Board of Public Works - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome, everyone. I am calling to order the Utilities Committee. This is a special meeting, Wednesday, December 17. We are five minutes late due to some technological troubleshooting to try to get one of our members who is trying to join us remotely. So they will be excused. So let's go ahead. We're calling the meeting to order. Please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America

and to the republic for which

it stands, one nation, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Please be seated. And roll call of membership as we previously mentioned, we have one member, Alder Heffernan, who has been trying to join us remotely. She is excused since the technology is not cooperating with that. We will introduce ourselves from my left.

Adrian Stansfield Martin, District 11. Veret Meltzer, District 2. Josh Lundberg, District 1. Denny Dougherty, District 15.

All right. Thank you, everyone. Our first item is to approve the minutes from our November 11 meeting, twenty five-fourteen ninety nine. Can I get a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any abstaining or nay votes? Seeing none, the minutes are approved with a four to zero vote. We do not have any public hearings or appearances today. Moving into the action items 20 five-fifteen 100, award 2026 A storm water management plan review contract to Brown and Caldwell in an amount not to exceed $40,000

Move to approve. Second.

All right. Have a motion and a second. Director Youngworth, what's your mic number? All right. Go ahead.

Thank you. So if I could please speak next two items, 25, 1500, and 15O1. We went out for RFP back in 2023 for excuse me, engineering consulting services to do stormwater plan reviews. We had two bidders. Those were R. A. Smith and Brown and Caldwell. They both have their strengths in different avenues, so we thought it'd be very beneficial to retain both of them. And this has been since 'twenty three, and we plan to continue that moving forward because we've had great success with both engineers. So those two items are both interrelated but yet separate from each other as they are two different consultants.

Alright. Thank you very much. Any comments or questions? All right. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and take a vote. This is on the first of those items. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstaining? Four zero. That one is recommended for approval. Moving down to twenty five dash fifteen oh one, award 2026 B stormwater management plan review contract to RA Smith in an amount not to exceed $40,000

Move to approve.

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any comments or questions? Seeing none, let's go ahead and vote on this one. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstaining? There are none. That is also recommended for approval four to zero. Moving down, 20Five-fifteenO2, request to approve the acceptance of the Department of Natural Resources lead service line replacement community outreach grant for private side lead services replacements outreach in the amount of $65,000

Move to approve.

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Director Youngworth, go ahead.

Thank you. So this item did come through Finance Committee last week and is coming through utilities committee for approval or subsequent approval before going to council. And it is in relation to community outreach that we plan to perform for our notification to residents on the galvanized lateral replacements.

Thank you. Any comments or questions on this item? Seeing none, let's go ahead and vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstaining? There are none. That is recommended for approval, four to zero. Moving down, twenty five-fifteen twenty four, renewable natural gas purchase and site lease agreement between Tarawa Outagami RNG and the Appleton Department of Utilities.

Move to approve. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Any comments or questions about this one? Director Stumpa, did you want to speak on that? What's your bank number? Go ahead.

Yeah. And the action item may not be clear, but we are seeking authorization to proceed. So there is a current gas purchase agreement and a site lease both dovetailed together. That framework has been agreed upon by the city legal team and to REVA's. So pending approval by this committee and common counsel, that would set the wheels in motion for next steps.

It doesn't mean the project would come to fruition because the company's got a lot of work to do, going ahead with acquiring what they need to do to get a pipeline in place. But it all starts with a with a agreed upon purchase agreement. So we've been working on this back and forth since the beginning of the year. It does provide some stability to us. It's a long agreement.

There were some back and forth in terms of out clauses, which it does provide. I'm not gonna get into any specificity what those are, but there are some there are some outs, like a forced demorrage, some unforeseen instances. But it does put us in good standing. And although we are gonna watch our renewable biogas go down a pipe away from us, and we're gonna be relying on natural gas, there are some things to be gained by that, deferring on a on a significant capital project to restore and upgrade our current storage system that would allow us to continue utilizing biogas, that's in the current capital plan. So that would be shelved in replacement of this.

It would provide a revenue stream of royalties in this mutually beneficial arrangement. So the better we perform from a treatment perspective, the better that arrangement through Tureva works because it provides them some of their rent and green energy credits that they're seeking. It also provides their facility with some stability. Landfill gas is pretty dirty. And really, they're going to use ours to help supplement and provide stability to some of these diurnal and changes in gas quality as construction of the land.

You can imagine the big landfill and some of it's open, some of it's not. And so the characteristics of the gas change over time as activities take place. So we have a more stable source. It's cleaner, and they will supplement accordingly. And that helps them stabilize their operations.

So all in all, it's it's a good arrangement. We had Baker Tilly, a third party, do a third party financial review. And that review proved positive over the twenty year period where we would not be operating in the red. So that gave us enough confidence moving forward to, again, try to finalize some of the terms and conditions in the purchase agreement and the lease. So I can open the floor to any questions if you have any.

All right. Thank you very much. It looks like Alder Hartshaim has a question. Go ahead. Thank you, chair.

I'm wondering if there is a plan because this sounds like we're all still a little bit up in the air until there are these approvals and some of the details are worked out. What the $75,000 investment for the new gas boiler equipment would be from? Is that potentially going to come from what the CIP plan was for the storage facility that we would not then necessarily have to use? So that's one question I had. And then the other question I did ask earlier to Director Stempa directly was, you know, twenty years seems like a long, long time that none of us is going to be around potentially none of us is going to be around on this council at that period of time.

Would we want to lock the city into that? And one of the things that he provided to me as a framework for that is that there's a lot of investment involved in this, so it's going to take twenty years in order to make sure that it seems feasible to both parties. So again, I would ask, please, the question of the $75,000 whether there is a plan for that or not.

All right. Thank you. Director Stempo, would you speak to that, please?

Yeah. And I appreciate Elder Huss and the reminder of the conversation regarding risk. Because we did look atand I'll answer the question, but we did look at this independently about ten years ago to do a direct pipeline to We Energies main hub there on the Southeast Side Of Appleton, that's about a four mile, I think, trench. And you've got to do some serpentine pattern to get there. That ROI at that time was not favorable.

I mean, you're looking at over ten years. And so again, the burden in that risk is really on the developer in this case. And so we kind of sidetracked that a little bit. And we can always resort back to doing what we do right now, worst case scenario. So now to answer the question regarding the 70 I'm doing my memo here, 77,000. So the hearse boilers that we currently operate, there's two of the originals are dual fuel, meaning that they can burn net natural gas or biogas. And we utilize those accordingly based on what we have for a supply. And so when we don't have a biogas supply, we can turn the system over. That's a dual head burner. The newest one is only biogas.

So that this arrangement was not forecasted when we put that last boiler in. And so that those monies would have to change that boiler burner out to something that would burn natural gas. Where the money would come from, we would plan accordingly. This this agreement, presuming it comes to fruition, is not gonna be a quick turn turnkey operation. It's gonna take a lot of time for them to do what they need to do upfront and then get the equipment installed and commissioned, so on and so forth. So we're looking at a year out, in which case we would be planning for next year to budget accordingly and not have to rely on available funds from other projects. That would be the intent.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Any other comments or questions? All right. Let's go ahead and take a vote on this one. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed or abstaining? Seeing none, that is recommended for approval, four-zero. Moving down, we have one information item, twenty five-fifteen twenty two, the 2026 Joint Chemical Consortium Quotation Awards. Is that Director Stempa or Director Yomworth? Go ahead, Director Stempa.

Yep. Just it's an annual process we go through with some of our neighboring municipalities, Menasha, Nina. And the bids came in favorable. We got a couple of new suppliers. We're in a good place from a budget standpoint as we project next year in terms of our one of our largest expenses, which is chemicals. So again, all in all, was a pretty successful outcome.

All right. Thank you. Alder Heitzhorn.

Thank you, chair. May I direct to Director Tempa? Yes. Director Tempa, the items that are more than the $20.25 cost per pound, are those heavily used or are those modestly used? Like, what kind of impact is the increase as opposed to I mean, bravo for all the decreases. But what kind of impact do the smaller the ones that have the small increase, what volume does that have

to us as a city?

Because I was having technical difficulties with my own laptop, which is supposed to be replaced on Friday, I would pull that up and go through. I can answer the question offline. What I can tell you that in aggregate, there's a couple chemicals or products that we use the most. So lime, for instance, is significant. That's one of our largest. Potassium permanganate is significant, both in the cost per unit primarily and in the amount we use. I would have to look at what that would be in terms of the usage and then the aggregate use over the course of the year and compare it to past years. But from a preliminary in my memory of what we looked at, it wouldn't be a significant impact.

Excellent. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? All right. Seeing none, we have one item left.

Move to adjourn.

Second. We have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

We are adjourned. Thank you all very much.