All right, everyone, let's go ahead and uh get started if you don't mind.

I think we might actually get you out of here early for once.

So that I'm gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order.

We are here for the assembly infrastructure enterprise and utility oversight committee of the whole meeting uh on November 20th.

We're scheduled from 11 15 to 12 15 p.m.

I noticed it's very late.

Attendance on the assembly side.

I know of at least five members who are out of town right now for various reasons, and uh it's also been a very busy week for the assembly, so I think some folks might be recuperating.

So with that, um, I think you're just going to be here to entertain me.

So as far as assembly introductions go, I'm Zach Johnson, and that is the extent of it.

Uh, we are gonna change the order of the day slightly on our new business.

We're going to have Alaska Water and Wastewater Utility go first and then move through the URS to the agenda as posted.

Uh with that, if you'd introduce yourself, sir, and take it away.

Nope.

David.

Tab the button one more time.

David Persinger, uh, general manager Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.

Um here to give a brief presentation on our proposed 2026 uh AWD AWU and ASU rate increases.

Um, as always, our mission is to protect the health and welfare of the public and the environment by providing responsible water and wastewater services.

Um, as we go into this uh 2026 rate increase, um again, we're two separate relate separately regulated utilities.

We have the Anchorage Sewer Utility and the Anchorage Water Utility, and rates are recovered on a historic test year because we are regulated by the regulatory commission of Alaska, and that is how the statutes uh regulate us.

Um aging infrastructure increased maintenance costs.

I think um inflation has not come down as much as we had hoped to over the years, and um those continue to drive a need for rate increases.

We've also got uh energy increases with our uh other utilities, um, particularly the the natural gas shortage is is pushing up on that.

Um permit renewals.

We also have uh municipal utility services uh assessment, Musa, which is a significant part of portion of our budget, and then uh we operate under a long-range financial plan that includes moderate rate increases to keep the utility uh financially viable in accordance with our strategic plan.

So going into 2026, our annualized rate increase that we are looking for is 4.85% for the water utility and 2.87% for the sewer utility.

That equates to about a monthly increase of three dollars and fifty-seven cents for a single family residential water service and approximately one dollar and eighty-nine cents for uh a residential sewer service and a combined uh increase of about 546 uh if someone is served by both utilities.

This is just a breakdown of the different rate structures.

Uh, we have our uh the majority of our customers are on main unmetered single family residential, and then when you get into the metered uh commercial, uh some of the charges are a little bit different, but that gives the overall uh existing and proposed and the uh change for the water utility.

Similarly on the sewer utility, uh again, the unmetered single family is our largest uh customer class, and uh the rates are are shown the the current rate and uh proposed rate, and then uh the change.

Looking across the nation and across Alaska, uh Anchorage is on par with with our uh other utilities here within the state as well as is outside of the state of Alaska.

I'm not gonna go through all these details, but um, we are in a somewhat unique utility is that we are uh municipally owned public utility that is also regulated by a state commission, and we also have a fairly large um payment lieu of tax burden, which uh contributes to uh having our rates the way they are.

to change looking across the nation and across Alaska uh Anchorage is on par with with our uh other utilities here within the state as well as is outside of the the state of Alaska I'm not going to go through all these details but um we are in a somewhat unique utility is that we are uh municipally owned public utility that is also regulated by a state commission and we also have a fairly large um payment lieu of tax burden which uh contributes to uh having our rates the way they are and as most folks know uh Anchorage is a uh in Alaska in general is is not a cheap place to live and I think uh our our BLS cost of living has actually come down a little bit it was I think higher than 21% but I think uh for 2025 it's come down which is a good thing going forward um we've presented these rate increases to our uh advisory board on November 5th and they were approved by the uh advisory board we've uh submitted those put them on the assembly they were introduced on the addendum at the meeting on Tuesday and they will be up for uh uh uh public hearing and uh hopefully approval by the assembly on December 2nd if that all goes as planned uh once it's approved by the assembly then uh we start the process of submitting it through the RCA that can take up to over a year 450 days uh depending on how the uh commission if they look at the rates and decide that they're um good as is sometimes they'll approve them that happened last year but that's pretty rare generally they suspend the rates and they want uh more information and then of course the um large interveners as well as the attorney general's office that represents the consumers um has a chance to weigh in on that and basically push back against it and then since we are coming up on one of my favorite uh holidays thanksgiving day and everybody's gonna be in a lot of turkey I just want to remind everybody um make sure you keep all the FAT oils and grease out of the drain because it causes a lot of problems on your on your sewer service as well as our system and hope everybody has a safe uh holiday season all right appreciate the update and um yeah for those who have been around for a little while this is a familiar update we get every year but always helpful to to hear the explanation uh still I'm I'm gonna look towards our staff or nobody on the phone so all right well it's just me and I do not have any questions so thank you Mr.

Bersinger I'd like to go ahead and invite Saltway services up for our next presentation actually can we do the PMO all sorts of things um yeah that's fine with that I I'll also just note that we continuation of the data yeah so we're we're that's the um an item understanding items category five uh project updates um so that's where that's posted on the agenda so I guess that'll just be one other change to the order we'll make but um I call it no that's okay is there a presentation that goes along with this or are you just giving us a verbal update presentation okay got it thank you go ahead all right so again uh this is David Persinger the general manager of Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility and I've got uh Aaron Hudson I'll have him introduce himself hi uh my name's Aaron Hudson I'm the program director with Jacobs uh running the PMO and also the waste energy program next slide okay so this uh contract was competitively solicited through a uh RFP process uh well over a year ago it was uh during the um early part of 2024 uh went through an extensive RFP process evaluation included uh complete compliance with the uh section the title seven RFP process including went to interviews where we interviewed uh shortlisted firms and ultimately selected Jacobs program management as a program manager for a large program for the for it was a five-year contract originally with two uh up to two years of annual extensions beyond that um it was set up to allow for up to seven million dollars per year program management um over the term term of five years 35 million dollars and the intent of this was to uh take care of a lot of these large uh efforts that we were looking at it with uh congressionally delegated spending and other large projects where we didn't have you know internal bandwidth to be able to to manage similar to what we've got uh with the the port the the PAMP program we needed a large uh program manager to to give us oversight and allow us to execute all these projects the other thing with a lot of these uh funded programs there's a lot of timelines on those that we have to meet with with the granting agencies and so making sure that we're executing the work and getting it done in uh the timely fashion is extremely important so that's the the background on this contract we're almost done with the first year uh the first uh 20 end of December basically is when the contract sends we have uh introduced this will be on the December 2nd assembly uh agenda for reauthorization or for basically authorizing the second year of the program and um with that we'll go to the next slide i'll let Aaron talk a little bit about uh what we've accomplished in the first year of getting the the the the heavy lifting of getting the actual uh program set up and then uh some of the projects that we're working on thanks David so uh since since we began uh we've been establishing the the programmation office in terms of its systems and processes and supporting functions so that we can operate efficiently um we're bringing in a lot of the the Jacobs um global experience in this spice so that we can uh we can work from a set of proven processes that that work

I'll let Aaron talk a little bit about uh what we've accomplished in the first year of getting the heavy lifting of getting the actual uh program set up and then uh some of the projects that we're working on.

Thanks, David.

So uh since since we began, uh we've been establishing the the programmation office in terms of its systems and processes and supporting functions so that we can operate efficiently.

Um we're bringing in a lot of the the Jacobs um global experience in this space so that we can uh we can work from a set of proven processes that that are that work for projects that can be small on the in the uh in the overall program, or that can be as big as the waste to energy.

So we've been setting up at the same time the waste energy program, which is which is uh you know one of the larger projects within the the portfolio.

Uh we've been setting up a number of AWO projects and establishing a program around those, and then a number of solid waste services projects and programs at the same time.

We've been setting up uh in project management plans.

So things these are things like how how we manage scope, how we manage cost, how we manage schedule, how we control quality, how decisions get made and get escalated through to um through to the the governance and and to the assembly.

As part of the waste to energy setup, we've looked at the schedule and uh and we've worked out how to accelerate that to some extent to try and meet some deadlines that have been set for us and establish a baseline for that schedule that we're now working through for the next for the first phase, which is the next 12 to 14 months or so.

Uh behind the scenes, I guess is uh we we've developed what we call a program information management system.

We'll do a short demonstration of part of that, which is the interface that you as the assembly will see um through a set of KPI dashboards that we've built specifically for the purpose of communicating how the PMO is performing and how we're achieving the KPIs that have been set for us.

Uh and behind the scenes as well, uh some structures and processes around document management and control so that we've got transparent records, auditable trail of what we're doing, uh, and very clear um control and version control.

A number of task orders are active that we that we're working on, and we'll cover those shortly.

Do you want me to go into the future as well, Dave?

Next slide.

Yeah, yeah.

So uh again, this was a competitive uh when we did this through an RFP process.

But the one of the main uh focuses of this and has been all along is we want as much local contractors, local Alaskans working on these, uh building these projects, managing these projects, overseeing them.

And so we've as part of the actual TMO, you know, Jacobs is the lead on it, but there's uh a tremendously large amount of contractors, some of them are large uh corporations like Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.

We've got small groups like Huddle, we've got you know engineering firms like Dall and PTS, PPS Consulting, Red In, um, etc.

So it's a you know it's a large group, but it's it's uh primarily uh local folks here in Alaska doing uh Alaskan work.

Next next slide.

And really, uh as Aaron mentioned, there's a lot of contract task orders that are out.

I'm not gonna spend a lot of time going through these, but you know, we had to get the program initiated.

We have uh grant support.