Okay, we'll call the meeting of the utility services board for October 19 2026 to order. Our first item
is to remind everybody that our mission for the city of Bloomington utilities to 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. And our vision is to be the leading municipal water
utility organization in Indiana. All right, and with that, I'll ask if there's any petitions
or communications from the public at this point. Anybody here to speak on any issues? Seeing none, we'll
go on to approval of the minutes from our previous meeting.
first item is a certification of the executive sessions that were held on September 21st and September
29th. That's basically a certification as long as everybody sees that the notes there that no final
decisions were made or subject matter discussed in these executive sessions other than the subject matter
specified and allowed under Indiana code. So that certification is for both meetings? For both executive
sessions, yes. Right, both executive sessions. I was not in attendance. I was not either. In the September 29th.
So we don't need to approve that. But it's in the minutes of the members who were in attendance, and
I'm listed as an attendee and I was not in attendance. But I was in attendance at the first meeting
on the 21st, but I was not at the meeting on the 29th. So we'll split those. Right, they have it listed
twice. In the second one, you and I are not listed.
Because the only four people at the executive session were Jim, Kirk, Seth, and myself. On the 29th.
I see how it is. I apologize. Got it. So it is, actually it is correct because I didn't see the other
paragraph. Thank you. So we don't need to vote on that, I just need to certify it? Okay, so it's in
the record. And I will sign that at the end of the meeting.
All right, then the next item then is the minutes of our full meeting on October the 5th. Those minutes
are in our packet. I had a chance to take a look at those. Moved in second to approve the minutes of
the October 5th meeting. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
All right, motion carries. Minutes are approved. Next item is the approval of standard invoices for
October 23rd, 2026. Everybody will review those. Have any questions about our standard invoices? Yes.
On page eight, we have a
are two invoices from quality supplying tool for the same product with significantly different amounts
for the first aid kit. Yeah I wonder if the quantity on those are different. Looks like one of them
I wonder if that's for individuals or whether it's resupply. I know we had a bunch of expires, so we
did buy some to replace those in vehicles. I'm trying to find the invoices here. It's page eight of
the packet, about three quarters of the way down. It's just on the same
It looks like the same purchase order, 26-316. That's their purchase order, not ours. It looks like
it's two separate lines for the same order. So we just got billed twice with the same purchase order.
Okay. And it was a mass ordering. Okay. Yes. Yes, Chris, my usual question.
I think I noticed a $61,000 attorney fee for the cleanup. Are we making any progress? What's the report?
I have an item on the agenda with that. You can talk about it then, or I'm happy to have a discussion
about it now. No, no. Let's wait till you want to do it. OK. Any other?
Questions or items for discussion for standard invoices? I move that we approve these standard invoices.
Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
All right, standard invoices are approved. Next is utility bills for October the 8th pay date.
bills there any questions on those move that we approve the utility bills second moved a second to approve
utility bills for the eighth for October 8th yes all in favor say aye aye opposed all right motion carries
and next we have another set of utility bills for payday October 15th
that we approve the utility bills from October 15th it's been moved in second to approve utility bills
for October let's see 15th yeah all in favor say aye aye opposed all right utility bills have been approved
next our wire transfers totaling five hundred sixty nine dollars five hundred sixty nine thousand three
hundred ninety six dollars and thirty five cents
for a pay date of October 19th. I move that we approve the wire transfers. Second. Moved and seconded
to approve wire transfers. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, the transfers are
approved. Next on our agenda is customer refunds. Two pages of those.
usual overpayments and inactive or final bills for closed accounts. Second. Moved and seconded to approve
customer refunds. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right motion carries.
Those are approved and next finally is
a special check run for August 16th of 26th, excuse me, October 16th of 26th. See the items listed there
for the special check run. I have a question. Yeah. On the first line item, I see where there's
a reimbursement for an error used for a personal purchase. I was just wondering if you can tell me
What's the process of how people use their cards and how was this caught? I understand accidents happen,
so I assume there's no ill intent or anything like that. And so I just wondered, what's our process
for that? The employee used it in accident instead of their personal card for a purchase. They reached
out to me. It gave us a heads up. And so they gave us a check to reimburse us
for their purchase. And if they didn't come out and say that they did this, we would have found out
when we got the statements that we wouldn't have the proper purchasing documents to make the payment
for it. Yep. Yep. I also like to add that there's a very limited number of credit cards. And there is
only one per division that that division head is responsible for.
moved and seconded to approve the special check run for October 16th all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
All right motion carries. Okay next on our agenda is is the request for approval of the memorandum of
understanding between CBU and the Department of Economic and Sustainable Development at the Civil City
of Bloomington or
residential stormwater grants. And we're ready to hear report. All right. So first I'm going to talk
about our agreement with ESD and then I'm sure there will be questions about the future of our grant
program and I'm prepared to talk about that as well. So the economic and sustainable
development department has been doing kind of neighborhood grants for some time and they were wanting
to expand into rain gardens. We were wanting to, while still supporting resident level grant programs,
we haven't had the capacity to administer them very well and we've also had declining interest over
the recent years. So the solution we found is to transfer a portion of the money that we set aside for
grants every year to ESD so that they can
grow their kind of rain garden program. I think they're just going to call it the residential stormwater
grant program. So they can go on a resident by resident level, people that want to add a rain garden
to their yard, something like that. And then that would leave us with the balance of our grant money
to focus on larger scale projects that will have more of an impact on more residents in the watershed.
So this is the move to
take some of that money to ESD, we will still be involved in selecting grant projects. So once they
get their applications in, they're still welcoming us to help look at that. They will also still rely
on us to do inspections of these projects to make sure they're done correctly. And finally, they will
be looking to us to hopefully provide some more information and outreach regarding things like rain
gardens. And we just met with some of our colleagues in Fort Wayne. They've run a rain garden workshop
over the years. And so we're looking to model something like that. So this is kind of changing
our residential stormwater grants often where contractors were grabbed and they were doing these projects.
The idea for ESD is to be more of like a do it yourself, resident by resident type grant program.
So that's what the MOU is for. And then I can take questions or talk more about where we wanna go with
our grant program if that is something you could like to discuss. Thank you, Liz. So we budget about
100,000 a year for our program. And I think there have been years that we've not used all of the funding.
We have not used all the funding since I took this position almost four years ago. And so I think then from,
My discussions with Kat that our thought is that this would allow us to, as you mentioned, focus on
the larger projects like detention ponds that are being neglected. That's right. And this would make
it a little more user friendly for smaller neighborhood projects. The ESD already has a lot
of the connections with. That's right.
That's absolutely right. So and I can talk more about kind of what we want to do with our grant program
going forward, because honestly, it's like $100,000 was maybe
a lot of money to give out to residential scale grants and now the 80,000 that will be remaining once
we give 20 to ESD is honestly probably not quite as much as people will be asking for. So we are looking
to target post construction stormwater features. So like you said, detention ponds, things that have
been installed and maybe not kept up over the years or have just reached towards the end of their useful
age. So we're looking at targeting homeowners associations, neighborhood associations, any
group of residents that has one of these features that they would like to do some upkeep or even replacement.
So we've been tasked with item to do post construction inspections of every feature that we know of
within the city of Bloomington supposed to be on a five year rolling basis. Nobody that I know has met
that yet. But as we go through our community and we find these
these ponds, for example, that aren't working well, we're having to deliver bad news to people. And
so we've started those inspections focused on multifamily housing and commercial properties. But at
some point, we're going to have to get to the neighborhood scale. And we wanted to have an option available
for an HOA or a neighborhood association who's finding out, oh, we're supposed to be maintaining this
pond for the past 30 years. No one has ever done that.
We have some real problems. We want to see that pond function well so that it holds back storm water
and prevents flooding downstream. We want them to be successful. And we also don't want to have to be
the bearers of very bad news with no possible solution forward for folks. So that's where we're pivoting
with this. When you find a detention pond that's not been maintained, as you mentioned,
and that it needs to be, you know, if it's silted up, then it's not got the capacity to do what it needs
to do. Do we cost share or is it kind of a case by case basis? So when we do our inspections, there's
there's sort of like,
different levels of failure that we see, because I'll be honest, not a single one of them is gonna be
perfect. There might even just be some vegetation struggles, right? So we kind of have the, hey, you've
got some minor upkeep to do here. You might have a little bit of erosion happening that needs to be
receded. We send reports to folks, so that's the most basic one. Then you get into, hey, you've got
some major erosion. Maybe some of your inlet structures have been under, like eaten out from water over
the years.
And again, we send a report, we let them know about it, and then we have the ones where it's like the
pond is failing, it is so silted in, it's not functioning. We've had, there's a couple ponds I know
out there that you wouldn't know that there was supposed to be a pond there because it's just sort of
a little depression in the earth. Those ones we're asking folks to start talking to us about timeline
on corrective action for that kind of stuff. A question about cost share. These were typically built
by developers as
private infrastructure. So the responsible party for that infrastructure is a private party, be it an
apartment complex that is maintaining its grounds.
be it the Sherwin-Williams that just went in next to Lowe's on the west side. They have a bioswale that
they're maintaining over there. Or it might be an HOA or a neighborhood group. So they set that aside.
It was always intended to be private and privately maintained. So this is like our attempt to try to
help out those folks when we're talking about single family residents. But yeah, there has not been
a cost share in the past. We've kicked around ideas over the years of how we could be helpful. But again,
There are so many ponds that are not doing great. I think the cost of the utility, even to share that,
that would be very, very high. Yeah, Jim. So when you see a problem, to whom do you report it? We report
it to the owner of records so we can go look in the county parcel records to see who owns it. And we
send the report to them. And like I said,
In most cases, we're not even expecting action. We're just saying, hey, you've got some minor problems.
You might want to look at this. We're looking at major problems, major failures, where we're asking
folks to start working with us on a timeline. So who is the owner when it involves an HOA? Great question.
An HOA is a business entity in and of itself. And that pond is likely sitting on a piece of land that
was, when this area was subdivided, it was set aside as common area.
and the owner of that common area is defined on the plat, and then usually also in the CCR, which is
covenants, covenants, what's the other C? Okay, so there's documents recorded when a subdivision is
created, ponds are usually in common area, the owner of that common area and who should be maintaining
it is usually very well identified. And so there are cases though where the homeowners association has
gone defunct,
Right, because they file yearly business reports, just like any business with the Secretary of State.
And if they've gone defunct, I think we're looking at, hey, if you'd like funding, your organization
needs to no longer be defunct, because somebody needs to be doing maintenance here. It can't just be
nobody. OK, so you do make sure it gets communicated. Yes. OK, thank you.
And like I said, we haven't really delved into the HOA-owned and neighborhood ponds yet. We want to
do a lot more outreach ahead of it before, you know, your HOA gets an inspection report from the utility
that says your pond's failing. They call up an engineer and find out they've got a really expensive
problem on their hands. We'd rather approach them a little bit more from the education standpoint before
we start sending those. But the state has required us to start doing inspections. So we started with
multifamily commercial.
I appreciate your time and thought into this program. I kind of echo the cost sharing at least. I feel
like that would be a model I would be interested in hearing more about if you guys felt like that was
worth it. I guess I feel like the remaining $80,000 could go really fast. And it sets a precedence here
at the beginning of the program that if we're going to take on 100% of that cost, then like,
We've got to, I feel like we would have to continue that for future projects. And then there might not
be that funding. And I like the investment of the ownership. Speaking of someone who lives in an HOA,
in the county though, so ours would not be eligible for this, but the stake of the resident owners I
think is important too, for future maintenance. And so,
That would be a comment on that. And then my other comment on the ESD would be you mentioned the ways
that CBU will be involved in that process and it sounded like pretty significantly, which is good because
that's what we want that outcome to be what we need it to be. But it doesn't sound like we're really
stepping back that much to give the funds to
them to distribute? Honestly, the Residential Stormwater Grant Program was way more work than I think
any of us realized when it was created. Even just ESD taking the day-to-day questions will be incredibly
helpful. It's been a lot of staff time. And again, we're giving out maybe half of the money. And some
of the projects towards the end of that grant's life were maybe not the most impactful.
So it will take a lot off of our plates. I feel confident. And then after ESD has done this for a year,
they may be able to take a lot more of it on in future. But it kind of fits in the wheelhouse of grants.
Thank you. That's what I wanted to hear. And before we go on to Amanda.
We plan to bring our fully flushed out new grant program to you guys to see what you think before we
start advertising on the website or anything. So we can certainly consider the cost share model and
come to you with some suggestions if that would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. Of course. Amanda. So is
the ESD going to contribute any funds to this or this is exclusively funded through CBU?
They had a camera with their neighborhood grant program was called. So they were funding a neighborhood
grant that did include rain gardens as an option. And so they were already spending their money on that.
So we said, look, we'll give you another 20,000, but that has to be exclusively spent on stormwater
focused items. So yeah, so they have a neighborhood grant. Sometimes that grant is just like beautifying
people's neighborhoods, planting native plants. It covers a lot of,
different kinds of neighborhood projects, but rain gardens were one. So we said, well, if you're already
doing rain gardens, can we have you focus on it a little bit more, then we're not duplicating efforts
in two different departments. But they do have, they were contributing their own budget to that as well.
Excellent, thank you. Of course. Real quick, this is for 26 and 27, correct? Mm-hmm. Do we foresee us
contributing past that, like donating towards,
Honestly, yes, if they if this partnership goes well, we would be happy to do this going forward because
again, you know, this focus on infrastructure that's not doing so well, that's kind of aging out is
really important. But since we've had that household by household grant program, we felt like taking
it away completely. People would just feel like they weren't getting a benefit from their government
that they had been. So we anticipate continuing this partnership with them.
Other questions, discussion? All right, ready for a vote on the MOU. Move, motion? I move that we approve
the MOU between the City of Bloomington, ESD, and utilities. Second. Moved and seconded to approve the
memorandum of understanding.
All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next item is the
request for approval for the Fourth Amendment to our agreement with VET Environmental Engineering LLC.
Looks like attorney Wheeler is going to be with us for that one. Yes. Good afternoon. This is just catching up.
some additional expenditure with VET who have been involved rather significantly in the ongoing discovery
phase of our litigation with Leonard's Linens Dry Cleaning. And so we're asking for approval of this
amendment to catch up the expenses that VET incurred in their depositions and review of documents and
release of documents through production
of document requests in the discovery phase. And this extends our contract with them to July 30th of
2027. Which is hopefully going to be out beyond the life of the litigation assuming there isn't any
additional delay. Okay. All right. Is this a time for you to address Mr. Sherman's
Questions? Yes, I think what well, why don't you ask me so that we know exactly what you're asking?
Another 61 or so thousand dollars in attorney fees. So I wondered how close we were to settlement. I
know mediation failed in the near past. So we are still working through discovery. So we're in the discovery
phase of litigation.
There currently is not any discussion about settlement, but I'm sure there will be more settlement discussion
down the road as we get nearer to trial. But at the moment, the parties are just busy trying to wrap
up the discovery phase. I think there are just a few more depositions to be conducted. There have been
a few issues with regards to the release of documents that had to be discussed in front of the court,
which captures
some of that additional expenditure that you're seeing there. But I wouldn't say that we're close. I
think there are still many months to go. Okay. Thanks, Chris. You mentioned the trial. Can you remind
us when that date is? I wish I could remember. I'm sorry. I did not familiarize myself with that when
I came in today. Best recollection is that it's going to be first
order of next year. Okay. I wasn't thinking it was before then. So I just can't recall the exact date.
Thank you. Okay. Any other questions on the extending this amending our agreement with VT? All right.
We approve the fourth amendment to the agreement with VT. Second and moved and seconded. Any other discussion?
All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item is requesting approval
of the service agreement with Clark Dietz, Incorporated. Engineer Peden is with us today. Good evening,
Phil Peden, engineering.
So yes, this is a contract with Clark Dietz. It's an on-call contract for engineering services. We've
had one of these in the past, as you might recall, and it was for the stormwater reviews that we do
with new plan development. They assisted with that as we were bringing on a new engineer. So you might
remember Caden Swanson. As he was brought on, we used Clark Dietz. As he learned the process and the
program and how we did those reviews, we slowly
use Clark Dietz less and less, so by the time Caden actually left, he was doing all the reviews. So
we've hired a new engineer, so we're restarting this process where we use Clark Dietz to help assist
through that as the new engineer is being trained and
in that. We also use these contracts for design of smaller storm systems where we're studying smaller
watersheds to develop a stormwater system for several blocks of street in certain neighborhoods. And
we've put a list together that we're including in our new rate case for the stormwater rate case that
we're going to need some engineering design on these smaller projects. And we left it
open enough I believe in this contract where they can be used if we have a water main replacement that
we need some assistance with. They can also do some design work or permitting or whatever we might need
from an engineering standpoint. So we broaden the scope a little bit on this one just because we have
additional projects that we know we're going to need assistance on and we extended the time. So this
doesn't expire to the end of 2028.
So if you if you're looking at that price and you're wondering why we increased it from the original
contract that we had with Clark deeds we it was because that additional scope and time where we extended
it. Happy to answer any questions. The maximum amount we might not use it all. That's correct. Depending
upon how many storm water reviews you need to do and
how much training needs to happen, right? In any project design that they do, they submit a proposal
to us that we accept at staff level before we have them start that design process. So we see the price
we're agreeing to within that on call before we move forward with it. Okay. Any questions for Phil?
All right.
Moved and seconded to approve the service agreement of Clark Dietz. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed.
All right. Motion carries. Thank you. And then item eight is requesting approval of an on-call service
agreement with Wexler Engineering. And Dan Hudson is here this evening.
and capital projects manager of the city of Bloomington. Quite often we get requests from plants to
do small projects. It could be a wall with a crack in it to determine the structural integrity, walkways
across clarifiers that are crumbling, transformer that caught fire that needed to be replaced,
A chemical feed lines system and also a permit, a temporary permit to feed it. Just a number of different
projects from all different areas. And to streamline our process, we need a way to get it quicker. To
get a consultant under a contract and then go out to design and bid.
to get a consultant under contract, that's a minimum of two months. And so what we're trying to do for
these smaller projects like this is to have a way we can do that without going through a contract each
time. And so I'm gonna ask the board to go under contract for an on-call for engineering services for
these technical projects that we need these, this system.
with Wesley Engineering for $225,000. And Dan, that would run us up to October 21st of 28. Yeah, it's
a long process. And I'm hoping we don't spend the money. If we don't have the projects come to us, we're
not going to spend it. Question?
clarification though this says the contract expires 2029 oh then there's three dates on on here that
say one says first term October 21st 27 second term October 21st also 2027 and there is a mistake there
oh those are renewals I think well 28th and it expires on the
It needs to be amended here.
It goes to 2027. The second goes from 2027 to 2028. And the third one goes from 2028 to 2029. So you're
saying the first one will expire this month? No, that's when it starts. Yeah, you're going to have to
answer that. Thank you. The memo is what's in question. I think the contract's probably good. The renewal
dates are, so this
assuming that everything goes through, we expect that the contract becomes live on the 21st of October
of this year. Okay. That's that answer. And so the first term will expire in October of next year, 2027.
The renew, the first renewal date is October 21, 2027. The second term will be, um, October 21, 20,
the second term then,
runs until 28 and the third term runs until 29. So 26 to 27, 27 to 28, 28 to 29. Okay. Right, and then
the expiration date of the larger contract is October 21st to 29. Yes. They've got their years mixed
up on the memo. Yeah, the memo is incorrect, so. The memo does not control the contract. The contract
controls the contract.
Got it. It takes legal to straighten the dates out. Well, anyway, I would be pleased if you would approve
this contract so we can get started on many of these projects. Well, Dan, thanks. You know, we've seen
how some of these do pop up unexpectedly, and this gives you a chance to be a little more nimble. Yes,
yeah. And that's helpful, I think. Oh, very helpful.
It doesn't say that we won't go out to bid for the big stuff. Yeah, but we may depending on the cost
of the project. But we've had several of them big some electrical jobs that were fairly technical. And
we've had some structural jobs, you know, just all different kinds of stuff. Great. Thank you. Any other
questions? Thanks for bringing that up.
I should have, I mentioned, I noticed it this morning and I forgot to, yeah, sorry. Anything else? Okay.
I move that we approve the contract with Wessler Engineering. Second. It's been moved and seconded.
Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you. Motion carries,
thank you. Okay, we're up to,
Old business, any old business from the board? Board members, old business from staff? Okay, new business
from the board. I just had a question which will lead into subcommittees probably, but we only have
one handful of meetings left this year. And so I know we'll need like an administrative subcommittee
meeting. I didn't know if there's any other subcommittee meetings we need to get on a calendar.
And if so, we should get it on the calendar. Okay. Okay. Okay. Get an admin subcommittee ready to go.
So we're ready for the new year. Great. Thank you for bringing that up. Any other new business?
All right. I don't think we've had any subcommittee meetings since our last meeting.
So nothing there, staff reports. Yeah, sure. So first I'd like to start with just a brief update on
taste and odor. There was a pretty brief spike in MIMB and Geosmin, which are those two chemical compounds
that impact taste and odor. That was at the end of September, along with a lot of other things that
were happening at the end of September.
And so I just want to report that our current numbers are back down. And so our G. Osmond is below the
detectable range. So that's three nanograms per liter. And then MIB is at 22.6 nanograms per liter,
which is still somewhat in the detectable range for sensitive populations. And so we're hoping that'll
continue to trend downward.
Yeah, so that's taste and odor. And then we wanted to congratulate and welcome some new employees. First,
I want to congratulate slash welcome Evelyn Gordon, who previously was an intern in our environmental
division, our MS4 program.
now has the stormwater education specialist position in environmental. And I'd also like to welcome
Max Beauvalet in engineering, who is our new GIS specialist. And then finally, I'd like to congratulate
Katherine Liu, who passed her backflow certification exam. Great. Good additions. Thank you for the update.
Do we have any petitions or communications from the public toward the end of our meeting here? Any other
input? Okay. Well with that, I think our agenda is complete and we can adjourn. Thank you very much.