Let's go ahead and get started.

I'd like to welcome everybody to our uh pre-council uh meeting for Lehigh City.

The date is October 28th, 2025.

Um we don't have a lot on the agenda today, but we do have some things we do have to go through.

Uh we uh oh, as a matter of roll call, all our council members are in attendance here today, and we always start this meeting out with a prayer.

And I asked Heather if she would do that.

Dear Henley Father, we're grateful we're able to be here today as a city council and uh representing the city and being able to uh discuss things together to be able to benefit our residents in our great city.

We ask the helming father to bless our residents that they can be Cape Safe and bless our our first responders and um our officers as they go about and helping and supporting us and protecting us that they can be under thy care.

Uh we're grateful, Heavenly Father, for this great city that we're able to live in and the opportunity we have to serve.

And we're thankful for being able to have this time of year where we can focus on the blessings that we have in our lives.

And again, Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for all we have.

We say St.

Jesus Christ amen.

We do not have any presentations or reports uh today.

Uh that moves us to item number three, which is the agenda questions.

Are there any questions on the agenda tonight?

We haven't had that one this short for quite some time.

So there's no questions.

Administrative report.

Nothing here.

Do you want to make excuses where our other administrators are tonight?

There it is.

ICMA.

There you go.

So that's why Bo is representing thank you for being here and not there because you're dedicated.

Yep, number one.

I'll make sure I pass that note on.

Yeah.

Please do.

We can make a loop.

Okay.

Uh, in absence of an administrative report, uh, mayor and council, let's bring it up here.

Do you have anything on your re-individual assignments to report on?

anybody started this meeting at 545 or 645.

Item six.

So this is one we have to have.

We do have to have a closed door session.

Uh so um apologize for anybody who's wondering why we're going to have to leave the room in a moment, but we will.

I won't take a motion.

This is for uh imminent litigation.

And I believe that.

And real estate.

That's it.

Yeah, real estate.

And potential litigation.

Okay.

I will take a motion.

Mr.

Mayor, I make a motion that we excuse into a closed meeting for the purchase exchange or lease of property pending or reasonably imminent litigation, the character, professional competence, or the physical or mental health of an individual or the deployment of security personnel devices or systems or real estate or real estate.

I have a motion to go into the closed door session.

Do I have a second?

And a second.

All those in favor say aye.

We will be retiring in the room directly behind us, and then we'll come back before the next meeting.

Okay, everybody.

We'd like to welcome to welcome you to our Lehigh City Council meeting.

The date is October 28th, 2025.

This regular session uh portion of the agenda.

Uh like to note that all our city council members are here.

I do not know where Heather at this is at this moment, but I anticipate she'll be coming in and sitting down very soon.

Uh, but I'm going to have to leave leave after item two, and I'm going to be turning it over to our mayor pro tem to finish this meeting because I have another meeting up in Salt Lake, but I wanted to stay here for item number two.

So there you go.

Uh so that being said, I have asked Chris if he would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Yes.

Um, if the audience would stand.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it's one nation under God.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

All right.

Item uh 2.1 is our epilepsy awareness proclamation.

Sorry, you want to come up and stand up here and tell us a little bit about what this is all about.

Tell everybody here so they can hear you.

First of all, thank you so much for advocating and providing awareness for epilepsy.

Epilepsy is the neurological disorder that affects more than 34,000 Utahs and then the thousands of others who are otherwise afflicted.

Each year, I've asked the city council and the mayor to give this proclamation to bring attention to advocate for epilepsy awareness.

And thank you again for doing so.

Oh, I'm tickled to do it.

This is this is one of my many few highlights through the year.

As I get to do this proclamation, I'm gonna read it.

I've done it, I think every year since I've been here as mayor.

This is the 12th.

So and it was important.

I did I literally had a meeting at 6 at 6 p.m.

tonight till eight up at Salt Lake, and I'm leaving here to catch the last half hour of that meeting.

But I wanted to be here for this.

That's how important it is.

So uh I with that being said, I will read the proclamation uh because epilepsy awareness month is November 2025.

Whereas epilepsy is an incurable brain disorder that causes people to have recurring seizures, whereas epilepsy is the third most common neurological condition, and one in 26 people in the United States will develop epilepsy in his or her lifetime due to genetics, traumatic brain injury, illness, unknown causes, and more.

Whereas epilepsy uh afflicts 3.4 million Americans with nearly 34,000 of them being untons.

Uh, millions more are affected, such as families, caregivers, friends, teachers, and more.

Whereas a wise widespread lack of understanding and knowledge about epilepsy often cause people, particularly children and youth, to fear, isolate, stigmatize, and bully their peers who are uh afflicted with epilepsy and other seizure disorders.

And whereas the city of Lehigh joins November 2025 as Epilepsy Awareness Month, a global national and state effort to increase awareness, educate residents of Lehigh about epilepsy, and lend support to people with epilepsy and their families in order to improve their quality of life.

Now, therefore, by proclamation, uh of Mayor Mark Johnson and the city council members, Paige Albrecht, Chris Condie, Paul Hancock, Heather Noah, and Michelle Stallings.

Dated the 28th day of October, 2025.

And I will sign this now.

Got a pen that works.

Yes, now we're gonna get a photo up.

Bring anybody else up you want.

Let's get them all up here.

If you want, yeah, why not?

Yeah, so take a photo.

Is that okay?

Okay, thank you very much.

Let me take a picture just okay.

All right.

No, I mean you know.

Let me do this.

Okay, yeah, let's be careful.

I'll just put that off.

I'm gonna make it line it up so it looks like it is.

There you go.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

You can either come to this seat or stay back there, whichever you want to do.

All righty.

Thank you.

Excuse me, please.

All right.

Thank you for coming, everyone.

Um, we will move on to item three, as we usually do, and take 20 minutes of citizen input.

We do ask that you keep your comments if possible to three minutes.

And if you have come to address another item that's on the agenda, we ask you to wait until that time when that comes up.

Is there anyone who would like to speak?

Please.

If you'll state your name for the record, please.

Sure.

Vern Keysler, Lehigh City resident, only for the past 20 plus years.

Hey, I wanted to say thank you.

Uh too bad Mayor Johnson left, but he has served this community for 25 plus years, either between planning commission, city council, and mayor, and I wanted to publicly thank him for his wonderful service.

I get to see him in action mostly in the transportation world.

And he's a strong advocate for transportation issues here in Lehigh.

Also wanted to thank you, because you never know when seats are going to change, right?

With an upcoming election or whatnot.

Thank you for your service.

Now, I want to brag about your professional staff just a little bit.

There's a couple of sidewalk projects been I call gap projects that have been completed in the last year or two.

One of them is just west of or just east of Sky Ridge High School on 3200 north.

That was two or three lots.

When you have safe routes for school kids and school children.

That benefits three schools that are Renaissance, Sky Ridge, and Eagle Crest.

You have safe routes for everybody.

Same thing on 2600 North.

There were two lots just across from the public works um ponds, irrigation ponds.

Those have been done too.

And that's mostly benefit the Eagle Crest elementary students, but again, it benefits everybody.

Finally, I wanted to call out Lauren Powell, our city engineer who's had the vision to put out and and to plan along with the Transportation Master Plan and those that that have the general plan, Kim Struthers and others, Brad Kinnison, Luke Segmiller.

Sixth East is about done.

That's an awesome project.

And it was a vision project that Lauren had many, many years ago.

I think people said, Oh, that's too expensive, or we won't get that through.

Um it's about done.

And uh that's gonna benefit uh traffic circulation and connectivity for Lehigh residents.

Finally, the parks that you have built.

The funding that the city council has allocated for the staff to implement those parks uh and improve other parks in the city.

Amazing job.

Um so I just wanted to come up here.

I'm sure you hear other opinions about other things a lot of times.

Tonight is just a night of saying thank you and gratitude.

Appreciate you and your professional staff.

Thanks.

Thank you, sir.

I'm sure the council would agree with you that our staff is second to none.

So we appreciate the comments.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak this evening?

My name is Lily Leighton.

Um, there's a road by my house.

It's on 900 north between 1700 east and 1200 east, and it's kind of shaped like an hourglass.

There's an area that's a lot narrower than the rest of it.

And it's very unsafe for both new drivers and experienced drivers because people have a tendency to speed there.

I'm pretty sure it's a county road, but is there anything that can be done to widen the road at all?

I'm gonna ask engineering Julian here.

Tell us the address again, please.

Uh it's on 900 north in between 1700 east and 1200 east.

It's yeah, that's a quick question.

I guess of course.

So is that that's where the homes, the homes come to an end right there at 1700, right?

When you get to 900 north, is that right?

On nine north until you get to 17.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it's it's sidewalk and everything that creates that curve, the hourglass, right?

No, there's no sidewalk, so like sidewalk, and then there's like a gap where there's just like rocks and stuff, and there's no like road at all.

That's right.

And then it goes back to sidewalk.

Okay, thank you.

Part of that is county.

We haven't been looking at it.

Okay, it's benefit.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Yeah, part of it is county.

Uh and uh we have been looking at it.

It's just a tough piece.

It's got a an irrigation ditch on the south side that and uh some of those people aren't anxious to have walk and curve in front of their place.

So maybe some property acquisition probably.

Yeah, there's definitely some property acquisition issue.

Kim, do you have anything to add?

It's definitely on our radar.

Okay.

All right.

We appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

All right, thank you.

Uh, my name is Rachel Anderson, and so we're implementing flex lanes onto Pioneer Crossing.

And as far as I'm aware, there's not gonna be much of a barrier.

And I just have worry about like the increased risk of like head-on collisions because of that.

Um I know some like places with flex lanes, they have like movable barriers or like other things implemented so that that kind of decreases that risk.

So like I don't know if you guys have any like influence over like you dot to like um implement stuff like that and just consider the safety of our drivers with our new with the new flex lanes that people will have to get used to.

That's no, I appreciate that comment.

I think we're all sort of waiting to see how the flex lane implementation goes.

Um, but I do know that they have to adhere to national standards in terms of safety and things like that.

Um but I appreciate you bringing it forward.

And we'll see how the implementation is.

It's gonna be um a little bit different on there, isn't it?

I'm I'm hoping it does some good things for traffic for sure.

And I like that the speed limit was lowered this week for the construction work too.

Yeah.

All right, thank you.

Is there anyone else who has a comment?

Yeah.

Uh oh.

Anyway, so I'm a union rep.

Um, seeing that you guys are having plans to build the Lehigh a little bit better on my behalf.

Uh, we do have a work with Union Carpenters.

We do have a lot of young people that try to get in their trade.

But if it's real difficult right now with all these subcontractors, I just wish that uh you could uh think about us and the future projects coming up.

Uh, we do have a foreman from DAW construction and a couple of employees.

I live in the city of Lehigh.

So that's just my my thought out there to bring the new kids of the young blood to this kind of trade.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Maxwell Yingling right here.

Um, so I don't know.

There's a lot of issues with transportation and stuff like that.

I mean, I feel like that's the only thing you guys really hear a lot.

Sorry about that.

But I've just been noticing.

We drive the roads too, you're good.

I know.

It's just it's all over the place.

Utah's constantly doing construction and stuff.

But anyways, uh on State Street and a lot of similar um major streets like that and whatever, right?

Like the sidewalk, it just seems to like end and stuff like that.

And I've seen a lot of people who are like trying to travel throughout the area and whatever, right?

Either whether it be like homeless people or whatever, or just people who need to use city transportation, like buses and stuff like that.

They can't get to the place they want to go without a lot of risk and whatever of going on those major roads because the sidewalk just seems to like end right there.

And so I think it would be really nice to implement um the ability for uh pedestrians to safely be able to walk to all those different stops without having to go into major traffic and stuff like that.

Okay, thank you.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um we love it when the students come because you guys, I mean, you're perceptive.

You guys see things that maybe um we don't.

So I appreciate you bringing that forward.

Um, especially I mean, with public transportation, there's a lot of work going on with that right now.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Would anyone else like to speak?

Very well.

I'll bring it up here again to the council and we'll move on to the consent agenda.

I think we just have the one item on the consent agenda.

So council, uh, are there any questions on that?

If not, I'll hear a motion.

Mayor Pro Tem.

I uh move that we approve the consent agenda as presented.

Do I hear a second?

Second that.

Are there any questions on the motion?

Well, um, all those in favor.

Oh, yes, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Moving on to the regular agenda, item number five, consideration of resolution number 2025-75.

Granting Summit IG Utah, a non-exclusive franchise to operate a telecommunications network in Lehigh City.

And do we have someone here representing them or is that you, Ryan?

Well, I'll introduce it.

We do have Steve Ragland who's joining us virtually.

Very good.

Because he's out of state.

Um, if you have any specific questions.

It's been a little while since we've have done one of these, but there's nothing remarkable about the terms and conditions of this telecommunications franchise agreement that you haven't seen before.

So unless you have any questions, I'll I'll leave it at that.

Anyone have any questions for staff?

And I'm ready to hear a motion.

Mayor Potem, I'll make a motion that we approve resolution 2025-75 as presented.

I have a motion.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

This is by resolution, so I'll take a roll call vote.

Paul?

Yes.

Heather?

Yes.

I'll vote yes.

Chris?

Yes.

And Michelle.

Yes.

And that passes unanimously.

Thank you, everyone.

Let's move on to item number six.

A budget amendment.

Uh resolution number 2025-76.

This is you, Dean.

It's me.

Thank you.

I'm the budget guy.

But to get it.

Yeah, so we're doing a budget amendment now.

We usually do three or four of these during the year.

Um, I think all of these are pretty straightforward.

I'll just review them really quickly.

Um, the first section, those are all things, and we do this every year when we have capital projects.

So sometimes people understand when we have a capital project, we budget it, but a lot of times those span over two or three years, and the budget doesn't automatically roll forward.

We need to have a motion or uh a budget amendment to roll that forward.

So that first section is all just related to those projects, projects that were previously budgeted, the years ended.

We need to budget that same money, so it's not it's not new money.

Um, but I did notice uh on the last one on the library city hall, obviously 10 million plus six million doesn't equal 10 million.

So I just typed a zero instead of a six.

So I apologize for that.

Um the second one.

And we've had a it says do we did a budget amendment last year for a couple of insurance claims.

This is there was another large one that I didn't put in.

So this is paying that out and paying that out of out of our reserves.

Um the other one is the fire grant.

The chief has was able to get a grant, and I believe it has to do with mental health for firefighters.

If I have the right one, yeah.

So same thing, even though we get the money and it's there, we still have to get have the council authorized authorize its um its expenditure.

Um the purchase of the land proper or the power, the property next to the power, no, the property next to the power department.

So we've talked about that several times.

That's just to get that in the budget.

And then their thing is um with the new library opening very soon, they needed some more money for books.

And so we have the Coomer Trust funding that that's what that money is for.

And so we're just budgeting to spend some of that money to help get our shelves full when it opens.

So that's it.

Is there any questions?

That's a fun thing to spend money on for sure.

It is.

I'm excited about that.

Can I ask some questions?

Yes, please go ahead.

Um, so in the library one, the the amended budget, which is 275.

Is that the amount that's accruing?

Is that the total amount that's accruing the that the interest is accruing on?

Or they have an amount every year for book purchases, which is 225.

We're gonna add, we're gonna take 50 out of the Coomer open funds and add it.

And add to that.

Okay, perfect.

Just want to make sure I got that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Very well, I'll hear a motion.

We need a public hearing.

Oh, we do need a public hearing.

Thank you for reminding me.

Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak to this item?

See none.

Now I'm ready for a motion.

Mayor Pro Tem, I make a motion that we approve uh resolution 2025-76, a budget amendment to the fiscal year 2026 budget.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

We're giving it to Chris.

Um are there any questions on the motion?

I don't know why there would be.

All right, then in that case, I'll take roll call again.

Heather?

Yes.

I'll vote yes, Chris?

Yes.

Michelle?

Yes.

And Paul.

Yes.

Very good.

That passes unanimously.

And we will move on to agenda item number seven, power systems impact fee amendments.

You're up again.

Yeah, so I'm just going to introduce.

So we have Susie Becker with Science Public Finance.

She's the one that's done uh the impact fee analysis.

And uh she's very well versed in the law.

And uh our power department and our contract engineer, and have been working for several months on this.

So I'm gonna let Susie present.

Um, just so I think we all understand impact fees or how we are able to fund growth-related infrastructure.

And uh as far as the details on the engineering, I that's that's not me.

But we're gonna let Susie present and then ask questions and then we'll have to have a public question direction here.

Great.

Well, thank you.

Thanks so much for letting us work um with you in the city.

I would love to be there tonight, but I am out of state as well tonight.

Um, Dean, are you gonna show the PowerPoint that I sent?

Um, should I share my screen or should I just talk about it?

How do you feel about that?

Let's ask the folks here.

She could share her screen, or would you just would it be easier?

Share her screen.

Can you try to share your screen first?

Thank you.

We have it here if we need to, or if it looks like it's coming.

Yeah, this looks you've got it.

We got it.

Okay.

Let's um let's see if that will work then.

All right.

Here we go.

Um, so just quickly, what is an impact fee?

It's a one-time fee, it's charge to new development, and it's only to offset the capital costs associated with new development, not operating costs.

And then the law further defines that we can only cover the cost of system improvements, not project improvements.

And then, of course, the law doesn't define the difference between them, but generally speaking, system improvements are larger scale um improvements that benefit the city, the residence as a whole, whereas project improvements would just be small lines or something that would just go to um to individual homes or that they're they're just smaller, they only benefit like a small area, one development.

And if you want to know all about them, it's in Utah Code 1136A.

We have to have two documents, the impact fee facilities plan and an impact fee analysis.

Now, Zion's we only wrote the impact fee analysis.

The first document is the impact fee facilities plan.

And I just want to pay tribute here to Mike, who I worked with.

Um, and I know we all miss him, and he was wonderful to help put this IFFP together and to help walk me through some of the technical calculations.

Anyway, um, so what the IFFP has to do is talk about what are our serving service levels now, and then what kind of demand growth are we going to see?

And oh goodness, what are we going to do to maintain those service levels?

Well, we really have two options.

We have excess capacity that we can buy into, or we can build new facilities or a combination of both.

That's what the impact fee facilities plan does.

It's often considered the technical, the engineering document.

Um, it will deal with the new projects, the cost, the capacity, all of that in electrical power terms.

So then on the IFA, which is what Zions does, it's the financial document.

So we take that information, we build right off the IFFP.

The IFA comes after the IFFP, and we do a proportionate share analysis.

Um, we divide into with development within the next six to ten years.

How much capacity is it going to consume?

How much of that can we, you know, how what was the cost of our existing excess capacity?

Because the FP will tell us what the excess capacity is, and we'll look at the cost, we'll allocate it.

We'll look at allocating the construction costs and new facilities and other costs like this study, but then the financing bonds, credits, any of that type of thing is taken care of in the financial document, the IFA.

So let's look at the very first thing that comes from the IFFP.

Look as you know, as you look at this growth in your customers.

I have to tell you that I was absolutely stunned when I looked at this growth in megawatts, 79 over the next 10 years.

So I live in Banafall, and I'm actually chair of Bountiful's power board right now.

And in a peak month in July, we might hit 79 or 80 megawatts.

And look at that growth you're having in 10 years.

You you really have a real need for a lot of new facilities and certainly have um a rationale for doing impact fees.

Okay, so the excess capacity.

So remember, we said there's two main um ways that we can meet our demand needs.

One is through buying into existing excess capacity, and the other one is through new construction.

So the excess capacity consumed during the time frame of this study, 10 years.

And the reason we kind of limit it to 10 years is because impact fees have to be spent within six years of one collected.

And so it gives you a little turnover year two to year seven, three to eight, whatever.

But we um that's pretty much the time frame of most of these impact fee studies.

So um in IFFP, this excess capacity, these percentages, it was all engineering then, and then um, these are the percent that would be consumed, and then we looked at the actual cost of your capacity, and you had um like 30 million, I think, for your actual transformer, but only 31%.

Then we took 31% of it for the actual cost um for the next 10 years.

This is based on you have to buy law use your historic cost, but you actually paid for it if you're buying into excess capacity, and these were the numbers that we came up with.

And again, I need to give thanks to Dean Lindell, who was incredible in providing me the information I needed quickly.

Um the next these are the new improvements again, right from the IFFP.

You can see there's quite a bit there.

26 million, 20 million impact fee eligible in our time frame.

So it all comes together.

What we do is we take all these costs, we divide it by the growth that we're going to see happening over the next um 10 years.

So we had buy-in to that existing excess capacity, you just sell for transformers, feeders, a portion of the power building.

We have an outstanding bond, and so we can charge um new development for its fair share of the interest cost of that bond, although we're gonna have to make a little credit for it later.

That then we have the new construction costs, consultants.

We had a little impact fee balance.

I brought our total cost here down to 366.

However, we had um some of the bond will go to benefit existing development.

It's still they're still paying for their fair share.

So we can't charge a new development, it's whole impact fee, and then say, oh, and guess what?

Over time you also get to pay for existing development.

They would be paying more than their fair share.

So we just have to make a little credit here.

And here it comes out at our cost per year.

Now some people will say wrongly, oh, your cost per KVA is going up every year for inflation.

No, what's happening is the gross fee, the gross fee stays the same.

It is what it is.

But you have fewer years left on the bond credit, so the credit goes down every year.

So in other words, the amount you're paying at the building permit counter over here in the far right corner, that's gonna go up every year.

But the amount that you'll pay over time is 945, 1157 for 2033 or whatever, that goes down over time as more and more people are paying on the bond and fewer years are left.

So the net present value becomes less.

So finally, the maximum fees here.

Oh, let me just mention one thing here first.

Though the old cost 247, it's about a 28% rate increase, but this had not been done for a long time, is my understanding.

315.

And then it's multiplied by peak demand to get your maximum fee.

I think your maximum fee right now on this one is just over 1200.

You'd be going up to about 1,575.

That's the last slide.

Does anybody have any questions?

I have one question.

Um I have I have one question.

If you go to uh table three.

Uh-huh.

And the IFA or the current the on this?

The IFA, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

On the IFA.

Okay, I'll stop sharing.

I have it should be the electron electric power demands or and growth and demand table.

Yes.

Um, the the question I have is that so I just to make sure I'm on the same page.

So you have your values in megawatts and then convert to uh is that KBA, right?

Um, but the the megawatt at the bottom for the 10 years 79.

Is that an average of those divided by 10?

Or how do we get the 79 when the values for each year are much higher than 79?

That's just the growth.

That's like in the megawatts, they'd be the 217 uh minus the 138 in that call.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

I and the same thing with the convert to KBA, all that, right?

Just it's subtracting the growth from the beginning.

Okay.

Thank you.

Does anyone else have any questions?

Um, Joel, do you have anything you wanted to add or Dean?

It's about 28% higher.

Joel actually brought this up.

He said, Well, what's inflation been since the last time we did it till today?

Because I think it was 2018.

I think it was 2018.

Anyways, whatever that was, it was almost gives 29%.

So it is kind of somewhat requisite or matching inflation.

All right, if there are no other questions, let's have a public hearing.

Is there anyone here who would like to speak to this item?

Seeing none, we'll close the public comment.

And um, if no one has any more questions, I'm ready for a motion.

Mayor Pro Tem, I'll make a motion that we approve ordinance 64-2025, adopting an impact fee facilities plan and an impact fee analysis and amending impact fees for power as presented.

I have a motion by Chris.

Do I hear second?

Also do we have?

And Paul seconds.

Um because of the nature of this, I am gonna do roll call.

I'll vote yes, Chris.

Yes, Michelle?

Paul?

Yes.

And Heather.

Yes.

Very good.

That passes unanimously.

And we're going on to agenda item number eight, consideration of resolution number 2025-77.

Approving the UAMPS Fremont Solar Project Agreement.

Joel, is this you?

I just know what you're doing.

Um we've we talked briefly about this project earlier, and I sent um the talking points and information that I was getting from UAMPS.

Um I've got uh a few slides if you'd like, five slides if you want to see some more information about the project.

And I think there was a few questions that were asked.

Um, I don't know if you want me to go over those questions and the slides or neither, or what what do you want to see?

I'm happy to do any of it.

The students in the remote rather I didn't, but we have a little time.

Let's see the slides.

Okay, I'll I'll be brief too.

I'll have to refresh my memory on our questions too.

Yeah.

I'll start with the questions if you want.

Sure.

Um Michelle asked a few questions.

Is that okay to go through those?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Um, so the first question she asked is uh the price of 3445 a reasonable price for solar.

And the answer to that is yes.

Um I've checked out against other folks in the industry, and that's a great price.

And maybe what makes the price most advantageous for us at the city and this project is the time and likelihood of getting a transmission interconnection in place in time to take advantage of remaining tax credits that are going to go away.

So because we have the transmission in place, long lead time items ordered, we'll be able to start construction by July of next year, which is a requirement for those tax incentives, and we have to complete it by I think a year from that July.

So and we should be able to make both of those with this project.

So yes, the price is great, and we'll be able to get it built quick.

Shall do you have a follow-up?

Yes, I do.

Um so as more solar comes online and it's kind of overproducing and it comes in very cheap, and sometimes people are looking to get rid of it over that 25-year period.

Will that stay a good price?

I guess I mean I guess that's hard to answer for sure on what's gonna happen.

Um the battery that's tied to this project will help, because not every project will have batteries, at least right now, but that allows us to shift into those more expensive areas and save that energy during the cheaper times, but that that helps hedge some of it, not all of it, but that's a risk for sure.

Okay, but yeah.

Um, and the other question is was the price range typically for solar right now.

I did do a quick check with UAMps and they're shopping all the time, and they're saying right now you're looking at 38 to 50 dollars per megawatt, and this is 3545.

So the pricing looks really good, and that's what I'm hearing as well.

Um do we renewable energy credits play a role in the decision for this?

And I would say no, but it is a benefit.

It's something that we can market if we choose not to retire those renewable energy credits, and we can get a few extra dollars back, and that will lower that energy price.

Um that I mean it is a benefit, but probably not the main decision maker.

Um, and then last question I had was what happens if we don't participate?

Um already the request that came in exceeded the 99 megawatts that were available, and so we actually requested 20 megawatts, our entitlement share is 18 and change.

I'll show it here in a second.

So there's more interest than available, and our if we walked away it would be gobbled up by everybody else that's interested.

So that's those questions, unless there were any other, and we can go through slides and yeah, you're probably gonna answer this, but the main question is just explaining how it benefits Lehigh.

It's a 25 year PPA, but you're probably answering.

Yeah, no, I think that's a um I didn't hit that one.

Um the benefit, I think, is just price surety.

Um, we're gonna see the pricing go up.

It's gonna fix the uh the cost of that energy.

Like you mentioned, we run the risk that we might have been able to get those megawatts somewhere else cheaper at certain hours.

But I think the surety of having that 18 megawatts locked up at the 35 dollars is is pretty valuable.

Um it's unlikely pricing is going to go down.

I think we'll see escalation overall go up.

That's what I've seen over the years I've been here.

It's definitely not as cheap as it was, and I think we'll continue to see that.

Even though it's solar though, you think it'll continue up.

Okay.

I think so.

Um, well, it's that's one component of our portfolio, but you have to add other products to maybe deliver capacity, which is the energy at night, for example.

And in order to deliver that, it's more expensive.

So as things change in the markets, building a new power plant today costs more than it did 10 years ago.

So it's gonna cost us more overall.

So it's not just the price of the energy, it's the price of building the okay.

Yeah.

Capacity is gonna be super valuable in the future.

So yeah, do you want to now are you gonna go first?

That's fine.

Let's see your slides.

And then yes, stop as you want.

And these are really brief.

Um, and most of you know, so 25-year power purchase agreement.

We talked about that.

Um, we've had they gave us a 60 day window.

Uh we have till the first of November to approve this.

Um, and we talked about the tax incentive, the timing is great right now, and there's not a lot of projects that are gonna be able to take advantage of this.

So this is this is a good opportunity.

Um the capacity is 99 megawatts at the 3545.

Um, there's a battery tied to it, and the there's a chart, it's a 49 and a half megawatt battery that you can discharge for four hours.

And so when you add in there's a cost to discharge that that's part of the power purchase agreement.

When you add in the battery discharge, which provides some capacity because you're gonna shift the load to later like night, um, it increases the cost, and that drops it in at about 69 to 74 dollars per megawatt hour.

And so that's almost exactly in line with what our current wholesale cost is for energy.

So you can see that this project doesn't increase pressure on our rate, or it doesn't decrease it.

So it's pretty stabilizing, and that's why we like this project.

Um we do retain the energy renewable energy credits or recs, and those are marketable.

So we can sell those on the rec market as well and make a few dollars.

And like I mentioned, our share is 18.38 megawatts.

So, real quickly about the project.

Um, I thought we were gonna see where it was.

Did we miss that?

Oh, it was on this slide.

You can see where the project is if you're curious.

You'll in the future be able to see it on the way, say driving to St.

George.

Um, if you're familiar with just before you get to Parwan area there, you're there's like there's a farm on the right, and it's just before that.

It looks like there's like a big field there, is where that will end up, if you recall.

Um, so this is a typical profile for a solar project um for this particular one.

So the red is what's going to be utilized to feed the load and demand from that project.

The green represents what we'll need to charge the battery to follow that profile.

So you see, we're gonna have excess during certain hours.

So your typical load curve in this region of the country is gonna be it goes up in the morning, then down and then back up.

And this is gonna take advantage of the times that we're not using as much of the load and charge the battery.

So then you take the blue profile, which is all of the production that's available, and some of it's used for the battery, and some of it's used for serving load.

So what that does is it gives you the ability to move uh the battery energy to be released at a given period.

And this is an example of likely when that would be utilized.

Um, so that that green or that orange line would be how the battery would be used.

So with that, if you look at it as a whole, then this is what the energy released would look like, or how it's met meeting our loads.

So, like you can see how that purple line follows the red, which meets our load, and now we can shift later into the evening after the battery drops off.

See, the purple is still a need there, and we can utilize it later into the evening when power prices are higher.

And like I said, that's all some short slides, but anyone have any follow-up questions?

Uh just one.

Um go ahead.

So, kind of to go off uh a little bit further with what Michelle's question about the benefit to Lehigh.

Um, can you talk just a little bit about the portfolio that we have and what this does to that, especially um if my understanding's correct, the last few years we've seen closings of coal plants and the parts coal and and other parts that were significant portions of our portfolio drop off.

So we're always continuously looking for replacement energy as well as adding to our portfolio.

So I'm wondering if you just talked to that for just a second.

Yeah, we I I used to, I mean, I have a list and it's it's getting updated here and there as UAMps brings a new projects for us to consider.

Um that list is like roughly like 10 projects long.

There's a lot of stuff that's being presented.

It's getting very hard to get it across the finish line.

We don't have all those, it's like this is one that's come up.

So my point is it's hard to get some of these projects going.

Now, to answer your question on other resources we have this project I like because it offers a new type of um diversity to our portfolio in the fact that we don't have a battery, and so we do have solar projects.

Uh we have a wind, we have wind projects, we have hydro projects, we have coal, we have natural gas, we have waste heat uh recovery.

Um the the ones we don't have would be uh solar plus battery, and we don't have geothermal and we don't have nuclear.

So those would be the the ones we don't have, and um this will add one more component to the diversity to that diversity.

That's really what we're after.

Is like we need everything we can get, but not putting our eggs all in one basket is ideal.

Yep, we want to diversify to help with like Michelle's point.

If we put everything in just solar only and something shifts, we could have a problem.

But if we can spread that out, it helps.

Thank you.

Yeah, good question.

Just out of curiosity.

So the battery is four hour storage life, right?

So if you're storing like whatever when the sun comes up, does it the the clock start ticking then?

Do you know what I mean?

Or is it just continuous so that it the four hours could be utilized anytime, and you wouldn't even have to utilize it, you know.

I mean, it's a battery.

So if the for some reason you didn't want to discharge it that day, you could wait till the next day.

Um, okay.

Okay, it's a four-hour yeah provides the electricity for four hours, but you can keep the storage okay.

We can choose what I demonstrate is just that's typically it's all pricing.

That's just typically when the energy is the most expensive.

Yeah, is when solar's dropping off and you lose all of that capacity, all that energy all at once.

So if we can shift and cover that with some cheaper power at that $35 rate we charge the battery with, that's great.

And so it's that's an example.

It might be cheaper to wait, and we're seeing pricing change in the morning, and so we may just patch it in the morning.

Probably unlikely.

But we just it's a it's a market-driven decision daily.

I thought it was it would last in the battery for four hours, then it diminish or something like that.

You know, but it's just yeah, that's more of a project.

Like there's certain ways you can store with heat, but you would have to like get rid of that shortly after.

It's not it's just gonna delay the release, but you can't store it forever.

Okay, batteries you can store longer.

Okay, but yeah.

Makes sense.

Thanks.

Anyone else have any questions?

All right, then uh nobody has any more questions.

I'm ready for a motion.

You guys just like it here.

Make a motion.

Thank you.

I please go ahead.

Um I move that we approve resolution 2025-77, approving the UAM's free month solar project agreement.

All right, I have a motion.

Do I hear a second?

I'll second that.

I have a motion on the second.

Are there any questions on the motion?

Very well, we're gonna do this by roll call, Chris.

Yes, Michelle, yes, Paul?

Yes, Heather?

Yes, and I will also vote yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending this evening.

Council, we are adjourned.