Nov 13, 2023 Public Utilities Board on 2023-11-13 9:00 AM

Good morning. It is Monday, November 13, 2023. We are about to kick off the City of Denton Public Utility Board meeting of that same day. It is 9/0/1. I'd like to call to order the meeting. Are there any presentations from members of the public this morning? It doesn't appear to be. We'll move on to our regular meeting, our consent agenda. Would anyone like to pull anything from the consent agenda? Mr. Chairman, I would like to pull item B from the consent agenda. Be happy to do so, Mr. Wright. Any others? It doesn't appear to be. So we will entertain the Chair will entertain a motion for items A, C, D, E, F, D, and H. So move. We have a motion. Second. And we have a second. Any further discussion? If not, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Signed the same. Passes unanimously. Item number B, Mr. Rybak. Yes, I noted there was a presentation included with the links. I thought it might be worthwhile for us to see that based both on the scope and dollar expenditure. Thank you. Of what these buildings are and where we're using them? Is that better? That's better, yeah. So switch curve buildings are used in DME's electric substations. They're about 43 by 15 foot. We get modular buildings from the manufacturer so they build them at the factory and then they ship them to the site and they get placed on our foundations. They're arc resistant. They house many types of equipment inside of them like switch gear, batteries, chargers, protective devices. Here's some pictures of the inside. So you see some batteries here on the left. On the right picture you see switch gear and relay panels. So protective devices and the actual breakers and switches and stuff that connect to the distribution lines in the city. Those all connect to these buildings inside the substations. Here you get kind of a brief overview of kind of how they connect to things. So the power transformers inside the substations, you're probably familiar with that term, transformers. Inside the substations are large power transformers and those connect to the switch gear buildings and the overhead and underground power lines in the city connect to these buildings. Typically they connect underground and connect underneath the building to the breakers and switches inside. >> So the cost of the building includes the switch gear or? >> Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The cost includes everything inside the building needed to make it functional. >> So it's a total modular switch gear room shipped to your site? >> That's correct. Yes, sir. Here the contract amount will cover four buildings, one for Brinker substation, two for Underwood and one for a future project. Here's some more pictures of the inside. >> And are these custom made or do they come as a shell and then you add custom features to them? >> They're all custom, but like we said, we provide a specification to the manufacturer and they build it to what we want. >> Okay. So you design it or you outsource the design probably, I would imagine? >> Really the manufacturer designs it. We just tell them what we want. So we tell them the building needs to be so big. We need this many breakers in it, these kind of batteries, et cetera. >> So is the equipment therein tested, needed tested before it leaves the manufacturer's facility? >> It is tested. We also go down to the manufacturer and attend a factory acceptance testing to witness the testing and make sure it's acceptable. >> So you have the manufacturer on site as well? >> We go to the manufacturer and witness the testing. >> Okay. You go? >> Yes, sir. >> Does your design engineer or are you guys doing the design? Third party design engineer for the building? >> It's just us. >> What's that? >> We are the only ones that go to the factory acceptance testing. But like I said, the manufacturer is the one that designs it. We approve the designs and then go down and witness the testing. >> But the manufacturers themselves do not send a representative to the testing? >> Yes, it's actually at the manufacturer's facility, the testing is. >> Well, the manufacturer, the people who build the building aren't the equipment manufacturer or am I missing something? >> They are in this case. They build everything. >> So the building comes from the manufacturer? >> That's right. >> So is it Emerson gear, ABB gear? >> It's Powell. >> Powell? >> Powell switch gear in Houston, Texas. >> So it's Powell gear and a Powell enclosure? >> Building, yes, sir. >> Okay. My misunderstanding. Thank you. >> So it's a turnkey operation from Powell, is that what you're saying? >> That's correct. >> And then I'm curious on the medium voltage. Can you share with me what that, for a layman, what would that mean? >> Sure. Medium voltage just means the distribution lines in the city. So the voltage on those is considered medium voltage. So anywhere from like 10 kV up to 50 kV is considered medium voltage. >> So do we have anything of a heavy voltage here in Denton? >> We do have high voltage. That's our transmission system. >> And that's what you would call that then? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Thank you. >> That's really the end of the presentation. But happy to answer any more questions. >> One other question. So you mentioned for future projects. So you're basically buying one of these four buildings in advance. How soon will that switch gear building be implemented? >> The one we're purchasing now has about a year lead time. So about a year and a half from now it will be in service. >> So three of the four are already slated to go somewhere and the fourth one isn't yet ready for that building to be provided. >> That's right. >> Is that essentially correct? >> It's a future project that we don't know if we really need one or not. >> Okay. And do these funds all come from bond money or are they -- >> Capital projects, sir. >> Capital projects. Okay. Thank you. >> Would you like to move approval, Lee? >> Yes, I would like to move to approve this recommendation. >> Item number B, item letter B. We have a motion. >> Second. >> Second. >> We have a second for Mr. Rayner. All those in favor, please say aye. >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Sign the same. There appears to be none. Passes unanimously. Unanimously we'll move on to items -- >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. >> Number three, items for individual consideration. Consider approval of the October 23rd, 2023 minutes. >> So moved. >> Okay. >> Second, sir. >> We have a motion and a second. Did you get that, Kim? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Okay. Item letter B for individual consideration. This is considering -- consider recommending adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton to Texas Home World Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a construction manager at risk contract with Sunt Construction Incorporated for construction phase services for neighborhood two and six improvements for the capital projects department providing for the expenditure of funding for providing an effective date RFQ8055- awarded to Sunt Construction Incorporated including the first guarantee maximum price in the partial not to exceed amount of $13,889,600. >> All right. Good morning, board members. Seth Garcia, deputy director of capital projects. Sorry for the mouthful there, but he is Craig. This is for GMP1 for neighborhood two and six associated with our 2019 bond. So for a quick overview of the entire neighborhood. So neighborhood two and six is outlined in the blue there. It's roughly 118 roadway segments, a little over 30,000 linear feet of water main replacement, 28,000 linear feet of wastewater main replacement. We've done some sidewalk connectivity studies and street lighting, photometric studies. We've also done partial lighting design and are including conduits and pull boxes for future street lighting as well. And just to point out, this is our second construction manager at risk project we have going to construction. So more specifically for GMP1, it's going to be the 15 roadway segments outlined in red here. It's roughly 6,000 linear feet of wastewater main, a little over 1800 square yards of sidewalk replacement. And once again, we're installing conduit and pull boxes for that future street lighting. So to quickly cover the GMP process for a CM at risk project. So we separated the work into eight separate categories that you can see listed there. And then our construction manager at risk publicly bids those individual work categories. We go through an evaluation process. We then hold interviews with the CM at risk with the highest ranking firms to confirm their scope and pricing. Once we have that done, we convert those eight into lump sum packages. Sunt Construction provided the GMP based on those bids, general conditions costs, bonds and insurance requirements, their CMAR contingency, and then their contractor's fee, which was agreed upon in the RFP. So this gives you a further breakdown of the actual cost of the GMP. So again, in that top section, you'll see packages one through eight, including their general work items. That is the total cost of the work at a little over 9.6 million. You'll see the next section includes allowances. So those allowances are areas that we worked with our CMAR to be able to quantify items that we saw as a risk. Again, with these allowances, if we do not use these funds, they do revert back to the city. And then that last section, you'll see the CM at risk contingency, construction fee and general conditions costs. So you add all three of those up together and we get to our total of 13.4 million. Question. I know what a contingency fund means. It's things go bad, things change, whatever plans are wrong, utility problems. Is the construction portion included in that contingency or is that just the managers contingency? So the contingency here is actually for the contractor's use. And so like you said, it would cover things that aren't necessarily scope growth, but things that were unforeseen, but not necessarily like a site condition. We would still compensate them for something of that nature. So that goes into their, that's coming towards, I mean, that's going to apply towards their management of possible overruns of other items. Is that correct? No. So they cannot use it for overruns or things of that nature. If I would say probably the most common thing that we would see is if we run into an area to where for phasing the project, they need to shorten a water main testing to get it in service quicker. That would be additional testing costs that we didn't anticipate. They would request to use those contingency funds to help expedite the project. Maybe I'm not asking it correctly, but what I'm trying to get at is does the $404,000 go towards the actual construction and or the management fee to the manager? So it goes towards the construction unless the city approves it if they need additional general conditions costs. Okay, so that'd be another line item change order. Correct. Let's say you have a gas line throughout the whole project, right? That's horrible because it's not ours, so then you have to deal with them and obviously the manager is going to say we're going to be out here another year managing this thing and we're going to want compensation for that. That'll be a separate line item, correct? Correct. And in that case, we could use this bucket of money if there was funds remaining depending upon when that popped up in the project or we could use owner's contingency. Okay, okay. That answers my question. Perfect. And again, with these contingency funds, that $404,000, something not used reverts back to the city at the end of the contract. Yes, sir. Quick question. You mentioned this is our second GMP project. Is Sunt the contractor on the first one? Sunt is not. The first one is McCarthy Construction. McCarthy. Yes, sir. And how has that been going from a management standpoint? Really good. We have a lot going on, so it's our Southeast Denton Package B project. I would say the biggest advantage is really being able to work with the contractor on scheduling and the amount of work that we're getting done. So currently, we're doing almost a million dollars a month in construction. We've got, I think, seven or eight different streets currently under construction. So just with the phasing, we're seeing that it helps us expedite some of those streets. So a normal project that would take us, say, two years, we've been able to cut schedules down to about 15 months just with phasing and working with the contractor through that pre-construction phase. So, so far, if we can avoid any big weather hiccups, we will finish that one on time in May of next year. And budget, too? Yeah. We have used, I believe, half of our owner's contingency on some unforeseen utility items, and they've used roughly half of theirs on some ground penetrating radar. We're working close to downtown, and we're finding a lot of really old lines. The subgrade called out for flex base. A lot of these lines are within 12 inches of the top of surface. So we use some GPR technology to find those things so we could identify those franchise folks and either lower them, or if we can remove them, remove them out. So that was an additional cost that has, I think, really helped the project, though. When you gave that timeframe of sometime next year, was that the, what I'll call the Barnard section of the city, or is that this that you're talking about? So McCarthy's working on a separate project. Yes. That is actually neighborhood 7A, and they're going to be done at the beginning of next year. But again, that one's separate from the Seymour project. That's a different project than McCarthy has with us. But it's saying McCarthy. Correct. That's what caught my attention, because I've seen them all around. I was just curious about Barnard, and then the northeast Idiot Hill area. Are they doing that as well? They are not doing that one. That one is Sunmount Paving. Okay. Is there, and I believe their utility contractor is DDM. And did, do you have a top of your mind of a potential end of that purgatory? I believe it's June of next year, is what's coming. I would recommend check out Discuss Denton. Our project managers update that monthly. Discuss Denton, did you say? Discuss, I'm sorry. Discuss Denton. And you can find the most current update schedule there. Mr. Raynard, I'll provide the comic relief over here, okay? It's been a long time, sir. I know. It's good to see you. Good to see you. All right. So quickly for the project schedule. So, PUB and council approved the design and Seymour contract back in November of 2022. So here we're before you today. With y'all's approval and council's approval tomorrow, we will issue a notice to proceed next month. We're anticipating them actually breaking ground in January. And then for package one, we're looking at an April 20, 25 completion date. And again, this will be the first package of three total coming. So we're still working on design. We'll have two more GMPs coming. And so with that, we recommend approval of the construction contract with Sunt Construction. And for the total amount of just over 13.8 million, that includes what we saw for GMP number one and then an owner's contingency of just over 400,000. And I can take any other questions. A couple of questions. Devin. Thank you. So I have a few questions. If you go back to, I think it's the third slide, the one with the GMP one map. So the red is what's being worked this project? Correct. Okay. And then the black is like the next like phase two or whatever. That is correct. Okay. And I had my questions are focused on the sidewalk and lighting illumination. Do you know where what sidewalks are being replaced or installed? Yeah. So on this project specifically, anything that has a ADA ramp that is not in compliance, we're bringing that up to code compliance. On Marietta Street and sections of Houston, I believe we have quite a few replacements. A lot of those sidewalks are very old from the thirties and cross slopes and different things didn't meet current ADA standards. So we're doing a lot there. And then the section of maple is within the UNT area that has a lot of eight foot, 10 foot side paths that were in poor condition that needed replacement. So we're doing a lot there as well on maple street in this first package, eight to 10 to eight to 10 feet on maple. And that is correct in the neighborhood. They're probably like three ish typically five foot of sidewalks. Correct. Yeah. Unless some of the older neighborhoods have four foot, if there's an existing four foot and we're just doing replacements, we're matching the existing. So we don't have sections of four foot and five foot looking funny through the neighborhood. And so really the sidewalk is only replacement or ADA compliant? In this section, that is correct. Once we get into phases two and three or GMPs two and three, you'll see sections to where we've actually identified some sidewalk gaps through connectivity. A lot of it in University of North Texas that we'll be filling in those gaps as we go through and do the roadway construction. Okay. And my second question is on illumination. I know when they upgraded the neighborhood to LED lights, there were a lot of complaints and a lot of calls in to turn down the street lights. So I'm, I'm curious what process you had to, to engage the neighborhood to make sure that that's not too bright of illumination. I will pass that to Tony. Very interesting topic, a difficult one to deal with. I think generally speaking, most of the complaints that we're getting are about insufficient lighting across the city. Where there is too much lighting, we do have the ability to dim those lights. And so, as you know, we recently came forward with a streetlight criteria manual. Within our processes, we will dim lights down to 50% illumination. That tends to resolve a lot of the issues. And so, you know, in these areas of the community, the complaints we get are really about insufficient lighting. So I really don't anticipate that whatever we do here will be an issue. Now, the one thing that we do kind of similar to what Seth said about sidewalks is we, we try to basically put in similar fixtures that are already there. So what you find in most of these older parts of town are the Cobra headlights, which, which the good thing about the Cobra heads is that they're, they are dark sky compliant. There's zero up light. So we likely won't be installing any, any of the acorn head streetlights. And as you know, you may recall, we're going to be phasing those out after the 1st of January. We'll be going to a new type of residential neighborhood fixture that'll be dark sky compliant. And, and the good thing about that fixture, it tends to project the light straight down into the roadway or the sidewalk and eliminate some of the, some of the light pollution that normally goes into neighborhoods, which is another source of complaint that people have. So, but again, here it'll likely be Cobra heads. So we won't get those complaints from people about light shining into their houses because those already shine pretty much straight down. And, and to, to kind of understand those terms, Cobra heads are the ones that they're kind of round and I guess oval and flat and point straight down. And acorns are the ones that have the tapered. The acorn is literally the, it looks like an acorn, right? You must have found it in a new, newer neighborhoods. The Cobra heads are the ones you find in major thoroughfares. Interestingly enough, we used to install those in neighborhoods. And so in this older neighborhood likely has a lot of the Cobra heads. So we'll be installing those there. So thank you. Yes, sir. Question, if I could ask you on the, it was intriguing when you said you could, you can turn them down with the complaints. Is there a formula as to when you decide to turn down the voltage somewhat? Yeah. So, so if the speed limit is above 30 miles an hour, what the national standards that we follow that there's insufficient light coming from, from vehicular headlights. And so if it's above 30 miles an hour, we will keep those at a hundred percent. Those tend to be the major thoroughfares and roadways in the neighborhood area. The headlights tend to be the primary safety. So as long as it's below 30 miles an hour below, we're able to dim them down to 50%, but nothing below that. It's just something that our engineers didn't feel comfortable going below 50. Well, I understand that. Pardon me for interrupting, but what is the trigger mechanism for you to even do that? Five complaints. So, so we set, we set all lights at 60%. That's kind of our standard, right? 60%. You know, we, we can dim them down to 50, depending on people calling complaining. Interestingly enough, a lot of times we have somebody that that's across the street from the light complaining about the light being too bright, we'll dim it down. And then the person on the other side says it's now it's too dark, dim it up. And so we have to kind of manage that. Interestingly enough, recently I had one gentleman at the same house. It was complaining that it was too bright and too dark. So I didn't know how to help him. Right. And so, no, he was not married. But, but so, so anyways, so, so we're able to go down to 50%. That tends to alleviate a lot of the issues. And then, and then we try to get creative. There's some, there's some globes out there. They're a little foggier than others. And so we'll take a foggy globe, you know, from one neighborhood and move it to another one where somebody's complaining and we'll, and we'll try to accommodate people as best we can. I think, I think, you know, it's been now several years since we started going forward with the LED conversion. We get, we get very few complaints now about the lights being too bright or they're too white. So, so again, we try to accommodate people as best we can. Thank you, sir. Any other questions on this item? John, entertain a motion to approve. So moved. Second. We have motion and second on an item of an individual consideration, 3B. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's just unanimously. Thank you. All right. Moving right along. Management reports. So, Mr. Chair, members of the PUB, so in front of you have a future agenda items. This is only through December. We do on December 11th, we do have the final wastewater master plan that will be coming to you in work session. You know, we'll be adding additional items, you know, here in the next few months. But as you know, generally speaking, after, after the first of the year, the utilities and a lot of our internal service funds kind of begin the their own internal budget processes. And so we'll try to pop, you know, begin to populate that for you so that you'll have an idea of when those items will be coming to you. So yeah, so we just had the budget approved not long ago, getting ready to kick, you know, kick started again. So we'll be back in front of you with awesome. Glad you're getting started earlier. You got behind there on those during the COVID period. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you for catching up. Yes, sir. And then the next item is a new business action items. We did have a request that we completed regarding questions about the Garland power and light power plant. And then we had two requests that last meeting one for relate to EVs and our fleet services. We did put this out to come back to you in a year that will give time for the folks to kind of see how how that's working out and we'll get you some information back. And it was a question about third party software. I do have a meeting scheduled with our attorneys and, and tech service as well, so we can strategize on how to bring that back to you in what format. So we'll have those discussions. Well, that's why we put this out to January, but you know, we might be able to come back sooner. So with that happy to answer your questions you have. I have a question about another item I'd like to add. Okay. I noted that all of the propositions at the state level passed, one of which included some incentives for power, electrical power generation. I wanted to maybe get some feedback from DME about what impact for to or on that's going to have for our local utility. We can do that. Thank you. Very good. Looks like that's about everything we have entertain a motion to adjourn. Second, we are adjourned. No vote.