Transportation Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the 01/14/2026 Board of Public Utilities regular meeting. Welcome to another evening and another year of fun and frolic with the Board of Public Utilities. The our first order of business is public comment. Do we have any public comment this evening? I don't see any in chambers.

Thank you, chair Gibson. For members of the public who are joining us tonight on Zoom, when chair Gibson calls for public comment, please use the raise hand function. And if you're participating by phone, you can press 9 to raise your hand. Would anybody like to make public comment right now? Nobody has their hand raised, chair Gibson.

K. Thank you very much. Next would be approval of the agenda, and I would like to amend the agenda to move item eight a one, the introduction of our new council liaison to be the next item on the agenda instead of being way down on the list. Other than that, is there are there any other amendments to the agenda suggested? I don't I don't see any.

Oh, Charlie? Actually, I just would like to pull can we pull stuff off the consent agenda? You sure can. Yeah. So I would like to pull, I think, item four e off the consent agenda just to have a slight discussion of that.

Okay. You say slight discussion.

Well, I mean, I'd like to learn more about it's a it's a large it's a large dollar amount, and

I just wanted to hear a

little bit more about that. Okay. Yeah. So we should move that to department business then. Okay. We'll do that then as the we'll do that as the first item of department business. And the AMT presentation will follow it. Alright. Any other suggestions, comments, questions, amendments? Do we have a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

I I move that we approve the agenda as amended. Second.

Okay. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor? I see four here. Matt, are you on board with thank you. Okay. I see a thumbs up from Matt. So we have motion passes five to zero. Thank you, Matt.

With that, we move on to the con excuse me. We move on to introducing our new council liaison. Susie decided to leave us early because for some reason she thought that spending time with a new granddaughter was more fun than being here. I I don't understand that, but Rin started her term a little bit early. Thank you. Welcome aboard.

Thank you very much. No grandchildren. Not expecting any. So

The well, thanks for joining us and please don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything we can do to help you do your job.

Thank you very much, chair.

Okay. Now we move to consent agenda, and we've already pulled one item off of it. And I have a minor very minor amendment to the minutes of the December 10 meeting, which were handed out here. So then we now have a draft number two.

And

so what I guess I would like to do is just make an friendly amendment that the motion for approval of the minutes read, I move that the board of public utilities approve the 12/10/2025 meeting minutes as presented or as amended in draft number two. Charlie, you look Okay. Yes. Okay. Well, let's see. That that what we need is a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended.

Okay. Okay. I move that the board of public utilities approve the items on the consent agenda as amended and that the motions in the staff reports be included in the minutes for the record. Thank you.

Second. Alright. It will be seconded. We approve the consent agenda as amended. Any further comment? And let's see. Tom, remind me. Is that procedural, or is that a roll call? Okay. Alright. Richard, would you please call the roll on the consent agenda?

Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Heffner? Yes. Member Knockley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Yes. Member Gibson?

Yes. Passes four to zero. That moves us on to a public hearing starting on page 84 of our agenda doc. The ever popular affirmation of the incorporated county of Los Alamos open meetings resolution. This case number 2601.

And it says the board of public utilities is presenting that. So I guess I should get to that page. I will ask if anyone is aware of any substantive changes from last year's and the preceding years, etcetera. That makes it a lot easier for everybody. So this is one we we've all been through this before.

We all of the boards need the council adopts it first in their first meeting of the year, and then each of the boards affirms it that they will abide by these rules. So that's why we are here. Are there any questions about it? Okay. And since this is a public hearing, I will ask for public comment. Is there any public comment? Kathy, do you have any online? Chair Gibson, I

don't see any. Thank you

very much. Bring it back to the board. Would anyone like to make a motion?

Sure. I move that the board affirm incorporated County Of Los Alamos resolution number 26 Dash zero one, a resolution establishing minimum standards of reasonable notice to the public for all meetings of the council, county boards, commissions, and other public bodies created by the state and those appointed by the council, collectively appointed county committees.

I second.

I'll second. Okay. Okay. Jim. Jim. You did. Okay. Moved and seconded the suggested motion. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, Richard, would you please call the roll?

Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Hevner? Yes. Member Nochley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Yes. Member Gibson? Yes.

Motion passes five to zero. Now we will go back to item four e, which is on page 68 of our agenda doc.

And

that is approval of a services agreement with Army Stick LLC for a million dollars for the water systems mechanical devices rehab service and support.

Like I'll

cover this

one. You're gonna cover this for Clay tonight. Okay. It's all yours. Sure.

This contract's over a term of seven years, and it's based on task orders, which we have a lot of our on call contractors generally in this amount of a million dollars over a term of seven years. This contractor, the the local representative is Bill Curb. You've probably heard his name before from Clay. He he does a lot of our repair and maintenance on our pressure reducing valves in our water distribution system. And recently, we've had many issues with those valves aging out and need repair and replacement.

He's done probably about 10 different valves for us recently over the last few years, and, this contract, allows for him to continue this work over the next seven years. Okay. And has this contract been in place for the last, whatever,

seven years or something like that?

I just thought it just it

struck me as something novel in March.

A dollar item. Actually went through the competitive procurement process, and and they were successful.

Okay.

Okay. And we do that generally any of our on call contracts. Sometimes there'll be a a b c. We might award to three different vendors that do the work. But in this case, this was the only vendor that was qualified to do the pressure reducing valves. It's kind of a specialty work. Oh, okay. So Great. Thanks. That's that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Okay.

I'll ask a quickie question. How is the the gentleman's name spelled, his last name?

Curb. Like, a curb on the side of the road.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Hadn't seen hadn't seen that as the last name. Alright. Thank you. Is there any are there any further questions or comments?

Do

we have any public comment on the subject?

Kathy? Chair Gibson, we do not. Okay. Thank you.

Back to the board for a motion.

I'll make a motion. I move that the board of public utilities recommend approval of services agreements number AGR26Dash15 with Army Stick Limited Liability Corporation in the amount of $1,000,000 plus applicable gross receipts tax for the purpose of the water systems mechanical devices rehabilitation service and support and forward to counsel for approval.

I second.

Okay. Moved and seconded the recommended motion. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, Richard, you're up to call the roll.

Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Hefner? Yes. Member Nocli? Yes. Member Schromberg? Yes. Member Gibson? Yes. Motion passes.

Motion passes five to zero. Now we'll move to item seven a. What was seven a? The annual AMT presentation. You don't look like James Albert.

James Martinez.

Yeah.

I'll be presenting on the twenty twenty six asset management team. Good evening, chair and board members. On December 17, 2025, we had our asset, management government team governance team meeting. This meeting, it takes a bottom up approach to gauge the needs of our field crews from their day to day operations. The asset management consists of seven different teams, a team for each utility group, and each team has a designated team leader and a backup team leader from our engineering staff.

And that team leader works with the supervisor for that utility and a couple of utility members from from that specific group. And what we do is we discuss what's been working for them and what needs that they see, any upcoming needs or, items of concern that need to be addressed. And, the following slides that I'll present will, give you a quick summary from, from our asset governance team meeting. Just a quick highlight of for the progress for the upcoming years.

I'll start with

the electric production asset management team. We had bid our hydro condition assessment for Abiquiu and Elvado, and we had obtained one proposal. The dollar amount that came in was twice the amount that we had budgeted. So it was much higher than what we anticipated for sure. And in looking at the condition assessment that was completed in 2013, we felt that it just was an absurd price, so we did not bring this to the board.

A lot of the costs were from what we examined was from bringing subconsultants from Canada to conduct the study. And, we felt that we would wanna rebid this and see if we could find a more local vendor within The US that could complete the those services. And, our staff reached out to several different groups to provide, that would provide these services, and they have shown interest. So we plan to rebid this with anticipation on getting several different bids. That way we can competitively bid and see if we could bring down these costs.

So we'll be working on rebidding that here soon. Also, what I have listed here is the arc flash study. That's currently in progress. We'll be kicking that off in the next couple weeks. And what this does is it aims to get a detailed electrical safety analysis by examining the electrical equipment in the facility, and it determines the electrical potential energy that can be released during an arc flash event, and the study will tell us what the proper PPE requirements will be and safe working boundaries in in that area.

And they'll provide proper signage and labeling on the MCCs and on the cabinets. And our staff, we plan to have them go and paint the floors. That way we can determine what those boundaries need to be in before they open up those cabinets and well, deenergize and open up those cabinets. Also, we what came about, which is new, was our Abiquiu crane analysis and repairs. We had a annual crane inspection completed recently, and one of the tests conducted was that they lifted one of the draft tube gates, and they they weighed it.

And what they found was that the gate was heavier than what the crane's lifting capacity. Right now, we're working to get a structural engineer onboard so we can determine the capacity of the deck where the crane is housed and bolted onto. And we can if if the structure supports it, we would like to upsize the cranes to match the the lifting capacity needs. So, also, staff had requested a budget increase for the next, two years for the maintenance and repairs of facilities as as the infrastructure there. The facilities are now about 40 years old, so just upkeep of the facilities.

And I like to mention just, some of the budgets. I know it's real high level, but some of these budgets will come back to you in February with budgets, and we'll have that ready for the during the work session. So I'm not providing budgets right now, but those are forthcoming.

Excuse me. Would that be in the actually in the work session February before the budget presentation at the regular meeting in February?

Correct.

Thank you.

Mhmm.

Another item that was brought up and is new is wildfire planning. Staff had requested if we could start creating the plan for, 12 miles of the electric transmission line. And we'll probably look to going through the UAMPs to complete this as an add on through through that. And then lastly, here, I have, decommissioning of the Alofem Butte communication tower. Staff had requested some budget to take down the this tower since, we now have, a hardwired fiber communication line to the facility, and we no longer need, the communication tower.

So, ultimately, we can remove that from the Hikaria property if if they don't have any intended use of of that facility.

James, would you prefer that we ask questions after each division here or wait till the end?

If you could wait till the end. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next, I have the electric distribution asset management team. Their mention was they would want to maintain a reliability to get the SADI under one hour again. So that's in the works. Another mention was improving the accuracy of our system maps. So, we'll work in house with our GIS specialist to assist them in updating their their maps.

We'll plan they wanna plan for further underground replacements based on the age and reliability of the system and cleaning up open wires secondary and increased service capacity to residential consumers.

And

on this next bullet, replace, the switch at Diamond Slash Trinity after new circuits are installed across the canyon from last. So, right now, currently, staff is working to get a bid package out so we can slip line, the conduits that, as you know, contain asbestos. We wanna slip line that and leave the asbestos in place. And that way, we don't have to mess with any of that mess. But at that point, we'll be able to pull new conductors through.

Also, what was mentioned was with our new fiber network that we've currently been installing across Los Alamos County. They did mention that our electric distribution would like to have some sort of SCADA functionality in their electrical distribution office. So that was one of their their wish list items. And, also, just, mention that we do have, a need for a substation to be designed for the Los Amos town site area. Next is our gas asset management team.

I like to report on this one that our this asset is actually doing fairly well. We haven't needed to invest a whole lot of money into large projects. It's mainly for maintenance and operations, and it's pretty pretty much as good as it gets. We do have just an increase in o and m mainly because our crews now that we have dedicated crews to this, they spend more time on the gas system. And, you know, they're dealing with all the paperwork and surveillance and things of that nature.

So it's great that we have dedicated people towards the gas utility. We did have a mention here of the isolated steel sections and investigations and subsequent replacement projects. For instance, we have the Trinity project, coming through this year. We have a few areas where steel pipe has been inserted with PE. However, in the in the seventies, they hadn't produced, plastic valves.

So we either have these short isolated, steel sections or just the valves themselves are still the metal body. So with the Trinity, we will remedy some of these issues by replacing with, plastic. That way, we we don't have any of these, isolated isolated steel sections. Next, meeting our operation operational and qualified requirements for crews. Luckily, we're able to dedicate the time that's needed to staying up to date with any specific trainings and requirements in order to work on our live gas system.

And and as I mentioned, reports and paperwork, just dedicating that time towards these efforts has helped just keep better in our compliance records and for any upcoming audits. We do have a few areas of older infrastructure and to mention, like tracer wire locate challenges where we have PE that was installed in, like, the nineteen sixties and seventies when they began replacing the steel lines. Some of these areas, the tracer wire was never installed. So we know of several areas across across the county that we know that we need to dedicate time and resources just to provide crew members and backers time to adequately locate the utilities by law. So these aren't often, but it does come up from time to time.

So we just need to be able to allocate some time towards that effort if they do come up. And then we have our Pueblo Canyon Bridge and Sur Crossing. We would like to study some alternatives to either repair or replace this bridge. A couple of years ago, we had a consultant fly a drone to investigate the integrity of the bridge, and they had provided some recommendations to rehabilitate re rehabilitate the bridge. But looking at it now, we probably wanna look at some other alternatives possibly to even eliminate the gas line that runs through there and look at rerouting the sewer lines or the sewer drops.

And this the portion of the gas line, we do have to mention it on our DIMP. It's called a DIMP, our distribution integrity management, report, and that requires us to conduct, continual surveillance of the infrastructure and document the integrity. So if if we one of the alternatives is to remove the gas line from from this bridge and remove the bridge in its entirety, you know, that just protects us from, you know, not being in compliance with the pipe gas pipeline and having to rehabilitate. And and if, you know, we're not find found in compliance, that's just one less thing that we're found with our our socks down. So we'll we'll reevaluate that, and then we'll come back with some costs and alternatives that we think that we need to proceed.

Next, we have our water distribution asset management team. We have our hydrant replacement and maintenance program. We'll continue with that through our fiscal year twenty seven. This year, we're anticipating that we need to complete about 40 replacements. We'll tackle about three hydrants now with the Trinity project.

We need to plan at least to complete between twenty and forty per year just to stay on top of of the these and have them in good working order in case of an emergency. Another projects that we have continuing is our northern community bolt corrosion leaks. So I'd like to report that we have a good working procedure now following the Camazon projects where we've had to rehab some of these areas. So we're replacing the bolts with something that's more corrosion resistant due to the road salts and the the wet environment that's in in these areas. And let's see.

Continuous waterline breaks and leaks. So just dedicating crew time overtime towards that. Excuse me. PRV maintenance and rehabilitation prod projects. So this was actually on the consent tonight, and you guys just approved that.

That was for army stick and bill curb his services. So, we'll continue with with those, projects with the specialty contractor on those. Also, as mentioned, any old galvanized water services and old meter replacement just, as those come become apparent, we dedicate crews to to, working through the through that and and allocating labor and resources to any of those highest priority needs, any water breaks, and things of that sort. So next, we have water production asset management team. We're planning to bid out the tank piping upgrades project.

We have twin tank and transmission inner ties with, the lanel, transmission line. We're planning to do this inner tie connection in order to take down the Parito Tank 4 A to repaint that project. So that's on our upcoming CIP project list is repainting Tank 4 A. Jemez fire protection project. Phase one, I like to report on that one that we're all completed with phase one.

All the waterline pipe has been installed. Here I have it's kind of out of order, but phase four. This was the tank portion where we constructed a new tank alongside Parito Tank 4. Sorry. Sorry.

Oh, you're moving it for me. So this one's just about done. I'd like to report on this one that we'll be putting our water tank back in service this next week. Probably, as soon as Monday or Tuesday, we'll be getting potability tests, possibly tomorrow or Friday. Phase two, this was the continuation of the installing the waterline, up the hill.

And it's currently ongoing, but I would anticipate that this portion would also be completed in the next week or two. We have, about a thousand feet remaining of waterline to be placed. And phase three, which is the last portion, it's the electrical part of the project, which will include the booster stations and electrical transformers and pulling conduit or conductors. Sorry. Next, we have our water production wells and mechanical upgrades.

This is also ongoing, and this project is to modernize eight wells, which include full rehab of the MCCs and any mechanical pieces like the valves. We have water or sorry. San Alfonso Road and East Road transmission line replacement. These ones are water trust board funded, and these also are great because we have 90% grant, 10% loan. We would we are looking for, next, our North Mesa tank altitude valve project.

Right now, we're looking at different funding options, and we'll present our plan in February at the at that work session on on which route we intend to take. If it's, water trust board or or, was it RIP, James? Drinking That's correct. Sorry. So, yeah, we'll we'll present on on which direction we decide to to take on that.

Water production, SCADA replacement fiber projects. This one's currently ongoing, and one of them is in design. We have the LA Canyon fiber, which is completed. Guaje and Booster and Guaje and bio fiber project. It was, I think, on the consent agenda tonight as well, which was to recommend award, which we did.

So we'll move forward with that project to get fiber in the Guaje and Bayou area. Next, we have West Road fiber. So that one's we're currently starting the design for that fiber project. And what I have listed here lastly is our sanitary survey of our water tanks. This was something that is not necessarily new, but it it came up, new that I'm here.

We hadn't had a sanitary survey completed, for over five years due to COVID. With this recent survey, we had 36 items that were noted as not in compliance. So far, we've completed 18 of the 36 items. The the remaining 18 items are actually to bring on a consultant, a diver, to get into the tank and assist to remediate some of the deficiencies. So right now, I think what we brought on the board was a budget revision in order to start working procuring these services to get a diver onboard so we can get moving on this because it's a corrective action that has a deadline.

So it's also an emergency to get this get this completed as soon as possible. Also, just to mention, we also probably need a plan on a budget for every five years. NMED is one of the requirements is to do a a five year inspection of tanks and report on those to the state. So it's just gonna have to be a repetitive budget to allow for that. Next, I have our wastewater collection asset management team.

Lift station and rehabilitation projects. North Road and Los Arboles like to report that North Road has been completed, and Los Arboles is currently in progress in that one. We should be completed in the next month. Following that, Quemazon and Eastgate are currently under contract with the same contractor, and they'll be moving moving on once they're completed with Los Arbolas to tackle tackle these these two. In our discussions, we would like to start shifting our capital project efforts to rehab, our vitrified clay pipelines, for our wastewater collection, and that is mainly in order to reduce our o and m resources and reduce the amount of backups and tort claims and tree root intrusions and and things of that nature in order to try to bring down those those tort claims.

Also, water trust board is now accepting funding applications for the wastewater collection project. So, that's something that we're gonna start looking into and seeing if we could or exploring to see if we can find some projects and get them funded through the water trust board, especially now that if they have a 90% grant component, that's all the better. So I have on here are some sore drops, the Pueblo Canyon in North Mesa. We had Wilson and company conduct the infrastructure evaluation, and what they identified was that, there's a need that we need to replace these sore drops, especially that we have, the upcoming development in these areas. So in the next couple years, that's something that we'll need to start addressing as that infrastructure of of of these Sore Sore drop locations.

Staff also expressed that, they continue having issues with, the Vectors or Vactor, and they've requested a new a new Vactor. K. Next, I or lastly, I have our wastewater treatment asset management team. Just a kudos to the to the crews there. The staff there have achieved in quite a deal by obtaining their certifications, and a lot of them are continually studying and and, obtaining higher certifications.

So, just something to note. Also, they've, discussed that now with the new wastewater treatment facility in in White Rock, they're managing their dump truck between the two locations. So they requested a heavy duty truck, just a truck, to haul the solids from the White Rock facility to the compost site. They had mentioned that they have a dump trailer. So if if they could look at maybe obtaining a heavy duty truck, they can pull that, back and forth, from the site to the compost site.

And lastly, here I have the maintenance projects and upkeep of the LA Wastewater Treatment Plant. So right now, the plant, it's about twenty years old, and there's a few items there that we have some upkeep maintenance. So, right, we applied for a RIP loan. We currently have the funds, and we'll be looking to do some replacements of our UV system. There's some aeration cracks aeration basin cracks that we need to have a contractor come in and do some repairs.

Also, the fine screen, nothing major, but think staff was looking at maybe replacing a few parts on that. And this past year or so, we had some blower the blower system was shutting down, mainly, it's because of the heat that was within the blower building. So we had a a study conducted, and there's some improvements that we could do by installing some intercoolers and things of that nature to dissipate some of the heat. And and that should assist with with the systems overheating and shutting down. And if we could do that, we'll extend the life of our equipment there.

So but mainly, our wastewater treatment asset management now with our new plant, and we shouldn't have any large projects large funding projects that we need to go after other than than these 2,000,000 at the LA wastewater treatment plant. So it'll just be maintenance from here on out. That pretty much concludes my my presentation, and I stand for any questions.

K. Thank you. Thanks all your team for going through all that. Questions?

Eric. Oh,

that's gotta stand up.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Matt.

Oh, perfect. Thanks. Two quick comments more than questions. First, thanks. The breadth of seeing all of those in one place is really useful. And my second comment is primarily for electric distribution. And I'm curious when I read through this, I was trying to look and see where the electrification study may have informed some of the thinking from the leadership team for next year. And I think two or three of the bullets I could I could draw a line to, but maybe as the team is thinking about this or or sharing this with the board through the rest of the year, eyeing decisions and priorities back to the electrification study would be really useful for me. So thank you again very much.

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Eric.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. I've got a few questions. You mentioned wildfire for the transmission lines. Is that just is that vegetation surrounding the transmission lines? Is that that's all about?

As far as I know, the transmission just tran the utility poles tran transferring the power between the forested area.

Yeah. So forested area. So okay. So it's trimming, making sure that vegetation okay. That's that's got that. I was curious as to the phrase open wire secondary, what that actually referred to. Is there an explanation for that?

Think I'll defer to Dennis on that one.

The open wire secondary is strung along the bottom of the electrical wires on the poles above the communication. They may set a transformer and then have wires going multiple poles each direction off of that transformer, and they just tap those wires. And it's poorly insulated, if at all, and we prefer to have few more transformers, shorter service drops, and triplex that's completely insulated, if possible compared to the open wire secondary that can electrocute squirrels and birds that

go to Boston.

So the open in this case meant uninsulated?

Yes. Exactly.

That's

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

That's the basis.

Then the only other question I had was I didn't quite get the problems with the tracer wire. I guess I I heard that it was just old and what what's the degradation on that one?

Yeah. It's a good question. So in a lot of the old areas, like, where they inserted some of the original polyethylene pipe, they would sever the steel in place. So I think what they thought was if they inserted it, of course, they're not digging it back up because the original steel, they could they could lock onto it and trace the steel. But they inserted the the the polyethylene into it, and in some places, they would actually they would hit something that they couldn't insert any further, and so they would dig it up right there and they would cut the steel.

And so you lose continuity through the steel, and then eventually, you can't trace the rest of the of the lot of times it happened in the services. So they they lose continuity and they suddenly can't tell where the services go.

Okay. Yeah. No. That makes sense. Because like I said, if it's metal, you don't need a trace wire.

Right.

But if it's vitrified clay or if it's polyethylene or anything like that, you do. And so okay. Okay. That explains it.

Thank you

very much.

So they they they'll tie on to, a riser at the they would put a a riser and some tracer wire to some something that they would tie on to, the the steel pipe that hosts the polyethylene. Right. They'll tie on there. They'll start getting, you know, signal, trace it back, and suddenly it just disappears. And then they can't tell where the other services went. So they're they're having to go hopscotch over people's fences and stuff to find the the big picture of where where the gas line going.

Yeah. So so that brings up another interesting point. So if you have a steel or a conductive line and you cut out a section and replace it with nonconductor, yeah, do you have to bond across it in order to preserve that?

Yeah. They exactly. So Okay. So they they weld they weld, like, a number 10 copper line to either side. It's hard to weld. Like, in the water system, sometimes a gasket will cause the problem, and they they lose continuity where there's a joint so they CAD weld on to cast iron. But on regular steel, they can just Yeah.

Okay. Sorry. That that explains it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Jennifer.

Okay. So yeah. Thank you. In the electric distribution discussion, there's a mention that they would desire some scale of function in the electric distribution office. I thought that in in this office in particular, a very robust SCADA capability was the future. So I'm just a little confused by the sort of, you know, ambiguity there and the sum.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think we currently have any SCADA.

We just wanna at least get started.

Yeah. Just get started. But the future would be much more extensive. Right?

Okay. I'm staring with that. So, yeah, we just

Oh, I see. Okay. That's just to get started. Alright. And then a quick question in water distribution. You I think you said something like 20 to 40 hydrants need to replace per year. So how how many do we have total in the county? Like, I'm trying to understand percentage.

Oh, man. Eight eight thousand.

Okay. So this is relatively minor. So okay. It sounded rather dire when you referred to in the case of emergency, we need to make sure we're okay. So that that's not too bad then. Yeah. And then last question, the, the clay lines that you're talking about rehabbing, what is rehabbing? It mean? Is that a replacement, or is that

Clay lines, we would either jack and bore or pipe burst or slip line, any of those. Yeah. But, preferably, we would wanna do a pipe burst. Okay. We're looking at combining several locations in order to make it worthwhile Yeah. For a large scale project. So

Okay. Okay. Thanks for clarifying. Mhmm.

I'd also like to mention that some of these vitrified clay lines, they currently go underneath some of the residents' homes and some of these locations that we need to reroute those and get those out from underneath the home. So

K. I've got a few questions. Under electric production, you say requesting an increase in maintenance and repairs for the next two fiscal years as facilities and equipment are aging. Facilities and equipment are already aging are always aging. What's different about this three year period?

I think just with talking with our staff, with the forty years, I think it's just a continual thing, and I think they've just foreseen a lot more stuff that are popping up more recently at the facility. So Do you have anything to add, Ben?

Chair Gibson, board members, there's a lot of parts that are getting old, mostly, like, related to water contact items. We just had to replace PRV. You know, you heard the army stick contract. Yeah. We use bill curb. Also procured a new valve for him, and that was, you know, 10 or $15,000 right there just to replace a single valve. And it was installed, thirty plus years ago. And so when you come to putting in the new one, well, now we have to put in new supports because the new valve fits differently. So there's a lot of items like that where things are just getting old. They're corroded. We're getting pinhole leaks in certain line water lines here and there. We have to patch things. Things that didn't happen thick in the decades past, they're now coming up just because of age.

Are you anticipating this is a two year bump in funding you're asking for or is this gonna go on after that?

I haven't quite scoped that fully yet further out than just

near term,

say, two year We're budget

preparing a two year budget, so I do anticipate there'll be some additional costs as we go on. Okay. So this might be our you know, as mentioned, though, there is a study to do the condition assessment. So we'll learn more once that study is complete, and we can have more detail. But that's that's what, James mentioned. We're re advertising for that proposal. But professional opinion, yeah, there's gonna be a little more cost as as equipment ages out.

Well, that's typical when equipment gets older. But so I was wondering whether it's a two year thing or Yeah. We just need to get overall increase.

Preparing a two year budget, so that's why

Okay.

It got in there because that's what their focus was over the next two years when they needed.

Then I I understand. Okay. Moving to electric distribution. Gotta maintain reliability to get CD under an hour again. Are there any specific things that you're wanting to do or needing to do to improve the overall reliability?

Because it has generally been fairly good and then we had, you know, a big outage that bumped the SATI way up, actually two big outages that bumped the city way up. But are so are there other things that we hadn't thought of before, weren't budgeting for before that you feel are now are necessary for reliability and kind of the same question that was asked earlier, anything that's different from what's in the distribution study report?

Well, the distribution study does call for replacement of a lot of really old switches Mhmm. And underground cable. We're going to focus on some switches in, the town side area where we're seeing outages from, we assume to be mice. We put poison out, but these are live front switches that would be better served with dead front switches because we go try to find the problem, don't find anything, put the fuse in, and it holds. And a few weeks later, maybe blows again.

So we're going to focus on replacing some more of those old LifeFront switches in residential areas. We're also, as part of the broadband project for the county, having to do a lot of make ready on overhead lines. So we're going to replace a lot of cross arms that we think are getting old and ready to start to fail and take care of those while we're up there on the pole getting to make ready for the fiber project done and make use of our mobilization there. So is it something that they weren't planning to do? I don't think so, but I don't know what all Stephen Morris had planned.

But working with the crew, these are things that we feel need to be done. They've done the underground switch and transformer assessments, and we're gonna move forward with finding things that they found need to be corrected. And, once we get past the, twelve months on our White Rock transformer failure. I am sure we're gonna be under sixty minutes again, but, we're gonna try to bring it down and improve reliability. My whole career has been reliability engineering, and so I'm gonna work with the crew to accomplish that as best we can.

Okay. Is this are the things that you just mentioned really part of a broader plan for upgrading the electric distribution system? Because we're supposed to talk about that next month at the work session. And I'm wondering, is this an integrated part of that so we could see this as part of that bigger picture? Or is this kind of a separate process where you've identified these things, you know, your your field crews have identified, oh, these are the things that we need that need attention now. So is it a single process or are there two separate processes going on here?

It's all part of the broader pan plan that you'll see next month. And, these are just specific things that you were asking about, and, those are things that we're gonna focus on within the next couple of months. I ask them if there's any switches that we can replace without causing outages. If so, we'll do it in the winter. Otherwise, we'll wait till spring and, do it when the weather's mild, and we can interrupt people's electrical service without causing them to freeze.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on. When I get to water distribution, continuous waterline breaks and leaks, crew overtime. Well, we again, we kinda like my first question here. We always have waterline breaks and leaks. Unfortunately, it comes with the territory. Are you anticipating more of those more overtime because of the way your crews are allocated or why or why is this something different than what we have been routinely dealing with?

Sure, Gibson. That's a good question. I'm not quite sure why that particular item made it onto this other than we talked about it quite a lot in the asset management meeting that it's probably one of the largest sources of crew overtime as far as GWS is concerned or waterline breaks. We you know, what'll happen is sometimes we'll when you have one, you they usually come in, like, pairs or triples. They don't they don't always happen one.

You you get one fixed and suddenly you start restoring water and and something else kind of breaks in the same area. So so we were just talking about it and a lot of these things are related like the the the agreement to bring army sick bill curb services into the into our routine rehabilitations. We, you know, we were looking at the the root cause of the waterline failures and a lot of them had to do with PRV responses. Some of the PRVs are are really old, and they hadn't seen complete overhauls. And so that really is where that particular item fits is is starting to add this routine, you know, rehabilitation effort into the yearly scope of what we do.

So you're you're right. The waterline breaks have been happening all this time. We've been paying overtime when they happen overnight and things like that. It's just we were we've kind of rolled rolled that into some other processes to see if we can reduce it, if that answers the question.

So you might be able to reduce the overtime?

That that's what we're that's what we're hoping that we're finding more root cause. I mean, we've had a lot of waterline replacement projects. Mhmm. You'll in the in our capital improvement, you know, our our our schedule for our capital improvements, the area around Aspen School, 33rd, Walnut, that that area down there has a lot of old water lines. We're looking at replacing those.

Denver steels, those are those are some old water lines. So as we as we go through these projects, we're we're hitting the the weakest points of the system and so, you know, we are finding places where we have little leaks and little problems and so that's the the the target when we move forward. So we're hoping to reduce it. Yeah. A lot of the waterline leaks that we've had recently are sort of self inflicted wounds on purpose where, you know, we've been doing a lot of hydrant testing with the fire department.

Mhmm.

And in the past when we didn't have a lot of, you know, enough qualified staff to handle these waterline breaks can be problematic and complicated, so there's a lot of problem solving on the fly. And we just really didn't have the have the staff to cover that volume of waterline breaks, but we do now and everybody's trained in how to do it. Every single crew member can handle that now. And and so we thought, you know, as long as we have the crews and we have every you know, we're fully staffed, this is the time to test, you know, to take the water system out for a drive and, you know, drive it at full speed. And so we've done that the past couple of years, and it does it does expose several of the weak spots.

And and like I said, sometimes it happens more than once from the problem and then you it's easy to go back and find find where the weak points were. So we're actually, you know, purposefully opening the hydrant, letting the PRV react, and then, you know, our guys complain about the fire department closing them down too fast. But really, you should be able to close them until right at the very end, you slow way down. You should be able to close them, you know, at some at some reasonable level without the waterline breaking. But the the the fire department was breaking the waterlines a lot our guys were just pointing fingers at the fire department, but then I was like, on.

Let's let's actually go look and see what caused it. And sure enough, we were it was there were weak there were things wrong with the water system too. We might have gotten lucky a few times if they close it super slow, but that got to be unreasonable. So we we just we just said, you know what? Let's let's do this the right way and find where we have problems and that's where we are now.

Clay, while you're there, I've got a a broader version of that question. You know, in in electric distribution, we have a whole bunch of metrics that we can see for real system reliability.

Mhmm.

Do you have anything similar? It wouldn't be necessarily the same thing, but similar for your water system that would we could track over time and see whether we're gaining or losing?

Yeah. And Kathy's been hitting me up all week to get the metrics, you know, because we we do we follow AWWA, American Water and Wastewater Association. They have benchmarking, and they put out a benchmarking report every year for quite a few categories. But the main one that we look at because we don't most of the time we don't we we fix and that this is another part of crew training. They know to keep they they know how to keep the waterline live and they keep positive pressure so that we're not siphoning in contaminants.

So they they repair the waterlines live. I mean, it's just a a really nasty break that they have to go and and shut everything down, cut out a section, and and, you know, bring actually construct a new piece into it. We we we repair most lines live so that the water just keeps running and they keep positive pressure. They can do that pretty well. But the metric from American water and wastewater is is waterline leaks, breaks, planned leak repairs.

So those are the main metrics that we compare on the national average. And and we typically stay somewhere just below the national average of of waterline breaks and leaks per 100 miles of line. We've stayed below it. The past couple of years, we've kinda been right at the national average. I mean, The U Utah State put out a big report about American infrastructure and the the age of most municipalities, water lines, and what how municipalities are addressing aging infrastructure and and going through replacements and handling leaks and stuff like that.

That's an interesting report. I think it was put out in 2019. So I'm I'm hoping that they're gonna update it, but it's it's a really comprehensive, really great report and it sort of, you know, it it hit home in reading it because, you know, we're looking at now because when the government came through and built a lot of these, the original pieces of town, of course we have all this waterline that is exactly the same age. So it's all coming due at the exact same time. Some areas some areas are doing better than others and and luckily, we have alkaline water here.

We don't have acidic the the pH is is neutral, but it's alkaline because it has calcium carbonate and silica in it. So it forms scale which protects it. The the one issue we do have is that we get, you know, road storm water road salt intrusion through the valves and that causes, like, corrosion along the bottoms of pipes and stuff. So it depends it depends on where it is. Like, in the town in the parts of town where there's a lot of clay soils, the the leaky water, the little bit of leaky water that forms around the water pipe actually is protecting it.

So we'll see scale formed around. The water the water lines aren't even rusty. They're they they have know, they're brown in color, but but they're protected by the scale. Now, like in Quemazon, that's all new stuff. It's not in clay soils.

It's in just trenched tuff that they ground up and put the sandy dirt back in. Road salt gets into it, and it eats up the the valve bolts really fast. So it's kind of we have old water lines that are in much better shape than some of our new ones. It's long digression there, but we're we're typically staying right on target with the national average with with our waterline breaks and leaks. And that comes out in what what is the? That's our dashboard reporter.

It's our annual report.

Annual report. So that's that's forthcoming. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

You bet.

Anybody else had any thoughts in the interim for questions to ask or comments? Okay. Seeing none, we'll we'll look forward to seeing the the greater detail next month.

Thank you.

Alright. That moves us to board business starting with the chair's report. First, I would like to mention two days after our last board meeting was the memorial mass or funeral mass for Chris Ortega, who was the utility manager for a long time here from the sometime in the eighties till 2003. The I think he was manager during the the dam construction projects and stuff. Anyway, really nice guy.

The the priest that was giving the homily, of course, was outlining some of the many things that Chris had done for the community and for for different people, different groups, etcetera. And I I should have mentioned after right after Chris left the utility manager's job that he got appointed to the utility board. He served ten years here too. Glutton for punishment. But, anyway, the priest was going through things and said, utility board.

How important? How boring? And he repeated it with the emphasis on the boring. So, obviously, he didn't get the memo about fun and frolic here. But unfortunately, now we have it officially the word of God.

We're boring. So on a different topic, I was wondering if the anybody else on the board would be interested as I am in taking a tour sometime at the combustion turbine at the laboratory. You you you don't know it by heart? Okay. Let's see.

I don't see Matt raising his hand. Okay. So it's only two of us. That makes it easier to schedule, and we don't need to advertise it as a board meeting, but I'll pass that along. It probably won't be for a month or so. But anyway, so thank you. I'm I thought you would have been able to give the tour, but I guess not. Okay. Something is related to what we do. We all know it's been warm this winter.

The official statistics from the lab came out yesterday for or two days ago for January. The mean temperatures in January, both the or all the the mean mean high, the mean low, and the overall mean temperature, they were all just under 10 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, like 9.8, 9.9. That's huge. Yeah. If you for the whole heating season, the number of heating degree days is down by a little over 25% from normal, which I haven't looked at the gas usage, but I would assume it is down by a similar amount.

So no. We don't have any global warming, but we do in the Southwest. Okay. That is what I have for the chair's report. Do any board members have reports?

It's

Matt. Uh-huh. Matt.

Perfect. Thanks. Just two quick things. One is about balcony solar, and I think I sent something that Philo sent around. I know it was all of last year. So just as a refresher, these are single solar panels that you can plug into a 120 volt circuit in the house. It's a 120 watts, so kinda like a hair dryer level. And there's a lot of motion in a number of states, and I just wanted to raise this to the board's attention to see if we wanna get ahead of it or at least monitor what's going on. I think Phil or somebody was gonna check with the state legislature to see if there's anything in their upcoming session on that. I haven't seen any updates, but I'm sort of following this and just wanted to make sure it was on everybody else's radar.

And I do remember you mentioning it last year, and so it hasn't been forgotten. But we haven't done anything with it yet either. You said a 120 watts for a hair dryer? That sounds like an order of magnitude off.

Sorry. Yes. Good catch. 1,200.

That's Okay.

Do you know is there anything in the legislative session upcoming for the state that we need to be aware of on that topic?

Chair, and member Huebner, have not seen anything yet, but, obviously, the state legislature starts, next week. So I'm sure a lot of bills will be proposed, and, we'll we'll keep an eye out for that. Have not heard back from our Utah delegation. It the the only thing I did learn is it wasn't related to public power, but it was the Utah law was for the investor owned and and co op utilities only.

Okay. Thanks. The other topic I just wanted to report to the board on was that I was the representative to the audit committee, and this was last year's audit. I found it really fascinating. It was great to go through all the details. I won't do that for you. But it helped me get a, you know, a broader perspective on where the utilities fit in the overall county budget and finances. One thing that I'd note last year, there's there's sort of multiple requirements that lead us to do the audit. There's federal requirements, and then there's also state and good governance requirements that we put on ourselves. And last year, because of the closure, we almost had to do two audits.

One to satisfy the o and b register requirements because that was closed during the shutdown. We couldn't get the information and everything we the county county couldn't get everything they needed. So it's it's normally a big process for the county. And last year, it was even even more so. So I think I just wanted to give a big kudos to everybody that was involved, and I found it a a a good opportunity to to serve the county and serve the board. So that was really rewarding.

Good. Glad you got found it rewarding.

Yep. That's everything I've got. Thanks so much.

Okay. Can I ask a follow-up question? Sure. That discussion about balcony solar. Kinda relates to email I'd sent to you, Filo, before. But so the DPU accounting does not currently have any lower threshold limit for exempting certain size systems. Is it necessary that we just wait for the state to come up with some new regulation, or or is this something we can do as a county?

I think I think we wanna monitor for legislation, and we can bring back something if we wanna look at it as a county. I I'd say my biggest concern with the balcony solar is if people put a bunch of these and, you know, put four or five of them on their house versus just one, like, you know, one or two that's intended and, you know, then the back feed of within a circuit and the risk of fire, you know, if they overload a circuit.

Well, the threshold could apply to the whole house, though. Right? And so if

you Right. But I think

They wouldn't put

The only thing I did hear from Utah is that some people are putting four or five of these on their homes, and Okay. And then it's a problem.

For circumventing the intended Yes. Special. I see. Okay. Interesting. Thanks.

K. Any no other board member reports? If not, Philo, you're up. Utility manager's report.

I'll talk about the White Rock Substation that first, T and D, completed their design, for the installation of a new transformer. And our staff, you know, Dennis and his team, and is working with procurement staff to put together bid documents for the foundation for the transformer. It's a very heavy unit, and we need to have a steel case case hunts, to support it. So that's not a typical on call contract that we have, so we gotta get some bids for that. Once we have this foundation constructed, I think we can report to the board, you know, what what our transformer installation schedule will be because that'll be more straightforward.

I know Dennis is is looking into certain other connections and parts that are needed, you know, getting those orders in place. So we're ready to do that tie over to the new transformer. With Llano, they did receive the environmental clearance. They are adding two more poles to their tie lines side. And I was informed today they are surveying in those poles and getting requests for locates.

And we don't have a firm schedule yet, but they they intend to do construction starting next week on their half of the tie line. We had quite a bit of basalt to dig out in our side, and we have all those holes dug except for one spot that needs additional excavation. And, finally, we did receive a mutual aid agreement from PNM. It's signed, sealed, and recorded, and it's in place. So, should we need to call on that, we have a a new partner.

With Elkridge, CID has issued 60 green tags out of the roughly 180, meters out there, and they they now are scheduling about 20 per week. And the only challenge we're having right now is getting the final connections to to to the new system because the homeowner's not home during the day. And so we made a request to the Elkridge project management team to have their plumber cart right out after work hours or on Saturdays. We're committed to trying to get these, meters cut over to the new system as soon as we can. The other thing they have is, submitted the as built drawings and easement documents to us.

So they're following up on everything that they need to do to turn over the system to us. And on recruitments, we had hired a customer care specialist, and then she quit within two weeks. So we're back to the drawing board on on that employee, in that slot. But, good news is, Sam Martinez, he's, been with the county for fifteen plus years, accepted the electric distribution superintendent position. And, so, we're currently recruiting for his replacement among our linemen team.

Eventually, we'll have a lineman. We'll need to refill, on whoever gets that position. And we are we have a outside, employment recruiter working on the deputy utility manager for electric distribution and engineering project manager. And then we did hold some interviews for senior management analysts and team. And other openings is electrician for in water production, a water operator, and engineering aid for utility locates.

And then finally, some, I call it bad news, but good news, for James Alarid, he gave me his retirement notice on Monday morning. So he will be with us the next couple months, and then he's gonna enjoy retirement a few months before he dips his toe back into the consulting world. Maybe we'll see. So congratulations, James, but thank you. Appreciate it.

So that's that's our status of recruitments. NNSA, Albuquerque office did give us our Christmas present, as promised on December 19. That meant some work for our team over the holidays. So, chair Gibson had put together a working group of two board members, including himself and member Knockley. We had a couple meetings, over the last couple weeks reviewing the draft ECA, and, we had one meeting with NSA procurement office, made some suggested changes to those contracts, and we're still working on contract amount and other provisions and clauses in the contract, primarily just to protect the the county, you know, our ratepayers.

And so barring this is just my estimate right now, and maybe I'm optimistic. But barring another government shutdown, because we're funded through the end of the month here, We hopefully can wrap up in early February, and I I'm hopeful we can bring make the first presentation at our regular meeting in February. And then I think James Martinez gave mostly an estimate on our, HEMIS fire protection. So the only thing I'll mention there is that the Pirido LLC group did reimburse $1,000,000 of the project in compliance with the development agreement they signed with us. So that was good.

It was a big milestone for us on project funding and payments. Then on Foxtail Flats, the commercial operation date did move back again about a month to 06/18/2027. That's full full operation. That leaves twelve calendar days afloat remaining in their contract days. So that's, you know, that's that's where we're at with that. They have done partial mobilization building the access road to the site and some of the site prep and geotech tests, and they expect full mobilization on April 30. So coming up.

For

UAMPS, I got reelected as chair of the CFPP for another six months, hopefully. The through the government shutdown, they never did get the project closed out, so they're still working to close out the project. So I'm still on the board. Hopefully, I can retire soon. That's what I get for not going and sending Ben there.

So and then the geothermal projects, both of those projects are on hold just due to transmission access with the Pacific Core. I hope to learn a little more in the coming months if some of that can break free because I think they're good projects for us to look at. And then chromium plume, there's quite a bit activity with that over the holidays. And, you know, since our last meeting, James Alarade and I are on this working group meeting, and there's a lot of work on the adaptive site management process and identifying what could be the next steps. You know, I reported last month that, you know, the chromium concentrations have crossed into Sinai Pueblo.

And so they have shut down the interim measure, but NNSA would like to restart it at a lower rate, just having one extraction well working, which is 60 gallons a minute, and then look at to do land application, which was part of their permit. It's allowed with our water rights to do that. It uses up more water because it's not reinjected, but I think there's probably a good benefit in that. Last time they had a extended shutdown, the equipment you know, filters plugged or motors didn't work. You know, it took a while to restart the interim measure once they did that.

And so there's probably some value to doing just this slow rate to keep keep the plant running. And then there's gonna be other discussions about a second phase, and that one consideration would be to use our PM 3 well through as a reinjection site. I think we had offered that in a letter couple years ago. If you recall, they were gonna give us a work plan to do a spinner log test and see if it's something that's was feasible. So that's still on the table.

And, obviously, we'll have more discussion as we learn more. NMED is is still scheduled for our March 3 work session to do a presentation, So we'll we'll get more details at that time. And then I mentioned this last month, and we have that 18 inch water production line in 2 Mile Canyon where we have a leak. We're still finalizing work plans with Landon on how to access and repair that. We we do believe our on call contractor, Parker, is up for the task to do that work.

And so, once we once we finalize the scope of the work, we'll bring back a task order for approval by the board in in a budget revision. And then we mentioned the last thing on here was our sanitary survey that's done every five years. We sent a letter in that mentions that we completed 18 out of the 36 items. However, the we need our diver, the subcontractor diver to go in and do some additional scope of work analysis such as collecting the sand sediment, be sure there's no lead in it, you know, how we how we can clean the tanks. So so that'll be forthcoming as well, another proposed contract and budget revision for finishing tank cleanings.

So with that, it's Stan for any questions.

Thank you. Questions? Janet? Yeah. So is n n m e d on board with NNSA's plan for a partial restart? I thought they were talking.

I think so as long as they get, they didn't they've been working on it, but they need to get a a work plan that's reviewable. There's a few steps remaining to get that approval.

I see. Yeah. Okay. And then as far as Oak Ridge goes, looking back in my notes from the last meeting in December

Mhmm.

And at that time, there were 38 green tags with 20, expected by the end of that week. So that would have been basically late mid December 58. We're at 60 still. Right. I'm just is it just how

occurred for the holidays because

the main issue? Okay.

Yeah. Frankly, Friday they only commit to Friday, and Friday was for the last two weeks was after New Year's and Christmas. So no nothing happened for those two weeks. Okay. So that's the big issue. That's why how you got your math right.

Nothing fundamental. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Thanks.

Let's see. We appear to have lost Matt for the time being.

He said he was getting ready to he was going over the Rio Grande Crossing. Okay. So he'd be back with us. Alright. Eric. Thank you, chair. Okay. So you've mentioned Foxtail Flats, and I've been really wondering about that for long because I've asked you a lot. The thing about Foxtail Flats, and and they gave us a report in the fourth quarter. Mhmm. Okay. I'm beginning to really lose faith in that this is ever gonna happen. The reason I say that is because I've I go to the Foxtel Flats website regularly, and the last news update they had was December 2024. And I've written contact us asking things like, hey. Has government subsidies affected just asking questions.

Never gotten a response. I have gone to the Desri website several times, and Desri, it's supposed to be the parent company, and they have a list of maybe 22 projects. And none of them Foxtail Flats is not on the Desri site. I've I've gone to the contact us for Desri. No answers. So it's like total crickets. So what I I gotta wonder what's going on here. I I wouldn't be surprised if in another month they call us and tell us, okay. You know what? We're done. It's not happening.

Well, if you'd like, I'd like to ask Ben to because he met with Desiree. I was away when he met with him last Monday.

Morning, mister Trumbert. Chair.

Yes. We had a meeting last Thursday. Got a lot of information, and I have heard your questions and concerns and especially about the website. And I have reached out to Desiree, and I just got back some information that they

are prepared to

have us add to the website. So that's forthcoming revision to the website and get us more current information. A lot of good stuff will be there. You are aware of most of it. Philo has shared some of it.

They're working on some additional details that he didn't touch upon, know, they're they've got panels secured for more than half of the facility. They already Desiree as a group has prepurchased mass quantities of PV panels to avoid tariffs and whatever. So they have that in place, and they're working allocating the full amount towards our project. They have secured both transformers, one that they'd already had purchased, the second main transformer that they are taking from another project to, that's on a further development, slower development, timeline. Battery procurement is underway.

They're getting close to finalizing that. So I believe all the pieces are aligning here. There is still the concern, why does the schedule keep slipping? And that's because of the the issues that they have run into. We have gotten assurance from them that they are not.

They don't see any tension with the current tariff environment. One, because of the PV panels that they already have in The US. So those are exempt from any tariffs unless some kind of crazy retroactive tariffs get thrown out. The batteries are looking at domestic manufacturing as is all the steel racking and piles and all that balance of plant materials. So in general, from a development standpoint, yes, there is some concern about why the schedule keeps slipping.

We're not happy to see that, and they're getting pretty close to their to their whatever you might call their drop dead date for their far outside commercial develop operational date. So they're getting really close to that as Phil pointed out for about twelve days from that now with their COB date.

So Desri's going to add Foxtail Flats to their website.

I was talking about the county website specifically. I wanna add all their updated information to the county website. I will mention to them that it's been noticed that we're not appearing on there.

It would be comforting if the Foxtail Flats Solar updated their updates because it's been over a year. You think they would have something to say.

I will speak to them, Dave, about that directly.

Alright. Thank you.

Well, you know, they slipped a year the last year, so I suppose it the fact that the website's a year behind shouldn't be

a big surprise. Nice try. Alright. Very gracious. Thank you.

Since we're on Foxtail Flats, you said June '27 now for full commercial operation. When is initial operation? When do we start seeing any power from it?

Do you recall what that date was, Philo? It was just

I recall May. It was they were within a month of each other.

So they used to be several months apart. Yeah. They okay. They

alright. They're doing some scheduled crashing, I suppose.

Okay. Thank you. Couple quick questions, Philo. You said Llano was about ready to start actual physical work. Have they actually done any physical work yet, or is the last five plus months just been getting through their paperwork and bureaucratic processes?

Last five months is paperwork and bureaucratic.

Okay. Five months for the paper and five weeks to build There's

wooden stakes out there. That's it.

Five months, they're on a fast track.

This is an emergency. Yeah. Do we have any guess as to how long it's gonna take them once they start the physical work?

No guess. Okay.

On this PNM mutual aid agreement, we have talked about the fact they have a mobile substation if we should ever may need that. That's kinda what motivated this trying to get this agreement. But what you know, they're vastly bigger than we are. What kinds of mutual aid might they ever want to ask us for?

Well, let's if we could envision maybe a major blizzard and lines down, they may need some lineman assistance. It would be that kind of a support. Okay.

Okay. Any other questions on the manager's report? Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll move to our other manager, Anne.

Good evening, chair and members. Just a few things. It's early in the year still, but I have the pleasure tomorrow morning at SALA to give the year end review to the chamber. So that'll happen early morning, And I'll mention a lot of things we've talked about, and it includes a lot of the utilities and projects as well. So, well, I'll share the share the successes.

We had a very, very productive year, so we're very proud of what we're able to to move forward. And we wanna keep that momentum going into 2026. I had previously mentioned that our public information officer, Julie Williams Hill, is retiring. She graciously has extended her date of being out of the office a month because, we have hired mister Dave Krueger, who is currently the chief inter interpretation manager and PIO for the BIAS Caldera. So he will be starting on February 2, and they'll have some overlap time.

So it'll be seamless transition. But he has some really amazing work they've done out there. If you haven't been out there recently to the BIAS and their website development, video development, promotion, relating sort of information to tourism, which I know is a big push for us this next year.

And

and really looking at things from, like, the customer experience, sort of like you talk about the Disneyland. Every everything you do when you go to Disneyland, they want it to be a pleasant experience. A lot of that is also from the national parks trainings as well. So we think that'll be really helpful for the county and some of the things that, you know, we can do better with even just signage during construction or, you know, messaging it in a way that's more captivating to people's attention, things like that. So so we'll see Dave around coming soon.

I do wanna mention we also manager utility manager Shelton talked about the Chromium plume, the Hexavilion Chromium plume. I do wanna mention that we are we also have had a separate meeting and with the chair and vice chair of council and the council leadership of the Pueblo, this of Desano Delfonso. And they are very concerned about being able to restart the measure even though we don't know everything about it. And I guess my layman's interpretation of our meeting and mister Alid was there as well with the all the different, players in this effort to kinda coordinate what needs to happen is we're not gonna knew everything to be able to restart it. And so what do we need to know at and be able to kind of more operate in a way that's more adaptive?

And it's very clear with the different agencies that with their processes, they all don't mesh, And that's really what's causing a lot of the communication challenges even with the state office of engineer and know everybody knowing when you have to kinda keep which player has to be involved when. So I I do anticipate that being an ongoing area of concern from a federal legislative when we go to D make our trip to DC at the March. It'll be the March. We'll be talking about that as well and in relation to the funding for the new well, and that is also we're working with our new lobbyists as well, federal lobbyists on that topic. And so that'll that'll keep going.

And Friday, we have a a state legislative dinner where we host every year just before the state legislative session in January, our state representatives and senators and give them a little card about what our state agenda is going into the session. And so I know mister Shelton's in close contact with Danielle Duran, our intergovernmental affairs manager, but we're she's working with our lobbyists on a really nice tracking strip spreadsheet of all the different bills. So, hopefully, this year, you'll have that information to kinda share with the board as you find new bills that might be interested to share that information. But it is getting easier to kinda keep, get into their system and track, different topics and things that we wanna see what pops up at any moment with the legislative session at the state. And, we also have the New Mexico County's Legislative, what do you call it, conference next week.

And we are, once again, receiving our budget awards for excellence and continued excellence. So we will, celebrate our continued, leading the the standard on on budgeting and compliance in those areas. And we just have a lot of good really good checks and balances and policies in place. Let's see if there's anything else. I think vice chair, Herman will probably mention this in reviewing last night's council meeting, but we are going to be ramping revamping our community dashboard, which is kind of we take the strategic the council strategic leadership plan that they've approved, which has focus areas and objectives, and then putting in some metrics.

And I think we've made some progress over the from last year to this year to kind of reduce the number, but make them a little bit more interesting and tell our story a little bit to the community about things they're interested in. It's certainly not gonna be representative of everything we do or track, but we are gonna be working on that as well. So I will stand for any questions. Questions.

I have one. Okay. You mentioned, that the lobbyist was gonna be dealing with the fed the well potential well. Does that imply I'm assuming it does, but I'll confirm that that's that a new well is mentioned in the draft federal legislative agenda that council will be looking at later this month?

I recall. Yes, Milo. I don't I I believe it's mentioned, but I here's where our conversation is with it is how do we kind of I think, with DOE, it's gonna be about how to get it funded so they can then get it on their list of priorities. Like, it it's really about where does this funding come from and how do we get on with some sort of bill or something so that it becomes a priority, and then it can be put into the DOE and budget. That's real and that can take several years, and so that's kind of where we're talking about it now. I don't recall exactly where it shows up in the language for the federal priorities. I'd have to review that.

Thank

you. Other questions?

I'll just mention, James Allard and Danielle Duran and I, did talk about it. There is a a funding opportunity request through the Army Corps of Engineers for, this well at Overlook. So we're looking at pulling in some federal funds in through that process, but there's probably a lot of different avenues that we can pursue that we're exploring.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. We'll move on to councilor Herman.

Thank you, chair. So last night, we had a work session down in White Rock, and the first thing that, we had was the regional development corporation, the RBC, gave their annual report. And they work with a lot of the small businesses, give out these microgrants and and other different funding. They do a lot of, events up here and in Northern New Mexico to help the small business community. The next topic was the North Mesa recreation master plan, which is a monster.

It's 26 acres 26 acres, I think, with a total budget of almost $13,000,000, bike park, and all kinds of other things in, as well. Possibly, a big multi use space for the roller derby team and other things. They're looking for kind of a permanent location. So I it's it's an amazing plan. They did a wonderful job getting feedback from the community and revising it, kinda making it what everybody wants to see.

My understanding is we don't have all of the funding available for this, but they have it laid out in in I think Four phases. Four phases. And it they, I think, just really, did a great job with the process of this plan. So it, really would be a fabulous, facility out on North Mesa. The next topic was the metropolitan redevelopment area.

We had a discussion about the a commission for this. There are a number of people in town who would really, really like to see a citizen led commission for transparency. There we talked about the pros and cons for and against this. I think, personally, that it would, really gum up the process a lot. It would take a lot longer to get anything approved.

It's a it's a very, very small area compared to what most of the, MRAs around New Mexico have. So, you know, I'm I'm not sure it's necessary, but we had the conversation about it. So we will go from there and see see how that goes. The next thing I thought would be really interesting to you all, we had a presentation by the Mozart DevCo group, the waste to energy plant, and and that was really interesting even though we won't get any energy out of it. It is a great thing, I think, for the community, get rid of a lot of our solid waste and and not have to transport it as far.

Just really interesting stuff they have going on there. And then, as county manager Lorence mentioned, we talked about the strategic leadership plan performance indicators for the, county dashboard, and that was very interesting as well. So any questions?

Questions, Jen?

Yeah. So given the impending loss of yet another small business in Los Alamos, namely the bookstore, This regional development corporation, besides micro grants, do they work with prospective business owners to develop business business plans, you know, to understand better what might or might not succeed in in communities like ours and so forth. I'm just wondering, you know, if we can is there some way to get more support to folks who wanna start small businesses in the county? Yeah.

Great question. Yes. They they do those things. There is some positive news on that front. At the moment, Somerset is is more positive about staying open. So they That's good to hear. Received a lot of support from the community. I'd encourage all of you to continue to support them. Do you have any input on that? No. So

small business. I mean, there's a lot of

There there are a lot of resources for that sort of thing right here in town. The small business development center over at UNMLA, they help entrepreneurs with their business plans and establishing whatever it is, LLCs or however they need to get started here in the community. LICDC has run a program for the last three years, a business accelerator that actually started. It came out of that. And about another there's there were almost 11 businesses in the community that started from that.

Wolf and Mermaid came out of that, and they're now in Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Airport. So there are quite a few success stories. So there are really great resources out there. And, of course, the retail, is where the county is really working hard on getting that out there. Alida application that, was just introduced and, approved. Well, I guess we'll be voting on the Ubiquiti, Alida. It's done. Totally done. So

Waiting for. Got it.

So, you know, there there are some really great resources out there for businesses that are struggling, or trying to start up here in town.

Yeah. So good to know. And and if the county can help with with communications and advertising, that would be good too. I I was surprised recently to find out how many people I know didn't even know the bookstore existed. You know? So

You know, we continue to struggle how you reach all of these people that don't engage with the community. How could you not know that that exists? Exactly.

You know?

So For some time. Yeah. But, yeah. Any ideas on reaching those people? Let me know.

Sure. If I may add one one topic. It by the end of the month, we are are on target to be releasing a new business directory where any business can sign up and advertise, and it you can sort it by, like, I'm looking for ice cream. I'm looking for bookstore or whatever. And they the the business themselves can go in and put in all their information, all the different things they offer, and then it's searchable.

So it's sort of a self managed. We've tried in the past to kind of keep track of of business directories, but things change so often. It's and things get out of date and incorrect. And so we're really looking forward to this tool as a way where it can be something that we can basically put a QR code everywhere we can promote it to say, if you're here and wanna find you're looking for something, just scan this QR code, and it gets you right to where you need to go. So we're excited.

Sounds good. Maybe every time somebody gets hired at the lab, have the lab share that that this exists. Right? So for example

Other questions? The I have one. Sure. The North Mesa rec plan Mhmm. Are any of the facilities there going to be replacements for existing facilities someplace else, or is everything there basically new capability, new new opportunities?

Please.

Cher, it's it's a hybrid of a little bit of both. For instance, like, the community gardens is gonna stay where it is, but there's also an expansion area for maybe, future gardens. There are some courts there that get expanded or enhanced or replaced, and then there are absolutely new amenities like the bike skills park, this pavilion councilor Herman talked about, and I'm trying to think of what else. But there are new amenities, a mix, a blend of both.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. Thank you very much for your report. Again, welcome aboard. We'll move to the environmental sustainability board liaisons report. Sue's been very patient for the evening, so now you're on.

Yes. Good evening, chair and board. Can you hear hear me well? Yes. Excellent.

At our last month's meeting, the ESB heard a presentation as you did from our stand tech consultants on the fleet conversion and community EV charging plans. And like the BPU and council, we provided comments, which had been addressed by Stantec and our staff and incorporated into the final draft of those plans. The plans will go forward to ESB and to council in February for approval. The ESB also drafted our 2026 work plan, which once again will focus on advancing the goals of climate action plan, including supporting climate action, education and outreach, community EV charging and other transportation initiatives, solid waste reduction programs, electrification and energy and water conservation as requested. We'll also support the food composting and food waste prevention program as it evolves.

Although the composting facility is currently stalled due to DOE and NMED concerns, the county has received a $1,200,000 grant from the EPA to implement a a program in food composting, and staff are working with NMED and DOE to resolve these issues and try and find a path forward. At tomorrow night's meeting, we'll finalize our 2026 work plan and meeting schedule as well as electing a new chair, vice chair, and liaisons. And we'll also hear a report from ECO station manager Armando Gabaldon on the results of the recent recycling material audit conducted by Barco. These results determine our recycling fees and revenues as well as giving us insight into what our community is putting into their bins. We'll report to you on on this next month.

But in the meantime, I'd like to remind everyone to if you have questions about recycling, consult our our Recycle Coach app. And as always, if you are still in doubt, please throw it out. And tomorrow night, we'll also be welcoming in a new ESP member, but we still have one vacancy. So if you have any friends who might be interested, please, ask them to apply, and I will be happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Sue. Are there questions? Looks like you get off easy tonight, Sue. Thank you for your patience.

You bet.

Okay. That brings us to general board business. Election of board chair and vice chair for the coming year. The guess we'll we'll start with chair and let's see. Good. Matt's on board again. The floor is open for quest for nominations, and you only need to nominate. You don't we don't need a second. Just a nomination. Are there nominations?

I guess, but just nominate Robert Gibson to serve as chair for 2026.

Are there other nominations? Matt, would you be willing to accept the nomination? Not for sure. No. Sorry. Oh, okay. Here's your chance to get rid of me, folks. At least get rid of me out of this chair. I'm not leaving the board. Well

No sexual.

Okay. If that's the case, then what we really need is a motion to close the nominations and elect yours truly by acclamation.

I move that we close the nominations for chair of

the b p u or

BPU and, elect chair Gibson to another term.

For that, we do need a second. I'll second. Okay. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion?

If not, Richard, would you please call the roll? Member Hollingsworth?

Yes. Member Heffner?

Yes.

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

Yes. Motion passes five to zero. How boring. Same chair three years in a row. Okay. That takes us to vice chair. Are there nominations for vice chair?

I nominate Eric Stromberg to continue as vice chair.

Okay. Are there other nominations? Matt? Would be willing to be nominated? Sure. Yes. That's a yes? Yes. Okay. So I'll nominate Matt Heavener so we have some choice anyway.

Any other nominations? Okay. See none. I'll close the nominations and first, I'll ask if there's any discussion on the matter before we vote. Seeing none. Richard, would you please call the roll?

Point of order. How is this working exactly?

Well, there's two there's two nominees. And and, basically, both name and then Vote for one.

Not a yes.

No. No. Please make sure you're clear on the process. We'd hate to have that something go awry because somebody's unclear. Remember how

it work?

Okay. Matt Heffner.

Member Heffner?

Matt Heffner.

Member Knockley?

Member Stromberg.

Member Stromberg. Member Gibson?

They Just for the sake of some change, I'm gonna vote for Matt Heavener even though Eric has done a wonderful job as vice chair. But I don't think it's a bad thing to mix things up a little bit, so I'll vote for Matt. So Matt Heavener is elected by three to two. Congratulations. By the way, you'll get to chair the next one of these meetings. I'll be out of town.

That was part of the deal.

Too late for you to withdraw now. Okay. Welcome to the leadership team. And thanks, Eric, very much for all of your work in that regard the last two years. And I know you'll be a continuing to be a contributing member here just as you have been. Okay. We move on to the status reports. Are there any questions or issues on the status reports? I would just note that the account receivables seem to keep going down. That's a good thing.

That is a good thing.

So yay.

They do keep going down with

our collection efforts and the collection agency. We've been able to collect some money, which is good.

Yeah. Well, the numbers keep going down noticeably, so that's you're obviously accomplishing something there.

We are. We are working hard on those. Great. You for noticing that. Thank you.

Other items on status reports. Eric?

So I

had a question about

the SADI. And I've asked this question before, but I don't I don't really what the answer is. Now the SADI, I believe, right now is just for our internal network system. Okay? What happens when we lose a line from PNM?

If it's a line from PNM, that is a power supplier outage, and those historically and the utilities I've always been associated with, including this one, we do not count those because it's beyond our control. And if a contractor digs in, it doesn't count because that's beyond our control. We did have a couple of contractor caused outages this past month, and I did not include those in the SADI calculation for that reason.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Alright.

That question has come up before, and I think we ought to be tracking in maybe in addition to SADI that applies to our distribution system. We ought to be tracking all the outages maybe on a separate index because that's what our customers see. Customer doesn't care whether it's a PNM problem or a contractor problem or our system problem, their power's out and that's what they want to know about. So I would hope that you're thinking at some point about adding another index that includes all outages. That's just one one person's opinion expressed previously, so it's not new.

Okay. Anything else on status reports? I did note under the the risk report that we had another that we had an employee potentially exposed to asbestos while working. Is that still on the last project, or is that something different?

It was, an old exposure. So it it was, related to stuff that was on Trinity years ago.

Oh, so it wasn't a recent exposure. It was a it's a recent claim for an old exposure.

Right. Okay.

Alright. Anything else? That takes us to the tickler file. Has everybody had a chance to look over it? And do you have suggested additions, deletions,

changes, etcetera? Eric? Yes. I think we ought to add balcony solar to the tickler file because there's a lot to talk about on that one.

Okay. We'll put that in the parking lot for the moment and figure out when when and how we're gonna add it to an agenda. Alright. Alright. Anything else?

Chair, I just had one question. We've had a couple presentations of fleet plan. Sue Barnes mentioned that they're gonna see the final version. I don't know if the board wants to see it again, but it'll there's not much time with our budget process to see it in one more time. But

Well, the question is would we have my understanding is the final report comes in February. Mhmm. So is what ESB and counsel are going to see the final report so there's no opportunity for input at that point?

Right.

Well, my thinking is at some point, we'd like to see the final report, but it doesn't have to be in February if we can't do anything about it. We put in a number of suggestions. It'll be interesting to see if they got incorporated. But if there's nothing we can do about it, that is a busy month. So Yeah. Is that, is the board comfortable with looking at it sometime? We had to put that on here just to to, look at the final report.

I don't it's whether the other was council saw a proposal with Mozart. It's whether the board wanted to see that technology, the waste energy technology. It's why we're interested.

That report didn't have much about the technology. It was more a rah rah, this is cool stuff. But Mhmm. It didn't say how they're doing it. But it is sort of a relevant topic. If we if there was more presentation on the technology to help us evaluate the technology whether for that project or something else, it might be more interesting, but I'll ask the board whether you'd like to see a presentation on that. It's on the the council saw it last night, so you can see it on the by looking at the council video when that gets posted, or we can ask for it to be given here.

Tell us. I think it it what they presented last night is they're procuring a a company to build the project. I think once they have that company online, I think they could offer more information about the technology they're selecting. So I can I can monitor that?

Okay. So we'll put that on parking lot for some time.

And what remind me, what is this presentation on again?

This was the a proposal for a waste to energy project to be built at Okay Owingay. Their current concept is that our waste would be part of their waste stream. They need more than just what we can provide, but we can provide us significant part of it. And the power doesn't come to us. They've already made other arrangements for the power, but it would be a way to if this worked out to for our waste to do more useful, something more useful and to be trucked at a much shorter distance and save us the tipping fees, so it would help in waste disposal.

So that's the big benefit to the county right now. But, you know, the technology would be interesting, but the presentation didn't have anything about the technology. Maybe they don't know. Well, it's probably proprietary at this point. Mhmm. Tom's nodding his head in the. Yeah.

I saw an NDA.

Ah, okay. Knowledgeable agreement. Okay. Is there anything else for the Dickler file? Matt, you and I and Philo need to schedule a scheduling meeting soon because I'm leaving town this weekend. So, we'll have to see if we can possibly do a scheduling meeting tomorrow or Friday.

Sounds good.

Okay. Is there any public comment? None in chambers? None online? We're boring again tonight. The word of God. The well, actually, that some things could be unpleasant and be nonboring, I guess we'd we'd rather have have have boring. Okay. Thank you very much. We are adjourned.