BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
REGULAR MEETING
FEBRUARY 19, 2024, 5:30 P.M.

ZOOM TRANSCRIPT

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But I just wanted to kind of point out while it looks good, there's things coming up that we have to pay attention to. So with that, I'd stand for Questions. Okay. Thank you, Philo.

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Questions from the board. Matt? Yeah, thanks, Chair. I had a couple, two quick questions. First, thanks. It's really a great report, very thorough. I really enjoy the comparables are super helpful. I had one comment on page 89 of the packet or page 22 of the report.

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And it was about comparables. This was looking at annual percentage of renewable energy.

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And I just wanted to suggest maybe adding New Mexico comparables. I think statewide it was about 47%.

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In 2023, 2024. And just, I mean, I don't think we want to get into all the details. Some of the charts show different utilities around.

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What's Kid Carson at, right? So I think a little bit more context there would be really helpful.

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Sure. And then the second questions comment was on page 102 of the packet or page 35 of the report.

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And this was notable, but also in the context of the budget discussions we're going to have later.

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He called out the debt coverage ratio as 28.31. I noticed that and I thought, okay, that's the uniper settlement. I understand, but I didn't see that number anywhere in the budget. And I was trying to reconcile that claim in the annual report with what we're going to see in the budget.

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Sure. I think it is in there. Okay, I missed it.

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I think we will… present that in a little bit. Fair enough. That was a notable Yeah, it jumped out at me when I first read this too It is, I think.

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Buried in the details. Buried in there and missed it. That's everything. Thanks. Thank you.

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Okay, Jennifer. Yeah, thank you for an excellent report. I have a question regarding page 88 of the packet or page 21 of the report.

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Looking at the residential electricity prices. Yeah, maybe I'm thinking apples and oranges here, but this plot from all three or three shown years.

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Really suggests that Los Alamos County electricity rates are very low compared to rest of New Mexico.

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But I recall at the work session meeting, the Appendix A shown by karen it sort of looked different, right? So in that case, we were comparing more specifically to neighbors Our nearest neighbors. And we seem to be high with only one exception. So I'm just curious, maybe there's some non-nearest neighbors in New Mexico that are exceedingly high, and that brings the average up for New Mexico.

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But those two plots seem to disagree.

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Yes, I agree. They're different comparisons. Yeah. So is it that there are other regions of New Mexico that are just remarkably high? And then that brings the average up for New Mexico?

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Yeah, I think that's when you see a mountain region that may not necessarily be our neighbors, but it's a Well, I'm just saying looking at New Mexico versus our neighbors in New Mexico shown in attachment a In Karen's presentation

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And perhaps somewhere else in New Mexico is quite different. Is that correct? Right.

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Okay. Okay. So relative to our neighbors we are high But relative to all of New Mexico, we're low, it seems like.

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Right. I think if you look at the yellow uh where the That's the average over the whole state right and then exactly right It's interesting that it varies that much across our state. Right. But Jen's asking Who's high? Is it Bernalio, right? Yeah, who's high? It's got to be, do you know who it is? Karen maybe does.

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Okay. Thank you. I believe that what's included in here, and we will confirm this.

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But I believe what's included in here is close to Las Cruces. And I think that there are some additional communities that are more statewide that we don't include when we do the rate change rate discussions because we're showing just those that are closest to us, whereas this is a broader

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Group. I'm just surprised at how different they look so yeah Interesting. I might.

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Point out that the average cost of electricity in the US is 17 cents a kilowatt hour.

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So we're doing pretty well.

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I mean, I guess the question is how well are we doing at 11 and a half cents a kilowatt hour versus 17 cents?

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And I think we'll probably talk about that. We will. We will.

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Other questions or comments?

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I've got a couple. Page 87 or page 20 of your report.

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Shows the saddies. Is the SADI that is shown here for us the one that includes only our outages, that is the ones that we, the department.

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Are responsible for or does this include all outages, including those that are outside that we can't control. They come from PNM or the lab or whatever.

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This one, I believe is just our outages. Okay, so this isn't quite an apples to apples comparison because everybody else's includes all of their outages.

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Correct?

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Yes. Okay.

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And other comment or question. On page 90 or page 23 of your report shows therms per capita per heating degree day.

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And shows a goal there And shows us meeting or actually already exceeding the goal that goal The problem is that the problem is that goal as it's stated here, is not the same as the board's adopted goal.

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Because we don't normalize to population. Our goal is simply therms per heating degree day.

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And if you look at those numbers. They're not as favorable.

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They vary some from year to year. Calendar year 23, we're actually down about four and a half percent from the this reference period.

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But in calendar year 24, we're only down half a percent.

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So we still got a long ways to go to get to 10% on the goal the way we've stated it.

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Okay.

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Are there other questions or comments here?

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Okay, seeing none. I will thank you and your staff because I know a lot of people contribute to putting this together and Although we didn't spend a whole lot of time on it this evening.

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I'm sure i'm sure Board members spent quite a bit of time looking at it.

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Yeah, good report. Much appreciated. And a good job. It's always nice to have something good to have have everything in good shape to report.

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Appreciate that. Thank you. All right, moving on.

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Next item is presentation of the DPU FY 2026 budget. As noted in the staff report here, this is discussion only tonight.

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We will need to actually adopt a budget no later than a month from now, and we don't have any real float in that the regular meeting next month. So we should certainly try to give the finance staff.

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Guidance tonight if we want to deviate whether it's this as presented or guidance and how we want to do something differently.

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And with that, we'll turn it over to either Philo or Karen, whoever wants to Start.

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Chair, I'll just want to thank Karen and all the senior team as well as staff and pulling this budget together.

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I think you've seen a lot of different pieces of the budget where we have our asset management team We did a presentation in January regarding that and then We're here tonight kind of taking the culmination of all those recommendations

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To develop a budget, both operating and capital. And karen team has worked really hard diligently to put it in the format that that's required by the state for budget, but I Don't want to steal your thunder, so I'm going to let her make the presentation because

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She included a lot of background information the importance of the budget.

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So go ahead, Karen. Thank you.

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So I'm just going to start off, Richard, if you can go ahead and put the presentation up.

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I'm just going to start off with a discussion that I know the rates are really important to all of you as well as all of us who pay those rates in town.

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The budget is about the authority to spend. So it is our dollar authority. So we're going to talk about rates as part of the budget, but really we're going to be talking about our spending overall, as well as our revenues.

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So one of the things we were asked, we tried to address not only what we're required to discuss with you, but also some things that different board members had asked for background on.

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So I'm going to go into some of the administrative reasons why we do the budget, what our requirements are.

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So first of all, New Mexico statute 6-6-2, and I'm not going to read it all but basically DFA or the Department of Finance and Administration has oversight in their local government division over all the counties In New Mexico. And they have the legal authority to require us to do a proposed budget

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That we are required to have public hearings. They have to actually certify our budget.

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So even after council adopts the budget In April, it doesn't actually take effect until it's been or endorsed by DFA.

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And it's rare, but we have actually had occasions where DFA has made a change to our budget. It's usually some type of administrative reason, but that can happen. So they do have to certify the final budget.

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And then also that statute requires that we do periodic financial reports.

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Where we also quarterly where we also have to tell them what our spending is We're very fortunate we have and affluent community, we have good GRT revenues.

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And so we're not normally on the list of communities that they're watching closely.

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But they do look at the budget to make sure that you're not over inflating your revenues to get a expenditure budget if those revenues aren't actually happening. So they actually are not just a rubber stamp.

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They do actually examine those quarterly reports as well as our budgets to determine that entities are operating properly. They can actually also put a county on oversight Where they have to be involved in your spend.

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I don't believe our county would ever be in that position, but there are counties in New Mexico today who are under oversight of DFA on a almost daily basis.

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Or is it always at the county level? No, it's down to, so it's by fund So they look at utilities as the joint utilities fund. They do not see electric gas, water, sewer, they see us as a single fund.

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And so we cannot go over that budget in total.

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So which is a good segue to the next slide, which is the charter. So you've got the state requirement, which is actually at a higher level.

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But as you recall, our charter says that one utility cannot support another.

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So even though we report it to them as a single bucket Internally, we have to keep electric, gas, water, and sewer separate because our charter says they cannot support each other.

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From a budget perspective, and I've only touched on this, there's a lot more in the charter.

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But I wanted to get to the charter and the ordinances are very specific about how we have to do the budget and what must be included.

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So under 506 of the charter, it says that the Department of Public Utilities manager shall formulate the proposed budget with the Board of Public Utilities for timely submission to the Council for adoption.

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So that's a requirement of the charter. And then it says what the budget must include.

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So the proposed budget shall include payments to be made to the county In lieu of franchise fees and taxes that would normally be assessed against privately owned gas and electric utilities.

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So one of the questions that we get asked, especially later today, tonight when we'll be going over the profit transfer is why is it only gas and electric?

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And typically, many communities only provide water and sewer. Gas and electric is sometimes provided by either corporations or corporations or corporations or corporations perhaps a co-op or some other type of entity. And that is why I believe when the charter was established.

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It only referred to the gas and electric as having to pay those fees.

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And then also the charter does require that we do a schedule of funds.

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It's not defined in the charter what that means exactly, although we're going to talk about the order that the charter says you must do the budget.

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However, an ordinance was passed that does detail what the schedule funds must include.

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And we will be presenting that to you in March. That is something that after we get your guidance we put together.

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And then we sit down with the county's chief financial officer who must per that ordinance certify the schedule of funds before we can Pass it.

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Next slide. And if you watched the last I believe it was last council meeting.

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The finance department got recognized by the GFOA for awards associated with the ACFIR.

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And that is the financial report of the county So GFOA defines four budget elements that talks about what a good budget for a government entity would look like.

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And it should be a policy document. It should be a financial plan.

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An operational guide and as well as for the public a communication device.

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So on the county website. Are all the budget for multiple years for the county And included in that document is this entire packet.

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Not that we present tonight, but the updated one in March that you pass.

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That entire packet with all of our backup and other materials goes as a supplemental schedule within that county budget book.

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Okay.

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I'm going to leave this. I'm going to go to the next slide because I'm going to do it at a higher level. But if you want to read the exact charter language, this is the budget categories, but I'm going to go over them kind of at a high level on this next slide.

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So the priority of budgets, and this would be If you didn't have enough money What order are you supposed to fund. And number one is current operations, which would include any normal maintenance Any bond or debt service expense.

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Then any capital plan replacements. Then the franchise fee and in lieu taxes, which are paid to the general fund.

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Then the capital additions and improvements And then the revenue profit transfer.

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And if the charter is vague, such as what is a schedule of funds then the council does have the option to pass an ordinance that would detail what that is. And the schedule of funds is one of those. The other one is the profit transfer, which again, we'll talk about later tonight.

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Okay, next slide.

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One of the other overarching documents that we use for determining how we're going to spend money and what we're going to put into our budget is of course the strategic goals. That's part of why we go over them in the time that we do so that we have that information to inform us when we're putting together our plans.

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So some of the areas that the budget does address is focus area financial performance, goal two.

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Which says to achieve and maintain excellence in financial performance. Specifically, 2.1.

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Utilizing revenues to provide a high level of service while keeping rates competitive with similar utilities.

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Objective 2.2 was taking advantage of favorable loan grant opportunities.

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And you'll notice when we do the capital plan in parentheses next to projects are if we are Presuming that we're going to apply for some type of loan, issue a bond.

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Or apply for a grant. In those cases where there is a grant or loan attached to a project, if we don't get that funding, we need to then determine how we're going to pay for it or not do that project.

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And then objective 2.4 is conduct cost of service studies for every utility at least every five years.

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And most recently, we did that for the electric fund. As you all know, you had that presentation. So all of these objectives have outcomes that are achieved with the FY26 proposed budget.

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Additionally, next slide. It also addresses the focus area of operations and performance.

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Efficiently implement and maintain secure and reliable business systems. So one of the things that we'll be bringing back to you in March is the residential electric time of use rate structure, which we are going to be billing in Tyler Munis.

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We've already started the talks with them. And in the budget is the $250,000 for that implementation in FY26. So that would be achieved also with this budget.

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Okay. One of the other areas that influences the development of the budget and how we operate are the financial guidelines that were approved by BPU on August 17, 2016.

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They're still relevant today, but some of the things that are required in there are ensuring adequate cash is available for effective and efficient operations of all county owned utilities.

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For budgeting, rate setting, and operational planning purposes. That's also where the definition comes into play for each of the reserve accounts.

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Which we've gone over at a prior meeting what those different reserves are for.

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It also states that within that our goal, because there isn't there isn't sufficient funds today.

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To do all of the reserves, the financial guidelines say that within a 10-year period.

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We must hit full fully fund all of those reserves.

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So the charter says we're to do a five-year plan. We do a 10-year. And the reason we do that 10 year is because of those financial guide So we're showing that 10-year capital plan and 10-year financial plan.

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Additionally, in the financial guidelines. Are projecting cash and reserves in the schedule of funds.

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And stating that it must be approved by the county CFO, which is both in the financial guidelines as well as in the ordinance that the council passed.

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Okay, next slide. Okay, I wanted to go through two things here. The first one in blue is what leads up to tonight.

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So we had the strategic planning with all of you where we went through that exercise that was led by Kathy, that's her last name.

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Darwin. Darwin, thank you. And she led us through that process.

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Then once you pass that strategic plan, we created work plans to achieve those strategic goals.

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Our asset management team meetings, they meet quarterly, but once a year they have an annual meeting where they develop a capital plan and then they present that to the senior management team.

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And we discuss prioritizing and ask questions. And that's what leads to the capital plan.

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I'll talk about where that got presented to you in a moment. Then we have budget meetings within each division.

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And finance. And then senior management does a review along with the utility manager to help put the budget together.

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Now, in terms of dates. In January, on January 15th.

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James Allred presented to you the asset team capital plan and talked about what that would look like. That's included in this document, pardon me.

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Tonight, we're doing the preliminary budget which the reason we present the budget to you more than once is so that we can have the discussion tonight.

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So that if you have questions or you have guidance that before we have to provide it to county to include within their budget within the larger budget that we've had that feedback from you.

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In March, on March 19th, that is the deadline where BPU must approve the budget whatever that looks like whatever we determine tonight.

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Literally the next day. Is the deadline where the county has to turn everything over to the press because they have to publish their guide that has all of the financials for every fund, which includes ours, right? Ours is a big piece of it

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They have to turn that over to the paper because it's published prior to the 31st.

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Which in our town, because the paper is published on Thursdays, it's like a week and a half before the 31st that it has to be done.

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And then April 21st through 22nd. And 28 through 29th will be the budget hearings.

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Usually we're on the second night, but I think this year we're doing it on April 21st.

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And then… That's kind of the end of it from the end of it.

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Council's perspective, but the county must then submit the budget to DFA as we talked about on the very first slide.

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By June 1st. And then prior to July 31st is when excuse me, July 1st is when we would have tentative approval from DFA.

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Okay, next slide. So tonight we're going to, I have a presentation that I've done in slideshow fashion rather than walking through each individual document to try to highlight for you what the overall budget is.

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What the dollar amount is that you're approving. But we can, of course, everything's in the packet. If you want to go to any specific page, we can of course get into the details. I wanted to talk about the purpose of each of the different types of documents that are included in here.

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So the first one Historically, I've been with the county, I think, 14 or 15 years now And it was called a fun flow the very first when I first came i don't know why But that's what it's called. So it provides, it's how we build the budget from the ground up.

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It includes revenues, operating expenses. Capital expenditures, and then a category called other financing And then expenditures by type.

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The other financing can either be inward or outbound. And we'll go through some examples of that, but it can include things like when we do the profit transfer.

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Technically, we look at it as an expense, but it's really not. It's a transfer between us and the general fund.

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Second is a list of the employee count by division. I'll kind of give you a little preview.

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It's flat for us for this year, but we'll still talk about what the FTEs look like.

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Then the next item is a 10-year cip And five-year budget option.

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Listing and the budget option is tied to the

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Profit transfer sorry so we're required to provide five years of profit transfer projects for the county to consider whether or not to accept the profit transfer and give it back to the utility for purposes of projects that we're doing with public works.

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And so they also in that ordinance allowed for a it's a five-year ordinance But it allowed for extensions of one year at a time. So we are tonight also just preview a later item, going to be asking that we extend that for another year.

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There's also a 10-year forecast graphs that graphically show revenue expense and cash.

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There is a chart that shows the customer impact. So what are the rates by utility?

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What is that projected to be for a 10-year period? And what is the combined rate increase?

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Then there's a 10-year financial forecast, and that includes the loads that we're projecting, the rate forecast inflows and outflows of cash What net cash looks like.

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What our projected reserve balances are and comparing that to our reserve targets.

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And then finally, as was talked about earlier, the debt coverage ratio projection.

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And it's to demonstrate compliance with strategic Goal 2.3, which says the debt coverage ratio must be 1.3

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So I'm going to stop for one second. Any questions about why we do the budget or any of the um overarching guidance before I get into the numbers.

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Any questions from the board?

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I've got a couple. Okay. You don't get off that easy. Let's see, on your page eight, our page 198 You talked about taking action next month that would effectively commit us to this time of use rate structure And which seems to me to be something that is big enough and important enough and visible enough

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:40.000
That it should be dealt with rather visibly rather than buried in a budget action What are you expecting us or wanting us to actually do next month on this subject. So we'll be bringing an actual ordinance And so that ordinance would put the structure in place

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:52.000
For a type of use, because as we talked about at the last meeting For us to be able to implement time of use, we need to understand what the components are going to be and not necessarily what each rate is.

00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:58.000
But how we're looking at starting the path toward time of use.

00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:20.000
So there will be three ordinances on three ordinances the agenda. I'm sorry, Philo, go ahead. Chair, I just wanted to follow on Tonight, this item that you're considering is just for the budget amount We'll ask for the recommendations 9% for next year.

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:29.000
Now, how we design that rate is the time of use that time use that that's a different discussion that Karen will bring back.

00:45:29.000 --> 00:45:47.000
Budget or rather a proposed rate design where the with an proposed ordinance of what that would look like. There's a lot of ways to divide of rate you have your rate monthly service charge.

00:45:47.000 --> 00:46:05.000
Time of use and the potential for demand charge. So those are the things that that will be brought back in ordinance. But tonight, like this piece here is we show the need for the budget increase proposed rating. He's through the 10-year rate schedule.

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.000
So we're going to use that information to bring back that.

00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:17.000
Proposed ordinance. An overall rate increase or rate change, whatever, rate setting, whatever it is.

00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:33.000
And how are these structured are really two different things. We can look at a budget and say, okay, we need x revenue And hence an average rate of such and such or a change in rate such and such.

00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:39.000
But that doesn't commit us to saying, okay, we're going to do a time of use rate and here's what it's going to be.

00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:58.000
What I think I heard you saying is that there will be a an expenditure or is an expenditure that will be proposed for FY26 simply to implement a time of use, though that by itself doesn't commit us to actually doing it. Is that correct? Yes, the only thing in the budget

00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:09.000
Tonight is the 250,000 and then what the revenues would look like and what the equivalent percentage increase overall.

00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:19.000
Would be to meet that revenue. It does not detail or ask for input on the actual design of how you get to that dollar amount.

00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:37.000
Okay, that answers that one. And the other one is you made a comment that's the five-year budget option that there would be an action asking for that to be extended And I guess I missed that. Where is that in our agenda?

00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:43.000
That is under the profit transfer agenda item later tonight. Okay.

00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:50.000
You can tell I didn't read that closely enough. Sorry. No problem. Okay. Answers my question. Thank you.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:48:09.000
Anybody else thought of anything before she launches into the fun stuff. I just want to point out something that we talked about last time and that is I think the $250,000 for the Munis, is that the right name anyway yes that is to

00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:18.000
Create the software and the system to be able to have the different rates. Now, if we haven't decided on the rates, we can always have the identical rates.

00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:30.000
For this time frame and that time frame, but the software has the ability And then at some point later on down the road, we can decide what those rates are. But this one is to get the software to get the ability to do that.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:42.000
There are two parts to the implementation. The first part is getting it so the system could do it. There's literally a checkbox on each of our accounts that would have to be checked for time of use to even be

00:48:42.000 --> 00:48:48.000
Turned on, but there's a whole lot that has to happen in census with the meters as well as in the program itself.

00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:54.000
And so my only point in bringing that up was that we don't have to know what the rates are now. No.

00:48:54.000 --> 00:49:07.000
They have to be able to implement the system to allow that in the future. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I wasn't anticipating rates now, but the decision to go to time of use rates, that's the biggie.

00:49:07.000 --> 00:49:25.000
And is… with the potential for the potential demand charges be included in that update of the billing system or is that further down the road? That would also be included. Okay.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:39.000
Thank you. Matt, I had one quick question. You said something that piqued my interest on slide nine. I got the impression that the only reason we do 10-year budgets is because of DPU.

00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:46.000
I really appreciate your flow down. It was a great presentation, but did I hear you right?

00:49:46.000 --> 00:50:00.000
The county also does a 10-year long-term financial projection What I was pointing out was that if you read what's in the charter It talks about a five year and we do a 10 year. Okay.

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:18.000
I apologize if I made that sound like it was just us. The reason we do the 10-year is um partially from our financial guidelines And then the county does it not for each fund, but for the general fund, they do a projection looking out 10 years also.

00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:27.000
So it's not for every fund, but they do it for the general fund. We do it for the joint utility fund. Okay, thanks.

00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:38.000
Any other questions? Okay. Okay. Put on your green shades. Here we go. For those of you old enough to know what that means.

00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:43.000
Okay. So as I said, um.

00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:48.000
Going to ask that we hold questions till I walk through the whole thing because I'm going to look at this at a high level.

00:50:48.000 --> 00:51:00.000
But I'm happy to dig in as deep as you want to go after that. But I want to kind of look at this from a higher perspective.

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:06.000
The first page here is to talk about cash.

00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:14.000
So I'm lumping cash and investments together here But I'm breaking it down between unrestricted and restricted.

00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:28.000
So the charter talks about reserves. And it says that we need to fund our operations, but we also have these reserves that we need to put in place. Our financial guidelines define what those are.

00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:41.000
In our 10-year plan, we do achieve them. But the only way we achieve them is through continual rate increases over that 10-year period. We are not achieving them yet.

00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:56.000
So just to highlight and remember. We talked about earlier, DFA looks at us as a joint utilities fund. So they're going to care about that row 16 on here. So I put the letters and numbers to make it a little easier for us to talk about it.

00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:13.000
So in row 16 is the joint utilities fund. That's where DFA is going to look the county or from a budget from a budget overview perspective looks at electric, gas, water, and sewer.

00:52:13.000 --> 00:52:24.000
But we look at our wastewater sorry But we look at it as each of the individual sub funds.

00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:29.000
But as we've talked about before, if you look at electric production and electric distribution.

00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:38.000
Or water production and water distribution. The main customer in both those cases for production is distribution.

00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:49.000
As well as whatever we partner with the lab. So there are transactions that get combined when you put the whole electric together.

00:52:49.000 --> 00:53:05.000
So depending on the view that you're looking at, you might not see cost of power, you might not see cost of water because that is an interfun transfer that's done between production and distribution.

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:23.000
So a couple of highlights here. You'll notice in the projection for FY25, Excuse me, the 25 projection, which is looking at things we've carried over, whatever we may know about the next six months, we're making a projection.

00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:31.000
Electric distribution is going to end again negative. And to the tune of 175,000, I'll explain how we get there.

00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:41.000
Water distribution also does. And wastewater does, which is why the rate increases that we've talked about for those funds are so critical.

00:53:41.000 --> 00:53:58.000
Between 25 and 26. And then to show the reserve requirements, you can see in 25, We're projected to have restricted cash of 20,321.

00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:05.000
But our reserve requirement is 34 million. So we're not quite there yet.

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:12.000
Okay, we go to the next page. I know these numbers are a little small.

00:54:12.000 --> 00:54:18.000
But I'm going to just talk through kind of what is on here.

00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:39.000
Again, for DFA purposes, this is a report that actually does appear in the budget book. And what we're looking at here is what is the overall net income And total revenues for the count or excuse me, for utilities as a whole.

00:54:39.000 --> 00:54:48.000
So in FY25, We're actually projecting to lose $3.6 million.

00:54:48.000 --> 00:54:56.000
And part of that has to do with capital projects that are getting carried over that we are funding through monies that we received in prior years.

00:54:56.000 --> 00:55:16.000
Remember, we have a grant or excuse me, a loan for the White Rock wastewater treatment plant and there has been different timings and when we've receive the funds. And then also we have in the electric distribution fund monies that we are

00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:20.000
Paying out for some specific projects, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:28.000
For 26, we're almost at break-even. 59,428 is the net income.

00:55:28.000 --> 00:55:34.000
What I look at when I'm meeting with the deputies quarterly to talk about our actual results.

00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:45.000
I first look at that operating income. Because that tells me that tells me whether or not we're at a minimum have to be meeting those operational requirements.

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:52.000
Now, the capital is also obviously very important. We won't keep our SADI going if we don't have capital projects.

00:55:52.000 --> 00:56:11.000
To keep the system in place. In those years like This year, we've had so many water breaks and issues where we have to take care of it. We can't not do those repairs or do those upgrades to try to keep those repairs from being necessary.

00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:18.000
That's that critical capital expenditure line. And then at the bottom are expenditures by type.

00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:30.000
And those categories are used universally across the county so that when we're looking at the county as a whole, if you say material and supplies.

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:40.000
It has a specific meaning. A lot of our spending ends up under professional and contractual services, which gets confusing.

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:45.000
But when you look at the details by each individual fund, we break out what that means.

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:53.000
So professional contractual services are things like the capital expenditures is one of the major categories that's in there.

00:56:53.000 --> 00:57:07.000
But it can also include contracts such as The 250,000 for the time of use upgrade would be in there. There's other things that will end up in that professional contractual services.

00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:16.000
Sorry, Karen, could you just go back a little bit and tell me a little bit more slowly why the capital expenditures are 55 million projected this year.

00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:25.000
Again. There are two main reasons. So from the budget, I understand that's a huge jump between those.

00:57:25.000 --> 00:57:52.000
The largest increase of that is the Hemis Mountain. Fire prevention fire protection project. So one of the things that's unique in government is when we bring an agreement to you, if that agreement is multi-year or a contract a project that we're issuing the very first agreement for. We have to have budget for the entire thing, even if it's going to span multiple years.

00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:56.000
So what will happen is you'll see this huge amount as a revision.

00:57:56.000 --> 00:57:59.000
Because it was in a prior year and we carried it over.

00:57:59.000 --> 00:58:07.000
So typically what the county, we as the county as a whole do is if it's a really large capital project.

00:58:07.000 --> 00:58:13.000
Whatever year it's first introduced, we create that budget And then you'll see it carry over.

00:58:13.000 --> 00:58:26.000
So that's one of them. The other one is the white rock plant that was put in place all at one time, but as we've done it, we've been carrying that through. And those are the two that are the bulk of that.

00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:32.000
Does that help answer your question? Okay.

00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:41.000
Okay. So what sometimes gets a little confusing, I think for folks is That number that's in yellow down there.

00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:47.000
That's really the only number that technically you're approving.

00:58:47.000 --> 00:59:06.000
So the motion or when council looks at it and they're doing a department budget, they'll say we tentatively approve 107 million to 11,714 for utilities There's all the other details, but that's the key number that they're approving or that you're approving.

00:59:06.000 --> 00:59:12.000
There's a lot that makes up that number. Technically, you're not really approving the revenues.

00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:28.000
Accept that you do obviously have to pass rates There are transfers that technically aren't approved. You're looking at it as a whole, but the number that you're actually technically approving is that 107 million to 11,714.

00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:38.000
And I apologize, I'm going to go back one. I did not give my usual Disclaimer, so I'll do my disclaimer now.

00:59:38.000 --> 00:59:44.000
We developed this really early. Compared to the county as a whole.

00:59:44.000 --> 00:59:50.000
I promise you in March when I come back and we give you the list of what's different, there will be differences.

00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:55.000
There will be changes probably in the IDCs. There may be some changes in payroll.

00:59:55.000 --> 01:00:13.000
Because as the county is developing the budget for the county as information may come to light that we need to also flow through our budget, but we feel that it's worthwhile to still bring it in February And we try to minimize what those changes are.

01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:25.000
Between February and March, but I just wanted to throw that out there that there will be some and we do highlight those for you and tell you Here's what's different. So sorry, I meant to Say that at the beginning.

01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:33.000
Again, with this highlight for the expenditures. There are details in the packet for each individual sub fund.

01:00:33.000 --> 01:00:42.000
But this was looking at it as a whole. Because again, when council passes it, they don't look at the individual I shouldn't say that.

01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:53.000
When they're making the motion, they're passing it for the joint utilities fund. They have all the details and can ask questions and do ask questions about each of the individual pieces.

01:00:53.000 --> 01:01:00.000
Next.

01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:13.000
Okay, so the budget highlights, this is the FTE count or full-time equivalents Which is the number of employees So a few things to point out. One, our account is not changing between 25 and 26.

01:01:13.000 --> 01:01:34.000
Our regular employee count is 101. We have 3.65 temps, which every year we've had a program with the engineers Where they go out to different schools and bring college students are in. And we have had a lot of success with several of them.

01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:58.000
Becoming full-time employees. And it's a uh a a good tool for projects that we need during the summer. And so that's that 3.65. And then the three overfill is A bucket of money that is in Philo's budget And an equivalent FTE

01:01:58.000 --> 01:02:18.000
For overfills. That's where we've had people like the power schedulers have have um potentially given their notice or if there's an area where we need a year or two lead time to get licensed properly or for retirements, that's what that overfill

01:02:18.000 --> 01:02:25.000
Count is for. Next slide.

01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:38.000
I'm just going to touch very lightly on this last month, James did go through this in detail But this is the 26 budget, so I wanted to be sure you had it right in front of you.

01:02:38.000 --> 01:02:45.000
For our capital projects. And if you notice at the bottom of Slide 16.

01:02:45.000 --> 01:03:00.000
For example, the Denver Steels project that has a drinking water loan and then the one below it, Sano de Ponzo Road, that has a water trust board of 2 million. And then where it says CIP, that means us DPU.

01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:09.000
So there will be an equivalent revenue in the fund statement related to that loan or grant.

01:03:09.000 --> 01:03:26.000
And can you go to the next slide? So this is the budget option capital project, and I'm going to again go through this a little more later tonight but What the ordinance called for is that the DPU would provide a list

01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:46.000
As a budget option of capital projects that could be funded with the profit transfer if it were retained in utilities. So in essence, that profit transfer, which is from electric and gas is we have to budget it. We're required to per the charter

01:03:46.000 --> 01:04:03.000
We do it based on a percentage of our revenues in gas and electric. And then that would, in essence, go to the county. And then the county says, well, thank you. You've met your requirement, but we'd like you to use it for these capital projects that we're doing joint with public works

01:04:03.000 --> 01:04:09.000
So that they're properly funded and they can happen at the same time. So we're not tearing up the roads more than once.

01:04:09.000 --> 01:04:27.000
So this year for 26, it's the Trinity Drive project that public works is doing and we would be replacing the gas lines and the water lines

01:04:27.000 --> 01:04:36.000
I know everyone looks at things differently, maybe because I'm an accountant, I'm not a good chart person. I am a numbers person.

01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:47.000
But I'm not the only one that needs to look at the budget. So these charts were developed to provide a visually the components that make up the budget.

01:04:47.000 --> 01:04:54.000
So it is combined. So the first one that's electric is electric production and distribution combined together.

01:04:54.000 --> 01:05:02.000
And this does show revenues, expenses, as well as cash. The next one, which is gas.

01:05:02.000 --> 01:05:15.000
And then the other thing that we did across the top is the percentages at the very top of the stack is the percentage increase that is presumed for each of those years.

01:05:15.000 --> 01:05:28.000
Okay, water. I think you need to catch a bullet. Yeah, there. Okay.

01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:35.000
Let me see what I wanted to say about this one. I think that's Good for that one. Let's go to the next.

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:40.000
I want to get to this next piece. Okay, then the next slide.

01:05:40.000 --> 01:05:45.000
Okay. So.

01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:53.000
When you approve the budget. You're not pre-approving the rates, you're approving the revenues.

01:05:53.000 --> 01:06:06.000
Right. And the expenditure. We put a proposal together as part of the budget to say what approximately that percentage rate would need to be. Rate increase would need to be.

01:06:06.000 --> 01:06:10.000
But the makeup of it, whether it's in the fixed fee.

01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:16.000
Whether it's a time of use, whether it's a existing rates.

01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:22.000
This does not define the structure. It defines what those increases would be.

01:06:22.000 --> 01:06:34.000
So gas and water already have enacted rate increases of 5.5% for gas and 6% for water that do take effect October 1st of 2025.

01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:39.000
So those need to be and are included in the budget.

01:06:39.000 --> 01:06:48.000
We have proposed a 9% increase in electric For 2026 and a 7% increase in sewer.

01:06:48.000 --> 01:06:55.000
That seven percent If we do nothing tonight, 2% has already been enacted and will take effect October 1st.

01:06:55.000 --> 01:07:06.000
What I'm saying is that that's not sufficient. And that we need to take a rate increase for a total of seven, which would be an additional 5% above what was already enacted.

01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:16.000
So let me ask, going back to your chart 14, you said we would approve the number of 107 million down in the bottom.

01:07:16.000 --> 01:07:31.000
And so that was computed with these proposed rates, in other words a nine percent proposed increase in electric seven and so forth yes okay And if we did not enact that, what would that number look like then?

01:07:31.000 --> 01:07:42.000
So we're going to talk about that because we were asked by Chuck Gibson to do an alternate plan. So there is an alternate plan that I'm going to talk about in a few minutes for the electric.

01:07:42.000 --> 01:07:59.000
But for any of this. Whatever percentage if you said, let's do sewer Since we're going to talk about electric, let's just talk about sewer for a moment. If you said, no, we want the sewer to stay at 2%, then between now and March.

01:07:59.000 --> 01:08:19.000
We would need to come back and say, okay, we're not going to do the following capital projects or we're going to delay these projects or we're going to aggressively look for loans, although we're already doing that. So I don't believe there are any that we haven't already identified, but we would have to come up with how to modify the expense

01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:34.000
And that 107 million would be a lower number. So if you go back to your… Charlie, Karen asked if we would hold questions to the end here. Can you hold Any further questions or does we have to ask those now?

01:08:34.000 --> 01:08:57.000
Having been trained as a physicist is extremely difficult. I'll give an overarching answer, which is… If the revenues aren't there for whatever reason, if they're not there because um the board says, I'm not comfortable with these rates that you're proposing.

01:08:57.000 --> 01:09:04.000
Or if a loan did not come through that we presume, let's say you pass the budget exactly as it is.

01:09:04.000 --> 01:09:08.000
And we have quite a few loans in here. If one of them were not granted.

01:09:08.000 --> 01:09:15.000
We can't just spend, even though you've adopted the budget, we can't spend it because we don't have that revenue source to do it.

01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:20.000
So this is a plan. It's never perfect. It will have to change.

01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:34.000
No matter what. But the goal of tonight is to get a temperature and to get your feedback so that if you say Absolutely not. We're sticking with the 2%.

01:09:34.000 --> 01:09:42.000
Knowing what that dollar amount is and knowing that that means we're cutting that amount of spend.

01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:49.000
Does that help overarching answer? Okay.

01:09:49.000 --> 01:09:57.000
Now, the other thing that we did Philo might have gotten a late night text from me about the budget once or twice.

01:09:57.000 --> 01:10:15.000
But one of the things we looked at was okay maybe we're not looking at enough loans. Let's look at what loans are out there and we looked at the impact of it and it actually made an $8 per month

01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:35.000
Difference in rates overall by looking at low interest loans that are available now that could fund those capital projects. So that does absolutely drive I was ready to cut a bunch of big capital projects, but there are loans that are available that we talked with James.

01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:45.000
And looked at what those were and we were able to keep the capital plan keep the rates lower than what I was worried they were going to have to be.

01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:54.000
And reduce it by that $8 per month. That was for the sewer fund. Yes.

01:10:54.000 --> 01:10:59.000
Speaking of sewer. Okay.

01:10:59.000 --> 01:11:04.000
We're going to talk about this and then we're going to talk about an alternative, but this is as proposed.

01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:21.000
So the blue are the adopted rates. Remember I told you those rates that are already enacted, already in place. And this is looking at what a typical residential customer only would be, which is 500 kilowatt hours electric 75 therms of gas.

01:11:21.000 --> 01:11:28.000
And we presume what the variable is to keep it flat so that the variable isn't coming into consideration here.

01:11:28.000 --> 01:11:35.000
6,000 gallons of water. And then our sewer rate is flat.

01:11:35.000 --> 01:11:46.000
So as I said, the bluer the adopted rates. And what I wanted to look at was what is the total annual increase combining everything. And what does that dollar amount look like?

01:11:46.000 --> 01:12:06.000
So the two yellow ones are proposed because we said on… wastewater or sewer we were going from the 2% adding initial five to seven Which is what that 6480 represents. And then in electric, we had a 9% proposal.

01:12:06.000 --> 01:12:12.000
Which would get us to the $90.75. So if all of that went through.

01:12:12.000 --> 01:12:18.000
It would look, and I presume just 9% or 9%.

01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:31.000
5.5%, whatever it was. Applied evenly to both the commodity rate as well as the flat fee, which could be different when we bring it to you, but overall dollars should be the same.

01:12:31.000 --> 01:12:40.000
Today, in FY25, this resident would pay $279.50.

01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:43.000
If it gets enacted in 26, it would go up to 299.18.

01:12:43.000 --> 01:12:52.000
So the blended rate is 7.04%. And then for 27, it's 5.59%.

01:12:52.000 --> 01:13:03.000
Those numbers will come back in a few minutes when we talk about some alternatives. But that's what we're proposing.

01:13:03.000 --> 01:13:11.000
Okay.

01:13:11.000 --> 01:13:22.000
The reason you do not see… the same debt coverage ratio is that I'm taking out of consideration the $58 million here.

01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:35.000
We're looking at it as net operating revenues. And it's not taken into consideration here. And that's to try to give that truer picture of what that debt coverage ratio looks like.

01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:41.000
As you can see, even with the current debt as well as the proposed debt.

01:13:41.000 --> 01:13:48.000
At no time are we below the 1.3 target.

01:13:48.000 --> 01:13:56.000
Presuming the race and revenues that we've put in place are are

01:13:56.000 --> 01:14:01.000
Adopted.

01:14:01.000 --> 01:14:13.000
Okay. I'm going to ask for some feedback, Pilo, if you want me to open for questions for what's there now, or if you want me to do the alternate first.

01:14:13.000 --> 01:14:19.000
I'll leave it to the chair, but I'd say questions up till now would be helpful.

01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:27.000
So we know how we got there. Yeah, I think that so we don't get a backlog of too many questions.

01:14:27.000 --> 01:14:32.000
Okay, so I'll stand for questions then. Okay. Questions from the board.

01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:44.000
We'll start with Matt. That's quick. First, thank you very much. This was really useful and a lot to dig into. And as I had questions, I went back and answer almost all of them in your presentation. So thank you very much.

01:14:44.000 --> 01:14:49.000
The only comment I would add, I think same question I asked for the annual report. I think we should be consistent.

01:14:49.000 --> 01:14:58.000
I understand leaving out the Uniper. That's such a distorting factor. But to claim to the public that we're 28.31% is our debt ratio coverage, but then when we're actually doing it.

01:14:58.000 --> 01:15:04.000
I think we should be consistent between those two. That's my only comment. So thanks again.

01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:09.000
Thank you. Other questions?

01:15:09.000 --> 01:15:34.000
Yeah, I have a question in the graphs, not your numbers. No problem. I'm happy to answer them. The 10-year forecast um under electric. O&m was the thing that was changing the most is that Yes. The blue stuff. The blue stuff. I mean, pretty significantly. Like if you look at the other utilities

01:15:34.000 --> 01:15:55.000
And just sort of flat. And I'm just wondering, and so that is sort of that projection in part what drives the relatively high need for a relatively high percent increase in rates so And how is that projected you know that that relatively dramatic

01:15:55.000 --> 01:16:18.000
Change in the O&M. Sorry, I'm relatively new to this, so I'm trying to understand. No, no problem. So I'm going to switch over and let's go to page This is electric combined. Let's go to page B53.

01:16:18.000 --> 01:16:29.000
And that's the 10-year financial forecast. So what we've done here is we've combined the electric fund and then we also show you separately electric production versus electric distribution.

01:16:29.000 --> 01:16:36.000
In just a second, we'll have it up on the board. Just give us one moment.

01:16:36.000 --> 01:16:42.000
I think it's helpful to walk through it here because you can see more

01:16:42.000 --> 01:16:51.000
Page 180 of your packet. Thank you, Joanne.

01:16:51.000 --> 01:17:16.000
It's going to be the other I'm sorry, give us one second. Once we have it up, then we'll be able to use it for

01:17:16.000 --> 01:17:23.000
It should be attachment B. On right there.

01:17:23.000 --> 01:17:27.000
Well, I'll go ahead and start talking through it. Do you all have it on your on the die? Okay.

01:17:27.000 --> 01:17:43.000
So the operational expenditures are going to be your Labor, it does include because it's electric, it includes AbiQ, Elvato.

01:17:43.000 --> 01:17:51.000
The only thing it's going to also here include are.

01:17:51.000 --> 01:18:01.000
Not the cost of power for electric distribution, but the cost of producing the power and or buying the power for electric production.

01:18:01.000 --> 01:18:06.000
So that's a big piece of that operational expenditure.

01:18:06.000 --> 01:18:15.000
And then it also includes labor benefits, the IDCs, that type of expenditures.

01:18:15.000 --> 01:18:19.000
So if you go to, let me try to make it a little.

01:18:19.000 --> 01:18:31.000
Another page that might help explain it a little more.

01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:40.000
If you go to page b4

01:18:40.000 --> 01:18:45.000
Which is which is

01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:53.000
Page 130 in your packet.

01:18:53.000 --> 01:19:01.000
Richard, if I can suggest not using the packet, I think what might be easier for you is if you go to Legislar and use attachment B.

01:19:01.000 --> 01:19:12.000
It'll be turned the right direction. Sorry, just give us one second for them to get it.

01:19:12.000 --> 01:19:16.000
There you go. Can you make it just a little bit bigger?

01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:31.000
So… The fund flows, which is this section gives you the best, it's the most granular level This is going to show you the operating expenses by category.

01:19:31.000 --> 01:19:47.000
Right. Okay. And that's going to be the Elvato. So the only thing on that 10-year plan. So the O&M here is going to be everything except that purchase power line because on your graph, that purchase power line is the is the um

01:19:47.000 --> 01:19:56.000
Orange, or excuse me, gray And then your IDC is the orange. So if we go back to the chart you were looking at, the graph.

01:19:56.000 --> 01:20:09.000
So that blue is going to be Elvato, Abacu. The contract administration and load control transmission Debt services separate.

01:20:09.000 --> 01:20:14.000
And then it's gonna include the Laramie River.

01:20:14.000 --> 01:20:20.000
And that's it. And then on electric distribution, which is the next page.

01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:39.000
It's going to include all of this, the maintenance, the substation, the switching, the overhead, the meter maintenance, all of that is going to be included Yeah, I just wanted to see, you know, so in the other utilities that blue is relatively flat

01:20:39.000 --> 01:20:57.000
It's noticeably not in the electric. And so to see those numbers, it helps. Yeah, it's primarily because of the production side and there's a lot that goes into what's considered their operations that are on a much larger scale.

01:20:57.000 --> 01:21:17.000
Okay. So it's driving an increase relative to today. Yes. And then we're going to talk about some of the changes in If you look at like electric over the years, how much we've increased our labor In electric distribution, we are under a um

01:21:17.000 --> 01:21:23.000
Contract agreement. Union. Union agreement. Okay.

01:21:23.000 --> 01:21:37.000
Collective bargaining. Thank you. Sorry. That was the word I was trying to think of. Collective bargaining agreement, as well as in our um with our commerce and pipe fitters. And so with electric, that's one of the ones where that was

01:21:37.000 --> 01:21:40.000
That increase which we will highlight in just a little bit.

01:21:40.000 --> 01:22:05.000
Does that answer your question? Yes, that's very helpful to walk through it. Thank you. No problem. And I will point out, since we do have some new folks also on the board, as I said last time, if you want to sit down at all between now and March to dig into something, I'm more than happy to sit with you if Philos can do it. I have staff that can do it. So we're more than happy to meet with you

01:22:05.000 --> 01:22:10.000
To dig in as deep as you need to understand it to feel comfortable making a decision next month.

01:22:10.000 --> 01:22:15.000
Okay, that sounds great. Thank you.

01:22:15.000 --> 01:22:31.000
Is that all for now, Jim? Well, I have another question. I'm just having trouble finding the slide. I wrote down that it's page 14, but I'm not sure in which… side of it I'm looking at. It was related to the water

01:22:31.000 --> 01:22:40.000
So it was related to the comment you made about how a capital expenditure that gets carried over from year to year, that expense, right?

01:22:40.000 --> 01:23:02.000
So how does that get included in your projection? So… Yeah, okay, so you can see the projected FY25 jumps for water production. And I think that's probably related to one of the capital expenditures is getting carried over. It's primarily Hemis Mountain.

01:23:02.000 --> 01:23:22.000
Yeah, okay. Fire protection project. Okay. And then if if that continues to get carried over, how does that impact or maybe it doesn't at this stage, the FY26 proposed budget So we always both what the original 25 budget is and what our projection is and the projection

01:23:22.000 --> 01:23:30.000
Is usually budget revisions you've already approved. So we don't try to just like throw things in there. It's something that you've already approved.

01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:35.000
It does include the budget revision that was on consent for tonight.

01:23:35.000 --> 01:23:41.000
So if I had to adjust that, if you didn't pass it then I would do that.

01:23:41.000 --> 01:23:57.000
It doesn't impact what the 26 numbers are going to be because if let's say the fire protection project isn't likely to end by June 30th. It'll probably continue you've already adopted the 26.

01:23:57.000 --> 01:24:15.000
When council does their motion. One of the components of the motion is to take anything that's already been approved that has not yet occurred that those can be carried over. So there's some that get carried over automatically through council action during the budget.

01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:21.000
So if you have a valid encumbrance at the end of the year, those can carry over automatically.

01:24:21.000 --> 01:24:32.000
Then we come to you around september And we bring a budget revision that says, here's projects where we haven't encumbered them yet. You adopted them.

01:24:32.000 --> 01:24:39.000
Last year or in a prior year, we would like to carry this budget over and those become budget revisions.

01:24:39.000 --> 01:24:46.000
To FY26. Does that help? Okay, no problem.

01:24:46.000 --> 01:24:55.000
Okay, there we go. Take care, Gibson. I'm not really good with initialisms. And on these graphs that are floating by.

01:24:55.000 --> 01:25:08.000
There's things like IDC. And A, D, A, is that American Disabilities Association? I apologize. No, let me… I will walk through them. So ONM is… Operations and maintenance. Operations and maintenance.

01:25:08.000 --> 01:25:33.000
Idcs are… Do I even know what they say? Intra-department charges. So basically the idc's are where the county, we were receiving county services it the finance team, payroll, HR, and we're paying a fee for using that service as is

01:25:33.000 --> 01:25:44.000
Allowed for in the charter. Ada is all of us admin so that's the in when the charter says that each utility must stand on its own.

01:25:44.000 --> 01:26:09.000
I don't work for one utility. I spend time on all of them. So my salary, my team's salary, our expenses get allocated to each of the utilities based on the the time we spend on each utility. When I looked up ADA, I got allowance for doubtful accounts. One of the definitions, but that's the wrong one. So I guess…

01:26:09.000 --> 01:26:24.000
In order to keep people like me on the straight and narrow. I'm sorry, we should have done. Just a little legend because there's all this white space on the right side of the drawing. We can absolutely. So just a little bit of legend right there. Thank you for that. We will add that.

01:26:24.000 --> 01:26:31.000
I appreciate it. Thank you. And to really confuse you? Oh, yeah. I'm ready. All of the utilities.

01:26:31.000 --> 01:26:39.000
If we go to the fund flows, all the utilities call the admin. It's engineering administration or whatever.

01:26:39.000 --> 01:26:55.000
Except for electric production because the contract says it has to be called Administrative allocation. And so it's different but they mean the same thing. Legends are good. Thank you. Thank you.

01:26:55.000 --> 01:27:02.000
Heather's. Karen, just a simple one.

01:27:02.000 --> 01:27:13.000
Page 149 or 23 of your presentation. Or if you're… There's a whole packet here.

01:27:13.000 --> 01:27:26.000
Has to do with URD replacements. We've been we started that a couple of years ago i believe and it was supposed to be a 10-year undertaking.

01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:36.000
And I see this still on the still In the long range projection for fiscal 35.

01:27:36.000 --> 01:27:42.000
Is that extending beyond the original 10 years or is that the end of it?

01:27:42.000 --> 01:27:51.000
For projection purposes, I know you know it might extend a little longer. It might be a little less, but kind of where are we with that?

01:27:51.000 --> 01:28:04.000
Rather large undertaking over 10 years or a decade. Page B23 is what you're speaking to yes for electric distribution. I mean, it's on every one of them, but that happens to be the last one.

01:28:04.000 --> 01:28:10.000
I'm going to phone a friend. Stephen?

01:28:10.000 --> 01:28:15.000
Would you like to speak to the Capitol? The underground capital projects.

01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:21.000
Here.

01:28:21.000 --> 01:28:27.000
Specifically what he's asking about.

01:28:27.000 --> 01:28:35.000
Chair Gibson, board, yeah, the 10-year projected plan goes over our assessments of what will need to be replaced.

01:28:35.000 --> 01:28:52.000
But actually underground replacements is going to be a perpetual Forever type. The tenure is going to continue to be I can say, you know, conductors that I've installed when I started working here are going to be reaching the end of their life pretty soon.

01:28:52.000 --> 01:29:02.000
And we run to fail typically and replace as failures occur but Even past 35 Especially with the electrification.

01:29:02.000 --> 01:29:10.000
Replacements are going to be a continuation. Okay, now it was my understanding, maybe wrong.

01:29:10.000 --> 01:29:20.000
That this referred to the direct berry cable And it would seem like At some point, we're going to be done with that.

01:29:20.000 --> 01:29:32.000
The direct barrier cables will be replaced at priority level. But even after 2035, the conductors that are in conduits are going to be needing or will need to be replaced.

01:29:32.000 --> 01:29:43.000
And so that's going to be a continuing effort. Okay, and if that's a continuing effort, I'm wondering whether it really even belongs in capital.

01:29:43.000 --> 01:30:05.000
Let me, I'm sorry. I was supposed to speak to this For budgeting purposes, the capital projects include Whether you are creating a new asset or whether you are doing a major upgrade repair to existing.

01:30:05.000 --> 01:30:20.000
So it's different than in the corporate world where you have repairs and maintenance only or you have capital and capital is primarily new creating a new asset, it's a little bit different in government. So you will see things that

01:30:20.000 --> 01:30:29.000
May appear to you to be repair and maintenance, but they are under the capital plan.

01:30:29.000 --> 01:30:41.000
We had transformers and switches, those types of equipment are in our operating budget. If a single one fails, we will replace it, do maintenance, splicing cable.

01:30:41.000 --> 01:30:47.000
Fixing damaged poles and such but When we have multiple failures in an area.

01:30:47.000 --> 01:30:57.000
The capital projects will will be replacing entire streets, entire neighborhoods all at once.

01:30:57.000 --> 01:31:25.000
Okay. Well, I was hoping that that line would drop off in 10 years but uh That's why I asked the question i was getting suspicious and you've confirmed my suspicions Okay, I have some other questions, but I think it's probably better to wait until you've done your alternative presentation and we'll go from there. Oh, sure, Charles.

01:31:25.000 --> 01:31:32.000
So again, in all of the mass of the data and the graphs and so forth, I'm looking for what I can grasp as a bottom line.

01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:40.000
I think tentatively I found it on page 203 of the packet which is chart 13, which is your fund flow.

01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:48.000
And so I'm going to ask you, I'm going to say a couple of things and I want you to tell me if this is about right.

01:31:48.000 --> 01:31:53.000
In particular with the focusing particularly on the rate increase question, right?

01:31:53.000 --> 01:31:57.000
So if I look at this, let's see if we get the column up.

01:31:57.000 --> 01:32:04.000
Yeah, that's the one I'm looking at. Page B3. It's marked.

01:32:04.000 --> 01:32:18.000
Page 13 in my present packet. It's page 203 in the packet and it's marked as Slide 13. Budget highlights fund flow. I'm sorry yes That's the one.

01:32:18.000 --> 01:32:29.000
We're almost there. So close. It could be either 13 or 14. Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. Perfect.

01:32:29.000 --> 01:32:41.000
Right. So if we look at if we look at Actuals for 2023, let's say, because 2024 was weird because of Uniper, right?

01:32:41.000 --> 01:32:52.000
So 2023, the total revenues were 83 million Just about an electric expenditure was 56.7 million. And here's the other funds.

01:32:52.000 --> 01:33:04.000
And if you go down, then at the end, the net income for that year was six 0.2 million, 6.3 million in the hole, right? A loss of 6.3 million.

01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:19.000
So question one is, I probably should know this and I apologize, but so what happened in that year? We had a loss. Did we get funds coming in from the general fund or something that covered that or How does a loss get covered?

01:33:19.000 --> 01:33:29.000
We do not get funds from the general fund. So we dip into our own reserves then? We either have received money. So it's a timing issue.

01:33:29.000 --> 01:33:40.000
So in this case for 23, There's a couple of reasons. There were some loan proceeds that were received in wastewater.

01:33:40.000 --> 01:34:06.000
That were approximately I believe it was either 15 million excuse me that were not recorded until the following year But they related to expenditures that were done in 23. So 23 looked like there was a larger go ahead, Philo, I'm sorry. I mentioned earlier about our gas fund that that's when we had the upset where we're three to four million in

01:34:06.000 --> 01:34:32.000
Over expenditures. We actually took a loan from the water fund Okay. To fund the gas shortfall and set up the sunset recovery rate to repay the essentially the water fund for that loan. Right. So you had gas that's About 2.5 million, almost 3 million. You had the money that was a timing difference for the wastewater treatment plant.

01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:39.000
Where we have to spend the money first and then we get reimbursed from them. So some of it is just timing.

01:34:39.000 --> 01:34:48.000
What you want to make sure of is that The number on row 22 here, the operating income is not where you have your loss.

01:34:48.000 --> 01:34:59.000
Often. Will cause Sure. Shortfalls in one year that are either made up in the prior or the following year.

01:34:59.000 --> 01:35:17.000
But operationally, we want to make sure that the rates are covering everything now. The rates are also supposed to cover capital Right. But it's a timing. But if there's timing differences, which is what that $6 million net loss is.

01:35:17.000 --> 01:35:30.000
And if you looked at, again, at 24, you'd have to back out the uniper settlement. Right. I'm not even going to talk about that. And then let's then we go to 25 projected. And again, the net income is a

01:35:30.000 --> 01:35:39.000
Is also in the hole about 3.7 million. Now, although our operating income is positive, so that's another capital issue, right?

01:35:39.000 --> 01:35:49.000
Primarily, yes. And then so now with the proposed rate increases on 26 That's what you're saying is needed to get us out of that hole.

01:35:49.000 --> 01:35:55.000
In other words, to pay for some capital, we would still be in the positive on operating income.

01:35:55.000 --> 01:36:07.000
But we would be much more in the positive on capital and therefore we kind of break even that that's basically the bottom line. Your argument is we need the rate increases in order to do that. Otherwise.

01:36:07.000 --> 01:36:12.000
We are just not going to be able to recapitalize. We need the rate increases in 26.

01:36:12.000 --> 01:36:25.000
And we need to be prepared that there will be ongoing rate increases in the other out nine years going out To be able to meet the capital plan and fill the reserves.

01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:36.000
Okay. All right. So I got your bottom line, I think, correct. That's my bottom. And the bottom line here in terms of the number that I showed on the other slide, it's that 107,211 that's at the bottom.

01:36:36.000 --> 01:36:44.000
That's the expenditure budget that you're you would be approving next month. I don't know about others, but for me, it's much easier to see, oh.

01:36:44.000 --> 01:36:58.000
Here's the revenue coming in. Here's our operating expenses. Here's our capital expenses. Here's where it adds up. That's why the fund flow is where we start. Okay. Yes.

01:36:58.000 --> 01:37:05.000
Other questions from the board? Okay, Karen.

01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:14.000
Okay. Thank you, Richard and Karen.

01:37:14.000 --> 01:37:27.000
Okay, so… through a series of a couple of meetings, there was a request made to look at what what an alternative plan could look like.

01:37:27.000 --> 01:37:35.000
On the electric, specifically electric distribution rate increase of the 9%.

01:37:35.000 --> 01:37:48.000
426. And… One second. And the 8% for 27. So I wanted to walk through a little bit of background and then look at what that alternate could look like.

01:37:48.000 --> 01:37:57.000
This is an expansion of the 10-year snapshot that I provided as a discussion point at our last meeting.

01:37:57.000 --> 01:38:03.000
And what I did down below without, well, I guess I did still use an acronym. I'm sorry. I did put IDC.

01:38:03.000 --> 01:38:11.000
My goal here was to break out the components. And so at the bottom at the top half.

01:38:11.000 --> 01:38:18.000
I added the net income. To show what the history of electric distribution has been. Because as we said.

01:38:18.000 --> 01:38:27.000
Until recently. There was

01:38:27.000 --> 01:38:33.000
Sorry, I lost my train of thought for a second. Until recently.

01:38:33.000 --> 01:38:39.000
We did not have a rate increase. So for 10 years, electric distribution had no rate increase at all.

01:38:39.000 --> 01:38:47.000
And you can see kind of the impact of this. In 2015, net income for electric distribution was 9.5 million.

01:38:47.000 --> 01:38:58.000
But they received a bond of 11.2, which tells me that That's 2 million in the hole approximately if you back out that bond.

01:38:58.000 --> 01:39:11.000
2016, loss of 510, et cetera. So it goes up There either were losses or pretty low. I think the best year was 2018.

01:39:11.000 --> 01:39:22.000
Where it was 864,000 of net income. The next column is the cash and investments. And then I broke out the bond reserves because remember we said with the reserves.

01:39:22.000 --> 01:39:38.000
Some of them are required by contract. Which the bond reserves are and you don't have a choice. You have to set that money aside And then the other reserves I lumped all together. So we attempted to do the reserves, as you can see, for a number of those years.

01:39:38.000 --> 01:39:58.000
Which is part of why cash was negative because the reserves are being funded, but then there's no money for operations. So I wanted to give you kind of this background of what was going on. We were asked to show what FTEs were. We had 13 FTEs in 2015.

01:39:58.000 --> 01:40:08.000
In 24 and in the 26 projection, we have 14.6. So we've not really gone up a lot there. However.

01:40:08.000 --> 01:40:16.000
The very bottom, if we talk about expenses, are labor and benefits have gone from 1.3 million to 2.3 million.

01:40:16.000 --> 01:40:26.000
Alignment in 2015 made $32.28. And in 26, it's projected to be 48.65.

01:40:26.000 --> 01:40:46.000
Which is a 38% increase. In the last two years, and thank you to Los Alamos County for covering a good portion of this for us employees, but the cost to the county for medical and dental insurance in the last two years has gone up 5% each year, so 10%.

01:40:46.000 --> 01:40:51.000
In just that two-year period. The in lieu and franchise.

01:40:51.000 --> 01:41:02.000
Has gone up. It's a percentage of revenue. So as revenues grow those amounts will grow. The in lieu piece of it is based on our assets.

01:41:02.000 --> 01:41:08.000
And it's basically like paying property tax. For specific assets.

01:41:08.000 --> 01:41:15.000
Idcs are interdepartmental charges.

01:41:15.000 --> 01:41:23.000
That are for services that we receive, that cost has gone up from 685,000 in 2015 to 1.2 million.

01:41:23.000 --> 01:41:34.000
In 24. The admin allocation also has gone up from 548 to 940 so you can see for many of these categories where the expenses have gone up.

01:41:34.000 --> 01:41:54.000
Debt service has gone down because we had 2009 bonds, which got, I think, folded into the 2011 bond. And then we had a 2014 bond. So there were bonds done in electric production and distribution. Primarily, they were related to production for Abicyu and Alvato.

01:41:54.000 --> 01:42:02.000
But a portion of it was for the electric distribution system. So those have gone down.

01:42:02.000 --> 01:42:10.000
There is equipment in capital But I broke out the equipment that was not associated with capital.

01:42:10.000 --> 01:42:23.000
And that has actually gone down. And it's not because the prices have gone down. It's because things have been folded into capital projects instead.

01:42:23.000 --> 01:42:27.000
And the capital, I did exclude labor. Electric distribution is unique.

01:42:27.000 --> 01:42:33.000
In that… primarily they do a lot of the capital work.

01:42:33.000 --> 01:42:52.000
So there is a labor component, but this does not include that. This is without the labor component for comparison purposes. And as you can see our capital it's going to be different year over year, but I don't know if y'all remember the slide from last time where we had some items that have gone up over 400% in the same time period.

01:42:52.000 --> 01:43:04.000
So we've had huge increases in the cost of transformers. And other regular equipment that we have to have to maintain our electric distribution system.

01:43:04.000 --> 01:43:27.000
And then the cost of power. Is not… it's been kind of in different amounts It went down as we were when we had San Juan, that was really low cost power we had to start building for our decommissioning.

01:43:27.000 --> 01:43:36.000
Which is part of why you have some of the years that are a little bit higher. And then now you're seeing that it's gone up significantly since FY 2020.

01:43:36.000 --> 01:43:46.000
Because of Juniper going away and losing San Juan, which was, again, a very inexpensive source of power.

01:43:46.000 --> 01:44:06.000
Okay, next slide. So I just wanted to show as proposed and kind of show how the 10-year plan connects in with the fund flow. So I've collapsed it obviously to try to just make it so you can see it on one screen.

01:44:06.000 --> 01:44:11.000
But on the left-hand side, you have the revenue, operating expenses.

01:44:11.000 --> 01:44:22.000
Your capital expenditures. And then the expenditures by type But you can see the net income loss or the net loss in 25 is projected to be 3 million.

01:44:22.000 --> 01:44:38.000
And in 26, it's projected to be 845,000. To the right is to the right the 10-year projection and what that does is that shows how we're funding our cash. So what's the change to cash?

01:44:38.000 --> 01:44:51.000
And… what is the impact on the reserves? So that net cash flow is going to agree with your net income loss or income or loss. It's going to be plus or minus.

01:44:51.000 --> 01:44:57.000
Because that's the bottom line, right? My expenses are higher than my revenue.

01:44:57.000 --> 01:45:04.000
I'm going to have negative cash. So I have to have the cash on hand to be able to cover that higher expenditures.

01:45:04.000 --> 01:45:17.000
The next line is what was the beginning unrestricted cash. So projected for FY25, electric distribution would have negative $5 million.

01:45:17.000 --> 01:45:27.000
Now, part of that is because they have more money in investments and I'm going to walk you all the way through that So that's B.

01:45:27.000 --> 01:45:34.000
28, if you look on the right hand side under projected, so B28 is the beginning unrestricted cash.

01:45:34.000 --> 01:45:39.000
And at the end of June 30 of 25, everything stays the same.

01:45:39.000 --> 01:45:43.000
It would be 5 million. Obviously, that's not a good idea.

01:45:43.000 --> 01:45:50.000
So the next row on 29 is on 29 me unreasonable.

01:45:50.000 --> 01:45:59.000
So we would be moving money out of restricted, so unfunding our reserves and putting that money into operations.

01:45:59.000 --> 01:46:10.000
So that's moving $8 million from the $10 million that we took from the Uniper settlement to fund our reserves and moving it into operations.

01:46:10.000 --> 01:46:22.000
That gives us net ending unrestricted cash of $174,000. In our reserves, we started with 11,293.

01:46:22.000 --> 01:46:28.000
Which is the 10 million that we transferred from Uniper and the rest is the required reserve for the bonds.

01:46:28.000 --> 01:46:37.000
And so it would end with 3.2 million. And our reserved target is 9.6.

01:46:37.000 --> 01:46:41.000
With the current 10-year plan, as well as with the alternate plan.

01:46:41.000 --> 01:46:53.000
We do fund the reserves within the 10-year period. So I will walk through that in just a moment.

01:46:53.000 --> 01:47:02.000
One of the questions that we were asked was about the cost of power because it looks like it's been I mean, if you look at the numbers just over time it's varied year by year.

01:47:02.000 --> 01:47:16.000
But what I look at when we're setting budgets. And when I'm trying to figure out if numbers that we've all pulled together to look at, and I just kind of give it the smell test just I look at the averages and look at the recent averages

01:47:16.000 --> 01:47:22.000
So in FY24, And I want to explain this is electric distributions cost of power.

01:47:22.000 --> 01:47:32.000
So that's a little bit different than that power purchases that EP makes because the electric production has to make it for the entire pool.

01:47:32.000 --> 01:47:37.000
As well as Kirtland. Tanzandia. And then we get reimbursed.

01:47:37.000 --> 01:47:47.000
So I'm just looking at electric distribution. So this is what are our rate payers what is the cost of the power that we receive that we then provide to our ratepayers?

01:47:47.000 --> 01:47:52.000
And that's what this is. So the average for FY24 was 77.10.

01:47:52.000 --> 01:47:59.000
I looked at January through June because it went up significantly for that half of the year and it was 89.56.

01:47:59.000 --> 01:48:08.000
And then the average for 2025 Which is July through December, which is all we have right now is 9143.

01:48:08.000 --> 01:48:14.000
When we developed the budget, we used $90. For the cost of power.

01:48:14.000 --> 01:48:19.000
And then we ratcheted it up in some of the out years.

01:48:19.000 --> 01:48:29.000
But that's what's used in the FY26, which I feel based on what our numbers have been is a reasonable projection.

01:48:29.000 --> 01:48:42.000
Okay. So this is just a snapshot of the 10-year plan. I'm only showing 26 and 27. On the left-hand side is as proposed.

01:48:42.000 --> 01:48:57.000
We have transfers in that are coming from electric production because the investments are in electric production But we had said that 2 million of the interest was going to be used to fund capital projects. So I have in the proposed budget

01:48:57.000 --> 01:49:07.000
That money flowing through to electric distribution So you can see with a 9% increase and the $2 million.

01:49:07.000 --> 01:49:13.000
And that transfer of the 8 million, we end up with a loss of 845,000.

01:49:13.000 --> 01:49:19.000
And our cash is going to be positive.

01:49:19.000 --> 01:49:26.000
By just under $500,000. Our reserves are only going to be down to 1.8 million.

01:49:26.000 --> 01:49:31.000
And the target is 9.4. That's with the 9% increase.

01:49:31.000 --> 01:49:39.000
And then for 27, we did an 8% increase And then I'll show you the 10-year plan here shortly.

01:49:39.000 --> 01:50:02.000
What the alternative was is we talked about Was there a way to reduce that percentage and do a one-time transfer in of some of the Uniper settlement have less invested And you will be losing about $130,000 in interest.

01:50:02.000 --> 01:50:06.000
But could that be used to help reduce that rate increase percentage.

01:50:06.000 --> 01:50:12.000
So we looked at it as 7% in 26 and 7% in 27.

01:50:12.000 --> 01:50:17.000
But increasing that transfer into from 2 million to 5 million.

01:50:17.000 --> 01:50:26.000
And definitely shores up your cash. It does not change your reserve balance yet.

01:50:26.000 --> 01:50:32.000
So this is that slide I showed you before. The top half is as proposed.

01:50:32.000 --> 01:50:39.000
The bottom half is the alternate. So if we switch from Let me keep this in front of me so I don't forget.

01:50:39.000 --> 01:50:47.000
Nine and 8% to 7 and 7%. The bill would go from 2918 down to 2950.

01:50:47.000 --> 01:50:56.000
297.51 sorry From $299.18 down to $297.51.

01:50:56.000 --> 01:51:04.000
Or from 7.04 blended. Down to 6.44.

01:51:04.000 --> 01:51:17.000
I know this one's probably too hard to read, but I didn't want to have you feel I was trying to not show you the whole thing. This is the 10-year plan.

01:51:17.000 --> 01:51:26.000
In both cases with the nine and eight or the seven and seven we within the 10 years do hit our reserve target.

01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:34.000
And it does still include the need to do rates a rate increase every year.

01:51:34.000 --> 01:51:42.000
And with that, I'll stand for any questions.

01:51:42.000 --> 01:51:59.000
Questions. I'm sorry. I had one quick question. I was following you almost the whole way, but then I lost $8 million. I thought I was on it, but I thought you said… I can go back to that slide and show you. Slide 30 was where I think I lost it.

01:51:59.000 --> 01:52:13.000
Because I thought I heard you make the comment that on the as proposed 2026 still included the $8 million transfer that you showed two slides earlier? So I'm sorry. Let's go back to slide 28 and I'll explain. I apologize.

01:52:13.000 --> 01:52:25.000
What I realized was that We normally, when we develop the 10-year plan, we have to look at the projection, right? Because we have to look at how are we going to end 25.

01:52:25.000 --> 01:52:43.000
But what I realized what i realized I see. Is that the 10-year plan doesn't show you 25. It only shows you 26. And so slide 28 was to go back and say, well, how did we get from You never had visibility to the negative 5 million. So that's why I was trying to

01:52:43.000 --> 01:52:59.000
Show that. For next month I think it might make more sense, even though it's a 10-year projection, to still show 25 so that you get that you're not missing one of the steps in the process. So I apologize that that

01:52:59.000 --> 01:53:02.000
We probably should add that to the 10-year plan and make it an 11-year plan.

01:53:02.000 --> 01:53:06.000
I wish it was always that easy to find $8 million. Thanks.

01:53:06.000 --> 01:53:16.000
When did we're at 11.5 cents a kilowatt hour now When did that get said? And you said there hadn't been a rate increase for a decade or so.

01:53:16.000 --> 01:53:22.000
Give me one second and i will it was let's see.

01:53:22.000 --> 01:53:33.000
Sure. Hold on one second. If I have my other presentation, I can… Bear with me and I'll have it for you here in just a second.

01:53:33.000 --> 01:53:41.000
While you're thinking about it, I mean, what I'm thinking is, or what I'm curious about is If we go back to that time where that was set.

01:53:41.000 --> 01:53:58.000
So instead of having a long period of time where we don't do anything, and then now it looks like we're going to kind of do a little hockey stick up what would have looked like if we had done moderate steady increases over that entire time.

01:53:58.000 --> 01:54:03.000
Thank you. So I have the chart up. It's one that I did show you all last time.

01:54:03.000 --> 01:54:12.000
We went from February 2015 and there was not another rate increase until October of 2023.

01:54:12.000 --> 01:54:27.000
So it was eight years. If you… I looked at it as approximately a 10-year period If you do 3% a year we were probably about 30% behind in what we at minimum should have been doing.

01:54:27.000 --> 01:54:32.000
If not a higher amount.

01:54:32.000 --> 01:54:38.000
And just to remind everyone, when we looked at that with our proposal. How would our reserves have looked?

01:54:38.000 --> 01:54:46.000
Had we done that, would we have been meeting our reserve target or still under under the target.

01:54:46.000 --> 01:54:51.000
I have not done that math, but I can bring that projection back.

01:54:51.000 --> 01:55:03.000
When we look at it from a CPI perspective. Between February 2015 and December of 2024, CPI went up 34.5%.

01:55:03.000 --> 01:55:12.000
Our rates, if you combine what our rate increases have been including the proposed additional 9% for 2026.

01:55:12.000 --> 01:55:25.000
It would be up 30.4%. Cpi 34.5 and our increases, including 26s, were 30.4.

01:55:25.000 --> 01:55:32.000
So very… just slightly less than CPI because we've had to play catch up.

01:55:32.000 --> 01:55:41.000
Had we done a more And I'm not trying to second guess what happened in the past because I'm sure there were reasons for that.

01:55:41.000 --> 01:55:47.000
But there were not rate increases during that time period. Whatever happened in the past, it is what it is.

01:55:47.000 --> 01:55:59.000
But we do have the data and I think it's actually helpful in helping at least me understand, you know, kind of looking back over that eight, nine year period now since 20, coming on 10 years since 2015.

01:55:59.000 --> 01:56:09.000
To try to see, you know, okay. Had we done that type of steady increase, here's where we would have been in terms of our reserves. Here's how things would have looked.

01:56:09.000 --> 01:56:16.000
And because I think this picture is now, since we didn't do that, we're just going to have to do some sharp increases.

01:56:16.000 --> 01:56:26.000
You know, in this hockey stick, I'll just say again, right, to catch up. I can absolutely calculate that and get that out to the board.

01:56:26.000 --> 01:56:33.000
Thank you. Other questions? Jen.

01:56:33.000 --> 01:56:38.000
Okay, so comparing the two proposals, so the alternative and the proposal.

01:56:38.000 --> 01:56:50.000
The main impact really seems to be on the cash. Is that right? Because neither one of them really addresses the reserves in the short term, although both of them address it in the 10-year plan, the 10 years.

01:56:50.000 --> 01:56:59.000
And the difference in what the rate payers, our customers will see doesn't seem to be too dramatic.

01:56:59.000 --> 01:57:07.000
It was 299.18 versus 297.57. I think it's the optics of the percentage versus the actual dollars.

01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:32.000
Yeah, right. If I may. Yeah. And the other big change that you did was to put the five million from the uniper. So we're going to lose 130,000 in interest But that gives you a lot more cash. So I don't really have a great sense on how important it is to have a lot more cash in hand versus not. So as long as

01:57:32.000 --> 01:57:51.000
So the guidance we're supposed to follow is that within our 10-year horizon, the rates that we're looking at projecting and the expense, the revenues we're collecting and the expenditures need to be such that those reserves are filled within that 10-year period. And they both do that. And they both do that.

01:57:51.000 --> 01:57:57.000
It's just two different ways of getting there. Okay.

01:57:57.000 --> 01:58:07.000
I mean, so… It seems like… Okay, so if you didn't do the 5 million transfer from Uniper funds.

01:58:07.000 --> 01:58:23.000
In the alternative. Does that drastically impacts the timeframe for getting to the reserves in the right place? I guess I didn't It only does if you do a 7% rate increase versus the nine and the eight.

01:58:23.000 --> 01:58:37.000
So if we stick with the two million transfer in than the nine and eight percent increases would be Or ideal.

01:58:37.000 --> 01:58:53.000
Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to point out, I think it's kind of these all these laws of averages You need to have income to match the expenses And it's how quick you want to do that. I think historically we've gone slow on

01:58:53.000 --> 01:59:11.000
Doing the income and doing the income the expenses are out you know pacing the income rates. So I think it's a matter of We wanted to show this scenario to say, what is the impact if we you know invest or invest

01:59:11.000 --> 01:59:17.000
Take an additional 3 million out of the reserve. I think he's showing a 2 million versus a 5 million here.

01:59:17.000 --> 01:59:30.000
What does that look like to the ratepayer? In one year, it's just a few bucks a month less, but at some point we're going to need to recover that few bucks a month.

01:59:30.000 --> 01:59:37.000
Because the operating expenses are there. We need the revenues to match.

01:59:37.000 --> 01:59:49.000
But are you worried about the optics of the nine and eight versus the 7.7, I guess. Is that the drawback of the… I think that's up to that's a values decision to the board. What do you want to see?

01:59:49.000 --> 02:00:03.000
How fast you want to go there. I know. Board member knockley mentioned a hockey stick, but it's uh you know there's That's why we show the total bill too. So you kind of have an idea. It's not as dramatic

02:00:03.000 --> 02:00:18.000
We have the advantage of being a blended utility with with the forest services

02:00:18.000 --> 02:00:27.000
Is that it, Jen? Eric? Thank you, Chair. My biggest misunderstanding, I suppose.

02:00:27.000 --> 02:00:34.000
Is why our electric rates are so low. It's they're extraordinarily low.

02:00:34.000 --> 02:00:39.000
When I was in Houston, I was 15 years ago, I was paying 13 to 15 cents.

02:00:39.000 --> 02:00:47.000
And we look at the rest of the country. You look at the operating expenses, like I said, the cost of transformers.

02:00:47.000 --> 02:00:54.000
We have an unusual distribution system here with a lot of issues.

02:00:54.000 --> 02:01:05.000
And so if we don't, I'm not a fan of the alternate proposal. I think that 9% is totally reasonable.

02:01:05.000 --> 02:01:13.000
Looking at some of these figures about the megawatt hour costs Our cost for power has gone up over 20%.

02:01:13.000 --> 02:01:19.000
And the rest of the country. And everyone knows that's going, the costs are going way up.

02:01:19.000 --> 02:01:36.000
And if we can hold ours down to 9%, I'm thinking, wow, what kind of thinking reality bubble are we living in where we're getting these rates that are so low. And I think that if we don't do the 9%,

02:01:36.000 --> 02:01:44.000
Like Mr. Shelton says. We're going to be back here in a couple of years because we're going to have a lot more to recover.

02:01:44.000 --> 02:01:52.000
Because costs are going to be going up. So I'm a fan. You know, the 107 million I think it's really reasonable.

02:01:52.000 --> 02:01:58.000
And I think we ought to go with that. That's my comment.

02:01:58.000 --> 02:02:05.000
Okay. Kind of comments and questions together here.

02:02:05.000 --> 02:02:21.000
First. Or at least the initial problem is that we're catching up from a number of years without any rate increases and we we were able We were able to get away with that by drawing down reserves.

02:02:21.000 --> 02:02:26.000
Which is not good in the long-term sense. And now we're having to deal with it.

02:02:26.000 --> 02:02:43.000
But during that same timeframe. We… If you look at the first page that you showed under alternate proposal over a 10-year period.

02:02:43.000 --> 02:02:52.000
Labor benefits went up 80%. Idc 75%. Administration.

02:02:52.000 --> 02:02:59.000
The allocation for 71%. Those aren't 3% a year increases.

02:02:59.000 --> 02:03:04.000
Those are about 6% compounded. That's a lot more than that.

02:03:04.000 --> 02:03:12.000
Than inflation. Or at least a CPI measure of inflation. There's lots of measures of inflation.

02:03:12.000 --> 02:03:32.000
So… where were all of these over time fairly large increase is coming from. You noted an increase of 38% for linemen over looks like 12 years.

02:03:32.000 --> 02:03:58.000
That's not even 3% compounded. So… And I would assume there's in electrodistribution, quite a few of the folks are our alignment so where Why the big increase in In the… All these, I would say, the cost of providing the power, not the power itself right

02:03:58.000 --> 02:04:24.000
But all the costs that go into providing it So the lineman was a data element. It's within the labor and benefits. Benefits have risen. I know there's a number of years where they've gone up five percent the um So the combination of labor and benefits has gone up significantly, as you can see.

02:04:24.000 --> 02:04:31.000
The inluent franchise are tied to our revenue. So as our revenues grow, those are going to grow.

02:04:31.000 --> 02:04:48.000
The IDCs, again, are going to be somewhat similar to labor and benefits because primarily what we're paying for are the services of the general county For accounting, for payroll, for HR, for legal.

02:04:48.000 --> 02:05:08.000
For the council for those types of costs. Same thing with the administrative allocation. You're going to expect that that's going to go up somewhat similar to labor and benefits. Right. Because again, it's not just people, it's also the cost

02:05:08.000 --> 02:05:12.000
The billing system, the cost of sending the bills out, et cetera.

02:05:12.000 --> 02:05:20.000
And then on… the capital, it's really about what the plan is.

02:05:20.000 --> 02:05:38.000
In what year. In 2015, I know there was a number of years where because we were not doing rate increases, we were holding electric distribution pretty flat in terms of capital spending other than what had to happen.

02:05:38.000 --> 02:05:51.000
I don't know if that answers your question. I mean, without me going back and looking at exactly what the rate what the salary and benefit and other increases were I can only speak to it generally, not specifically.

02:05:51.000 --> 02:06:05.000
Well, I know, I think where you're trying to go, but I'm not sure that quantitatively it gets there. You talked about some years labor benefits or some benefits went up 5%.

02:06:05.000 --> 02:06:12.000
So the compounded rate here appears to be something of order 6% across the board for the whole 10 years.

02:06:12.000 --> 02:06:20.000
That's And 3% here and 5% there.

02:06:20.000 --> 02:06:27.000
In individual years. Don't get an average of 6%.

02:06:27.000 --> 02:06:40.000
So I'm still trying to understand that. Sorry, I don't yet. That's okay. Let's go to… I think I can give a little bit of a demonstration of it.

02:06:40.000 --> 02:06:52.000
If you go to Page B5.

02:06:52.000 --> 02:07:00.000
Which is the electric distribution Fund flow.

02:07:00.000 --> 02:07:09.000
And you look at operating expenses we can even go back to 2023 or any of the years. If you look here.

02:07:09.000 --> 02:07:17.000
The total operating expenses were 14.7 million. 9 million of that was cost of power.

02:07:17.000 --> 02:07:20.000
So even though you're looking at percentages, when you blend it.

02:07:20.000 --> 02:07:28.000
The cost of power is a much higher portion of what the total costs are. Same thing if you look at 26 proposed.

02:07:28.000 --> 02:07:34.000
Out of the 19.8 million 11.1 million of it is cost of power.

02:07:34.000 --> 02:07:45.000
I'm not trying to minimize those increases but the individual line items went up 6%, but if you look at the total expense we'd have to look at that.

02:07:45.000 --> 02:07:50.000
Also, while we're on that page and looking at it just a little bit differently.

02:07:50.000 --> 02:07:56.000
If you add up all the operating expenses but not include the cost of power.

02:07:56.000 --> 02:08:03.000
In 23, it was 5.7 million. The proposed for 26 is 8.7 million.

02:08:03.000 --> 02:08:10.000
That's a 50% increase. From 23 to 26.

02:08:10.000 --> 02:08:19.000
And… I'm trying to understand that one.

02:08:19.000 --> 02:08:32.000
I'm trying to figure out, you know, you're talking rate increases to meet expenses, but I'm trying to understand where the where the costs went up as much as they did.

02:08:32.000 --> 02:08:40.000
And… Maybe that gives us some things to think about in the future.

02:08:40.000 --> 02:09:02.000
I obviously can't go back But I'm trying to understand what's driving the need for such substantial cost, excuse me, rate increases. So if you look at the At the bottom of the page, which is the expenditures by type, that does not include cost power.

02:09:02.000 --> 02:09:13.000
And so the difference between the 25 budget And the 26 proposed is 1.4 million or 15.6%.

02:09:13.000 --> 02:09:23.000
Oh, wait a minute. So we're comparing the 9,310, which is last year's budget to the proposal.

02:09:23.000 --> 02:09:44.000
And that increases 1.4 million or almost 1.5 million. For an increase of 15.6%. And if you go back a year before that to the 23, You were at seven and a half million. So from 23 to 26, again, we've got, in this case, something like a 30% increase.

02:09:44.000 --> 02:09:50.000
And if you look at 24's actuals we spent in capital 1.3 million.

02:09:50.000 --> 02:09:56.000
And the proposed is 2 million. In addition.

02:09:56.000 --> 02:10:03.000
Included in that cost of power is the vertical switch gear. So there's pieces that are in the cost of power itself.

02:10:03.000 --> 02:10:15.000
But since you're specifically asking about the other areas. The other thing that went up significantly is we talked about it last at the last meeting.

02:10:15.000 --> 02:10:20.000
You've got transformers that have gone up 400%. You've got other items that have gone up.

02:10:20.000 --> 02:10:41.000
On order of 100, 200%. And that is part of this the maintenance categories that aren't the people categories, but the maintenance and those costs have also gone up which are reflected in both our capital as well as the maintenance categories.

02:10:41.000 --> 02:11:08.000
I do recognize that some of the individual item costs have gone way up but the way up it appears it appears that a large part of the increase is actually in labor benefits, IDCs, non-hardware items Whereas maybe there are large percentage increases in certain hardware items

02:11:08.000 --> 02:11:24.000
But there's a broader, there's more dollars in non-hardware items that seem the overall increase seems to be fairly large.

02:11:24.000 --> 02:11:32.000
I guess you're probably not going to succeed in hammering this into my thick head tonight so Let's move on.

02:11:32.000 --> 02:11:35.000
We… We have a goal.

02:11:35.000 --> 02:11:41.000
To try to encourage people to Electrify.

02:11:41.000 --> 02:11:48.000
And… raising… Electric rates a lot.

02:11:48.000 --> 02:12:00.000
Is not helpful to encouraging people to do that. We had two 9% increases one a year and a half ago and one last summer.

02:12:00.000 --> 02:12:14.000
What is proposed here, the main proposal the original proposal is another 9% increase, which would mean a 30% increase in 21 months in rates.

02:12:14.000 --> 02:12:19.000
That's a big bend in the hockey stick.

02:12:19.000 --> 02:12:44.000
And I wonder… how much Because some people will look at that percentage increase, just as we are doing here and say, boy, that's a lot you know 30 in 21 months uh And I'm wondering whether that discourages people from electrifying.

02:12:44.000 --> 02:13:00.000
The… So some significant part of this is the is the cost of providing the service Some is in the cost of power.

02:13:00.000 --> 02:13:19.000
However. The… The big point, the kind of the main idea of the settlement in from uniper was to make up for that increased cost of power.

02:13:19.000 --> 02:13:25.000
And… are…

02:13:25.000 --> 02:13:37.000
I've forgotten now what we called it but the I can find out what we called it. Anyway, when we looked last April or decided last April to

02:13:37.000 --> 02:13:47.000
Accept the uniper. Settlement.

02:13:47.000 --> 02:13:55.000
We listed priorities here. For the use of associated income.

02:13:55.000 --> 02:14:05.000
Bring the reserves up. Cover increased cost of power to minimize rate increases Beyond those already anticipated in long-term plans.

02:14:05.000 --> 02:14:11.000
Then upgrade production and distribution systems Basically, it was those three items.

02:14:11.000 --> 02:14:28.000
The basis for the settlement amount with Uniper was based on But we expected the increased cost of power to be versus what the Uniper contract would have cost us. In electric production. In electric production.

02:14:28.000 --> 02:14:35.000
Somehow that $2 million is going to electric production and then back to electric distribution.

02:14:35.000 --> 02:14:50.000
I'm not entirely sure why. And that's sort of offsets the increased cost of power But then you mentioned this vertical Breaker.

02:14:50.000 --> 02:14:57.000
I think you're including that in the cost of power Yes, Chair.

02:14:57.000 --> 02:15:17.000
And I did want to point out If you look at last year's budget, let me be clear. It's a cost of power in electric distribution right not out of production because it's an operating expense that goes to electric distribution.

02:15:17.000 --> 02:15:23.000
You're referring to the vertical breaker.

02:15:23.000 --> 02:15:31.000
It's not our asset, so we can't capitalize it. Right. So it's an operational expense that we have to pay.

02:15:31.000 --> 02:15:48.000
In electric distribution. And it comes out of electric distribution, not production. And based on what you just read, I just did want to point out as a point of reference that last year in the 10-year plan for electric distribution We had 9% as our projection for 26.

02:15:48.000 --> 02:16:02.000
And we had 5% as our projection for 27. The… Well, as we discussed there's some of uncertainty as to how that was presented last year.

02:16:02.000 --> 02:16:21.000
And in fact, I watched the meeting video in march and and that wasn't pointed out at all So it wasn't pointed out in the staff report and it wasn't pointed out in the meeting uh that that was increased.

02:16:21.000 --> 02:16:32.000
Are you… planning to put this vertical breaker in the cost of power in 25 or in 26?

02:16:32.000 --> 02:16:41.000
There's $3 million in 26. Okay. So let's see here.

02:16:41.000 --> 02:16:52.000
If I look at the Okay, what I've got conveniently in front of me is the electric distribution projection. That's page 144 of our agenda doc.

02:16:52.000 --> 02:16:57.000
I'm not sure what it is in your thing.

02:16:57.000 --> 02:17:04.000
Okay, it shows cost of power in 25 is 10.2 million.

02:17:04.000 --> 02:17:19.000
And then in 26, it's down to 9.4 million. And kind of stays there and yet we have this one-time $3 million expense there in 26. How is that folded in?

02:17:19.000 --> 02:17:23.000
That's not in the cost of power.

02:17:23.000 --> 02:17:46.000
The… calculation of cost of power is based on And it goes back to the slide that I showed, excuse me, it's based on the components that make up purchase power as well as the other costs associated with electric production.

02:17:46.000 --> 02:17:54.000
So in, let me get to the right slide.

02:17:54.000 --> 02:18:02.000
Can you bring out this? It should be right there. Okay.

02:18:02.000 --> 02:18:09.000
One of the things that we look at is in elective production.

02:18:09.000 --> 02:18:21.000
What are all of the costs? And over time we looked at what was going to be for 25 projected, which it's already over $91.

02:18:21.000 --> 02:18:28.000
And then what it would be in 26, which we came up with $90 per megawatt.

02:18:28.000 --> 02:18:37.000
And then in the out years, we looked at it being 90 and going up from 91 to 92 So it's not that we didn't back out the vertical breaker.

02:18:37.000 --> 02:18:49.000
It's that the cost, the blended costs of what we're going to be paying is that that 90, 91 and 92 per megawatt.

02:18:49.000 --> 02:19:11.000
And I did after our discussion earlier today. Chair, I did meet with Ben and review all the numbers and make sure that he also agreed with Again, he and I put those projections together and we do still stand behind them, that that is what we feel the cost of power is going to be based on the information we have today.

02:19:11.000 --> 02:19:22.000
Okay, so the question for the board is whether we want to go ahead and

02:19:22.000 --> 02:19:35.000
Adopt the 26 budget. Which is in the context of a long range financial plan that includes Another 9% increase.

02:19:35.000 --> 02:19:46.000
And 8% next year. And whether we think that that's something our customers can live with.

02:19:46.000 --> 02:19:56.000
And won't adversely impact our electrification efforts.

02:19:56.000 --> 02:20:02.000
Or do we want to… soften that somewhat.

02:20:02.000 --> 02:20:13.000
Bye. Taking a chunk out of the Uniper settlement Basically, the 3 million would offset this vertical breaker thing.

02:20:13.000 --> 02:20:29.000
Which is a one-time expense. So that's really the question to the board. If the if the Ford's determination is now let's let's do another 9% and anticipate 8% next year.

02:20:29.000 --> 02:20:33.000
And I don't know that we have to go any further with the discussion.

02:20:33.000 --> 02:20:38.000
If we want to try to mitigate that increase.

02:20:38.000 --> 02:20:51.000
With some transfer from the from the Uniper settlement then we can figure out work on details.

02:20:51.000 --> 02:21:03.000
Can I just add to that? The question would be also for that 3 million, what are the opportunity costs? Let's say we put that extra 3 million in and we want to transfer in 5 million.

02:21:03.000 --> 02:21:14.000
What's the opportunity cost for that 3 million? It's approximately 130,000 in interest reduced interest per year.

02:21:14.000 --> 02:21:25.000
Yeah, per year. Quick question that follows up on Chair Gibson's comment about the purpose of unifer settlement money.

02:21:25.000 --> 02:21:49.000
So they had three priorities. So again, I'll play the newbie Which you're perfectly entitled to do and you're not guilty. You weren't here during all of that. So there's three priorities are is one more important than the other Is there a long-term strategy for addressing each of the priorities? I mean, I guess what conversations have been had

02:21:49.000 --> 02:22:03.000
In terms of deciding How to, you know, beyond saying these are three priorities sorry So there were some short-term priorities in terms of the presentation. There were some short-term priorities and longer-term priorities.

02:22:03.000 --> 02:22:22.000
The initial short-term priority was to take part of the settlement and immediately put it into electric production to address the fact that price per megawatt that we were going to be buying 24 seven was going up significantly.

02:22:22.000 --> 02:22:39.000
So that was one of the short-term priorities. A second longer term priority was to try to fill up the reserves for both For the electric fund, both in electric production and electric distribution.

02:22:39.000 --> 02:23:04.000
And then the um and then the third priority was whether or not we were going to invest the money and which would generate about $2 million a year that could be used for capital projects um electric distribution as well as some of the projects in electric production and whether that made more sense than having the money

02:23:04.000 --> 02:23:32.000
Fully available up front. And so the decision the um advice that we had was the charter does call for investment of reserves or funds. And so we followed the county policy with the advice of the county Chief Financial Officer to invest those funds in a 10-year ladder

02:23:32.000 --> 02:23:54.000
So that they're not all coming due at one time and to maximize the return so that Those funds are available for a longer period of time. So was there a specific fraction that was supposed to address the issue of covering increased costs of power to minimize rate increases? There was $2 million a year

02:23:54.000 --> 02:24:04.000
That was presumed in the projection that we showed at that time, which related to electric distribution.

02:24:04.000 --> 02:24:23.000
Okay, so that's the 2 million in the original proposal that you showed tonight. Is that correct? Yes, that that interest would flow through to electric distribution for offsetting capital plans and allowing for those monies to be spent sooner.

02:24:23.000 --> 02:24:34.000
Okay. And the rates As I said earlier, the rates that we presumed in that year

02:24:34.000 --> 02:24:41.000
With knowing what was coming, we presumed that it was going to be 9% and 5%.

02:24:41.000 --> 02:24:49.000
So we've not changed 26 but we have changed increased what we would be doing in 27.

02:24:49.000 --> 02:24:56.000
From 5% to 8%. And why did that happen? Excuse me, yes.

02:24:56.000 --> 02:25:13.000
Yes. So why did it go from five to eight? Just brief based on the results of FY24 and with the loss of the 1.3 million, that was why we felt we had to accelerate that.

02:25:13.000 --> 02:25:18.000
Okay, thank you.

02:25:18.000 --> 02:25:23.000
Other questions, comments, thoughts? All right.

02:25:23.000 --> 02:25:40.000
Thank you, Chair Gibson. There was, you and I spoke about a survey that was going to be going out. I think it went out and the survey, have we gotten the results back from that survey okay because And the reason I'm bringing this up is that one of the questions in the survey was

02:25:40.000 --> 02:25:54.000
How much more are you willing to pay per for green energy. And there were some there were some… bands in there like 10 to 20, 20 to 30, $30 to $40, things like that.

02:25:54.000 --> 02:26:10.000
I think that's… I'm not a fan of taking any money out of Uniper to pay for rates because I think that's a that represents a flash in the pan that's here today going tomorrow. It's kind of like taking oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to lower gas rates.

02:26:10.000 --> 02:26:16.000
And I think that with electrification. The costs are going to be astronomical.

02:26:16.000 --> 02:26:26.000
In terms of starting to replace parts of the grid. We've talked about transformers, talked about four-way switches, we've talked about all that stuff, the increase in costs.

02:26:26.000 --> 02:26:37.000
And we can use that uniper money to start paying for infrastructure modifications in order to supply to allow the electrification.

02:26:37.000 --> 02:26:43.000
But I would like to, I guess… At some point, I guess I'd like to make a motion.

02:26:43.000 --> 02:26:52.000
But we're not finished. We're not taking any action. We're just kind of provide we're providing Karen with guidance. I like the 107 million.

02:26:52.000 --> 02:26:58.000
I think the 9% is totally reasonable. And I don't think we ought to take any money out of Uniper to pay for rates.

02:26:58.000 --> 02:27:03.000
That's my comment. Thank you.

02:27:03.000 --> 02:27:13.000
Charlie, question. Actually, for you, Robert, I want to make sure I understand some of the comments you made earlier.

02:27:13.000 --> 02:27:20.000
So the opportunity cost of taking the 3 million and putting it in to make it 5 million, you know.

02:27:20.000 --> 02:27:32.000
Some odd thousand in interest per year. What are the opportunity costs of not doing that from your perspective? What I thought I was hearing you say was The cost would be that we would have some people who might have

02:27:32.000 --> 02:27:54.000
Otherwise electrified, not electrify. Is that is that Correct. Did I get that right? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that somebody would make a decision based on this particular action But it's kind of the overall trend We can argue that we were catching up for a while

02:27:54.000 --> 02:28:08.000
But it kind of looks like this looks like this looks like I mean, it's another 9% this year, proposed 8% next year the reasonable person might say, yeah, then it's probably going to continue at that rate.

02:28:08.000 --> 02:28:17.000
Even though we don't think so right now, but we didn't think so was going to, you know, FY27 was going to be this high when we were looking at it last year.

02:28:17.000 --> 02:28:21.000
We didn't think 26 was going to be that high when we're sitting here a month ago.

02:28:21.000 --> 02:28:30.000
So when people look at it as a whole I think there's probably some discouragement.

02:28:30.000 --> 02:28:35.000
Is it significant? I don't know.

02:28:35.000 --> 02:28:40.000
But I'm raising the question.

02:28:40.000 --> 02:28:49.000
In either case, in addition to nine and eight or seven and seven, whichever you go still has a five and a four and a bunch of threes.

02:28:49.000 --> 02:28:57.000
Coming after, which it says, yeah, but will that actually happen? Maybe it's a lower bound. I don't know.

02:28:57.000 --> 02:29:06.000
Well, at some point we'll start talking about the distribution system and that's a whole other thing that's not included in here at all.

02:29:06.000 --> 02:29:10.000
And we'll get some better idea this summer when that report comes in.

02:29:10.000 --> 02:29:18.000
What that might start to look like they won't have something else to chew on for a while.

02:29:18.000 --> 02:29:38.000
I mean, for what it's worth, I agree with Eric that I think it's better to just go ahead and do the 9%. And I don't think that that's excessive but um I just wanted to make sure I understood the question you were raising.

02:29:38.000 --> 02:29:43.000
Other thoughts, comments?

02:29:43.000 --> 02:29:48.000
Or would this be a good time to break and ask for public comment? Yes.

02:29:48.000 --> 02:30:06.000
Is there any public comment on the subject? Thank you, Chair Gibson. If anyone would like to make public comment, please use the raise hand function on Zoom or step forward to the podium.

02:30:06.000 --> 02:30:10.000
Does not appear to be public comment at this time, Chair Gibson. Okay, thank you.

02:30:10.000 --> 02:30:16.000
So we don't get any of the wisdom of our constituents.

02:30:16.000 --> 02:30:20.000
To help with this, but we'll hear about it afterwards no matter what we do.

02:30:20.000 --> 02:30:34.000
Okay. I guess what I'm seeing is not much sentiment for the alternative here to stick more with what was originally proposed. Is that fair?

02:30:34.000 --> 02:30:39.000
Assessment of the board's assessment board sense here.

02:30:39.000 --> 02:30:48.000
I'm still thinking and plan to sit down with Karen at some point between now and Then in March. Okay.

02:30:48.000 --> 02:30:53.000
The warning is it's hard to make major changes at the meeting in March.

02:30:53.000 --> 02:31:09.000
Sorry, I mean, like she said, this has to go to the printer the next day Unfortunately, the only opportunity we have to make any major changes would be at to put this on the agenda for our work session.

02:31:09.000 --> 02:31:22.000
In two weeks. Just to provide a visual This is the county's budget book. So it's not a small document by any means.

02:31:22.000 --> 02:31:31.000
Which means we could hide a lot of numbers in there and nobody would ever notice. This is about half their budget, so I think it's… fairly significant piece of it.

02:31:31.000 --> 02:31:45.000
Yeah. Yeah, I am leaning… towards the preferred approach by Karen, but I just wanted to chat with her. So I'll try to do that Probably early next week. No problem. Okay, thanks.

02:31:45.000 --> 02:32:01.000
Well, trying to understand government budgets because they have their own format is That's a big challenge. And if you're able to figure it out in one year, let alone in one meeting with Karen.

02:32:01.000 --> 02:32:07.000
More power to you. Okay.

02:32:07.000 --> 02:32:17.000
I think that answers that question for now and and most likely for next month.

02:32:17.000 --> 02:32:25.000
Are there any other questions or comments at this point?

02:32:25.000 --> 02:32:31.000
Karen, thank you for putting together an alternative here for us to look at.

02:32:31.000 --> 02:32:44.000
And think about. And thank you for putting all of this together and uh and i had a lot of help I know. It takes a lot of people to do this.

02:32:44.000 --> 02:32:52.000
And for a very good presentation. Thank you. We're going to miss you.

02:32:52.000 --> 02:33:00.000
Although, Joanne, I'm sure can pick up and do just as well. Right, Joanne? I hope so.

02:33:00.000 --> 02:33:08.000
Well, we do too, but we'll be kind to you for the first few minutes anyway.

02:33:08.000 --> 02:33:13.000
Okay, anything else on this topic? Thank you. Okay.

02:33:13.000 --> 02:33:23.000
Anything? Karen, do you have anything else to add? No, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And I'll look forward to our discussion on profit transfer in a little bit.

02:33:23.000 --> 02:33:30.000
Okay. Before we go there or any place else, it's a little after eight o'clock. Shall we take a breather?

02:33:30.000 --> 02:33:41.000
And try to be back here. It's about 8.03, according to that.

02:33:41.000 --> 02:33:50.000
Then I came here. Okay. We ready to restart. Jennifer, are you ready? Yes. Okay. Not trying to rush you. I just wanted to make sure. Okay. All right. The recording's going. We're back in session.

02:33:50.000 --> 02:34:01.000
Next item is an affirmation of incorporating County of Los Alamos resolution number 2503.

02:34:01.000 --> 02:34:07.000
This has to do with an image The Nemia agreement.

02:34:07.000 --> 02:34:21.000
That we discussed at length. Previously. So if there are further questions or issues, of course, we can cover that When it comes time for a motion.

02:34:21.000 --> 02:34:42.000
We are required to read the whole motion as is So whoever makes it gets to do that. And we also need a little bit of an addition to the motion Or something that says I further move the board forward this recommendation to council for adoption.

02:34:42.000 --> 02:34:51.000
So… Ben.

02:34:51.000 --> 02:35:06.000
Chair Gibson, board members, everyone else in attendance thanks for having me here tonight. Ben Ulbrich, Deputy Utility Manager for power supply. As Chair Gibson mentioned, I've been to you twice in January and again in February at the working meetings

02:35:06.000 --> 02:35:12.000
And we have at length discussed the arrangements of the NEMEA prepay gas agreement.

02:35:12.000 --> 02:35:20.000
How it functions, the mechanisms it operates under the past and future potential cost savings to our customers.

02:35:20.000 --> 02:35:40.000
We've had the support of the support in that question and answer session, the last one we had from Mr. George Majors of the majors Group, he is online today again in case any new questions come up that he can speak to. And last meeting, the Royal Bank of Canada also had a number of representatives available to answer the questions.

02:35:40.000 --> 02:35:44.000
So at this point, I do believe we have discussed it in depth.

02:35:44.000 --> 02:35:53.000
I don't anticipate any additional questions, but I am ready for them, at least to the best of my ability and Mr. Majors ability to answer them at this time.

02:35:53.000 --> 02:36:01.000
What I would like to say is that I'm glad to be here before you today for a decision on this matter.

02:36:01.000 --> 02:36:18.000
I'd like to point out that we've, like I said, we've talked about the discounts and I do believe as a county staff member that I do have an obligation to all the customers, the utility customers in the county As does the board to look out for our customers best

02:36:18.000 --> 02:36:30.000
Financial interest. That's one of our missions is to provide economical utility services, one of our key missions. It's right in the top of our mission vision value statement. And I believe this hits that goal.

02:36:30.000 --> 02:36:36.000
We're looking at a potential cost savings to our customers over the next five years for the cost of the gas commodity itself.

02:36:36.000 --> 02:36:41.000
Approaching in the ballpark of $1.7 million over that five-year period.

02:36:41.000 --> 02:36:54.000
The only alternative is the only alternative between approving this is to not approve it. There's no other alternatives at which point we are giving up a potential $1.7 million cost savings to our customers.

02:36:54.000 --> 02:37:05.000
With that, I stand for questions or discussion. We'll start with questions. Are there any questions?

02:37:05.000 --> 02:37:12.000
Okay, that was easy. Next, I'll ask if there's any public comment.

02:37:12.000 --> 02:37:16.000
And I certainly don't see any in chambers. Do we have any online?

02:37:16.000 --> 02:37:29.000
Thank you, Chair Gibson. There is. There is anyone wishing to make public comment, please raise the hand function I see nobody at this time. Okay, thank you very much.

02:37:29.000 --> 02:37:37.000
That brings it back to the board discussion or eventually emotion.

02:37:37.000 --> 02:37:45.000
Any further discussion? Seeing none, who would like to make the motion?

02:37:45.000 --> 02:38:03.000
Okay, Matt, to say thank you to Ben. I move that the Board of Public Utilities Affirm Incorporated County of Los Alamos resolution number 25-03 A resolution relating to the natural gas supply agreement between the incorporated county of Los Alamos and the New Mexico Municipal Energy Acquisition Authority.

02:38:03.000 --> 02:38:11.000
As amended by a First Amendment and Second Amendment. Authorizing the execution and delivery of a Third Amendment to the Natural Gas Supply Agreement.

02:38:11.000 --> 02:38:18.000
Authorizing action necessary or advisable to obtain a gas discount pursuant to the supply agreement as amended.

02:38:18.000 --> 02:38:29.000
Including the execution and delivery of certificates and agreements relating to the foregoing, ratifying, approving, and confirming prior action taken related to the foregoing.

02:38:29.000 --> 02:38:34.000
And repealing action inconsistent herewith And I further move.

02:38:34.000 --> 02:38:47.000
That this moves to council for consideration. Or that the board would forward this to the board forward this to council before with a recommendation for adoption. Yes. Thank you.

02:38:47.000 --> 02:38:52.000
Or something like that. Okay, is there a second?

02:38:52.000 --> 02:38:57.000
Okay, Charlie seconds. Is there any further discussion?

02:38:57.000 --> 02:39:12.000
Thanks, Dr. Gibson. Yeah, I'm going to vote no on this one. I mean, what we have on here, in my opinion is a island of legality in a sea of illegal arbitrage.

02:39:12.000 --> 02:39:20.000
I have two levels rising from what I hear, but… I just don't feel good about it.

02:39:20.000 --> 02:39:36.000
It's just not that much money savings for the work. I just see an enormous amount of complexity and it just doesn't save our ratepayers that much and it's Something that I don't think we should enter into.

02:39:36.000 --> 02:39:43.000
Okay. Other comment?

02:39:43.000 --> 02:39:52.000
Okay, seeing none Kathy, would you please call the roll?

02:39:52.000 --> 02:39:57.000
Oh, did I catch? Do we need to talk a little bit longer before you're ready?

02:39:57.000 --> 02:40:09.000
Sorry about that. When you're ready, Kathy. Remember Hollingsworth? Yes. Remember Heppner? Yes. Member Nochley? Yes. Member Stromberg? No.

02:40:09.000 --> 02:40:17.000
And Member Gibson. Yes. Thank you. Okay. The motion passes four to one.

02:40:17.000 --> 02:40:29.000
Thanks, everyone. And I thank Mr. Majors for standing by online for in case we did have questions But we had such a good discussion last time.

02:40:29.000 --> 02:40:32.000
I need to repeat it tonight.

02:40:32.000 --> 02:40:35.000
You're welcome. Glad to be here.

02:40:35.000 --> 02:40:43.000
So now go get us a big discount.

02:40:43.000 --> 02:40:44.000
I'm sure you will. And we look forward to hearing the results.

02:40:44.000 --> 02:40:48.000
Do my best, sir.

02:40:48.000 --> 02:41:02.000
Okay, we move on now to a review possible approval of the water and energy conservation plan which is that starts on page 259 in our agenda doc.

02:41:02.000 --> 02:41:10.000
And that would be Epi. Good evening, Chair Gibson and members of the board. This sounds really loud.

02:41:10.000 --> 02:41:37.000
I'm not going to go over this in depth, just a really super high level. If you want to reprieve from the budget, I encourage you to dive into it more deeply. It shows a lot of good successes from the last two years. This is just a biennial update. It's just saying, hey, we've done this project. We haven't done this project. Kind of what's the status of different targets and action items that are designed and thought of just to meet the board's goals over the last couple of years.

02:41:37.000 --> 02:41:48.000
Additionally, we've updated almost all of the graphs to reflect the 2020 to 2024 time period instead of the 2016 to 2021 time period.

02:41:48.000 --> 02:41:56.000
And then now that I know what I'm doing, we kind of redid some of the graphs to actually show, I was only here for a couple of months when I updated this first time.

02:41:56.000 --> 02:42:06.000
To show how we align better with consumption patterns and showing actually something that meets what we're saying we want to even watch for.

02:42:06.000 --> 02:42:18.000
It also shows the introduction of alignment with the climate action plan. You'll see those in the second part of the plan here. It just kind of overlines them real broadly.

02:42:18.000 --> 02:42:36.000
When we do our update next year in 2026 for the 2027 onward plan, then we will be actually incorporating a lot more action items that can complete both objectives at the same time. So climate action BPU initiatives, those actions will be identified there.

02:42:36.000 --> 02:42:47.000
Oh. This is only an update, but it's really important that we maintain a current plan with the Office of the State Engineer.

02:42:47.000 --> 02:42:55.000
It's good for funding sources that we tack into and then also making sure our water rights are compliant with our usage and our conservation plans.

02:42:55.000 --> 02:43:08.000
I'm going to stop there. I'll answer any questions if you would like me to dive into anything. But like I said, it's just an update to projects mostly and then keeping the plan maintained with updated facts and figures.

02:43:08.000 --> 02:43:21.000
Okay, thank you. Questions from the board, Matt? Thank you very much. I had one quick little question. It's on page 279 of the packet or page 19 of your report.

02:43:21.000 --> 02:43:31.000
Up at the top and it's very minor, but it talks about using the wastewater, the reclaimed water to irrigate four different sites in Los Alamos.

02:43:31.000 --> 02:43:40.000
North Mesa Soccer field north mesa ball fields and Los Alamos county golf course Where's the fourth?

02:43:40.000 --> 02:44:07.000
Very minor. Good point, Matt. That's the one page I did not update. Thank you for all the work you did on it. Good question.

02:44:07.000 --> 02:44:19.000
And that could have been something we just pulled from one of the previous plans so Like I said, that was a catch from A couple years ago.

02:44:19.000 --> 02:44:31.000
As you can see, though, in that second picture that you can't really see the sites, all those green dots in that lower picture are the sites that are watered by reclaimed water. So it could have been any number of those.

02:44:31.000 --> 02:44:36.000
That it would be referencing.

02:44:36.000 --> 02:44:45.000
Other questions? But I'll change it to three. Then I don't have to pick a fourth.

02:44:45.000 --> 02:44:54.000
Okay, well, I… Did you have something, Clay?

02:44:54.000 --> 02:45:16.000
The middle school is actually connected to it. But they don't use it. Yeah, I think that's the, I can see that little, yeah, they actually have a connection. They even have a a… they even have the infrastructure in a pumping system and there's a feed there, but they don't ever use it.

02:45:16.000 --> 02:45:24.000
Thank you, Clay. Okay. First question I have.

02:45:24.000 --> 02:45:48.000
Is the recommended is the recommended motion recommended action is to accept the plan And the utility manager's recommendation is to approve it And there's a difference between accepting something which is just accepting a report which has no great legal significance but approving

02:45:48.000 --> 02:45:57.000
Does. And I'm asking what is staff's intention or desire here for us to do?

02:45:57.000 --> 02:46:17.000
We ultimately just need to maintain an updated plan. So if you want to approve the updates with the revision of the four to three wastewater treatment.

02:46:17.000 --> 02:46:25.000
Approval tonight. We have approved prior versions. So if you want to be consistent with what actions we've done in the past, it's been approvals.

02:46:25.000 --> 02:46:34.000
Okay. Was going to be my guess but i wanted to find out for sure. So we knew what we were doing.

02:46:34.000 --> 02:46:38.000
I know novel concept.

02:46:38.000 --> 02:46:44.000
Couple questions. See, page 276.

02:46:44.000 --> 02:46:48.000
Six which is… page 16 of your report.

02:46:48.000 --> 02:47:06.000
In the first paragraph there. It says… It talks about water rights and then talks about rights Within this agreement, there is no limit to the amount of water that DPU must provide to LAML.

02:47:06.000 --> 02:47:15.000
I thought we did have an agreement that basically was 70 30 Am I remembering incorrectly or what?

02:47:15.000 --> 02:47:30.000
Chair Gibson, again, this is one section I haven't updated. So it was pulled from a previous plan or description of water rights that I had access to at the time. So if anybody else wants to provide clarity that's the way I've read everything.

02:47:30.000 --> 02:47:35.000
There is a limit. You're right. So we'll need to correct that section.

02:47:35.000 --> 02:47:43.000
Okay. Then let's see.

02:47:43.000 --> 02:48:04.000
There is… Page 301, it talks about the difference between how we track our water use and how the Office of the State Engineer wants it reported.

02:48:04.000 --> 02:48:11.000
And I looked at that website from the state engineer. I mean, it's a Hey.

02:48:11.000 --> 02:48:27.000
Spreadsheet that you can fill in And I'll have to concede that I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. What are the differences Between the way we do it and the way the state engineer wants it done. Good question, Chair Gibson. The biggest difference is

02:48:27.000 --> 02:48:31.000
The calculator that we report to the state engineer is based on calendar year.

02:48:31.000 --> 02:48:40.000
And our current presentation of data is fiscal year. So when people look at that, there is a slight difference because it is different times of year that we're reporting.

02:48:40.000 --> 02:48:49.000
And we're going to, in that next update, we'll probably figure out how the best way to align the annual plan with the or the annual report.

02:48:49.000 --> 02:49:00.000
With our conservation plan because we're working kind of off of two separate calendars and it's kind of misleading to the public when you go Oh, but we're meeting here, but in calendar year, we're not quite needing it. And which one do we need to be?

02:49:00.000 --> 02:49:06.000
Basing it on. So that's why I made that clarification in this report. I said there's his calendar year.

02:49:06.000 --> 02:49:13.000
Thank you. That answers that question. Flipping to page 303.

02:49:13.000 --> 02:49:28.000
Under the water rule W8 section, it says uh Data analysis is underway to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of Water Rule W8.

02:49:28.000 --> 02:49:51.000
That's the first I think we've heard that that's being reviewed. And I'm kind of curious what's driving that what What's motivating this evaluation. Not that it isn't a good idea to evaluate things every once in a while in general purposes, but I'm guessing that there must be something behind this specifically.

02:49:51.000 --> 02:50:10.000
This is just an internal item that's come up from some conferences I've attended is different communities have looked at it and they have similar type water rules. You know, you can only water Tuesdays or Fridays or whatever But we don't have any way to enforce it. So are people actually watering on the day they're supposed to? Are we seeing

02:50:10.000 --> 02:50:20.000
Kind of an even usage of water on even days and odd days? Or is it just a completely useless program that we're promoting just because we have it in place?

02:50:20.000 --> 02:50:28.000
So there's ways to dig into that data to see if it's actually an effective program or do we need to be rewording it?

02:50:28.000 --> 02:50:37.000
Okay. We certainly don't need extra rules and programs that if they're not doing us any good.

02:50:37.000 --> 02:50:42.000
So glad you are looking at that.

02:50:42.000 --> 02:50:47.000
Let's see, I guess I got this a little out of order. I had a question on page 299.

02:50:47.000 --> 02:50:53.000
Where it talks about it Under public information.

02:50:53.000 --> 02:51:00.000
Bill inserts are placed on the DPU's website for easy viewing for those that receive electronic billing statements.

02:51:00.000 --> 02:51:27.000
Do we have any sense of how many hits we really get looking at that what would be our inserts or handouts to know whether that's an effective way of communicating the same information that is in the inserts that people receive. Kathy is able to see the hits that we get from the emails. As far as I know, the website

02:51:27.000 --> 02:51:41.000
They can to an extent, but since we've done the switch, I don't know that it's Switching websites, I don't know it's apples to order, apples to oranges And I don't have those numbers for you right now, but we can get them to see what's out there.

02:51:41.000 --> 02:51:54.000
And… while I'm here, I'll just ask the question, what percentage of our customers are using electronic billing versus paper?

02:51:54.000 --> 02:52:02.000
I asked this from Paula one time and it's in one of the appendixes that I don't have printed off.

02:52:02.000 --> 02:52:07.000
It's a significant portion has at least signed up for electronic billing.

02:52:07.000 --> 02:52:25.000
I also sign up for electronic billing and I never look at that insert, but I also make it so Is that an exception? Because I know what's on there. Or if any of you are signed up for electronic billing, do you look at the insert that's emailed out is a good question because I see it. I make that thing. So I don't need to know.

02:52:25.000 --> 02:52:29.000
Spend the time to read it because i read it, approved it, I've created it. We're done.

02:52:29.000 --> 02:52:34.000
But we do know there's a significant portion who have signed up for it.

02:52:34.000 --> 02:52:42.000
All right, that's all I had in here. Any other anybody else Joanne has pulled the number and it's just over 1500.

02:52:42.000 --> 02:52:48.000
Customers are signed up for e-billing. Okay. Thank you, Joanne.

02:52:48.000 --> 02:52:52.000
Johnny on the spot. Checkboxes.

02:52:52.000 --> 02:53:01.000
Yeah, roughly. Depending on whether you count customers or meters.

02:53:01.000 --> 02:53:07.000
Okay. Nothing else from the board on that.

02:53:07.000 --> 02:53:15.000
I guess I'll ask if there's public comment. Thank you, Chair Gibson.

02:53:15.000 --> 02:53:20.000
If anyone would like to make public comment, please raise a hand function or step forward.

02:53:20.000 --> 02:53:27.000
I see nobody. Okay, thank you. All right. Last call.

02:53:27.000 --> 02:53:33.000
Okay, I think we're finished. Thank you, Abby. Oh, I'm sorry.

02:53:33.000 --> 02:53:45.000
All right. And Chair, we can do as amended to fix that water rights in the uh Okay. Number of reclaim class tumors.

02:53:45.000 --> 02:54:01.000
All right. And would someone like to make a motion? Sure. I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the 2025 update to the 2025 water and energy conservation plan as amended.

02:54:01.000 --> 02:54:11.000
Second. Okay, moved and seconded that we approve The plan as amended.

02:54:11.000 --> 02:54:16.000
Final comments? If not, Kathy, you're on.

02:54:16.000 --> 02:54:23.000
Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Hefner? Yes. Member Nakley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Abstain.

02:54:23.000 --> 02:54:35.000
And Member Gibson. Yes. Thank you. Okay, motion passes four to zero with one abstention.

02:54:35.000 --> 02:54:50.000
That takes us to Something we do actually do every year annual review of every year Article 5 of the charter It starts on page 319.

02:54:50.000 --> 02:54:58.000
Of our agenda doc. And… Tom Wayman.

02:54:58.000 --> 02:55:03.000
Thank you, Chair, board members.

02:55:03.000 --> 02:55:08.000
Give Richard just a moment to pull this up. There it is.

02:55:08.000 --> 02:55:18.000
All right. This is kind of dry and boring, so I'm just going to read the highlighted parts, but I will interject some comments as we go.

02:55:18.000 --> 02:55:37.000
So just the basic structure of our Charter is really the core, our constitution for the county the code of ordinances which follows the charter is the legislative body the rules And the laws that we follow.

02:55:37.000 --> 02:55:46.000
All right. So no function assigned by the function by this charter to a particular department is subject to change by the council.

02:55:46.000 --> 02:55:57.000
So once it's in the charter, that's it. The council doesn't have the authority to to tamper with it, although I suppose you could through a voter referendum of some sort.

02:55:57.000 --> 02:56:11.000
County manager, she'll be the chief executive officer of the county the county manager shall be responsible to the council for all operational requirements of the county shall execute the vision strategic goals and its policies established by the council.

02:56:11.000 --> 02:56:24.000
Under Charter Article 303.2 administration, each county department except as provided in this charter shall be under the direction and supervision of the county manager.

02:56:24.000 --> 02:56:39.000
The exception is the Department of Public Utilities. All right, under Charter Section 505, there shall be a department of public utilities as we or where under 501.3.

02:56:39.000 --> 02:56:53.000
The Board of Public Utilities shall adopt and shall file with the council procedural rules and regulations not inconsistent with this charter No action shall be taken by the board or public utilities except by the affirmative vote of at least three members.

02:56:53.000 --> 02:57:00.000
Three members shall constitute a quorum for the business of the board.

02:57:00.000 --> 02:57:14.000
This is a slimmed down version of the procedural rules for the Department of Public Utilities but That's the rules that the department follows, of course.

02:57:14.000 --> 02:57:25.000
Under Charter Section 502. The manager shall conduct the business of the utilities department subject to the policies established by the board.

02:57:25.000 --> 02:57:47.000
At some point, Philos brought this up, we might want to change the name of from public utilities manager to Public Utilities Director. Is that right philo or something to that effect a different i think if there ever is an amendment it's more of a general manager because i'm over

02:57:47.000 --> 02:57:57.000
Four divisions. That's what the industry calls but yeah manager instead of That would require a charter change to do it. That's right.

02:57:57.000 --> 02:58:15.000
In general, we have been unenthused about opening up Article 5 to amendments to anything exactly All right. Under Section 503 And we'll get into some of what we've been talking about heavily tonight, the budget, which is part of the

02:58:15.000 --> 02:58:26.000
The responsibilities of the board. The utilities department may provide its services to other county offices and department and shall be reimbursed from non-utility funds.

02:58:26.000 --> 02:58:36.000
Utility commodities shall be sold to the county on a compensatory basis and the Department of Public Utilities shall be reimbursed for those these commodities from non-utility funds.

02:58:36.000 --> 02:58:44.000
So it's just a restatement that utilities is separate from IT and all the other departments.

02:58:44.000 --> 02:58:56.000
Under Section 504 rates and charges the rates to be paid by consumers for electricity, gas, water, and sewer services shall be proposed by the Board of Public Utilities and shall become effective upon adoption.

02:58:56.000 --> 02:59:11.000
By the county council. And what's important to note about adoption becoming effective upon adoption by the council is that there is most other ordinances that pass can be overturned if the citizens don't like it.

02:59:11.000 --> 02:59:18.000
There's a two-week period or two week to 30 day period before an ordinance is actually enacted.

02:59:18.000 --> 02:59:24.000
Giving the public an opportunity to overturn the council decision by referendum.

02:59:24.000 --> 02:59:30.000
But when it comes to rates, which is something that you've got to operate on a compensatory basis.

02:59:30.000 --> 02:59:35.000
We don't want the public tinkering with that, that we've got to balance the books.

02:59:35.000 --> 02:59:44.000
Department of Utilities shall be operated on a compensatory basis. Recent charges shall be just, reasonable, and comparable to those in neighboring communities.

02:59:44.000 --> 02:59:58.000
Under Section 505, the Department of Public Utilities shall furnish the Board of Public, well, I skipped some furnish the board of public utilities and the council its annual report which shall include balance sheets.

02:59:58.000 --> 03:00:07.000
Which show the financial condition at the end of the previous fiscal year of each utility in the department and the department as a whole.

03:00:07.000 --> 03:00:21.000
Under 506, the proposed budget shall include payments to be made to the county in lieu of the franchise fees and taxes that would normally be assessed against privately owned gas and electric utilities Karen mentioned that by the grace of the council

03:00:21.000 --> 03:00:26.000
We do go through the accounting process to figure out what those franchise fees are.

03:00:26.000 --> 03:00:33.000
Through the grace of the council, they usually return those to us for capital expenditures.

03:00:33.000 --> 03:00:51.000
Under 507, bond issues the council On the recommendation of the Board of Public Utilities may authorize the issuance to sale of revenue bonds and general obligation bonds to finance the operations, long-term commodity contracts, acquisition, construction improvements and extensions of the utilities.

03:00:51.000 --> 03:01:00.000
Under 508 of the Charter, Section 508. The board shall have the right to invest the reserve in contingency funds.

03:01:00.000 --> 03:01:06.000
One of your obligations or duties. Under 509, priority budget of expenditures.

03:01:06.000 --> 03:01:18.000
To plan and utilize its proceeds for the maintenance, improvement and extension of utility systems before any part of the Such proceeds are divided or is diverted to the general accounting purposes.

03:01:18.000 --> 03:01:23.000
This is from the proceeds of the operation of the department.

03:01:23.000 --> 03:01:33.000
Under the subparagraph one of that these reserve funds and these separate buckets that we're supposed to fund are funds required for current operations.

03:01:33.000 --> 03:01:36.000
Number two, funds required to redeem and pay interest on any bond.

03:01:36.000 --> 03:01:42.000
Three, adequate reserves to finance replacements. Four, it shall be paid to the general fund.

03:01:42.000 --> 03:01:47.000
Payments to be made to the county in lieu of franchise fees again.

03:01:47.000 --> 03:02:00.000
Under five, the provisions for additions and improvements foreseen as necessary to meet future requirements And six, if all of that's taken care of and there's remaining operating budgets that goes to the county general fund.

03:02:00.000 --> 03:02:12.000
Under Charter Section 510, management and audit the Board of Public Utilities shall employ a qualified consultant to review, comment, and make recommendations as to the operation and condition.

03:02:12.000 --> 03:02:27.000
The county utilities, which we routinely do. All right. Under the code of ordinances, which is what I have listed next, it's not strictly under the charter but Part of the rules that support what we do.

03:02:27.000 --> 03:02:37.000
Under chapter 40 dash 42, BPU powers and duties is the jurisdiction and control over the utility systems owned by the county?

03:02:37.000 --> 03:02:54.000
And the third one, planning needed expansion, accounting for stuff in the future Number four, developing policies, guidelines for system operation, quality of service, rates, and balance of reserve funds, and for the operation of the blended utility system.

03:02:54.000 --> 03:03:01.000
Under subparagraph six, formulating with utilities manager the budget for the systems.

03:03:01.000 --> 03:03:12.000
Number seven, preparing a five-year plan for the capital expenditure of the system's replacement activities, etc. And as Karen has mentioned, though, we actually do a 10-year plan as well.

03:03:12.000 --> 03:03:29.000
By code and ordinance, we're required to do that five year under chapter back to chapter sections 502 under dpu manager authority and duties the manager shall conduct the business of the utilities department subject to the policies established by the board.

03:03:29.000 --> 03:03:35.000
So policies are certainly your bread and butter.

03:03:35.000 --> 03:03:42.000
All right, under code of ordinances again now chapter 40 40-44.

03:03:42.000 --> 03:03:52.000
Powers and duties and responsibilities of the manager Again, formulating with the board the annual budget for the department, which we've been talking about tonight.

03:03:52.000 --> 03:04:03.000
Under 40-45, policies and rules, the Board of Public Utilities shall propose the public policy of the department and those other policies unique to each utility system.

03:04:03.000 --> 03:04:13.000
And then under policies shall be adopted by the board at public hearings and shall become effective upon approval again by council.

03:04:13.000 --> 03:04:19.000
Which means that they can't be necessarily easily overturned by referendum.

03:04:19.000 --> 03:04:27.000
The board shall establish and adopt at a public hearing rules and regulations governing the conditions of utility systems.

03:04:27.000 --> 03:04:32.000
Rules and regulations established by the board shall become effective when transmitted to the council.

03:04:32.000 --> 03:04:50.000
And filed with the county clerk. All right. The council of course may refer to the board. Such other matters as the council may wish the board to consider and the board shall report its comments thereon within the time requested by the council.

03:04:50.000 --> 03:04:59.000
I don't know how often that actually happens, but if we get direction from the council who need to respond appropriately.

03:04:59.000 --> 03:05:06.000
Budget issues that may arise under the Charter, Section 506. We've discussed all that already.

03:05:06.000 --> 03:05:27.000
Under the code of ordinances 40-63 part way down in that under subsection after subsection c should the council fail to adopt the department's proposed budget on or before the started the ensuing fiscal year, the latest approved budget of the department shall be the budget of the department until the council adopts a new budget

03:05:27.000 --> 03:05:32.000
For the ensuing fiscal year. In a worst case scenario if it didn't happen.

03:05:32.000 --> 03:05:49.000
Under rate issues and the charter section two of 3.1 actions requiring ordinances of which there are limited number, but one of them is under D, set the rates charged by the county for utilities or waste removal.

03:05:49.000 --> 03:05:56.000
It has to happen by ordinance. And lastly, under emergency ordinances.

03:05:56.000 --> 03:06:10.000
Which can happen or if necessary for mostly for health safety and welfare of the public But you'll note that no such ordinances shall levy taxes or set utility rates or waste removal rates.

03:06:10.000 --> 03:06:23.000
We should be able to plan for these things. So no emergency ordinances on rates of the utilities All right. That's just a quick recap of the obligations and responsibilities of the board.

03:06:23.000 --> 03:06:28.000
To the council and the council back to the board just a little bit If they have questions.

03:06:28.000 --> 03:06:36.000
So I'll stand for questions. Questions? Eric.

03:06:36.000 --> 03:06:48.000
Okay, profit transfer. That was my… That was my chance. You know, it's only taking me about four years to figure this out. Okay. So in Section 509, and here's my problem.

03:06:48.000 --> 03:06:53.000
We have one through six. But Karen did a great job of explaining it, I think.

03:06:53.000 --> 03:07:00.000
What we're calling profit transfer is in bullet number four. I think that was explained pretty well.

03:07:00.000 --> 03:07:14.000
Tonight because it's transferred to the general fund in lieu of franchise fees and taxes and that was because of the electric and gas. Yes, Karen?

03:07:14.000 --> 03:07:22.000
Technically. There's an ordinance that clarifies this section.

03:07:22.000 --> 03:07:29.000
And the franchise fee and in lieu taxes are not the profit transfer. That's separate.

03:07:29.000 --> 03:07:43.000
So the franchise fee and in lieu taxes are also set by ordinance exactly the amount that is supposed to be transferred that is different than the profit or revenue transfer, which is defined as 5%.

03:07:43.000 --> 03:07:54.000
Of electric and gas revenues for specific classes of So which one of these bullets does that fall under?

03:07:54.000 --> 03:08:01.000
It falls under bullet six. Which i'm sorry.

03:08:01.000 --> 03:08:05.000
Well, okay. And that's because that's what it sounds like, isn't it?

03:08:05.000 --> 03:08:16.000
Profit transfer and bullet six is all remaining operating profits. But of course, I started thinking about this when we didn't have any prophets.

03:08:16.000 --> 03:08:26.000
We were in the hole. I mean, we were borrowing money out of reserves. And so there were literally no profits and yet we still had a revenue transfer.

03:08:26.000 --> 03:08:30.000
And when I asked the question back then, it was explained that it was more like a franchise fee.

03:08:30.000 --> 03:08:58.000
It is. Item six. Does say all remaining operating profits, but the ordinance that clarifies what is how the charter is being interpreted and being addressed that council did pass defines that revenue profit or operating profit as 5%.

03:08:58.000 --> 03:09:07.000
Of the revenues. So it's not based on profit if you had Negative profit, you still would pay it on the revenues. Right. It's based on revenue, not based on profit.

03:09:07.000 --> 03:09:13.000
And so I guess my suggestion is in our paperwork, and I think this may be starting to happen.

03:09:13.000 --> 03:09:20.000
But in the budget, in the line items and things like that, instead of saying profit transfer, let's just say revenue transfer.

03:09:20.000 --> 03:09:35.000
Revenue transfer to general fund because the profit, I mean, it took me four years to figure this out and it's still Where possible, I do use the word revenue As you'll see in the next presentation.

03:09:35.000 --> 03:09:47.000
Except, I think. The act for i believe it's still called profit transfer because it's called the auditors tie it back to the charter.

03:09:47.000 --> 03:09:58.000
So I believe that's the one place, but where possible, I put in parentheses revenue or profit. So thank you. Anything to help out people. So it takes them less than four years.

03:09:58.000 --> 03:10:05.000
Matt and Jen have probably figured this out a long time ago. It just took me a long time. So thanks for being patient with me.

03:10:05.000 --> 03:10:11.000
Of course not.

03:10:11.000 --> 03:10:16.000
Other questions? Or comments.

03:10:16.000 --> 03:10:21.000
Or anything. Okay.

03:10:21.000 --> 03:10:29.000
Thank you very much, Tom. All right. Thank you, Chair.

03:10:29.000 --> 03:10:35.000
That takes us to… Speaking of revenue transfers.

03:10:35.000 --> 03:10:45.000
Item 7C, approval of the calculation of revenue transfer from electric and gas funds for up for fiscal year 24.

03:10:45.000 --> 03:10:53.000
And associated budget revision. Which starts on page 327 of our agenda doc.

03:10:53.000 --> 03:11:02.000
Karen. Pardon me, Chair. I will be able to skip several of these slides because we've gone over them.

03:11:02.000 --> 03:11:07.000
Before tonight. So let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

03:11:07.000 --> 03:11:16.000
You'll recognize this as the list of priorities for the budget And then I included the charter language on the next slide.

03:11:16.000 --> 03:11:26.000
Which I won't read because Thomas just did. Okay, do one more.

03:11:26.000 --> 03:11:40.000
Okay. So I'm going to first talk big picture and then we'll get into what the actual numbers that we're requesting you to approve this year. So I wanted to talk about the timing of when each thing happens.

03:11:40.000 --> 03:11:55.000
With the ordinance that The board, excuse me, that council passed Which was addressing, let's see, it's ordinance o2 dash 324.

03:11:55.000 --> 03:12:16.000
That ordinance said that some of the pro the revenue, profit transfer could be retained by utilities. So we're required by charter to budget it during the budget hearings, we propose to council as one of the budget options that.

03:12:16.000 --> 03:12:38.000
That they give us budget authority for a project that is a joint project with Public Works. And that happens in april during the budget hearing. So we would include a revenue transfer in our proposed budget In this example from 24, it was 721,000 from electric.

03:12:38.000 --> 03:12:44.000
And 527,000 from gas. That was based on our budgeted revenues.

03:12:44.000 --> 03:12:57.000
Dpu proposed and council approved the budget option In 25's budget for 1,304, which was for the bathtub row nectar peach water distribution project.

03:12:57.000 --> 03:13:04.000
What confuses people about this is in FY25?

03:13:04.000 --> 03:13:14.000
They give us the authority to do that project. We go about, we do the project. We spend the money And we move forward.

03:13:14.000 --> 03:13:21.000
Today, because we have the 24th. Actuals, I come back and say.

03:13:21.000 --> 03:13:28.000
Okay, now we'd like to actually transfer the money to you and have it come back to utilities.

03:13:28.000 --> 03:13:37.000
Those amounts are never going to be the same. So… we pick the project that we're trying to fund as much as we can.

03:13:37.000 --> 03:13:47.000
Some years the profit transfer revenue transfer is more than the project and some years it's less. It's never exact.

03:13:47.000 --> 03:13:52.000
So today, February 25, Our actor has been issued.

03:13:52.000 --> 03:13:59.000
The financial statements for audited financial statements for the county. Council has accepted them.

03:13:59.000 --> 03:14:19.000
And now I'm proposing a budget revision. And that budget revision shows that sales with the transfer would be 615 309 from electric and 362.814 from gas Which is a total of 978,123.

03:14:19.000 --> 03:14:29.000
And then we're also now going to request that council consider requesting an extension of the period by one year.

03:14:29.000 --> 03:14:42.000
Which has allowed for in county code 4063. I'm going to come back to that again and restate it here. Let's go to the next slide

03:14:42.000 --> 03:14:59.000
So in the aquifer, this is one of the schedules. It's table 26. It's toward the end of the ACFER. And this details out what the franchise fees in lieu tax and profit transfer have been for a 10-year period.

03:14:59.000 --> 03:15:04.000
You'll notice that where I have the blue box and there's a little E next to it.

03:15:04.000 --> 03:15:11.000
Those were all the years. That council has redirected money back to utilities.

03:15:11.000 --> 03:15:28.000
For various road projects. Some of those have stayed in electric. Many have been used for water or for gas projects. So the total from FY20 through FY24, which would have been last year, does not include the one we're talking about tonight.

03:15:28.000 --> 03:15:45.000
We have retained $4.4 million. And with assuming that with assuming that the board approves and council approves this profit transfer revenue transfer it would be 5.4 million.

03:15:45.000 --> 03:15:53.000
In total for this time period. And if you're ever confused about the franchise fees, the in lieu.

03:15:53.000 --> 03:15:58.000
And the profit transfer, revenue transfer, the little footnotes here, which I know are a little hard to read up there.

03:15:58.000 --> 03:16:09.000
Define how it's calculated. So this is a good guide if you're trying to follow how you do those three pieces.

03:16:09.000 --> 03:16:19.000
Will you please go to Attachment.

03:16:19.000 --> 03:16:24.000
B.

03:16:24.000 --> 03:16:33.000
Excuse me. Karen, I'm slightly scared to ask, but sure. Why 5%?

03:16:33.000 --> 03:16:44.000
That's nothing. The charter doesn't say anything like that. So for many, many years it was My practice done is 5%.

03:16:44.000 --> 03:16:47.000
And I apologize because I don't remember if it was 20 years ago by the ordinance.

03:16:47.000 --> 03:17:02.000
But the ordinance that clarified did define the five percent that actually occurred when I was on council the first time. This goes back more than 25 years.

03:17:02.000 --> 03:17:20.000
And then I think there was updated when the when the franchise fee was right yeah So this is the calculation and we take this directly from the actor. So we wait until it's been published.

03:17:20.000 --> 03:17:24.000
To show that the books are audited and these are our final numbers.

03:17:24.000 --> 03:17:34.000
So we only use residential commercial it does not count sales for either the schools or for the county, again, per the ordinance.

03:17:34.000 --> 03:17:57.000
So the calculation in F And I apologize, there's a typo on here that's FY24 audited sales, not FY23. So we will fix that for the permanent record, but the amounts are correct. So the $615,000 is what electric would be transferring

03:17:57.000 --> 03:18:05.000
And the 362,000 is what the gas fund would be transferring. The full amount of the 978

03:18:05.000 --> 03:18:13.000
Would just get my sorry numbers here.

03:18:13.000 --> 03:18:20.000
So I would be going to water distribution. For the project.

03:18:20.000 --> 03:18:28.000
That was defined as a in our FY25 budget.

03:18:28.000 --> 03:18:34.000
So can we go to the Attachment C.

03:18:34.000 --> 03:18:45.000
The next one.

03:18:45.000 --> 03:18:52.000
Right there.

03:18:52.000 --> 03:19:11.000
Maybe make it a little bit bigger. Thank you. So what we're doing here With the bracketed numbers, the negative numbers is we're saying that we're saying that The general fund is going to reduce the transfers in.

03:19:11.000 --> 03:19:15.000
And gas and electric are going to reduce their transfers out.

03:19:15.000 --> 03:19:31.000
For the amount that was budgeted And then lines five through eight are gas and electric transferring those same amounts or the calculated amounts to water distribution.

03:19:31.000 --> 03:19:48.000
So this action is the general fund allowing us to redirect the dollars. This isn't about budget budgeted expense. It's about budgeted transfers of cash.

03:19:48.000 --> 03:19:57.000
So there's so there's three, excuse me, four portions to the agenda tonight.

03:19:57.000 --> 03:20:02.000
The first is to approve the calculation of the 25 revenue transfer.

03:20:02.000 --> 03:20:08.000
Based on the ACVR. The second is to approve the associated budget revision.

03:20:08.000 --> 03:20:19.000
The third is to forward to counsel with recommendation for approval And the fourth action is to recommend that Council add another year to the redirection option.

03:20:19.000 --> 03:20:27.000
So in the ordinance, it said that council allowed for this redirection for a five-year period.

03:20:27.000 --> 03:20:34.000
And that council could each year extend that by a year if they so chose.

03:20:34.000 --> 03:20:40.000
And with that, I'll stand for questions. Thank you.

03:20:40.000 --> 03:20:50.000
Are there questions?

03:20:50.000 --> 03:21:04.000
Matt, I have one question. We'll pick up on Charlie, I'm afraid to ask. No question. Why was the revenue about 300K less than Is there an easy answer to that?

03:21:04.000 --> 03:21:16.000
Because the original estimates were 1.3 million. I believe the reason is the actual usage.

03:21:16.000 --> 03:21:25.000
So if you look at

03:21:25.000 --> 03:21:30.000
That is the actor. Actually, hold on. I have it here.

03:21:30.000 --> 03:21:42.000
Too many pieces of paper. Give me one moment.

03:21:42.000 --> 03:21:47.000
I might be able to answer part of that. If it's in the gas fund.

03:21:47.000 --> 03:21:53.000
When we did the projections the prior year, we were assuming the gas would be more expensive.

03:21:53.000 --> 03:22:15.000
For… the following year and it didn't occur. But hopefully… I also wanted to look, sorry, I'm just looking at the comparison of what was projected versus what so in the

03:22:15.000 --> 03:22:28.000
In FYI, 24, our projection was 120 0.3 million kilowatt hour sales for 24, and we ended up with 118.9.

03:22:28.000 --> 03:22:35.000
And then in gas. We projected

03:22:35.000 --> 03:22:40.000
8 million therm sales in our actual therm sales were 7.5 million.

03:22:40.000 --> 03:22:54.000
So when the quantities are different. Even though you have whatever your budgeted rate increases are you're not going to receive as much revenue. Okay, thanks.

03:22:54.000 --> 03:23:11.000
I'll ask a general newbie question. So the funds that get directed to the joint utility system fund Do they have to be used only for projects that are operated jointly by DPU and public works or how is it can they be exclusively dpu

03:23:11.000 --> 03:23:35.000
Project? The ordinance states that it is for projects that are Joint. Joint. And typically with those type of capital projects We want to do them jointly because if a road is going to be torn up, we're going to go ahead and if it needs it, update the water lines and possibly wastewater or gas.

03:23:35.000 --> 03:23:49.000
So it just depends on what that project is and where it is in town. But we try to minimize having to resurface the roads if possible. I thought so. I just want to make sure. Thanks.

03:23:49.000 --> 03:23:57.000
Other questions? Is there any public comment?

03:23:57.000 --> 03:24:00.000
Thank you, Chair Gibson. If anyone would like to make public comment.

03:24:00.000 --> 03:24:06.000
Please use raise the hand function or step forward. At this time, I do not see anybody.

03:24:06.000 --> 03:24:15.000
Thank you. Further discussion or discussion or emotion.

03:24:15.000 --> 03:24:19.000
Which has several parts.

03:24:19.000 --> 03:24:40.000
And we should do them all together. Yes. Okay. I move that the Board of Public Utilities recommend the transfer of revenues of 5% From the electric and gas funds during fiscal year 2025 to the general fund and redirect these amounts to be used within the joint utility system fund

03:24:40.000 --> 03:24:48.000
For purposes designated by Council in accordance with the incorporated county of los alamos ordinance 02-324.

03:24:48.000 --> 03:25:06.000
I further move that the board approve budget revision 2025-37 As summarized on attachment D, and that the attachment be made a part of the minutes of this meeting I further move that these actions be forwarded to Council with recommendation for approval.

03:25:06.000 --> 03:25:23.000
I further move that the Board of Public Utilities recommend Council extend the profit transfer redirection option per county code section 40-63d For an additional year to FY2030.

03:25:23.000 --> 03:25:31.000
Second. Okay. Thank you. Moved and seconded that we take all of those actions.

03:25:31.000 --> 03:25:39.000
Is there any further discussion? Okay, Kathy, please call the roll.

03:25:39.000 --> 03:25:45.000
Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Hebner? Yes. Member Nochley? Yes.

03:25:45.000 --> 03:25:56.000
Member Stromberg. Yes. And Member Gibson? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Motion passes five to zero.

03:25:56.000 --> 03:26:06.000
Aren't you going to miss doing this every year, Karen? Yes.

03:26:06.000 --> 03:26:16.000
Sincerely said. Okay, we move on to board business. Starting with chairs report.

03:26:16.000 --> 03:26:25.000
There was a meeting here on the 27th of January Reporting out the technical study on the chromium plume.

03:26:25.000 --> 03:26:31.000
And I think Philo is going to talk more about that, so I'll let him and not duplicate.

03:26:31.000 --> 03:26:42.000
There was a question raised about a question raised about how we should respond, how board members should respond to public inquiries.

03:26:42.000 --> 03:26:53.000
And I don't want to get into discussion on that topic, but I thought I would just do a brief thing under report here. And if we need to discuss it further, we can put it on the agenda at some point.

03:26:53.000 --> 03:27:02.000
In the first place. Any member is free to respond to an email or other public inquiry.

03:27:02.000 --> 03:27:10.000
But being careful to say I'm speaking for myself as a board member Not for the board.

03:27:10.000 --> 03:27:20.000
The… However, most of those inquiries come in, at least the email ones come in addressed to the board.

03:27:20.000 --> 03:27:33.000
Are… my preference is that anybody who sends something to the board should get a response of some kind.

03:27:33.000 --> 03:27:39.000
At least an acknowledgement so they know it didn't go into a black hole.

03:27:39.000 --> 03:27:51.000
And preferably a response with some substance to it. Basically Philo and I have been splitting that up. He does most of them.

03:27:51.000 --> 03:28:10.000
And he does them usually very quickly. I do a few of them and they usually take a few more days And then if a response goes out that's effectively from the board or from from Philo as the board gets copied. So you should see that.

03:28:10.000 --> 03:28:25.000
Hence, I would recommend that if you're thinking, gee, I want to respond to this myself Maybe you want to wait a few days and see if you want to see if we respond so you can build on that or maybe not have to do it yourself or

03:28:25.000 --> 03:28:38.000
But you could also respond and say, I don't agree with that or whatever. Again, you certainly can respond as an individual board member at some point.

03:28:38.000 --> 03:28:55.000
Having said that, I know we got one almost two weeks ago that some proverbial crack and there wasn't any response And I caught that this afternoon and called the individual and we talked on the phone. So there now has been a response.

03:28:55.000 --> 03:29:04.000
That was Jody Benson's query. My mistake, we just let that one fall through.

03:29:04.000 --> 03:29:14.000
But anyway, that's how we've been dealing with things. But if people want to do something, think we ought to do something differently, we can talk about it.

03:29:14.000 --> 03:29:31.000
And Matt, this is a chair's report, so I don't want to go into a deep discussion but simple question we'll take. Thanks. Yeah, just a simple question. I guess I'm curious if an email to the board email constitutes public comment. Is that a venue for public comment or not?

03:29:31.000 --> 03:29:42.000
Well, it is a way of getting comment in. But then it doesn't get reflected in the record is my concern. So do we need to summarize it in the record? That's My general question.

03:29:42.000 --> 03:29:55.000
Good question. Let's see, that does not make it into, it certainly doesn't make it into the minutes as a public comment.

03:29:55.000 --> 03:30:12.000
Chair, all our emails are records well they're certainly public record. However, I think like the one I replied to last night uh was more project clarification. It wasn't before the board for consideration. It was just a citizen requesting a trail.

03:30:12.000 --> 03:30:17.000
To go alongside of it. Currently awarded waterline project.

03:30:17.000 --> 03:30:26.000
So I looked at that as just clarification of our activities and our activities helped this individual.

03:30:26.000 --> 03:30:35.000
At least go to some avenue to get an answer to their question.

03:30:35.000 --> 03:30:52.000
So typically, if it's you might say more of a detail or technical question, Philo responds. And if it's a something that's really more of a board purview thing then I will respond usually.

03:30:52.000 --> 03:31:13.000
Generally, I try to respond, but there's occasions where they ask for the chair's input or whatever it may be, or maybe an individual, you know, to map Specifically, then I try to work with you guys to try to work on a response.

03:31:13.000 --> 03:31:27.000
Just a thought on that. Maybe perhaps we should encourage the person if they think they're making a public comment to come to the next board meeting and ask us in public or Depends on the situation do that. This is going to be on the agenda at such and such a meeting.

03:31:27.000 --> 03:31:34.000
You're welcome to comment on it at that point.

03:31:34.000 --> 03:31:38.000
We don't get a large number. So it's not a big burden.

03:31:38.000 --> 03:31:58.000
You know, that could change over time but It's important to hear from hear from and hear from communicate with, respond back to So people that care enough to comment to us.

03:31:58.000 --> 03:32:07.000
Okay, that's all I had in the chair's report. Are there any board member reports?

03:32:07.000 --> 03:32:26.000
Don't see any. We'll go to the utility manager's report. Okay, chair and members of the board First, I had an email exchange with the yes communities and they have their engineer did complete the sites based survey mapping on February 7th.

03:32:26.000 --> 03:32:36.000
They still owe me a schedule, but I did have a conversation with them about their intent is to begin construction around the June timeframe.

03:32:36.000 --> 03:32:42.000
When gas usage is the least. And then finally.

03:32:42.000 --> 03:33:10.000
I always give a staffing update. I jinxed myself when we were fully staffed last month because guess what? I got retirement notices from our deputy utility manager for finance and administration, our power system operator, and a management analyst And then we had two resignations, one for engineer associate, and he went to Llanel for higher compensation.

03:33:10.000 --> 03:33:19.000
And the other senior customer care specialist she went to She got a promotion, became a building permit technician.

03:33:19.000 --> 03:33:44.000
So we are advertising all these positions right now. So that's our update there. And then Hammonds Mountain Fire Protection Project, it's still, you know, it's been over a year however our Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management agency, the state assists us with this application because they do the

03:33:44.000 --> 03:33:54.000
Benefit cost analysis. Model. They do the inputs. They think they found a path to get us a result of one or better.

03:33:54.000 --> 03:34:05.000
And we gave him some documentation. We haven't gotten the results back yet but getting hopeful that we'll get some form of a project.

03:34:05.000 --> 03:34:15.000
Then NNSA, Albuquerque office, they did make a request for the six month extension of the current ECA.

03:34:15.000 --> 03:34:19.000
And hopefully you know that by the end of this week.

03:34:19.000 --> 03:34:28.000
And in their terms, the end of the week is Thursday. So you get Friday off four tens.

03:34:28.000 --> 03:34:46.000
Or four somethings. Yeah. And then with UAMS, the biggest thing that came up with the projects that we have with them on the geothermal is we had two different transmission service requests in.

03:34:46.000 --> 03:34:53.000
Now, these service requests are on hold because FERC has to review and approve them.

03:34:53.000 --> 03:35:01.000
Well, it's another federal agency. So what's the timeline for that? Undetermined. They don't know.

03:35:01.000 --> 03:35:21.000
You know, I know we budgeted to have two board members go to the Rotherm project uh so that's undetermined at this point. Once we have a transmission service approval to put that energy on this line so we can receive it here.

03:35:21.000 --> 03:35:29.000
Then we'll proceed with a tour and try to You know, get that power purchase agreement in place.

03:35:29.000 --> 03:35:32.000
This transmission There's a lot of discussion.

03:35:32.000 --> 03:35:42.000
About reliability, fires of the West and everything is you know kind of up in the air about, you know.

03:35:42.000 --> 03:35:49.000
What is the resiliency requirement and what do you pay for fees.

03:35:49.000 --> 03:36:11.000
Right now, Pacificor had settled 2,000 claims from fires from previous years, they still have 1,500 more to go, let alone what might occur this fire season so There's a lot going on. I think trying to get um a handle on what the costs are.

03:36:11.000 --> 03:36:24.000
For transmission. I know I'm going to talk a little bit later about delay of our project, but I think working closer to home Right now is a better plan than what I'm seeing.

03:36:24.000 --> 03:36:30.000
Just from all the transmission issues.

03:36:30.000 --> 03:36:47.000
And then at our next work session. Uams will present to us the financial readiness assessment And the consultant did a readiness assessment of all the 50 members and so I think it'll be good.

03:36:47.000 --> 03:36:53.000
As a comparator you know we'll know where we stand among our peers.

03:36:53.000 --> 03:37:08.000
And then Robert mentioned about the chromium plume. The EMLA and NMED, they had the independent technical review team. I went to two separate meetings on it.

03:37:08.000 --> 03:37:16.000
One was here among the council chamber and then another one that was in a public forum.

03:37:16.000 --> 03:37:21.000
And I think… there seemed to be a good path forward.

03:37:21.000 --> 03:37:32.000
There just was not a much of a discussion of a timeline to contain that chromium plume. That's something we have to continue to follow.

03:37:32.000 --> 03:37:48.000
But, you know, the bottom line is there's going to be enhanced pump and treat system And how that plume can be contained is really what we need to know before we start operating our Pyrito well 3.

03:37:48.000 --> 03:38:05.000
And I did bring up in the public comments that you know we need to be considering operating that well soon or have a separate well built Because the site-wide environmental assessment calls for additional water use.

03:38:05.000 --> 03:38:11.000
And we're going to need that well in operation or something of equal capacity.

03:38:11.000 --> 03:38:29.000
To serve. So that was comments I made. And then at the SWICE, I attended that meeting with Chair Call last week And Lionel is seeking approval for the expanded operation alternative. So that's the largest one in in the slice.

03:38:29.000 --> 03:38:45.000
They initially had some poster board sessions where you walk around, talk to staff and And as I was talking to him, they said, well, we got six, seven sites identified for solar And you say, well, does that include battery with it? No.

03:38:45.000 --> 03:39:03.000
So how do I ask for battery to be included? You need to make public comments. So I made public comment and said, maybe you want to call these energy production sites so you can include battery storage or geothermal potentially. The larger

03:39:03.000 --> 03:39:17.000
Expanded version does include a nuclear energy. So Chair, I know you'd be pleased to hear that But that was a separate site option that they're looking at.

03:39:17.000 --> 03:39:25.000
And then the other thing I asked while I was up on the podium was to maximize the use of the county's reclaim water.

03:39:25.000 --> 03:39:41.000
In their plans for expansion. Another note, I know Stephen Mars is working with his counterpart the at Lionel on cost estimates. It's not finalized yet for the electric asset transfers.

03:39:41.000 --> 03:40:00.000
So we'll bring that to you when we have it. And then at Foxtail flats The environmental review has been delayed and that will delay the site mobilization by six months right now.

03:40:00.000 --> 03:40:17.000
They did. Desiree did do the preliminary design. They've done everything they can short of they have to have the complete review by the BIA and approval to do final design of where all the solar panels go.

03:40:17.000 --> 03:40:26.000
And so they're exploring options, what they can do to keep things on track, like pre-ordering the panels and storing them.

03:40:26.000 --> 03:40:48.000
But we should have more in a few months. Understanding you know the timeline for the project We just have to have that clearance so that they can finalize their lease terms and then then our construction schedule can be built from there.

03:40:48.000 --> 03:41:08.000
I want to invite the board. We'll have a flyer go out soon on March 13th at peak, we'll have an electric… electrification town hall, and this is by our consultant that's looking at electrification so That's going to be the public outreach. We've done town halls in the past and

03:41:08.000 --> 03:41:15.000
Seems like… hopefully get more participation than we did tonight, for example.

03:41:15.000 --> 03:41:32.000
The last time we did it was… for power production when we're looking at CFBP and solar and wind projects, we've got quite a few people that showed up. So we're going to try that format to get more participation.

03:41:32.000 --> 03:41:43.000
So you'll get an invite to that. And then CPACE ordinance that was introduced by council on the 28th and public hearings on Feb.

03:41:43.000 --> 03:42:07.000
25th and that was January 28th and then uh I attended the legislative dinner with New Mexico delegation There's some bills of tracking They're mostly focused on co-ops and investor-owned utilities, but I work with Danielle Duran, the county's governmental affairs manager and

03:42:07.000 --> 03:42:18.000
On monitoring these. There was a bill that we were hoping would move forward through the committees was on a revision to IPRA.

03:42:18.000 --> 03:42:28.000
That would have protected our customers utility data usage. But it died in committee.

03:42:28.000 --> 03:42:36.000
That's been something brought up in the past, how to protect our customers data. Right now, if someone makes a request, you all the data.

03:42:36.000 --> 03:42:59.000
And then… Finally, I participated in a couple interview panels for the public works director and the community development director vacancies And Eric Martinez is the new public works director And next week there'll be on-site interviews for a couple of community development director candidates.

03:42:59.000 --> 03:43:05.000
So with that, it's Stanford questions.

03:43:05.000 --> 03:43:32.000
Questions? Charlie. On the chromium plume, Philo, I listened to the councils, the discussion at the council work session um I have to admit, I have not like read you know tome that the technical review put out But as I recall, when we had people here from both EMLA and then the state and MED,

03:43:32.000 --> 03:43:37.000
They were pretty wide apart. They were pretty far separated on their technical assessments.

03:43:37.000 --> 03:43:50.000
Did that… Did that ever get really resolved or was it sort of papered over and now they're restarting the interim measures at, you know, whatever, two thirds capacity or something like that?

03:43:50.000 --> 03:44:03.000
I would say, you know, like one big thing was the well drilling method. Could they do a dual well screen versus I'm just doing two separate wells.

03:44:03.000 --> 03:44:23.000
The design that came back allowed for a dual well screen that used a combination of of cement above the water table level and bentonite below. It was definitely a compromised design solution, but it made sense when they did the presentation. The other was computer modeling

03:44:23.000 --> 03:44:31.000
They use the they use The labs use a pretty detailed finite element model.

03:44:31.000 --> 03:44:42.000
And the state was requesting mod flow model in the recommendation was for the state's model on Modflow.

03:44:42.000 --> 03:45:02.000
There's uh there's just the the area of re-injection there is definitely it became clear to restart the interim measure. And so that moved forward because there was a dispute about it pushing the chromium plume down.

03:45:02.000 --> 03:45:22.000
So they got through that. It got restarted. Now, the area of this nose of the chromium plume that's deeper and 100 feet down that's moving closer to the drinking water well that needs new wells drilled to determine nature and extent. And that's the piece that's unknown.

03:45:22.000 --> 03:45:40.000
But that's part of the final remedy. That all have to be figured out. But at least they they're on a holdup of can we even drill a well? So now they can drill a well so i think I've noticed there's some activity out there just last week

03:45:40.000 --> 03:46:06.000
So hopefully they're moving in that direction uh to get a new well drilled that's just upstream of our well we can get some more nature and extent boundaries. So there's movement it's And I think that they're… the New Mexico Environment Department and EMLA are going to be working

03:46:06.000 --> 03:46:20.000
To talk to the office's state engineer about, you know, okay, now we need to you know drill these wells and it's going to take each of these wells are six months to a year to build and So that's where my concern is.

03:46:20.000 --> 03:46:35.000
It's a timeline. Okay, we drill a well. We just learned something Now, what do we do? Oh, we got to drill another well and contain this plume. It's going to take a couple of years, years to Before we really have any certainty of certainty

03:46:35.000 --> 03:46:42.000
Are drinking water well. Great, thank you.

03:46:42.000 --> 03:46:52.000
Learn questions. Follow on this ECA extension let's assume that it goes forward and we have a six month extension.

03:46:52.000 --> 03:47:13.000
Does that cause us any operational or financial issues just the extension itself you know we've looked at a lot of different things. We have a lot of things that end the end of June because they're tied to the ECA one way or another.

03:47:13.000 --> 03:47:22.000
What are the consequences just of that extension? If any.

03:47:22.000 --> 03:47:38.000
It's not much. I'll just say this. There's one project that the board approved was the removal of sodium sulfur battery where we had a chance if we had a longer period of time we might have been able to benefit from that.

03:47:38.000 --> 03:47:54.000
But really, I'm not sure I would even say that that was a real opportunity because we're seeing a lot of other issues with tariffs and you know exchange between countries I'm not sure that that option really would have been viable.

03:47:54.000 --> 03:48:13.000
But I don't see… any issues with any issues with the cost, but it it will cost it When I did talk to Matthew Burrello, who I'm working with on his intent is get the extension but continue to work on

03:48:13.000 --> 03:48:20.000
Getting the final agreement because the renewal can occur concurrently.

03:48:20.000 --> 03:48:35.000
So um That's maybe to answer a question you asked me before is I don't want them, you know, they get a six month extension, then they sit on their hands for six more months. That's That's not the intent either.

03:48:35.000 --> 03:48:42.000
If for whatever reason. The process doesn't move forward.

03:48:42.000 --> 03:48:52.000
Very quickly. Can there be another six month extension? Is there any limitation there?

03:48:52.000 --> 03:49:03.000
What I've seen through the term of the ECA, there's been multiple extensions over the years. The one we're currently living under was a five-year extension.

03:49:03.000 --> 03:49:08.000
So that's why I mentioned about let's do another five years.

03:49:08.000 --> 03:49:12.000
That didn't go too far, but I thought that that would get us through some.

03:49:12.000 --> 03:49:19.000
Some of our issues. Okay, thank you. Anyone else?

03:49:19.000 --> 03:49:25.000
All right. County Manager's report. Anne, are you still with us?

03:49:25.000 --> 03:49:28.000
I am. Good evening. I will keep it brief.

03:49:28.000 --> 03:49:32.000
Good evening.

03:49:32.000 --> 03:49:48.000
We are knee deep in budget. I just want to thank Ms. Kendall and Mr. Shelton and all the utility staff for all the hard work helping us get the budget done on The utility side, we've got quite a bit to go. We are also

03:49:48.000 --> 03:50:05.000
Planning and you're going to see more advertised about two open houses for our capital projects to kind of just engage the community what we have ongoing with projects and what we have coming up in the next year and also just a mechanism to

03:50:05.000 --> 03:50:12.000
Get some community feedback on our capital plans. And in the first week.

03:50:12.000 --> 03:50:35.000
March, I think… myself and Mr. Rand will all be in dc And talking about the importance of supporting the lab mission, but also all of our how intertwined we are both on the utility side, on the fire side and

03:50:35.000 --> 03:50:50.000
All of our federal grants as well, just any impacts that we might have just that's going on so I will leave the update from the last council meeting to Councilor righty unless he wants me to do it but um

03:50:50.000 --> 03:50:53.000
That's all I had to share.

03:50:53.000 --> 03:50:58.000
Thank you. Any questions?

03:50:58.000 --> 03:51:12.000
All right, we'll move on to council liaisons report council liaisons report Yeah, thank you, Chair, and a pleasure to be here for Vice Chair Heaven.

03:51:12.000 --> 03:51:32.000
Then Fred will give an update. Yeah, I could probably talk for a long time about profit transfer, but I won't do that. If anyone wants to talk to me offline, I'd be more than happy to have a discussion about it. So there was uh yeah good overlap between some of my notes and what Mr. Shelton already shared like with Hexbill and chromium.

03:51:32.000 --> 03:51:42.000
I think it was positive. I just also want to share that Inner Measure was a recommendation that was an early one before the report was finished.

03:51:42.000 --> 03:51:48.000
So that happened last summer. And then the restart was, I think, early fall.

03:51:48.000 --> 03:51:52.000
They actually be able to restart it. So that was useful.

03:51:52.000 --> 03:52:09.000
So I think that was a good outcome. Yeah, I think we just are waiting to see what the actual implementation plan is going to be for that project. It's going to be probably fairly expensive. I don't know that we have a solid number yet.

03:52:09.000 --> 03:52:13.000
On how much it's going to cost to address the comments.

03:52:13.000 --> 03:52:29.000
So it is one of the things we'll be talking to As Liz Rant mentioned, we have our federal trip So we'll be talking about funding that EM might need to have to address the hexavale and chromium plume with regard to these new comments.

03:52:29.000 --> 03:52:50.000
Let's see. Oh, just before I forget, might get sidetracked by other items. I think coming up, unfortunately, it overlaps with budget hearings, but I just wanted to remind folks about the new nuclear forum that's own falls And I hope that maybe

03:52:50.000 --> 03:52:56.000
Some of the newer members might be interested in that, but it's really interesting forum.

03:52:56.000 --> 03:53:06.000
Matt's there with Phil and I last year. I found it really useful So it also includes a site tour of the site there.

03:53:06.000 --> 03:53:13.000
In idaho if you're interested. So let's see.

03:53:13.000 --> 03:53:19.000
Yeah, some of the other things I just wanted to highlight, and I think there were two meetings, January 28th meeting.

03:53:19.000 --> 03:53:39.000
Just a couple of things. So we passed the ordinance for the low income tax credits. This is something that we've had I think for… not 20 years, but I think 15 years. It's been in the was added to the state law. And what we have to do locally is pass an ordinance in order for people that are low income to be able to

03:53:39.000 --> 03:53:50.000
Qualify and put that on their income taxes. It actually comes off the income tax And there has to be adjustment then to our revenues on property taxes.

03:53:50.000 --> 03:53:56.000
So that's one of the reasons why I think we need to pass an ordinance saying that we're going to be okay with making that adjustment.

03:53:56.000 --> 03:54:10.000
So that passed, it's been a longstanding thing. The question was, how well is it used? And so that's why I decided I might as well mention it here tonight so that maybe some more people might hear about it. I've seen some press Press releases about it.

03:54:10.000 --> 03:54:15.000
I've already heard about the CPACE. That's coming up next week.

03:54:15.000 --> 03:54:22.000
And we did have on the 28th, there was a consent item for the phase four of the Hemis Mountain fire protection project.

03:54:22.000 --> 03:54:33.000
And then it seems like we always have various BPU, DPU items. We had a couple contracts for SCADA systems on the 28th.

03:54:33.000 --> 03:54:50.000
February 11th was a work session. But we did have some business items I already heard about the presentation we got from strongly by Jessica Kunkel, who's with EMLA, and Brad Smith with N3B.

03:54:50.000 --> 03:55:07.000
So there's a lot of discussion about Excellent and Chromium, independent technical review report And… So that's very useful. And we had a discussion also about an update from Ms. Duran.

03:55:07.000 --> 03:55:18.000
About the legislative session. One that I had noted was House Bill 51. I think, I don't know if that one's one that's still going forward, but that was energy storage system tax credits.

03:55:18.000 --> 03:55:25.000
There's a Senate Bill 4, which is statewide greenhouse gas limits unfortunate about IPRA.

03:55:25.000 --> 03:55:35.000
Not moving forward. House Bill 45 is a renewable energy tax, which is to put a tax on renewable energy sources.

03:55:35.000 --> 03:55:44.000
That's one that we were opposing. And then you heard a bit about the federal priorities And I mentioned the EM support.

03:55:44.000 --> 03:55:54.000
And the other thing I guess I'll mention is we did add in uh support for new nuclear and consent-based siting into our federal priorities.

03:55:54.000 --> 03:56:08.000
So that'll be something I think some of our delegation is interested in those as options. The consent-based siting is a way basically to have eventually a more permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear waste.

03:56:08.000 --> 03:56:31.000
And then coming up, you already heard about C-PACE. Obviously, the revenue profit transfer is coming up next week There's the contract that you approve this tonight for the on-call electric And obviously, you know, budget hearings are coming up the end of April.

03:56:31.000 --> 03:56:39.000
I guess one other thing I wanted to mention, and I also was noting on.

03:56:39.000 --> 03:56:46.000
So on Facebook. Probably isn't people's most favorite. Let me see if I can pull this back up.

03:56:46.000 --> 03:56:57.000
That we did get, there was on Facebook, there was a comment about

03:56:57.000 --> 03:57:10.000
Let's see if I can start coming back up. Yeah, but it was somebody that was just posting about utility rates. That was interesting you're talking about utility rates tonight, but somebody was just putting up data about somebody that had a

03:57:10.000 --> 03:57:18.000
A fairly small amount of sized home and had, I think the average we projected was about 300 a month. Theirs was about 600.

03:57:18.000 --> 03:57:35.000
And it occurred to me we also got to go on a trip, some of us, to what's called the brain. So it's a system for helping the city of Albuquerque basically remotely manage and monitor all their facilities and they have like 600 of them

03:57:35.000 --> 03:57:53.000
And what they've been able to do with this is actually identify like water leaks or other like things, you know, HVAC systems not being tuned correctly, maybe set on the factory defaults when they should be reset to that season.

03:57:53.000 --> 03:58:01.000
So it was really interesting and they can demonstrate savings of money on that. And of course, we have our AMR, you know.

03:58:01.000 --> 03:58:13.000
System, AMI, I guess. And that could um you know and then with the you know the issue the person had with their bill I just was wondering if there's opportunities for us to take advantage of that kind of with

03:58:13.000 --> 03:58:20.000
In the reporting because I think you can set up thresholds This is interesting that people can get like only the water leak. That's why the bill is so high.

03:58:20.000 --> 03:58:34.000
Or it would provide some data to people. It just seems like it's kind of like what the county can maybe get the data We're all one county right but it's utilities has the data for the metering, right? So getting the AMI data

03:58:34.000 --> 03:58:46.000
And helping save some money in county facilities too. And I think that's really uh It's a very interesting thing. And so they've been working on that since I think 2022.

03:58:46.000 --> 03:58:52.000
And they have a lot of data historically been showing buildings and You can see the trends.

03:58:52.000 --> 03:59:04.000
It just seemed like a really interesting thing. I think the interesting thing It's basically software that you can purchase. So it also is this grid watch system to kind of the brain in the grid watch. The brain is an acronym, of

03:59:04.000 --> 03:59:12.000
It doesn't mean the brain, but I just thought that was a really interesting to see that and to see what they're doing in Albuquerque.

03:59:12.000 --> 03:59:20.000
And I think the city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County are both looking at implementing similar kind of systems.

03:59:20.000 --> 03:59:25.000
So… I think that was everything I had on my notes.

03:59:25.000 --> 03:59:32.000
Thanks. Thank you. Questions?

03:59:32.000 --> 03:59:39.000
Everybody's still awake, huh? Only a few more minutes.

03:59:39.000 --> 03:59:50.000
Okay, no questions. Thank you, Randy. Environmental sustainability board liaisons report. Is Jesse with us tonight? Nope. Okay.

03:59:50.000 --> 04:00:01.000
That takes us to appointment of board member to county audit committee for 2025.

04:00:01.000 --> 04:00:10.000
This is… This is a pretty minimal commitment if anyone is interested in doing it.

04:00:10.000 --> 04:00:16.000
They're down to basically it's two meetings, an entrance conference and an exit conference.

04:00:16.000 --> 04:00:25.000
And last year they did them online and they were only about a half an hour or so each.

04:00:25.000 --> 04:00:46.000
So… But it is during the day sometime and the dates get set and they're firm and we don't have much opportunity to influence them well the influence I will ask if anybody would like to do that job.

04:00:46.000 --> 04:00:52.000
I'm interested. We don't have the dates yet though, right? We do not have the dates yet.

04:00:52.000 --> 04:01:10.000
I'm interested. Yeah, I think last year And it seems to me the entrance conference was sometime in the summer, like June or July, and the exit was November, maybe, but I'm not sure of that.

04:01:10.000 --> 04:01:18.000
So would you like to be appointed to the audit committee? Sure.

04:01:18.000 --> 04:01:22.000
Okay. Is there anyone else who would like to be appointed?

04:01:22.000 --> 04:01:44.000
If not, it makes this real easy. Would some… someone like to make the suggested motion and fill in the blank there?

04:01:44.000 --> 04:01:59.000
If not, I will. I should. I don't think I will. Well, okay. I move that the Board of Public Utilities nominate Member Matt Hewner to fill the vacant position on the county's audit committee.

04:01:59.000 --> 04:02:17.000
And appoint him for remainder of calendar year 2025. Further recommend that the utilities manager notify the chief financial officer of the nominee I second. Okay. With gratitude.

04:02:17.000 --> 04:02:24.000
Okay, any… Further comment.

04:02:24.000 --> 04:02:41.000
Eric. Thank you, Chair Gibson. I would say this. That they don't send out notices for their meetings What you have to do is you have to look at your county outlook calendar And that's the only way that it shows up or else you'll miss the meeting. I missed a few meetings because

04:02:41.000 --> 04:02:46.000
I never got notices. Thanks for the heads up.

04:02:46.000 --> 04:03:01.000
Seems to me, I remember getting an email initially kind of saying what the dates would be but then There was no reminder the week or the day before. So if you didn't put it on your calendar, you'd miss it.

04:03:01.000 --> 04:03:06.000
But… Okay.

04:03:06.000 --> 04:03:18.000
See, we have a motion and a second to nominate Matt to do this be on the audit committee for 2025.

04:03:18.000 --> 04:03:31.000
Kathy, would you please call the roll? Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Hebner yes member knockley yes member stromberg? Yes. And Member Gibson? Yes. Thank you.

04:03:31.000 --> 04:03:36.000
Thank you. Motion passes five to zero. Thanks, Matt, for stepping up.

04:03:36.000 --> 04:03:50.000
You'll find it really exciting. Actually, the old days, we had three meetings a year and they're about an hour each and they were in person and you actually learned something about the audit process.

04:03:50.000 --> 04:04:04.000
You don't really learn much here. They're basically going to ask you Are you aware of anything that we ought to be worried about?

04:04:04.000 --> 04:04:18.000
Prepare and be worried. You know, we think Karen's been cooking the books.

04:04:18.000 --> 04:04:27.000
Okay, let us move. Shall we move on to the status reports?

04:04:27.000 --> 04:04:34.000
And you can all read them. We'll ask if there's anybody has any questions.

04:04:34.000 --> 04:04:43.000
Comments, concerns, whatever.

04:04:43.000 --> 04:04:58.000
I had one under, this is page 355 under workman's comp there was a distribution employee injured while operating a ground tamper can get a brief summary of what that involved?

04:04:58.000 --> 04:05:04.000
Basically, he strained muscles. Operating that ground tamper.

04:05:04.000 --> 04:05:12.000
Okay. And after a couple months of not having anything, we do have a couple of claims they notice.

04:05:12.000 --> 04:05:17.000
For sewer backups.

04:05:17.000 --> 04:05:23.000
Anything else on status reports?

04:05:23.000 --> 04:05:29.000
If not, we'll go to the tickler file.

04:05:29.000 --> 04:05:36.000
Does anyone have any i'm not going to go through what's on the agenda. If you were interested enough, you already read it.

04:05:36.000 --> 04:05:51.000
Or you'll read it afterwards. But does anyone have any questions, comments, or additions or changes that you would like to the tickler file?

04:05:51.000 --> 04:06:01.000
This is your opportunity. And also we are having our monthly scheduling meeting next Friday morning, next week.

04:06:01.000 --> 04:06:15.000
So if you think of something between now and then that you'd like to put on the… on a meeting agenda, let us know.

04:06:15.000 --> 04:06:25.000
Okay. That leaves us with… Again, public comment on any utility related subject.

04:06:25.000 --> 04:06:36.000
Is there any public comment? Thank you, Chair Gibson. If anybody would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand functions.

04:06:36.000 --> 04:06:44.000
I see nobody at this time. Okay, thank you. I thank everyone for their patience and tolerance.

04:06:44.000 --> 04:06:57.000
What might be a near record long meeting for at least the time I've been on the board And we still have a bunch of big issues to deal with is coming up.

04:06:57.000 --> 04:07:07.000
That's where we get paid the big bucks, right? For anybody listening, we're volunteers.

04:07:07.000 --> 04:07:15.000
The big bucks are zero. Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.