on March 25th and we'll call the uh meeting of the Grand Public Utilities Commission to order roll call higgins here matten here oday here angland stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America to the stands one nation with all and the next is approval of the agenda um I have three additions uh to add to the agenda if I may um I'd like to put
them under 7 7 A3 4 and 5 and the one would be to recommend a council to reclassify Mitch Lacelt um to the journeyman position uh to recommend to council advertising Mitch's
current position and to recommend directing staff to begin the process of creating a job description and wage scale for the water distribution supervisor that would be my recommendation for the approval of the agenda so there's three additional items
under seven correct um is there a motion to approve the agenda mike your m your microphone what's that your microphone there you go so moved second
all in favor say I i i okay item five is the consent calendar notice to the public all matters listed are considered routine by the commission and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless good cause is shown prior
to the time the commission votes on the motion to be adopted by roll call is there a motion to I think you have to read the Do you have Do we have to read the what they are in the consent oh I'm sorry yeah approval of the minutes b
approval of bills c approve final payment to Magny Construction Incorporated for the 2 milliongal reservoir project in the amount of $5,369.83 discuss Susan Hardman training chemical hazards and hazard communication training and E approved
2025 co-generation and small power production rate schedule move to approve the consent calendar second roll call higgins yes mattton yes od yes next is public forum is there anyone
here to speak under public forum seeing none we'll move on commission committee reports personnel Committee Dolly so we met and um we met a couple times and we've got a few recommendations at this time we are recommending the hiring of a second
laborer position uh do you want to do these recommendations and approvals independently or can we do it as one i'm assuming independently in case Yeah let's do them independently all right so that would be my first that would be our first recommendation
that would be my motion to recommend the hiring of a second labor position second motion is second any discussion all those in favor say I i i the second recommendation is to uh backfill the
meter service worker position okay that's my motion second no discussion i have I have a question what does backfilling mean the position is vacated and we are now going to refill the position so it's not left empty okay
okay all those in favor signify by saying I i i motion carries mr chair yes uh you missed public forum no I did not okay jan has left pardon me jan left
she's not here oh I did you did you call for public forum yes yes i'm sorry i missed it i thought you do i'm I'm used to having it called like a couple of times i missed it we usually have coffee here too i need that diploma sorry no not a problem
all right and then the third recommendation uh for the motion for uh recommendation is to recommend a council to reclassify Mitch Lel Latchel the journeyman line worker position and that he be placed at se step six based on his
qualifications and I so move second and just to clarify Mil Mitch used to be in a supervisory position and he wants to go back to nonsupervisory and work with the regular lineman correct that's correct i have a question Mr chair
based on that we have a job opening in journeyman andor apprentice uh maybe somebody could tell me how this would affect that opening that we're seeking to hire a new person is that now no longer necessary i I can
take a stab at it and if I'm wrong you can correct me okay so we had 12 applicants we had four that were qualified to fill that position and Mitch was one of them and was the most qualified thank you you're welcome okay and that was your motion also and
there's also but motion and second's already been made correct okay all those in favor signify by saying I i i motion carries okay then the next one is to recommend a council advertising Mitch's current position the electric distribution supervisor internally if no
qualified candidates do apply we would like to proceed with an external posting and I so move second no discussion all those in favor signify by saying I i i motion carries all right and the last one is to recommend to
direct staff to begin the process of creating the job description and wage scale for the water distribution supervisor position uh for council approval and I so move second any discussion all those in favor signify by
saying I i i motion carries b is Finance Operations Committee um I guess Mike said I it's my turn because I wasn't here last we've met once on rates for the electrical and
we'll be meeting again this Friday and uh hopefully then bring forward a recommendation at our next meeting i don't think anything other than that is there um I will say that I have been got a couple phone calls since Senator
Iicorn resigned he was sponsoring our bill for the um $10 million to put into the dam and as of this morning there rep Heintman is trying to find another senator to sponsor the bill
and there's still life so we might possibly be still have a shot at getting in front of the legislature so I worked pretty hard the last couple days trying to get back on there so there is a little life that just was kind of
wrapping up this morning so okay thanks Mike and that's what all we have for that unfinished business uh see the attached separate memo regarding updates on unfinished business is there any questions on unfinished business
no just some clarification can uh who wants to clarify the staff met with the department heads on 318 and are looking to review further the prior to the next commission meeting would that have been this meeting or April's meeting okay that's what I just wanted to make sure and then um the same thing with the
electric transmission service i'm assuming it's going to be an AP April meeting because of the meeting with just took place okay and then um the crypto mining activity JFK is looking to schedule a meeting with AAP did are we going to discuss that later on or does
anybody want to update us on that one if the meeting was already have taken place meetings with JFK are ongoing they we're scheduling a meeting it's with staff to clarify their February billing okay we're working on it with JFK yes okay
all right and so no updates from the March 18th meeting correct okay mark can I ask you a question on that yeah what why is why is JFK having a conversation with A
they're having they have questions on their billing that a so we pass through from A bill a section of the billing and they have questions just clarifications on how that bill and transmission fees are being charged so they're buying direct power from A there's a negotiated
contract with A yes okay and then my last question we had started a strat plan but we didn't make any reference to this here are we just going to not are we just not discuss this strat plan anymore or
uh yeah we can obviously uh review it but the um I guess the general consensus or the direction was that we needed to make sure that uh what what came out of that strap plan actually uh aligned with the
city that we didn't want uh anything in our strap plan or our direction being in interference with the uh city moving forward u so that's kind of where we left it can we just add it on here as
unfinished business and that way we know that we're going we can work with city hall to find out how the city council strat plan is going so that we just don't drop the ball we put a lot of hours into it and I just don't want to forget about it that's all thank you
that's all I had okay anything else under unfinished business are we waiting on a lease draft from the lawyers on climate vision okay that's all I got okay then we'll
move on to new business sorry on climate vision um did they say they had to have something in place by May if I'm No I'm I'm mistaken on that i think the J at the beginning of June okay so
we should see that by the end of April it's been sent to the attorney okay thank you okay now we'll move on to new business um conduct public hearing related to the project priority list application on the main lift station and we'll have a
presentation from Woods correct see if it works there you go the document that is being presented uh Jeff I'll send it out after the meeting we received this this morning that is what the packet that is in front of you
that I handed out this morning well hello everyone my name is Bill Westerberg i'm with Woods and we've been working with BPU on coming up with uh a plan to um rehabilitate or um reconstruct or build a new um main lift
station at their current facility right now um the idea of what we tried to do was to basically base the facility or base um um the design and all the concepts
that we came up with on um PF um acquiring PFA funding and creating a facility plan so that's part of the pro so that's the process that we followed so some of the stuff that we're going to talk about is just like some of the
planning and stuff like that um pop some of the like existing topography the existing conditions of the of the existing facility um the need for the project um maybe how the project was selected you don't have to scroll
through these i'm just kind of talking about the um we'll go back to the beginning some of the alternatives the costs the pros and cons and show the selected alternative and then discuss the schedule based on the um submitting
the facility plan and getting on the IUP list so basically the first few slides kind of show where the facility is for people who don't know i'm assuming that there was some residents in town here or at
this meeting um so the existing topography we actually surveyed this a while ago we supplemented it um with some additional information um some so what you're looking at here is the main pump station building the pre-treatment building and
the cold storage garage and you can see the existing um utilities coming into the pre-treatment building so right now there's sanitary sewer draining by gravity into the pre-treatment building which eventually drains goes through the pre-treatment process into the main pump
station building and then is forced out into a force man that crosses the Mississippi River at the location where we uh did the directional drill project last year or two years ago
um so what we did is we went through a little bit of like an environmental analysis and they're currently working on um an environmental impact worksheet and so some of the things that they talked about that we have to be concerned about
at the project were uh like we t contact US Fish and Wildlife Service they they there's the long-eared bat some grey wolf type stuff all things that we have to be aware of when we're designing the project and put in requirements for that the DNR has uh
Blandings turtle very similar to what we had to deal with for the directional drilling project um the Minnesota State Historical Preservation Office Shipo um they are con they're in the process of their review and they're supposed to get something back in May which is a
requirement that that is a requirement for the facility plan in order to move forward that's probably going to be the controlling factor um the project area as everybody knows is within the uh flood plane of the
Mississippi River um the flood elevation is 11 1165 which is basically a 100red-year event and you'll notice when you look at the facility right now is most of the doors are up fairly high you have to go up
steps in order to get in some are not which is something that we're going to talk about a little bit the next sheet that just kind of shows FEMA's um flood area which is there's a little
red dot there that shows where the um facility is located and that it's right in the middle of the flood plane um some of the things we got here about population um just to be consistent with the report that Bolton and Mink created we kind of
use some of their information um especially for like the projections the stuff before 2024 you can get that from the state demographer center or some historical data um so that just kind of shows what the projected population
would be um and as part of the the process we had to submit a PPL and in that they asked for what the number of uh what the number of sewered residents
and unseeded residents were and it was like or not un there are basically no unseeded residents but there's like I don't know four I can't remember the exact number now 4,000 um residential and roughly 600 um
non-residential or commercial or industrial um so what what their report is showing for the population is that uh in 2045 there they're projecting a slight increase in the population of Briner um
but they did list say that uh commercial and industrial may depending on the growth and what comes in that's kind of a variable in how this you know what the amount of flow going to the lift station would be okay the existing
facilities there was a report that was done by Witsth in combination with HR Green and they kind of went through and analyzed the uh the existing lift station um as part of that report what came out of that was some um immediate
needs which were to basically do the directional drilling project from Brainer to Baxter in order to correct that but also in that report it did talk about what the existing facility um was like and made some recommendations on
that so basically that existing facility was built like the pre-treatment was part of the existing wastewater treatment plant that was there 50 years ago or more that was removed where the new wastewater
treatment put where the new wastewater treatment plant is and the main lift station put in to pump to the brand to the backter side or the um current wastewater treatment plant so that was done in roughly
1980 to 83 um so at that treatment plant there is a pre-treatment area and that was probably about 10 years older than the main lift station
um what BPU has been doing is so they've been doing yearly ongoing maintenance at the uh main list station and at the pre-treatment building that is um kept the building up to or basically maintained it and kept it functioning
but they have really done a really good job of maintaining it but without doing a whole lot of uh uh I guess upgrades or replacement of the pumps or any of the other things that are in there so um it's it's really time for
some of this stuff to happen uh one of the things that was brought up at some of our meetings that we've had is that a couple of the pumps are in poor condition and not really pumping up to their capacity and we
recommended at that meeting or at that time that you know maybe before this PFA or the um financing even goes through it might not be a bad idea to replace one or both of those pumps so that you don't ever
have a problem and so these two p these four pictures show the the main live station um you can see the doors are up high because of the flood waters um the garage door on the picture on the upper left is uh
below in the flood plane so that if the flood did occur you're going to have to sandbag that or block that to keep the water from going in there there's a couple other areas on the bottom right picture um there's uh a lid or a
couple of manhole covers and uh hatches that are also within the flood plane where I don't think they're waterproof so water would be taken in there um what you can see on that top right picture that's the uh the grit area um
it's kind of open but it is the parapit wall is above the the flood elevation so So in the next pictures just kind of show just to get an idea keep going down the next pictures are just from the
TKDA plan it just kind of shows all the equipment and all the um like what the pump room looks like on the on the basically the basement what the uh first floor looks like um what the second floor and the roof
look like i mean basically the building is 35 by35 with a little bit of uh um space in the lower left corner that's not part of the it's there's building or there's um wet well or dry pit area underneath there but
not not above the last picture shows of the lift station kind of shows what the it's it's very it's deep so it's what 26 to 30 feet down depending on where you measure
to um has a right now it has a wet well and a separated dry pit area the pumps are in the dry pit area with a pipe through the wet into the wet well that drains the uh the flow into the pumps um and then that is forced out into that
force man that we talked about earlier that's goes to the U main lift or to the uh wastewater treatment plant there's a couple pictures in here showing what the pump room looks like this is in the dry pit area so these are
the four pumps with the manifold that connects into the force man so basically as the pumps go through a valve go up into that manifold the the pipe coming up it basically kind of increases as it goes out through the wall and the pipe
size for the force man is 20 in that's basically the same picture just a different angle kind of shows how the piping works mr chair yes can I ask him a question sure yeah at any time if there's questions please everyone okay uh Bill
um so you're going over the existing uh facility right now with Okay um when this is uh if we if the funding comes through will this will there be many changes to what you're showing us is it kind of just going to be reurbished or rebuilt newly constructed whatever you
want to call it in the same fashion or there going to be some things that are improved on uh I I know you're going through this i I just wanted to know if you're going to have what are what the next thing some of the things we're going to talk about or I'm going to talk
about here is just uh what the four options that we looked at for the U main lift station and then kind of the process and how we broke it down to get to the selected alternative okay and then I'll I can kind of Thank you try and explain that to you by just trying to show what it is that we're working
with there okay um there's also a generator that's on the main floor that uh I mean normally these generators are not inside the building they're outside and actually Charlie doesn't really like this so we're going to um we're told that
generator is going to be outside um does create a lot of uh um air quality and uh other type issues inside the building [Applause] i don't know i just threw in a couple
things about the need for the project um you know basically when it's a lift station and you're in the low point um if the lift station were not to work or you can't pump at the capacity um there's really nowhere for the lift station to go if you can't get the the
sewage out of there so it would either it's going to back up in the in the lines which nobody wants especially if you've got somebody in the low area um and you don't want it to overflow because it's in the um flood plane of the Mississippi River so there there is
some um basically that's a need for the project you know even if even if not all the pumps go down you still have to uh get the pump and get the get the sewage out of that area like I said before this
is a aging infrastructure the building is roughly 40 years old the main station the other one is roughly 50 years old i mean the the existing building doesn't really show there's some outward
signs of wear around the perimeter where some of the block and stuff like that is falling away or you know like broken but inside the building it doesn't really look that bad but it is still 40 or 50 years old [Applause]
so some of the things we're going to talk about now is just so what we did was uh we met with the basically we met with um BPU Charlie Trent Danny Chris talked
about uh um what the what they thought or what we thought the four options would be for this project um so what this um drawing shows is the existing topo showing what the four options were that we looked at um option one
actually options one and three are new structures and they're shown in the blue options two and four are rehabbing or repurposing the main pump station and they're shown in red
um so option one is a new main lift station with a dry pitch style and two wet wells very similar to what was um what you have
now uh alternative two is to rehab the main lift station to the current standards it's a dry pit style with two wet two wet wells so basically we'd end up just removing gutting the building and putting in new equipment new pumps
and adding walls and stuff like that where we need to alternative three is a new main lift station as a submersible style with two wet wells alternative four is rehabilitate
the main lift station to current standards as a submersible style with two wet wells so basically they're all very similar and we're using two of the options we're using existing building and two we're building a new one what's easier to maintain submersible or
dry long term i mean Charlie might not be able to answer that better than me but I Yeah so when we're looking at maintenance um submersible technology today um it's much easier to pull the pump out and and
maintain it but uh back then it was said to be easier to be able to do it when you're standing there unfortunately the location of that and the maintenance of it if you've seen them pictures um with the hoisting positions and stuff like that it it's a piece for a piece at this
point so submersibles would be basically a big tank with submersible pumps engine motors on the top at ground level no still be the motors would still be down in the uh in the wet well down
where the pumping is actually occurring but all the maintenance would take place at ground level am I thinking correctly yeah so uh along the lines of like uh Evergreen is another major one that has a pre-treatment uh building to it when we
look at pulling them uh pumps we pull them out inspect them replace them whatever parts we need and we put them back down um when it comes to these you got to have you know your your winch your crane all of that and you're kind of working in a more weather related
building but the way it's the way it was designed originally makes it almost more convoluted to be working on them than what we have at Evergreen currently thanks um so what I did or now the next sheet
is uh we just talk about each of the alternatives um so what we did is as part of this process so what you're going to look at is basically the final version but through the process um so we went through alternatives 1 2 3 and four but then we broke it down from four to
two from two to one and as we broke it down we added additional information into each option or each alternative that moved forward um but during this process you know some of the options were kicked out so that additional information was not you know we didn't
add any more time into an option that was um not chosen to move forward um so like I said this alternative one is a new new main lift station with the dry pit style new generator and outdoor
closure um gravity sewer connection um from where it comes out of the pre-treatment building well I can't really Yeah down there in blue that would go into the uh the the new main lift station and then there would have to be a new force man that would connect
into the existing force man from the new um main pump station building so would the existing pre-treatment building become obsolete or would it still be utilized in some fashion it would still be utilized i yeah the plan
right now is everything would still go through the pre-treatment building and then go into one of the four different options or the selected option um one one thing I just want to interject that due to the fact that we identified this as a whole project uh
back in 2020 um due to the fact that it was taking so much time to get the river crossing completed we broke it up we then BPU took on just doing the pre-treatment building with new screens grit replacement uh MCC and we're on the
uh air makeup in that building and now what remains is just the pump station as we speak right now for that so um I can bring pictures or we can have a what is but we're in the middle of up updating the pre-treatment the screening and grip
building yeah that the the pre-treatment billing was part of that report that I mentioned earlier there um Wood Seth made some recommendations as to what to do to improve that um so the nice thing about alternative
one is that there's no long-term bypass again you need to make sure that we maintain the flow and pumping the sewer or the sewage to the lift station um the idea with this one is is that the main pump station building can remain operational until it needs to switch
over to the new facility um and then there may be a little bit of downtime in there but not not terrible very similar to the downtime that we had for the directional drill project and these next pictures just kind of show the idea this was taken
from a different city an example um but basically there'd be three or four pumps in there um with a very similar to what they have now where you have an area where the wet well where the sewage comes in the dry pit area and that's
where all the pumps and the valves and all that kind of stuff would be again this is picture from a different project but it just kind of shows very similar to what you have now um one of the things is that uh the stairwell would have to be separated
from the um from the drive pit area so that would basically be like a Yeah a stairwell basically right now it's in the existing building it's open alternative two is basically going to rehab the
existing main lift station facility as a dry pit basically the way it is now but bring it up to standard bring it up to code um put in all new equipment all new pumps um and basic a new flow metering in the
structure um but yeah and update electrical controls put in a new generator um the biggest issue with alternative 2 is we're going to have to bypass the flow that comes in so that it
doesn't go to the main lift station so we had to put in a a a bypass lift station in order to um divert the flow from the main lift station and connect into the existing force man which you'll see when we go through
the costs is very expensive or can be so what we did here is we just kind of went through alternative two using the uh TKDA drawings and kind of showed what the plan is um I don't know how much detail you want
to go into but uh so like I said we're going to replace all the valves and the piping um add walls separate basically have two wet wells so that you can separate um close not use two of the pumps so that
you can go in there and do some work in there while the other two are operating and then basically switch back and forth so that uh you can do maintenance in there that's something you can't do right now um and then even to make that a
little bit easier we would kind of divert the flow coming in so that it would go one that it would be diverted into each well with a valve so that you could turn that flow off going into each side um there's been talk about maybe adding
allowance or costs in there to uh raise some of these covers and bring them up to grade so that they um you don't have to worry about the flooding um an option is to in the meantime is to maybe put some poly and sandbags over it but I
don't know if that's a if you're going to spend this kind of money maybe you just want to fix this i can add that is part of our contingency for flooding um it's not uncommon to have uh water standing on the ground in them locations and that's what we do is put poly over and sandbag
them openings same with the there's three manholes on the site similar issue occurs there too um like I said we're replacing the pumps the valves and the piping um we're going to like say one new thing that we're going to do is we're going to put in a flow meter loop so that they can uh
monitor the flow coming out of the lift station and then in again basically the what this whole thing is is uh we're going to take out everything that's in lift st in the
existing lift station replace with all new equipment HVAC all the controls all the processing equipment for the lift station and you know new boards stuff that Charlie's been kind of working on right now but all that would eventually be would be replaced as part
of this option um we're going to propose to heat the building um the bathroom there's a bathroom in there it doesn't really It's not really needed but there's really no reason why we have to take it out if we don't have want to
[Applause] mr chair yes um Bill are there any uh um ADA requirements with this particular project whether you build new or
refurbish or I I I don't staff is that something that we have to do or has that ever been discussed that actually hasn't not well we have an architect on the team and I we have not really had that conversation with him but uh something we can bring up i don't really know I I
don't really know how you should have put an elevator in there i don't know how you'd get down to the bottom well I mean I think it has to do with uh again this is not a public facility per se where the public is
going to be using it uh going to it and uh doing anything there and but it I didn't know if there's some requirement for any potential employees i that's all I'm asking i didn't know if that's ever been discussed or not so well we can
bring it up okay i I guess it's probably better to find out if we need anything before we Yeah i mean just something to remember is that this process right now we're Yeah we're still way up here 30,000 ft or more um we're trying to get closer further we get along here
okay thank you um so then alternative three is a a new main list station building with a submersible style with dual wet wells um a new generator and an outdoor enclosure
gravity sewer connection from that pre-treatment building to the new um alternative 3 building um one nice thing is no long-term bypass just like in alternative one you can use the main pump station as long as you
need to to uh um pump the flow or the sewage that's coming down here um one thing that we're going to try and do with this option is we're going to try and put all the valves and the
metering stuff above ground in a building so that we don't have the confined space issue so the you can just go into a building in order to access the valves and the uh metering equipment versus going down into a a structure or
a underground like a manhole or something like that that you see normally then the next slide is just uh kind of what the what the blue station might look like uh this is taken from a the the
plan was taken from a different project but it's very similar uh that's where we kind of got some of the cost estimates from was from a project in Edina I believe that did something very similar to this a little bit bigger but scale was easy to uh um prorrate to this
project so basically like I said it's a deep wet well separated and what this is showing in the plan view is a valve vault off to the side but the difference is that we are going to try and bring the valve va
the valve vault up above grade and set the building on top of the um concrete slab and then the then the flow would actually go back down and then go into the force man back out towards the existing force
man alternative four is again going back to the main building um converting it from a dry pit wet well right now to basically a wet well um remove the walls that we need to
remove um and then just put in new submersible pumps a new flow meter again another generator and outdoor enclosure and all of the equipment instead of So basically we're going to end up doing what's out
there right now from the first floor just take all that building all that off and demo it and then build a building on top of that that's fit or sized accordingly to put all the equipment in um basically in one
floor again the same concept as alternative three trying to put the the valves as much as we can in a building above grade so we eliminate that uh confined space issue some of the next pictures just kind of
show the existing building with uh tearing off the top two floors of the building in order to be left with the the slab there have to be some structural work to redo that slab and eliminate some of the holes in there but well that
was going to be my question i can't see how thick that foundation is or those walls you tear off the top of the building i mean what's what is the structure like right now have you It's block wall above grade um it'll demo easy
but I guess I'm looking at the solid this you know to rebuild something new on it if is what's the structure in its current condition could it support or would that need to be built out or re resupported in any way reinforced by
built if you'd build above that the what you can't see very well here is the see the walls on either side there they're 4 and 1/2t thick concrete that's what I was asking you can't see the thickness yeah so so if we have to we can go down
and tie into that to support and add some structural strength to that top slab so they you know just so what they did was they they poured the concrete above grade and then they sunk the structure
down into the ground as they're digging out the inside so it's kind of like a queson just driving it down into the ground and that's why those walls are so thick um yeah next slide just kind of shows the electrical building sitting on top
similar instead of it being a huge two-story building it just be something smaller enough to fit the equipment in it and maybe we need you know like either one larger building or two to get separated so that you have the valves and the um all the equipment and the
electrical stuff together or separated um the next one just kind of shows the idea is that with the pumps being on one side the the flow comes in on the east side of the building and then it slopes to the pumps and then you have that
again that new electrical room and new hatches over the wet wells so that you can get to the pumps and pull them out right now yeah right now the access to the pumps in the dry pit is a little it seems a little bit um difficult because there's there's not really a
good way in my opinion to get the pumps over to the hatch it seems like there's one hatch but they're not directly over the the they're over one or two of the pumps but not all four again just like the other options we're going to try and with the two
separate wet wells we'll divert the flow going in so that we can control the flow going in to one side so you can do maintenance on one side while the other side is doing its pumping a lot of this stuff on the next one we kind of really talked about um so then
the last page or one of the last pages is the pros and cons a lot of the pros and cons are kind of mentioned as we've been going here but um a lot of the so like the pros for alternative one is or for a lot of the ones that are new you're going to get a brand new brand
new facility new equipment with a longer service life um clean and act clean like in safe and clean access to the pumps and motors um again with like one and three you avoid the huge cost of a
bypass um designed and built to suit the current and future needs the cons for alternative one it's a more complicated design and construction than the current than a
submersible style facility and a less effective use of the existing structure basically this existing structure would just be with the idea would be to take it down as much as we need to maybe down on the first floor and we can gut that and
use that as a equalization area or something like that um alternative two um safe and clean access to the pumps and motors basically this alternative to remember is we're keeping the existing building we're just rehabbing
it um this one requires bypass station or temporary conveyance um there's a lot more unknowns when you're trying to rehab a building um the inflow and infiltration problems may increase the flow beyond the capacity of the temporary pumps so that's going to be
variable on the uh the time of the year and amount of precipitation that comes in um again cost of setting up the bypass some of the things that contractors mentioned about the bypass is uh how it's going to be set up so
like if they the cost increase with some of the you know like if they have to have 247 monitoring of that that cost will go way up then um if if we can figure out a way to have it like a typical lift station where you have the floats and all the controls in there that would save some of that cost but it
does add um the cost of those controls to operate it um alternative two is going to require some pipe penetrations through that 4 and 1/2 ft thick concrete wall which is I mean in the grand scheme of things it's
um it's expensive and it's probably complicated but it's not really that bad um the heating operational costs will get better the concrete structure of the building is
um over 40 years old and in good shape but may not last the service life of the new equipment that's inside it um so the the the pros for alternative three are the brand new modern facility
new equipment long service life um simpler design than the dry pit style um again it avoids the cost of the bypass and uh can be designed to suit the current and future needs of the of
the community the cons for alternative 3 it's a le less effective use of the existing infrastructure um some I guess you could say it's not as safe and accessible as the dry pit options but if you're going to do most
of the work above and that may not be totally you not it's not like you're going to go down in the wet well very often constructing wet well in poor soils with groundwater um again when you're building these new buildings as I
forgot to mention is the groundwater isn't very far down probably few feet five feet um so that's one of the reasons why they're kind of using a method where they're sinking the structure into the ground with option three they don't we're not proposing like an office area
similar to what they have now kind of well at least they have a table area um again like I mentioned before working in the well with submersible pumps is a ton following on the pros for alternative four more existing more
effective use of the existing um infrastructure new large deep wet well construction or avoids new large deep wet well construction that I was talking about earlier for one and three um minimal HVAC maintenance
minimal HVAC operation cost i mean we're saying no heat but I I think we're going to end up putting some heat in here new digital controls lower heat cost due to natural gas there's been a natural gas line provided to the pre-treatment building that we can move
or extend over to the main treatment or the main pump station whichever location we decide bill why why would you not be sure if you need heat why would it say no and you're you're saying now that you think it would need heat what well we started
with the option of there's really not a reason to have heat in there but then as we started to go through the options to move forward um and added additional data or additional information to these uh alternatives um we started with no
heat initially but the architects mechanical and structural um want to have heat in that building so that's the conclusion that we made and it just didn't get crossed off here in my little spreadsheet okay
okay so the big thing the cost so what we did is we tried to estimate the cost of the options um again we looked at all four of these um so when we tried to explain all the
stuff that I just explained to you I explained this to BPU and the staff and alternative one with a contingency was the cost the estimated construction cost was 13 million alternative two which is
rehabbing the main lift station was about 5.2 million alternative three with the new wet well submersible pumps was about 5.24 24 million slightly above and
then alternative 4 was 5.76 million roughly so then we kind of looked at what the overhead cost would be and we kind of assumed for like our basic engineering services for the design in construction
administration and then some other soft costs like geotechnical work in order to put in these options um so we looked at what 25% for the percent of construction for the engineering design bidding construction
services and the admin and all of those costs total um 3.3 million roughly for alternative 1 1.35 million for alternative 2 1.37 million roughly for alternative 3 and
1.5 million for alternative 4 and then adding them all up the total project cost for each of the options alternative one was 16.3 million alternative two was 6.52 million alternative 3 was 6.61
million roughly and alternative four was 7.26 million so the way the process worked is we kind of started like I said we started with four met with them um the BPU staff eliminated options one
and four so then we went back and we did some additional analysis of options two and three we reported back to the BPU staff with what our conclusions were and then um based on that they selected
alternative three which is that was supposed to be the big surprise but so they selected alternative three which is the uh submersible style lift station new
um just to the health of the existing pre-treatment building um oops Bill when we call it a pre-treatment building um is there really any treatment that
takes place or is it just a process of moving the material is there any actual treatment that goes on at that facility of of the of the material uh yes um so we're we're going
to there's removing of the grit okay removing of all the there's screens in there screens and stuff in there removing of all whatever's in the flow as it comes in um and then that will go across the river yes then the clean water will go into
the into the main pump station yeah either in one of the in alternative three will go to the new building just to the south of the pre-treatment that's one of the reasons why we're showing the bypass after it's going through the pre-treatment so that
we're not pumping all of the flow that has all the terrible things that you can think of okay thank you um so I guess the next thing is just the
the schedule um so I said we submitted for the the project priority list part of the um PFA financing um we submitted a a facility plan was a draft to the MPCA just to kind of like a placeholder and then um
as soon as we get all the information like incorporate the stuff from this public hearing um incorporate the stuff from uh information that we're waiting for the like shipo or something like that um we'll incorporate that in and then resubmit the uh amended facility
plan back to um TFA for approval and the idea is to um get all that in by June 6 so that they can make a determination if you're going to get put on the uh um intended
use plan or IUP and once you're on that then uh well they it takes them a while to create the list and um I think it comes out at the end of the year either spring or you know like fall or winter and then
once you're on the IUP list you have six months to uh complete the design if you don't complete the design in that period then you just get uh you just reapply for the IUP list which according to them is not as hard as the initial
application that we're going through right now in order for us to get any funding the project priority list has to happen and we have to be on the intended use plan to get priority funding so this is how we find out where our priority is for funding options
as part of the PPL list we completed a worksheet that had a lot of questions on that that uh the more points that you get based on those questions that you answer correctly um the the higher rating you're going to get to be put on
the IUP list so how long does all of that take i mean when when potentially could we hear on funding i 2020 well according to them it could be as early as fall of this year but I'm
guessing it's probably not going to be till 2026 the beginning of the year la last year's IUP came out in January or February of this year but it's typically November December time frame and a lot of this stuff is um dependent
on bonding too so if there's no bonding then things get moved they don't have as much money to spread around um does anybody have any questions not now i'm sure there'll be plenty in the [Music]
future um I have a procedure question do we open this up for public comment then bns It's a public hearing so yeah after Bill is done we'll do that okay thanks thank you Bill yep no problem this is a
public hearing is there anyone in the audience who has anything to say janna no okay with that we'll close the public hearing um the next item is uh consider requests
from customer for credit of wastewater treatment and collection charges danny you want to take that i can we have had uh over the last month since the last commission meeting we had two customers request um credit for collection and treatment
char wastewater collection and treatment charges for um leaks that end ended up in their basement and uh we confirm that the basements have no drain and are not entering our system their dirt floor at this point and um one of those customers as you can see is requesting an
adjustment for just over $3,000 um they were leaking for quite some time and they had water up to their floorboards so that is what they're requesting this is similar to how we've done in the past um these customers have asked for additional credit related to
their average usage staff felt that based on past practice just waving the water treatment and collection charges as it didn't enter the system that is what we're recommending crediting the next two attachments had kind of a breakout of their bill and um how we
calculated those numbers similar to how you've seen in the past and I'll answer any questions okay probably don't need to spend a whole lot of time on the $6.14 one I'm guessing but is there a motion on this or I just
have one question before we did because it is past sorry have it it is past practice that we've done this if it doesn't enter into our wastewater treatment facility um and that was where my confusion was because part of it said it didn't the other part said it didn't so I did have
a question on it but my question is is this an insurance claim and are they going to be I just I mean if we're going to wave it then they're going to turn it into an insurance i I that's I just want to make sure that we're being fair and I mean our past practice is to wave it if
it doesn't enter but um I I didn't know if you had that answer i didn't tell you yeah that's I've had I've had this happen okay um insurance only covers your damage doesn't cover anything to do with Okay how can I ask a question chair
how long does it take to have a Is that one month $3,200 for the water bill whatever the time was when it started filling up to when they found it i don't know if they were gone for the winter i
Who knows the this house um it was an empty house they had it open for rental and they had nobody living there at the time this is the most I think we've ever had this do but it's under under the same premise as all of the others that are
typically much less it still didn't go through the treatment center so it's really in my estimation a hard thing to charge them agreed agreed i just that's that's a lot of I mean I've had a couple
water mane breaks at the paper mill and I mean a once a month walkth through you know it's 5600 bucks in the water bill it's not that's to me it's poor it's not keeping
an eye on your property but I agree it's it didn't go through the sewer treatment plant so we didn't incur cost where did the water Oh in the ground through the through the ground in the ground in the ground back to the river they said it had a dirt floor it wasn't
a cement basement um so we're only The question is do we uh remove the treatment uh charge not the actual water right correct yeah thank you i make that motion to approve
both of them yes okay second all those in favor signify by saying I i i motion carries okay then we'll move on to staff reports uh city administrator thank you Mr chair just a few items uh we did have
an offsite on March 10th uh full council and full commission were invited to that we had good attendance from the council i think Commissioner Higgins was there representing the council or excuse me the commission so thank you for that also we had several members of staff at a very high level we just talked about
organization structure we talked a little bit about facilities mission vision and values and then we saved some time at the end to hear from the council on what their priorities are for the staff for the next couple years i expect these conversations to continue between council and myself as far as what their
priorities are and staff will respond accordingly u second item Country Manor city Council did approve the conduit debt for Country Manor so they're looking to begin hopefully late May uh block metrics just to give you an update on that they have submitted their building permit so that project is
moving along as well yesterday we had our finance director and our finance manager from the utility make a presentation to the integration workg group regarding finance potential finance integration um I think the uh the what came out of that meeting was
probably another we'll have another joint council commission meeting uh in the next three to five weeks so staff will get that scheduled and we'll get those invitations out to the full council and the and the full commission uh lastly um and I don't know if Chris
will talk about this but with Chris's departure uh I'm going to be meeting with uh the PNF chair today after this meeting i'm meeting with the city council president tomorrow and we'll discuss kind of a way ahead i will say that the employee policy manual does
speak to this process about hiring the public utilities director it also speaks to um having like an interim director so we'll look at the employee policy manual we're still getting we're just dusting off dusting this off and getting familiar with this again but staff will
begin to work through that process with council and of course the commission will be fully ab breast of what we're doing with that so that's the end of my report thank you Mr chair thank you Nick um council leaison report thank you
Chair OD um I would just like to uh thank Mr evans uh I am sorry to see you depart and um I uh limited conversations I've had
with you i I think you're uh genuinely a uh a person with a servant's heart and you are definitely in a a individual that is does care about the people in your community and I truly believe they
always had their best interests at heart and I wish you well in the future that's all I have thank you Jeff hr director nothing in addition to my written report thank you public
utilities director report uh thank you sir um I guess first off uh just uh some updates i have completed a preliminary I guess call it path forward a
five-year rate study proposal for where the rate should be for water wastewater and electric for the next five years that will be presented at committee on Friday uh some other things we have uh there's obviously some despite some of
the uh uh things that are happening at our state level uh there were some other actions that's been taken uh at least as far as um and again just real quick u that currently municipal utilities are
uh required to buy surplus energy and pay retail rate for power produced by uh uh photovotayaic or solar powered systems that are under 40KW uh there's
been some pushes and some uh uh uh positioning with MEA and MMUA to uh try to correct some of that in that there was concern that uh because of it being retail and not actually wholesale that
there's potential for people to oversize their systems to basically have a arbitrage for lack of a better term and that the concern is that obviously to uh subsidize these profits it comes at the
expense of the rateayers that can't actually afford to have uh solar systems or other uh renewables online so uh there's discussions uh at least uh as a first step to uh try to uh limit sizes
or to uh develop a policy where instead of actually getting dollars that it's more of a you're building an acrudeed credits and kilowatt hours uh but again you know I've been fighting the good fight for about 15 years on this various states and
whatever that you know honestly at the end of the day that if you have a uh system on your house or business that you're getting the advantage of it and that what actually hits back on the grid or our network that you know it really should be wholesale rate and not retail
or avoided cost um I guess the other uh point of interest uh is that uh there's another bill that's trying to exempt power generated outside of Minnesota uh from the current carbon-f free
standard uh unfortunately it's important to note that this does not actually change the mandate on utilities for the carbon-f free uh basically that's just uh I guess a preliminary move to keep uh North Dakota from suing us for
attempting to regulate their business um let's see uh yeah another House bill that's uh attempting to establish uh standards for uh setback requirements between uh solar
projects and wildlife management and park areas uh more to come and then I guess the other uh unpleasant uh part of the report is and I guess a reason why we're you know really trying to push this uh uh main lift project is that uh
based on the report from March 6th the state budget for fiscal year 2627 is anticipating a surplus of 500 or $456 million but
based on preliminary analysis for the 2829 budget year they're looking at a 6 billion deficit so money is going to get extremely tight extremely quickly unless something magically happens
[Music] um and uh so I guess that's my end of report thank you Chris thank you finance manager report i guess the only thing I'll add to my report is I appreciate Chris's
mentorship and he'll be missed thank you operations manager report i would echo Danny's sentiment there and nothing to add to my written report okay water wastewater manager report
again thank you very much i learned in a short period of time a lot about structure and management and I appreciate your time and and wish you well thank you okay thank you i have one quick question you can do that right here under
commissioner's report go ahead oh no the drink I just I just was going to ask what what were the residential drinking concerns do you recall off hand uh it's going to be uh aesthetics it's it's taste and order got it okay that's all I wanted to ask so now you're saying
it's our turn yeah I I just wanted to commend and thank um so back in 2023 we did a ribbon cutting um event out at the airport for the solar uh project and at the time there was discussion about that
the solar project out there at the airport was going to produce about 10 gigawatts if I'm correct per year said gigawatts in our posting um so I wish proofread that proof read okay so
but but that being said um I did go back and I appreciate it because on our if you do want to watch a live projection of the solar and what it's actually um uh generating you can watch a live event for from the airport as well as the
plant at BPU um and in 2023 10.44 megawws right 9 and in 2024 9.9 megawatt so far um and so far this year well up to two days ago 4048 megawws um and just
to put that in reference when it was talked about that said that's enough gen energy to generate a supply for almost 1380 homes so I mean just to put things into perspective I thought that was neat but I I really commend um BPU
as and and staff for putting that on the website so that the rateayers and consumers can actually see that and I appreciate that but I didn't I I did want to ask if hydro was on there i didn't get a chance to look to see if we can look at that thank you yeah it is
under if you go under electric there's an electric on the homepage solar that's where you'll find that perfect awesome just anyway wanted to do a followup because I think that's fantastic and very much appreciate it so and thanks Chris for your short time here i got
nothing thanks okay I have one thing um a few weeks back uh John Forest called me he's with Certoma and now that we um own the gravel pit area and all of
that they're wondering if we would be interested in working out something to do with you know expanding their park area as far as the wetland area what they would like to
do is a project on cleaning up Buffalo Creek and in order you know so that's kind of the area that they're looking at is where that creek runs through is that they would like to um approach the city
and and BPU on if there's something we can do i don't know if we would like and Nick you can chime in here too if we would like them to send us a letter stating that or you know I may if I go
to Rotary today I'll see John Forest at Rotary if I don't I can reach out to him and and kind of see what he's thinking and uh you would you do that then yeah I can do that absolutely i'm I'm glad you brought up the um Robert's property because I did have a question while I was walking by there the other day the building is was part of the purchase
correct this concrete building is it emptied and is it secured do has anybody ever did it okay i have not received keys yet okay did they remove all the equipment off of the property unaware huh do not know we bought it as
is so Oh so we have stuff to take in for scrap potentially well potentially it's been there for 40 years right um now that the snow's gone staff will go over and evaluate okay thank you
move to adjurnn then so moved second ajourned