Board of Public Works - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everybody. It's 6 p.m., Thursday, July 16th, 2026. This is the regularly scheduled City of Waukesha Water Utility Commission meeting. Let's call meeting to order. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Francor? Here. Commissioner Fowle? Here. Commissioner Curry? Absent. Commissioner Payette? Here. Commissioner Matthews? Absent. Commissioner Bartels? absent. Commissioner Haldensleben? Here. We have a quorum.

Excellent. I would like to make an announcement. Announcement of a closed session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85 Sub 1 Sub C. A motion will be made to convene in closed session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85 to consider employment, promotion, compensation, or performance evaluation data of the general manager position over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility. So we'll let the convene later. Public comments. There are no persons from the public here today. Emails or anything we should know about from?

We do not have anything.

Okay, excellent. Let's move on to then approval of minutes.

Can I get a motion? So moved. Second.

All right. Van Coor and Halvinsleben. That was very good. Yeah, you did a great job. I've started doing German Duolingo. Oh, there you go. Okay, any questions or comments on the minutes? All right, hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstain. Passes unanimously. All right, thank you, Ellie. All right, that moves us into action items. Action item 5A is approved payments from the General Fund and the Improvement Fund. According to anything of note, I'll make a motion to approve.

Second. There is nothing special on here to note.

Commissioners, any questions? We've got some of our bills from our construction projects.

Maybe it's for Kelly. The UW Parkside bill, I mean at one time we discussed that they may be getting out of that business. Is this like for, is this an annual payment or is this a monthly charge?

It's mostly monthly. There are some months that they don't do the sampling.

They're not required to do it every month?

No, in the middle of winter they don't really do that. Okay. There has not been any recent talk of them getting out of the business.

Okay.

As a matter of fact, we're currently working with them to possibly do additional testing as it relates to the disinfection study that we need to do as part of the return flow. Return flow. Okay. Thanks.

That is invoiced to the city. That goes to the city.

All right, hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstain.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you. All right, that brings us to action item 5B. Approve the classification and compensation study to Cottingham and Butler in an amount not to exceed $20,000. So moved? Yes. Second, perfect.

All right. So the utility recently solicited a request for proposals or RFPs to conduct a classification and compensation study. This study formally has not been done in several years here. And so the objectives are to ensure job classifications are market aligned. We also want to review and update all of our job descriptions, making sure that everything is up to date with all of the standards and legal items as well as making sure that the titles and the descriptions match the positions we have currently. And also to evaluate and refine the utilities overall compensation strategy. So we had two vendors that responded to our request for proposal and that was Cottingham and Butler and MRA. And both Um, RFPs were very similar in nature. Both of them were, um, complete and looked like they both could do the job very well. We felt that Cottingham and Butler had one slight advantage. They seem to have a little bit more data, um, based on benefits for the public sector than MRA did. MRA was going to use some of Cottingham & Butler's information and also we're going to have to do a much broader look out to other customers to get information back. With that, and I also contacted all of their references for Cottingham and Butler, and everyone was very satisfied and very happy with their work. They all had rave reviews from them. And so because of that, we are asking to approve the classification and compensation study to Cottingham and Butler in the amount that's not to exceed $20,000.

Questions for Courtney?

Going back when we've done this before, I didn't know who decided what the other communities were. Was it the consultant who said here are comparable communities and then we had some more national? Do you or does the utility get involved in that discussion about what you agree are communities that are comparable? Yes.

So we will have a meeting and they will obviously have a pool or an idea of who fits us well, but we do have input on that and who they go out to. And obviously, Cottingham Butler does have a lot of that information already also.

Thank you.

Other questions? Do you remember who did the study the last time?

So we had, it wasn't basically a compensation study. Springstead, who was now purchased by Baker Tilly, they did more of a study to see if the positions and the actual utility was aligned right for how the workflow was going. Prior to that, I believe it was WMS, but that was many years ago.

Former Springstead. Okay.

Yeah.

Anything else? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain?

Passes unanimously.

All right. Action item 5C. Approve the $46,273.78 change order to Myron Construction for plumbing additions at the new operations center.

So moved.

Second.

So Myron Construction is requesting a change order that's to add additional backflow prevention to all of our hose reels in the garage. What was originally thought of putting in there, though it wasn't included in the bid, the original thought was something that the plumbing inspector wasn't a big fan of. So we upgraded to something a little bit better. And then there was no pressure reducing valve in the design, even though we're over 80 PSI. So these items, had they been in the design, we would have paid for them in the bid. But I'm requesting an official change order for plumbing additions. we still are within budget.

So you said the original system wasn't enhanced?

There wasn't anything in the original bid, but the contractor said you should put something in, and obviously we'd agreed. And what they proposed was something that we couldn't really... to make sure that they were working properly. And so we talked to the plumbing inspector up at the city, and they're like, well, they're allowed, but we don't really like that particular one and trying to be good stewards of the water that we're producing.

So this would be in lieu of that other proposed enhancement?

Right, but this is a changeover increase because nothing was included in the original bid.

All right, hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? All right, thank you. Thank you. All right, that brings us to action item 5D. approve the water main replacement unit price contract and 1% city administrative fee totaling $946,055.64 for the water utilities portion of the City of Waukesha Public Works contract with Musson Brothers Inc. for the Luke Bourne and Walton reconstruction project. So moved.

Do you want to move?

Yeah, go ahead.

So moved.

All right, so Joan moved, I'll second.

So the bids for Luke, Board, and Walton water main relays were opened at 11 on Friday, June 26th. There were three bidders shown in the chart. The project was approved by the Board of Public Works meeting on Thursday, July 9th. An action by the Common Council is scheduled to occur at their meeting on Tuesday, July 21st, if approved by the Water Utility Commission. This project was brought to you back in March due to some More breaks on Luke Street. Sorry. More water main issues on Luke Street. At that time, it was proposed that we loop Bourne over to Walton to complete, get rid of that dead end. So that is part of this, is looping that through there. So all the red box is basically what would be getting replaced with the addition of that stretch to tie it over from Bourne to Walton. So the motion is to approve the water main replacement for the unit price contract and 1% administration fee totaling $946,055.64 for the Waukesha Water Utilities portion, the City of Waukesha Public Works contract with Muslin Brothers, Inc. for the Luke, Bourne, and Walton Reconstruction Project.

Man, does our portion of the bid, does that include, because we're putting new main through the park there, does that include restoration or who covers that?

Usually for all these projects, it's basically an addition to the resurfacing project. We do share costs with the roadway, and then where we cut through curbs, we usually are responsible for the curbs. Basically, whatever the water portion. So we'd be fully responsible for the park? Part of that, yeah. So they are doing some sanitary work as well. Oh, they are. So it's very, very similar to the resurfacing products for the year. Oh, all right.

Where's that park again?

Saratoga, the baseball fields. Oh, yeah.

You can see prairies on that side if that helps. That's how I organize myself.

That's the flower shop. That's the baseball fields at the top. Gotcha.

Thank you.

I did a double take at first.

All right. Questions for Matt? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain.

Passes Unitas.

Thank you. All right, brings us to action item 5E. Approve the water main extension and developer's agreement for County Crest Lane at no cost to the utility. So motion. So. Second. We'll give that one to the mayor. We'll give that to the mayor. Ties go to the mayor. That's how it works at City Council too.

So to orient yourself on this particular screen, you need to tip your head sideways because north is this way. North is to the right of the screen. Meadowbrook Road runs along the bottom, but obviously that's a north-south road. The area in the dashed red... is the area that's being proposed as part of the development, lot one. What the developer, David Smart, requested at the end of February was a water main extension along Country Crest connecting to Maple Way and then stubbing into the potential future development lot it's 550 feet of eight inch pvc and 320 feet of 12 inch pvc there is water main in torhorst up to the church which you can see just to the south or left of lot one And this is an area where there are two separate pressure zones. Reduce Northwest is on the southern part of the drawing or the left side. And Meadowbrook or Pebble Valley is from basically lot one to the right of the screen. So it's not completing a loop, but it's setting it up to complete a future loop when the Maple Way, Red Maple Way connects to existing mains. Possibly in the future, they are looking at reorienting this particular road that goes into the orange or yellow, depending on how you look. They're currently thinking of moving and relocating what's in here to there, but that's not part of this proposal. It is our standard developer's agreement for 12 months with no exceptions.

All right, hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain.

Passes unanimously.

All right, thank you all. All right, so I think that brings us out of action items. Yeah, it does bring us out of action items into discussion items, which there are, so we're gonna move into information items. New Operations Center update.

So we have some updated photos here. Dave took the drone out yesterday. You can see the office part is the lower section. The face brick is in, the windows are in. They're starting to work on the inside more and the taller section is the garage. Go to the next one. This is the, on the left is the, what this room is going to be the equivalent of. And on the right, right?

That's the training room.

Okay, I had it backwards. Sorry, my bad. It'll look better when the table's in there and then I'll know what their rooms are. Okay, so you can see they're doing, patching some drywall and they're going to start painting soon. They are putting up the door jams on the offices. You can see there's going to be a door and then window space on the side of it. So it's really starting to look much more like an office now. This is the garage, two different views of it, one looking out toward the exit and one looking back toward the shops area that pavement is now in i'm not sure if it was in when you guys i don't think say the concrete's in there nice so did you say did they have to do that in one pour four oh four you have any questions matt or i can feel them when do we move in in the fall yeah i was hoping you would say next month We have to bring our own doors.

Yeah, that's right, yeah. Good point. Use porta-potties for a couple months. You know. All right. Nice. Thank you, Colleen. Utility performance report administrative activity.

All right, so I have an update from Dan. Work continues on depositions and expert reports. They plan on completing all depositions by the end of August or early September. Expert reports will be finalized Following that, they have one more deposition and a 30B6 deposition, which is a corporate representative of S.J. Lewis. This will provide information that they haven't been able to receive from other witnesses that they've deposed. They're trying to schedule mediation and expert reports, but we have a lack of communication from S.J. Lewis' attorney on them, so they're waiting a final scheduling. Once they hear back, He will let us know more and then schedule that closed session then after they have those. They have a tentative date at the end of October, but that's dependent on the expert report scheduling. They'll also be providing an update to the court in early December, which may result in a court date being set. This would also help move things along. So he feels they're in good position on the depositions and x-ray reports, and they are ready to go whenever the court decides.

It just keeps dragging on.

Admin and other utility news, the PSC did respond to our Request to pause the right case. We finally got a response from them and They did say that we can do that. So that was good news Big Bend Road is one of our Land that we have that originally was given to us or purchased in 1978 as a potential shallow well site and And because we do not need that anymore, Jennifer is taking that to council to list that as surplus so we can get rid of that. Our budget timeline was created. And so Matt and Kelly are so excited because they love the budget. They can hardly wait for our first meeting. We are currently working on a work comp audit that happens every year. We are attending night out on 8-5, August 5th for conservation, and we attend that with clean water. So we share a booth. We took ice cream and Gatorade to everybody that had to work outside earlier this week. And when we passed one of the city crews, we stopped and gave them a little ice cream sandwich also. And we're also continuing to work with the city attorney on sending letters out to the customers for the Pine, Glen, Cumberland, and Summit properties that have the main in the backyards. So city attorney's office is going to help us finalize that letter, make sure everything is legally correct. And then we were going to get that out so that we can get planning on that started. And as of today, we have completed the first round of interviews for the GM, which is very exciting.

The PSC giving permission to put this on hold, that was a significant thing, was it not?

Yes, yes. So that's great news. They did mention in there that if it takes a little bit longer, we are going to have to provide new data. So I hope that that's a lot of work. And so I'm hoping that we won't have to basically start over, but we will see how long it takes for... them to have a decision on Milwaukee. But ultimately, we don't want to put two rate increases for the community.

But congratulations. Yes, thank you.

That's right, because we were waiting on Milwaukee's rate. Okay, all right. Yes.

It wasn't a given.

Right. Yeah, well done on that. How much of a buffer window do you think we have with the PSC? Is this like a few several months, a year?

We can... take, um, until Milwaukee's decision is finalized. Um, but again, that, that whole plays out in the timing with all the new data. So, yeah, so we're, we're hoping that Milwaukee is going to be done soon.

The well abandonment process continues. The pumps are out of wells five and six, 11, 12 and 13, which is great news. Uh, 11, 12 had our pump. Yeah. Well 12 has the pea gravel in it, so it's started to get abandoned. They are starting to put the pea gravel in well 5. They have put in roughly a third of what was bid, and they haven't found the top of it yet. Well 5 was blasted with dynamite several times when that was still legal to increase the flow out of the well. So consequently, when you run the camera down there, it just goes black because there's no circumference for the light to reflect off of. We did put in the bid 60 percent more than mathematically should be needed. We did get a unit price bid, so if we're off later, I will inform you when I know more. The abandonment of the structures at Wells 5 and 6 including the reservoirs goes out for advertising on the 21st. Bid opening is on August 11th. It will come to you, assuming we get bidders, for action at your August 20th meeting. Lead and copper sampling is underway. Thank you, Joe, if you've done yours. I appreciate it. Your house is eligible.

I forgot Tuesday morning, but I did put it out.

You were not alone in the squad that forgot, but thank you for doing that, along with our other 29 people. people that are helping us and lastly dave and i did a tour of the booster pump station site with a woman in transportation seminar today we had about 22 people and i suggested they contact zach to go on a clean water plant tour so i got that process started too

Mountain construction we are in our summer mode replacing valves hydrants as they break or we see fit to replace. We have ongoing hydrant survey valve survey. We did do a small relay over at Mill Reserve off of Saint Paul. We had a few. Issues over the winter with the main that crosses the river there. Kelly talked about it and. Decided with the new river crossings that we have, we're going to abandon that river crossing there because. The room with the new apartment building, there's no more room in there to dig to fix anything. So there was about 50 feet of old 12-inch cast iron that was left between the relay on St. Paul and Mill Reserve, so we relayed in-house the 50 feet of pipe there. nick is at the national esri conference out in california this week which is good because we have to make the switch to arc pro which is our gis program is i've been trying to use it for the last few months so that i can help others and it is definitely different to use and harder to work around. So I'm hoping Nick comes back with a lot of great pointers and fixes for us so we can teach everybody else how to use it. We have to make that switch. And then DPW did help us pave the reserve after we were all done. And then in turn, we helped DPW pave Lincoln Avenue. They had rented a mill. And I think we were over there for three days hauling millions for them. helping out in any way we can assist them to get their paving program done.

That's excellent. Look at all that collaboration. I appreciate it.

Love it.

Thank you, Matt. Hey, was there any update on, it's a small one, you're going to paint all the fire hydrants? Oh, yeah, sorry. They're coming next Tuesday. Oh, really?

I don't know if I brought this back to you after, did we talk about that again? We're going to make it a longer program. So they were going to actually, he called me Friday while I was driving up north and wanted to come on Monday. But with Nick being in California and myself being out of town, I didn't want to call Kelly and have her try to have to figure out where the iPads were because we were already gone for the day. So he was going to come Wednesday and then with the heat and everything, he's coming next Tuesday just to start for the whole week. So they'll be starting. They're hoping to get like 400 done this year.

Oh, wow. Okay. Thank you. All right. I guess that brings us to financial report.

Okay, so we'll start with revenue as we always do. Revenue is looking very good. We are quite a bit above budget actually this year. A couple of things to contribute to that. We did have half of the city has an extra two days on this bill. So that makes a big difference. And then we also have just been hot and dry and hot and dry uses lots of water. So that is definitely contributing to that also. One little item I did want to mention on here, which looks a little odd, is the public. It looks like we are under budget there for that. There was an issue with the meter over at Hort when they filled the pool. So that will be corrected next month, just with the timing and everything. We will get that fixed for next month, so you guys will see that then. Moving on to expenses. Expenses. Our first line item there, source, as we just saw. We are over budget for source because our Milwaukee Water Works invoice is over budget because we're selling more water and using more water. Our treatment for the month is under budget about $9,500. The Jacobs invoice that we received last month did have some time on it for the water system model update. And it was originally booked to this treatment account and it should have been booked to the admin line. And so that was corrected in June. And so that's why you normally see that admin line a larger negative number and the treatment not. And so that's just the variance there of that. And distribution is about 17.4%. Um, under budget for the month, and that is, um, we are working right now more on our capital items. So the hydrant replacements, the valves replacements that Matt was talking about all of our, um, reconstruction, all of the city's work, all of the water main replacements. So things like that. So they're working on capital items more. And as we know, labor is budgeted evenly, so that's why that looks under budget. We also didn't get an invoice from the city this month for street openings, so that makes a difference also. So moving on then to our cash. We started the month at 53.4 million and we ended at 54.3. So as you can see, pretty much typical month. We had our WIFIA issuance there of that 1.5 almost million dollars here. And that's just the submittal for all of our construction costs for the operations center. Everything looks good for cash. And then finally, we have our transmission and distribution items. Arrowhead Trail, that is the The Sheenstatt sisters, that's the easement that we're working to get, and so that, a piece of that that's been pushed for likely construction next year. City Attorney's Office is also helping us with that. They are hoping to get that finalized very soon. Highway 59 reconstruction. Matt is crossing every appendage he has to hope that we are done with all of the offsets on that project. Davidson. Davidson Road. The water main is going to be done this week.

They finished today.

Finished today. Excellent. William Street, the city is likely pushing this one to 2027. I don't think it's been formally finalized yet, but they think that's what's going to happen. And that's because of a WeEnergies thing.

So William Street, is that like they're going to upgrade the street by La Estacion? Yep. Okay.

Bidwell and Prospect, that one is complete. And then the resurfacing project, they are done with the, why can I never think of the name? Harrison Hillside. Harrison Hillside. I just, it's a block. They're done with that one. They are working on the Easy, Norton, Oak Lawn. And then when they're done with that, then they will move to the Pebble Valley. So that one is all on schedule. Crews were working really good, I heard, right?

Does anybody have any questions on that?

All right, so anything else before I go to close session, anything else for the good of the cause? All right, thank you very much. All right, agenda item eight, closed session. I guess I would like to make a motion to convene in closed session. pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85 sub 1 sub C to consider employment, promotion, compensation, or performance evaluation data of the general manager position over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility. Second. Do I check? Can I read? Oh, no, that's after. Sorry. Yeah, roll call vote, please. I was confusing myself with B. I thought there was a double narrative. Sorry about that. My fault.

Commissioner Francoeur? Aye. Commissioner Fowle?

Aye.

Commissioner Curry? Absent. Commissioner Pyatt?

Aye.

Commissioner Matthews? Absent. Commissioner Bartels? Absent. Commissioner Haldensleben? Aye.

We have a quorum. All right, excellent. So we are in closed session, right? Okay, excellent. Okay. Oh, sorry. Okay. I'd like to make a motion to reconvene an open session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85 Sub 2, whereupon action may be taken on matters discussed in closed session. Roll call. Oh, we need a second. Second. Oh, we need a second. Sorry. Oh, the mayor seconded. I think I'd get the hang of this.

And then the votes. Do you want to?

Yeah, so that's going to be a roll call vote, right? I believe so, yeah. Another roll call? Yeah, to get back out.

Okay. Commissioner Francourt?

Aye.

Commissioner Fowle? Aye. Commissioner Curry? Absent. Commissioner Pyatt? Aye. Commissioner Matthews? Absent. Commissioner Bartels? Absent. Commissioner Helfensleben? Aye.

All right. Well, it brings us back into closed session. Open session. I'm sorry, open session. Sorry.

Another cookie.

I just can't get it right, can I? It brings us back into open session. There's no business to report. So unless there's an objection, we are adjourned. There he goes.

All right. Remember when you read Will's comments?