All right, good evening.

It's six o'clock.

And all our Columbia work session to order for June 8th, 2026.

Our topic tonight is uh electric and it's related to advanced metering uh infrastructure.

So I'm gonna kick this over to start, I assume, to Aaron Keys with our utilities.

I better use microphone, right?

We're recording this.

Aaron Keys Utilities Director.

Uh, thank you all for being here on this off Monday.

Uh, we're talking about advanced metering infrastructure for both water and electric.

Um tonight, uh, giving our presentation.

I have Eric Wurtz, who's our engineering supervisor, he is the project manager for this project, and then Chad Nobles from Amoresco and I will let them introduce the rest of the team.

Uh, but just by show of hands can all the staff people that are here to support this project, raise your hands.

So this is not a minor project by any stretch of the imagination.

Um it's a very extensive project, and staff is uh supporting this effort and been very involved in this whole process.

And Aaron Wait, can I acknowledge that was not just utilities staff?

That's staff from multiple staff from multiple departments.

Okay.

So IT, uh finance, most notably the other departments and utilities.

Yeah, awesome.

Thank you.

So again, we're here to discuss the opportunity to invest in advanced metering infrastructure.

Uh, it's an opportunity to improve both customer service and reliability for both water and electric.

So, for example, uh, how many of you know that we don't automatically know when the power is out at your house?

We rely on you to call us to let us know when the power is out at your house.

With advanced metering infrastructure, we will know when the power is out at your house.

Um we've been asked about setting billing dates.

With the current way that we read meters, we cannot set a billing date.

With advanced metering infrastructure, we will be able to set billing dates.

Uh we're a college town.

We have thousands of college students that move in and move out every year.

That's hundreds of turn-ons and turnoffs that requires our truck to roll to that residents to run and turn off a meter.

Uh water leaks.

Currently, it takes about a month or more for it to show up on your bill, and then you're paying a very large water bill with advanced metering infrastructure.

We'll be able to set it up, it'll send you an email and say, hey, something weird is going on with your water.

So these are some of the benefits that we see for our customers and our utilities.

So staff's been trying to move this forward uh for a couple of years, and it's not as simple as just going out and changing out the meter.

And so that's what's been taking time is to figure out all the pieces that are involved.

So it's uh the communication from the meter to the billing system, it's managing the data, uh, it's setting up the customer portal, and thousands of details along the way.

So, as you listen to this whole project, uh, what we're asking from you tonight is confirmation that we should move forward with this project.

Um and this investment, and what it'll look like to you is it'll come back as a contract with Amoresco to move forward with this project.

And so, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Eric, our project manager.

Oh thanks.

I'm just gonna give uh Chad the opportunity to introduce his team from ARSCO real quick.

Thank you all.

Um I say appreciate you guys allowing us to speak tonight.

Um, my name's Chad Nobles, I work for Amoresco.

We've kind of served you know, multiple uh rep roles here tonight.

One is kind of a consultant, one is kind of the technical expert.

We don't manufacture meters, we've put them all in.

Um our team has put in hundreds of these systems.

I've been working with utilities for over 25 years, and so we've got lots of expertise.

I do want to call out your staff, has been actually awesome to work with.

Um, as you can see with the support, very seldom do we get cities your size even that bring all the departments together, and it's critical because the project that we're talking about tonight is gonna touch every citizen and every business.

And so we got to make sure that that communic is communicated correctly tonight, uh, and is actually, you know, all your questions are answered, so we're here to take questions throughout the process.

I want to introduce a couple of folks with my team, Dana, is right here.

He has served as the Missouri senior account executive.

You've probably seen him at other council meetings before.

Garrett Luther is our senior project manager.

He's been doing uh kind of grew up in the world of doing installation.

He will serve as a senior project manager.

He lives kind of right up the road uh here for him, so he's really happy about this product.

Usually he travels all over the place, so he's like, hey, I can drive to this one, so he's really excited about that.

And then John is our regional director over Missouri as well.

So uh, and again, I'll turn it back over to Eric and let him kick it off.

All right, thanks.

So I just want to encourage you to ask questions as we go through this, as usual.

Um, we've tried to make and Eric do use the microphone.

You have to bring it a lot closer to you.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, because we record it because we have a council member that's not able to be here tonight, so we want her to be able to listen.

Um, so we encourage you to ask questions throughout it.

We've also kind of tried to make this presentation a little short so we're not eating up the entire two hours because I know you guys will have questions.

Uh, we will appreciate answering all of them as we move forward.

So, as staff, um, Aaron went over some of the challenges that we have been facing um with our existing metering system.

Um, so as you may know, that's there's a lot of manual readings done.

Uh, many of those manual reads, plus many of the others that are um in the system are far past their useful life.

We're going to have to replace them anyway.

So, this project is like kind of a bonus.

We're gonna go in there, we're gonna bring us into the 21st century with something we were going to have to do anyway.

Many of our many of our readers, they are they are failing, some of them are stuck, and um, like Aaron had mentioned, you don't find that out until a month later when you get the read on it.

Um Aaron also mentioned the three uh several three operational interficiencies that we have.

Um, the first one is uh the rolling of the trucks, not only to do a meter read, but also to do any of the turnoffs, turn ons that our college students go through, and also the outage notification.

Um there are many other efficiencies that we'll gain, those are kind of the three that are uh kind of the most obvious to staff and to the public.

Um, and then one of one of the things we talk about when talking about data transparency is really a data availability.

We only know what happens in a month, how much power, how much water is used, and this the system would give us a uh an ability to do a lot more analytics on the data we have.

We able to see what time power is used, and it gives our customers the ability to see that as well.

And that's that's one of the challenges that we're hoping to uh to solve.

So the way we've kind of gone through this project is we have asked Amheresco to work with us.

Um we needed to find an industry expert to do this.

Is not something we could accomplish in an in-house manner.

Um we were looking for a uh a good uh a team that could go from start to finish, and then they're kind of a turnkey response.

Uh we need somebody that helps us with our citizen engagement plan.

That is a plan that you will hear about from Amheresco a little bit later on during their presentation.

Um this is just a little, this is kind of wordy for a timeline.

We started working with Amheresco last fall.

Amresco has already done a number of things with our staff.

Um, most notable, probably the most in time intense was doing some water audits for the meters.

They took a couple hundred, was it a couple hundred, sixty?

You're talking about the meter testing meter testing.

So, yeah, we tested uh roughly we tested roughly 70 uh residential meters, but we actually surveyed several hundred of the meters, which I'll talk a little bit about about all that process.

So, yeah.

So we got staff involved in that process as well.

Um, we've had several workshops.

It's not not just been this one, maybe four or five where we've met with Billy, we've met with IT, we've met with uh water and electric, and we've talked about the ways this project would benefit those areas, and it's kind of led to this support that you see here today.

Um, and that kind of led us up to what's going on today.

We're bringing back a scope of work to you as kind of a hey, this is where we're at, and it's like Aaron said, we're looking for your support moving forward.

Um we intend to bring given given everything goes well, we intend to bring a contract back to you sometime around September for your approval.

And then so this is a non-exhaustive list of the members of staff who have been involved in this project.

I tried to put an exhaustive list together, and I was afraid I was gonna leave somebody out.

There is in the area of 30 people that have touched this project in some way on staff among various departments.

Okay, so I'm gonna turn it over to the Chad.

He's gonna talk a little bit about what we've done so far and what's coming.

Thanks, Eric.

Can I can I ask sadly a couple questions before we get down to it?

Um, the utility billing, is this going to be a different utility billing than type that we have now?

On the software, no, it's actually the same software that you're using today, which is Harris Advance.

All right, that was pretty much it.

Thanks.

Great question, though, and feel free to bring them on.

We'll talk through that a little bit today.

Um, I don't want to want to kind of just highlight a little bit more.

The staff really has been involved in entire scope of work.

So, one of the things that we did is we took them through, we put boots on the ground for several several months out here.

We field surveyed some stuff.

I'll talk a little bit about that.

But staff has been involved in all of these discussions that we're talking about tonight, and they've really been able to bounce the ideas of their goals, their challenges that they're dealing with, and we basically helped them pull this project together.

So we're going to talk a little bit about what is AMI, what are the benefits, and kind of walk you through some of that.

What I want to talk about, where's the industry been?

So if we look at the meter industry, we typically started with manual reads.

That's one read a month.

We don't know how the water's being used.

You just get that bill and it shows up, and you're like, how do I pay this?

Because it's more than what I thought, and I don't know where that water went, right?

Um, but that was where the technology was.

It transitioned years ago to what they call AMR or um automatic meter reading, is what some people refer that to.

We called it drive-by.

So we basically put a radio on the meter, we took a black box, we got in the truck and we drove around and we still collect one read a month.

So again, it's not like we're getting all the data.

You can at that point go out and manually stand over the meter and collect a bunch of data, but you got to do that individually.

So you're not getting all the data on a monthly basis that you really need.

Fast forward, we are well into a mature industry here.

This AMI, which is advanced metering infrastructure, has been around at least 15 years or more.

Um, it's very proven um technology that's out there, but it is using either some type of imagine taking that black box and either now mounting it on some type of pole or elevated structure.

So now the reads come in, they come in daily, they come in hourly, and in the case of the actual electric meters every 15 minutes, you're getting reads, so you can actually see that data.

So it's more close to real-time type information that's coming in.

The other thing that's changed in advanced in technology is the meter side.

We had old mechanical meters, these basically on the electric side had a rotating disk that you would see in the old meters if you could actually read through the glass, you know, that wasn't faded.

Or you would have a meter in the ground that has some type of device that's spinning in it.

As mechanical meters age, they all slow down, right?

So I've been testing meters for over 20 years.

I've had one twice actually my career where it's actually sped up, which people most people think, but that's one brand, one particular type.

You don't have those meters.

So every other meter that we've seen is always declined.

So what happens is is even though the user is having water go through it, they're not necessarily paying an equitable fair share.

That happens sometimes.

Is it off by a lot?

No, but it can be.

So we will talk through that.

What's changed a lot that allows the technology to advance is batteries.

So we used to not have power in an actual water pit, you know, or in the ground.

Now we have electrical power through the battery that allows us to have a 20-year warranty on these type of meters.

So we're gonna talk through that a little bit more.

Can I see a quick question?

Oh, and it maybe no, it might be on this next slide.

I think that's my my one question.

You mentioned something that I hadn't I had not actually sadly given thought to was the infrastructure to read.

And so, how many like would those be deployed around the city?

Like how many sites would we expect?

And is this now gonna be the next like you know, controversial like black antenna in my backyard?

Like so, what what does that look like?

Yeah, so we evaluated if you saw the slide earlier, we looked at like 10 different meter technologies, and some of those technologies are all built differently.

So, some technologies, as you can see here, use the existing cellular network that's out there.

So, whether it's ATT, Verizon, you'll basically leverage that to get to there.

The other technologies will actually, in the case with your staff has you have an electrical meter, and some of the water meters, if they can't reach the nearest pole, they go through the electric meter actually too.

So they actually are called a mesh network.

It's a type of technology that's been around a long time.

Um, from the standpoint of where those boxes, because you own the electric utility, most of those are gonna be on electrical light bulbs.

Okay, so they will you probably won't even notice them.

It's be a little gray box sitting on top of electrical light pole that will install around town in random places.

Thank you.

And I think out of all the locations, there's probably 50 something of those.

So it's not like we're putting them on every pole that is out there.

So the way the technology works, you've got electric meter or water meter, it'll have an actual radio, or an electric meter, it has just a what they call a NIC card, an actual card in it that actually transmits the signal back.

It either goes to this black box that's mounted, what we call a data collector that's mounted either on a light pole, um, and then or an existing cell tower.

So in areas where you don't have electrical meters and the coverage is outside your area because you have some of that on the water side, we're gonna use an existing cell tower to actually transmit that data back.

That data then feeds into the cloud, which actually the cloud you think of it as, and we call this a meter data management.

So one of the things that this project is also doing, and we'll talk about the software side of this is we're installing a meter data management system.

So you used to get one read a month.

You now get all of this data every single hour is coming in from every meter every day.

So you have to have a way to actually manage that data.

And so there's a very, we're using Harris, same company, and we're actually going to put in their meter data management system as part of this, and we'll talk through that.

That data then is even fed out to a bill, or it actually, as we mentioned, it's gonna go to the customer portal.

So this portal now will we'll talk a little bit about what you're gonna get to see on that portal as well.

Some of the benefits you guys have hit.

Staff has hit on several of these, but I wanna kind of talk through a couple of these.

One, when we look at the operations right now, staff is kind of handcuffed a little bit to not know when the power is out.

They don't know how to proactively plan, you know, where are the outages occurring, where are different things, they're having to manually track that.

With AMI, they'll be able to see that data and get all these different points in so they can actually improve the daily insights as well as their operations long term from a meter standpoint itself, detecting leaks or what we call continuous usage on the water side, uh, the outages on the electrical side, any anomalies like how much is a transformer being loaded.

Is there something that's going on?

Did we lose a phase of the electrical power?

They'll be able to see those type of things through this data, which they can't or struggle a little bit get to now.

From the citizen standpoint, to me, this is the biggest benefit of any AMI system is you now are giving the citizens, the users the actual data that they've been asking for that we could never give them.

And so now they get to look at setting alarms for themselves.

If you're a fixed income person and you need to be able to set a leak alert to where you want to know if I'm out of town and my I got a leak going on, I want to know that, right?

I want to know if the toilet's leaking and I don't really know it.

I want to know if my irrigation system's going off and I don't really know it instead of waiting until the end of the month.

So those type of things, they'll actually be able to get a text or an email from the system to be able to tell them what's going on.

So it encourages the actual user to decide and make the decision.

Do they want to conserve or do are they okay with paying?

So it gives the you're putting the power in their hands basically.

From a staff's perspective and a cost perspective, the reduction in operational cost is huge.

If you think about being a college town where you have the move in and move outs that we talked about, every somebody's moving in, you'd have to roll a truck, pull the electric, maybe you got roller truck, person sitting here trying to call a bill, now they got to come back into the office.

Here, citizen renter comes in, they want to pay their final bill, they pull up the account, push a button, get the read, process the bill.

So you're getting a very accurate read the day of not 24 hours later, you're getting that read, you're processing that bill, they can set their self-stack and set an alert to where hey, if anybody goes and steals water, something happens, they know what's going on.

New customer comes in, it's all processed, never rolling a truck.

So it's a huge cost savings when you look at the system, and we'll talk through some of those.

We'll show you some of what we've worked with staff on kind of estimating some of those costs.

Yes, ma'am.

I don't know if you'll be able to answer this, but if we're minimizing the charcoals and things, what if what does that have an impact on the current number of employees?

Great question.

And we talked about that.

I don't know if Aaron, if you want to address it or know we've kind of talked through it, I can highlight it.

I think right now you have, I believe, seven, if I recall, meter readers, and I know that you've got two positions you're trying to hire.

What we heard from staff is they're struggling trying to keep up with meter reads.

It's very hard to hire a manual read person.

We have workers' comp claims, you've got lots of issues that go on.

It's a it's a hard job, right?

Um, with not a lot of pay, unfortunately.

So those people that are currently on staff will be retrained because you'll need to have a technical person now working on something that's a little bit more higher tech.

So a lot of times they'll fill unfilled positions as well as you'll take some of those and they will become meter technicians instead of meter readers.

So it actually improves the livelihood as well as usually of that individual that was reading meters.

Good question, though.

Anything else, otherwise, I'll okay.

So I mentioned customer service, and to me, this is the biggest value.

We've talked about some of this, but it's the transparency of the data.

And I see Ricky back there smiling because she knows she can get the questions that come into her office all the time.

Being able to take data and just show up a citizen, a user who's come in and maybe is upset over a high bill and they can now see that is wonderful.

You also can encourage them to sign up to the portal to where they can see that themselves way before that month bill hits, so they get those alerts.

It's just a huge benefit, but there are lots of different things, and I think customer service, I could talk all day long about I've seen 30 to 40% reduction in clients, you know, the calls that come into the office.

So the improvements that happen from staff with this system is huge.

So I want to kind of go through and give you a little insight of what your system looks like today.

As I mentioned before, we spent quite a bit of time with our staff as well as your staff, kind of walking the fields.

You'll see pictures, every picture that you see is actually from your city, your meters, your different things that we found.

You have a variety of manufacturers and sizes out there.

That makes it truff for inventory management.

You know, when they roll a truck, maybe they thought it was one thing and it's actually something different when they get there.

So again, we're trying to standardize on what's actually in the field as well.

The majority of your meters are residential, which are called Form 2S.

We found that about 8% of those are indoors uh on the electric side.

So the majority are all outdoors.

The 12% that you see currently on, that's just because we didn't find them in the database and we physically didn't put eyes on them yet.

And so there was we called them unknown at this point.

We'll find them obviously during the construction phase, but we just wanted to kind of highlight Eric was like, what do you mean in those?

So I want to make sure we cover that.

Right.

So I'll dive in a little bit more.

There's a little bit more to talk about on the water side because you have a bigger variety of pits and applications that are out there.

So in this part of the country, we do see pits that are deeper, right?

Because of the freeze line, they need to be deeper.

Um, we saw you'll see some of these pictures where these meters are buried in dirt.

We've got lots of broken lids.

If you maybe you have a house that's got a box that's been broken or structurally damaged, and we're gonna get lots of different where the meters actually kind of outside the meter box, some endpoints that were failed, as Eric mentioned.

These meters are past their useful life or a large chunk of them all, and they will have to be replaced regardless of whether you put AMI or not, you're gonna need to replace meters.

So I want to show you a couple more pictures.

Oh, yes, ma'am, you got a question.

What is the average life for a meter like that we currently have?

So you have a kind of a mixed bag on the mechanical side.

We talked a little bit about mechanical meters.

So most, let's take the average residential mechanical meter, which is a five-eighths by three quarter on the water side.

The average life or the warranty I would say on that is tied to two things age and volume of water through it.

So that's usually uh most manufacturers are five years or 500,000 gallons of water, which industry standard would say the average person is gonna get there somewhere between seven and ten years, and then you should be replacing them.

The new meters, which are the solid state meters that are in the ground, they are not tied to actually volume at all because there's no moving parts in them.

So that warranty is a 20-year warranty.

Because of the battery, uh, because of the no-moving parts, basically, you don't have anything to wear out.

The battery is what limits it to the 20-year limitation.

Thanks.

But good question.

Well, to that question, um, and maybe this is probably more for Eric.

Eric, do we have a current replacement schedule for meters?

I mean, IT has like a three-year computer replacement schedule.

So, like, what do you guys think?

Right, and so there is a meter replacement schedule, and we're, I would say we're behind.

It gets funded yearly, and staff goes out and replaces several, especially the troublesome ones.

Um, yeah, we're behind this would kind of be a nice catch-up project for us.

And then is the plan then going forward to have kind of like a 20 year old I mean, like revolve right rotating.

I think that would be a very good idea.

Okay, well, put it in the plan.

Thank you.

Okay.

Is it a problem to change these water meters when some of them are in water, some of them are deep, and some of them appear to be in the basement.

See that guy back there?

That's the man.

That's the man with his crew.

He's he we have one of the things that Amoresco will bring to the table is a is a full on-site construction manager who's gonna live here for the entire duration of the project and make sure those decisions.

Your staff is busy doing this.

They're used to doing this, they've got their full-time job dealing with stuff.

But what our crews is it a problem?

It can take longer, right?

We'll have to pump out if it's you know wet.

If it's you know, and you'll see some of the pictures, we'll pump those out.

That's why when we do the construction of this, and I'll kind of hit this right now.

Electrical will typically go 30 to 40 percent faster than the actual water.

Okay, so we'll be done with electrical before we get done with the water side.

Um, from an installation, you know, we ideally, if we can get electric meter plugged turned in and out in 10 and 15 minutes, great.

That water is gonna take 15 to 30 minutes pretty consistently from that standpoint.

And I know we had another one to I wanted to add on to that.

I wanted to just point out that the electric staff and the water staff are indicated that they would like to have crews on board to fix any problems that Amheresco would come across.

We're not gonna outsource routine maintenance that they might come across to Amheresco uh water and left that we'll have crews that'll follow behind them and be like, hey, this is broken.

They'll get a they'll get a note from Garrett and say, Hey, we need you to address this and this and this.

And we also have a number, a number of industrial-sized meters where uh the electric crews are going through and updating those services.

Um that Amresco's just dealing with the meter, and our people are dealing with the service lines into the building, or up to that point.

Okay, yeah, this is kind of a physical question because it came to my mind when you mentioned that we have a whole lot of meters that are at the body.

Um, do you have a are you able to quantify that the number of meters?

I'm thinking my house.

I have a relatively new meter.

I think that's because we did an upgrade on the electrical home not too long ago.

But um in other words, this is part of the fiscal impact.

It's gonna be very expensive to put the AEMIs in, but um I'm wondering if you've been able to quantify what it's gonna cost to just replace what we've got and how long we can anticipate before that has I assume it's on a web tiding basis of some kind.

Yeah, yeah.

So I want to I'll answer and then I'll turn it over to you.

So on the water side, we are reusing and actually because several of the water meters your staff has been doing a good job of actually replacing those with some of the newer technology.

So I think out of the 50 something thousand, there's about 20,000 that we're actually reusing and not doing the full replacement on.

So that's built into this model already.

I do want to back so when I talked about the 20-year time frame, that was talking about water.

The electric has a different time frame, it's less actually, unfortunately, just because of the nature of electric meters.

Um, but that they all have a much longer warranty at this point.

You want to get anything with that?

I don't I don't think I have anything to add okay.

Great questions, though.

Keep them.

Um, so as Eric mentioned, as we go through, we are going to try to on the water side try to address structurally damaged boxes.

If there's a curb stop, which is the valve for the shutoff, we're gonna try to work with staff to make sure those are repaired and fixed.

So we're not only doing an actual replacement, but we're getting that infrastructure back to where it needs to be from the standpoint while we're already there physically.

Because a lot of times, if we have to dig that out, we might as well dig it out right now and get to it anyway.

Here's a couple other pictures.

I tried to just show you can see how deep uh the picture on the far left is.

You can see that we've got quite a bit of dirt in that center, and you actually have two meters in some pits.

Um, that has to be vaced out or either somehow dug out to actually get to the access of those meters.

We did find some non-standard piping out there.

We'll try to address that, and that's where Eric Wyatt was talking about with his staff.

It's common, you just have to fix these type of things when they go.

I mean, they were doing the best they could at the time and try to fix it, but we're trying to standardize as we go through this process.

A couple more other ones.

These are some of the newer ones.

So the see the bottom left down there, that's one of the newer meter technologies.

We'll be able to reuse that most likely.

Um, we've identified those based on age, based on the type of meter that's actually in our survey.

We came across those and we were actually accounted for.

Plus, your staff has data on when they actually did replace some of those water meters.

But you can just kind of see uh some of those um, and these are very common that we see with every utility, so it's not uncommon to see this actually out in the field.

On the intermediates, intermediates for us are considered inch and a half and two inch on the water side.

So we sampled these as well.

We went and surveyed these.

We found that roughly 56% of them are actually indoor.

Um, a lot of times these can be commercial type meters as well.

Any of your indoor meters and pretty much all commercial will be scheduled individually.

So when we go to change out, sometimes we have to do this at night, sometimes we have to do it on a weekend, depending on what the business or the actual use of it is, and so those will all be taken care of.

Um, the situation you can see uh top right corner where we've got it in concrete.

If there is, there will be situations where we'll work closely with staff.

There may have to cut some concrete to actually be able to physically access the meter, but that's where we've we've talked with staff and they're willing to work with us very closely on those type of accounts where we come across that.

Here's just a couple other pictures that you can see again.

Um, everything from buried meters to meters inside, and we'll take care of that.

So those will be individually, as I mentioned, scheduled accordingly.

On the large meters, because of the cost associated with a large meter, we physically put eyes on every single meter three inch and larger.

So we physically went to them, we looked at the type, we have to look at the lay length of the meter.

Does it need extra spool pieces or piping that's what's the configuration?

What's the new pipe?

Lots of different things.

We look at safety issues, whether they're because some of these can be in a confined space.

Um, and so all this is taken into consideration when we're building that.

And the reason we do that is because we don't like change orders.

So we wanted to get a very tight scope of work, because I know that's probably one of your questions.

And we want to make sure that yeah, we address that.

That's why we spent so much time in the field up front, so that when we did write our scope of work, we knew exactly what we needed to actually do.

Because we when we do these projects, we typically don't have change orders associated with it.

Unless your data is way off, we should be good on where we're actually at today.

Yeah, that's the other question.

I'm just um the flooded outdoor pits that you're gonna have to pump out.

Do those fill up after you guys are done then?

Or okay, so you're not able to make them water.

Yeah, you they're not water.

Um, they'll eventually just because of the vault condition, because we're not necessarily changing, it doesn't hurt.

These meters are designed, they're fully potted.

Um, from a technology standpoint of electronics that we're putting in, they're meant to use like lab, they'll spend most of their life probably under that water as well.

So they'll be fine.

Yeah, so um my question was going to be around uh cost and stuff.

And I know with these type of big projects, there's a lot of unknown unknowns, and so um obviously looking at the bigger ones, you can have a better idea.

But imagine as you're out there and you're finding ones that are in the pit and covered with water and stuff like that.

Um, is there gonna be like a framework or a checklist of like we're gonna prioritize pipes that need to be replaced versus I don't know, whatever other problems that might come up to where, like if you start running into budget concerns that you can, you know, these are going to be the priority fixes.

Yeah, we've kind of had those conversations already with staff.

Um we've got a draft contract already written basically on that, and the pricing that we're going to show you cover that.

So when we did even the small surveys, we're taking on the risk.

Okay.

So we shifted a lot of that risk to us because we've done these before.

We we survey enough meter boxes on the residential side on the intermediate sides to feel comfortable giving staff a firm fixed price, right?

So the things that would be different would be concrete cutting, right?

And we've already talked to staff, they're willing to take that on.

So a lot of these things, even on the box materials where we've put in boxes and stuff, we've got that material already built into the job and taking on that risk.

So if it goes over, we're eating it.

Has have we missed?

Yeah, occasionally we have, but we've doing it long enough that we're pretty good at hitting those numbers.

And the survey that we try to get to gives us an engineering about 90% confidence factor.

So we're usually it's statistically a good survey for us.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about the scope of work.

We kind of showed you what you had in the field, and I want to kind of hit some of the scope of work.

So this is the two charts are probably a little bit of an eye chart, but they are the details that are associated with what we found out there.

So that's how we're able to give that firm scope of work because we kind of know what was out there.

Um, and you can see it's roughly 53, almost 54,000 electric meters that will be fully replaced.

Um, of the 52 seven of the water meters, we're replacing 33,000 of them and retrofitting almost 20,000 of those.

So, what that means in the retrofit is we're actually putting the right radio on those that actually communicates, but the actual meter itself will remain.

And we looked at age of that meter, we looked at the type of that water meter that was in the ground to make sure it is exactly what we're trying to put it.

And that's so you may have meters out there that just were replaced in the last one or two years, and there's 17, 18 years of life still left on that meter.

There's no reason to replace that meter.

There are a couple endpoints that actually we should be able to use as well.

I believe.

Yes, me.

So when you talk about retrofitting to like old technology, and I appreciate that the IT teams here, I love that.

Um, I think about you know, the potential or uh limitation of upgrading, you know, like when you get to certain life of technology can no longer upgrade um the software in order to secure it properly.

Is there any kind of concern we should be thinking about or protecting in that aspect?

So, as far as the the manufacturer of these systems has a 20-year warranty on it.

Um we all know software changes, but we're using the same software you've been using, and they constantly, so that's why they have an on you'll see an ongoing fee associated with your software and for software as a service because they're constantly upgrading the software as they go through the process, and that's just the way it's no different than your cell phone.

You know, Apple comes out with an app update, and so it gets updated.

Um, and the same thing with the software, it'll continue to update, you know, throughout the process.

I guess I was worried about the the meter technology, the new piece.

The meter technologies, we've seen them last that time frame.

I mean, this technology's been around.

So, and the manufacturer that staff wants to go with is a variable that they've got you know millions of endpoints out there.

You you've got a hundred thousand, they're dealing with clients that are millions of endpoints.

The large utility companies are using these, so it's a very reputable manufacturer out there.

These 19,000 are new or not, but they can be retrofitted and also helps for the next rollout program 20 years later, also, which is why we're doing it that way.

Good point.

So Garrett made a comment that these ones that we are retrofitting, they're new enough to basically that you can retrofit them, which is a good sign, right?

But it also, as you talked about, I think a replacement program going forward.

That way, come 20 years from now, or come 15, 20 years from now, you're not replacing them all at the same time you've got a rollout program already built into the water situation.

So it's kind of an already phased approach.

So that's part of the reason we're doing that as well.

Thank you.

One of the other things that we do when we do these installs is we um handle all the data integration.

So as much as utility guys like to think this is electrical project or plumbing project, I've told them many times this is a data project.

It's 100% has to be accurate data.

So we capture um 10 to 12 pictures of every installation.

It allows us to do all of our QC, our quality control checks on old reads, new reads, serial numbers.

We have a, and she unfortunately couldn't be here, and I forgot to introduce her earlier.

So we have one of the um one of our staff lady that she handles all of our name is Stacy, um, and she actually has been involved in this project from day one.

She actually handles all of our program data integration.

She manages that team that does that.

So we'll have an on-site person that will come on and work with staff during the you know the times that they need to to get them up to screen, and she's working with, she's already been in conversations with your utility building staff.

We've been with the software manufacturer, she's been coordinating all of those calls.

And the the lady that actually did all the field work is a lady by the name of Angela Hedgecock.

She is a PE actually in the state of Missouri and several other states that she has, but she's been, she and I have worked together for almost 25 years now, um, basically working.

So she's put a lot of the technical data that you see on here.

So thanks for that reminder.

Um, but we will capture those, integrate all those points because it's crucial that that information gets into the system accurately.

Um we also capture sub-meter accuracy of the GPS coordinates.

You got to think about we got a meter that nobody's gonna go to anymore as much often, or somebody retires and didn't know where that meter was.

So we're gonna capture that.

It allows your staff to overlay that onto their GIS and they can map that now and see exactly where all of these meters are.

So we're capturing that to sub-meter accuracy when we do this project.

As we've talked about meter boxes, lids, um, gaskets, those things are all inclusive in this turnkey price that you're about to see of what this is going to cost.

Um, all of the integration that's handled by us is included as well.

That's the integration to the AMI software.

That's the MDM, which is the meter data management.

I think that's on my next slide that I'll talk about, and then the actual portal.

So everything is turnkey when it comes to looking at this project.

So I want to spend a little bit of time here, and I know this is a busy slide, but I mentioned this is a data project.

It's yes, it's a meter replacement project, but it's also a data project.

So this is where we're actually installing a meter data management software package that is manufactured by Harris, which is your current software provider.

So they basically will take all of this data and it feeds into here where they can run different analytics, reports, loading profiles, various things that allow staff to use to manage and proactively figure out where they need different infrastructure, figuring out where outage management is, looking at leak alerts and alarms and trends and all this type of stuff rolls into this software package.

So it is a large package, any utility of your size, this is where you start to differentiate yourself from a smaller utility as you need an MDM because of the data that's coming in to the actual uh system.

So all of this integrates into the existing utility building software, it integrates into the portal, it integrates into the GIS system, it'll integrate actually into the AMI system.

So it is, it's it's kind of like the brains that process all of this data for that.

And that's part of this package as well.

So we get asked a lot of time what a typical meter installation looks like.

Um the idea here is you can see some of our different crews that have been after, they've actually changed electric meters in the snow, they've changed them in the mud.

We get a lot of mud on the water side.

Um, we basically um all commercial, um, all indoors are all scheduled appointments.

So we will actually schedule those appointments.

Um we usually try at least three times before we engage staff to kind of maybe help us because we're missing or we get a refusal or some sort of something of that nature, then we'll engage staff, but we usually do it at least three times before we actually go back.

Um we go through a process.

Garrett has an actual customized uh operating standard operating procedure for your city for this particular meter manufacturer for this particular software that's being installed.

So he'll create that.

We'll make sure staff is trained up on it, we'll make sure our guys are, and we'll execute that.

That includes all the quality control, everything that's done.

We also handle all the swapping of the data.

So we're not putting an extra burden on your utility billing and customer service reps.

We're processing a file, we're making sure that that file gets all transmitted up and done.

Um, obviously, there will be a little disruption to your citizens and your business users.

Um, when we we hope that the electrical side is less than 10 minutes.

We hope that the water side is somewhere around 30.

The large meters will be individually scheduled, and we'll typically schedule those on off periods of time.

Um, but I'm gonna hit on a public outreach plan that we will do uh in a little bit, but I'll take your question first.

So Betsy and I are right now experiencing Airman replacing all the gas meters in the campus neighborhood.

And so the gas line a lot of the meters too.

And so um Etsy, question Do you have a question?

I do.

I just want to know are you doing it in like sections of the city at a time?

And I'm sure you're gonna have a good PR thing.

And Amoron did too.

I mean, we all know they're there, they're just massively disruptive for prolonged periods of time.

Um, so you're gonna are you gonna be doing it in like whether they're streets or sections of neighborhoods and then so we we like to follow our teams like to follow the route that they're currently being read in so that we're in an area and we go down and finish as much as we can.

We will have multiple routes open because of issues that we'll come across in that that we may need staff to go back and cut some concrete before we can actually replace that.

But we will try to go through that route, get that route 100% ready so that staff can also build that route through the AMI system and not have to manually read it the next time around.

But we will put a plan in place.

We work closely.

Stacey's already kind of been talking to different what we call blackout dates, read dates, those type of things, any critical clients that have to have water usage all the time.

If they don't have a bypass, we got to figure out a plan to make sure that they have water, what that looks like.

Um, a lot of our guys, you can see the tarp in the picture here with the blue tarp on the bottom right.

We try to keep the mud and grass to a minimum, you know, that we put our dirt and stuff there.

We're digging up stuff.

It's going to be, but we're going to try to replace that's also why we take the pictures because we want to know what it looked like before and what it looked like after.

Our on-site guys are checking and verifying.

I know I see it all the time with gas, they're hitting lines and doing different stuff.

And that's part of why we've learned our lesson.

Like we want to make sure we understand and try to put people's yards back to where they really were as best we can, you know.

Yeah, we might just, yeah, when you're talking about, I assume you're going to talk about the public outreach, but also making sure there's a line at the contact center for the kind of like all the calls we get about fiber.

We're like, we don't do fiber, but we're getting the calls about it.

So that we have like a person dedicated responding to that.

Yeah, and we have a work order management tool that we will use that your staff also has access to.

So they get real-time updates.

So when that technician actually is changing that meter and he's taking those pictures, it's uploading before he leaves and goes to the next one.

So if a customer does call in and say, hey, they damaged our line, if it goes into if it happens to go to staff, they can look it up and go, hey, we weren't there.

Or yes, we were here.

I'm looking at your pictures.

I see what it was, it changed out two hours ago.

Here's what it got.

Do you have an issue?

And if they do, it gets rerouted to our own site guy, we go address it with the actual and fix the problem when it's from there.

Yeah, I think I I want to make just the reminder that like all the staff that might be getting calls have access to that.

So, right?

So if you're gonna probably not a utilities person answering the call, I'll be in the contact center answering it.

So making sure that they know who to talk to or include them in.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, if you're so now there are certain situations that but if it's indoors, if it's commercial that would require scheduling, uh, would there be any way for if a residential wanted heard about when we sorry, when we did the press release, if someone reached out and said, hey, you know, I've got my kid is hooked up to an oxygen machine.

I want to make sure that mine gets scheduled so we can prepare for the least disruption.

Is that an option to do that?

Absolutely.

We've already asked staff, and they've kind of been working on a list of what we call critical care patients, dialysis centers, different things of nature.

That's all part of our initial before we do a construction kickoff.

It's part of our outreach.

Like we have a whole plan, those are the type of questions we want to know.

Like we want to know where those critical hospitals, health care, you know, any of those types of elderly patients, those type of things that are critical for that.

People in their homes.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they will be the hospitals and the retirement communities, right?

Yeah.

So is you know for the public, if they're listening, we want them to also reach because if staff doesn't know that you're a critical care patient, then how are they to tell us?

So they'll need to know that as well.

So that outreach will just have to go out to let them know.

That was gonna be my next question was how do we find out about the in-home patients?

So Barbara and I live over near the college students and both the East Campus and Benton Stevens, and maybe North Central Island, where you know, we certainly have a lot of rentals.

Um so you're gonna be able, you're gonna have to meet to be able to get hold of the property owners, and I think your office, our office of neighborhood services, can help with that.

Um they helped a lot with the Amaron folks, like you know, these you know, here's the property.

Let's reach out to them, and whenever you're in the neighborhood doing that route, you know, you can make sure you they're they're around.

So yeah, it's always there's so many we like to work, we have seen a lot of things that have worked, but we want to customize it for your particular town, your particular applications, and that's why we'll work closely with your public information officer or or whatever there is.

Like we had one here that we did, we did actually in the lower right core real-time mapping.

We literally had dots that change colors, you know.

We worked with staff and they created a page of hey, if we were in the area, it was one color, and as we can go through it, change that's up to you on how much you want to go and how in depth.

But there are lots of different ways we put, you know, if we're in an actual gated community or in a neighborhood, you know, we can have a sign, but there's lots of different ways that says, Hey, you're driving into this area and we're gonna be in the area.

Um, we we typically don't like to do pre-notices because it may rain tomorrow and we can't get there, you know.

But we are obviously knocking on doors, we're not turning a meter in a case of a water meter or electrical, we're not gonna change it if it's something you know on the water side.

If somebody's if we see that meter spinning, we're gonna make sure we knock and try to figure out somebody's not in a shower or something of that nature.

So at the same time, you might want to say over the next month, we'll be in this neighborhood to do this because that's sort of annoying when they show up at seven in the morning and they want to come in your house for whatever reason.

And I'm like, okay.

So that would be nice.

And the critical homes that'll be nice just for all of us to know, like, not just for your replacement, but that should be something that the electric department knows for I would be already have a list, right?

We already have a list.

Yeah, yeah.

I think we do, but we can update it, yeah.

Make sure it's correct.

Yeah, and I and I will say that you know, our normal business hours typically our guys will start early, but we don't typically on the water side, we're not or in the like we're not really gonna cut off water before eight o'clock.

So we because we know people take showers, so we usually have working hours between eight and four, eight and five.

We'll work with staff closely to figure that out.

Um, and what those actually are and make sure that gets definitely to the public of what we're trying to do.

I think there was another was there another question, maybe over here.

Okay.

I have a lot of cybersecurity questions, but we can talk about that probably as a different okay.

We can hit on some of those as well if we can if we want to.

So um we also help with the communication with utility billing staff.

You know, obviously they've never done a project like this, and so we've seen what works, some of the questions that typically come up to customer service representatives.

We'll work with staff to kind of help them understand what's being changed.

We'll put out we usually always do a video that shows how we're gonna change out a meter, what it looks like, how it's read, how it's you know, and kind of do a here's what the change out looks like.

So we'll have one for electric, we'll have also one for the water side as well, so the citizens can actually maybe put that on your website or have a link to it where they can actually see kind of what's going on when we're actually there doing a change out and what these new meters will look like from that aspect.

Um, and again social media posts to different outreach things, uh different communication, we'll co-brand help you guys with that.

We've seen lots of different ways to actually get that messaging out.

Um, so we'll be more than happy to work with you guys, however, you want to do that.

Any other questions at this point?

Okay.

So I want to kind of recap quickly on some of the benefits, and then we'll talk some numbers.

Um when you look what we've talked about this project.

I want to make sure everybody understands that we are going to significantly be able to allow your staff to increase their response time to citizens.

The outages they don't have that ability now, they'll be able to see that.

Um, the continuous consumption, which is typically a leak of some sort.

They're now going to be able to see you as a citizen and user will be able to have that data on your portal on your phone, on a laptop, getting an alert.

So it's just huge proactive tool that allows you to manage how you're using your electricity and water to be able to see what that actually is.

Um, you're empowering really those customers to make hopefully conservation decisions.

I mean, water's critical to life, electricity is critical to our comfort these days, and so it's a it's a sustainable process that's being put in place to basically make the system more reliable.

When we do this, we're seeing how transformers, the meters are telling us data, they're giving us feedback, so they're making that electrical grid much more reliable so that they can make proactive decisions prior to having a major catastrophic event or being able to react much faster to that event that comes out.

Um I know there's been discussions about future rate flexibility.

You have a hard time doing any type of rate discussions when you don't have the data.

So this is will allow you to have that data, you'll be able to collect that data and be able to make decisions on how and if you even want to consider changing different rate structures, or as Aaron mentioned, having a billing date, even just to be able to provide the simplicity of that.

You'll now have that through the AMI process to be able to do that with that.

We'll show you some numbers of how they're reduced cost on the operational side.

It's significant when you're talking about having to manually read meters now versus going to not have to roll those trucks, you're gonna see an efficiency improvement much but greater than what you see today.

Um, and you know, I just like to say that your staff is trying to do a good job of physically fiscally and proactively making it fair and equitable to all residents.

So by putting in all accurate meters, they're making sure that everybody pays their fair share, but also that they're able to forecast and plan instead of react.

So they want to be able to actually see the data and make those educated decisions using data that's actually coming to them that they don't have now.

Can I ask?

Yeah, uh related to future assigned price building rates that also includes being able to do rights that are in a variety of levels and costs so that for instance overnight might be less costly and so forth.

Correct.

It's one of those things I think that we're probably cool here and highlighting absolutely.

Oh, yeah, I'm very excited about this.

Real-time use rates, yeah.

Yeah, and I mean everything from demand response to you know all different types of ring flexibility that you can have out there, yeah.

So but you don't have that uh ability to do that.

The AMI system coupled with the MDM, the MDM is a critical piece to be able to do that verification and reading of those electrical reads and different things to make sure that they're accurate coming in.

Cybersecurity, did you have a specific question you want to talk about?

I may be able to not answer it, but I'll try.

I feel like I didn't use the microphone.

Um I feel like I should have sent probably some questions in, but you know, I think we should talk to uh maybe some data privacy.

So, how we how will we anonymize the data?

Uh, how will we make sure that if we do know somebody's a critical care patient that we're not going to allow them to be exposed to, you know, and with any uh type of wireless transmission, there's potential for man-in-the-dle attacks, etc.

Um, so would you mind just kind of talking to them?

Yeah, I can talk to some of that.

So we fully vetted in your IT department was in many of those conversations where we were talking about you know the different encryption that's on the actual data packets that's transmitted over to all of the actual um anomaly of the data itself as you're talking about to make sure that the actual name, because we're just looking at consumption data, we're not necessarily you know different names and different things of that nature to come up.

That's all still protected in private, you know, from that aspect.

So um, again, if you've got specific ones or if IT wants to talk a little bit about it, more than happy to address that.

So yeah, do you know if the encryption methods are uh post-quantum encryption methods, or are they we've been involved since the very beginning since our first meeting?

Um we have been told what we have in our instructions, all covers everything that we are concerned about.

I don't have a single instance that I can find in the wild of these systems being broken into and taken advantage of.

Um the encryption is higher than what we use in a lot of other places.

Um it's very small bit streams of information.

So there isn't a whole lot of ways to get in.

It isn't like a big white hype of information coming in.

It is bits of usage data being sent efficiently, encrypted, key exchanged, handshakes made, collected aggregated and sent bundles that are all only seen by one location.

No one else can unencrypt this data.

Okay, I'd be interested to see if it's post-quantum encryption or like if it can withstand that or we'll we can get a lot of different things.

Yeah, more details later.

I'll ask more than mainly.

Yeah, I'm gonna try not to tear it out.

So they have the process may call it uh much of risk profile.

Yeah, you're uh supply supply chain resume management.

That's right.

Thank you.

So uh this is one of those things where we're gonna go through as we just got the scope.

Um, like we said, we're gonna we're gonna get that IP and they're gonna run through their supply chain risk management.

They will ask all those questions, they will have the results available for anybody in great view.

Um but like heard a couple of different times.

These have been deployed hundreds of thousands of locations without a major incident that I'm aware of, and that Chad wasn't aware of.

Great great question, though.

So we'll move um to kind of the project financial slide, and I want to spend a little bit of time here just to kind of talk through some of the numbers.

We're always everybody gets interested.

So, as we mentioned, it's truly a turnkey project.

So, from this standpoint, it's all of the construction management.

We have not only Garrett, but um, he'll have a construction manager that lives here every day and is dealing with that.

We have a data team that will be involved in the process, those are all amoresco staff.

Um, we have uh competitively bid this project out to the market.

We've got uh an installer um that is actually uh uh been working with us for a while.

We've vetted them.

Um they've actually will have multiple field crews that will actually physically be doing some of the change out stuff.

Um the customer portal, the meter data management system, the AMI network.

Um, even your staff is will be trained on how setting up the network.

We worked with electrical staff, they're gonna take on that role of actually mounting them on their poles because they wanted to do that, and so we're perfectly fine.

They'll take up uh that burden on um and mounting those for the installation, but everything is kind of turnkey.

So the contract with Amheresco is just under 42 million.

There is Harris basically has a integration fee and some project management fees to work with us during that integration time because they work directly with you, they're gonna basically have that contract with them already.

So you've got a roughly 108,000.

So with directly with Harris AUS, which is the CIS vendor or the billing software.

So the total implementation from a CapEx standpoint is a little over 42 million.

There are some ongoing fees that we talk through, as we mentioned, to keep these software up to date to keep this the integrations in between each other.

So for the AMI itself, that's roughly 170,000 a year.

The MDM, as you can see, which is the brain of the system, that's with Harris, your current provider, um, is roughly 330,000 at this current time, and these are year one cost.

Um, and then the Harris Advanced has a different integration that they charge for the portal and the integration ongoing to keep those up to V, and that's another 62,000.

So you're roughly looking at $560,000 in year one.

As with everything, unfortunately, things do go up.

We typically see anywhere from two to three, maybe four percent increases, and we've kind of modeled that out um over a 15-year period with the uh with a with a performer that we've provided staff that we'll talk briefly about here.

Um from us, I just want to be clear about the third-party thing.

Uh these are ongoing, but these but these are things we're already paying.

So no, no, so I just want to be sure that we're adding up all of the stuff that's gonna cost, yeah, plus the benefits that we're gonna do.

Yeah, so yeah, in addition to what anything we're doing right now.

Correct.

So right now, you the think of a capital project of putting everything in and getting it as 42 million, and then you'll have ongoing cost of roughly a little over a half a million dollars a year to maintain all of that.

It's kind of and I go back to the phone analogy.

You buy a phone, but you still pay for it every month in the data plan.

That's your data plan, that's your software paying to keep that going.

That's the third party, and we say third party, it's not amoresco fees, it's with somebody else.

There is one amoresco fee, which we talk about here called measurement and verification.

So, one of the things is we want to make sure those water meters are remaining accurate.

So this construction timeline is roughly a three-year construction to get all of this up and done from the time we start with the software integrations and getting that's a big critical path for us is getting all that software up, and then we'll put meters in the ground.

But so we'll we'll have put some meters in the ground in year one, and then one year after we're done, so year four, we're gonna go back and randomly test some of the water meters to make sure they're accurate, so that the meter may because the meter manufacturer has an accuracy, we have an accuracy guarantee on the project, just like you've seen with some of our other contracts related to that uh on the electricity side, we guarantee meter accuracy in this project.

And so we're gonna test the meters in year one, year two, and year three.

And if you decide you want to continue testing them for future years, you can pay us to do that if you want.

But the idea is to make sure that what the manufacturer committed, what we're committing to is actually coming through, and that's basically buying um some brand new meters, pulling an old meter out of the ground, sending it to a third party testing lab and testing those according to American Waterworks standard to make sure they're remaining accurate and working properly.

From a benefit standpoint, we presented year one.

Obviously, the benefits typically increase because if cost goes up, then so do the benefits because you actually have a value, you're taking a consumption number times some value.

So, due to meter inaccuracies that you currently, when we ran your current consumption database on the water meters based on your current accuracy.

So you're, I don't want to get too large in the numbers, but when we tested your residential meters, um, they had a weighted average of roughly 96%, which is pretty accurate, but we modeled that against 98 and a half.

The difference is is on the low flow side, which is the issue with a mechanical meter on the water side, you were at 87%.

So the leaks weren't always showing up, you know, and so that's where you see this almost $600,000 in water sewer revenue that will be collected from a more accurate water meter that's in the ground.

On the electric side, the same thing.

We there's many white papers that are done out there in the industry where they say that you lose anywhere from three to five percent.

I think this is two percent or actually, I think it's one percent of your water, your electric revenues on a yearly basis.

So we're expecting at least a one percent accuracy gain on the electric side because you do have some old mechanical meters and different things of that nature from the electrical standpoint.

But it's a small, even though it looks like a big number, it's a small number compared to the total volume of revenues that you have.

I mean, you're dealing with a hundred thousand accounts here on the water and sewer side, so it's a pretty and that benefit will continue.

So if you're it's not a rate increase, so let's be clear it's not a rate increase, it is an accuracy gain from having an inaccurate meter to a more accurate meter.

I'll address this head on.

We always get questions hey, could my bill go up?

Yes, if you have an inaccurate water meter and you were getting free water or water that you should have been paying for, you may now have to pay for that.

But your current rates are your current meters weren't extremely inaccurate, so it shouldn't be drastically noticed.

If you take that number and divide it out by 50 something thousand meters, it's a small number.

And some of that most likely will probably come from your commercial meters.

We typically see those have a bigger impact than your residential meters as well.

Can I ask um are you about to go into the electric revenues part?

Go ahead, ask your question.

I was just gonna hit the operational savings.

But what you just extra what you just explained was a revenue increase from like that kind of lost data, right?

For the sewer sewer piece.

Um so this is benefits, electrical revenues.

This is not our already, these are in addition.

In addition to what is that where why?

Because your meter, so like think about an electrical meter right now.

If it's only reading 98%, and we get to read that too, okay.

It's that's literally it seems like a big number, but but look at your overall volume of electric and water revenue or electric revenues, that's less than I think it's like if I remember correctly, it's like 1.2%.

Yeah.

So it's a small number over the overall, but it is a big number.

No, it's like I couldn't use that number in my pocket.

I know, sorry, operational savings.

And and you you bring up a good point, and I I wanted to stress that because you have a lot of, you know, there's a lot of accounts that this number is coming from.

It's not coming from one or two accounts.

Right, right.

Christina had a question.

Thank you.

Um, so the implementation costs 42 million, uh, ongoing party fees, ongoing uh measurement or for three-year measurement and verification.

Do you have like a slide that shows us like over time when we'll start to see our ROI or so we have like the three point million, like we're not gonna see that right away because we're spending 42, you know.

Yeah, so we we ran a performer that's actually in our we have a it's a several hundred page investment grade audit that is being reviewed right now that we'll turn in um that actually shows a performa and actually the way that we actually modeled it at four percent interest rate over a 15-year term, and you actually have positive cash from year one.

So, because of the revenues that you increase depending on how your debt structure and you know, again, I can show you what that model looks like, but we basically ran that model.

Um we know talking to finance that they actually are looking at rates potentially in 3.5, which means you're even gonna get a better payback.

But if you look at the revenues and the operational savings, the project actually will fund itself over a 15-year period.

Now we'll let finance and others talk about how they would you obviously have to come up with 42 million through some type of loan or something to basically pay us to actually execute the work, but it's being recruited back over the years.

And so again, I'll I don't we work with you to kind of lay that out, but finance handles how you actually decide to fund the project.

And I think they have some comments if they want to to talk through that in a minute.

We can definitely discuss that.

I'm sure they will, and we'd like to hear from them.

Yeah, but a great question.

So operationally, we worked with staff um to figure out what truck rolls cost, how many rereads, how many replacements we're doing, you know, those type of things.

And the number that staff and us came up with jointly was basically 1.15.

And I think that's a pretty conservative number based on what we've seen.

Like I mentioned the reports that we get back from clients where we've done projects is 30 percent, 30 to 40 percent reduction of calls, you know, that you're having to actually run and roll trucks, and that's a significant number, you know.

So that is actually all we have tonight.

Unless you want to talk finance, we could bring finance or I'm assuming, yeah.

I know finance is here, so we've got to finance director.

Yeah, I have a lot of questions around that.

Yeah, I think we do have, I mean, you mentioned in your memo um that the city is working with lenders uh for both either a loan or special obligation bonds.

So, does finance or Aaron wanna speak to that?

Like, what are the thoughts?

Yes, we're currently getting um quotes from different lenders uh looking at uh bonds.

Yeah, we have we have both from a hundred looking at bonds.

We would do uh two issues.

Is that what we're you wanna come up here, Matthew?

Yeah, two issues and it would be over um so we can currently have looked at bonding uh for 10-year period before these in the amount of I believe it's 43 million.

We received the rate of 3.5 percent versus very evident times for this period.

Uh that is the bonding option.

We also received a uh quote for bond as well, a bank loan that is in the range of 3.75, I believe was uh even taking into the account of the cost for bond fee mobile that's more heavy because the decision making be like that.

So you know you're talking about coming to us for a contract in September for this contract.

What would councils you know what I mean?

Like what role would council play in this, and what would what how does that process work?

Play in what exactly process we could come to you and show you that information, but uh usually as a fiduciary that was my responsibility.

Whether you bond or whether you just do like that a lot.

What whatever the best opportunity for the city would be so what would the process look like for us to uh bring that forward to the council?

So do we look for you probably need a microphone if you're in we we could do a report?

Yeah, I think that's what I'm asking for.

So we could definitely do a report to council kind of showing the process of what we did and how we came to uh the funding source before we bring for before we for a contract in order for us to contract work, we're gonna have to actually show you the financing plan for the project.

Yeah, yeah.

I would like to um and it's probably part of our budget conversations this summer.

Maybe it would be nice to look at all the bonds that we currently have out for our water, you know, for our utilities, and what we have bonded and what we have spent and what's left because we get questions about that all the time.

This is a huge project, and we're gonna hear about that.

So I think you maybe talk about two things.

So bonding authority of things, sort of uh what our visual go about and then what we actually have bonded, yeah, yeah.

And I know that like the water night advisory board, and you've started including it in our current events, has our current kind of update on monthly on the water bond projects, but it doesn't necessarily Betsy's point doesn't necessarily say like what all authority we do, you know, that we've already done and what other projects are out there, it's just shows water bond projects.

Yeah, it would just be nice to be able to show that we're fiscally responsible, or we're gonna turn around and look at it.

Um large and utility rates, yes.

Yeah, and for the report, I would like to see like options.

So, like this, if we went down this route, this is a bond option, this is a lease option or loan option, whatever.

So being able to understand what our options is so that we can explain to citizens that we are trying to take the most fiscally responsible route.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So next steps are that this comes to us in September.

Well, conversation about financing report comes to us, and this comes to us in September.

And then did I see in there that potentially a notice to proceed could happen in mid-September?

Uh yeah, we're we're shooting for mid-September for our notice of proceeding for coming to you in late August, early September.

And then you said three years, about three years for rolling.

Up from notice to proceed to actually starting construction, what is that typically?

So if we hit our mid-September, we'll start going around and doing stuff as soon as the weather clears up.

So Garrett's telling me March probably of 2027.

Okay.

And does that include the roughly 6,000 meters that you don't know where they are?

I will go find them.

Okay.

Um, and then I noticed that there we have a number of water night advisory board members in the room.

I'm assuming that they have had a presentation on this.

Is that or have you guys talked to the board on this project?

Were you talking to them this week?

Or is this their first time hearing CMI uh for years?

Right.

So not specifically this presentation, but uh the general information.

Okay, yeah, Nick.

Well, that leads to my question.

Uh it seems to me, and my impression has been that we're behind them because it is probably something we should have done a while back.

So I'm curious.

I think that needs to be communicated to the public as well.

But at what point is it is it a good idea for the utility to implement AMI.

Um is there a population level at which that happens?

And what does this look like in our city in peer cities?

Yeah, go ahead.

So um, as I mentioned, we've implemented AMI.

I have now for over 25 years, so I would say you're a little behind on that aspect of things.

Um, but we still have cities that have not done it, right?

Um, we have cities as small as 500 accounts all the way up to hundreds of thousands accounts, right?

So um, I have cities that I've actually implemented a drive-by solution 17-18 years ago, and we now got them to fix space, you know, to the AMI system.

So um, we're already on kind of AMI 2.0 is what the industry calls it now.

Um, it is a very proven technology.

I will say most electric utilities, like a lot of your big electrical utilities have AMI because of the data.

It's critical that they see that data, and the water's been trying to catch up, but we couldn't get there as fast as electrical because we didn't have power, but now that the battery technology is there, it's there now, and so we've it's time's now.

So I don't imagine we'll have as much of this as we did when the utility first started talking about AMI, but what about the people that are worried about your sending radio waves out and wants to speak to it because he was with the utility when those conversations were happy, I don't know the answer.

Come on, you know, we should give it to our consultant.

This is a very good consultant opportunity to answer this question.

I'll take the answer.

So um there has been numerous studies that talk about frequencies, right?

Um, and don't pick up your phone.

The frequency that the meters are transmitting is a 900 megahertz.

Same thing as baby monitors and other things of that nature that are in houses, right?

It's been around for many, many, many, many years, you know.

So you know, we we have tons and tons of actually the industry has tons and tons of white paper that is out there.

Um these are actually in a pit, they're far, far away from the house.

You know, they're on the side of a house that's transmitting up.

So I just want to make sure that maybe we have those questions ready to answer in case anybody in our communications.

And and we definitely have we've we can provide numerous papers that will support these studies that have been done by medical doctors, different, you know, frequency, you know, radio frequencies, those type of things.

They talk about that.

You had a good thing to remember is they only transfer it four times a day.

They collect the reads, and uh what they transmit is less than a text message because it comes across exam data, so that's about a quarter of what a text message is.

I know not the phone analogy, but it always sends out four right, and to Garrett's point, if you guys didn't hear it, it it only sends out typically these are transmitting packets of data like four times a day.

So it's not like it's constantly sending signals because we're trying to save battery on that stuff, and so it is a very small, as your IT director mentioned, it's like very small packet of data that goes from that way.

But yes, we'll we'll definitely can address those questions in other ways.

I just remember the conversation.

Did you have a question?

They've been there.

Yeah.

Um, can people opt out of this?

So it's a great question.

We talked to staff.

Um, I will let Aaron answer that because that's a policy decision for you guys.

There's currently uh information in our ordinance which allows people to opt out and have a non-standard meter.

Uh they do pay uh one-time source charge and then they pay an additional uh monthly customer charge for that non-standard meter because you know you have to have somebody actually go out and just read it.

Um preference, of course, would be to remove that from the ordinances and require everyone to have these meters.

That would be staff preference, uh, because it is difficult and time consuming to deal with the non-standard meter.

Um at the very least, we need to raise the dollar, not the monthly charge amount uh because we are not recovering our costs uh to go out and read that meter, I think what that right now.

$35.72 a month.

So um to read that more.

Can't roll a truck for that.

Yeah, that sounds uh if you're just going to a neighborhood to hit one meter, yeah.

Um what about people that do want the AMI, but maybe they want to delete their data, or they want to something, you know.

How are you gonna handle that?

Will there be an option for them to do that?

To delete so like the like they don't want their data being stored or something, like do you have some options?

That's where their private information is stored.

Um it's not stored in the meter, it's not stored in the metadata management system, their private information stored in our billing system.

But the meter data will be stored long term.

So, like they lived in a house and they don't want you to have any of their data.

And so if that data is associated with that, but then we need to have that data to bill.

Yeah, I think well, at some point you do, but if they want to opt out of not having that data.

So I know that I have historical data, yes.

It's like once the billing cycle is passed.

Yes.

So um most softwares, like your current utility building software keeps a certain log of data historically.

And I'm asking, go ahead.

Yeah, so it would really be up to that manufacturer to decide whether or not because we're that's still gonna go to the same data.

I will tell you from a just a practical standpoint, the data that we're receiving from the AMI is just a consumption number.

Like it's it's tagged to that, yeah.

But that's just really a let's say you aren't having any data that could tell me that you're not home.

So if I was able to access that data in some way, then I know which homes are.

I don't know.

I don't want to go into a whole like cyber talk, but it's just I want us to be thinking about those things, and um I know I'm going to have friends that are asking me those kind of questions.

So yeah, the data will still send across.

Yeah, the data will still send across, you're still gonna get packets of read just like you are today.

It's just there wouldn't be a consumption, it would send a you know a zero profile, but we don't know if you're not home or we don't know if you're just not using electricity or you're not using water, could be a lot of different reasons there.

But I've never had that actually uh come up, actually.

So there are questions.

Oh, Ricky, you want to Ricky?

Come on, Ricky.

And also, I don't think the council know you, so introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Ricky Jones.

I'm the utility customer service manager.

So what you're concerned about is like the the historical data that's gonna be like an MVM in the MVM.

There is no personal data, it is going to be literally an account number and the meter reading information as far as like usage data.

There's not gonna be an address listed, there's not a person's name associated with it in that mindset.

All that is inside of the the billing software, so that's where that information is at as far as the historical data goes.

I'm sure there'll be time frames and stuff that it gets kind of cleaned out because you don't want to keep data from now until a million years from now, right?

We're getting ready to do a CIS cleanup for our billing software that only keeps five years worth of billing data.

Um so that would be the same kind of concept that we would do for the the meter management, right?

We would only keep so long so that the utilities can actually use that for historical use purposes, and then the clean out would happen to keep it so that we're not just overrunning the servers with data information.

Does that help answer?

I understand how data storage works, but well, yeah, and I just that's as far as the the concern over the data being stored, and someone's saying I don't want you to keep that data anymore.

Technically, the usage data is owned by the city in that mindset.

Their personal information is inside of the billing software, so the the usage itself isn't going to be a personal related thing in that mind.

If that this I guess that's what I was trying to select.

Okay, okay.

Um other questions.

All right.

Uh well, I think when you started at the very beginning and you talked about a how long, how old we are on getting around to doing this, but then also the fact that you found 12% of our meters, or you couldn't find 12% of our meters, made the case, and you didn't have to go over any more slides.

Because I was like, oh, we can't find them.

Let's have those.

Um so I think unless I'm hearing differently, I think council is expecting to see something come forward uh both the contract but beforehand the report on how the financing would work.

So thank you for uh bringing this up.

I I'm I'm excited about real-time use rates eventually.

That is what's excites me the most about this is for incentivizing conservation.

So all right.

Well, we just have one other thing for our council uh might want to discuss.

Uh so the rest of you probably don't need to hang out, but it's about scheduling.

Um, so our upcoming our upcoming uh pre-council, we are going to have we have um six six new planning and zoning commission applicants for that for the one additional vacancy.

Um we have six water and light advisory board applicants, and we have two citizens police review uh board applicants.

Um the other item on the agenda is the capital improvement project plan discussion.

So Sheila has estimated that hold on.

Look, if it's seven minutes each, it's an hour and 38 minutes just for the interviews, yeah.

Yes, and in seven we we seven to ten is usually kind of what we do.

Some of them can be faster.

I can cut a question out too if we want.

I mean, but it is roughly what we've done.

Um and then the question, and so this was my question I had for DeKarlin was so the capital improvement plan is coming to us for public hearing to our meeting in July, which is this the third day of July.

Um, so they want to talk to us before it comes to us uh for that public hearing.

So my question to you is like, is it possible to do it at one of our three budget work sessions that happen the week before?

Possibly you want you then also take it out of the thing if you guys are that that might be.

It is a little what kind of a little threading mercury.

It would it will be best to have the secrets because we have so many new individuals.

This was more of a refresher.

What is CIP while we're doing it?

Uh looking at a few of the projects that will be on the CIP or fiscal year 27.

So this was more refresher.

Uh if we do not have any net sign there, I don't I don't know how useful it would be.

I could put some of that information in when we talk about the general phone or one of the other solutions, but it wouldn't be the proposal having it all as well.

How much time would you need how much time would you need for it?

Or to be a robust conversation.

I think I think 45 minutes would be okay.

But that's without questions.

That would be roll roll for the present type.

So questions another 15, 20 minutes.

Okay.

How long is um what's the agenda look like?

Are we talking to midnight meetings?

Yeah.

It's a pretty light agenda.

You think it's a pretty light agenda?

So we could start 4:30.

We might actually be out by 10 and just keep it together.

We could I mean if councils available to come at 4:30.

It would be Monday.

Early the other option uh on the page that looks like this that I handed out.

I tried to give you all where each of these boards and commissions that do and that you are interviewing stand in terms of quorum when our next meetings are and things of that nature in case you wanted to try to have a special like off meeting because these aren't recorded.

I would much rather just start at 4 30 than work video.

Well, I'm not saying off Monday, but I'm just saying at some other point if you couldn't figure out to do it on um June 15th.

I can come in and we're gonna have another CPR V vacancy.

Okay, and are you able to come at 4 30?

I I blocked my Mondays off now.

So you've learned so checking me, Betsy.

Okay, okay.

I'll check so that's a quorum.

So okay, so I think we'll start at 4 30 then for the pre-council.

Um right?

Yes, we're your face.

Well, it's an hour and 40 minutes if all of them can participate.

So that and then if you have 90 minutes.

Are you good with 50?

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, I think we're gonna do it.

Okay, okay.

So yeah, we'll start at 4 30 then.

And you really won't have much of a buffer, but it doesn't.

I mean I'll I'll go through it as as quickly as I can.

And maybe maybe I can go slide and then if we have questions, we'll email you.

Or asking.

Well, well, I think the big thing is to remember is that this is this is an intro in it, but it's still a public hearing happening.

Yeah, we will have time for additional questions as well as more information on the council meeting to send it.

So asking questions.

Email, yeah, just know that I will have you a hard stop.

That's fine.

There'll be a hard stop when the people come in.

And maybe we maybe we say all questions for questions.

Maybe we yeah, decide not to ask any questions during the slides.

Yeah, only at the end if we have time.

And the other thing is I cannot promise that I can get them groups.

All the P and Z, all the water.

Oh, you don't have to.

You can make it.

I'm I will I will not try and ask them okay what their availability is and try to handle it that way and try to group them, but I just want to point that out.

Yeah, I'm gonna stress some of that.

Some poor water and light applicant is gonna get a really confusing CPRB question.

Right.

So the only other thing I'll point out is that Stacy um had put together, I think C is this from you.

Stacey I put together the upcoming pre-council work session topics so that you know kind of what to expect of what's coming down, and this is why I say we're doing a lot of things in July.

Um to to point that one out.

Is there any questions on that that you kind of wanted to clarify?

I think so.

That's just for your information in case you guys wanted to bring anything out.

Okay.

Anything else?

Anything else that needs to be discussed?

Okay, well, go ahead, Betsy.

90 minutes.

We did it.

All right, adjourn.

7:30.