City Council - Regular Meeting

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uh good evening everyone. So I'm going to call the work session in order. Um online we have uh councelor Stevens and um I don't know if anyone else will be showing up. Do we know if someone else will be what are you looking at? Am I missing somebody? I didn't either. Okay. So, first item on the agenda is public comments. Anyone want to make public comments? Okay. No public comments. Uh review u we're going to go to the presentation of the water quality collection system inflow and infiltration reduction efforts. Mike, how are you this evening? Great. How are you?

Good. You're going to enlighten us and tell us how wonderful things are and Right. Yeah. You guys are in trouble now. Yeah. All right. So, just for the record, you need to show us your name. So, Mike Morgan, City of Kuz Bay Water Quality. Perfect. Thank you. The uh we got a PowerPoint. Christine's going to get it all set up so I don't mess it up. And as we're going, I don't know if there's any questions or anything. Just I'm pretty informal. Just yell at me, jump up and down, throw popcorn at me. I What? Okay. Interrupt if we have a question. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

All right. So, what is a wastewater collection system? A lot of people just know they flush and run the sink and away it goes. Well, we have uh service laterals from from the homes. take everything from your home to a to a main line out in the street and most all that is it's all gravity fed. We try to eat 2 to 3 ft per second. Uh those lines can be uh made out of various materials, clay, asbestous cement, concrete, iron, uh corrugated metal pipe, lots of different PVCs. So there's some bunch of different stuff out there. Do you have any wood ones left?

Uh we have found some. We found uh not long ago we just took out a wood bottomed manhole which still had wood in the bottom was actually pretty good shape. Uh we discovered some old wooden lines next to newer ones. Not sure if they were water old water ones or old waste water, but we've seen them. So it's pretty interesting. So how does a collection system work? And you know the gravity lines flow down to the low spots in the basins and a hilly area such as Cruz Bay. We have several different basins. Uh one of the things uh people, you know, don't think about is how does it get there? The stuff from the hospital has to get down to the plant on 680 Ivy. So there's a pump station down close to Goodwill that pumps it back up towards the hospital past the hospital over the hill and once it gets to the crest of the hill then gravity takes back over and it flows down towards the plant. We have 27 of those lift stations and 26 the 27th one to be ready at the new housing development over Lindy Lane here pretty soon. So the hospital do you have to treat that any differently or are there any uh things that we treat differently than this the regular waste?

We we do industrial studies uh we don't have heavy industrial users that we found you know every so often we have to do that but there's if we had certain manufacturing and things there would be things that would have to be treat pre pre-treatment or things we would have to do different. The hospital is a a big user and you know we keep an eye on things there. That pump station's really busy, a lot of flow. But, uh, there's nothing that we do different at the plant. There's no PE treatment there. So, the, you know, sometimes we'll see things where we've chased down uh some chemicals being dumped. We're like, boy, we can really smell chemicals in the plant and we went to the different lift stations and and uh started to work our way back. And it was a a building over by off of Ocean Boulevard where they were dumping a bunch of cleaner down, but it was so strong that we just you could smell it, you know. So, you know, and it was honest mistake. They weren't, you know, they were just like, "Oh, we found this old stuff. We dumped it down. All right. Well, you know, kind of kills some of our some of our microorganisms that are trying to do their job." So, little education time there. And, you know, it wasn't malicious. learning experience for them and good investigative experience for my crew, you know. So, Ellen, this is pump station 6. Sorry, Christine. That was pump station 6 pictured over one of our brand new ones over on cruise over by the DMV.

She has a question about lift station. I just lift stations again. Is that what I'm hearing? Yep. Yes.

Yeah. Some places, you know, you could the place where I was in South Dakota, we had one, you know, and well, it was pretty hilly, but we it was just worked out well that everything was all in one basin, the whole town pretty much. Uh we had a district like we have Charleston and Bunker Hill. That little district had four and they were a tiny little thing, but they were not strategically placed, I guess, you know. So, Mhm. So why do we want to keep the collection system in good working order? Uh one of the pictures is all the new additions to the plant there uh protect the the treatment plant and then the other picture is just behind that dock. There's another dock and that's where we actually discharge into Kuz Bay from the plant. You know, we want to protect the protect the bay of course. That's why most of us are here I think, you know. Uh, we want to keep sand, rock, debris out of the pipes because those come to the pumps and oddly enough pumps don't like pumping sand and and gravel. So, it eases the the treatment process on the plant when that sand and and stuff isn't getting to the plant, lessens the cost because lot more energy to try to separate the sand and all those kind of things. Uh, and we don't want to have sanitary sewer overflows. We don't want raw sewage spilling out of the pipes and getting into the bay. So those are uh the main reasons of keeping it going.

So also besides we uh wanting it to be claimed uh disab you know we try to go above and beyond and try to do the right thing all the time. It's I don't think I mean yes the permit tells us we have to do that and we we do but I think everybody everybody that works in water quality wants wants everything to be clean and and protect the bay and but yes we are strictly governed by DEEQ and the EPA. So, uh, one of the other reasons prevent property damage. That big sinkhole was a a storm line over an empire that was a quite a hole and developed really quickly. The next picture to it is a ini. So, that's water coming in around a round a joint from a lateral. And, you know, looks like a little squirt, but they add up quick. So, you know, we treat a lot of water if you're not uh keeping those uh leaks out of there. The uh

that's your camera run that pipes the

No, that that is a picture from the camera. Yes. And I will show the camera here. We'll actually get to see the camera and and more things. But yeah, that's a picture from inside the pipe and showing that. And there's some you can see the green dye. We put dye in to make sure, hey, this is water from the ground getting into the pipe, not just, you know, water flowing down the pipe. So to verify that yes, we have an issue here. So and you know all that is you know we do a lot of things with the camera and we'll we'll get to that next one. So how do we maintain the collection system? We have one of our collections operators there with a big vacon jeter truck. So that I'll have a it has like almost 1,000 ft of hose, 1 in hose that'll run down with a big jeter head and it's just like a pressure washer going down the pipe pressure washing. And then the other part is a vacuum. So everything that it breaks loose, big giant vacuum sucks all that stuff out. So we catch it before it goes down to the lift stations and gets to the pumps. So, and the the cleaning and inspecting and and locates probably take up 80% of my crews the collection crews time. I that's they we have to clean all the pipes every 5 years part of the permit. So, we they are they are out often cleaning.

I'm sorry. Did you did you say how how much we 90 miles?

Yes, we have 90 miles of pipe. uh sanitary about 10 miles of force mane so about 90 miles of gravity 50 miles of storm which we are not not part of our permit but we do spend a lot of time on storm catch basins clog roads flood those a lot of times those pipes are corrugated metal pipe and the salt water and and those pipes don't get along well they rust out with sink holes or let's say a mass a large percentage of our sink holes are from storm, you know. So, this picture is that fancy camera and it's got the the big wheels on it, but there's several different setups. It's got tracks. It's got wheels with little diamonds on it to get up the plastic pipe so it'll grip into them. Uh, and that's how we tell, you know, the condition of the pipe. You know, pipes are buried under the ground. we don't know what they look like if we So they run that camera up there and uh you know they'll do an inspection and it used to be in the old days if you have Jeff, Larry, and Frank doing an inspection and Jeff, Larry, and Frank would all tell you that a different condition of the pipe. So we've gone send all the our operators to a a national certified training where all the scores are the same. So you'll get the same opinion. If somebody's been in a a location with all new pipes and they see a a separated joint, oh my gosh, that's that's terrible. And somebody that's been in a city or, you know, municipality with really old infrastructure and they be like, that's nothing, you know? So to get everybody on the on the same page and score everything equally, they go through, they look, it's a crack, it's from 7:00 till 2:00. They put that in the computer system. They move along to the next thing. There's a separated joint. They put that in. There's a a hole with soil

visible behind it. They put all that in and then the software generates a score and that tells us a rating. This is what the pipe, you know, how long the software that they've been using thinks the pipe will last or and then that way we get all the same ones. And here's some of the things we see. We have the the photo on the left is a where a PVC pipe was connected to concrete repair and uh looks like it was overcompacted on the sides and squished in kind of a ghost face looking pipe there. I would say the the one on the right is a is a hole with soil visible. So every time it rains the ground gets saturated. That's soil is getting into the pipe and going to the pump stations headed towards the plant. So when you have compaction issues on that was probably done by a contractor, who's responsible for fixing that? That degrades the life of the pipe, doesn't it?

Yes. There if we have a contractor do work, usually there's a a one-year warranty. We try to camera as soon as they're done and then we camera again right before that year is up. Uh if it's an emergency repair, then usually there isn't a warranty on emergency repair. or if you know, hey, like 101's pulling apart a big sinkhole and we have to stop and fix that. You know, there's it's whoever can get out there the fastest and and get the road open and everybody safe again. So, there's a if we did it ourselves and then and it's us, you know, so depends, but yeah, we But there could be private parties doing work,

correct? connections and and in that instance, are you still uh going in and checking and make sure that

Yeah, we we try to we try to schedule, you know, as soon as we can after they're complete uh television. If it's a new install, a lot of times that's part of the install if it's planned is, hey, part of the contract is they're supposed to televise when they're done and they send that video to us and then we go back out before the warranty is up and compare, you know, to make sure it's still in good condition. But yeah, if we do a new line and have a contractor do it, we do require an inspection so we know, you know, that they did a good job cuz once it's buried, you know. Yeah. So, this photo is uh you have some grease build up on some roots and it starts to block everything up. The next one, is this a commercial spot or a home?

Uh this particular one, I'm not sure, but we have them from both. I mean, it's amazing. You would think, oh, all the restaurants are where you're going to get the grease, but that's not always the case. There's a lot of areas, uh, you know, apartment complexes seem to have a lot of grease problems near them, you know, but it's everybody and when we find it, we'll send out flyers or mailers and hey, don't dump this down, you know, and try to educate.

So, have the since we initiated the grease traps being mandatory for restaurants, has that helped things? Yeah, we have areas that are better that we we would call them we would call them bad lines. They're not bad, but just say hey we have to go out and we know this one every month or every 3 months we have to clean it. And there was several that were on that that we hey we've taken off the list or we've reduced hey we've gone from we don't have to clean that every month every six months or you know so that we have noticed difference for sure in in areas. So, and we made repairs too, you know, and some of that stuff we were we found that guys were in the routine and they were cleaning things and hey, we we fixed that. We don't have to clean that every month all the time now. Um, so

and and if you've identified places where you see larger problems, like you said, apartment complex when you have new developments like that, is that something that you're considering maybe some sort of a grease trap that would catch that?

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure what our regulations can be on an apartment, you know, complex on, but we do always send out flyers and mailers and uh, you know, we'll hit those areas. So, with that, and if it's individual people, you know, we've noticed we found somebody was running a a nail salon out of their home and dumping a lot of nail polish down. And, hey, you can't dump, you know, the business thing because we don't have anything to do with that, but don't dump the nail polish, you know. So we will talk to people directly and and you know if things don't improve then we we move that up the ladder and you know let Jennifer or code enforcement or whoever it is handle it from there. panel.

Nicole, to Stephanie's point, is that something we could do for future development if if apartment complexes have a tendency to just as a result of of I don't know, well, bad decisions. And I'm not trying to say that. And yeah, because you you have to think, you know, one person dumping a little grease down the drain and we we don't want you to ever do it, but is we may not ever notice, but when you have a whole bunch 150 going down one lateral into our main, then we try there it is. You know, it's all piled up because it's 100 people.

I think that's a good question. I don't know if Jennifer like I think if we saw that, I think we'd reach out to not just like flyers. I mean, I think we want to talk to the property owners like there is a trend that we're seeing here, but I don't know what I think.

Yeah, I think you're talking about future development. So, that's regulated by the state of Oregon and so there's specific code to that. Um, so from a city standpoint, we really don't have jurisdiction. I'm not sure what it is for like highdensity residential. I don't think any pre-treatment or fog device is required. It's only required for commercial and like food service establishments. So, we cannot have an ordinance in the city that requires them. Even though it's it's governed, we cannot decide for ourselves if we're looking into that. Yeah, we can certainly ask about that. I think Stephanie, Councelor Kilmer brings up a great point. I don't know if that was the direction you wanted to go.

And I I don't want to speak for Mike, but I mean, we have seen it, but I and Mike, please please jump in. Is it is it a serious issue or is it something we've actually been able to to keep a handle on with education and and resolve?

There's, you know, a few of them and I don't want to badmouth people, but there's some of some of the areas. There are certain areas where you can talk to your blue in the face, I think, and and nothing changes, you know, and then there's areas where we talk to people and and we see a difference. So, you know, it's we do try to, you know, talk to apartment managers or rental agency managers, but once again, if they really leave the message, I don't know. And if they do, do the people listen.

Well, I think we should look into obviously there's benefits the restaurants. Um, and you can't just pick and choose on the restaurants. So, I think if we decide to do that and have the opportunity to do it, we might want to look into having them all do it. I mean, it saved time. I mean, and that they put in, you know, every month. Now they're every six months or something. So, sure, we'll look into it if it's possible. And and I love that that we we try not to use the hammer right off the bat and go through education, but if you're having to keep especially if you're having to keep go back going back to the same locations and educate, um that's not a good use of the time that you have when you have so many more needs.

Yeah, I agree. Um this photo, this pipe is in really good shape. Yeah, except for that natural gas line running through the middle of it. Really? Yep. That was over off of 20th off of Ocean Boulevard. It just drilled right through. Yeah, it happened. Usually fiber guys are notorious for drilling through our lines. Uh gas happens every once in a while, but uh they went out and removed the line, moved their line and repaired the the sewer for us. Okay.

So, but if you see that's a you know that pipe is in really good shape. It's concrete from the 50s, but that that's an example of one that's it's doing its thing and been doing it for a long time and still in good shape. All right, the next one. Sometimes we find some furry friends inside there.

We find mice and and rats quite often, but this was uh down by the Empire boat ramp uh storm line. And uh the next one was not just that one. It was a family of four. There's was three babies. Two of them were still hiding behind there. Uh they were all still happy when we left.

So they they didn't hate to see us go, but they uh that's uh I'd seen pictures of raccoons before, but that's the first time I ever seen one in one of lines I was working on. So all that camarine and all that scoring, what is the condition of the cousins collection system? We've televised roughly 30% of the of the sanitary sewer. Uh right now we're you know we we will keep going but you see the big green piece that's the stuff that's in really good shape. And as you go down next slide there, so 90% is going to last for according to that scoring system that we use for at least 10 10 years, 20 years. We try to look out 3 to 5 years in the future. uh the the ones that aren't the 10% that are you know that little red pie is have already failed or will likely fail in the next 5 years. The orange pie piece of the pie is in 5 to 10 years they will most likely fail. The 10% well we have 90 miles of pipe. Well, 10% is 9 miles of of line that are uh concerning to us. Um when we uh go through and televise more and and get the rest of it, this could skew up or down, you know, and we may we try to televise and we clean and televising those pump station grids. That way we keep on a rotation and get them all done in 5 years. So, if the next grid we do is in really good shape, may skew it that direction where, hey, the percentage is looking better. If it's one that's in bad shape, it could easily skew it the other way. So, it'll

be interesting to see where we're at when we're all done. But, I think we're there's a good chance we're uh done enough that we're starting to see a trend, but we have a lot and there's sections in town that are substantially worse than others. So, we'll see see how it turns out when we're all all said and done.

When you say all said and done, so I mean, what's uh for those that potentially have failed or will fail in the next five years? Um I I'm sure you probably can't answer this, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. Do we have a budget that is going to address all of those pipes so that we can have that? Well, this guy here is is sternly telling us no. The uh but we don't have to. Not all not all failures are created equally. Okay.

So, we have a line segment that's 450 ft between manholes and it scored as failed. might be 20 feet of it that were so poor that caused it to score as a failed or you know the bottom is gone. You know we've actually driven that fancy camera right out of the pipe into a hole. Uh so but then the rest of the pipe is in really good shape. So we dig it up and we we repair 20 ft and then we retalivize it and now it scores in the category it's good for 10 to 20 years. So not every so you know and then there are ones that yeah this thing is in poor shape from manhole to manhole and you know the only way to fix it is going to be to to replace the whole thing. So we have a mixture of of each and how much can we you know budgetary time wise can we do in a 5year period? I did some research. The most I could find is we did 3.8 miles as our largest amount of repairs in a 5year period. That's still yes. Um, and that's still not going to get us to nine. But also, like I said, we might not, you know, have a full 9 miles thinking of it that way. It might really only need three miles or four miles once we're all said and done and, you know, assess the whole situation of the but there's uh other ways too. We go to the next slide, you know. So Mike, I don't know. It seems to me that since uh I came back on the council that we're more diligent about trying to stay on top of things. I mean, since we've been on in 2016, we put a a lot of money into our sewer system. Two brand new plants, a lot of lines. Previously, I never realized that we were doing this on this type of basis. I think a lot of things have put it been put into place. we have an economic uh uh economic um what

analysis that he comes in and does and figures out what we need financially and so I mean it's not everything we need but I think we're making strides I would think uh that better than we have in the past at least

well and part of that INI reduction you know we think of pipes and everything but we've been doing a lot of lift station we have you know the two brand new lift stations uh and and repairs new generators two of them to keep them running. But the the one that I showed the picture of on the cruise pump station six, the wet well collapsed when we sealed all the leaks in it. I mean, that tells you how much infiltration was coming into that that once we sealed the leaks, it couldn't structurally hold together anymore. So, it collapsed and we had to build a whole new wet well. And unfortunately, in DEQ's eyes, we don't get the credit. Hey, that was stopping a lot of, you know, we made a huge improvement on INI, but they only measured by there's a few things, but most of it is how much lines have you replaced or repaired. So, you know, we stopped a a big one there that we will get minimal credit for in their eyes. Um, there's a manhole that had leaks in it that was right down on Front Street that when the tide was over 6 ft, we're getting 300 gallons a minute coming in. We we got in on low tide and we sealed that thing off and you know that's that's a huge savings but we won't get a whole lot of credit for it but we are seeing it in the plant uh flows have have reduced I mean it's been a really dry year too but I mean we have noticed a little bit of difference in the plants that you know every time it rains it's not here comes all the water it's you know the ground really has to get saturated now and before we start to see the effect of the rains

I was just going to say I think I appreciate this work because um being proactive to me seems um more fiduciarily responsible because when you have an issue with a pipe, you're not just affecting the pipe. Um it's not just affecting, you know, wastewater, it's affecting roads. And that's what people when they drive through a depression in the road and it seems to swallow their car, you know, that's that's they don't realize what's going into what's happening around that. So for sure

I appreciate that and I think that we always need to keep that in the front of our minds because it is more than just

you know waste water or water line. It's everything around it. Well, in these pictures, and you know, we kind of touched on it with the questions that all of them aren't created equal. This the one with the excavator with the hammer that was uh about 60 ft of pipe, but it was sanitary and storm on four street where there were two plates that one of them had been there. Everybody thinks from the dawn of time, you know, we got both those plates off the street and fixed both those repairs and that was a line that had scored failed and it's it's ready to go. The other one next to it was that's in the the box culvert for the storm and there was a hole in the bottom of the box culvert. Every time the tide would come up would come in the bottom of the hole and then it was flowing out underneath and you know we damned that up and and reconed the bottom of that and so it's functioning like it should now. But those are all things that would have scored failed that are now functioning the way they're the way they were designed. And part of our our fix when I've been here three and a half years and we had a little Kodiak GMC dump truck from the '90s that my guys tried to kill, tried to break. It kept going, but it didn't haul very much. It was a little guy. We had a a backhoe from the '9s. So, we purchased some equipment. So, now we can dig down to 14 ft. We have shoring to go 14 ft deep. We can haul, you know, 12 yards of of rock, so the guy's not sitting there waiting for the truck all day. We have two dump trucks now instead of just one little one, so we can get some of these repairs done faster. That's one way we're going to help improve this. The next one is we combine our efforts with the streets department. This is South Fifth by the

post office. It's in uh terrible shape. It's a concrete street. They're going to have to jackhammer up the whole street. Well, there's two plates on that street. That sewer line is uh really old. We're going to replace 475 ft of 8 in sewer main and all the laterals out to the sidewalk cuz they're all in bad shape. Some of them are Orangeburg. They're old materials. Uh any guesses on how old that existing sewer main is? close. Next one, it's 102 years old. Wow.

I don't think that's the actual installation, but it is an old pitch. So, yeah. So, we're going to, you know, it's like, hey, if the street's going to, they're going to have that up. So, we don't have to pay the the demo for the street is covered under the street improvement. So, we're just paying for the pipe to get replaced and and that. So it's a combined effort between both divisions and you know we can knock out two birds with one stone and you know I don't think they had a street then doesn't look like

no so I think my guess is that's during war times because it seems to all be women there working so I'm thinking that was during World War II but all right next one and how how do we prioritize the repairs? uh largest offenders when we when we find big leaks that are really dumping, you know, groundwater in or safety hazards, big sink holes, you know, we don't want a school bus or a car to fall in a sinkhole. Those are the ones we try to we try to knock off first. The the other thing we we really try to do is is spread our efforts out across the city. We try to make sure we do stuff in East Side. We do stuff in Empire. We do repairs downtown. We do pairs repairs in Englewood. And and we really try to balance around and, you know, make sure everybody knows that we're not forgetting about one section of town or one section of town has priority over the other. Uh we even get up on Telegraph Hill sometimes.

I'm out at Telegraph Hill, right? You go to the other places first. Uh we are going to have a project on date over there. So partway up the hill and that's that's another one that's over 100 years old. So you know and that's we just you know we try to do the right thing, try to help the city everywhere we can. Uh we try to help the the citizens. You know, if we're doing a line repair, we're putting in a new piece of main line and their lateral connects right there and it's in bad shape. If we can put in 4 ft of lateral over there and it fixes their line, we do it. You know, I mean, it it helps us in the end cuz it's just going to be high and I pour in, we're already dug a trench, we're already there. If we can do that, we do that. We had one lady, she was really mad cuz we were blocking her driveway and we said, "Well, we're going to fix your lateral that's broken why we're here, right?" And boy, she made lunch for the crew and she was real happy then. So, uh, what have we accomplished in the last 5 years? Sanitary lines cleaned 87 miles. Routine problem lines clean. So, those ones that we do, you know, because of grease and things like that often, 28 miles. Sewer lines televised, 32 miles. Manholes set to match the road grade 14 manholes repaired, 72 and six replaced. locates completed over 4,200 and that's whenever somebody else wants to dig they call in a locate and we have to go out and mark our sewer or our storm force mains it's a time consuming and you know they call them in you have three days to get them done so it's that's always on their list of things to do uh sink holes and lines repaired in the street repairs made 68 sanitary main man manhole lids replaced

It's 83. I think probably in the 50s somebody was having a sale on storm manhole lids cuz about 80% of our sewer manholes are with storm manhole lids on them. So they have the big extra holes and that water end. That's I must somebody must have had a sale or something. Uh so we're slowly going through those and replacing those. Uh so that helps a little bit. Sanitary service laterals repaired 26. Uh wet wells have been cleaned 181 times. And that's the well at the lift station where all the gravel and stuff, you know, collects at the bottom. And we we had to vac all that out and try to protect the pumps. And I think we're a little over a quarter mile in the last 5 years cuz we switched our efforts from line lines being repaired to pump stations. So, our budget has gone there for them in recent bit of time. But the uh we're going to have a bunch of them coming up next year. So, we'll get that number back up there. But

plus two uh new sear treatment facilities in five years, right? New ones. Well, we plant two and a redo on plant one. Yes, correct. Yeah, that took a little bit of money. I mean, I think it's important that we have uh this information available and if we could put a dollar amount so people might understand why our rates are and what they're doing uh to have on hand sometimes would be nice. Yeah. I mean, we got 50 million in just treatment facilities, two plants. So, well, the other thing I think is significant because you uh as a body chose to bring this back in house,

we have a different ownership of that work. the televising to the best of our knowledge was not occurring in the past. So we were reactive when there was issues and now we can kind of be a little bit more in front of it and you just I mean they see the folks that are there like they take this work seriously. We now have capacity to do a lot of these littleer smaller jobs in house. That's you know we can do that a little bit cheaper than going out. There's just so much has shifted since you made the decision to bring this in house. So,

well, and we have a couple of holdovers from, you know, the old regime. And sometimes I'll ask those guys, hey, have you ever had a problem here? Or did you ever make a repair there? And, you know, is it more than 4 ft deep? Cuz if it was, we didn't do anything, you know, and so they, you know, they've learned a lot. They've come a long ways. They're all, uh, you know, they get certified the more they know and the more experience. And, uh, there was only, a lot of them were just operators in training three years ago. And several of them are level three, which takes six to eight years of experience, and three hard exams you have to pass. And they're all I don't know. I'm really proud of them. They've come a long ways. That's great. Well, thank you so much for everything you do in this presentation. Anyone else have a question?

Yeah, I was just going to say and as you're continuing to do this maintenance and televising and standardizing the reporting of it, those repairs should start to diminish. Right. Yeah. I mean the sink holes specifically because a lot of those are caused by faulty lines. So if we're on top of it more there should be less those catastrophic failures. Yeah. I mean there's so many ways you know we are and then you think about 150 miles total a pipe if we could if we repaired or replaced a mile a year 150 years you know you're you're always just going to the cycle is just always going to continue.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's just so much but you know and like I said some of them last 100 years so that's why you got to pick and choose and it all depends on the materials they used and how well they compacted and and and things like that you know so

I just want to say thanks for your leadership. So, uh, this is a really great presentation and and also when we're reminding people of all the things we've done, it might be a nice reminder to the program that we have with the laterals, uh, where, uh, they can buy the insurance for either the water or the sewer lines. I just, um, had to pay for my water line because I didn't reup on that insurance and so it's expensive. Uh, and then also the fats, oils, and just a reminder, maybe maybe April's the month that we do that annually or something just to remind people the work that's been done.

Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to put the uh the service line warranty stuff in a regular rotation, maybe even quarterly. We get that in the newsletter just to keep people kind of aware that that's an opportunity for as a homeowner. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, we have the other programs. I we try to tell people that will help if they have a lateral that failed, you know, and it goes the other side of the street. That's very scary and very expensive to people. They don't, you know, they think once it leaves my property that I'm done with it. And well, unfortunately that's not the case. And but, you know, we do have a program. I try to remind them we'll we'll help with concrete and asphalt. So, you're not paying for a whole new street and and things like that. Mhm. That does at least ease them a little bit, but you know, yeah, that's another to share that the trench um restoration, asphalt and concrete,

you know, support some of the street side work. Yep. So, anyone else? Thank you so much. Thanks. Well, thank you guys for for taking it over. You know, I think we're delivering a better product to the citizens than there was before. Agreed. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Next one is the fire department mitigation rate ordinances. Uh Nicole and Chief Atkins, who's first?

Um well, I'm going to just briefly start us because we've we started this conversation um a little bit ago at a work session just to kind of present an opportunity uh based on services that we were providing. And from that feedback we came back with some uh refinement to that. The goal is across all things we do at the city like the folks who have the service should have a responsibility for paying for it and uh obviously in most instances our property tax should cover you know the the standard services but there are uh services that are ped provided outside that that we'd want to find a way to make sure the folks using those services are covering that so it doesn't lie on the back of the larger community. So that's really the intention behind this and Jeff I guess can you know dive into maybe more of where we tried to refine this to be more in line with maybe some of the comments that we heard.

Yeah, thank you. Good evening. Uh so taking the feedback we had from last month's uh work session um what I took was that you were receptive to having the billing ordinance in place um billing insurance but you did not want individuals being build directly. Uh so we already had that set up to where it would only be non-residents that would get personally build. Uh but in refining that in the appendix A that was included made that change. So, uh, regardless if they're resident or non-resident for a lot most of the calls, uh, their insurance would be build, but if their insurance was denied, uh, the claim or if they don't have insurance, we would close that claim and they would not receive a bill personally to them. Um, there are still a few things that an individual would be build for, regardless if they were a resident or not, that we propose. Um, and that's primarily illegal burns. Uh we have people that do open burning year round. Uh we have some repeat offenders that we go out. Um it's definitely illegal. We advise them of the burn regulations and either they put it out or we put it out. Um some of them are really good about that. They don't burn illegal materials. Again, others it's a consistent issue for us. So with this proposal, we would be allowed to build them directly for that violation of our time and materials required to extinguish that fire. I'm hoping that through that we would get the compliance that we're hoping for. Uh we tend to threaten with DEEQ complaints. Uh but DEQ does not really get involved with that unless it's very well documented and has to be extremely hazardous materials are burning. So uh small amounts might be effective if we can do that

that way. The other one is false alarms. We go to care facilities and businesses oftent times uh multiple times a year uh because they have uh alarm system malfunctions whether that's because of poor service uh or lack of service to the system. And we would like lot of agencies we keep going consistently. We're sending two fire engines typically with full crews because we don't know if it's a fire or not. Um and it's tying up resources and then most of the time it's false alarms. So um we would also be able to request to be able to start billing directly to the facilities after a certain time period when they become problematic every year. And same thing with uh hazardous materials release. uh we would try to bill insurance. Uh but sometimes if it's a shipper driving through um if it's small amounts, we can deal with that as our fire department. Uh but if it becomes a large spill, then of course that is what activates the state fire marshals hazards materials response team which is also PSP. Uh but at that point it becomes a state response and then the state would actually get involved with billing the responsible party. But this would be more likely the just small incidents that we come across that we could bill insurance but potentially the spiller as well. U the other comment I know was made last time is uh projected revenue and I try to be very conservative with all my estimation on stuff. U I'm still estimating about 30,000 upwards to maybe 50,000 in revenue a year. uh which was the comment was made that like maybe it's not a lot of money but that also reflects probably 7 to 12% of our materials and services budget that we are expend that we are budgeted for every year. So there is a little bit more work for our staff but the majority of this is being done already by

obtaining the information on our alarm responses. Uh so it's very very small uh increase in costs. And then the al other thing is I located another thirdparty biller that actually adds on their fee on top of our invoice and then bills it that way uh instead of taking a cut from us. And again they only get paid if we receive funding. So um I think that'll also help to increase our revenue or recovery rates that we're billing for. I have a question. Sure.

Uh Chief, uh so you were talking about like the um I'm looking at the last page, the false alarms, uh no charges for like the first three false alarms in a calendar year. Um what is the rate structure? Have you uh have you put that together for what's the charge for the fourth, fifth, and sixth call? Are they the same or? Yeah, so we would have come back with a resolution for you to set rates. um we would do uh comparable rates with other jurisdictions to have an idea of what those specific rates would be. Uh this is not really new. It's several other agencies are doing it. So we have a built-in pricing list that we could go off of or an average for comparison.

Thank you. Uh Chief, a question. I I think you stated you didn't have a dollar amount on what you think these extra things cost you other than the 7% of equipment costs. Um can you give me just a guesstimate of what you think this is? And and I did like your idea because I was going to ask, well then we're going to have to have a staff member that's going to be responsible for submitting those bills, following up and making sure we get the reimbursement. But having the third party biller if they add onto the charge I think that's a good idea.

Yeah. So with the reporting system that we use it's called first do uh it's a pretty robust program. So our third party biller is able to actually reach in to that and pull the data. So we just have to enter it initially. So we're like I said we're already entering in all that data. The one thing we would be doing is capturing insurance information which we don't currently do. We don't have a need for it. But it's something that almost every time we go and deal with a person uh it's available there or the police get it from a police report. So it's fairly easy to come across most of that. And then the third party biller has said even if they don't have the insurance information as long as they have name, telephone number, location, they can reach in or contact them directly. So there's not necessarily a specific person that's going to have to be doing this work, which is one of the drawbacks that we've looked at in the past. We haven't had the access or knowledge of third party billing. So we've always been, you know, we could bill, but the revenue that comes in is going to be eat up by the extra salary,

the salary, right, for that clerical position. So and that's auto and home insurance that we're talking about. I'm sorry. Auto and home insurance that we're talking about, correct? Thank you. Yeah. So when you're talking about list assist, are these for home list or you talking about commercial?

Uh it' be homes. Uh so we go to typically elderly residents. Um most time they don't become a problem. It's a one or two a year type thing potentially. We do get the ones that are just repeated over and over and over. Uh and we typically try to talk with them that uh this is not really our responsibility. So like can you try to find family members, neighbors, something else because we're also not always available when someone calls. Um so we don't want to have a elderly person on the ground for hours waiting for us to respond if we're tied up on fires. So we try to get them to do that. Um but sometimes it does become problematic. We've had several over the years that they typically work their way out. They end up going to a care facility or something else happens to where that um issue stops. Uh but that can be months of repeated uh lift assists. Uh which creates strain on our staff. Uh so it's again it only becomes a problem if we start seeing the pattern. We don't necessarily run reports to see are we going to this address multiple times a week. It's when the crews start realizing they're going multiple times. And of course we have three crews. So it's usually takes a while and when we look at that point we start running reports and we realize we've been there you know in excess of 10 12 times uh which is usually in a couple months time period. So that's where it and again this is all kind of at the discretion of the fire chief to be able to wave that if there's certain circumstances. But um sometimes that is a a good reason for them to stop calling that because sometimes it is just abuse. We've went numerous times and there's definitely able-bodied people there. They just don't want have to deal with it.

This is I have I have just a little bit of heartburn about this one. I'm imagining imagining someone falls and um where you come out to um lift them up. But what you also do is you assess them

uh to make sure that they haven't hurt themselves. And I I struggle with three. If if it were me, I would, you know, make it maybe five assists or keep that charge pretty low because um I have aging parents. My mother's fallen. Thank goodness the fire department was there. My father couldn't pick her up. Uh and um she was um hurt and so of course I'm using this personal example. Um and I know that you have many examples that you could give me, but I feel as if I feel like that is a service that we should provide our citizens. So that's the only one I have slight heartburn on. What do you charge? What's the charge on it? I

typically it's like $65 to $75 is what other departments typically charge in that range.

I I have a lot of heartburn, but um and I have a lot of questions. Um I had an aging parent also that fell that but was pretty good sound mind. Um, had I had she not been able to get a hold of someone, she would have laid there for days and probably but the first thing that she said through my door is there's no way you're going to be able to lift me. This was at 3:00 in the morning. And uh, try as I might, I I could not lift her. Fortunately, I knew somebody that could help me. But there we have a lot of people that are on their own here. And um but the first words through my mother's mouth, out of my mother's mouth was, "Call that fire department. Those guys are cute and they they just go bloop and they'll lift me right up." Um because apparently she had called you before um because she couldn't get a hold of somebody. And I think there's a lot more people out there. But overall, I I have a little bit of heartburn. I understand. I will say I appreciate the thought ahead of this to um try and cover some of the costs. I still I still think the public relations cost for this does not equate to the 30,000. Um, we also have a third-party biller that we're going to that we don't have control over how they treat our citizens um on on billing and collection. Um, and I I I have a lot of other thoughts. So, I'm going to I'm going to be the one that probably brings up the devil's advocacy in this because that's what I

do. You know, I try to just food for thought. Um, and then the the other thing that I'm concerned about is that again it's a it's a it's a a low number. Um, we have people on duty 247 and I understand that you would prioritize fires over, you know, or serious medical in the tiered system over over say a fall or or a lift. But what are our neighbors doing right to the north of us? They are not doing this that I am aware of. Do we know? Are they considering this? I mean, we kind of have to be consistent.

Yeah. North, we do we do create um I think a perception that we're tougher. So, I'll let you answer that question. Uh so, North Bend is not and that's primarily because of the ordinance or the law that was passed for them where they cannot do fees. Uh so, they have not looked into this or moved forward on this because they didn't think it would be beneficial um or would go through that process they have to go through. Uh but Charleston, uh Millington, Sumar, Green Acres, uh they all do. And then there's numerous other ones all up and down the coast. So, um not not North Bend, but several others.

And are all of those departments that you mentioned that do charge, are they all staffed with the percentage wise that we have on staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Uh they're mixed. A lot of them are volunteers or they're smaller agencies than us. Um but so they're having to leave work or they're having to come in in the middle of the night.

Uh not necessarily because a lot of those agencies still have career staff. So Charleston has career staff. Um North Lincoln has they're the largest fire department on the Oregon coast now. Um they do charging and they have a lot more staff than we do. Uh Tieuk um they're mix. So a lot of them are career but not as predominant as we are. I we are still more career than volunteer. Um not necessarily by choice but that's what happens anymore but

and and those locations would have a large influx of tourists during e even larger some of them more so than than we have um on the south coast. Um those are those are some of the questions and the concerns I have. So I I mean I went in at the last meeting but I understand that um charging the tourists was an issue. Uh and it doesn't look what I've seen here right now isn't seem to be the case. It's been changed. Um you know maybe the lift should go to just anything over six. Maybe there can be a few changes. Uh the 30 to 50,000 um might not seem a lot but that's what our increase was for the fire department in negotiations this last year. And so it is something that isn't a cost that we're absorbing. Um because of the north um they don't have the sewer rates that we have, but they're going to be facing that shortly and they have a sewer system problem. So I don't think that we always need to make a determination on what is happening on the north. We need to determine what's best for us. Um I think eventually something like this need to be in place. maybe this isn't exactly what we want to do. Also, I would hope at some point in time the state legislature gets involved and starts mandating that the insurance company start paying and that we would have something in place because this is an expense that we incurring. Unfortunately, our costs keep going up every year and we have to find a way to uh stay up with those costs or we have to cut uh manpower. right now. I can tell you I believe and I know the chief can step in and tell us and I probably on the police too that what we have uh from uh uh firemen and police probably is not the amount of people that we need to really to take care of our citizens and so we need to think about that. I

mean, do we want to give the service and take care of our citizens or do we keep cutting and cutting and cutting where pretty soon we're not giving the service that we expect or the people expect? And um so I mean it's a difficult situation um and I understand it, but I I think that something needs to be put in place. Maybe this isn't exactly what everyone wants. It looks decent to me. I think there could be a few changes, but overall I think it's a step in the right direction. Well, and I I just want to reiterate that I did say upfront that I I appreciate that we're trying to be proactive. I think uh trying to cover our costs and our expenses. We know that we don't we don't in the public uh doesn't always realize that what we collect in taxes doesn't even come close to to the services that we provide. So, I appreciate that.

Uh Sarah, did you have some comments? because I know that you had a few comments that the last time uh this was brought up. Thanks. Nothing that you all haven't covered. My last question is uh when this comes before council, no more questions for you. Oh, when this comes before council, sorry, when this comes before council, will you have that that rate structure for us? because I feel like I could I would feel better knowing what those rates look like and then we can just look at it in one full swoop and decide what we want to do. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thank you.

And Chief, I thought I saw in here I can't find it. I highlighted it and it didn't say, but I thought somewhere in here it stated that it uh the increases in the future would be determined by the fire department. Is that in here somewhere? It is in the ordinance. I don't remember. Might be the last paragraph. talks about the increases uh through it's in section two of the ordinance on page one there's a reference to CPI. Okay. All right. So I mean I just I would like to make sure that uh if these are increased that they come back to the council for ratification.

Yeah. So as it currently stands right now like this would create a codified law that sits in our code that gives us authority to build. Then it goes to our city fee resolution and you guys see that at least once a year because of mortgage is indexed has to come back to you for ratification uh every time and so this would be similar to mortgage right we bring that back to you and sometimes we go through it and we see there's some other fees that need to be modified that don't have indexing but yes those do come yeah I mean I I think it's prudent but I think it's always uh incumbent upon us to be able to see it and ratify it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay,

Chief, in your defense, from a lift standpoint, I know home health and hospice agencies are not allowed to lift and most skilled care facilities where you get a lot of your calls are also not allowed to do the lifts. So, I don't know if there's something we could do to work out some sort of a rate with those organizations to help offset those costs. But, you know, those facilities and agencies have policies that say if somebody falls, call the fire department. And you shouldn't have to bear all the responsibility of that. At least in my opinion.

Yeah, absolutely. And that is one of the big issues and we Exactly. They have multiple staff members, but because they've written into their policy, they don't do it. There's nothing legally says they can't. And actually, in the OA guidelines, Oregon Health Administration guidelines, there's actually language that says that they shall do that kind of work and not burden the local fire and emergency response agencies. But yeah, it's it's a liability, an employment liability that they're trying to protect against. But either way, you bear the burden of having to take care of that. Absolutely. And if if that's the case, I that's where we should be charging for that. If if

they're just calling you because their policy is they're trying to protect their employees that So, we're trying to protect our employees, too. So, is there anything that you I mean, I think it's incumbent upon us to tell the chief that if you is there something you'd like to change? I mean, Lucenda, you stopped about the amount of lifts. I mean, are you going to be satisfied if it's six lists in instead of four to six or how because I don't want it's going to come back to us and so I think we need to give direction if there's a change that someone wants, we should probably be mentioning it. Now,

me personally, I feel like the five or six number in a calendar year. Um, and knowing that I felt a little bit better that it was $60 to $75, it's still an expense, but I I could I could get behind that. And um then I think the other was just knowing what the rate structure is, if it's an illegal burn and all those things. Just having that before us before we make the decision. Okay.

Can can we add a line to that for uh facilities like skilled facilities that call? Because I don't think that five I think five's too high if they could actually if they had people standing there waiting for the fire department to show up and they could have taken care of that themselves. That's a great question. For me it was it was home it was home visits. It wasn't facilities. I guess they're suggesting that this should be home assist and list and maybe not um commercial or places that. So that's as long as it's clarified that we will be charging for the commercial every time or something. So yeah, we can absolutely do that. Okay.

Uh and just a question on the special events standby. Are we talking about school districts um when you go up to the games or um

No. So we don't wouldn't do that. Um we've been contacted primarily from um like businesses that want us to come out and do standby for them doing something um for instance like water quality when they're doing some confined space entry. Uh we do standby. So we have a crew out there ready to go to rescue them in case something happens. Uh it's not really our responsibility to do that for private industry. We do it for the city for no charge because it's our city. But to go out and do that for another private entity, um, we feel they should either be hiring someone to do that specifically or we should charge for doing that standby. So, so it really wouldn't adjust anything we normally do on a day-to-day or the public education, public relations type of standpoint. We would still be doing the events we normally do. It would just be those specialized type of standby events.

Okay. Anyone else? All right. Thanks, Chief. Uh, so now is there anything before we go to executive session? Because when we go into executive session, we will not be coming out and making a decision. Anything? Hision. Yeah, true. You're right. So, it doesn't matter. But there is there any public comments? I guess if not, we won't be taking any when we come out of executive session. Good point, Stephanie. All right. That being the case, we'll go into executive session and someone will read the criteria.

City council will now meet an executive session pursuant to OS1 192.6602F to consider information or records that are exempt by law from public inspection. If the council intends to come out of executive session to take final action, the presiding officer should announce when the open session will begin again. Representatives of the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the room. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the executive session except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decisions may be made in executive session. I'll be ready in just one moment.

Sorry. All right. Executive