Board of Public Utilities - Regular Meeting

This thing on? Welcome to the Board of Utilities meeting of July 13th. This meeting is called to order. We will now play the inclusion statement.

Pursuant to the City Council rules of procedure and order of business resolution, the members of all Boards and Commissions and the public are reminded that they must 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.

I already asked Michael Becker to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, so if we could stand and join in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ready, begin.

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. Thank you. Can we please have the roll call?

Good evening, board members. Board member Wright?

Present.

Here. Board member Montgomery. Here. Board member Evans. Here. Board member Becker. Here. Board member Cruz. Here. Vice chair Wolgamuth. Here. Chair Siena is absent.

Thank you.

OK, we'll now move for public comment.

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We have no public comment, evidently. All right. At this time, the Board of Public Utilities hold a public hearing to receive public input related to the proposed WA-12 agricultural water service rate schedule, closure to new customers. The public hearing will be conducted to allow public comments on these issues. CHRIS JERRAM.

Chair, will it move? TODD BANDUCCI.

Yes.

I've been informed by the city attorney's office that I need to recuse myself since I am on the WA-12 rate. So I will do that.

All right. Good job. So we're open for public comment on item two. We're supposed to have an announcement here?

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So we call for presentation of item two by Brian Centurio.

Good evening, Vice Chair Wolgamuth and members of the board. I'm Brian Centurier, Assistant General Manager of Finance and Administration. And as Vice Chair Wolgamuth mentioned, the item before you tonight is the closure of the WA-12 Agricultural Service water rate to new customers. So to provide some background, in November 2017, the City Council recommended establishing an Agricultural Water Rates Task Force appointed by the Board of Public Utilities. It consisted of 16 community members and met for 13 months. And then in May and June of 2019, the task force presented its final recommendation to the board and council. And October 15, 2019, at a joint public hearing of the board and city council, the WA-12 agricultural service water rate was approved. And this also transitioned existing agricultural water rate customers to WA-12. So the agricultural water rate, or WA-12, provides a reduced water rate only for efficiently irrigated agricultural uses while the household, building, and landscape uses are charged at the applicable rate, which would be the WA-1, the residential rate, or the WA-6, the commercial rate. So the purpose of the agricultural water rate was to target the efficiently irrigated agricultural uses. I'll go into that. Along with the rate, well, the main component of the rate is the agricultural water allocation, the AWA. This was a determination of the water allocation based on local climate and seasonal variations and published data and standards. And that's the formula. It includes evapotranspiration based on Riverside's climate, crop factors based on the crop type and the water needed for each type, the irrigated area based on the planted area qualifying for the allocation, a conversion from inches to CCF, 100 cubic feet, which is what we bill on, And then the irrigation efficiency factor set at 85% for the board's direction. And all of these AWAs, the allocations are specific to each customer on the WA-12 because that irrigated area and the crop type are frequently different. Well, they're always different by customer. So here's the rate structure for the WA-12. The top is residential with residents, and the one on the bottom is commercial without residents. So the tier one is similar to the residential tier one with the same pricing. But the customers on WA-12 get their tier two, the water allocation, and that is at the same price as the residential tier one. Then their tier three is really equivalent to the residential tier two. And the agricultural tier four is all usage above that tier three, which is similar to the residential tier three, which is everything above tier two and priced at that residential tier three rate. So really they get an extension of tier one for their water allocation, agricultural water allocation. Without residents, the commercial, their tier one is the water allocation for their crops. And that's priced at the residential tier one. And then everything above that is their tier two, which is equivalent to the commercial rate. So there's a program limit that was established and the current water rate plan continued that $684,000 annual program assistance limit, which is really the under collection for the WA-12 customers as if they were to just be placed on the residential rate or the commercial rate. And then once that program limit is reached, the general manager immediately declares a schedule closed to new customers subject to the approval of the Board of Public Utilities and the City Council. Here's the customers. This is calendar year. In the first calendar year, 212 customers applied and received the rate. It's grown and really plateaued at that 245 customer count where we're at now. 39 commercial customers and 206 residential. Here's the program assistance. In that 2020, all the way to the left, the program assistance was $372,000. That's basically that AWA allocation, the agricultural allocation, how much money customers were saving as if they were on just the residential or commercial rate. So you can see they're well above that program cap of $684,000. The number of customers has since increased and we've also seen the impacts of the previous five-year rate plan and then the current five-year water rate plan. The customer usage is impacted by weather. We had a lot of precipitation in 2023 and customers used less. But projecting based on average historical usage, we expect the customers in this class, the WA-12, to get really close to actually essentially meet that $684,000 program limit by 2028. So really one year from now. At the current customer level, the 245 customers, So kind of repetitive here, but we are, when considering the five-year water rate plan and the current WA-12 customers and their allocations, we do expect to meet that $684,000 program cap, program limit by 2028. The General Manager did declare the WA-12 closed to new customers as of September 19, 2025, on the late last calendar year, and now we're seeking approval by the Board and City Council to officially close the WA-12 to new customers. The rate will exist for those 245, but it will be closed to new customers in an attempt to not exceed that program limit. Recommendations tonight are that the Board of Public Utilities conduct a public hearing to receive public input related to the proposed WA-12 agricultural service water rate schedule closure to new customers and adopt a resolution establishing the closure of the WA-12 agricultural service water rate schedule to new customers. and that the Board of Public Utilities recommend that the City Council adopt a resolution approving the closure of the WA-12 agricultural service water rate schedule to new customers. And with that, I'm available to answer any questions at the end of the public hearing.

Thank you, Brian. So we've called for public comment. We've received a couple cards. There may be callers online. We're going to do the in-house speakers first. So first up is Kevin Dawson.

Good evening, Commission. My name is Kevin Dawson. I'm in Ward 2. In 2018, I sat in on many of the task force meetings and actually substituted in for a task force member who was unavailable for a few meetings. It took over a year for the task force to complete its work and make its findings. I hate to see what took over a year be stymied or undone in just one meeting. I'd like to see the promotion of agriculture here in the city. And I think that this program does that. I think that said, nothing should be put on autopilot and expected to stay the same forever. I think that it's been. what six years going on seven and it would be a good time for a review and maybe two in to that end a new task force and paneled and given a much shorter time period to do the work say like three to six months to review the program and if there's tweaks or suggestions bring those bring those back to the Commission and to send those on to the City Council I'd like to see the program continue to have the goal of always being lawful and keeping in mind Prop 218. I have a big interest in Prop 218 and water rates here in the city. I also would like to know, you recently hired an outside consultant to do a study of costs to set new water rates and I was wondering if this particular topic, the ag water rate, was included in the study parameters going forward. That would have been useful in looking at this question. Anyway, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Next up is Guru Mantra Khalsa.

Good evening, commissioners, . I was the Ward 2 rep on the Ag Water Task Force. And I also served as the first board chair of the Riverside Food Systems Alliance. And I'm dismayed that after 10 years of Grow Riverside, All we've done is virtue signal and we have nothing virtually to show for it for the effort Your best guess is six hundred and eighty four thousand dollars of under collected monies This is a perfect example of decision debt the city lost its general fund transfer lawsuit because it violated prop 218 and now you're using prop 218 and to cut off access to the folks that in the city charter, which says agriculture is the primary use for our water supply. Ag properties have the right to their original service allocation perpetuity. And the cost of service is to pump and deliver the water. It's not for 600 fire hydrants, infrastructure, water quality issues. These are public health benefits. They need to be reclassified and allocated in different ways. Now that you're appealing the Prop 218 loss, how much money have we spent on this already? You're estimating you're a short 600-some thousand. How much have we squandered trying to be in violation of Prop 218 and kick the can down the road? You know, I know California water law is complicated, and the Ag Water Task Force recognized that. There was a huge amount of engagement. Almost everyone was willing to have another committee re-engage immediately to study this and keep it going forward because our water studies were not worth the paper they were written on. So some of the solutions we might want to consider are some special benefit property assessments that cover the maintenance and infrastructure. Fire Department has got 600 hydrants. We don't have access to that as rate payers. That's a public health benefit. That should be on their budget, not on the rate payers. We pay for it in other ways. Our agricultural investments, instead of subsidizing foreign companies to come in here, at that Ag Water Task Force, I made a report. Just citrus bioflavonoids alone, the white stuff in the citrus, at that time was a $68 billion a year market in the US alone. That doesn't cover cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertilizers, or any of the major industrial categories that use citrus that we don't process. We sell commodity prices and get the lowest common denominator. We really need to start doing a better job here. We're publicly owned, this is our utility, and we're tired of being treated like ATMs. Measure Z has proven that you are losing trust and you are rapidly running us into trouble. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Carlson. Any calls? So evidently, there's no calls from the outside. So if there are no other comments regarding this matter, the Board of Public Utilities will close the public hearing. Do we have a motion to close the public hearing?

Second.

Roll call, please.

Board member Wright. Board member Rand.

Yes.

Board member Montgomery.

Here, yes. This is a roll call, right?

Yes, you're voting.

Oh, this is a vote? To close the public hearing. Oh, yes.

Board Member Becker? Yes. Board Member Cruz?

Aye. Aye. Yes.

And Chair Wilkenmuth?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Do we have any comments from the board? Evidently, I'm the only one who has comments. So, Brian. Some questions here. Presumably, the discounted rate was to support agriculture in the city of Riverside. Is that correct?

That is correct. Qualifying agriculture according to the rate schedule.

Yes, okay Was this an RPU?

Initiative originally or were they directed by City Council directed by City Council to for the board to establish the task force and Come back with a recommendation to the board and council Okay, so

The city council suggested that RPU offer a discount rate to agricultural water users, basically using potable water to promote extra agriculture. And this was discounted. At the time, the value of the discount was determined by some formula to be $684,000.

That was the recommendation of the task force, yes, was to implement those items, which ended up being the WA-12 agricultural service water rate. Yes, you're right. And I could go into further detail on the $684,000 program limit if you'd like.

It was presumably determined by some formula, an estimate that somebody came up with, and it seemed reasonable to the people at the time.

Yes, it was our historic under collection of the previous agricultural water rate customers, the WA3 and the WA9.

They were similarly discounted?

They were discounted. Estimated discount was that $684,000 annually. So that's why it tied and was reasonable to set the program limit going forward to be that under collection at that time.

Did the task force recommend that this be a cap or limit?

It was included in the task force recommendation. I'm not aware if it was established by the task force or staff or the board, but it was included in the rate schedule brought forward.

All right. According to the report, it says staff determined that this was going to be the cap or limit. But it doesn't say anything about what the intent of the task force was.

I'm sure that's correct then.

All right. Well... I'm not sure the original intent of the task force was to have this program be limited at $684,000, considering over time new potential prospective clients or customers would be applying for this rate and the cost of water over time increasing. Well, eventually that $684,000 is going to be exceeded. But somehow it morphed into a cap that now limits the participation of new customers, unless new cap money can be found. Does that pretty much sum it up? That is correct. OK. So according to the report, this water was originally going to be made available to any property of greater than half acre in size for which there are across this RPU service territory some like 12,800 parcels that would meet this criteria.

That is correct.

And at present, only 245 participants are in the program.

Correct. Those participants applied and had the qualifying agriculture.

Right. All this presumes that they meet the standards to qualify for agriculture and have a crop plan and an efficient water irrigation plan to water the plants.

That is correct.

Okay. Okay. So it strikes me as somewhat unfair that the program is now being limited by what seems to be an arbitrary cap, just because nobody ever thought that it would be exceeded. So I guess let me ask you this. new monies were to be made available for this program to increase the value of the discount beyond $684,000, then new program participants could be admitted again?

In theory, yes.

OK. Is there anything preventing us from adding to that $684,000?

It's not a recommendation this evening. I would welcome the city attorney to add also, if she'd like, but increasing the use of non-rate revenue to contribute to this program It could be slightly risky at this time. Times have changed. There are a lot of court cases out there challenging water rates in California, and it could be slightly risky as far as future litigation if we were to allocate additional other revenue to this program.

I don't exactly understand that. Perhaps a city attorney could like me.

Thank you, Chair Wolgamuth. Susan Wilson, Assistant City Attorney. So WA-12 does address this issue. In Section 11, under additional conditions, it says that the City Council may, by resolution, identify such additional non-rate revenues and increase the program limit set forth herein. So it lies with the City Council. to determine if there are non-rate revenues, the use of which would not violate Prop 218, are available. So the City Council could certainly make that, go through that analysis. And it could be general fund dollars, or it could be other non-rate revenue, the use of which does not violate Prop 218.

Okay, so the City Council is in charge of making that decision?

Correct, under the right.

Okay. I think the board here should recommend that the city council explore ways to increase that cap or limit so that new participants could be eligible to join this program. It seems to me that if there's really 12,800 properties that could potentially qualify, and there's only 245 participants, there's a lot of people out there that could take advantage of this program. but haven't probably because they don't even know it exists. So I would think that there is the possibility of potentially new agricultural startups that could take advantage of this opportunity. So if the intent of the original program was to support and promote agriculture within the city of Riverside, I don't think it's said, but only up to a cab of 684,000. I think if you're going to have it, you're going to have it for everybody. It's a fairness issue, is the way I see it, more than anything else. And I would like to incorporate any motion that comes out of here to at least explore the opportunities of expanding the program so more people could participate. Any other comments from the board? OK. And I guess I'm calling for a motion.

I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO MOVE STAFF'S RECOMMENDATION.

SECOND.

OKAY. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

BOARD MEMBER WRIGHT.

YES.

BOARD MEMBER RAMP.

YES.

BOARD MEMBER MONTGOMERY.

YES.

BOARD MEMBER BECKER. YES. Yes. Vice Chair Wolgenmuth?

No.

Motion passes unanimously. Or I'm so sorry. Motion passes. Vice Chair Wolgenmuth dissenting. Thank you.

All right. I guess that closes the public hearing and response. We now call for David Garcia to present item number three.

Vice Chair, I'll wait for Board Member Evans to rejoin us real quick here. Vice Chair Wilgemuth, members of the board, now it's time to present the Employees of the Year recognition for 2025. This is one of my favorite times of year. We actually get to recognize all the hard work of all the employees that are here at the City of Riverside Public Utilities Department. It is. We are a large department. We're the largest department in the city. So you can imagine that the selections of the employees of the year is sometimes difficult because we do have stellar staff here at the city of Riverside that are dedicated, loyal and very dedicated. TUNE TO THEIR PARTICULAR ROLES AND JOBS HERE AT THE CITY AND THE UTILITIES DEPARTMENT. THE EXECUTIVE TEAM CONSIDERS NOMINATIONS FOR EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR THROUGH THEIR DIVISIONS EACH YEAR AND AT THE END OF THAT DECISION WE TYPICALLY HAVE ONE, TWO, TWO TO THREE EMPLOYEES WITHIN A PARTICULAR DIVISIONS THAT HAVE floated to the top, have met beyond expectations of their managers, their supervisors, and the executive team. So it's with my pleasure, I'd like to call up for the presentation of the employee of the year, starting off with Mr. Honeyfield.

Good evening members of the board. Daniel Honeyfield, Assistant General Manager, Energy Delivery. Really excited to kick off the Employees of the Year. Have two in my division this year, two outstanding stellar employees. We'll start with It's going to work. There we go. Rudy Villavicencio. Rudy is a principal engineer in our engineering department. He was a key, or I should say, supervisor over multiple key initiatives and programs, starting with the 4 to 12 conversion program. We've come to the board recently many times. Hunter substation upgrades of the Hunter circuits, converting those to 12 kV conversion. as well as other circuits in our system, completely eliminating our goal of the 4kV system in the upcoming years, and have all of that converted to today's standard of 12kV. Instrumental in leading these efforts, standardizing our distribution system, and that will improve our system reliability and capacity as well. This also supports our long-term load growth and initiatives. Very instrumental as well in the cable replacement program. A lot of our cable out in our infrastructure is 50, 60 plus years old. Tends to have cable failures, causing outages to our customers. Him and his team have been, again, instrumental in these programs and ensuring we get that cable replaced before it does fail. The Northside Electric Cost Estimates, another big program. Lots of growth out there from the city, different projects, the new soccer stadium, the new water park, and other things that are happening on the north side of the city of Riverside. He has been instrumental in collaborating with city staff and making sure that we build the right infrastructure. And then another key project to highlight is the citywide LED conversion program. So all of our streetlights have since been converted to LED, and Rudy was responsible for overseeing that program and his staff. More than 25,000 LED streetlights have been successfully replaced, thus reducing energy on the system. Those are much more energy efficient, ensuring reliability and public safety. So at this time, I'd like to ask Rudy to come on down the stage and join me. Maybe take some, I guess we got a photographer and we can take some pictures. So, how about a round of applause for Rudy?

Board members, if you wouldn't mind joining us just for a quick photo here with Rudy. And then also, Rudy, you could be, Rudy, if you'd like to ask your family to join you for the photo, that's up to you.

This is... Bye. Bye.

All right, next Energy Delivery Division, Ramona Martinez. Ramona has been the backbone of Electric Field for many years. She is a steady force for the division, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. I can't tell you how many times I reach out to Ramona directly to her. She's great getting the information back, giving us status on projects, a lot of different requests that we get. Maybe it's from council members or even maybe some of you board members asking about different projects and things ramona is the go-to person she definitely performs above and beyond she's been managing crew scheduling technical coordination high level decision making she's definitely a selfless mentor mentoring a lot of our new staff up and coming helping out with the field personnel down at the utility operations center her knowledge is surpassed by her integrity and commitment She has an amazing positive attitude and is really a pleasure to work with. Ramona doesn't just do the job. She defines what excellent looks like in the electric field. We want to thank her for her 30 plus years of going above and beyond every single day. And that quote was directly from her supervisor. So I just wanted to share that tonight. And again, congratulate Ramona on Employee of the Year for 2025. And Ramona, if you'll join me for some more pictures.

Good. Give some interest.

Yay!

Hi, again, I'm Brian Sentieri, Assistant General Manager of Finance and Administration. And on behalf of Tracy Sotto, Assistant General Manager of Strategic Initiatives, I'm here to announce the Employee of the Year for Customer Engagement. It's Andrew Galvin, our utility principal program services rep on the customer engagement team. Andrew is always going above and beyond. As a central appoint person working with key media and communications for the customer engagement team, Andrew works on almost every project the team does. He helps and develops everything from flyers and to the presentations giving at Good Morning Riverside, which was recently hosted by RPU last Thursday. They were early morning over at the Mission Inn. All right. He captures the heart of the customer engagement team, so it shows through all of its, all RPU media. He's instrumental in coordinating RPU's hosting of the California Municipal Utilities Association ACES Conference. That's their customer engagement conference. We hosted that last year. Andrew was a huge part of the success of that conference. He makes RPU and his team shine. He supports the team developing several award applications for which RPU won and works to develop the messaging on all customer programs. So he's really outward facing and he exemplifies servant leadership. He was a leader in the development of the RPU Braille and large print document which received an APPA Award for Excellence in Communication where we received our national recognition for that. So Andrew, congratulations.

Thank you.

All right, and we're going to keep celebrating. For business systems, a team under the finance and administration team, which is, they're the backbone. They keep our systems up and running. They're by the scenes, meter to cash. And then systems like asset management and also our call center. But this employee of the year is Joseph Chavez, our principal business systems analyst. Joseph has done an amazing job. He facilitated the RPU department-wide effort to close out 3,000 electric and water UM, that's asset management work orders. So each one of our projects is assigned a work order, and that's how we track those projects. We realized we had a lot to close out to ensure financial accuracy and timely reporting, and Joseph was really instrumental in making sure that that happened, working with both many individuals from the electric and water teams, He was an instrumental subject matter expert in the digital modernization enterprise resource project. So that's our project to upgrade our asset management system. Basically, we determined our needs assessment. So before we issue an RFP, we need to clearly document over hundreds of pages what our needs are going to be. So any consultant knows exactly what we're looking for and we make sure that they can meet our needs. That's where Joseph was our subject matter expert. He set up a work order process for the preventative maintenance asset inspections for Waterfield. And then that fourth one there, he configured, tested, and implemented the asset management electric and water work order fixed asset threshold increase from $5,000 to $10,000. Doesn't seem like much there, but anything below $10,000 is operations and maintenance, and anything over $10,000 goes and gets capitalized as an asset and then depreciated. Joseph configured that to make sure everything was working properly. And thank you, Joseph, and congratulations for your Employee of the Year, and thank you for your efforts. Come on up. Joseph's joined by his wife and two children.

Thank you.

Good evening, board members. Robin Glennie, assistant general manager of water. And tonight I am here to present the employee of the year for water, who is Pasquale Mendeville. He is a water superintendent over maintenance and SCADA assets. His team keeps the water system running. He has over 20 years of experience and uses that experience to help mentor staff and maintain the highest standards of safety and performance throughout the water system and the staff there. Safety leadership, ensuring all of our staff are safe while they're out in the field, ensuring that he is supporting the efforts of our safety department and rolling them out and enforcing them. He has operational excellence, helping us author SOPs to document our processes and procedures, improving consistency, safety, and efficiency. He has led electrical control panel upgrades, enhancing system reliability at a lot of our well sites that are aging. maintained lighting upgrades to increase safety and visibility at some of our treatment plants in remote locations, and has been excellent at emergency response, responding after hours, restoring critical equipment to keep the water running, especially during peak heat events. So with that, I would like to congratulate Wally. And he is joined tonight with his family.

I am. I just keep walking.

Yay!

So on behalf of the board, I want to extend our congratulations to all the employees of the year. And keep up the good work. We really appreciate all you do. Thank you. All right, moving along. Agenda item four, I will ask board members if anyone has any conflicts of interest to disclose on any items on our agenda.

Yeah, I'd like to disclose and recuse myself with respect to item number nine on tonight's agenda.

All right, Gary. Thank you for speaking up. We will now move to the consent calendar. Does anyone wish to pull an item on consent? Hearing none, I'd like to have a motion.

Move approval. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Please vote.

Sorry, please vote again. Someone hasn't voted.

I think I pushed my button.

There it is. Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. All right. We will then move to the discussion calendar. We will now open public comment for item 7.

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Okay, item seven, we call on Who? Do we have somebody from the Board of Ethics here? How are we going to move forward on this? I'm not sure. OK. For item number seven, a discussion will be held by the Board of Public Utilities to review the Riverside Municipal Code Chapter 2.78, Code of Ethics and Conduct, and forward Revisioned recommendations to the Board of Ethics for consideration. Before this discussion, by the board, we can take public comment. Do we have any public comment? Pardon me? OK. OK, no comments from the public. I guess we're going to ask for comments or recommendations from the board. So just to review, last meeting we had a presentation by the Board of Ethics on the ethics review for the year. And I guess we're coming back now for specific recommendations that we could pass on to the Board of Ethics in order for them to make any improvements in their product for the next year. Any comments? Tom?

Yeah, I can't find it on my list here, but I just had one. This is something we talked about. Under the prohibited actions, the current policy is that the people covered by this can't put campaign material on city vehicles. And I would recommend that we change that to say they can't put campaign material on any city property, including power poles, street light poles, but not limited to those, but those as examples. And that way, well, it makes it much more difficult for a person who is an incumbent to use city facilities like streetlight poles and power poles, which are used frequently for that purpose, and be subject to an ethics violation. I would make that recommendation. It was category H, I think, but for some reason I can't find it on the OK.

I'm confused by your motion here, because I think this is prohibited behavior by board members.

And council. And council. I said those covered by the Board of Ethics policy, which includes us and the city council.

What stops a private person from putting a campaign sign up on a telephone pole?

City codes and ordinances.

OK.

But that's not an ethics complaint issue because they're not covered by the ethics policy.

Right. All right. I'm just trying to clarify your point here. So you would recommend that expanding the posting of campaign literature and bumper stickers and other materials to not only include vehicles, but also other public pieces of property or the like.

Yes. OK. And I would include that, for example, power poles and street light poles.

OK. They seem to be a frequent target come election time. Yep. I've noticed. especially because they never get taken down. Okay. Any other recommendations from the board?

I just had a question. Did we get clarification on use of personal vehicles when people are out conducting city business? We may have individuals that are You know, going to and from doing city business in their private vehicles, not necessarily anything that's marked or designated specifically as owned by the city. Do we get any definition on that? Any clarification on that?

We never got clarification on that. Perhaps legal could weigh in on that.

Great question. So the code only applies to appointed and elected officials, and no appointed official has a city vehicle. And the same for the city council members. They don't drive city. They don't have an issued car. But I guess if they were using one of the fleet cars, there is a prohibition on, I think that might be already addressed. Just looking through the code of ethics. Display of campaign materials in or on city vehicles prohibited. So that's in HR ready. No, no official of the city of Riverside shall display campaign materials on city owned or provided vehicles under their control. But you're saying that they also can't use the vehicles to travel to a...

I think it's more just a clarification because some individuals may use their personal vehicles while conducting city business. And I didn't know if that fell into that jurisdiction of effectively being like a city vehicle in those moments.

Oh, no. You still retain ownership of your car if you're using your personal vehicle. It doesn't transform it into a city vehicle.

So that would keep it away from this language. Correct.

Correct. Otherwise, they would have no way to get to their campaign activities.

Uber. Other comments, recommendations about the Board of Ethics presentation that we received last meeting? All right. Well, I have at least one. I think it serves little point to go through the minutia of the process and procedure of how a Board of Ethics complaint is raised, how it's processed through the Board of Ethics, the appeal process, all that. which took up the bulk of the presentation. That's really kind of beside the point, in my opinion. It's great to know that it's out there and that if we are subjected or are caught doing bad behavior and we're faced with an ethics violation, that we can look up that information, like on a website somewhere, and find out what our roles and responsibilities and rights are. But I don't think it served any purpose for us to be presented that material at a meeting like this. So I think the presentation should have focused on the prohibited behavior and why, if there's nuances to that, like personally owned vehicles or something like that, We should have covered that in more detail at that time. So if we were going to make recommendations, well, if I was going to make a recommendation to the Board of Ethics, I would say we don't need the minutia of the process itself. We just need to concentrate on the prohibited behaviors. Reaction? Anybody else have anything to say about that? So my understanding is that we have until the end of this month to get recommendations back to the Board of Ethics. That's what I think I read in the notes somewhere.

That's correct. The Municipal Code provides that by the end of August, the Board of Ethics agendizes and discusses the recommendations of other boards and commissions. So if they meet the first week of August, that means they publish the week before? Five days before. So if you were to defer this to your next meeting on the 28th, I don't think you would make the deadline to get onto their agenda.

My next question would be, if we were going to provide feedback to the Board of Ethics, how do we do that specifically? Do we go through our secretary?

Typically, the boards and commissions make a formal motion saying these are our comments to be passed on to the Board of Ethics because it comes from the board, not from individuals.

Okay. So I guess we need to agree on a motion that we would send back to the Board of Ethics. Can I get a... A proposal or a motion that includes some of the comments we've heard on the dais tonight.

OK, well, that's kind of what I thought I was doing. I make a motion that we give the Board of Ethics specific recommendation that category under the prohibited activities item H, I think it is, right, Susan? That it's a prohibited action to put campaign material on any city property, including vehicles, power poles, and streetlight poles, but not just limited to those. And a motion.

Second. All right. Can I amend that motion and say that we don't need the... Maybe you could make a second motion if I'd be so bold. Okay.

I'll second the first one.

Okay. Are we going to then have competing motions? No. Oh. Okay. Then I make a motion that...

I have a vote.

Oh, okay. Let's vote on the motion that's been made and seconded.

Please vote. Motion passes unanimously.

All right. Then at this time, I'd like to make a second motion that the presentation to the Board of Public Utilities by the member of the Board of Ethics eliminate the process and procedures of the complaint filing and appeal and so forth, and concentrate on the prohibited behaviors. End of motion.

Second.

OK, call for a vote.

Please vote. Motion passes unanimously.

Other motions? OK, hearing none, I guess we'll close this item and move on to item 8. So we are now open for public comments for item 8.

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 star 9. When called to speak, press star 6 to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

So we now call for a presentation of item 8 by Jessica Spiking.

Good evening, board members. My name is Jessica Spiking. I'm a utilities resource analyst with the Power Generation Division. I'm pleased to present to you the item tonight for emissions testing and environmental consulting services for all three of our power plants. The City of Riverside owns and operates three power plants, Springs, Clearwater, and the Riverside Energy Resource Center. Together, these facilities have the availability to provide a combined total of 260 megawatts of electricity. The availability of these facilities is critical to ensuring that RPU can meet the customer electricity demands, especially during the summer months. These facilities must comply with stringent operating permits as well as regulatory regulations. Each facility is issued its separate operating permit and must comply with numerous regulatory requirements. Some of these requirements include the continuous monitoring of emissions, mandatory emissions testing must be performed by a certified testing company on all nine of the units, as well as the preparation and submittal of more than 3,300 regulatory reports annually. In addition to these existing requirements, South Coast Air Quality Management District is currently undergoing transition with new rules and regulations. These changes and these significant rule transitions are expected to impact our permitting language for each of the facilities, as well as the monitoring, reporting, and record keeping requirements. Given the complexity of navigating these regulations and the high volume of reports, additional technical expertise is critical to ensuring that those facilities maintain a high level of compliance. Ontaris, formerly known as Montrose, has supported RPU facilities by providing the very unique service of both emissions testing and environmental consulting services. They provide the integrated solution by having those two services under a single contract. They are the only company in this industry that provides that integrated service. Also on Terrace has been supporting the city and the facilities for over 20 years. So they have direct historical knowledge of all of our operating permits, any regulatory history or permit modifications that we've undergone. They have been a part of that and supported that for more than 20 years. With this historical knowledge, they are able to provide us with timely resolutions to any complex regulatory matters, which is critical when you're dealing with time-sensitive decision-making for any sort of noncompliance issue. Ontario has provided a proposal for a five-year term for emissions testing and environmental consulting services. We negotiated favorable pricing for this five-year contract. They capped their annual rate for these emissions test rates as well as consulting rates at 5% annually. To give you an example of the costs for these proposals, the RATA test is called the Relative Accuracy Test Audit. That's the most expensive admissions test that we perform at the facilities. And their proposal is a little over $8,600. And the market cost for those in 2025 is approximately $15,000. So they are giving us really favorable pricing for this particular test. That's a minimum savings about $50,000 per year based on a minimum of nine tests because we have the nine units. Additional cost savings come from our experience and the time that we've had with Ontarius for the emissions testing. We were able to work with them and optimize our testing schedule, meaning we can perform the test required in one sitting. Instead of having to perform one test one day, one test another day, we worked with them and were able to combine the tests. So by doing that, it saves us approximately $52,000 or more a year by doing the optimization. This next slide's just an outline of the amount that we expect to spend on emissions testing, plus approximately 400 hours of as-needed consulting services. We will only be charged for what our actual expenditures are and what the actual tests that are performed. This amount is not a guaranteed payment to OnTerrace. with that we recommend that the board of public utilities recommend that the city council approve a professional consultant services agreement with on terrace usa of little rock arkansas to provide emissions testing and environmental consulting services at the three power plants for a five-year term commencing july 1st 2027 through june 30th 2032 for a total agreement amount of $1,723,815 and authorize the city manager or designee to execute the professional consultant services agreement with On Terrace USA, including making minor and non-substantive changes subject to the availability of budgeted funds. That concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions.

Thank you, Jessica. Are there any public comments on this item? Evidently no public comments. Any comments from the board?

I have a question.

Go ahead.

What level of professional liability insurance do we require them to have?

I believe it's $2 million.

Okay, so you consider that sufficient in terms of the consequence of error on their part?

Good evening, Jim Perez, principal resource analyst. That is the template, the insurance requirements that's a standard for the city, and it has been adequate for us at this point.

Have you ever had to file a claim?

Not an insurance claim. But we have had maybe one or two occasions where they've made a mistake and they came back and fixed it. But nothing substantial.

Other comments? Naturally, I have a few. All right. The bottom line is that these people have been doing the work for 20 years. They're well-versed with the system. They know everything inside and out. They are one-stop shopping. The only possible issue would be that it borders on a sole source contract. So we're not opening it up to anybody else. However, according to the report, you've done informal research outside looking at other utilities, and you found that the pricing is competitive across the board. So it seems that... This is a no-brainer. Why would we change horses at this stage and go with somebody else when we have a proven track record of people who have done the job successfully? And I assume that you're all very happy with their performance. So I support this measure. So any other comments? In that case, I need a motion.

Motion to approve. Second.

motion passes unanimously thank you thank you

Chair Wilgemuth? Yes. I'd like just to make a brief announcement. Jim Perez is retiring. This is his last hurrah here with the city after 17 years. He's retiring on Thursday, so we just want to congratulate him on his retirement. Thank you, Jim. Good job.

We'll put him back down here so we can ask him more questions.

That's right. Come back. We have more questions.

Let him off too easy.

Okay, we're now open for public comment for item nine. 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 star nine. When called to speak, press star six to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

We call for a presentation by Daniel Honeyfield on item nine.

Good evening, board members. Daniel Honeyfield, assistant general manager Energy Delivery. Tonight, we're looking for your approval to increase change order authority for bid number 8146 to outsource utility contractor LLC. This is for the Springs Reliability Project Phase 2, and thus increase the work order number 2321785. Before I jump into it, I want to talk a little bit about the history of the project, and then we'll talk about the need for the change order. So the Springs Circuit Reliability Project, its purpose is to enhance the circuit transfer capability of Springs substation. For those of you who don't know, Springs is out on the southeast side of our system. And so there's not a lot of circuit ties you can imagine if you had a substation in the middle of the city, such as maybe Plaza, where it ties to multiple substations that surround it, such as Riverside. Mountain View, many others that are around. So this is kind of almost out there a little bit by itself in a way. And there's been a lot of load growth in that area and the need for additional circuit ties is very much needed. And so that was the intent of the circuit, the spring circuit reliability project, both phase one and two. So I established additional tie points to the Orange Crest substation. This will effectively improve the reliability. If in case of an outage, we'll be able to transfer that load fairly quickly to adjacent circuits, get customers back in service as soon as possible. And also it adds additional capacity. Like I mentioned, the load growth in that area, improving our response times to electrical outages, increasing safety, of course. Improves electrical services power quality and also providing a new infrastructure that will last for many decades to come So the first phase which was approved in August 28th of 23 It was for the design construction of the extensions of circuits 1572 and 1573 along Sycamore Canyon Boulevard to Alessandro Boulevard and Barton Street and Also new tie switches were added to enable the connections between with La Colina substation. And then phase two was most recently approved September 22nd of 2025. And this was to outsource utility contractor for the civil construction portion of the project and additionally new tie switches to create circuit ties with Orange Crest substation. So to provide additional reliability for the spring substation. So phase two, this project's located north of Alessandro Boulevard on Mission Grove Parkway along Alessandro West of Barton. The scope of work was installation of approximately 2,228 trench feet. I'm not sure why we say approximately, because that's a pretty good number. But anyhow, trench feet is looked at more, if you think of just linear feet, right? So that's from A to B. But within that trench is multitude of conduits. could be up to 10 in some areas. So for example, you could have four fives and four five-inch conduits. And on top of that, four-inch conduits. On top of that, two-inch conduits. So we really utilize that trench. And in some cases, we even do joint trench with other utilities to really take advantage of the one trench. And we work out those costs appropriately based on their needs. But the idea being that it's more efficient. And so we don't have multiple trenches for multiple utilities. Anyways, part of the scope of work as well was to installation of vaults and a pad-mounted junction cabinet, also known as a PJC. That's another point where a cable can come in. Multiple cables then go out. Almost think of it like a splice point, if you will. And then some pad-mounted switch enclosures, slab boxes, and other related facilities. And of course, asphalt replacement, all the restoration required when you dig trenches. Construction of phase two began in February of this year. During construction, we're in the middle of construction, we have open trenches, we discovered a large discrepancy in the quantities between the bid amounts and the actual work requested per the plans. So existing 10% change order of this project was 114, just over $114,000 and that only covered, unfortunately, a portion of the necessary additional work. So costs for the additional work totaled over $327,000. Now, the discrepancies were additional conduit to be installed. We had almost a mile of, unfortunately, a mile of 5-inch conduit that was missed in the bid units. It was on the plans. So in a way, it's the work that we still wanted to get done. We intended to have bid out. We just messed up. Unfortunately it was overseen and here we are today coming back to ask for the additional change order authority increasing the amount of the total project contract amount with the contractor. So a little bit of the project breakdown here. As you can see, the design inspection work, the electrical work performed by our own internal staff, and then the civil construction work that was performed by outsource utility contractor. The total work order amount that was approved back in August 11th was $3,285,000. The additional increase amount of $213,000. And then the revised amount would bring the total to $3.4 million. Just over $3.4 million. So the recommendations is to authorize additional change order authority for bid number 8146 to outsource utility contractor of Los Angeles, California for the Springs Circuit Reliability Project Phase 2 in a not exceed amount of $213,071.51. And two, approve additional funding for work order number 2321785 in the amount of $213,071.51 for a revised total capital expenditure of $3,498,071.51, which includes all design, construction, construction support, contract administration, inspection, and construction change order authority for the Supreme Circuit Reliability Project Phase II. Authorize the city manager a designee to execute any documents necessary to effectuate the project described herein, as well as the ability to make minor non-substantive changes in alignment with all purchase policies. That concludes my presentation tonight. Joining me tonight is Engineering Manager Efren Mejia and Principal Engineer Rudy Villavicencio. We're here to answer any questions you may have in regards to this.

Thank you for the presentation. Do we have any public comment? Evidently we have no public comment, so comments from the board. Christian.

Yes, can you just talk a little bit about what has been implemented so that the oversight doesn't happen again?

Yeah, I can briefly talk about it, maybe high level, and I'll ask the two gentlemen to give a little bit more detail. But mainly is to have a quality assurance to review the drawings, compare those to the bid units, ensure that we have captured everything. Like I mentioned earlier, we had over a mile of five-inch conduit that was missed, and that was one of the larger ticket items. We also had 615 feet of additional trenching that was needed. And 1,955 feet of two-inch conduit. Again, on the drawings, not on the bid units. So we're going to have a higher, greater quality assurance program to ensure that those match. Efren, I believe, had mentioned as well we're going to have a peer review program put in place to ensure things like this don't slip through the cracks. Now again, this is, we intended to go out to bid with this amount. I should also mention that we did go back, look at all the bids, and we ran the numbers again. Outsource was the lowest, still the lowest bidder. So again, it's just unfortunate that they didn't make it over to the bid sheet for them to bid on. But it was work that was needed and intended to be done. Anything else to add?

The only comment I would add is our supervisor in charge of the project, the design project, has taken it very serious. The work at hand right now is to speak, to implement a peer-to-peer review, and the actual signatures that we require are pretty strong and equally validated, and we're sure that the business and the action plans check that they're exactly identical, and we'll have signatures on that. I think, Gary, personally, that

Can you hear me? My apologies. Efren Mejia, engineering manager. I've spoken to the supervisor in charge. He has taken this task very serious. He acknowledged that a stringent, more accurate QAQC effort will be implemented. We will implement a peer-to-peer review along with his review, so there'll be at least two more points of review, and we'll implement signatures on the plans and on the bid list, on the bid units, to ensure that both numbers match before projects are issued for bidding.

Other comments? Yes, Tom.

Well, excuse me. I just want to make sure you sort of repeat the fact that this company, had everything been correct, their bid would have still been the lowest evaluated bidder?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that is correct. We went back through all the numbers, the line items, put in the correct quantities with all of the bidders, and it was determined that they were still the lowest bidder.

So the bidder provides the material. That's not a separate line that you do. You go out and get the material.

That's correct. And they provided the conduit material. That's what I mean. Yes, and the bolts and things, yes.

Okay. Well, I'll just say, fortunately, it's only money. And it's not a person that gets affected by bad design, bad procedures. And technically, you're right. We probably would have said yes to this in the first place had anybody had been right. But I also remember a few weeks ago, months ago, another project that came here where there was an underestimate on something as paving. We had to adjust the paving. And the answer was, well, we're electrical engineers. We don't know about all this civil stuff, which stuck with me because I don't accept that answer. And so I think that, again, within your quality assurance, it needs to include consulting with people who are civil engineers. If that's what you need, then that's what they ought to be. But to miss the trenching, it just worries me that we hear excuses, but well, it worries me just hearing excuses. Technically, we can't say no to this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

just to clarify the initial work was completed the trance was filled and repaved everything so we're talking about reopening that those designated areas correct

No, the work has been done. We will not be reopened. The work's actually already been performed.

Okay, so it's not going to have any delays or extended times impacting the community in the area?

That was the concern, right? That's why we did move forward with the work, because of the safety concerns on the community, the traffic being Alessandro Boulevard having open trench. The decision was made to move forward.

So this work's complete, so we're basically just settling the bill at this point?

Other comments? All right, so it's clear that This is not the contractor's fault. This is an internal RPU problem that you're taking steps to rectify so that it won't happen again. We pretty much have to move forward with this item in order to get it completed. It's unfortunate. Everybody is chagrined. And we cross our fingers, and we do a better job. So I support this project, and it sounds like there's really no alternative here. CHRISTIAN, ONE MORE.

JUST FOR THE CITY ATTORNEY, SO SINCE IT'S ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED, IT'S DONE, ARE WE RATIFYING THEN THAT?

NO, YOU ARE APPROVING THE EXPENDITURE. IF YOU DECLINE TO APPROVE THE EXPENDITURE, THEN WE WOULD HAVE TO ADDRESS THAT WITH THE CONTRACTOR. OKAY. BUT THE CHARTER REQUIRES THAT YOU APPROVE ALL EXPENDITURES IN EXCESS OF $50,000.

Any other comments?

I'll just move to approve. I was going to say that we need a motion. I'll move to approve.

Board Member Wright?

Yes.

Board Member Rand?

Yes.

Board Member Evans?

Yes.

Board Member Becker? Yes. Board Member Cruz? Yes. Vice Chair Wolgamuth? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

And we have Board Member Montgomery rejoin.

He's going to finish his go.

All right, we now call for public comment for item 10.

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 star 9. When called to speak, press star 6 to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

OK, with that, we call for a presentation of item 10 by Robin Glennie.

Good evening, board members. My name is Robin Glennie, assistant general manager of water. I'm here tonight to present to you the gauge water transfer and olive wood conveyance agreement. I want to start off by stating this is in the board report. But if this item passes tonight, it will be heard at council tomorrow. If it does not pass tonight, it will be pulled. So I just want to make sure that that is clear. The Gage Canal Company operates infrastructure to produce and deliver non-plottable water to shareholders and contract holders. In 2025, the Olivewood Pipeline, which is part of their infrastructure, developed a leak in the BNSF railroad right-of-way, rendering the pipeline inoperable. Gage has been diligently working with the railroad to gain access to investigate and repair the Olivewood Pipeline. The Gage Canal Company is a California nonprofit corporation with a rich history in the city and the citrus industry. In 1965, the city acquired Gage Water Rights and Assets via a friendly condensation agreement. After which an operating agreement was executed that stipulates Gage continues to operate and maintain the infrastructure for production and delivery of non-potable water. The top picture is artesian wells. We still use wells in this area, but they are no longer artesian. The bottom picture is an early picture of the canal. The gauge production and conveyance. Gauge utilizes various wells on the Bunker Hill groundwater basin to deliver water to the gauge pipeline and the gauge canal, which is that yellowish line to the far right of your screen, and going down into the darker blue line, which is the canal area. The Olivewood wells, Olivewood 1, 2, and 3, so three separate wells, are in the Riverside groundwater basin and deliver water to the Olivewood pipeline and customers along that pipeline as well as the Gage Canal. So it is in the Riverside basin, the lower left-hand yellow line that goes across and into the Gage Canal. That pipeline did leak. That is an image of the leak after some cleanup happened, so not a good weekend. It resulted in water and soil to flow onto nearby railroad tracks, stopping the lines. The wells were shut down, and the pipeline was dewatered to mitigate any risk or future impacts to the railroad operations and surrounding infrastructure. Gage hired a consultant to investigate the location of the leak or leaks and prepare estimates for either repair, lining, or replacement of the olive wood pipeline. This is a very lengthy process to get into pothole, investigate, come up with a plan. And during this time, the customers fed by this pipeline have been out of water from the Gage system. So RPU's Riverside Canal Pipeline runs parallel to the Olivewood Well Pipeline. With modifications, the Riverside Canal Pipeline can convey gauged Olivewood Well water and or transfer Riverside Canal water And those modifications would consist of connecting service laterals and valves from the Riverside Canal pipeline to those service lines that are existing on the Olivewood line. If approved, the work will be completed by RPU Water Field Forces. And it has an estimated cost of about $96,316, which will be reimbursed by Gage. Conveyance fees will not be charged to gauge as a transfer of water will benefit the city by providing operational flexibility in the summer months and cost savings on treatment needs. Here is a schematic, very high level, not to scale, cartoon schematic. So across the freeway near RCC are the olive wood wells. They come across in that blue line and feed customers by the service laterals. And then any water not fed to those customers ends up in the gauge canal. The booster station pulls water from the riverside canal, goes up the green line, and ends up in the Gage Canal where it blends with that Bunker Hill groundwater and delivers water to customers downstream of that point. The modification would be that little elbow in orange and the two valves in red. So kind of hard to show in the report, but that little illustration is what we would do in all the service laterals to get those customers water because currently there's no connection to the service laterals to the Riverside Canal pipeline or the Olivewood Well pipeline. So the recommendation tonight is that the board of public utilities approve work order two six two seven three zero four and the amount of $97,000 for service lateral modifications. I recommend that the city council approved the gauge water transfer and olive wood conveyance agreement and authorize the city manager or designee to execute the agreement and making minor and non-substantive changes. And with that, I am available for questions.

Thank you, Robin. Do we have any public comment? Would the caller through, please?

Good evening. Hello?

Hello.

Hello, Chair Wolgamath, I'd like to comment. I'd like to record my opposition to, well, first of all, my name's Carl Pongs, commenting on item 10, particularly the agreement that's attached to this. The title of it is Gauge Water Transfer. I sent in a letter to the clerk and I'd like to read it. As team directors of the RP board, I've reviewed the presentation and supporting documents on agenda item 10. concerning the proposed gage water transfer olive wood conveyance agreement. The Gage Canal Board is currently dark, therefore they could not have given this agreement an appropriate review or voted on its content before such time as this RPU meeting taking place. The current proposed agreement attached to item 10 has both financial implications and resource reallocations that directly affect the cost to all shareholders, not just the City of Riverside. As a concerned citizen and member of the Gage Canal Board, it is my opinion that this agenda item should be polled and tabled until such time as the full board, including the city appointed representatives, can vet the gauge transfer olive wood wet water conveyance agreement as proposed. Engaged canal bylaws provide that no water will be sold or delivered for any purpose other than the irrigation without the specific action of the full board of directors authorizing the same and establishing the terms and conditions thereof. To the extent that there is extra water, the bylaws also state that extra water shall be distributed by the management at the direction of the board and sold at such rates that the board of directors may determine. I have no evidence to support the implication that the Gage Board of Directors has authorized this agreement. Our few board actions approving and executing this agreement without the full board participation leaves it subject to challenge until, unless and until it has been properly authorized Temporarily tabling this item until the board meeting resumes would avoid unnecessary delays and revisions. Thank you.

Thank you. Other callers? No other callers. All right. No other callers. Do we have any comments from the board? Gary.

Do you have any response to the caller's comments or objections?

I'll defer to Susan Wilson from the city attorney's office.

We don't have any information as to whether or not the Gage Board approved this or not. We just rely upon our counterparty to go through their proper procedures. We focus on whether or not we have appropriate authority to sign the contract on behalf of the city.

Thank you.

Can we do?

If the board and the city council approve the agreement, then the city manager will be authorized to execute the agreement on behalf of the city of Riverside.

Thank you. Other comments from the board? Tom.

thank you for so I'd like to thank Robin for moving this forward I know sometimes we don't like to see and I am coming here and then be at the city council meeting the following day but if it weren't if we had to wait to be another two weeks before council would see it and we have to recognize there are customers or shareholders customers who have not had water for almost a year that are on Rumsey drive that are all served off of this pipe. And so They deserve to, I think it's important to show that bureaucracy can move at a little more than glacial speed when it needs to, and I do appreciate the fact that Robin did that. It's my understanding that the Gage Board did have an email vote on this item, as far as the Gage process goes. As a gage board member. I know I voted so I can speak directly to that. It's not hit not hearsay anyway But it's important that again the word reimburse the city's not going to be out of dime and Recage Canal shareholders are going to reimburse the city for 100% of the cost to make this connection. And so those, again, those shareholders that are on Rumsey Drive and Ivy Street and maybe another one, will finally have the share of the water that they would be allocated under the gauge should shareholder process so I think it's important that we move this forward and the other point is that we're maybe getting into the weeds about Gage Canal that we don't tend to talk enough about here, but the water quality that comes from the olive wood wells by RCC is a lower quality than the water that comes from Bunker Hill. I mean, Bunker Hill water is drinking water. The other water is not. This process will allow the city to tap another source, but the Colton Basin, I guess it is, which has water quality that's kind of in the middle. But to the extent that that water is used, then the gauge shareholders who get water off the canal will have a slightly higher quality than they would if they were otherwise using the olive wood Wells at RCC. So it's a little nuance. Most people wouldn't even recognize the difference. But it is a factor that isn't one more reason to do this. So anyway, I think it's important that we move this process forward.

Other comments? I agree that it's important to move this process forward. However, I'm unclear now, based on Tom Evans' comment here. The water's still coming from the Olivewood Wells, correct?

Yes, so the Gage Canal water comes from Bunker Hill, from the Gage assets, and there is a valve that turns water into the system to be blended with other well water to become potable and delivered to the drinking water system. And there is a valve that allows some of the water to go to the Gage Canal for their deliveries. So if the olive wood boosters are coming on to transfer water, it moves water from the Riverside Canal to the Gage Canal and offsets how much water is coming from Bunker Hill. So this arrangement allows for the olive wood wells to be utilized as the primary source of supply and allows for the olive wood booster to be utilized June 1st to November 1st. to assist with the high heat demand seasons and add as an additional source of supply for redundancy for the customers off of this line as well as those downstream.

All right. I was under the impression that the olive wood water from the olive wood wells was going into the Riverside Canal and then to the Rumsey Line.

No, the olive wood wells never touch the Riverside Canal. It just goes to that pipeline.

OK, so what happens to the olive wood well water until the pipeline under the railroad is fixed? It's just turned off?

No, so under this arrangement, when we tie the service laterals over to the riverside canal pipeline, we'll operate a set of valves, the little gray area on the map there, towards the bottom. That moves it from the blue line to the green line. It'll isolate the whole green line, or the whole blue line, so there's no leak, and move it up the green line through the service laterals, and any excess will reach the gauge canal, just as is typically normal, just with that parallel pipeline.

All right, but that water is coming from the Riverside Canal.

It could come from the olive wood wells or the canal.

Okay.

Vice Chair Wilgemuth, I just want to add that what we are doing here to repair this and help gauge to supply their customers on Rumsey Drive, the water that they're receiving is no different than the water they receive year-round when those olive wood wells are running. All Gage Canal customers that are downstream of the Allwood wells receive the Allwood well water when Gage turned those wells on, which is most of the year. Right. So I know we talk about Bunker Hill water, that Gage Canal only gets Bunker Hill water. That is not accurate. It gets Bunker Hill water or it gets Riverside Basin water throughout the year. They do not solely get Bunker Hill water.

OK, I understand that. But I thought I understood how all this worked, and now I'm confused. So I'm not sure if I'm gaining ground on this. But my understanding is that the water from the Olivewood wells is going somehow to the Riverside Canal. But that, you're saying, is not true.

Correct. So the olive wood wells typically only pump to the olive wood pipeline, serve customers, and then any excess from those customers goes to the gauge canal and feeds customers downstream of that location.

But since the olive wood line is broken...

then we are going to move that water, the olive wood well water, across a set of valves that's already existing and tie service laterals over to the other pipe and not use the olive wood well pipeline until the repair is completed by the gauge consultant.

Okay. So the olive wood well water is going from the olive wood pipeline directly to the Riverside Canal pipeline.

Correct.

Okay.

in that little valve that's underneath on your picture, which by the way, thank you very much for the for the map. It helps a lot. But that that valve just below the olive wood booster building is between the blue and the green line. That's where the connection is going to move all wood well water to the riverside canal pipeline.

Correct.

Got it. Okay. So olive wood, the Riverside Canal pipeline, which is different from the Riverside Canal. Correct. Will it have only olive wood well water in it, or will it have water from the source of the canal, which is the Riverside Colton Basin?

So the olive wood booster can move water from the Riverside Canal through that same pipeline to the Gage Canal, but under this current agreement, only June 1st to November 1st. Outside of those windows, it'll solely be olive wood well water.

And that water would be coming from the Rialto-Colton Basin and from the Riverside Basin. All right.

I think the salient point here is that The people on the Rumsey line have been without water for over a year. And this is a fix that will make a relief possible for them and be a stopgap measure until the Olivewood line can be fully repaired under the railroad tracks.

Correct.

OK. It looked like in that photo there was not only dirt and water on the tracks, but they were undermining the tracks. Is that true, or is that just the way the photo shows to me?

So this is a sloped area. And so the debris and water flowed down the hill and onto the tracks. To my knowledge, it was not undermined. Oh, I see. After the mud and water was cleaned up, the trains began operation again. And we did have their staff on site while we did that work.

OK. I see now the source. It's where we're standing and where the photo's taken. I thought it was like coming across the tracks from the other side. OK. Thank you for that clarification. All right, so like I said, I agree that this is a critical need. It sounds like there's a way to fix the problem. And for what seems to me a fairly cheap price and a fairly short time for construction is that we can fix this problem now and make sure that people have water. on the Rumsey Line to take care of the issue that they've been facing there for over a year. What happens if, because of this water transfer, it blows out the Rumsey Line again?

The water transfer in itself is at the same operating pressure as the normal operating. So it should not do that again.

It shouldn't, but it has before. Then they fixed this once and blew out the line. And now there's no water. So hopefully we won't be making this a bigger problem because of trying to fix this current issue. OK. That's all I have. Any other comments from the board? Can I get a motion?

Move approval.

Oh, I'm sorry, Tom.

I just have a suggestion. Well, somebody moved it, I thought, I heard. I'll second. But I have a suggestion that for the council meeting tomorrow that you get clarification from H Canal that, in fact, the board approved this. And so the council knows, because Mr. Pong's question is a yes or no. I think he's wrong, because I voted. So my understanding is that they did, but I think you need to get an official memo from Ben Alms or Peggy Mock that the board approved it.

We'll be ready for city council to verify that.

Good. Thank you.

So we have a motion and a second. Please vote.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

All right, we now move to board member or staff communications. Do we have any board or staff communications to report on item 11, systematic reporting on meetings, conferences, seminars, et cetera, by board members and or staff? All right, hearing none, are there any items for future consideration under item 12? I have one thing here. As part of our packet for the general manager's report, there's the list of ongoing projects that... or items for future consideration listed there. Thank you very much for providing that. But it seems that I had a item once upon a time buried in the depths of my memory and maybe history about considerations of the implications of Proposition 218 for board activities. And I don't see that on the list anymore. So if we could get that added back on.

Absolutely. I don't know why that's missing. That should still be there.

Well, I know we haven't discussed it yet, so. Okay. Any other items for future consideration? All right. Hearing none, we turn the time over to David Garcia, General Manager's Reports.

Thank you, Vice Chair Wildermuth. I just wanted to make one comment about the minute order tracking as far as board member request. Board member Evans had made a request at the last meeting that we include on the minute order our schedule. for the public benefits item as far as the number of different projects that are going to be brought forward to the utility board. I am working with staff to add those and get some accurate timelines in that. So it's not included in this particular minute order, but it will be included in future minute orders. So I just wanted to make that statement. And that's all I have, Vice Chair.

All right. Very good. Well, I guess that concludes our business tonight. And hearing no other objections, this meeting is adjourned.