- I will call today's utility service board meeting to order.
- The City of Bloomington Utility's mission is to enhance the quality of life in our community
- by providing safe, sustainable, and high-quality drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater
- services in a cost-effective manner promoting public health, economic vitality, and environmental
- stewardship. If any board member has any personal or financial conflict with any issues or
- individuals
- on the agenda, then please be sure to recuse yourself during those portions of the meeting.
- Are there any petitions and communications from the public?
- No. We'll move on to the approval of the minutes of the May 19th bid opening.
- Do we have any questions or comments on the May 19th bid opening?
- Hearing none, do we have a motion for approval?
- So move.
- Second.
- We have a motion and a second for the approval of the minutes of the May 19th
- bid opening. All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed, say nay.
- Thank you. Minutes of the bid opening are approved.
- We also have approval of the minutes of the regular meeting on May 19th.
- Are there any questions or comments on the regular meeting on May 19th?
- I move approval of the May 19th regular meeting much.
- Second.
- We have a motion and a second for the approval of the regular meeting minutes.
- All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed, say nay.
- Not nay.
- Not nay. Remix of the nay.
- The regular meeting minutes are approved from February or May 19th.
- Easy for me to say.
- Moving on to the approval of the claims.
- First, we have standard invoices for a total amount of $915,307.85.
- Are there any questions or comments on the standard invoices?
- Two questions.
- The first is at the bottom of page two, city of Bloomington,
- interdepartmental agreement to 2023.
- It's all on water.
- Just wondering if that's correct.
- Oh, it is because we're paying the water for installments this year.
- So we paid this all the sewer the first time we went through,
- and this is the second of four payments.
- Yep.
- Second one is on the top of page eight.
- Stan tech for testimony in the water rate case.
- I was just wondering what their role is.
- Their role is so there's we have three professional organizations, I would say.
- We have a legal firm that's going to help represent us at the IORC.
- Then we have another firm that's putting together our revenue requirements.
- And then Stan tech is going to do the cost of service study
- after we get the revenue requirements.
- And the cost of service study is when it says that
- the revenue requirement says we need this big of a pie to do our projects.
- And then the cost of service people decide who's going to pay what part of that pie.
- Thank you.
- No approval of the standard invoices for today.
- Have a motion and second.
- All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed say nay.
- Standard invoices are approved.
- Moving on to utility bills for a total amount of $25,064 and 67 cents.
- Are there any questions or comments on the utility bills?
- I move approval of utilities for May 29th.
- Second.
- Have a motion and second.
- All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed, please say nay.
- Utility bills are approved.
- Next we have wire transfers for a total amount of $528,045 and 37 cents.
- Are there any questions on the wire transfers?
- I move approval of wire transfers for June of 2025.
- Second.
- We have a motion and a second.
- All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed, say nay.
- Wire transfers are approved.
- Lastly, we have customer refunds for a total amount of $5,454 and 43 cents.
- Are there any questions or comments on the customer refunds?
- I move approval of customer refunds for June 6th.
- Second.
- Motion and a second.
- All in favor, please say aye.
- Aye.
- All opposed, say nay.
- Customer refunds are approved.
- Thank you all.
- Item number five on our agenda is approval of this consent agenda
- for a total amount of $5,763.
- Kathryn Zager. Good evening.
- I'm Kathryn Zager, utilities director.
- I'm presenting tonight's consent agenda totaling $5,763.
- The first contract is with Smith's Design Group for $2,500
- for plat amendment to Canterbury Lot 5 in order to vacate a portion of conservation easement.
- Next is with Brehop Corporation for $1,963 for a new oil water separator at
- Monroe Water Treatment Plant. Last is with Electric Plus Inc.
- for $1,300 for work on the low service tower at Monroe Water Plant.
- Is there any member who wishes to consider one or more of these items individually?
- Hearing none, if there's no opposition, these items will be approved as recommended by staff.
- Hearing no opposition, the consent agenda is approved.
- Thank you. Item number six is a request approval of resolution
- 2025-08 to designate surplus property for auction.
- Matt Haby. Yeah, we got several vehicles that we're wanting to auction off.
- If the description that says not used, but a better description is repairing them is too expensive.
- There's one that needs like a $20,000 engine, so we're just trying to get rid of these things.
- Any questions or comments? I just was wondering
- when you get the money for this, will you let us know?
- Oh, we get it all the time, yeah. Because usually it's like, you know,
- old filing cabinet, broken CD, and like this is something that might get some money for parts.
- Fair enough, yeah. Well, I know that you approved a loader maybe that last meeting or two meetings
- ago, and I know that we got like $46,000 for that loader. You said 46?
- Yeah. Great, and what are we going to do with that?
- Find a project. Okay.
- Okay, thanks. Any other questions or comments for Matt?
- All right, and if we approve Resolution 2025-8 for Surplus Property.
- Second. We have a motion and a second on the table for approval. Please say aye. Aye. Aye.
- Next we have Request Approval of Water Main Replacement Prioritization List, Phil Peden.
- I'm really tempted to go break a CD and see how well I do in the bid.
- They're old and they're too neat, right? So it's like, okay, we can get rid of it. That's right.
- Phil Peden, Engineering. Yes, this is a list of our water main replacement projects
- listed as a prioritization based on a number of factors. So there's a team of folks from
- engineering that I want to give credit to developing this list, but Assistant GIS Coordinator
- Jordan Kiso, Matt Dabberton, and Kayden Swanson helped create this list and the ranking factors
- that were put into that. So this is information that we carry in the GIS system, pipe diameter,
- age, material, and number of breaks. We've been tracking that for a number of years,
- and I believe the break data goes back to early 1980s. So a lot of communities don't have that.
- And so when you go to these seminars where they talk about how you're going to develop your water
- main replacement prioritization, it's all about data and what you have going back. So we're lucky
- that we had a lot of main break data, unfortunately, but also lucky that we have it. So this is how
- we
- did that. We ranked those and then gave them a score of one to five, and we were able to get all
- the number ones, which was the way chosen to say the worst, in this list of 30. So that's what we
- prioritize. Happy to answer any questions. We're looking at also, you'll see this evolve over the
- next few years. We're going to constantly look to, I guess, make this more accurate. Things change,
- and so this is consistently changing as we learn about more breaks. There's a lot of criteria that's
- not in our GIS that we want to add to this. In fact, we had a company come in and give us a
- seminar on how they can use AI to develop a way to sort this data, and they'll take a lot of
- exterior
- data outside of just the GIS data, but weather conditions, soil conditions, things like that,
- and train the AI to where it will predict where the main breaks are. They've had success in other
- communities. Unfortunately, the water budget isn't allowing us to pay for that service at this time,
- but we hope in the next few years we can do that. So we're doing our best at this time.
- We, like I say, we would like to add data where we could prioritize based on the paving list
- off of criticality, whether it's closer proximity to a school or the hospital,
- something like that. We've got a whole list here, but basically we expect that we will refine this
- list over the years, but we wanted to have something in front of you that we're starting from.
- This is great, by the way. Are there any questions or comments for Phil?
- Sorry, okay. This is fantastic, and it's just amazing to me that the AI technology that you
- shared with us, I mean, that's just crazy. Instead of going from the magic eight ball to tell us
- whether or not there's going to be a break to actual data. But in terms of this though, I mean,
- I can see how you've ranked it. Does this mean that these would be, like, you'd want to start
- at number one and we're going to work our way through? Or it's kind of like we're going to
- now make a master plan based on these? Honestly, to me, they made that list. Then from there,
- we really need to develop where they would go in order from there. I went ahead and based it off
- a number of breaks to get one through 30. But I think if it's on the 30 list, then we'll be
- strategic. Oh, that one's on the paving list sooner. We're going to move forward that first
- before we do one that's not. So it's not just operating in a silo. It's also looking at what
- other projects are going on too. The timeframe to get these done, is there, I mean, is this
- something
- that you're saying this we have to, we're going to, this is our one to two-year plan or our three-year
- plan? We don't have estimates on on those yet. We've done eight to ten water main replacements
- in a year when we had the two to three million dollar budget. Obviously, we're short on budget
- now, so it won't be to the new rate case. So we've got a year and a half or so, you know,
- whenever that rate case comes through before we can start doing those. But then I suspect,
- depending, and if you look, one of those is 2,400 feet. So that's going to, that'll eat up a big
- chunk of one year's budget. And then my last question is, I like too that you've talked about
- the neighborhoods that would be affected. What about the east third street? It says NA. Where
- is that? So there's one right near the bypass, right at third in the bypass. Third in the bypass
- is one, okay. And the other one's further east. Third in the bypass. A couple weeks ago. Yeah, CVS.
- Okay, the corner there. Okay, yeah, okay. It crosses the, I believe it crosses the
- intersection on the north side of third street. So that's one of them and then what's the other?
- Further east, near Park Ridge. Thank you. Those were my questions. Thanks.
- Yeah, thank you, Phil. This is nice. If you want, I don't know if you have logins to GIS,
- but Jordan created this really great interactive map where you can choose, I just want to see
- the ones that were ranked the highest, or I want to see ones and twos, and then it highlights red,
- orange, yellow, green, and you, and then you can see where they're at within the city, and then how
- they align with, say you had a one and a two and they were adjacent, you could see where you could
- tie those together as one project. So, and it turned off all the other layers. It was just very
- helpful to kind of analyze the... I encourage you guys to keep putting as much data as you can
- into these things, because if there's good data in, then we can get good data out, you know,
- and so it's fantastic. This is great. Well, in fact, we met on that about a month ago as a team,
- a lot of the ADs and TND staff to say, "Okay, you had a main break. What data can we collect?
- Water temperature? What were the pumps doing at the time? Was there an activity? Were we
- flushing in this neighborhood?" And just seeing what data was available so that the more data
- we can start to record and maybe in a year, then we can throw it in the AI and see if there's a
- deciding trend with that data. You might find that one of those elements that you weren't looking
- at
- really tells you the most about main breaks. Thank you again, Phil. I noticed that a pretty
- large number of these are on Fritz Terrace. Is that a really problem area that I know?
- James could speak on that, but what happens is they go in a certain time frame. It could be the
- soil type there. It could be they all went in in a certain era of time when the manufacturers were
- using a specific type of pipe or that manufacturer of that pipe, because we have different brands
- of
- pipe that create ductile iron. There's one brand that caused more breaks. If that brand got used
- when that contractor built Fritz Terrace, then you see a lot more breaks. Or the contractor did
- something when they did the install. There's so many different factors, but you can see that once
- it starts in that neighborhood, you get a lot of the pipes in the neighborhood all at once.
- Recalling a few years back, I remember Vic talking about taking the approach of there's a certain
- percentage, given the lifespan of these systems, that we need to replace every year. I'm just
- wondering if we're continuing on with that approach for water and stormwater, and how this fits in
- with that. We were doing our best. I feel like with the $2 to $3 million budget we had before
- water money got tight. We don't have any available this year for doing it, or next year before the
- rate case comes through. I think what you start to realize, the more research you do, and as we
- talked
- about taking the data, we found that the older pipe doesn't have the breaks. The more you look
- at the data, the more you realize where your focus should be. You see an era of 1950 to 1969 pipe
- that
- has the most breaks. That should be the highest priority. Pre-1950, you're not seeing the breaks
- or the problems. It's a much more nuanced approach than just a percentage that we were talking
- about
- a few years ago. So I think, yeah, we're not replacing everything when it hits 100 years old
- because a lot of that pipe is still good, but we are being more efficient at how when we do
- make a replacement that we're replacing the ones that need it the most. My opinion only is that
- we should allocate, we should budget for this, not work ourselves into a place of where we have a
- deficit, an infrastructure deficit. The challenge you get, and we thought the same approach,
- until we got two and a half million dollars, say last year, it was all we could do as project
- management and T&D staff to keep up with. We did eight or ten, I'm going to say, and that was about
- all we could do. The prices get a lot higher when you have to bid it out. You have to manage the
- project through the engineering department, and so you run out of time to get more done unless,
- of course, we expand and get more employees that can manage the project. We expand T&D and we have
- more crews that could do it. That would be one way to do it as well. I don't want to speak for
- James,
- but I felt like that was what we thought we could do internally. Some of those projects were more
- complex or larger, whatever it was. We weren't allowed to do them internally, but the ones that
- we did, they were pretty busy with those all year. Just as a board member, I want to know if we get
- to the point where we're making decisions by not growing, where we're increasing our deficit
- in our infrastructure, where we really need to be more proactive. We're certainly in a deficit with
- water main replacement. If you look at what we did for the Cruzan era, there wasn't a lot of money
- allocated to water main replacement. The rates weren't there to allocate toward that, so we got
- behind. Then we tried to catch up by increase, increase, increase, till we got from $500,000 to
- $2.5 million, I think. Again, we're making progress, but it's getting so much more expensive.
- Just a few years ago, what we thought we could do for $300,000, now $800,000. It ate into the
- $2.5 million budget really quick. That would be great. We'll get more. We'll do our best,
- but there is a point where staffing is limited to complete the goal.
- Just to tag on to that, though, let's all remember this conversation when we're giving
- positions to other departments, that they're helping them when our folks can't get the
- jobs done with the staff they have. I'm just bringing that up as a comment.
- I'm glad you mentioned phasing this with paving projects, because that's a really
- efficient way to do things. So I assume you're working with Public Works to see their
- paving plan for the year? Yes. And then we try to get in there before that? Yes. Okay.
- They don't have that available a year prior, so you get it. I think we get it February,
- let's say. But what they do, they do work with us really well, so we can say, "Hey,
- we want to replace that," and then they'll delay, they'll put that on, they usually shift that to
- later in the fall so that we can get to our work. Yeah, because it really frustrates citizens when
- they see having to dig up something that just got paved. If we could see a five-year paving list,
- oh, then we could really plan ahead. And maybe now with this great list, there's opportunity
- to share this list with them too, at least like they know our priorities. Yeah, that's a good point.
- Thank you. And if there is a bottleneck in terms of administering contracting, like someone
- mentioned,
- there's maybe 10 projects at Fritz Terrace, maybe that all gets bundled into one to have a better
- economy of scale there in terms of the contracting and do one large project. I don't know how we
- budget for that right now, but we can certainly plan for something like that going forward. I
- don't know how the neighborhood would react either, but I mean, maybe they'd rather see it all done
- at
- once consecutively rather than a new project year after year piecemeal. Yeah, that's a good point.
- A lot of it's planning and then the bidding. And so, yeah, sure. I think that that would
- save a lot of time. Great discussion. It's been a great one, Phil, to you and your team.
- Are there any other questions or comments for Phil? Do we have a motion for approval? I move
- we approve the water main replacement prioritization list. Second. We have a motion and a second.
- All in
- favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Request is approved. Thank you.
- Item number eight, old business. Any old business from staff?
- Any old business from the board? I did that backwards. It's okay.
- No. New business. New business from the board. New business from staff. And subcommittee report.
- Mr. White. Yeah, so property and planning subcommittee met just prior to this meeting,
- and our mission was to really have an open discussion, hearing in for reports and information
- from staff and related to the concept of our future space needs here at our current site,
- and what might be on the horizon for the Winston Thomas site. Remember, this was a follow-up from
- the mayor's presentation a month ago, expressing interest in arranging some,
- well, putting together some proposals for building public works, Department of Public Works for
- Civil City at our Winston Thomas site. So we brainstormed a little bit today to talk about
- different scenarios, thinking about what both utilities needs in a 30, 40, 50-year time frame,
- as well as what Department of Public Works needs. And I think as we kind of summed up the
- discussion,
- we had a list of things that Cat will take to the mayor's office to discuss with them.
- But in general, the committee really, I think, consensus was that we want to work as closely
- as we can with the mayor's office and with the Civil City side to see what their needs are
- and really look at the big picture. Lots of different scenarios, as the mayor mentioned
- at her presentation to us a month ago. This site that we're currently on may be
- highest and best used for new housing development. So that would be a good reason for us to
- end up in the Department of Public Works to vacate this entire site. We also talked about if
- we moved the utilities department to Winston Thomas, this might allow the
- Department of Public Works to use all of this site and just connect together.
- Or if they moved to Winston Thomas, we could expand on this site.
- So lots of good options and I think as I say the consensus was is that we're we certainly
- haven't decided anything. We're wide open for making sure that we make the best use of both
- our rate payers and taxpayers because on the Department of Public Works side it's it will
- require the city council to to expend a significant amount of money as well. We want a big picture
- to
- see what man I'm kind of looking your way take that message back. We really feel like in big
- picture we want to work together to make sure that the impact on citizens is the most efficient
- and taking advantage of what we know both we have information that we know what we what we need
- from
- the studies we've done and our space needs and we need to make sure that we know what DPW needs
- as well so that we can make best use in the big picture and think long term. So there's our report.
- Has there been more conversation with the mayor or her staff about those options? I was
- I was here at the board meeting where she initially laid that out uh deputy mayor now
- has there been more conversation exploring those options? We have not but one of the things we
- discussed with them was perhaps a joint meeting between a set of mentions that we might put a
- meeting together between the board about the works and the usb to talk about some brainstorming as
- well. And we did ask to get on her agenda but she was not available so we you know we couldn't for
- scheduling wise so we opted as the board to at least let us get together get all of our questions
- in line so but we've not had any further personal like discussion with her I don't think staff has
- either. Matt you ought to be at such a meeting. Yeah and potentially other council members as well
- I mean yeah to Kirk's point about the overall financial efficiency of you know across multiple
- units in a sense or you know revenue basis like yes we should have the city council involved in
- that.
- Great discussion on subcommittee forward to follow up answers and see what comes from our
- suggestions.
- Anything else subcommittee wise? All right staff reports.
- All right yeah I've got a couple items for us today. First we'd like to welcome Reston Souders
- he'll be joining us in T&D as the utility specialist one. I also have some congratulations for
- Joel Pontius the conservation energy resource manager. He earned his sustainability practitioner
- credential and Christy Lindbergh our environmental and environmental programs. She was awarded the
- lifetime achievement award by the Hoosier River Watch and IDEM for over 20 years of volunteering
- with the Hoosier River Watch. That's my staff report.
- Next is petitions and communications any petitions and communications from the public.
- And then do we have a motion for adjournment? I move we adjourn.
- (orchestral music)