Music

Chair, staff is ready when you are.

Good evening.

Welcome to the October 23, 2024 meeting.

The time is now 5.30.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum.

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner, if you can please unmute.

Vice Chair, Eberley.

Here.

Commissioner Johnson.

Here.

Commissioner Tran.

Here.

And Chair Zito.

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Okay. I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins.

You have two minutes to speak once you are called on.

After the first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips.

We will now proceed with today's agenda.

Okay. Please rise for the opening acknowledgments and honor of Sacramento's Indigenous people in tribal lands.

Okay.

To the original people of this land, the Nisun people, the southern Maidu Valley and Plains, Miwok, Puthan, Wintan peoples and the people of Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento is only federal recognized.

We acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk besides us today on these ancestral lands by choosing together together in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's Indigenous people's history, contributions and lives.

Thank you. Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Alrighty.

Our first business today is the approval of the consent calendar.

Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speakers for the consent calendar.

Okay. Thank you. Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?

Anybody? Okay. Is there a motion and a second for the consent calendar?

To approve.

A motion to approve.

We have a second.

Okay. Let's see. Will the clerk please call the roll for the vote?

Yes. And just to confirm we have a motion by Vice Chair Eberley and is it second by Commissioner Tran?

Perfect. Thank you. And commissioners, please unmute.

Vice Chair Eberley? Yes.

Commissioner Johnson? Yes.

Commissioner Tran? Yes. And Chair Zito? Yes.

Thank you. The motion passes.

Okay. We will now proceed to the discussion calendar.

Is there a staff presentation? Let's see.

There should be. We have one here.

Discussion. That answers the department.

We have the department of utilities, the 2020 to 2025.

Strategic plan update.

Is that right?

Okay. I'm sorry.

Oh, okay.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Yvette and Glon.

I'm the chief of staff to the director of utilities.

I'm here today to share with you the department of utilities strategic plan.

So I will start out by quickly sharing with you our mission vision and values.

And that's just because our director shared those with you back in August and her presentation.

I'll spend a bit more time going over our goals, objectives, objectives, and highlight for you some of our accomplishments over the years, as well as some of our planned actions for this fiscal year.

I will note that during COVID and the year after we did not make much progress and implementation of our strategic plan just because of course we were focused on keeping our employees safe and keeping our core services going for our customers.

Finally, I'll wrap it up by sharing with you our next steps for our update of our plan.

So just going to share with you quickly the mission and vision which you have seen before back in August.

Here are our values and I believe our director went over these with you as well.

There for our mission vision and values, their and our goals have they've largely stayed the same over the years with some small changes.

For our last update, the executive team did add an innovation value and then more recently we've developed an equity value which will be reflected in our next update which will be happening in the spring.

We'll just go over our goals with you really quickly. We have goals on public trust to build and maintain public confidence and understanding through communication, delivery of quality service, responsive customer service, and compliance with environmental regulations.

Reliability, deliver reliable services through proactively monitoring and maintaining our assets and reducing system vulnerability by continuous performance measurement.

Sustainability is our third goal plan for current and future generations by protecting preserving and enhancing water resources, the environment and the community.

Organizational performance, develop and retain and engage diverse and professional workforce in an organization that demands accountability and innovation ensures cost effective operations and employee safety.

And finally financial viability, so maintaining a sustainable financial structure that responsibly invests an infrastructure ensures full cost recovery, appropriate reserves and optimizes financial reserves.

So about every five years we update our strategic plan. This past update was done in-house and our staff lead undertook significant efforts to get input from all levels of the organization.

In fact, we received over 200 proposed actions from staff for consideration. The exact team spent time to review them all and spent hours discussing them and prioritizing them.

So in terms of organization and tracking of over 200 action items, we tied each of the strategic actions to an objective and in turn the objective, of course, to the goal.

On the right side here on this slide is the abbreviated strategic plan objectives and I'll share the full objectives in future slides.

And again, for clarity and accountability, we went further and identified a project manager or a lead for each action item so that we could have one person responsible for implementation.

And at the end of every fiscal year, we request progress updates from these project managers and proposed actions for the future fiscal year.

So now I'm going to walk you through some of our accomplishments, highlight some of our accomplishments over the years, and then some of the focused actions that we are undertaking this fiscal year.

I'll try to answer any questions you might have, but I may likely just have to get back to you because I'm not intimately involved in all of the areas and all of the actions that we've undertaken.

So first, I'll go over employees. Our objective here is to develop and retain and engage and diverse professional workforce.

So over accomplishments over the years have been we've created a program to recognize employees that demonstrate safe working practices.

We've created a matrix tool to help staff understand the skills and requirements to progress through different classifications.

And we've created programs to improve staff connectedness and collaboration.

Some of the areas that we're focusing on this fiscal year is we'll be doing our employee satisfaction survey, providing additional training, and then implementing a new tool to better manage construction projects.

On internal communications, our objective is to maintain and enhance communication with internal stakeholders. Some of our accomplishments in this area were that we completed our internal communications plan.

We have a monthly newsletter internally for staff, and then we also have a director meetup program in which the director meets with staff in person, actually all 580 staff are welcome to come to her meetups throughout.

Some actions that we're focusing on here this year are tracking our progress in terms of implementation of this new communications plan, enhancing training for supervisors on department policies and procedures, and creating a tool to better track state and federal regulations.

Next is external communications. And again, one of our accomplishments is this communications plan, which is also outwardly facing for our customers.

And focused on making our external department utilities communications more accessible and equitable, we've increased and improved outreach on social media, and increased our outreach to the youth community.

And one of our areas that we're focused on this fiscal year is completing some customer surveys, continuing our outreach to the youth on career opportunities, increasing digital outreach and creative service campaigns, and then continuing our tours of the water treatment plans.

Next is efficiency and our objective here is to implement business and operational process to obtain greater efficiency. Some of our accomplishments over the years have been incorporating business case evaluations to help improve decision making.

We've created dashboards for performance measures throughout each division, and we've created a tool to track and improve our contracting process.

And in the last few years, we've created a tool to improve our asset management records, developing a project management software tool, an internal study to ensure cost recovery, and then upgrading our work order system.

Infrastructure, so our objective here is to plan and manage infrastructure to minimize life cycle costs while delivering established levels of service.

So, accomplishments in this area have been, we've completed all the viable projects from the combined sewer system optimization study.

We've completed dozens of phases of critical infrastructure maintenance on city's flood control system, and completed two large projects, the Third Street sewer project, and the McKinley storm water vault.

Some focus areas here for this year are completing the separated sewer master plan, improve our asset management system to better track costs, replacements, and asset life cycles, complete the EIR for our water plus program, and complete the long term control plan update.

On innovation, we are objective here is to embed innovation into the organization. Some of our accomplishments were, we created a series of webinars that focused on improving innovation and work culture for our staff.

We created a program to recognize employees that implemented innovative projects, and we piloted an innovation summit for staff.

This year we'll be focusing on continuing these events for staff, but also implementing new ideas that we got from staff throughout the years, which include potential right alongs or internal staff tours, again to help improve collaboration among our divisions.

On the financial side, I'll just skip that. Some of our accomplishments here have been pretty big. We got our 2022 storm drainage fee approved by property voters, which hadn't been done in over 25 years.

We created a policy to improve funding reserves for emergencies and unexpected shortages.

We created a new rate modeling software to help us develop long term financial plans, and we updated and got approval from City Council for our development impact fees.

Some areas we're focusing on on financial are the 30 year capital improvement program, refining that process, completing our long range financial plan, and then completing the water and waste water fund reviews with the auditor's office.

On water conservation, our objective is just continuously improving the programs in that area. Some of our accomplishments here were improved outreach through social media and events such as a water wise garden showcase we might have heard of recently.

We've helped residents and businesses convert over a million square feet of long of long to drought tolerant landscaping, and we've dispensed over more than a million dollars in water conservation rebates, and we've also secured some grants.

We're focusing this year on updating our water conservation plan, which is a significant effort, and we're also using grants to grant funding to continue and expand our league-free Sacramento program for income eligible customers.

Finally, the last item is sustainability, and our objective here is to reduce the impact, the environmental impact of our operations.

Some accomplishments in this area include our, we completed our policy to set high level goals for sustainability within the department.

City Council adopted an ordinance that requires certain new buildings to include additional plumbing to use water, reduce water on site.

We participated in the river American River Basin study, and we completed some LED retrofit projects throughout some of our facilities.

This year will be focused on taking off our sustainability action plan, our energy management plan, and finally finalize the design of two projects to prevent trash from entering our waterways, which is part of a state regulation.

So in terms of next steps, this next spring will begin our process for updating the strategic plan to take us through the next five years.

We will be adding our new equity value, which will be reflected in our new plan, and we again will engage staff and the executive team to gain input on any proposed actions that should be considered for the next five year plan.

And we plan to have this completed next summer or fall timeframe.

So that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions or comments at this time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Let's see. Thank you. Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?

Hi. Thanks for your presentation. It looks like the DOU got a lot done last year. Have a couple questions. You mentioned that one of the items that got my interest was the DOU communications plan that was completed.

Is that something that's rarely available online? I think I'd be interested to see kind of what that plan is just because I think we've kind of teed up in previous meetings that the that by 2028 that we will have, you know, a need for rate increases.

And part of that that I think is going to be really important is communicating that to the public or the ratepayers early and often.

So I'm curious to see if there's overlap there if that's been factored in.

So yeah, our communications plan isn't on our website, but I can share that with you. And yeah, for the rate, the next rate increase, we will be.

I believe we will have a communications plan specific for that rate increase.

Great. Okay. I had two more questions.

You included a lot there that you've accomplished in the last fiscal year. Are there, you know, graphics or timelines or things like that that you've used to kind of show that off in, you know, plan our text or just maybe a suggestion of, you know, making sure that the public knows now that we're being good stewards of their rate pair funding to kind of strengthen that argument.

And when it comes to, you know, the rate increases.

So we, the accomplishment, I shared today, we're over the last four years. And so these were just highlights kind of the major accomplishments.

We do have a much larger document that tracks everything that we're trying to accomplish. And it's pretty unwieldy.

To your point, we don't have it's mostly internally focused in terms of our strategic plan and accomplishments of what we're doing.

So we don't have an external facing document or, you know, report about how what their accomplishments are the plan was.

But we can certainly share that with you in terms of the full plan that we have.

Yeah, that would be good to see in the future. And then you mentioned something that's coming up is the release of the auditor's report of the Water and Waste Water Funds.

And is there a timeline for when that might be complete and ready to review by us in the public if that's public?

Yeah, I believe the auditor's on track if they, if we say on track is early next year is when the plan, the report will be completed.

And it will work its way through the budget and audit and then full council.

And we, I believe we do plan also bring it back here to you guys for bringing auditors to kind of share the report findings with you all.

Great. Thank you so much.

Oh, Clark, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers for this item.

Okay. At this time, this was a recommendation only so no vote is required so we will move on to the next item.

Yes, no. Okay. And the next item is the Utile Rates Advisory Commission 2024 annual report and 2025 work plan.

Yes, I'll be providing a very brief read through once I have the clicker in hand.

So this report is based on a template that was developed by the clerk's office for use by all city commissions in preparing, presenting and submitting their annual reports.

To the personnel and public employees committee.

This is our table of contents.

And here we have the first section which goes over the background and establishment of the commission.

There's information regarding how the commission was set up to provide community participation in the rate setting process and the requirements for commission seat appointments.

This commission serves both the Department of Utilities and the recycling and solid waste division in each of our respective rate setting processes.

So the commission depends significantly on whether we are in a rate adjustment cycle or not with rate adjustments demanding significantly more time and resources.

Now, there have been some ordinance changes that are discussed here at the bottom that took place as we've been preparing the report.

So that's reflected in the commission ordinance changes and the code related to the commission is being moved to a new section of the city code.

So the number of the commission seats has been changed to mostly direct appointments of city council and the number of seats is changing from seven to 11.

Then we have our list of currently seated commissioners, recently departed commissioners and the primary DOU staff for the commission.

So we have our purpose, powers and duties section which further goes over the commission's role in holding public rate hearings and providing recommendations on utility rates.

Here we have our key accomplishments for the last year and this has been oriented around the commission's ongoing education and gathering of information to be best position for our next rate adjustment.

For our May meeting, we had a review of the financial highlights for FY23 and FY24.

We also had an election of a URAC chair and vice chair at the meeting in August.

We had our deferred maintenance progress report. We also had a DOU overview presentation.

We had another DOU financial update on the FY25 budget and FY24 year end.

And then we had a recycling and solid waste division presentation.

At this meeting, we've just gone over our strategic plan progress report and we're now in the middle of our URAC annual report.

Here we also have our commission resources expended. This is another component of the staff developed template which incorporates the hours and a standardized rate.

These are estimated times. So, you know, staff went through and developed a number of hours and resources expended that went into preparing commission reports and staff reports.

For our work plan for the upcoming year, we have two primary goals.

The first one is continuing this process of ongoing education and information gathering as this is we are not in a rate adjustment cycle right now or not in a rate adjustment year.

So, we're going to go through presentations of water planning efforts around River Arc and Water Plus.

We're going to have a wastewater and water fund review presentation, a DOU further DOU financial updates, recycling and solid waste updates, a URAC work plan and annual report.

And as we're doing here, a discussion around the next year's work plan.

And then, I'll lastly hear we have our calendar and this just further goes into detail on the exact outline of our agenda items for at a meeting by meeting basis.

So with that, I'll leave it back up to the commission.

Thank you.

Yep.

Can we get anybody to speak on this one?

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers for this item.

Here we go.

Okay. Are there any commissioners who was just speak on this item?

Okay. Yes.

I had a question about the item regarding the new seats and seat reallocation.

I saw it in the port that it was date of October 15th, but has that timeline changed?

So the seat reallocations have already been passed by City Council, but there's a, as I understand, a lag between when those were enacted and then when they actually go into effect.

So, yeah, at this point, we still have seven, but it will be going to 11 when it actually, but it has already been enacted.

So that has taken place as far as the City Council is concerned.

All right. Thank you.

I wish I ever really.

Yes. I had a question. I know a little bit about the river arc effort, the project, but what is a water plus?

I'm not sure what that is.

Just give me an idea what that is.

So water plus is an internal branding that we did for a project that involves the water system.

So it includes expansion of our Sacramento River water treatment plant.

It includes transmission main work that will support both river arc and expansion of that plant.

It involves resiliency projects that we will undertake at the existing treatment plants to ensure that we have ability to treat with

ozone and be able to transition out disinfection to sodium hypochloride.

So there's a number of different projects that goes into it, but we call it holistically water plus because it involves the water system enhancing it and ensuring its resilience.

We will share there's a lot of detail in that project.

So as we share with you, we'll go into some of that detail and the specific projects that are going to be undertaken as part of water plus.

It is a long term project. So it's nothing that's going to be done in the next three to five years here, but in the long term.

Working on phases of the projects that eventually will get us to completion in the long term.

Is it a city specific project? Is that what a plus is just the city, the city's infrastructure. Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Videos.

Okay, so this does require a motion of vote. So is there a motion and a second for this item?

Motion to pass.

Second.

Yeah, I have a motion by Commissioner Everley and a second by Commissioner Johnson.

Will the clerk please call the roll for vote.

Thank you chair. Commissioner's please unmute. Vice Chair Everley.

Yes. Commissioner Johnson.

Yes. Commissioner Tran. Yes. And Chair Zito. Yes. Thank you. The motion passes.

All right.

That's all we really have. At this point, isn't it?

Let's see. The next item is for Commissioner comments, ideas and questions.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak?

Nothing. No one.

Okay.

The last item is public comments. Matters not on the agenda.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the public comments?

Thank you chair. We have no speakers.

Okay. This pretty much concludes today's agenda. I just want to make sure that we all know this is our last meeting of the year.

That's correct. And we come back in the agenda.

March. March. March. That's a long, long time from now.

So, okay. There was a calendar that was sent out if anybody didn't receive it. You can go in there and look.

Okay. So, this concludes today's agenda. Thank you everybody for your participation.

The meeting is adjourned.