It is 4 p.m.

and this meeting of the Rochester Public Utilities Board is now called to order.

The first item on the agenda is of course the approval of the agenda.

May I have a motion and second to approve the agenda as presented.

I'll move approval of the agenda.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The agenda is approved.

And now it's we come to the most bittersweet part of the meeting tonight.

Um section number two, a special recognition of Melissa Grainer Johnson.

I'm gonna take a tiny point of privilege.

I first met Melissa when it her name was Missy Grainer, and uh that was way back in the summer of uh 2020, I think, or 2021 or 2001.

Sorry.

And uh man, it's uh been a long time, but uh here we are.

Um I'm gonna read this short uh uh recognition.

Um tonight we recognize and thank Melissa Grainer Johnson for her service on the Rochester Public Utilities Board as she concludes her time.

Melissa has served on the RPU board since 2016, including in leadership roles as vice president and president throughout her tenure.

She brought a strong sense of financial stewardship and governance responsibility to every discussion and decision.

Melissa consistently focused the board on long-term sustainability, rate stability, and accountability.

She has thoughtful probing questions, emphasized clear analysis, and ensured that commitments were well understood and followed through.

Her leadership strengthened both the quality of our discussions, our decisions, and the culture of the board.

As board president, Melissa guided the board with professionalism, integrity, and respect, reinforcing the importance of fiduciary duty in public service.

On behalf of the board, RPU leadership, and the community we serve, we thank Melissa for her dedication and lasting contributions.

And at this time, it is my honor to present Melissa with a signed resolution recognizing her years of service and leadership on the Rochester public utilities board.

May I have a motion to approve the resolution on board packet page five.

I'm honored to move to approve the resolution.

We have a motion.

And a second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion.

Councilmember.

Thank uh Malachi for the nice thing.

The one thing that I would add in there when I heard like a governance and stewardship and fiscal responsibility and sustainability was also staffing and this idea of do we have the right people in the right jobs?

And I thought that's a special set of attention that Melissa brought, especially in this time to bringing in a new general manager, and I really appreciated it.

Yeah, and I I would just kind of along those lines.

I really appreciate your your words on that.

Melissa, thank you.

Um, I know we've been on the board.

You you helped to onboard me onto the board um about seven years ago.

I really appreciate your leadership.

And along those lines, as uh councilman Keane said, I I just was reflecting.

You've always been worried about, you know, concerned about the staff, concerned about customers, concerned about people and uh going through uh the pandemic and going through COVID.

I just really appreciate your leadership through all that.

Man, I I would just like to say um thank you for helping make my first year transition easy, and thanks for setting a great example for me to follow, or you know, so I appreciate that.

And it's been fun watching you.

Thanks.

I had I think the most to gain from you being on the board.

I'm grateful for um your participation in the recruitment and helping bring me to Rochester.

Um, this is a wonderful team that I've joined, and uh just deeply appreciative to you and your family for welcoming us as well.

And I wish that we had a purview broader than the boardroom as well, because your influence in the community extends well beyond the boardroom here in Rochester Public Utilities with your contributions elsewhere.

So I'd like to recognize you as well for that for what you do outside of the boardroom as well.

There's a lot of people in this room who have benefited from your leadership development and your contributions in the community.

Thank you, everybody so much for your kind words.

Um I was not expecting to get a little emotional, but I guess 10 years later.

Um this time with RPU has been very valuable to me.

And I'm forever grateful for the opportunity to serve with you and um to serve the people of Rochester.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded.

Um, all in and we've had discussion.

All in favor of approving the resolution on board packet page five.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Carried.

Here you go.

Melissa.

And I just want to add there's a rumor that Melissa was actually trying to get Tim here because of babysitting help.

And there's no there's no truth to that at all.

Please don't look at her babysitters tonight.

Thank you so much.

Um for the transition back to our regular um agenda items.

Next up is item number three, our safety moment with safety manager Mr.

Cook.

Well, you won't have to listen to these anymore.

So as we approach the holidays, I suspect there may be a number of people looking to buy electric bicycles.

So I thought this might be a timely topic.

I have a friend who recently bought an e-bike online, and I looked at it and I thought this looks more like an electric motorcycle and a bicycle, but I didn't really know the difference.

Then I got an email from the Minnesota Safety Council, and I learned that what he purchased is commonly referred to as an e-moto, not an e-bike.

Uh, according to the Safety Council, there's been a recent increase in direct to consumer companies selling motorized bicycles that don't meet the legal definition of an e-bike under Minnesota law.

These e motos are not the same as legal pedal assisted e-bikes.

So, what makes a legal electric assisted bicycle in Minnesota?

First, the motor motor must not exceed 750 watts of power.

The assistive speed must be capped at 28 miles an hour.

And crucially, the bicycle or the bike must have functional pedals that will allow it to be uh propelled manually.

Any vehicle that fails to meet these criteria, for example, a bike with motorcycle style throttle, an oversized motor or purely decorative pedals is not a legal e-bike.

Minnesota also prohibits anyone under the age of 15 from operating a legal e-bike.

Why does this matter?

Because these e-moto's are often uninsurable, difficult or impossible to legally register, unsafe to operate on streets, trails, or sidewalks.

Using them can expose riders and pedestrians to serious safety risks.

In some cases, misuse can lead to fines, seizure of the vehicle, and other legal consequences.

So what do we have to do to stay safe if you're shopping for an e-bike?

Verify the motor wattage, test ride the bike to make sure it actually operates as a bicycle.

Use only the charger that was provided by the factory.

And probably least popular, but probably a good idea would be to buy it from a bicycle shop instead of ordering it from some online retailer.

So remember, a bike's supposed to be a bike, not a motorcycle.

So I hope everybody has a happy holiday.

And remember, safety is the best gift of all.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And uh Melissa could still log in and watch these virtually.

And next up on the agenda is the consent agenda.

Item number four.

We have a couple items on there, the consent agenda.

The first is the minutes from the November 25th RPU board meeting.

A second is a review of the accounts payable listing.

Number three, reject a bid for construction of the Ponderosa Pines Booster Station.

And for reference, that's project 2025-15.

And the 2026 hourly power line clearance tree services contract.

It's the rate schedule for the time and material contract.

Awesome.

Uh can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Okay.

Is there a second?

All second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion.

Hearing none, uh, all in favor of approving the consent agenda, items 4A, B, C, and D.

Uh, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The consent agenda is approved.

Thank you for that.

Next up, we've reached the portion of our meeting for open public comment.

Um the uh open public comment uh period is for the purpose of allowing citizens to address the utility board.

People wishing to provide direct public comment may appear in person or provide written commentary in advance by email.

Virtual participation is currently not available.

Comments are limited to two minutes total.

Uh and total comment period time is limited to 20 minutes.

And anyone not having a chance to address the uh board tonight will be the first to present at the next board meeting.

Um there any public comments.

There isn't anyone signed up.

Thank you for that.

Next up, we go to agenda item number five A consideration of bids.

Um, first one is the uh 2026 lump sum power line clearance tree services uh bid, and I believe we're gonna hear from Mr.

Stiller.

If someone has questions.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, members of the board.

Do you have any questions for me before I begin?

Okay.

So the item that you just passed on the consent agenda having to do with our hourly services, sets the stage for the amount of dollars that we can enter into contract under this lump sum power line clearance tree services.

So in the course of doing that, we uh basically review our past practices and our past existing contract.

So uh then we compare our bids that come in with the uh total amount of dollars that we're allowed to uh reserve for these lump sum services.

The bids that came in uh will all came in quite routine uh from two contractors that we've worked with in the past, both Aspen Tree Service and New Age Tree Service.

Um RPU has a practice of awarding the work on a split contract basis, so that means there might be six different feeders that we uh submit bids for.

The contractors bid on each of these feeders, but we select the lowest of the bids per feeder rather than an aggregate, and that is informed to them on the time of bidding.

So what you have in front of you then are two uh approvals on the on the resolution.

Uh Aspin one, one of our map and new age tree service one, the remaining five.

So with that explanation, do you have any other questions for me?

I should be embarrassed to ask this, but uh, what's a feeder?

The electric circuits that leave our substation that extend out into the neighborhoods.

Uh off the top of my head, I wouldn't not quote a number, but I would estimate we have approximately 50 feeders.

Gotcha, and that drives the the difference in the who was lowest on each one.

You added them up and that's correct.

Each feeder has its own type of neighborhood, and therefore the the forested nature of that neighborhood versus less forested.

Appreciate all the great work they do up on top of Northern Heights Drive.

So we got a lot of trees, so big time here.

Just um, I was looking for the compare year over year.

Is it nominally uh up year over year, or is it about the same, or what I was looking for the compares?

So uh for example, our hourly rates adjusted by about three to three and a half percent.

And that was really aligned with the uh labor agreement between those workers and um the unions that they are are part of.

Um cost per mile is tracking upward, and I would say it's aligned with those other sorts of labor agreement costs.

Um there's also from time to time a feeder might have a more difficult route of access.

Some of the lots may be very difficult, the lots are backyard, the lines are backyard, so that might drive a cost per mile different from one feeder to another.

Okay, all right.

Uh again, but it's it does seem to be in line just with normal expense growth.

Similar, yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you for the report.

Um if there are no further questions, then could I get a motion to approve the revolution resolution on board packet page 29?

So moved.

Uh do we have a second?

I'll second.

We have a motion.

We have second.

All in favor of approving the resolution on board packet 29 for this contract.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Carried.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

And now we're going to uh transition to regular agenda item six A.

Um this is the Enterprise Resource Planning ERP project.

It'll be presented by the director of corporate relations, Mr.

Hogan.

Try that again.

Good afternoon.

Uh here to talk a little bit about the enterprise resource uh planning software implementation.

Uh enterprise or commonly called an ERP.

So uh an ERP um uh solution basically means different things to a lot of different people.

It can mean anything from like QuickBooks for somebody in a small business to uh a lot of large businesses will run on Oracle or SAP or some of these large enterprise systems.

So uh looking at uh what we're um bringing to the board today is uh uh uh enterprise resource program where we're looking at a number of big components.

An ERP typically has you know uh multiple areas that each area really is almost an implementation in itself.

So I just touched on a few of the major areas that uh we're uh uh requesting uh permission to move forward with uh the big block areas here, the first one there being the human resources area.

This is an area across the city uh where most of it is done within uh JD Edwards, although we actually is uh an Oracle application that is used at the city level and the financial level.

And then uh here at RPU we actually capture a lot of the time recording uh within an SAP locally hosted system.

So that information uh the human resources piece will be a fairly significant change, and then most of this uh information is currently on standalone systems, and that'll uh they'll all be going into the ERP system itself.

For the financial area, uh as I just mentioned, the the the city's finance department does most of their uh financial reporting uh and tracking in a system called JD Edwards, it's an Oracle-based system.

It's a uh locally hosted environment and is coming towards end of life.

The the utility is in a similar situation with a locally hosted SAP solution that we've had since uh right around 1999, and uh is also coming to the end of life from my support standpoint.

Uh end of extended life um support is in 2030 for that one.

So uh when you look at that, there's a number of other pieces that you would most people would identify with a you know financial package as far as general ledger accounts payable uh and cost pieces there.

So there's two fairly significant migrations there with the JD Edwards and the current ECC environment uh transitions there.

The next big area, this is uh is the asset management work management.

This is uh a bigger lift for the utility than the city.

The city has a number of standalone programs that are not going to be in this area at first, but the uh on the the utility side, uh we have different uh levels of detail that we keep track of, uh different assets, you know, power resources and fleet area in particular were very detailed.

Uh, but we also use this area a lot for our uh tracking cost recording.

There's a lot of uh integration back and forth within the system.

The budgeting area for the utility will be a little bit easier, uh in that it we actually have a standalone uh solution called VENA Solutions, and so this one's primarily an interface uh for for the utility.

However, for the city, they use Oracle for a lot of theirs along with spreadsheets.

So this is going to be a little bit bigger implementation uh using a software called UNA, uh, which is a third-party cloud solution that will have integrations back and forth.

Uh another big area is treasury and other kind of functions here.

The ones that uh impact the utility the most here would be down the towards the bottom as far as the enterprise reporting and the procurement contract management in particular, a little bit on the debt uh debt side there as well, mainly on a recording standpoint.

The city does a lot more work on the cash management and banking side as well.

So and then the last area that I'm showing here is an area where we do a little bit of this, uh, but it this is an area that's really going to be enhanced with this uh solution, which is the ability to have one source of truth in the ERP and the ability to pull that out into uh really a data analytics platform, which will enable us to do a lot of a lot of reports that we currently do.

We print out can end up being dashboards, and so there's there's uh a lot of opportunity in this area.

Obviously, we have to do all the heavy lifting first to get to some of these benefits, but that this is a fairly substantial area uh where we're going to be advancing uh the organization.

As far as the process that we that we uh undertook here, uh the process really started at the city quite a bit earlier, and then they actually waited so that we could catch up and and uh do some of the requirements gathering here back at the end of 2024.

We then put together uh two requests for proposal, one for the utility and one for the city.

We always had a goal of trying to come out with a uh a combined or a shared system so we'd be on the same platform, but that was not one of the requirements going in.

It was definitely a strong desire, but we put out two RFPs so that we could evaluate the requirements for both uh both environments.

Uh from uh the RFPs coming back, we then uh spent quite a bit of time uh in that April through August time frame with demonstrations, uh sitting uh and uh having each of the different vendors come in.

I think we had 22 initial proposals, uh, narrowed that down to about 11.

And it really boiled down to the last two.

We were looking at an Oracle and an SAP solution.

So that was the those were the two finalists.

To give you an idea of the work that went into that requirements gathering, there was over 1,700 individual line item requirements.

So you would take one little area just like you know, accounts payable, and you might have 40 requirements just for accounts payable.

So we went all the way through all the different big processes, calling out those those different areas.

As I mentioned earlier, strong desire to be on a common platform, not necessarily a requirement.

One of the keys there is actually the integration of the system.

So kind of the third bullet down there.

The human resources, finance, asset management, budgeting, and analytics, having the the level of integration that we're looking for uh was a key ingredient into the decision.

The uh human resources side there, uh there's a lot of compliance, and as I touched on earlier, uh they're working with a lot of separate systems now.

That's all going to be integrated into one.

Um I think a couple of the other key points down towards the bottom was employee self-service, and then obviously the data analytics that I touched on.

We we definitely have some reporting requirements on that as well, as far as we have regular financial accounting that you see in your in your board packets each month, but we also have uh FERC accounting that supports doing our cost of service, and we also have regulatory reporting that has to follow a completely different format.

So there's there's a there's a number of different layers on that.

So the recommendation after uh the team uh you know had gone through and reviewed all these different applications was to uh recommend to the the council and to the board here that we move forward with uh SAP S4 HANA implementation, working with HCL Tech as our software implementer.

Uh this first went to the council back in September.

I might be wrong on that day, September or October.

Um, and to uh approve the organization going out and negotiating uh with uh with HCL and SAP, which uh we have done uh the key recommendations there or desires, you know, achieving a common system.

Uh, we're achieving that.

There's some definite advantages for us being able to migrate from our ECC SAP solution into S4 HANA.

The primary one is keeping and preserving that asset history.

We have over 20 years of history in it, especially in the power resources area, that uh we really didn't want to lose that because that's that's your maintenance type of information and the um a lot of uh knowledge there that's caught, you know, is in captured in our systems that we want to preserve.

We're working very closely together with the city and the RPU finance teams to co-design this uh to uh gain some efficiencies from an integration back and forth uh with uh reporting in particular.

Uh then also looking at the experience of the HCL team, they're coming off doing essentially the same project for the city of Tacoma, Washington that just went live about a month ago now.

I'm uh so and uh so they they were on time and and achieved that.

And then the uh integration uh and leveraging the ability to use AI and the analytics side uh is also one of the key um factors that led to this recommendation.

If the uh project is approved by the board uh for the RPU team, we would be looking at really the kickoff would start fairly early in February time frame for the technology groups to really be moving uh the environments and setting up the test environments and things like that that we need to have in place uh before we really start in really the April time frame is when the heavy lifting for a lot of the subject matter experts uh in the different processes would be involved.

So uh it's actually set up this way fairly strategically because we want to get through year end and get and get uh the backfill um people that are uh being recommended to hire uh behind some of the subject matter experts uh on board and trained up so they can take over uh through that year-end process.

And then we've got the um you know the implementation period there with really deployment in that March time frame of 2027.

That doesn't mean that everything for the utility will be done at that stage.

Um there are some items, some of the requirements that'll actually won't be delivered until the full implementation is complete uh by October and 2027 when the the uh the rest of the city migration from the JD Edwards platform into uh the SAP environment uh is completed.

I haven't I haven't really stopped to give you a chance to ask questions, but if you do have questions as I'm going, feel free to ask that.

Always the important part is dollars.

So it was uh we were in the process of this negotiation as the budget had already been submitted and stuff.

So we do have a difference there between what was approved in the origin in the budget back on December 1st.

Uh we had a total of 11.9 million dollars in the uh 26 and 27 budget for the implementation year one and year two.

Um the recommendation um that was brought to the to the uh city council back on December 8th, I believe.

Um, and then uh is being brought here uh is to approve a um the portion for up you that would be 15.

almost five million dollars there.

So there's about a 3.5 million dollar difference, and you can see each year where those differences are.

Uh the the major pieces that were different uh from when we got into defining that was uh the the decision to really look to have a contract uh project manager that would be over the entire um deployment.

Um so that was uh uh an expense that we didn't have necessarily in the budget to start with.

Uh implementer travel was one, and then uh we're recommending a 20% contingency uh within that as well.

So those those are where the and if you're looking at the difference of that 3.5 million, that's that's where the big pieces are that uh were different than what we originally had.

The other part here that is in the budget in the approved budget on December 1st is including eight limited term backfill positions, and those include four positions in finance, two in IT, one in the water department, and one in the power resources.

That doesn't mean that there won't be other people working on it.

There will be lots of other people working on the project.

They're the ones where we actually have uh, you know, where we are bringing somebody in to actually backfill a position so the subject matter expert in that area can move uh full time onto the project.

So and then to give you an idea of the scope of the whole thing, this this slide comes out of the um the uh presentation to the council for the entire project uh on December 8th.

So you can see the entire project there is just over 30 million dollars between the the two implementations here, and uh with the the RPU portion of that being the 15.5 million.

With that, I can stop and uh take some answer any questions that you may have.

Good.

Councilmember Keene?

Um yeah, uh first thing again, we're way down the trail on this one now.

So um, and on December 8th, the city council approved this as a um a consent agenda item, which was kind of scary because of the picture, how big of a deal this is.

But I think we had already gone through a study session and really gotten into the the details.

Um so my questions, uh when you went through what this is, the one thing that I noticed it isn't, and maybe it's built into the asset management, but how do we do inventories?

So inventory is in that financial section.

I didn't call it out.

So yes, inventory will be part of the um the ERP.

It's in SAP right now.

Uh there are some specific inventories that are also uh meters in particular that are in uh uh the customer information billing system, Kaienta.

Okay.

Um so we do have to work to keep those in sync, but uh primarily the but there is like we don't have a separate inventory for our warehouse that that's that's not part of this yet.

No, it's part of the ERP.

Okay, right.

And I was surprised to see the reference to FERT because I didn't think there was regulatory support in this uh ERP.

Um so within the SAP environment, they do have the ability to um configure it so that we can do FERC reporting.

Um there has been additional modules, add-on modules.

We chose not to buy, we actually have an add-on module on our current SAP environment.

We chose not to do that.

We're going with the the standard um uh what's built into as for harm, which is the SAP environment that we're going into.

So we're going to go with that and and uh we will end up having to write some custom reports in order to hit the compliance side of that.

But uh at this stage, we believe we can do it within um the SAP environment.

Good, good.

Uh underneath these kind of the different finance modules, the HR modules.

Are there uh any sort of implied or specific number of users we can have on there or number of people we can uh a number of employees?

So there is there is licensing, and the licensing is driven by a number of factors.

Um some of those are like especially when you get in the HR side, it is based on uh users, so it's on head count.

Um in the different other areas, it's the the licensed uh depending on what the user's needs are.

So somebody in the field doing um you know data entries, say time entry or something like that, would be licensed differently, say somebody who's creating uh job orders and stuff like that.

So there's a whole uh I'm gonna get this wrong.

There's a whole equivalent unit measurement in the SAP world.

Because sometimes you, especially like in NHR, there's items where um somebody that may be an election judge isn't going to count as one.

They they're in there for a very short period of time.

Okay, and don't need all the functions.

And so they might count as a 0.25 or something.

What what kind of number of users assumptions that we make?

And what I'm really asking is are we exposed to oh, if we have if we have better uptake in the units, our expenses go up?

So the um the way the system is used and and the amount of data and some of those things will have an impact on uh you know on hosting charges uh over time.

So you could expect those to grow.

It is based on um you know the payroll part in particular is is uh tied to all 1300 people or something like that right now across the city.

So uh, you know, as that grows, you could expect to have those those be the sort of incremental.

There wouldn't be this sort of like, oh, there's a bigger uptake in this in some group that's gonna drive the.

We'll try to you know quantify or size it to fit where we are right now.

You will see in the uh the subscription side, we're kind of phasing that in so far as how much we need when.

So like we're not paying for everything and beginning of year one, we're paying uh a portion of it, and then we're paying more in year two than the more in year three.

So there will be some um escalation in there, but that's actually planned in the in the implementation.

Last question or comment, I guess more of a comment.

I I might have seen it wrong, but it almost looked like you were working towards a cutover.

And I would think this is going to be much more scaffold and something's gonna happen in HR and then something's gonna happen in a different group.

It's not going to be uh a cutover.

Or do you or how there will be cut outwards, yes.

Many of them will be so there will be uh two big financial ones.

So the the RPU EC SAP ECC cut over, yeah, will be one.

Uh there will be another one in the uh JD Edwards, like when they go from doing here to doing it there, uh, and then payroll will they will have a number of uh items there.

And they will there could be because of the timing, um the the RPU one going sooner, we are going to have to do some backward connection, like all the payroll processing and filing is done through JD Edwards right now.

So even though we may have elements of the HR side stood up and using it uh within the the RPU environment at first, there's about a four or five month you know difference between the cutover.

So there will be some work there where we have to make sure that we can be kind of backward compatible and then you know do the cutovers when all the pieces are ready to go.

So good, good.

I've there's been a lot of work put in on this, and I really do appreciate how I I was doing some during the this last year in the spring when they were doing in the different groups and bringing them together and trying to do that that thing.

So I think it's been well thought out.

I think these are really big, scary projects, and I'm expecting some bumps, but at the same time, I've done our due diligence and I look forward to supporting it.

Yeah.

And actually uh Kyle Hunter is here.

I would like to recognize him.

He's been quarterbacking a lot of this process all the way through and uh has spent many hours, weekends, nights uh working on this to try to keep the the ball moving.

So the word if I might add just a little bit, uh Patrick, in your line of questioning, um, there's aspects of this future software that we will use as RPU that's a little bit different than how the city has broad uses.

We all have the human capital management need.

So this is an opportunity to bring payroll timekeeping benefits all together into a common platform that is right now disjointed across many pieces of software.

So we're all coming into the same space there, and the broad city organization will be using the software together.

Um there's aspects of what RPU needed out of this project.

Inventory management is one of those.

We have very strong requirements because we manage our warehouse today through SAP.

That doesn't exist everywhere else in the city.

So there's additional modules that we have a heavier lift on on the RPU side on the asset management, work management, inventory side, where one of the reasons we're phased up front on this project is we have a bigger lift and we're already in an SAP environment.

So it should be arguably a smoother transition for RPU to go SAP to cloud SAP, but we needed the people side of the business to come with.

So phase one is RPU plus city HR.

Um, and then that phase two is the rest of the city financials.

Um as Peter mentioned, right now SAP for us is basically a timekeeping system and it passes time over to JD Edwards.

That's where we're gonna have to be backwards compatible.

There'll be a period, I believe, when we will be cutting payroll out of JD Edwards and time out of the new SAP.

Um, so even some of those details aren't fully defined yet.

We'll go into configuration workshops in the first part of the spring.

You asked a really good question about scaling costs, and this is one of our concerns.

We're going from on-premise annual software licensing historic model to software as a service where you're paying sometimes on a per user basis or per head count basis.

So we projected out five years on this of what our cost would be based off of our anticipated growth of the complete city organization.

But long term, we will need to start budgeting differently for these components.

It adds additional overhead on the software component to adding people to the overall organization because it it will scale the costs up across the whole organization.

Every option we looked at had us in a future world in software as a service.

So this was a jump regardless of Oracle SAP or any other option.

We're entering into this software as a service model, and it's going to require us to budget and treat software differently than we have looking back historically as well.

You're a student asking that question because it is a future risk there where costs will scale as the organization's.

No, and I and I've watched some of these in other places.

And one thing I would comment on is we've gotten used to most IT things are capitalized and then depreciated.

And when you get into the software as a service, it's it's much cleaner to use it as a as a yearly operational expense.

Yep.

But that cut over is very difficult for managers to uh to accept or step up to because it makes it um more like current year stuff.

Yeah.

It will impact operating budgets into the five-year period forward because we are gonna have to start budgeting beyond the next two-year window and beyond in this new software as a service model across the whole organization.

So it's a big jump for us to take this leap.

We get benefit out of going into this future world as well.

There's some inherent security built into these cloud services where our legacy systems are in an old world really from a software perspective.

And then on the cutover piece, Peter's right on there's two major cutovers.

Um, and the the biggest lift in this project up front is the people side of our business.

Uh the HR systems across the whole organization live in probably nine different pieces of software right now.

So bringing those all into one is a big part of phase one.

Um Carl knows this very well because he lives this every day of the world, making the JD Edwards and Bolton systems work.

So uh it's with both excitement and great trepidation that both Aaron and I recommend this project.

It's a it's a huge undertaking.

RPU has a history of uh strong success in the advanced metering project.

We're approaching the project delivery in a very similar way, identifying subject matter experts, backfilling those positions so we can keep the business running, even the project delivery.

We're approaching in that way.

We've also had some historic challenges as well.

And this is a big piece of software that we'll we we go into with eyes wide open, knowing it's gonna be a big project as well.

Any other questions or comments for Peter?

Just a couple.

Oh, go ahead, Wendy.

One, glad to hear I was excited to see the regulatory.

I just question is water going to be part of the asset management.

Okay.

Is it now?

It is.

Okay, I wasn't sure.

And then um just sort of summarizing the uh increase in costs.

It looked like it was to do a project manager, or I'm not sure the title, which I think is a really good idea, having been through these and some of my past work and um and then um contingency and then what just uh there was a travel component for the actual implementers.

Yeah, so we had the quote for their implementation, put that in now you know, planning, and then it was like, oh, yeah, that's gonna be you know quite a bit more for them to actually come here.

So it's basically to help with all of the implementation.

Yeah, so it was that was the that was one that was like, oh yeah, we you know we do expect them to show up and be here.

So it was like okay, we need to put that one in the budget.

So okay, good.

Just wanted to kind of recap that.

Thank you.

Did we have a um contingency budget before that had just increased, or was there another contingency uh that had been identified yet?

So I would say based on some feedback from the council, the contingency was actually reduced.

We originally had 25% contingency in there, and based on some guidance from the council, uh that was reduced to 20%.

Okay.

But regarding the budget difference between what we put into 26 and 27, we had not fully funded the full contingency in our budget projections.

So I think it's accurate to say that adding the contingency at this point was a change from what we put in front of this board and the council in the 26-27 and the RPU budget and the implementer travel.

Um, those were the biggest components of that cost difference between what was just approved and what we're asking for here for the full project delivery.

We were doing the budget in July.

So we were saying you didn't have full information at the time.

A lot of this information.

So we were we were kind of going based on indicative pricing.

Um, and we did put a contingency on that, but um you know, when we got the the real numbers, it was different.

So makes sense to come back and firm it up.

And it looks like Patrick City Council approved uh proactively our budget for us.

Should we agree today?

But it's all contingent on our board approving that so any other questions or comments.

I just have one then for you, Peter, real quick question and a comment.

Um in that process, um, did we need to talk to any other cities or Munis that were about our size that were using the uh software or the fact that we hired the folks from Tacoma or the fact that we use SAP kind of so actually the um the person that trying to think what Chris's title was, I think she was the city of the chief technology.

So from Tacoma actually came here, and we've actually talked to her several times.

Um talking through the the applications, how it was used, even some advice on you know that there was a module that's about 360,000 a year where she's like you don't need that right now.

You know, you could come back to that you know five years from now.

Um, you know, she's like we went 10 years without that before we went to that one.

So uh yes, we have done that.

And uh that perfect, nice job.

I just assume so I just double checking and then we not only sorry, I want to add to that as well.

We not only referenced uh the implementer checked their references with Tacoma.

We also referenced those who are using the software, and we were diligent about understanding there's a city government and a utility with an electric utility that does power generation in our references, and that actually shaped a lot of our recommendation because the alternatives that we were looking at would have taken RPU's current all-in-one software package approach and split us into two.

And so the other Oracle solution was an Oracle plus another big piece of software that we felt was a significant risk to split off work management into come something completely different, which fortunately there was strong support across the whole organization, including CR City Finance to go to a consolidated single system.

So and the comment was I just love that you're doing it with the city.

It's nice synergy, it's a nice extra efficiency and just nice that you're traveling together on it.

So with that, I the request would be uh there's a resolution in there.

There's two parts to that.

Uh, one is to approve the amendment to the um the 26-27 budget.

I think I might have the record for the earliest amendment to the approved budget, you know, on December 1st.

Uh and then the second part of that is asking for your approval uh to expend the funds um and delegating um to the general managers and uh uh city administrator there um for that there will be other contracts like the interface to uh the Venice Solutions, which is that budgeting one that will be a separate contract.

That's not in the counter uh information, but it's within our overall budget planning.

So there will be other you know, smaller contracts.

I would want to move approval of the uh resolution as presented on packet page 32.

Perfect.

We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

I second.

Perfect.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion hearing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Approved.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Really appreciate it.

Nice work and lots of work still to come.

And because we're loading up on big decisions and big questions this meeting, uh, we're gonna move to item six B, uh, which is the Grid North Partners Joint Development Agreement for RPU's participation in the Mankato, Mississippi River Transmission Project.

And it will be presented by director of power delivery, Mr.

Scott Nichols.

I appreciate it.

And I appreciate Peter too by taking that mantle of the earliest board action for the next budget.

I believe I had it previously, so I appreciate you taking that over.

Um, just to level set a little bit.

Uh I presented uh this presentation.

Uh this is the sixth time you'll have seen this slide kind of level sets us on where we're at, what what the project is is about, uh why we're doing it, ultimately, what our ownership stake is um and what who our partners are.

So I make the promise if I ever had to make another presentation, I'll refresh this slide, maybe.

Um, but it's a good good level set for us to kind of kick off.

Um the nice thing is this is our our sixth time.

So I wanted to highlight some of the actions that we had uh the previous five uh back in November of 2022.

Uh we actually kicked off this project, uh Peter and I did uh from a need-based standpoint and also uh a financial uh responsibility standpoint.

So we talked about the need, uh we talked about our ownership dollar percent uh level and also the return on equity we get from uh an MVP project.

The next engagement was in December of 2024, where we talked about our our FERC or a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rate incentive filing that we did where we're getting cost recovery during construction or construction work in process.

It also provided us with 100% abandoned plant protection in case the project were to not continue.

We can recover our cost to date.

And it also put us in a positive bonding situation for our 2020 or 2020 plan or 2030 plan um because of the protection that it provided us.

Did another uh board informational update in January of 2025, then in August of 2025, we asked the board to officially uh proceed with the Tranch One project so we can capitalize any uh incurred cost to date.

And then I provided uh two months ago in October of 2025 an update to the board.

And then the last part of that slide uh we talked about we talked about future board actions or future uh governance actions that we were uh going to be partaking.

Um and that was what what was bringing us here today is for uh the council to recommend we proceed with a joint development agreement to formally uh commit us to the project um and also talk about some uh how we how we can manage uh going through and if there's some substantive changes, providing authority to the general manager and city council uh city attorney to do so, and then we'll have to amend and restate some uh existing December of 2012 CapEx agreements to include the Mankato Mississippi to Mississippi River uh facilities in those agreements and then provide again or recommend to the city council the authority of the general manager uh and city count and city attorney to uh execute those agreements.

Um we did bring those CapEx operating agreements to the board and the city council back in December of 2012, and they went through the full FBA and RCA process.

With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Randy.

Uh Randy uh is our is RPU's SME, and he's been working with the Grid North Partners Group on the agreements committee.

Uh this is three years in the making for us, I think.

Uh going through a lot of dry, no offense to the attorneys in the room, but some dry conversations about some contracting.

And uh I'm gonna turn over to Randy because he had the heavy lift uh to delivering this to us today.

So yeah, so we thought we'd probably be here about a year ago with this, but it's been kind of a little bit slower process than we thought.

Early on, we worked with Michael to help identify an outside legal council, our previous one ended up having a conflict of interest with Darylin.

So we weren't able to use them.

So you helped uh identify a couple individuals from stole Reeves that we've worked with.

We originally were headed down a path of an MOU, which was going to be kind of a you know, kind of a not a full-blown agreement, but we kind of so we spent time doing that, and then we kind of shifted gears and went down the the joint development agreement path.

But also, you know, we're just party to one project, excels in a number of different projects.

So some of the you know, timing of getting things done a little slower was they were prioritizing some of their efforts in other places.

So anyway, we're finally here today now.

And so, yeah, we've had a number of agreements, and those attorneys from Still Reeves have participated on all the agreements team meetings that I've been on.

Um, you know, going through the document, going, you know, advice, you know, maybe Simpa has a question, RPU has a question, you know, working out all the details, and uh, and this is really kind of I don't know if I'm gonna use the right terms, but this is kind of just the initial official agreement.

The real agreements will happen sometime next year.

This is to get the project going, and then the full set of agreements, those amended and restated agreements that Scott mentioned, those are kind of what I call the real agreements.

I'm sorry if I'm not saying that properly.

But uh, so on the slide here, the yeah, so the uh the amount uh in uh in the agreement is for RPU's portion is the 28,84,000 dollars.

Um then there's that's can be comprised of a couple components.

One is kind of a fixed piece, uh 21 million.

The other one, the not the 7.8 million, that one could float up or down if the project uh, you know, if the expenses go a little over or under.

Um but uh and then let's see, what else?

Which one do we have to push there?

There we go.

Um XL Energy, you know, they're they're the ones kind of managing the managing the project.

We're a little bit of a I don't know if you want to say silent partner, but um they've already been doing you know a lot of pre-design work, there's materials on order, and so this agreement is gonna really help them be able to kind of move the ball forward even further.

But actual construction, you know, actually turning dirt won't happen until the full complete set of agreements gets amended and restated next year.

But this will kind of bridge that gap until then.

Um, I'm gonna just stop.

Do you guys between Scott and myself, you have questions?

Any questions?

Go ahead, Mr.

Council.

Yeah, I'm kind of interested in.

I mean, I I read through this and I can kind of say like you always progress, but it's slow sledding and all that.

But we're doing mostly the financial stuff right now.

Is there really is there somebody else doing the real estate stuff that says yes, this is this is where we're gonna go from here to here.

This is the path we're gonna take.

Yes, that's like 20% done, or is that no?

It's uh I'm sorry, I didn't mean to oh no, please.

So they're expecting the public utility commission to make a ruling by the end of January to actually identify this is the route that it's gonna go.

Okay, there's alternative routes identified right now, and they'll their rulings expected to be in by the end of January.

You you make it out like it's an engineering ruling.

Is there a political property?

Political ruling.

Yeah, yeah.

There's uh you know, there's some engineering that goes into okay.

Here's an alternative route that could work.

There's then there's a lot of public meetings.

There's been a lot of there's been the closest ones have been up at Pine Island was held, but um the public will say, Well, why don't you look at going this way?

Yep.

And actually, one of the alternative routes is following highway 14 from Mankato to Byron.

That one kind of came out of the blue.

That's a piece that we're not involved in.

That's an XL discrete ownership piece of it, but probably unlikely that one would get picked, but I'm not the PUC, so I don't know for sure.

Okay.

Um, then the other one just I these have been presented to me going back, like you say, to 2022, as we really should take on this work because it's an opportunity for us to offset our transmission costs.

This is a good way to do it.

But are there big financial risks in this too?

Looks like Tim's gonna jump.

I would say we have mitigated near all of the financial risks in the project.

So the biggest ones are what if it doesn't happen and we've invested dollars.

We went to FERC a year ago in December and got a ruling that we can get credit for construction work in progress, so we can start recovering revenue as the project constructs, and also if the project cancels, we can get full rate recovery out of that.

Those are the two primary risks that we have in front of us.

We're guaranteed return on both of those.

So there's very little financial risk on the project deployment cancellation along there.

I guess one of the biggest risks here is what Randy, I think, touched on is there's one component of our investment that can scale up and down, but it's a small one.

One of our goals here is to invest in these projects to the about the size of our costs in the projects.

So one risk here is if the project costs go up, we have a fixed component and our investment won't go up.

So I would say the biggest risk is that we won't get more investment than what we have, and our costs will actually be higher that we have to pay to MISO and not get rate recovery on.

So it's with strong agreement that I recommend that the board consider moving forward here in council.

This is a way that $10 billion of costs over the next few years are going to hit the full MISO footprint.

We will pay it as a load serving entity.

And our best way to mitigate our costs, not only the reliability improvements that'll come, but mitigate our costs is to make these investments in this project along the way.

No, I again I want to be supportive, but I one last question, just when you say we go to FERC and get where we get reimbursed.

Who is that through?

FERC uh approves our rate recovery and rate incentives.

So again, who when you say we're going to get the recovery back, who's paying that?

Is that the who's paying it so that we get the return on our great question?

So these are examples of uh postage stamp projects, meaning everyone in the footprint of MISO pays for this transmission.

And so FERC now allows us to file for recovery from MISO.

So we get a check from MISO that we get rate recovery, and that check, the source of those funds is every load serving entity that's paying for it.

So it is it is ground up to it to a degree we're paying ourselves for our usage in the system, but because we're an owner, other people's usage of these project is getting paid as well.

I understand it, but it offsets our we would have our own costs and the part that we can buy is the size of what we could have that we're part of.

So and maybe to connect it to the previous item as well.

That idea of FERC accounting is fundamentally that we do in the ERP is fundamentally tied to our transmission investment as well.

So what we do for financials for our uh transmission accounting is the way that we get recovery through MISO.

And it's the methodology that we use in our financials so that we can get the rate recovery we need.

That's the accounting framework that we have to use here.

Yeah.

And again, this is slightly different question.

And this is for uh attorney Spindler.

I just on this last be it further resolved public utility, uh, give the delegate authority to the general manager and the attorney.

I'm looking at that and I'm looking for some sort of like scoping that says up to a dollar amount or something, or is there something that as a board member that that it's good to do that up to a certain point?

But how how can I think about that?

That I'm not um exposing the utility to some bad decision.

Sure, council member Keene.

I I appreciate um the question and I would just give you some reassurance that I'm sensitive to that point as well.

Um there are limited circumstances where we go that direction where either we have some concern about the timeliness um of agreements getting executed, or um, just recognizing that there may be some non-substantive um final elements that need to be worked out.

Um, just to provide a little more context, I won't be able to tell you an exact dollar figure or a percentage, but I again appreciate the sentiment.

Um the language in in your resolution also gives reference to this.

Any final non-material changes to the JDA.

What I would give you examples of when I'm thinking of material changes, there's two categories in particular, and I think I'm on the same page with director Nichols and RPU on this point.

Two main categories in my mind price point or cost considerations of any significance, as well as any liability or risk considerations that um that I think the political bodies need to be need to be making those decisions and not the GM or me.

Um so it would just give you reassurance that we'll continue to do everything that we can to have final form agreements specifically approved by both bodies.

Um, and that um uh we will certainly limit our discretion to to areas that are truly non-substantium.

Good.

I I I certainly want to support this the way it's written.

I I understand the value of it and the need for it, but I also just want to get it out in the open that there's those are things that could create governance risks.

Absolutely.

Appreciate it.

I would frame this a little bit like buying a home or a piece of property.

But when you sit down at closing, you're signing a stack of documents that's about this thick that all follow the intent of the sale document.

This JDE JDA is really like the sale document.

Terms are very unlikely to change from this point to the final and restated amended agreements.

It's taken us a year to try and get to this point, so it's very unlikely that anything would change.

If for chance we get increased investment opportunity through this, we would gladly bring it back to the board and council to increase our investment.

I think there's a very, very small chance of that happening.

I think we're good.

I just want to have the discussion.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you for that.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay.

I had a couple quick questions if no one else does.

Sorry, I don't want to jump in front of them.

And these are just technical ones.

What's the timing of the distribution?

Are we just paying the 21 million all at once?

Are we doing it every so many months and the 7 million?

Yeah, it'll be we'll we will have, you know, when we do actually execute this, uh, there'll be a little bit of a back billing that the accumulated dollars at XL has on the books that you know at Simpa us and and then Darylund will pay.

And then um, but it will be as they're progressing.

We'll be getting dude.

I don't remember if we used to get quarterly statements in CapEx that we would pay, I believe.

It's okay, that's close enough.

And then um, are we paying XL?

Are we paying MISO?

Who are we sending the wire to or cutting the check?

Excel as the booking all the expenses, and then we're reimbursing them.

And then just technically is Xcel building this project west to east or just different jumping around different segments, or they kind of uh they have they do have it staged, and I don't have it memorized right offhand.

You have that memorized first.

So they're going start at Minkato, trying to break around this year, yeah, and then working to the east and just work their way this way.

So I'll gotcha.

Thank you so much.

Are there any other questions?

If there are no further questions, may I have a motion to approve the resolution on board packet page 10?

So moved.

We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

All second.

We have a motion and second.

Uh, any further discussion.

Just note that that this will require council approval as well.

And we're scheduled to go to city council on January 5th.

We are working towards a deadline.

All the partners are I'm probably skialing stats thunder here.

Sorry.

All the partners are working on getting these agreements signed by the end of January.

Um, we'll be doing the same action, I believe, in the Simpa boardroom in early January as well to do Simpus side.

Sorry, before we vote too, Scott, you're gonna finish or conclude.

Okay.

Sorry, don't mean to jump ahead.

Skip the good part.

Um perfect.

All in favor of approving it, uh, please uh signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Resolution is approved.

Now moving quickly to item six C, which is a letter of agreement with Simpa regarding battery charging and discharging treatment under the power sales contract.

And we'll hear a presentation from director of power resources, Mr.

Bullock.

I uh good afternoon.

Um as you may remember in the November 25th meeting, you authorized uh us to enter into two um energy storage service agreements with light shift energy.

Um that was conditional on getting a board vote by Simpa to approve an exception to the power service contract.

Um that happened on December 10th.

So Simpa did the board did vote uh with one member abstaining um to get approval um to for the general manager and the the president of um Simpa to negotiate um a side letter agreement that would accommodate it.

So that's what we're um we're here tonight to get authorization for.

Um the power supply contract, um, which is um what's active until March 31st, 2030.

It means that all power supply to Rochester comes uh that's under 216 megawatts, uh comes um at the contracted rate of delivery from FIMPA.

Um, anything over uh you know, we get from the market.

Um so we need an exception to that, and we're to charge the battery and discharge the battery and get the benefit of the um of the market pricing um so we can benefit from the arbitrage.

Um so the batteries oper will operate behind our wholesale meter, so they don't generate electricity, they only store it.

Um so we need clarity on the discharging and charging of those of the of the batteries.

Um it would be similar to the existing letter agreement we have for the the solar project.

Um, but the solar project doesn't have a charging component.

So it is it is fundamentally different.

Um what we want to do with this letter is make sure that we are in compliance with the the power supply contract um and providing cost neutrality um through it.

Um and then we're uh we want to make sure we provide access to the locational marginal pricing for the batteries so we can do the arbitrage.

So I like um I like diagrams.

So um, and I did have to draw this out so that we could get the language and logic correct.

So, you know, we're when we're charging the battery, we're gonna treat that as negative generation.

It won't be built as simple as simpa supplied energy, and it'll and we'll be pricing that at whatever the LMP price is at our node at that time that we charge it.

Now, when we're ready to discharge, we'll treat that as positive generation.

It won't be credited as simpa supply, but as market supply.

Um, it won't offset the PS uh the power supply uh contract obligations um because we've already um done that when we charge the battery.

Um, and then it allows us to capture the the high LMP value.

So that we'll ask for the settlement to be done on the discharge at the LMP price.

Um so the next steps are finalize that letter agreement with Simpa.

We do have a draft.

It's we've had a couple of turns of it, not with Simpa, but internally.

Um and then we'll so tonight we're asking for authorization to enter into that agreement once we finalize it with Simpa.

Um, we will finalize the layouts um for the underground utility locations um and site topography.

Um, whereas we will sub once we get this agreement done, we'll also submit the permit applications.

We need a zoning certificate and a storm water review.

Um, and then we'll finalize the detailed design and the operating procedures.

Um, we do expect us to be able to get this installed relatively quickly since it is behind the meter and we don't have a lot of permitting associated with it.

So before you, you have a uh uh a requested utility board action.

I won't read the resolution, but um, I'll answer any questions that you have.

Great.

Thank you for that.

Are there any questions from the board?

Councilmember Keene.

If you could just go back to your um your green uh red picture.

Christmas uh Christmas, yeah.

Perfect December meeting.

Um I think what I heard you say is we're going to buy Simpa power to charge it.

So when we dispatch it, we're not gonna pay we will it'll be considered to fulfill our obligation under the power supply contract, but it will not be at the the contracted rate of delivery, it will be at the LMP price.

Okay.

And I'm trying to, I'm still trying to get my head around that it's behind the meter.

Um, and so I'll just ask my simple thing.

If uh we ended up with just some surplus power that wasn't going uh selling to myself and we charge the battery, we'd be breaking this agreement.

If we had served no, we would not.

So let me step in here.

We've I'll use some math scenarios.

In four o'clock in the morning, our load might be a hundred megawatts.

Yep, that's gonna be low market price.

We want to charge the batteries at that time.

We'll turn the batteries into and we we're gonna charge the batteries by buying power from so I and I'm trying to do this thing.

I've said like, no, we just found a little way to charge energy.

I'm getting to, I think where your question is sourced.

So in the middle of the night, we're gonna our load is a hundred megawatts, and we want to charge the batteries on top of that.

So we're gonna turn them on, charge them.

That'll add 20 megawatts of load.

From Simpa's perspective, they look at us like a box around the whole city, and they call the all the substations add up the load, and that's our town gate meter.

So from Simpa's perspective, it might look like 120 megawatts, even though our load outside of the battery is a hundred megawatts.

So this agreement will at that moment say we we have negative 20 megawatts of charging load, and it's simple math.

You take our 120 at the town gate, you add a negative 20, and it then reveals to Simpa what our load is as 100 megawatts.

So in the middle of the night, we can charge the battery and it's effectively coming from the MISO market.

But the fact is these meters are inside the city behind the town gate meter.

Okay.

So we have to add the generation back to the town gate meter so that it's treated properly under the power sales contract.

Okay.

That's exactly how we do it on Valley High Solar during the middle of the day, except it's positive generation.

And so it makes in the middle of now in the afternoon, we have 200 megawatts of load and we're discharging the batteries to Simpa.

It looks like we're 180 because you were pushing on to it and lowering that.

So in the afternoon, we add that 20 back in.

So regardless if it's charging or discharging, the battery has a plus or a minus on it and it adds back in.

That's what's in this letter of agreement.

It'll define the math and where it's at.

So that from Simpa's perspective, we're still buying our load, and they get to effectively not ignore, but treat our battery as if it's on the other side of the town gate and participating in the market directly.

So next time you have an opportunity to interact with Simpa with Dave, with any of the board members, I would uh suggest that you give a big thank you to Simpa for allowing us to work through this contract.

It's really a big deal that they've created a carve out on the power sales contract to allow Rochester to do this.

We worked very fast to make it happen.

There were some days that I didn't think this was going to make it across the finish line.

Um, but they're a strong partnership with Simpa to make this happen.

They seek to benefit from this by having a relationship with us and getting to see a battery in operation, and they're expecting to learn just as we are, how this battery can work and benefit their future members as well.

Very good.

Thank you.

Good question.

Any other questions?

I'd like to move approval of the resolution as presented our.

Can I sneak one in real quick?

Sorry, absolutely.

I'm trying to be differential.

Give everyone else a chance to go first.

Lia the um I'm just curious.

How does the uh how do we uh make the charging decision happen?

Is it based on our total load when it hit drops below a certain point, it automatically does, or is there someone up at four o'clock in the morning waiting to hit the button when something happens?

Yeah.

Well, we'll know when we'll have a forecast for the following day, the day ahead when we want to discharge it.

So based on that, we'll know we'll want it charged for the hour.

So we'll be looking for the lowest price.

You'll recharge as soon as possible.

You're not picking the lowest point in a month or a week orcha.

So if prices go significantly negative, we would charge it for as much as we could.

I'm sure it doesn't quite relate, but would it in theory make sense to um park one out by uh Lake Zumbro as well and just charge it at high flow and or is that timing too?

Yeah, erratic.

I think there the flow is not uh significant there.

We have enough um distribution to bring it back.

So yeah, it wouldn't necessarily benefit us there.

There's only four megawatts.

Yeah.

No, thanks for all your work on that.

Oh, sure.

Looks more like a festivist uh graph to me.

Uh and thanks to Simpa, that was really fast.

So okay.

Um without any further questions.

Um may I have a motion to approve the resolution on board packet pages 114 and 115.

I think you had that, Councilmember Key.

Yeah, I'll move that.

I'll move uh that those that motion.

Perfect.

And a second.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor of approving the resolution on board packet pages 114 and 115.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed, the resolution is approved.

Moving quickly now to the informational section of our meeting.

Uh, informational number 77a, a my meter update, benchmarking and customer portal.

Thank you, Patty.

Uh director of customer relations, uh, Patty Hansen.

Okay.

Just I've got to get set up because we're going to do a little live demo.

Um, so I just want to make sure I've got everything in place here.

Oh, nope.

Okay, there.

Okay.

Great.

All right.

Well, thank you.

And um, good evening, everybody.

I'm really really proud and excited to share with you two successful projects this year in the customer relations department.

Um, utilizing the my meter platform for the project, the first project benchmarking and the second project um being the customer portal.

We'll start off with benchmarking.

Oh, oops, sorry.

They were required to upload their energy usage into an Energy Star, the Energy Star Portfolio Manager platform.

And that was due by June 1st of 2025.

Starting next year, any building that is 50,000 square feet and greater, they will be due by June 1st of 2026 of next year.

As a part of the law, RPU also had requirements that included providing and Josh, I'm gonna do it, easy navigable, navigable web portal, an easy to use website portal for our customers to upload their data directly up into the portfolio manager.

We had to provide at least 24 months of usage, uh data within a 30-day request, monthly data, aggregate aggregated data, so multifamilies that fall within the 50 and 100,000 square feet, um, pulling up all their data as one unit, so to speak, so that we're uh still protecting customer data.

Um also establishing an aggregation standard, and then more importantly, managing um tenant consent where required in in certain situations in 204 towards the end of 2024, we were lucky to be awarded 321,000 uh benchmarking grant that the state offered.

There were two grant objectives.

Um one to implement the MyMeter benchmarking software, and then to also hire a limited term commercial energy advisor to help implement the software as well as um community engagement and outreach to help our customers in the first go around.

Happy to report.

Um both objectives were achieved successfully, and more importantly, um, we did go live with the benchmarking module back in March.

According to the state, we had 137 buildings that were required within the Rochester area to comply with this requirement.

Of that 137, 86 are in compliance, 51 are outstanding.

And I'm going to come back to the outstanding piece in a moment, but I want to really focus on the outreach activities.

Um, we had a project manager within the marketing and energy services area, Caleb, who's sitting in the back there, who is absolutely instrumental in getting this up and running for us.

And he did such a good job, and he made such an impression that the state of Minnesota asked him to co-host a virtual life uh presentation to help customers understand their requirements.

Um he set expectations, um timelines, guidance, as well as walking them through some certain steps within the platform to show them how easy it was going to be to upload their their um their information.

So that would took place back in April of last year.

And all summer long, there have there has been continued outreach, targeted outreach, emails, calls to to the customers that fall with it fell within that 137.

Um we even hosted on-site visits here at RPU with customers, inviting them in.

Um we actually helped them establish their accounts as well as help they establish their accounts within the MyMeter and connected to the Energy Star platform.

So it wasn't for a lack of engagement and customer um engagement and and and education, but it was more about the obstacles to compliance.

So address that customer readiness.

First and foremost, tell you what, customers were not happy with this, and we heard about it.

Um, and you know, part of it was making it clear that it wasn't RPU.

This is not RPU, this is a state law.

We're just trying to help facilitate how you can upload your energy usage.

So that kind of mellowed out.

Um, some customers had no idea where to begin.

Some customers were kind of at a loss.

They kind of went in there.

And it can be a little bit overwhelming and daunting, especially if you have multiple properties because you can combine multiple properties and upload them.

So some customers started down that path, and then they would come back and they would hook up with either Caleb.

And now Alex has been pulled into the to the to the show.

We had some data discrepancies and going back to the 51 that are currently outstanding.

I'll be honest, some of them, some of the, and I've heard this through the team, they don't care.

But there's the data discrepancies.

They're looking at parcel sizes versus square footage sizes.

So as Caleb is working through these or and Alex is working through these, they're they're adjusting those.

Now that doesn't mean that they won't fall within next year within the 50,000 square feet, but at least this year we're kind of working through those situations.

We had some system issues where if there's a complicated, we have some complicated uh customers, complicated rates, sometimes pulling that all the information under that one particular customer, the information might not come over correctly.

So there was some manual adjustments that needed to take place.

So that kind of added to uh a little bit of the delay in some of these customers reaching compliance.

Um, and then frankly, um the lack of timely response from uh the gas company.

Um, the gas company has really um uh it's been very difficult for them.

Uh all of their processes from my understanding is very manual, and especially when you get into an aggregation, um, pulling data, pulling manual data for like 152 units within one unit, one building structure can be quite time consuming.

So those are some of the obstacles to compliance.

Um, we're hoping within this first year, and then next year that through more customer education that will start, you know, start reducing that number because the state is asked us, you know, what are you guys doing to help facilitate the customers?

I think they're very happy with the progress that we've been doing.

Um we haven't had any negative um impacts, and they keep paying us the grant money, so that's a good thing in reimbursement.

Um I can say that the benchmarking law has been really beneficial for RPU just because it really has opened the door in terms of uh opening uh for those customers that have worked with us or haven't worked with us, are now getting the full scope of all of our various different programs, whether it's retro commissioning or some of the newer uh uh offerings that we might have, custom rebates that we have available.

Um, so that's been a real tool in our back pocket uh for the team in terms of meeting our our SIP, our conservation goals.

Looking to 2026, um, the state has got 126 buildings listed in the 50s uh 50,000 square foot and greater.

So not only will the 137 need to reapply again because it's on an annual basis.

Um the we'll be adding another 126.

Um so the work is just gonna be two-fold or a little short right now in marketing, but those guys are doing an awesome job.

Um, we will continue with our customer engagement and outreach activities with which again is you know, calls, emails, follow-ups, um, getting um messaging out there.

The state will also be sending out notification to all of our customers, um, both the 100,000 from this year, the 50,000 for next year by March 1st, letting them know you've got to do this.

Um, uh, and by June 1st.

And so they'll have our contact information, and I wouldn't be surprised if we'll be doing more uh joint um uh communication efforts with the state again.

I'm gonna excuse me, I knew this might happen.

Sorry.

So anyway, um, benchmarking so far from our perspective has been super successful.

We met the goal of the there are the objectives of the grant.

And I just I again I have to give kudos to Caleb for the project leadership.

And as also he worked very closely with Jared in our IT department.

The two of them have been at the hip.

And going forward into our second project with the customer portal.

These guys laid a tremendous amount of groundwork and foundational work going into the customer portal project, which made things so much easier for that project team.

They owe them a beer for sure.

So any questions with regards to benchmarking before I move on.

What do you know what the state's overall goal with this project or this information or this requirement is?

What's you know long term?

Um, to be honest, I I don't know what it was initially.

Um I think it was more of a political thing, um, but I can't say that for certain.

I do know, you know, Minnesota is very green.

They're putting this in place.

I think that there has been talk, and um you may have heard more.

Yeah, I can I can jump in here as well.

So the benchmarking legislation is modeled after other jurisdictions.

I think this work was actually started in Colorado in my backyard where I was.

So the model legislation for benchmarking is a pretty standard model statute that Minnesota adopted.

Um the the underlying intent is to make disclosure of energy intensity in a building publicly visible and so that it can become a value for the property.

Um, I guess the other side of that is it can become a liability in Colorado.

They put it all the way on the MLS listing, so that you had to disclose your energy consumption on each property.

I think this also lays the foundation.

This was, I believe, introduced by representative Kraft out of St.

Louis Park.

He and I traveled together to Germany last year.

It also sets the foundation for what has been attempted to be introduced of building performance standards where it not only sets the disclosure, but it also sets targets and they ratchet down over time to um create uh incentives or requirements that buildings reduce their energy use and disclosure and data is the first piece of that.

So I think there's kind of a two-part strategy here legislatively that is both um uh helping to increase the property value or the um the marketability of a product, and then I think it sets the foundation for the building performance standards in the future.

Anyone else?

Okay, move on.

Customer portal.

So just a little background again on this project.

We were with um Smart Energy Water SEW, um, which was bit had which has been in place since November with Go Life with Cayenta back in 2019.

Our contract um is due to end this month.

Um in early 2024, the decision was made to seek um a new um vendor.

Some of the following reasons include um limited functionality, very difficult to work with, the current platform was coming to end of life.

Um changes were very costly and costly because we couldn't make any of the changes on our end.

We'd have to um have SEW make changes for us.

Um and it was just very difficult.

It's not a user-friendly platform by any means.

Um, so we went out for vendor selection last summer.

We had four um responses that came back, and we ended up awarding the contract to MyMeter, um, which is now ironically vertex one, and it's kind of a funny story because we brought back two vendors, MyMeter and Vertex One, another one.

So, but um more to come on that.

Um the primary goal of the customer portal project was we had to go live in November.

That was our goal.

Uh that was our our deadline is to go live to beat the end of our contract in uh this month so we wouldn't have to continue paying monthly for the SEW um platform.

Um happy to say that we went uh live on November 5th.

Um we had limited migration issues issues.

Sorry, choking up.

Um we had this was probably the easiest go live I've ever experienced in terms of data migration.

We had very limited issues.

We've had extreme positive customer reaction to the new portal.

We're continuing, we're not quite done yet in terms of implementing.

We've got advanced metering integration.

Testing is going to be starting on that soon.

And then once we start implementing the advanced meters, then that will start, those will start slowly showing up in the customer portal.

And then it's not up here, but I want to mention that because of Vertex One taking over My Meter.

And Vertex One, their platform, the reason why we didn't go with them is they weren't very strong on the electric side, but they are hugely powerful on the water side.

And so now Vertex One and My Meter have combined their platform, and it's now called V Connect.

And as a part of when we started our implementation, we have been guaranteed that once we get up and live, they're gonna start slowly transitioning us to the new platform vConnect.

So we are going to even have more functionality enhancements coming down the road, but there'll be more to share on that.

So our participation levels have been awesome.

We have over 58 as of yesterday morning.

58,000 plus customers have a user in the portal.

Now that's a big number.

It can mean that there that can mean that there are multiple users on one account.

So if you have a large customer, you might have multiple people within that customer who are a user accessing the account for one reason or another, whether it's for energy conservation efforts potentially, or payroll uh or excuse me, um accounts payable.

Um, but still very positive.

We have over 37,000 customers that are on auto pay alerts.

2100 of those are new since our go live in November.

Um we've got 41,000, almost 42,000 um e bill alerts and 1600 are new.

Um, and I just wanted to share, we wanted to share that with you as of November.

So very positive and successful.

Um customer enhancements.

There is a whole slew of them.

I mean, I it just it's amazing.

Um and I'm not gonna read through all of these, but just a couple of real big ones.

Um when you go into the portal, you can you can go in, there's 16 different languages to choose from.

It comes ADA compliant, which all of our platforms are gonna need to be ADA compliant according to the um Department of Justice, what April 26th of 2026, so that's already taken care of for us.

Um you can manage multiple accounts under one account.

Um a key a key uh enhancement here is when you get customers that call and they're maybe they're calling about a high energy bill, or maybe they're in their platform and they don't understand their bill, or they have a question about their bill.

We have the ability to go in administratively on the back end and we can look at the count as though we're looking at it right next to them, and we are able to facilitate and easily answer any questions for the customers.

That's a huge takeaway for us.

Um, but just night and day difference compared to what we came from.

So okay.

So before I I get started on this, um, I since I recognized obviously Caleb, um, I do want to recognize the customer portal team.

Mickey was our project manager.

Um she led the project, kept everybody on task.

We had Lonnie in finance in a billing, we had uh Ryan Moore who did um our IVR and our outage map and um diagenics integration with the customer portal, and again, we couldn't do it without Caleb and and and Jared because they had already set the foundation and instrumental on the data side.

So um I just kudos to those guys.

Um you can access if you have not already accessed the my meter account, you can do it two ways.

You can go to my.rpu.org, or you can go to the mobile app and download um the app either through Google Pay or Apple.

And I'm going to share my screen.

I know.

See if this works.

Okay, so I'm gonna share.

Oh, right.

Okay, here we are.

Oh, how can I make this smaller up here?

Can I?

All right, I don't remember it being this big.

Let's see if I can go like this.

Does that help?

No, it doesn't.

Okay.

Well, here we go.

So when you first get on the customer app, you will log in, and it brings you to the welcome to the RPU connect um uh home page.

You can immediately, you've got a couple of um uh icons here that you can go to.

So if let's say you there's an outage in your neighborhood, and you're like, oh my gosh, I wonder if you know, am I included in the outage?

You can go into the portal and you can click the outage map, and the outage map, if there is an outage out there, it's gonna show you here.

This is all zero, yeah!

Live outage map.

No, yes.

Um, I'm not sure why it's distorted here, but um, but we're gonna work with it here.

Um, so but you can go in here, it will tell you the total uh outages, um, it will tell you the number of customers affected, and it'll kind of give you a blob um that you can uh like zone in.

Oh, there's Viola Road, that's where I live, right there.

Um you can zoom in and it'll show you whether you're a part of the outage or not.

Um, you can also quickly report an outage from here.

You just go in here, you go in and you punch your number, and I won't do this because I don't want to report a false outage, um, but just to kind of show you it's very simple, very intuitive.

You can schedule customers can do like you don't even have to be a customer, or you don't even have to have a uh an account created, you can go in and do a one-time payment.

You can schedule a new customer move in from this front page.

So if you are brand new coming into RPU, you can go in here and set up uh uh an account.

Um, and Mickey, if you have any more specific questions, can answer how that happens on the back end.

We've got rebates, we've got our plugged in, we've got contact us, and we have our home page.

So I'm just gonna go in.

I'm gonna log in really quickly just because I just want to show you some of this fun stuff.

So right away the tile page will come up.

You view your bill, paperless billing, manage your auto account, um, start stop transfer, neighbors chipping in, you can sign up right here.

You can update your profile.

There's a whole slew of tiles that you can pick from.

You can X out of this.

Oh, wait a minute, but I want to go back to it.

I can hit this little home icon and it will come back up.

There it is.

Go back out again.

Um, on the home page is it gives you your count information.

If I have multiple properties, this would all show up over here.

Um, so for commercial customers, that would all be right there.

Um, if I had a balance due or any balances due, that would be show up right here.

I can go in, I can manage my account, and I can look.

Here's like all my bills, I can view like the actual billing, it shows me the charges, it tells me when my due dates were, when I made payment.

I'm on um, oh my even pay must have gone up.

We paid 183, and now it's 184.

I need to talk to you about that.

Anyway, um, so anyway, um, so that it's just like all this information at your fingertips that is just so intuitive and so easy.

I mean, if I can get through this, anybody can.

I'm telling you, um, go back to the dashboard.

Um, what's really new and exciting is that you this graph will show up and you can look at your electric, you can look at your electric.

Um, I'm gonna go over here because I might here.

You can do it by consumption or by dollars.

You can do it by your three services.

Sorry, I'm I'm trying to do I've got a thing that's showing up here.

Um, but you can do your total billing, you can overlay it, you can show last year, you can do two years ago, um, and it'll it'll just provide you with all the information here.

You can hover over and gives you all of your billing charges right there.

Um, we get calls at the end of the year, customers asking for their 12-month um utility bills for um tax purposes for whatever reason.

Customers can go, we can direct customers now to the portal.

They can do that themselves.

We can change the chart data.

So customers who need that information.

This is a very easy to see.

You know, you got 2023, 2024.

Remember, I talked about two years, 24 months of usage.

That's right here.

That was part of the uh benchmarking program, shows up here.

And um, let's see, what else can we do?

Manage.

I we did manage our account.

I'll just do manage auto pay.

I can do um sign up for auto pay here.

We've got auto pay all over here.

We really want people to sign up for autopay.

It's here.

Um, let's see.

What else am I missing here?

Um, the alerts.

Let me go to the dashboard.

Yep.

Let me oh, wait, wait.

Oh, right.

Sorry.

Um, the alerts.

So, like in here, I can go in, I can do alerts on, you know, when my bill is comes out, remind me right before the bill is due.

Um, when and like, hey, my payment when my husband makes a payment, I get the notice because my name's on the account.

I can go in here and I can update my outage information, how I want to receive.

Do I want to receive an email?

Do I want to see receive a text message?

I can do that here just simply by clicking add.

I can go in here and click this and then hit uh save changes.

I'm not gonna do this and for the end for this um demonstration.

Um, that's not my real email and not my real phone number and some other stuff that I changed.

So for the benefit of this uh um presentation.

So that's the fast and dirty of it.

Um if you have not been in there, um, I highly encourage you to go out there and create an account.

And if you have any questions, you're more than welcome to call customer service and they'll get on with you and help you walk you through it and answer any questions.

So anybody have any?

Thank you so much for that.

Any questions or comments?

Just on the benchmarking.

Is it really hardcore a building size, or is it this person is billed for more than this, or is it really the physical building size?

It's the it's the square footage of a of a of an individual building.

Okay.

Um, and just is there any way the state has access to what that is, or they know that through um like county property records, or well, how do they know these things?

Yeah, Caleb is shaking his head, they're getting it through the county.

Okay.

And it so and were they commute?

Did the state communicate to the building owners that they would have to do this stuff, or is it really the communication through the utilities?

No.

Well, it's it's a combination.

Um, the the the state actually hired a marketing firm um at the beginning of, well, I shouldn't say the beginning of last year, it was more towards the end of last year.

And so they were they were responsible for um initially notifying the customers.

We have taken it upon ourselves, um, even though we don't want to be the enforcers, um, but we certainly want to be make it as easy as possible for the customers to comply.

But the state they're the ones that are notifying them, letting them know, you know, what the requirements are, what the potential penalty might be if they don't, okay.

Um, etc.

So thank you.

Yep.

Question.

Any other questions or comments?

Awesome.

Hearing none, thank you so much.

Really appreciate that.

You're very welcome.

With only three items remaining on tonight's agenda, we'll move quickly to item eight a RPU index of board policies, and I'll turn this over to Director McCullough.

Thank you.

Uh, I do have one request.

We're coming up on the first quarter and would like to form an ad hoc group to look at the policy for safety in the index.

We're hoping to have some initial meetings with an ad hoc group, call it by end of January.

So if there's anyone president that you would like to nominate or volunteers, we'll get that scheduled.

I don't have any preference.

Anyone want to volunteer?

I'll volunteer, Councilmember Keene.

I'll volunteer.

Board member Tori, thank you so much.

Very good.

Thank you.

Perfect.

With no other comments or updates, we'll move quickly then to agenda item 9A, the general manager's report.

And again, it will be presented by General Manager McCullough.

Thank you.

I will be brief.

I tried to make the slides a little bit more descriptive so you could read, especially on the Simpa summary, some bigger decisions in the Simpa boardroom.

And I would highly encourage you as board members to go through and try and consume those conclusion slides that I had.

Kelsey was appointed.

Welcome to your next four to eight years, Kelsey.

If I might take a privilege to introduce Kelsey, Kelsey was appointed by the mayor's nomination and the council confirmation this past Monday.

She'll be joining the board on January 13th.

I hope you see my joke there.

She's from my same alma mater, the best university, the premier education institution in the nation.

We both graduated from Iowa State.

But Kelsey is deeply involved with the community, both with the Chamber of Commerce, the Rochester area builders.

Now, as the director of business development for Krauss Anderson here in the Rochester office, serving the Southeast part of Minnesota in her day-to-day role and comes to the board with more than 15 years of construction related business and development experience and deeply integrated in the community.

I've heard nothing but positive great things from all aspects of the community about Kelsey joining the board as well.

So just wanted to welcome Kelsey and we'll see you next month.

Okay, I'm going to skip very briefly through these.

Some big assumption changes coming up in our 27 budget with wholesale cost changes.

I would say these are positive notes.

We're seeing some reduced wholesale expenses in the near term that we will be able to adjust some of our budget assumptions coming up.

This is probably one of the largest single strategic decisions that we have as a board and a community regarding our agency exit is how to properly fund a retirement or commissioning fund there.

That will happen before the end of our agency agreement.

So we will over the next four years be looking at funding that.

And we don't want to do too much and we don't want to do too little.

That leaves liability on either side.

Just a major strategic decision for us.

And there has been a suggestion of a long-term cost or risk sharing agreement that Simpa's brought forward.

So that's more for the board, I think, to consider likely need to form an ad hoc group and bring this in front of the board for any of those decisions that would be coming in 2026.

Tried to do some quick math here so you can see how this slide translates to the customer bill.

This slide over the year comes to be uh just a fraction of a penny of additional wholesale cost.

Um, and so it's it's impactful.

This is what adds some of the energy costs there.

The fact the three and a half million dollar number is higher than the budgeted $700,000 credit, means our wholesale expenses were about four million dollars at the agency level, but to Rochester, just about $2 million higher than we budgeted, and that gets passed through to the power cost adjustment.

So just tried to walk through how the math works and how I think about it, because it translates to the retail bill there as well.

Operating reserves are healthy, and even with the million dollar credit that we expect to receive next month, there's still a healthy operating reserve into the foreseeable future.

You'll notice the dip from April to June.

That is the outage at Cherco, and it will consume some operating cash as we buy replacement energy during Sherco's outage.

So that's why that dip happens there.

Hoping to get a tour opportunity for Sherco for board members or staff members during its last major scheduled outage coming up in April.

Um last maybe point here, the red box.

Um we were awarded, we as collectively the city, including RPU, two and a half million dollars of up to two and a half million dollars of federal and state grants that will fund uh about 600, almost 700 kilowatts of solar on municipal buildings.

This is a very significant addition of power generation.

And as you think back to August, we talked about some of the utility scale solar costs coming up.

This is a way to add to our portfolio at a uh with grant support, no direct rate impact to our customers.

It's Peter's favorite price for solar, which is free, at least when it's supported by a hundred percent grant funds.

Um busy schedule coming up in the first quarter.

I would like to highlight some board opportunities.

We will have our annual board recognition breakfast or sorry, the employee recognition breakfast in March.

Um that's always a uh great time.

Uh Malachi will uh our board president will need to be there.

Any other board members are welcome as well.

We do have a couple of conference opportunities.

Uh the legislative conference up at the Capitol in St.

Paul is coming in late March as well.

So if there's any board members interested, you can mark those dates, let us know.

And with that, I will pause.

Any questions or comments on the general manager's report?

Hearing none, we will now transition to the last item on tonight's agenda, division reports and metrics.

Are there any questions or comments on the division reports and metrics for December of 2025?

One quick one.

I uh I saw the AMI project went um mock go live.

I don't know what that means.

I just wondered how that was going.

Um we just finished the the system integration testing, it's on track.

Uh we're gonna start the pilot here in January.

So uh we're doing a mock goal live just to make sure we have everything in place to cut do the cutover uh for that pilot.

So uh on time on budget as of today.

Great question.

Any other questions or comments?

Yeah, just on um just as a follow-up.

I'm just trying to think of this.

That I I I look through some of those words and I and I don't ask a lot of this like what the words really mean.

But um, I wonder what some of those things as we look at our schedule for uh 2026, something like do we do some sort of cadence where something like AMI, we do something in I'm gonna make this up April or July, just um have it on our on our agenda just to keep as opposed to you know the the things that are in the general manager's report of the others.

That one it is something that we've got going on, but it does seem to fall behind and or fall like off of our radar where there's other things going on that are just naturally because of the spending of there.

So I again I'm just looking for um we we don't have the concept of study sessions, but some way of keeping the board updated on things would would be helpful, just thinking about it, and that's one opinion.

I I don't know where my peers are.

Could not agree more.

This is bigger than I think people think about now.

It touches so much.

So I yeah.

And I want to acknowledge, like I was glad to see the commercials out there talking about this is gonna be coming up and this idea of like here's how it works in electric.

Water's tougher.

And I think it's a simple message, but it's important to get it started because this is going to be a heavy lift.

To respond to that, stay tuned for January.

We intend to do kind of a year flyover.

This is what's coming.

We have a lot of major strategic initiatives.

I would say the ERP project is one of those now, our advanced metering project as the transmission investments move into construction.

Our goal is to focus our board level conversations not only on what's ahead, but what we're trying to execute on major strategic initiatives as well.

Point well taken, and we're already thinking about how to design information updates on these major projects.

We we try and bring project updates in the board packet, but we don't always bring those to the surface.

Hearing the board's desire, at least one, maybe I'm seeing nods, hearing more.

Um, we'll design that into more informational type items.

I would like to say that all of our big decisions are behind us, but that's not true.

So we also have some big meaty topics to talk about a future decisions, but point well taken on recognizing the ongoing work and executing well on that.

And just an aside here, the division reports are an important part of the packet, but we don't get much time with them.

And I do appreciate uh Wendy to looking through them and kind of like calling something like that out.

But going back on your point, this board is more than just like policy and futures.

We have an execution responsibility.

And and that's what that uh it generally doesn't come naturally to have those here, but um, I I would appreciate some aspect of it.

You might have noticed that's why we did an update on the customer portal.

Two major projects that we executed on this year, and that intent was to bring that back to the board to show a close out on those and uh mid mid-project check-ins on three, four or five-year initiatives are an important piece of that as well.

Thank you.

I just would add to that.

I'm excited about the AMI project.

I think it's gonna go great.

Staff is fantastic on it.

I just listening to Tim talk about his experience going through it before in another market.

portal two major projects that we executed on this year and that intent was to bring that back to the board to show a closeout on those and uh mid mid-project check-ins on three four or five year initiatives are an important piece of that as well thank you i just would add too that i'm excited about the am i project i think it's gonna go great the staff is fantastic on it i just listening to tim talk about his experience going through it before in another market there's always gonna be one percent of the people that we're gonna hear something from so that's just how it's just how it goes with any project so okay any other um questions on the division reports and metrics if not is there any other business to come before the board tonight hearing none I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved and second second movement seconded and on Melissa's last moments in the board with us all in favor of adjourning say aye aye aye aye we are adjourned thank you