Board of Public Works - Regular Meeting

Alright. Welcome everybody. It is Thursday, 04/16/2026, six p. M. That is the regularly scheduled City of Waukesha Water Utility Commission meeting. Let's call this to order. Roll call.

Commissioner Frank Court here. Commissioner Fowell here. Commissioner Curry absent. Commissioner Piatt

here.

Commissioner Matthews Here. Commissioner Riley? Absent. Commissioner Bartels? Here. You have a quorum.

Alright. There are no rate payers here for public comment. Any emails or anything of note? Okay. All right. We'll move on from public comment into approval of minutes. Can I get a motion for the March? So moved. Second. Okay. We have motion and a second Frank Kour and Bartels. All right. Any questions, commissioners, comments? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? It is a unanimous approval. We're ready to keep going, Ali, or Okay. Alright.

Excellent. Okay. That brings us into action items. Action item A, approve payments from the general fund and the improvement fund. Moved. Follow motion. I'll second it. Second Matthews. All right. Commissioners,

any questions?

I have one to note. We are making our bond payments, both principal and interest for WIFIA as well as our safe drinking water loans. Those are due May 1. So those are included with the commission packet.

Thank you, Courtney.

Any questions, commissioners?

Give you a few more seconds to peruse. K. All right any anything folks? Okay hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstain. All right that passes. Action item 5B approve the Prairie Avenue water main replacement to UPI construction LLC in the amount of $199,820.00 and to Ferguson Water Works for the purchase of the 20 inches pipe and fittings not to exceed $125,000 need a motion. Alright, Dale motion.

I motion to approve as written.

Or second. Second. Peter. Alright. Questions or actually no who's got who's got this one? This must be Matt.

So we brought this to you last month as a discussion item with some excess funds in the village of Waukesha doing the road or reconstructing the road on Prairie Avenue. So we did put it out for bid. There were four bidders, and they were the bids were open on Tuesday, April 7 at 09:30. UPI was a low bidder. So we're looking for action or approval from water commission with from the council to follow next Tuesday if passed.

Bids came in pretty good from UPI, and so that's the stretch from Sunset to Prairie Avenue or to the railroad tracks to the north where the village is gonna be doing their their reconstruct there.

Gotcha.

So in the process of getting the bids, we found out that the 20 inch parts are have a significant lead time on them. And with a tighter deadline on the project, we decided to bid just the the labor install, and then we're supplying the 20 inch parts so we can order after your approval. They expect the lead time.

Okay. So

we're now waiting for contracts to get signed.

Okay. That makes sense. Okay.

So the motion is to approve the Prairie Avenue water main replacement to UPI construction in the amount of $199,820 and to Ferguson Waterworks for the purchase of the 20 inch pipe and fittings not to exceed a $125,000 All

right. Questions for Matt?

I do have one quick question. Can we go back to the financial? Significant difference. I mean, you're almost 30% like

25%

less. Do we have a cap on add ons or additional charges onto that? Just a question, they're coming in significantly lower than everybody else They're ballpark. But what happens if they come back to us with $75,000 worth of add ons?

There's a state statute that does limit the amount of things that can be added on. And this is a unit price contract, contract, so we're fairly protected because it's not gonna come up with that much more pipe to put in, especially since we're supplying the pipe.

Okay. That that was my question. Like, what's the cap what's our protection to come back and, you know, say, hey. We got $80,000 worth of add ons, and now we're they're not the lowest bidder anymore.

Their price per foot was substantially lower for install. A lot of the other ones were higher than I thought they're they were closer to supplying the pipe and

And the and install. So So all in, you're at $200,199,000 plus a 125,000 for pipage.

Yeah. Okay. And this is with the question. What's that?

Sure. Plus the utility labor.

Plus there's a little yeah. A little bit of utility labor. The village, their contract came in good, so they're they're ready to roll. Stark is doing the road reconstruction there. So it should flow pretty smoothly with everything we'll finish, and then the village will take over from there. The village is gonna do the traffic control for us too, so there's also some savings working with

the village also.

And we saved the 1% city administration.

Yeah. This

is a big saving. Alright. I'm sorry. Other questions for Matt? Alright hearing none all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Okay. Passed. Thank you Matt.

Passes unanimously.

Approve okay the very the past. Pleased DBA municipal well and pump. Made Move to approve. I'll second. Must be Kelly. Yes.

On Tuesday, the same day we did the bid opening for Prairie, we opened the bids to abandon wells five and six. These are two of the deep wells that pump two reservoirs and, therefore, really wouldn't work in our system, and we don't need the reservoirs from a capacity standpoint. We also don't need the, these particular wells as backup emergency supply wells. So we received four bids. This is just to a to remove the pump from the well and to remove the well.

I will come back to you in the fall to abandon the structures, and I'll work with Jennifer on them excess property and and whatnot. But this, we're bidding separately because I didn't want the commission to have to or in the utility payers to have to pay an extra 15 to 20 percent to a general contractor to manage a well earlier when this is what three of us at the utility have done in a past life. Midwest Well Services doing business as municipal well and pump has done a lot of work on five and six, and their mobilization fee was considerably lower than all the others, which is why the big bulk price difference is there. I think it's just based knowledge that they have for the Wells, and they know what to expect. So I'm asking for your approval since it came in under what I had estimated.

This will also go to the common council on the twenty second, and I won't be able to be there so Brian Renee is gonna it.

It is included in the budget. The funds have been appropriated already in the budget?

Yes. Actually this thank you for bringing that up. This is part of the $4,000,000 EPA grant. Okay.

And you say these are deep wells. How how far down are the pumps in these?

These are about 600 feet down. These are two of the deep wells. There is a potential for the contractor to come back for additional monies because Well Number 5 has been dynamited so many times. We don't know exactly how big the hole is because when you put the camera down at the light just goes away. But we do have fixed prices for the, the materials that they would be adding, so they're not gonna come back with a premium price. It's it's a fixed price.

Gotcha. So pull the pump and then fill it bentonite or whatever? Whatever?

Alternating layers of bentonite concrete and pea gravel. Oh. Depending on where they are in the formations. Thank

you. The questions for Kelly? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? All right. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Action item 5D, to approve the abandonment of Wells Number 1112 And 13 unit price contract totaling $62,320 with Midwest Well Services DBA Municipal Well and Pound. So moved. Second. Okay. All right. Kelly again.

We also bid the abandonment of Wells 1112, And 13. We had three bidders for this one. Municipal well and pump was the, low bidder. It came in under what I had estimated for the cost. Again, this is to remove just the the pumps and then abandon the three wells.

The well houses or the buildings around 11 And 12 will likely remain, and because Park and Rec has an interest in them when we're done with them. They're right along the Fox River, on the South side of the city. And Well 13, there has been a party interested in possibly buying that structure. So we will work with Jennifer on declaring that one excess property and then go down whichever path is required for that, selling it or abandoning it. These are the three shallow wells.

You ask why did she bid them separate. Yep. There's different contractors that can do shallow well abandonment versus a deep well abandonment. You notice that one dropped off between the two, bid lists. I thought this might bring in smaller firms, but, at a couple 100 feet deep, they might still be too big for the the little guys.

When we talk about parks and rec actually possibly having an interest in eleven and twelve, is that for a cost of donation? How does that work?

We haven't got that far yet, so I don't know. I just met with Melissa and gave her a tour. Well, twelve actually has a little park shelter attached to it where there's picnic tables, and it's right by the bridge that walks across the river. So I suspect there would be some sort of value to it, but, I mean, we'd have to work with Courtney to find out what the value on the books is.

I was going to ask the same thing. Yeah. I don't sell it to him.

Absolutely. That's what I said too. And I'm on the other side. When this comes our vote, this is not a donation thing.

I don't think the PSC would allow that. Right. My guess is, but I'm not sure.

And I

know in the past too when we've done the other abandoned well, it was we made it go out for bid. It should go out for bid. So that would I'm not in favor of giving that away

if that's what you're asking.

Understood. Thank you.

All right. Other questions for Kelly? So you said timing will probably fall when the building stuff or this excess properties comes up?

Yes. They well, it's gonna have to be abandoned completely by the July. So when they're well on their way to having a firm schedule, then we'll bid the abandonment of the buildings. I have all the specs and and bid tab bid stuff ready. It's just I didn't wanna put the cart before the horse.

Yep. Awesome. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Anything else for Kelly? Alright. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Okay. Do that. To and $30 Must be Kelly Holt. Can I get a motion? So moved. Second. Frank Kernfowl. All right, Kelly.

Okay. So every ten years, the DNR requires all water systems in Wisconsin to prepare a master plan so that you can use it to create your CIPs and and plan accordingly moving forward. Our last one was done in 2012. We we got an extension because we were a little bit busy transitioning in the 2223 range, and, DNR was willing to work with us as to why update a plan until it was time when we were ready to to do that. So we put it in the budget for, 2026 and broke it up into two parts.

There's a master plan, which is the report writing and the action of what are you gonna do and why are you gonna do it and how do you run your system and and what if this happens, then what. And that's something that I did in a past life, so I'm proposing and and in the budget, I would be writing that. And the other part is the water system model. It's a computerized version of the map on the wall, basically. It has in the model pumps and towers and people using water.

So it sounds like it would be a fun video game, but it's it's really more of an engineering tool. And Jacobs is the keeper of our model, C H 2 M Hill. Prior to that was Earth Tech. They all had our model, and now Jacobs has it. And, Tara ran it for us before the transition so that we could help create the attack plan and what model or what towers to take out of service based on when the new water would get there.

And it was used to compare against the the blue cloud that was on the Internet for where the water was transitioning, and it was quite accurate for that particular time frame. Well, now it's time to update it based on the new mains that Matt's and Matt's put in, the different pressures that we're operating at. So I, got a price from Jacobs to do that, and their price for updating the model came in under our budget. We have two days of field fire flow testing that we will assist them with, and they will use that to calibrate the model. We will be doing a fire flow in each of our 10 pressure zones that's required by the insurance service organization or ISO, and the fire department needs to have a good ISO rating so our insurance rates in the city stay reasonable.

So I've, I spoke with ISO because the fire chief invited me to an event, and I was able to talk to him in person. They had wanted the ISO rating to be done in February. We politely convinced him to wait till the model was done and do it in October so that they would have more accurate, data that made everybody, including fire chief, happy. So I'm asking for your

approval. Questions for Kelly?

I've seen those those bottles. They're pretty cool. I think it's called UC and JEA both have done there.

I've they're really cool. When when you do something on your own and you're not contracting out, do you have to go in and punch in as a time for the like, a certain account?

Yes. My my time is tracked, and it goes against the And budget if I get too far off, Courtney yells

at me. I'm just curious.

It's more economical for us to do it in house because my charge out rate internally is much less than a consultant. Sure.

No. I get it.

I I was just curious if because it's a budgeted line item if we had to track it somehow.

What was ISO? Were you referring to, like, the fire code?

Insurance service organization.

Thank you. It affects the rate. K.

Alright. Any other questions for Kelly? Alright. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Stain?

Motion passes unanimously.

Excellent. Thank you, Kelly. All right. We can move on to discussion items.

We do not have any discussion items this evening. On to

Okay. Alright. Move on to information then. The operations center update. So it's

outside doesn't look any different, but inside is dramatically different. They're pouring concrete floors, so all the office concrete is poured. The picture on the left side here is where future meter storage and meter test bench area is gonna be. There's a couple more walls I need to go on there yet, but on the right is our workshop. That'll work workbench.

There's a overhead crane, just places to work on equipment and parts. Picture on the left side here is one of the two large garage doors that are on the west end of the building where we can pull into the building. So the one on the left is kind of what we're planning on putting racking on both sides that'll store our parts that we use day to day so guys can they pull their truck in. They can grab the parts they need, load them, and they're out the door. There's nothing in the way.

We're not moving trucks to get to everything we need. It's gonna be amazing. Picture on the right is the wash bay. So that'll be on the right hand side where that black hose is going up the wall kinda, there's gonna be a a catwalk. So it's a metal set of stairs with a platform so we can get up on top of our dump trucks, mud dogs, larger vehicles to clean the tops of everything off. There'll be two pressure washer reels that hang from the ceiling that'll spin three sixty around so you can get around the whole truck and you're not dragging holes out from a wall and trying to loop it around. So that's gonna be pretty awesome as well.

Looks like my shower at home.

So they both plan at once. So the this is the office. So the office is pretty much all framed out now.

I don't

know if you can can you stop one or the other? Where's your office, Courtney, right there? That is our office right there.

So I was kidding. So

you're saying? Wow.

Yeah. Alright. So Jesus. It's kind of amazing right now. So that's walking in the front door right there on the one on the left where you're moving. This is walking down the middle kind of the middle hallway. The conference room is gonna be on the left. I believe that's Courtney's office straight ahead. And then there's another office there. The one in the corner is the GM's office with the bathroom. It was kinda quick. And then these are all just other admin offices, and that has the one on the where it stopped on the right hand side is our printer copier area.

Is that a joke? What? The GM has a bathroom.

Oh, it's next to the GM's bathroom. Or the the bathroom is between the GM's office and the conference room. So it's right outside the conference room.

Oh, I

thought you meant you put a Wow. How did Dan get that?

He did ask for one,

I think. He did, but we ignored Okay.

Got

he's got a sauna instead. No. Shower in there. Locker room.

And then the right video, so he's kinda walking in the same area, but then he turns and goes, this is the front of the building. It's really hard to explain. Like, that's technical services storage area. There's some bathrooms in the middle there. And then when he looks to the right here, this is the wall of offices that are on the front wall of the building. So there's six or seven offices, I believe, on that front side there.

I think that was Matt's. We just walked by.

How many how many

square feet is the office space?

Oh, would there be a quiz?

I don't remember.

I don't remember. I can I can find it out for you,

though? And

then that's just where he stops kinda looking. There's an open work area where the guys are gonna be able to meet in the morning, kinda get their what they're doing for the day and go from there. Some bathrooms and the locker rooms are all back there. It's very cool to see. It's kind of a maze right now.

And looking through studs, it's hard to really see everything, but it is definitely they framed it up real quick because there was nothing in there week and a half ago, and all the walls are framed. They're putting the drywall up above the so they they drywall everything above the ceilings as a fire block. They're running all the mechanicals in the ceiling, pulling all the electrical, all the data cables, all that kind of stuff is all getting installed in the office area now. So that's kind of the big focus is to get all the mechanicals in there, and then they'll start drywalling. I think they're already

They were hauling in drywall today.

Bringing drywall in today already. So

And as far as size, there's only two spare offices, so we really didn't plan for great expansion in the office area. But the conference room is larger, so we won't be impacted here.

Looks a lot different. Very cool. Very cool. They're seem to be on schedule. They're still shooting for an October, bringing in of November completion.

So Nice.

And we did give Joe Piper a tour, Alderman Piper tour on Wednesday. So if you would like to walk through, you just have to let I'll be gone next week. Matt, no. You have to wear a hard hat safety gear.

But Yeah. If you wanna see, just let me know. We can set up a time I can meet you over there.

K.

Obviously, when it's done, you'll get to see him.

I don't wanna

be told seated in

that the marble's gonna be coming in three months. Just to get him going a little bit.

He would have flipped about having Right. Jim having a little private bathroom. Well thank you Matt. Yeah that's awesome. Now if people didn't want to go on a tour is it better to wait a bit for more work to be done?

Or If if if for me, if you, like, can't visualize, I would wait for the drywall to be on because then you can go in there and see alright. This is an office right now. It just looks like a bunch of sticks, and it's hard to tell them. I mean, you can see the rooms, but

Right.

Until it's drywalled, it's kind of hard to really I I would have to have a set of plans for me to find my way through there right now. So

We should we should probably do it. As a more More than one on one.

I was gonna say, yeah, plus it'd be just, you know, run out

there. Yep.

So maybe sometime when the weather gets a little better. Or or would folks be interested in a tour before the grand opening?

Well, it's just

like you said, when the drywall

Yeah. Once you have the snow in it.

Once the drywall's up, I can let you know, and we can just we can meet in there. Yeah. And then we can get hard hats and everything for everybody. And

I'm not so sure about that.

Getting much. I'm sorry.

I'll speak to someone who's working.

John wants to just If

we go at three they're not working in there. So

A little Pfizer. Alright.

Alright. Should we move on to the utility performance report, administrative duties?

K. Alright. So cleaning on the operation center, we have signed an agreement with all of the furniture. We had a blanket PO that you guys approved in December for 250,000, and the furniture came in at about 229,000. So we are under budget for that.

The the manufacturer that we selected does have a seven and a half percent increase May 1, and we did get them to agree to hold the costs. So that saves us about 17,000 thousand dollars. So that will be exciting when we get all that. The revenue requirement for the PSC rate case was received, and we are working on that. Hopefully, submitting that back to them by the end of day tomorrow.

We had our second annual Easter egg hunt on the April, and it went well. Lots of lots of fun, lots of eggs. I think we had, what, a 120 some eggs hidden around the entire utility that everyone had to find. So that was a good time. One had a fun time with that.

And then we have our cell leases. I just wanted to mention this. We have cell leases on many of the towers where different cell vendors have their antennas, and then they pay us a fee each year to have that on there. We are currently working with Verizon. They have an agreement that expires in fall of this year.

And they do not want to meet our insurance requirements. So I have been working closely with Jerry, and he is we are trying to set up a meeting with their people and Jerry and us here to discuss further, but they do not want to provide umbrella insurance. And Jerry feels that it's is very important and required that we have that umbrella insurance. It protects us. And the in his words, the amount of money that we receive for these cell leases does not compare in any way to what would happen if there was an injury and we didn't have this umbrella policy.

So I just wanted you guys to be aware that this is happening. I've been working with them for a very long time now. We also have a T Mobile one that is also we're working with them. We're not too as far of a point as we are with Verizon, but they're having a little bit of struggle with the work comp piece. So we're working on that one with them as well. But I just wanted to let you guys know that while this is nice revenue to have, we are having some struggles with this. And and Jerry has kind of advised that we wanna stick to our requirements on insurance. And so we'll keep you updated as we work through those.

Thank you.

And then I have an update from Dan. The mayor and Dan went to Washington DC. Director of public works and mayor also went, and everything went very well on their trip to DC. With the lawsuit, depositions and expert reports are continuing. They have a check-in with the courts on May 8 and are hoping to find out more about scheduling and future court dates on that date.

Expert reports will be completed after the depositions are done. And then after all of that is complete, then they can begin prepping for trial. Dan and Jessica should be in attendance at the next meeting in May to give a more formal update for all of you on where they're at with everything. That's all I have.

I have a question.

Yep. I'm sorry.

Joan, do you

Go ahead.

The rate increase Yes. That's gonna take a lot of heat from me. Do we know what that is, and what's the messaging? How we prep for that? I only got two calls this week or emails about rates and water rates. Right.

So so again, this has been in this has been part of our plan for many years. It's within the plan. I believe right now, they're looking we went in at about 14%. So it's going be between about 11.514.5% depending on. Is Milwaukee Water is also in for a rate increase right now.

And when Milwaukee Water gets an increase, we can automatically go in and request that increase put on our because, obviously, the purchased water will go up whatever our increase is, and we need to forward that on to be able to maintain. And so we are trying to work with them to coordinate so that we just have one increase that includes Milwaukee Water's increase in that rather than having to go. We're asking the PSC rather than having to go get an increase ourselves and then have to give another increase very shortly after when Milwaukee Water gets their rates increased. So we're trying to coordinate and work together. And, again, we've expressed to the PSC many times over that, you know, we prefer one rate, and we also, you know, are trying to reduce the impact on customers as much as possible.

And we would prefer this rate increase to happen very end of the year, 2027 because we did have sewer and return flow increase this year. So we are working all together and, you know, trying to minimize that impact as as much as possible. So they are fully aware of that. We hope that they will work with us and, you know, do the same.

Is there a schedule that we have for the plan? I wasn't here this fine year. Is there a schedule that we can go out on the plan? Like, we're talking 11% to 14% this year. And what's the next step? And what's the next benchmark that you have forecasted

So we have that sheet. And I I believe we we had that in the fall that we went over that with that that increase. And I think I think we had discussions then. I can certainly send you a copy of that if you'd like.

And does that go to council for vote, or is that just

No. That's our operations. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the public service commission does our rates. We don't we don't pick our rates. We don't select them. So whatever they say is what actually goes.

And don't they set the timing of it as well?

That's correct. And that's why we're, you know, we're trying our hardest to work with them to, you know, and push this off again to minimize the impact to customers as much as possible keep our plan of, you know, this much increase each year.

Like you said, it's best to do one with Milwaukee or otherwise.

Yes. Exactly. And we we are

People won't understand that.

I can understand that.

But getting to

It advised the pain at this point. Correct.

Joan? Remember that you mentioned that you were trying to ask ask them to not have us put our request in immediately? So when you said it's due May, did they not

Correct. They said no. They wouldn't agree? Correct. That is correct.

They told I understood what you said. You were doing that so that it would push

it off so we wouldn't be increasing and increasing. That is correct. So we are trying to delay because they have rules on when this has to be implemented once this whole rate case is done. Not only are we trying to push that off, but we have a yearly public service commission report that is due May 1. We have our financial statements that we're reviewing and and trying to put out for public and then regular business. And so that's why we also asked for that increase in time. They did give us two weeks, but they didn't give us additional. They told us it had to be in by tomorrow at end of day.

It seems odd to me that if the utility would want to postpone a rate increase, why would they push it if they're there to protect the ratepayer?

So we've had a conversation with them many times. Dan did speak. He he left a message. Hopefully, you know, we can kinda get together and just all work together as as one and and get this, like I said, one rate increase with Milwaukee and the timing later in the year. But in the end, they make the decision. We have we have expressed over and over our hopes of when this all

So what's the probability that we could add two potentially?

I I think it's possible. I don't know. It depends on who you speak with there.

And we can't pause it's like you said it's mandated so if the commission says we have to institute and then Milwaukee raises the rates then we have to go back. Correct.

Now that's all right which again I don't quite understand that because unless the PSC is afraid somehow we're going to delay rates and go bankrupt or something like that. Like I understand if the utility

Part of their thing is they have a schedule and they're keeping their schedule of who's working on what when. But I

I suppose because they have more than us.

And if somebody else is coming in for an increase, then yes. They're managing their workload Okay. As

Alright.

Other I

excuse me. I think that deal does bring up a point because we we used to talk a lot about the communication plan and the open houses and all of that. And so it'd be nice to get in front of this. At least Dan is gonna be here next month's meeting. Maybe in preparation for that, we can emphasize that we have a growing concern and that because we did a very good job of communicating before.

It's going to be brutal. I'm just telling you. The communication is going to be absolutely brutal.

Yes. We

the the phone calls, we field them daily. So that is why we're really hoping that we get the one increase rather

than two.

Because the last increase was a year

ago or '24.

Okay.

So is that on your to do list or Courtney's to do list to get it discussed?

Agenda? Yeah.

About Or the work started. Because I don't really remember anymore if we have a we had a firm that we worked I'm with, not sure that we still have a connection with a firm or even a plan going forward.

Correct. Yeah. I mean, have that model that we had with all of the years, the future years, and those increases that we had put out. But we don't have until all of this is done. We don't have an actual percent increase finalized until they have this revenue requirement complete.

I don't recall doing any particular PR campaign before the October 2024 rate increase either. So I'm not sure like why is why you anticipate this being such a bloodbath? Because people

are already complaining about the water rates now And the message we heard three weeks ago was, oh, we're paying for the Taj Mahal that we're building over there at the building. I'm just telling you the public sentimentality through there, and they were gonna pass on another rate increase, which I understand we've forecasted and scheduled and then possibly two, it's not going to be pretty.

So we can I think it's something like we can talk with Dan or I can talk with Dan about because we have talked with Dan also about it's like that we'll be having a closed session to talk about the GM search in May? And but also we can make sure that we're ready to talk about a potential PR campaign associated with the rate just so we remind people about the schedule, about how the PSC operates a little bit and then what that might mean.

Yes. And I think maybe in a month or two, we'll know more on what our final percent is and have a more solid number. I think a solid number is important also. Just Right. And and, again, that that 11% to 15% is the water only. So that is not the impact on your entire bill. So the impact on the entire bill would be less than that because sewer and return flow are not anticipated to increase in 2027 based on, you know, what we've talked about with the city.

So, Courtney, when you actually get the number would you guesstimate it June, July, whatever?

Well, it it depends on kind of how all of this falls out with are they going to allow us to, you know, have a a later date? Are they gonna be able to put this on hold for a little bit or not? And so I guess that it's all kind of up in the air right now.

So do you think that this will has high percentage that it's gonna hit sometime

this year? I would I would say, well, we're we're hoping for end of year this year. But it you know, if this keeps going at the pace it will, it it could be, you know, September, August that we and which we don't want. So and we will ask for an extension again. Okay. So but I just don't I just don't know. It is an Us. I apologize. I I wish I had No. More solid answers, but I don't,

unfortunately. It's what we don't control. Right.

Yeah. And I mean, I tried to every time I talk to them, I keep those messages in their ear. So that's all we can do. Right.

Yeah. I mean our discussions with PSC seem to be a recurring theme. So but, yeah, I think we can definitely have a part either a separate agenda item about information related to the rate case just so that you can either come out and story Freeman or just or just more information.

Okay. Alright.

Any other good news, Courtney? Sunshine.

It's not raining.

Yeah. Does that do it for the administrative enough? Is there anybody

My bad.

Kelly. Not a ton going on with us. We have the Lily Rose, Meadowbrook senior living that we passed a few months ago that construction started. So they got good chunk of water main in. Still still a lot to go, but they did start putting water main out there. Last week, I did go with Dan and attorneys on a walk through for the punch list for SJ Lewis. So we were able to go through the punch list, kind of agree on some things that are complete and what's not complete, and we're working with SJ Lewis to get the remaining punch list items completed.

We're systematically taking our water towers out of service to do their five year drain down inspections. That will help us determine when we need to budget for repainting of the towers. That should all be done by, Memorial Day. We have to take them out one one week at a time because by the time you drain them, inspect them, drain them, clean them, inspect them, refill them, back to them to make sure they're safe. It takes about a week's time.

UW Dubb Tower is the one that is currently down, and, we just communicate with the fire department in advance and run the pumps in pressure mode so the customers normally don't see any kind of difference. We notify fire department in case there's a big event. They can if they get time, call us when dispatch goes out, and then we can watch the system closely. Our lead and copper sampling at our sites that are approved will happen in, it has to happen between June 1 and September 1. So in advance of my being gone for a little while, I reached out to all of all 31 of our past participants requesting that they agree to help us again.

I've heard back from about half of them, so we'll, we'll continue to hopefully line the rest of them up. We are required to submit 30 samples, so we don't have a lot of extra people that are willing to do it, and your house has to fit certain criteria in order to be eligible. And lastly, I met with, Charlie and Doug from planning today. We are starting the process to get 445 Newhall off the historic register. It used to house Well 4.

It's located at the near the intersection of West And Newhall right in the parking lot where KDB label used to be. We are currently using a small portion of the structure for storage, but it won't be necessary once we're in the operations center with all of our, tools and inventory close at hand. It was built in the late forties. It's got a little bit of an art deco thing going on with it, but there's asbestos in the walls, asbestos in the tile in the roof. And the reservoir, which is the largest part of the building, is starting to develop holes at the intersections of the roof and the walls.

And so we hired Gail from UW Milwaukee who has a blanket contract with the city to do all of the historic stuff for all their water main and or all the street projects to put together a, report on acknowledging that it's part of the historic registry, but it's not truly a landmark. And that Well 3, which we're keeping, is of the same style and is already on the register, so we're not losing the last, you know, water utility art deco building. And and, so that needs to go to the landmarks committee on May 6. Charlie's gonna present it just to let them know that this is what we're doing, but that it's not truly a landmark site. So I'm not asking for any action.

I'm just letting you know it's, it should be abandoned, and anything that comes, I I will keep you updated. And when it comes time to tear it down or do some mitigation because we don't wanna tear it down, I'll bring it before you for action. Thank

you.

Anything else, Fred? That's everybody? Okay. Alright. Let's move on to the, financial report, please.

Okay. We'll start with revenue for March. Revenue is looking good. We had about 1.5% above budget for the month for I'm sorry. 2% for the month about we're about 1.5% for the year above budget for revenue.

Commercial and industrial continues to be higher than the previous year, which is good news. And for the year for consumption, we are about 1.6% above our estimated budget. Expenses for the month of March, everything is pretty good this month. We we didn't have any really high variances. So source for March is about $6,500 over budget.

That is for the Milwaukee Waterworks invoice. Our pumpage was higher. There was a couple more days on the on that invoice. Distribution is about $6,600 under budget, and that we did not receive an invoice from the city for our street openings. And our administrative category is about $7,500 above budget.

We had some vehicle maintenance expenses on our mud dog in March, and then we had labor that we had previously booked to a capital job that was in error. And so we had to move that to an expense in in March, so that increased that. Our interest income continues to be good. It's going down a little bit, but still above what we have budgeted. As you know, we budget that very conservatively, but that's still looking good.

So we're looking good for March. For cash, we started the month at $52,800,000 We have our issuance of long term debt there, that $1,200,000 right here. That is our WIFIA reimbursement for our operations center that we received. And then we also have the other one to note here is our $774,000. That is our pilot payment that we sent to the city.

And so that was a disbursement in March. And so we ended the month about 54 and a half million dollars. And finally, we have our transmission and distribution spreadsheet. And that is all of our active water main replacement projects for the year. The only one that is currently underway is the bid well in Prospect. They are wrapping up services next week, and so that should be close to done water wise. And then the resurfacing project, which is the large project that's gonna happen this they are hoping to start next week. And obviously, we haven't received a whole lot of invoices yet because it's early in the year. So does anyone have any questions?

When do we start looking at 2027? Just curious. I don't remember.

This will stay all year. So you'll keep this one all year. Budget budget will have 2027 stuff in it.

Okay. But you so you were already

Yep. They're they're already talking. They 2027. They know what they're planning on doing.

I didn't know if that was, a fall Yeah. Or if that's constant all All year year.

Stops. Yeah. Couldn't remember. Okay. But, yeah, we usually start talking about capital and operating budgets somewhat. Is it August or September?

September. September is capital. That's why

I was wondering. We're always in October and yeah.

Okay.

There's something that popped into my head I was going to ask anyway any other questions or comments for the team here? Alright. How do we say it? If there is no objection, we're adjourned. Alright. Thank you everybody. It's $6.49.