Good afternoon and welcome to the 230 Public Works Committee meeting.

I'm Councillor Director Wright, and I call this meeting to order.

Item number two is Simone Gitten's appointment to the Greater Tulsa Area African American Affairs Commission, filling a vacancy.

The term will expire May 1st, 2029.

Ms.

Gittons, come on, Dan.

Did I say your last name?

Yeah, Gitten.

He's like kittens.

Okay, I thought we would talk.

Well, welcome to our table.

And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you would like to serve in this capacity?

Yeah, well, um, my name is Simone, of course.

Um, I like to say I'm a new Tulson still, kind of sorta.

I came here through Tulsa Remote about three and a half years ago, and I just really fell in love with the city.

Um, it reminds me of Tucson, Arizona, where I went to school at, so it's same, but it's like big city, but small town.

Small town.

I like to say two uh Tulsa is like five people removed.

So every time I meet five people, I'm like, oh, I know so and so, and yada.

So it's really exciting in regards to that.

Um I love all of the things that are happening in Tulsa.

I get to know about a lot of things and go to a lot of events and just get involved in a lot of opportunities.

Um I guess my real job that like allows me to exist.

Um I work for an ed tech company that services NYU's master's degree of mental health and wellness counseling.

Um, so get to talk to students all day about why they want to get into mental health counseling, if that's actually a thing, if they need to maybe go a new route, all that jazz.

And um, I mean, outside of my real job, I like Sam really involved.

Um right now I'm in Typrose, so I get to do their welcome committee, so I'm co-chair of that.

Um I'm on the Tulsa Voter Coalition that represents TIPRO's, so we do a lot of voter initiatives and such.

Um I mean, is there anything else that you want to know specifically?

I don't know.

Let me see.

Let's look at a lot of things.

Do we have any questions?

If you have any with all of those, I don't have like kids or anything like that, so I feel like I just everything that I do is already exciting to me.

So that is what I do.

I'm doing my master's degree right now in higher education administration, and I guess something not serious.

I like to go to brunch.

You guys have a lot of good brooch spots.

Yes.

So, you know, still trying to find good Mexican food, so if anybody has Arizona Mexican food is very different than what is over here.

Yes.

No, that's right.

We haven't lost very often.

Oh, if you want to pour within my way.

Not a problem.

You know, that's not sexy.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm from New Mexico, so we got the bot.

Okay.

Um, yeah, brunch in honestly.

Um just meeting lots of new people.

Yeah, I'm a very like friendly person, so um, everywhere I go, I feel like I meet so either somebody new or I see a lot of people that didn't know already.

So it's good to meet you for the first time.

I love your energy.

We are taking up a vote to confirm your um commission uh nomination on May 6th at 5 o'clock downstairs.

You are welcome to come.

Um you're not required to.

If you do come and want to speak after the vote, you'll be invited up.

Thanks for your willingness to serve.

It's nice to meet you.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, item number three is Fatima Linares, uh, reappointment to the Greater Tulsa Area Hispanic Latinx Affairs Commission.

Term expires December 31st, 2028.

Attended nine of 11 meetings, and you live in District 4.

Hi.

Welcome back.

Hi, nice thing.

Yes, so since there are you know, some new folks since you've come before us before, just give us a little introduction and tell us you know why you want to continue on serving, what you're working on with the commission, and thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um grateful to be back.

Um, I think this is my since 2014, I believe.

Um, so I've been in the commission for a while now.

I am chair of the education committee.

So I take part of the planning for the Tomaji Bera Awards, which by the way, you guys are uh invited, and it's coming up May 14th at the City Library here in downtown, where we um recognize 30 scholars and 10 heroes in the community.

And this year we have about a good number uh between Tulsa Public Schools, um Tulsa Honor's Academy and Glenpool.

So please come say hi and take pictures with the kids.

Oh, so that's part of the reason why I like to continue serving.

I mean in the uh the commission for a while and chairing this um committee for quite a few years as well.

So just wanting to improve the the work that we're doing and continue to recognize our students that are the future of the city.

Um I'm a mother of a baby boy.

Um they live in Tulsa since 2004.

Long time.

Um for Tulsa Police schools with our immigrant population, and that will tell you the heart that I have for our immigrant population here in Tulsa.

Well, great.

Do we have any questions or comments?

Well, you've done this before, so again, uh, we'll be taking up your confirmation vote on Wednesday, May 6th, 5 o'clock.

You are welcome to join, but you don't have to, and then thank you for reiterating that invitation for the 14th.

And congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, on to item number four, an ordinance amending title 15, Tulsa revised ordinance is titled Franchises and Grants, Chapter 3, Title 2011, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company Franchise granting a franchise for a term of 20 years, providing for use and repair of rights away, establishing engineering standards, defining grantees' duty to move or alter facilities, establishing a franchise rate of 4% of gross receipts, requiring voter approval of this franchise at a special election on August 25th, 2026, providing for several ability, providing that the franchise shall become effective upon grantees, filing of an acceptance and repealing the previous franchise.

There is a public hearing on May 6th, and today we have Miss Davis to give us an update.

Yes.

And I see lots of um interested stakeholders in the room as well.

Uh Sarah Davis and Council staff.

Um, yes, there are half of the room is here to help with this item if there are additional questions.

Okay.

So I will I'll go um through this and kind of remind us of where we are in the process.

So you remember last week um we did a high-level overview of the process so far and where we were in the franchise.

Um, and we hit a lot of the points of the franchise in that ordinance, and so there or in that presentation.

So there are three legislative actions that ultimately in this process you all will take.

Um, this is the first one.

So this is actually the franchise ordinance language, and in uh your backend material, there is a red line copy of that ordinance.

Um, the only thing we're doing with this ordinance today is just having the committee discussion.

You'll remember we extended this out a little bit so we could make sure to table it some community conversations um during the process.

Um the next item, I'll just mention these two, but we won't talk through these today is um the resolution calling the election.

So that's just a similar resolution to how you call every election, and then the public ways fund ordinance, which is the ordinance um that ultimately governs that public ways fund to amend that one.

We will have to go through a brown ordinance process um just because it was established with that.

So looking at um the backup on the red line copy, there's about six or seven um high-level items in the franchise ordinance.

So again, it's for a 20-year term at a four percent rate.

Um the additional funds, the franchise ordinance has those going into that special fund, the public ways fund for ride-aboy maintenance and corridor enhancements.

And then two points that we didn't spend a lot of time on last time, and and a lot of people in the room can help answer these questions if you have more detail, is in section 307.

Um, you will see that this section really governs um sometimes ONG needs to do work in the right of way.

And so some additions you'll see uh in the definition section are um of those ADA standards.

So we want to make sure that all work um complies with ADA requirements, um, including temporary sidewalk requirements.

Um so an example of that is you can't just put down clean rock.

Um, you actually need to put something that complies with ADA standards.

Um, and then it does provide we know we know we've got good partners, right?

But in the unlikely event um that something does need fixed after a certain notice um uh period happens, the city could step in and go ahead and correct something that needs to be corrected.

So that's what um section 307 covers.

308 is your other section that you're gonna see a lot of items in, a lot of amendments in, and this is a section that really governs that sometimes the city of Tulsa needs to do um work in the right-of-way, and that impacts the location of ONG's facilities.

Um, and so the two engineer groups um on the side of the city and on ONG met a lot um to better coordinate that time.

Um, and so that both of us, the city and ONG would be more timely in getting those facilities uh moved for projects.

So if a construction project has four phases, maybe they can start working on phase one while two and three and four are in later stages.

If you have any questions, um Paul or Morgan from OG, they're happy to come up and talk through those.

That we could reopen discussions about that, but that would take a lot of discussion here, and it would take two public votes.

So but just you don't know what happens in the future, so just leaving that open as well.

And then finally, you know, this is a bold decision by Jack.

Um took out the requirement to provide pager numbers and fax numbers from so some of us want those ends to be it was it was an aggressive aggressive policy decision.

Decision making.

I know that added telegrams.

If you want to discuss that link, I think that would be our Twitter handles or something like that.

Right.

Right.

So that is a high level overview of the changes.

Um we can take any questions, and then I have just our next steps to go over after.

Okay, I'm gonna use chair privilege to go first, and then if you guys have questions, jump in.

Um on section 301.

Can we just how did we arrive at 20 2015 on the agreement?

Yeah, so you want to have consent.

So the whole point of a franchise agreement is to have consistency in this.

Um, and so most communities are probably at 25.

Um, so this does give us that flexibility to revisit it earlier if we need to, and obviously there is flexibility too in the franchise agreement.

Like if the uh natural gas industry just dramatically changes, there's flexibility to go back and look at that.

And so we felt like 20 years gave us enough flexibility, but also provided that consistency for the community.

Okay.

Any questions from I know uh the chair and vice chair and immediate past year, we're all in the room, so they can maybe answer some questions.

Well, yes, but I mean you were in these discussions in a way that the rest of us weren't.

So uh especially for the newer counselors who haven't done franchise agreements.

Do you have any questions or things that you yeah, I need to go over?

I mean, another increase.

I'm just I have to get to the bottom of it.

Yeah, I think I've actually if we can hear I'm trying to think about or try to understand this in terms of I know ONG just put up a request for a rate increase in front of the corporation commission last week, last week, and I'm just trying to think through like that was PSO maybe.

PSOG, so the why don't you come to the table?

So we could be online.

Yeah, that's all right.

So I just could you introduce yourself for our audience and our secretary.

Justin Frederick uh on behalf of Oklahoma Natural.

So I do handle the rates for us as well at the commission.

And so the rate mechanism that we're under with the state is an annual rate review, and so we're we're as a gas utility, we have an annual mechanism, so every year we go out there and they review the rates and they're adjusted within like a band.

And so uh that filing is made um every year around the end of March, end of March, first part of April.

So that's when that was filed, and then just this week we are required since it's a potential rate increase.

Uh the state requires us to give individual notice to every customer we have, which is 920,000 plus, and so those notices began going out this week.

So that may be where you saw that.

If you're if you're a customer of ours, you may have got your your notice.

We do those over the billing cycles that go over a month, and so those started here this week.

Okay, so just to clarify the so it's not outside of like a typical annual band of increase, is what you're saying.

So, what you'll typically see with like a major electric utilities and gas utilities is the typical structure as you go in for what's called a general rate review, and typically you do that every three to five years where everything's looked at.

We have a mechanism in place where basically certain things are set, and then we go in and have it adjusted once a year.

And so the commission reviews the AGs involved in those cases as well as commission staff and any other interveners, and um they review everything, and then there will be an adjustment potentially uh to the rates on an annual basis.

What you'll find is it ends up mitigating the increases where if you went three to five years and say you were capital heavy on spending and they just start recovering that you would get a much larger increase after three to five years, which you may see with say your PSO utility that comes in.

Whereas ours, if we're in a mode of where there's capital being spent, it'll be more gradual because you're getting a smaller increase every year potentially.

But it does give the another good part for the state is it gives them an opportunity every year to look at the at the rate and what's your recovery.

Okay, that's helpful.

Any other questions or comments?

Uh councilman.

Sorry.

No, yeah, um what is happening in Iraq contributing to any of those you mean Iran, sorry.

Are you talking about the franchise fees?

Just the ability to get just products.

Oh, so how the gas bill and so how the gas bill work is we have a rate of it's basically it the two main components of your bill for the gas utility is going to be one, the commodity cost, and so that you'll see a fuel ladder on there, a fuel cost on there, or PGA cost.

The utility's not allowed to make any money off that.

There's no profit on that, so it's just it's a it's a pass-through cost of what we pay for that commodity, the gas cost, and then the other portion is just our service of what it takes to maintain our pipes, and so that's what's built in your service fee.

And so to the extent anything from an economy basis increases our cost of construction, that ends up at some point getting flowed into your service amount, and to the extent we have that anything from Iran or anywhere else in the world impacts commodity cost, which sometimes it does, just like a hurricane or something would as well.

Uh, that could eventually make it into the piece where you're paying the fuel component.

Okay.

That's it.

Thank you for um boosting the signal on the ADA.

I think we learned some lessons through the last time, and just um, I think a lot of times in district four we see uh impact.

So yeah, schedule modify your focus of our of our conversation is just making sure we comply with those standards, which everybody wants to, but we just explicitly.

So, and thank you for your forward thinking, uh, Mr.

Attorney on technology.

Or bringing us into the 21st century.

I still get taxes, though, so I still have that.

I don't know, this younger generation feels very retro.

We might see pagers again.

Yeah, we have some.

Um just click on next steps.

So um ONG will be at the community conversations on all of at all of them.

Yes, I think maybe there's one we were.

There's one and I need to make sure I can't.

There's one we're trying to find a cover.

But it's like a tabling situation, so constituents can visit someone or um on May 6.

Um, we won't have any votes on any of these items, but we'll go ahead and start bringing the resolution for the election.

Um, and then this ordinance will be on first reading, and there will also be a public hearing opportunity at the five o'clock on the six.

On the sixth, uh-huh.

And then um the pre when the public ways fund um we get that ordinance finalized and moving forward.

Um you just you'll see that press conference notice.

So I didn't want you to be caught off guard by uh public ways press conference notice.

So is there anything else?

Well, I on behalf of the full council want to thank um Sarah Davis for taking the lead on this for us to help us understand it.

And um, I know you have lots of things you have to do, but once every 20 years, this is my favorite so and thank you to the counselors who were in the room doing the work too.

We're in the room.

And to you all for working with us.

So we're showing up.

So that we're leading the and the conversation and the efforts and all of this of putting the um all of the the ordinance together and public works and our ONG for as you're rightly saying, it's a heavy lift, and so things to Sarah and General our staff for doing that.

It's a contributing it's a once in a 20-year-old.

It is, and there's really specific timelines that we have met.

So all parties.

Thanks for prioritizing it with all that we have going on.

Um, for the public, if you want to be heard before us at a five o'clock uh public hearing will be on the sixth, you get a full five minutes for that, and then of course, when we take up the vote, public call again.

So I just I don't see any media partners in the room, so we'll have to respond as people start to become more aware of it and community conversations throughout the month of May directly with with the folks making the proposal, so are co-proposing it with us.

So lots of opportunity to engage between now and then.

Thank you all for coming on that.

Thank you guys.

We'll move to item number five, which is a discussion and update with representatives from public works and water and sewer departments regarding refuge refuse, stormwater, water, and sewer collection fees and charges anticipated for 2026-2027.

A little switch out here.

Yeah, if you want to do the tear words.

Oh, on this item, they're gonna be trash for presentations.

Oh, okay.

I have one item that I read, so my work is done.

Yes, your work is done, and then we'll move the presentations through.

Thank you.

Oh, you guys wore ties today because of your presentation.

Is that is that in front?

We don't wear ties.

Awesome!

Says the guy who has it shaves.

I do want to say that Counselor Datton is rocking orange today.

Public safety awareness.

Oh, shoes and vests.

And orange.

Oh, I thought you guys were kidding the group.

No.

Remember that I own our Mr.

Zachary gave us a whole spiel last time.

So let me get out of the way.

Sorry, that was unfortunate.

I think that's going to be a good thing.

Yeah, really.

Okay.

Okay, let's focus on our friends down here that are gonna put a presentation here.

Who's who's speaking first?

Okay, Terry Ball.

Mr.

Ball.

So I'm gonna present you the tear uh presentation first, and we're just gonna give you all kinds of information today.

So uh first things you'll have here in front of you.

Make sure you've got this one.

It's a non-PowerPoint presentation, so that's what we're gonna go through first.

Um as far as tear uh in the FY27 budget.

Uh first we just wanted to give you, you know, tear basically has four main contracts that provide all the services, uh, the larger services, uh except for bulky waste, which we do in house.

But uh refuge and recycling hauling, um, it commenced the current contract.

Eric was actually in charge of this back in the day.

Uh it's about to expire finally, so uh it expires September 30th of this year, uh at FY27.

We put that out to bid.

Uh current hauler is new solutions, and the new contract uh is also gonna be new solutions.

The new contract will take uh effect on October 1st, and it has an expiration date of September 30th, 2036 with an optional renewal for five years.

So basically that one is uh they're gonna have all new trucks.

They've ordered all new trucks.

Uh they're taking delivery of them this summer, and some of them will actually be out there uh operational before the new contract starts, but they will have all new trucks that you'll be seeing out in the field um by this fall when this new contract comes in place.

Recycling services uh that did commence on May 29, 2012.

Excuse me.

And expires on September 30th, 2035.

Uh that's with TRT or landfill uh 2023, expires in 2033 with the American AEL, American Environmental Landfill, and then waste energy.

Uh we have that contract started uh 2023 and expires in 2037 with one five-year extension possibility with the reworld.

So those are all all our contracts basically.

Uh we're good until the if everybody uh exercises their options, we're good till almost mid-2030s with our big contracts, so that provides some stability as far as uh we've walked those prices in long term, and now they're just basically uh they're all dictated annually by whatever the inflation rate is.

They get that increase in their contract based on whatever the the uh consumer price index, and there's different ones that we use for each contract depending on which one's linked to their type of service, but it's all done by the federal government.

Tear contracts, just so you have an idea of what those prices are.

I'm not gonna go through all of them, but you can see FY26.

Our pricing uh because the way our contracts are set up, it goes through the end of the calendar year instead of fiscal year.

So you'll see a price switch starting January 1 each year.

So you'll see right now we're in the process we are in the 2958 per ton with reworld for uh taking care of our uh waste, and then and that will carry through to the end of this calendar year, and then in um July or January 1, we anticipate 3105 um with that.

So each of those that shows what the price per ton of what they do to handle that annually.

We handle we send about a hundred and seventeen, almost a hundred and eighteen thousand tons of municipal waste.

We have a we have an annual estimated tonnage of recycling of about 18,500 tons per year.

So we do a good job of a recycling.

Sorry.

Eric water, everybody else got bottled water.

Because he knows how many microplastics are in there.

Yeah.

Wow, feeling really superior without your PFAS.

Sorry.

No, that's good.

I'm good.

Uh as far as what I was talking about earlier, the consumer price index, each of those are a little different.

They're not just consumer price index.

Some of them are linked to fuel, some of them are linked to trash haulers.

There's all kinds of price indexes that the federal government puts out, and it just says what this is what you owe that you should adjust your contract annual.

That's how our contracts are all set up on that.

That way allows us to do a multi-year, and with it being through tear, we can contract through multi-year agreements.

Um, as far as just this next thing that talks about the green waste.

The reason we put that in there talking about FY24, it's like, why is that in there?

FY24, we did a study of the green waste, and we came out and decided Teradid that we needed to split and get out of the wholesale um green waste business.

We had put out a RFP and basically came out with a contractor.

Uh, they're out of uh CS Carry, they're out of Kansas City.

We went and toured uh tear members went to also, and they starting last um fall, last they opened up the new commercial green waste site.

So basically, if you go out there now, you'll see a commercial gate and you'll see a residential gate.

So residential, anybody that has a utility bill gets to come into our gate, they get to drop off for free, they get to pick up firewood, they get to pick up mulch.

All that's there available to them.

If you're a commercial person who charges for services to people to clear their yards or whatever, they go to the commercial and they pay whatever the gate fee is of what's posted there, and they do that.

There's two other uh commercial operations, one in Jinx, one in Owasso.

So they've got three three places they can go to if they so choose to dispose of commercial green waste now.

But basically, the city it's also got out of the commercial green waste business.

Um there's some talk about as far as green waste disposal talks about you know if currently it's five dollars and twenty-eight cents a cubic yard, which is they've kept what we were charging when we were doing it.

Uh so that's still the gate fee if you uh come and bring it to the commercial side.

Our facility out at the green waste site, uh, the address is listed there, but it's open six days a week, 730 to 430.

We are closed on Wednesdays, that's our day that we service equipment.

Um just get the place cleaned up a little bit, and it's only open uh well, it doesn't really apply as much now.

Residents on Sundays, but uh as far as I know everybody always has concern how many green waste bags can you put at your curb.

That's 15 as long as they're in the clear bags, and then there's the information about the household pollutant disposal facility.

I will tell you that's one of the best things we have got going out there, and the numbers that we're seeing just continue to climb.

Uh, we set a new record of how many customers we had this year, this last year, and we're already this year averaging even on Wednesdays in the high 60s, almost 70 customers per day, which is about 15 to 20 higher than what's been.

It's just the word keeps getting out, and especially if you start going and shopping at your uh local stores and see what the price of certain things are oil, um, chemicals, all those things that were brought to us if they're unopened.

We go and we have a swap shop that allow people to use them for what their ultimate use was meant to be, and that's what we're seeing a lot of people uh that go in and do that because it is you know if you can save 20 dollars on if you go buy a quart of oil, a quart of oil, it's almost ten dollars nowadays.

If it's full synthetic, it's even more than that.

So we have people that come in there, and we've got some of what we call our frequent shoppers that they're always finding stuff to bring so they can shop in the in the facility.

So it's been a very good success story.

Uh both it and the green waste are probably two of the most unheralded unavered.

We don't advertise a lot, but they're very well heavily used.

So on page two, I really just wanted to bring we are making a lot some changes on services, so I just want to make sure everybody's very clear on this.

Our prices went up quite a bit on the hauling side of it, but we were able through making some cuts and some efficiencies.

Uh we were able to keep the rate uh increase down to four percent on trash.

Um but you'll notice on some of these things when you see the uh what the rate up until uh 930 of 26 is and what it goes up by, you'll notice that that doesn't translate to what we're increasing the price by.

We were able to keep some other things below uh our costs under uh bring them down some so that it ended up being a four percent increase, which doesn't reflect how much actual our increase was on the new hauling.

Um far as backyard and the old contract, existing one, you have a backyard and backyard extended.

Now they'll just be a backyard.

So you can see the price went from $5.36 for backyard, extended was $943.

Now the new contract is just $20 uh for that distance.

So you can see how much that went up.

So the backyard, these what we call the services that you choose, uh, all the cart services, you'll pay.

So the eight dollars is our will be $28 with the new one uh with the new starting in the October 1st, and that's basically covers our overhead plus the $20 that that we are actually charged by new solutions to do that backyard service.

One thing I do want to really encourage all of y'all, if you have citizens who cannot due to medical issues, move their can.

There is a process.

If you go online to City of Tulsa go, there's a form that they can have their doctor fill out, and once it's filled out, they will get the normal trash rate and not have to pay for backyard service.

So please, we always talk about that when we go to public meetings.

But if you have anybody or if anybody reaches out to your office about that, if they are medically not able to move their trash can, there is a process, we will do it, and there's no extra cost as long as the doctor fills out the form and attests that they cannot do that.

So just answer fine Genny Q question.

Yeah.

So twice a week will no longer exist with the new contract.

Uh we were down to about 3,000 customers, actually below 3,000 or right around 3,000.

It has been dwindling over the years, and it the amount of road traffic that that trash truck puts on there for those few customers that were requesting twice a week, that is now uh gone effective October 1st, and we celebrate that, especially a person who has to fix the roads.

Um additional carts, um, there is a charge for additional 96.

And believe it or not, I think with the amount of recycling that people do, especially with all their cardboard and everything that comes in nowadays, uh, there has been some desire for two recycling carts.

So there is an availability now to have a second recycling cart.

There is a cost with that, but it's still relatively mild as far as uh the price on that.

Oh, sorry, but if you go to that next page.

Um so other than that, if you look at that um example down on physical limited service, uh, you'll see that that price is the same as the normal customer, and that's what I was mentioning earlier, as far as what that price is.

And then all these prices down here are just the prices that we actually are charged, and we add our um overhead fee on to that as far as the city's part of it.

We do not make profit, it's just covering our expenses.

One thing I do want to really point out, because this is the biggest change as far people may be used to is in the past a extra uh refuse sticker was fifty cents each, so you can put one of those on a bag and get it collected.

The new bid came in for it went from seven cents is what new solutions used to charge us.

Now the new rate is dollar fifty.

So uh so that new charge would be two dollars.

So right now, if you had gone and bought those stickers uh starting October 1st, you'd have to put four stick of the old stickers on a bag for us to pick it up for new solutions to pick it up.

There'll be a new sticker coming out.

We're working with communications to design the new two dollar sticker.

Um they are not like a stamp, they're not a forever sticker, so you don't get to use one.

Um it is four stickers, and that's just the cost of service that was bid, and that was the new cost of service.

So some people, if they use a lot of those, it may make more sense to get a second trash cart uh if you are a heavy user.

You're probably gonna be um, you know, it doesn't take very long to basically recover if you're a heavy user of stickers.

So but that is uh as far as just want to make sure y'all were aware of the some of the nuances of the new uh rates, and again, those were public you bid, those were the prices that we received.

We had to see the four or five uh haulers all bid it, and this was the one that was selected.

Next, uh do we want to do that?

No, no, no, that's not grass, that's just extra trash.

You get 15 bags of grass still.

It's that people that sometimes have more trash that will fit in their trash can.

They could do the sticker and put that out next to it.

But it's just been clear back.

And we get extra stickers when they mess our bags.

Well, uh moving on that.

This is more just this is more just the rate model to show you.

If you go to line 22, um, this is where it'll sort of show you basically it's a two and a half million dollar impact with the new um, it's really probably closer to three million if you do it for a full 12 months is what the increase in hauling was uh with all the bids.

Um so if you go looking 16.7 million, and this is only a nine-month uh expense on that 19.2.

So it looks like it went up two and a half million, but you have to remember that's nine months worth of, so really it's probably closer to almost uh almost a three million dollar impact with the new bids for the year-round hauling.

Um thing I will point out too uh green waste hauling line eight, our revenue went down there because we did get rid of that, but also our revenue, our expenses on that uh went down by 800,000 by not running the commercial.

Um one thing I will point out too uh Green Waste hauling line eight, our revenue went down there because we did get rid of that, but also our revenue, our expenses on that uh went down by 800,000 by not running the commercial, so we uh we actually came out ahead on that.

And then bulky waste pick up.

Um it's been ten dollars for I think since uh uh it started, and so basically we've uh because of the expenses going up, and that is a uh selected service, it is going up to 20 dollars uh starting October 1st, also it's still a great bargain.

Uh it still gets you eight cubic yards of uh uh trap of picked up there at that curb side.

Other than that, you can go through there's some uh places where we uh cut some expenses.

Um the uh capital replacement on carts.

Uh we've dropped it from a million and a half to a million just based on what we're actually seeing.

And regional base went down by 800,000 and emergency response now that the city in the past tear has been uh relied on to help with the city expenses on immediate storm response, like when we had the Father's Day storm, Tear actually leased the site up at the airport, and then the city will eventually reimburse TARE.

There's like $50,000 of what we paid.

But now this is being reduced down to $100,000 since the city has the rainy day fund for storm response now.

So went from $500,000 down to $100,000.

And about $50,000 was the most we've ever used, and this has been in place that amount.

I think for about five or six years now, we had a half a million dollars in that account, and we've very rarely use so that is everything tear related.

Yes, okay.

So let's take about five minutes or so because that was good ten minutes, Terry.

I have uh district one, three, five, and eight.

Counselor Hallmer.

Um the backyard services that you mentioned.

Are there any um flyers they've had to be when I say a meeting?

What up, you know, the the graphic that we get received to share on our constant contacts on our Facebook social media so that our constituents don't know.

Yes, we will get with you talking about for the medical side of it.

Yes, everything that we will get with yeah, we can get with communications work on that.

We've done that push through Facebook and some other things in the past.

We are gonna be doing a bill stuffer.

I believe it's in the popular though.

So if I no, no, yes.

We we will get you, we will get you all y'all something.

But and I meant to say in the I believe it's either July or August, I think it's August is what's gonna end up being.

There will be an item in the bill stuffer explaining the new trash services and the new rates.

We'll also be doing a separate letter to the 3,000 customers that are twice a week to let them know that way if they need to decide.

Are they really heavy users?

What we have found out, a lot of people that are twice a week, people travel, and that way if they're not here that week, or if they forget, they just like having the flexibility of picking which day, so it's really not a need, it was more of a um, so we're just gonna send them a letter, and if they really are a heavy user and that's the reason they need it twice a week, then that'll allow them to know they can get a second can if they need to.

So, but yes, we will work on that and get that to y'all.

And the backyard service for two cans, right?

Those folks that travel, they could do the backyard service or what is it?

Could they do it?

Oh, is that just for medical now?

Yeah, I was asking about that.

Okay.

Yeah, you're talking about all right.

Well, for the people that are traveling, if they have the backyard service, then they don't have to put it out.

As long as they don't walk their gate.

Oh no, if they travel, they still have to pay the backyard service.

That's what I was saying.

They can do the backyard service, be gone, yes, and not have to put up the card.

Yeah, which kind of mitigates the other thing.

You just like check.

You just have to remember to cancel and then get back in town.

District three uh Jackie Down right now.

So I did the calculations on the um service description rates, and the rates are still, I mean, it's still pretty low.

It's like two fifty-seven increase on the 32 gallon, and that would be for the once-a-week service or twice a week.

All these are once a week.

Once a week, okay.

Everything quoted here is all once a week.

Okay, well, that's what I thought, which it should.

So is there any thoughts on offering incentives for something smaller than the 32?

No.

No, the the trying to keep inventory of these cans right now alone is is problematic.

The 32 gallon is primarily being used in like condo units.

Um, but no, we're not trying to go anything smaller than that.

I mean, there even trying to keep these three sites.

I mean, the 64 and 32, like a recycling will only have 96 gallon recycling cans.

We won't we'll not have anything smaller than that, but it's well for the trash, the trash bins, there they won't be smaller.

I just think that with more recycling, I can just speak for myself that I don't put my I don't have to have my trash picked up but once a month.

My wife and I now that we're empty nesters, a lot of times I have one to two bags in my 96 gallon cart, but that's just what it is.

But I my yeah, I can fill a 96 gallon up with recycling every every week, and which I do upcome the holidays.

Well, I'm just wondering if maybe down the lower thanksgiving and Christmas are my two times I fill up my 96 gallon.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Councillor Archie, you're on the tear board, right?

Yes.

So maybe if there's a policy, like model policy, you can okay.

He's our representative basically on okay, Terry.

Over the years have talked about brown waste as well.

Yeah, like other cities do.

Yeah.

Um American waste has like the permit ability to do um composting, it's just hasn't been activated.

Right.

But other cities have that.

What is it?

Brown carts for yeah, we've looked there the cost to do we're trying to keep all the cost, I mean everything has a cost, and so there's just when we looked at that in the past and tear has looked at it, it doesn't make financial sense compared to what the that system would cost to do.

So what we do have the availability is if you want it turn into compost.

You can we really encourage backyard composting that way.

You you compost it to your yard and then put it straight into your own garden.

If not, you can deliver to the greenway site and somebody else will eventually utilize that.

But as far as having another stand-up program, that would just add more and more rate increases, and we're at the time we're trying to minimize them and not I mean we've already through this system uh tear alone has added went from one CEO crew, we're currently paying for five CEO crews to keep the right-of-way clean.

So hopefully you've noticed you know the right-of-way looks better than it has in the past, but that's because TARE the TARR is historically funded three CEO crews, and then um through some of the CARES Act funding, there was two crews the city picked up, and then starting last year, uh TARE picked up the cost of those two.

So right now, you know, we we fund five right-of-way crews right now through this too.

So that's we're we're trying to be selective of what programs and like so composting can be done very easily at home.

We uh the Met does lots of uh education on the value of composting in your yard, and that way, like I said, you know where it came from, you compost it, you put it in your garden, and um it it it ends up being a you're not doing a you're a small what much smaller carbon footprint instead of having a big pick it up, haul it, turn it, and then go back and pick it up.

If you do it in your own yard, the uh carbon footprint that you're leaving is very very small compared to having a full-blown process.

There's also community gardens that'll accept donating compost.

Did you have it a follow-up?

Um, yeah, I know that um there's concern also about human error.

I guess that's been going around.

Oh, that's a spin of state legislative compost.

I don't know where that left off.

Well that's my category.

Oh, is it okay?

Yeah, let's get people using that for composting.

That's that's what I was getting at is for composting.

That's what it's on the human.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe we need a PSA, why that is a terrible idea.

Yeah, I'm not sure communicable diseases everywhere is yeah, but I we encourage people to compost vegetable scraps, grass clipping, and leaves.

We'll just clarify that.

Right, drowning.

Okay, animal pet waste should be thrown away.

Yes.

Um if you have chickens, then you can do that.

You know, I do notice the city allows chickens, and you there is a process, but you have to be careful with that too, because we also from the stormwater side caution because we also don't want that because that's how E.

coli bacteria ends up in the crease of stream.

So it's all about responsible pet management, uh whether it's a chicken or a dog or a cat.

There is a ownership to that that you need to be aware of and make sure you're not impacting your neighbor and the community or yourselves, quite honestly.

Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense.

Count also, I just wonder, I'm sorry, one more follow-up.

Um are you guys utilizing a better way as well for the street right-aways?

Uh or they've got it it's it's handled through asset management, but the better way funding, I believe, still comes from TER.

I believe it's 50,000.

Is that still I'm not sure how much it is, but in the past, TARE has been the funding source for better way.

I've I that's handled through Mark Hogan's group, so I can't answer that other than in the past, TARE has contributed to costs related to right-of-way cleanup because that is solid waste cleanup is the is the responsibility and and goal of tear.

Okay, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Yes, uh, Counselor Gilbert.

Um, so the new trucks, yes, uh trash trucks.

I know when we were putting this together back in 2011, the new system we talked about the trucks with the arm to pick up and dump instead of slight slide so yeah, so are those new trucks going to have the claw to dump the truck.

Well they'll have the the they'll have slide pickup, they'll still have some rear, but with the new system, they're going to have a new camera system that's basically an AI system that will self-learn over time.

So then if they go in and they see that a um recycling can has contamination in it and it'll have an algorithm that determines that, it will reject it, it'll take a picture of it and it'll keep on driving.

Same thing is as they go down each place, they'll actually be take if there's not a trash can there, it will actually take a picture of that.

And so when we get the calls, we have some folks that forget to put their trash can, then call and say, Well, they missed me.

Well, now we'll actually have video that we'll have video evidence whether that trash can was there at the time they did it.

So there's a lot of new technology in this contract that didn't exist in the old contract.

Technology didn't even exist when it was bid.

Uh there was RFID in the handles, and that was the technology.

Now it's gonna be actually video technology with cameras on the trucks.

It will also protect them that if somebody says that the truck damaged their property, they'll have video evidence yes or no, they hit something.

But on the flip side is we also have video evidence is did was there a trash can there when they did, if they missed it, then there'll be video evidence that says they did, but we'll also have video evidence if the trash can wasn't there when they were buying.

We'll also the AI system for the recycling is brand new.

Uh we're one of the very first cities that's gonna try this.

Uh so it's gonna be a self-learning system, and we'll see how it goes.

But our intent is hopefully that we'll be able to we've already just this last uh month ago, we hit our historic low ever contamination rate in our recycling, and so we're hoping with this uh and with our aggressiveness of uh pulling cancer people that are using the recycling can as a second trash can that we'll continue to lower our contamination rate, which makes the recycling more valuable, and it also we pay for contamination.

If there's contamination, there's a surcharge on top of our recycling processing fee.

And the lower we can get that, the more valuable our recycling is to the market, and also the less we pay our recycling uh company to actually process that.

So there's this new contract will be interesting.

Like I said, we're we're we can probably count on one hand um the this system.

There's one in South Carolina that this company is has been doing, and there's a couple others that are in the that it's all in its infancy on this AI as far as being able to find contamination.

So we're gonna be on the leading edge on this, so it's gonna be fun to sort of watch where this goes.

Um also the green waste pickup.

So um like counselor Lakin's 24 bags of leaves.

Are we mulching those?

Those go to the trash energy plant.

Okay, so they still have to be in clear bags though, just so that we make sure that's supposed to stick to that.

There's right, but I mean we back in the day.

Sorry, I have to go back there, but we are talking about um mulching, and so I guess that's we have when we've looked at the cost to try to do that.

It's just not a program that I feel like we need to.

There's so many other needs with trying to clean the city up that the mulching, the cost it would add, it would add a significant amount increase to the rate structure to try to add mulching that we've really chosen that we really do want to push that on site mulching, is really where it's at if we're gonna do that.

Not trying to bring up a mulching program at this point in time because with the inflationary costs weight hit everything.

We're trying to be limited on what has a return on value, cleaning the right-of-way has a return on value, taking paint that keeps it out of the storm system and the sanitary sewer.

So the thing the programs that tear has decided to pick up are ones that were trying to be multi-uh staging of how it who it helps, and that's sort of the programs that right now trying to add any more costs to the rate structure for another program.

We're we've we've actually been trying to figure out how to stop where we're at and try to preserve what we've got and keep rates affordable to everybody.

Um is there a bulk waste increase?

Yeah, we'll keep went from 10 to 20.

It's what hasn't it's $10 is what it started out in its infancy and it's going to 20.

So we're still um my understanding broken arrow.

So hopefully everybody will be good with that.

Now this we will have we are going to implement looking at implement a process that if um that we'll come out with at a later date that there may be if somebody just economically cannot afford it, we'll have a pilot program that we'll unveil later that will allow for limited the people that just absolutely can't afford but need some help.

We've got that.

We've already sort of got that through the neighborhood program.

We've also got a free dump pass that if somebody the brand uh brand pitchers group they'll go vet them out, and if they qualify, we give them a free dump pass already.

That way it helps clean up the neighborhoods.

So and this is just yes, and this is gonna be another little piece of that that will have some bulky waste, but we're still we'll vet that out, and that'll come out of a later day too.

Still 20 bucks is pretty good as opposed to 55 dollars at the dump.

Yes, if if you look and so look, there's a line item on this uh on that page three that shows uh our revenue for bulky waste, which is going from 225,000 to 450, and then if you go down to bulky waste uh program, it costs 1.4 million to actually so that's a million dollars subsidized program already.

Right.

So we basically went we we cut the subsidy by 225,000, but we're still subsidizing the city of Tulsa's a million dollars to make sure that we can get that out to everybody and especially low income to try to keep that from turning into illegal dumping.

And that's really why TARE years ago chose to keep that as a subsidized people.

If if you don't have a way to get rid of it and you don't have means to pay to go to the dump, which is very very expensive to go to the dump, then unfortunately people have made the choice to go dump it in a bar ditch, and it's problematic for us, it's problematic if you live by it.

Um so there's always been that desire to keep bulky waste uh artificially low, uh, so that we hopefully the people that question what do I do with it, they'll hopefully at least choose the cheap cheapest option, which is to have us do it, and we come pick it up, and it's eight cubic yards, which we say it's the size of a Volkswagen, but since they haven't made a Volkswagen in about 10 or 15 years, we're probably gonna have to find a new car, maybe a Kia box or something.

Yeah, I gotta I gotta get away from my fax number and find a new uh eight cubic yard analogy, I guess.

But maybe think of it in terms of mattresses.

Well, that too.

So all right, thank you.

Counselor Lake.

Okay, so somebody looks at page two, they go, gosh, we're getting charged 12 bucks, but you're charging us double that for residential collection, right?

Yeah, um so just explain why.

And it's like that on just about all of these.

I mean, it's even worse on some of these.

Well, all of the system takes all of the different things that is always if you look at like current rate right now, it's nine dollars is what news charges us, it's 24, is what that that rate is.

That includes all of the problems.

It also includes your dead animal pickup, it's a subsidized for bulky waste, it's a right-of-way cleanup, it's all the things as a rate payer to keep the city looking as good.

It's all the stuff on this page.

It's all that stuff on that page.

So it's all the programs that make the city where it's at, keep trying to keep it as clean as possible.

So that's where that is.

So we did not, we just basically took we took the cost of what that was, and if you look at it, that's why we didn't even in theory by four percent.

We just went up by four percent.

In theory, if you know, with the new rate went up by you know, your rate went up uh not even 97 cents.

By the rates were charged, it should have almost gone up nearly two dollars.

But we tried to keep that's where we went in and looked at where we could cut anything we could cut in on that page there, and you'll notice some decreases to try to get it where we could get the actual impact to the ratepayer at four percent, and that way where we didn't do that though, is these the services that you choose on your own to do, we didn't subsidize it.

We just took what we were already charging an overhead under the old contract and just put the new price in it, didn't increase any overhead costs, just basically carry that over.

So um in this projected, it says in process budget.

So this on page three, it's light blue, which is a fund balance of 14 million decreasing to four and a half million bucks by fiscal year 30.

We are eating through fund balance quickly.

Yeah, but but why?

What is what are you putting in the estimates that's not allowing you to keep that fund balance as a higher number?

Because right now it's just the cost.

I mean, some of the cost we're not we're still not.

There's enough fund balance up terror feels like we should try to keep rates as low as we can and just keep working through fund balance.

At some point, if we because each of these contracts are going up right now, we've estimated five percent inflation is right now.

This last year it was around 3.2, 3.4.

But for modeling, we would add but five percent because you never know with the world going on right now what inflation's gonna go, you know, just look at our trash increases that pardon you modeled our trash and trash increases are down below there.

If you look at rate change each year, this year's four percent, the next three years are five percent because we we put in a five percent inflation for all contracts.

If you go up above there, you'll see the rate.

If you go up to the very top of that, so that's the rate change.

So that's the rate change for for Tulsa residents, not the rate change for the contract.

That is somewhere else.

We're estimating a five percent increase on these contract.

It's rolled into those numbers.

But right now, if you look at the very top, you'll see where it says rate model, and you see that rate is four four five five five.

So this year's rate was four percent.

The rate that we're proposing for this upcoming year is four percent, and then the next three years after that, we're proposing five percent, which is basically keeping you what's the level with inflation.

Okay, if inflation's less than that, we might be able to drop that down.

It just depends on because again, having those four still can't figure out where the fund balance is going, though.

I mean, I I hear what you're saying on the rates of the contract are going up, but the rates of the but if you look the residents are going up too.

But we did we're not we're not bringing the rates to where the expenses were.

If you look at it, we've been eating even this year.

We're we're gonna be uh we're eating into fund balance by 1.2 million, right?

Is what we're projecting.

So we're not even covering costs currently, so you're still gonna be we're eating in the fund balance every year to the tune of about two and a half million dollars.

Um I trust that the the spreadsheet is right.

I'm just trying to get I'm just trying to hear you say what's all in this and trying to get us to go a little bit deeper on this information because if we were somebody can take this page and go, dang the city of Tulsa is just make a ton of money on us and on our backs.

I mean, it looks that way on page two until you get to page three, and you go dead and we'll pick up ride-away cleanup.

You look at the big ticket items in here, and you quickly go, Oh, well, there's a lot more being done with the money that is in excess of what our we're paying for those services to the contractor, customer care, all those things are up, but IT, everything's wrapped into those costs.

Okay, so and then none of us turning a profit.

I mean, to your point, cost well, well, for somebody it is on the line item, but right, but there are other line items on there that don't have any income whatsoever.

Right, so that it's offsetting the cost.

You don't pay for dead animals, but we I back to council.

Yeah, if you turn it in, you gotta pay for it.

Well, then nobody but to counselor Hall Harper's point, the more we can um push out on our own circles, whether it's town halls or community meetings or on our socials.

Um, I know when the mayor presented the budget a couple weeks ago, one of the big reactions is like they're increasing utilities again.

But for as long as I've been here, we've made a commitment to do it to catch up to 10 years of not doing it at all, if I'm not mistaken.

So went a whole decade with no rate increases at all.

And it's just now we're now we're we we had the luxury of the old contracts, and as those old contracts went away and we had historic inflation, unfortunately, the new contracts cost a lot more.

I mean, trucks are double what they used to cost.

I mean, dump trucks for the city of Tulsa are double.

Right.

So we had like a historically depressed, I think.

Oh, yeah, no, I've explained it.

Yeah, and I thousand times.

I'm just going through just trying to help us all stand what's really happening.

Well, people can take things out of context.

For the counselors who haven't been here as long.

I mean, we have been curvatous to say yes, so that we don't have infrastructure failures or you know, bigger problems, just kicking that can down another two to four or six years.

Yep.

But the government will make it.

It makes that harder for us though, for sure.

Because we have to explain it.

And I guess the you know, Councilor Hallhopper has good comebacks when people say we don't want to do it.

I don't want to drive down the streets and see dead animals because you know we don't have the dollars to pick them up or any of these other baked-in services.

So are we ready to move on to the next, which is water?

Stormwater, storm water, okay.

Storm water.

Got it.

Okay.

Did we do the slide move?

T G2.

I'll pay attention to that, but I'm not popping up.

Are you doing this one too, Terry?

No.

Oh, okay.

I'm just gonna be first.

Okay, okay.

Um the first slide is the executive summary.

Um we're continuing with the stormwater UE with the focus on asset management and that UE is the utility enterprise initiative.

Um 24.9% of the stormwater budget is going to routine capital and CIP.

Stormwater fund relies solely on utility charges for services.

We'll need additional staffing related to the Black and Beach study.

Stormwater rate increase would be seven percent.

Uh residential customer will see their monthly stormwater bill increase to 1465 or three per three cents a day.

These additions are a continuation of the Blacken Beach study.

We're in year eight of 12-year-old 12-year schedule.

So we're adding new several uh several new staff and four trucks for surface asset operations and water quality enhancements with our MS4.

There's a lot of requirements that are required by the federal government to do.

So this is the staff and equipment required to do that.

The MS4 uh municipal separate storm sewer system is what that stands for.

This slide is um operations and maintenance asset.

Um the left side shows our responsibilities, and the right side quantifies uh the maintenance that we do.

There's a lot that goes into stormwater maintenance to revent flooding and protect water quality.

This slide is the stormwater fund budget.

Um biggest items are personal services, 32.8 percent.

Last year it was 33.7 percent.

Cash funded capital is 22.6 percent or 26 percent, and last year it was 22.6 percent.

Debt service is 8.1 percent, and last year it was 8.5 percent.

Um the next slide rate increase is expected to provide 2.7 million in 2027, and projection for the next year is 4.1 million.

The expected annual debt payment will be 5.2 million in 2027, increasing to 7.1 million in FY 31.

Cash capital is at 11 million, and depreciation is at 9.8 million.

Five-year capital is 80.9 million, and cash funded five-year CIP is 49.7 million.

Um, this is a graph of the historical rates.

Um just to show you uh the increases each year, and the percentage increases we're gonna put oh okay, that's fine.

17 million in FY27 and 16 million in FY28.

Uh the next slide is um the City of Tulsa watersheds.

We have either 30 or 31 of the watersheds, and these are the ones we maintain every year.

And if you'll notice the red outline, that's the city limits there, so it just shows you the some of those drainage basins that actually are outside of the city limits, but they all impact.

This slide is uh our significant stormwater fund projects.

Um is stormwater maintenance building expansion.

Uh the next one is Hager Creek Storm Sewer, and the bottom one is 43rd in Sheridan, the FEMO brick grant match.

We still doing that.

Yeah, what is the well?

We're still the we're still waiting to hear from the federal government.

It's on life support right now.

Did we get the brick grant back?

Okay, not officially yet.

I thought, yeah, I thought there was a short window to go after it.

Well, I think that there's supposed to be a conversation about that with the folks that administer it.

Um we had a call with Annie Vest um Office of Emergency Management last week, and so I think we're still working on those details to see how much we'll receive from that grant.

So as soon as we have the information, we'll share that.

Yeah, it's ministered to the state, and the state's still trying to get clarification on because they're they're changing some of the rules on them a little bit versus what they were under the old program, and that's the part that the state's still trying to figure out for sure, and then what we'll need to do to make sure it qualifies for it.

We've broken that project up into phases, okay.

Okay.

Um, so that we could, even if we didn't receive the brick grant, that we could phase that project in through our own capital program.

Um, but hopefully, when we know more about the brick grant, then we can use that to apply to those projects.

Because I thought we were awarded it, and then a year ago it was.

We we got the design money, and that is still going on.

Okay, the the next phase, which was a continuation, that's the part we're still waiting to find out if there's gonna be any brick and mortar money coming from the feds.

Okay.

Like while we're on that, can because this is what we went to DC about too.

Um, did we ever get the uh what they what FEMA owed us for the Father Day Storm?

Uh we'd have to ask the little lady to the back.

We ever get the reimbursement on Father's D store, yeah.

Not the largest one and not the second largest one, they're still in the works.

So, how much is outstanding?

Our proportion, the 75%.

I think it's about 12 million.

So we're waiting on 12 million from FEMA.

Yeah, I have to check it out.

I'm just making sure that's all.

Because last year with the brick and all that, it was 54 million for two projects that they owed us.

I'm trying to get out of that 54 million that they owed us a year ago.

Where are we?

Where are we?

Did we get any of that?

We'll get that number for you.

Okay, thank you.

Because we did get the design money.

I mean, that one's the one they did not.

But it can take like five years.

I mean, the 2019 floods and stuff, we were waiting off dollars for a year.

We still get our need our 12 and a half percent from the state.

So that's historically been a struggle getting their our 12 and a half percent back from the state, too.

So we don't lose sight of that one either.

All right, counselor Gilbert.

Yeah, just um, since this is in my district, will you guys please let me know?

Because this is one area where we like to remind people to turn around, don't drown.

Because um, anytime we get those thank you for sharing that message.

Yeah, um, any time we get those uh downpours, that is the one place that will flood immensely.

And that's where the new stations run too.

That's where they go to.

Yeah, so if your car makes it there, you're gonna have some mechanical affiliates.

Right.

That's why it's so important to turn around.

Yeah, so which is actually a picture of 43rd and Sheridan right there.

Yeah, and with the rain that we've gotten lately, I don't know how many vehicles have driven through there and gotten damaged, but um still just as a reminder, turn around.

Don't drown.

Okay, Travis.

Sorry, I don't see your eye in the responders have to go out.

Any other questions or comments on the Strongwater presentation?

Uh sorry, Councilor Ghost, no?

No, because I have a meeting next week.

Um I have they call them lakes, but they're ponds in my neighborhood.

It's my understanding the homeowners own or they're responsible to the middle of the pond, right?

They're responsible for the whole pond.

Right, but if you've got 10 around the pond, right?

Yeah, they own their section to that.

No, not necessarily a lot of times detention ponds, a lot of times when they plat neighborhoods, they plant those reserves as reserve areas, okay, and the HOA owns those.

And so that's where when you pay a due to your HOA, most of the detention ponds are owned by the HOA, and then the plats are written that every lot owner is a one, and let's say there's 80 homes in the neighborhood, they're a 180th owner and have to contribute to it.

So that's that's how most of those are set up.

We don't have official HOAs in the world.

Then you it's yeah, if it's in your neighborhood, then it may be that each of you owned to a point of it, just have to look and see how your everybody's plats are, but that would be individual ownership of it then.

I okay.

So I saw there on here we had those ponds are just ones that we own ourselves.

There are hundreds of others neighborhood ponds that we have.

75% of all creeks are in private ownership.

We've dealt with Council Bangle a lot on this over in his district.

There's a lot of and most of it's in private ownership.

And so that's why the plats are all written that if somebody goes and doesn't maintain their channel and it creates a blockage where it can back up water onto their neighbors.

We have the right to go in and get rid of that blockage and then bill whoever's property that is that caused the blockage.

But the day-to-day maintenance is on the individual loan or whoever owns that piece of the creek.

So again, we we own a very small percentage of the stormwater facilities and creeks that actually exist in our city limits.

So when you see those numbers, see how big those are.

Yeah, then multiply that times you know points uh that's that's only one fourth of all that exists out there because all the neighborhoods, a lot of these neighborhoods that are getting built in East Tulsa, some of them have three to six detention ponds in their neighborhood.

Right.

And those are all, and that's some things we've talked about too.

Is you know, we are concerned, and we're gonna try we've been trying to go out and educate these HOAs that you need to try to stay on top of those now because the longer you let them go and let them go, the HOAs are gonna be very problematic of trying to keep those in oper in good operating, and and we have the responsibility to enforce making them keep them in good working order to the point that we can go do it and then backbill the HOA and the individual homeowners if they don't do it, right?

But as far as like um cleaning out the ponds and all that, that's on those either private owners, we'll say, like in your instance, or by the HOA who is all those neighborhoods that are vested in that HOA, right?

So you're getting ready to do it's on the Periman Ditch, so you guys are getting ready to do some improvements in my area.

Brooks Brooke is sending somebody out next week to explain that.

So I just want them to be prepared because they're going to try to time the draining of the pond to correspond with that improvement that the city is doing.

So we'll make sure her team's prepared.

Yeah, because they'll get asked.

Okay.

I it I think it's like 34th in Delaware ish.

Okay.

Yeah.

Don't be able to do that.

43rd in Sheridan, please.

It it can't downhill to the Arkansas River, by the way.

Just kidding.

Counselor Gilbert and the Council Binkle.

So just a quick question.

So stormwater, this um, the second by the first slide, actually, the um stormwater fund relies wholly on utility charges for service.

So if a neighborhood has a a pool that is no longer being used by the neighborhood, they're not filling it, they're not, it's it's closed because the neighborhood cannot afford to run it.

Do they still, even though nobody is there, nobody is using it.

It's still impervious area, though.

Say that again.

It's still impervious area, so they still have to pay a stormwater fee for it.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

So I mean, I I'm asked that question.

Yeah.

No, but it's the only thing that they could get out of the stormwater fee is if they would go and uh convert it all to grass, then they could petition for that.

I mean, then it just be a good one.

I mean, because it's if it's commercial, if it's if it's rated commercial, they go and look and see how much of what percentage of that is impervious, you get charged by that.

So if they go and basically get rid of all that concrete and turn it into grass, then if they're getting charge of commercial rate, then it would basically get reduced very significantly because they're no longer have all that impervious area.

So they can go to the mulch site, get mulch and fill it up.

I'm just gonna be the noise.

Counselor Bingled and Counselor Ratten.

Just be kind of thank you for that clarification that just becomes the only made claim but fund.

Um still is seeing that pond.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So I have a question about the maps that we were talking about previously, because I still have questions about what's public versus private.

So, like whenever uh the question that um counselor push was asking about earlier, I had an HOA, you know, that didn't do sludge management within their uh detention ponds, and while we could use public funding to mitigate you know the issues that they were um experiencing with the banks expanding because they hadn't maintained those, and so the issue that I always run into is people who don't understand what is public versus which is a developmental responsibility, because I think like in the uh one behind my house specifically, I'll just use that as an example.

Um there's East Track Park, which is back there.

So one side of that is city owned on the one bank, and then right directly across that adjoins or buttons up to the housing development, that's all private.

And I think that's where most people get confused is what is public versus what is private.

And then the other question about the stormwater, every time we I bring this up every time when we start creating housing developments, are we creating significant impact the upstream versus downstream impacts?

Um how much impact we're putting on these watersheds.

I now know that we just need to redirect everything to 43rd and share that'll solve it all.

Um but I'm curious.

How much how much are we how much more of an impact are we putting on our watersheds with the development?

Are we developing too fast for our the watership?

Development services looks like that, and they make sure that whatever new water is getting generated.

That's why all these developments have the ponds in them is to handle that excess flow that's created from the development and then do a timed release of it so that it's not impacting downstream.

So that is all part of Michael Scage, and at some point you may want to have him come make a presentation to y'all about how what how they look at that as far as the development process, just with all the development that's encouraged and coming.

It probably would be good at some point to have him and his group come in and make a presentation to y'all because I know that gets brought up in public meetings too.

Yep, but it might be a good one on one in front of the of y'all just to see what he can explain what they do and how they prevent that from happening.

Which is different than in fill.

And that is a very real issue that we haven't solved yet because that is happening.

You're taking a thousand square foot house, putting a four and five thousand square foot house, you're taking 25% impervious and making it 80-90 percent impervious.

So that does have a true impact in a neighborhood that was probably undersized to begin with, and when you start so we we've been working on that and trying to figure out, and we're trying to figure out how that, and with we've been working with development services, water and sewer, public works, trying to figure out, and that's not just an issue here where you've got cities where infill is happening, the same issues are happening there, so it's just a matter of trying to figure out what that looks like long term, and trying to, you know, quite honestly at some point's probably gonna be like an impact fee where then we can come in later and come in and upsize the storm to address the impact of what that new reality is has done to that neighborhood.

So we had such a big issue in the Brookside.

It's a big it's a big issue.

Yeah, it's huge.

21st to 51st, basically 21st I-44 from Riverside to Harvard.

Yep.

You can walk anywhere in there, and I'd even say West Tulsa now because now you're getting those two and five-acre lots that were done.

Now people are doing lot splits and doubling and tripling and quadrupling number of houses that originally started on those lots, and it's it's not limited to one area of town anymore.

We can go to East Tulsa and show you where people have totally concreted their entire lot.

Um then scream about it.

Yeah, and then scream about stormwater beings.

Yeah, right.

So we have uh nine minutes left for Eric's presentation.

Has everyone gotten what they've needed to say in a group or even follow up by email and stuff.

Yes, I just put it to make a public statement that people will be paying stormwater fees even if you have the utilities turned off on your property.

I think there's big misunderstanding that people do not realize that they are still going to receive the stormwater fees, and I don't think that the public is fully aware of that, and that goes for commercial properties as well.

So I I think we need to do better about messaging that are we ready for Mr.

Lee's presentation.

Oh, yes.

Uh Eric Lee, water and sewer.

I have 100 slides, and that makes it ready.

Get ready for auctioneer mode.

Um the the two bullets I want you to focus on here is uh the water fund, it's the fourth bullet down.

It's a it was planned to be a four percent increase in revenue, it's gonna be six, and in exchange, the sewer fund the plan was to be five, and it's gonna go down to three.

So those two balance each other out.

Um so we we wanted to stay with our plan, even though those percentages change for the two funds.

Um as you know, we study our system about every 10 years, we had the utility enterprise initiative.

City didn't really grow, it was you know, at 390, um, 395.

Didn't really grow, so everything is focused on rehab and replacement.

Um as we and we made data decisions, we're starting to show a few maps that we use to show the highest risk assets.

Um increased rates to pay more with cash.

We had um, in fact, in 2010 and 2011, um, we had no cash going to capital on the sewer side.

Um we increased rates so that we had more cash, and we improved our bond rating, which meant lower interest rates that we were paying.

So actually, that helped out our our citizens as well.

Um after the high risk lines that need to be replaced.

As we look forward, um, we've got a 2026 comp study that's going to be released here, hopefully within a month.

I know I keep telling Councillor Hall Harper, it's almost here, it's almost here, and I think it's almost here.

Yeah.

And the big thing on here is it's not just rehab and replacement, it's also economic development and growth.

And I think this is really where our comp study is like okay.

We did the rehab and replacement.

That doesn't end even with growth.

You we're still having to do that.

And I think these two are going to start layering on each other.

And I think that's something we really need to talk about with council.

Once this report is final, we want to come in front of you and start discussing what does this look like.

Um, how do we balance both growth and rehab and replacement?

Uh, and here's the big news that we're gonna share with you is that we need to bolster the water system.

That's why we changed the rate increases and we're putting more on water and less on sewer.

Is um, and councillor Lakin can tell you this.

We're we're experiencing pressure issues in South Tulsa.

We have been for a few years.

Uh, if you look back at the 2001 comp study, it said in 2006 we're gonna expand AB Joule by 30 million gallons a day, and then again in 2020 by 50 million gallons a day.

And guess what?

We didn't do either one of those projects because the demand wasn't there.

So we didn't want to build it and have all this excess excess capacity before even the demand hit us, and so no reason to raise rates before we had to.

That being said, if you look at the big construction projects we had in 89 to 93, we built a huge loop line down the South Tulsa.

We wanted to serve Kimberley Clark, Big Speed Jinx, built the Turkey Mountain water storage tank.

Um, the only other big project after 93 was in 2021.

We built a 48-inch line at Cherokee Industrial Park.

Other than that, not a huge amount of expansion just because of population growth.

Um, we're also seeing people use less water through uh water efficient appliances.

Um, but that expansion is needed now, and it's not just South Tulsa.

Um, it's also East Tulsa's growing, uh, the northwest service area.

There's opportunities for growth there as well.

So we're gonna see some big capital projects come out on the water side.

Um on the sewer side, we're waiting on the final report, uh, the water, the draft report was presented to TMUA.

I think the sewer is gonna be in a couple weeks.

Uh on the sewer side, we've had a couple issues.

One was at the Apache uh lift station, which there was um a solar panel manufacturing company that was going to come in at the airport.

We were gonna take all the capacity on the sewer lines in that area just from that one business.

With it not coming in, that's relieved that we still have capacity in Apache.

But one project can all of a sudden change our sewer collection system, our sewer infrastructure.

So any growth has to be strategic.

If all of a sudden people say, Well, I'm gonna develop in here, develop there, wherever it happens to be, we may not have the capacity, or all of a sudden the capacity is all taken up with one project.

So we have to be thoughtful about that since we can't do everything with the current money we have.

Um but what you're gonna see over the five year next five years is we're gonna move back down to kind of uh inflationary rate, about 3%.

Last 15 years has averaged about seven percent.

Um here's the big numbers.

So over the next five years on the water side, 400 million dollars in capital, so divide 400 by five, and you're talking 80 million a year on average, and you can see that fifth year, fiscal year 31, we jump up to 127 million, and that's because that's when the big construction dollars are really needed to be spent.

Um, we're looking instead of 15-year loans, we went down to 15 year loans for quite some time because it was let's pay these things off, get them off the books.

We're talking about possible 25, 30 year notes on some of these because of the money that we have and the borrowing that we need to put into place.

Um, so big projects, big lines coming out of AB Joule expanding AB Jewel's treatment capacity.

Um, on the sewer side, you'll see that we've stayed pretty stable within the 60 to 70 range.

Um, we do have a high year in fiscal year 29, um, but that averages over the five years, 360.

So, what is that 72 versus the higher rate for water?

So, if you look, this is the comparison between the plan that we have and what was previous.

So, on the water side, uh sorry I switched up the colors here, water's in yellow instead of blue.

But if you look at water, we had planned over the five years to spend 213 million.

That's jumping up to 399.

So 186 million more in capital projects over the next five years.

And on sewer, we're able to kind of balance it out.

It's almost the same as what we had planned over the five years.

We just we change the amount sometimes from year to year based on what the risks are.

Significant water projects, we're gonna continue with our true reads project, true reads project.

Um, we're changing out all the meter boxes, the meters, um, checking to see what the service line material is made of.

Um electrical chemical costs continue to go up.

I don't know if anyone's seen the recent releases from PSO.

Um, we're concerned about some of those increases on the electrical side because a big portion of our budget, I think 4% on the water side is electrical rates.

So we did not account for that, but we will look at that and see how that impacts us.

Um pavement replacement is also a huge cost for us.

It's nice when water lines are behind the curve in the green area, and we're not digging up the street.

We dig up the street, it gets really expensive.

Uh cybersecurity is another item that's come up.

I was in DC a couple weeks ago.

We talked about trying to get uh our Congresspeople to push forward cybersecurity legislation.

So hopefully they're doing that.

We want to make sure that system's really separate from like the IT systems that we have, computers.

We keep the plants system separate, but we will still want to make sure that we're safeguarded, especially with the political common.

Um, and here you can see the 15-year-old report for rate increases previous to this year was 3.8%, and next five years we're looking at a 5.6.

We still think that 5.6 is pretty good considering everything that's going on with our costs.

Uh, waterline failures were pretty steady over the the years.

If you see all those high points, that's typically in a winter month when the water temperature gets to 38 degrees, it's at its densest, and pipes constrict and the two don't like each other, and so then they break.

Um, significant sewer issues.

Um, everyone knows about PFAS, forever chemicals.

Um talked about humanure.

Um, you know, the truth is um is that one word or two words?

Because I've heard I've seen it as one word in all the legislative materials.

Yeah, okay.

You know, there's lots of concern about that.

Um, I'll tell you that we're monitoring our wastewater plants, and so you could take like our Hickey Creek plant, a lot of residential customers, we're hardly seeing any PFAS at all on that.

Um, and our North Sub wastewater plant, depending on which lift station uh the waste comes through.

You're seeing um PFAS show up, and it's from different industrial customers.

And so I think if we can really address that on the industrial side through our pre-treatment programs, I would like to think that we could continue to land apply biosolids and use those because there's a real shortage right now in fertilizer across the nation.

I don't know if you've been to Lowe's or Home Depot lately and seeing the prices, but um the federal government's really concerned about this, and we want to make sure that we can continue to use biosolids of that application.

Speaking of composting, so we've got a project that's got a fertilizer grant through USDA.

We want to see that go through where we mix the brown and the green together and we make compost and it's uh soil amendments, so it's really nice to have, and so we're gonna be doing that moving forward with that project.

That'll be important given global fertilizer limitations if we have local resources.

So you can oh I'm naming like because of um there's like global fertilizer shortages driven by the war, and so this will help us be able to generate things locally.

We're doing the yeah, we're doing the best our we can to contribute in that that way.

Yeah, um, I do want to state you know, the two significant issues that um I think if I could just get your attention on this, we have what we call party sewer lines or private problems on private services.

People multiple people are on one service line that connects to our main, and for whatever reason that was allowed in the 40s, 50s, 60s, whatever.

Um, we're seeing more private problems and overflow, and a homeowner says, Oh, the city has an overflow, and we're like, Actually, it's not us, it's your neighbor, and you're both connected to the same line.

So I just want to thank all of you for working with us on those because those are hard to solve.

TMUA has kind of given us the direction, go solve it, and then we'll figure out the financials later who's responsible.

Um, and so we're gonna work towards that.

Obviously, we want to keep you informed when those things happen.

Um, and then the other thing is uh our technology's gotten really really good.

We love AI, the thought of AI doing more kind of identification of defects in our sewer collection system.

We've got ultrasonic technology, we get to figure out where all these problems are, but the list of problems keeps growing and growing and growing, and the resources to make all those repairs, we're just not there.

And so, one of the things that TMUA is looking at is how do we continue to have enough staff, enough resources to make all those repairs.

So we'll probably be coming to you in future months and talking about making sure we have the resources to maintain the sewer collection system.

If you look at rainfall, which is the line, um, when we have high rainfall, if you see the gray portion of the bar, that's a wet weather overflow.

If you look at 20 whatever year that is 15, a lot of wet weather overflows, but a lot of rain.

But if you see 2019, if you see 2025, lots of rain and not as many, it's because we've really focused on uh the areas like Coal Creek, Flat Rock Creek, where we have a lot of these overflows and making those repairs to the defects.

So we're really proud of that program.

Grease says high.

Excuse me.

Grease.

Yes, grease can be very high.

Um we've got a good fog program, but if you see um the grease numbers, if you look at just the tan area, you'll see that it has diminished over the last five to six years.

And it's really because of the concentrated effort we're making on you know, trying to get that message out there.

We're also we're also cleaning a lot of lines, you have crease collection.

Um, we push the Thanksgiving time frame.

So here's one takeaway I want you to have on this slide.

We in 2018, the cost, and we we figure out we estimate what we think a contractor is going to bid for a water line replacement project.

And what we do is we take the size of that water line in inches, it's the diameter of it.

We take an inches, we multiply it by a factor, and then the the length of the pipe.

We're like, okay, if it's a six-inch line, you know, it's six inch times twenty times the length, and you kind of get a rough estimate.

That twenty dollars, if you look at that now is almost fifty dollars on average.

The cost to replace water lines has increased so dramatically, it's way more than inflation.

So I wanted to bring this to your attention is that you know everyone's good about saying, well, inflation is two and a half or it's three or it's five.

Well, that may overall be the right number, but it may not be the right number in the industry and what's happening.

So we can't do as much with the same amount of money that we used to.

Um here's and I think the the handouts have kind of the comparison or what the utility bill looks like.

This you've seen this before on kind of the increase.

We talked about median average, high use customers.

Um, so there's a table you can look at that if you have any questions, you can ask me later.

But we're looking at just for water and sewer, about 390 more for the utility bill per month.

Um, we like to compare against other utilities.

Um we do comparisons against other cities.

Um, yes, sir.

Sorry, I'm just it was just really fast.

Well, we're five minutes over our time, but okay.

And it's a bad hand too.

It's in the hand, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

If anyone has any questions, let me know.

I'll be happy to come back.

Um, and then you know, obviously, our main goal is protect public health.

Um, we want to be responsible.

We know affordability is a big issue, but if you really look at that fifth one, large water supply projects are gonna be dry and water rate increases.

I can't say that enough is that we're gonna have to get a lot of people on board with these are gonna be significant capital projects, large six-inch water lines going through arterial streets.

Um, so it's gonna have to happen.

Um, and then if you want to talk about this at some point in the future, we can.

We projected what we thought rates were gonna be, and so it's the dark line and what and what rates were, but the dashed line shows how we changed.

And so if you look at the dark blue and then the dash, light blue, you can see that in 2020, 21, 22, there were no rate increases, and so we were able to stay below what we thought the projections were gonna be.

Now that dash blue line is coming up above because we have these huge capital projects that finally need to happen.

Um, and then with sewer yellow and then the dash brown, you can see we've kind of gotten below there, and we're staying below where we thought the projections were gonna be.

So we feel better about sewer, but we need more rate increases for water.

Any questions?

I truly for the life of me can never remember what water adjusted and water is and sewer adjusted and we what are the dashed lines again?

So the solid is where we were.

So let me just draw your attention to the solid blue line in 1997, no rate increases to 2000.

Yeah, and so that blue line is also what we projected the solid.

The solid blue line is what we projected going out in the future in 2012.

Right, and then the dash line is what actually happened, and I should probably reverse those so that you can and we can reverse those, but the dash blue line is what happened.

So in 2015, 2016, we started decreasing Councilor Laken on the water rates because we were identifying the riskiest lines, replacing those first, and using asset management to really drive our decision making.

So but so prior but prior to 2015 there was there would be a dash if you like stretched it back it was just you just chose to pick 2015 as the year to sort of identify that divergence.

So so 2012 we projected the solid blue line going out in the future it should be dash going backwards because that's what really happened.

Yeah like the what yeah that's we'll we'll clean up so it's easier next time okay yeah I agree with you because the dash feels like it should be a hypothetical where the solid should be the actual every year I think I we will fix that.

Okay thank you and you've been here the longest so if you have that question others probably do too we are 10 minutes over and we have a pretty full four o'clock so I'm sure Mr.

Lee or Mr Ball will take an email or a phone call from anyone at this table.

Thank you so much we're adjourned how long shall we