From our last second.

All right.

Minutes will stand as published.

So today we're going to be hearing first from Councilman Henderson, who's our budget chair for this upcoming budget year.

He's going to talk to us about the proposed schedule.

And then we have Mark Heinzer from our stormwater division here to talk to us about the class A.

Wastewater.

Sorry.

No worries.

About the Class A power project that they have going on at Mox and Ben.

And that is our agenda for today.

So with that being said, I'll turn it over to you, Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Council, in your folders, you'll find a sheet of paper labeled FY27 budget education sessions schedule.

Basically, what we'll do is start on Tuesday, May the 12th.

Start at 10, go to 2 30.

We will have a break.

And then we'll do the same schedule on Tuesday, May the 19th.

What what I would like to do, I'm going to try to do this a little bit differently than what we've kind of done in the past.

I would like for each council chair of the particular budget of their particular committee to lead the discussion in the budget session.

Okay.

So that you become number one more familiar with the budget for your department that you're over or your chairing.

And then I would like to develop this further.

I I didn't want to take it too far this time, but I'd like to develop this further into maybe even breaking this out into small information sessions in the future where the committee chairs would be in charge of you know determining their time when they want to set it up.

It doesn't necessarily, you know, I'd like to have it to where we didn't necessarily have to do it on a Tuesday and on go for so long.

Maybe you know you want to schedule it at some point uh during the week, and and but uh and my thought would be to have uh council people assigned to different groups so that you could attend everyone if you wanted to, but if you didn't want to, you would uh just be in you know in in that small group.

And then uh my thought was um on uh the 26th, any follow-up is needed, we would uh as a group come back and discuss uh maybe anything, any tweaks that needed to be made or or um uh concerns that needed to be addressed.

So uh what I'm gonna ask the council to do is if you have questions, and by the way, we're going to get our uh budget books after the council meeting today.

Uh but look at it, study it uh this weekend.

If you have any questions about a particular item, email the council uh chair of that committee.

Oh, of the committee of the committee, like um councilman Elliott's uh legislative, and if you'll look out to the side, his budget responsibilities would be city council judges and executive.

So if you have questions about any of those budgets, email councilman Elliott, and then that way as he leads the discussion, he can uh propose those questions and hopefully get those answered uh questions answered.

Uh same thing, Councilwoman Dotley, uh community development.

If you have questions about community development, email councilwoman Dotley as she leads that session, uh she can present those questions as well.

That way each um each chair of those committees is a little bit more involved in this budget process and hopefully uh gain a little bit uh broader knowledge uh of the budget, particularly the budget that your uh committee is in charge of.

So are there any questions about this sheet of paper and maybe kind of how this thing is gonna work or flow?

You do first of all, this is fantastic.

I like this a bunch.

Well, thank you.

Uh this is very I mean, I like this a lot.

So me and Councilwoman Hill have uh because affordable housing is of course house on the economic development.

So we're both scheduled for that day.

So do you want us to do like 30 minutes apiece or how do you want to gauge that?

Um actually, and I'll be honest, I so that really uh affordable housing was just gonna be under economic development at as far as budget discussions was was going.

Okay.

So I guess we can share, I guess when it gets to that space.

Yeah, I mean we could we could share that.

Um obviously under economic development, we've got that budget uh portion in the hotel motel.

Um and then you know that's that's the one thing that uh you know affordable housing is really important and I think it deserves its own time within our priorities.

So okay.

Um just we just split it once depending on the time frame idea.

The way I've the way I tried to do this, I think um I've tried to schedule the the committees that I'm that may not take a complete hour just before lunch and then right after lunch.

I've tried to schedule um well it except for yours, but uh on the second day like planning and zoning, I don't think would take the whole hour, but what we would do uh we're not necessarily not tied to these time, yeah.

That was just the the time slot that I gave them.

So if we got through a uh planning zoning early, we would just roll into economic development and then into and we've got a little bit of time.

Uh I've got us cutting off at 2 30.

Obviously, we don't have to be out there until 3 3 30.

3 30.

3 30, yeah, 3 30.

Uh so I've left us a little bit of play at the at the back end of these days of these sessions to, you know, if we happen to run a little bit long, we should have a little bit of time.

Uh, but I was just trying to structure it, you know, in in time slots that that fit.

Okay, and then for the presentation, so I know typically I guess Westland to be given the presentation or chief of staff, and then how do you want us to just guide the conversation with them on the well the department the department head should give the presentation?

Weston will be here, you know, if we have any higher level or whatever.

Um but I I see it as the department head given the presentation the uh chair just kind of guiding that uh discussion okay presenting any questions that may have come to the chair okay uh presenting those to the department head as well.

Okay, that works and then and then whatever uh you know whatever I guess lingering questions that we might have we could uh we could do them on that uh Tuesday May the 26th uh for the kind of follow-up meeting if if needed.

Okay.

With this being sort of a flat budget, I'm not sure you know, if we're gonna have a lot a lot of questions, and we may, but uh but I have scheduled another uh that third day that third day time for for those types of things.

Uh key dates June the second would be our public hearing for the 27 budget.

Uh then the first read would be on June the 16th, and the second read would be on June the 23rd.

Okay, thank you.

All right, scheduling.

So on that Tuesday, May 19th, we're scheduled to have strategic planning that afternoon with David Denmark coming to talk to us about the provident place airport in project, which obviously the budget and those conversations are important, but I know we're all anticipating that as well.

Could we possibly move those to um on the afternoon of the 19th to the morning of the 26th, so that we could do both things.

Um we could start if you if if the council wanted to, of course, that'd be a long day, but we could start earlier and and bump just bump everything up and then save that um two o'clock time period.

Okay.

I mean that's when we would be meeting anyway.

So start at nine o'clock on the is that acceptable to the council to start at nine then on that Tuesday?

Yeah.

Okay.

And that's only if we need follow-up.

Well, that's on the 19th.

Oh, the night.

The follow-up is the 26th.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, so we'll start at 9 a.m.

on that Tuesday the 19th.

Um, and then we'll try to wrap up to where we have uh strategic planning in the presentation then at I was I was unaware of that.

I mean uh usually when we start budget hearings, that's kind of what we just scheduled plan for, but but I I think we can accommodate that.

So we're gonna move everything up an hour.

Uh yes, on the 19th.

Okay.

And Nicole, I guess you can send that out to the council that we've adjusted that schedule.

Okay, thank you.

Um other questions or concerns about uh our budget hearings for the 27th.

I mean for the 27th.

For the 27 if not, I have I I have another item.

I'm going to propose a budget amendment to the 26 budget and well okay now there should be uh staple page and then a loose a loose page.

So one is one is operate budget.

How many more we need to do?

I don't need any CLUC chair you just got two pages.

I have a lot of things.

Oh, there it should be a staple page and then a single page.

So we need one more single and you need one more single okay.

I got okay one is the staple the staple page is the operating budget and the single page is the capital budget.

Um so I have been monitoring um revenues coming in and expenditures going out, looking at the financials, and uh it looked like that we were to the good.

So what I had proposed to the administration was capturing the surplus and revenue that we had for the 26th budget, uh moving that over to capital for the raccoon mountain water project.

Um and and Weston, if you have any questions, can explain this a little bit more.

But um it looked like that we were um down a little bit in our property tax revenue, we were up in permit permit fees, we were up in sales tax, and we were up in interest.

So uh what we're capturing basically most all of it came from the interest uh off of the I believe it was off of the ARPA dollars that we had this is just general interest.

Just gent okay, all right.

Uh so uh Weston feels comfortable with moving the 3.5 million from operating to capital uh and what I would do and with the um chair's permission we would have a budget hearing on the 19th of May.

We would do first reading for the budget amendment on the 26th, and the second reading on June the second.

Uh and most of you have heard me talk about this before.

We have um a whole section of uh of the city and in my district that does not have water, their own wells and their wells are failing, and we got a report just the other day of another well that are that has failed up there.

Uh residents were having to haul their water to their residents.

Uh it presents a public safety um concern as well because if there's a fire up there, fire department obviously has to bring whatever water they're gonna use with them, and and that's very limited, and so uh it's it's a public safety issue as well as is a public health issue, uh not having water.

Um we started um uh Ryan Ewalt uh sort of ran point on this when he was here for a little while, uh got ball got handed off to um uh chief of staff Roy uh and and he has worked very closely with TVA.

We worked out a deal with TBA to come through their property.

Uh it cut the cost of this operation just about in half.

Uh and we've uh we've done all the paperwork, we've got agreements uh in place.

Um so every everything is ready now, but TBA has said that we really can't start anything until they know we have the money in place.

So with the money in place in October, I believe it's October, November, somewhere in there when the bats go in the hibernation and leave all the trees.

Uh we can go in, start clearing and start uh bringing water uh to these residents.

So I'm sure you may have questions uh that you know be happy to answer.

Uh and if we need to do a hearing, I mean a um committee uh maybe next week or or even the the week of the um uh public hearing, you know.

We could I could set up a budget finance committee meeting.

Yeah, okay.

So I do want to ask about I guess I think a presentation would be fantastic because I know you've been talking about this since I got on here in 2011.

Chair Chip in your presentation would you also include I imagine it may but just the the impact on how many residents and maybe future development yeah so I imagine there's gonna be people that live there now but what's the potential potential this would also serve yeah okay and and we actually have a a one pager and my apologies I meant to have that printed out because that does that answers a lot of questions but but I think presentation would some back and forth uh you know would it would help but we you know we we did a lot of that you know in preparation to we went after state money you know trying to get some ARPA dollars and and I will say that this goes all the way back to I don't know like 2020 when you know we got the 38 million dollars from the ARPRA funds and I and I asked then because the state was going to match you know whatever dollars we put towards infrastructure and uh I had asked Joda and that was back during Joda's day you know if we could you know put set aside some of that money for uh the water project he said that that the mayor wanted to put everything you know towards the agencies and the programs and I said but but he promised that we would find the money so we're now in my opinion down the road and it's time to find the money so we'll uh in in the presentation we'll include what the infrastructure is that'll be on the same day as the public hearing is that what we're looking at on the day approved uh would you well we could either do it um week before you tell me we could do it I mean I could do it next week if on the 12th if you wanted to uh that way the council would have all the information because I would assume that we would do I would I would think that we would do the public hearing at the very beginning that's typically when we do public hearing would do it at the very beginning so if we did the public hearing then the then the committee would come behind that which seemed a little off yeah just looking at the agenda for next week I think we have room to do that we don't have any other committees um on the agenda okay and just one proclamation and special presentation so I think we've got some time there you want to do that if that works for the council okay all right so I've got uh include what uh infrastructure it includes uh future developments and in fact on okay how many residents will it impact now and then future okay any other questions any anything else you'd like to see included in the presentation thank you um something that I found important in this discussion and would be important for everybody to understand is the why of why the city needs to expand water service versus why Tennessee American water is not allowed to do that um and this is the history of the annexation um of this area um and then also does this represent the entirety of any surplus we would have had for this year well I think Weston go ahead and answer that I I think that's what he feels comfortable with yes yes so right now through kind of preliminary April um projecting six six point three in access revenue so that's going to be half okay more or less and that's so they still gives us some cushion for kind of Q4 to come in so I wouldn't want to go much more than that but okay all right thanks for that and and did this include uh Tammy some of the surplus also included um backfilling some of the um replacement so we're gonna do that in 27 in essentially this this is kind of that concept of a one time revenue that we talked about in kind of the policy discussions that we've had where we've had this kind of one time revenue that we're gonna use for a one time expense like capital in this case and and to that end is this a is this in fact the total cost or are we going to be looking at an additional expense in the next fiscal year so we have so we already have 1.3 million set aside in the 3.5 is what we've anticipated getting us to get us over the line to get us over the line okay one other question uh for your presentation what would be the timeline so once you once the money is approved then when does construction actually start what is okay like when do you actually have to have the money to somebody's gonna be asking for a check sort of thing the timeline any other questions or comments about this item council

For your presentation, what would be the timeline?

So once you once the money is approved, then when does construction actually start?

What is okay?

Like when do you actually have to have the money to somebody's gonna be asking for a check sort of thing?

The timeline.

Any other questions or comments about this item, council?

Thank you.

Oh, thank you, sir.

For these.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

For these uh budget education sessions.

Are the departments ready for next week?

Well, if yeah, yeah, um you'll have to ask some administration.

I've already gone over the dates with administration.

Okay, and they were good with them.

So do you know if we've talked to Judge Pagan?

No, probably not.

Okay.

All right.

Councilman said you're obsolete.

So you're responsible for that.

Could you follow up with her?

I will.

Um and and that's a great point.

If if all of the council chairs will reach out to that department head to just say, hey, we're scheduled at whatever time.

Let them talk.

Uh do you have any questions for me?

Got questions for you, whatever.

But reach out, make contact with your department head so that you all have at least had a conversation.

All right.

Anything else, council?

Were we switch gears to wastewater?

All right, Mark.

I'll probably stand.

I think we need to know this.

All right.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um my name is Mark Heinzer.

I'm the administrator for the wastewater department.

Appreciate the the time this afternoon to go over this project, the Class A power project.

Um, it's gonna be impactful to the budget as well as to the city, so I want to make sure that you all are in the loop on what's going on, why we're doing it, and everything else, and it's a good time to ask questions and get an understanding of what's going on.

So, class A power project.

Uh we produce a class B biosolid at the wastewater plant right now.

We want to get to a class A biosolid product, which is uh better for the environment, uh, it's less odor, there's a lot of reasons to do it, a whole lot less material to work with because it actually reduces the volume as well.

And of course, we we we have to have a good acronym here.

So we have process optimization and wastewater energy recovery, and we'll talk about what what those uh uh what that looks like as well.

There's a couple components to that.

So, first I do want to take a step back, go 13 years uh back into the past here to talk about the consent decree and what we've done over those 13 years and why that why now we're shifting to this this other uh big capital project.

We'll talk about what the class A power project is, it's both the liquids process and a biosolids process upgrade, as well as that energy recovery component.

Why is it important?

Um we'll talk about the project schedule as well because it's a multi-year project, uh there's different phases to it, and we'll talk about the project costs and what we get out of that going forward.

So 13 years of the consent decree back in 2013, the city entered into a consent decree with the uh uh EPA and the state of Tennessee, and the reason for that was a lot of wastewater overflows around the city.

So this is a heat map that was created back uh a few years ago of where all those uh overflows were.

You can see it's not any one neighborhood, it's not any one part of the part of town, it's all over the city.

We had wastewater overflows whenever we would get a rain event, we would have these chronic wastewater overflows, so chronic more than five times a year.

These hot spots would be you know, wastewater coming out, getting into the streets in our neighborhoods, getting into the creeks and things like that.

The consent decree was put in place for us to address this, and so as a response to that consent decree.

This is a map of all of the different projects that we did.

And so we did you see there's some areas that are just odd shapes.

That's where we went in and did sewer rehabilitation.

We looked and we cleaned all the sewers, we looked for defects, we religned those pipes, we fixed breaks in the lines uh in order to uh make sure that those pipes had good integrity.

Some of these dots are pump stations where we maybe the overflow was caused by a pump station that was too small.

So we went in and we did a pump station rehabilitation, pump station rebuilds all over the city.

And then some areas you the only thing you could do was build a tank.

And of course, you've seen some tanks going up around town.

So we looked at each area, found out what was causing the overflows.

We applied the right solution to that.

And uh here today, uh today we have uh no chronic overflows anymore.

So we've eliminated all of the chronic overflows that were shown on that heat map.

Uh so that's that is that is huge.

We've also been in a hundred per 100% compliance with the consent decree, so there's a lot of reports we need to do, a lot of studies we need to do a lot of things that we submit on a quarterly basis to the EPA.

We've been we've been good in all that.

Uh the the consent decree uh terminates in 2030, and we'll actually have all of our stuff done ahead of that.

So we're we're tracking right now to actually complete all the stipulated projects about six months ahead of schedule, so we're in good shape with the EPA on that in that regard.

We've eliminated or we've reduced these inflow and infiltration areas.

Of course, you'll always have some with 1,200 miles of pipe, but we've reduced these uh significantly the overflows again.

We've eliminated the chronic overflows.

That's that's huge, and that's a big component of the consent decree.

And this uh West Bank overflow was really the biggest um biggest overflow we had.

This contributed millions of gallons of year a year to the wastewater overflow tally every every year.

So this has been eliminated.

So 95% of our 90 to 95% of our wastewater overflows have been eliminated in the last 13 years.

That's huge.

We've we've really focused on the collection system, we've focused on the neighborhoods and the streams, and we've made those improvements, and it's been very, very successful.

But we haven't really done a whole lot at the wastewater plant itself.

We've done a few things just to keep things going.

We've had a couple couple uh upgrades there, but there's some uh portions of the facility that really need attention, and that's what we're gonna talk about today.

So I'm gonna talk about the liquid process upgrades.

Here's an overhead shot of kind of a portion of our liquids process.

What we're gonna be doing with this class A power project is decommissioning the O2 plant, the pure, the high purity oxygen plant.

We're gonna rebuild the aeration system and install an IFAS system.

IFAS is a fancy acronym for integrated uh fixed film activated sludge.

I won't go into detail on that, but just to understand that it is a it is a new technology that we're gonna implement, and we're gonna add additional blowers.

So, why would we decommission the oxygen plant?

The biggest thing here is that the plant was constructed in the early 1980s, it's really reached its useful life.

It costs us over a million dollars a year just to keep it going.

The energy alone is close to a million dollars a year to run it.

It's a cryogenic, high purity, very low temperature oxygen plant.

It's it's highly uh specialized technology, uh, and it's 45 years old now.

It's a tough environment with those temperatures and things like that.

Um, so we we barely keep it together, and when it does go down, which happens a couple times a year, we have to bring in liquid oxygen to to use, and that's very costly.

Um, but just having that that uncertainty, that risk of not knowing when this is gonna fail on us, right?

What's gonna what's gonna break next?

That's been a challenge.

Uh, we could have looked at replacing it with a new oxygen plant, but you know, we rely on on specialized contractors and consultants to run this, uh, but the IFAS technology is actually going to be it's going to allow us to do our own kind of operation and maintenance better.

And so back when the oxygen plant was built, they didn't have this technology.

Um what we're able to do to do to do now is basically retool the aeration system within these tanks, and that's going to actually give us more oxygen transfer and basically allow us to use the same volume of tank.

We don't have to build new tanks, the same volume of tank, get rid of the oxygen and still meet the requirements of the treatment uh that that's required.

So it'll be easier to operate.

And IFAS, again, it's just a fancy term.

There's a there's a floating media that uh actually the the bacteria, the beneficial bacteria that we use kind of like attaches onto there, so it's like a it's like a house for our beneficial bacteria.

Um so for you know, for instance, the you know, the the right now the tanks are just water, right?

It's just empty water, and there's not a lot of surface area, the bacteria are just floating around.

When we put this in, we can get a lot more bacteria into the same volume, and that actually boosts our treatment.

So, right now we use the oxygen like like an athlete on the sidelines, you know, uses oxygen.

We use that oxygen to you know really activate what we do have as far as the the microbes in there, but now we won't need the oxygen, we'll just have a whole lot more microbes in there.

So what is the IF stand for again?

Integrated fixed film activated sludge.

Thank you.

Question back here.

I chair.

Oh, wait.

I was just waiting.

Okay.

Okay.

And so with this, we can use just blowing atmospheric air into the tanks.

We don't have to have that oxygen.

And blowers are a technology that our staff knows how to operate, our staff knows how to maintain.

It's something that we do every day because we already have blowers in different parts of the plant.

So we're actually reducing the complexity of the operation of the plant and the maintenance of the plant, which I think is a good thing.

It's a good resiliency thing to have their ease of operation, lower maintenance costs.

We're not relying on contractors on specialized consultants to understand the cryogenic oxygen plant.

So moving into the biosolids portion of this.

So looking at an overview of kind of our biosolids processing area.

We're going to be building four new uh anaerobic digesters.

Installing a methane recovery system and also a biosolids dryer system as well.

And so looking at the the digesters, why should we build new digesters?

Well, the reason for that is that the six that we have were built in the in early 1960s.

They only do about 40% of our needed capacity.

So only 40% of our biosolids get into the digestion system.

And so obviously, you know, 60 years ago, Chapnugo is a lot smaller.

There's probably a good amount of volume at the time.

We're a lot bigger community now, and but we've never added any digestion capacity over the last 60 years.

So we it's time.

We need to do that.

We looked at rehabbing these digesters.

Um we could rehab them for roughly the same amount as building some new ones, and so it's really it's like we could get another 60 years if we build new ones, as opposed to maybe 20 years rehabbing these for the same amount of money.

So, you know, for you know, my analysis there is that it's better just to be thankful we had these for 60 years and move on to something better.

So we're gonna build four new digesters.

Uh they're gonna actually go up here where this uh old uh the filter press building is that's no longer in use right now, and these will be eventually torn down.

So we'll have four digesters that can do the same capacity, actually double the capacity of these six.

So we'll get a hundred percent digestion of our biosolids in four tanks instead of 40 percent in six tanks.

So we're increasing our capacity greatly, and digested biosolids smell a lot less than undigested biosolids.

So right now, 60% of our biosolids are undigested and stinky, and we want to get 100% that's digested and less sticky, right?

That's really the goal here.

So I'm sure your constituents will appreciate that as well.

Um and then looking at the why dry the biosolids.

This uh is product that we look to make.

So this is a biochar.

So if we dry the biosolids, and I'll pass this around, you can open it and look at it.

There is no odor to that.

That is a biochar that actually can be a revenue stream.

Um but but that's been highly processed.

There's you know, there's there's there are no pathogens involved in the product like that.

That could be sold at Home Depot if you wanted to, it could be bagged and sold, it could be put in your garden in our to worry about with with regard to any kind of pathogens in a product like that.

Whereas today, you couldn't use our our class B biosolids for anything around your house.

It really goes on agricultural fields that are further out, like you would spread manure somewhere, it's the same kind of concept there.

But we really want to get to something that um not only is a beneficial uh supplement to to a soil, but also just is a revenue possible revenue stream, and we'll figure that out as we go.

Um the other part of that is you know, right now we make about 70,000 tons per year of biosolids.

That weighs a whole lot less.

So once we process this, the the tonnage will go way down to seven to ten thousand tons a year, so a lot less material to deal with.

And if it's a product that we can actually sell or something like that in the future, uh then we actually have a revenue stream and the costs of of disposing of it go way down as well.

So, again, looking at the future, really good product.

Now that we're not the first ones to do this either.

There are other communities that are doing this as well.

What the tice look?

Just like chicken.

We're not ready for that.

No, um, so again, so this is this is really why we want to do the drying there.

And then let's talk real quick about the energy recovery.

Um, why would we recover the methane?

So the the digestion process produces methane.

We're producing it today off of our existing digesters, uh, but we're just flaring it off.

And so flaring it off is one, it's just wasting energy.

Let's why would you just why would you use an energy source like that and just not not put it to beneficial use?

And so we really want to recover that energy because our energy bills are so high.

We pay three to four hundred thousand dollars per month to EPB for our energy.

That's almost four million dollars a year.

And we can actually recover nearly all of that going forward if we implement the two phases of this project.

Because we we will have that much capacity to generate methane.

And that's really why we want to do this because high energy costs, uh again, the odors and greenhouse gases from methane flaring off.

We want to eliminate that issue.

We you know, we have permits with the you know the air pollution control board, and uh we have to account for all the gases that we put into the atmosphere, and if we're able to put those gases into these generators, we reduce our our greenhouse gases and reduce our um uh odors with regard to the flare as well.

So and it it pays for itself because as we generate our own electricity, we're not paying for it.

Um and so we save money in that regard.

And the other side of this is EPB has less concern about uh the the grid around you know, around the city.

So we're we're a really huge draw of electricity.

One, the O2 plants are really huge draw, but just in general, all the pumps and blowers and everything we have are really a huge draw.

And so during the summer months, when everyone's running their air conditioning and it's hot and and everything, they'll call us and say, Hey, can you shut down your O2 plant?

Because we want to make sure that we can still provide service in the area, and you guys are really you know, it's a big draw right now.

We've got a high high demand right now.

So we'll shut down the O2 plant, we'll start using the liquid oxygen, it's expensive for us, but it keeps the the community with power, which is you know we're very important.

Um, but if we can do this, they don't have to call us anymore.

We get rid of the O2 plant, and we're generating our own electricity.

We're not that draw on uh that big draw on EPB's grid anymore, and we can we can support that as well.

So they're very supportive of this project, even though it looks like oh, we're not gonna get our bill pay.

Well, they're not worried about us having a huge bill, they're more worried about making sure that they have service to the entire community.

And they're working with us on it.

TVA's working with us on this as well.

In fact, we just put a big banner up in front of our our plant uh that TVA sent us because we're part of their energy red program.

They're very supportive of everything we're doing.

Um so again, why is this important?

You know, aging infrastructure, stuff from the 1960s, 1980s, it's it's just at the end of its useful life.

Um new infrastructure is actually going to be simpler to operate.

Uh it'd be more efficient when it comes to OM, be more efficient with it when it comes to energy.

We're gonna reduce odors, adding potential revenue streams, and extending the life of the treatment plant for 40 to 50 years.

So this this project and you know the the projects that we're doing in the next few years will actually set Chattanooga up for growth for the next 50 years for the wastewater plant.

And that's you know, that's huge.

We can bring in more businesses, we can bring in more industries, we can create more jobs for our for our community, more opportunities, and wastewater is not going to be a holdup, right?

So we want to make sure that we have the capacity for what Chattanooga can become in the future, and we're not in the way of that.

We're setting Chattanooga up for the next 40-50 years with these with these projects.

I'll talk about the schedule a little bit.

Phase one, call it the early works package to prepare the site.

We've got six generators already on orders, um, and we expect the delivery on those in December of 2026, so you know, about eight months from now.

Um, and then there'll be an installation phase.

But you know, in June, we what we want to do by June is actually get the get the our current digester methane and actually run it through these first six uh generators.

And that will that will already reduce our electric bill by close to I think a hundred thousand dollars a month potentially if we do everything if everything shakes out like the math says, we actually reduce our operating costs right away with with this first phase of these six generators, and so uh, and we can use our existing methane to do that.

Uh phase two, we'll start the liquid uh side.

We talked about the IFAS and the four new digesters, and they're big and they'll be a long construction phase.

It'll take a couple years to build those those uh digesters.

Uh once those uh digesters are in, we will install the next six generators, and we will get um uh basically get the rest of that energy out of it.

Looking at the budget, the liquid process upgrades 70 to 80 million, biosolids process 130 to 150 million.

But here's our here's our graph.

And so this is our green mountain, it's not lookout mountain, it's a green mountain of money.

Um this is this is our strategically planned.

So we strategically have been saving money for this, call it a down payment, right?

You save money for a down payment, you're buying a house, you're buying a car.

We have saved money over the last, you know, even starting with the beginning of the consent decree because we we knew what we were gonna be looking at as far as capital improvements.

Awesome.

Now we're gonna start to spend.

You see FY26, we're starting, we're starting down here, we're starting to spend this money.

The large tanks that uh we have are kind of part of that uh spend, and uh the the rest of this spend is also with this new class A power project.

We've got a hard stop here at 30 million.

We always want to have 30 million in the bank account for whatever comes our way.

It's this is uh this is our target cash on hand.

We never want to go less than that, so we will always be in a in a position financially to respond to whatever happens, but we're also still able to do the capital investments.

So this is this is strategic.

We've been planning this.

We've got a uh a financial model that goes back all the way to these early days of the consent decree and it looks forward into the future five to ten years as well.

So we use a financial model to make sure that these investments that we're doing uh make sense.

Now, this project is funded with some low interest loans as well as uh fund balance.

So the 6G85 is our is our down payment, and we've got the loans for the remaining portion of that.

So this is a little busier, but this is the reason we're showing you this is if really just look at two things here these orange bars and the blue bars.

So the blue bars back here are taller than the orange bars, primarily.

That's because our revenue was higher than our spending.

As you look here, you're gonna see our spending is higher than our revenue, but that's because we're spending our down payment.

And so this is by design.

And so you'll see in our budget, but wastewater spending you know, 200 million, but they only bring it in 150.

Yeah, that's that's exactly right because we're spending our savings account in order to do these projects.

And we'll get back to where now you know getting back in the FY30, FY31, we're getting back to more normal normal spending.

So that was the design.

And Councilwoman Dolly, thank you for cameo appearance here.

Um as we uh release the sturgeon um in the end of the river.

And again, this is why we do it, right?

We want to have um a thriving environmental uh ecosystem here.

We want to have growth, we want to have resiliency when things go wrong, whether it's tornadoes or whatever else, and we want to you know have rate stabilization, so we we want to plan 40-50 years in the future to where we are ready for anything.

Um that's pretty much it.

So I know I went through that kind of fast, but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Chairman Elliott has one and then councilwoman down here.

Uh thanks, Mark.

Uh, this is really great.

Question about the oxygen.

How do you measure what oxygen you're putting back in the water?

What does that look like?

So we have a we have a for the use as far as like going into the river from our process, or you're oxygen in the water, right?

Yeah.

Like how do you what measurements or usually a dissolved oxygen?

We have what's called dissolved oxygen meters that can actually tell how much oxygen is in the water because wildlife, you know, whether it's fish or invertebrates or whatever, they need dissolved oxygen because they breathe oxygen like we do, just in a different form.

And we have uh whether it's from our effluent or even throughout our process, we have dissolved oxygen meters that tell us what that level is, and we know where we need it to be.

Okay.

And with this new technology that we're looking to implement, are we gonna be at the same level currently?

Or is it gonna be a little bit less, a little bit more?

What is that?

It's probably gonna, it's it's gonna be roughly the same.

The uh the oxygen that we pump in now, that pure oxygen is actually pumped into an annular space above the water.

Okay, and so what we will be doing is we'll have fine bubble diffusers at the bottom of the tank that are actually like your aquarium.

You see those bubbles in aquarium, it's gonna bubble up through, and that's gonna, you know, basically directly uh impact the that air that we pump in is gonna be direct contact with that whole column of water.

So it's kind of a trade-off.

Okay, perfect.

That's all please.

I just wanted to say after I've done my tour, and I'm glad that I can understand all the things because I did my tour, but I can meet you all for a saving.

We're saving the money and projecting for what you need it, and now it all makes sense.

And so uh I think just for me, it's just a job well done.

Thank you.

Um, and uh I'm interested more how you're gonna commercialize the fertilizer, uh, where we're gonna store it.

I'm sure public works will love to help you with that.

And uh so excited about what you all what you all would do and and to be generating revenue with with our with with all of our things, not our waste with all the things.

Uh generating revenue, you know, from uh from bio solid uh is very exciting and um interested to see how we can commercialize that and hopefully you know we can buy local, you know.

It's real home here from home from your home's home, you know.

So that's like a marketing campaign.

So I'm excited about it.

I look forward to uh hearing more about how you're gonna how you're gonna commercialize that.

I think that's good for the city to be in a space where we are now, you know, offering you know, offering products, I think.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you so much again.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

G.

That's what the middle and then I find such organizational um usefulness in enterprise funds in the way that you all have a dedicated stream of income that you can plan with.

Um before I ever served as an elected leader in our community, and I I read about the overflows and I I learned about um the consent decree.

What I what I thought about as a constituent was here's a bunch of folks who knew we had problems and didn't have the guts to do anything until the federal government forced them to.

Um and so we have been living with this consent decree, you know, being being told to take our medicine, right?

And given the prescription for that, which has allowed us to save this amount of money and have a remarkable impact for the future health of our community.

I mean, our district two was riddled with overflows.

That one of the gushing, that's straight off of Lepton Drive, I do believe.

I think you're right.

Um it's a big difference.

So as you say, Mark, that you all are want to be planning 40, 50 years in the future.

I I hypothesize that once we have met the consent decree expectations that there will be folks who will say, cool, let's shut all this down.

Um not dissimilar from we met our emissions goals and now we don't test emissions anymore, right?

Except in this case, we actually have pipes in the ground that are going to need long-term maintenance, right?

Um so as you all are looking at that at that 40 to 50 year planning.

How are you thinking about what your funding needs to look like to continue to maintain a very healthy maintenance and investment?

Yeah.

Yeah, so there is uh known maintenance that's required for collection systems and for pump stations and things like that.

So uh we have uh for instance for the collection system, uh, we've got 1200 miles of pipe, we have 30,000 manholes.

Uh we have a program, a maintenance program, where we go uh basically every six years we clean and inspect every um every pipe, right?

And that that what that does is that helps us identify where a problem is.

So ahead of where there might be an overflow.

And that's part of a bigger uh program that's uh it's referred to as a CMOM program, which is construction maintenance operation and management.

And that's that's part of our um permit requirements with the state.

We will always have that program.

We have it's part of a compliance thing anyway.

So there won't be kind of a a lack or a or a fallback of kind of the oversight of things like that.

And then again, with with the the plant itself, we have a really robust preventive maintenance program that we've put in place, uh and we've got uh good tracking on all that stuff.

So for instance, we might have a uh a backup pump in our in our warehouse in case you know a pump goes down.

We have a preventive maintenance that guys go and they rotate that pump to make sure the bearings don't flatten out.

Like we're that detailed.

Like we're even looking at stuff that's in inventory to to maintain what our inventory is so that we don't have problems when we pull the cobwebs off something and try to put it in and it's rusted shut.

Like no, we we have valves and we that are in in storage, we we work those valves.

So we have a really robust uh maintenance, preventative maintenance program that's paid for with money.

That's part of our that's our operating expense.

That's the so this is all kind of like capital.

Well, well, and that's I think that's where I'm headed.

What I want to what I want us to start understanding together and talking about together is it took a lot of years to get to a place where you were able to do these multiple projects and save up 68 million dollar down payment on uh 140 plus million dollar project.

You know, we don't we don't see that right now in uh public works.

We don't have an enterprise fund for public works, right?

So you all are able to think in a arguably much more logical way than other government departments because you know we have this revenue that not only covers our our maintenance, but it also is our capital.

We are have a healthy capital budget.

And I don't want us to suddenly fall off that cliff, and in 15 years, y'all be right back where you are, where well we need to make this advancement and we can't, and now the city's got to carry a bond and on and on.

Well, even when the consent decree ends, I think we'll still be an enterprise fund.

It won't that won't change.

Right, but you're gonna have to think about what the charges are going to be to people.

Absolutely.

Right?

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

And the leadership is gonna have to have the stomach to be willing to help you hold that.

And so what we've done, so the early years of the consent decree, the rate increases were probably like nine percent.

We've reduced those.

I think it's I think it's five percent this year, and it's only gonna go down from there to track uh what we want to do is just uh track inflation because we we we kind of have to do that because stuff gets more expensive, and in order to keep going, we don't want to be any more than the inflation rate right now.

We're in the consent decree and we're still a little higher because we're in the consent decree.

We're a little bit higher than inflation, but um that's coming down.

So it started off at nine and went to six, now we're at five, it's gonna go down to four.

So you're not anticipating reducing your base rate, but actually going up with inflation.

Yeah, but that base has grown by that nine percent, et cetera each year.

Okay.

Well, I mean, nine percent was early in the consumption.

Right, right.

Not anymore, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

Well, let's keep talking about that though.

Thank you.

That's all, Mr.

Chair.

Yeah, I actually want to follow up.

That was actually one of my questions, and thank you to uh your deputy uh Lawrence.

I did a field trip at that couple weeks ago.

And I I think I called uh councilwoman uh heel and we nerded out just on how methane becomes energy and how we are turning some of the biosolids um into a product that we could sell my what my first question is that currently we're giving all of our solids to neighboring county farms uh for free.

And paying to get them right.

Oh, we are the well it costs us money to get it there, yeah.

Right.

So my question is is that as we transition into this, will this be a product that they will that they will be in agreement to like would they would they be a contractor that we can say we want to sell this to you now?

And what is what would be the savings for the city for the the marketability of that goes beyond just agricultural farms in the area?

So you you you could do that with the landscape companies, soil blenders, things like that.

It's really good for compost amendment to compost.

The actual the marketability goes way up with regard to where you use it, right?

So right now with our biosolids of Class B biosolids, we can we have a limited space that we can uh take it.

But this will be class, that will be class A, and that can go just to all kinds of different places.

So the market's what it what's the market potential as far as like what this will bring into the city of Chattanooga once we start packaging this as a product versus what we're paying out to send it ship for free.

Sure.

Yeah, and those those numbers I I don't have those numbers for you.

I do know that you know when I did a little research on the biochar, it's it's interesting, it sells for about 600 to 1,300 a ton.

Um not gonna make a lot of money.

A crazy amount of money, and I don't know that uh that's real, that's that's uh Google search, right?

Um and also there are some environmental like like carbon credits for that because that actually sequesters uh carbon.

And so there are some carbon credits that people have have uh gotten with that at about 130, 130 dollars a ton.

I again I don't know where that's whether that's gonna end up.

I do know that our operations expenses will go down when we're dealing with 7,000 to 10,000 with a product that we can you know move much easier, uh and then versus what we do today.

So with all of these cost savings, right?

And potential profitability in this and all the money you all will be saving and like electricity and what type of savings the the number one complaint I get, which council we have no bearings in, is that my sewer bill is higher than my water bill.

Um what type of cost savings uh can we pass those cost savings to the taxpayer as in the rate and save the money in the rate.

Yeah, some of that some of that is is is kind of far in the future to project, but what we do know is it's like like I showed on here, the operation and maintenance costs are gonna go down.

There's a capital investment now, and there's a debt service to that, right?

So we have to pay off the the loans, we have to do that.

Um but when we're talking about we're no longer have the that cryogenic oxygen plant, we no longer have 70,000 tons of biosolids.

We know that those operating expenses are gonna go down.

When we pay when we convert the methane to electricity, we know our electricity bills go down, and so you combine those and the operating expenses and the operation operational complexity will be reduced as far as quantifying that, we've got high level numbers.

Uh but the bottom line is with the oxygen plant, we have to do something with the digesters.

Actually, the digesters, none of them are working right now because we had to take them down for for for maintenance, right?

So we know that these aging systems, we have to replace them anyway.

And what we're trying to do is replace them in a way that that really sets us up for success in the future.

And so we're making this big investment, but we're trying to make it in a way that actually will reduce operating costs.

We still have our debt service as part of this.

And so that those those that debt service feeds into that rate structure that I talked about.

But we want to make sure that we're actually dovetailing that and making sure that's right.

But that so there's a there's a happy to deep dive on some of that stuff with you guys uh if you need to, because it is a kind of a complicated process when you start looking at all these different things, bond rating and debt service are big for us.

We want to make sure that Weston's got what he needs to make to have a good healthy financial uh uh environment for the city as well.

Thank you.

Councilman's just taking up my thing.

So councilman used to tell me to give me cleaner water, it wouldn't cost so much to clean it up.

That's the reason it costs more than your water basically.

Right, right.

Um Mark that's a great point.

Just point for it kind of addressed the nice errors out there.

The filter press was supposed to produce class A biosolids, and it never did.

Yeah, it was tough to operate.

And it it was this kind of a big plump.

What guarantees do we have that this new system won't be like the filter press system?

Yeah, so we never quite got there.

So it's so what we are investing in as far as like the new digesters, that is a known technology.

We of course digestive units have been around for decades, right?

Um the part of this, the dryer portion of this is contracted services.

So if they if they don't produce, we switch contractors.

And so that's one of the things that we wanted to make sure that uh we weren't committing to 50 million dollars of something that may not work, right?

So the filter press building was the largest installation of its kind at the time.

Uh we're really not doing anything like that uh today with this project, uh, and what we are doing with the with the biosolids.

So let's say the dryer service doesn't pan out.

I mean, we we they took our biosolids and they made this.

So I know that they can do this, but can they do it at a large scale?

That's a good that that's the question, right?

So they've they've uh promised that they can, and and we'll see what what comes of that.

But okay, not promise, but what guarantees does that come with?

Yeah, that so it's a contract.

And so if if uh so today we have a biosolids contractor that manages our and if they fail to do their service, what what do we do?

We're it's the same situation that we're in today, it's no different.

We've got biosolids project product that a contractor has to take to these farms and and spread out.

And so we are at the you know the uh I guess the the whim of of the the businesses that we that we work with.

Um and it's it's it's you have to rely on something because we don't have our own haulers and we don't have our own agricultural spreading equipment, and we don't drive around on people's farms and spread the stuff, we have to rely on that.

If they just took their keys and left one day, you know, we would have to we'd have to find a way to pivot, and it would be it would be very difficult.

It's the same with this.

So, of course, with this, hopefully, we're dealing with a lot less, and hopefully we're getting a product that is a lot better.

Uh and we've this is this is uh again it's a technology that's being used in other places, Orlando.

I think it's a bigger wastewater plant than ours, as one of these systems in place.

And so that is produced class.

And there's actually a smaller version down in Walker County, which right here.

Um they have a smaller plant, but the plant down in in Walker County, Georgia has this exact system down there.

That's where this was made.

And so I know that the technology works, it's just a matter of does it scale up.

Orlando committed to it, Orlando's doing it.

Um I haven't I haven't been down there to see their system.

Uh but uh again, we're we're trying to do things that actually make good common sense and good resiliency.

I'm all about like resiliency, like I don't want to have some catastrophe like you're talking about.

That'd be like that's that's what we don't want, right?

So we need to do we need to do the digesters anyway, absolutely and yeah, and uh and the electricity, you know, using the methane is a cost savings.

Yeah, so really it just comes down to the dryers.

The dryer is it's it's probably the where the I guess the risk is, but even if let's say the dryer fails completely, we still have a better class B product because we were digesting 100%.

So we'll have a less odorous class B product, and we can continue to go to the farms like we do today.

Worst case scenario, and I don't think that's gonna happen.

But if there was a worst case scenario where the dryer didn't work, we still have the same process we do today with a actually a better product.

Um maybe it won't be class A, but that would be the that would be the trade-off in a in the event of a catastrophe.

And the digesters put us further down the road other.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

Gives more life to the plant.

Absolutely.

Okay.

I I don't know.

I just I'm just a little cap shot putting you know all of our money on the table over that class A and then you know, I don't still want to get to the what why class A and But all of the work that we're doing is important aside from producing the plastic.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um and and again, I wouldn't want to commit to a technology that I didn't actually see work somewhere else.

Uh and again, Walker County's had it for a couple years.

Uh and and again it's a smaller plant, uh, but it's it's a unit that it's scalable, so I don't see there being too much of a risk.

And with the Orlando also committing to it and and building theirs, they're they're a year ahead of us on this, and so um I I do feel like it's not like a filter press.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments, Council?

Okay.

So thank you again, Mark.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

Sorry.

Kind of a crappy presentation, isn't it?

All right, council.

Well, that takes us through our agenda for today.

Um just please make note of the upcoming presentations and also the board appointments that are listed at the bottom there.

Um if there's nothing, no other business anybody has will be adjourned for this minute.

Councilman Harder, maybe to go over the budget.

I I was tuning in online.

Or you okay, so you got huh?

So we don't need to do these housekeeping items.

We'll do those another time.

Another, yeah.

Yeah, we'll just we'll put those off.

I don't want to push us to close to 330.