1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,640 Good evening everybody. It's 6 o'clock. We barely made a quorum this evening, but 2 00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:18,160 let's go ahead and call the Monday April 22nd 2019 Public Utility Board meeting 3 00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:24,920 to order. The first items on our agenda are work session items, and the first 4 00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:29,880 item is item A, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the 2018 5 00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:33,640 water loss audit report. 6 00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:50,080 Evening. Good evening. My name is Tyler Dawson. I'm the field service tech 7 00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:55,880 manager, and I'm here to present you with the results of our 2018 water loss 8 00:00:55,880 --> 00:01:03,280 audit from the water department. At a 30,000 foot view, a water loss 9 00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:08,920 audit is about finding where all of your water went and why it went there. At a 10 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:12,160 high level, this is your equation. You have authorized consumption, you have 11 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:15,120 apparent losses and real losses, which I'll get into those definitions here 12 00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:19,640 shortly, and that should equal the total water supplied. There's a lot more to it, 13 00:01:19,640 --> 00:01:24,480 but once we get into it, we want to focus in on these two categories. What was the 14 00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:29,040 water loss? How much was that? Is that okay? Is it normal or abnormal? And what 15 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:34,320 are we gonna do about it? To get more into the weeds of this, here's a more 16 00:01:34,320 --> 00:01:38,100 detailed view of what that audit consists of. So to walk you through this 17 00:01:38,100 --> 00:01:41,680 busy graphic here, we're starting from the left side. We have water produced 18 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:45,320 from our two water treatment plants, and we split that off into different 19 00:01:45,320 --> 00:01:49,560 applications of that water as we go from left to right. So we export a little bit 20 00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:53,120 of water to Crum and Singer, some of our treated water, and the rest is water 21 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:57,160 supplied to Denton. The vast majority of the rest is authorized consumption, which 22 00:01:57,160 --> 00:02:00,160 is then billed to our customers, either on the residential or commercial side. 23 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:03,760 And then we have a few more categories in the bottom right over here. We have 24 00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:07,520 some unbilled authorized usage, and we also have two types of water loss, 25 00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:14,480 apparent loss and real loss. Now when you talk about real loss, this is probably 26 00:02:14,480 --> 00:02:18,400 what comes into most of your minds when you first hear the term water loss. This 27 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:22,920 is leakage. For example, you take a pipe, put one gallon in this end, you expect 28 00:02:22,920 --> 00:02:26,480 one gallon to come into the other. Real loss is when you have some leakage in 29 00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:29,840 between. You have a joint that doesn't quite fit right, you have an older pipe 30 00:02:29,840 --> 00:02:34,320 that might crack. Whatever happens, that water actually leaves the system before 31 00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:40,680 it gets to its intended purpose. Now real loss is an indicator of system health, 32 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:43,680 how our pipes are doing, how we're maintaining our distribution system. 33 00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:49,380 There are lots of causes for these. We have aging pipes in the city that just 34 00:02:49,380 --> 00:02:53,640 don't hold up forever, that we want to replace those as they come up. We have 35 00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:57,680 connections that don't quite hold up as well, and the environments of the pipes, 36 00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:01,160 of course, have different effects along the way. You can see a number here at the 37 00:03:01,160 --> 00:03:07,120 bottom that's the total water loss for fiscal year '18, 505 million gallons. Now 38 00:03:07,120 --> 00:03:14,840 that's a pretty big number. I wanted to help put that in context for us. So out 39 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:25,840 of a gallon of water, here's your real loss. It's about seven percent of our 40 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:30,160 total. In drinking water terms, say you're talking a gallon of drinking water, it's 41 00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:38,760 about nine ounces. We also have apparent loss, which is a little bit trickier to 42 00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:43,320 understand, but taking our visualization here, you take a gallon of water, put it 43 00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:47,120 in one end of a pipe, and you have a meter connection at the other end. Now 44 00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:50,600 all the water goes through, but your meter doesn't quite register one gallon. 45 00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:54,240 For some reason, it looks like you have less water at the end, even though all 46 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:58,240 the water may have gone through. So the biggest contributor to this is meter 47 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:02,340 inaccuracy. Our meters, when we put them in the ground, are as accurate as we can 48 00:04:02,340 --> 00:04:05,700 make them, and of course they start to degrade just a little bit over time. 49 00:04:05,700 --> 00:04:09,880 Scaling within the meter can slow down the mechanism, lose just a few percent 50 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:14,920 accuracy. This also includes things like unauthorized consumption. If we have 51 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:18,200 someone creative enough to bypass our metering system and use our water, it 52 00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:22,200 went to a customer or an individual at least, but we weren't able to measure 53 00:04:22,200 --> 00:04:26,420 that water. We weren't able to capture who it went to assign that to an 54 00:04:26,420 --> 00:04:34,560 individual or an entity. And this is an indicator of fiscal health, because our 55 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:39,560 billing system is based on who uses how much water. Each customer gets a certain 56 00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:43,400 amount of water through their meter and they receive a bill based on that. If 57 00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:46,720 this number is not accurate, then it's hard to assign that out. It's hard to 58 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:52,160 recover accurate revenues, so we want to keep a close eye on this as well. And you 59 00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:57,040 can see a volume at the bottom of this slide. Our apparent loss in 2018 was 222 60 00:04:57,040 --> 00:05:08,000 million gallons. So again, let's look at our drinking water example. That's about 61 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:14,720 four ounces out of a gallon. So you can see everything left in this jug is what 62 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:19,220 we consider authorized consumption. This is the rest of the water. As big as 63 00:05:19,220 --> 00:05:24,120 those numbers seem, we also have about six billion gallons in authorized 64 00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:29,980 consumption per year. And included in this, we do have some unbilled authorized 65 00:05:29,980 --> 00:05:34,920 usage. Again, this is not in the water loss part of the audit, but it is 66 00:05:34,920 --> 00:05:39,640 another kind of complicated category sometimes to understand. Primarily, this is 67 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:44,000 fire protection and system operations. Fire protection is not a build service. 68 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,600 It's offered for free to any customer who develops a fire protection 69 00:05:48,600 --> 00:05:53,320 system. This includes water that goes through a fire engine. This includes 70 00:05:53,320 --> 00:05:57,000 water that might come out of a sprinkler system in a building, and also training 71 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:02,200 operations for the fire department. System operations is basically everything 72 00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:06,320 we do, all the water we use to keep the distribution system running and keep the 73 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:10,480 water clean. When we put new pipes in the ground, we flush water out to scour 74 00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:14,640 anything out of those pipes that we don't want to be there. We also will 75 00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:18,320 flush water out for water quality issues. As water ages, it loses some of its 76 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:21,360 disinfectant, so we want to flush out that old water and make sure the water 77 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:28,200 is clean and healthy to drink. So when you put all these together, you can see 78 00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:33,760 we filled in some numbers on this chart. You can see our 505 million gallons of 79 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:40,440 real-loss, 222 of apparent, and whopping 6 billion 147 million of total 80 00:06:40,440 --> 00:06:46,200 authorized consumption in the city. And we also want to look at this from a 81 00:06:46,200 --> 00:06:53,200 financial perspective as well as a volume perspective. The real-loss, well 82 00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:56,920 you can see that's our bigger amount here in the red, is actually the lower 83 00:06:56,920 --> 00:07:01,360 cost because it doesn't cost all that much for us to produce an extra gallon 84 00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:06,480 of water over and above what our customers need. The total cost we 85 00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:12,320 estimate to treat a thousand gallons of water is only 37 cents, so we cost out 86 00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:16,920 that real-loss at a little bit under $200,000. The reason this is important is 87 00:07:16,920 --> 00:07:20,960 because this is how much we could save if we could fix all of our leaks. So it's 88 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:25,440 roughly the amount we could apply to a comprehensive leak management or leak 89 00:07:25,440 --> 00:07:31,440 detection and repair program. There's only so much we can do with that. Honestly 90 00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:35,760 this is probably comparable to the cost of one repair crew in the water 91 00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:38,560 department, and that doesn't include finding the leaks and it won't fix all 92 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:42,800 of your leaks. So we do have some efforts we put forth to find and repair 93 00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:46,240 leaks, but we're a little bit cautious on how far we take that, make 94 00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:50,600 sure we're approaching that in a financially responsible way. The 95 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:54,360 apparent loss, the small yellow glass here, is much more expensive at about a 96 00:07:54,360 --> 00:07:58,040 million dollars. The reason for that is that's priced at the retail cost of 97 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:02,000 water. If a customer uses a thousand dollars or a thousand gallons and we 98 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:06,000 weren't able to recover the cost of the water they used from revenue, we price 99 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:12,840 that out at about $4.69 per thousand gallons on average for last year. This is 100 00:08:12,840 --> 00:08:20,600 a large number and also justifies the meter replacement program we have out of 101 00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:25,600 our water meter shop. We have done analysis that suggests that about 13 102 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:29,120 years old is about the place when a meter needs to be replaced when we can 103 00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:32,920 save the right amount of money by replacing that and offset the cost of 104 00:08:32,920 --> 00:08:41,600 doing so. We wanted to benchmark some of this data against some nearby cities in 105 00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:47,360 Regency. We'll show you our loss, both real and apparent loss, as well as 106 00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:50,760 something called the infrastructure leakage index which I'll define here in 107 00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:57,800 a moment. Some considerations when looking at benchmarking. We're never 108 00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:01,560 quite looking at apples-to-apples. Every system is a little bit different. Some 109 00:09:01,560 --> 00:09:06,160 have grown faster, some have older infrastructure, some the topology of the 110 00:09:06,160 --> 00:09:11,960 system effects breaks in a different way and not all audits are performed equally. 111 00:09:11,960 --> 00:09:15,800 We're pretty proud and dentin of the way we do our water audits. The state has 112 00:09:15,800 --> 00:09:20,880 caught up to doing a more advanced water audit, water loss audit program that we 113 00:09:20,880 --> 00:09:23,200 feel like we've been at for several years and we put a lot of effort behind 114 00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:30,760 making sure our numbers are as accurate as we can make them. So within a Regency 115 00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:35,360 we're looking at real and apparent loss per connection. So that'll kind of 116 00:09:35,360 --> 00:09:39,280 normalize it between different utilities and you can see dentin's numbers right 117 00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:43,920 here. We're right around the 60th percentile, so right around the mid-range 118 00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:51,320 of utilities within Regency on a per connection basis. On a per capita basis 119 00:09:51,320 --> 00:09:54,040 you can already see the difference in the cities by how much this chart 120 00:09:54,040 --> 00:09:57,840 changed just from per connection and per capita. We shift just the other side of 121 00:09:57,840 --> 00:10:01,880 the midpoint so we estimate we're right about at the median for our 122 00:10:01,880 --> 00:10:11,800 water loss. And finally on the ILI, infrastructure leakage index, this looks 123 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:16,600 at total real loss compared to a theoretical minimum real loss. So there's 124 00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:20,640 a leakage calculation based on the size of your system that can help you 125 00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:25,120 determine what's the minimum that your system is expected to lose just through 126 00:10:25,120 --> 00:10:27,840 leaky pipe joints and connections throughout the city that are buried 127 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:32,800 underground and it compares your actual real loss to that theoretical minimum. So 128 00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:37,040 our number was 1.83. Theoretically you can't go below 1, you can't 129 00:10:37,040 --> 00:10:42,800 lose less than your minimum and there's no cap on this number. So 130 00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:49,000 within Regency our ILI is significantly lower than most utilities. We're pretty 131 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:53,040 proud that we're below a 2. That's consistent if maybe a little bit higher 132 00:10:53,040 --> 00:10:56,800 than some past years but we're proud that we're on the on the left side of 133 00:10:56,800 --> 00:11:04,320 this chart. And some of the results of this audit, some of the steps we're 134 00:11:04,320 --> 00:11:08,240 implementing as a result of these numbers we found. First of all we want to 135 00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:12,960 continue our meter replacement program at the schedule we're doing it. We found 136 00:11:12,960 --> 00:11:16,840 nothing wrong with the program as it is and we think it's doing well to offset 137 00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:22,640 our apparent losses. We also want to continue leak detection as we've done it. 138 00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:27,080 Again we can't justify a bigger investment at this time but we do have 139 00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:30,440 leak detection equipment that we're currently in the process of renewing to 140 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:33,720 some updated technology and we're going to continue using that and trying to 141 00:11:33,720 --> 00:11:39,600 find leaks that nobody's seen yet. We've also made some improvements to the audit 142 00:11:39,600 --> 00:11:44,960 itself. Our main break water loss estimates as you can imagine if there's 143 00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:47,840 a main break that water is not coming through a meter and it's not coming 144 00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:51,600 through a regular sized hole in the pipe. So it's difficult to estimate how much 145 00:11:51,600 --> 00:11:55,320 water is coming out of that but our water utilities coordinators put 146 00:11:55,320 --> 00:11:58,320 together a great program to help us jump-start that and improve those 147 00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:02,200 estimates so we can get a better feel of how much water is leaving our system. 148 00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:07,000 Similarly we're improving our water estimates for operational applications. 149 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:12,400 Again these don't always come through meters. Some trucks are outfitted with 150 00:12:12,400 --> 00:12:16,480 meters on the back of them some are not. When we flush pipes for new construction 151 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:20,380 we don't always have meters available for that so we're improving this process 152 00:12:20,380 --> 00:12:26,640 to to better understand how we're using water operationally. And finally we're 153 00:12:26,640 --> 00:12:31,680 improving our source metering at the production plants. This involved this is 154 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:35,600 mentioned during the conservation plan presentation a couple weeks ago but we 155 00:12:35,600 --> 00:12:39,360 have at each of our two plants we have a raw water meter that pulls water from 156 00:12:39,360 --> 00:12:42,520 the lake and measures it and a finished water meter that pushes water out to the 157 00:12:42,520 --> 00:12:45,800 system that finished drinking water and we've had some concerns with the 158 00:12:45,800 --> 00:12:50,240 accuracy so we have actually replaced two of those last year have two more to 159 00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:55,040 be replaced next year and we're also looking at some steps to help keep those 160 00:12:55,040 --> 00:12:59,720 systems in calibration so that we can keep an accurate idea of this. The reason 161 00:12:59,720 --> 00:13:03,120 that's important is those meters the way they're built actually overestimate 162 00:13:03,120 --> 00:13:06,280 water so as they come out of calibration we could actually be 163 00:13:06,280 --> 00:13:09,600 overestimating how much water we're sending to the city and assuming water 164 00:13:09,600 --> 00:13:12,160 losses that were never actually there to begin with so we want to make sure 165 00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:17,400 that's accurate. And that's all I have for you today I'm happy to take any 166 00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:25,920 questions or comments. Can you expand a little bit on what the replacement 167 00:13:25,920 --> 00:13:31,960 program is I mean do we know how many need to be replaced right now how many 168 00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:36,600 are replaced every year things like that? I don't know those numbers currently but 169 00:13:36,600 --> 00:13:41,200 it's a 13-year cycle our customer service program helps manage that list 170 00:13:41,200 --> 00:13:45,160 they store the meter ages with the accounts so they provide reports on a 171 00:13:45,160 --> 00:13:48,640 rolling basis any any meters that hit that age are sent to the water meter 172 00:13:48,640 --> 00:13:52,280 shop and they go out and replace them as the time comes. Okay so you said you 173 00:13:52,280 --> 00:13:57,560 didn't know how many come of age on a on a yearly basis or anything like that? 174 00:13:57,560 --> 00:14:03,680 Yeah Tim may have a better answer. I know he does. 13-year rollover. He knows everything. 175 00:14:03,680 --> 00:14:10,800 We actually have a projection going over the next five years when meters will be 176 00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:14,840 replaced and we're currently keeping up with them so we have no meters over 13 177 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:21,000 years old. Okay so we're currently staffed to keep up with that at the 178 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:26,200 present time. Real quick will you state your name? Oh I'm sorry my name is Tim 179 00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:31,520 Fisher and I'm the director of the water utilities. Thank you. Thank you. How many 180 00:14:31,520 --> 00:14:38,640 residential meters do we have in the system? Approximately 32 see a 30,000 or 181 00:14:38,640 --> 00:14:51,800 32,000 Daniel. David why don't you stand up and tell us through the microphone? 182 00:14:51,800 --> 00:14:59,280 This may not actually have the breakdown. 35,000 total. So sort of divide that 183 00:14:59,280 --> 00:15:03,200 by 13 and that might give us a rough number of how many? A rough number yes. 184 00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:11,480 If I can just ask a couple more do the do the resident plan do the payers know 185 00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:16,680 when it's being replaced or are they notified or does it just happen or 186 00:15:16,680 --> 00:15:20,440 they're typically only notified if they're on site at the time. We'll make 187 00:15:20,440 --> 00:15:24,880 sure we're not shutting off water to prevent anything that's happening inside 188 00:15:24,880 --> 00:15:29,000 the home but it happens very quickly. If you're not home you probably wouldn't know. 189 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:32,760 So you probably wouldn't know. Okay just wondering because I was thinking well I 190 00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:37,800 don't remember the last time that mine was but I wouldn't know. Okay all right. 191 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:43,840 I have one question. For the purpose of the audit when you're determining real 192 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:52,080 loss attributed to faulty poorly calibrated water meters how is it that 193 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:58,600 you come about a volume or figure being that the meter is faulty or not working 194 00:15:58,600 --> 00:16:03,200 properly. Yeah that's a good question. We've done bench testing studies where we 195 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:07,160 pull meters from the field and we know the actual age of those meters and we 196 00:16:07,160 --> 00:16:11,440 will test the accuracy. Again taking our example if you pour in a gallon here and 197 00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:14,520 see what comes out the other side. We can see that in a very similar way if you 198 00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:18,680 know that that bottle is one gallon then you can fill it up and see how much the 199 00:16:18,680 --> 00:16:22,400 meter reads. Okay. So we've done bench testing to see what those degradation 200 00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:27,040 curves look like. Okay. And on the larger meters anything over I think two inches 201 00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:34,120 and above we do testing annually we actually pull those meters test them on 202 00:16:34,120 --> 00:16:39,800 that specific meter and we can rebuild if we're able to rebuild and regain some 203 00:16:39,800 --> 00:16:43,360 of that accuracy or we can completely replace that meter. Okay so some of them 204 00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:48,080 are estimates based on theoretical approaches to the loss rather than 205 00:16:48,080 --> 00:16:51,840 somebody actually really tried to measure how much water came out of the 206 00:16:51,840 --> 00:16:55,040 pipe or something like that. Yeah majority of this is extrapolated from the bench 207 00:16:55,040 --> 00:17:02,920 testing study. Okay thank you. Does anybody have any other questions? Okay thank you. 208 00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:12,820 Thank you. Our next item in our work session is item B receiver report hold a 209 00:17:12,820 --> 00:17:16,440 discussion and give staff recommendations regarding the solid waste 210 00:17:16,440 --> 00:17:26,680 fiscal year 2019-2020 operating and capital budget. Good evening Chair, 211 00:17:26,680 --> 00:17:30,520 members of the board. My name is Ethan Cox. I'm the director of solid waste. For 212 00:17:30,520 --> 00:17:34,680 my props I'm gonna empty a bag of garbage on the table. Just kidding. I was 213 00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:39,040 actually hoping you'd leave it for some refreshments but. I wanted to drink the 214 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:44,840 red one. I was okay with the red not the yellow one. All right so I appreciate the 215 00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:48,000 time this evening. We do have kind of a two-headed presentation for you this 216 00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:52,160 afternoon. I'll be leading us off walking you through the operational side of the 217 00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:55,080 solid waste budget and then Mr. Nick Vincent from the finance department will 218 00:17:55,080 --> 00:17:58,960 come up and dive into the numbers for everyone. We do have our managers here 219 00:17:58,960 --> 00:18:02,180 from solid waste. I'd like to take a brief moment to introduce them. I have Mr. 220 00:18:02,180 --> 00:18:05,880 Eugene McKinney. He's our operations manager in charge of the collections 221 00:18:05,880 --> 00:18:09,720 fleet. His staff are the friendly faces you see on the road every day doing the 222 00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:15,360 recycling refuse collection. Ms. Tina Eck is our senior business analyst so she's 223 00:18:15,360 --> 00:18:19,520 a wizard with numbers and spreadsheets. We've got Aaron Clark our administration 224 00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:23,220 manager and then we also have Brian Berner our deputy director over the 225 00:18:23,220 --> 00:18:27,640 landfill and side operations and so in addition to Nick Lee these folks have 226 00:18:27,640 --> 00:18:31,280 done quite a bit of work putting the presentation or the budget together. It's 227 00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:38,040 always kind of a drawn-out you know kind of a thought-provoking process but I 228 00:18:38,040 --> 00:18:42,720 appreciate all the efforts they and their staff have put into this. So when 229 00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,760 we talked about the solid waste budget last year one of the things that I'd 230 00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:49,440 mentioned is we're basically preparing to do a number of diagnostic checks for 231 00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:52,880 the solid waste department and by that I meant we were bringing in a number of 232 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:57,720 consultants to look at our operations. We had audits ongoing from Weaver and 233 00:18:57,720 --> 00:19:02,600 Tidwell and we were also undertaking a rate study that's fairly comprehensive in 234 00:19:02,600 --> 00:19:06,400 nature and so all those have wrapped up in the past year and so for this first 235 00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:09,440 slide what we'll do is we'll go through a few accomplishments as well as goals. 236 00:19:09,440 --> 00:19:13,120 I bring those things up simply because it informs a lot of what we've been 237 00:19:13,120 --> 00:19:17,320 tackling recently as well as what our goals are moving forward. In terms of 238 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:21,280 accomplishments we did do a fairly massive management reorganization of 239 00:19:21,280 --> 00:19:24,800 solid waste last summer essentially turned over about 70 percent of our 240 00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:29,640 management staff. For the folks that remain really what we were focusing on 241 00:19:29,640 --> 00:19:34,480 is bringing in leaders that are focused on employee engagement as well as 242 00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,200 workplace safety and one of the biggest accomplishments we've had we do an 243 00:19:38,200 --> 00:19:43,280 annual employee survey and we had tremendous gains year over year. Our new 244 00:19:43,280 --> 00:19:45,920 management teams been in place for the better part about six or eight months. 245 00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:50,040 We're getting really good responsiveness out of our employees the survey was 246 00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:53,120 outstanding so I really want to give a tip of the hat to our operations managers 247 00:19:53,120 --> 00:19:56,600 their staff as well as our line staff because I think we've made a great deal 248 00:19:56,600 --> 00:20:01,440 of progress on that front in a very short period of time. In addition whenever 249 00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:05,200 the PUB and the council received the Blue Ridge report that operational 250 00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:09,120 review last year one of the things they pointed to is lack of a safety culture 251 00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:12,160 in our department and they identified that that was one of the reasons why 252 00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:17,760 we're having a high incidence of accidents and workplace injuries. There 253 00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:21,280 is an award called the Jimmy Huff Award through Texwana which is the Texas 254 00:20:21,280 --> 00:20:26,320 branch of the Solid Waste Association in North America. I want to point out that 255 00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:30,000 our department was recently recognized for the best year-over-year improvement 256 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:34,040 of workplace safety. That doesn't come without a lot of hard work by our staff. 257 00:20:34,040 --> 00:20:38,080 We hired a safety and training coordinator named Jason Palofsky. Brian 258 00:20:38,080 --> 00:20:43,040 spent a great deal of time putting in some curriculum with Jason's assistance 259 00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:47,080 and it's starting to pay off and so again just a tip of hat to staff as well 260 00:20:47,080 --> 00:20:53,000 as our line workers that make safety a priority every day. We also have a number 261 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:55,500 of initiatives where we're trying to right-size our fleet and improve 262 00:20:55,500 --> 00:20:59,640 operations that's efficiency, effectiveness, making sure that we're 263 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:03,080 making good decisions. One of the things we're doing in terms of right-sizing our 264 00:21:03,080 --> 00:21:07,000 fleet is changing out a number of pieces of equipment in the landfill to 265 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:11,280 basically be the right size for our operations. One such change that we made 266 00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:14,840 is replacing our compactors which is basically a big piece of heavy 267 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:19,800 equipment that compacts the waste. Just as an illustration of what right-sizing 268 00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:22,800 can do that's given us about eight additional years of landfill life 269 00:21:22,800 --> 00:21:26,600 through that one change in our operation and so I don't think we're I think we'll 270 00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:30,040 be hard-pressed to have another impact that large. That's really one of the 271 00:21:30,040 --> 00:21:35,220 things you'll see as a thread as we go through this presentation. In terms of 272 00:21:35,220 --> 00:21:38,720 goals for 19-20 I'm not gonna hit all these but one of the things I do want to 273 00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:42,880 point out is we did have an audit by Weaver that basically came in and looked 274 00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:47,540 at our scale house operation. For those of you that don't visit the landfill the 275 00:21:47,540 --> 00:21:51,240 scale house is basically the entrance and the exit to the facility. The way I 276 00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:55,140 allude to it is like the nerve center for any landfill operation. Everything 277 00:21:55,140 --> 00:21:58,800 gets weighed coming into our facility it gets weighed going out and that's where 278 00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:02,840 all the financial transactions take place. And so I neglected to put it in 279 00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:06,280 your packet but I will circle up with Mario to make sure you have a copy of 280 00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:11,680 the audit for the next PUB meeting. But essentially what their findings were is 281 00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:15,680 there weren't really good separation duties there weren't good internal 282 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:19,200 controls. We've corrected all that that we can but one of the things they 283 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:24,200 identified is your system has some big loopholes that can't be closed and so the 284 00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:27,160 system that we use for all of our financial transactions is what I'm 285 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:30,360 alluding to. And so one of the things you'll see when we get to our 286 00:22:30,360 --> 00:22:33,920 supplemental packages is we do think that system needs to either be upgraded 287 00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:37,720 or replaced. It is an investment that we really feel like it's a top priority 288 00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:42,380 for us moving forward. We've talked a little bit with the board and the 289 00:22:42,380 --> 00:22:45,160 council about the state of the recycling market that's going to be an ongoing 290 00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:49,200 conversation with you all as we move through the next few months. The market 291 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:53,180 is still somewhat in turmoil and so as we mentioned in that presentation making 292 00:22:53,180 --> 00:22:57,280 sure citizens are informed, educated, and doing their best to recycle right and 293 00:22:57,280 --> 00:23:01,880 reduce contamination. That's going to be an ongoing goal for us. Next going to 294 00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:05,120 talk about the rates in a moment. The last thing I want to highlight here is 295 00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:10,600 we do have continued efforts to improve our fleet performance and uptime. Back to 296 00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:13,920 Blue Ridge's report last summer they were looking at our fleet. We're carrying an 297 00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:18,320 abundance of backup fleet to try to keep a functioning fleet on the road. One of 298 00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:21,440 the things that you don't want to play too much with is your collection fleet. 299 00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:24,920 Otherwise trash is sitting on the curb. Folks aren't getting their stuff 300 00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:28,800 collected. It becomes a human health issue and so we've been carrying a large 301 00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:33,760 number of backup pieces of equipment for a number of years. With the assistance of 302 00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:37,200 the fleet department we are basically trying to change out our equipment as 303 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,280 fast as we can and catch up from some of the negligence that we've had in years 304 00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:44,560 past and so that's again going to be a top priority as we work through the 305 00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:50,640 budget and the capital improvement plan. In terms of budget emphasis one of the 306 00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,640 things that I always like to talk about is your budget should really be an 307 00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:57,120 offshoot of your purpose and your strategy should be closely linked to 308 00:23:57,120 --> 00:24:00,720 your budget as well. For us if you ever come out to our administrative building 309 00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:05,320 take a tour you're liable to see that illustration there on the right. That's 310 00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,400 what we call our big picture which is really a statement of purpose for our 311 00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:12,120 department. It also provides a little bit of a cue to the employees that look at it 312 00:24:12,120 --> 00:24:15,340 as if I'm making a decision and it doesn't jive with everything under the 313 00:24:15,340 --> 00:24:19,040 big picture then it's red alert we may need to reevaluate our decision making. 314 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:22,800 This kind of leaves out our culture our approach what we expect of our staff and 315 00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:27,800 our leaders. From a strategy perspective we try to basically make this really 316 00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:31,760 simple is our goal is to provide exceptional value to our community. When 317 00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:35,600 you pull solid waste down to its nuts and bolts we're here to collect waste 318 00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:39,200 and recycling we're here to divert and recycle as much as we can and we dispose 319 00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:44,680 of the rest and safe and environmentally friendly manner and so doing that 320 00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:48,640 providing exceptional value we're basically the only choice in town for 321 00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:52,720 service and so we have to be a little bit of everything to all people and so 322 00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:57,960 how we do that is we balance our goals and our approach. Financial performance 323 00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,640 is important but so is operational excellent being safe effective and 324 00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:05,960 efficient. Customer focus is something that we've been spending a lot of time 325 00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:09,560 with the board and the council on giving you overviews of our program showing you 326 00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:12,840 what we think is working what isn't because the breadth of service is 327 00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,880 important but also making sure that it's high quality and then from a 328 00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,880 sustainability perspective we certainly want to focus on the environmental 329 00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,840 components but we also need to be financially and socially sustainable as 330 00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:29,160 well. A few cost drivers for our budget obviously with most of the presentations 331 00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:31,880 you're going to see from the other utilities customer growth and increased 332 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:36,480 service demands are always there. Unlike other utilities solid waste is exposed to 333 00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:41,280 market forces from a landfill we are in competition with other landfills in the 334 00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:46,560 region that's based on a price basis as well as a convenience basis. Construction 335 00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:51,560 is probably one of our sectors that is most exposed to a recession and so 336 00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:55,080 construction tends to die off if a recession hits so we have to make sure 337 00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:59,160 we're paying attention to that and then obviously with the recycling market being 338 00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:03,200 in flux the commodity prices are certainly something that will affect our 339 00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:09,160 bottom line. We're also a highly regulated environment so we are known to 340 00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:13,400 run into unfunded mandates at the state and federal level occasionally and so we 341 00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,860 do track those bills and try to integrate that stuff into our budget when possible. 342 00:26:16,860 --> 00:26:22,920 A few cost containment strategies in terms of the operating budget those are 343 00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:27,400 your ongoing year-to-year expenses that don't typically go away. We do zero 344 00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:30,920 based budget for some of our stuff like travel training and outside contract 345 00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:34,920 services. We essentially want to rinse and refresh and look at that fresh every 346 00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:39,000 year. Improvement in resource management is something you're going to hear me 347 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:42,760 talk a little bit more about on these next few slides. When we say resource is 348 00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,440 really for our operation what you're talking about is staff, you're talking 349 00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,640 about equipment which can be landfill equipment, it can also be collection 350 00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:53,400 vehicles and then you also have your containers and carts and things that you 351 00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,480 actually as a consumer or as a customer of ours use out in the field. Those are 352 00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:59,980 all things that we need to make sure we're managing effectively and 353 00:26:59,980 --> 00:27:06,040 efficiently. Equipment of vehicles we do utilize or we analyze vehicle 354 00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:10,300 utilization information we get from the fleet department and we try to rat size 355 00:27:10,300 --> 00:27:14,760 our fleet. I don't want to misspeak I'll kind of do an eyeball check with Tina 356 00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:18,640 over here. I think we've eliminated something on the order of about 40 or 50 357 00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,720 vehicles and pieces of equipment the last two years is that about right? And 358 00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,680 so one of the things that the utilization will do for you is you look at 359 00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:31,120 underutilized equipment and you find ways to rat size but also what we've done is 360 00:27:31,120 --> 00:27:35,480 tried to implement means in which we can share equipment. I think we've done a 361 00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:39,240 good job of that within the department but we're also looking at trying to 362 00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:43,280 partner with fleet and share equipment across other department lines too. We've 363 00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:46,000 also identified and tried to replace some of those underperforming vehicles 364 00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:50,640 like I alluded to earlier. At some point a piece of equipment or a vehicle if 365 00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:54,640 that's a lemon it costs more to maintain than it does to jettison and replace and 366 00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:59,520 so those are ongoing conversations for us. The last thing that I'll talk about 367 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:02,840 down here we I'm sure all of you are familiar with the business case analysis 368 00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:06,000 that we bring through so I'm not gonna spend much time on that. I do want to 369 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,400 talk about kind of how we've approached our capital plans and so whenever you 370 00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:13,040 look at solid waste you have your disposal operation in your collection 371 00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:18,400 operation. Years past the landfill tended to get most of the investment through 372 00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:22,080 our capital improvement plan and so what we've really tried to do the last couple 373 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:26,460 years is make a more holistic approach to how we evaluate and so when you see 374 00:28:26,460 --> 00:28:30,720 the supplemental packages and our capital plan it's basically focused on 375 00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:34,560 needs first and making sure that there's a good mix between those two divisions 376 00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:39,920 and then we get to once after we've satisfied all the needs and so hopefully 377 00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:44,320 that makes sense. In terms of process improvements I think we've hit some of 378 00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:48,120 these I think one of the things that we're really proud of is our relationship 379 00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,840 with finance I think we have a good working relationship there challenges 380 00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:55,280 assumptions on both sides of the table and so there is a healthy amount of 381 00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:59,080 checks and balances that go into our budget. We do have some improved 382 00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:02,680 processes and internal controls that we've implemented responsive to the 383 00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,440 audit that we received last year a couple of new things we're implementing 384 00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:10,400 that are just on the starting line we've implemented a dispatching operation 385 00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,920 basically charged with improving the routing of our collection vehicles 386 00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:18,080 making sure that that route is as efficient as it can be it's not just 387 00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:22,400 about money it's about wear and tear on the road it's also about emissions and 388 00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,560 making sure that we're not doubling back in a neighborhood when we don't need to 389 00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:30,160 be. We've also implemented that formal training and safety program like I talked 390 00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,600 about. These are going to be ongoing improvements for us ongoing focus in the 391 00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,480 years ahead. I've talked about resource management for future improvements I'm 392 00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:41,200 not going to hit that again but I will say that this is a nice segue in terms 393 00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:46,160 of the scale house software and asset management that takes us into our 394 00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:50,120 supplemental packages. So we do have about 1.8 million dollars in 395 00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,520 supplemental packages that we're going to be proposing for this upcoming fiscal 396 00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:57,600 year. If council recalls and I'm sure Nick will hit on this when he gets to 397 00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:02,080 the podium is we've essentially gone two years without issuing any debt and so 398 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:06,160 we've right-sized all of our capital plans to try to maximize the use of 399 00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:11,880 existing funds. So what we're focusing on here is a few priorities. This is the 400 00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,560 scale house and asset management software that's responding to that audit. 401 00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:19,520 Engineering services is something you typically see for landfills what we're 402 00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:23,920 actually doing is eliminating several different line items smaller line items 403 00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,760 in our budget and collapsing it into one blanket engineering agreement. So we'll 404 00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:33,840 be putting an RFP out for that. Route consulting services believe it or not 405 00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,800 for a modern city all of our drivers come in in the morning they get a piece 406 00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:42,240 of paper that tells them where to go. There's no onboard GPS the driver 407 00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,760 basically has either a printed map where they're operating off of what they think 408 00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:50,200 is the best route to go collect the trash and recycling. Don't want to speak 409 00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:53,520 for Eugene but I know he was out doing a ride along with one of our drivers 410 00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:58,280 they came across a commercial can. Okay when do you pick this one up? We picked 411 00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:01,040 that one up on Monday. What about that one over there? We picked that one up on 412 00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:05,920 Tuesday. Why are we not just picking them both up on Monday? And so I think there's 413 00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:11,560 a lot of efficiencies to be gained both with the new technology for a system as 414 00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,840 well as designing clean and efficient routes that our drivers can have an 415 00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,240 onboard computer that tells them where to go. Takes a little bit of the guesswork 416 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:22,160 out of it. We have some pieces of equipment here I'll just quickly go 417 00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,040 through those that roll off is for construction we are seeing growth in 418 00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:29,240 that segment so we're trying to keep up with customer demand. A waste handler 419 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:33,680 dozer that is a replacement. The mini rear loaders I have a picture of these 420 00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:38,960 because they're kind of cute. So right now what we have when we go out into a 421 00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,500 community we have a lot of pieces of heavy equipment and we have light duty 422 00:31:42,500 --> 00:31:47,160 vehicles for our supervisors and crew leaders. Rather than dispatching a heavy 423 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,960 piece of equipment to double back on missed collections we would be replacing 424 00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,920 light duty vehicles with a mini rear loader for our supervisors and crew 425 00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,680 leaders. They can be more responsive to customers that get missed or that 426 00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:01,960 customer that's running late and has has to have us double back and get them. It's 427 00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:06,000 more efficient, more economical, keeps our drivers on task so they're not having 428 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:08,960 to divert from their routes. 429 00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:17,240 Quickly. Nick's chomping at the bit over there I can feel him. We do have an 430 00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:21,080 additional HEO that's heavy equipment operator they were proposing for the 431 00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:25,400 landfill. Last year we eliminated about seven hundred thousand dollars worth of 432 00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:29,960 temporary labor through a staffing service and we also reduced 10 FTEs out 433 00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:34,400 of landfill as well so we basically took 24 positions out of the landfill. I think 434 00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,280 we cut a little bit too deep and so what we were recommending is adding one 435 00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:42,680 position back. And then on communication radios right now our drivers and folks 436 00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:46,460 in landfill are on cell phones. It's not safe. We're having issues with 437 00:32:46,460 --> 00:32:50,000 communication so we'd like to get the landfill to switch over to communication 438 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:54,440 radios instead. And then the last one here, last but not least, is the recycling 439 00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:58,640 drop-off at North Lakes. This one is on here because we are going to need to 440 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:03,280 relocate that facility. It's currently housed where the new believe it's either 441 00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:07,320 a Vela soccer or tennis center is going to be and so we've been working with 442 00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:12,600 Parks and Recreation to find a new site. That center takes in about a hundred and 443 00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:17,240 sixty hundred seventy tons a year so this is a hefty investment to relocate it. The 444 00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,640 other thing that I'll say is the relocation. We may be relocating some 445 00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:24,080 challenges that we're currently seeing at the site. There's a heavy amount of 446 00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,120 illegal dumping that's going on there. This is similar to the issue that we 447 00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:31,640 brought forward to the PV and council with our drop-off sites at the landfill. 448 00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:35,920 We are certainly happy to move that. There's a couple of additional things 449 00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:40,920 that we could bring forward to the PV and council as alternatives. One is not 450 00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:45,600 to relocate the drop-off center and is to pursue what we call drop-off or 451 00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:49,600 pickup events where we basically take containers out into the community on a 452 00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:53,320 weekend when most folks are doing their cleanup. We can also collect home 453 00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:57,200 chemicals while we're out there and once we're done we take the containers with 454 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:02,120 us to prevent illegal dumping. That's on the very low cost side. We could do that 455 00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:07,880 with existing resources. On the high side we could take it from a drop-off center 456 00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:12,200 to a staff site which could go all the way up to a million or two million 457 00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,120 dollars depending on the services that we want to offer. And so we put that out 458 00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,840 there the way we built this into the budget is basically just a flat 459 00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:26,360 relocation of that site at $420,000. We're happy to take any recommendations 460 00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:31,720 the PV has before we talk to council on that particular piece. So essentially the 461 00:34:31,720 --> 00:34:34,600 the cost could scale up or down depending on how we want to approach 462 00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:39,600 that. So that's essentially our supplemental package in the end of my 463 00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,000 piece of the presentation. Before I turn it over to Nick are there any questions 464 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:48,520 from an operational standpoint? Do you know what the contamination rate is for 465 00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:53,440 the North Lakes drop-off? Yeah so we it's about 38 to 40 percent which is 466 00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:57,040 not uncommon. I mean when you look at these photos you've got folks that are 467 00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:02,120 recycling responsibly but then you have a few bad actors. So you've got lots of 468 00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:06,240 usable cardboard here but then you also have you know a lot of waste that's 469 00:35:06,240 --> 00:35:09,860 going in. The reason why the contamination rate isn't higher is we 470 00:35:09,860 --> 00:35:13,760 actually roll out with refuse trucks and do clean up three times a week on this 471 00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:18,800 side. So it's it's a pretty involved process. I don't know Eugene probably two 472 00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:25,760 or three employees an hour or so at a time to clean this up. In addition to the 473 00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,520 waste and stuff some of the other problems we have obviously you got 474 00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,920 chemicals and propane tanks here. We're dealing with a lot of windblown 475 00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:36,920 litter at the site and depending on where we relocate that can have an impact on 476 00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:41,360 other city properties or private property owners. So our staff is going to 477 00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:46,800 pretty considerable lengths to keep this cleaned up. Contamination isn't as high 478 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,200 but it's much higher than what we're seeing at the drop-off site at the 479 00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:53,960 landfill after we move that behind the gates. 480 00:35:55,720 --> 00:36:07,920 Other questions? All right without further ado all right good afternoon PB members 481 00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:11,800 chair I'm Nick Vincent the city's budget manager. As Ethan said I'll be walking 482 00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:15,240 you through the financial portion of the proposed 19-20 budget for solid waste 483 00:36:15,240 --> 00:36:18,800 fund. I did want to hit some assumptions that were included in putting this 484 00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:23,320 budget together this year. Staff is recommending to change the way that the 485 00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:27,000 current reserve is structured within this solid waste fund. I'll review this 486 00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:30,880 with you in detail on the preceding slide after well the slide following this one 487 00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:34,600 where we can explain a little better. We are also recommended to maintain 488 00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:38,800 existing residential rates. We are wanting to utilize the fund balance 489 00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:42,160 within this solid waste fund to implement a rate correction strategy that I'll 490 00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,360 review with you in a following presentation after this one also. That's 491 00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:49,400 a direct follow-up to a cost of service study that was done last summer and I'll 492 00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:52,840 discuss that with you in further detail here shortly. Some of the major 493 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,960 capital items that's included in this year's budget in 2020 we are wanting to 494 00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:01,320 issue one million dollars in bonds to fund renovations to the administration 495 00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:05,960 building at solid waste. In addition in 2022 we're wanting to issue five million 496 00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,840 dollars in bonds for cell development cost which is in the future years and 497 00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:15,840 I'll show that to you on the five-year CIP. So as I mentioned staff is 498 00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:19,640 recommended to change the way that the current operating reserve is calculated 499 00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:23,480 in the solid waste fund. Currently there are three components that are added 500 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,640 together to make up this fund total. You have an operating component that you can 501 00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,680 see here that currently has about five million dollars in it. You have a rental 502 00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:36,360 fund component has about 1.2 million and then you have a vehicle replacement fund 503 00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:40,520 component about four million dollars. So all together these total about ten point 504 00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:45,300 four million. They're not separated out they are all combined into one reserve 505 00:37:45,300 --> 00:37:50,120 fund currently. Moving forward what we want to do is create two distinct 506 00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:53,960 separate reserve funds. One being operating the other being vehicle 507 00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:58,360 replacement. In doing that we had moved nine million to the operating side and 508 00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:02,880 one million to the vehicle replacement side. We are also recommended to do away 509 00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:08,600 with the current rental fund component that is shown on the second line. This is 510 00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:12,240 consistent the way the water and wastewater utility currently show it so 511 00:38:12,240 --> 00:38:19,720 they both have an operating component a vehicle replacement fund component. This 512 00:38:19,720 --> 00:38:23,560 is the five-year forecast. You can see the adopted 2019 budget that we're 513 00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:27,200 currently in here in this column. We were projecting to use about three 514 00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:31,320 hundred fifty thousand dollars in reserves. End of your estimate revenues 515 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,920 are coming a little bit shy of what we projected so we're projecting to use 516 00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:39,680 about five hundred fifty thousand in reserves. Moving forward we have rate 517 00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:43,120 revenue of thirty four point four million dollars. You can see that up here. 518 00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:47,960 Expenses about thirty seven point three million. This does include the one point 519 00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:50,840 eight million dollars in supplemental packages that Ethan had pointed out on 520 00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:55,880 that slide. So given that we would be using two point nine million in reserves 521 00:38:55,880 --> 00:39:01,040 if PB and council approves this proposed budget. The reserve funds are both 522 00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:04,800 separated out here down below for transparency so you can very easily see 523 00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:08,720 there's an operating fund component and there's a vehicle replacement fund 524 00:39:08,720 --> 00:39:12,160 component and you can see that both of them are growing over the five-year 525 00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,800 period so the operating fund goes from seven point one to seven point nine 526 00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,520 million and then the vehicle replacement goes from one million to four point three 527 00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:28,160 million. These are the solid waste resources. You can see the adopted budget 528 00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:31,640 is here in the middle column. The proposed budget is to the very far right 529 00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:36,440 so we had adopted resources about thirty four point eight million that did use a 530 00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:40,480 little bit of reserves that were included in here and then proposed about 531 00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:45,200 thirty seven point three of which two point nine is the use of reserves and 532 00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:53,200 we pointed out in the forecast. This is the expense detail. You can see the 533 00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:56,960 expenses by the different service categories within solid waste. We have 534 00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,560 thirty four point eight million dollars in expenses in the adopted budget. We're 535 00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:04,800 projecting that to come in about thirty four point six with the proposed budget 536 00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:09,160 to be about thirty seven point three. As I stated before the supplemental packages 537 00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:17,160 that Ethan reviewed are included in here. This is the five-year capital plan. I did 538 00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:20,240 want to point out on the previous slide I had mentioned we're going to issue one 539 00:40:20,240 --> 00:40:24,040 million dollars in bonds to renovate the solid waste administration building. You 540 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:29,640 can see that money here and the future years we do have some debt issuance in 541 00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:33,700 2022 and five-year money for cell development. Those are the major items 542 00:40:33,700 --> 00:40:41,440 included in the bond issuance. So you can see in 2020 we'd be issuing a total of 543 00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:45,880 five point seven million total. This would include revenue funded projects 544 00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:50,120 and capital fund projects and it separates it out down below here. Bonds 545 00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:54,960 are three point three and revenue is two point five. You can see, I apologize my 546 00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,400 mouse disappeared on me, right there. So bonds would be three point two and then 547 00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:07,640 revenue would be two point five. This is the FT summary. So currently there's a 548 00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:11,420 hundred and twenty two point five positions in the solid waste fund. We are 549 00:41:11,420 --> 00:41:14,520 projecting that to stay consistent to the rest of the fiscal year through 550 00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,500 September. Moving into next year we would have the one twenty two plus the one 551 00:41:18,500 --> 00:41:21,920 supplemental that Ethan had mentioned on the supplemental slide. So bring the 552 00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:29,840 total FT count to one twenty three point five for the solid waste fund. And then 553 00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:33,000 with that, that concludes the presentation for the budget. I'll stand 554 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:36,120 for any questions you may have. Our staff is here, Ethan is here too if you have 555 00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:42,360 further questions. What caused the increase or the planned increase of our 556 00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:53,960 operational reserves? Let me go back here. So that's a great question. So the 557 00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:59,400 operating reserve is increasing from 2020 to 2024. The major contributing 558 00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:03,020 factor is the debt service. The debt service does go from eight point five 559 00:42:03,020 --> 00:42:07,400 million down to six point two million. As the fund continues to revenue fund 560 00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:11,000 assets instead of debt funding them, the debt service is falling off in the 561 00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:16,960 future years. Okay. Yeah and that does fall directly to the operating reserve. 562 00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:27,160 Any other questions? 563 00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:38,040 That's it for this presentation. Thank you sir. Appreciate it. 564 00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:47,160 So our next item on our work session is item C. Receive a report, hold a 565 00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,480 discussion, and give staff recommendations regarding the solid 566 00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:57,440 weight, solid waste rate correction strategy. Good afternoon Chair, PB members. 567 00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:04,640 My name is Nick Vincent, the City of Denton Budget Manager. I just want to step aside and step back up here. So I'll be walking you through this presentation also. 568 00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:13,200 Appreciate it. So a little bit of history in the summer of 2018, the solid waste 569 00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:17,440 department partnered with Nugent Strategies to complete a in-depth cost of 570 00:43:17,440 --> 00:43:21,040 service study, if you recall, and that study looked at the different service 571 00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:25,640 components in solid waste, residential, commercial, and landfill, and identified 572 00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:29,720 the revenue requirement of each. Some of those were over recovering and some were 573 00:43:29,720 --> 00:43:34,200 under recovering, so this correction strategy is meant to adjust those and 574 00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:38,000 correct those. So I'll walk you through each of them separately and throughout the 575 00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,360 presentations will stop me if you have any questions. I'll be happy to answer 576 00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:42,560 them. 577 00:43:42,560 --> 00:44:03,120 Apologize, let me get the right presentation up here. All right, some of 578 00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:06,800 the major accomplishments to date. Ethan touched on these a little bit, but we 579 00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:11,600 did do a 12% rate reduction last year for residential customers. We eliminated 580 00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:16,120 landfill mining to save net losses of over a million a year. I mean we did 581 00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:22,240 construct a CNG station for net savings of $400,000 annually, and one of the 582 00:44:22,240 --> 00:44:25,920 recent ones we did cancel the building materials recovery operation to avoid 583 00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:31,800 net losses of $680,000 a year, and that's about two to three months ago. So as you 584 00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:36,440 pointed out, Chair, earlier the debt services decreasing in 2019, it's 8.9 585 00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:42,000 million. That does go to 6.2 million in 2024. This is part of the reason we can 586 00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,960 implement this rate correction strategy over a five-year period, and I'll touch 587 00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:51,720 on that here with you shortly. So there are three main service categories of 588 00:44:51,720 --> 00:44:55,680 unsolved waste. You have your residential, your commercial, and your landfill. 589 00:44:55,680 --> 00:45:00,560 Residential, these clearly identify the goals for each. Residential's goals is to 590 00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:06,160 maintain the existing rates. Of course we decreased last year by 12%. The 591 00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:10,120 commercial goal is to incentivize customers to move to larger containers 592 00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:14,720 with less collection frequency. That, you know, cuts down on wear and tear of the 593 00:45:14,720 --> 00:45:19,080 equipment, wear and tear on the roads, so we do want to incentivize that behavior. 594 00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,680 Recycling is the same way. We want to incentivize recycling through reduced 595 00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:26,160 rates, so we'll go over the recycling rates currently in the proposed ones 596 00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:30,800 with you here shortly. And then also we want to reduce the over recovering rates 597 00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:35,160 in commercial to bring them to cost of service over an amount of time of five 598 00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:40,120 year goal. Landfill goal would be to reduce the over recovering rates also over 599 00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:44,680 five years to establish cost of service rates, and then also to be cost recovery 600 00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:51,240 in five years, the efficiency they find at the landfill. So as I said, there's 601 00:45:51,240 --> 00:45:55,240 three main categories. You can see each of them listed in this matrix. Residential 602 00:45:55,240 --> 00:45:59,040 is listed here. They're currently under recovering through the rates about a 603 00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:04,680 million dollars. Commercial is over recovering about 3.3, and landfill is 604 00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:08,880 under recovering about 2.4. What we've done is we've put the five year goal 605 00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:13,280 below, so you can see that the residential five year goal is to maintain existing 606 00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:17,320 rates within the residential department. Commercial would be to reduce the 607 00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:21,360 over recovering rates. We'll review those with you shortly. And landfill would be 608 00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:25,120 cost recovery in five years through increased efficiency, and as the debt 609 00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:33,640 service continues to fall off. This is the residential slide. It details out 610 00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:36,680 the rates for the two different size containers that the residential 611 00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:40,480 customers currently can choose from. We have a large container, and then we have 612 00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:45,560 a medium container. The services that have the checks listed next to 613 00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:50,040 them here are the services that are included in that rate. We do have some 614 00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,560 individual service fees that are out here to the right with the fee of each 615 00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:59,560 associated with it. So if a customer was to call in, for instance, for excess yard 616 00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:04,160 waste, there would be a cubic yard charge for that service. I do want to point out 617 00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:07,400 that the ones that have the red asterisk or their underline, these are future 618 00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:11,920 program discussions that Ethan will be bringing back to the PB and council over 619 00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:18,760 the next couple months. So I thought it was important to point that out. What I 620 00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:22,720 wanted to do is go over the different size containers or type of containers in 621 00:47:22,720 --> 00:47:26,840 commercial that customers have to choose from. First, you have a front-load 622 00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:32,000 container. This service is built on a monthly service fee based on collection 623 00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,920 frequency and size. We'll see that on the next slide. These are side-load 624 00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,720 containers, very similar, just a different truck, and these are also built on 625 00:47:39,720 --> 00:47:44,880 collection frequency and size, and we'll review those also. Roll-off containers, 626 00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:49,000 you see these at construction sites. They do have three components that go into 627 00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:52,440 billing it. So when a customer receives a bill for a roll-off container, you have a 628 00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:57,080 service fee component, a disposal fee component, and a monthly rental fee. Same 629 00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:00,360 thing with compactors. You see these a lot, like at big grocery stores, 630 00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:04,240 universities, and they do have three components that go into the rate also. A 631 00:48:04,240 --> 00:48:10,840 rental component, a disposal component, and then a service fee component. 632 00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:18,240 This is the front-load refuse rate slide. As I stated earlier, we do want to 633 00:48:18,240 --> 00:48:22,000 incentivize customers to shift to larger containers with less collection 634 00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:25,560 frequency to cut down on wear and tear of the roads and wear on the equipment. 635 00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:29,160 We do want to incentivize recycling through reduced rates. We'll review the 636 00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:33,440 recycling rates with you on the next slide. The matrix below here, this is the 637 00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:38,280 front-load refuse rates. So if you look at the table, the current rates are here 638 00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:42,920 on the left, and then the ones we are proposing to change are highlighted in 639 00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:47,320 this green column. So you can see, for instance, a 6 cubic yard going two times 640 00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:52,760 a week is currently 297. We're recommending to go to 282. This would 641 00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:56,600 take us closer to cost of service. It is reducing the over recovering rates that 642 00:48:56,600 --> 00:49:01,240 currently exist within the front-load refuse customers. We do have a few out 643 00:49:01,240 --> 00:49:06,120 here that we have X's next to. I want to point these out really quick. These are 644 00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:11,160 rates we're recommending that go away. There are minimum customers in 645 00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:16,100 these categories. We do feel like it'd be more efficient to move them to a larger 646 00:49:16,100 --> 00:49:22,340 container, maybe going less frequent, less frequent per week. Another strategic 647 00:49:22,340 --> 00:49:27,960 move we're wanting to propose is to align the side-load refuse rates with 648 00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:32,360 these front-load rates that you see here, creating one distinct identifiable rates 649 00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:36,320 for refuse service and one set of rates for recycling service. Just keeping it 650 00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:40,240 consistent. In the past, the side-load rates were higher than the front-load 651 00:49:40,240 --> 00:49:44,420 refuse rates. So moving forward, we're proposing to align those two different 652 00:49:44,420 --> 00:49:51,840 service categories. This talks about side-load rates, the ones I just 653 00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:55,760 mentioned. So we are proposing to align the side-load refuse rates with the 654 00:49:55,760 --> 00:50:00,600 front-load rates you just saw on the previous slide. We are also proposing to 655 00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:04,400 adjust the following rates. So for instance, a 3 cubic yard going one time a week 656 00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:11,200 would go from 105 to 74. The bottom table is the recycling rates. As I mentioned 657 00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:15,600 before, the anyone with the X that is in the matrix are rates we're proposing to 658 00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:21,200 do away with moving forward. They're not currently being utilized or underutilized 659 00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:25,760 rates and categories, so we're recommending that them go away. 660 00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,600 These are some additional commercial rates that are out in the community. So we do 661 00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:41,800 have organic collection rates. These are for pre-consumer organics and you see 662 00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:46,480 these a lot of times at grocery stores in the community that have, you know, 663 00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,400 pre-consumer organics collected in those as are brought back to the saw waste 664 00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:55,360 facility to be composted. We are proposing that rate go from 374.13 to 665 00:50:55,360 --> 00:51:01,160 274. The extra fee associated with that we're recommending to go from 240 to 666 00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:06,160 $75 based on the cost of service study that was done last summer. We are 667 00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:10,600 recommended to keep the compactor service fee of 275 and separating it out 668 00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:15,720 from the open top service fee. Reason B in the consultants recommendation was to 669 00:51:15,720 --> 00:51:20,400 maintain the compactor service fee just because of additional requirements for 670 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,560 the driver to get out of the truck and hook hydraulic hoses and such a little 671 00:51:23,560 --> 00:51:28,080 bit more in labor-intensive. So we are recommending to leave that the same. The 672 00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,520 open top service component of it though that doesn't have the hydraulic hoses 673 00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:35,800 just to hook up, load the container and dump it, we're recommending that fee go 674 00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:40,760 to 240. That's here on the bottom. 675 00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:49,960 Landfill rate, one of the major recommendations from staff this in this 676 00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:54,480 correction strategy is to separate out the gate disposal rate for non-city 677 00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:59,600 Denton citizens and businesses and I'll discuss that with you down here below. We 678 00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:03,880 have we are continuing to reduce our reliance on wholesale waste in the 679 00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:07,480 landfills so the forecast is taking the growth assumptions out in the future 680 00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:14,040 years. So going back to separating out their disposal rates so we are proposing 681 00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:18,920 to separate out the city didn't disposal rate from non-city didn't disposal rate 682 00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:24,360 we would increase non-city Denton's rate from 44 a ton to 46 and that's shown in 683 00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:29,280 the first bullet point here and then we would recommend maintaining the existing 684 00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:32,960 rate for city and citizens and businesses and it's currently 44 a ton 685 00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:36,280 and this is people driving up to the facility disposing of stuff they may 686 00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:40,560 have loaded on a trailer in the back of their truck we would recommend keeping 687 00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:48,240 that the same. With that that concludes the presentation I know I've covered a 688 00:52:48,240 --> 00:52:50,520 lot of stuff so if you're getting questions I'll be happy to back up and 689 00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:59,160 address your questions. I have a question it's a little off-topic but not really. 690 00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:13,840 Whose budget is burdened with paying for litter or illegal dumping within the 691 00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:20,400 city limits? Ethan you want to come up and try to just address illegal dumping 692 00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:24,000 let me ask Ethan Cox to come back. I mean I know at one point in time we actually 693 00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:30,320 had a task force there was a number you could call like 369 dump or junk or 694 00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,120 something like that and you could report illegal dumping and I don't know if it 695 00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:40,200 was ran by the police department or if it was run by Solid Waste or. So Mr. 696 00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:44,480 Chairman Tony point the chief financial officer so currently that is all paid 697 00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:47,640 through out of the general fund our parks department is really the one that's 698 00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:51,080 tasked with that that there's also coordination with our community 699 00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:55,000 improvement services improvement department formerly code enforcement and 700 00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,440 so that's that department's also in the general funds it's really the general 701 00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:05,000 fund it's tasked with cleaning up a lot of those they have litter locations 702 00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,360 primarily around parks other city located property certainly if it's a 703 00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:12,200 private owned property then we try to work with the with the owner of that 704 00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:17,960 property to have them correct that that litter that may be on their property okay 705 00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:22,460 okay I know that you know I know this is this is always unintentional but often 706 00:54:22,460 --> 00:54:27,840 when we're dumping the commercial dumpsters litter spills I know it even 707 00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:33,640 happens with with residential bins as well but often the resident the 708 00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:37,160 residents owner will actually go out there and clean it up and put it back in 709 00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:41,200 the bin but with the commercial collection you know nobody really wants 710 00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:45,220 to own it sometimes not even the driver who spilled it doesn't want to own the 711 00:54:45,220 --> 00:54:50,000 trash and then it becomes something that I think we have to pick up and somebody's 712 00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:54,520 got to pay to have that pick up and I think it's I think it's great that we're 713 00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:58,040 trying to reduce rates for somebody because that's a good thing to reduce 714 00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:02,280 rates but it seems like maybe we're overlooking some of the real costs of 715 00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:09,200 delivering that service Chairman I think that's a great point you know it's one 716 00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:13,200 of the things that we've talked a little bit about internally is we have a very 717 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:17,840 outdated ordinance in terms of servicing and service standards Nick had 718 00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:21,060 highlighted a couple of slides ago for residentials we want to come back and 719 00:55:21,060 --> 00:55:24,440 kind of refresh and say okay here's how this was intended to work is it actually 720 00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:29,240 working the presentation is up but one of the things you noticed on those 721 00:55:29,240 --> 00:55:32,200 slides for the North Lakes drop-off I showing is those containers were 722 00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:36,080 overloaded they're spilling out on the ground and I think that's one of those 723 00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:39,000 things that we really need to work with not just our residents but also our 724 00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:42,780 commercial entities on is if you can't close the lid by ordinance we shouldn't 725 00:55:42,780 --> 00:55:46,320 be servicing that container because it's exactly what you're saying is as soon as 726 00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:50,440 we lift it it's going to spill out all over the place for commercial containers 727 00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:54,080 especially front load depending on the type of material you could be lifting 728 00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:57,440 that and it comes straight through the windshield at the driver and so really 729 00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:01,320 creates not just a literary issue it also creates a safety issue for our 730 00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:04,880 drivers and so I think what we want to try to do is take kind of a common-sense 731 00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:09,320 approach to how do we do these things bring back to both the board as well as 732 00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:13,520 the council some recommendations for recrafting our ordinance changing some 733 00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:16,560 things when necessary and then we want to talk to you all about how do we 734 00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:18,920 enforce on that because we certainly want to go out there and collect 735 00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:23,040 something but it's going to create more litter or hazard then I think the person 736 00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:26,640 that created that issue is really the person that needs to be part of helping 737 00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:29,840 us clean that up and so it's just really trying to get to those common-sense 738 00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:34,240 solutions about how we work around those issues okay thank you this is one thing 739 00:56:34,240 --> 00:56:39,440 that just occurred to me is have we considered putting like cameras out 740 00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:47,480 there or something to monitor that North Lakes that's part of that 420 and change 741 00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:51,920 that we showed up there we don't know what was in that yeah I mean it is a 742 00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:55,280 relocation but a couple of things that we have built into that figure that you 743 00:56:55,280 --> 00:57:00,040 saw up there is adequate lighting as well as cameras and then prosecuting 744 00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:04,800 illegal dumping and folks that are abusing that site it's easier said than 745 00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:08,440 done we had cameras out at the landfill it didn't deter most folks from abusing 746 00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:12,760 that site but we do need to be more diligent about going after folks that 747 00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:17,680 are our bad actors I wonder if one effort you could make in that direction 748 00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:21,600 as far as catching those people I noticed that you know at that I use the 749 00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:26,680 North Lakes recycling center frequently and there are signs up that saying it's 750 00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:29,440 monitored but if you look around you can kind of tell it's not monitored but if 751 00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:34,120 we do come up with some kind of solution where people can report illegal dumping 752 00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:39,120 you could actually put some signs big signs along that fence or a fence near 753 00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:43,000 the dumpster letting people know how to report it and perhaps people will be 754 00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:47,920 reluctant to do so if their neighbor right next to them is being given a hey 755 00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:51,400 take a picture snap a text and send it you know I don't know I don't know it 756 00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:55,680 just seems like we need some as a citizen who sees it happening we need 757 00:57:55,680 --> 00:58:01,400 some kind of deterrent yeah some way to report it some you know thank you yeah 758 00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:04,240 well just one more thing too it just occurred to me we were talking about 759 00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:09,000 the really large those dumpsters because I go by there all the time and it seems 760 00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:12,840 like they're always full like to overflowing couldn't we put some larger 761 00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:16,360 ones out there and that's one of the things with the new side is if we do 762 00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:19,160 relocate and move it over there instead of doing what we call front load 763 00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:23,120 containers which is what you saw up there we would do more standard roll-off 764 00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:27,480 containers that are restrictive in terms of what you can put in there again 765 00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:30,600 that's not going to knock off the illegal dumping if someone's not being 766 00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:34,720 monitored or you know enforced upon because we had the same dynamic at the 767 00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:38,160 landfill when we were seeing that but it does restrict some of what you all are 768 00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:42,240 talking about is the windblown litter things on the ground consistently so 769 00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:46,280 it's definitely something we would put into the design for the new side and I 770 00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:50,440 don't know if you have any control over the design of the actual thing you know 771 00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:55,880 the actual dumps I mean the containers containers thank you sure I'm very 772 00:58:55,880 --> 00:59:00,720 short I'm like five foot tall it's very hard for me you know I mean I'm 773 00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:06,360 constantly having the ground because you can't reach it but I know that I mean so 774 00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:10,760 I'm very conscientious to try to you know I do but you know other people won't 775 00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:15,040 I'm gonna go I've done it three times now I couldn't reach it I'm just gonna 776 00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:19,920 leave it where it is and walk off and just a thought we'll certainly take a 777 00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:26,620 look at that as we purchased some new containers I have some stairs out there 778 00:59:26,620 --> 00:59:35,400 so that shorter people can stand in the back of the truck well I think efforts 779 00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:40,840 to reduce rates for commercial customers is a fine idea I'd hate to see us go 780 00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:45,240 through some efforts to reduce it and then find ourselves in 18 months or 24 781 00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:49,600 months trying to bump the rates back up right because we really didn't assess 782 00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:53,880 the situation right no I'm glad you brought that up so one of the 783 00:59:53,880 --> 00:59:57,440 recommendations of staff is to bring this back to the PUB and council 784 00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:00,720 annually as part of the budgeting process where we can take an annual look 785 01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:03,720 at it make sure we're not reducing them too much we have to come back the rate 786 01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:08,480 increase thereafter okay okay thank you 787 01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:18,760 okay the next item is part of our regular meeting it's the consent agenda 788 01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:25,440 we have a few items on our consent to consent agenda a through H we're gonna 789 01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:32,920 pull item a for consideration at another meeting Larry did you want to speak to 790 01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:35,440 that real quick 791 01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:44,920 we're just gonna push it to another meeting and take care of the first item 792 01:00:44,920 --> 01:00:49,960 on the consent agenda has to the Saturn non-disclosure agreement and UNT is 793 01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:56,080 involved in that ultimately and we have a member of our board who is a employee 794 01:00:56,080 --> 01:01:01,160 of UNT and so she's not able to participate in the vote on that and that 795 01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:06,040 leaves us down to three so we don't have a quorum and so it's not a problem to 796 01:01:06,040 --> 01:01:09,880 push that to another meeting okay although it is gonna go to council 797 01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:14,720 tomorrow okay without a recommendation from PV they'll come back and bring it 798 01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:22,200 back for consideration here okay thank you so with that being said we have 799 01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:33,800 items B through H on items for our consent agenda does any member want to 800 01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:40,600 pull any item for questions or further discussion nobody wants to pull any 801 01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:48,040 items do you have a motion for approval of item B through G oh sorry through H 802 01:01:48,040 --> 01:01:54,680 on our consent agenda so moved to approve be through H yes ma'am I'll 803 01:01:54,680 --> 01:02:01,280 second we have a motion for approval and a second any discussion all those in 804 01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:08,760 favor say aye aye all those against nay the motion to approve items be through 805 01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:15,280 H passes the second item we have in our regular meeting is items for individual 806 01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:21,000 consideration the first item is the approval of the public utility board 807 01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:26,880 meetings from the minute meeting of April 8th 2019 the draft minutes have 808 01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:32,360 been distributed in advance of this meeting do does any member have any 809 01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:37,400 omissions deletions edits that they'd like to make to these minutes no 810 01:02:37,400 --> 01:02:45,280 hearing none the minutes are approved as submitted and item B is the assistant 811 01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:49,640 city manager update yes mr. vice chair members of the board in your packet 812 01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:57,440 you'll have a memorandum or memo from Debra Vieira to myself that includes an 813 01:02:57,440 --> 01:03:02,160 attachment and informal staff report that was sent to our City Council back 814 01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:08,840 on on April the 12th basically it just gives a summary of a of a violation that 815 01:03:08,840 --> 01:03:15,480 that the city was issued from the Texas Commission environmental quality on a I 816 01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:20,160 believe it was more of a of a missed sampling of a water of a water 817 01:03:20,160 --> 01:03:23,680 collection it was basically a missed one sampling of a hundred they're supposed 818 01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:30,120 to pick 120 water samples just threw it in inadvertent error they missed one and 819 01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:35,240 so as a result it triggered a violation but there's no concern about the water 820 01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:40,760 quality so based on that we've changed our standard to actually over collect to 821 01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:46,080 make sure nothing's missed in the future but again because we received the 822 01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:50,120 violence notice of violation we wanted to inform our council and obviously 823 01:03:50,120 --> 01:03:54,400 informed the PUB of that of that said violation and if you have any specific 824 01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:59,760 questions Ms. Vieira is here to answer those questions if you have those come 825 01:03:59,760 --> 01:04:06,120 didn't we have a similar violation last fiscal year fiscal year before that where 826 01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:14,080 we didn't test at all with this it actually made the paper and upset 827 01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:16,720 people for a little bit until they realized that it was kind of a 828 01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:24,400 procedural thing I'm not good afternoon or good evening board Ken banks general 829 01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:28,600 manager of utilities I'm I'm gonna take a guess at the one you're referring to 830 01:04:28,600 --> 01:04:33,180 and I think it was related to the lead copper monitoring that we were yes okay 831 01:04:33,180 --> 01:04:41,360 okay and basically what that was is it was a the state had changed a procedure 832 01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:47,180 whereby they used to send the the bottles and that was kind of the the 833 01:04:47,180 --> 01:04:52,720 impetus for going out and doing the collection and because of that change in 834 01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:58,800 procedure it was not noticed in the monitoring time by the time that that 835 01:04:58,800 --> 01:05:04,080 issue was noticed we had gone past our window there's a narrow window in which 836 01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:08,120 to sample them because they want them want the samples collected in the hotter 837 01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:13,160 time of the year and so what we had to do is actually wait until the the 838 01:05:13,160 --> 01:05:18,660 following summer to do that monitoring we were not alone in the state there 839 01:05:18,660 --> 01:05:23,640 were there were quite a few utilities that kind of fell in that same category 840 01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:27,280 but this is a different this is a different test these are these are for 841 01:05:27,280 --> 01:05:34,000 fecal coliforms and for disinfection products and basically you collect a 842 01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:38,520 hundred and twenty on a monthly basis okay all right thanks again 843 01:05:57,960 --> 01:06:05,680 the future board agenda items you'll be noticing you'll notice that you'll have 844 01:06:05,680 --> 01:06:09,200 a number of items budget presentations coming forward to you over the next 845 01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:14,040 number of weeks so starting today along through through the middle of summer 846 01:06:14,040 --> 01:06:18,320 you'll be seeing these presentations and look forward to presenting those items 847 01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:22,880 to the board and answer any questions you all may have nothing further to 848 01:06:22,880 --> 01:06:32,640 report our third and concluding item of the regular meeting is the Texas Open 849 01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:37,400 Meetings Act allows an opportunity to us for us to respond to inquiries from the 850 01:06:37,400 --> 01:06:42,800 public utility board or the public with specific specific factual information or 851 01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:47,240 recitation of policy or accept a proposal to place the matter on the 852 01:06:47,240 --> 01:06:53,320 agenda for an upcoming meeting it also allows an opportunity for members of the 853 01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:58,120 publicly public or community to include expressions of thanks congratulations 854 01:06:58,120 --> 01:07:01,840 condolences information other type of information like that that doesn't 855 01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:05,720 require an action by the board does anybody have anything like that they'd 856 01:07:05,720 --> 01:07:12,360 like to present oh I wanted a status report on the dumpsters off of sidewalks 857 01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:17,840 those I think those letters gave a deadline of April something and we 858 01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:22,680 included an update in our as an informal staff report on this past Friday and 859 01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:26,080 we'll send you a copy so the board a copy of the of the update my 860 01:07:26,080 --> 01:07:32,480 understanding is everyone's in compliance all right well then so that 861 01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:39,200 doesn't need to go on the agenda right if we're getting the report we'll still 862 01:07:39,200 --> 01:07:45,320 include it as a ACM update okay and send it to the board separately any other 863 01:07:45,320 --> 01:07:52,760 items from anybody none anybody in the audience part of me anybody in the 864 01:07:52,760 --> 01:08:01,920 audience anybody have anything they want to say okay nothing beings wanting to be 865 01:08:01,920 --> 01:08:10,200 said do we have a motion for to adjourn this meeting so moved do we have a second 866 01:08:10,200 --> 01:08:16,040 second and we are adjourned thanks everybody