Transportation Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone, to the 04/15/2026 regular meeting of the Board of Public Utilities. Thanks for attending. Thanks for participating. We have three board members here, and Matt Teefner is online with us this evening. Hi, Matt. Thanks for being able to join us. We have one out of town. I will first open the floor to public comment. Is there any public comment in chambers? I don't see any. Is there any online?

Not at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathy. Approval of agenda. Is there anyone who would like to make changes to the agenda? If not, we'll appreciate a motion to approve it.

I move that we approve the agenda as written.

Second.

Okay. Lacking further discussion, all in favor? Matt shows the thumbs up also. Motion passes four to zero. It takes us to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I move that we, the Board of Public Utilities, approve the items on the consent agenda as presented.

And? And that the motions.

Us. And that the motions and the staff reports be included in the minutes for the record.

I'll second that.

Okay. Thank you. And for that, we'll do a roll call vote. Kathy?

Member Haffner?

Yes.

Member Nachele? Yes. Member Stromberg?

Yes.

And member Gibson? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. The motion passes four to zero. That moves us to presentations. And our first is to recognize Tom Wyman, who's leaving us. That certainly a mixed feelings about that, Tom. Congratulations on moving on to another phase of life. We will miss you, of course, but we greatly appreciate what you've done for us in the time that you've been here. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, and I've really enjoyed working with you all, getting to know you over these last three years. It was a hard but exciting choice. You know, sad and exciting at the same time, but, you know, I'll miss participating in

these meetings, really. Thanks. Well, if you don't run out of town, know you can come back or you can watch us online or whatever.

Very well have.

Call it and tell us why we're screwing up. Okay. Philo, do you have a certificate there

Yes. For

So let me read this off. I I first wanted to say I appreciate working with Thomas over the last few years. I think his he was an engineer before he became an attorney, and I definitely, that experience was invaluable with managing the various contracts that we've had with the BPU and agreements. So I wanna present this certificate of appreciation to Thomas Weiman in recognition of his invaluable legal counsel, dedication, and outstanding contribution to the mission, vision, and values of Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities and the board of public utilities from April 23 or 2023 to April '26 right now. And I also got a gold coin to present to you for integrity.

We honor our words to keep our commitments and treat others with respect. We strive to always meet our responsibilities in an ethical manner, and you exemplified all of that during this three years you've worked with us. And also got you a key chain because you will be an essential piece and you can come back and insert that into the puzzle down the road.

Okay. We really are going to miss you, Tom. But you're going to be here for the rest of the month. We're going to try to get as much out of you as we can at that time. Okay. We'll go on to the annual Lennell presentation. Philo, would you like to introduce our speaker there?

Yeah, chair. Tonight, have Jesse Freeman, who's gonna make a presentation about all the activities that Llano's doing from energy and water conservation and other system wide upgrades. So I know we have a short press a bulleted presentation that he can walk through.

Thanks. As Miles said, I'm Jesse Friedman. I'm a program manager with the utilities and and infrastructure division at LENEL, and we have a presentation and a brief, update on our utilities activities. I'm happy to take questions as we go or save them till the end. It's up to you all. But let's dive in. Next slide, please. So just a couple of high level topics. So I'm gonna go over the electric forecast, which is something we partner with the county with every year and some of our utility planning, then a couple of our utility level projects, and then our efficiency projects that we have been working on for the past few years. Next.

So the electric forecast, we deliver this to the county by January 15 every year. And this is a ten year forecast as required by the ECA. And so this year compared to last year, there were no May major changes. It was pretty similar, load forecast, not a whole lot of big changes in the projected load. We are still anticipating our next supercomputing platform to be delivered by the end of this year and operational in 2027.

And so that will be a bump up in the load, and you can see that in the forecast. There's a kind of plateau, and the two platforms are running together and it dips, and then it bumps up again. And so ATS five is called Mission, which is the name of the platform. And then we're also getting another supercomputer called Vision, which is a replacement for our current AI computer called Venato. We're not expecting to exceed our 116 MVA import limit into the county during this period and before the EPCU is completed.

So we feel comfortable with our operational parameters that will be under that limit even with the new computing coming later this year and next year. We also have the project called LAMP, the LAMP modernization project that is expected tentatively in the early twenty thirties. So that is in the forecast as well. And so that will bring the the beam line down for a period of at least eighteen months, potentially longer depending on how the project goes. And so we're hoping to do some upgrades during that period as well on the utility side.

I'll talk about that a little bit later. So that's a a dip that shows up out in the forecast that everything kinda goes down. And then when the project comes back up again, you know, the the load kind of continues on. We don't expect a a bump in the demand from this. It's mostly an upgrade of outdated equipment.

So the front end of the the beam will get new equipment that is now, you know, just north of 50 years old, it'll be a pretty similar power draw. So not not a big impact on the the demand side there. And then as we are gearing up for Foxtail Flats coming online next year, we've been talking internally and with our with the NSA and with our contractor Exeter about how we can more flexibly operate the turbine to support Foxtail Flats so we get the most out of that power procurement because we know we're gonna be getting a lot of power during the day and maybe not as much at night, and it's gonna vary seasonally. Right now, that turbine runs roughly when the beam line is operating. So the turbine is about 25 megawatts, and the beam line at peak capacity is also about 25 megawatts.

We we do that to match it. We have a hard cap on the number of hours under our current air quality permit, but we are open to exploring options, especially considering the the permit. It's has been around for a while. We've been looking at it. Just the limitations are are mostly on on carbon monoxide and and NOx, but we think we have some flexibility there. And also with the starts and stops, we are under a contract to run the turbine in a certain way, so we have to work that with Siemens Government Technologies because they are providing the operations and maintenance of some of that equipment. So nothing that we can't overcome, but we wanna start working on that now if there's any contractual changes or anything we have to do to to operate that more flexibly.

Next slide. So question for you.

Oh, sure.

Do you think I don't remember this coming up that much during the Foxtail Flats debate. Could you go back one? Thanks. So are we thinking that without the you know, have batteries as well as part of Foxtel Flats and then we would firm it up with other, you know, arrangements. So is that not going to be sufficient to provide stable power to the lab?

I think it's a bit of both. One is to make sure that we're not undersupply, but also that we're not over supplying by running the turbine at full capacity when the solar is peaking as well and the battery is full. So That would not be good. Yeah. So right now, we're you know, we turn it on and we try to run it pretty constantly. You know, our our it's kinda like a light bulb when you turn it on. It's the most likely time for something to go wrong. So once it's up and running, we like to keep it running. But that's not to say that we can't look into how we can, you know, ramp it up and down. There's a bit of a cap on the the lower limit of, you know, about 80% capacity is what we're at now, but there are potential modifications that we could make potentially to the emission system and controls and and that kind of thing to operate at a lower capacity.

But, you know, if if we're running that so typically, the Lance beam season is from May to December. Right? And so that's kind of overlapping with peak solar season as well. So we may get better usage running it solely in the winter or mostly in the winter instead of running it just for that time period. So we still have a little bit of work to do on the modeling and the analysis to see what makes the most sense.

So you're not exact so nowadays, you basically run it during lance beams?

That's typically been the run cycle. It's been a little funky with the beam cycle the last couple of years. They haven't been enough capacity, but, like, that plan operational plan is typically, you know, in May for that just under five thousand hours to run it at a constant rate.

Do you have modeling of the do you have good modeling of the demand season? In other words, to to try to plan ahead for what you might need to do?

I think we're pretty comfortable with our load. I think it's when you start to get the load from Foxtail Flats and the battery dispatch is where it gets a little bit complicated. And so we're we're working with Exeter, which is one of the NSA's contractors to to get a better handle on that. And and they were the partner with us when we're working on the budget for the for DPU and the ECA budget as well. And so they're very familiar with our our load and our resources, and and so they're a good partner. So we'll probably be tapping them to dig a little bit under the hood and and see how we can match that load with the solar and the battery discharge.

I see. So final question for you. And does the department is the department hooked into this whole process and have access to the consultant and or the data? And are we using that to plan how we provide services?

You know, as Jesse mentioned, with our ECA renewal, we've been in meetings with Exeter about the lab's projection for energy needs for the next twenty years. And we've met with them at different times for other budget projections. And they also do work with Sandy and Kirtland, do the projections for them. So we, yeah, we have interactions with their consultant, you know, from time to time as we ask questions of the lab. So we don't have them directly for us though as a community, you know, for our projections as the county.

Right. So I mean we're the sort of

the lab is the 80% customer. So I just, my question is do you feel like the department has enough insight into all this in order to plan out resources effectively, especially with this new Foxtail Flats resource coming on?

Yes. Okay. I've got a couple questions for you, One Jesse, on this is when is the anticipated completion date and operational date for EPCU?

So if we go to the next slide, that's a top. It's a good segue. Thank you. So EPCU is not just one project, right? We tend to think of it as the power line coming across the canyon, but it's a series of, many projects, one of which is that import line, the SN line that's coming across.

The tentative date for that is late in 2027, but obviously, that's, subject to construction delays and procurement delays. And so we're pushing hard to keep that so that in 2028, we don't have to worry about any kind of curtailment of us kinda hitting that upper or lower limit, that one sixteen MVA. But that's the plan right now is for that part of the project to come online in the late twenty twenty seven time frame. There is still extra work that's going. There's a bunch of stuff that's happening. There's an internal transmission line. There's more than half a dozen internal distribution lines. There's duct bank. There's transformer upgrades. So there's a lot of stuff happening with that. But most people are focused on that one part of it, is the SN line coming across the canyon.

In next fall, a year and a half from now, 'twenty seven, we're going to become part of an EDAM operation. Will your turbine generator be considered a resource within that, or are you keeping it separate?

I believe it will be a resource, I think. Is it three megawatts?

Ben, you want to jump in on that one?

Chair, board members. There's a couple ways of looking at it. One, we will be required to have visibility of the resource to the California ISO organization as they model everything and monitor things. So they'll have monitoring view of all of our generation regardless of where it is, which includes the turbine. But it's not gonna be a participating resource in the sense we can't bid it into the market as generation. We potentially can use it to as a demand reduction asset, but that'd be how we could use it.

Okay. Thank you. And last question right now. This lands modernization project, talk about early 30s, is that funded?

So it is, I believe, partially funded. They got CD one, I believe, last year. So they're working on a lot of the planning and hiring up the staff. I don't think it has full funding. I'm not sure of the the total budget of it at this time, but they are working to hire up folks. And they have a little bit of work to do on the actual, like, technology before they can really, like, dig into what the cost estimates will be. But right now, the official schedule from the folks out at Lance is that, you know, in the 2030 early twenty thirties, 2030, 2031 is when they expect that to happen.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

I'm just bringing up my notes here. The static var compensator.

Yeah. Before we get to that, going back to EPCU, am I do I remember that that's supposed to be, like, 200 MVA

Yes. On the third line? The import capacity of s n

line will be 200 MVA. So how is any of that or how much of that do you see being reserved for the county?

I don't know if we see it necessarily as, like, a reservation for one or the other. I think it gives both of us a lot of headroom for expansion. Like, our forecast, which is kind of like the upper end of our projections in, like, the 150 MVA range at the end of the ten year cycle, but I think there is sufficient capacity for both the county. I I know that there are a lot of growth plans in the county, especially with electrification of vehicles and buildings. And so there's gonna be, you know, a bump up in the load here, but, I don't think we're, like, slicing it up for one party or another. It's a partnership.

Yeah. So as of now, there's no numbers or agreements. It's just kinda, okay. We'll build it. It'll okay.

Yeah. So right now, that's the the goal for EPCU is to carry us into, like, the twenty fifty range. However, our two existing power lines are are starting to age as well. So, like, once that project is done, you know, the conversation on reconducting those potentially with a higher capacity is definitely what we wanna have with PNM. The joint ownership thing makes it a little bit tricky, but, you know, those being older lines, I think those are good candidates for a reconducting and and hopefully with a higher capacity to accommodate growth.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

I guess I can talk a little bit more about ABC before moving on to SBC. So so the project is underway now on-site. We are we're digging on and putting in Dutch Bank. You've seen it probably on on West Hamas. That's a five stage project there that they're moving along, but they are really moving quickly.

They beat a lot of the schedules. And so I think that August is the time frame for them to wrap up those phases on the West Hamas duct bank. They are also doing some duct bank from our Western Technical area substation to meet up with the southern end. So they started in the middle and kind of went this way, and then they're kind of meeting up together. And that work is is ongoing, and so that's a lot of the stuff that you don't see behind the scenes.

But like I mentioned, it's a it's a very big and complex project with a lot of a lot of folks working on it, and we have a very good team working on this. And in terms of the external part of it. So, like, most of the scope is is on Lennell's property. It's about 80% of the scope of it will be on lab property. The 20% that's not on there is mostly that transmission line.

So they are working now through the permitting phase and hopefully by the middle of the summer, I think, is the target date to get permits from from the various agencies whose land we are kind of cutting through for that line. The SVC is another project that we just wrapped up recently this year. So the static var compensator is a valuable resource. We often get called upon by PNM to provide voltage support and provide VARs to keep their grid stable. The controls of it were obsolete.

And so we I think it's a four or five year project now that we've been working on that to get those controls updated. We just wrapped that up not too long ago and have it operational. It also provides a lot of power quality benefits, specifically for some of the sensitive equipment at the laboratory. So keeping that power factor and and voltage nice and tight so that they can operate without getting any any trips. I know that when we were testing it early on, we did have a trip over at part of the laboratory when we turned it off.

And so we know that our customers at the lab depend on us for that, and so we're glad to have that up and running. The primary control center or the power control center, the map board PCC. So if you haven't been there, that was actually a map on the wall with, like, pegboard and yarn. It was kind of an antique. And it was very it was very good at what it did. Like, it was very accurate. Was a very accurate representation of our system. However, in 2026, it's a little outdated, we upgraded that. And I believe we did our ribbon cutting in October. So now we have a bunch of screens up there.

Our our operators and and your dispatchers now benefiting from that. We also had to upgrade the HVAC system because those screens make a lot more heat than yarn does. So they're happy for that as well. And that that project has been has been really good, and we're we're happy that we got that one done. The t a three twenty five ninety eight switchgear is another one of those projects. That's a it's a pool project that is helping us in preparation for EPCU and that internal transmission line. That project is on schedule. I think they're expecting to wrap that one up this fiscal year. I know equipment has been ordered. There were some long lead items and some things that had to be fabricated, but that project is coming hopefully online by the end of the fiscal year.

As I mentioned or alluded to earlier about Lance, so we undertook a substation replacement study at T 853 so that that substation just serves that technical area to try and pair that potentially with the downtime at the beamline. And so we just finished that a couple of weeks ago, and that's to replace that substation with something a bit big bigger, a bit more modern, a different configuration, and an m plus one design to be able to add future, like, third transformer to that one. It's got two transformers, add a third one in the future if we need it for extra capacity. I know they have some growth plans out at the at the Lance area. And so there was a study that was done, I believe, in 2012 that the county did, and there was a potential transmission line or distribution line that was gonna go across the canyon.

And so we took that study and and updated it. And now we're putting everything together so we can start asking for funding for that and so that we can build that substation while the beam is down so that we don't impact any mission operations out there. And then on the the metering side and the SCADA side, so we are working on some of the the meters at the that have been out, some of the billing meters as well, the Pajarito well meter. And I think we're working on an outage for that one to make sure that we can check the configuration and make sure everything's safe before we swap out any meters. I think actually, that was for the Pajarito boosters, not for the wells, but we're working on the well meters as well.

On our site, we've been doing a lot of metering upgrades. So we've added a lot of water and gas meters internally to better track our consumption and electric meters in preparation for our upgrade, which we are currently working on now. So the first phase of that was a lot of hardware. So, like, the GPS synchronization, a clock synchronization of our grid, replacement of some outdated equipment that was, you know, some relays and RTUs. And then we are working now on the kind of software side of things.

And so we're piloting the new software that we're working with at our wastewater plant, which is going pretty well. And we hope to have the SCADA system for the electric side up and running in the early twenty twenty seven, like February, March 2027 time frame. And so that'll be a big benefit on the operational side of having a better representation and a more reliable SCADA system, a more modern system to to operate. So I think our our operations folks are really excited about the SCADA upgrade.

Any questions on that?

Yeah. Okay. So did any of that have to do with 900 megahertz backbone? Or can you give us any update on what you're doing with the and the reason I'm asking about the 900 megahertz backbone is I'm wondering if any of the entities that are hanging off the system, the wells and cell towers, and and is that gonna be connected to the 900 megahertz?

That I do not know. I know that we are doing communications upgrades as part of this and trying to run fiber as much as possible, but that I I don't know in particular. But we can we can get you an answer on that if this data system will be impacting that.

Okay. And can you give us any updates on any asset transfers that are in the works?

I know that we've been working on some asset transfers on the PNM side. Cassandra has been working on that. I think there were some relays at one of the substations that we were working on, but I don't I don't have any specific details about that. Cassandra would be the best person

to Alright.

Thank you.

Alright. I can tell you about the 900 megahertz backbone as far as we're concerned. Our our SCADA system, we're trying to get away from the 900 megahertz backbone and go to fiber because we share fiber on the same, you know, bundle. So so we're actually moving away from that on the side.

Okay.

Okay. Just a couple of efficiency projects that we've been working on that we wanted to update you on. So one of them we're working on now is a a conceptual design for a waste heat recovery plant at Technical Area 3. So this project would take waste heat from the data centers, both the SCC and the LDCC, and pipe that into a data center heat recovery loop that would provide heating for a number of buildings at T A 3. And so we could provide quite a bit of heating and cooling with that.

We have almost the capacity of one of our large boilers available as waste heat just from our resources now not considering future computing. So there's lot of waste heat there that we'd like to recapture. So right now, we're working on the original design had, a separate building and, I mean, the real estate is tight and and building is expensive. So we're rescoping that to try and fit the equipment into existing buildings inside the data centers. And we hope to wrap that up later this year and see if we can try and get some fun project.

I feel like a long term build that out plan, but this one will probably but that one system over time and chilled water as well to Technical Area 3, which does not have any central chilled water at the moment. There's all individual chillers for for the buildings out there. We're also working on a a conceptual design for a water treatment plant at Lance. So right now, Lance is our single biggest water user. And so some of our folks have been working with a subcontractor to design a system to increase the cycles of concentration in the cooling towers from two to six, which would be, you know, roughly a third to half the water that it currently uses.

So it's similar to our sanitary effluent reclamation facility, like a similar type of technology. It's mostly like a reverse osmosis membrane system with some clarifiers. But cleaning up that water will help us run more concentration cycles, so more water through the cooling towers before we have to blow them down and send that to the drain. And so they are looking to do a small pilot of that next year and then package that up into a, like, a larger scale system. And the good thing about that is that that project has informed our surf facility, and so they've been working back and forth to, you know, provide feedback to each other and has helped us make some improvements at that, some process improvements that we've been working on.

So that that facility SURF has provided more or less all of the cooling water to our supercomputing facility. So it's about 40,000,000 gallons or so. And if we were running on city water, that would be three to four times as much water just because of the mineral content in silica. So we send them very clean water and are able to run it at a very high cycles of concentration. So that project is is ongoing. We've also been trying to do some steam and condensate improvements in t a three. So half of our water usage is cooling towers and and make up water for our steam system. So we're really focused on on those two. Steam system, we have a lot of leaky steam traps. So we did steam trap assessments, and a a couple of buildings have replaced a bunch of them.

We're looking at condensate pumps as well to make sure they're functioning and not just dumping that heated and treated water out down the drain. And so that project is is ongoing. We're making good progress on that. And then, when the HRL facility is is finally demolished, in the next couple of years, that will come off the steam system, and that is about 10% of our peak demand. And and I think that's a once through system, so that'll help save us a lot of water and a lot of gas.

And then last but not least, EV charger is another thing that we've been working on. So we have 69 EVs and a 113 plug in hybrids in our fleet right now out of about 1,800, 1,850 vehicles. And so we're trying to support all of the fleet vehicles. They came pretty fast in the last few years, and so we're trying to catch up with some of the acquisitions. And so we have just under a 115 charging ports at the laboratory.

Some most of those are level two chargers. We're under construction for four six level three chargers and two level two chargers right now. So some of them are might see them off West Hamas when you go past the wellness center on on the left. There's a charging hub there that has 12 ports and two level three chargers as well, and we're trying to get those commissioned and and up and running. But those have been really helpful.

We also have a lot of personal vehicle drivers that charge at the laboratory. So we have nearly 900 people connected to our charge point system. And so that's this the entire state is somewhere in, the, you know, 15,000 vehicle range for for plug in vehicles. That just at the laboratory register, tries to somewhere like four or 5% of the plug in vehicles in the entire state. So we have a lot of vehicles and a lot of people that commute from, you know, Albuquerque and far away that depend on us for that personal vehicle charging. So we're trying to pair that with the fleet charging and make sure that we prioritize the fleet, but that the POV drivers get the benefits of that as well. Any other questions?

Is that

the end of your presentation?

Yes, it is.

Okay, thank you. Other questions or comments? I'd like to ask a little bit more about water. You talked a fair amount about electricity. You talked about various projects that would reduce water usage. But what is, in general terms, what is your longer term forecast for overall water usage at the laboratory?

So we do expect water usage to grow a bit. However, that facility SURF has the capacity to at least double to accommodate the new supercomputers as they come online. So our plans are to utilize that water as much as possible. It's it's reclaimed water, so it's not potable water. And that's also much cleaner, so much easier on the cooling towers.

And so we have the ability to expand that. We have a line that we just ran to our steam plant so that we can switch over or add some of that water into our makeup water for our central steam plant. And we're also looking at potentially adding a line across Diamond Drive when we do the widening project to our other data center so that they would have the option of running that water as well. And so between those three facilities, you're talking, you know, more than a third, probably 40% of the lab's water usage. So as much as we can to switch over to that reclaimed water would kind of reduce our net consumption.

Overall, you know, we expect some growth with buildings and more employees coming on-site, but most of our water is is driven by that kind of larger industrial uses. And so we're pretty focused on keeping that water consumption down. Last year, we had a a lower water consumption here partially because the accelerator wasn't running as much. And so when it doesn't run as much, it doesn't use as much water. But our trend has been pretty flat in the last couple years, but there's there's always the, you know, plans of expansion and and some of the new construction. And so I know that, you know, in the SWISE, it contemplates like an upper bound of nearly 500,000,000 gallons, but, you know, the the actual consumption may be somewhere in the middle of where we are and and what that upper bound was.

So you're using a significant amount of recycled water for non potable uses.

Yes.

Do you have any anticipation of wanting to use recycled water or reuse water from the county?

We have talked about it. The big challenge, obviously, is sending the water over to the laboratory. We've looked at running it across the canyon on the bridge. I think we're open to that. We have been able to increase the capacity at our facility, and so we're trying to utilize that as much as possible. But I know that you have quite a bit of the the reclaimed water as well, and so we would definitely be open to that discussion.

Okay. Any other questions? Let's see. Do we still have Matt online?

Yes. I do. Yep. Sorry. I just, fumbled it around, but I'm still here. I have a quick question.

Go for it.

Okay. Great. Thanks so much, Jesse, for the overview. Lots going on, and thanks for the details on the EV charging. I had a couple of follow-up questions on that. Because later tonight, we'll hear about the county fleet electrification and then the community charging plans. I guess my two questions are a specific one about what's the heaviest vehicle that the lab has in its fleet. Are there any heavy duty vehicles? And then my second question is more general. Are there any surprises or interesting things from the lab's experience in either fleet electrification or in the charging that the county might at least be aware of or maybe learn from? Thanks.

Yeah. So our largest vehicles are 40 transit vans. We have a couple of regular ones and a couple of high top ones, but those get used pretty well. I think we have seven of them in total. We have quite a few of the f one fifty Lightnings as well, and so those are on the medium duty.

We don't have anything in the heavy duty kind of class at the moment. But those logistics demands that we see running around haven't heard any complaints from the folks that are using them. So I think they're pretty happy with those vehicles. In terms of surprises, you know, planning for the vehicles, you know, we tend to think about, like, where these vehicles are gonna be parked and, like, how far people are willing to walk to charge. And we found that, like, over time, people really figured it out of how to charge their vehicles even if they had no experience with EVs, didn't drive one at home.

And so they were able to go on our our maps portal. We have, a internal maps portal where we let people see the charging ports that are nearby. And so people really figured it out a lot faster than I think we expected. We were, you know, worried that some of these people in really far flung technical areas might have difficulty accessing charging. And and we do still have a bit of that with the plug in hybrids because we have more of those than the EVs and, you know, you can still run them on gas. So we tell people to charge them when they can. They need to be charged more frequently. So I think, like, going fully EV over plug in hybrid was more beneficial in terms of, like, usage. So we get a lot more usage out of that. And the highest, like, usage vehicle is actually in our division.

It's one of our supervisors, f one fifties that they're driving around. It's the highest mileage EV in the entire fleet. And so we're we're pretty happy with that and haven't had any complaints. But, you know, we were worried about people getting stuck on the side of the road and and running out of juice and, you know, it hasn't really happened that much. So I think people have really taken to it. I think we've all set a lot of, you know, personal vehicle driver adoption. So people have gotten a lot more familiar with the EVs as well. But the other thing that was kind of surprising is we were a bit worried about peak demand. And when we did this exercise a couple of years ago, you know, we thought, well, if we had 600 Nursal ports and they were all plugged in at the same time, we're talking, you know, four or five megawatts. And that's kind of a scary number to add without doing any managed charging.

But overall, people tend to plug in not during our peak times. And so that's been really helpful. Like, even the folks that are plugging in at the end of the day tend to be just past our peak in the in the summertime. So they're plugging in, like, 03:30 or four instead of, like, two or three. So we're not having to deal with the that high peak. So it hasn't added as much to our peak load as we've thought. I think our our highest we've seen is about 250 kilowatts so far, and that's for, you know, a couple 100. So that's out of, like, almost 600 kilowatts of capacity, a little bit more than that. So, those are the the two main surprises for us.

Great. Thanks.

Any last questions? Thank you very much. We do appreciate you coming, and you're welcome back anytime.

Thanks.

Well, of EVs, that's the next item on the agenda, the final fleet conversion plan and the community wide EV charging plan. Angelica.

Chair Gibson and members of the board, happy to be here with you tonight to present the final fleet conversion plan and community wide EV charging plans. It's been about a year long process. Last time you seen us, we presented you with the draft that was back in December, and we tried to take account for all the comments that we heard from you all and integrated those along with others into the final version that you're going to hear about tonight. And just a reminder that both of these plans were accepted by counsel at the March 17 meeting. And tonight, we have with us Anali Castillo and Josh Schott from the Stantec team, and they will be presenting the final versions to you all.

Okay. Thank you. Do wanna wanna have Josh and or Annalie go ahead?

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Tracy Gibson and members of the board, we're happy to be here and and present the final version. I think my colleague miss missed the memo of our combined outfits today.

You told me.

What's it like?

We did it on purpose to leave you out. Should I be sharing my screen on on our end, Pankaj? Or

Which way do you prefer? Would you like to share it, or would you like for me to If share

you can share it, that that would be great. Thank you so much.

Okay.

Yes. So we we'll start with, a quick update regarding, the public comments that Angelica just mentioned. And just a reminder that we're gonna go over the the two there are, like, two components of this project. The first one was the county fleet conversion plan, and it's I think it's item c presentations.

Thank you.

So we'll start with the count to the conversion plan, and then I'll pass it to my colleague to talk about, the public charging, plan. So, going into the the next few slides, just a quick reminder that of the last in person meeting, in the next next slide. Thank you. The last in person meeting was conducted in December 13. We received a total of 13 comments during that session, mostly for people attending online.

We had a low attendance that day due to the first day of snowing, I'm guessing on that very first day. So, I think a lot of the expecting in person, attendees were trying to vacate facilities as soon as possible. We also on on that day, we started the, public comment period so that both reports were open to the public for review, and we have a platform that was able to collect feedback, from the reports. That in combination with the presentations that were done to, the the boards, yourself, and as well as the sustainability board, we received a total of, 41 comments and at five total, comments from the public that were done through the online platform that we have available. So we incorporated, all of these comments and feedback, and we're introducing to the final plan.

And in the next slide, we have a summary, of the three three main pillars or topics that were addressed. The first one was the address equity across the county for community wide EV charging plan. So we'll kinda dive into how we approach, those comments and and make modifications to accommodate and respond to the feedback. The second, kinda topic of comments and items was expand charging availability in WYROC. That was just as a general, which also goes hand in hand with the accessibility and equity.

And then the last one was, create more actionable next steps to implement the counterfeit conversion plan. Now, obviously, this was a a planning exercise, we did, we're able to create more detailed recommendations for the implementation of the first phases of the plan, and we're gonna go over in detail with those. So in the next slide, going into more detail with the fleet conversion and how we address those comments and anything that was different from our last meeting, that was presented here. We start with, just a quick reminder that we analyze two, implementation strategies. One was the EV policy, which, will maintain the county's current, two electric vehicles per year goal.

And with that, the the max EV transition will be to 31% by 2050. And then then we also analyze the second scenario that is called the cap policy scenario, which is aligning with the climate action plan that is trying to reach neutrality carbon neutrality by 2050. So for this specifically, the county fleet will reach about 86% of their conversion to EVs, and there were specific exemptions, due to the specialized and critical vehicles that, were assessed not as a one to one, transition at this time. And the next slide, just a quick visual representation of how that EV policy looks like and how that county the cap policy looks in comparison with the number of EV counts throughout the years. So we wanted to exemplify that the cap policy is while it is aggressive, it has an implementation period between now and 2050.

So the transition is still gonna be, very gradual. And keeping in mind the specific operational needs and and kinda like some of the day to day operations, to make sure that there was no ways to that. The technology will get in the way of having the county fleet in their different departments do their duties. In the next slide, we have a quick summary of the financial evaluation. And then, again, this is kinda like a quick overview from what was presented on the on the last version as well.

But in in total, the cap policy has a 25% higher price tag than the EV policy, obviously, because we're buying more vehicles during that same period. In the total cost of ownership, consider everything from, you know, owning the vehicles, how they're utilized, the cost of fuel, the cost of maintenance, and what capital modifications to the facilities and for the charging equipment itself. And in the next slide, one of the comments that we received during the different board meetings was that the assumption that a 10% reduction in the maintenance cost was too conservative. While that this was documented with data that we have seen from the actual EV operations with the county as well as being more in line with some of the some of the projections in actual savings that we're seeing from fleet owners, not from EV individual owners. We did conduct a sensibility analysis, where instead of having a 10% reduction in the maintenance cost, we did a 25% reduction into the cost per mile.

So the EV policy went from having as a 1% savings in the overall cost of the maintenance between now and 2050 to have a 2% savings just on the maintenance. In the cap policy, I do apologize because I have the numbers flipped here, but the the cap policy, when we have a 90% cost of the maintenance, we only saw 4% of savings. But with the EV at 75% of the maintenance, we reach a total of 8% savings on the maintenance cost. Now what does this mean in terms of the overall cost is that basically, doing two point time 2.5 times the projected savings in cost per mile was only gonna provide about 1% of the total savings for the cost of the project. So we kind of run the sensitivity analysis to say that even though we are being conservative in the projects of savings, even having double plus the amount of savings expected would only save about 1% of the total cost of the project.

Just kind of showing how that specific item, is not a critical point for the feasibility financial feasibility of this project. In the next slide, summary of the greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously, that this is one of the main, reasons why the cap policy aligns with the the goals of this of the county. So during the transition time, the cap policy would achieve about 38% of the overall emissions, over over the transition period. But if you see at the year 2050, the difference between the yellow line, which is the current fleet versus a a full electric fleet in in in 2050, we will have over 80% of the reduction year by year after that.

So we're not only helping with the reduction during the transition period that is, like, very significant, compared to an EV scenario, but past that, the savings and emissions is is really significant. In the next slide, we have, a power load projection. So, obviously, when we're doing the assessment of where the EVs are coming, we also conducted an assessment of where the charging infrastructure needs to be. So this landed a power projection, per location for the full implementation. This graph in here are showing the combination with the the publicly available charging that we're projecting that a colleague would present in a little bit.

For, like, for level two send DC fast charges. We also assume that the county fleet transition, in the past, we work with Atomic Transit to project their transition to electric vehicles, which is one of the most significant loads that you'll see in the county. In addition to, potentially, if the electric buses were to transition sorry. The school buses were to transition to electric, we also have a projection for that, even though, that doesn't seem to be a a immediate action item on on their end. And in the next slide, we have a one of the items that we implemented as some of the the responses to the openly common period where they were asking for having more recommendations that are leading to implementation and just to the plan.

So in here, see for the first phase, we have the timeline of when the charging infrastructure should be coming online during the the periods of procurement for the EVs. So we see this for the Los Alamos County, for the Los Alamos region as was for White Rock, And it's a combination, of having not only the the how many, but also the one, from the implementation perspective. And the next slide, just some final takeaways, not only from the data collect from the public comment period, but also from overall the plan is that the fleet conversion following the cap policy really supports and aligns with Los Alamos County's climate action plan and explores, being able to reach those goals. The the facing, for this specific implementation was also not analyzed from, you know, greenhouse gases and financial assessment, but there was also were frustrating considerations, funding strategies, and overall implement next steps of implementation that we're gonna see in a little bit. And overall, while there is a significant price tag in terms of, the the overall transition, that also goes hand in hand with the significant savings, from the greenhouse gas and emissions perspective.

And lastly, some, fleet comparison implementation. One of the first few steps that we see as immediate is having a formally adoption of the cap policy or continue with the e EV policy. While the, county, board, this didn't necessarily, like, approve one or the other. They did approve of the plan over in in general. So it's up to the county to be able to identify if the funding and additional items could be aligned to start implementing the cap policy.

It's very critical to continue to evaluate the uses of the vehicles and the current demand for the infrastructure that is already available to make sure that the assumptions that were used into the planning, phase are still standing and can be applied moving forward. In in general, a very critical item would also be to assess the overall operational cost, not only from the cost of electricity, but also the maintenance cost as we saw that could be, an item to have better data on. And very importantly is to have dedicated research to activate the funding and and having strategies to close that funding financial gap. And just in general, one of the other items that was, critical for implementation moving forward is to be able to have, open lines of communication with internal departments as your utility just presented, being able to predict that load, being able to have the timing in the process for implementation and upgrades is gonna be really critical. And identify potential barriers from the community and the fleet the vehicle operators that are gonna be using this, to address, and solve them before there is, delays in implementation overall.

So infrastructure wise, it's gonna be, we're gonna have some suggestions of the implementation between now and 2035, but that's also gonna be depending on the procurement strategies and the funding. But it would be really critical to have an overall master plan for all the facilities that not only align for when the vehicles are coming, but that could also align with other ongoing, major projects and improvements in those different departments and buildings. And lastly, the communication with the utilities as as mentioned will be critical. So all that to say, I'm very sure that the data collected and the assumptions need to be reassessed on an ongoing basis. Like, this is really a living document.

So per periodically revisions of this plan and assumptions, ideally every five years is really highly recommended, and it will be something critical for, adjusting the implementation track. So, in the next slide, I think we might have a time for questions if we wanna start addressing questions on this before we kinda move to the to the next, part of the project.

K. Thank you. Questions at this point? Eric?

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. One thing that I've heard and I've never seen in any of this, okay, I've heard a lot of things like people with small services might need to upgrade their service in order to have a car charger. But there are car chargers out there that have sensors that go to your current panel. And so if you've got a 100 amp panel, what you do is you set the sensors to 80 amps.

And if your cars if your house is drawing 40 amps, it can't charge your car at 50 amps because it'll throttle it down to 40. So you'll never exceed the 80% of your panel. And so I see where a lot of people in town who have 100 amp panels would never need to ever upgrade their service because I don't see it being a problem if as long as they have sensing car chargers. So I just wanted to make you aware of that or if you were already aware of that you could include that in your report.

Yeah. Unfortunately, the report is done.

It's been Well, the report's done. But or in your conversations with people that, you know, they don't necessarily have to increase their services.

Yeah. Thank you, Trudh Gibson and and board member. I think, that is valid. And I feel like as some of our recommendations state, right, like that ongoing coordination for implementation, not only at the fleet level, but also, the community incentivizing, in those programs are gonna be start being developed as the county sees needs. So I think having this type of information is gonna be critical for for some of those planning programs and incentives that could be proposed moving forward. So thank you for that information.

Matt.

Yeah. I think my first question is to you, chair Gibson. I've got four comments and four questions on the fleet electrification presentation and study, but they're not so much clarification. Do you want me to jump into those now or hold them till later?

Why you go ahead and do them now?

Okay. Thanks.

This is not an action item, the usual rule it's more of a discussion item here. So go ahead. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you. First, thanks so much for all your work on this, and I think you did a great job of addressing all of the input and a lot of our questions. So thank you very much. And I'll just go through they're more from my notes when I went through the report. So I'll refer to page numbers from our document package. I don't think we need to go to each one. And some of the questions are probably actually more rhetorical to the county than to you. The first one is on page two twenty six of our packet, and you make a recommendation about county EV take home policy. And you have a really great discussion about the telematics that are needed.

And so I think this is a question probably to the county. Do we have a current vehicle take home policy that we need to think about revising in the near term to to relate to EV? And are we do we have I know we've got some EVs in our fleet. Are we do we have any telematics information or any fleet usage information like like as described in the report?

Chair, I can answer. Member Heavener, only our police and fire have take home vehicles. And, currently, I'm not sure they have any EVs in their fleet, but that could be something they can measure down the road if the conversion occurs in those departments. It's not allowed in other departments to bring home vehicles. It's only emergency services, and that's due to IRS tax laws.

Okay. Thanks, Violet. Yeah. That's so it's a good recommendation for us to consider in the future. Nothing to learn from you. So thanks. My next one was just a comment on the report. I thought you did a great job on the safety, the fire considerations, and the training. I really appreciated that. That was a great summary of the sort of the state of what we need to think about. My next question was actually for you. And the fundamental question is what are the sensitivities of some of the variables or some of the assumptions you made in the model to get at the financials? You talked about needing to be a living document reexamine every five years. But on table six seven in the report, you use the assumption of $2.52 49 a gallon gas. Ah, the good old days.

We basically doubled that. And so how my my specific question is how sensitive is some of the financials on a doubling of the price of gas? And we're living in dynamic times, every five years may not be enough, but I appreciate it's a livid document. But how much how much does that doubling of the price of gas impact the conclusions?

Yeah. Chair Gibson and members of the board, thank you for that question. I think that that's a a really great point. I think one of the, key items that we assess in their sensitivity was, like I mentioned, the, maintenance cost from that perspective. So we saw that, you know, if for every two, we get only one, less than point 1%.

So we did not run, like, a formal, like, you know, Monte Carlo or, like, any other sensitivity, for the other financial items. But just from looking at the proportion between and and I think in the report, if I'm able to find that at the table, just because of the proportion, that the fleet acquisition is gonna have compared to the others, I would say, like, the more dominant factor is for from now is the price of the EV procurement, so the cost of the vehicles. Now, again, we were really conservative from that perspective just because from the current values that we have seen from available vehicles, we still assume, like, about two to 2.5 times higher than the normal. So that will be, like, the main dominant factor. The feel, I would say, would definitely have a a bit of an impact.

But I would say if if I were to rank, I think acquisition will be the first more dominant, which is probably gonna be four times the, four times the impact on any other factor. And then second will be the fleet, maintenance, which is the other factor that has, you know, the the highest, percentage of use. And then third to that is gonna be the the probably the the fuel. So if we saw from the maintenance that doubling that was only costing about doubling the benefit was also creating less than 1% of the benefit. I would say that the fuel will have a similar impact.

Not to say that it's not significant, but, I would just I would say, like, the the cost of the vehicle will still be the dominant factor even if we're seeing double, triple the vehicle, the fuel cost. Not to say that it will feel nicer to not pay, that. So but, yeah, I I hope that answers the question. And and and, again, this is a bit on the fly just from looking at the numbers, but I would say, yeah, this is the Fleet acquisition has the the just because of how many vehicles and the volume of that, that's gonna always be driving the main factors.

Yeah. No. Thanks. That that's really good. I guess the it's complicated is the answer. And I think my my thought is fuel, we gain the advantage of time integration. So the sooner we convert, especially if fuel goes up and electricity stays the same, we we gain time integration there. But if we wait, perhaps the acquisition cost will go down. So it's it's a complicated one, yeah, I keep in track.

Than anything, I feel like if the higher the prices of the fuel, that's just gonna drive the demand of EVs, and that has a very astronomical point of having lower vehicles, cost. So I would say maybe not directly. Right? Just the fact that the gas is expensive will have an impact in the county being more able to do this transition. But if the trend continues, there will be those unintended as a impacts that we're gonna ended up driving the vehicle cost down. So, yeah, like I said, it's just complicated, and I wish we have a very sophisticated model to see that. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. My next question is probably to file out. But as I was reading through this, I tried to think of it from the utility perspective, and I realized that more fleet electrification actually means greater revenue generation for DPU. And I didn't see that captured in the report. I think it would be on page two twenty or two fifty four. That's what my notes have, but I think that would be an additional benefit from the utility perspective. It is additional revenue, I guess, to electric distribution. I'm not sure, but do you have any thoughts or is that an interesting thought to think about FILO or is there is there something to that that we should consider?

Chair Gibson, member Heavener. We do for the county public facing fleet chargers, we're analyzing the revenue earned per kilowatt sold. Right now, we've been operating at a loss, but it's not to say that that could flip as increased utilization. You know, we got the level two chargers out, and we're getting a few months of data now. But it hasn't been a significant revenue source at this point, you know.

And then I think we'll see with some of our proposed rate increases with the combination of time and use and demand charges, there's gonna be some leveling of usage. And I'm not sure until we have some historical data that we could say it's gonna be a big jump in revenue because we'll be offering a lower rate during the off peak time. So more to come.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I was mostly freshly feeling the decrease in revenue from gas from the last meeting. So I was thinking, oh, maybe there's a silver lining here for increasing revenue. So thanks, Quick question on page two fifty seven, there was an equation, and it was written in a really strange way. I had that it was it was tricky to to interpret that equation. Just a minor comment.

Do you do you do you know the page of the report itself? Like, the

63.

Number of the attachment be?

63.

Thanks. Oh, thank you. Oh, yeah. That is thank you. Yeah. That was something that happened when the PDF got converted. Thank you

for that. Very minor. Another comment. Just the existing the appendix b and the existing conditions in market scan. I thought that was another great summary, so thanks so much.

Let me I think this was still in the fleet electrification. I've kinda lost track of the dividing. So let me mention it now. This was on page three seventeen of the packet where you looked at where the county might put chargers. So it may have been in the community electric charging. Sorry. But I just wanna make the point for the utilities to hear mostly that the ECO station location looks like it's actually behind the fence. And I just want to point that out is hopefully we could have it twenty four seven available to the public, not just when the fence is open. This is a sore spot because Jim has Mountain Electric down in Espanola has a nice DC fast charger, but it's locked up other than business hours. So I wanna make sure we don't make that mistake.

So that was just a comment to make sure Philo heard that. And I think that was everything I had. Thanks so much, Trent Gibson.

Thanks, Matt. And and by the way, there's the same kind of problem with the formatting of the equation on the following page, page 64 of your report. Same same kind of problem.

Yeah. Thank you, chair Gibson and the rest of the world. We'll make sure to address that.

Okay. Any other questions or comments from the board at this point? You'll get another chance at the end here. If not, let's move on.

Thank you, Josh, and thank you for complying with the dress code for tonight. Please take it away.

I do what I can, please. Luckily, I did have this one stashed nearby. It's great to see you all again. My name is Josh Hart. As a reminder, I'm gonna take you through the updates that we've made to the community wide EV charging plan.

And, like Antoine mentioned at the start, I'm gonna focus really on the changes that we've made since the last time that we spoke to you all. But if there are any questions about some of the baseline assumptions or the previous approach, please feel free to let me know, and and we can double back. You can go ahead and jump to the next slide. And, I wanna start and summarize that all of the revisions that we made as part of this last revision to the final draft were focused on either increasing, the equity of this report or clarifying the equity of the report. And so as we go through the few different areas where we're making changes, I just wanna keep that in mind because in some cases, we were editing the approach, editing some numbers, and in others, we built out the text that we used to that approach in those numbers.

And, and in general, I'd like to classify the changes that we made into these three buckets that you see on the screen. We'll go into each of these in detail. But, at a high level, we have the multifamily, equitable charging, multifamily housing angle, the public charging accessibility, and education and engagement. Jump to next slide. Great.

Thank you. And, the first revision of those that I want to dive into is that multifamily charging piece. We've talked a lot about this with, all of you as well as the county staff and the county council. And what we addressed here in the report, is that early drafts of this report, were not sufficiently describing the emphasis that the report and the model had placed on multifamily housing to begin with. And so, it's important for us to note that housing density was always a a large factor driving that model.

But in this final revision, we've drastically built out how we describe that as a priority for the model. And you'll see on the screen here what is hopefully a helpful demonstration. You can see in this map suitability results, which you've seen before where the dark orange is is very good. And we've overlaid here on the map in the purple the parcels that are apartments and condos and other multifamily parcels so that you can see that correlation where suitability is increased. It's darker orange in those areas where, people don't have access to the garages.

And so, again, we're we're either increasing the equity of the approach or we're clarifying the equity of the approach. And so a large part of of these changes were better describing this process and kinda how that multifamily angle played into the model. You can jump to the next slide. And the second change is that is about adding more charging in, residential areas. And so this final revision has an addition of four new chargers.

As I'm sure you remember, we received significant feedback to add chargers deeper into few different areas throughout the county, including, some more single family residential communities. So what we did is we, we looked at areas that are residential that had been requested throughout the community engagement process, and importantly, that were also highly suitable in the model. And, again, back to that, either increasing or clarifying the equity, This is an an example of a change where we were intending to increase the equity of this by expanding the charging out into residential areas as well. So the result of that change is that there's two new two new locations at Urban Park and the Hilton shopping center in the North Community as well as two new locations in White Rock, one at the Smiths and one at the Overlook Park. We're gonna drill into those White Rock locations in a moment here as well.

And you can jump to the next slide. Thank you. And so, yes, as we talked about, White Rock was initially underrepresented in this first draft. And so this final version, includes an additional two locations there. You can see here it's these look two locations are in addition to the visitor center and the fire department.

And the Smiths, as I'm sure you all all relate to, especially had a lot of requests from the community. So that is a a high request. Of course, that is on privately owned land, but that is a big priority, so that was added. And Overlook, as well as being a great community destination also integrates well with the, the plan the climate action plan's recommendation to install more chargers at sports complexes. And so these are more areas where it's, areas that were specifically requested, and also that were marked highly suitable by the model.

And you can jump to the next slide. Thank you. You can see the full map of the recommended chargers here. And so what we revised in summary was increasing equity in the placement of these charges. And so I mentioned really building out, how we talked about that placement and the model as a whole.

You can jump to the next slide, and we've identified specific phase one locations here. And that means pulling out the next steps that we recommend for the county with these phase one charger locations. These are the ones that are the most suitable, most often, and most highly requested, and logistically, most important to install in the near term. And on the next slide, to to bring this all together, this plan is focused on proposing, what we think of as a network of chargers. Right?

So the exact implementation is going to depend on data that is not yet available. And so, I mean, seeing how much those first chargers are used, the return on investment for some of those sites, and seeing how the implementation of many of these chargers end up impacting equity. And then, based on that data that you receive, adjusting your future implementation based on what you're learning from those new data points. And from a communication standpoint, this is, of course, gonna going to require continued external engagement, telling people about chargers and making sure that they understand how to use them. And, also, will be important for the county to interface very intentionally with the the recommended privately owned locations.

I mentioned the Smiths location. And as we've discussed in the report, that means sharing these maps, sharing the data that has been collected as part of this project, and, encouraging those private locations, by showing them the viability of those locations. And then lastly, we'd just note here that it is going to be an iterative process of installing that infrastructure in the areas that we, with the county staff, have found to be highly suitable, seeing how it's used, how it impacts the network broadly, and then installing more infrastructure based on on what you've learned through that process. And then on the final slide here, this is one that you've seen before, but we continue to emphasize, to the council and to the boards, the need for streamlined permitting, lots of collaboration with you, the board of public utilities, and, of course, continued funding and and communication with the public to, bring down those adoption barriers wherever they are. And with that, I'll open this up to questions, and I think we can spread between both any other residual questions from the flute port as well as this one.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Nice presentation, both of you. Charlie.

I want to drill down a little bit on the streamlining of permitting. Tell me more about that. What permitting needs to be done? If the plan is adopted and implemented, are you saying every project is going to be fought out? Or are we gonna have some way of doing this kind of kind of by right? You know, what what are the what are the what are the barriers specifically that you see?

Great question, and I'll pass to Emily.

And thank you, Chair Gibson and board member. Do you mind, like, referring your question? Is that as you're asking if we were to put a one charger or the chargers that we're seeing at the different locations, what will be the permitting or barriers for those?

Well, you said that one of the, I mean, you know, you said twice in your last two slides, a top thing was to streamline permitting. So what is the what are the permitting barriers and and what do we need to do to to streamline them?

Yeah. So

I mean, this is like in the modern world, we wanna streamline permitting, and I'm all about that. And then when it comes to it, people really don't actually wanna streamline permitting. So I'd like to get it laid out. What is it we need to streamline to get this done? Right?

Yeah. So I can I can talk in general for the other pieces and maybe Angelika if you wanna touch specifically on your current experience and timelines for the implementation in the in the county locations? But so with the I think from one perspective, the county lead has an advantage that they can actually streamline some of that communication with the utilities since you're all part of the same organization, which is a really great advantage. But, from the public side and charging implementations, there is sometimes small things that could be tricky. Right?

So certain things when we're looking at public, public charging, and let's say you do have a partner and they wanna come and do charging in some of their own private locations, having charges every so often that could trigger, the large scale, for example, environmental permitting. They could also trigger a a formal, load assessment, or projection if there is certain, numbers that are that are above, you know, just the one charger. Right? So, I think if, if you guys were to see this and that some of the recommendations, from coordination is that instead of having, like, people that wanna be part of some incentives or programs or partnership to have private privately private locations with public charging. If we were to see those applications instead of, like, five individual applicants to see it as a one project that might have be across different locations, just from that perspective alone, you go from doing things five times to doing it once even though a lot of the assessments and the the specific work will still be across the different locations.

But just in terms of, like, the timeline, the process, and and even some of the, logistical pieces of doing different applications that could be an incentive, for some of the private, partners as well. And I think when we talk about, you know, one or two chargers and maybe one or two locations, you don't see much of, like, the issue from that perspective. But, just in the case of atomic transit and then, you know, how many vehicles and how large of that capacity it is, well, they might be able to, you know, come up to utilities and say, hey. We need to have this added charges in x timeline. When you see that as an aggregate for all of the different locations that might be coming online at the same time, having some of that coordination ahead.

And and that was what we keep using, like, the word, like, the master planning piece of things. Right? So we don't see each department coming and doing specific applications independently, but we can see kinda like the road map, and taking advantage of that. Just some of the benefit from that perspective is that, like, maybe some of the feeders might not reach capacity with one project, but might reach capacity with the second project. So then from that perspective alone, you're jeopardizing, the viability of a second one, just because of a specific timeline.

So so those are

some maybe general examples of when we say, like, the need for a streamlining permits in environmentals that could trigger environmental and load assessments as well as the timeline for permitting in general for, improvements, that might have to go through the county. But in in I don't know, Helica, if you also wanna expand a bit on your current experience with the process to get into charges and styles that you guys already have from that perspective.

Sure. Chair Gibson, members of the board. So from the county perspective, installing the chargers that we have, we have a lot of coordination with utility right now and with our fleet department. So we've been able to overcome some of those barriers maybe that other communities might face. And, also you know, so we haven't we've been able to just work, collaboratively on the installation of those and making sure we have capacity in the areas, that we're installing these.

But we would have to take a deeper dive into the residential areas, for example, to make sure, you know, as a homeowner, that that process is is streamlined and, you know, fairly a fairly easy lift for them to install EV chargers. I don't think at this point, we, our utility department doesn't, you know, have to approve every single charger that goes in. I haven't seen that. That may change or, you know, that may be something that DP would want to look at as this as more and more people are adopting EVs, but that isn't currently the the scenario that we're facing. So from an internal point of view, we haven't had any barriers.

We I think we require a state permit just for the construction pieces, but not any other than just collaborating with DPU on, hey. We're, you know, letting them know we're planning to install chargers in different locations and making sure there is actually a transformer and everything available. So we haven't hit any roadblocks in that way.

Thanks.

K. Other questions? Eric.

Thank you, chair Gibson. Okay. So you use the word equity a lot. I've I counted 25 instances of the word equity, but I don't see it defined anywhere. Can you tell me what you mean by that?

Thank you, chair Gibson and and members of the board. That's an excellent question. Yes. And this is, I think the reason that 25 times was the number of, times that I mentioned that is it's been a big focus since the beginning with, with the county as well as in these conversations. And, and so that's why we are highlighting that is to is to respond to that feedback.

When we talk about equity throughout this project, it's it's meant a broad range of things. At the beginning, it included bringing in census data on demographics, and making sure that any kind of data that's available publicly on income, racial language barriers, etcetera, are included in this. Specifically, the changes that we've made since the last time we presented are really focused on equity around multifamily and single family housing. And so a lot of the discussions we had focused on this, inherent dilemma between people who can charge at home, people who can't charge at home perhaps because they live in a place without a garage, people who need to charge, therefore, in, publicly available spaces. Something that we heard a lot about in the community engagement period was that the best place for people to charge, if not at home, is in places where they go for commercial activity.

So a grocery store, a restaurant where they're hanging out for a long period of time. That's part of the reason that you see a lot of chargers identified along the Downtown Los Alamos and Downtown White Rock areas because that's where people are going to hang out for an extended period of time, leave their car parked and charged. And so I would I would I started broad because I wanted to acknowledge that we were taking in a lot of different demographics when we've talked about equity initially. A lot of what I was describing tonight was focused on making sure that we explain why the chargers are focused around the downtown core, that map that I showed illustrated that that's where a lot of the multifamily non garage spaces are. But then also, we are adding locations, so that even people in those residential areas who might not have the ability to upgrade their garage for at home charging do have that option as well.

But I still don't know what equity means. And when I get a charge banks, charger

In this case, in a few locations

I think I'm learning something.

Yes. And and we usually have a plus terms to use, so we of that word. So thank you for the comment, and we'll make sure to as a as a personal, professional lesson for me to to keep in mind moving forward. But to kinda, like, go back to, what Josh was describing is and I think you provided a great example. Right?

Like you said, if I wanna have an EV, I just come and grab and put a charger, and that's it. Right? But but if there is certain people that still want access to EV and still want access to clean, in savings on the long run, and maybe they do have a the economic capacity to pay for a vehicle and potentially even a charger. But if they leave in a place that they don't get the luxury to just come and connect their charger, that's where this equity means. Right?

Like, because then they will probably have to spend more money in and keeping free axe. So what I to find other ways, obviously, yes, not to the fact that they didn't have access to cleaning. Right? So from that perspective, there are certain barriers of having access that we would be able to address or a free person to own in the

Need to finish up the present.

We've we've finished included. We're meant to be part

of it. The community wide on feeder.

I just wanna make sure that this

the fact that they have Well, the If I'm interpret

Feed a backup, a slice that we have from difference in that. I don't have the report, from Bristol McDonald's for me to see, what would be kinda, like, one of the the main assumptions. But, just from my perspective, one of the first things that come to mind is that when the person McDonald was in coordination with Stantec for the data collection, we were very, detail into being aligned with the scenarios projections for EV adoption because we were, like, about the same phase of that project. So that means that the same projections that they use for the public adoption are the same scenarios that we are using right now for for the public adoption of electric vehicles. At that point, the atomic transit projection was already, commercially available.

I mean, publicly available because we have finished that project as well. So I feel pretty confident that from those two points of of data, those reports should be aligned unless they use a different projection for the atomic transit. Now that said, when they were basically completing their study, we still didn't have all of the locations for or the quantities for the county fleet. So the county fleet, which is a significant also another significant portion of this, was not provided to personnel at the time because we were not done with our study at that moment. So I don't know what were their basis on assumptions in terms of the number of charges that might be needed, in this case specifically for Feeder 14.

At at our report, obviously, look at the actual location of the different sites and the number of chargers and vehicles that will be coming from the total. So I would say, like, the main difference might be coming from they may be assuming that there might be an opportunity for sharing infrastructure at different, feeders that they actually that there actually is, or they're assuming that some of this electric vehicles from the county fleet might be at different locations. Because, again, at that point, when we were putting in it with them, we didn't have a so I don't probably just the different lines for was not their their findings. These values are different. But I would say some of the assumptions that they were using, were just in a way generalized.

And, obviously, they they did provide recommendations in their plan to have studies like this to be a little bit more specific at the feeder level. So

Chair. Phil. I just wanted to add a little color to this. If this is twenty fifty, if we're assuming

Yes.

All 30 buses are electrified at 400 kilowatts of energy battery, this range is pretty close. If you look at overnight charging because they have to plug in level three chargers to charge up those large battery systems and then you add in all the other fleet vehicles. I don't think this is that far out of range.

Well, there's another another way of comparing this. If you look at, say, at the at the high EV scenario, if you add up all of these power demands, comes out to be just over 24 megawatts, of which six megawatts is county. That's 25%. Yet if you look at fuel usage in the county, the county and the schools together are slightly less than 5%. Now admittedly, that's energy versus power.

There's a slight there's a little difference there, but that's huge. The I would expect to see the power demand from the county and schools to be maybe of order 5% or so of the total demand, and yet you're saying it's 25%. So I'm I'm confused here as to which numbers are right. And for the the public use here. It would And be

chair Yeah. Chair Gibson, did you consider the fuel demand of the public buses for the transit authority as well on that?

Yes. That's all county fuel use. I mean, a they all fuel from the same place and so that's all available in one place. Actually, schools fuel there too, but they keep their own numbers. So yeah, it does include atomic city transit.

So I don't know that we're gonna resolve this right now, but it remains I mean, the most fundamental question that we would have as a utility is how much power is this gonna take? And this seems to be an attempt at summarizing that, which is good to have a summary, but we've got to have confidence that it's right. And if it's if there's a problem on the with the the county part of it, are there any similar problems with any of the others? It it calls into question the credibility of all of this.

And yeah. Chair Gibson, I I appreciate the the comments. Just I pull out the the study from them really quickly, and I do think the majority of the assumption is because of the what they did for city Atomic City. They assumed they had chargers that were, only 50 kilowatt, which will not be enough time for the charger for their public buses for the, yeah, public the buses to charge. Our study with Atomic Transit, evaluated a 150 kilowatt, chargers.

And then I would say in terms of, like obviously, I'm not I agree that we're not gonna resolve, which one is right or wrong from that perspective. But I would say, just from, the assumptions on the power, I I understand why President MacDonald had to do some of the high level assumptions and projects up to 2050 because they were not looking necessarily like a, you know, a very granular data. I would say my level of confidence with the projections for the county fleet and the atomic transit was looking at that granularity. Like, we look at the specific energy demand that the buses will be coming, how much time they have to charge, and when they will need to leave to the point that we were able to assess how that they were actually gonna need, on route charging at some of the locations. The on route charger capacity is 450 kilowatt, at one at the transit center that they have.

So, again, not to advocate for my own work, but I would say that that just from the scope of work and the level of detail that was developed for atomic transit in the Fleet County, I would advise to look at that more granular scope versus the overarching, you know, high level projections that they were looking at, for '20 for, you know, 2050. And acknowledging that in the same report of Mcdonald's, they actually recommended granular deep granular assessments like the one that we just did. So, again, just as a word of guidance, like, the the fact that we were looking at the exact energy demand at the day level to then do projections, for the entire v for each vehicle and then at the fleet, provide a level of granularity for the projections of the of the fleet. Again, not to say use hours, but just to give you the details on on the level of scope, and the difference between that report and our report. They were really different, in their main goals, for and and level of detail at the scope for each analysis of the fleet.

Well, their their assumptions are fairly well outlined in their report also in terms of charging time, power of chargers, things of that variety. So it shouldn't be too hard to reconcile the two. The problem is your report's done, their report's done, and somebody's going to have to sit down and figure out which is what's what here. Because as I said, this is the really the most basic information that we as a utility need to have a handle on is how much power are we really going to need for EVs. And we've got two reports here that are very different, and we're going to have to resolve that.

Next question. This shows the peak power, this this same chart, which is the same figure in the report, shows presumably the peak power demand. Is there any consideration given to the phasing of when the different feeders might peak? Are they all are you assuming all at the same time? When I came up with 24 megawatts for the high EV scenario in your report, that's just adding all of them up.

But that doesn't mean that they're all going to be peaking at the same time. Did you do anything that would indicate kinda which what time different feeders would peak so that we could try to get a a a total power demand peak for the different scenarios?

And, sir Gibson, do you mean the timing on like, during the day when the peak is reached?

Yep.

Okay. Sure answer is no. No. We did not look at the hour by hour demand projection for the for the county fleet.

Okay. That answers the question. I mean, it's, I didn't see anything, but I thought I'd ask.

I will say, sir Gibson, the assumption has been stated for both the the county fleet and atomic transit. The peak is, is doing a non non service hours so that the, you know, the hours of charging is after business hours, so between eight and 5AM. But, again, we don't have, like, an hour by hour peak that will, you know, solidify that assumption.

And, of course, the the the community wide

Yeah.

Demand Yeah. Schedule may is likely to be somewhat different. And we don't know what it is yet. We'll we'll find out as people as we get more vehicles. Yeah. But also, mister Hold on just a moment. Sure. Since I mentioned more vehicles. And Helica, do we have or can we get the either the DOT or the tax and rev data on how what the number of EVs is in the county by year so that we can track that over time and use it probably somewhat to project future numbers of EVs?

Yeah. Chair Gibson, I think that's something we can request.

That might be useful to see how it's growing with time. Eric, you had a question?

Yeah, excuse me for interrupting. Yeah, but also if you have, for example, 24 chargers on a transformer, you can throttle the chargers for the capacity of that transformer. So you'll be splitting the transformer load across that number of chargers. And so mitigates the draw.

And that's helpful. Okay. Do we have any other questions or comments on this report? I'm not seeing any, so Angelica, congratulations on finishing a long job. There's a lot of information in here and we appreciate it.

Not only your efforts, but the efforts of Stantec. And thank you both for being here this evening again to go over this again. It's important And we really, there's a lot of good work in here. We may or may not agree on every number. But if nothing else, it outlines the various different issues that we have to think about. And, of course, we'll be reviewing you know, we'll be updating these things every few years as we go along. And things will change. Thank you very much, all of you. We appreciate it.

Thank you, chair Gibson and members of the board. It's been a real pleasure working with this community, and and I will echo your congratulations to Angelic and her group because they are really one of a kind. And we really enjoy our time working with them and coming to the community and and get to know, Los Alamos and their biggest planners. So thank you so much for the time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Paul.

Okay. We move on from EVs to water. Introduction of an ordinance. And actually, my understanding is we're actually gonna have a presentation before we introduce the ordinance and some opportunity we'll have some opportunity to discuss. So, Joanne?

Good evening, Chair Gibson and members of the board. So I'm bringing forth ordinance zero two three eight zero, which is our water rate ordinance. So when we were doing our FY 2728 budget, we were doing rate analysis. So we have some new things that are going to are part of this new ordinance. So I will go through each of the different ones in order that they're listed in the ordinance.

So I'm gonna go ahead and do a slight overview. These numbers on this page, I'm looking at the last three year average. But keep in mind when we were doing our projections, we used a five year average for our budget. So and I did a three year on this. One, because the last time this was presented was three three or four years ago.

And also because we've had some growth with some of the apartments and stuff. So I wanted it to be a little bit closer to what we're looking at today. So we have about 66% of our households are in Los Alamos and about 35 34% are in White Rock. We average about 7,000 residential customers, 84 multifamily, two eighty eight commercial, 91 county, and 28 school. So our multifamily, our customers, they're the group of residents that share one single water meter that may feed more than one.

So two to however many building I mean, apartments or condos. And so all the usage is billed under one account. So there's a little less administrative cost. So that's why some of you'll see that their cost is a little bit different. So we're averaging about 55 apartments, 19 condos, seven duplex or quads that share a water meter.

We have the two mobile home parks, Elkridge and the one on North Mesa. And then we have our one senior living facility. So the next page is kind of going over our residential usage for Los Alamos and White Rock. I broke it down in KGals for non peak and peak for the different rate classes, residential, multifamily, commercial, county, and school, just to kind of see where non peak and peak usage is. And then the graph below is our average monthly residential usage per household in gallons.

So I just kind of broke it down between Los Alamos and White Rock. You know, Rock doesn't have as many customers, so you'll see that difference in their average monthly usage. Next page. So looking at our residential peak. Peak is May through September.

And so we have a tiered water rate from May through September. So anything under 9,000 gallons, and then we have 9,000 to 15,000 gallons at another rate, and anything over 15,000 gallons is at the the third tier. So, and we'll go through each of those different tiered water rates here in a few minutes. The next page shows our neighboring communities. And so on this one, we have both the proposed F Y 27 rate and the F Y 28 rate.

And then we're comparing it to the city of Santa Fe, Santa Fe County and Espanola. And that is using 06/30/2025 rates for those neighboring communities. You'll see that Santa Fe County, when you get I think it's over 4,000 or 6,000 gallons. Their prices go really, really high. You'll see from 4,000 gallons, their average bill is $56.55 and then at $6,000 it's $92 if they use 6,000 gallons.

So that's their tiered water rate. Espanola does not have a tiered water rate, but the city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County do. So Espanola is a flat rate year round. So this is just kind of to show our neighboring communities and their rates at those different usages per month. So this next graph is our potable water consumption.

And I think we kind of labeled this a little wrong because if we look at this, the blue is budget and the red is actual. And this is actually the water, total water that was delivered to our system. It wasn't the actual consumption that we sold. So you'll notice that in like '24 and '25 when we go into the next page of the water sales, it kind of flip flops. So I'll kind of talk about that.

But this one is actually what was delivered to our system to be sold. And then the next page is our potable water sales. And so one of the things on the previous page in FY '25, it looks like we budgeted for a higher amount and then our what we actually produced was a lot lower. But then if you look at the sales, you'll see that the sales in '25 are higher. And part of that is that we did receive a reimbursement from Lantel for a t a 55 waterline project, which was the revenue was included in this.

So that's why that kinda looks a little off from the previous one. So these are just showing our budget to our actual. And then all these graphs for FY '26, it's just showing our budget to our current projected. The next page is our non potable. So for '24, '25, and '26, the budgeted amount was a flat, and it was never changed. When we did our '27 and '28, like I said earlier, we did a five year projection. We looked at the past five years and projected it. So this was, I think, hundred and thirty six five, if I remember. Oh, yeah, it's right there. A $136.05.

And we've re kind of evaluated that for '27 and '28, and it's down to about 97,300. So that blue line will drop when we start looking at FY '27 '28. So the next one is the non potable water sales. So this one, when I was evaluating why the blue line is so low compared to the water sales, when I was looking at the budget, it looks like our average cost of non potable water that we sold was about $3.47 but when it was budgeted, it was budgeted about 1.5 per thousand gallons. So I'm not sure why that was calculated that way in the previous adopted budgets, but that's why that those graphs look a little off.

For 2728, we're projecting about $392,000 in sales in f y twenty eight, about 04/2023. So it kind of falls into line of what we've actually been selling. This next graph is from the budget that was presented back in February. So we just kind of included this so you guys could review that. And it also shows our rate increases that we included in the budget.

So the 8% for '27 and '28, and then we are looking at 7% for '29 and '30, and then about 5% to 3% moving on for the October forecast. So now we're gonna go into the actual ordinances and the rate. So the first part of it is our proposed service charge, which is the monthly fee that we charge when you have a water meter. And this is for a residential multifamily commercial county and schools. So you'll see our current rate.

And through this the current ordinance that we're in, we only have through an eight inch water meter. But we did add a 10 and a 12 inch water meter because this Paharito Mountain is a 10 inch water meter, so we needed to get that in there. So we went to a 12 inch. So that's why there's not a current rate right now for those two and for '26 and '27, they're 8% increases. The next page is showing for our proposed consumption charge.

This is the per thousand gallons of water sold. The first column shows our non peak cost per gallon or per thousand gallons. And it's divided into single family residents, the multi family residents, commercial, county, and schools. And then the next section is our peak water rates and those will they show for the the three years or being the two years. So on the residential commercial multifamily schools and county, everything's in an 8% increase.

So now we're kinda going into the different changes that we made because we we found there's some stuff that probably wasn't being service charges that weren't being charged. So we went through each of all of our different charges that we currently bill. For our non potable service charge, right now we do per 1,000 gallons, we're currently charging $3.69. And we did an 8% increase for '26 and '27. But we're we are not currently charging any service fee.

So we have added a service fee for '27 and '28. This is to recover some of our administration and billing costs that we're currently not collecting. And if you'll notice the monthly service charge is half of our potable water sales. And so that's because a lot of the non potable sales that we do now are seasonal. The county is using it for the school, the parks.

The next page is the proposed bulk water delivery that we currently sell from water distribution to water production. So it's the the cost of water that we sell. So the bulk service rate service charge is currently $9.46. We increased for 2627, 8%. And and then the per thousand gallons is also eight percent.

So that one doesn't have a big change. So then the next one is our this is new. This is our proposed irrigation meters and our snowmaking service charge, consumption charge, and our energy charge for Potietho Mountain service area. So right now, if you have an irrigation meter, you're getting charged the commercial rate for per thousand gallons. And it's and and why it has no why it doesn't have a current is because there is not a current rate.

This is a new part of our rate. So it's the per thousand gallons is at the commercial rate. And then you'll notice the service charge is, again, half of the the current potable water service charge. And, again, that's due to seasonal. So people are irrigating in the summer and then snowmaking in the winter.

And then the other portion of this is the energy charge that we're going to charge for the Pontiac of the Mountain Service area, which is a dollar 50 per thousand gallons sold. And so the idea of that is that it's the pumping the water 1,800 feet up to the $250,000 war water storage tank up on the top of Ponte Tho Mountain. So, and that's just for the water being delivered to Padito Mountain. This is a new one. So currently with the bulk water that we sell to Los Alamos National Lab, it is at the bulk rate that we are selling from water distribution to, I mean, from water production to water distribution.

And we've noticed that our role, it was currently Lantel uses about 20% 26% of our system's total water production. So we're proposing a new rate for Los Alamos National Laboratory. We are billing them a service charge right now at $9.46, and the additional service charges are at 8%. The biggest difference you'll notice is currently we're selling per thousand gallons at $5.59. It's gonna go up to $7.45 per thousand gallons and we're proposing $7.8 in '27.

So this newly incorporated bulk rate is to incorporate some debt service and contingency cash reserves. And that's due to the number of loans that we recently were issued and building a new water well and replacing water production lines. So and the bulk rate also includes costs for some operation and maintenance costs, IDCs, admin allocations, capital costs, and the debt service and contingency cash reserves. So that's covered. And on the next page, you'll see where we this is kind of explaining how we came up with the rates.

So these are our if you look at the last two columns, it's a budgeted amount for water production. And that's what we have in there. We included in the blue, we have the contingency cash reserves that we talked about during budget and the debt service cash reserves. And looking at the annual average land all operating costs, we're looking at 26% of that cost. And by looking at the five year average and all of those costs is to cover their portion of all of our cost to serve, that's where we came up with the $7.45 for '27 for their bulk rate and $7.80 for FY '28.

And then the last part of this is the calculation for the service charge to Los Alamos National Laboratory. So we looked at what we looked at how much time it takes to bill, meter reading, any type of meter calibrations that our GWS crew goes out, and the vehicles used to get any of these reads and any repairs that we might have to do. So we took how much time per month or so that we probably spend on these, and this is where the service charge kind of came into play. So with these several different proposed rates and the new rates, we're looking at trying we're expecting to restore our water funds cash flow to a more sustainable level, fund some essential repairs, replacements, and ongoing operations, fund our cash reserves, which project to bring a positive cash flow starting in FY '29. And if you look, we we talked about future rate increases starting at 7% in '29.

So that's the end and I'm happy to take any questions.

Questions. Thank you very much.

Yes, that's

a lot.

We appreciate it.

You're welcome.

We're all thinking.

Yeah. We'll

have another month

to That's a lot to think about how to do this too so understand. We'll have another

month to think before we actually have the hearing. Quick question. All right, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. How do you come up with the 1.5 for the energy charge? Can you tell me what you think the proposed horsepower is for the motors to drive that water up to Pajarito Mountain?

Okay. I will let Philo answer that because he helped me calculate that.

I had myself, James Alarid before he retired, and James Martinez. We each calculated it separately and came up with the same numbers. So and then compared it with a booster station. The biggest piece that it's basically the energy charge was about a dollar 20 in just the kilowatts. But then when you add in the demand charges, because these are large horsepower motors, that's what brought it to the average of a dollar 50.

You don't remember the horsepower? 50?

50 each. That's 50. 50 each, but you got both running at the same time.

Yeah. That's what I estimated was 50. Okay.

But times Times four. Four and raising it 1,800 feet.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions? I have a related question. Doesn't so much have to do with charges for the next year or two, but it does for long term. We had a nice presentation last meeting on costs for providing electric service in comparison to various national benchmarks. And there were some significant differences that we'd like to explore.

Is there any similar set of national benchmarks from, say, AWWA that we could compare our water system costs to to see how we align there and, of course, ultimately, are there any savings we can discover that would help the rates in the future? Is there any such thing that we could get our hands on to do a similar comparison?

Chair, you know, we did provide those examples of neighboring communities in the FAQ section. But every water system's unique. We can, you know, we generally try to compare ourselves with mountain communities where we have to have large energy costs. You know, we're not doing surface water treatment, we're doing groundwater. Well, that saves money on treatment costs, but pumping costs are the higher part of dealing with groundwater. So, you know, in finding equal comparators, it's it's difficult. So but we can we can definitely pull some data from APWA and and see what they have.

Well, if they've got something, I mean, we have to judge how valid it is. But to do that, you have to start with something. And then you say, okay, we do have higher pumping costs for x, y, or z reasons. But then there's other things that are probably aren't different from one system to another or shouldn't be terribly different. If we see big difference, significant differences, we say, why? There may be legitimate reasons, but you first, you ask the question. Okay. That could be helpful. May not be, but you don't know until you ask the questions. Okay.

And and chair, I'll just add that, you know, I appreciate the work that Joanne did with this study. One thing that wasn't looked at a few years ago is all these loans, grants that we receive for our water production system. We had to be putting money aside for our cash reserves for the bond indebtedness. The way the formulas were set up, the lab wasn't paying their pro rata share of that. And so I really appreciate Joanne pointing that out where we got that now into the cost equation.

Just out of fairness, they should be paying that share of the improvement of the water production system that all our other customers are doing. So that that will help down the road as far as, you know, our customer rate. We just have to see how how the usage continues. And I think the using a a five year average projection looking behind instead of projecting growth going forward is a conservative way to budget. So think we'll see some progress to that end, hopefully.

I can't say with inflation we don't know, right? But hopefully it will lower the need for larger increases down the road.

Inflation unfortunately drives everything. Okay. Any other board questions or comments at this point? This is not the public hearing on this, but I think it would be fair, if there is any public comment, to take it at this point. The actual public hearing won't be till the May 20. But is there any public comment on this not yet introduced proposed ordinance? I don't see any in the room. Do you have any online? None online either. Okay.

All

right. Would someone like to introduce this ordinance? Well, if nobody wants to do it, I will. I introduce without prejudice Incorporated County Of Los Alamos code ordinance number zero two dash three eight zero, an ordinance amending the Department of Public Utilities water service rate schedules chapter 40, article three, sections 40 dash one seven one, forty dash one seven three, and 40 dash one seven five, and adding new sections 40 dash one seven six, forty-one 177, and forty-one 178 to the incorporated County Of Los Alamos code. Thank you, Joanne, for all your work.

Joanne Thank you.

First preparing the budget and that showed, you know, what we need to do here and then this to implement it. And as Philo pointed out, get the lab to pay its fair share too.

Yes. Thank you, Chair Gibson. Thank you, Bedmers of the Board.

Okay. Thank you. It is '8. We've still got a ways to go. I suggest we have a take a break here no more than ten minutes. Let's say a max of ten minutes, and we'll see you all back. We're in recess. Thank you.

Recording stopped.

We're back in session. Thanks, everyone. The next item of business is reports, starting with the Chair's report. First item is that, as you may remember, each year we've had a different method of interacting with counsel on utility manager performance appraisals. And what we've discussed for this year is to try something actually fairly straightforward, and that is to have our counsel liaison here be the liaison between us and counsel on the subject.

So she's going to join us for our closed sessions as a liaison, and we'll bring whatever input counsel wishes to provide and let them know if there's anything that they might want to scream and holler about before we do it. But at this point, there isn't planned to be a separate set of communications with counsel as there has been in the past. So Counselor Herman will be with us for both of those meetings. And well, however many meetings we have. Okay.

Speaking of, the first of the utility manager performance appraisal meetings will be associated with our next work session, which is on the May 6. And we need to decide whether we're going to try to do that before or after the scheduled meeting. We we scheduled it that night in part so that we could have everybody. But then, Matt, I think you're gonna be on a plane that night, aren't you?

I am, unfortunately. Yep.

Is there any way that you're able to join us remotely either before or after, or are you just out that evening?

I think it's unlucky unlikely. I'll be driving down just before, so I'll probably hit the dead zone right at the crucial moment. And then the flight's a fairly long one. So unless you go really long that day so I'll get input in probably out of out of band.

Okay. That doesn't surprise us, but we we've gotta go ahead and get going on this. We've already delayed it a little bit trying to get everybody together, but that's that's a big challenge in the modern world is to get even a few busy people in the same place at the same time. So Charlie, do you have any input before or after?

After, please. This is May 6,

right?

This is May 6.

Yeah, before before I'm gonna be running right up to the 05:30 time, so after would be better for me.

Okay. Eric? I'm not sure.

I'll have to look at my calendar.

Okay. Tentatively, we'll think after. But if there's

Doctor.

I'll let you know.

Some I hope it can work that way because we need to have Charlie in there. And if you're able to do it after, that would be Okay, well then, I think we'll plan on it. It will be after the session that evening. Okay. For the following meeting, May 20, that's a regular meeting. And I will be absent completely, and Matt will be remote, meaning that we're going to need an acting chair that evening. Jen isn't here to defend herself, but I'll ask if we

I'll vote for her.

But if we have a volunteer, we'll we'll go with a volunteer. Otherwise, I'll draft somebody.

Yeah. I'll I'll look and see. I've I've got a written agenda in 2020.

I'll probably be able to do it.

Okay. The Let's plan on that unless you tell us otherwise. Okay? All right. Appreciate that.

Let's see. Next item. Some while back, the council appointed a council working group of three councilors to look into potential charter changes. And that working group reported back to the council last week. They'd narrowed it down basically to just one recommendation.

And that, on the basis of input from other boards, several other boards, was that boards would like to see the charter limitation of two terms in succession for board and commission members increased to three. And there was some discussion of that at the last council meeting. And they directed staff to develop to write an ordinance for consideration, which is the first step in the process to put a, a charter amendment on the ballot because a charter amendment has to be approved by voters. The, there was a little bit of discussion of whether or not that should apply to utility board also. Right now, it's the same rule.

Is fifteen years too long?

Well, you tell us.

Well, I didn't do it in succession. And I'm not even up to ten years total yet.

Wow.

They but anyway, they haven't asked for our input yet, but they they might. I don't know. The question also was brought up in that meeting, and this working group was tasked with going back and thinking about it, as to whether or not there should be some clarification in Article five, which is the article that applies to utilities, because there's one part of it that says utilities shall be operated on a compensatory basis. And then we have the other part that in the financials that says leftover funds shall be profits shall be transferred to the general county, county general fund. And their sense is those are in conflict to some extent.

If it's compensatory, how can you have a profit? So they are looking into that. I don't know what they'll come up with. And, I don't know whether they'll ask for our input. We might provide it whether they ask for it or not. This is a long process to get things on the ballot. That's why it's getting going now. So this, at this point, is just a to let you know that that is happening. Those two things are under consideration at this point. And Counselor Herman may have more to say about that in her report if I haven't stolen too much of her thunder on the subject anyway.

And the last item I will mention is that I'm gonna be speaking again to the League of Women Voters lunch with a leader group tomorrow. I did just last June, but they had a dropout, and I got drafted at the last minute. So it'll be a different talk than I gave last June. But just to let you know, that is happening. The we didn't have enough time just for me to really say, why don't you try this person or that person or that person? So they were desperate. So I said yes. That's all I have. Do any members have reports? Matt?

Yes. Thank you. This is related to an earlier topic, but it is actually a board member report. I also did have an unfortunate network dropout, so stop me from too far out of line. But about three years ago when I was on board on board of transportation before I joined BPU, I went to MVD and asked for EV registrations, and they happily sent me the data for the last ten years, statewide, county level, monthly EV and plug in hybrid data.

So it's easy to get. But through the STANTech report, I was actually introduced to the atlaspolicy.com. And if you're interested, it's on page one zero one of our packet tonight, and it's page 24 of that final report on the public infrastructure. It's footnote 21, but that page has one one screenshot of the report. And it's a really nice data exploration tool. I don't know that you can download the raw data. So if we actually wanted the raw data, we might have to go to to MVD. But you can explore the data there. And since we had the break, I was able to go there and actually make this more into a report. I did look and it's last updated 04/01/2026.

So I think it is still monthly updates. And Los Alamos County has 35.7 EVs per thousand people registered, and that's the highest county per capita registrations in the state. The next county is Santa Fe County, which is 26 EV registrations per thousand people. So we're definitely leading the state in registrations of EVs. When I looked at this about three years ago, a couple of factors came up that I just wanted to caveat.

When I was trying to think about this data, the large number of commuters to town was a factor that county registrations complicates the analysis. Of course, a lot of that is probably utilizing the lab charging infrastructure. So there there's just two two counter factors there. These registrations also don't include Lantel fleet registrations. So if we look at EVs in the county, both federal registrations and personal. It's actually even higher. So just that quick report and pointer to to answer the earlier question that you were brought up, chair. That's everything for me. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you. Any other board member reports? If not, we'll go to the utility manager's report. Chair

and members of the board, next month and through June 3, we have primary elections. And this room is occupied by voting machines, etcetera. So on our May 6 and June 3 work sessions, we're gonna be meeting in Room 300 at the 3rd Floor. And on May 20, our regular meeting will be across the hall in the Boards And Commission Room 110. Update on the White Rock Substation.

Sandbros is working to reroute the conduits to allow for the caisson installation that was recently awarded by counsel to R and M Construction. We're confirming the schedule. And I I wrote in here the May, it might be a little further out. We're still trying to the contractor's still trying to get a four foot diameter drill that has some lead time that we're trying to work through. And so we're still confirming that schedule.

But if everything went well, it'd be the May, but it it may lag some because of availability of the material. And then for the tie line, the installation is complete. The only thing remaining is programming the recloser control. And for Elkridge, we have all but four homes that have cut over to the new gas system, so that's pretty great progress. We hope to do the purging of the gas line the May, so we need those last four homes to be converted before then.

And then I wanted to give some recruitment status, and we did three internal promotions. And first, James Martinez is here this evening as the deputy utility manager for engineering. He replaced James Allred. And then Kathy Deanna gave her retirement notice last month, and and Abby Hayward has accepted the public relations manager. Of course, the board knows Abby from her conservation role.

And last, Paula Nelson was promoted to senior management analyst, and she's been here at a few meetings to support at times. And she will be in charge of the customer care center billing and collections. So congratulations to the newly promoted. And, when you have internal promotions, we need to backfill their their vacancies. So we have three of those. And then we're

in

the process of interviewing our water production superintendent next week. And then other recruitments is we're looking for a line person, electrical associate engineer, electrical engineering manager, gas water sewer superintendent, and a trainee, summer interns for engineering interns, and engineering aid for utility locates. So some of these you've seen over and over again on the electrical engineering side where hopefully, we'll capture somebody graduating. We'll see. And then engineering aid for utility locates.

I know we've been out for that for a few times. On the other front, the Plumbers and Pipefitters union contract expires June 30, so we've begun negotiations for the contract renewal. And then staffing, we have an alternative work schedule option that we exercise on daylight savings time period with four ten hour days in the gas water sewer, wastewater, and hydroelectric teams are participating in that alternate work schedule. And then just to update on the ECA, we are holding weekly meetings at this point and trying to renew it. Has been assisting us with that effort.

And I think that's fortunate in in light of Thomas' early retirement, I'm gonna say. But he didn't get to see this over the finish line, but he's definitely helped a bunch. But we're we're our working group meeting scheduled for April 30, second to last day for Thomas, and we'll review the progress of the negotiations then. But I can say they're positive. I shared some information just on the contract value.

Exeter, it was presented earlier. They do electric projections for the lab. And they estimated the contract value for the first ten years at $424,000,000 and the second ten years at $593,000,000 And if you add up those over twenty years, it's over a billion dollar contract. So it's a significant contract we're entering. Then Hema's Mountain Fire Protection, we noticed that we had an award for funding.

However, through Google Earth, they said, well, it looks like you did some work. And we said, yes, we did. They asked us to revise our estimates to, you know, what what it's gonna be cost to complete the project. So we resubmitted those estimates. We haven't received a notice to proceed because FEMA is under the Department of Homeland Security, and they're still in a shutdown mode, unfortunately.

So I'll hopefully report back next month that things freed up there. The remaining balance of work is about three and a half million dollars with 2,650,000 of federal funding. And phase three is out for bid. Today was the last day for questions, and the opening is scheduled for next Thursday. That's for all the pump houses.

It's phase three. Foxtail Flats. I don't know if we get into remember, it's something we add, but they're doing a groundbreaking for the morning of May 12. I don't have the exact time yet, but it's past Farmington, so sometimes it can take forty minutes just to get to the site from Farmington. So it may be that if you wanna attend probably a hotel night, some mileage will be needed for that, that few $100, I'm guessing.

So if you're interested, I can get more details once I have have it. I don't have much more than that at this point. Now with Ben and Thomas and Richard Virtues, our consultant that's helped us with Foxtail Flats consultant, we reviewed a requested consent and assignment of the lease to with the Ute Mountain Ute to separate it from the power purchase agreement. And so we executed that. It's allowed through this PPA where the lease is held under name of Foxtail Flats and the power purchase agreement is held under Foxtail Flats two.

It's got broken into two parts. There's no other changes to the PPA. And UAMPS, their meeting is actually next week. Ben and I reached out to Scott Methersmith who is working on the geothermal projects this morning. And he mentioned that the rototherm is about halfway done where they're drilling, and they're working on the second half, which is horizontal drilling elements.

And they hope to have their pilot well done by the by the June. And we still don't have any updates on the transmission access for both those projects. Chromium plume, the EMLA reached out to us. They initially were going to go at our work session, but they couldn't get all their presentation cleared, so they moved to May 20. And the interim measure remains turned off, but I think they're wanting to reach out about getting it moving again, some element of it.

And then the 18 inches water production line repair in 2 Mile Canyon, we got news today that the core doesn't require a permit, so that frees up us to move towards construction. So we're scheduling some potholing to verify site conditions and then finalize task order with our on call contractor and then prepare the associated budget revision to go with that. So you'd probably see that at at our next meeting, hopefully. And, Sauter Miller completed all but the one, item on the tank cleaning and corrections from the NMED sanitary survey, and, they were on-site, today and should finish by the end of the week, the tank foundation repair at Sycamore. And during this time, NMED also gave us a month extension because they were aware we're doing this repair of the foundation.

And so we should meet our deadline and be in compliance with that survey request of items to correct. And we did find through the tank cleanings there's corrosion, so we'll be putting together some projects for tank coatings to prohibit that corrosion from moving further along. And then PFAS settlement, I don't have any new updates from the class action lawsuit, but they are on top of what it is. But it I think as the board knows, it's a multiyear settlement process. This will this will be until 2030.

So I'll have something to report soon. Then vertical switchgear. I know Jesse mentioned it's on schedule, but they're they're looking at their initially, they said they were gonna be ahead of schedule. So now they're back on schedule, which is the end of this fiscal year. So they are delayed, and they should resume May next month, but I wanted to qualify that.

I didn't bring that up to him, but that that's he was right, but we fell behind in the schedule when we were ahead. Okay. And then Forest Service, this took us about six months to request this meeting and get get it scheduled. We finally had a walk through with the Forest Service and the State Historic Preservation Office, and we reviewed the six sites that that we're trying to acquire from the Forest Service. This project started in 2015.

It's jointly funded between DPU and the county. There's elements of water tank sites, open space needs, emergency evacuation route down RIDIA Canyon, for example, is another important element. So all five of the six sites had no issues with any major mitigation requirements. One of the parcels by the cemetery actually had some archaeological resources and it'd be pretty costly to mitigate. So we are exploring reducing that acquisition area just to include the access road to our lift station down there, and leave the sensitive areas where they are and not disturb them.

So we've gone through our internal process. We think we could do this, but we have to confirm with the Forest Service if we can reduce that. Or maybe we just eliminate and keep a site access agreement for the little little piece of road that's part of that parcel. So with that, I'd stand for questions.

Thank you, Philo. A lot going on. And a lot getting close to end, which is good. Questions? Matt.

Yeah. Thanks for the update, Philo. Just to let you know, I'd be interested in going out to the ribbon cutting on Foxtail. I'll see if my schedule works with that, but I'll be in touch. But that sounds exciting.

Thank you.

Anything else, Matt? Okay. Several things here. First, yeah, we'll plan on the June 3 work session being in room I think it's 03:30 rather than three hundred, isn't it? Anyway, upstairs.

However, in previous several previous cycles here, even though we've scheduled it that way, the clerk's office has cleared this room out really fast after election day, and we've been able at the last minute to come back in here. So we might yet be able to be back in here for that meeting. The on Elk Ridge, once this gas line is purged May or whenever that happens, roughly what's the what are the steps in the timeline for that system to become a county gas system?

Chair, they they have some easements they need to turn over to us. Once once those easements are accepted, it's ours. Okay.

Are you expecting is that a matter

of a few weeks, a few months? So I had requested the easements today. They're they made some request. Thomas did some review. We gave them back the comments. They said they're gonna capitulate and accept the 20 foot easement that Thomas said, no. We're gonna stick with our standard. Mhmm. And so I just haven't got them turned back to us. And the process of easements are those have to go to counsel for acceptance.

Way to go, Tom. You sure you don't want to stay? Okay. On all of these promotions, congratulations from the board. Welcome into your new seat.

And we do appreciate the work you have done and will continue to do. And same is true for for Abby and Paula also, even though they're not here at the moment. But we the board extends extends its congratulations also. On Hema's fire protection project, since FEMA won't pay for work that's already been done, do we run into a problem of we either slow down and not do work because if we do, then they won't pay for it? Do we run into anything like that?

Chair, the we could if this agreement doesn't get executed soon. The concern would be long lead material items. And so that's I can't answer that question completely until I know once we have an award. You know, the the projects that we did do was mainly put in the conduit and pole boxes throughout the whole corridor. Because it was common trench, the paving for the water, you know, over the water trench need to occur, so there is economy of scale.

You know, I think originally this project was on the scale of just under $6,000,000. So, you know, we've done quite a bit of work to date, and this is the balance. But so, yeah, there's it's a challenge. Seemed that the schedule's tight.

That's what we needed to know. There is a complication there. Mhmm. Okay. Moving on to the Foxtail Flats groundbreaking. Matt, you're interested in going up to that? Okay. Is anyone else? I would be if I wasn't leaving town that morning. So I can't do it. Let's see. We only have one meeting left to approve expenses. Do we have to approve expenses for in state travel at this level or do we if it's overnight? Don't remember those rules.

I don't remember either.

Okay. Well, there shouldn't be a big problem doing it at the last at the meeting a week before if we have to, if Matt can make it. And I hope you can, Matt. The board ought to be represented at this auspicious event. Okay. On this EM presentation, they asked for the twentieth. Is there a particular reason they want to present? Is there something that they're wanting us to do? Or is it they figure NMD was here, so the other side ought to be here too?

I think it's I think it's a a little bit of both. They wanna present their side, and I think they also wanna present what steps are their plan to move forward. I do think trying to keep the communication with the county as a whole. I think it's important.

Okay. I'm not objecting. I'm just curious. This popped up by surprise, sort of.

And

my last question on the vertical switchgear project. Did I hear you say you're at least hoping that it will be done by the end of this fiscal year, meaning in two months?

The the end of their federal fiscal year, which is September 30.

Okay. Well, at least we're talking this year and not

Yeah.

So, yeah, there's several things coming to closure. That's great. And Foxtel Flats getting shovels in the ground and getting going. That's great too. Any other comments or questions on the utility manager's report?

Okay. We'll move on to let's see. Anne, you've grown a bit here. Juan, you're sitting in for Anne tonight. What do you do you have anything to report?

Thank you, chair Gibson. Speaking of groundbreaking, I'll I'll start with that. We do have a date set for an official groundbreaking of our community broadband network project now aptly named Atomic Fiber. So that is set for May 12, and that will be in White Rock at the Visitor Center because May 12 is also a night of a county council work session. And so they'll also that's a work session.

They'd be in White Rock anyway, but county council meetings will also be in White Rock. But we wanted to take advantage of council being already going to White Rock. So the board is is definitely welcome, to attend that also. And next, I don't wanna venture too far off in the council recent council actions. I'll let, vice chair Herman talk about that.

I did want to touch on, though, two sort of updates that have come in really quickly. The first one has been today, the county public works traffic and streets team has installed the county's first ever green bicycle striping. So that was near the high school. So you'll see that. You might not see it tonight, but you should probably see it tomorrow.

And so they do have a plan for a couple other strategic locations. So just wanted to highlight that. And then also, we did get word from NMDOT that they are going to do a roadway resurfacing project on New Mexico 4. So this isn't gonna be the big widening in full full reconstruction that everybody was hoping for, but it is gonna be a resurfacing. And so they anticipate that project to start in May, although we haven't gotten official word yet. And we've asked once they get that scheduled that we can help communicate that through our channel. So that's about it. And I'll stand for any questions the board may have also too. So thank you.

Questions from the board? So May 12 is is kickoff day. The I don't know if the board will be able to be represented there, but I'm sure you'll accomplish the job anyway. Eric.

Thank you, mister Gibson. Any update on when the restaurant may be open? Is that at the golf course, is that still June or is that July? When is that?

They're still working through a couple of things. I think that timetable is probably still still correct. June to July ish time frame. So they are making some some changes on the inside at the new proprietors sort of request. And then we're also just making some some routine update maintenance type things.

Yeah. I've I drive by there every day because I live on Bronco Mesa, and it's just I'm just astounded Yeah. At the amount of stuff that's going in the trailer and hauled off, trailers come back, and, like, wow.

Yeah. So

a lot

of work.

There is I appreciate that. There is a lot of work here, so we're excited for that. Thank you. Thank you.

Anything else? Thank you, Juan. We'll move on to the council liaisons report.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. We the council met last week on April 7 for a regular session meeting and passed unanimously in the consent agenda were a couple of things I wanted to let you know about. Approval for the bid on the East Road 14 inches water transmission line project and the award of the task order for the drilling of the five piers in the White Rock substation for the transformer replacement project were both passed in that. And then later on in the meeting, let's see, also passed unanimously was the award of the bid for the Spartan construction for the Fire Station 4 replacement project. Wanted to let you know about that.

I don't have any other information about the proposed charter changes. I think you've covered what we, know so far. And then a couple of other things just to let you know about. We received a citizen petition from a Girl Scout troop requesting to make the North Road and Urban Street intersection a four way stop. So there is a ninety day study on the intersection.

And so we're taking a look at that. And then I also just wanted to let you all know that this Saturday from ten to two Earth Day will be celebrated at peak. And that's it. I will stand for questions.

Thank you. Are there questions? He must have covered everything.

Doctor. Indeed. Thank you.

Doctor. Thank you. Before we go to the ESB liaisons report, I'd like to ask Tom a question, give you maybe a couple of minutes if you needed to think about it while we're getting the ESB report. The next item on the agenda is general board business. Is that broad enough that we could approve travel expenses to a board member to go up to the groundbreaking? Or is that that be something we would need to advertise separately?

Chair Gibson, I think that it'd be a procedural it'd be all right. It's just a procedural issue approving that kind of an expense.

Okay. All right. Thank you. So we'll do that after we get the ESB report because Shannon's been patient all evening. Thank you very much, Shannon. So you're on.

Thank you, chair Gibson. Well, we've been up to quite a few things. So we'll also be at peak as counselor Herman mentioned on Saturday. And then Inhelka is also hosting the, the Earth Day celebration for county, staff, I guess, which will be on actual Earth Day, which is next Wednesday, the twenty second. And that will be in I think it's just in the lobby there at the municipal building.

So if you wanna swing by, definitely do so. She probably needs volunteers as well. So if you're interested in volunteering, I would definitely reach out to her. At our last meeting, which was in March, we had a presentation from the Mozart DevCo about waste to energy plant. I don't know if you guys had that presentation.

I believe they talked to council, so it's basically just, taking waste and converting it to energy. I would recommend at least looking at the, presentation because I think it would probably be of interest to this board. And there is someone local who, works for them, so, they can collaborate with you if you all, want them to come talk to you. And I'm happy to provide that contact information if need be. And then we have our monthly meeting tomorrow, and we're gonna be getting a presentation on the New Mexico climate action plan, and then a presentation on, our climate marketing and engagement plan.

And I think that's pretty much it. So I'm happy to take questions if you all have any.

Are there questions? K. And we have not had the Mozart Mozart presentation yet. I think we have it scheduled somewhere, but I couldn't find it right away. Anyway, it is a subject of interest to us.

Yeah. It was it was definitely very interesting. I am curious to see what happens with it. I think it it could be really cool. So definitely a good presentation for you all.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other any questions, comments in the SB report? Thanks for your patience, Shannon.

Yeah. Of course. Thank you.

Okay. Moving to general board business. If we want to send mister Heavener off on a field trip. We're gonna need to approve something, and I don't know we don't know yet whether that'll involve a hotel overnight or whatever, so we probably should put a

Chair? Yeah. I calculate about $600 due mileage, hotel, and a meal. Okay.

Good. Should always put a cap a little above that just to have some breathing room. It doesn't mean he can spend it. That just means that we approve up to.

We have to make sure he

doesn't ride his bike out there. So

We guess the mileage is the same way. The attempt. Okay. So is there a motion, or I can make one if nobody else has thought about it yet, or any discussion about approving maps travel up there? Okay.

I move that the board of public utilities approve travel expenses for board member Matt Heavener to attend the groundbreaking for the Foxtail Flats project on May 12 in an amount not to exceed $800 per person $800. I'll second. Any discussion? Any public comment? Do you have any public that would comment? Okay. Thank you. Alright. Motions on the floor. Kathy, would you please call the roll?

Member Hefner?

Yes.

Member Nachtley? Yes. Member Stromberg?

Yes.

And member Gibson?

Yes. Thank you. Motion passes. Four to zero. That takes us to a BPU training opportunity, the APPA National Conference, which is in Boston at the June.

Jennifer had expressed some interest, but I have been trying I've asked her by email whether she whether that interest is is turning into a positive, yes. I want to go, and haven't heard any response. It's getting to the point where we need to make decisions there. And I think if since she hasn't responded, I would like to attend. So I would like the board's approval of that, although I'm not sure that $3,000 is gonna do that.

It's $1,200 registration, about $300 a night for four nights for hotel room. Airfares are 600 or more.

Much cheaper.

Yeah.

Which means there's not much left for beans for the traveler. So I would suggest that maybe we make a up that dollar amount that's suggested. But I will let somebody else make the motion.

Can I ask our attorney a question? It's, like, 4,000 a better amount?

Yeah. And I would suggest even doing like chair Gibson did up to and maybe even make it 5. I don't know. Airfare should have gone up incredibly.

Alright. With that, I'll go ahead and make a motion then. So let's see. I move that the board of public utilities approve travel expenses for chair Gibson to attend the twenty twenty six APPA national conference in an amount not to exceed $5,000 per person. I think it was one person, so

there you go.

Don't need the per person. Right.

I'll second.

Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. And the county has the travel rules on what they'll reimburse just like the lab does, So as long as our number is higher than what's actually spent according to their rules, that's what gets reimbursed. Any comment? Any public comment? Seeing none, Kathy, would you please call the roll?

Member Havner?

Yes.

Member Nauchley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Yes. And member Gibson?

Yes. Thank you. Okay. Motion passes. Four to zero.

Now we move to status reports. Do we have any questions or comments regarding status reports? I have one, and that is that per discussion, well, discussions beforehand, I finally, with Dennis' help, I finally found the column on the report on page four zero five of our agenda doc that tells us what the outage time is, kind of the equivalent of SADI, but including the upstream outages also. It's not very much and it's now called the Running Consumer Pain Index, or CPI. But the information is there.

Right now, it's not very different. There hasn't been much in the way

of

upstream issues, but it has been at times. So it's it's actually there in the report. Thank you, Dennis.

That's like the misery index of the early eighties and late seventies.

Yeah. The Anything else on the status reports? Seeing none, we will move on to the tickler file. And in addition to the subjects on the tickler file, there's a few things we'll need to talk about in terms of who's going to be present when and whether or not there's going to be any or I should say how we're going to deal with some of the issues there.

First,

before we actually get into subjects, Kathy sent out an updated spreadsheet today with people's current expectations of when they're going to be here. Is that the best information that we have? Does Kathy have the most current information from everyone?

I think I can send her a more a couple more outgoing

things. Are you still expecting to be present for the next three meetings?

I believe

I am. Yes.

Good. Yes. Good. Good. Has no guarantee. The okay. Let's see. We've already got acting chair taken care of. I've mentioned the rooms. Mentioned closed sessions. Matt, you're gonna cover the council agenda meeting this Friday? Okay. Great. Thank you. Alright.

Are there issues with the proposed agendas?

The

I would like to move one item here, and it's my mistake that it got scheduled this way, I guess, for the twentieth, that is of May, that is the next regular meeting. Right now, we're saying review of ten year budget plan and reserve policies. And I'm not going to be here for that meeting, and I would really like to be here for that topic. So I would suggest we move that down to the June 3.

Okay.

We'll look at in detail when we have our monthly agenda setting meeting again, but I forgot about that conflict when we set that. Oh, I also notice right now that the electric distribution undergrounding is also tentatively or scheduled here for the May 20, and I'd like to be here for that one too. Okay. Sorry about that.

Member Gibson? Yes. We found out today that there's also going to be a presentation by Llano on May 20. You're right. Chromium team.

Should be on here or should get on here. It'll fill up for some of these things we're taking off. We got to make Eric work that night.

Yeah, I was in the party.

Okay. Anything else right now that people see as a problem or that they would like to have added or moved or otherwise? Okay. There are a couple of items that I'm not sure are on here. One is the EDAM discussion when which is be when UAMPS comes. Thought we were thinking of September for that, but I think that has dropped off the parking lot.

It's probably in September. We just didn't print it out.

Okay. Well, we need to keep it visible in any case, one way or another. At some point, I would like to review our electric costs versus the APPA data, shall we say, because there were some discrepant significant discrepancies there and that we'd like to understand them.

Yeah, chair. I had Richard and Ben, they've been working on it, the discrepancies. One one thing we found is there is a shift in rows. It on the first part of the report need to be shifted down that that clears up a few things. But then we're also getting clarification on some of the others. So we'll bring that back once once we get all the information.

Okay. Yeah. I don't think it's a big hurry,

but it's something we don't wanna lose. And you mentioned tonight AWWA water. Right.

The I think our data that you presented last month on the electric costs did not include was not yet did not yet include FY '25, I don't believe. So I would assume that that's not shouldn't be too hard to update. So we'll have the most current data. There's no problem with having all three years. That's good. But we ought to have the most recent also, including FY twenty five. And is Mozart in here? Because I know we had wanted to put that on here. But I don't think I see it. Did it get fall off?

I I did speak with Mozart last week. They're still seeking some funding. And I said I'd check back with them in two months. They're not ready to make a tech presentation that we had requested. They just have the general information they gave ESB, but, until they, select a a constructor, it's they're not willing to share the technology. They're still tweaking, like, whether it's gas, syngas, or the products that they're gonna make. So the technology is not completely nailed down.

Well, I think the technology would be more interesting to us than just than the general overview that they've been giving. So, you know, to just stay on the parking lot so we don't lose sight of it. Yep.

Yeah.

Anything else that anyone would like to have on here? Alright. I think we've come to the end here. We'd ask one more time for public comment. Still nobody, The everybody's completely happy with everything we've done and they're not No.

They'll take it to counsel. They they won't complain to us. They'll complain to counsel. But folks. Well, we didn't quite make it by 09:00. 09:01, I guess. No. 08:50. 08:50. I was looking at the second hand back there. Hey. Thanks, everyone. We are adjourned. Thanks

a lot.

Recording stopped.