Board of Public Utilities - Regular Meeting

Good evening. We'd like to welcome you to the Board of Public Utilities meeting. This meeting is called to order. We will now play the inclusion statement.

Pursuant to the City Council rules of procedure in order of business resolution, the members of all boards and commissions in the public are reminded that they preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting. In that regard, members of the boards and commissions and the public are advised that any delay or disruption in the proceedings or a refusal to obey the orders of the board or commission or the presiding officer constitutes a violation of these rules. The city of Riverside is committed to fostering a workplace that provides dignity, respect, and civility to our employees, customers, and the public they serve.

K. Will board member Becker lead us in the pledge of allegiance?

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

Roll call, please. Good evening, board members.

Board member Wright is absent. Board member Goldwere? Here. Board member Rand? Here. Board member Montgomery? Here. Board member Evans is absent. Board Member Becker?

Here.

Vice Chair Wolginmuth? Here. And Chair Santa?

Here.

Thank you.

And we will now move to public comment.

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Okay. Let the caller in. Thank you.

Hi. Good evening. Melissa McKeith with CURE. I wanna speak to two issues tonight, the urban water management plan and then the general plan 2050. I did submit written comments that I hope were distributed to you because the e comment was down for some reason.

In 2021, we spent considerable time and money hiring outside consultants and working with RPU staff and Todd Corbin on revisions to the urban water management plan that would support and prioritize projects to help us identify how much of our water resource we should be allocating for mitigating heat and climate issues in the future. And I submitted to you what city council had adopted, and I'll be providing some additional documents. I'd appreciate it if, under new business this evening, there could be a request of the general manager that we have some kind of workshop on the urban water management plan before the final date so that there could be discussion in a format that lets us perhaps take a little bit longer than three minutes and present information on why this matters. And I do appreciate that staff did reach out to Cure after the last Board meeting to invite comments as part of your process. Secondly, on the general plan, I appreciate that we do have these workshops with the public.

They're quite elementary. I think that the point that Mr. Evans has been making is that our board, as a board, should be weighing in on some of its recommendations for general planning for the next twenty five years. And that's a longer tail in terms of when we would have to do that. I think these two documents give us an opportunity to have that sort of in-depth discussion with not only my organization, but perhaps people at C CERT, at UCR and other organizations in the area that are interested in how to address the fact it's going to get a lot hotter.

Anyhow, thank you. I did have some questions on the CIP. I'm wondering what happens to the other 33% of the money that didn't get spent. That I'm sure my three minutes are almost up, so Brian will get off without having to answer a lot of follow-up questions. Very complicated issue, the budget.

And it does affect our rates ultimately, And I I did feel like saying, well, it's kinda normal to have interest be more than our actual payroll. You know, Americans love debt, but then we're stuck with it. So I'm just thinking that perhaps we'll go back to another point, could have a little bit more discussion. Bye.

Thank you. Are there any more public comment? Okay. I will say I apologize that the e comment maybe wasn't working or something, but we did get the comments submitted to us or sent to us, so thank you for that. Okay. For item number two, we'll ask our board members if anyone has any conflicts of interest to disclose on our agenda. I'm not seeing any, so we will move to the consent calendar. Does anyone wish to Or, pull

Chair, I apologize very But much for before we move past public comment, there was something mentioned which doesn't really track with the facts that we have found. So the caller mentioned that the city council had adopted something submitted in the comments, and that, as far as we could research, is not exactly true. I wouldn't say it's not true, but it's not correct, and we certainly could find no evidence of it. We reviewed the meeting, the 06/22/2021 meeting, where the urban water management plan was heard by the city council. And the city council did not adopt anything that I see in the comments submitted tonight.

Now it could be a misunderstanding. Maybe the caller had something else in mind. That could be. But from what I understood, what was submitted as comments was not actually approved or adopted by the city council. Now that may or may not make a big difference, but as a lawyer, if you hear something which is out of tune, you know, you kinda have to nip it in the bud and let it get fully addressed later. So I apologize for butting in on that, but I just have to keep the record straight.

Okay. Thank you for that, and hopefully we can figure exactly what was meant, in the near future. Thank you. Okay. So we'll now move to the public comment I mean, sorry, consent calendar. Does anyone wish to pull an item on our consent calendar? Okay. So, do we have a motion to approve?

I move to approve.

Thank you. And a second? Second.

Please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. We'll now move to the discussion calendar. We will now open public comment for item number six.

Public comment is now open for this item. Call (951) 826-8688, and follow the prompts to access the meeting. To request to speak, press 9. When called to speak, press 6 to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

Okay. We call for a presentation on item number six by Tracy Sato.

Thank you so much. Good evening, Chair Siana and members of the Board. My name is Tracy Sato, Assistant General Manager of Strategic Initiatives with RPU. And it is my pleasure tonight to provide a presentation and a request to approve updates to our Electrify Riverside City Facility Publicly Available EV Charger Installation Program, that's a mouthful, but it's the name of the program for EV chargers to help compensate the cost of putting EV chargers that are publicly accessible at city facilities. This program, I do want to mention and we will talk about this in the next couple of slides, is fully funded through our Low Carbon Fuel Standard program.

So unlike our public benefit charge and our water conservation surcharge, those funds are on or were on the customer's bill. These funds are not paid for by our customers. These come from a state program that RPU and the city opted into back in 2018 that then generates credits that we can sell and use those funds for these programs. So that's what we're going to talk about a little bit tonight as well. So I wanted to start off with a little bit more about what the Low Carbon Fuel Standard program is because I think it is important to understand what it is and what it isn't.

It's a voluntary program for RPU, but it is a statewide compliance program. It deals with transportation fuels, and so it primarily affects gasoline, diesel, those types of fuels that are fossil fuels. But electricity is now a transportation fuel, which is why RPU could opt into the program. The goal of the state, and this was one of the two programs, the other being CAP and Invest now, but cap and trade at the time, was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the State of California to nineteen ninety levels by 2030. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program, or LCFS program as I'll refer to it, has the goal of achieving a 20% reduction in transportation fuel carbon intensity based on from the 2010 baseline by 2030.

So it gets into those weird years of what we are trying to accomplish. But in the end, the goal is that all the transportation fuels in the state will have a reduction in the carbon emissions that result from their use. It's a market based system, so again, we get credits, we get a credit for every metric ton of carbon that's reduced by the use of electricity for folks who charge their vehicles at home, so that's an important thing. And the ones that omit over the standard for any given year have to turn in those credits. So basically we get the credits from the state, there's a market for people and for companies and organizations to buy those credits, and so we sell those in markets.

RPU opted into this program in 2018 and again we receive these credits every year or every quarter actually. The regulations, because this is essentially provided to the utilities to distribute these credits and utilize these credits for the public benefit, there's a lot of rules around them as to how we use those funds and we are required, most importantly to use the value for the benefit of existing and future owners of electric vehicles. The spending of the proceeds has to support transportation electrification projects in the specific category or sector that credits come from essentially and they have to based on those sectors there's different requirements. For these, they're created by residential electric vehicle use, so we have to use them in ways that really support public access to EV charging. We are not allowed to utilize the credits for ongoing maintenance and operations of EV chargers, but simply to help to spur the market and support people who are entering into the EV market.

Another requirement because equity is a huge issue is to require that up to 50% of the LCFS revenue be spent to support transportation electrification projects that benefit disadvantaged, low income and rural communities. We don't rural communities here, we're not qualified for that, but they have to benefit our disadvantaged and low income communities. The other part of this request tonight is due to a request that came from the City Council and from the city for economic development purposes. In November 2025, the City Council entered into an MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding with Chevy Company Chevy company limited, Chevy Corporation Limited, I'm sorry or Chevy. It is a Korean based electric vehicle charging provider so they actually build and construct electric vehicle chargers.

They do have them deployed throughout South Korea and what they are doing is they are trying to expand into The United States. Per the MOU, the city has committed to purchase and install 45 of their Chevy EV chargers. These are all level three EV chargers so they're at a much higher charging capacity than what you might have at your home so it'll more quickly charge your vehicle. And the city has requested had requested as part of this process that RPU, we would look at the use of these low carbon fuel standard funds which are fully intended to be used for EV chargers and to offset the costs of installation for these EV chargers, if we could utilize some of those funds through our existing program because we already had $500,000 in a program and they were asking if we could expand it to help support this program. So based on our review, our staff review, we did determine that this was an eligible or an allowable expense under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations and we could provide a rebate.

So RPU isn't going to buy the chargers, but we would provide a rebate once the city does do the procurement and then we would also rebate them back the potential funding for the chargers themselves and some of the infrastructure costs. We do have the funding available for $3,000,000 to be transferred into the program. At the 2025, we had about $6,100,000 in the Low Carbon Fuel Cash Reserve Account. This account had $4,000,000 of that 6,100,000 is already allocated to existing Electrify Riverside programs that provide rebates for used EVs, home EV charging, public access EV charging at private sector businesses and those that at the city, as well as we had a program, we had $1,000,000 if you recall for electric transit buses because we do have community members that will never be able to participate in the EV market and are dependent on transit. So this allows them to also benefit from having electric vehicles.

So that meant we had 2,100,000 left that was unallocated to any programs based on that. Part of that allocation included of that $4,000,000 included $1,000,000 that had been set aside or basically earmarked for a grant match for putting AV chargers in at the airport. That award the city did not receive the award for that grant, so we are suggesting that we take that money back from that earmarked because it will never be spent for that purpose and add it to that $2,100,000 which would bring the total unallocated funding to 3,100,000 about. To set up the program, we do need to modify the existing EV charger program for city facilities. We have to maintain that it benefits current and future EV owners.

We already again have programs for the purchase of used EVs, EV charging, all of those things that I just mentioned. They will not be impacted in any way by this change, so those programs will continue. And we do get more credits every year, like I said, so we'll be able to continue the funding for those programs in future years. We are now allowed to provide investments in the grid side, so the upstream utility side infrastructure necessary to support EV charging. Those are now eligible for a rebate where they weren't before, so we need to add that into the rebate program.

We also need to specify that because this is such a large portion of the funding that we do need to have this funding provide at least 50% of its expenditure for low income disadvantaged communities and we need to have that added into the program requirements. And again the expenditures that are proposed by the city are eligible dependent on the site locations and what needs to happen for them. So what we are proposing for the existing program, the red line was attached, but what we do need to do is clarify the allowable expenses so the program can rebate the purchase of the EV charger, so basically the EV charger itself, and it can rebate the upstream infrastructure. We cannot rebate or cover the costs for the on-site installation, so that's parking reconfiguration, mounting, things like that. That is not an allow allowable expense under the program, so that will be a responsibility of the city as they go forward with this.

Require a minimum of 50% that be spent related to rebated to the city, that it be spent on the designated disadvantaged communities or that are benefiting disadvantaged communities, so we have to manage those funds and the sites of where they're going to go depending on what's happening with that, which the city is still in that process. The funds need to be utilized within three years from this approval or from the City Council approval, and the reason for that is we do need to get these funds out the door. We don't want to sit on them for a length of time, so that does since the city is intending to move forward with this, we should be able to expend those within the three years. And then we also need to transfer $3,000,000 from the unallocated portion of this fund over into this program, the City Facility Publicly Available EV Charger program, which already has $500,000 in it, which would bring the program total amount to $3,500,000 for this current fiscal year and then we will budget for it in future years with a carryover. So you'll see those coming forward.

So our recommendation this evening is that the Board of Public Utilities recommend that the City Council, with at least five affirmative votes, authorize the CFO or designee to record a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $3,000,000 from the Electric Fund Low Carbon Fuel Reserve Account and appropriate expenditures to the EV charger install at public facilities account and authorize the city manager or designee to execute the Electrify Riverside program and take all necessary action required or advisable to implement, administer, fund or carry out the City of Riverside's responsibilities under the Electrify Riverside programs, including the ability to make minor and non substantive changes and to execute future amendments to the Electrify Riverside programs under substantially similar terms and conditions. And I did want to note on that recommendation, the reason that we add that under substantially similar terms and conditions that you can make amendments to the program is the regulation does change or there interpretation that is released, and we might need to have a minor tweak to the program to keep us in compliance and do that quickly, but we always bring those back to the Board for your review when we do the updates to the different programs.

And I'll be available after public comment. I also have with me Miranda Evans from our Community and Economic Development Department who helped with the MOU and the development of the MOU and the coordination with the Chevy this evening to answer questions.

Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any public comment? Okay. Send the speaker through the caller through.

Good evening. Melissa McHughes again. First, I do support the city having more EV chargers. Our shopping center's having more EV chargers. Occasionally, when I hear us presume a disadvantaged community want, I have to point out that none of us in this room are probably disadvantaged.

And we might actually want to reach out to some of those communities and see what they would prefer such a large sum of money be spent for. I think this notion that getting an electric bus is something that people would think was really great in terms of a contribution to the environment is, you know, questionable. However, since mister Goldman wanted to respond to my public comment, all of you will be receiving a videotape of the city council meeting from June 21 excuse me, twenty second twenty twenty one. And I would request the opportunity to meet with the chair and mister Bohlman to go over the stipulation that mister Corden and I agreed to in front of the city council that day. I realized he wasn't there.

I appreciate his concern that things are accurate, but I, too, as an attorney, want things to be accurate. And more importantly, the issue that we were speaking to, the importance of actually optimizing and managing and utilizing our water resources to combat climate is really the point rather than a debate about specific language. So, you know, again, I'm happy to have that discussion any time. I'll be definitely reaching out via email to everyone so that you can look at the video and judge for yourself, and then it would also educate you a lot about what goes with to the urban water management management plan. So again, on this item, I support it.

I know there were a lot of questions from the Board lost time. Quite a bit goes to the best situation. Not sure that's the most practical expenditure of our tax dollars, but I'll leave that to spare. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other callers? Okay. Do we have comments from the Board? Pete?

You're on. Thank you for the fine presentation. There's some intriguing aspects to this project. You indicated that we had $6,000,000 in LCFS funds, and we're basically, with this action, spending them all down. So next year or next quarter, we're going to get more credits?

Yes.

Presumably. How many on an annual basis, how much do we earn on our credits?

Budget I can't release the because exact the because of market rules around market sales, but we do budget for $750,000 a year.

Okay. So even though we're depleting our $6,000,000 entirely, we're expecting new revenue to come in annually, perhaps to the tune of $7.50 Perhaps. Yes. Okay. I'm not trying to pin anything down or pin anybody down here. All right. So I was just wondering, are there other projects on the horizon that we're looking to spend money for? And the fact that we're spending $3,000,000 on this project, are we losing the opportunities for something else in the near future?

So we are essentially delaying one program that we are two programs that we were going to be bringing to the Board later this year. We were still working on all the agreements. One of them was a workforce development scholarship program for residents that wanted to go into developing or repairing EVs, working on EVs or EV chargers. We'll delay that program probably to later this year, making sure that once the year settles, I will also mention even though we have budgeted funds for a lot of these programs, some of these programs aren't going to spend the money, the full amount, just simply because we don't have all of the community coming in and applying for those rebates. So some of those funds are going to carry over.

But so that was going to be that will be one program that will have to be delayed is the workforce development program. And the other one that we were that was going to be later this year or early next year was an EV charger hub rebate program that staff had been developing. So I don't know that that was going to fully come to fruition. We were still working on the legal logistics with that and all of the agreements, but this essentially covers that same intent of providing EV chargers in the community that are publicly accessible and 45 is a substantial amount of chargers. So those funds were only going to fund a couple because of the expense of the infrastructure improvements anyways.

So this was a very comparable program. That program will just simply be delayed again until we can build up additional funds for that program.

So these chargers are going to go into city facilities? On city Primarily? Or exclusively?

We are looking right now at sites, all of the different city sites where these could be a possibility, so that is primarily where we are looking. We're also considering partnerships with the county right now, but this is all being discussed and we still don't know if the city would be able to install chargers on county property for that because the city would still be the ones installing those chargers. So we would still have to go through that, but we're still in complete negotiations with Chevy as well as researching all the sites because again, even though we're putting $3,000,000 towards this, that is only going to really cover the cost of the chargers and a really small portion of the infrastructure costs that go along with that. They are fairly substantial, so we're trying to find sites that will minimize those additional costs to the city.

I'm trying to figure out where you would put these in disadvantaged communities. So we're talking like libraries and police stations

Potentially libraries, police stations.

Fire stations.

Potentially the airport is an option as well. And again, that one, because even though it's not a disadvantaged community, it's entirely surrounded by a disadvantaged community, so fast charging, they would be able to all of those that community would be able to go there, and that site actually has some space for it. But yes, we are looking at all of those different sites, community centers, libraries, even downtown here in the city hall or the city parking garages where there is going to be access. We also want to make sure that they have access onto the freeway. These aren't going to be free, so they will be expected to bring in enough revenue to hopefully pay for all of the O and M.

So these aren't going to be free chargers. There will be a charge for the electricity from them, so they do need to be in places that are accessible to the communities. Okay.

Thank you.

Other comments? Rebecca?

I know there's a reason, and I'm thinking Brian may actually know if you don't, and maybe Anthony does. Why at least five affirmative votes? Because of the amount?

Because this is a supplemental appropriation, and so because it's a supplemental because they weren't allocated in the budget, it does require five affirmative votes from the city council. Thank you. Mhmm.

Carrie?

Good evening. Help me understand better how the installation of EV chargers is going to benefit low income and disadvantaged communities. I don't know a lot of low income people that own EVs.

Actually, we've been having a lot of our low income customers buying EVs because we do have a substantial rebate, so we are seeing a little bit in that market of used EVs. It is expanding. A lot of the EVs are coming off of their first sales. So what we're really looking at in these they were in sales or leases, so that first generation of the most recent EVs are coming in off of that. And they're coming in at a very good price.

So we are seeing more folks, especially in low income and disadvantaged communities, participating in this. And then according to the CPUC's analysis of this, everybody benefits from cleaner air. So that's a little bit more of a stretch, and I'll throw it out there, but that is something that does come up.

To your point about market or used sales, ironically, and this is a little off point, I've seen recent reports indicating that the sale of UVs in California is declining significantly, whereas hybrid vehicles is increasing. Does the city's electrification plan take that type of trend into account in any way?

Yes, because plug in hybrid EVs still utilize EV charging, and so they a lot of times, a plug in hybrid electric vehicle will actually be able to drive almost solely on their electric charge the majority of the time, unless they're commuting for a really long distance. And so that's a new area in the market. But I actually just saw that article this weekend and haven't had a chance to dig into it. But yes, we do take that into account.

There are also significant number, including one that I've owned, hybrids that are not electric, they're not charging.

Last

question, and I think I understand, but the rebate you're referring to, that rebate is going to go to the city?

Yes, it would.

Thank you. Other

comments? Okay, I had a few concerns when I read this initially, but I think you've addressed most of them, and we had discussed this previously as well. So I do have a couple of comments. I know this sounds strange, but I appreciate the fact that it's not gonna be free to charge at these locations. I think it's super important that there's revenue coming in to pay for the maintenance.

I've seen so many of these very initial early, like here, actually at city hall, these initial chargers that don't have this, you know, there's no profit motive associated with it, and so the maintenance isn't there and Correct. They, you know, fall apart, whereas the ones that are doing it for profit maintain their equipment and yeah. And so I think that's great. For a long term sustainable model, it seems so much better. So I think that really matters, right?

We are this is not a new model, right? There are charging models where you can pay up front for a charger and then decide what to charge your customers at your store or whatever if you have these chargers in front. But this is a special circumstance where we're not getting or maybe we are, the city or the utilities not getting additional revenue necessarily beyond the cost of the electricity. A lot of that revenue is gonna go to Chevy, I guess. So I'd be I don't know.

There's a lot of details there about how that money what gets charged. You know, if they came in and said it's a dollar per kilowatt hour and nobody nobody charges, that's a problem. So I want to just make sure that that if we get some sort of a reasonable cost, you know, some middle ground I don't know I'm not going to assert that here, but I just hope that's going to be worked out.

So that is all part of the discussions that we're having right now with Chevy, with the agreement that's being negotiated. There is a profit share back with the city to help pay for the O and M. Again, that was part of the MOU, so that is being worked on at this time. And then the city will be also, as part of the agreement, will also be agreeing on the price that will be set at the charters.

Okay. Thank you. And I'll just make a comment about the low income. I mean, you're right. Almost all EV drivers are but it is coming down.

Actually, so I work at UCR, and number of students who are now driving used Tesla Model 3s is kind of amazing because I go through the parking lot every day on the way to work. And it's a big change happening very fast. And people who do not own their own homes often don't have the capacity to charge at home or charge at an apartment complex and whatnot. So this would actually help a lot provide a charging charging locations for people who cannot charge at home, who don't own their own home, you know, and are renting. So that is going to be more and more of a concern as it lower more, you know, lower and lower income people are adopting.

Okay. I have no more comments. So are there any motions?

I'll move to approve.

And second? Okay. Thank you, Sean.

Please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, would it be

appropriate for me to make a few comments?

Oh, is it allowed after we voted to no. Oh, okay. No problem. I'm sorry. I'm interested in what you're gonna have to say, though. Maybe another time. Sorry. Okay. We will now, open for public comment for item number seven.

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Okay. We call for a presentation of item number seven by Daniel Honeyfield and Fadi Magala.

Good evening, members of the board. Daniel Honeyfield, assistant general manager, energy delivery. Joining me, Fadi Magala, engineering manager with our energy delivery department. Happy to be here tonight, present with you the fourth amendment to our interconnection facilities agreement with Southern California Edison. So a little bit of background, the Riverside Transmission Reliability Project or RTRP is a joint project with Southern California This provides a critical second connection to the state grid.

It addresses electrical capacity as well as reliability needs of the city of Riverside and all the areas within and provides, improves our internal sub transmission network. Here is a diagram of the project, a real simple diagram. On the left is the single connection to state grid as of what we have today. So everything comes into the city from SoCal Edison's Vista substation, and there's seven circuits that feed the entire city coming from that substation. After RTRP, we will have a new transmission line coming into the city and that will be at the terminates at SCE's Wildlife Switchyard, which is co located with our new RPU Wilderness Substation.

And we've come to you in the past about procurement of transformers and just recently the grounding transformer that will be located there at the Wilderness Substation. And we will then have two systems, we'll have the east and the west that will feed the city of Riverside. A little bit of background on the milestones that have taken place thus far with RTRP. The project started back in December 2004 when we applied for a second connection to SoCal Edison to the state grid. And in January 2006 was the first approval from the RPU board.

And then later that year, the California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, approved the project as necessary and cost effective addition to the state grid. In March 2009, the Riverside City Council approved the interconnection facilities agreement, IFA, between Southern California Edison and RPU defining the terms and conditions regarding the RTRP participation, ownership of facilities and assets, construction, operation, cost sharing schedule and so forth. In April 2009, later that year, the Federal Energy Resource Commission certified the IFA. The following year, August 2010, the first amendment to the IFA was approved by counsel and shortly thereafter filed with FERC once again. Five years later in April 2015, SCE submitted its application to the California Public Utility Commission for a certificate of public convenience and necessity, excuse me, CPCN.

In September 2016, SE submitted a modified route or hybrid route for the RTRP to the CPC as part of the CPCN process. This included some undergrounding potential undergrounding within Harupa Valley. In March 2018, the City Council approved the second amendment to the IFA, and a little while later that year, the City Council approved the third amendment, different changes that had happened with the project and the status going forward. And then in March 2020, the CPUC approved the certificate of public convenience and necessity. Upon that approval, RPU was reimbursed for all of its cost up to that point to support the project and we received that reimbursement amount of $15,400,000 And then according to the non reimbursable amount in the third amendment, that is costs associated with, that we are responsible for, that total was just at $15,900,000 at that time estimated cost.

This is equipment that supports Riverside only. So now, here we are tonight at the Fourth Amendment. So all the time that has lapsed and updates to the project, to the schedule, to the cost, getting a better understanding of the scope of work. We now have a new proposed commissioning date on or before of October 29, and then we will commission our portion, the Wilderness Substation, within six months after SCE's commission. Now the non reimbursable costs, as you can see on the slide, have been reduced for just over $1,700,000 and this is scope of work that they had initially thought they needed to do, so lower distribution line relocation costs close to the water treatment plant is part of it is not required, so that saved quite a bit of money, and so them going through and looking at the scope of work, the changes in the overall cost to the city has been reduced from 15,900,000 now down to 14.2.

So reduction of just over $1,700,000 Payment milestones, so the payments for the Fourth Amendment will be start from initially was going to start on January 2020 through July 2026, and that has been changed excuse me, that's been changed from January 2020 to July '26. This year, we'll start those payments with the final payment being done in July 2029, the time of the completion of the project. And the updated schedules reflect in Exhibit B, excuse me, Exhibit C of cost of the ISO controlled facilities, this is the facilities owned by Southern California Edison, the transmission line and other associated equipment. These are not at all the city's responsibility, and these estimated costs have increased from $4.00 $5,000,000 to just over $750,000,000 Other things within the Fourth Amendment, some miscellaneous completed activities that have been done thus far have been updated in the IFA clarification language and some other definition updates have been updated in the Fourth Amendment of the IFA as well. Our recommendations tonight is that the public excuse me, the Board of Public Utilities recommend that the City Council approve the Fourth Amendment to the IFA between Southern California Edison and the City of Riverside, reducing the interconnection facility cost from $15,900,000 to $14,200,000 and revising the payment schedule and project completion date, and authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute the fourth amendment to the interconnection facilities agreement, including minor non substantive changes and sign all the documents necessary for Southern California Edison to complete the filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

With that, we are available for questions after public comment.

Thank you very much. Do we have any callers? Okay. We have no callers at this time. Any comments from the board?

Pete?

Thank you for the fine presentation. Can we go back to Slide nine, please? So there's a typo there under the Fourth Amendment for the one time cost of distribution relocation. It's correct in the report, but there's a the amount there is incorrect. Should be 773,000.

You see what they're referring to that the two rows in that Fourth Amendment are the exact same amount for different things. Oh, yes. The middle one, the one time cost is supposed to be significantly lower.

I do apologize. Didn't catch that.

Alright. Well, it was pointed out last week at the pre meeting and was supposed to be at least verbally addressed or redlined, and I'm disappointed to see that it's not. But I guess as long as we're correct in our understanding now.

Yeah. The total amount that's being reduced is is correct at one point. Right. But,

yes. Not a

Sorry. I wasn't at the the meeting and the message didn't get to me and Alright. I do apologize for that.

I understand that you were out of town. So somehow that message needed to get forwarded. Alright. Fourth amendment. There's a delay of six years here. Why?

Well, I think this is more, you know, Southern California Edison that's driving the request here, and I think the big delay was for getting the construction bid. So once they had a good understanding of what the total cost would be, then they wanted to come back to us. We knew we needed a Fourth Amendment. We knew the schedule had been changed, for example. We didn't know what the total costs were going to be till they got bids back on their portion of the project. And there's just, you know, been other delays on the project over, you know, since 2018 timeframe.

Alright. It seems odd to me that you'd go forward not knowing what the costs were going to be. Is that standard practice?

Well, they had an idea what the costs were going to be from their estimates, and when they got the approval, as I mentioned, in 2020 from the CPUC. But, you know, with the inflation and things that have happened since COVID, it's very difficult to estimate how much the construction costs were gonna be.

Alright. Well, I find it a little disappointing that we're so far off in our estimates and our time estimates. Alright, I guess there's nothing to be done about it now since the previous deadlines was three years ago. So I guess I'm glad we're fixing it now. Right. All right. No further questions at this time.

Any other comments? No? I mean, I guess it's nice to see that it came in very delayed but under cost. It's unusual. Unusual. Under what we were expecting. So that's nice to see.

Yeah. And I think in some cases they were looking at worst case scenario. We worked with them, we worked with the folks at the wastewater control plant and able to come up to a solution there that reduced costs for us. We were responsible for some of those distribution relocations. Really worked in our favor, absolutely, to see it reduced. Okay, thank you.

May I hear a motion?

I'll move approval.

Second? Okay. Thank you. Roll call.

Please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any board or staff communications report on item number eight? Okay. Are there any items for future consideration for item number nine?

Unless you're planning to bring it up, I would like to address at least part of one of Melissa's calls. So I think a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a group of community leaders, and I was sitting with the planning director, and I said something to the effect of, with all due respect, all of your long term plans are just on paper if you don't include the utility. Utility. If the people who are here don't get involved early enough, if projects like RTRP don't get approved, there is an additional load that's coming into the city to be able to support all this new economic development. So to her point about being included in longer term planning, electric, water, how we get the power, they all need to be included.

So thank you.

Thank you. Anything else? Okay. We'll now turn the time over to David Garcia for the general manager's report.

Thank you, Chair. I just have one quick update on the incident that I reported on last meeting regarding the injury to a couple of our employees. Just a little bit of good news. The employee that was in the ICU burn unit is now out of the ICU, still in the hospital, but seems to be recovering here. So we're glad to hear that. That's all I have, Chair.

Thank you. That's good to hear. And this meeting is adjourned.