And call our um Columbia work session uh for January seventeenth to order.

Um we have because of the fire alarm that went off on Wednesday, we uh I think are starting with the end of we're starting with the end of our uh presentation from Wednesday.

So Matthew Air Erin, am I just kicking this to you?

Uh I believe so.

Is that correct, Matthew?

That's great.

Okay.

Aaron Keys, Utilities Director.

I'm gonna kick this over to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh and I will just start all over again with electric.

Not all the utilities, just electric.

Thank you for that.

Um so for electric what we have proposed for FY twenty-seven is a six percent um increase for all the tier uh revenue increase um on just the tiers.

So no change to the customer charges or the base fee.

Uh that'll be about eight point six million dollars in additional revenue.

Uh additionally, we want to propose uh increasing the cap for the PCA or the power cost adjustment factor.

Uh right now the power cost adjustment factor is based on uh tier one for the electric rates.

Currently it's capped at fifteen percent of tier one, and we'd like to propose to move that to twenty percent of tier one.

What occur has occurred this last year and in previous years is the purpose of that power cost adjustment is to recover the excess of expenses that occur uh with the power purchase part of the electric budget.

Uh, because of weather conditions and things like that.

There are sometimes expenses that we don't anticipate in a year.

And so the the purpose of that is to attempt to recover some of those expenses.

Um weather things have been going on, like we had a a winter storm fern this year, and then we've had a few days this summer already with really um a lot of uh stress on the grid that will cause some higher prices for us.

So with those two things going on, we'll have additional costs that we need to recover through that power cost adjustment factor.

So that's why we're recommending moving it from 15% to 20% of tier one.

And the water and light advisory board has recommended uh both of those for FY27.

So some of the things that we have done with the electric utility, uh if you recall the forecast, we are below what we need for cash reserves.

So with that in mind, we know we also need to do some uh defer some expenses, uh try to make some cuts.

Uh so that's what you'll see here.

We're we're deferring the maintenance on the landfill gas generator.

Uh we're deferring a capital improvement project that was about um just under a million dollars.

Uh there are two positions in utilities that we are proposing to eliminate, and then there are four positions specifically in electric that we're gonna freeze for the next year.

Uh the good news is we did get uh or we know we should be receiving a three million dollar grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to replace uh transmission poles.

Uh so hopefully you'll be seeing that in the very near future come through council because all those grants have to come through council to be accepted.

Uh so that helps us a little bit.

Uh one of the other things that I will probably have a budget amendment for uh that I wasn't thinking about was funding a cost of service for electric because uh we did the last cost of service, I believe it was in 2022, but it was based on like 2020 or 2019-2021 numbers, which were all kind of wonky because of COVID.

Um so, and with all the the changes going on in electric, we we feel like we need to go ahead and do a cost of service this next fiscal year so we can uh update our rates and update the power cost adjustment factor as well.

So, next slide.

Um of the significant impacts to utility rates.

Uh two of these we really don't have much control over.

Um the first one is the significant increase in electric capacity cost, which we talked about in uh our IRP discussions, and we'll talk more about uh one of the the most pressing ones is our Dynogy contract is expiring.

Uh we are having conversations with Dynogy, and we do anticipate being able to uh extend that contract for at least another year, but the prices on that are much different than when that original contract came into place.

And so I believe it's like a three million dollar difference, $3.5 million difference from our original contract.

So that will be a pretty big expense.

Uh but that provides some financial less risk financially than if we were to depend on the market, which could be much greater than that, because that's probably the price that they anticipate the market being at.

Um if we were just made ourselves subject to the market for that same amount of capacity, it could come in a lot higher.

Um we'll probably be bringing that contract to you in the very near future.

I think Betsy had a question.

Um Dynasty is Dynagi, it's dynamic, sorry.

Is what is like gas or solar.

We don't know.

Uh we just have a it's purely a capacity contract.

We don't get any energy from that contract.

Uh so remember we have capacity and energy when we talk about things, and capacity is just uh the ability to turn the lights on.

Uh and so that particular contract is not tied to any specific energy source.

Okay, thanks.

Uh and then uh one of the things we would like to move forward with is some high priority infrastructure projects.

You know, we've been talking about transmission line, uh, advanced metering infrastructure, and we're gonna need to start talking about generation projects.