Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Or this meeting of the special meeting of the Finance Committee on Wednesday, 12/17/2025, at 05:15PM. Let's rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Roll call of membership. Let the record show that all members of the finance committee are present. We have no minutes to approve. We have no public hearings or appearances, so we'll go right into our action item Of25Dash1521. Request to approve change order number two to Fabric Power Systems as part of the Appleton Water Treatment Facility Emergency Generator Control Equipment Project. To approve.

Thank you. All

right. So Director Sempah, why don't I hand this over to you and you can give us a little bit of a fill in where we're at here. Did I get right? Off by one. All right, there you go.

It's on. It's off. Yeah, it's not working. Yeah, try a different mic. That one might be just Weird. No.

Oh, now D3 works.

Oh, I got D3 director. Okay. It was D3. I had director. That's what happened.

Oh, okay. All right.

Where was I? Sounds much better. I appreciate the committee getting together before council tonight for this. So this project was a capital project for last year. It was to upgrade the controls at our large standby generators at our water treatment facility.

And as part of that work, to replace these obsolescent controls, as the contractor and their subs were doing their commissioning as part of the first phase, it was discovered that there was some remnant original wiring that wasn't appropriately crowded. So if you can imagine voltage being or electricity being like water voltage, like the pressure and current, the volume behind it, when they're systematically testing these controls is what they're doing, which is different than how the system was ever used before. This was the first time in which we replaced it and the methodology that the contract was using to make sure all the switches and breakers, when they were hoping that current was going or not going where it was supposed to, without a load. So the generators are running. There's voltage there.

There's just not current or volume. When the systems are properly engineered, there is grounding. Right? You got grounding in your house when you plug your outlets in and many, many other things. Well, that voltage, in this case, didn't have anywhere to go because the grounding wasn't there.

And then that systematically, as they were testing, damaged some very expensive equipment. This is not like your little household square D breakers. These are the size of refrigerators. So unfortunately, that leaves us with this unanticipated change order to make that right. And the time sensitive part of it is because we're locked into the contractor's schedule and they're booked and they're bringing in some very large equipment for benchmarking this is why I'm bringing it forward and the request for the committee. I'll open the floor for questions.

All right. Alder Hartzinger.

Thank you, Chair. May I direct to Director Stempa? Director Stempa, this all for damaged goods? This is essentially sort of the it sounds like I mean, from what you show, it sounds like it's both damaged goods and the corrective actions to fix them.

It's a combination of the two.

I'm glad this didn't occur when we were, you know, live and kicking.

Yeah, or somebody in front of the panels with an arc flash.

Agree, agree. My one question is where the funds are coming from. Is the project where they're coming from under budget? Or is this something that's going to have to float into the following year?

So I worked with Jerry to acquire funds. So, there were some funds carried over last year from a chemical systems project, which in part were using some of that excess or available funding, we'll call it excess, that was unused from a chemical system upgrade a few years ago, there was emergency authorization sought from this committee for the bulk hypochlorite tank work. That pot of money, and I we don't like working this way, but we knew going into that hypoch chlorite tank replacement work, would need all the funds we could get our hands on, so we carried that money forward. Fortunately, I think we're in a good place with that. We're using the available funds for this, so we're not asking for anything in addition.

It's just carryover funding being reallocated to cover the cost of this change order.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

All

right. Seeing none. Glad you were able to find a solution to this. Really appreciate that and know that this is definitely a big curveball to handle. So the fact that you both and your teams were able to find a resolution to this timely, that's very encouraging.

Yeah, hats off to the contractors and the staff that were working on this. Mean, they did a great job.

So All right. We'll go ahead and vote then. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? That passes five to zero. No information items. Move to adjourn. Second. All right. Have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. That's five ayes. We're adjourned.