BOARD OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
LOS ALAMOS COUNTY   |   MUNICIPAL BUILDING
JUNE 17, 2026   |   5:30 P.M.


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Go ahead and start the recording, if you would please

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Thank you.

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Good evening. I call to order this June 17th, 2026 regular meeting of the Board of Public Utilities.

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Thanks everyone for participating this evening.

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We will start as usual with opening the floor to public comment. On matters not otherwise on our agenda this evening.

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Do we have any public comment?

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I see one. Sure. Please state your name for the record and limit your comments to three minutes, if you would please. Okay.

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that my name is Ray Sarder. I'm a resident of White Rock, and what I wanted to address is this residential demand that's being proposed in principle, I oppose it because we're paying

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for the electricity twice, that the electric you're going to

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have an additional fee for our peak demand hour, and we're already paying the rate for whatever that hour is, given our forthcoming two-tier system.

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Given that

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if reality can't… there isn't… it won't be eliminated. I also oppose how it's being proposed, that the proposal is our peak demand over

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Any 24 hours of the month

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Whereas the purpose of the two-tier pricing system is to get us to shift out of the peak demand for the system

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And that's what this res… if you… we're going to have this residential demand, it should have that same purpose also.

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My wife often gets up early 5 a.m, and she likes to turn on what she calls her servants. So the dishwasher will come on, the laundry, the dryer, the washing machine, she'll put a roast in the oven, and all that's going on

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And you're not going to tell me that her

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causing our personal peak to be at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. is going to put a burden on our electrical system

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that there's a… if we're going to have the residential demand, there's much better ways to do it. You've already identified 6 hours of the day where you want people not to

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to shift out of, so limit… put the residential demand

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For the peak of that 6 hours is one way another way is what's the peak

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For the whole system of the month. What's that hour?

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then identify the customers that drive that peak

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And a third possible way is set a goal, say you know what the system capacity is. And I understand we don't want to have to

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Grow the system. We want to keep the system as it is or grow it as least as possible. Set a goal like 95% of our capacity. And every time there's an hour that exceeds that 95 capacity

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then you identify who's the customers that are driving that high demand, and that way we will achieve this goal of shifting us away from

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Our peak demand driving the system to be ever larger

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And that's my comments for today. Thank you.

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Thank you

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Is there any other public comment in chambers?

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Is there any online?

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Thank you, Chair Gibson. For members of the public who are joining us tonight on Zoom, when Chair Gibson calls for public comment, please use the raise hand function. If you are participating by phone, press star 9 to raise your hand.

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If you wish to make a public comment at this time, please raise your hand on Zoom.

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Chair Gibson, there are no hands raised. Thank you.

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That takes us to approval of the agenda. I would like to pull item 7A off of the agenda for tonight

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It's listed as a rate comparisons with national data, and there was apparently a failure of communication

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I'll own that, I guess, because what we were really looking for was cost comparison, not rate comparisons. So we'll bring that issue, that matter back

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some future points. So 7A off the agenda. Otherwise, I'd like approval of the agenda with that change.

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I move we approve the agenda with that change.

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Jennifer, are you with us?

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Yeah, so I'll second.

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Thank you, okay, moved and seconded. I actually did that more as a test to make sure you were really there.

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And awake that may be the critical factor here.

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Well, here, wake is another story.

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Okay, moved and seconded that we approve the agenda. All in favors? Let's see, we've got two here, Jennifer

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Yes?

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Okay.

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You're in favor of approving the agenda as amended.

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Yeah, correct. Yes

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Okay, thank you. Okay. That motion passes 3 to 0. Takes us to a statement regarding the closed session on June the third

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And

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Matt, would you be willing to read that one?

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Make sure I'm on the right page. Yes, I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the following statement for inclusion in the minutes. The matters discussed in the closed session on June 3rd, 2026 were limited only to those topics specified in the notice of the closed session, and no action was taken on any matter during the closed session.

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Okay.

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For simplicity, I'll second that.

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Any discussion? Okay, again, this is procedural, so we got two votes here and Jennifer

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Yes.

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Okay, motion passes 3 to 0. That takes us to the consent agenda.

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There's one change internal of the consent agenda, and that is that

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Both of the minutes for both of the May meetings have been amended, and those amendments have been handed out. They're on the DS tonight. I think they were sent earlier, too, I believe.

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So we should be able to pass the consent agenda as amended

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With that

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Understanding

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Perfect. I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the items on the consent agenda as amended and that the motions in the staff reports be included in the minutes for the record.

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I second

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Okay

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Any discussion?

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Alright, been moved and seconded. This will take a roll call vote on. Kathy. Member Hollingsworth.

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Yes

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Member Hefner. Yes. And Member Gibson? Yes and Member Stromberg is trying to log on.

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Okay

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You said, Member Stromberg was trying. Is that going to the minutes he's trying?

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Not quite what I meant, but anyway.

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Okay, motion passed 3 to 0. That takes us to item 7 B. Discussion and possible action on one year rate increase for gas services.

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It's page 79 of our agenda doc.

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And

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We will. Chair Gibson, we have other items for B, C, and D.

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Pardon? 4 B, C, and D are still on the agenda.

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I'm sorry about that.

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Well, that's fine.

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Thanks for trying to keep us honest.

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Okay, Joanne

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Good evening, Chair and members of our board

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On the June 9th Council meeting, they had asked us they did not pass our ordinance 02379, and asked us to come back with a one year ordinance for gas. And sorry, my presentation has the wrong one. We had to change the ordinance number, so it's actually 0238

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So this new one-year ordinance has a new ordinance number.

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So on the next slide

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So on this slide.

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We're kind of showing a few different things here. The green line is our net income, our loss, and this is going it starts when we July 1st, or how we ended June 30th of 25. At that time, our net loss was $489,267

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And then you can see how it kind of trends along through the rest of the year. And right now, we were able to get actual numbers through the end of May. We don't have our June totals, obviously. We haven't finished the month, so those are estimated

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And so it's looking with those numbers through May and ending June. Right now it's looking like our net loss will be about 760,000, to end the gas fund this year.

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So this next slide, I just kind of wanted to show where all of our expenditures land. Obviously, our cost of gas is a high amount of the expenditures, but the cost of gas is a pass-through rate. And then our next one is interfund charges. Those are the

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costs that we pay the general county for services like Hr. And finance and procurement and those kind of items. And then our next one is salaries

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For our GWS staff. And then we go to our professional and contractual services. And then we have our benefits and then we have a small portion of it goes to capital outlays. We don't have a lot of capital. This last year in gas, we did have Elk Ridge, which is which is coming in at about 200,000. I think our budget had 400,000, but it's coming in closer to about 200,000

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Our next slide is

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showing our 27 what's got 25, 26 with our 27 projections. And those are again based on our five-year average of 6.8 million therms sold.

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So you'll see the revenue is the blue, operating expenses, orange, greens cost of gas, capital is the blue, and revenue is the purple or pinkish color. And the green line that's down below is showing,

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Our net income or loss. And you'll notice in 25 and 26 again, we're at a loss of our net income. And you'll see that it's trending up in 27 with these proposed rates and that again is at if we do sell $6.8

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the arms of gas. As you know, this year was a little warmer, so we did not sell as much. We're gonna come in at about 5.6 million therms, potentially, by the end of this month

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And then this next slide

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So this one I showed, I believe it was in the last two presentations for gas, but we did add the New Mexico price of natural gas delivered, but this is for fiscal year. I mean, I'm sorry, calendar year 25. So this was the cost

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of gas across New Mexico for January through December of 2025. And

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So you'll notice that with the 50 therms and how it goes up through 150 therms. The line. And based on the calculation, they have it at Decatherm. It was broken down per therm

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At 70 therms, the average cost was $80.47, and which is about our average of therms sold to our residential customers, and if they

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Use 100 therms. The cost is averaging about $172.43 on their bill.

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So this is just, we just added that to kind of show the gas rates across New Mexico.

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So right now with our proposal of ordinance 02385, it has just the first year on

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The ordinance and it's it took out everything for the second year that we had proposed initially. That was really the only change we made from the 2 ordinances was removing fiscal year 28 charges.

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Or rates, I'm sorry.

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So I'm open to any questions.

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The board has. Thank you. Questions?

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Matt

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Thank you, Chair. I had two quick questions. One maybe on the slide before on slide four

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I just wanted to make sure I understood that the revenue is the only positive number on these bar charts. Is that true? And I guess my real question is, is the revenue transfer in or out of the gas fund? I can't remember. The the revenue transfer. Yeah, it's out. We do pay out of the gas fund. Okay, yeah, so everything else, the operating expenses, the cost, the capital expenditures. Those are all

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Negative, so ideally, the blue bar matches all the other bars. Right. Okay. Yes, perfect. Thank you. And then my other question was more of a meta question, which is, how did we get here? So I don't know if you want to take that, or Ren or Philo, but I just wanted to make sure I understood

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We had some public questions about

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the gas rate increase was voted down. Why is the board coming back with another one immediately? And I think the answer is because the Council asked us to. I think I heard you say that, but can you give a little bit more details of

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And we're back here doing this.

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Chair member Huevenner through the council discussion of the proposed rate increase there was the chair suggested that we come back with a one-year

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Increase, not 2. And see where we stand a year from now

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Okay, so I had mentioned, too, in the staff report the same night, Council had been considering some charter amendments and those may have an impact on how we project and set rates going forward for both electric and gas

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But we won't know the outcome until November's election, but that would give us time during our budget process in January through March to

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Make some proposals then

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Okay, perfect. Thanks, Father. Thank you. Thank you. That's everything I've got.

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Jen, did you have any questions?

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Yeah, actually on this chart, I had a question and sorry if I'm missing something. So these are always based on a certain number of therms sold that's indicated at the bottom here. And we are sexually selling recently less than that

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If you actually take into account a different projection based on closer to what we're actually selling at this moment, how does that impact these charts?

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Things get worse

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Chair, Councilor Hiesner. I mean, I'm sorry, Hollingsworth.

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So I did, it's not in here, but I did some, like, projections, and

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Right.

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I base some of my projections based on the actual sales that we projecting for this year to kind of see if we only get to this year, because it's 6.8 million, of course, is how we did our budget back in January, February, March, and got it approved by council. So I'm kind of sticking with that in some of the charts just so that it

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is consistent.

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But looking, I'm sorry.

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Well, I'm partly asking, you know, because

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We need to answer the question of why are we coming back right away with a request for a potential request for increase in gas rates for one year and beyond whether the Council is asking us to do that or not

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You know, I would assume you might want to make the case for financially, for financial responsibility, for the DPU, whether that's required

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Right? And so if the actual therm sold has a big impact on our solvency here, just yeah, that's kind of why I'm asking.

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Oh, okay. Yeah

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That might make the case for why one would need to pursue a rate increase, I guess is my question.

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You're right, yes, that is the reason. And if we do

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If we do not sell as many therms of gas next year, yeah, I mean, we remain in probably a deficit depending on how much we sell. Because, I mean, our costs

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We… there isn't a lot of changes in our costs. We did just pass the Cba, the agreement for gas, water, and sewers. So those new salaries are now included as well

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Moving forward, we didn't have those salaries back in January when we were creating the budget, so those… so some of those expenses will go up a little bit.

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But yeah, so yeah, you're right. We do need to explain that, but everything's kind of based on the 6.8 million therms that we're projecting for 27.

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Okay, yeah, and I mean, just because there's quite a bit of interest, right, in the communities, we do want to make sure that we're being as clear as possible as to what is going into these numbers.

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And on the next slide, we're comparing to other New Mexico communities

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Again, we should, I guess, make it clear, right, that we don't know what the other communities are planning to do with their rates, right? So

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You know, our trajectory here in purple

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Let's see… and I mean in the blue and red is including increases

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In the cost or in the rate, right? But we don't know what New Mexico gas

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company is going to do, or Zia, right?

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Correct, we don't

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Okay.

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And yeah, again, it would be nice to try to reach out to those folks and

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Maybe get a more realistic basis for the numbers we show for other New Mexico communities, because again

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I think that is something that our customers might be looking at is how we compare. And if we're showing flat rates for them

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you know. But yeah, that that could be

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a challenge to these numbers as well.

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Okay, thank you.

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Did you have any more questions or comments, Jen?

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I'm good at this time, thank you.

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Okay. Did Eric get online?

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Okay.

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Yeah, I did. Thank you, Chair Gibson. I mean, on the fence on this one. Okay, so whatever our increase was, I don't remember if it was 27%, whatever it was, but I mean, we're obviously not taking in as much revenue

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As we are expending, and so we can't keep that up. That is not sustainable, so

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Yeah, maybe, let's just say it was 27%. That's a whole lot. I think we need to come back with something like maybe 10%. I think it's a good idea, possibly to check with other communities as a sanity check, but

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Their realities, their dynamics are not the same as ours. So ultimately, what they do doesn't affect our finances, but maybe that

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It would make it more palatable for the public at large if all they all around us are they're doing 10%, well then, you know, okay, maybe we can get by 10%. That that gives us puts us in a little bit better position

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So, that's my thoughts

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Thank you.

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Question, Joanne. On this chart that we're looking at right now.

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The purple line there says NM price of natural gas delivered calendar year 25

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What

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What is that? I mean, is that for all of New Mexico? Is that some particular company? What is that particular line from?

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It is from, let me pull that up. Chair, it's all of New Mexico.

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So every natural gas supplier averaged out. Oh, okay. All right. Is what

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the cost is, okay? That's helpful. And I got that from American Public Gas Association. It's an index cost price. They do it for every state, but they don't do a national average

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Okay, so basically the purple line shows we're pretty close in alignment with statewide or even underneath it. Average, yes. Because this was a calendar year 25

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And we're looking here at our Fy 26 and Fy 27. So if you if that purple line where Fy 26 or Fy 27, it'd be higher than where it is.

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Presumably, yes. Presumably. Suggesting that we're actually underneath the statewide average.

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I would like to comment

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on something that Eric just said, because I think it's

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I think it's our fault for

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putting out something that is easy to misinterpret, and that is that very high number for a percentage rate increase, 27 or whatever it is

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But that's only the revenue to the county in the, you know, the, from the service charge and the fixed costs. That does not take into account… that's not what the customer sees.

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Because the customer also sees the cost of gas, which is passed through.

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So if you take that out and look at what the customer sees, it's a good deal less lower percentage than that. But because it's there

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You know, it was there when it was… when this was first presented in February. It was pointed out at that point that that was something that could be misleading, and I think a lot of people have continued to be misled by that. It's not that much of

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That large an increase. It's still a substantial increase, but it's not as large an increase as that 27 or whatever percent number that we have.

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So that that's, I think, our fault for

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presenting it that way originally and not really correcting it.

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Question

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little bit of how we got here

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Do I if I remember correctly.

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I think it was last year, or maybe the year before

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We had to add I think it was three employees

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for compliance purposes in gas, is that correct?

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I'll let Clay answer that. I'm not sure about his staffing.

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So we didn't add any more to the overall gas, water, sewer. Well, we added a supervisor. We added a supervisor, right? So that did, yeah, so we did add so the supervisor had to come in, take over management of the gas system, and that did open up one spot

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that we needed to fill, so we did add one person. So it was one, okay. Yeah. But what it did do was, it's kind of a long story. So, in the past, the gas system's in good shape. There are some challenges with it

00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:31.000
Because it's a regulated utility, there are some things that we have to keep doing now that we probably didn't do to the level that it was required before. So we've had to dedicate a solid crew of our senior pipe fitters to do these procedures because that's required. And what we would do is we'd have a water line break or a sewer backup or something

00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:48.000
We'd call those guys off the gas system because there was never an emergency on the gas system, but we no longer can do that. They have to stay on it no matter what. So if you were to look at the time allocation for those senior pipe fitters, you would see them being spread among

00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:55.000
amongst the other utilities, but now it's just dedicated to gas.

00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:03.000
Which means that they're not working for the other utilities. That's correct. So in effect, we've had an increase in

00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:06.000
the number on gas and

00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:23.000
to look at it, maybe an easier way than hours charged to gas. That's correct. Yeah, so there's more the salaries being that's being pulled by the gas system has increased quite a bit because we kept getting these findings and

00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:38.000
near violations from the PRC. And so basically we were put on notice that no longer can we skip certain OQ procedures during the year. We have to do these things no matter what. So

00:27:38.000 --> 00:28:00.000
One of the issues is we have, you know, we sort of inherit, we bought the gas system from PNM in White Rock, and it's steel. And so there's a lot of O&M on that steel because it does not have a like a rectifier that induces a current in it. So we have to do all of this electrochemical

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:18.000
cathodic protection work, and it's just never-ending. We're constantly having to check the potential between the soil and the pipe and fix these cathodic protection problems. And so that's just a… it's just a lot of work and maintenance

00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:35.000
We don't really have a lot of capital projects that we need to do anymore. We've done all of those in the past. Now it's going to be little pockets of things that we need to do, but the O&M on it is going to be this way for the duration that we

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:38.000
own and maintain it.

00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:42.000
Okay.

00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:44.000
How many

00:28:44.000 --> 00:29:02.000
FTEs, do you have in gas? I mean, I know it's easy to look up GWS in total, but how many of those are gas? Yeah, that's a good question. So we will always have at least two crews, if not three, doing certain things to it so that each crew has two

00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:19.000
It's a primary and a secondary, so we have between 4 and 6 people working on it. And like I said, all of them have to have their each two-person crew has to have one of the senior pipe fitters that has the gas fitter

00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:28.000
And that's one of the issues. So it takes up one of our senior pipe fitters for each one of those crews

00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:36.000
pipefitter or senior pipefitter. Okay, thank you.

00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:41.000
Okay,

00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:42.000
Sure.

00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:51.000
Can I just do a quick follow up or just… Yeah, just timeline. Clay. Approximately what year did we have to

00:29:51.000 --> 00:30:05.000
you know, to promise the dedicated senior pipe fitters for gas. And approximately when did the White Rock issue with lots of the enhanced O&M work kind of come into play I'm just

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:06.000
Just get

00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:22.000
So those are good questions, Member Hollingsworth. So we've always had this issue with the cathodic protection in White Rock, but what happened is, you know, the regulations, I keep going back to the analogy that it's like

00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:39.000
owning a nuclear facility, you know, it's overseen by the pipeline hazardous… I mean, the regulations come from the dot. The division is the pipeline and hazardous Material Safety Administration. So though there there's a whole bunch of codified

00:30:39.000 --> 00:31:09.000
rules that have to be enforced by our local enforcement agency, which is the Public Regulation Commission, so they have a special pipeline Safety Bureau, and so they come in and they review everything that you do, all of your records, everything. So

00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:12.000
Yeah.

00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:13.000
what they saw, since we have all of these other blended utilities in this department, was that we kept pulling people off of necessary. So it's not like we're just in the business of gas. We offer gas, water, and sewer. And so we have 22

00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:31.000
gas, water, sewer, pipe fitters, you know, the crews that run the gas, water, and sewer. Any given day, we have 2 to 4 people off, and so that you start to diminish how many people you have working, right? So, but never can we not

00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:42.000
do our gas O&Ms. And so, no matter what, we're doing that as a primary thing, because we're going to be in violation. So, the

00:31:42.000 --> 00:32:01.000
The issue with White Rock is just a good example of something that we had perhaps I don't want to say neglected, but we didn't put enough emphasis on it, and it was one of the big findings that the PRC kept hitting us with, that we had low

00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:16.000
CP values, the cathodic protection values. So no matter what, we have to start doing this work, and it's time consuming, and it takes these people who have the certifications to do it. Another thing is, we have kind of a

00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:32.000
It's a really interesting and robust system, but we have a 100-pound sort of transmission system that goes through the town site area, and then we drop the pressure to

00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:48.000
To a more safe 20-pound system, so it's a cool design, and it's safe and everything, but it creates more work for us and more O&M, because we have all of these PRV stations in town, or

00:32:48.000 --> 00:33:09.000
regulation stations are kind of different than a peer, but those have a lot of maintenance procedures that that are required, and they go through the the book. Okay, here's the date. Let's go look at these, and did you perform all of the things? If they see any rust, if they see that you didn't perform the test procedures or anything, so the guys have to do it and

00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:26.000
Yeah, so I think we really, the audit lasted for like it was over a year between 20 and 21 And so it took a year for this big report to come out. And then by FY23, I think is when I came to

00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:44.000
BPU to explain the situation, and we had to bring in a dedicated supervisor and completely overhaul our O&M plan for the gas system

00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:45.000
Okay.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:56.000
So I think it's been since FY 23 that we've been doing this and we've stayed in good stead with the PRC. They're happy with us now, but it was touch and go for about a year there. We were trying to stay out of violation, and they kind of put us on notice.

00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:59.000
Interesting, okay, now that helps. Thank you.

00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:00.000
Thanks, Clay.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.000
You bet.

00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:19.000
Any other questions from the board?

00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:22.000
The

00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:30.000
Since… I guess I'll go ahead and make a motion that's similar to the proposed to the recommended action, just phrased a little differently.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:46.000
I move that the Board of Public Utilities direct the utility manager to present a one-year gas services rate increase to the board on July 22

00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:51.000
2026

00:34:51.000 --> 00:35:03.000
Can we discuss the motion before we second or do we second within discussion? Okay, I'll second it. Okay. Moved and seconded. Now discussion is open. Why? Actually

00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:10.000
I ought to ask for public comment. So let's do that first.

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:13.000
Is there any public comment in chambers?

00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:17.000
Okay, I don't see any. Is there any online?

00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:23.000
Any members of the public watching on Zoom, please raise your hand now if you'd like to make public comment. Chair Gibson, there is one.

00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:26.000
Okay, let's hear that one.

00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:33.000
I do apologize. Lynell Brody, you may now unmute yourself to speak. You have 3 minutes. Please state your name for the record.

00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:39.000
Great. My name is Linelle Broad. I'm a resident in the western area. So

00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:48.000
We get this one year tax rate increase. What is the purpose of just doing a one-year increase?

00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:59.000
And what would be the intent of that increase in the year?

00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:00.000
Okay.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:05.000
We're listening to comment right now, not opening a discussion during public comment. And we do have your email or your

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.000
community feedback forum, by the way, I was going to bring that up if you didn't comment.

00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:13.000
Great, thank you.

00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:16.000
So go ahead and continue with your comment.

00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:20.000
Yeah, so

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:35.000
Without asking without discussion, I do have some concerns with you know our citizens being able to afford yet another utility increase at this stage considering the electric increase that's happening in July

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:43.000
And we'll be… everybody will be seeing a rate increase, a utility bill increase. So has the board considered

00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:57.000
the financial impacts to our residents to handle… be able to handle or absorb to rate increases in short order.

00:36:57.000 --> 00:36:58.000
Sorry.

00:36:58.000 --> 00:36:59.000
Again, you're asking questions that we just need comment at this point.

00:36:59.000 --> 00:37:02.000
Yeah.

00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:05.000
Yeah

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:07.000
Yep.

00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:23.000
I guess my comment would be to that I'm concerned about the community's ability to handle multiple rate increases to their utility bills this year and that the board consider spacing those rate increases out

00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:31.000
A bit further to allow citizens to adjust their finances accordingly.

00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:33.000
Okay?

00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:34.000
Is that the extent of your comment?

00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:35.000
Yes.

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:41.000
Okay, thank you. And like I said, we do have your comment in written form also.

00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:44.000
Is there any other public comment?

00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:47.000
Anyone else wishing to make public comment?

00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:49.000
No, Chair Gibson. Thank you.

00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:57.000
Okay, now it's open for board discussion. Matt. Perfect. I guess my main question was just

00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:10.000
The purpose of the motion is to bring the full ordinance back to us. I just wanted to make sure I understood that. Thanks. Yeah, for that'll be the formal public hearing. Perfect.

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:12.000
Is there any other

00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:16.000
Questions or comment here

00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:18.000
Her board discussion.

00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:33.000
Mr. Chair, just for clarification, because the current language of the proposed ordinance is not a one year increase. It's an increase to take effect in August on August 31st of 2026 that would

00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:46.000
As it reads be a long-term permanent increase until the ordinance is amended again. So are you requesting that it be redrafted and brought back as a one year

00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:51.000
Increase. No, not at all. That it be

00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:57.000
Because as was explained earlier, what was originally proposed is a two-step increase

00:38:57.000 --> 00:39:02.000
And this would make it a one step, just the first step of that.

00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:06.000
So it's a single

00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:09.000
You know, one increase

00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:21.000
So you're suggesting, and maybe I see how you got a problem with the motion.

00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:24.000
Let's see here. How can we change that?

00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:28.000
Good point. Thank you.

00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.000
So I think

00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:37.000
Ms. Brody, in her written comments asked

00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:50.000
If approved, how would the board guarantee to residents that the rate increase will end after one year? And it was… it was not and is not intended to end after one year. It's a… it's a step increase

00:39:50.000 --> 00:40:05.000
That would then go on permanently.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.000
Well, since we've got the ordinance drafted here.

00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:13.000
I think we could just say present

00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:23.000
Lac guest ordinance 82-385 on blah blah date

00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:27.000
I think gets rid of it. So I will

00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:32.000
With the board's permission, do a friendly amendment to my own motion. Perfect.

00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:45.000
And move that the Board of Public Utilities direct the county manager to present Lac. Code Ordinance 02-385 to the board on July 22, 202

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:54.000
And I just wanted to, you said council or county manager, you mean utility manager? I'm sorry. I apologize. Try it one more time. Another friendlier amendment.

00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:58.000
I gotta let you guys make the motions. I can't do this straight

00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:03.000
You aren't going to object. Okay.

00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:19.000
We'll try again. I move that the Board of Public Utilities direct the utility manager to present Lac. Code Ordinance 02-385 to the board on July 22nd, 2026. I'll second that. Okay, thank you.

00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:25.000
Thanks for straightening me out here.

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:30.000
Is there any other board discussion?

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:32.000
Chair Gibson

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:33.000
Sure, go ahead.

00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:39.000
I don't have that ordinance in front of me. Can you give me the gist of what it says?

00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:53.000
It is exactly the same as the ordinance that we proposed before, except it only has one increase in it. It doesn't have the second year's increase in it at all.

00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:56.000
You mentioned something

00:41:56.000 --> 00:42:11.000
Which I think is very important, and that is the fact that 27% was only one of the components of the gas increase, so I guess I was kind of expecting that the motion would be for the staff to

00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:18.000
Come back with a actual percentage based on

00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:22.000
typical usage, is that something that can be done

00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:23.000
Or is that independence

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:35.000
I would hope that that's in the presentation. It actually has been in the presentations all along with what the effect on a given household is and you can work percentages from that.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:42.000
So that's nothing new. But presumably that will be

00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:49.000
I hope highlighted when it comes back the next time to help it be more easily understood by everyone.

00:42:49.000 --> 00:43:06.000
Yeah, okay, because there's a part of discussion, if it is clear that that is in the ordinance, then I will vote yes, but if it's that's not in the ordinance, then I'll vote no.

00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:13.000
Well, the ordinance does not give a percentage increase. It gives amounts

00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:22.000
amount for service charge amount for what do we call it fixed charge or

00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:27.000
Gas consumption charge. Consumption charge. Thank you.

00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:42.000
It does not give a percentage increase as such. And then, of course, the total… the percentage increase that a given customer sees will depend on the cost of gas, which is a pass-through that's not in the ordinance.

00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:44.000
not affected by the ordinance

00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:55.000
Yes, of course, but the… okay, so when they present that, if we vote yes on this and they present that to us, then we can have those discussions at that point, I'm supposing.

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:56.000
You sure can.

00:43:56.000 --> 00:43:59.000
Okay, thank you very much.

00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:02.000
Thank you.

00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:06.000
Any other board discussion?

00:44:06.000 --> 00:44:09.000
Okay, seeing none.

00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:13.000
Kathy, would you please call the roll?

00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:15.000
Member Hollingsworth?

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:16.000
Yes

00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:17.000
Member Stromberg.

00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:18.000
Yes.

00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:23.000
Member Hefner. Yes. And Member Gibson. Yes. Thank you.

00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:33.000
Motion passes 4 to 0.

00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:38.000
Okay, that takes us to

00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:42.000
A discussion item, electric distribution undergrounding.

00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:47.000
Dennis.

00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:58.000
It's much better to be here presenting this than the Sadie figures. But you'll have your chance on that later. I thought I might.

00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:04.000
This is a high level overview of what it would take

00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:14.000
My end cost and some of the hurdles to bury all of our overhead power line in Los Alamos County. Didn't look at

00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:24.000
individual properties and say, well, we've got to cut a driveway here, we've got to tear down a shed in the backyard to get under there

00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:27.000
None of that was done. This is just

00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:30.000
using averages based on

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:37.000
The bid that we got to do the Piedra Loop project in White Rock

00:45:37.000 --> 00:45:39.000
And then

00:45:39.000 --> 00:45:45.000
Well, what would it probably costs to do something internally as an add-on because

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:55.000
I thought it was extremely expensive to do any undergrounding in this county after seeing the last 2 bids.

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:57.000
So

00:45:57.000 --> 00:46:07.000
We'll move on to the next slide. And in the electrification study. I didn't want you to forget that we've already got a lot of really old stuff out there.

00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:11.000
That we would like to continue replacing

00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:19.000
And this still probably needs to continue moving forward, even if we underground the existing overhead

00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:21.000
Power lines.

00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:25.000
So

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:27.000
Yeah, let's go to the next slide.

00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:31.000
But let's look at some of the benefits of having the underground power lines.

00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:38.000
It just looks nicer. The neighborhood I live in. It's underground, looks very nice.

00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:44.000
And underground cables don't get hit by lightning so easily.

00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:48.000
And we don't have pole fires if there's no pole.

00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.000
Which we've had two of in the last couple of months.

00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:57.000
So you're less likely to have a tree get into your underground cabling

00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:01.000
We don't have to trim trees

00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:15.000
Some of those tree trimming contracts can be 25 to $100,000 a year. Hopefully it'll go down when we bury the lineup Camp May Road to the

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:17.000
Ski Hill

00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:25.000
We don't have to do a pole inspection. That is a savings. Last time I did it, it was $25 per pole and we do

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:28.000
A pole inspection about every 10 years.

00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:36.000
On a complete cycle, and that includes treatment of the pole to prevent it from rotting any further

00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:41.000
And some of the disadvantages. It costs a lot more to bury

00:47:41.000 --> 00:47:54.000
The cable because the cable itself is much more expensive, it's got to have insulation on it that we use polymer or porcelain insulators on the pull top

00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:59.000
When there is a failure, it can be a bit more difficult to locate

00:47:59.000 --> 00:48:15.000
I was out on the locate of the problem on May 8th, and it was a lot of trial and error because we thought certainly there's a broken cross arm or a tree on the line. So we patrolled all the overhead line in the area

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:16.000
Didn't find it

00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:18.000
And

00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:21.000
So they opened up a switch

00:48:21.000 --> 00:48:27.000
closed in, and it held, then we went and started working our way down

00:48:27.000 --> 00:48:39.000
And eventually isolated what section of cable it was, but it takes a while. On overhead, it's very visible, usually, and easier to locate

00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:50.000
It does help if we have fault indicators on our switches and transformers to say, I saw a significant increase in current

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:56.000
instantaneously, and it'll have a light that glows and says it's down line of this point

00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:03.000
We have some equipment like that out there, and we can add that and that would help

00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:04.000
Isolate

00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:15.000
where the faults are. At least give us an idea of where to go looking. And we're probably going to have to do that as we add more and more underground and upgrade our system.

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:17.000
But then

00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:23.000
You either have to pull it out of conduit to repair it or replace it, or dig it up

00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:24.000
And

00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:40.000
Hopefully we have a loop and we can isolate it and go back and dig it up the next day. And we definitely have a lot of loops. They've done very well on the design, and we make that a requirement

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:41.000
Head

00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:50.000
developer say, this is how we would like to have our housing development built. And we looked at it, and everything was radial.

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:57.000
And we went back and said, no, we recommend that this layout be considered, because we do want a loop

00:49:57.000 --> 00:50:04.000
And last thing we wanted was 70 or 80 homes sitting there looking at

00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:09.000
Our guys out there digging up their front yard trying to repair an underground vault one day

00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:17.000
When we can say we can loop it back to here and open it up and do it the next day

00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:18.000
So

00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:20.000
And then

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:31.000
Excavation for installation and repair, it can upset some people when they have a very small front yard and we tear it all to pieces digging in conduit

00:50:31.000 --> 00:50:33.000
But that's

00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:37.000
One of the disadvantages of having it

00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:47.000
And if you want to make a modification, it's a little more difficult to accomplish if it's buried.

00:50:47.000 --> 00:50:48.000
But

00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:50.000
in White Rock

00:50:50.000 --> 00:51:01.000
The computer model that we have told me we have 25 and a half miles of overhead power line. With 8.8 miles being single phase

00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:05.000
16.7 miles being multi-phase

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:13.000
And it identified 325 overhead secondary services.

00:51:13.000 --> 00:51:18.000
So this is a pretty close approximation. It may not be exactly accurate

00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:23.000
But this is what we show in our analysis model. So it's

00:51:23.000 --> 00:51:24.000
Close enough

00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:27.000
for this purpose

00:51:27.000 --> 00:51:30.000
And then here in Los Alamos town site

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.000
Almost 45 miles of overhead power line

00:51:34.000 --> 00:51:50.000
17.1 single phase, 27.7 multi-phase, and quite a few overhead services, about 1647 is what we show in the model

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:55.000
So Bixby Electric was the low bid

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.000
on the Piedra Loop project that's about to kick off

00:51:59.000 --> 00:52:02.000
In their bed, they

00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:09.000
Want to charge us $98,100. Just to mobilize to start work.

00:52:09.000 --> 00:52:15.000
Their trenching is $21 a foot. If they do not hit rock

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:18.000
It's additional if they hit rock.

00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:22.000
They're charging us $13.80 a foot for 4 inch conduit

00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:26.000
It's single phase, so we're using 4 instead of 6 inch

00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:33.000
If they hit rock, it's $56.60 additional cost per foot

00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:38.000
We did do 10 soil tests along the line

00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:39.000
And

00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:44.000
We have very small chance of hitting rock

00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:47.000
On this project, which

00:52:47.000 --> 00:52:53.000
made me feel very comfortable until I saw this bid come in, and it's like, wow

00:52:53.000 --> 00:52:57.000
But I was under the impression that

00:52:57.000 --> 00:52:59.000
If you dig in White Rock

00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:01.000
You're going to hit White Rock

00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:07.000
And this is probably the best place to have to bury

00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:09.000
cable in White Rock

00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:23.000
So, but this is only installation of conduit. It does not include the conductor or the installation of the conductor or the changing out of leaky transformers. Our crews internally will be doing that after

00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:28.000
Bixby lays the conduit for us

00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:30.000
So

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:33.000
If we took that cost

00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:37.000
and assumed no rock

00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:46.000
It would be 617,760 per mile to install conduit.

00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:50.000
An additional almost 300,000 if they hit rock.

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.000
And Bixby says, yeah, they can continue working at that rate.

00:53:54.000 --> 00:53:59.000
The conductor is about $21,000 a mile

00:53:59.000 --> 00:54:00.000
to

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:05.000
Install it or no to just purchase it on the reel.

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:07.000
the transformers

00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:16.000
3,230, I think is the cost per transformer. And that was verified again today.

00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:21.000
So that's a realistic number of about 75,000 to replace the overhead transformers

00:54:21.000 --> 00:54:25.000
if we added 23 per mile

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:32.000
The labor to install the conductor would cost about $20,000 per mile with our crew

00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:37.000
The labor to install 23 transformers. They weigh

00:54:37.000 --> 00:54:40.000
About 1,500 pounds apiece

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.000
About $50,000

00:54:44.000 --> 00:54:49.000
And then the labor to retire the overhead line

00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:58.000
I guesstimated about $15,000 to go pull down the conductor off the pole and pull the pole out

00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:01.000
That's assuming we could get

00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:08.000
cable and telephone off of it. Otherwise just cut it off above the communications and leave it for them

00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:16.000
But this does not include cutting people's concrete driveways to put in conduit in their front yard

00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:19.000
or sidewalk repair

00:55:19.000 --> 00:55:25.000
As we work along the edge of the roadways. This is strictly

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:31.000
assuming Piedra Loup, where you have gravel driveways, and you just move along and go back and patch it.

00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:34.000
with base course

00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:36.000
So

00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:39.000
And town site

00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:46.000
I figure if they can work in White Rock at that rate, they can probably work in Los Alamos at that rate

00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:49.000
So, approximately the same cost

00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.000
Per mile

00:55:52.000 --> 00:55:56.000
It's about the same number of transformers per mile.

00:55:56.000 --> 00:56:03.000
And once again, does not include driveway or sidewalk repair.

00:56:03.000 --> 00:56:08.000
So secondary, that is the thing that bothers me the most.

00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:16.000
We have quite a few almost secondary overhead service drops to homes.

00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:31.000
And in the electrification study, they specifically spell out in one of the presentations to County Council 3,000 to 20,000 or more is the cost. But when we talked with them

00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:39.000
I got the $10,000 cost, but I couldn't find it documented in the presentations. So

00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:43.000
I use the 8,000 for my calculations

00:56:43.000 --> 00:56:45.000
But

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:48.000
When we talk to Burns and McDonald

00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:54.000
They said probably 6 to 10,000 would be the average cost. Some would require more.

00:56:54.000 --> 00:56:57.000
If you're having to go

00:56:57.000 --> 00:57:07.000
From the front yard to the backyard and have a really old service with number two and it needs to be for all kinds of stuff.

00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:12.000
But in some cases, a total electrical upgrade

00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:19.000
Would be necessary. And from what I've seen around Los Alamos and White Rock.

00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:26.000
There's quite a few of those that would definitely need a major upgrade. But the question is, who will pay

00:57:26.000 --> 00:57:28.000
And that comes down to a

00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:32.000
a legal determination, probably as much as anything.

00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:38.000
Because of anti-donation.

00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:41.000
So

00:57:41.000 --> 00:57:47.000
Here's a couple of examples of overhead and underground secondary that I picked up

00:57:47.000 --> 00:57:49.000
And

00:57:49.000 --> 00:57:53.000
The one on the left is a very

00:57:53.000 --> 00:57:56.000
typical 200 amp meter

00:57:56.000 --> 00:58:12.000
base and breaker panel underneath it probably something that would be considered perfectly acceptable, except it goes out through the top of the roof and overhead to a pole.

00:58:12.000 --> 00:58:24.000
So there are some special cases like this one where you know it's going to require a lot of upgrade. There's no breaker panel with a main disconnect. There's no main disconnect switch

00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:36.000
This is probably something originally done when you had 1 light bulb in the middle of the room and this big round black switch on the wall like my grandmother's house had

00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:39.000
And

00:58:39.000 --> 00:58:42.000
Probably only have two conductors

00:58:42.000 --> 00:58:56.000
And two prongs on the receptacles around the house. I'm just guessing, based on… I grew up in homes more like this, and so, yeah, they probably would have quite a cost

00:58:56.000 --> 00:58:58.000
And so

00:58:58.000 --> 00:59:00.000
Right now

00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.000
If you ask them, they're probably saying, I have no problem with my electric service.

00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:14.000
But that would probably require a major upgrade just to make the changes to meet code nowadays.

00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:17.000
So

00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:20.000
If we take these costs

00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:23.000
And say White Rock would cost

00:59:23.000 --> 00:59:33.000
Almost 1.1 million if we didn't hit rock, which we know we will, to bury the conduit and the conductor

00:59:33.000 --> 00:59:40.000
2.6 million possibly at $8,000 each average for the secondary runs

00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:43.000
798,000

00:59:43.000 --> 00:59:47.000
$170 per mile for

00:59:47.000 --> 00:59:52.000
town site forgot what I had on White Rock that was more than town site

00:59:52.000 --> 01:00:07.000
And then 13 million, roughly for the secondaries in town site, because there's so many more

01:00:07.000 --> 01:00:13.000
So you take that cost per mile, multiply it by 25.5 on White Rock.

01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:16.000
And

01:00:16.000 --> 01:00:26.000
The 325 times $8,000 on the secondary and then town site coming in at just under 36 million

01:00:26.000 --> 01:00:45.000
total and $13 million for the secondary. It's going to be probably close to about $80 million plus any rock adder that we hit if we hired somebody like Bixby and they said, yeah, we can do it for that rate

01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:48.000
So

01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:51.000
There was question of, well.

01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:57.000
How much are the transformers for the pole top, which we're going to be replacing a bunch of

01:00:57.000 --> 01:01:03.000
As we do some maintenance because we have a lot of really, really old Delta 2 bushing

01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:06.000
Transformers with two fuses

01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:08.000
And some

01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:11.000
Secondary loops that

01:01:11.000 --> 01:01:19.000
Me are quite dangerous because you have multiple transformers serving this secondary run that runs a whole block

01:01:19.000 --> 01:01:24.000
And the fault current on the secondary can be extremely high

01:01:24.000 --> 01:01:26.000
When you have that kind of bus

01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:30.000
So we're going to be making them all radial

01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:32.000
off of a single transformer

01:01:32.000 --> 01:01:43.000
So but Paul talk transformers are a little cheaper. I actually thought they were about half this price, but no, this is a price I got today.

01:01:43.000 --> 01:01:50.000
And it's like, oh, yeah, that's cheaper than it was 3 years ago, but I thought it was a lot cheaper now. But

01:01:50.000 --> 01:01:54.000
No, they… they like to disappoint me.

01:01:54.000 --> 01:02:04.000
And another thing to consider. Say they really manicured their backyard in the service wire

01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:16.000
Is from the backyard and there's poles back there. Maybe it's on the other side of the fence where the yard is and quite as manicured. But if we were to underground it.

01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:19.000
Do we go on the street side

01:02:19.000 --> 01:02:24.000
And avoid backyards that might look like this because I saw some pretty nice ones

01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:27.000
In the last year and a half

01:02:27.000 --> 01:02:40.000
And if we go street side, well, most of the service entrances, if it's currently in the backyard, are in the back of the house. So now you got to run down the side and around the back to get to their meter.

01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:47.000
So that would add a little more cost and hassle, but it can be done

01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:55.000
But if we bury along the easement, do we trench or bore in backyards with fences, gardens, and sheds as obstacles

01:02:55.000 --> 01:02:58.000
I remember

01:02:58.000 --> 01:03:04.000
At my first distribution system, a guy wanted us to

01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:16.000
Put everything in the backyard along an easement. And I said, fine, but I want an alleyway, no fences. And he said, we'll make them put removable sections. I said

01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:21.000
They'll never agree to that, and they're still going to put stuff back there on top of our

01:03:21.000 --> 01:03:28.000
facilities if we don't have a dedicated wide open, accessible easement

01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:31.000
And we fought, he lost

01:03:31.000 --> 01:03:33.000
But

01:03:33.000 --> 01:03:41.000
it can happen that way, and we currently don't have any type of alleyways that I've seen in a lot of the community here

01:03:41.000 --> 01:03:45.000
And just makes it difficult to do.

01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:49.000
We do have a backyard unit, which I didn't have at that system

01:03:49.000 --> 01:03:50.000
But still

01:03:50.000 --> 01:04:00.000
getting it through some fences is difficult, especially if they don't have a gate, and they say, you gotta walk through my house to go read the meter in the backyard. Had that happened, too.

01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:02.000
But

01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:05.000
It just adds more difficulty.

01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:09.000
If we go in the backyards. Then

01:04:09.000 --> 01:04:14.000
Another concern I have is getting cooperation out of

01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:18.000
Comcast or any telephone utility

01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:20.000
They love to ignore us

01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:23.000
And then

01:04:23.000 --> 01:04:27.000
Could we get them to bury their service wires

01:04:27.000 --> 01:04:31.000
Since landline telephone is losing customers to mobile phones

01:04:31.000 --> 01:04:39.000
And then Comcast, would they agree to bury their service wires when so much video is shifting to streaming video

01:04:39.000 --> 01:04:51.000
And right now, I stream video from Verizon Wireless myself. And then Los Alamos County with Atomic Fibers going to be doing fiber to the premise.

01:04:51.000 --> 01:05:00.000
I can imagine both Lumen and Comcast are going to be losing some of their rate base and customers to Los Alamos County.

01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:02.000
Meaning

01:05:02.000 --> 01:05:07.000
Why would they want to do a whole lot of capital investment

01:05:07.000 --> 01:05:13.000
When they're likely to see less of a return on that investment.

01:05:13.000 --> 01:05:21.000
So that's a consideration that I think would make it difficult for them to want to work with us. And then the next slide, I believe

01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:26.000
demonstrates what happened after a fire. What is it, roughly 20 years ago

01:05:26.000 --> 01:05:31.000
26 now 26 now wow 2000

01:05:31.000 --> 01:05:33.000
You had a fire

01:05:33.000 --> 01:05:44.000
the electric facilities were buried. As you can see, the pad mount transformers, but the poles are still there for the communications companies that did not. And Steven Morris said

01:05:44.000 --> 01:05:49.000
We offered to give them the conduit if they would bury

01:05:49.000 --> 01:05:51.000
And they didn't

01:05:51.000 --> 01:05:55.000
So, are they more likely to do that now? That's something

01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:00.000
to consider, but I wanted to point out that they didn't do it back then

01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:03.000
And I don't see a lot of

01:06:03.000 --> 01:06:09.000
expectation on return on investment if they did it now

01:06:09.000 --> 01:06:11.000
So

01:06:11.000 --> 01:06:15.000
That's what I have on

01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:26.000
Undergrounding as a cost. But I did some evaluation and consideration. And I could be wrong on some of these assumptions, but the one on the right

01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:29.000
That's the kind of

01:06:29.000 --> 01:06:33.000
Rock saw that we used in Illinois

01:06:33.000 --> 01:06:39.000
to go through granite in the Galena territory to bury underground cable

01:06:39.000 --> 01:06:45.000
that we inherited from the investor-owned utility that was kind of like what we're facing around here. It was

01:06:45.000 --> 01:06:51.000
40, 50 years old failing and not in conduit we got to do something

01:06:51.000 --> 01:06:57.000
So we hired a contractor with one of those things to dig down four feet in granite

01:06:57.000 --> 01:07:00.000
To lay new conductor.

01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:09.000
On the left is something that appears to be more common now and more common, because I couldn't find one of those on the right to purchase new

01:07:09.000 --> 01:07:20.000
But yeah, there's some very expensive used ones out there. But on the left, it's more common nowadays and it goes on the end of an excavator.

01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:25.000
So suppose you wanted your own trenching crew.

01:07:25.000 --> 01:07:36.000
The excavator is about $200,000 to get one that can produce 28 gallons per minute at 300 Psi, which is what that rockhead requires.

01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:40.000
The rock head that I showed you is about 35,000

01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:44.000
The crew's going to need a vehicle to get around

01:07:44.000 --> 01:07:50.000
Town figured 120,000 to equip it with all the bins.

01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:53.000
And a foreman equipment operator

01:07:53.000 --> 01:07:55.000
And

01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:58.000
Two groundman crew members is what I estimated

01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:00.000
Probably it would take

01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:10.000
And with benefits, a four-person crew would cost us about $1,800 a day

01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:13.000
So I thought, well, okay

01:08:13.000 --> 01:08:18.000
You got sick leave, holidays, training, vacation

01:08:18.000 --> 01:08:28.000
So I added all that up, and I came up with, yeah, about 9 weeks of non-productive days per year total. A lot more than

01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:33.000
Gut said should be realistic, but that's what people cost us.

01:08:33.000 --> 01:08:41.000
And if we assume that we can lay 200 feet of conduit per day, which means trenching it, laying it, and back

01:08:41.000 --> 01:08:42.000
covering it

01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:45.000
single-phase cable

01:08:45.000 --> 01:08:53.000
About 500 feet of cable per day in the conduit

01:08:53.000 --> 01:08:55.000
Bixby

01:08:55.000 --> 01:08:57.000
We are

01:08:57.000 --> 01:09:04.000
Are estimating at this rate of production, 37 working days

01:09:04.000 --> 01:09:14.000
to do the job. Bixby bid $984,115. That was low bid

01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:17.000
High bid was $3.5 million

01:09:17.000 --> 01:09:27.000
And we thought 500,000 roughly was going to come in. And so I was quite disappointed even with low bid

01:09:27.000 --> 01:09:34.000
And glad to get it compared to the other 3 bids we got

01:09:34.000 --> 01:09:38.000
So I thought, well, let's just play this out

01:09:38.000 --> 01:09:46.000
How much is the material costing us? How much is the trenching costing us? How much would it cost us

01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:51.000
If we use those assumptions I just had on the previous slide

01:09:51.000 --> 01:09:55.000
But I looked at material cost

01:09:55.000 --> 01:09:56.000
And

01:09:56.000 --> 01:10:04.000
I thought, well, I could go with our warehouse, but if it's been in there for a long time, it's going to come in really cheap, and that's not fair

01:10:04.000 --> 01:10:13.000
So most of this stuff's available at Home Depot on the website. And I thought that's current today prices. And we can get it a little cheaper

01:10:13.000 --> 01:10:22.000
Or we need to stop buying it from where we're getting it, but this would give us a little higher extended cost internally

01:10:22.000 --> 01:10:25.000
The 3-inch PVCs 47 cents a foot

01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:29.000
Well, we're paying $10.90 a foot

01:10:29.000 --> 01:10:31.000
On this contract

01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:34.000
The three inch elbows

01:10:34.000 --> 01:10:39.000
$688.80, those are steel

01:10:39.000 --> 01:10:46.000
3885 is what I found. I mean, I thought, wow

01:10:46.000 --> 01:10:51.000
These guys are making a lot of money and that's on top of trenching

01:10:51.000 --> 01:10:53.000
Which is

01:10:53.000 --> 01:10:58.000
More than double what I think we could trench it for if we had our own equipment

01:10:58.000 --> 01:11:00.000
So

01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:17.000
This is just a comparison of us possibly doing it internally versus hiring Bixby to continue doing this type of work or another contractor at about the same rates.

01:11:17.000 --> 01:11:19.000
But

01:11:19.000 --> 01:11:24.000
I'm open to go back on any of these pages and give you my

01:11:24.000 --> 01:11:29.000
Explanation if it wasn't clear enough.

01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:41.000
I admit I'm a nerd. I sometimes think everybody should understand it like I do. Not everybody does. My wife is pretty good about telling me that

01:11:41.000 --> 01:11:45.000
But I have a son who understands everything I do because he does the same thing.

01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:49.000
And I just get spoiled

01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:54.000
But I'm open to further comments, questions

01:11:54.000 --> 01:12:04.000
Okay, thank you. I know this was a fair amount of work to put together, but we had to start someplace. Yes. Thanks for doing that.

01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:06.000
Comments, questions.

01:12:06.000 --> 01:12:19.000
Matt, we'll start with you. Sure. Thanks, Chair. Thank you very much. It's a lot to think about. So thanks for pulling it all together. You made a strong case to me that nothing should be undergrounded and we should buy you a trenching crew

01:12:19.000 --> 01:12:33.000
I think that's a little extreme, so I've got a couple… I think that crew needs to report the play, because they do more digging than we do. But we can work that out. He'll take them six months a year and I'll take them the other six.

01:12:33.000 --> 01:12:41.000
I've had a couple of questions to sort of probe my my extreme takeaways.

01:12:41.000 --> 01:12:51.000
For comparison, you told us in White Rock, there's 25 miles of overhead and in town site there's 45 miles. How much is undergrounded?

01:12:51.000 --> 01:13:06.000
Is it 50-50 underground and above ground or I think we're about 10% underground and 40% overhead, but I didn't, I can get that information. I was just curious for the forward to

01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:18.000
Yeah, that that would be helpful, just because my takeaway is nothing should be underground. Yeah, it may be… almost half is. It may be in the electrification study. Okay. But I don't recall specifically. I think it is, but

01:13:18.000 --> 01:13:23.000
I can't guarantee it. Okay, and then

01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:40.000
Oh, because I used to have to do this. So it's kind of, it's not really apples to apples because some of the long runs to get like out to the mesas and stuff, those are overhead. And so you get this disproportionate amount of

01:13:40.000 --> 01:13:56.000
of, you know, long run to get there, and then the smaller neighborhood areas, they undergrounded, like, back in the 80s and stuff. But yeah, there's this long run of overhead just to get there. Okay. The long runs aren't underground. Okay, but even with the long runs

01:13:56.000 --> 01:14:12.000
It's 4060. I mean, it's about half and half. It's not 10%. It's actually more still more overhead. Okay. Yeah, it's way more overhead because you have a lot of these long secondary runs to get to the homes and stuff, and

01:14:12.000 --> 01:14:15.000
And they

01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:30.000
The way it looks is just different when you have it overhead. You pretty much find the short path when it's underground, like overhead, you'll have a lot of daisy chaining and stuff like so it becomes more efficient when it's underground

01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:32.000
But it's

01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:47.000
It's not 50-50. Yeah, okay. I mean, think about just like the EA 4 line. I mean, that's miles of line that's overhead, and so you just don't have that with the underground. Yeah. Okay.

01:14:47.000 --> 01:14:56.000
Well, thanks. My next question was, you presented a total estimate cost if we wanted to underground everything of about $75 million. I think that was kind of the takeaway

01:14:56.000 --> 01:15:09.000
But I'm wondering, is there any way you can estimate what the long-term savings or benefits would be? Is it 100 years to make it worthwhile or 50? And there's some intangibles like aesthetics that you said were benefits.

01:15:09.000 --> 01:15:13.000
But you just gave us the cost case for it's really expensive

01:15:13.000 --> 01:15:17.000
But what's the benefit of doing it or

01:15:17.000 --> 01:15:23.000
I can't tell you how many hundreds of years it might cost

01:15:23.000 --> 01:15:32.000
or take to see the savings on maintenance. Besides this almost 80 million

01:15:32.000 --> 01:15:37.000
That's assuming no rock at her and the rock adder

01:15:37.000 --> 01:15:46.000
is going to come in real quick. That could easily double, I think, just based on rock.

01:15:46.000 --> 01:15:57.000
From what I have heard people complain about the cost of working in rock. And then when we did those polls for the tie line with flannel

01:15:57.000 --> 01:16:03.000
in White Rock at South Monterey

01:16:03.000 --> 01:16:14.000
I could see why Brad Parker had to go to the dentist while he was working on it because he was sitting on that machine, that backhoe pounding on that rock

01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:16.000
And

01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:21.000
I just… I would hate to try to guess how much that would add.

01:16:21.000 --> 01:16:28.000
Because I really I don't have a good feel for where the neighborhoods have shallow rock, deep rock

01:16:28.000 --> 01:16:32.000
I was anticipating it being

01:16:32.000 --> 01:16:40.000
3- or 4 foot deep in the White Rock substation. It's 30 feet. And now we're having to pay a fortune to put piers down to get to it.

01:16:40.000 --> 01:16:45.000
Or at least down the clay. So

01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:53.000
I'm tired of trying to make assumptions in my own head, but let's make assumptions and lie to you. I appreciate that.

01:16:53.000 --> 01:17:01.000
But I think that's one aspect we want to consider. We've got the cost. What is the benefit? Yeah. So

01:17:01.000 --> 01:17:07.000
Then my third question is, how much of the new development that's going on in the county is undergrounding?

01:17:07.000 --> 01:17:15.000
all of it, all of it. That's what I thought. So you've convinced me that it's not worth undergrounding anything. Is it just not worth retrofitting, or

01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:25.000
Help me understand. We make the developer bury the conduit for us. Right. And that's where you aren't seeing it as rate payers.

01:17:25.000 --> 01:17:31.000
the developer has to do it as part of their development project, and they're already doing it

01:17:31.000 --> 01:17:33.000
for James with

01:17:33.000 --> 01:17:39.000
water and sewer anyway. And so now they're saying, let's joint trench it.

01:17:39.000 --> 01:17:50.000
Which we don't have that benefit of spreading the cost among gas, water, sewer and electric if we do this.

01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:56.000
Okay, thanks. That's all the questions I have right now. And thanks again for putting this all together. It's a lot to think about. You're welcome.

01:17:56.000 --> 01:18:00.000
Thank you. Eric, you had questions.

01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:16.000
Yeah, thanks, man, Dennis, I tell you what, man, that's an awesome amount of work, and I appreciate it. So I noticed that you're mentioning galvanized 90s. Recommend, I recommend very, very highly that you use

01:18:16.000 --> 01:18:31.000
You do a look at RTRC, AKA fiberglass, but we can't say fiberglass because that's a trade name of the Corning company. So we have to say RTRC. There are lots of benefits, at least five that I can enumerate, but

01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:48.000
They would probably bore the rest of these people to tears, so let's not talk about it. We can talk about it offline. But Rtrc. I think you ought to look at very closely. You know, Matt talked about, you know, what is the cost benefit personal opinion here

01:18:48.000 --> 01:19:03.000
I don't think that there is any cost benefit whatsoever. We would do it just because we want to do it. The Sadie, you might as well quit tracking it because I think it would go through the roof

01:19:03.000 --> 01:19:19.000
Repairs would go through the roof, which I think the cost, which I think would swamp the tree trimming. I don't think that with the current environment of everyone asking about rate increases

01:19:19.000 --> 01:19:28.000
Why we would incur another however many million dollars cost this would be with

01:19:28.000 --> 01:19:37.000
Probably zero benefit. I don't think this is the right time, but I really want to thank you for your work and

01:19:37.000 --> 01:19:41.000
Ask you to consider RTRC. Thanks

01:19:41.000 --> 01:19:46.000
I do like the fiberglass. I brought that up internally in our group.

01:19:46.000 --> 01:19:49.000
And

01:19:49.000 --> 01:19:56.000
It wasn't very well received with the rest of the team, but I'm working on them

01:19:56.000 --> 01:20:08.000
Appreciate it. I'll talk to you. I'm out of town when I get back in town. I've got five benefits of RTRC that swamp any of the cost considerations. So I'll talk to you when I get back

01:20:08.000 --> 01:20:15.000
Okay.

01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:16.000
Well

01:20:16.000 --> 01:20:17.000
Okay? Jan, do you have any input here?

01:20:17.000 --> 01:20:34.000
I guess just a quick follow-up to one of Eric's comments there. So I'm talking about Mercedes and repairs going through the roof if we were to do this. I mean, it's not like we don't have any underground systems in our county, right? So we should have a pretty good sense of whether or not

01:20:34.000 --> 01:20:52.000
There would be because that suggests there's massive additional cost beyond this upfront cost if you were to do this. Dennis, do you really do you think that's true? I mean, I thought most folks were doing this to have some benefits with respect to reliability

01:20:52.000 --> 01:21:01.000
And yeah, it's, you know, against environmental factors and other issues.

01:21:01.000 --> 01:21:03.000
Can you clarify

01:21:03.000 --> 01:21:10.000
The operational costs and the risks associated with undergrounding.

01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:18.000
The reliability of underground cable nowadays compared to the cable that we're trying to replace

01:21:18.000 --> 01:21:21.000
is greatly improved.

01:21:21.000 --> 01:21:34.000
I was told early in my career, which has been a little bit extensive. Somebody and I were discussing how long we've been in this world doing this work today. And

01:21:34.000 --> 01:21:47.000
getting that conductor right in the middle of the insulation back in the 70s was not so easy. So, while you might have half an inch of insulation

01:21:47.000 --> 01:21:52.000
planned all the way through it. You might have

01:21:52.000 --> 01:22:02.000
3 quarters of an inch on one side and a quarter inch on the other. Somewhere down that cable and that's where your 1st failure is likely to come. Because the

01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:14.000
insulation level between the 75, 7,600 volt wire and the ground is not that thick. And as the age gets on there, the

01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:20.000
insulation value starts to go down, and that's where

01:22:20.000 --> 01:22:27.000
the short circuits happen like we had on the eighth day of May, but it just went to all three of them in that case

01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:29.000
But

01:22:29.000 --> 01:22:33.000
The cable's improved, I can't deny that.

01:22:33.000 --> 01:22:36.000
And how long will it last? I don't know

01:22:36.000 --> 01:22:38.000
But

01:22:38.000 --> 01:22:41.000
If you have overhead anywhere

01:22:41.000 --> 01:22:52.000
You have to have good lightning arresters where the underground cable takes off because in the 80s, I learned most of the underground cable failure

01:22:52.000 --> 01:23:03.000
on distribution line was due to lightning storms hitting the overhead line, and it traveled through to the underground cable

01:23:03.000 --> 01:23:07.000
And took it out. Now, if it were all underground

01:23:07.000 --> 01:23:14.000
All of our lightning problems would come from lantel, because we would have everything underground except EA4.

01:23:14.000 --> 01:23:16.000
because

01:23:16.000 --> 01:23:20.000
Golly gee, that's just bad enough overhead. Try to do that one underground

01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:21.000
Right.

01:23:21.000 --> 01:23:23.000
But Anguahe Canyon.

01:23:23.000 --> 01:23:27.000
So we would definitely separate them

01:23:27.000 --> 01:23:39.000
I don't know that we would have a lot of failures on anything other than maybe tree roots growing into and damaging the underground cable in the conduit.

01:23:39.000 --> 01:23:40.000
Okay.

01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:44.000
Or the conduit getting full of water and helping deteriorate the cable

01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:54.000
So

01:23:54.000 --> 01:23:55.000
Yeah, yeah.

01:23:55.000 --> 01:24:00.000
I think we'd be in good shape for a while, but we still got all of the existing old underground cable that we still need to focus on replacing anyway. And so we would still have those failures.

01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:14.000
Okay. Yeah, I'm just curious about the develop… the new developers doing new construction. They're eating the cost effectively, and they can do this more easily because they can joint trench

01:24:14.000 --> 01:24:16.000
For water, sewer, and gas right

01:24:16.000 --> 01:24:17.000
Correct.

01:24:17.000 --> 01:24:23.000
Okay, so… but even so, based on these estimates, it would seem that these would

01:24:23.000 --> 01:24:40.000
be viewed as rather significant burdens for the developer. Are they complaining at all about… I mean, are they… are they getting similar quotes and bids? Or are they doing… can they do things themselves?

01:24:40.000 --> 01:24:41.000
Yeah.

01:24:41.000 --> 01:24:46.000
I think they're doing it internally with their own construction crew. That's just a speculation.

01:24:46.000 --> 01:24:47.000
Yeah.

01:24:47.000 --> 01:24:49.000
However, I can't guarantee that

01:24:49.000 --> 01:24:50.000
Right.

01:24:50.000 --> 01:25:04.000
But no, they're not complaining, because everything in Los Alamos has what we've been calling internally the Los Alamos Adder anyway, and when I look at what they say they want to rent their properties for or sell them for, they're passing it on to the consumers

01:25:04.000 --> 01:25:18.000
Okay. All right. And last but not least, I received a call when I first joined the board. We had a discussion with utility folks from Taos

01:25:18.000 --> 01:25:24.000
And if I remember correctly, I believe they were talking about undergrounding a lot of their

01:25:24.000 --> 01:25:35.000
Capability. Do… do you know how other communities… I mean, we're not the only northern New Mexico community with lots of tuff and other rock to deal with

01:25:35.000 --> 01:25:41.000
Are other communities looking into doing this kind of

01:25:41.000 --> 01:25:50.000
you know, work, and are they facing similar high bids and so forth.

01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:51.000
Yeah.

01:25:51.000 --> 01:25:56.000
I was at Jimmez Mountains for approximately three years and we did not have significant rock issues anywhere in the service area.

01:25:56.000 --> 01:25:57.000
And

01:25:57.000 --> 01:26:01.000
Unfortunately, I know him as mountains did not want it in

01:26:01.000 --> 01:26:19.000
incur any capital cost. They had not for years. We did a lot of capital improvement while I was there, but undergrounding was not a topic of interest for us, even in town. In fact, they had cable failures when I got there

01:26:19.000 --> 01:26:33.000
And they had backfed around them and 10 years later they still hadn't repaired the cable. I actually had a contractor come in and replace some failed cable that had been going for up to 10 years dead

01:26:33.000 --> 01:26:34.000
Hmm

01:26:34.000 --> 01:26:39.000
They had no interest in undergrounding or any maintenance really.

01:26:39.000 --> 01:26:41.000
And Kit Carson

01:26:41.000 --> 01:26:42.000
Yeah.

01:26:42.000 --> 01:26:43.000
Intels

01:26:43.000 --> 01:26:46.000
Right.

01:26:46.000 --> 01:26:47.000
Okay.

01:26:47.000 --> 01:26:49.000
I don't know how much rock they have, but I know between

01:26:49.000 --> 01:26:55.000
Espinal are between Velarde and Taos. There's quite a bit of rock

01:26:55.000 --> 01:26:57.000
Through the canyons there

01:26:57.000 --> 01:27:09.000
But I don't know what it's like once you get up closer to Towson. I think it's mostly dirt, like we had in Espinola, but you guys probably know better than I do.

01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:11.000
Not necessarily. Okay.

01:27:11.000 --> 01:27:14.000
All right, thank you.

01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:20.000
Thank you, Jen.

01:27:20.000 --> 01:27:27.000
Fundamentally, it seems to me that the issue here is primarily aesthetics versus cost.

01:27:27.000 --> 01:27:31.000
And one would assume it's going to cost

01:27:31.000 --> 01:27:34.000
something more initially to put

01:27:34.000 --> 01:27:41.000
To replace overhead lines and put some underground. The question's kind of how much

01:27:41.000 --> 01:27:48.000
You seem to have given us kind of the cost to do underground lines.

01:27:48.000 --> 01:27:50.000
But that's not

01:27:50.000 --> 01:28:06.000
compared to overhead lines, we're going to be renewing a lot of overhead circuitry also, which means new poles, some new poles anyway, new conductors, which admittedly cost less for overhead cable than underground, transformers

01:28:06.000 --> 01:28:16.000
Look like they're very similar in cost. So really the question is

01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:25.000
is how do they compare not just the absolute cost of undergrounding, but how does it compare to the renewal work that we're going to be doing anyway?

01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:42.000
Over the next 20 or 30 years, this isn't something we would do immediately. And the reason the question comes up right now is we're looking at a long-term renewal, so if we ever are going to underground any part of the community, this would be the time to think about it and start planning it

01:28:42.000 --> 01:28:49.000
As part of the renewal that's going to be taking place anyway

01:28:49.000 --> 01:28:51.000
So

01:28:51.000 --> 01:28:58.000
I'm not sure that the cost estimates

01:28:58.000 --> 01:29:03.000
Really tell us what we need to know, how to compare one to the other.

01:29:03.000 --> 01:29:09.000
That's one concern I have

01:29:09.000 --> 01:29:18.000
Jen brought up the question of maintenance cost and it would seem I would agree with her. We've got a lot of experience with underground utilities

01:29:18.000 --> 01:29:34.000
underground electric and we've got experience with overhead. We ought to have we ought to be able to based on experience, figure out roughly what the differences in maintenance costs are. And of course, for overhead that also really includes

01:29:34.000 --> 01:29:44.000
tree trimming and things of that variety that you wouldn't have to do if you went underground.

01:29:44.000 --> 01:29:47.000
So that too is

01:29:47.000 --> 01:29:52.000
part of a, I think, a fair comparison if you're going to look long term

01:29:52.000 --> 01:30:07.000
This estimate, of course, it's a scary number naturally, although when you look over 20, 30, 40 years, it's not quite so bad on a per year basis. But I also suspect the numbers really higher than this if you did it

01:30:07.000 --> 01:30:11.000
If you did it as an absolute, not as a comparison

01:30:11.000 --> 01:30:14.000
But

01:30:14.000 --> 01:30:17.000
Because of the terrain, because of the rock

01:30:17.000 --> 01:30:23.000
There's probably areas that are easier to do, i.e. less expensive

01:30:23.000 --> 01:30:27.000
And others that are more difficult. So

01:30:27.000 --> 01:30:35.000
It's a good place to start. Say, oh, if we're going to do the whole county, this might be what the cost would be.

01:30:35.000 --> 01:30:37.000
But

01:30:37.000 --> 01:30:49.000
I would think that there's probably some low-hanging fruit where it would be considerably less expensive or easier to do, and other areas that are probably more difficult

01:30:49.000 --> 01:30:56.000
For instance, we there's some areas where the power lines, I think, are out closer to the street instead of through the backyards.

01:30:56.000 --> 01:31:04.000
So you don't have the going through the backyards issue and the

01:31:04.000 --> 01:31:15.000
the service panels in homes are on the front or the side someplace where they can be accessed from the front rather than the problem with them being in the back, which is

01:31:15.000 --> 01:31:23.000
a significant problem. I don't know how many how much of the town that has overhead lines

01:31:23.000 --> 01:31:30.000
Has easements in the front, and how many has easements in the back

01:31:30.000 --> 01:31:32.000
Those are

01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:47.000
That might be a difference in terms of what areas we might consider doing and others where it might not be practical or within reason to do, shall we say. So I'm really trying to figure out how to compare. So when we look at

01:31:47.000 --> 01:31:53.000
Renewal for any given area, or maybe for a large area, say

01:31:53.000 --> 01:32:00.000
Maybe it's practical to underground here, and maybe it's not practical to underground over there.

01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:04.000
This seems to be kind of a place to start

01:32:04.000 --> 01:32:08.000
But we need to look a little further

01:32:08.000 --> 01:32:09.000
to

01:32:09.000 --> 01:32:16.000
see what what we really could do if we really wanted to do it

01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:25.000
And I don't know if we want to do it. That's why we're asking the questions here. With respect to the communication services

01:32:25.000 --> 01:32:38.000
How long you may or may not know, how long are those agreements, the franchise agreements or whatever we have, how long do those run? I'm wondering if

01:32:38.000 --> 01:32:45.000
On the next renewal, we can't insist that they be put underground.

01:32:45.000 --> 01:32:54.000
I mean, I do remember what happened at Cerro Grande, where we put the electric underground and then thinking we were going to get rid of all the poles

01:32:54.000 --> 01:33:06.000
they insisted that we keep the poles there so they could put their lines on them, which was… seemed kind of dumb then, and still does. But and that's been, you know, more than a quarter of a century.

01:33:06.000 --> 01:33:20.000
Is there a way to over time, I'm not saying next year or five years from now, but over time, force those communications lines to go underground and get rid of the poles

01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:28.000
I think that's going to end up coming from your county and your legal counsel.

01:33:28.000 --> 01:33:40.000
I got in trouble when I was a manager in Ohio because all of us managers like to play attorney and Buckeye Powers attorney would chastise us at every manager's meeting about doing that. So

01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:58.000
I learned my lesson. Well, I'm throwing the question out for something to think about as we go forward. I don't necessarily… we obviously don't have all the answers tonight. Certainly. But, this is a place to start, and we appreciate that. I think we can

01:33:58.000 --> 01:34:06.000
I can give you the cost of replacing a pole right now on our make ready is about $3,500.

01:34:06.000 --> 01:34:13.000
That includes all of the effort to do it energized and such. So

01:34:13.000 --> 01:34:18.000
just figure 3,500 a pole is going to be a pretty good average price for a while.

01:34:18.000 --> 01:34:24.000
So that's 3,500 per pole, how much is that per mile?

01:34:24.000 --> 01:34:29.000
I used to allow 20 to 22 poles per mile

01:34:29.000 --> 01:34:34.000
So 70,000 roughly per mile to build

01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:35.000
Just

01:34:35.000 --> 01:34:44.000
a gut kickback there without the transformers. Those add a little cost, because we're going to be replacing a bunch of

01:34:44.000 --> 01:34:53.000
60-year-old transfer… I mean, these are before Lyndon Baines Johnson was in office, because they're black instead of gray

01:34:53.000 --> 01:34:55.000
So I know how old they are.

01:34:55.000 --> 01:34:59.000
Okay.

01:34:59.000 --> 01:35:01.000
Well

01:35:01.000 --> 01:35:10.000
Over a long period of time, we're going to be replacing a lot of poles. Yes, we are. And we're doing a lot of that now. The

01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:16.000
Maybe it makes sense to replace those with underground line. That's what we're trying to figure out or get a handle on here.

01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:19.000
at least in some parts of town.

01:35:19.000 --> 01:35:22.000
Okay.

01:35:22.000 --> 01:35:29.000
That's all I have for now, I think.

01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:40.000
Thanks for putting the numbers together and bringing up some of the other issues that we can't quantify very well yet. You're very welcome.

01:35:40.000 --> 01:35:46.000
I enjoy being here. Oh, before you leave, is anybody, any of the board have any other questions or comments

01:35:46.000 --> 01:35:51.000
Okay, thank you.

01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:57.000
Okay, that takes us

01:35:57.000 --> 01:36:08.000
Review of 10-year budget plan and reserve policies. Joanne.

01:36:08.000 --> 01:36:20.000
Good evening. We're going to go over the financial guidelines that were approved by the board back in August of 2016.

01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:28.000
So I kind of put a presentation together of what we have now and kind of look at what

01:36:28.000 --> 01:36:38.000
What it looks like, because I know we had questions during budget about all of this. So on the next slide. I broke down each of the reserve

01:36:38.000 --> 01:36:55.000
that were in the guidelines. So we have like our operation reserves. That's at 180 days of budget with a floor of 90 days. Our debt service reserves is required by our loan documents. Our retirement and reclamation reserve

01:36:55.000 --> 01:37:12.000
are per agreements, and I believe the only one we have right now is an electric production for the San Juan Generating Station. The capital expenditure reserves is the annual depreciation plus 2.5%. We have our rate stabilization reserve

01:37:12.000 --> 01:37:21.000
Which is a 10-year historical average cost per commodity times the 12-month average for our projected consumption

01:37:21.000 --> 01:37:34.000
And then we have our contingency we reserve, which is the single largest equipment that has a potential to fail. And that's set by our yearly DPU asset management team.

01:37:34.000 --> 01:37:53.000
So the next slide. So these are some of the loan requirements. And I spoke with Ms. Dazzi, our CFO of the county, and got some of these numbers and went through some of this with her on a high level discussion. So the New Mexico Finance Authority requires a debt coverage ratio of at least one

01:37:53.000 --> 01:38:11.000
The New Mexico Environment Department requires a debt coverage ratio of 1.2. And in our concurrent strategic goals, objective 2.3, we have our debt coverage ratio of 1.3 or greater. So that's what we try to meet every year

01:38:11.000 --> 01:38:13.000
When we're doing our budget.

01:38:13.000 --> 01:38:29.000
So the next two slides, I kind of went online. I did some research and I found some of the there's these two cities in Washington. Their populations are a little bit closer to ours than other ones that I found online. So

01:38:29.000 --> 01:38:45.000
I don't really know how to say this town, Issaquah, I'm guessing. Is it okay? They have a population of 39,200. I think we're about 20,000. And so they only do water, sewer, and stormwater. So they don't do everything like we do

01:38:45.000 --> 01:39:00.000
They had some reserve targets listed, and so they have capital plan reserve, and they use kind of their cip to do that on a 5 year. They do a debt coverage ratio. They do 1.5 of net revenues to the total debt service

01:39:00.000 --> 01:39:14.000
They said their operating reserves at 90 days of their operating expenses. Their debt service is the amount needed to pay their current and future debt, 125% or as bond covenants indicate.

01:39:14.000 --> 01:39:21.000
And then they have an emergency capital repair amount required to pay for any unanticipated capital costs.

01:39:21.000 --> 01:39:31.000
The next town is Bainbridge Island. So they had all these little towns in Washington. So this one is a little bit closer to us. They have about 25,000.

01:39:31.000 --> 01:39:41.000
Again, they do water, sewer, and then these two towns do storm and surface water. I'm not sure exactly what those are, but

01:39:41.000 --> 01:39:52.000
So they're also an enterprise fund like we are, and so they have a capital contingency reserve of 1% of their utility systems capital assets, net book value

01:39:52.000 --> 01:40:08.000
They have operating reserves for their water and sewer, and they do a minimum of 60 days of ongoing operations expense at year end. They provide cash for operations in case of seasonal variations in revenue or expenses.

01:40:08.000 --> 01:40:29.000
And then for their storm and surface water, they do a minimum of 90 days of operating expenses, and these fees, I guess, are due twice a year. So they have this range due to the fees being due. And then they have a restricted debt reserve, and so it's amount of their debt due similar to kind of what we do right now

01:40:29.000 --> 01:40:47.000
So moving on to this I put three charts for each of our sub funds. So chart number one is what was presented originally in our budget. So there was no changes. I just took it out from our budget book

01:40:47.000 --> 01:40:54.000
You might have noticed in the gas fund, it was at 90 days instead of 180 days where

01:40:54.000 --> 01:41:04.000
And that's because we took it to the budget with the 90 days. And that's also was approved by our financial

01:41:04.000 --> 01:41:20.000
Statement that's approved by our CFO. So I kept it that way. So you'll see that kind of variance in the gas from chart number 2, where most of them are at the 180 days, but gas, for some reason we took it at the 90 days. So I just left it that way

01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:40.000
And then chart number three. Oh, let me go. So chart number two has moving from 180 days to 90 day operating reserves and then setting the capital expenditure reserves to 180 days based on our 10-year average since we do a 10-year forecast

01:41:40.000 --> 01:42:02.000
And we kind of found that during our research, and we found that's kind of what the governance finance officers association, Gfoa has as an example of setting capital expenditure reserves. So we took that and then chart 3 has those 2 additional. There's 2 changes, and then a revised rate stabilization reserve

01:42:02.000 --> 01:42:17.000
at it at 20%. So in the charge they're presented the present the percentage is shown are how much of those reserves are part of our annual revenue just to kind of see

01:42:17.000 --> 01:42:22.000
So in the next slide shows our electric production.

01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:37.000
And so, in chart one the amount of the reserve is expected to be at 14.8 million. And that's looking at about 30% of

01:42:37.000 --> 01:42:39.000
Revenue

01:42:39.000 --> 01:42:53.000
And then chart two with the different changes moving from 180 days to 90 days in operation reserves and changing our capital expenditures, it drops the amount of our

01:42:53.000 --> 01:43:08.000
revenues to the amount that we would need to put in a reserve about 25% from the 30% that we're at now. And then in chart 3, again, changing operation reserves, capital expenditure reserves, and

01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:23.000
putting in a rate stabilization reserve at 20%. And that's our sales to electric distribution. That brings us to about 28% of our revenue per or for that one year. And so each year has a percentage.

01:43:23.000 --> 01:43:34.000
And if we go to electric distribution, it's the same idea that all of them are the same changes from the original

01:43:34.000 --> 01:43:47.000
And then in the gas, again, this is where in the chart one it's at 90 days. And in chart two it's 180 days. So it's just reversed because that's how we took it for the budget.

01:43:47.000 --> 01:43:52.000
And you'll notice in this one

01:43:52.000 --> 01:44:09.000
The 34% is where we're sitting now. The way we have the gas… our targets. In chart 2, adding some different capital, and 180 days, it takes us to 38% in Chart 3

01:44:09.000 --> 01:44:14.000
Adding the reserves brings us to 75% of our revenue.

01:44:14.000 --> 01:44:31.000
Water distribution. You'll notice in how we have it now. It's 67% of our revenue. And then these changes kind of drop it to about 49 to 41%.

01:44:31.000 --> 01:44:41.000
In water production, currently the way the reserves are set up, it's about 92% of our reserves to meet that reserve target.

01:44:41.000 --> 01:44:54.000
I'm sorry, 92% of our revenues to meet that reserve target and some of those changes kind of drop it down to 47% and then 67%.

01:44:54.000 --> 01:45:06.000
And then in wastewater, the reserve targets right now, the way they're set, it's looking at it's about 90% of our yearly revenue to meet those target

01:45:06.000 --> 01:45:23.000
I'm dropping from 180 to 90 days, it's taking it to 57%, and then adding, because this one did not have a rate stabilization reserve, by adding a rate stabilization reserve, it brings us up to 77

01:45:23.000 --> 01:45:40.000
So these were just ideas and examples to kind of show the different things that I found online with different other utilities looking through APPA. They didn't have anything specific to how to set cash reserves

01:45:40.000 --> 01:46:00.000
Just different… looking at different things, speaking with Miss Dad's our CFO. We talked about how the county brought up their reserves, I think, from 20 to 25%, and she'd mentioned that that's kind of they follow Gatsby 54 to set their

01:46:00.000 --> 01:46:02.000
Reserve targets

01:46:02.000 --> 01:46:18.000
I may be saying this a little incorrectly, but I believe that's what it is. And she mentioned that we don't necessarily have to follow GASB 54 because we're an enterprise fund. But that's how they set their reserve targets and stuff is through

01:46:18.000 --> 01:46:20.000
GASB

01:46:20.000 --> 01:46:24.000
So, I put questions, but I guess

01:46:24.000 --> 01:46:40.000
I'm just… I think we just wanted a discussion about this and and have you guys kind of give us suggestions, or I'm not really sure where to move on from this, but this is kind of my research the last couple of months trying to decide

01:46:40.000 --> 01:46:47.000
Show you some different counties, different cities, what they do. And what we found.

01:46:47.000 --> 01:46:51.000
Thank you, Joanne. You're welcome.

01:46:51.000 --> 01:46:56.000
Questions, comments

01:46:56.000 --> 01:47:13.000
Go ahead, Matt. Sure, I'll be happy to start us off. First, Joanne, thanks a lot. This is a lot to put together. And I think I follow it, but I'm not sure I understand it or know what to do with it. Yeah. And so I think there's a lot of knobs to tweak, and you've shown us three different cases. Right. And so

01:47:13.000 --> 01:47:30.000
I want to digest it and think through it some more, but you've thought through it a lot more. I mean, what… what's your conclusion? I wanted a conclusion slide. Well, okay, so this was set back in 2016, right? And I'm not sure… I wasn't in a position to know what our

01:47:30.000 --> 01:47:56.000
Cash was back then, and I don't know if it was assumed it was in a better position than some of our funds are now. I don't know that for a fact. But what I was noticing in speaking with Ms. Dadzy, some of these percentages that, you know, based on how our financial guidelines are for reserves right now, it's really high. It's kind of hard to meet. So I was trying to find a way that maybe we could

01:47:56.000 --> 01:48:14.000
Work at meeting those reserves. I mean, it's hard to put 90% of your revenues into a reserve account and probably why we haven't funded those in the last 10 years. That's my guess. I don't know. I've only been doing this for one year, but

01:48:14.000 --> 01:48:27.000
looking at it, I mean, you would think by now we would have, and I don't know. And I know that you have to fund each of the reserves like you have to fund operation reserves before you move on to the next one, because that's how it's

01:48:27.000 --> 01:48:33.000
Described in the reserves, and I also think there's

01:48:33.000 --> 01:48:44.000
a muni code about it, or I don't know, there's something in there that also. So yeah, I think some of them are just a little high, which is, you know, so I was trying to find a way to

01:48:44.000 --> 01:48:57.000
meet that reserve that we could have the money and be able to put money aside, and hopefully in 10 years get there. And so that's kind of what I saw

01:48:57.000 --> 01:49:15.000
That's helpful, because that's I had to say reserves are important. I understand that they cascade like you talked about. We have to fill some with with more priority. But yeah, when I see 90% of revenues going to reserves, that seems crazy. So I'm right. That's kind of where I'm like, I don't know how to meet that

01:49:15.000 --> 01:49:32.000
And meet all those different reserves. We need all of them for various different reasons and all the funds. We have things that break, and we don't have it in, you know, capital projects. So we need to find that money somewhere and get a pipe fixed, or you know whatever it is out in the field. So

01:49:32.000 --> 01:49:35.000
Yeah, and I guess

01:49:35.000 --> 01:49:39.000
One thing that I had trouble thinking through was each of

01:49:39.000 --> 01:49:52.000
Each of the utilities are so separate and some, you know, one knob tweak or what, you know, one of the different charts was great, and the other one, it totally threw that utility. It does, yeah.

01:49:52.000 --> 01:50:02.000
I don't know that we can split up how we manage reserves for each utility fund. I don't think we could do that. I guess we could do whatever we want. But it looks like

01:50:02.000 --> 01:50:21.000
it's complicated because you can't have a single knob fix all the reserves and everything. Yeah, it almost feels that way, too. Yeah, like, it's not a one kind of fits all kind of thing, but that's how it's set right now. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. It's a lot to look at. A lot of work to put together, so thank you.

01:50:21.000 --> 01:50:23.000
That's everything I have.

01:50:23.000 --> 01:50:24.000
Thank you.

01:50:24.000 --> 01:50:30.000
Jen, do you have any questions?

01:50:30.000 --> 01:50:41.000
Yeah, sorry, I had to finally unmute. Just a minor question. I did. So the operation reserve reserve for gas was

01:50:41.000 --> 01:50:50.000
I guess, currently set at 90, but everybody… everything else is set at 180. I sorry I missed why gas is the one that was different

01:50:50.000 --> 01:51:04.000
I'll be honest, I don't remember if we did that on

01:51:04.000 --> 01:51:05.000
Huh.

01:51:05.000 --> 01:51:19.000
purpose, because the gas fund was so at a negative, or if it was just an error when we created the schedule of funds. It's been so long, and we've looked at so many numbers. But that's what was was presented for the budget and also the schedule of funds that was approved and signed by Mrs. Dadzy. So I left it that way

01:51:19.000 --> 01:51:24.000
But I'm not sure why we did that, I'll be honest.

01:51:24.000 --> 01:51:29.000
Okay, yeah, I mean, because if in chart two your reverse

01:51:29.000 --> 01:51:43.000
dropping the number to 90 for everything, I mean, it might be worth just keeping in this case it at 90 right just to be consistent. So then everything for chart 2 is in 90. But anyway.

01:51:43.000 --> 01:51:44.000
Yeah.

01:51:44.000 --> 01:51:45.000
Yeah, yeah, okay.

01:51:45.000 --> 01:51:47.000
Right, right. I just put the 180 so you guys could see the difference between the two. Yeah, sorry.

01:51:47.000 --> 01:52:02.000
No, that's okay. And I mean, it seems like a sort of important one. You mentioned that that has to kind of get done first, but compared to the two examples that you found, it's the 180 that we typically use seems rather excessive

01:52:02.000 --> 01:52:06.000
Is that… do you think generally the case?

01:52:06.000 --> 01:52:23.000
Well, through like when I was looking at all different types of utility

01:52:23.000 --> 01:52:25.000
All over the place.

01:52:25.000 --> 01:52:26.000
Okay.

01:52:26.000 --> 01:52:27.000
companies. A lot of them were set at about 90 days. But there was there was a plethora of different ways that different companies do that. So yeah.

01:52:27.000 --> 01:52:35.000
Interesting. But it's good to know there's some flexibility, right? And that we probably should be revisiting these numbers. So

01:52:35.000 --> 01:52:49.000
Because, as you said, we're hitting… we're giving ourselves targets that might be near impossible to reach and cause us to take actions that

01:52:49.000 --> 01:52:50.000
Right

01:52:50.000 --> 01:52:51.000
may not be necessary, could be problematic. So okay. All right, thank you very much for doing this.

01:52:51.000 --> 01:52:53.000
You're welcome.

01:52:53.000 --> 01:53:06.000
Thank you, Jen. Eric, do you have anything?

01:53:06.000 --> 01:53:11.000
Hello, Eric

01:53:11.000 --> 01:53:16.000
He is there, Chair, but he's not unmuting himself. Okay.

01:53:16.000 --> 01:53:22.000
Well, if you have anything to say, unmute and come back. We'll give you another chance here.

01:53:22.000 --> 01:53:33.000
The quest, the basic question here is what's adequate for reserves. I mean

01:53:33.000 --> 01:53:35.000
We try to

01:53:35.000 --> 01:53:48.000
use objective measures like numbers of days or percentages of something. But the question is, is that adequate or not? The it would seem to me

01:53:48.000 --> 01:53:53.000
We have 10 years of experience with these policies

01:53:53.000 --> 01:53:56.000
and we certainly should have records that

01:53:56.000 --> 01:54:14.000
Not… shouldn't be too hard to access going back that far, but we ought to be able to see what our experience has been. Could even run test cases against our experience and say, well, suppose that our reserve was 90 days for something instead of 180 days

01:54:14.000 --> 01:54:24.000
Would that have ever gotten us into trouble? Would that have ever been inadequate for a given purpose? I mean, you know, we know

01:54:24.000 --> 01:54:35.000
You know, what kinds of things have happened and maybe a ballpark, at least of what they've cost us, whether it's a particular

01:54:35.000 --> 01:54:50.000
component failure or an unexpected expense that comes up or just, you know, we didn't use as much gas this winter as we were expecting to, and we didn't have the reserves to cover it very well

01:54:50.000 --> 01:55:00.000
didn't have the reserves to cover it at all, which got us deeper into a hole, but it would be useful, I think, to take a look at

01:55:00.000 --> 01:55:09.000
That last decade of history and see what we could learn from that. And

01:55:09.000 --> 01:55:12.000
Yes, it's

01:55:12.000 --> 01:55:29.000
It's interesting to look at other places and what they do, and how they do things, or what the industry is, what's common in the industry. That's useful also. But you know what happens here is important also, and we've got that information, right? Yeah, because, like, kind of going back to

01:55:29.000 --> 01:55:50.000
Huebner is the, you know, like, the one size doesn't fit all, like, gas. We have 6 months or 5 months where we, you know, the winter months where we have a lot of sales, and then it slows down, and in fall, like, exactly like water, we have kind of a 6-month period where people water, and then in the winter it slows down

01:55:50.000 --> 01:56:06.000
And then like electric, it's probably pretty consistent through the year. You might have a couple months right at the beginning, end of spring, summer, and fall where it might dip a little bit into like heating or cooling kind of kicks in

01:56:06.000 --> 01:56:13.000
So, yeah, so we do need to look a little bit more at our tenure kind of history.

01:56:13.000 --> 01:56:23.000
I think that would be useful. I do have a shorter term question. Sure. You show rate stabilization reserves

01:56:23.000 --> 01:56:25.000
In Chart 3

01:56:25.000 --> 01:56:35.000
For electric production, gas, water production and wastewater. But we don't have rate stabilization reserves in chart one or two for those.

01:56:35.000 --> 01:56:49.000
You know, we don't… we don't have apparently not thought we needed a rate stabilization reserve, so why do… why do we add those in Chart 3? Is it just to make it consistent all the way across the board for all utilities?

01:56:49.000 --> 01:56:53.000
Even though as we've just discussed, that's probably not necessary

01:56:53.000 --> 01:56:57.000
I think we kind of just put that in there because

01:56:57.000 --> 01:57:07.000
any one of these, like I said, like gas, we have the 6 months or water where we have about 6 months of high usage. Just to

01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:24.000
have something so that our rates, if we need to, not do larger rate increases if things kind of drop. So we did put them in all the funds. They probably, when we created the budget, they should have been in every single one of the funds, because

01:57:24.000 --> 01:57:37.000
The way the financial guideline says that it needs to be in there unless there is a pass-through rate, and the only one we have a pass-through rate right now is gas.

01:57:37.000 --> 01:57:40.000
So

01:57:40.000 --> 01:57:45.000
So if that's the case, if you're suggesting

01:57:45.000 --> 01:57:49.000
that we consider putting a rate stabilization reserve in

01:57:49.000 --> 01:57:52.000
And all of the funds

01:57:52.000 --> 01:58:00.000
Except for gas, perhaps. That actually increases the reserve requirement. It does, yes. Because they're not there now. Right.

01:58:00.000 --> 01:58:03.000
The

01:58:03.000 --> 01:58:08.000
Okay.

01:58:08.000 --> 01:58:10.000
It seems

01:58:10.000 --> 01:58:15.000
difficult to imagine why we might have

01:58:15.000 --> 01:58:26.000
might need a rate stabilization reserve in those utilities for where we control the whole process, like water and wastewater.

01:58:26.000 --> 01:58:28.000
So

01:58:28.000 --> 01:58:31.000
It would

01:58:31.000 --> 01:58:35.000
I'm not sure why we would want… need to do that.

01:58:35.000 --> 01:58:40.000
Right. For those, you do have one in

01:58:40.000 --> 01:58:51.000
electric distribution, but not an electric production. Well, that puts one that puts it in the electric fund anyway. The

01:58:51.000 --> 01:59:01.000
My question whether it should be in production or distribution. I'm not sure we would need it in both, because they kind of go in series with each other

01:59:01.000 --> 01:59:03.000
So

01:59:03.000 --> 01:59:07.000
I'm not sure it would be needed in electric production.

01:59:07.000 --> 01:59:21.000
So I think we can fine tune a little bit more looking at the need in each fund. I mean, it's nice and it's easy when you say we're going to use the same requirements for each fund

01:59:21.000 --> 01:59:38.000
But that may not be the right, that may not be what we need in each fund. Exactly. I agree. I just kind of brought in just a starting point for us. It's… No. This is a starting point discussion. Exactly. So yes, you're right

01:59:38.000 --> 01:59:41.000
That's fine

01:59:41.000 --> 01:59:44.000
Let's see, I had one other one and of course

01:59:44.000 --> 01:59:48.000
Now, I've forgotten what it is.

01:59:48.000 --> 01:59:57.000
We'll see if Eric has come back online and has any questions.

01:59:57.000 --> 01:59:58.000
And apparently not.

01:59:58.000 --> 02:00:02.000
No, no, I'm online, I don't have any questions. I'm just listening.

02:00:02.000 --> 02:00:08.000
Okay, all right. So it's back to me to try to remember

02:00:08.000 --> 02:00:11.000
What that my other question was, huh? since I

02:00:11.000 --> 02:00:12.000
All right

02:00:12.000 --> 02:00:18.000
Well, I just wonder if we can go to the gas one. I just wanted to offer an observation.

02:00:18.000 --> 02:00:35.000
This past year, we had the unseasonably warm winter. We sold 20% less gas. That's why we're short and that's roughly the $50,000. And if you look at your operation reserve for 90 days

02:00:35.000 --> 02:00:42.000
That's 919,000, that's 25%. So the numbers

02:00:42.000 --> 02:00:58.000
I guess what I would never go below 90 days because we've already experienced a 20% fluctuation in our operations. So I just wanted to point like a real case of when you need that reserve in place

02:00:58.000 --> 02:01:04.000
So just pointing that out in light of we've been considering the gas

02:01:04.000 --> 02:01:09.000
rates and fees and charges, etc.

02:01:09.000 --> 02:01:22.000
Well, that's part of why I would like to look at the history and see things like that. Where have we wished we had or where have we had and used

02:01:22.000 --> 02:01:34.000
reserves for various things. And see a majority, probably was capital budget revisions to you know, build a project

02:01:34.000 --> 02:01:45.000
We pass a lot of budget revisions every year. It'll take quite a bit of time for us to sift through those to get them tabulated, but

02:01:45.000 --> 02:01:51.000
pretty frequently. We dipped in the reserves to build the capital improvement project.

02:01:51.000 --> 02:01:59.000
Which may tell us we need to somehow do a better job of budgeting for capital projects based on

02:01:59.000 --> 02:02:05.000
More realistic estimates in this environment, unfortunately.

02:02:05.000 --> 02:02:07.000
Which changes every

02:02:07.000 --> 02:02:14.000
Every time there's a war. Be honest, we've had two since I've been in seven years here.

02:02:14.000 --> 02:02:17.000
Okay.

02:02:17.000 --> 02:02:29.000
Let's see. Well, I guess you're off the hook on my because I can't remember my last question. Until you're done, then of course I will remember it.

02:02:29.000 --> 02:02:36.000
But anyway, if no one else… does anyone else have any further questions or comments?

02:02:36.000 --> 02:02:47.000
Okay. Thank you very much, Joanne. Good place to start. Thank you. This is a big item for in our budget. It is worth

02:02:47.000 --> 02:02:55.000
At least critically reviewing, if not refining to better match our needs. Thank you. Work on it.

02:02:55.000 --> 02:02:58.000
Thank you

02:02:58.000 --> 02:03:02.000
Okay, that brings us

02:03:02.000 --> 02:03:05.000
to 7 30

02:03:05.000 --> 02:03:14.000
Do we want to take a break here or keep going? What's the preference?

02:03:14.000 --> 02:03:16.000
Keep going

02:03:16.000 --> 02:03:20.000
Anybody particularly want a break here?

02:03:20.000 --> 02:03:25.000
I'm not seeing a cry for it, so we'll keep going. Okay.

02:03:25.000 --> 02:03:27.000
Chair's report.

02:03:27.000 --> 02:03:37.000
The first one is simple. Matt and I have swapped farmers markets dates. He's going to do the 25th of June. I'm going to do the 24th of September

02:03:37.000 --> 02:03:41.000
Second one is not simple at all.

02:03:41.000 --> 02:03:51.000
DOE is now telling us that maybe we'll see a draft DCA from them sometime in the next couple of weeks or so

02:03:51.000 --> 02:03:54.000
If so, remember

02:03:54.000 --> 02:04:05.000
The current extension only goes to the end of July. Can we consider it? We, meaning the county, the board, council, community, etc, in a month

02:04:05.000 --> 02:04:11.000
If we're going to do that, we're going to need to look at this

02:04:11.000 --> 02:04:14.000
rather long, complex, cumbersome document

02:04:14.000 --> 02:04:19.000
As soon as we reasonably can, Philo has

02:04:19.000 --> 02:04:26.000
Hold board members and found out it looks like maybe if we have the anything from DOE in a timely manner

02:04:26.000 --> 02:04:32.000
that we could meet on the afternoon of the third of, excuse me, the 8th of July

02:04:32.000 --> 02:04:36.000
At about three o'clock

02:04:36.000 --> 02:04:39.000
Does that sound like something that

02:04:39.000 --> 02:04:44.000
At least hopefully that we can meet.

02:04:44.000 --> 02:04:50.000
Can you meet then, Jennifer?

02:04:50.000 --> 02:04:51.000
Okay.

02:04:51.000 --> 02:04:59.000
Yes, I've… yeah, I've already spoken with Philo about that. My only ask was that if it is possible to go earlier than 3 Pm. That would be great, but I understand that might not be possible.

02:04:59.000 --> 02:05:02.000
Well, we'll do the best we can.

02:05:02.000 --> 02:05:14.000
Let's see, you're gonna be gone. I'm sharing time zones with Jen, so I second her opinion. Okay. Charlie's not here. He's probably the one who wants to have it later, but

02:05:14.000 --> 02:05:17.000
And Eric

02:05:17.000 --> 02:05:28.000
What's your preference there? If we can to the extent that we can accommodate it

02:05:28.000 --> 02:05:30.000
Eric.

02:05:30.000 --> 02:05:34.000
He confirmed three with me. Okay.

02:05:34.000 --> 02:05:38.000
Now, first we have to get something from DOE for it to

02:05:38.000 --> 02:05:41.000
be anything we can do anything with

02:05:41.000 --> 02:05:48.000
But anyway, I want people aware of that possibly coming down the pipeline

02:05:48.000 --> 02:05:51.000
Item 3

02:05:51.000 --> 02:05:56.000
Nick Nelson has offered to give any of us who wish

02:05:56.000 --> 02:06:01.000
or arrange for any of us who wish a tour of the lab's combustion turbine

02:06:01.000 --> 02:06:07.000
And so I'd like to find out who from the board would be interested in that.

02:06:07.000 --> 02:06:10.000
Besides me.

02:06:10.000 --> 02:06:17.000
It's an interesting tour. I've already done it. I leave my spot for somebody else, but I recommend it. It's a good tour.

02:06:17.000 --> 02:06:20.000
Eric, have you already seen that thing?

02:06:20.000 --> 02:06:31.000
You know, if I can, you know, keep me apprised of when that is happening because I would certainly be interested. I just don't know if I'll be available.

02:06:31.000 --> 02:06:34.000
Well, we'll try to do it when you can be available.

02:06:34.000 --> 02:06:36.000
Yeah, that'd be great. I'd appreciate it.

02:06:36.000 --> 02:06:40.000
Okay, and Charlie, we don't know.

02:06:40.000 --> 02:06:46.000
Okay, so that's.

02:06:46.000 --> 02:06:51.000
Let's see. Jan, you're not going to be here for the next considerable while, are you?

02:06:51.000 --> 02:06:53.000
Correct.

02:06:53.000 --> 02:06:55.000
Okay

02:06:55.000 --> 02:06:59.000
Maybe that's next year for you.

02:06:59.000 --> 02:07:01.000
Okay

02:07:01.000 --> 02:07:06.000
And last item on my report is that a week ago

02:07:06.000 --> 02:07:09.000
I flew over the foxtail Flats site

02:07:09.000 --> 02:07:13.000
last Wednesday morning, a little before 8 o'clock in the morning

02:07:13.000 --> 02:07:23.000
There's a lot of trucks, there's a lot of equipment down there. What was moving at that time anyway was earth movers

02:07:23.000 --> 02:07:33.000
There's a lot of dirt being hauled. It kind of looked like they were leveling out different areas, presumably to put solar panels on a level

02:07:33.000 --> 02:07:35.000
platform

02:07:35.000 --> 02:07:42.000
That's kind of what it looked like. Of course, you couldn't tell for sure what they were doing, but they were moving a lot of dirt. It was certainly… didn't look like any real

02:07:42.000 --> 02:07:54.000
Construction yet. Certainly not solar panels and things like that, but those would be at the last, I think. Anyhow, I thought it was interesting. There was quite a bit of activity there.

02:07:54.000 --> 02:07:57.000
And that's all I have under my report.

02:07:57.000 --> 02:08:01.000
Do any other board members have anything

02:08:01.000 --> 02:08:05.000
Mr. Gibson, I would really be

02:08:05.000 --> 02:08:12.000
Oh, gosh, appreciative if the foxtail Flat Solar website would be updated

02:08:12.000 --> 02:08:22.000
I mean, I keep harping on this, but the last update was December of 2024

02:08:22.000 --> 02:08:28.000
Will something for our staff to talk with Desiree about

02:08:28.000 --> 02:08:40.000
Yeah, Chair, we are updating our website, the county's webpage on the project because we just got all the press release and photos

02:08:40.000 --> 02:08:45.000
So that's in process. And we also have a presentation next week

02:08:45.000 --> 02:08:54.000
with the council on the project, but Desiree getting their website. We will request again. Ben

02:08:54.000 --> 02:08:59.000
Every other week, Eric, just so you know, whenever we meet with them.

02:08:59.000 --> 02:09:19.000
You know, I appreciate that. I just don't get a warm fuzzy when foxtail Flats has no updates. Desiree has no updates. I'm kind of wondering what's going on here. So I appreciate your bird dogging them

02:09:19.000 --> 02:09:23.000
Okay, thanks for the reminder. Again.

02:09:23.000 --> 02:09:29.000
At least we know something really is happening physically now.

02:09:29.000 --> 02:09:30.000
Okay.

02:09:30.000 --> 02:09:40.000
Well, I don't know that, because I don't see it on the website. I'm not flying overhead, but I appreciate your visual confirmation

02:09:40.000 --> 02:09:51.000
Well, I didn't make that one up. And it was only me flying, so I couldn't take pictures while I was flying at the same time.

02:09:51.000 --> 02:09:53.000
So

02:09:53.000 --> 02:09:56.000
Anyhow, moving on

02:09:56.000 --> 02:10:06.000
Utility managers report. Yes, Chair and members of the board. So New Mexico is under red flag warning and it's been hot and dry and windy

02:10:06.000 --> 02:10:18.000
So PNM has disabled their automatic reclosers on both their transmission lines feeding our area. And that's just part of the wildfire

02:10:18.000 --> 02:10:20.000
Risk mitigation measures

02:10:20.000 --> 02:10:24.000
And you know at this point

02:10:24.000 --> 02:10:32.000
you know, the weather's there. It's all throughout their service area. So

02:10:32.000 --> 02:10:46.000
While there's no public safety power shutoffs currently anticipated, but when you disable those reclosers, it just increases the likelihood of a unplanned outage, should one of them

02:10:46.000 --> 02:10:49.000
be tripped.

02:10:49.000 --> 02:10:59.000
Just wanted to bring that to the board's attention, and you know, we continue to monitor that, and if there is an unplanned outage, we'll

02:10:59.000 --> 02:11:03.000
Obviously, be letting everyone know, but

02:11:03.000 --> 02:11:07.000
And we have two feeds. But if should there be a

02:11:07.000 --> 02:11:17.000
Outage due to wind or whatever fire, you know those those are things we're going to have to bear in mind as We're at risk.

02:11:17.000 --> 02:11:30.000
And then for the White Rock substation, had the pre-construction meeting today to drill and construct the caisson. So for the foundation of the transformer and that

02:11:30.000 --> 02:11:35.000
That's going to be ongoing for the next couple of weeks.

02:11:35.000 --> 02:11:43.000
The tie line recloser controls been programmed and ready to go online should there be a need.

02:11:43.000 --> 02:11:57.000
and then for Elk Ridge there is one home yet to be turned over. They don't have any gas service, but I don't think they're using any gas right now, and haven't

02:11:57.000 --> 02:12:04.000
made it priority to switch over because the weather's probably nice enough for them

02:12:04.000 --> 02:12:19.000
And then on New Mexico gas, they have mobilized to begin the hydro testing of the 7 to 8 miles of high pressure gas line from Santa Fe to Los Alamos. And they're setting up the virtual pipeline

02:12:19.000 --> 02:12:24.000
And there'll be in operation from now till mid-August

02:12:24.000 --> 02:12:39.000
And recruitment status, we have quite a few rounds of interviews over the next week. The end of this week and next week for the GWS superintendent, the energy and water conservation coordinator, and the senior engineer

02:12:39.000 --> 02:12:46.000
Then the other vacancies are electric distribution engineer manager

02:12:46.000 --> 02:12:58.000
Associate engineer that specializes more in electric management analysts, water operator, two power system operators and an engineering aid for utility locates

02:12:58.000 --> 02:13:11.000
The plumbers and pipe fitters union contract renewal was approved for five years, and that will run through June 30 of 2031.

02:13:11.000 --> 02:13:17.000
The ECA, that was mentioned already by chair. So we're

02:13:17.000 --> 02:13:31.000
it's in their hands for review and and talking to the Albuquerque office, their goal is to turn it over by the end of the month. So that's June 30, July first, st I hope no later

02:13:31.000 --> 02:13:36.000
So that we could try to hold that special meeting on the 8th of July.

02:13:36.000 --> 02:13:53.000
And then the subgrant agreement was approved last week by council for the Hemis Mountain Fire Protection Project, and it's out for signatures with FEMA. Once I get that back, then that's our green light to get going on procurement and

02:13:53.000 --> 02:13:56.000
construction bids

02:13:56.000 --> 02:14:02.000
And that's just to cover the electrical undergrounding and removal of the overhead line.

02:14:02.000 --> 02:14:18.000
Then we talked about foxtail flats. It's under construction. We have a meeting next week to meet with their best contractor. And that's battery energy storage system

02:14:18.000 --> 02:14:29.000
They want to understand a little better how we want to operate and discharge the battery as they set up their programming and SCADA systems for that

02:14:29.000 --> 02:14:48.000
And for the chromium plume, I work with Council Chair Righty on a list of questions. He's next week going to be at the Energy Community Alliance meeting and going to meet with Deputy Secretary Walsh. So he's got a list, I think he had five questions for him.

02:14:48.000 --> 02:14:58.000
Then the New Mexico Environment Department Sanitary survey items. We got all of that completed short of this one

02:14:58.000 --> 02:15:10.000
housekeeping curb at Sycamore Tank. This tank was turned over to the county by the laboratory with no as-built drawings, and there's no

02:15:10.000 --> 02:15:23.000
foundation under SLAB and we're trying to work through NMED on what the best path forward is. They want to assure proper drainage around the tank, but

02:15:23.000 --> 02:15:38.000
standard means and methods are a little unique in this case. So we're still we requested an onsite inspection to help determine the best path forward, and they're just their backlog wrapping up their fiscal year. They're not able to get out

02:15:38.000 --> 02:15:40.000
Quite yet

02:15:40.000 --> 02:15:56.000
And then PFAS, our class action suit, we provide some reformatted data to match their needs for you know they have, you know thousands of communities or have to pull together data

02:15:56.000 --> 02:16:04.000
They asked for two more samples. I think we got one today and we'll hopefully get one in the next week or two on the other well.

02:16:04.000 --> 02:16:15.000
In meeting with NSA DOE staff in review of the swice water needs

02:16:15.000 --> 02:16:20.000
We had an initial meeting and showed that they exceeded their water.

02:16:20.000 --> 02:16:31.000
their annual water rights allotment, and based on that they moved up their reclaim water facility improvements so that they could stay under

02:16:31.000 --> 02:16:45.000
that water annual water rights allotment. So that removed one argument for expansion of water production well for a new well. But we still have our argument that we lost Pm. 3

02:16:45.000 --> 02:17:03.000
This is offline because the chromium plume and you know we we still have resiliency and redundancy needs that need to be replaced. We'll continue to pursue that different angles on that

02:17:03.000 --> 02:17:15.000
We're finalizing the contract for the 40-year water plan. So hopefully have that at the regular July meeting to BPU and

02:17:15.000 --> 02:17:25.000
We're continuing to work on some federal funding to investigate the new well at Overlooked Park that could use San Juan Chama water

02:17:25.000 --> 02:17:34.000
And then we talked a little tonight about the extended electrical outage on May 8th and 9th and the

02:17:34.000 --> 02:17:50.000
And with our engineer, we determined there was some programming on the relays that were missing. And so staff's working on the task order with our on-call engineer T&D to get some updated programming to add to the relays

02:17:50.000 --> 02:17:55.000
It'll be a great safety improvement when we get that that completed.

02:17:55.000 --> 02:18:09.000
And then we applied for a federal grant for $275,000 to the natural gas distribution infrastructure safety and modernization

02:18:09.000 --> 02:18:20.000
Grant program. It's a federal program, and it's for Central Avenue from ninth down to the Trinity Roundabout. And

02:18:20.000 --> 02:18:31.000
We do have development plans in place to, you know, do a mixed use development at the old Smith site. So this will help

02:18:31.000 --> 02:18:36.000
increase the capacity of the pipeline as well as replace an aged line that's

02:18:36.000 --> 02:18:39.000
over 50 years old

02:18:39.000 --> 02:18:49.000
And then UAMP's the CFPP still alive, so I still had chair duties today at the board meeting and

02:18:49.000 --> 02:19:05.000
We did have a resolution to move We still have a balance of funds in Bank of America over to Wells Fargo through a line of credit. Once DOE reimburses

02:19:05.000 --> 02:19:11.000
UAMPs or the CFPP, then that those balances go away.

02:19:11.000 --> 02:19:15.000
And then

02:19:15.000 --> 02:19:31.000
The other thing that was interesting about today's meeting was and we'll have Mason Baker come in September that a lot of the projects they're pursuing right now, and this is a big shift in the last couple of months, they're looking at

02:19:31.000 --> 02:19:38.000
Improving their capacity needs through eDam and adding best

02:19:38.000 --> 02:19:45.000
is the quickest way to meet capacity needs, so they're looking at several projects right now.

02:19:45.000 --> 02:20:00.000
So we'll hear more about that, something that will feed into our foxtail Flats business plan for sure. And then PNM. This is kind of good news and it's like an old project that's

02:20:00.000 --> 02:20:08.000
Still alive, everyone, is our San Juan Chattering Station has been fully demolished and decommissioned. It's to the ground

02:20:08.000 --> 02:20:12.000
We had the final

02:20:12.000 --> 02:20:20.000
Report submitted to San Juan County to comply with their ordinance, which required everything to be removed down to the ground

02:20:20.000 --> 02:20:34.000
And so it was carried out per that plan. And most a lot of material was recycled. I mentioned that over probably over the last year. And

02:20:34.000 --> 02:20:40.000
Things have been disposed of and recycled. So the

02:20:40.000 --> 02:20:45.000
process was a three-year process to bring that plant down.

02:20:45.000 --> 02:20:52.000
Mine reclamation work is more extensive, because there's a lot of re-grading

02:20:52.000 --> 02:20:57.000
and reseeding that will run through 2030. So we still have

02:20:57.000 --> 02:21:00.000
another 4 years of work there

02:21:00.000 --> 02:21:04.000
With that, it's stand for any questions.

02:21:04.000 --> 02:21:07.000
Okay, let's see. Eric, you got your hand up.

02:21:07.000 --> 02:21:24.000
Yeah, I appreciate that. Okay, so I'm interested because you're talking about battery energy storage systems. Foxtail Flats has told us that they can use the 320 megawatt hours

02:21:24.000 --> 02:21:26.000
daily

02:21:26.000 --> 02:21:42.000
But in order to do that with the charge and discharge rates, they need 533 megawatt hours of batteries. So because they can't go 100 to zero, they really need to go 80% charge to 20% charge

02:21:42.000 --> 02:21:54.000
So I would really enjoy hearing what they have to say about these numbers, and if you want to get me involved, I'll be glad to get involved.

02:21:54.000 --> 02:21:59.000
Those are great questions. I hope to learn more next week.

02:21:59.000 --> 02:22:14.000
Well, I look forward to what you learned because the numbers that they're telling us just absolutely don't add up.

02:22:14.000 --> 02:22:20.000
Thank you.

02:22:20.000 --> 02:22:21.000
Any more? Eric?

02:22:21.000 --> 02:22:25.000
No, that's good for me.

02:22:25.000 --> 02:22:27.000
Okay

02:22:27.000 --> 02:22:39.000
I don't see Jennifer's hand up, so Matt? Great, thank you, Chair. Thanks, Vila. Lots going on, as always. The one that caught my eye was the natural gas federal grant application.

02:22:39.000 --> 02:22:44.000
And I was curious, is there match required with that, or is it all federal funding?

02:22:44.000 --> 02:22:46.000
There

02:22:46.000 --> 02:23:04.000
What we put in the application was in our CIP program for 2028. The road will be rebuilt and the type of match that we offered was like our traffic control and the general conditions when we coordinate with public works

02:23:04.000 --> 02:23:10.000
That would be our cost share. But there wasn't a match requirement for the pipe

02:23:10.000 --> 02:23:15.000
component, which is 275. Okay.

02:23:15.000 --> 02:23:23.000
And I'm interested in thinking about with the county goals on reducing the use of natural gas. If the county should be

02:23:23.000 --> 02:23:28.000
funding the upgrades, especially if it's to motivate new development.

02:23:28.000 --> 02:23:39.000
We talked earlier about putting… make the new developers pay and potentially, you know, incentivizing gas-free on new developments. And so I'd just be

02:23:39.000 --> 02:23:52.000
Curious if you're keeping that in the back of your mind as you pursue. I mean, I think it's good… we have to maintain and replace things, I understand that, and federal funding is great for that, but if we want to pursue our long-term goals of getting off natural gas

02:23:52.000 --> 02:23:57.000
There's push the cost to somebody else. There's quite a bit

02:23:57.000 --> 02:24:12.000
You know, this project, I think is going from Trinity to Central through their site. And then we have kind of our central avenue that serves all the apartments down here and below that are

02:24:12.000 --> 02:24:23.000
outside of the project limits. So when the road gets done, we need to. That's the time to do it. Yeah, yeah. And that's why we fight for funding and

02:24:23.000 --> 02:24:31.000
And because it's in our budget, we'll hopefully avoid some costs down there. Okay, thanks. That's everything for me.

02:24:31.000 --> 02:24:32.000
Okay.

02:24:32.000 --> 02:24:36.000
A couple of questions. First, the outage from May 8th

02:24:36.000 --> 02:24:41.000
You said that some of the programming was missing

02:24:41.000 --> 02:24:48.000
Do we know how that happened or how it was not caught or

02:24:48.000 --> 02:24:58.000
What are the lessons learned from that? Well, I'll ask Dennis because he did the research, but I'll ask him to

02:24:58.000 --> 02:25:00.000
go up and explain

02:25:00.000 --> 02:25:07.000
In more detail.

02:25:07.000 --> 02:25:22.000
I'll simplify this as much as I can. The relays in these switchgear buildings are General Electric relays and they have group settings

02:25:22.000 --> 02:25:30.000
Depending on your needs for the time down line of groups 1, 2, 3, and 4.

02:25:30.000 --> 02:25:35.000
The relays had group one programmed

02:25:35.000 --> 02:25:42.000
To operate properly. Groups 2, 3, and 4 had no programming at all

02:25:42.000 --> 02:25:47.000
Then when the crew goes to work on the line

02:25:47.000 --> 02:25:51.000
They go to the switchgear building

02:25:51.000 --> 02:26:03.000
go into the settings and turn off reclosing because if they're working on it and there's a short, they don't want it to open and then close right back on them again.

02:26:03.000 --> 02:26:05.000
Unfortunately

02:26:05.000 --> 02:26:15.000
The way to select which group you use is manipulating the same buttons as you do

02:26:15.000 --> 02:26:18.000
to turn off re-closing

02:26:18.000 --> 02:26:23.000
And so half of them were on groups 2 and 4

02:26:23.000 --> 02:26:30.000
And half of them were on Group 1. And Stephen Mahrez used to go in periodically

02:26:30.000 --> 02:26:35.000
And look at the settings, and correct them if they were wrong.

02:26:35.000 --> 02:26:36.000
I didn't know that

02:26:36.000 --> 02:26:48.000
didn't know anything about these relays, I've only worked with mechanical relays in the past, and Schweitzer relays. So I didn't know I needed to go do this

02:26:48.000 --> 02:26:50.000
Or I would have

02:26:50.000 --> 02:26:57.000
But that's how we had the wrong settings, specifically on the circuit that had the underground fault that should have cleared

02:26:57.000 --> 02:27:10.000
because that relay said, oh, there's a fault, but I don't have any instructions, so it just sat back with its feet up and let it burn right on through to the main, looking back at LANL.

02:27:10.000 --> 02:27:11.000
And that

02:27:11.000 --> 02:27:20.000
Happened, and both mains were in parallel at the time, and both tripped, which took out all of Los Alamos town site

02:27:20.000 --> 02:27:25.000
And it took us a while to figure out what happened

02:27:25.000 --> 02:27:32.000
Fortunately, people said a transformer blew up not too far down Trinity

02:27:32.000 --> 02:27:38.000
And we went and found the jumpers burned, and they gave us an idea of where to start looking

02:27:38.000 --> 02:27:40.000
And I got here

02:27:40.000 --> 02:27:49.000
About 25 minutes after I got the phone call and Wayne had already started patrolling, I thought that a transformer blew up at the hill

02:27:49.000 --> 02:28:03.000
Because that's where I'd been told a transformer blew up was just east of the apartment buildings there and thought, well, okay, I'll go down there and see if one of those pad mounts we sat last year blew up

02:28:03.000 --> 02:28:12.000
Then I met Wayne at the townside switching station, and we rode together and started riding overhead. But

02:28:12.000 --> 02:28:14.000
The relays

02:28:14.000 --> 02:28:27.000
are going to be programmed so that groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 all have the same settings. And then there's another switch on the panel called hotline tag

02:28:27.000 --> 02:28:37.000
That will keep the lineman from having to open the little door and start pushing buttons on the relay in the future, and it will also give them a much quicker

02:28:37.000 --> 02:28:52.000
Clearing if there is a fault down line where they're working because a hotline tag uses an instantaneous curve, which is extremely fast versus the delay curves that we have programmed into Group 1.

02:28:52.000 --> 02:28:56.000
So it'll be safer and

02:28:56.000 --> 02:28:58.000
More foolproof

02:28:58.000 --> 02:29:06.000
Some people like the words landman proof, but we're going to call it more foolproof and just simpler going forward.

02:29:06.000 --> 02:29:10.000
And that's going to be done hopefully within the next 2 weeks

02:29:10.000 --> 02:29:22.000
And will those then be on a regular inspection cycle also like Steve used to do? We can do that still, yes. I mean, I'm not directing you to, I'm just asking if they will.

02:29:22.000 --> 02:29:30.000
They will, but they won't need it as much as they have in the last year and previous. But

02:29:30.000 --> 02:29:33.000
Thank you. That was helpful.

02:29:33.000 --> 02:29:36.000
Second question

02:29:36.000 --> 02:29:41.000
Since the

02:29:41.000 --> 02:29:47.000
San Juan Generating Station demolition project is done

02:29:47.000 --> 02:29:51.000
I know the mine isn't yet, but the station itself

02:29:51.000 --> 02:30:06.000
Do we get any of the decommissioning reserve released, or is that held for a while? It's actually held for a while. Well, one is the report, you know, the San Juan County has to accept it

02:30:06.000 --> 02:30:08.000
That's

02:30:08.000 --> 02:30:12.000
Last time we submitted, it took them a few months.

02:30:12.000 --> 02:30:22.000
And then the other piece is they have performance bonds that

02:30:22.000 --> 02:30:33.000
the State holds, and they have to release those. And then then those funds should free up. But it's going to take a little time. Hopefully, closer to the end of the year we'll know

02:30:33.000 --> 02:30:37.000
the status of that. Okay. Thank you.

02:30:37.000 --> 02:30:44.000
I don't see any other queries on the report. Thank you very much, Philo.

02:30:44.000 --> 02:30:56.000
And it's been said to hear patiently all evening just waiting for your turn on stage. Go for it. Thank you, Chair and board. Just a couple of things I wanted to mention.

02:30:56.000 --> 02:31:15.000
Utility Manager Shelton talked about fire season with the last storm that came through in the Santa Fe forest. There are a number of fires burning. They're small right now, but the one that you're seeing smoke north of Los Alamos, the last report I just got just before this meeting is it's grown to 128 acres

02:31:15.000 --> 02:31:28.000
And it's 3 miles northeast of Chicama Mountain. So that's what's described. Check out the there's a website that's mentioned in the

02:31:28.000 --> 02:31:38.000
press release that we issued earlier today. For whatever reason, the fires are not big enough to make it on NCWEB, where a lot of us go for fire information, but

02:31:38.000 --> 02:31:53.000
Stay tuned on that. I wanted to mention that our new economic development administrator, Max Kudiakov did start early last week. So we're very happy to have him on board.

02:31:53.000 --> 02:31:55.000
And then

02:31:55.000 --> 02:32:02.000
One thing that I noticed on our new website, our PIO, Dave Krueger, has really been pushing a lot of our

02:32:02.000 --> 02:32:07.000
Engagement, current opportunities to your have your say

02:32:07.000 --> 02:32:24.000
page on the website, so if you go to the main page, you have the main icons. There's a have your say icon, and if you click on that, just to give you an idea of what's active right now, you can take the survey on the Historic Preservation Master Plan, Fire Station 4 Public Art Theme

02:32:24.000 --> 02:32:39.000
And then Ashley Pond Park Safety Bollards and the comprehensive plan were receiving public comments or taking surveys on all of those initiatives right now. So I think it's a nice place to go look to see, hey, what's going on? What can I engage with

02:32:39.000 --> 02:32:50.000
Just thought I would mention that and then for next week we are going to have we're going to introduce the high level concepts of

02:32:50.000 --> 02:33:05.000
local economic development act or leader participation agreements were close to being ready to take to Council in the form of an ordinance, which is an introduction and public hearing. But our process has added a pre-intro intro

02:33:05.000 --> 02:33:22.000
Where we the public has not, they seem to like when we sort of announce it's coming and talk a little bit about the project without the pressure of a decision, versus just, you know, kind of announcing that we're introducing an ordinance.

02:33:22.000 --> 02:33:27.000
We're going to see two of those next week on Council's agenda, so we're very excited to

02:33:27.000 --> 02:33:30.000
Introduce those to the public.

02:33:30.000 --> 02:33:33.000
So with that, I'll stand for any questions.

02:33:33.000 --> 02:33:37.000
Thank you. Are there any questions?

02:33:37.000 --> 02:33:41.000
I don't see any. Thank you very much. Thank you.

02:33:41.000 --> 02:33:59.000
We move down the line to our council liaison. Thank you, Chair Gibson. We had our most recent Council meeting last Tuesday, the 9th of June regular session, and a few things of interest on the consent agenda.

02:33:59.000 --> 02:34:09.000
We passed award of bid for the Western Area Twin Tanks piping upgrades, phase two project

02:34:09.000 --> 02:34:14.000
New Mexico Underground Utilities

02:34:14.000 --> 02:34:34.000
Also, approved, as I guess Philo mentioned, the plumbers and pipe fitters union agreement and approval to execute the power purchase agreement

02:34:34.000 --> 02:34:39.000
Let's see. Introduction of ordinances.

02:34:39.000 --> 02:34:53.000
There was the introduction of an ordinance amending the water surface rate schedules, and we had a presentation on that. So

02:34:53.000 --> 02:35:04.000
Also, introduction of an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds, bond sales for the

02:35:04.000 --> 02:35:10.000
Fire station number four, the one across from the golf course there.

02:35:10.000 --> 02:35:16.000
We already talked about the gas rates.

02:35:16.000 --> 02:35:39.000
Something of interest that I wanted to mention, there was a proclamation imposing restrictions and limiting the use of fireworks due to drought conditions. So there's going to be a great extended drone show on the 4th of July down at Overlook.

02:35:39.000 --> 02:35:47.000
Also, under business, approve approval of the DOE and

02:35:47.000 --> 02:35:54.000
Los Alamos County electric resource pool budget for 27 and 28

02:35:54.000 --> 02:35:56.000
And

02:35:56.000 --> 02:36:11.000
Something else of interest that I just wanted to mention, August 25th, there's going to be a Los Alamos Nuclear Forum here in town. So just wanted to make sure you guys all knew about that coming up

02:36:11.000 --> 02:36:15.000
And that is it. I will stand for questions.

02:36:15.000 --> 02:36:17.000
Thank you.

02:36:17.000 --> 02:36:22.000
Are there any questions?

02:36:22.000 --> 02:36:28.000
I guess you covered everything that people were interested in tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

02:36:28.000 --> 02:36:35.000
That takes us on to the ESP Liaisons report

02:36:35.000 --> 02:36:37.000
Do I see Carly?

02:36:37.000 --> 02:36:38.000
Yes.

02:36:38.000 --> 02:36:39.000
Hi, can you hear me?

02:36:39.000 --> 02:36:41.000
Yep, we sure can.

02:36:41.000 --> 02:36:48.000
Okay, great. So this is my first time doing this, so hopefully I'll get it right.

02:36:48.000 --> 02:36:55.000
So to recap the May 2026 ESV board meeting

02:36:55.000 --> 02:37:03.000
The presentations that were heard were David Hampton presented on the Ridwell recycling program

02:37:03.000 --> 02:37:11.000
Which focuses on collecting hard-to-recycle materials and reusing those items through innovative solutions.

02:37:11.000 --> 02:37:14.000
And they do offer collection and mail-in services

02:37:14.000 --> 02:37:24.000
Sustainability manager, Angelica Garool gave an overview on the on-bill financing program

02:37:24.000 --> 02:37:36.000
Which allows homeowners to fund energy improvement projects through a loan that is repaid through their utility bills. I believe you guys actually received the same presentation on June 3rd

02:37:36.000 --> 02:37:40.000
So I'm sure you're familiar with that program.

02:37:40.000 --> 02:37:47.000
And then ESB board members Shannon Blair provided updates on the single-use plastic ban.

02:37:47.000 --> 02:37:50.000
or a single-use plastic bag ban.

02:37:50.000 --> 02:37:55.000
And the updates for tomorrow's reading

02:37:55.000 --> 02:38:03.000
Meeting, sorry. So the board will hear the following presentations. Katie Thwaites

02:38:03.000 --> 02:38:14.000
We'll be discussing the possible action and recommendation from environmental sustainability board on the plastic bag ban.

02:38:14.000 --> 02:38:26.000
David Hampton will be discussing an ordinance adding Chapter 18 article 5 banning the distribution of single use plastic carry out bags

02:38:26.000 --> 02:38:33.000
And encouraging retail establishments to charge a fee for recycled content paper carryout bags

02:38:33.000 --> 02:38:40.000
And Angelico will provide updates regarding the residential sustainability report

02:38:40.000 --> 02:38:52.000
Other updates will include electrical vehicle charging infrastructure, municipal food composting program, and upcoming community events

02:38:52.000 --> 02:38:59.000
So that's all I have. Do you have any questions?

02:38:59.000 --> 02:39:07.000
Are there any questions from the board?

02:39:07.000 --> 02:39:08.000
Okay.

02:39:08.000 --> 02:39:10.000
I don't believe so. Thank you very much. And you did just fine first time at bat.

02:39:10.000 --> 02:39:11.000
Well, welcome.

02:39:11.000 --> 02:39:14.000
Thank you, I appreciate it. Thanks.

02:39:14.000 --> 02:39:18.000
Thanks for your patience waiting to give your report.

02:39:18.000 --> 02:39:20.000
No worries

02:39:20.000 --> 02:39:25.000
Okay, that takes us to

02:39:25.000 --> 02:39:31.000
Item 8G1 discussion, possible support of the council charter review

02:39:31.000 --> 02:39:36.000
Philo, did you want to start that off or did you want me to?

02:39:36.000 --> 02:39:42.000
Chair, I can start it off. Last week

02:39:42.000 --> 02:39:57.000
the Council considered a few different items for charter amendments, and the most pertinent one was related to the profit transfer, removing that

02:39:57.000 --> 02:40:08.000
A section that's in the charter. And then they had a lot of discussion about terms and party affiliation. So

02:40:08.000 --> 02:40:22.000
Attached, you'll see we finally got the meeting minutes and sent that out to the board. You know, one's most relevant, but in the motion included

02:40:22.000 --> 02:40:24.000
The board

02:40:24.000 --> 02:40:31.000
a public utilities as well, I think, in the makeup of the parties will remain the same

02:40:31.000 --> 02:40:39.000
But I just… so there's a motion before you to support

02:40:39.000 --> 02:40:50.000
Removing the profit transfer section of the charter. And then if you wanted to support any other elements of the

02:40:50.000 --> 02:40:57.000
Charter review that's contained within the meeting minutes that's at your option.

02:40:57.000 --> 02:41:01.000
Okay, thank you. Yeah, the

02:41:01.000 --> 02:41:03.000
You know.

02:41:03.000 --> 02:41:08.000
The council's charter review working group

02:41:08.000 --> 02:41:11.000
Proposed several different things, but and

02:41:11.000 --> 02:41:13.000
For completeness

02:41:13.000 --> 02:41:18.000
the 5

02:41:18.000 --> 02:41:31.000
The section 911 and Section 305.3 are included here in the agenda doc, but they're not germane to the utility board. So there's no real reason for us to be weighing in

02:41:31.000 --> 02:41:36.000
or thinking about those as a board, can certainly as individuals.

02:41:36.000 --> 02:41:40.000
But the

02:41:40.000 --> 02:41:42.000
The change

02:41:42.000 --> 02:41:48.000
In terms of deleting the profit transfer provision that is very much germane.

02:41:48.000 --> 02:41:58.000
And hence brought forward here for to give us an opportunity, if we wish, to make a recommendation to Council on that.

02:41:58.000 --> 02:42:00.000
So

02:42:00.000 --> 02:42:16.000
Chair, may I make a clarification? Just I'm assuming most people know, but I just feel the need to say it out loud that changes to the charter require a vote of the people. So these ordinances are only to and the reason that's timely is because we're kind of up a deadline to be able to

02:42:16.000 --> 02:42:28.000
publish the ordinances to be able to get them on the ballot for the November election. So these actions don't recommend changing it. They recommend putting the an option to change it to the voters.

02:42:28.000 --> 02:42:32.000
Right. Thank you for the

02:42:32.000 --> 02:42:36.000
Clarification.

02:42:36.000 --> 02:42:40.000
Are there

02:42:40.000 --> 02:42:44.000
Questions on the subject.

02:42:44.000 --> 02:42:54.000
I guess I have one question just to remind myself in past years, we've had profits from the utilities that we've sent to Council, and then we've been able to

02:42:54.000 --> 02:42:56.000
Get those back and use them on utility

02:42:56.000 --> 02:43:07.000
Projects, that's mostly what's been happening, and if this was removed that's what would continue to happen. So this is kind of a formalizing what's been practiced for the last couple of years.

02:43:07.000 --> 02:43:13.000
And I guess my question is just how much have the profits been that we've sent back to the county?

02:43:13.000 --> 02:43:16.000
So, is my understanding correct? And then

02:43:16.000 --> 02:43:20.000
is my near history understanding correct, and then about how much money is that?

02:43:20.000 --> 02:43:29.000
I think it's 5% of revenues for gas and electric, isn't it, Joanne?

02:43:29.000 --> 02:43:33.000
Chair and Councilor Huebner, yes, it is 5%.

02:43:33.000 --> 02:43:44.000
And we've been doing that transfer to the general fund since the charter's been in place. This

02:43:44.000 --> 02:43:50.000
Return from council to the or from general fund to utilities is

02:43:50.000 --> 02:43:54.000
Only been in the last few years. And

02:43:54.000 --> 02:43:58.000
there are specific requirements on that.

02:43:58.000 --> 02:44:08.000
If this provision went away we wouldn't be sending that money to the general fund, and they wouldn't be sending anything back. Life would be a little simpler.

02:44:08.000 --> 02:44:21.000
And of course, they're not under any obligation to send it back. I mean, they've got an obligation for a few years, but that's a rolling commitment. They can say, oh, we need the money for the general fund.

02:44:21.000 --> 02:44:26.000
And this would eliminate that

02:44:26.000 --> 02:44:30.000
Risk, shall we say, to utilities

02:44:30.000 --> 02:44:34.000
If approved by the public. If approved, yes.

02:44:34.000 --> 02:44:39.000
Great. Okay, thank you. Thanks for the further explanation.

02:44:39.000 --> 02:44:43.000
Okay.

02:44:43.000 --> 02:44:48.000
Is there any public comment on this issue?

02:44:48.000 --> 02:44:54.000
Any members of the public attending via Zoom, please raise your hand now to make a public comment.

02:44:54.000 --> 02:45:01.000
There are none, Chair Gibson. Okay, thank you. We do have a motion of support.

02:45:01.000 --> 02:45:14.000
Would anyone care to make that motion? Sure. I move that the board support County Council's recommendation to have the County Manager draft an ordinance to formally propose the following changes to the Charter. Remove paragraph

02:45:14.000 --> 02:45:22.000
Quote 6. Any remaining funds shall be transferred to the county general fund in Section 509 of the Charter.

02:45:22.000 --> 02:45:23.000
A second

02:45:23.000 --> 02:45:31.000
Second. Okay, again, have gen listed as the second for the record.

02:45:31.000 --> 02:45:35.000
Okay, is there any further discussion?

02:45:35.000 --> 02:45:39.000
From the board.

02:45:39.000 --> 02:45:45.000
Seeing none, Kathy, would you please call the roll?

02:45:45.000 --> 02:45:46.000
Member Stromberg.

02:45:46.000 --> 02:45:47.000
Yes.

02:45:47.000 --> 02:45:49.000
Member Hollingsworth?

02:45:49.000 --> 02:45:50.000
Yes

02:45:50.000 --> 02:45:58.000
Remember Hebner? Yes. And Member Gibson. Yes. Thank you. Motion passes four to zero.

02:45:58.000 --> 02:46:08.000
I don't know if the Council really cares, but you have our our recommendation to go forward with this.

02:46:08.000 --> 02:46:09.000
The,

02:46:09.000 --> 02:46:20.000
Okay, next item is approval of the annual presentation to Council, which will take place next month on the 14th of July.

02:46:20.000 --> 02:46:24.000
This is pretty much what you have seen before.

02:46:24.000 --> 02:46:29.000
In the interests of time tonight, I'm certainly not going to go through everything.

02:46:29.000 --> 02:46:32.000
There were

02:46:32.000 --> 02:46:48.000
There were a few more tweaks that were done, and they'll probably still have to be a few tweaks, especially if Philo is successful at hiring a couple of people, and then the number of vacancies will go down. And hopefully there'll be a little bit more to say about the Eca. By then

02:46:48.000 --> 02:46:56.000
So but this is the best we've got for right now. So I'll ask if there's any questions, comments

02:46:56.000 --> 02:47:02.000
Further proposed changes

02:47:02.000 --> 02:47:07.000
If not, is there a motion to

02:47:07.000 --> 02:47:17.000
Approve this. Sure. I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the annual presentation to Council and Chair Gibson's delivery of the presentation at the July 15th, 2025 Council work session.

02:47:17.000 --> 02:47:19.000
I second it.

02:47:19.000 --> 02:47:21.000
I think it's 14th.

02:47:21.000 --> 02:47:27.000
I know it says 15th, but the meeting, I think is, isn't it on the 14th?

02:47:27.000 --> 02:47:33.000
Friendly amendment for the 14th. Okay.

02:47:33.000 --> 02:47:41.000
Friendly amendment is

02:47:41.000 --> 02:47:42.000
I think Eric

02:47:42.000 --> 02:47:47.000
Now, see, Jen, see, you made it. Somebody's got a second. Okay, thank you.

02:47:47.000 --> 02:47:51.000
Any discussion?

02:47:51.000 --> 02:47:55.000
Not Kathy, please call the roll.

02:47:55.000 --> 02:47:56.000
Member Stromberg.

02:47:56.000 --> 02:47:58.000
Yes.

02:47:58.000 --> 02:48:00.000
Member Hollingsworth?

02:48:00.000 --> 02:48:01.000
Yes.

02:48:01.000 --> 02:48:08.000
Member Hebner? Yes. And Member Gibson. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Motion passes 4 to 0.

02:48:08.000 --> 02:48:15.000
That takes us on to the ever popular status reports.

02:48:15.000 --> 02:48:19.000
Why is this man smiling?

02:48:19.000 --> 02:48:22.000
Are there any questions?

02:48:22.000 --> 02:48:26.000
Concerning status reports.

02:48:26.000 --> 02:48:29.000
I have one

02:48:29.000 --> 02:48:31.000
What is

02:48:31.000 --> 02:48:35.000
Yep.

02:48:35.000 --> 02:48:36.000
Yes

02:48:36.000 --> 02:48:43.000
Okay. Was on the May 8th outage.

02:48:43.000 --> 02:48:57.000
Different parts of the town were out for different periods of time, were they not? Correct. And that's why the tabulated data shows multiple outages for the same day. I was trying to show

02:48:57.000 --> 02:48:59.000
It really wasn't as bad

02:48:59.000 --> 02:49:15.000
On the Sadie and make it more realistic. Kathy Deanna, as one of her last great things, sent me the report from the AMI system showing as meters came back on

02:49:15.000 --> 02:49:23.000
What sections of town were still out. And so I was able to use that to whittle that number down to an hour and a half.

02:49:23.000 --> 02:49:25.000
Otherwise

02:49:25.000 --> 02:49:30.000
If we'd have done it with no AMI data.

02:49:30.000 --> 02:49:38.000
It would have been guessing and probably closer to 4 hours or five hours at it. So that's why

02:49:38.000 --> 02:49:48.000
you see in the tabulated data multiple outages on May 8th. I was using it to whittle the numbers down to get to say more realistic

02:49:48.000 --> 02:49:53.000
Okay, and I'm glad you did make it as realistic as possible.

02:49:53.000 --> 02:50:03.000
Thank you. You're welcome. Just wanted to clarify that or confirm that what I thought was happening, or at least that you intended to happen that is what did happen

02:50:03.000 --> 02:50:06.000
Thank you. Any other

02:50:06.000 --> 02:50:13.000
questions or issues on the status reports, any of the status reports.

02:50:13.000 --> 02:50:24.000
I don't see any that will take us on to the tickler file.

02:50:24.000 --> 02:50:29.000
Are there questions, comments, concerns?

02:50:29.000 --> 02:50:39.000
On the ticker file

02:50:39.000 --> 02:50:43.000
I think we're largely getting the parking lot

02:50:43.000 --> 02:50:54.000
Emptied

02:50:54.000 --> 02:50:57.000
I have a question for Eric.

02:50:57.000 --> 02:51:00.000
You had requested this town hall

02:51:00.000 --> 02:51:06.000
on climate action plan way back when I think you had withdrawn that request, had you not?

02:51:06.000 --> 02:51:08.000
Yeah, pretty much.

02:51:08.000 --> 02:51:11.000
So we can take it off the parking lot then

02:51:11.000 --> 02:51:12.000
Sure.

02:51:12.000 --> 02:51:17.000
Okay, thank you. I thought that was the case, but I wanted to check with you before we did that.

02:51:17.000 --> 02:51:19.000
Yeah, I appreciate that.

02:51:19.000 --> 02:51:26.000
Okay, if there's nothing else on the tickler now. We'll still be getting together

02:51:26.000 --> 02:51:29.000
What is it, the 26th

02:51:29.000 --> 02:51:32.000
Update it

02:51:32.000 --> 02:51:35.000
That's before you run off, right?

02:51:35.000 --> 02:51:37.000
And

02:51:37.000 --> 02:51:40.000
So if you've got any other suggestions

02:51:40.000 --> 02:51:41.000
Concerns

02:51:41.000 --> 02:51:45.000
Let us know and please keep Kathy informed about

02:51:45.000 --> 02:51:51.000
Your availability or non-availability, not just for the scheduled meetings, but really particularly in July

02:51:51.000 --> 02:51:59.000
I don't… anytime in July, because we don't know for sure when this ECA is going to hit us.

02:51:59.000 --> 02:52:00.000
Okay

02:52:00.000 --> 02:52:06.000
That being the case, we're down to public comment again.

02:52:06.000 --> 02:52:09.000
Is there any public comment?

02:52:09.000 --> 02:52:12.000
I don't see any in chambers

02:52:12.000 --> 02:52:17.000
Thank you, Chair Gibson. Any remaining public online who would like to make comment now?

02:52:17.000 --> 02:52:18.000
No.

02:52:18.000 --> 02:52:19.000
Okay.

02:52:19.000 --> 02:52:23.000
With that, we are finished. We are adjourned. Thank you very much

02:52:23.000 --> 02:52:25.000
And we'll take a

02:52:25.000 --> 02:52:32.000
10 minute break or so, and the board will reconvene in the DPU conference room for closed session.

02:52:32.000 --> 02:52:36.000
Thank you.