Okay, it's 9 o'clock and we have a quorum so it's called to order the May 6, 2019 Public
Utilities Board meeting.
The first item on the agenda is to receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff
direction regarding the customer service fiscal year 2019-2020 operating budget.
Good morning Madam Chair, Board, Tiffany Thompson, Director of Customer Service.
Happy to be here this morning to go over our budget presentation.
So customer service mission is to help serve and educate our customers.
Last year we calculated and produced over 641,000 bills.
We filled at 195,000 phone calls, assisted 64,000 customers in our lobby and collected
and reconciled over $287 million worth of revenue.
So some of our accomplishments is we did launch the Page-You-Go prepaid metering program.
We have about 130 customers on that program right now.
We also launched an after-interaction survey with our lobby customers coming in.
This is in addition to the survey that we offer over the phone.
So anytime you interact with our customer service agents, you're given an opportunity
to answer three short questions about your interaction and then also you can get a callback
from a supervisor if you'd like to further discuss your interaction or have some concerns.
We've had over 24,000 surveys completed through that and the customers that are wanting a
callback, 75% of those customers are wanting a callback to give compliments on the experience
that they receive from the customer service representative.
So the other 25% has been opportunities on how we can improve.
We also conducted the study of the credit and collection processes that we brought forth
to you in March with that.
And then we also did an audit, a stem to stern audit in our operation, spent about 400 hours
with the internal auditor and did some process improvements with that.
So our goals for this year is to continue to boost the adoption with our prepaid metering
program.
We're also adding an additional 18 locations to be able to pay your bill that's going to
be at our 7-11 locations and also our family tree locations that we have in here.
And then you'll be able to pay also multiple locations nationwide.
We're also doing a study of our call center performance metrics with Navigant as well
to make sure that we have the right performance metrics and that we're up to best industry
standards with our metrics as well.
And then we're also going to have some subject matter expert representatives that can help
our customers that have sensitive and difficult situations that they're working through.
So not only helping them know what programs the city offers, but also the community and
home with it, so those are some of our goals that we have this year.
So our budget emphasis is to maximize value while containing and limiting costs.
So we do this by focusing on our performance measures.
So some of the ones I want to point out is obviously bad debt is one that we want to
continue to look at.
Over the last several years that has been decreasing, but we did make some recent policy
changes that is impacting that slightly with this last fiscal year and we're anticipating
that to increase a little bit more as well.
And so we also want to make sure our self-service adoption, so our customers are able to make
payments online without contacting us or having other options to be able to do business online.
And then first contact resolution, making sure we're offering that complete solution
when the customer calls in and not creating duplication of effort on our part and also
the customer's part.
And then average speed of answer, how quickly we answer that phone call when they come in.
We have a goal to answer that phone call within 60 seconds or less, right now we're answering
that in about 29 seconds.
So the key drivers of our budget is our customer volume, the behaviors of our customers and
then how we respond to that volume.
So we want to make sure we're looking at ways to reduce that volume and improve efficiency
by increasing our customer satisfaction.
So we do that by investing in self-service options.
About a year and a half ago we launched the new payment portal that we have.
We have 46% of our customer base is registered and using that payment portal.
And then also 25% of our customer base is on electronic billing.
So that saves us about 10 to 12 cents per bill per month with the customers that go
on that electronic billing.
And then approve efficiency.
So we want to continue to leverage the feedback that we're getting from the survey.
And I'm going to talk to you just a minute about some of the things that we implemented
based off of that feedback that we received.
So here's some of what has happened with our cost containment strategies and also just some
changes in our customer behavior.
So our customer base continues to go up.
Our lobby volume has been decreasing over the last several years and that's directly
impacted by based off of the self-service options that we've been offering.
And so they've either transitioned to doing it themselves or they call us over the phone.
So we are seeing an increase in our call center volume based off of customer base increase
and that the calls that we're getting are the more complex calls that we do need to
hear from.
Our average handle time has also steadily increased over the last several years.
And this is because, again, the calls that we're handling are more complex calls.
So signing up for service.
If they're needing to sign up for prepaid utilities, there's a lot of education that
goes with that.
So again, the customers we're hearing from are the ones that we need to talk to and spend
a little bit of time with.
And then our average speed of answer, this demonstrates how productive we're being.
So even though our average handle time has increased, we're being efficient with our
resources that we have deployed for our customers.
So some of the process improvements that we've made this year, we've developed over 300 standard
operating procedures that we previously didn't have.
We have them in multiple different formats and places.
And so this last year, we really focused on getting it in one central location to be able
to know what is the process and really a source of truth for all the processes and methods
that we have.
We've also added a Spanish option to our payment portal.
This was a feedback that we got from our Spanish representatives and also from the survey results.
So now customers that were calling in needing to do business over the phone with the Spanish
representatives now have that capability to do that online.
So that's one example of one of the things we implemented based off the survey feedback.
And then we also launched a self-service transfer and disconnection capability on our payment
portal.
So that's another way that customers don't need to reach out to us directly.
They can do that online at any time to disconnect or transfer their service.
So as an internal service fund, our cost allocation is divided among the utilities and general
government that use our services.
So that's based off of if they're represented on a bill or we take a phone call from them,
they get a certain portion of our budget allocation back to them.
And so based off of that, our budget is increasing and some of the changes I wanted to note with
that we did have a mid-year change with an additional FTE this year.
We have some plan changes in our supplemental packages.
It's a 1.5 CSR and then also a quality control specialist that I'm going to talk about in
just a couple of minutes.
And then increased funding from $125,000 to $175,000 for the plus one program.
And that was based off some direction that we got about a month ago from the board and
also council.
And then some contingency preparation.
So currently we have a contract with Elevon.
They're our merchant services provider for our online credit and debit card payment.
We do need to shift over to Wells Fargo Merchant Services.
There is some changes in the way that we're going to be able to charge the 2.7 commercial
fee with that.
So we're going to be coming forth to you with some direction, seeking direction on some
options in the next couple of weeks because that will have some impacts on if we're going
to absorb certain costs for our commercial customers and also impacts our electronic
check payments as well.
So we're vetting out some options and bringing forth to you again to seek direction.
But we do need to plan for worst case scenario in our budget if we needed to absorb those
costs.
So this $200,000 is what that impact is.
So some of our highlights, the personal services with the increase, additional FTEs.
This is a fully loaded budget that you're seeing right here with the supplemental packages
included.
We are seeing an increase in our postage and printing due to the cost of paper.
And then our merchant services fees is included, that additional $200,000 in that operations.
So for our position summary, we currently have 43.5 FTEs.
Over the last several years, we have been combining and eliminating positions.
So this is going to be the first year that we're seeking to add some additional positions
based off of our customer base and complexity of calls that we're servicing.
We have the 30 staff that's dedicated just to our front line customer service support.
So for our supplemental packages, we are seeking an additional 1.5 that's a full-time and a
part-time customer service representative, again, based off of customer base, wanting
to make sure that we meet our service level agreements, answering that phone call, first
contact resolution.
And then the quality control specialist, this was a recommendation during our audit process,
is having someone that can do quality control on all of our billing.
We do have some processes set in place, but there isn't a dedicated person that is looking
over rate application and additional, again, just quality control for all of our billing
processes.
This person would also assist with quality control for our call center and cash, just
based off of the number of calls that we do quality assurance on.
And then we have a six-week training program for all of our new customer service representatives
that start with our department, and we are almost always in some type of training program.
So this is what this person would be, how they would be spending their time with that.
And so with that, I'd like to thank the board for their continued support, and happy to
answer any questions.
Questions?
The pay near me plan, did that contract come before us?
It did not come before you, because it's just an addition to the prepay metering contract.
With that, we're able to do that, and there is no cost to the city to do that.
It's going to be passed through to the customers that are utilizing it.
So there isn't any cost to the city with it.
But once we go live with that, we're going to be bringing forth an informal staff report
that will be put to the PUB so you're aware of what's going on, how it works, and then
marketing to our customers.
Okay, so essentially, they can pay at 7-Eleven, but they have to pay the percentage fee.
Any fee associated.
And 27,000 other locations, that's all the same.
It's the same thing that we have with MoneyGram and Fidelity Express.
If you go to Kroger, same type of thing.
We just wanted to continue to offer additional places to pay, but this also complements the
pay as you go program, because we need real-time information to be able to get that.
So it's important to us for our customers to be able to go and have alternate locations
to pay, and us get that information immediately.
Sure, sure, sure.
One more question.
With respect to the pay as you go program, I know those people can access their usage
online through some kind of portal.
When are the rest of our customers going to be able to use that?
So we're looking at that now.
Right now, we've been focusing on getting the prepaid customers with that, but that's
going to be a game plan.
I'm glad you brought that up, because we can definitely make sure that's an articulated
goal for our post-pay customers to also be able to do that.
So what we can do is once we're ready to implement that, we can come forward to the PUB and let
you know this is ready to go, and here's the process to do that.
I mean, that's something we've already budgeted for and paid for.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
So as soon as we can get that online, it seems like that might be useful to everybody, especially
if we've already paid for it.
It's going to be sooner than later, so.
And that'll be both electric and water?
You have to have electric to be able to have the my usage, because that's the trigger.
If you're a water-only customer, the data isn't there, because we're still estimating
water usages.
It's pulling data from the smart meters, and I don't think the water meters are smart.
Yeah.
Right.
I'll let you say that, so.
That's what you said.
I just want to say your time to answer is an excellent -- you're doing excellent in
that.
Thank you.
I think there's 43.5 people that make this happen.
Yeah.
I just get to be the mouthpiece.
Yeah.
Sorry.
One more thing.
Sure.
With our merchant services agreements, you're going to bring that back to us to tell us the
details of that?
Yes.
So right now, just high level, we charge a 2.7% fee on the commercial customers.
Our contract that we need to go to with Wells Fargo Merchant Services does not support that.
They say we need to have a flat fee, and so -- and we also would not be considered a general
government mid, we'd be considered a utility mid, and so there's different complexities
that go along with that, so there's going to be some costs associated.
Do we want to absorb the fees?
Do we want to pass on the fee?
What should that fee be?
It also --
Is there a do we even want to do business with Wells Fargo option?
That's one of the options that I think we need to discuss is do we want to go out for
a request for proposal for that one specific service.
The contract that we're operating under now, which the PUB and council gave us a one-year
extension just a couple of weeks ago, is up May of 2020, so we have to have a solution
by that time, and that's a very aggressive goal, just to be able to do that with it.
So we're vetting out all those options.
It's going to be coming for you in the next couple of weeks, so we can get your direction
on where would you like us to go with that.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Okay.
All right.
Thank you again.
Thank you.
All right.
The next item is to receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction regarding
the water fiscal year 2019 and 2020 operating in capital budget.
Okay.
Good morning, Madam Chair, board members.
I am Frank Pugsley, director of water utilities.
First, just like to take a moment to recognize a few people who helped out a lot with this
budget.
Crystal Westbrook sitting over there.
She put up with us and gave us a lot of options and revised the budget over and over for us,
and you'll see what Nick Vinson is going to present after my operations piece.
It's all come together pretty well.
I'd also like to introduce our two superintendents in the water utility.
We have Mr. Hector Ortiz.
He joined the city in April.
He is the water production superintendent, and to his left is Kent Conkle.
He is our water and wastewater superintendent.
He manages all the construction and maintenance crews you see around town.
I just want to thank those guys for coming and watching today, and also I just want to
also acknowledge Tim Fisher.
Over the last 10 months since I've been at the city, since June, he's done a lot of mentorship
with me, and I just will be eternally grateful for all the knowledge he's been able to give
me, and I hope that we can continue to do a great job running the water utility like
he's done for the past 20 plus years, so thank you, Tim.
With that, let's get started.
There we go.
Goals and accomplishments.
Over the last year, we've accomplished a lot, I think, in the organization.
Number one on my list is back last fall around September timeframe, we began implementing
a really detailed construction schedule for our water and wastewater construction crews.
It's really helped our guys focus and achieve their projects on time within budget and make
sure that we know where we're going down the road.
We started out with just about a couple of months of planning out with other projects
out kind of floating out there that we pick from as we go along.
We've built that into about a two-year look ahead where we have all of our wastewater
and water projects planned out for two years, and that has been adopted by both the streets
department and the project management office, and that helps all three of those groups really
work together so that we can manage our construction projects more seamlessly so that we don't
have these long lag times between water and wastewater replacing utilities and streets
coming out to replace the street.
Sometimes months later, we want to bring that lag time down to weeks rather than months.
We also updated our water distribution master plan, which is essentially our roadmap for
where we expect our water distribution system to go in the next 10-plus years, and we also
updated our five-year impact fee program, which is our roadmap for growth-related projects
that we can fund with our impact fee revenue.
We completed some critical repairs to the Lake Louisville 30-inch raw water pipeline.
It has a parallel 27-inch pipeline that we'll get started on with an assessment and some
repairs coming in the next couple of fiscal years.
Our goals coming up were really just maintenance and growth-related issues at the two treatment
plants, some upgrades for Lake Louisville, additionally adding some zebra mussel controls
at our raw water intake structures, because both of our lakes do have zebra mussel infestations
now.
We need to be cognizant of controlling those.
Ray Roberts Water Treatment Plant really hasn't had any major upgrades since it was constructed
and brought online in 2002.
We've done all the routine maintenance that we need to do, but now it's time to kind
of do some heavier lifting and bring that plant back into full operating potential.
We have several large transmission lines that are going to help us move water to the south
and west sides of town, the north-south water transmission main along Bonnie Bray and the
Allred and John Payne Road water transmission lines.
We are very close to securing, I believe, our water reuse permit from the TCEQ, and
that will get us up to 12 MGD of additional water right, claiming our wastewater effluent
in the future.
And we are currently working on our water distribution system asset management plan,
and what that program is going to do is it's going to allow us to better target our water
distribution replacement projects.
We'll have a better risk-based scoring for those lines so that we're not just digging
up good pipe and replacing it with new pipe.
We want to make sure we're replacing the correct pipes and correct valves and infrastructure
when we need to.
That's going to help, I think, with our budget and operating expenses going forward.
Between all of our departments, we've centralized on the City Works work order management system,
so all of our water and wastewater field groups are now speaking the same language as far
as work orders go.
We went through a vehicle study to identify our less efficient heavy equipment and make
sure we have the right equipment for the right jobs so we can be most productive and efficient.
I mentioned the asset management program.
Cost-containment strategies in our current budget.
We have our current proposed budget salary savings of $500,000.
The asset management program will again help us to reduce our capital expenditures where
we don't need to be spending it, not that we'll reduce it overall, but we'll be putting
our money to the best use possible.
And this past summer, we had a really good summer for water sales, both retail and untreated
raw water, and we were able to use that revenue to defer any bond sales this spring for the
water utility.
And we're currently working, as you probably have all heard, on the timing and size of
the CIP project for our Ray Roberts water treatment plant expansion.
As everybody's been doing, we're using a zero-based budget with our supplemental packages, which
you'll see here shortly, and again, the heavy equipment study to help us improve our efficiency.
Process improvements, I'm going to hit on that construction schedule a couple of times
because it really has helped our process.
I think we've seen a really high level of production from those crews, and I attribute
it some to that.
We're way ahead of our projected line replacements for this year.
We've also started cross-training some of our staff on the various equipment that we
have in the water and wastewater crews out in the field.
We have various equipment from various manufacturers, and we want the staff to be comfortable switching
between equipment so that in the event of an absence, they can see that they can take
over when they're needed.
We've also experimented this past year with dual-purpose crews.
Typically, what we've done is we've had water crews and wastewater crews, and they construct
water and wastewater respectively.
When we have the opportunity now on certain projects, we'll have the water distribution
crew go in and replace both water and wastewater assets on the street.
Same thing for water or the wastewater collections crews.
It saves us immobilization, and it saves us some time switching out crews, and it helps
us complete some of those projects a little bit faster.
To go over our supplemental packages, we have six ranked on here.
Water metering maintenance, we're asking for one FTE, and that is a water meter maintenance
mechanic.
The water metering group has only increased in full-time employees 2.5, so they've gone
from 16 and a half FTEs to 18 in the last 20 years.
We have a lot more meters out in the system than we have ever before, and it's continuing
to grow, and our replacements are continuing to grow.
We have a water metering administration, half an FTE, and I think this is rank out of water
metering admin.
Yes, sorry.
Currently, one and a half admins in the water metering group, and again, their call volume
continues to increase.
We're asking to take our half-time employee to a full-time employee.
The annual call volume in the water metering group that these two ladies pick up is over
15,500 calls a year.
That's about 65 a day, and those can take some time, and again, the half-time admins
also volunteer some of her time in excess of when she's supposed to be there to help
make sure work orders are closed out on a timely basis, and we can really use her help
full-time.
The water production operator one is for the Lake Louisville water treatment plant.
It's shown as a full FTE, but that initial cost is low this year because we don't plan
to bring on that employee until later in the fiscal year.
As part of the Lake Louisville treatment plant upgrades, we'll be installing a solids handling
system, which uses a belt filter press to help dewater our water sludge, and that piece
of equipment really needs a full-time employee to make sure it's running at its optimal conditions
and make sure its uptime is high.
So we'll need that one full-time employee starting towards the end of the fiscal year
once that project is commissioned and brought online.
We have a utility admin assistant one and a utility admin intern.
These are both for sustainability.
The sustainability group will be leaving the service center for a new facility, and at
that facility, they won't have admin support to run payroll and do the other admin functions,
so they will need one FTE admin there, and the utility admin intern for sustainability
is necessary due to the work we're seeing at the Clear Creek Nature Preserve, as well
as to handle some of the after hours outreach events that the sustainability group are kind
of volunteering their time after hours to complete, so that intern could help us accomplish
a lot of those tasks.
We have two asks in the water distribution group, an HEO2 and a maintenance crew truck.
This is going to be targeted mostly towards hydrant painting and hydrant maintenance.
As our construction load goes up and then we have emergencies, we're pulling our maintenance
crews into construction occasionally, and by having this extra dedicated person, we
can really focus their attention on making sure we're getting out there and maintaining
our fire hydrants.
We do operate every fire hydrant in the city every year through the maintenance or the
metering shop, and whenever they identify an issue, they will submit a work order, and
this employee would then go out and take care of the fire hydrant maintenance issues.
This is our projection that kind of discusses when our new treatment plant will require
to be online.
Right now, we're showing that this is a typo here, not construction to begin in 2023.
This is actually designed to begin in 2023, construction would begin in 2025 about, and
then the plant needs to be online in 2028 based on our current projections.
I mentioned we do have a study ongoing with a consultant to help us kind of narrow this
down, and between our two estimates, we feel confident that beginning design in 2023 and
then construction in 2025, we'll be able to have this plant online in time to beat our
demands.
The three lines on the graph, the red, blue, and green, we plan our treatment capacity
based on the dry year, because that's the one that we're really concerned with.
If we hit a dry year and we don't have capacity, then we would have to enter our draw contingency
measures, and all the little black dots you can see are our actual pumpage.
In the last few years, we've been a little bit fortunate that it's been wet for the last
three, four, five years, so our actual demand has been low, but last summer we did hit a
near peak record in July.
We didn't hit our peak, our maximum record, but we do expect that variability to continue
going forward.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Nick to handle the financial side.
Good morning, Chair, PB members.
As Frank said, I'm Nick Vincent, the city's budget manager.
I'll be presenting to you the financial portion of the proposed 19-20 water budget.
Feel free to stop me throughout these slides.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer your questions.
A few of the assumptions that went into putting the five-year forecast together, we are proposing
to change the way that impact fee revenue is currently used in the water fund.
I'll review that with you on the next slide.
We are not forecasting any rate increases for the current proposed budget in 2020, but
we do have some plugged in in '22 and '23 in anticipation of the water treatment plant
that Frank talked about.
We are projecting a 2% population growth.
We do have a declining GPCD plugged in, going down to 152 in fiscal year 2024.
And then the water treatment plan, it has moved from 24 to 25, as Frank had mentioned.
So as I said, we are proposing to change the way that water impact fee revenue is currently
used in the water fund.
When we receive this revenue currently, we do apply it to eligible debt service.
Moving forward, we are proposing to change this method to fund both debt service and
upfront project cost of eligible projects.
So you can see in the proposed columns, the eligible debt service portion would be 2.7
million.
The revenue component would be about 3.8 million.
Over the five-year period, we would fund about $11.2 million worth of revenue funding of
upfront project cost.
This does save the fund money associated with interest of issuing bonds for these projects.
And I'll show this to you in the five-year forecast also on a few slides.
This slide summarizes how much revenue the water fund can recover through impact fees
over a 10-year period.
Last fall, the impact fee study was completed for the water fund.
It did identify $66 million in total recoverable costs that we could recoup through impact
fees.
When that money does come in, we can apply it to two different things.
We can pay debt service of eligible projects, or we can cash fund projects upfront.
Our current project list identified about $17 million worth of projects we can revenue fund
upfront, and then about $49 million worth of debt service that we can apply towards
the debt service component.
So when you look at these tables on the proceeding side, you can see over five-year periods,
about $21 million towards debt service and about $11.2 million towards revenue funding.
So we are within those requirements.
This is the five-year forecast.
You can see the adopted budget, 2019 in this column, we have $45.7 million in revenue.
We did have about a drawdown of $4.4 million in reserves.
The end-of-year projections, we do project to come in a little bit better, only using
about $4 million in reserves.
In the proposed budget, we have $47.6 million in rate revenue, a drawdown of about $2.3
million in reserves.
So total resource is about $50 million, expenses is $50 million, and as Frank had pointed out,
we do have supplemental packages already included in the budget.
You can see that amount here of $304,000.
Moving down the page, we are not forecasting any rate increases in the current fiscal year
or in 2021.
We do have a 2% plugged in in '22 and '23, in anticipation of the plan coming online
in '25.
The reserves for this fund do stay above the minimum in each of the years.
The current year is $19.2 million.
It does increase to $41 million in the future years.
I also want to point out, currently, we do have an impact fee reserve.
In that reserve, we do have about $14.8 million.
We do want to transition about $9 million of that to a capital reserve, that will be
used as a future date to revenue fund another eligible project.
So I just wanted to point that out to everybody also.
This is the revenue detail for the water fund.
A couple things I'd like to point out, as I mentioned a couple slides ago, we do want
to change the way that impact fee revenue is currently used in the water fund.
You can see, in the previous years, we brought it in and applied it towards the debt service
of eligible projects.
Moving forward, we're wanting to divide it into two components, applying about $2.72
to debt service and about $3.8 million towards revenue funding of eligible projects.
As I mentioned, this does save the fund interest money from issuing bonds over the 10-year
term.
This is the expense detail for the water fund.
You can see the adopted budget here in this column of $50.1 million.
The expenses are projected to come in about what was budgeted, about $49.9 and then the
proposed column is about $15 million, including the supplemental package of $300,000.
This is the five-year capital plan.
So fiscal year 2020 is the first column.
This is the proposed budget.
We do have $29.2 million worth of projects that are currently planned.
Of that amount, $15.9 million is planned to be bond funded, $9.2 million is planned to
be revenue funded, and $3.8 would be funded with impact fee revenue at the initial project
start.
This is the FT summary for the water department.
Currently there's 105.5 positions.
You can see the number here.
The supplemental packages that Frank just reviewed with you is five positions, which
takes the total to 110.5.
That's all for the water presentation.
Can we go back to the 2% in the two future years?
I'm sure you looked at it, but what would it look like if we had just smaller beginning
this year?
I do have a scenario that takes us out to a 10-year period.
We can see it through 2030, but it does have the 2% built in.
If we lowered it to 1%, when you get out there in the 10th year -- let me pull up another
slide really quick and I'll address your question -- hang on just a second.
What if we started it this year with 1% and just did 1% out instead of boom boom?
We can look at that.
We have not.
I haven't brought that scenario forward today.
If that's something the PUB would like us to bring back, we can.
We definitely have another meeting scheduled.
Let me show you this really quick though.
In 2020 -- I hope everybody can see this here.
The rate increases are down here on the green line.
You can see them right here.
Currently it would be 0%.
When you get on to '22 and '23, they're 2%.
The reason we did choose 2% -- if you look at the reserve, the minimum reserve out here
in 2031 is $20 million.
That puts the reserve at 21.9.
So we could do smaller increases, but this may not be above the minimum out here in the
future years.
Okay.
Of course, the earlier you start, you get the compounding effect, but we just chose
2%.
Well, 2% isn't big.
I was just curious.
Thank you.
We definitely look at it each year too.
As we progress in '21, we come back to the '21 budget, it very well may be 2% still.
It may be a smaller amount.
Other questions?
Sorry.
I jumped in there.
I know you always had -- no.
Brendan doesn't have one.
I had a question --
Yes, ma'am.
-- with Frank.
I was just curious about what you were doing for the zebra mussels.
I'm very sad that they're down here.
Yes.
There -- we'll be adding some chemical addition systems at the intake structures to discourage
growth.
Does it work?
Yes, it does.
Yeah.
It provides -- it's an oxidant and a copper ion generator that will be operated in kind
of a pulse fashion so that it discourages them from attaching.
They'll find somewhere else to grow.
Okay.
Why don't you e-mail the city of Chicago because they're working on this too.
Yeah.
There's -- and a lot of cities in Texas are doing the exact same thing, proposing identical
systems that we are too.
It seems to be --
So it's just right at the pipe head?
Yes.
Yeah.
It's right at the intake structure.
It stops them from, you know, attaching to that intake.
Okay.
Good luck.
Thank you.
Well, no other questions.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Our next item is to receive a report and hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding
the wastewater and drainage fiscal year 2019-2020 operating and capital budget.
Good morning, Madam Chair, PV members.
My name is Kenny Banks.
I'm the general manager of utilities.
I'll be handling the wastewater portion of this presentation.
Before I start, I also want to echo the same sentiments that Frank had put out earlier,
acknowledge Crystal, Nick, David.
There's been a lot of work done on this budget and I really appreciate everyone's help to
get us to the point where we're at right now.
So in terms of our goals and accomplishments, we submitted the final, and I want to repeat
final, annual report for the EPA administrative order.
This has been a long, ongoing project.
PS Aurora has been the lead on this and essentially we've been able to implement programs that
allowed us to go through an administrative order instead of a consent decree and essentially
has saved the utility a lot of money, plus been able to demonstrably reduce the amount
of sanitary sewer overflows that we've had.
We've updated the five-year impact fee, as Frank mentioned earlier, completed the
construction of Cooper Creek Phase 1 and 2 interceptor projects.
These are two very large projects.
You've probably seen them at the intersection of 288 and 380.
Some of the work that's going on there near the channel is related to this project.
A very important interceptor project for the whole Cooper Creek Basin.
We have bid the Hickory Creek and West Wetflow Detention Facility projects, so the Hickory
Creek system is an approximately 3.5 million gallon storage system that is located in the
Hickory Creek Basin.
It will allow us to collect water at times of high flow and then feed that back in at
times of lower flow.
So it's just a mechanism to help us balance our system a little bit more effectively.
The West Peak Flow Detention Facility is actually located on the Pecan Creek Wastewater Treatment
Plant property.
It is about a nine million gallon capacity storage system that has a 30 million gallon
per day pumping system that allows us also to store waste and then basically move it
into the system.
So it's just a way of balancing out those peak flows that we see.
We've completed the design of the sludge handling project at Pecan Creek and bid the solids
handling equipment for procurement.
The solids handling system at Pecan Creek is a fairly old system.
This is a much more modern version that will help us dewater and more effectively deal
with our sludge.
I also want to acknowledge that we have a project that we've been working on that's
been kind of spearheaded by PS to look at the ability of using enhanced treatment technologies
to expand the capacity of the Pecan Creek wastewater system without actually increasing
the footprint of that system.
So I'll talk about that a little bit in just a few slides or just a few bullets.
But that solids handling is a big component of that chemical feed system.
So we kind of designed them and implemented them hand in hand.
And then of course we updated the wastewater collection system master plan that was part
of the overall impact fee study that we did earlier this year.
So goals for 19-20, we want to complete the construction of the sludge handling project
and complete construction of Hickory Creek and West Wet Flow detention facilities, bid
and begin construction on Hickory Creek phase one and phase two interceptor projects.
These are two very large interceptors that are in the Hickory Creek system that are going
to help increase the capacity to convey wastewater into that area where we've got our storage
system.
We've also got the Hickory Creek pump station upgrade which will again allow us to just
really modernize and enhance that whole side of the city and moving the waste through that
system.
We want to submit performance data to TCEQ to look at that capacity addition.
We have to do a pilot study for the chemically enhanced primary treatment that we're looking
at and demonstrate that that will work effectively and then we can move on to full scale.
And then we want to also complete the construction of the Robeson wastewater diversion project.
This came in front of you a few weeks ago and essentially what this is is it's a system
that's going to be put in place that allows the current Robeson wastewater treatment plant
to be taken offline.
They've got a small batch plant there, that batch plant is going to have to be substantially
expanded to be able to accommodate Robeson at full growth.
So through discussions and negotiations we have come up with a deal to basically divert
that wastewater flow from Robeson and then move it through the Hickory Creek system ultimately
to the concrete for treatment.
So in terms of budget emphasis on our operating expense side as we stated on water we fully
implemented City Works through the field group to standardize our work orders.
We've been really looking at our equipment and vehicles and identifying places where
we can replace heavier equipment with more right size, more nimble equipment both in
terms of equipment size and in terms of equipment type.
Also one of the main goals that we're doing right now is phasing out a significant amount
of our backhoe inventory and replacing it with excavators for doing linear pipe projects.
The excavators are much more efficient.
So that's one example of how we're trying to get smaller and more nimble machines out
there to do a better and more efficient job.
Basically are looking at our asset management data.
We have an initiative that Frank spoke about a little bit on the water side about increasing
our asset management capabilities.
We've got a very good program for asset management in wastewater and we've been able to use that
program to make sure that the way in which we're managing the system is efficient.
We're not replacing pipes just because they've reached a certain age.
We're replacing pipes because they have reached a certain level of inefficiency or degradation.
So we're trying to get the maximum amount of time possible out of our system.
Again, part of that is enacting infrastructure solutions to lower asset life cost and reduce
environmental impacts.
We continue to look at all different types of technologies, plant modeling processes,
the chemical treatment that I mentioned earlier, our work order system, our GPS system, all
of those things working together to help us be as efficient as possible.
And then, of course, we've had a consistent theme under the administrative order that
we will continue to perform proactive operations and management activities to basically improve
our customer service by reducing those mainline service calls, sewer chokes, and sanitary
sewer overflows.
The overall goal there is to minimize the emergency response by maximizing our preventative
maintenance.
So cost containment strategies, we've got budgeted salary savings of about $400,000.
There was a reorganization of the Beneficial Reuse Department that occurred earlier in
this year and we've been able to save about $53,000 on an annual basis through that reorganization.
We've reduced our revenue funded capital and FY20 by about $3 million.
Nick will talk about this a little bit more, but it's an attempt to kind of normalize our
capital expenditures over the five-year capital improvement plan.
We continue to use asset management programs to improve our capital management and replacement
scheduling.
We enacted a feasibility study that we talked about a little earlier to get that increased
capacity at the plant.
And as everyone else says, we're using zero-based budgeting with supplemental packages and then
we are, just as in water, looking at that heavy equipment and trying to right size it.
So process improvements for '18-'19, you'll see some consistent themes overlapping with
water.
Water distribution and wastewater crews are looking at that dual purpose crew to be out
there and be more efficient, not having to mobilize twice and be able to get both the
water and wastewater side of the project taken care of by a single crew.
We continue to use and explore trenchless technology for sewer line repairs, whether
that's in-situ small point repairs or doing pipe bursting projects where we can basically
replace an existing pipe by breaking that pipe apart and pulling a larger pipe through
it or even a pipe of the same size through it.
So it's less disruptive, it tends to be faster and it tends to be less expensive.
We are working on emergency response plans for all lift stations and pump stations in
the city.
Each station is somewhat unique and so the opportunity is there to put together a station
specific plan so that everybody understands if we have an emergency, this is what we do,
this is how we mobilize, this is where we need to look at putting the waste, etc., etc.
And then the collection system asset management plan is something that we are continuing to
enhance as we move forward.
So the future process improvement, I've already talked quite a bit about this, but this is
basically the installing of the solids handling and the chemically enhanced primary treatment
facilities at Pecan Creek and we're in process right now by setting that up to run it in
test mode and see how it works and then provide that information to TCEQ.
At that point, if everything looks good, we'll be looking for an increase of a plant capacity
for that plant based on this technology.
Right now, just to give you an idea, rough cost estimates, looking at the amount of expansion
that we anticipate getting on this, which is about 5 million gallons per day of additional
plant treatment capacity, the cost for using the CEPT system versus the building new traditional
plant capacity, the CEPT is going to be about 20% of what we would normally pay for plant
expansion.
So very beneficial dollar-wise.
In terms of the supplemental package, we've got a couple of them here.
Basically the wastewater collections is looking at adding two FTEs or heavy equipment operator
ones.
Basically, right now, we have two two-person crews and one one-person crew and essentially
what we're looking at is adding two positions to bring the one-person crew to a two-person
crew and then to bring one of the crews that has currently got two people to three.
It's better to have three people for confined space entry and it also gives us an opportunity
to do a little better job from a workload standpoint and being able to have coverage
when people are out or someone's in a training or someone is otherwise unable to be on the
job site.
What's more about coverage are, as Frank had mentioned, our amount of capital construction
has continued to increase pretty dramatically and our maintenance activities are also increasing
at the same time.
So this is an opportunity to plug in a few of those gaps, reduce a little bit over time
and get better coverage.
The HEO2, right now, we have two crews.
One of them has five members.
One of them has six.
The idea here is to balance out those crews with six members apiece and do it with a heavy
equipment operator, too, which is a higher level, more skilled individual.
Multiple pieces of equipment can be run.
There's two main goals there.
One is to balance out the size of the crews, which is an efficiency issue, and then the
second is having that experienced personnel there to act as a, for lack of a better word,
the floater position in case we need to have coverage somewhere else in the group.
And then the flushing truck crew leader.
Right now, the flushing truck crew is a fairly large portion of the organization and they're
teams of two people.
We have a total of five and they report into a field service supervisor in addition to
three other crew leaders reporting into that field service supervisor.
So things are spread pretty thin right now and the ability to make sure that we're documenting
everything on the flushing crew side, to make sure that we're covering our permit requirements,
that we're demonstrating, that we're continuing on with the activities of the administrative
order, and then just being able to analyze all of that activity, the videos, et cetera,
to determine better how to go out and replace our system, we're getting spread a little
bit too thin.
And so the idea there is to basically get a crew leader in there.
That crew leader would be responsible for just the flushing crew section of the organization
and then the existing crew leader would be over all those other three areas.
It's a little confusing.
I do have org charts if you want to see them, but yes.
And coordinated between water and wastewater with all the heavy equipment operators, right?
Absolutely.
So that we, because you're trying to do this efficiency.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes, yes.
Both of those crews report to Mr. Conkle on the water and wastewater side.
So real quickly, the plant flow versus treatment capacity graph, I know it wouldn't be a budget
presentation if we didn't show you all these, so I didn't want to break theme.
But we're looking at right now about 2026 time frame when we're going to get at 90%
of capacity.
The difference here is that now we have the ability to look at this chemically enhanced
primary treatment.
And so the opportunity exists here to actually go through that plant expansion, get it online
probably easily by 2029 and basically be able to meet the expected future growth demands
that we're looking at right now.
So we're looking at about a 1.8% growth, that's been pretty standard for us.
And we have noticed that our annual flows are going down a little bit, you can kind
of see that.
We only have a couple of years worth of data there.
We are thinking that this could be related to some of the declining GPCD, gallons per
capita per day that we've seen on the water side, but it's still a little bit early to
tell.
So we're watching that and it is a possibility as we reevaluate this every year that this
could slide out a little bit further.
And I believe that is the end of my portion of this.
So any questions for me before I turn it over to Mr. Vincent?
Okay, thank you for your time.
Good morning Chair, PUB members, my name is Nick Vincent, the city's budget manager.
I'll be reviewing with you the financial portion of the proposed 19-20 wastewater budget, similar
to water.
If you have any questions, please feel free to stop me throughout the presentation and
I will address them.
We are also recommended to change the way we use wastewater impact fees for this fund.
I'll review that with you on a similar side here shortly.
We're projecting a 2% population growth.
And the fund does maintain a debt coverage ratio of 1.25% and a reserve fund above the
minimum in each of the years and I'll review that with you also.
And there are no rate increases in the 10-year forecast or five-year forecast of the wastewater
fund.
And I'll show that to you here shortly.
So we are proposing to change the way the wastewater impact fees are currently used.
In the current method, they are applied directly to eligible debt service.
So you can see about $4.2 million is applied to debt service.
Moving forward, we will want to apply it towards debt service and revenue funding of projects.
So in the 2020 proposed budget, we have about $3.7 million going towards debt service and
about $500,000 going towards revenue funding of projects.
Over the five-year period, we would revenue fund about $1.3 million of upfront project
cost and apply about $20 million towards debt service.
This table summarizes the amount of impact fee revenue the wastewater fund can receive
over a 10-year period.
Similar to water, this was identified in the 2018 impact fee study that was recently completed.
So you can see total, we can recover about $49 million in impact fee revenue through
the wastewater side.
Of that, we can apply about $19 million towards cash funding upfront project cost, and then
we can apply about $30 million towards debt servicing of projects.
This is the five-year forecast.
So the 2019 adopted budget, we have $32.7 million in rate revenue.
We were planning to use $4.7 million in reserve.
If you recall, we did do the 5% rate reduction last year for wastewater customers.
We are projecting to come in a little bit better using about $4.2 million in reserve,
so about $500,000 less than the original budget anticipated.
Moving forward into 2020, we got $36.4 million in rate revenue, you can see that number here,
using about $1.5 million in reserves for a total resource of about $38 million.
Expenses is also $38 million for a balanced budget.
There are no rate increases or decreases in the current proposed budget or in the five-year
forecast.
As you move down the page, the reserve does stay above the minimum.
So you can see it's $12.7 million in 2020, the minimum being 10.6.
As you go out, it goes to 15.2, with the minimum being 10.
I would like to point out Dr. Banks had made a comment earlier.
We did reduce the amount of revenue-funded project money that we're setting aside.
So you can see in 2019, it was actually $10 million.
We have brought that down close to $7 million in the current year.
But we are, at the same time, planning to revenue-fund that $500,000 in projects that
I had pointed out earlier.
I know we can deal with it in the future, but it looks like in 2023 and 2024, we could
have a rate decrease again.
But that's way out there.
So let's not talk about it.
It is.
If you want to see the 10-year forecast, I'd be happy to pull it up for the Waste Water
Fund also.
When we get to that point, this will give you a better picture past that window.
There we go.
Now we got it.
All right.
So 2020.
Let me scroll down a little bit here.
So you're going to see the $12.7 million here.
As you go out, it does go down some, and the majority of the reason for that is when the
Waste Water Treatment Plan expansion comes online, the debt service does go back up.
So to answer your question.
Thank you.
You answered me.
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right.
Anybody else got any questions on a five-year forecast?
So this budget and the plan moving forward hinges on approval of, is it the cert system?
Is that what it's called?
But we haven't actually even implemented that test project yet, right?
Let me ask Dr. Banks to come back up here because he's the expert on that and he can
address it.
You're correct.
We haven't implemented it in full, but we've been undergoing a feasibility and modeling
study now for a little over a year to determine that this would work in the system.
So it's kind of a stepwise process because it involves the permit.
You've got to first look at the feasibility of it to decide whether you want to spend
any more money pursuing it further.
We've done that.
The feasibility, which involves both testing and modeling of the plant, has indicated that
it will work.
We then move to the next stage, which is essentially doing a test case study to demonstrate to
the TCEQ that we can meet all of our permitting conditions by using this particular type of
technology.
Once we've done that, we've got to then approach the state, and the state will have to review
to grant us the additional capacity to discharge by studying all of that information.
Once they do that and we've got the permit in hand, we then move to full-scale implementation.
So we've got a feasibility study that indicates that it will work.
We're right now on an actual test case study to demonstrate it in practice, and then if
everything turns out as anticipated, we'll then move to the next phases, which is actual
permit modification.
And so we don't feel like there's the need for a contingency budget to switch gears to
actually build a plant instead of doing the chemical treatment system.
At this point, no.
As we move forward, things could change.
I think it's unlikely, given the results of the feasibility study, but that's definitely
something that we're looking at.
Either way, we're going to have to approach the state for a permit expansion, it's just
how do we want to do it, through a traditional system or through this CEPT.
Right, but if we have to use a traditional system, we're seeing a significant increase
in how much money we have to spend, and it's going to take longer, I would imagine, to
build it and get it in place.
That's correct.
So it would be a scramble mode at that point, kind of.
Yeah, I think that at this point, I mean, we are fully aware of the timeframe associated
with it, unless something just completely unexpected happens, we anticipate that the
testing will be done and we'll be able to apply for the permit.
To be honest with you, I'm much more concerned about the permit getting through than I am
in terms of the review time for the TCEQ than I am of what we're going to have to face proving
up this concept.
But all that being said, yeah, the fallback position is to just do standard increase,
but keep in mind, we're required by permit to hit these analytical points at a particular
level of plant capacity.
So that amount of time is kind of built into it, and as a result, we shouldn't have a
problem that if something comes up, we are looking at it every year and we will have
a fallback contingency of just standard construction, which is what we were intending to do until
we hit on this new technology.
Okay.
Thank you.
Sure.
All right.
Keep moving forward here.
This is the revenue detail for the wastewater fund.
A couple things I'd like to point out, similar on the water presentation, you can see we were
bringing impact fee revenue in and applying it directly to debt service.
Moving forward, we were breaking it up into two components, applying about $3.7 million
towards debt service and about $500,000 towards revenue-funded eligible projects upfront cost.
This is the expense detail for the wastewater department.
You can see expenses by department within wastewater.
A couple of the important things on this slide, you can see us transferring out the $500,000
in revenue to cash fund those projects, and you can see the supplemental packages that
Dr. Banks explained a few slides ago.
This is a five-year capital plan.
In the five-year window, there are a total of $69.8 million in projects.
In 2020, the proposed budget, there's 23.1.
Of that amount, there's 15.7 million proposed to be bond-funded, 6.7 million proposed to
be revenue-funded, and then the $500,000 for impact fee revenue-funded projects.
This is the FTE summary for the wastewater department.
So currently, there's 113.5 positions.
If the four supplementals are approved, you can see those here, we get a 117.5.
That concludes this presentation.
Drainage is a separate presentation.
Daniel Kramer will come up here in just a second to do drainage.
If anybody has any more questions about wastewater, we'd be happy to address them.
Thank you, Nick.
Good morning, Chair, PUP members.
Apologize, I'm a little stuffed up.
Apparently, I caught something for my kids this weekend.
So I'm the Deputy Director of Operations, Streets and Drainage, Department's report
to me.
So some of the goals and accomplishments that we've gone through with drainage this year,
Rockwood Lane and Mistywood, we installed a neighborhood storm drain system to help with
some of the localized flood in the area.
It's about 1,300 linear feet of storm drain.
Currently, right now, we're working on the McKinney Street widening project in conjunction
with engineering.
We're doing a section of that right now, and then we'll be going in and doing some paving
over the top of that, coming up with that.
Excuse me.
Also, Hercules storm drain system is actually going to be going on later this year, as we're
looking for a water relocation from a developer as we put in that storm drain system for that.
Going forward for the next year, we're looking at oak tree and Choctaw storm drain improvements.
Both of those are currently in design right now, going through our internal engineering
department to get ready for construction.
We're also going to complete our mapping system for the storm drainage master plan.
Currently, right now, we're missing a few sections here and there as we go through.
Most of it's different inlets, different pipe sizes.
We may have the locations, but we're missing the full depth.
We're missing the diameter and stuff, so we're going out and getting that information so
that we can make a full storm water plan for the whole city.
Also, our goal is to increase the storm drain inspections.
Currently, right now, we're somewhere around 5% is what we're able to inspect.
Most of those are some of the troubled areas we know and calls that come in.
Our goal is to start moving more towards maintenance to be proactive instead of reactive.
As I said, we're looking at to increase the mapping productivity for the storm water master
plan.
We're working very closely with engineering on that so we can get all the information
to do our full mapping systems on those.
Upgrade, our systems for the current FEMA flood maps, they did put out some new maps
here recently.
We're working with engineering also to help them out to get our rating score back off
the extra two points.
With all the information we have, we're looking we should be able to raise it a couple more
points past that to help our citizens.
Also, to maintain our existing system, reduce the amount of trash and sediment in our waterways
and do more maintenance.
Some of our inefficiencies that we worked on for our -- we talked last year about street
sweepers, seeing if we needed a third one, and we were looking at that in the budget.
Currently right now, we don't see one.
Next probably three to five years, we probably will need another sweeper.
What we're looking at is about 18, 19, we're doing about 850 miles per cycle on our sweepers,
and that's about eight and a half cycles per year for the average residential area, and
24 cycles on our north and south thoroughfares and downtown is what we try to run on those.
We've upped that to about 870 with the new development and looking at more efficient
ways to run it, so that adds about 300 miles, 600 curved miles of sweeping that we've been
able to add with very minimal on there.
We're also working on our 24-hour response time.
This last week or so with all the rain, we've had quite a bit more calls that come in as
normal, but we do try to get out there 24 to 48 hours to talk with the residents to
look at the area and see what we can do to help address their issues as they come up.
A couple different ones, we do a lot of mowing of our channels.
We are better situated for the big mowing of the channels.
We have a couple small areas that we take care of.
Currently CIS uses a small mowing contract, so we're working with them to try to get some
of the smaller areas on there so we don't have to use our forces to do that so we can
more efficiently work on some of the bigger ones.
We've also been working on our inlet inspections.
As we go out and do cleanings and everything as they come up, we got reports that are coming
out telling us exactly what information is missing and from all of it so that we can
actually see it on the iPads and the guys can go out there and log it into our system
so we know all the information of every inlet we have.
Last year we did ask for a half a person increase.
We had a seasonal person, we added another half FTE and took one of our actually interns
who had been working at the city and they're our full time GIS analysts right now making
sure all of our information is up to date in our system and getting everything in there
so we can track it more efficiently.
As we're moving forward, we've been working for the standardization of all of our work
orders and everything we go across the board.
We use internally for street strainage and traffic, we use a system called Cartograph.
We're putting all of our work orders and all of our systems in there so we can plan out
our work going ahead so that we can actually see it and everything in there.
Making sure that all the groups have the correct equipment so that they can log them in the
fields and we're not doing double work as they come back in and get them back into the
system.
For future use, we're working right now on use of an aerial impervious surface mapping.
Currently right now when any of these new businesses come up, we take the plats, we
see how much they have so we can estimate their drainage fee.
So what this system does is they fly over, use LIDAR and they can actually send back
a report.
We're looking at a pilot program over towards the Rager Ranch area to see what we're missing,
what it shows that it's coming up and then we will look at the data there and see if
it's worth doing it across the whole city on that.
So with one of our supplementals we are looking at, and I'll get to that here in the next
slide, so we're looking at 100% inspection of our channels and ditches.
Currently we're only at about 20% and also bringing our current inlet inspection up from
20% which we are currently 5%.
So what we're asking for in a supplemental package is one crew with 4 FTEs and one vehicle.
What this crew's main goal is is to get the rest of our mapping up and they'll be our
inspection crews.
We'll be able to get out there and get all the inlets inspected, do any maintenance that
needs to be done on those as it comes up and also for all of our ditches.
I wanted to just show you this, kind of our numbers and what we're looking at.
So right now we have 154, almost 155 miles of drainage ditch right now.
We hit roughly 30, 31 miles, those are all of our concrete channels and all of our small
ditches that we know we have issues with, the ones that we mow and they're out there
all the time, that's what we hit on a yearly basis.
Our goal would be to get up to 100%, that's an extra 124 miles of actually most of our
bar ditches.
Now not everyone needs to be maintained every year, but we do need to lay eyes on it and
verify that the culverts are clear and all the water when we do have these rain events
that it's actually draining where it's supposed to be and be able to look at them yearly.
As for our curb inlet inspection, currently we have 7,800 inlets, we're roughly doing
about 390 and as those come up, one of the issues that we had this past year was Welp
Street.
If you know, we had to take that street down and replace the culvert underneath.
One of those, the only reason that we found that is because a truck made the corner and
broke the inlet so we had to go out there and look at it and looking up underneath we
did see that there were some cracks and that we needed to shut that down and get to it.
So with this, this will allow us to hit everything within 5 years and be able to go through our
whole system and actually know what we need to do and make better plans going forward.
So, any questions on that before I hand it over to Nick?
Questions?
Thank you.
Good morning Chair, PB members, my name is Nick Vinson, the City's Budget Manager.
I'll be reviewing with you the financial portion of the proposed 19-20 drainage budget.
Feel free to stop me if you have any questions throughout the presentation, I'd be happy
to address them.
The proposed budget does maintain existing drainage fees or rates.
The drainage fee is calculated based off the square feet of impermeable surface and then
also the fund does maintain a fund balance of $1 million each of the five-year forecast
and I'll show that to you here shortly.
And ultimately the drainage budget does include watershed department.
Both of those departments ultimately roll up into the wastewater fund so we are presented
to you separate today but ultimately it's part of the wastewater department.
This is the five-year forecast.
You can see the adopted budget in this column here so we have about $5 million in adopted
revenues.
Same thing in expenses, they had a balanced budget.
In the proposed column we have revenues increased to $5.2 million based on new development.
Expenses are $5.2 million also.
As I'd said, we're proposing no rate increases to drainage fees so it's staying flat in
the five-year forecast and the drainage reserve is maintained in a million dollars in each
of the years.
This is the revenue detail for the drainage department.
So in the proposed 20-20 budget column you can see we have a little bit of transfers
in about $340,000 from the general fund.
We have about $4.8 million in drainage fees, these are residential and non-residential
fees.
And a little bit of auction proceeds for a total of $5.2 million.
This is the expense detail for, sorry there's a typo right here, this is actually expenses.
This is the expense detail for the drainage department.
You can see the proposed 20-20 budget column to the far right.
One of the things I wanted to point out is the supplemental package that Daniel did touch
on is included in the proposed budget.
It's $300,000.
You can see that amount listed here.
So total expenses of $5.2 million.
They do have a balanced budget this year.
This is the drainage five-year capital plan.
You can see in the five-year period there is about a million dollars in projects or
excuse me that's 20-24 is a million.
In 2020 the proposed budget column is about $630,000 in projects planned, $385,000 goes
to our channels rehab, $100,000 towards Choctaw drainage and a little bit of vehicle replacement
money in there.
This is the FT summary for the drainage department.
Currently there is 24 positions, you can see the number out here.
If the supplementals are approved, the four people, it would take the total to 28 positions.
That wraps up the drainage presentation.
Questions?
Thank you.
All right.
Next is the consent agenda.
Does any board member wish to pull an item off of the consent agenda?
Pull item B as in boy.
Any others?
Do we have a motion to approve items A, C and D?
Second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
Item B.
I don't really need any additional details.
We just had a conflict of interest so she had to step out of the room and I guess I
had to pull it so that's why we did that.
Yes sir.
Thank you.
Anyway, if that's it, that's it.
That's it.
That is it.
Do we have a motion to approve item B?
Move to approve item B.
Second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries.
Will you tell her she can come back in?
Tell her she can come back in.
Oh yeah.
That's right.
You have to leave now.
Okay.
Do we'll recluse q zeroes today, I can't say that word.
All right.
Next item is consider, oh he didn't need to step out quite yet, but consider approval
of public utility board meetings of April 22, 2019.
Were there any changes or corrections?
And they'll stand approved as presented.
And now item B, consider recommending the adoption of an ordinance for the city of Denton,
a Texas home rule municipal corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with,
I can never say that, JAGO, public company Inc. for the construction of PEC for drainage
improvements phase one and two and Elm and Locust street water improvements phase one
for the city of Denton.
Good morning.
Board chair and board members.
My name is Jim Jenks.
I'm with the city's engineering department.
I'm the project manager on this particular project.
Sorry, I'm going to need a little help just for a moment getting their presentation up
and running here.
Is it not there?
Is it hiding underneath the little menu there?
I think it's in the corner.
Click there so we can get rid of the box.
And there it is in the corner.
Thank you.
Sorry about that.
I have a very brief presentation this morning just to go over the basics of this project.
But basically, this is again the PEC for phase one and two drainage improvements project
that includes the Elm and Locust water and sewer improvements from Hickory to Eagle.
Basically the scope of the project is illustrated in this map here.
The major portion of the drainage is what's shown in red.
That is our box culvert that's an 18 foot wide by 8 foot tall reinforced box culvert.
There are also some drainage pipes that extend northward along Elm and Locust streets also.
And what's shown in blue here is the public water and wastewater improvement projects
or portions of this project going along Elm and Locust from Eagle up to Hickory.
All in all, there's about 1,500 feet of this large 18 by 8 foot box culvert, about 3,100
feet of the drainage concrete pipe, 18 inch to 48 inch in diameter, about 5,900 feet of
water lines ranging from 8 inch to 20 inch and about 7,800 feet of sewer lines, sanitary
sewer ranging from 8 inch to 24 inch.
It's with the scope of the project and the sequencing issues involved, the contract construction
timeframe is 730 calendar days.
This project was bid and this was actually the re-bid following the initial bid last
fall which was ultimately rejected due to the price from the one bid being higher than
staff thought it should be for this project.
We went back, valued engineered, added some options in design and bidding, pardon me,
and here are the results that came from the re-bid.
You'll see there was three bidders, the lowest being Jago Public Company.
What is shown here is we have a base bid and an alternate bid and those total to the scope
of work that I had shown you in the previous slide with the map, basically to get the award
amount under what was funded for this project.
We found that we would need to delete the fiber optic and traffic items.
Basically what I'm talking about there is there's two 2 inch conduits along Elm and
Locust, kind of similar to what is shown in blue here as far as extents.
Those were to facilitate the future installation of fiber optic lines there.
Division of those items, we consulted with purchasing, make sure it was okay to do that.
It did not change the order of the bidders and so it was determined that that would be
fine.
That was going to be my question.
You took it out of all of them.
Right.
The amounts that you see here reflect that deletion.
Basically the low bid amount with Jago Public is about 10.96 million.
What we have found in your AIS, I mentioned towards the end of the information for bidder
background section, there was a funding gap still, although the re-bidding process knocked
a couple million dollars off the bid amounts, there was still a funding gap that we had.
So we worked with the drainage department to identify funds that could be transferred
and so that's what I'm speaking to in that part of the AIS.
There was funds transferred from the oak tree project, from the Choctaw project, and from
the channel rehab account.
In the oak tree project and the Choctaw project, there is still money left in those projects
to complete design.
The last slide I have here is just the formal recommendation.
RF is recommending that the city approve an ordinance to execute the construction contract
between the city and Jago Public Company in the amount of $10,960,623.19 for the PEK-4
phase 1 and 2 drainage improvements and elm and locust water and sewer improvements from
Hickory to Eagle.
And again, this would correspond to the award of the base bid plus the alternate bid minus
the fiber optic and traffic improvements.
And that is the extent of my presentation.
I'd be happy to stand for any questions.
Questions?
I just had a quick question, I need some education on how bond money works with this.
There was, in the 2014 bond, there was $2.4 million for PEK-4.
Is that being folded into this $10 million or has that already been spent for design
or what happened with the bond money that was going towards this?
Do we have any idea?
Yeah, here it comes.
I have the breakdown of the accounts that maybe what she's referring to perhaps.
Hi.
Lee Perry, Assistant City Engineer.
So PEK-4, yeah, phase 1 and phase 2 both had bond money and that's a part of this.
And that's just been folded in, those bonds have already been sold?
Yes.
Okay.
I wasn't sure how that worked.
Other question?
Thank you.
I have a question about the fiber optic and the traffic improvements.
I know they're not going to be done here, but is that something that is needed and are
we looking at doing that later on or are we looking at having that funded in some other
way or?
We'll be looking at that with our traffic department as far as other options to make
that happen.
Okay.
All right, great.
All right.
Just wanted to make sure.
And then I have a question.
With the bids, there's about a $2 million difference between bidders.
How confident are we that something didn't get missed by JAGO that's going to come back
as a change order or something like that?
Well, we have about a $1.2 million difference there between them and the second low bidder.
JAGO was the, in the fall when we bid it the first time and got the one bid, they were
the one bidder.
So they have, they're, they've been looking at the project for a while.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
And they're also currently mobilized at the Eagle Drainage Project.
Gotcha.
That makes a difference.
Okay.
And so they're, they'll be ready to start this project right once they're wrapping
it up.
That makes a difference.
Thank you.
Okay.
Do we have a motion to approve?
So moved.
I second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
That carries.
Next item.
Consider recommending adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a Texas Home
Rule Municipal Corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a public works contract
with Raymar Construction for the construction of Hickory Creek Lift Station for the City
of Denton, providing for the expenditure of funds, therefore, and providing an effective
date, and the contract is not to exceed $3,418,000.
Good morning again.
Ken Banks, General Manager of Utilities.
This project is one that we had spoke about a little bit earlier in the, in the budget.
The existing Hickory Creek Lift Station pumps all the wastewater flows from the entire Hickory
Creek sewer sub-base into the concrete plant, and that station's getting pretty, pretty
old.
If you recall, there was a failure of this station back in February of 2018.
We had a pump that appears to have been trained a piece of material and caused a catastrophic
failure at the pump station.
Essentially, the electronics are getting outdated.
The initial design is starting to create a backup in the interceptor itself, and that's
just under normal conditions, so it's time to basically go in and put a more modern version
of a pump station in there.
There have been a few service interruptions, as I spoke about, and this was actually authorized
in terms of the design contract by the City Council back in February 7th of 2017, so we've
had this on our radar screen for a little while.
Funding for construction was included in the FY19 budget at about $3.7 million.
Just to give you a rough idea, and it's not a, not a great map, but you can see kind of
where, where we're talking about.
This is the Hickory Creek interceptor right here, and this is the pump station that we're
referring to that pumps into a force main here, and then gravity feeds onto the concrete
plant.
So this is Teasley where it turns, and this is where old Alton comes across and goes over
Hickory Creek, so kind of give you an idea of where this thing is.
So you can see it's collecting from a pretty sizable area of that portion of the basin.
So it was advertised for bid in November of 2018 after the final plans were completed.
We got two bids.
The lowest bidder was Raymar Construction, and their experience was evaluated, and they
have the qualifications to be able to complete this job.
Bid came in at $3.4 million.
We had budgeted around $3.7, so came in a little bit under budget, and that's pretty
much the extent of the project.
Staff is recommending approval of this contract with Raymar so we can progress on the Hickory
Creek station.
And I'd be glad to answer any questions.
Questions?
No?
Do we have a motion to approve?
Motion to approve.
Second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
Motion carries.
Let's see.
Next item.
Consider recommending adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton authorizing the City
Manager or is designated to execute a purchase agreement by and between MD Massoud Rizab
and the City regarding the sale and purchase of a fee simple to an approximate 1.656 acre
track more or less situated in the Alexander Hill survey area.
I'm going to skip through.
For the amount of $2,999,750.
Good morning.
Paul Williamson, Real Estate Manager.
Today before you for your consideration is a purchase agreement for the proposed Eagle
Drive substation site, electric substation, location map showing it at the corner of Bernard
and Eagle Drive.
Things to consider, this track's been in play for quite a long time now so we're
kind of toward the end, the culmination of an actual acquisition.
We've got a counteroffer for settlement by the owner that's been delivered to us and
for y'all's consideration for a potential recommendation and I stand for any questions
y'all might have.
Questions?
Paul.
Good morning.
Is there any other expenses that are associated with this or relocations or?
Yeah, there are relocation entitlements for not only the tenants, any tenants that may
be there.
It's somewhat vacant now.
I think there's the tenant in the convenience store and there may be one additional tenant
but the tenants, those entitlements are there and so they're due by law for those and even
the business, the owner of the land himself, he may be entitled to some relocation benefits
as well.
That's not in this budget.
No, they're considered as a separate matter.
Well, we've been talking about this for a while so do we have a motion to approve?
Motion to approve.
I second it.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
Motion carries.
ACM update.
Thank you.
I just have two items.
You've got the new business action items.
We've got the one pending item to discuss the meeting time.
I'm going to work with the city manager's office before I get that scheduled here, upcoming
meeting here shortly.
And then the future public utility board agenda items, predominantly you can see that we're
in budget time.
You can see that we're in budget time right now, so we've got a lot of upcoming budget
presentations.
So that's all I have and oh, I didn't want to acknowledge, I'm sorry.
We do have a tour scheduled for the water, wastewater and solid waste facilities that
is going to occur on May the 17th.
It's going to be from 830 till approximately noon.
We have three takers so far, so I'm looking forward to all of y'all seeing the plans.
I think you'll enjoy the tour.
If another PUD member is interested, you're more than welcome, but keep in mind we have
to post if we go above three.
So just if you could let us know.
That's all I have.
All right.
Boarding items, is there any item that a board member would like placed on the agenda in
the future?
I don't have an agenda item, but through email we received information about attendance.
Yes.
And I wanted to know, was that a change in the current attendance policy or was that
just a reminder or how come we got sent the attendance policy?
Oh, that's been a policy forever.
I think we were just not enforcing it maybe.
It came up with city council.
Say that again.
It came up with city council, but this is a trickle down.
So no one wants to own up to why we got sent that particular email.
Kim sent it.
I don't know who told you to send it.
You're the messenger.
You're not going to tell us who told you?
I actually thought it was two, not three.
It said three, right?
And I thought it was two.
I swear my handbook says two, so at any rate.
Can I make a suggestion?
Sure.
Let me follow up with that and we'll provide a small informal staff report and send it
out to the board.
That would be wonderful.
I'm curious if that's the same for all boards and commissions, because some only meet like
four times a year, and some of us meet 12 times a year, and it seems like attendance.
Hospital 24.
What's that?
Hospital 24.
Indeed.
I was just throwing out some numbers there, you know, because I know some only meet when
they have to.
But really we're just going to let it be us that discusses this, and you, nobody's got
it.
Okay.
All right.
Well, it was always the policy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I understand that.
I read the policy.
And Kim sent us a reminder of the policy, I guess.
Yeah.
No problem.
Thank you.
All right.
Any other items?
Motion to adjourn?
It's a high move.
We adjourn.
We're adjourned.
Without my answer about attendance.