Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's the line.

All right.

Starting relatively on our agenda.

Um we'll start with um Mayor Graves and our court update.

Um they win.

Um, not often.

Not often.

But it is nice to have those names kind of in the back pocket for when it does come up.

And that was one that we just hadn't had on our list.

So we'll be able to use them for the current defendant that needs the assistance, but we also have the name going forward.

And then a couple of the my other categories changes or things coming up at court.

We started as a court of record not too long after I became the judge, so probably 2015, which means our equipment and our processes for recording hearings are the same from then, them, excuse me, from then.

And see for the record, folks are changing to a cloud-based service now.

Which will be uh, I think a vast improvement for how the recordings are all held at this time.

And so we'll be looking at switching over that cloud-based service, uh, hopefully sometime in the next next year.

And along with that, we will hopefully have an equipment update as well, since of course we've had the same equipment for 10 years.

Um, but that'll come down to what it what it looks like cost-wise, what needs to be updated, what we can still keep up.

But that's the ongoing conversation to make sure that our recording equipment is what we needed to have it in place.

I guess I never thought about it, but your equipment is different than Willamette Falls equipment that they use for uh recording our meetings.

Yes, our equipment is called it's called for the record, and everything we have equipment-wise comes from them.

And then, of course, the computer program is from them as well.

And is it in the same room where Willamette Falls is set up, or is it something you set up and take down every time?

Mary gets to set it up and take it down each course.

Wow, okay.

Okay, wow.

Is it is it just all about 10 years old?

Is it just audio or is it video as well?

It is just audio.

That's what I thought.

Yeah.

Uh I think having the cloud storage will be probably the nicest upgrade.

Um, not having to start store everything locally and search locally.

Um, other update for the court was that we're in the process of hiring for a new position, which will be um some much needed relief.

There was, of course, a COVID dip in cases, and now we are on the trajectory of back up, which means that the work at the court is moving back up as well and workload.

So I'm told job description has been submitted to HR and the timing is based on HR's response as far as approving that description and then getting out a posting, but that should hopefully be happening in January.

I can share that that has now been reviewed.

Class comp was completed today, should recruit in early Jan.

We were calling it a deputy court, I think the term we've landed on is court specialist and the law court manager, but this was made possible by the public safety fee.

So thank you, counsel.

Yes, and it's much appreciated to share the workload a little bit in the court because Mary's fielding calls and emails, and then of course, also being present in court each time we have a court session and processing all the cases as they come in, attorney requests, um, defendant requests.

So she is fielding a lot of information.

Um like I said, also being in court, uh dealing with each court day and scheduling those sessions as well.

So much needed relief is coming in.

Um and then the only other thing that I had heard of for the court, which uh I'm certain everyone in the room there knows more than I do, is the possibility of credit card fees um coming to the court and being added on to defendants um cases and payment plans, things of that sort.

Um obviously that'll be a change in the court system to add those in.

Um, but I'm sure everyone else there knows probably the process to how we landed there and if that is uh for certain coming or if it's still in the in the thought process.

I've been voted and approved by council.

Implementation has been rocked.

It's been a complicated, we have to get our payment processor on board and hard companies, so it has not been implemented yet.

Michael will be providing you guys an update on that in the new year.

I know they had a meeting this week about it's in the fee schedule that you have authority to charge up to a three percent convenience fee for credit card usage on things, including so we'll just have to work it into the into the court fees and yeah, figure out where that how that will be calculated and included.

You mentioned that there's been an uptick in your caseload since COVID.

Can you just tell me a little bit?

Like what drives your caseload?

It's mostly traffic tickets, is it something else?

Um, I mean, largely traffic, of course.

Uh I have seen quite a bit more from code enforcement recently.

Um, and I think you know, likelihood there's probably more out there that code enforcement could be sending in, but they have a lengthy process with their cases.

They do a really good job of trying to work with folks before it ever ends up in court.

Um, so I have seen more code enforcement recently.

And uh I know that they are working on other cases.

Traffic certainly increases our caseload.

Um, but also I think people at least more recently have been hiring attorneys.

Uh I've noticed that we have more attorney cases coming through.

Um, those take up a little bit more time, of course, for a trial docket.

Okay.

I you kind of cramped my second part there.

Are there trends or insights in the caseload that you think would be helpful for us to know or to think about, especially as you mentioned, like code enforcement is increasing.

I guess these speech promotes are running that or even the trend of more attorneys coming to court.

Parse through what that means for our property.

Yeah, I don't I don't know if I could predict uh the reason.

Um I assume that it's probably one of two things.

Excuse me.

If folks are economically doing better, they have the ability to fight citations.

Um, so they might be more inclined to hire an attorney.

It could also be the flip side of that, which is if they are more concerned that they are not economically stable and that this ticket could impact their job, they may be more inclined to fight it and uh hire an attorney to help them do that.

So I think that could actually go either way.

Um I've certainly noticed more of that over the last probably two to three months.

It seems like there have been more cases coming in.

Are there I in that?

What's the average cost of a ticket that we're issuing for our traffic citations?

Or more or less.

Right.

So they're all set by legislature, of course.

So D violation is 115, that's the presumptive.

Uh C violations 165, B is 265, and A is 440.

I would say the vast, vast majority fall in the 165 to 265 range.

Um reason being a failure to obey a traffic control device, so it's running a stoplight, stop sign is 265, and speeding if you're in the 11 to 20 range is 165.

If you hit 21 to 30, then you're in the 265.

And those are the majority, of course, of what we see.

Okay, that's probably thanks.

You meant you mentioned the the fee as uh the credit card fee is something coming.

I assume someone's talked to you too about eventual introduction of red light cameras and speed cameras.

I have heard mutterings, but I think that's about as far as it's gotten to me.

We also um will provide a in January a firmer update for that.

But that at this just for your sorry, Judge Graves, I didn't keep you more apprised, but yeah, that was kind of a part of the same kind of credit card B conversation.

So our uh PD has taken the lead on sort of the research into how that um uh program will be stood up.

We're hoping to do kind of RFPs for the technology in the spring and have them implemented sometime next summer.

So okay, the next summer timeline.

Yep.

And stationary this time, not the band.

Stationary, yeah, looking at 224 and 99E.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, that'll certainly put our new court uh specialists to work.

Yeah, and timing actually sounds good for getting someone up to speed, and then uh obviously that increases the number of citations coming in.

So the ability to process those will be uh much better once someone has had a little bit of time to get used to the regular court processes.

Other questions from the judge.

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

So thank you for joining us.

And uh forest, nice to see you all have wonderful holidays.

You too.

Kimberly.

Well you'll get thank you, take care.

All right.

So next we have the Kellogg.

I think mostly it's going to be April and Karen.

So maybe up here.

Providing the presentation.

Well, I think we're back is not coming, so you can move for one can sit there.

And Shelly Romero, over there.

Okay.

So the project management team.

But I'm gonna keep it to um Councilor Massey, who's our rep to uh to the Washington Council to sort of keep this off.

Yeah, just so um you can understand we we you know we have a number of goals in the city council, and so one of the goal that's been assigned to me is uh um you know spark and range based on for the the lead on on this among other issues and that kind of thing.

I will probably repeat the letter that we sent.

Um you know um I think that the you know the change in administration um has been sober uh to say the least.

Um uh I was so excited when things seem to have a lot of momentum because I was telling people I said I think we never get here now we've been hit with this big speed bump.

And so um uh we're all on board, but we just think that there's a lot more challenges than we anticipated here ago, that kind of thing.

So that's why we we we kind of sent you this uh list of non questions that we will address.

So I'll stop talking with us if we'll get you.

Yeah, and thank you for that letter.

We've been looking forward to a chance to talk with you all about the project and kind of um provide some updates and raise them up to speed.

So um, yes, there have been a lot of sobering changes, and we are feeling pretty sober, but um we also have quite a bit of money um and we have enough money to take us all the way through the pre-construction activities.

So we want to um leave that money wisely and get enough values on it as we can.

So um anything else before we start okay.

Well, I am April McEwen, so I'm a calorie project manager, and I'm with River Lord Project LLC or Project Management Consulting Partner, BP from the past.

I'm working with American Rivers.

I was the UNRWS standing programs.

Um initiated the project when with with North Clackman's Water Show Council when they came and and um and talked to us in 2021.

So it's way back, but um super happy to still be here on the project.

And I am going to buy Karen will introduce yourself and then the other members are great.

Um Karen Capman, excited to be here as the first time you guys have seen me on this project on involving law, blah blah blah blah things.

So for this project, I am the project manager, so Odot holds a contract with console, and I have a full design team.

Some of the design in phase one, those team members are now under the console.

They are now from consultants to me.

So I don't want to maybe show it and everybody, but all of the design networks.

I love this.

Hi, I'm Shelley Romero.

I'm an area manager central for ODOT Region One Project Delivery, and I get the most from these people obviously over there.

So I'm happy to be working on this project within the city.

And you guys know me, I'm Amy Dan Ring with the North Blackwell's Water Chift Council.

I'm the watershed restoration manager, and I function as the uh council's uh project manager on the design team.

You know me as well.

I'm Neil Shulman, I'm on the project leadership team.

Joseph Gilliam, I'm the lead uh for the city on the leadership team as well.

And I want to give a shout out to Jonathan Orwitz, who's with that who's in Andy Bird.

Yeah, and Andy Bird are also and Jen and Peter and Adam.

Okay, so here is our agenda today.

Um the purpose of the media, we wanted to respond to your letter.

Now we can't cover everything, literally everything, each one of these topics because we don't have that time, we only have an hour to cover it all.

So we wanted to just provide this presentation, a higher level overview, and then if you have more specific questions, we plan to follow up with a written response and provide more detail with that.

Um so today we'll talk through the project overview and then get into we know there's been a lot of technical questions, so we get into the weeds a little bit, but hopefully not too deep, um, but provide you with some um engineering slides and show you what's going on with the shared use path design and also uh where we're at with evaluating the sewer there, and then look ahead in next steps and and ongoing.

Okay, so first up on project overview, we'll talk about the critical partnership that's needed to deliver this project, project goal, uh, and the design and construction elements to achieve the goal, and the project timeline, um, the funding outlook where we stand now to Robert Robert, your question, and then the collaborative team structure that we have going on.

So here are the four entities.

I know you're very familiar with these four.

This composes our leadership team.

Without any one of these entities, we would not be where we are today.

So we have the Oregon Department of Transportation, no one else can actually hold a contract to construct a state highway bridge other than ODOT.

So ODOT's involvement has been absolutely essential dating back to Toba Peltz back in 2021, and just yeah, it's been a great partnership.

Um, and then we have you know, ODOT owns the state highway bridge, and then we have the city of Milwaukee primary footprint owner owning most of the project footprint, and obviously this project, you know, the outcomes of this project, the benefits of this project are going to be realized by the residents of Milwaukee and the surrounding community.

Um so do it without the city of Milwaukee, that's for sure.

Then we have these NGOs, right?

So we have the local community presence here with the North Collapse Government's Watershed Council, who um just brings so much capacity with community engagement and um has just Neil's just done a great job of of securing that initial seed funding and really demonstrating those uh that community support, and we'll have a funding slide that really shows that here in a bit, but um combined with American Rivers who had who brings dam removal experience and experience managing large-scale rest uh restoration, as well as leveraging uh funding dollars that are not traditional to ODOT or City in the restoration realm and bringing that project management expertise has been really key.

So I should give you a minute to just read this because it is quite one, it is quite a sentence.

Um, but this project goal is meant to encompass the overall vision for the project, and the interesting thing about it is it doesn't just say re-established fish passage, it doesn't just say transportation, it says all the things, and this really reflects the vision of the four entities and aligns that under one uh project goal, desired outcomes, and also reflects uh community input and um the desired outcomes of what we've been hearing from the community stakeholders as well.

So we take the project goal, we break it down into smaller objectives, and then that is then broken down into okay, how do we achieve those objectives?

And so that's where we have our design, which leads to our construction elements.

Um overall, again, that vision is increasing species and community resiliency overall system resiliency.

So, project objectives primary, you know, we have that 50 million dollars from NOAA.

That's really for dam removal, restoration, fish passage.

And um, so that's a real primary driver of the funds we have right now, but everything is equally important.

It's one project.

So modernizing the 990s bridge, we can't remove the dam without doing that.

Uh, restoring a uh reconnecting downtown to the waterfront.

We understand that that is a priority for the city council.

Um it also restores you know a migration corridor for wildlife, urban watershed, and then connecting that to the waterfront.

And then we have the 14-acre habitat restoration and restoring that impoundment.

And what you see bolded here are the things that are really aligned with the focus with the city uh also and priority.

So, you know, restoring that habitat is means we are also removing a lot of contaminated sediment, which is a human health hazard, becomes airborne when the water goes down during the summer months, and it's a real um, it's a real concern.

It also when we remove that contaminated sediment, we increase flood weight capacity, and so it attenuates flood water to lower Hill Creek and come off the lower William River.

Um, so there's some benefits there.

That's one of the mitigation strategies in the city's natural um hazard mediation plan.

And then you see shared use path shows up over in command community enhancement features too, so reconnects those three parts and creates benefits for the community, uh restoring green space and then access to green space.

So it takes that sort of dead impoundment right now that's not really usable, and then makes it a usable area right in the middle of downtown.

So we covered the primary construction elements.

Um, the project timeline where we are right now is final design phase.

So we're working through we just finished our 30% design assessments package this past summer, and then we'll be moving forward to our 60% design milestone in the late spring.

And this is all boots on the ground, all hands on deck.

We are motoring board because we need to spend this NOAA funding by December 2027, and we really want to get the the project to a shovel ready status.

So, you know, we can't control everything, right?

And and like you said, there's been some wrenches thrown in since January uh of this year.

So what we can control is we have this funding, and we can get the most value for the with that money and uh complete final design and get everything as planned and as far along as possible.

That even if we are not able to secure all of the construction funds, we'll be able to pick it up and uh save a lot of money when the project can be constructed.

If we don't get all the funding, we're still motoring towards that goal.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

Um so project funding.

This slide really shows, you know, it's a real snapshot of just how invested um the community has been in the project of those you know, those dollars in phase one.

Um and also North Clackness Water Show Council held you know the contract that sponsored that work in phase one, the feasibility work.

Basically, American Rivers and the North Lack of this Water Council can hold contracts to do work that's not building public works infrastructure or placing the state highways bridge.

So if it involved restoration or stuff like that, we've held contracts for the project.

And that would other things about this.

So thank you.

In your letter, you verified how the city's funding that was provided, the one million dollars is from the URA funds, and how that could be spent.

We understand that can't be spent on sewer relocation or in the upper impoundment, but needs to be spent on the lower portion of the project, and that we didn't have that information, so that was really um really helpful to hear that million dollars is so important because it really demonstrates the city uh commitment to the project to other partners and other funders, and it's really helps leverage additional funding.

So it's helped leverage the metro funds, um, and then collectively the metro funds and the city funds really are useful for leveraging those federal dollars because they're not federal.

So very important, you know, for this a million dollars is not nothing, right?

But for this project, it it may seem like a little drop in the bucket because of the price tag, but it is so critical coming from the city to have that funding.

Um, the metro funds here, so we have 10 million dollars from them as you know.

The funds are super important and need to be spent for 200.

That's the other thing driving the project.

Okay, quickly, and then I'll stop talking about it.

Oh, and then you go back.

Sorry, yeah, I did have a question.

So the um on the funding.

So the OWEB environmental restoration fund.

I've heard some talk about um potential.

I mean, I see that most of that is federal, but that's the one piece of state.

I've heard some talk about potential state funding through Monsanto settlement dollars.

Is that that?

That is, yeah, it's the Oregon, yes.

Yes.

And that really that's kind of what's a reasonable expectation in terms of that.

I think our project is ready to go and aligns closely with what we've heard.

They're developing that criteria now.

And so we're we're just tracking it and seeing how they're developing that program, and then trying to align, you know, with that.

Um, it's not fully developed, and there hasn't been any release of you know notification or soliciting know what their timeline is to do that.

They want to get funds out.

Well, yeah, there's three they've divided the the legislative legislative act, divided the fund into three tranches.

One is uh that is has to be implemented by New Year's goes to tribes, and that is basically out the door.

Um, then there are two other funds, both of which in the high level language developed by the legislature and the settlement are could very well be written for this project.

What has not been determined is how much of the fund they are going to try and get out the door quickly, and versus sustain the fund and run and sustain the corpus of the fund and give out funding its dollar batches and keep it going for longer.

Um, I'm tracking that process pretty closely.

There's another meeting later this week.

Um, but it is supposedly they are moving toward an application at the end of 2026.

Okay.

And I'm glad you brought us back, Lisa, because there were a couple of things that didn't want to cover about this.

So these two the federal highway.

I'll go.

Yeah, it doesn't work on the screen.

Okay.

So the federal highway, the two big big plots there were frozen this year, but they we've heard from our congressional offices that they should be coming online again in a couple months.

So that's good news.

We will evaluate those and and see what the changes are and what's happening with that.

Um that being said, you know, it's a big hit if those aren't there for the project, right?

The viability of going to construction on time, you know, looks pretty thin.

Um, we are working with other partners though to explore other non-traditional sources.

So we've had it, there's just in the nation, there's a big shift of where funding's going and how it's going.

And so we're trying to look at that and see what other opportunities there are.

I think really outside the box.

We're not doing that.

Okay, quickly, project team structure.

We cover the leadership team members, and we meet monthly.

Um, we discuss, you know, we admit it, we're administering the project, so we're discussing um project management, contracting, um, engagements.

There's there's not we're we're hitting everything that is needed to make the project happen, and um we make decisions you know by consensus and talk through things.

That being said, we're also constrained by the organizations we work for.

Um, we have to often you know come up with okay, we think collectively is the best plan.

This is the only feasible route for this reason.

Um, and we use you know data to come to those conclusions, and then we have to bring it back to the city council.

We have to bring it back to ODOT's upper management and um bring it back to the ultimate you know, decision makers.

So this is a lot collaborative project team.

There are a lot of work of these on those projects, and we sort of corraled into committees or sub-teams, if you will.

So, like Karen is the lead, um, the project manager for um tour, and then they have nine nine consulting firms working under them, right?

So we have a huge consultant team working on this project.

Um, and then we have the technical team here.

So that is composed of subject matter experts and disciplinary leads from the leadership team entities.

So dating back to 2023, that was Tessie Prentice representing on that for the city, and then it went to Mandy Bird, and then the summer when we hit our first big design milestone, and Emma logged into that meeting, and so did Peter, it became very clear we really needed um city engineering staff and public work staff involved.

Um, we wanted involvement earlier, but you know, we were really uh have been told about city capacity limitations and resource uh limitations, and so we were we were trying to to work with what we have, but um here and Adam and Jen and Mandy being there since this summer has been invaluable because that gives us the direction and the input needed from the city because we really can't advance design of the elements we're about to talk through without their direct involvement.

But um here and Adam and Jen and Mandy being there since this summer has been invaluable because that gives us the direction and the input needed from the city because we really can't advance design of the elements we're about to talk through without their direct involvement.

A couple other notable things we have design milestones, so 30% design, 60% design, it's all aired iteratively designed at those review milestones.

We have kind of those extended subject matter experts from leadership entities that review that package, provide input, and then that goes into the next iteration of the design.

We also have a communications team that's led by ODOT that means monthly, but it really has a lot of the same layers on from all of the leadership team entities.

So kind of vertically and across, we're really integrated, and um there are members of the leadership team on each of these teams.

Some of us get to sit in on the top of you or the neighborhood.

We just really like each other.

Um, we like each other.

Yeah, we actually like each other and they're really like yeah, genuinely.

Okay, so that's like a walk out of the share piece.

Um okay, so I get to start.

Stop talking and pass it over to Karen to talk us through some technical things.

Great, thanks, April.

Um, we'll go down into the weeds a little bit.

I'm gonna try not to go down into the weeds too far because I'm an engineer and keep going.

But I recognize that the shared use path, especially is a very important aspect of this project.

It hasn't challenged them, but I think it's important to share with you uh what we've done, and then through a relocation is sort of something that's happening from Google.

So I'm gonna start out with value engineering.

Why are we talking about value engineering world?

Value engineering ends up being an important part of the overall shared use path concepts.

Uh, very large projects when you use federal dollars, they require a value engineering study, and value engineering isn't to it gets to look for best value.

Its purpose is to bring in subject matter experts and really people who can look at a project just differently.

So it was led by an external uh third party consultant with some Kellogg team members that weren't involved in developing alternatives, so it really was meant to be a fresh look.

But day one, the first two hours was April, myself, Jonathan, and others defining for this team the project objectives and the purpose and need.

So they are not trying to cost cut, they are not trying to change what you're trying to achieve.

What they're doing is getting a fresh look at what you're trying to do to try to identify risks that we might not see and come up with some maybe some more creative solutions.

So this became important because it they came up with a couple of alternatives on the shared use map.

So this slide shows you three different options that that we looked up.

There's the baseline option.

I think we've been looking at this all along.

It connects Milwaukee Bay Park to Dogwood Park and Main Street, it goes underneath the Washington Street Bridge, it goes underneath the new OR99 bridge, and it gives you, I think what you were looking for, the ability for residents to go walk along this beautifully restored creek that you're going to have.

The value engineering team found the challenge that there's going to be flooding, and I'll get into a little bit more detail.

But this path is going to be flooded, and not just like a little a few days a year for a little bit.

It's something I think the city needs to consider.

So the value engineering team said, okay, well, how do we still connect parks and how do we still get people where they want where they want to be?

So how do we meet this objective?

And they came up with what they call value engineering alternative eight in the study.

The whole thing was shared with the city staff, and they were allowed to provide some comments on that.

But value engineering study eight said, hey, let's not send the path underneath the Washington Street Bridge, which which really is the low point that's causing some flooding, and put a tunnel under 99.

So raise it up and put it in a tunnel, and then come up in between, come up to Washington Street between the two bridges.

But the problem is that it's the ADA accessibility, the ADA design cannot be met coming up between the two bridges, and a tunnel is very confining and concerning.

So we'll go into a little bit more detail there.

And then they also looked at another alternative that said, okay, let's look at a tunnel all the way south that ultimately doesn't really uh meet the goal either because it doesn't connect the parks.

But that gives you a little bit of a sense of what the VE team was looking at.

So let's go back to the baseline concept that we've all been talking about.

This is kind of the plan view uh alignment.

It starts with where the marked crossing is at Milwaukee Bay Park, it drops down underneath the Washington Street Bridge, and then we'll go underneath the new OR99 bridge, kind of meanders along.

I have the point developers preliminary wall in there because that was influencing what we were doing.

Coho point timing is a little bit um up in the air, so it probably will be a little bit of uh less of a constraint, but at the end of the day, it comes up to Main Street.

It's a 14-foot wide path.

We're following ODOT's ADA design standards for width for maximum grade.

So this would provide two-way bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

Like I said, passes under both bridge bridges, but there are major operational and maintenance considerations that you're going to see here shortly.

And here it is.

This is the profile view of the path.

This is a really engineering line, so bear with me.

Um, some key things that are that this shows.

There are two blue boxes up on top.

The skinny one on the left is the Washington Street Bridge.

One of the design critics that's what they're calling the bridge in the park.

We don't call that.

I mean that.

So that's not that's a new name to us.

Okay.

It hasn't several different names.

So I apologize.

I will map it.

And the testy actually wants to ask me.

Can we change that?

That makes no sense.

What do we call it?

The bridge to get up to the bridge in the park, get under any bridge, you need to provide this real name the bridge up.

One of the design criteria for for cats, not just ADA, but for paths is 10 feet of vertical clearance.

And that's because people ride bikes, people ride unicycles, and people do things, but 10 feet is the is the clearance.

So you can see the very west edge of the bridge, bridge in the park.

Now you can clarify that's what it is.

So we go down 10 feet, and you can see that's the that's the low point.

Now we have to stay low because we also need to get underneath the new OR99 bridge, which is a lot thicker because it's a longer bridge and it's a horse, so those are the girders, that's the depth of that, what we can call the structural depth of that bridge.

But we need 10 feet there too.

So you can see the path, and then you see this dashed blue line and OHW that stands for ordinary high water.

Ordinary high water elevation is 23.7, and what that represents is the on a typical year, the flooding level.

That's typically what you're going to see.

It's it's an important elevation for permitting because it defines in water work and how to waterwork.

But the 23.7.

So I drew that 23.7 foot elevation line, and you can see that path, that segment of that path, 400 feet is going to be underwater every single year for a lot of days.

And I'll show I'll show you a little bit more of that.

But it's four months a year.

Oh, I didn't show up March, April, May, and June.

And you it's a little counterintuitive, like why May and June.

You would think that you know raise roads.

So let's go in.

But yeah, that's what limit on that.

Uh no, that the deal is that as the snow melts, the Columbia comes up, it backs into the Willamette.

What's causing the flooding is not the water coming down Kellogg Creek, it's the Willamette rising and backing and backing up.

So I'll show you some more.

They do artificially raise the river for road festival as well to get those spaceships in.

Yeah, I mean, that's as somebody who lives near Elk Rock Island, we know during race festival we can't get to Elk.

Yes.

Yes.

So I'll show you a chart that uh we included on our hydraulics report that that shows you in a little bit more detail how many days per month that we would expect flooding, but generally between March and June, 400 feet of that.

So from uh from our design perspective, that's not insignificant.

Uh, here I was just trying to show you from a plan view where the inundation was, the flooding limits are.

So you can see you're you're dropping off in Milwaukee Bay Park, and we're coming down fast because we have to get underneath uh the Washington Street Bridge.

And then just when you get on the other side of 99, then we start really climbing fast to meet up with uh with Main Street.

But that those are the limits of the of the flooding.

So as we developed that, and April mentioned there are ongoing meetings with city staff, which we really appreciate.

We have been the design team has been saying we think this is a potential issue for you.

What do you plan to do about that?

So we talked about um you know there's going to be significant maintenance involved with this because you've got water coming up and down.

In fact, we're working with uh the Odak pavement expert to try to figure out do you use concrete pavement because it can handle the inundation, but when concrete, if you get water um kind of carving out the soils underneath, it can fall in, and then you all of a sudden don't meet ADA.

ADA is a quarter inch on a sidewalk, or do you do or you use asphalt, which can be a lot more forgiving, but you end up with undulations.

But at the end of the day, you're gonna have cycles of water up and down, and you're going to have you're gonna have to accept some maintenance.

So we wanted to make sure that um that your staff are thinking about that, and then just operationally, how is this path going to function?

And and Peter suggested warning signs like watch for flooding makes that makes really good sense.

Um, but I and our team are continuing to just nudge a little bit, like what else do you need?

We want to make sure that the response plan and the maintenance plan are well thought out, so that if there are design aspects that we need to include in the project that we're accounting for those, so we just want everything to be well thought out.

Well thought out to minimize the city avoid redesign as well.

And here's another view of this.

This shows, and this is looking downstream from above the new 99 bridge.

You can see the cross hatching is uh where the where the dam is where the water passes today.

I highlighted the shared use path again, that 10-foot vertical clearance issue.

So on the far sort of eastern side of the inundation, it's going to still be uh a couple of feet.

So this is what this is going to look like.

The line along the bottom where it says finish grade, that's the bottom of the channel.

I just want to point out to you that there's a main channel, that's kind of the big flat line on the bottom, and it kind of comes up on the left-hand side, and then it flattens out.

That's the wildlife access that uh that everyone wanted to be in the project, and then and then the slopes come up.

So yeah, I just wanted to give you different views.

So I'm trying to disagree.

What we're looking at.

This is you're saying looking toward the Willamette.

Yes.

From but this is the bridge, the new future bridge.

Yeah, yeah, at the top.

Okay.

And people who are watching online are gonna see this, but this is the existing structure.

Okay, this is the new 99 bridge and bridge rail.

It's much longer, it's much longer.

This is the primary channel, and then it slopes up to the shared use path.

This is the railing, you know, like safety railing for pedestrians on the shared use path.

And then on this side, it comes up, and this is a wildlife bench.

So that when the water you know is normally flowing down here, you can have access for um well, all the different wildlife I can't.

I'm not sure I can name them, and then back up here.

So, what I'm trying to show you here is here's this ordinary high water elevation.

This is that sort of typical flooding on a on an annual basis, and as you're looking underneath the new bridge, this is how much water is going to be there.

Do you have a slide or is the next slide the Washington Street Bridge, which would be even higher?

I don't have yes, but the so the building on that one would be even higher than this bridge for the Washington Street Bridge.

Well, the Washington Street Bridge is just it's just lower.

Yeah, but this channel is essentially going to be the same channel that we carved out underneath the Washington Street Bridge as well.

But yes, the trail will have more inundation.

Yes, indeed.

It's lower, yeah.

In fact, if I let me go back because here's the Washington Street Bridge, so you've got that much flooding.

Okay, that's the 99.

It looks like it's over by flooding.

Six and a half, about six and a half feet of flooding, almost almost seven feet of flooding.

Yeah.

And so this was uh just to make sure that we're clear that we really looked at data for this.

And this chart, it shows the water surface elevation on the left, that's what WSE is.

That's the water surface elevation.

Uh that is going to result from backups of the Willamette River.

The shared path low point underneath the Washington Street Bridge is 16.7.

So as you you can look at how deep the water is going to be how many days per year.

So my example in May, the path low point underneath the Washington Bridge will be under three feet of water about four days during that month at the path low.

And it's not four consecutive days, it's going to be a day here and a day there, and then next week some because the lamp kind of comes up and scale.

So from again, I don't want to be overly dramatic, but from a maintenance and operations standpoint, these are important things, I think, for the city to think about to make sure that you're getting the value of everything that you that you're realizing everything that you want to realize because you have it's gonna take resources to manage, and we understand we have to solve that, but it's just a realize there's a couple ways to skin this issue, and that is uh if you want to be super responsive, then uh you're checking the weather all the time, you're checking the water level, you open it and close it.

That's quite frankly, uh manpower intensive and quite right at risky, and you know, the other more you know um safe path is that you would close the port four month, period.

And I mean, close it where people can't get in.

Um at the same time, you kind of have to have it flexible because you may have these things outside of that.

That's right, yeah.

And that's clothing is is the design consideration.

So, what does that clothing look like?

Is it ball or does it give?

And that's where it comes into the design consideration.

You can crawl over a bottom.

You can't, and so if the if the city really wants to close it, that's I think it's a thing maybe what does that look like so that we make sure we instead of all of those things in our in our design.

So I just wanted to show you again, just like a little bit of a close-up of these value engineering alternatives.

So all that data, that's what the value engineering team saw, and they went, Oh, holy cow.

You know, can we come up with a better way to do this and still meet the project objectives?

And at the end of the day, they might be over a tunnel under 99, but the connection grade that you can see between the two bridges doesn't need 80%, so it's infeasible, and a tunnel that's 10 feet tall and 16 feet wide and 115 feet long, would be incredibly confining and probably a safety concern for the for the city as well.

Um so if it doesn't meet the okay, with that curve, it doesn't beat the 10% grade.

So I was thinking that it go across the actual existing bridge somehow, but it wouldn't that wouldn't be that's a the grade we're looking for is four and a half percent.

So this is more than double twice as steep.

The other issue that one of my uh funny engineers said, you know, if you did this, you get a kid on a on a um skateboard, you know, coming around that corner and then whamo right into the tunnel.

That's probably not a good thing.

So at the end of the day, not recommended, and I think city staff supported supported that as we talked as we talk through it, and then again, just a close-up of the upper value engineering alternative.

Um this one just does not meet again, it's another tunnel, but it doesn't achieve what you're looking for, which is an open path to enjoy the restoration.

So we just went, yeah, okay.

Thanks, but no, that's so not right.

Oh if the tunnel is up, and it's it's above that floodplain level, so it could conceivably be open, like at four feet or something and have an open view.

No, no, no, it would have to be fully enclosed.

It would have to be fully enclosed.

Yeah, one of the things that happens, and we talk a little bit about like some solid rail, like why can't you use some solid rail to almost like you go to an aquarium?

Like, that's really cool.

But as the water comes up, you end up trapping fish.

So it helps for certain things, but it doesn't help for others.

So ultimately that doesn't break debris debris, maybe to get your permits and relatory agencies are really want to see the debris capacity there and everything.

So where we are to kind of summarize what we're doing with the shared use path, we're continuing continuing to advance the spaceline design concepts.

I think it most you know it's the closest to meeting to achieving the goals of the project.

Um it's going to need some active management and some city resources during you know when it's actually in use, and we need to understand what that the design team needs to understand what that looks like so that we can work those things in.

And then I just I wanted you to recognize that you know it's about a hundred million dollar project, it's a 15 million dollar path.

This is 15% of the project.

That's a lot.

Um it's a lot.

So we want to make sure it gets done right.

If that amount of money is going to be spent, let's make sure uh we do it right, and we just want to make sure we're not you know picking up a design and putting it back down or making a change because another decision was made.

So as we evolve uh as we're involved with meetings with city staff, we're just asking for a little bit more on a uh basis of modulations.

Okay, okay moving on to the CLI.

Not nearly saying this path is way more excited.

We love wastewater here.

So I guess some things with the shirt.

You're saying a retained wall or something to make it so floods for fewer days per year isn't possible because three would be caught or fish would get caught into it.

Correct.

So there's really no way, no way we can design around this the path will have to flood for about a month every year.

In total months, uh a month in total days plus yes, yeah, yes, across the four-month period.

And it might be worth that if Shelley has exam, you know, being in the transportation realm of other bridges that have trails under them and some issues they've experienced.

Um so there's references here.

Yeah, I mean, there's um there's uh I mean there's just all kinds of like homeless there are tunnels over in um Portland, there's been homeless camping, there's been people who have experienced assaults or crimes, and so it becomes really um challenging from a maintenance and a public safety perspective.

So that's something that might you may want to consider here, you know, when you're talking about the tunnel.

Um you can put flood warning signs, but I mean three fourth feet of water is pretty significant if it's limits to that level.

So you want to fence it off and have it be meant unusable for a certain for certain times and how maintenance intensive is that is it and I guess are there other paths that flood this debris and you not have massive amounts of silt buildup or flood and I'll be in slippery for more than that four month period?

Yeah, so build up, yeah, and you could reign a bit on the slippery end of the road what the surfacing type is, but that just it sort of piles on to the it's gonna take some resources to reopen the path of following these alongside if you look at a tunnel that extends under the Washington Street Bridge as well, or that would just be totally you can't, you can't because that 10 feet, you still have to have the 10 feet of verb clearance.

So we're showing it as open in the baseline, yeah.

But when you end up with a tunnel there, the whole idea of the tunnel under 99 is you have the 99, the OR99 bridge will sit higher, yeah, so the tunnel can come up, and that was what was driving the just tunnel underneath 99 and then come up in between and not go underneath the Washington Street Bridge at all just because it's so low.

Yeah, that's really the that's really the problem.

It's Washington Street Bridge.

With 15 million dollars, is that in range for like over the highway passing, or would that be far out see 15 million dollars?

We can consider that over the highway.

I think it would far exceed that, and um one of the reasons is you have to meet an 88 grades, you've got the bridge that's over what you're trying to cross over 99, but then you have to you know ramp down, and sometimes that takes a distance to do that, yeah, or that takes a lot of yeah, so I think that would be uh very challenging considering the built environment that's there, and that's some of the things that you also want to do.

And it have to be constructed pretty high so that you had vertical clearance for grade to through something at least 18 feet, 18 and a half feet.

Yeah, that's a lot of exact little comfortable people.

I've never heard of a four-month side of the year.

I don't know, as many multi-stocks.

It seems like a big lift to clear and clean operate.

Are we able to do that?

I I think uh actively managing that challenge, right?

It's I don't have any challenge.

I would suggest we not go too far now that rabbit because I understand your concerns, but I mean, there's a that's why we have these smart people trying to evaluate all possible solutions here.

And I'm gonna start right off the bat and say for the sake of time, and we could talk about the sewer line for hours and hours, it is incredibly complicated.

And so my intent is to share with you what we know, what we have found out, but there's still a lot more coordination to do between ODOT, the city, um, and the design team to you know advance this form.

So okay, so it all starts out with trying to make sure that we're achieving the restoration outcome that everybody gets.

And the creek restoration is really split up into three different reaches, which I'll which I'll show.

But here's a nice here's a nice glory picture of here's the impoundment, and then Enterflood did this fantastic graphic that really shows what you're trying to achieve.

So it's that's kind of warm to the heart, like this is why we're all here.

Um that's what we're trying, that's what we're trying to get to.

So, as I mentioned, the restoration design really considers three reaches in the engineering terminology.

There's an upper middle and a lower, the upper is really connecting the existing creek at Oakfield Road down to the uh sewer line crossing, that's a point where the dynamics of the creek change, and so you can see it's it's kind of just a creek in the upper reach, it's primary, secondary, tertiary channels, lots going on in the middle reach, and then the lower reach is just connecting into um the Willamette River.

But because of that change from the upper to the middle to try to really achieve what we're what we're all trying to do, the sewer line is just at the wrong elevation.

And here's a profile of that.

The the dashed line at the top, another engineering drawing, but the the gap line at the top is the mud line, if you will.

That's where the soils are today, and uh the lower solid line is the creek channel.

You see some little kind of dips downs, those are pools and baffles and all kinds of uh restoration stuff.

Uh, but I'm pointing to where the sewer line, the sewer line sits today, its elevation, and it sits squarely above where we want the creek profile to be.

If we uh I think one of the questions that the council asked was have you looked at adjusting the creek profile so that we don't have to do anything with the soil, and the answer is yes, and from an engineering perspective, if you try to raise the creek channel that you designed, if you try to raise it up, you're not going to achieve as much in the middle zone, which has all the different you know, that's where the money that's where the money is in this, and then the upper reach, you end up having to chase up oak field road further, so you extend the project way above field road, yeah, and so it just becomes more complicated.

So that oat field road location is a very convenient uh connection point, and then if we dropped it down to where there was enough clearance and leave the sewer line in place at the end, westerly end of the middle reach is the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge.

And so you end up adding a risk of that because you're excavating more at that location, which is which is going to be a concern.

So all that to say we think we're in a sweet spot here with the restoration design.

It's been scientifically designed from a maintenance perspective and a natural adaptability standpoint.

We're trying to achieve a design that you can put in place not be maintenance free, but it supports itself.

So what we concluded is the existing sewer line, something has to happen with that with that sewer line.

So here we are.

This shows where the sewer line is.

This is trying to is it taking just from a apartment complex, or is it taking from that whole area in the yellow dots?

It's doesn't work.

Peter might be able to, I mean, it's in not the full area, but you can see that I think it's pretty it's pretty extensive though.

Maybe not all of them within that that's all it's not a single facility.

Yeah, there's we've got solid lines at all converged.

And it's an eight-inch line, so it's not tremendously large.

I'm sure you have larger facilities, but eight-inch sewer lines.

Okay, so when we started analyzing, and we have subject matter experts in consor who I think can work for the city and work for a lot of cities and a lot of public agencies in the area with uh with sewer systems.

It's a gravity flow system that connects the Middle West Pipeline, as I said.

Um the city shared with us when we came on board some inspection data, and I think somebody tried to run a camera through that line, but they hit a spot where the camera couldn't go any further, and that typically is due to either a blockage or there's some sort of sag or keep, if you will, in the pipe.

Uh, neither of those is so we've been we've been talking with city staff about you know when would that pipe naturally need to be replaced.

I think we have maybe a little bit of different opinion.

We think it's closer to 10 years, I think city staff is just closer to 20 years, but at the end of the day, you're still within your planning horizon.

So we're not prematurely if this pipe was to uh was to be replaced, it's not being replaced prematurely.

So we looked at adjusting the creek profile, so there was no relocation.

I talked about that, that really wasn't feasible.

Uh we looked at alternatives to take the pipe on its current alignment, but just go underneath the creeks, like way down underneath the creek, and then over the creek and then out of the creek.

That's the relocate the sewer line.

It's like just move it out and out of the creek.

Um so we as we looked at those alternatives, we worked with city staff to not just what the current sewer flow rates are, but you know what's planned in the future, so we make sure that we're uh thinking about the size appropriately, making sure we're meeting the project objectives, minimizing city long-term costs and liability, that's always a consideration, construction cost and timing, and then again, that's there's costs that are coming your way at some point, and so the cost we're looking at are really within the within the horizon.

And one of the key study findings of that is that no matter what we do, we can't maintain a gravity flow, which is the simplest.

That's the most cost-effective system, if you will, you're gonna have to have a pump station under any circumstance.

So the major option is kind of talking through lowering again.

Can't do uh the gravity systems, we need to have a pump station.

We looked at a pressure system, and look out.

I will say I am not a sewer line designer, so I don't know what all these mean.

Jen and Peter probably know a whole lot more to answer those questions, but a pressure system also isn't feasible because the flows are too low.

So you need a new pump station and you need a new force main.

So we do have a feasible option that goes way down underneath the creek.

And I think actually the micro solution is side.

Oh thank you.

Yes.

Um, I want to acknowledge that there isn't there is an option that goes way down underneath the creek, but gets a similar cost to what we're suggesting as a recommended alternative, and lower doing that way down underneath the creek has several constructibility challenges that we would have to have to face.

And lower doing that way down underneath the creek has several constructibility challenges that we would have to have to face.

So raising up and over, this is what a utility bridge looks like.

It's very costly, it's feasible, but it's costly.

And you end up with this kind of ISOR, and as the creek comes up, you're not always uh worry about debris and kind of attractive nuisance.

So when we looked at realignment, we think that that's really the best option.

Get the creek out of the channel, I ended the existing system, use a new add a new pump station with a force main, and we can work with city staff to figure out where's the best place to put the pump station.

But I think this really provides the lowest risk overall, has the best value, and it provides the best long-term maintenance operations because it's um out of the floodplain.

Uh, we can set it up to our successful like maintenance staff, and you're not if there was a problem, you're not looking you know, having building street.

So, this is the alternative that we're recommending to staff, and I cannot really reiterate enough that we are still working through all of this.

There's no decisions, we're not looking for an immediate decision.

There's still a lot to talk through, but this is what we're suggesting.

Here's a here's the solution.

Uh pump station at the end of 28th, and then it connects into the existing system, we're replaced some sewer lines, and then it sends the flow up to an existing system on Lake Road.

So kind of going back over some of the questions you have.

Have all the options been explored to avoid relocation on a pump station?

Yes.

We investigated a total of nine options, including a channel design adjustment.

A pump station isn't is needed regardless.

So a pump station is just as not going to be avoidable in any circumstance.

And we believe the best option is to uh move the sewer line under the pump station up on 28, and that's what we were showing.

I think one of the other questions and this one we're not able to answer, but I'll give you a little bit more information, just things we're thinking about.

Can the sewer line be included in the main project, main construction project?

The answer is yes, but there's a big butt there.

Um there's two different characters of work going on.

Uh demarcation of elevation 23.7 is very important from a permitting standpoint.

If you're working below that, you have to get inwater work permits above that is upland, it's we call that up.

So and permitting for it, sorry to interrupt that the permitting for inwater work is extensive.

I mean, it takes a lot of specialized expertise.

Uh, we had 13, we had all the permits you would need from local, state, federal agencies to just do the sediment sampling, like 13 permits, and I mean it is a lot, it costs a lot of money.

Um, we had you know specialized amphibious uh equipment.

So depending on what alternative is chosen and how things shake up.

I mean, it's it is a big lift.

Um yeah, that effort alone was you know close to three million dollars.

So when you think about replacing the sewer system, the existing system has to remain in place and operational the entire time you're building a new one.

So you build a new one, and so that's the you know, that's all the pipe work and everything, then there's lots of testing, and then there's connecting it, and then there's removing uh the old one.

So, in order for our main construction contractor to really start their work, they're gonna start at the upper end, and if you think about like lowering the lake, it's gonna be they're gonna work from the top.

That's that's what makes sense.

So the sewer line getting out of the way is a very early and critical, it's a critical item, and there's a scheduling uh risk with when that when that happens, when that's able to be removed.

Um removing the pipe would be in water work, and the restoration is all in water and work.

So we're working through the permits, the permitting for that.

So it's sort of a you know, no-brainer to have the to include removal of the existing sewer line when it's ready to be removed, included in in the major project because we're already accounting for that permitting as April just said numbers of limits and cost.

So it doesn't have that same, it's not permit free, but it doesn't have the same in the armed pockets.

Okay, so I think what I want to leave you with is we think there's a lot of advanced long-term maintenance and operation cost advantages.

And I mean there's still, I think a lot of discussion with city staff, robot staff.

It's just like I will leave it at that because then we could continue.

I don't I don't think we can't solve everything.

Um today talking about it, and it's gonna end up being probably a risk-based term solution, uh risk assessment for looking at it from all the angles how these solid, yeah.

It feels incredibly helpful, and I super appreciate how you distill the complexity into something we can think of.

And I know you said Karen, it's not like we're not answering it tonight.

It's we work at a lot of work still to do, but I'm sure you've heard from my staff, you know, we have a capital improvement budgeting process.

So is there any sense you guys could give us on milestones or or deadlines for sort of when you need to know various things because that you know, I tell my staff they can't make commitments to you unless we get direction from council, and I think any clarity you could provide us on sort of when those decision points need to happen are really helpful so we can engage most effectively at the staff to staff table.

Yes.

Well, that's a great transition in next step.

Great.

Um I'd say right now we the work that the cities that Peter and his folks are planning to do to evaluate uh capacity at the downstream siphon and some of the input they're gonna be providing is what's really needed right now.

Um while that's happening, we're gonna be working on this delivery pathway angle because I mean we're just looking at major risk to both projects, right?

And and needing to the sewer line to be online before the restoration work can even start, um, and then try to convey that to funders.

You know, they're just like we want to fund this.

So yeah, there's a lot to be done.

Um, but stepping ahead to to next steps, kind of down there at the bottom.

Um, one of the biggest things that um Peter said back to his team was looking at the clean water revolving loan and saying, hey, what benefits could we get from pursuing this?

Um, and then I would be working with Peter to like how how can we leverage like existing funding that we have and and and things like that, and then um at that point, if it's beneficial, adding the sewer relocation to the CIP before the April deadline because we have to submit that application in April would be uh the timeline we're looking at.

Okay, next step the clean water revolving funds.

I think in order to achieve, you know, I think there's different dates that it can be submitted, but that one kind of thing I work backwards.

Yeah, I took their timeline and I worked all the way back, and we think we would have to have the acquisition in but you know, I I really appreciate you know you know all of it has been done, and I think all these recommendations are good.

I think that one of the sort of uh we appropriate um we both approach this that this is such a valuable project that we all do.

But I would say that probably there's a different approach, at least one aspect of that.

Um you're trying to deliver this project, we're on board.

We have some other issues that we got a city to run.

And so when you say that well, you're gonna have to replace this pipe anyway, and for those 10 years, 20 years, I'm not sure that from our perspective, that's a big difference.

Quite frankly, does need to be in place right now.

And so uh a lot of priorities that would be ahead of a 10-year project, you know, that we have to get done.

And um, you know, if uh we're being asked to some money, there's a couple of issues.

Um, you know, there's this big question mark about these federal months.

You know, my nightmare scenario is the city is asked to you know spend five million dollars on this.

Uh and same same same summit five million dollars.

Those federal funds never appeared.

That's just my nightmare scenario, you know.

Uh and so when when I get back to the we have a you know, uh um, you know, the city run, you know, it's like we have these other um upgrades that are you know uh near, we gotta be always keep ass, you know, forever chemical treatment requirements, you know.

That's that's a regulatory requirement.

That's a big CIP project as well.

Um and there's just other you know uh lumps and vice project that uh you know are closer on the on the replacement horizon than this sewer pipe would have been.

Um and so uh you know, we we have to think about all of those things, and eventually uh even if uh daddy warbox comes along and gives us a lot of money, we're still gonna have some operating cost and that kind of thing, which we understand.

We're we're willing to you know do that, but we're always gonna be things in our mind about you know look the impact on rates to our ratepayers, and uh we you know we have a you know uh this goal that I mentioned earlier about delivery, you know, catalog and Milwaukee Bay Park in the like several years, you know, their term.

We also have these uh goals about affordability.

A lot of our residents you know, quite frankly struggle with affordability, and we're trying to keep their utility rates down.

Um and so those are all the things that come on that maybe you don't see on a day-to-day basis because you got this project, but those are the things that we have on our mind as well that give us toss.

Okay.

Um and I just I do that to just sort of highlight, you know, maybe a different perspective, at least in some parts of the of the project about uh about you know priorities and and that kind of thing.

Um I could jump here and saying there's not doing a fantastic job of letting us know good that those are their those are their issues, those are the competing priorities for them, and that was one reason to come in and um because you always have you do have to wait for this, yeah.

Right?

Um and projects like this don't happen unless we put ourselves in your shoes, right?

And so we are thinking through all of those things and thinking about how to leverage funds and strategize and also getting at what is the worst case scenario.

So say like the city paying five million dollars for this, and the project had no dollars in the game.

It would be a good idea.

Before you go any further, I I didn't agree to any of that.

I'm in trouble with the rest of the county.

But but I was you know, I thought Peter and I was like, what is the ratepayer increase of that?

And it you know, you're two to three percent, right?

So compared to other things, maybe less, but it's not nothing, right?

Um, and so you know, what can we do?

It it takes a lot of brain work to make projects anywhere close to as big as catalog happen.

So I mean, I feel like we have to explore every opportunity.

We have to look at the loan um the loan approach and see if we can leverage some funds through that and and get some funding for this.

And we'll just have to keep, you know, we kind of chip, I fill back the banana layers, you know, fill back the layers and just answer one question at a time and then drill in.

But right now, I think the work that they're doing to answer some of the questions about capacity on the super line, that's gonna keep answering those next questions that get us just a little bit further alone along and then really taking a look at the loan application.

And your your approach to the project funding, what's up there?

Yeah, those dollars they have how we should use those dollars.

Well, I think I've heard from you, yeah.

I just would like to service it.

Yeah, we so that's that's more than the 150, which we've talked about in the past, right?

So it's other dollars in there.

Um what I've shared with Councillor Mass and the Council in general is that we've hold held on to those dollars and put our staff time because we didn't want to add or take away funds that could be better use getting consultant dollars, you know, maybe use the future for like the sewer line or something along those lines.

So that's that's kind of where I would think those dollars would eventually go as a would be through using technical experts or generating capacity through contracts.

Um that's probably we haven't touched it.

I think that what we have done is that we've sort of uh sucked the you know their participation is sort of taken out of orgether describing with this as like we may have to really bring in you know the the pros from Dover on some particular aspect, and so that's why we wanted to keep that you know kind of separate.

And if you would Peter, would you uh uh um would you discuss your your your uh sort of feelings on the revolving fund?

Sort of uh you know their participation is from uh we're gonna describe this as like we may have to really bring in you know the pros from Dover on some particular aspect and so that's why we were to keep that you know separate and if you would Peter would you uh uh um would you discuss your your your uh sort of being so the revolving fund yeah versus the you know the over and again we kind of rolled this into the big picture of of of the city's finances not just this project go ahead yeah and and just from that affordability perspective and I know I've like I've mentioned lots of times so it's not just wastewater we do have you know we're looking at some significant increases with the work that we have to do on our water we have a safe uh system deep efficiency that we need to we need to fix so this is a say brows yes to schools yeah over and I should say like over our six year period uh forecast period for a CIP arm rate is all like we put in the uh damage about a two and three quarter percent increase each year over that six year period so you know and I think so we can factor all those in there's some extensive increases that regulators are facing and we're trying to mitigate those in in lots of different ways you know one of the big ways that we're doing is we're trying to make sure that we have a really realistic executable start we regulated paid in uh rates that to get uh infrastructure constructed um so I think the other piece that I would say uh you know when we look at these opportunities will be revolving we're we're working with Oregon business development department right now we have an application in or say tricking water involving it's our first uh trunch that's gonna be about a six million dollar uh application three million of that is for driven but we still have to pay principal on that other piece uh the clean water drinking uh water revolving um is not available so there's principal that has to be repaid on that we really need the way what the what the options are um that that opportunity versus the increases uh on the rates because there's there's still a cost associated with it but it might be a tool that we could we could certainly use uh but also we've looked at you know internal borrowing as a source of uh helping reduce uh impacts to ratepayers for the work that we're on the water and that would be trying to potentially utilize some of the uh wastewater reserves to offset uh future increases there as well but that would be reprioritizing projects but that would be the prior test uh but it's really sort of just like we stack up all of the all of the work that we have like trying to mitigate uh cost of rate pairs so when you throw in a million dollar product or five million dollar project um there's there's a cost associated with that which I think we're trying to mitigate can I just make sure I understood sort of where what April was saying about timeline um so uh if we had it in our CIP by April which is we're trying to do our CIP by April anyway.

Yeah we were in February then we really try to make some decisions we don't adopt it until we adopt our budget in in June but yeah so if we had it and we went for the clean water revolving loan funds but then by end of 2026 have no federal funding would we back off I mean we wouldn't do this absent that so the application just gets you in the queue you're not bound to use it that's important so it just gets you in the queue and then you can make a decision down the road if you want it or not I and I think and I really appreciate that and I appreciate the encouragement of like we wouldn't leave you guys off stranded with this big project that's the big thing.

I think you know just again to the kind of reality of how of a very small engineering team and so if we're adopting a CIP that says this is a project and we're putting a city project manager on it and putting funds toward it I we I think this is it's helpful Mary like kind of when would we sort of have that certainty because we've got to deploy those resources another project until we get that certainty sort of when are we subbing in stepping out and I mean and I I really appreciate this project team's always been really how can we help how can we help and when we say capacity it's it's not just like I need more money to hire more people it's a very small city trying to manage a CIP and get things you know moving.

And so I think as we go forward I would just love to keep exploring what hats does each part wear.

You know I think that maybe that was an original assumption on our side that this was a project that'd be kind of engineered by the bigger project team and managed by the bigger project team.

Maybe there's more a way where that still happens, but with some financial support from the city, or there's the we manage it, we fund it.

All of those have different impacts on how Peter and Jen staff their team and how we affect our rates.

And so I think if though if this is in the CIP, we'd have we'd be adopting a rate increase to pay for it.

Then we could always back that off if things change.

But that's just some of the trade-offs you might have to be.

And I think one of you know, one of the consequences scale our CIP where we can execute it, is like the projects are all priority projects.

They're not like there's you know, downtowntown, main streets, streets projects, there's pretty fast projects.

There's you know, two other pump stations that we need that are in need of repairing the location that we have.

There's uh Monroe Greenway.

So there's lots of projects that are a priority to already, right?

That we're trying to get published.

So it's not something that's not important.

So that's the challenge.

So part of the scenario analysis and the information we want from the city and looking at all the different scenarios was it if the contract for the serial location going under the um the catalog project, or is that some other way we haven't figured out the feasibility of that or what but how does the city this ends up being a city public works, you know?

It's a it's city public works infrastructure.

Yeah, so what input, how does the city control fix uh for someone else's first contract?

I mean, we're looking at you know feasibility the other way, and like so the more information we get from you all on the what would be needed, what you would have to like what direction you would be providing, what um what ownership you would have of it under someone else's contract, what an IGA maybe would look like.

Sure, that's gonna allow us to really evaluate like can we be all and then we can say okay, now we see a pathway for who's wearing what hat and how to make this work.

Yeah, we're doing something similar on outer power with the city of Portland because the city of Portland, it's an ODOT project or O dots the contract for the contractor, but the city water bureau has been involved, and they added funds and oversight, if you will, to like the water folks on the design team.

So they were providing because we don't that's not our wheelhouse per se.

So they were the ones that were looking at the designs and providing input, and you know, and then the contracts ours, and so now we've got you know them working, you know, our contractor working with them also in the construction phase, but um, we don't want a situation where you know the project you know builds this infrastructure and greater pieces.

What I don't like it's a we got slides go we do.

We do have another agenda item.

What's the other slide that we haven't gotten to that you guys want?

It's just what's coming up next.

So the six minutes design we covered.

Um, again, I think we really just touched on it.

What the like getting kind of honing into the sort of tension between resource requirements that costs money, you know, to manage the SUP and then versus the benefit of the SUP.

So that's something that you know is another complex thing for the council to grapple with.

Um again, we're gonna be evaluating contracting options.

So again, the more information we get from you all, the more that's data we're putting right into those scenarios to determine people's delivery pathways through relocation.

And we didn't even touch on it today, but we can do it in maybe the next update of community enhancement features because that's still the same trade-offs that's adding assets, but also cost money to maintain in the long term.

So like that last bullet.

I think that's something we should kind of yeah, yeah.

And and then very the very very last bullet are when do you want to get uploads?

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, is this something we should do more frequently?

We just want to make sure there's a good communication all the way across vertical.

Decision point or accomplishment point that would that would that would make sense.

Yeah, we can talk about that more in completion.

Yeah, and we're engaging with people with some staff on questions that we have for them.

So and I just again want to extend my huge appreciation to you guys for taking the time to do this.

Again, these wonderful humans that work for me, they get sick of me saying like you can't commit to anything without council.

So it's not their fault, it's my fault.

But I think this is a real is really important at this level of dialogue.

I'm leaving you all for three months, but I would recommend that before that February CI conversation.

You have another touch point, an in-house touch point um, where we can maybe look at the response, the written response from the team, you can kind of weigh in some things here and give some feedback to Jen and Peter on that CIP they're gonna present to you.

Because again, I think there's gonna be some some trade-offs, and we'll obviously all done in February, but that'll help them.

Then you have your February CIP conversation with budget committee, and then probably looking at these folks back March, April or later.

But that I think knowing your knowing your April kind of deadline is super helpful, I think, for us getting our internal ducks in a row with what we can and can't say committing to reasons.

And knowing by February, we'll allow it to actually prepare that.

Yeah, in time prison though.

Yeah.

Oh, maybe it was just one other shot.

Okay.

Um, I just want to say I've been doing publicly funded projects for 40 years.

40 years and a few months.

Four years essentially.

I will say, well, there's uncertainty in federal dollars.

The best thing that this leadership team is doing is driving decisions forward so that when those come online, you are so far ahead of the pack that everybody else will adjust, oh, we just have an idea.

You know, feasible idea with an implementation plan.

This is really doable.

We know a knot, a lot, we know what the risks are, and we have forging ahead.

Anytime federal dollars come on board, it's those shelf ready projects that go first.

So it will be ready.

We will continue to work with city staff because I think that's the best thing that's going on if we don't need to leverage that in the quick.

I wanted to quickly ask two other questions before we leave.

One of our extra time, it's one of our vendors.

Oh, it's not here.

Oh, okay.

Umbody said anything about the railroad.

So is the railroad bridge and trestle all pop aesthetic, and we're not anticipating any problems.

I wish I could say yes.

We have we have the pinnacle of railroad experts on the clock works who works very closely with the where we are in the railroad process is we're preparing what's called their 30% concept package with the intent of starting the conversation with them.

They've seen a graphic of what the project wants to do to create that opening that's a structural modification.

Um the team also did one other really important thing, and that is our console of structural assessment members, got five of them, scaled the bridge, measured everything, and went did non-destructive poking testing into the uh in into those supports.

So we know the shape of the situation of that.

And it's not it's not good.

Okay, so the structural modifications that were being worse than our cylinder benefit to the railroad, and the other beneficial thing is that the the railroad bridge that's down the line a little bit that um was uh damaged by five torch.

Um they're closing that down for a few years, is our understanding.

We want to get that from them.

So if we can stay on this, we can stay on this timeline.

You're talking about the bridge across the millama.

I'm talking about the bridge across the mill.

Wow.

So they're talking about not having train traffic, which means if there's not rail traffic there, there's not rail traffic here.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a fantastic ability when you don't have to construct while you're doing rails opportunities.

It just helps us with the business case, the UPRR.

Like, we have a graphic that we want to improve, yeah, and then you don't have things running on it.

Like there's our windows.

Oh, that's I I would love I would love to know right away if they confirm that.

So do let me know.

Hopefully to talk to them in like in probably January.

My other question is just and it has nothing to do with the Keller project, but since we have Shelly here, um Shelly knows also about our highway 224 project.

Just wondered if there's everything's on task on time on.

It is.

We will come back and do like the final lift paving uh next year in the springish.

Um we had to, which you guys may not know, we had to actually reduce scope in paving the entirety of the project because we had uh a problem on a different project that is in construction that we need to divert that money to.

But uh our region manager uh found some additional funds.

So uh there will be a Rusk Oregon 224 Rusk part two, which uh Karen and her team will be helping us with.

They did the first one.

So uh yeah, it will be uh coming through with another project um there to finish up the paintings and the ADA ramps are in and that project is moving right along.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Oh there, okay.

Sorry about that there.

This works well though.

Yeah, I think it's kind of your thing there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I share it with everybody.

Oh, I have not turned in the haircuts.

All right, folks, let's get going.

We need to uh we need to move on.

It's the presentation or conversation with PGE leadership.

We have uh Larry Beckdal, who is the VP of PGE and Heidi Bell, who's uh later.

Great.

Well thank you.

Okay, apparently time is okay because I was rushing to get from our integrated outstanding.

We had the number of folks um really of the captain.

So uh we're always happy to uh have data and we have uh Cornelius, we have uh newbird.

So we try to encourage folks want to come and find out how we operate the grid, what it looks like, what happens uh it's a good tour.

I recommended it to our deep as an interest.

Uh I'll just say what we need um technology.

Where where is the right down in Swalleton?

Okay, Sherwood uh highway.

We call it the brown building.

Nobody knows what it is, but it's no side there.

Yeah, very cool.

But yeah.

Um just making my way back over here.

Um thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Um I know we can have a little bit of an open dialogue.

I don't know how much uh we provide it until you're moving on the slides or anything.

Oh, yeah.

Trying to get them up.

No jokes.

So Larry.

Yeah, they wrote a little thing for me, don't you?

Oh maybe just a little background as well.

That was Portland General for uh 11 years now.

Uh prior to that around translation.

So um which is 75% of the transmission across the northwest.

And uh the origins of all that you know plays into some of the things that we're doing now.

Um but also uh prior to that part of public utilities, so in Vancouver, Washington, um public utility district there, and then uh part of that with Civic Corps, kind of all over the the Northwest, spend a little time in uh uh with the Japanese utility uh exchange program, a sister city and sister state if you will, Toyoma with uh Oregon, and so uh was uh pretty damn good for me.

I think you're good and then you go see others and then we kind of are humbled and you figure out okay, how did we do these better?

And uh so it's been a life journey for me, uh stupid and um bridge uh learn about but also to find out how our communities think about bridge and how you all are planning for anything about umput and the other part.

So that's what we're hoping to do a little bit here tonight, and um I think it's got you up now.

Yeah, like that, pretty disturbing.

Yeah, I found this picture.

Are you guys familiar with this picture?

It's so neat.

Oh, that's a lot you mentioned.

Well, it can kind of fine point.

Oh, yeah, like magic or binder, yeah.

So you'll have to forget.

I had to pick between certain pictures, and I thought that one roast my own.

Well, I I got my brother in law, he's from Alpha T and put up fishing on the uh down from the bottom of the dam, and sure enough, we got into minutes and it was 10 foot long, about 300 pounds.

Wow, quite that big, but um, you know, they just come up and roll on their stomach or the bags and your rubber stomachs get hooked out and let them go and huge.

I mean, it's just amazing to think, and then they get those Persian balls underneath at the bottom of the dam.

Um they see them, you know, via you know thermal graphics, kind of these big balls down at the bottom where they somehow huddle up the surgeon, and I mean these big balls just anyway.

Pre-historic, uh something you really unique about.

So, all right.

Um, thank you.

And and maybe I should get the print.

Um sorry.

Um, yeah, a few statistics, you know, that you see there.

Um I think about the residential and the corner, and we have had an opportunity to speak with the mayor and my city manager the other day in what is the growth property, yeah.

Yeah, you know where we're going next.

Oh, there Eagleton, we're ponding.

We get it.

Um but yeah, we you know, look at you know, things that are nature of looking at okay, won't you know as it grows and then thinks about how fill in uh the industries that you have, those things that these want back in, um and really how do you build out the community here.

Um we have been experiencing a lot of growth through the health of Atlanta Valley, and and it's you know, everybody wants to draw to data center.

I'm gonna set that aside for a minute and come back to it.

Um you think of the normal growth, which used to be about less than one percent for many many years, 25 a year.

And I've been in this industry that long.

So um you really didn't see a lot of growth, and the energy efficiency came along, we kept things flat.

Um, and then heat pumps came along.

Um, you know, starting off how we use a heat bundle came along and over at 20 um 21.

And um that year um we fled.

What I mean by that is you could see a normal picture of load coming up in the morning, and uh you normally peek out before in the afternoon and then start to come back down again, and that particular day it went up and hit the ceiling and went flat.

Everybody had their fans, whatever they could get, and um, so the next year, it's only 96 degrees in the summer.

We hit the same book because everybody bought air conditioning.

So we it was a 10% increase over here.

Uh I share that as to say in hand climate, we all adapt, we all think differently.

Glad to see the heat pumps come along.

Um, we also see electric transportation from your senses, but I was curious what you've got a billion dollars right about the particular.

But at the same time, uh electric vehicles, we've also seen um just again use, and as people think about um how they use electricity uh and their applications, um we love seeing um the energy efficiency, it's L LED lights, um Christmas time, we get better shows with LED lights for a lot less energy, and so it's been really exciting to see, but that growth went from less than one percent to two and a half to three percent just with what we've seen in normal usage patterns across the system.

Then data centers came along, and um and what I'll say about data centers.

Um here about the hyper scale, the large learning models, um the one gigawatt uh type facilities uh that would equate to things like um opening up a three-mile cloud, um the tri-cities, uh they're putting in small modular reactors in the tri-cities area.

Um so folks like Amazon, Microsoft, these big balance sheets are going in doing it.

We don't have that type here, so when we talk about Hillsborough, um it's still a cold location, right?

They tend to be buildings that are a hundred megawatt building, and I referenced the aluminum industry the last century because these sound a lot like that, and uh when we built the transmission and World War II, maybe in uh the lumber industry by the early 70s, we haven't transmissions we've built with since very little we built that, but again, slow growth coming across the Caribbean, and all of a sudden you have data centers, and like a Hillsborough where a box is 100 megawatts, cycle plants they had five hot lines in there.

You could actually turn hot lines down to help the grid when we need to operate them.

Uh data centers, we have the flexibility, we're finding what they do, they can, and so we're doing a lot of work with these refactoring information or their ability to change what they're processing, they can actually change what the load is.

They can move it from say uh Hillsborough to North Carolina.

Why not?

If we're you know in that situation, we can so we'll talk a little bit about UM237, some of the issues.

I know you know the letter.

I will dive into that a little bit.

Um we want those that are causing pay growth, if you will, and that's much like the aluminum industry, they paid for that transmission back in that last century.

We're all reaching the benefits of that today, but it's full.

So the aluminum industry left in the 90s, the chip manufacturers came along, we've filled it in, both residential, small commercial, and industrials.

So that system that we lived on, pretty darn full.

We will talk about how we try to get every megawatt we can out of the existing, but there's going to have to be some point where we need to reconnect, we need to change voltages on existing.

I'm the first to admit, and uh mentioned to the mayor that um the boardman to Hemingway transmission line that's underway today, finally under construction 21 years after its origin.

It takes forever to try to build a new line, and so existing lines, existing routes, we have to get the most out of them.

So that's where I'll spend my time.

Um I can't wait 21 years.

I don't think I have that much of a career left to wait 21 years.

So I mentioned those things that say the system is changing, the dynamics of the system are changing.

We um you know, we we talk about against you know, storm, extreme weather, cyber attacks, earthquake, uh, some cascading, subscribe earthquake, um all of these emergencies, if you will, weather attacks, etc.

That we're trying to think, how do you get resiliency?

How do you being um you know the sort of reliability in the system that we need because we are all dependent on this commodity, and it's really important for us to maintain that resiliency, and uh so we're trying to dig in in each of these areas and say how do we harden our assets are old?

Um many cases uh we asked uh the engineering society they gave us a demon because of our the age of our assets, yeah, and uh like ridges here.

We all know that it's gonna take a lot to reinforce and end up, but there are some things that we're doing in resiliency.

Batteries is number one.

Um we've now installed 500 megawatts with the batteries, uh 200 megawatts in the troutdale area, 200 megawatts in the St.

John's area, uh 75 megawatts in the uh pro area right now, and there's some smaller ones that are square, and uh so that's 10% of our peak.

But really, what it does is it gives us flexibility that we haven't had.

We've had a little bit of in the hydro and coolie for the northwest, it's kind of the one reservoir that holds a significant amount of water.

Many of the other dams are out of the river, so it just means they're passing through.

You don't get a whole lot.

Um but batteries give us the ability to hold the electrons, and uh that's newly rushed.

They had pipeline, put things in tanks, and you couldn't get the crazy.

So now what we're able to do is take the wind, the solar when it's operating, fold it into a battery, and then utilize it in the system to make a great example of that is California put in um 17 gigawatts now of batteries.

So we're in four and a half gigawatt system.

They've got 17 gigawatts of batteries.

California is 52 gigawatts, so more than 10 times what PTE is in terms of our size.

Years ago in the summer, you had what they call in the morning.

Normally loads would come up, but that's when the sun would come up.

So they were generating more of the solar than their low.

So you can see their loads fall off.

Then when the evening came, the loads chewed up because the sun went down, a generation went away.

And so in the midday, they were selling it for basically giving us or paying us to take the excess energy, and then in the evening, they were buying everything they could get from us because they didn't have enough to keep them going in the evening, and uh so an economy can't stay done, and so they finally put batteries in, and that ductwood now is flattened out.

What used to cost one to two thousand dollars in megawatt hour in the summertime?

This last two summers 150 hours, so technology say technology can really help us, making it right down and get done right, and that's what we don't do with changing work.

We show here modernizing, we also talked about uh resiliency.

So you know, we want to get the most out of the system that we have, and again, try to keep it right.

Wildfire um certainly has been on everybody's mind.

Um urban areas, Milwaukee, still there's concerns, but not quite the same, other than I'll just lean on to like a force park, a huge part of next to urban areas, and not a lot different than LARI.

Once they get started in the homes and they're jumping from home to home, it's exposed awesome.

So, how do we think about it as communities?

How do homes standards of homes, building homes?

How do we consider it wild?

But one of our best preventions has been public safety power shots.

So I didn't believe in it prior to Liberty of 2020.

Um I grew up in Montana, uh, done this story.

Controlled and you just knew that that was gonna happen.

Um, but never had seen what the damage could do.

And uh the Labor Day of 2020, we turned off buffer, and that was a hard decision, not the one that wants to turn it off.

We had to make that decision.

That was the best decision we ever made because the fire that took place as you saw further south, we're demonstrating.

That was the best decision we ever made because the fire that took place as you saw further south, we're definitely and when we went back up into the community, three were now on top of everything, and uh we know pretty well we would have things with so you know we learned our lesson, but how do we do that in a control fashion by science bringing us the best determination to do that?

Um I turned real quickly to you know what is our energy and uh currently 45% non-emitting.

Um there's 13 percent on top of that that's quote unquote uh uh being treated as if it is carbon emitting because we don't know.

We're buying it that's coming out of California, even though it might be coming from solar, we don't know that for sure, but we have to claim it as being a bidding.

Um so we're trying to get better and better.

We know exactly where it's coming from, just paint the electrons as well.

Um but this is our picture today, and uh we're trying to take advantage of the tax credits of projects that are trying to you know get into the production call up here uh meet the timelines because that's a 30% reduction in uh the cost of that generation if we uh need those things, so that's being worked on the speed, and you have to have certain things done finished by end of the year, but uh by I believe it's July first of it was a lot of work, but we really have to advance in those experts.

Sorry to interrupt how long we're scheduled to stop.

Well, we're scheduled to stop now, and you got 10 minutes late start.

So we got we'll give you 10 more booking, thank you.

Okay, portability.

So this is uh the one that I think probably uh single engine on, and uh I know my boss uh William.

Um we have discussion about you know how do we keep residential rates at or below inflation, and we made the mistake of waiting through COVID, not given doing any rate increases, and then we hit an 18% rate, which in a lit a storm no we've um all 51 like 60 months letters with commissioners and and you included it.

We know that's not a good solution, so you're better off doing small increments over time.

Um so that's what we're working on.

Um go further into the data center piece because I know that's important.

Um, but before I jump to that, I do want to talk about the IB of the um so this is this is our um program to income qualified.

There we go, bill uh discount.

So those individuals that are eligible based on their income, the fixed income, labor elderly um meets program, uh, but also low income, and uh so what we're trying to do is encourage those customers to take advantage, and you can see numbers there.

Um households that are eligible are uh taking advantage of it right now, and uh but there's something on the order of 1100 um that are still eligible, but aren't involved, so want to encourage that um so it's just 70 per 2% of eligible.

Okay, because I just said it was 70% of Milwaukee households, yeah.

Enroll in all of the involvement.

So that's 30% pretty well.

72% is a pretty darn good numbers compared to some of the other sites, and so I think I have room to improve stuff.

One of the things that and I are working on too is getting out more information via your newsletter.

Um we're also in terms of uh workability this this year.

Uh we've taken on our customer affordability commitment.

Um we've cut our expenses by 25 million, we've got another 30 million next year.

Not easy decisions.

Cut them from what?

From our cost, our O and M cost.

Oh, okay.

So our operating cost, uh, we've made those commitments, and um not easy.

Uh some layoffs this year.

First time at least in 11 years that I've been here.

Uh contractors maybe have to release them for trying to make sure that every dollar spending, and uh your hardest vision in time.

I know you were having to face that as well, and uh dollars every dollar counts.

So the last one um did one letter commission on UM 2377, which is data center, and we through the last legislative session created um working with legislative a separate class for data centers.

So we didn't have that before, so that was created, um, which then we can have a separate rate with them and look at that.

We're also as I mentioned earlier the cost causation.

So figure now, number one, um you're impacting the system.

How do we make sure that you're paying?

Two, if you decide, because you know, some figure that this is just the way they might come in for a few years and then boom, they're gone, and we end up with stranded assets.

So, how are we making sure that we cover those costs?

That's all the rest of the customers pay for something that they left behind.

Um and then finally, it's um I'll say the rate structure itself.

Versus 50 years or 40.

Three years is in line with the uh fair act that we stats.

We can't file for rates.

Um there's uh and when we do, we have an 18-month period before lots of input, etc.

But to try and line up with that.

We have a rolling three year so you take the assets that have been put in, depreciation, you take it out, and effectively you then look at the loads that had come on, and you spread those costs according to those loads.

So as data centers come on, they pick up more and more of as they are bringing their load to the table.

So each year in line with the Fair Act, you have a three-year rolling review that's gonna be happening.

So we anticipate that the presidential is gonna see possibly even slightly declining rates, where you're gonna see data center coming in at like 25% rate increase.

So I share that with you is to say that um this is effectively because of their loads.

Transmission, they already paid for the substations, they already paid for the distribution of fees.

What's difficult at times is to take the transmission and pull it apart because we are a network, and between ourselves, the Civic Core, and Bonneville, we're all interploiting.

But we can, you know, if you're doing it on a load increase basis, you can take those costs, you can spread them probably shared.

So it kind of gets back to it, as I mentioned, the literal industry that that's century paying for and I have to have a data center to pay for it now, and we had that benefit for many years to come.

So that's what's being proposed in the UM 237.

Uh your letter was well timed.

Getting word into commissioners and saying what make sure these folks are paying for they cost.

And are they actively pushing back?

You know, not actively.

They come back with we want it to be fair.

What's important to them is that they get hooked up.

Yeah, and um megawatt for them is anywhere from 30 to 40 million dollars.

And now if I can squeeze a megawatt out of our system, and we have seen some articles where um we're doing some hourly studies, we're using AI to computation to really dig in and analyze how budget more can we get out of the system.

So we found that we could get 80 megawatts more on piece in the neighborhood of the think about that.

80 megawatts, I mean 30 to 40 million dollars per megawatt.

It's really important.

For us, then collecting the revenue, not having to put any additional in to get that 80 megawatts means you know, we're able to bring the revenue and spread that across without the increased cost everyone, so we can drive the revenues, the rates are money down.

So that's that's what we're trying to work, and uh we want to be smart about it.

Um but also know that communities, okay.

And uh we've got to build a system make sure that they paid for those pushing back 25%.

Okay, right?

That's supposed to be good.

That's all we have to look at and help.

We're just more than happy to have you help us help you, you know, to build up.

I wanted to ask you a few questions about the uh three year period.

Um my day job I worked on in the legislature, and I'm involved in negotiate the final push for the power act.

And I can say legislative intent that I was really cover all costs of additional structure that these required.

Can you speak a little bit more about what happens after that three year period?

I appreciate the fair every three years you do the same thing, and you do it on an annual basis.

What we propose now is three years.

And keep that weighted average going through that.

So um again, from a rates perspective, you go back and read the view, okay.

They're loading a little more, so they get to pay more.

I mean, that's that's how you try to spread those costs.

Um but it doesn't end in three years.

I think that's the misnomer that's kind of floating around.

Um people thinking that oh, they pay their three years, but that's it.

No, each review it at your next cycle and the next cycle and the next cycle.

So what gets reviewed though?

I'm sorry.

Oh, um, how much of the share that they're they how much their load is increasing, so how much they're paying on on that and so they pay on the entire system all other customers.

So even though the transmission, which again it's kind of fuzzy, I can't say that it's from point A to point B that you caught unless it was a radio fee, and I can think of one in Prime Bill where um we built the Facebook, and it was just to their site, that's pretty easy, it's clean, but when it's the backbone network here that's being used by everybody, it's harder to differentiate that.

But if you take the total cost, the new capital, and you look at how much they're using, you apply that against it about fair reasonable looks like you know, they might take out 70-80% of the cost for all work, whether it was done for them specifically, if you will, or for the community like Malala that needs the 57 comparable 15 KB.

I know there's a lot in that, but but um if you want, we can provide you know more information on and the proposals because these are all proposals, so you know it goes in this Friday is the next round, and you know, we hold the um we can move the ball forward with uh the commission on the seeing that okay, they're paying the majority.

Now, if you ask for too much and they go away, okay, but that's one view, but that just means you don't put this at all.

I mean, then we have to pick up all costs.

We can also have a person who is offered to come out and have a rate discussion with maybe we could add and you follow up and writing we can sure a lot of this will go over my head.

We can sure a lot of this will go over my head.

You're the energy expert.

I just know that it is really important that we're making fees.

Um agreed.

And it is um, but the person's Jackie.

Great.

Other questions we still have?

Yeah, I have a couple.

Um so you mentioned that the rates would for people not for cons regular consumers, not the data centers, but would flatline and potentially dip.

Is that with the data centers paying for their fair share?

Yeah.

That's that's the reason.

So would we anticipate you know, almost 50% increase over the next five years on consumers, like the last five years it was?

No.

Like how are you guys gonna do that?

The residential, yes.

Um again, our commitment is cheap residential public nation.

So ranking it would be a 50%.

Okay.

Um my other question is I notice that when there's severe weather storms or issues, when infrastructure gets damaged, ratepayers end up paying the repair because like my bill jumped like 70 bucks in one month because of the damage that some of the wind storms and some of the ice storms cause.

It's like there's an increase on the ratepayers to repair that.

But well, my question is this why are we paying for it anyways when don't you guys have a budget for these issues?

Like, why is why are we getting increases on those still?

Let me look at I'm happy to have you.

Yeah, that was a you're right.

We set budget aside for the storm.

We work with the commission to say, okay, let's take an average a year, and um we do have a storm so given you have a bad storm, hopefully we have enough there to cover, but we don't if we've already spent more storms in one year, then you'll go over, then you're going back and you're asking for recovery.

That's what you get an average each year, but um if you don't use it, it carries over the next year, and then you know, hopefully that pays but if you're wrong in your estimations of how much how many storms you're gonna have.

Having to come back and ask for more.

But how come how come the company itself doesn't make that up?

And like, why do they put on ratepayers when the company's clearing like you guys are clearing over and sewer?

Right, but you're clearing over 300 million net profit.

What that's your shareholder packet.

Yes.

The the investors are investing typically retirees who are expecting a return.

Well, I I know how it works, I understand capitalism, but at the end of the day, to have to make the ratepayers responsible financially for storms that we don't have control over when you guys are making that amount of excessive money, it just you know it doesn't it you're trying to do the right thing.

I mean, that's something that you could do that would make a big difference for me.

You're right when where we manage it at a 90% return.

That's you know, anything above that goes back in our retainer, all go back in the system.

So I hear what your point is which is okay.

If the system fails, how could people have to pay for it?

Weather force major happens, why why do people have to pay?

Well, somebody has to pay.

I know I understand I understand that.

I I just find it funny that we have to pay for it when you guys are pocketing over 300 million.

That's what I'm saying.

That's just a lot of that's a lot of money in one year.

Well, it's also to pay your shareholders too.

Correct.

I get it.

And they're return the humanity 90%.

Because see, what the issue I have too is you know, a city like ours, which is small, which is restricted on where we can get our our income and our financing.

We had to increase our right-away fees.

Right.

And you know, we've been good partners with PE G PGE for quite some time.

And unfortunately, a letter was sent out to all of our residents, you know, saying that we have to that you guys, PGE, the company has to increase all of our residents' bills by the amount that the city was increasing the right-of-way fee.

And it kind of threw us under the bus.

And I felt like, well, that's not that's not a little fair because at the end of the day, we're s we're we're we're restricted on how we can earn money too.

You guys have that 9%, but that 9% grows year over year because of inflation, right?

So that 9% stays steady, but the dollar amount goes up.

I mean it does.

In 2023, you guys made how much did you clear in your you made just under 300 million?

So you guys are going you guys are earning more and more each year.

You're making more and more money.

So my question is, why what would it have hurt to not put that increase on customers and and eat that?

How much of that would have costed?

How much would it have cost PGE to swallow that increase as opposed to pass it on to our customers?

Right away.

Right-of-ay fee increase, yeah.

It was about a five dollar on average, five dollar increase on people's bills.

So you take the households and you do the math.

It doesn't sound like it's that much.

Um I would figure if you wanted to do the right thing, maybe swallowing costs like that would help too, instead of passing it on to the residents.

And I know you guys aren't responsible for this.

It's just you know, it it's a company like you guys are a corporation.

You guys are shareholders.

You're you're you're you're managed and and right, it if it is a public a public utility.

Well, yeah, of course.

I understand that, but you guys are a public utility.

Well, not that you're a corporation, so you're managed as a utility in terms of how you're the jurisdiction and what rules you have to follow, but you're still a corporation, right?

So the the bottom line is still profit.

The bottom line is still shareholders and making them happy, right?

So I know you just go public.

The only difference is access to capital.

You're trying to attract.

And without that 90%, you don't attract.

That's kind of the fundamental point.

And I could say it, but um I know my own parents and grandparents all kind of relied on that dividend to carry them through their retirement.

I get that.

But I'll just say access to capital is really capital intensive business.

You got water and sewers.

And we building them, replacing, expanding them, cost them.

But somebody, in order to get dollars, uh pay for the water.

So I think we don't run on profit though.

We don't operate for profit, that's the difference.

We don't operate for profit.

I hate to check them out, but we do have people coming in in the next meeting, and we have to have a little break before we go up there.

But um, I intended to ask you guys about green tariff and a few other things, you know, sort of climate stuff, but I will send my questions in writing.

Okay.

Okay, and I my counselor could be the same.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

You have to say we're during Oh, we are a jury.

There we go.

No gamble, we're not going to be able to