching both those groups, schools and multifamily, the same programmatic materials that they use come through our residential site as well. So you get a win win. You're teaching those students those teachers, those other entities how to manage and operate both at their workplace as well as at their home. One that might look a little odd on here, everything we're on track for the year to be on track by the end of the year, with the exception of gas well inspections. We lost our full time gas well inspector through the voluntary separation program back in 1920. We are on track to fill that during this fiscal year. We have a posting out or in recruitment. Hopefully we can get some interviews scheduled during this month to get that online and back on track. The other one that might look a little odd is if you see on the grease interceptor inspections which are kind of grease traps or grit traps. We had some complaint issues during fiscal year 1920 so we did an extra number of inspections trying to identify and find that source. That's why that number is actually higher than are projected. Sorry my voice is killing me this morning. Any questions on those metrics before I move on to the next page. So I'm curious, though, the recycling audit school and multifamily, so that is that is that the same type of program that solid waste does or it's very similar but we're, we're targeted within the school systems we provide services to so the areas that actually the city that was providing that recycling to you would go into those schools, work with the student population as well as the teachers, and then a multifamily, we have dedicated staff going out and meeting with those property owners property management companies to get those groups to understand the program, what can come into it, how that works, and to manage and help them understand just the general system within itself. But this is focused on auditing the contents of the trash. It is it is we actually get into those large dumpsters look through and help them understand a lot of these mixed sources here sometimes you have third party contractors doing custodial services say at schools, so you have to get with them as well so they understand the difference between the two dumpsters, because sometimes you inadvertently use the wrong dumpster for putting trash, which then contaminates that load. Same thing in multifamily some of them have contract services that pick up or valet picking up trash from the residents to put them in the dumpster, make sure they understand that as well. And so is this is this the education program in the schools for recycling, or is there also another education program in the schools. It's a combination this is just one of the metrics we track is the number of audits the number of touches we're doing out there, but within that program we do have activities we do programs within them work with the students the teachers so that's an interactive process it's not just the audits. I'm reading my concerns brought up with solid waste. I think the education component is probably more important than the audit component. So I would, I would love to see and I realized that it takes a while to track metrics. The number of classrooms, or number of students or number of interactions with citizens and residents on the education side, I think is probably a very important metric to track and to see how well it correlates with with contamination rates and so forth. Also, I did have another completely different topic question gas well inspections 1094 is that because that's the number of gas wells we have basically yes so that's a target goal to touch every gas well twice a year. So within our program we try to go to every well whether it be in the ETJ or the city of Denton, twice a year, some of the numbers go up, if we have to go back for revisits or if we have complaints or other issues going on. And it's changed a little since that number has been established, whether they're new wells or they've been plugged and abandoned. So again we might inspect a well twice, then it may get plugged in December, that would be actually a third touch for that same well during that one year. Are there, are there different rates of inspection during reworks and when when when a well is. Yes, if they're doing all different things we're supposed to be notified to be out there and that will drive that as well there haven't been as many reworks currently, we've gone down slightly. And then within the city of Denton. We also contacted a third party contractor who assists us in our inspections, and we do a tiered level, based on how close that gas well is to a sensitive receptor. So we have low, moderate and high priority wells. And what that does is it steps up the amount of data we're collecting while we're there and working with those operators to ensure they're meeting our requirements. So you, you have filled the gas well inspection have not filled the actual full time position we're in the current process of trying to set up interviews, but you've, I guess you performed some before they left, or we've been doing them on the whole time. We just been absorbing it through other staff and using our third party contractor so the third party contractor has been operating the entire time, doing the part that we contract with them in house we've been using multiple staff to backfill during that vacancy. MSW compliance reports. You don't mind me asking. Sorry, municipal solid waste. So anything we're doing for the landfill, whether it be weekly, monthly, quarterly reporting could be on the leachate system gas well, the well, the gas monitoring systems, as far as what's coming off those kind of things. So any touches we're doing on Brian's group's behalf. Yeah, we want to make sure they're done in a timely manner. Thank you. So then just to pull in a good metric out of the simply sustainable framework. One of the key things we're trying to do is reduce our energy demand across the city. So what you'll see here on this graphic is kind of the baseline years 2019 that was our higher year. And that's the new baseline under the state rules that we then go back and compare against, but our goal is to reduce on an annual basis within the simply sustainable framework we've seen that we saw a good dip in energy consumption or electric consumption in 2020, most likely due to coded for facilities not being used as much. We saw a slight uptick during 2021 thus far. And that's probably due to the fact that we're back in the office and doing different things. So again, our goal is to reduce it you can see the trend is we're going down. We're also meeting under Texas Health and Safety Code chapter 388 has local governments that are in non attainment areas so we're in non attainment for ozone, we're supposed to establish a goal of reducing our energy consumption or electric consumption 5% annually compared against 2019. So we met that clearly for 2020 2021 we got close we didn't quite get there. These are raw numbers as they're reported, it does not take into account, whether naturalization. If you're bringing on new facilities if you have any growth. None of that's accounted for here that's all done on the backside after we report it. They want us to upfront try to look at the raw number and see if we can meet that reduction. Our department structure, just wanted to point out a few key things that are a little odd. You've heard about all the positions, whether it was during Stevens presentation on debt and water utilities, or Brian's presentation for solid waste. On the other side, are actually housed and funded out of solid waste. So our landfill compliance group, instead of creating them out and try to pull them out into a different HBU, they stay housed and function within solid waste, all the other blue members were touched on within the HB us within our group. These are the one thing you'll see it looks like we're having an increase for next year. That's not an increase it's actually a realignment. We're taking the director position my position, as well as the assistant director position out of the water admin HBU, move it into the sustainability HBU at this point, so that we actually can align and look at environmental services as a total cost within our assigned cost areas. So that's the main shift. We're also looking within our supplemental request. We're looking to take two part time positions and convert them to one full time position, because the part time staff are very helpful to do a lot of great work, but it also makes it difficult on a day to day basis to meet the demands. So as a key to go over a full time. Any questions before I move it over to financials for Nick. Thank you, Michael. Okay, so really quick, just jump right into the expenses for environmental services sustainability. So you can see the current fiscal year that we're in right here, we have 4.9 million in expenses, you can see how it breaks out to the different categories we're looking to do is increase the printing from solid waste, which is $15,000. So, you know, it's kind of confusing the way that reads it's just printing services, we're looking to make an increase in the cost. So what we're looking to do is increase the cost increase. And then this is I think Michael would already mentioned these, but you can see here we're looking supplemental packages recycling education, and then looking for those watershed technician reclass positions of $63,000. So we're looking to make an increase in that budget. And then supplemental packages recycling education, and then looking for those watershed technician reclass positions of $63,000. So total supplemental requests of 163. And then next steps I don't think I need to review these again with you. You've seen these previously in the last couple presentations. And then that is it, we are open for questions. Yes, sir. I feel like I've been asking all the questions for like the last hour. The expenses slide. Yes, sir. Just trying to understand the. So water like most of those are pretty much level. The, the water sustainability is is increasing 20% 30%. And I was trying to figure out what, what is water sustainability. I couldn't I couldn't correlate it to other. Let me let Michael come up and answer that question. Michael Gagne again. That basically what you're seeing there it's kind of our admin group. So that one's going up because it's taking on my position as well as my assistant director position, as well as the additional hundred thousand for transferring from solid waste to do additional outreach and education to be billboard campaigns printing materials, things like that. That's just the area that houses all those new expenses. So that's what's taking that up. Okay, so the water sustainability is just because it's because it's on the water fund side of things so it's teamed water it's not on the wastewater side so I have funding on water wastewater. It's just sorry about that. Anybody else. It's the last presentation for today. Thank you for your patience. I'll pull, pull this down here. Thank you, Barbara. You certainly give them the slot to think about. Okay. Did I, I failed to mark off the supplemental request for white paper today. Good point. That's not a presentation what that is so those are white papers that support the supplemental packages as you saw today. So what is a white paper. So when a department requests a supplemental package, right, they submit the amount of that supplemental, but we also ask them for justification. So those white papers service justification for the supplemental packages. So if they're requesting a position, there'd be justification their metrics and why they need that position. So those are just for your reference. If you want to look at those there is no presentation though. Thank you very much. Well, having completed our work for today I 1052 and we will adjourn this meeting. Thank you.