excited to offer this to our community because we know there is a need for it. It's that time of year again, budget season. That means the city of Corpus Christi is getting ready to plan how we'll spend money to keep our community safe, clean, and growing. Just like you might plan on how to Okay. Good morning everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Miss Wa, could you please call the role? >> Mayor Plet Wardo, >> present. >> Council members Roland Bera >> here. >> Sylvia Campos >> here. >> Eric Canu is absent. Gil Hernandez >> here. >> Kaylin Paxton. >> Uh Ever Roy >> present. >> Mark Scott >> present. >> Carolyn Bond >> here. City manager Peter Zenoni >> present. >> City attorney Miles Grizzly. >> Mayor and council a quorum of the council and the required charter officers are present to conduct the meeting. >> Okay. Thank you Miss Wortha. Um so we don't have anyone on WebEx just for clarity. >> No ma'am. >> Okay. So good morning everyone. This morning we are going to have an overview of the Corpus Christi or by Corpus Christi water of the fiscal year 2026 operating and capital improvement program proposed budget and rates. Great. Good morning, mayor. Good morning, council members. Drew Molly, chief operating officer. It's a pleasure to be here today. Uh we're here today uh to present our proposed 2025 2026 budget for water and wastewater and the proposed rates that would go into effect January 2026. Uh there has been a lot of work that has been put into this budget. And I want to thank the CCW team as well as uh Amy and her budget team uh for the dedication and perseverance that they've put into bringing us here today. Um I also want to thank just our entire CCW organization for the work that they do every day to provide safe and reliable drinking water and wastewater services to our community. Um, so we're going to start by providing an overview of the Corpus Christi wastewater system and then proceed to the drinking water system, including a review of our 2025 achievements, our proposed 2026 operating budget, as well as the proposed 2026 capital improvement plan. Uh, Mr. Wes Neban, uh, our director of infrastructure services, will present to you two decision packages for your consideration. One will improve our ability to maintain our infrastructure and the second will improve our ability to serve our community with type one affluent or reclaimed water. Andy McCartney with New Gen uh will summarize the cost of service model he used for developing our proposed FY26 water and wastewater rates. For those of you who are not aware, the cost of service model was initiated three years ago with the ultimate goal of all rate paying all rate classes uh rate customers paying their true cost of service. We've achieved this objective and you will see the results of this cost of service analysis in the upcoming slides. It's important to point out that CCW operates as an enterprise fund. An enterprise fund is a dedicated fund to support the operations of the water and wastewater utility. We are not supported by taxes. We are financially independent and self- sustaining and are not not part of the general fund. We operate this fund just like a not for-profit business would with the purpose of being good stewards of our rateayers investments. And while we are not here to make a profit, we are here to ensure that the rateayer is being served efficiently. Our rateayers are the community that we serve and we strive to meet their needs every day. So, let me start with the proposed 2026 budget for the wastewater fund. Before we get into the numbers, we want to highlight a few achievements. I won't read the entire bulleted list here, but just select a few key projects, which includes our two largest wastewater treatment plants and our largest lift station. So just this past May, we issued a $102 million construction award to rehabilitate infrastructure and improve treatment processes at the Greenwood wastewater treatment plant. The OSO wastewater treatment plant, which is our largest wastewater treatment plant, saw a $111 million investment last year to modernize the ammonia removal system, which will lower the operational cost and increase plant capacity to 18 million gallons a day. Uh this is a 4-year project and at our largest lift station in the entire city, the Williams lift station, uh we've achieved substantial completion for the 12.2 million project. Our team continues to inspect, clean, and perform preventative maintenance of our collection system. The Idiq contracts are an excellent implementation tool for rehabilitating and replacing wastewater pipelines across the city uh which included replacing approximately 32,000 linear feet uh of wastewater lines and rehabilitating 100 manholes. Rapid deployment of these resources to address aging infrastructure is essential and we are meeting our key performance indicators of the consent decree. Um, and so speaking of the consent decree, as you can see here, the decree continues to be a major initiative that drives virtually everything that we do in our wastewater department. Uh, just as a reminder, the consent decree was implemented in January of 2021 as a result of the city not meeting the Clean Water Act. Uh, the 15-year decree mandates that the city improves maintenance functions and the infrastructure associated with the system. To improve the system, the consent decree- establishes uh specific targets and goals that we are either meeting or exceeding today. As part of the CD, we're required to initiate pre-esign and u uh design for parts of our wastewater system that have had uh hydraulic constraints. And constraints are typically another way to say parts of the system that are are not large enough to move flow through them. Um, so we are going to continue to implement these types of projects through especially through our Idiq contracts. As mentioned earlier, here's a list of consent decree milestones. And as we can see, we've completed uh 10 out of the 17 milestones and the remaining milestones are either on schedule or ahead of schedule. as as part of the CD, as part of the consent decree, we are self-performing much of our own work. This is a little different than other cities where a greater portion of work um in cities that have CDs uh are typically subcontracted out. It's not to say we're not subcontracting out some of the work that we do in our CD consent decree program, but we do self-perform quite a bit of work. And we find that when you self-perform that work, you you tend to get some improvements and costs uh because our our our forces are pretty efficient at what they do. Um in 2020 when we signed the CD or the consent decree, our analysis showed that the rate of an average residential rateayer in year 10 would be generally $80 to $90. And and it may not be real real obvious on the screen, but I'm talking about the the uh the chart on the left. uh that was the analysises that that was done. So in about 10 years $80 to $90. Our latest evaluation on the right uh projects uh um valuation of the projected rate in year 10. It indicates $94 in year 10. And the reason for the change in that is primarily driven by the much higher inflationary figures that occurred between 2020 and 2025. Um those those inflationary figures were about 24.8% 8% as opposed to what was originally predicted at inflation of about 15%. So our proposed FY26 budgeted expenditures and revenues for wastewater is shown on this slide. On the left side of this slide, um you can see a wheel that shows the proposed expenditures versus revenue for FY26. The outside of the wheel shows a revenue of $99.4 4 million less fund balance. And the inside wheel shows the proposed expenditures of $13.6 uh million. Our revenues between 25 and 26 increased by $2.6 million while our expenditures increased by $100,000 uh as shown on the top right um uh bar. We will discuss a breakdown of these expenditures on the next slide. However, we are requesting an increase in our position account to help us maintain the new wastewater infrastructure we've installed as part of our uh CIP program. This slide here shows a comparison of our FY25 to 26 um budgeted expenditures by major categories including personnel, operating costs, capital, debt, and allocations and transfers. You can see from this table that our personnel has increased as a result of additional positions to maintain CIP projects as well as merit and cost of living cost adjustments for operating costs as a result of continued optimization and modernization of our wastewater treatment plants. We have seen lower usage of chemicals and therefore an overall decrease in chemical costs. The capital costs have decreased from 2025 to 26 as a result of the one-time transfer to development trust funds that are not occurring in 26. Our debt expense is projected to increase in 26. This is due to the continued investment in our wastewater system. The biggest takeaway here is that our overall increase in expenditures of.1% is uh lower than the water and sewer consumer price index um of 4.86% 86% from 2024 to 2025. Um, and with that said, the next three slides, I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Wes Nebin, our director of uh, water infrastructure. All right. Thank you, Drew. Uh, good morning, Mayor, Council. Wesley Nebin, director, water systems infrastructure. Um, I would like to introduce two separate initiatives that represent the wastewater department's commitment to protecting the more than $500 million worth of uh investment in the wastewater infrastructure that we've made over the last 10 years and going into the the future. Um, as Drew alluded to, we have two projects right now that do exceed $und00 million. Um, is um that is part of our enhancements, recapitalization of our plants. We want to ensure in the future that these the longevity of these plants continue to be uh a top priority and that you know we learned the lessons from the consent decree of the past where we did not uh fully fund and we deferred the maintenance on these facilities. So the first initiative is uh the addition of nine maintenance positions and the heavy equipment to assist with those positions. It'll be a $800,000 annual investment um with a $ 1.5 million onetime investment. Uh this initiative is going to provide for additional maintenance for items like odor control systems, additional lift stations, filters uh filter buildings. Sorry, I went one slide too fast. Um that have been added to the plants over the last 10 years. Um the plants themselves have not added additional employees since in in at least the last 15 years. We couldn't go back further than that, but in at least the last 15 years, there have been no additional staff added to these plants. Even though we continue to upgrade the plants, we can continue to add improvements uh that allow us to meet changes in permit regulations um and even service levels that we provide to our customers. So the second initiative is going to relate to our reclaim water. Um the and I'm sorry we had one. So the maintenance the uh the maintenance that we have one reason that our maintenance is so difficult in the city of Corpus Christi and I just wanted to touch on this is that five of our wastewater treatment plants are in close proximity to the saltwater. wastewater itself is already corrosive with uh sulfuric acid, hydrogen sulfide gas, things like that that cause significant corrosion even to stainless steel products. Um that is just exacerbated by the fact that our plant like I said five of the plants are within a half a mile of saltwater. Um you can see some of these pictures illustrate some of the maintenance items. These are all um these are all plants and upgrades at the plants that have been done in the last 10 years. that while they're not critical in nature, they do decrease how long these items will last and they will have to be going and be replaced if we don't do proper maintenance in the future. Um it is um you know it's even even the one on the top right of the screen that's aluminum and with some stainless steel uh attachment pieces and those all rust even when you go to that level of uh construction. All right. So now for the second decision uh pack uh the second decision package. So this relates to the operation of the reclaimed water station. The station was originally constructed and is being operated as an unfunded part of our 2425 budget. Um the service is offered at no charge to our residents. Um we man the station daily with staff and personnel that would be performing normally be performing some of the other maintenance items you saw in the other slides. that defers maintenance even further. So, this initiative will provide the necessary staffing to continue to run the station at its current service level. Why is this important? Our current model that we're using is not sustainable. We cannot keep pulling maintenance staff from other areas to continue to run this station and expect our plants and our infrastructure to operate at the levels that are needed. um without the additional employees, we will have to really look at either shutting down the station or severely limiting the amount of time that we have it open. So that's where these two um decision packages lie and they really I think uh relate to the commitment we have towards the maintenance program in our department. >> Wes, since you're there, can you just remind us again? It's on the slide, but of the operating hours at the uh >> Sure. >> We had a resident speak favor, you know, give you all some good good comments last night, but >> Right. So, the operating hours right now are 1 to5 Monday through Friday and 8 to 12 on Saturday and Sunday. And that might seem like a a fairly short time. We usually sell out of water though before we hit those hours. So, the the staff is we shut the gate um usually around 3:30. 2:30 as you heard the uh resident say last night. It was shut before we even started yesterday, which is a first. So, it's a very successful program. Um but it is a very expensive program to maintain. >> And how many gallons do we distribute? >> 20 20,000 gallons a day. >> 20,000. >> Yes, sir. >> And you doubled that, right? Was it 10 to start? You increased the size of the storage tanks. >> No, we we kept the size of the storage tanks. What we were able to increase was the size of the output. So, we were able to get customers through more quickly. We were able to increase the size of the uh the the pumps. We increased the size of the line and we doubled the um the number of uh fill stations. >> Okay. And then just one other question if the council's okay. The is there an opportunity to expand? There was some question of that last night. Can we make this operation serve more customers >> there? There could be an opportunity to expand in the future. One of the challenges with OSO is space. Uh OSO is very limited on space. Uh my understanding is the all the area around OSO was given to Texas&M Corpus Christi uh back in around 2008 I believe and we are going to have to expand the plant simply for operations. What that does is that limits our ability to expand this program to offer more of this product. So if we do, we will have to go in and purchase land back from Texas A&M Corpus Christi to be able to do that. And it'll be a significant investment um in in uh infrastructure to do it as well. Um so >> Okay. And then um can you just tell uh since you're here again in the fall, you're going to have to close down this operation? We are looking in the fall. There's a possibility that we may have to close down the operation. Um, as you can see in the slide, it's not marked very well, but you can see the route that the uh the cars have to take on that left kind of inlaid slide. That area is going to be under construction as part of the OSO project. We're going to be putting in a 48 in uh gravity main in that area, which is going to take up pretty much all of that space. um that eliminates really the traffic pattern or any traffic pattern for people coming in that are going to pick up that um that reclaimed water. We are trying to work and work with the contractor to come up with alternatives to that. Any alternative we do come up with is going to cost us money though. So there may be a cost impact if we can find something and I think dependent on that cost impact and and you know the decision of council and and executive management whether or not we move forward with shutting it down or trying to alter the construction methods >> and we're holding questions until the end. So I mean I appreciate your questions Peter but I don't want to go too far because I know people have questions on this and I'd like to come back to um or get through this before we go into questions. >> Great. Thanks Wes. And and one other thing to point out, I know there'll be questions at the end, is is uh I think Wes said that we um we're not we're not selling the water. The water is for free. So there there's no cost to the resident. Um and you know, as the city manager just mentioned, I think it's been a pretty successful program. I I don't know any other program in the state of Texas where they do this. I I the the folks from the the reuse the the association of of water reuse um who we've been in touch with, um Council Member Hernandez, you met her a couple months ago. Um it's it's it's a program that hasn't been done before. So I think I think we should all be proud of the fact that we've got at least a source of water we can provide to the community during this drought. So moving on uh to the next slide, I'm I'm going to take us through the uh the CIP um program. So our wastewater CIP program is a coordinated effort uh between CCW and engineering. I I always like to thank our partner Jeff Edmonds and his team because they are responsible for helping us deliver these these pro these these projects and our capital improvement program to ensure that these projects are delivered on time and within budget. Uh you can see on this slide the various types of wastewater projects included in our CIP program uh which include wastewater treatment uh projects, lift station projects and so forth. We have a total of 29 projects that are in pre-engineering design uh or construction. Of those 29 projects, 23 are on schedule and six are delayed. I'll have a slide here in just a second that I'll show that highlights the reasons for why six of these projects are delayed. The bottom line is is I think this slide uh shows it is that 79% of our projects uh are on schedule and the budget associated with those projects is 70 79% on schedule as well. Um so this slide here shows the six projects that are delayed. Two of the six projects, the Broadway wastewater treatment plant third clarifier and the OSO operations center were intentionally postponed to cover the increased costs associated with the Greenwood wastewater treatment plant upgrade that was awarded in May of this year. If you recall, the engineers estimate was $70 million. That was what was budgeted in the CIP. The the the lowest bid that came in was 102 million. So there was a delta of $30 million that we had to accommodate for. And so as a result, um we had to uh delay a couple projects to to make room for those that increased cost. >> Uh two of the projects on here were postponed as a result of funding delays uh from the CDBG mitigation grant uh which included the green mitigation and the backup generator project. And then uh two projects were postponed as a result of rescoping and rebidding uh to keep the project within budget which included the twin 36 inch and McBride wastewater mains and the Waldron lift station force main replacement project. A breakdown of our proposed wastewater CIP program for 2026 by category is shown here as follows. We're proposing to deliver approximately $110 million of wastewater improvement uh projects for next year. As we've said before, our C CIP program is is driven by the consent decree uh which we continue to upgrade our treatment plants uh lift stations and the collection system is required by that consent decree. Our proposed 2026 CIP program consists of uh 24 projects. This is a continuation of our ongoing and currentring uh capital improvement program with no new or long range projects being added to the current program. And so with that said, I'm going to turn this now over to Andy McCartney uh with New Gen. Uh he's going to present the cost of service study results and the proposed weight rates for our wastewater program. >> Thank you, Drew. Uh Andy McCartney, principal consultant with NEN Strategies and Solutions. Uh good morning, mayor, council, and members of the executive leadership team. Uh I want to u introduce our other new gym members here today uh with me. Uh she was here two years ago, Tia KS. She does a lot of the modeling uh for the cost of service and rate model. Uh we've got Andrea Campbell kind of behind her. she's been helping TIA this past year and she's done a phenomenal job on a very complicated uh uh rate model. And then finally, uh Richard Campbell, who's our managing director of water and wastewater, he was here last year with me. So I wanted to give them, you know, uh reintroduction. And Richard was here with me when we did the one-on-one meetings, believe back in June. So again our our approach uh much like the last two years are to ensuring compliance with uh you know the principles of rate setting for wastewater. It's the manual of practice number 27. Uh a new addition was just released uh this summer. Um a lot of people did weren't even aware of it. In fact I think it was just a quick update. Um, a particular note for uh, Councilman Hernandez that M1 is still slated for publication in October 2025. So, it's it's still coming. You're still waiting. Yes, sir. I'm still waiting for it to come out. So, uh, it it was a labor of a lot of volunteers. Um, and finally, we want to make sure that we're compliant with your contractual agreements with your uh larger uh wholesale customers, including treated water, raw water, and network, as well as as uh any of your bond holder commit uh commitments and agreements uh because that's very important. Kind of a summary of our pro uh of our process. Uh first, we start off determining the revenue requirements. And basically, we determine this from your uh operating budget. And this kind of determines the size of the pie. And in the next step which is the cost of service where we undergo a series of allocations of functionalization uh classification and distribution. We determine how big those slices are for each of the customer classes. And as part of our um rate model, we also do a multi-year financial plan so that we can look forward. And finally, we get to rate design or the pricing where we determine the rates that are needed to generate that the amount of revenues to equal the class cost of service. And so that's just kind of a summary of our process. Again, on our approach, we we're utilizing the same methodologies uh the same rate model dynamics as in the uh prior year studies. Uh I mentioned how we go through the cost of service allocation process. Uh we do that with the net retail revenue requirements, meaning we take out all the wholesale, we take out the raw water, and we take out any uh miscellaneous income fees to determine what that net retail revenue requirement is. uh the uh proposed retail rates for 26 that we're going to uh uh present today. Uh it we've kind of had a phased in plan over the years and it continues that plan of and we also are trying to uh move each customer class as close as we can to their respective cost of service. So for wastewater rates uh the rate structure that rate structure is very common in the industry and that we have a monthly uh minimum charge and for Corpus Christie water includes the first 2,000 gallons of water usage and that's how we determine wastewater usage is through the water usage. Um and u including that in wastewater charge even though you're going through a period of heavy water conservation is still okay. Uh there's also a volutric charge that's based on a dollars per thousand gallons for the residential customer class. We determine that based on their winter quarter average. And so any um outside of the uh domestic or home usage they're not penalized for because we're measuring that water usage during the winter months when they're not watering outside because that any kind of irrigation or outdoor water use is typically not returned to the wastewater system for conveyance and ultimate treatment at your multitude of wastewater treatment plants. for commercial and multif family uh customers. That's based on their actual water usage. And uh down below you see the little chart showing uh for each uh rate structure element and then how those volumes are determined for each of those customer classes. For our proposed rates, the volumetric charge is increasing uh because of increased costs for all the customers. uh the monthly minimum charge increase for the inside city limit customers is is due to that recovery of the storm water legacy debt. Just a reminder that only the inside city customers benefit from storm water infrastructure, not the outside. So that's why we have differentiated that and put it in the minimum charge so that there's a clear-cut transparent way to see that for the outside city limit customers to understand that they're not getting charged for that legacy debt. Um finally the uh proposed uh revenue from our recommended rates meets the business needs the cash operating uh required reserves and the debt service coverage requirements for fiscal year 2026 for the wastewater fund. Kind of a wanted to show some history on that funding of the storm water legacy debt through the years. So in fiscal year 2021 and in the preceding years uh the water rates uh funded all of that debt in 2022 the water fund balance absorbed 100% of that storm water legacy debt. Um the same in 23. In 24 because the water fund balance was getting lower and there was adequate uh amounts of fund balance in the wastewater there was a shift there. So it still wasn't being recovered through the rates in fiscal year uh 25 um 50% of the wastewater rates did absorb that uh 0% for the water but the amount that should have probably been recovered through water was recovered through the wastewater fund balance because there's still adequate fund balance to absorb that for this year. What we're recommending is $2 million, which is um half of that storm water legacy debt is 5.882 million. So, we're phasing that in on the water side because there are other cost increases on the water side. So, we wanted to be mindful for those uh customers that use low volumes that might uh have struggle to pay their bills. So, we wanted to phase that in. So, we've only got 2 million. It's 17% uh with 50% being in the wastewater rates and then that remaining 33% that would have been charged to water customers being absorbed by wastewater fund balance. And so in 2027 we pick up another $2 million of that storm water legacy debt with the uh and that equates to 39%. 11% would therefore be recovered by wastewater fund balance. Again the wastewater rates would absorb 50% of that. And in uh fiscal year 2028 and beyond uh 50% would be recovered through the water rates, 50% through the wastewater rates. So our phase in plan would would uh would final out in 2028. So here's our uh revenues at projected rates compared to the wastewater cost of service for the two classes, residential and commercial. Um you can see that there's a little bit of subsidy going on on the residential uh uh class as well as uh the commercial is is basically overreovering its cost of service. Uh it nets out to zero and we'll see why on the rate structure because those volumetric rates are the same for residential and commercial. So, um, that cost of service also includes the amounts needed to meet debt service coverage for the wastewater fund, and that equates to about $2.34 million. Here's a graphic of that just showing uh graphically for the wastewater fund. We're we're really close um on the residential uh we're almost recovering the cost of service and we're a little bit over recovery. If you remember in past years uh the commercial class was way uh over recovering. So here's a look at the rates. Uh so the minimum charge for the residential inside city customer. Uh right now they're paying 3511. Uh they will uh propose to pay 38.29 per month and the volumetric rate will increase uh 34 cents from 807 to8.41 41 per thousand gallons. The outside here you can see the the impact of the uh storm water legacy debt. Uh right now those outsiders are paying $305 per month and it will go up to 3312. Again they're paying the same volumetric rate as they have done um uh which is done currently. Everybody residential outside inside commercial inside outside they all pay the 807. So, here's a look at the commercial inside and you see a drop in that monthly minimum charge. Uh, that's because that monthly minimum charges has been high for a number of years and um it was just taking too long for that monthly minimum charge to get up close to that. So, we just decided we need to go ahead and drop it. It's taking too long. So, that's why we dropped it down more closer to its cost of service. So they will see a decrease from 4610 per month to 3829. Again the volumetric rate remains the same. Uh but if you will uh remember just from a few minutes ago the commercial class is still over recovering even with that drop in their monthly minimum charge. So we just that's why as rate consultants we felt like it's time it's taking way too long for that monthly minimum charge to get up that high uh so as not to decrease it. the outside city limit uh customers for commercials, same thing. Uh right now they're paying 39.45. Uh they will pay 3312. Again, they're paying a little bit less. They don't pay for any storm water legacy debt. And again, um that volumetric rate is uh going up 34 cents for them. >> So did we want to do questions now on wastewater or just going up? No, actually I'm going to go ahead and pause and we'll do questions on everything we've heard so far and then we'll continue on with water fund. >> Yeah. [Applause] Okay. [Applause] [Applause] Um, I know I had a question about the positions. Um, so we when is the last time that you know the that the department has hired brought on more positions, more staffing? um in this particular department under wastewater, we could not find um when they last brought on. I I spoke with employees who have been here, like I said, actually 17 years. He's managed the wastewater treatment plants. They haven't brought on an employee in those 17 years into the wastewater treatment plant itself. We have brought on a few more electricians, but that is not what these particular employees are going towards. We brought on some uh people for the collections department, but again that's a separate operation from the wastewater treatment plants. >> Wow. >> So, and and in fact, he's actually lost employees to some reorg situations where employees have been taken out of his department. >> Okay. To maintain all Well, that's not good. Um um I I I can understand um asking for the nine. Um let me see. So equipment that you're you're you're page 12 is where I am. >> You've got some specific pictures here. Are we not doing and I know like you mentioned these are all literally sitting on the water. You have that graph or the the photo of of where they're located. Um so is there no and you you can see the the um corrosion really so how does that affect I mean this is 10 years right that this equipment is only 10 years yes so that that's you know when we look at there there's two types of maintenance we do in the plants one's preventative one's corrective um preventative maintenance uh even if done properly over time you're still going to have things fail um what it does is it actually increases the lifespan of those products. So, at this point, we triage what as far as with our staff what can be done um and what what can be done, what should be done, and what can be of course deferred, which is kind of the old adage that the wastewater departments kind of operated under for many years. um we don't want to do that and and we know council has really pressed us to do a better job at our maintenance which is one reason we felt it necessary to at least bring this before before you for the decision currently at the plants I'll let you know we do 183 preventative make uh work orders a month that's a month and some of those work orders actually have multiple assets on them so it it it far exceeds that 183 um right now as far as corrective maint maintenance, which is items that have failed. For instance, yesterday we had a flow meter that failed at the uh Broadway treatment plant. We're going to have to be replacing that. Um that's a corrective maintenance item. Um which these this team would also be helping with. We currently have 155 work orders a month that we do on corrective maintenance. Um there is just an extreme amount of work um that these teams are responsible for. >> Right. Right. Okay. Thank you. And then um on page 13. So um on the the reclaimed water you're saying, how did you say this is this program is being staffed? Uh the program is being staffed by various um various employees that we have available at the time. We pull from different levels depending on the nature of failures. They're all maintenance technicians that run the plant. Uh depending on what their workload is and what they have and the and again the uh criticality of what they're doing, right? >> That's how we decide who to pull. So, it's uh but it's getting to the point where we are pushing back um a lot of maintenance items. Uh for one, uh wastewater repairs, we do pull from those from that team. We have 155 uh wastewater repairs that we need to do as part of the consent decree. So, when you pull a team from that, you are essentially pushing those repairs further down the line um and making it more difficult for us to meet the consent decree requirements. Um the other ones are staff maintenance inside OSO that help us with this. We pull them off at noon. So any maintenance items uh are preventative uh corrective or preventative they might not be doing. A good example is we do an afternoon walkth through before we leave the plant every day. If if the guy if the team is working to give away reclaimed water that walk through might not be done. So items that you know, bar screens, uh things that might need to be cleaned before we go, right? It might not be seen or we have to go back and do it on overtime. >> Oh wow. >> Yes, ma'am. >> So we're basically we're just pulling from here to take care of that and then that gets deferred and so it's a not a good cycle. Okay. And I'm just curious about um the the water program. the lady that came yesterday who's very grateful for it. She was using a term um of of I guess how much water she's taking, but she was using a term and so it made me curious as to know as to how do people take the water. Do you recall what she said? >> The tote. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. >> The totes. So the totes are how most people haul the water. They're just a container that they purchase. Tractor Supply or a farm farm and ranch. >> So a residential person can just go get a tote and then fill it. How many gallons is that? Um the typical tote size is around 275 gallons. >> Oh wow. >> So most I'm going to say most people have at least two totes. Not everybody um but a lot we we average around 450 to 500 gallons a day. So that's that's most people get that. And in talking to some of our customers who are using this, really anything less than the the probably around 450 to 600 gallons doesn't do a whole lot on a yard. >> So that's why they go to the two totes to be able to to water. >> And so are our reclaimed customers is it a what what would you say the split is residential and commercial? >> Because you've got any anybody can come get water, right? >> That that that's correct. And commercial is a very I I would that term I think we need to define better when we say commercial. >> Okay. >> Um commercial customers still pick up to water residential homes >> if that makes sense. The commercial users are going and watering landscape on residential customers homes. >> Okay. >> We also have people who go and pick up that um individuals are calling commercial because they pick up for their neighbor, they pick up for someone down the street. Um, on these permits, we have a lot of people who do not have the ability or the equipment to water their own yard. >> So, they list a separate driver as the person who's picking it up for them. So, that person might have two or three totes on their vehicle or their trailer and they're using it at two or three different properties, but they're all residential properties. >> I don't know. >> Okay. So, they are they're mainly all residential. >> They're mainly all residential. Yes. Yeah. And and we do have what we call a provider permit. We do have like Turners and Gills that do have permits. They're not required when they go water, if they pick up water from us, they can go water anywhere in the city without having a specific address they're taking it to. We we don't have to track that because they're considered a provider. That's really what makes them more of a commercial user. >> Okay. Thank you. And and last question for me on um page 16. So the the proposed CIP u it's 109.7 million and I noticed that went down uh from 182 in 2025. What what was the reason for that huge difference there? >> Camille Tyrus, assistant director for CCW. Um well let me start. So it is a decrease. We always estimated that 2026 is going to have a lower budget. Uh in 25 we were predicting that the budget for wastewater is going to be around 169 million. So $20 million less. Um the additional 50 million I we will take credit for this is through the efforts of our uh directors Andrew to really task the staff at and because I'm as you may I was this capital but capital manager for the whole city now that I can focus on just one department it gave us time to truly look at historical data and see how projects are executed. We want to always be optimistic and say, "Oh, this is going to take eight months to design. Oh, this is going to take a year. Let's budget like that." Well, we went back and actually looked at the facts. And what we noticed is that no, actually with the procurement process, with what everything takes, our average design time for most of our infrastructure projects is a minimum of 12 months. So there's no reason to budget any construction if the design is not done in that fiscal year. And then for looking at construction, all of our construction projects take at least 18 months to 24 months. And some of the larger projects take four years. So again, we took the efforts, we took the data and said let's look at strategically at the budget at the projects and let's spread out the the budget based on factual information from projects that we have done previously. So that's spread out a little bit thing. We have not canceled any project. >> We're not saying that any of these projects were all of them are essential and need to be done. So there's no less projects. It's just the timeline of where the budgets are got extended. Good. Okay. >> So, that's the $50 million difference. >> Okay. Great. Thank you, Comm. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Councilwoman Vaughn, >> that's a big difference for a timeline on on the reclaimed water. How long are y'all planning on doing that? >> What's it how long? >> Um, right now with this program, it would be indefinitely if we decided to take this decision package. >> Okay. So, we're not charging for the water right now. >> No, ma'am. >> And I know from the other day parks and the different ones that had all the fees, it was all about cost of service. So, what's the plan? >> Are we just going to keep Y'all want to add seven more people? >> Yes, ma'am. It would it would be part of your normal of our normal wastewater rate. It wouldn't be charged through a fee. >> So, we're going to keep giving that water free. We at this point yes we we can begin to charge >> woman. I think the plan was to incentivize uh the use of the program. So it um it has been in place for about two years. We started this probably two years ago and initially uh we couldn't get anybody to take the water and we had just as bad a drought. >> Uh we did more advertising. Wes and his team improve the the flow through and how you actually get the water to make it more customer friendly. And so the the uh freess of it is to incentivize and make sure people are using it so that the investment is worth it. So probably over time maybe one more year or so we probably would start look at a fee for service. uh that may have a reduction in use, but for right now it's to make sure the program becomes kind of institutionalized and people are familiar with it and it would have a customer draw. So the free part of it is to do that and we're not sure how long we should do that. It's still pretty new um in the still, as we mentioned, could be some disruption this fall uh with that construction project, but >> eventually we probably would would uh have a a nominal fee to recover some of the costs. And I get that because we need it because of the drought. And I get that, but I just don't know how long you go. If we get out of the drought, then I guess you have to review it. >> Okay. And on page um 28. So if I was a if I was a customer and I looked at this and I saw that the outside city limits were paying less than the inside, I would the question would be why is that commercial as well? So can you tell me that so I can answer that? >> Yes ma'am. that differentials do that storm water legacy debt because the storm water infrastructure does not extend beyond the city limits. >> Uh they would have a protest and the large volumes have already thought we had it included in their rate uh back in 24. So therefore it's it's not used and useful to them and so therefore we exclude it from the outside city uh because they do not benefit from it. >> No, they don't. And I get that. >> So there shouldn't be any cost. >> That's good. Good answer. Thank you, >> Councilman Hernandez. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Um, looking at your line item budget, you have $1.15 million uh set aside for overtime uh which is equates to 9% of the 12 million9 12.9 million that you have with regards to uh personnel expense. Why do you have your your overtime so high? >> Is this uh sorry is this on the line? Yeah. >> Yeah. The over time. >> You know, I ask this question every year. >> No. No. And our Well, simple answer is we're a 247 operation and we uh our overtime with vacancy rates, vacations, we we have to cover someone takes a vacation for an operation uh an operator at a wastewater treatment plant, we have to cover that vacation. If somebody calls in sick, we have to cover it. We do not have the luxury of just not having someone come in. Um though everyone at the plant and operations has a specific duty. Um they have something that they deliver a deliverable every day able to uh to meet the level of service that our residents our customers expect and the EPA and the TCQ. We have to ensure that we have that those people. >> Okay. So since 2021, in 2021 you guys had an FTEES of 218 people. >> Yes, sir. >> 2022 232 people. 2023 we increased it to 260 FTEES and then you're asking for 277 now. Right. >> So that's an increase of 27%. >> Yes, sir. >> Right. Of of personnel, but yet you still have very high overtime and you're having to do this. So kind of explain what you're how that works. >> Sure. Um so one thing that we've done with the overtime with the additional staff that you're speaking of a lot of that was in the construction in the uh infrastructure underground the pipes things like that. We have actually uh to date I'll use an example. This year we are doing all the repairs for the consent decree from the televising that we've done in house. we're not having to go out to get a contractor to this year. We've done around 255 of those repairs. Um that we have about another 180 that are I mentioned earlier that are on the board. That staff is being utilized to do that work and respond to emergencies and go and do other things. Now, with those duties, even though we're expending that money, we can still do the work at about 40% of the cost of a contractor. To date, we have saved around $29 million for the city for the rateayer um by doing this work inhouse. So if th those employees are providing value to our customers and a significant value I I believe Camille said it's about 70 cents on the rate when we checked it with the savings that we've seen um up to this point. >> Okay. So how many open FTS do you have right now? >> Uh wastewater is at uh 10 to 11%. So, you're asking for more people and you and you and you're 10%. >> 10% is a normal that's actually a very normal rate with our technician level. That's um that's a almost an industry standard. That's what you see technically from people that you lose through retirement, through finding other jobs. And >> that's 27 people. >> Oh, 26 people in this case, right? continuous. That's >> that's correct. Do >> you think that's going to improve by adding more people or more? >> Vacancy rate won't improve. It'll still be 10%. >> So, does that go to your overtime? >> That's correct. >> Because of your vacancy rate, >> vacancy rates considered when you look at overtime as well, but you actually have more of an impact when you're talking about vacation and leave people being out. >> Okay. So you you see the the perspective that we have is that you have a 20 a 10% vacancy rate. You're asking for more people because you're having this extra overtime. >> Well, though you have these this kind of vacancy rate. >> No, I'm not asking because we have this overtime. I'm asking because the work that we have I can't even expect. I I can't I don't have the staff even with overtime to get this work done. the work that's being that you saw >> if you don't have if you're not if if you have the 10% vacancy rate you I mean you're going to be in the whole >> it's in yeah councilman you how many different position types do you have there's numerous position types so the vacancy rate may not be in maintenance and maybe >> yeah that you're right >> right I mean there's numerous position types and the vacancy rate >> uh is through the whole year so he could be interviewing somebody we need a position to post to interview so it's vacant tomorrow it could be filled but still he needs these people to do the maintenance. So explain that Wes. You don't have all the same position. >> All these 17 people are for maintenance. >> Yes, that is correct. >> Only for wastewater treatment plant. No, not all for maintenance. No. Nine people are going to be for maintenance at the wastewater treatment plants. The other seven are going to be for the distribution of the reclaimed water. So we're not having to pull other staff from other activities that they are supposed to be doing. So, this goes back to Councilwoman Vaughn's thing about, you know, you're we're giving this water for free and you're adding seven people uh to address the program, >> right? >> You know, so there I mean, I get what we're trying to do, but if if it's only going to be at OSO, um you're you know, how is that helping somebody up that lives in in your neighborhood, right, in Cal Allen? You >> you mean as far as the uh distribution of the reclaimed water? >> Yeah. I mean I provided let me step in u so if we wanted to make it a net zero operation right I provided so per thousand gallons to cover the cost of those seven FTEEs uh we would if the council wishes we can propose a fee of 7561 per thousand $7561 per thousand gallons it will generate sufficient revenue to cover those seven FDs and basic basically that operation is net zero. So we could do that. Uh that's that's we didn't want to do it as the city manager said. We wanted to emphasize and run it a lot. But if the will of the council is to do a fee like that, we could and make it a net zero operation. >> Well, maybe you do it gradually, right? >> Or gradually. Again, we just need direction. And I mean if you want it over three years like we're proposing with the uh stormwater uh legacy debt we can divide that 75 by three and start with let's say $25 uh for per thousand next year 50 the following year 75 to get to the cost of service for for that that that's um give us the direction we can put something together. Yeah, we we yeah, we can we can we can do that ourselves, Camille, but we're recommending right now no rate for year one so we can get this thing established maybe by year two, but if the council wants to, then that's >> Well, I mean, you know, and this is just an Oso. Not everybody lives around and it's >> Well, right. But they Where do your people come from, Wes? They don't just come from this side of town. >> They come from all over the city. >> They come from all over the city from the island. >> Yes. >> They come from Cal Island. >> Yeah. Susan Upshaw who came yesterday I think she said she has to drive 30 minutes to >> so they come from around the city then >> I know they come I've had people ask me you know that live in district 5. I'm not complaining you know I'm just saying this is successful enough maybe we should expand it to other locations. >> We we can definitely look at that and there are limitations that >> you know there's a cost to all this >> right that as well. So, and I'm I'm concerned that you have a 10% o um vacancy and you're asking for more people and then you've had a 27% increase in the amount of people you've had in the in the last 5 years. And I'm not saying it's not needed. We need to do the maintenance. I've been a big proponent of preventive maintenance. >> No, the 10% you that is a pretty much a benchmark. You're always going to carry a vacancy. >> Well, it's it's a significant amount of people. 26 people >> it is, but a 10% vacancy rate is really not that high. Um, we've actually been as low as six to seven where the the city average is closer to 12 11 >> you know for you know standard you should have less than 5% overtime >> uh 5% overtime. >> Yeah, you should have less >> not not for a 247 operation. Maybe if you're an 8 to5 operation or something that works, but when you're getting call outs when you're responsible for all night. I mean, it's it's difficult. >> I'm looking, you know, looking for in terms of uh manufacturing, you have a a shift work, right? Right. Still look at it's still a 24 oper 24-hour operation or close to it and you still look at at less having less than 5% overtime. >> Right. And and in that industry, a lot of times you will not call in somebody though to cover a shift. You will sometimes, granted, I've I've worked in that industry. >> Um but you can manage it a little better than we can. If we have a wastewater overflow, >> there's no managing it. I have to have the people there. >> Okay. With adding more people, the expectation is you lower your overtime. >> Not in this case because >> you know, you're not unique. You know, I understand, you know, that everybody has responsibilities, right? It you you need to work on on lowering your overtime. >> We we can work on All right. Um, you have uh on on uh page 10 of your presentation and may and I'm looking at I'm looking at where you have debt where it says in fiscal year 25 it has 27.2. I'm assuming that's million. >> Correct. >> Yeah. In millions. And then you have in 2026 it's it's 31.4. But in the budget proposed budget book it says 21.2 million. >> So this is your what you described last year. Unfortunately I was in Europe at the time and I couldn't answer the question. My financial jiu-jitsu. This is where the debt for uh that was for the legacy was never assigned there and it should have been to that because we're paying it out of the rate. Uh it was in the transfers out. uh it should have always been reflected, but that's how it was proposed and adopted, but uh that should have that $6 million that 50% always should have been in the debt and that was corrected in this year's proposed budget. We we added that debt because now it's covered by was covered in 25 and is covered 26 to 50%. So that's why you have that delta difference. >> Okay. But where is it documented in the >> Well, the adopted budget is the adopted document. So that's how it was adopted. Uh we >> No, this is the proposed >> the proposed has the 31 which includes that 6 million now included in there. When I did the presentation, I wanted to show the true change in debt because that debt was already accounted for. It was just that financial judicial. >> I understand that on the on the on the on the adopted budget, but on the amended budget, it doesn't even have that amount. >> No, because it was always scheduled to come out of water. the adopted budget for water had that transfer in there. >> So that would have been nice to explain when you went over the the this particular document because that I mean if this dollar amount is includes money from water you know this is a a 47 um 47 48% increase in in debt service from you know from the previous year's budget to this year's budget. >> 10 Yes. 10 million. Yes. Yes. It would have been Yes. >> Okay. So I I mean you know you need to be a little more clear on that because it >> and I >> especially when you have a doc >> I could have put a footnote next to it saying the 25 includes the $6 million. >> Okay. So I'm going to see that amount in the water budget. >> You will see the $58 million in the water budget. >> Yes. >> Okay. And so will it be less in the presentation from the in the water budget? It will go from 57 to 58 even though we added $5 million of debt. >> All right. When we get to it, um, you're gonna have to explain that as well. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you, >> Councilwoman Compos. >> Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I don't know about all that jiujitsu math there, but okay. I'm going to trust that all this will work out. Um, all right. So, uh, uh, I guess back to the reclaimed water. I it is a successful program and I I think it's you know it's it's doing what it's supposed to do which it's getting um our you know our community you know used to using reclaimed water. Um the I guess the question or you know the complaints that I'm having although you know I appreciated what what uh Mrs. opt uh had said yesterday uh but I have a customer that is complaining that it is not fair. So um instead of um you know he he he gave some suggestions. I I did send them to Peter. I don't know if it was forwarded on to you. >> It was council. Yeah I did them. Yeah working on it. >> Yeah. So I I you know he's just saying that you know we should limit uh the amount of I guess either wholesalers or resellers or however you want to say it by the totes like I guess you can only be limited to so many totes. So hopefully you know you'll be able to look at that and and um and give some solutions to that. Um the other was about the maintenance or the technicians. Um, and I do appreciate that the, you know, that it looks like it's being manned really well, which is, you know, great. But if we're doing, you know, if we're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you know, if we're using all these technicians on this project and then letting our maintenance go, that's not a good thing, right? So, uh, again, I think it is a a great project that, you know, I maybe just like I I think I do agree with our city manager that if we could at least give it one more year and start to sort of get, you know, the people used to, you know, eventually we're going to have to charge, you know, for this. Uh, but, um, I I congratulate you. I'm glad that it finally did get going. It was, you know, kind of like a rough start cuz there was nobody that would take it. Ain't that amazing? So now it's like we have too many people. Um okay, so um back to the storm water um legacy debt. Um okay, so I I wrote down about the 5.8 million debt. Could you please just revisit that one more time for me so that I can understand it? >> Yes, ma'am. The the total stormware legacy debt is like 11 >> 12 million >> 12 million >> and 50% of that is 5.882 million. >> And so we're trying to recover that and phase it in to where we have 50% of it recovered through wastewater, 50% through the water rates. >> And so we're getting to that. So um the reason why it only applies to inside is that also what you're wanting explanation of? >> Yes. >> Is because that storm your storm water infrastructure or utility only serves inside the city limits. It doesn't provide any service outside. So they don't benefit. So none of that infrastructure would be considered used and useful to the outside. So they would have a cause of action and now it only takes one vote to bring an action before the public utility commission. And so that's the reason and historically that's why it was done. It was only for the inside city customers to bear that burden instead of the entire system. So, >> and I I asked that only because not only because but uh back to the annexation, right? U had these, you know, 70 80 corporations uh been annexed into our city, they they would also have um been part of this legacy and would have been justifiable right? >> Just Yes. To recover it >> through the recovery. Okay. So again, you know, this uh IDA does, you know, it's got its um you know, its downfalls of uh going back to the city and us not being able to charge what it actually costs our our customers to provide services. So again, it's for me it's it's still not equal. Um that that's really all I had, sir. But uh thank you. Uh hopefully again I guess the main thing though is you know we decided 3 years ago that we were going to start or we have um started uh putting the rates you know starting to um be a little bit more equitable. But again, we're still going to be having that same issue that we have the outside water customer challenging their water rates and there's nothing that we can do, right? Is there anything that we can do to stop that? >> No, it only takes one vote now because of recent uh legislation that was passed at the state. I know the city of Corpus Christi was in contact with me, Ryan Scrapareek as well, and I was in contact with like people from the forth water department about it too because they serve people outside the city uh as well. So, it's one of those things that the the uh the the hurdle rate just got way lowered. >> Way lower. >> I I believe it did. >> And and and I think Yeah. And as a result of that, if if because they have the funds to fight those those rates, I mean, they have the funds, you know, to fight that those water rates. And then if we end up losing, we as the city, it goes back to us, right? It goes back to the water rate pair. >> So, you know, again, it's just not right and not fair, >> right? And my understanding was that it did pass, but it may not have made it out of committee. No, there were several pieces of legislation that would have made it easier and they all failed. None of them were passed. So, >> but still it takes 10%. So, wastewater outside customer. >> Okay. So, it's still not fine. Then it's still not just the one then it's still >> it was never just the one. It was 10% >> 10% of the >> originally >> 10% of outside >> vote. So on wastewater you only have like 50 outside city limit customers. >> So that 10% would be five to six. So five >> fake to sign a petition. Yeah. >> So, >> yeah, but the >> Yeah, there's a lot going on in the legislation. So, I'm busy working all these rate studies and I get all these email. >> Okay. So, for clarification, it's not one right now. >> It's not one. It's >> right. It's a percentage. >> It never changed. So, it's still at 10%. >> Correct. Okay. >> They want they they were proposing it. >> I remember. Yeah. I thought I I I was misled. >> They went up there and testified, >> misinformed or >> But generally, they contest the water rate, not the wastewater since they don't have >> Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess actually I meant to say the water, not the waste water since they don't even pay for that. So, yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir. >> Councilman Roy. >> All right, that was entertaining. Um, first of all, New Gen Strategies. Uh, I want to thank you guys for your presentation. I also want to thank the fact that I was kind of here before when we had our old uh vendor and I keep just you guys are doing a good job in terms of just uh and understanding the process a little bit better. So keep up the good work. >> Um I want to talk about two things. I want to go back based on what some of the other council members have um talked about because you know essentially when we made this water available we created a new I don't want to call it an industry but we created a new job um classification out there where you have now these uh companies that are collecting the water and then they're going out as far as like in our area Cal Allen and they're watering people's lawns and they're charging a fee and some of them are pretty heavy hefty >> and that service is pretty hefty. You want a green because I I look at my grass and my grass is not looking really good right now and then I look at a couple of my neighbors and it's you know looks like a golf course and um so I am concerned about the fact that we aren't passing on I mean that we're giving it away for free. I am I am concerned about that. I and and the fact that really when we classify who uses the water, we should really look at what is the purpose of the end user because you know you have these guys coming out and they're picking up their totes and then they're taking them out there and then they're watering and they're and that's a business for them. So with that, I don't really agree. I think we need to come up with some type of plan to defer that cost because if you're running right now and you're saying that you have 10% um deficiency in terms of staffing and related to overtime or whatever the case is, right? >> Uh he was saying a 10% vacancy rate. >> You have 10% vacancy rate, right? And so you're trying to staff up because you're saying based on your operations 247, you need to be able to have these people in place and but you don't want to charge the water. And part of the reason why you need the staff is because of the expansion that we've done in water. So I don't want to run out of time here. So follow me on this. If we had a really good rain, let's say hypothetically, and I don't know the answer to this question, but if all of a sudden we we got 16 inches tomorrow, I don't know if that would lessen those groups that are coming out and taking from that water right now because primarily they're doing that because we're in a drought. Um, so I think the time is now to be able to charge for those. I think if we go through in a year year and a half from now it might even decrease 60 70% if we have back to surface water. So that is a concern. Um therefore I am I I I think we really need to look at charging for those services even if we uh ramp it up where instead of going at $76 or whatever that you recommended maybe we ramp it up every year um because they're making a profit off of it. The other thing is um I want to talk about annexation and not necessarily with industry but if right now in London for example you know we're doing everything we got a tur we're looking at trying to help the infrastructure of London expand when that happens and we and as we go through the process of annexing more residential areas right that will also increase our revenue from a standpoint of storm water is that correct Because then they're not they're not outside of the city limit, >> right? We would collect a storm water fee. >> We would start collecting the storm water fee. >> Yes. And those residents would pay into the rates which the >> pay a portion of the >> And so you can take a look. And so here's what I'm where I'm headed with this is that I would like to see something based on the projection of where we think that we're going to be in a few years based on these areas that are annexing and you know as we expand as a city to try to also incorporate where we think our revenue is going to be with that. Does that make sense? >> Yes. So >> okay. Um so then the other thing I wanted to also talk about is um I forgot there's one other thing. Um >> the best part too. >> Yeah. I was I was moving quick. >> Um >> oh well. >> 40 seconds. >> I'm going to lose I'll give my 30 seconds to somebody else, but I'll remember and I'll bring it back >> the next time I can talk. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Councilman Councilwoman uh Paxton. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I think he I had my list of questions, but then council member Roy really did bring up a good point with all of these um developments and items that are being forecasted to coming online in the next several years. And I know that um for myself the questions I've asked is what kind of impact are we anticipating on our water supply as we see these developments continue to come across the dis and I've been told it's fairly negligible at this point especially because of the um the timeline. It takes so much time from the time we're approving and looking over development plans and things for those to actually be be enacting a draw. So maybe and I hate to add any more work to CCW. I know you guys are just taxed, but that is that is something that I'd also be very interested in. >> Well, it's not tax and it's a simple calculation. I mean, if the projection is 50,000 houses, right? An average household uses 6,000 gallons per month. So, it's a simple thing. 50,000 times 6,000 gallons a month times 12. And we can get you what that is. But you're absolutely correct. at 50,000 that there will be some impact but we're not talking about 50,000 houses in the near future right we're talking about few thousand the impact is negligible I mean it's it's not enough volume we're talking about you know our annual volume is over 38 billion gallons a year right this is going to be a very very small percentage because it's residential residential you know you need a lot of houses to actually bring that number Just as you said, 50,000 plus would make an impact, 2,000 houses, 3,000 houses. No. >> And does that take into consideration? I know some of these projects include additions on the commercial side. Um, and then another item is we see that I see that a lot in district 4 is these new homes and new developments have their exemption um, notes because they're they're tending to saw, they're tending to um, the landscaping, things like that that have to for the first several weeks of the installation, they need to be upkept to to maintain those investments. So, does that um count for those new commercial and perhaps those uh kind of special cases where they're taking care of those new developments initially? >> Yes, I believe it's 15 days that they get. >> I believe it's 30 days that they get >> where yes, we can account for it. But again, we're we're not talk we're not talking in the tens of thousands really to make an impact when we're talking about resident even on commercial, right? Commercial, you know, if you a Walmart uh and you know, things like that, the liquor stores, they're not particularly large thing. Restaurants use a little bit more obviously because they cook and clean and things like that. So, there's more water utilization. But if you're talking about stores, retail stores, again, you would have to have a large number to really bring that impact up and to really see a significant increase in the revenue generated from those. >> Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for that. But um yeah, it is a curious topic. Um so on page eight there's a forecast of rates uh kind of going out a number of years >> 10 years. >> Thank you. >> Are these figures inclusive of any new water supply or this is just base rate projections? >> Base rate projection. >> Base rate projection >> because this is for wastewater. >> So there is no water supply. This is this is for wastewater. So this is uh with consent agree. So the basic the what the what what we're show here is that the consent degree when we signed it presented it to council we made it clear there will be a rate impact and a quite significant one because of the amount of money we get we have to spend based on the consent decree. We did the exercise again five years later to look, hey, how close were we? You know, are we still within that benchmark? Are we completely off? And as Drew stated, we're in the upper 80s uh in 2020, we're in the 94. So with increased inflation during that the COVID years and things like that, we we we actually feel very good that our predictions in 2020 are are nice are moving in the right direction. They're not completely skewed. >> Okay. Then my last couple of comments is um on the reuse item. I know that there's been some really good commentary provided uh for myself. I've had a couple of uh community members reach out. Um, everyone is really appreciative that this supply exists. Of course, we're in an environment right now under the drought restrictions where we are to an extent, a great extent, limiting use of water and this to me really offsets that. But, um, some things that I'm hearing is the challenges of accessing the water. I know there was one gal in particular who reached out and she had gone a number of days trying to get trying to get water and she was there hours before opening and every time she would get to her place in line it was closed for the day already. That kind of thing and so um Wes I know you called yesterday. Yesterday was a little bit busy. I didn't get back to you. Um but I did want to I did want to say you know she did reach out. She got it. she got through. But my my question was that distinction and we heard a little bit of that up here between commercial and residential. And certainly um yes, a lot of landscapers are are utilizing this resource for residential, but that's still service. Um how how do we how is that play out at that location? Um what we would have to do is number one um the commercial pro permit holders such as gills and turners and those um we would have when they come in we have their information we actually they scan in we have everything there that's what we would look at if we were to limit the amount they get. um where it becomes a little more uh difficult and time inensive and where this decision package actually again would um be needed is if we started limiting the individuals who are picking up water for other people. So while they're still commercial, they're again they are they're providing a service. You're right. They're um as Councilman Roy said, they're providing a service. They're going out and watering some residents lawn. Um, in particular, I know of uh a uh a lady who called and was speaking to me about trying to find somebody to do that for her. She didn't have the ability or the equipment uh resources to get that done. Um so these people are charging for their time, but they are going out and providing that to others. Now they are commercial business. Again, it is for a residential customer though. So um it would be difficult to try to determine who is doing it for themselves and who is doing it for someone else. >> Sure. >> They would it would it would be on a um you know we would have to trust what they're telling us >> and and I and I get that and I don't want to come across incorrectly that I'm trying to say I think that we need to you know add another curtailment to our commercial users or anything like that. I was more curious of, you know, when they arrive. Is there, you know, a section for those who are registered as commercial and then those who are residential? >> No, we we divide it up at this point by the amount you're taking taking so that those with the single tote, we can move those through more quickly so they're not waiting on the larger containers. >> Okay. Then that may be something to look at. And I know you guys are pulling from every resource you can right now just to offer this service. I I understand that and I and I thank you for that. But um I have had a couple of people reach out that there are those small collectors getting stuck behind the large ones and they just can't make it through the line. >> And and we do have over 500 permits right now, individual permits. And you know, even if we reduced it to say 400 gallons, >> uh you know, a day, you're talking 80 customers would be the max that we would be able to serve. >> I I understand. Again, I'm not I'm not advocating that we add another curtailment. Um I do want to say as far as charging, um I think right now that's going to be a difficult transition to make because of the curtailment under the drought. I understand that um there are a lot of accounts that are using this for their you know um for a profit if you will but in essence in the other hand we're also saying you you cannot access the resource that is water to serve your livelihood which is your business and so we're offsetting by providing this service and so it's it's a higher rate to us yes but in my imagination this particular setup is still a temporary transitional phase while we secure more water, get us out of the drought. If we look at this or a very similar project in a long-term reuse, that's different. But >> okay, Councilman Scott, >> uh it's uh first thought that Caroline asked the right that that resonated with me. That's why the wastewater weights are high because of the storm water, whatever you call it, the the dead end money. Um, I don't really need to talk about NC, ICL, and OCL. It's just the right thing to do. People outside the city limit shouldn't have to pay for our wastewater. I mean, our storm water uh debt. So, I'm good with that. Just want to get that out there. I have been on councils before where they got slipped in and uh we were notified by some of our partners that bought water from us going, "Really? Really?" And I thought, wow, shame on us. So, I I think keeping an ICO works. That's the right thing to do. Little question about um the um reclaim water. What a man, what a success story, right? How cool is it that we're spending a lot of time and energy because of the demand's so high and the usage is so high. I did want to ask about and you've told me before probably customer profiles. So, you we have 80 people a day generally, 80 trucks, vehicles. How's that work? Right now we usually we average before we run out around 40 to 42 customers per day. >> 42 customer 30,000. Um and and the average customer takes >> 500 500 gallons >> different because we we actually got excited and bought two totes and then realized you can't fill them with water in a pickup. I guess they're well our little pickup. Oh >> because of the weight, right? So it's a weight issue. >> Yes. So there are different totes. People have small totes, big totes, right? >> Yes, sir. Some Yes. Trucks. Um, you know, you can have a water truck. Um, we don't really see many of those uh except for type two, you know, when they come pick it up for construction. Um, but yeah, you can have differentiz totes. We've had people uh bring rain like rain barrels in. >> Yeah. >> Um, to fill up. As long as they meet our criteria, it can be used. >> And uh so Okay. So average daily 40 to 42. How much water do we and you sent this in a memo? We crossed our millionth gallon or something. What? >> Yes, sir. We did. We crossed our mill millionth gallon a couple weeks ago. >> Millionth. Use that in a sentence. Um so as we're talking about how cool this is, we're out say, "Hey man, 40 42 people are using this a day. We're we're using how much water on average per day or how do you how do I articulate the success of this this this service? >> Um we have the 20,000 gallons that's available and we essentially are that water has been utilized by 3:00. >> Wow. >> You know, usually the the number of people that come in. So that's uh 2 hours after we open um as it was indicated by uh Mrs. Upshaw last night, the gate was actually closed. We had everybody inside before we even started selling. That that was all >> good for y'all to have that kind of at least advanced notice, right? So at least if I'm driving up and the gate shut, I know not to get in line. Is that the concept? >> That's correct. I may not be happy about it, but at least I'm not sitting in line for a long an extended period of time knowing thinking I'm going to get water and then not. So, um, isn't the man going to go down once it start? And it will rain. I always tell everybody, dove season's the 1st of September. God loves doves. Morning loves humans. It will rain in September. Get ready. I promise you. Opening day rain. So, when the rains do come, I guess demand does go down. >> Uh, we've seen a decrease in demand when we've had rain, but again, it goes up fairly quickly afterwards because the rain I mean, the effects don't last very long, >> I guess. And because it's free. >> Yes. >> My thought is that just I don't know how you unless you got a filling station. I mean, I don't know how you how you charge for this except to just charge everybody $25 every time they step up. You put it to their bill. They move on with their lives. I I don't know. So, an average person uses it how many times a month? >> Oh, the average person. How many times? I don't have the >> I'm just curious what $25 would mean to the people that are using it, >> right? Um, it's really a lot of the same customers that are the repeat customers. I can look that data up how often they they actually come >> because if it's if it's, you know, like for instance, my goal is to get to September one, right? That's if I can get one rain between now and September 1, I'm going to make it. My grass is going to make it because it's, you know, statistically it does rain in September. I guess that's our second highest, maybe our highest month. Um, but if if I used it four times a month, that's $25 a pop. You know, I I would think that would be that's worth the convenience and that's worth the ability. I don't I can't imagine people arguing at $25, you know, when they show up. Now, I guess the iffy deal is if I have two totes and he's got one and she's got four, you know, I just I just don't want it to be complicated, but I do think the public uh I think the people that don't use it would appreciate there being some charge. You know, >> we we do meter every every customer. >> Really? >> We have to. Yes. Uh TCQ purposes. Again, that's one reason we have to have this staff. We uh we have to meter how much we're uh giving to each customer under each per under each permit. >> So, as I drive off, you know that I' you've loaded 225 gallons into my my tote. All right. Okay. >> That is correct. >> I think there ought to be a way. I think I think there ought to be a charge. I think it should be nominal. I think you're right. We want to get a couple years into this. It's not their fault we ran out of water. Uh but but I do think the rate payer I think people that use it are willing to pay a little and I think people that don't use it would kind of appreciate it. You know it it be a cost sharing between those who did it. Anyhow, I'm out of time and and I'm really excited because I think council member Roy remembered his question. So I'm just going to sit back and get ready. >> It's not that great. Councilwoman Vaughn. >> Okay. So, you said there's around 40 to 42 customers a day. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Comparison between the commercial and the citizens. >> Um, are we calling commercial the individuals who are picking up and delivering to other residential customers that might not have the equipment or are we talking >> Well, we really don't know if they're delivering that. We just take their word they are. No, I'm just talking about regular citizens go in there and they get water and then businesses go get water. So what's the >> it's uh you have to again trust what they're telling you who they're picking that water up. >> Well, Gil wouldn't trust but verify, >> right? Um so when they come in and they pick up, you're talking conservatively, I would say a 7030 split. So 70% are the residents that are picking it up, 30% are your commercial. >> Can they come more than once a week? >> I'm sorry. Can they come more than once a week? >> Yes, ma'am. >> So, we really could have 40 to 42 customers, let's just say 70% residents coming every day and getting that water. >> That's correct. >> So, here's my concern is kind of what you said, Ever. There's there's certain areas of the city that are not going to go all the way into town to get that water. They're not going to. I just don't believe Cal Island does it. Very few would do that. And then you have people that are going in there and getting the water and they're selling the water, going and and watering people's lawns. It is not fair for the rest of the city. We know you have to have seven employees to have to pay for those what 200 people a week, probably some of the same ones. That's not fair. So, I don't have a problem. I'm like Mark, I don't think it needs to be a huge amount of money, but I think you have to pay for your costs just like you guys said and the other things when we were talking, parks, etc. Um, I don't like it, but it's not fair for the everyone else to have to pick that up. >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you, >> Councilman Bry. >> Okay. Um, I did remember my question, but I'm going to leave that question for last because I just want to let you know if you're saying that you do 7,300,000 gallons per year, and I kind of did the quick math on it, um, based on the $7561, that would generate 554,800 um, in revenue. And so, um, as per what Mark said and Carolyn said, if we were to just do 50% of that, that'd give you about 275,000 to help you with your staffing. >> Yes, sir. >> So, even if I I really do believe, and I think you can hear the council here say this over and over again, but we may want to look at something like that because that would help you offset your cost. The other thing I wanted to ask is that >> is this considered, you know how when golf courses they use what they call a purple line or a purple water? Is this purple water? >> It is. >> It is. >> It is. >> So my question is what's the furthest >> purple line that we service the city? So, in other words, I like I live um out in Cal Allen and we have the um forgot the name a River Hills Country Club. >> And are they serviced with Purple Water? >> Uh no. >> No, they're not. They're actually serviced by WCID number uh number three. >> So, okay. >> Or Rob. Yeah. So that's part of the reason why you have to meter because you have an obligation in terms of what the amount that you can use per day because we have an obligation in terms of making sure that we also provide water to the bays and estuaries, right? >> Um no, it it's actually just part of the the tax standards the Texas Administrative Code that you uh TCQ wants to be able to track where this goes um just for their general purposes. So if there is an incident that occurs, a discharge, something with the effluent that is not permitted under their guidelines, they know who it went to and how much. >> Okay. All right. So now here's my question. Earlier you mentioned about $50 million in the budget as far as being able to kind of free that up based on the fact that you're saying that your projects ex extend where before maybe you were thinking 6 months but really the bottom line is is that from the time that you say yes to get the engineering done it's taking 12 months or greater right so then the cost hasn't really changed. No, >> but it's really where you put that pocket in in terms of that expense. You've carried it over to the next year. >> Yeah. So that's why I mentioned that it we haven't canled and costs have not gone down. It's just >> So here's my concern and and we talk about this on council all the time, especially when we're looking at doing projects where the the pre-engineering because if we do the pre-engineering, we know at some point in time that project's going to come up and now we're going to actually have to fund the project. And if we sit there, for example, in one particular district does seven or eight projects, then at some point in time that seven and eight projects will come to fruition and it's going to have a it's going to have an impact on our budget, right? >> Yes. I mean, yes. So what I was thinking about is that if you're moving this along based on the number of projects that you have related to water, are we sitting there saying, "Okay, yes, artificially it looks like we reduced our our our budget this year, but then next year when these things all hit, >> so it's a progressive over 10 years. So that it's not like we shifted from one year and that 50, >> you didn't load it all in one year." >> No, no, no. spread it out over multiple years. So it's not just like we took the 50 from this year and there it is in 27 it's 50 more. Right. >> Yeah. Cuz I thought in two years if we're at panic mode because now all of a sudden all of these projects are sitting there. Um >> no and this is and um and I have to clarify. So when it comes to construction contract right you just signed $102 million or$102 million for Greenwood. Right. >> Right. that schedule even though it's 102 that you signed said proceed that in the cap is 20 million here 30 million here another 30 million here so that's what we did we looked and said hey this project >> we said that it's two years for construction is it really no actually it's three okay let's take a little bit from here a little bit from here for historical and implement that third year so you release a little bit of the the budgeted need and you shift it down to the next year. So, the costs have not gone down. It's just the timeline of how we budget for that. >> All right, good. That makes me feel a lot better because I was thinking, you know, two or three years from now, are we going to be sitting there going, "Oh, okay. How did this >> No, that would happen if we um for example, move the project completely out, right? And moved a lot of the project and say, "Hey, we're not going to do these projects." And we shifted them down. and then all of a sudden you're three or four years later and all of these projects are now in the schedule. That's not what we did. We we're still keeping the same projects. We just looked at how we spread the costs out over the years. >> All right. Thank you. That was it. >> Okay. Thank you. I have one last quick um quick little comment then we'll move on to water. Um Wes, if you can come up. you were kind of abruptly interrupted when you were asked a question and then you were not able to completely answer it, but you did start by saying you're um you're you're not or that you are unique or you're not um like other departments. And I think what you may have what you were going to say speaks greatly to the ask which is nine maintenance I'm talking about the nine uh maintenance positions. So, if you can go back and and you were going to explain that the reason like someone calls in and it isn't like a department here, right, in in at city hall. The reason why it's critical and you didn't get to finish and I'm sorry about that, but could you go on with that? >> Um, sure. Uh and what I was saying is yeah our the way we operate is again our services that we have to provide whether it's based on our service level agreements with our customers what they expect based on our rates or what the CCQ or the EPA has mandated that we do. Um we when we get a call we have to go out uh whether it's scheduled or unscheduled time. Um then on top of that, if a job is taking place, um you know, let's say we start a job at 1:00, your quitting time is 3:00. We don't shut the job down at 3:00 and go home. We work until the job is finished. And unfortunately in our industry, those jobs you can take quite a while to finish. Um and then you might have to call in additional people again um you know to cover to um take care of some of those. So there, you know, to Councilman Hernandez's point, we always need to look at our overtime and manage our overtime better. That's that's definitely something we need to do. Um but it is a reality in our business that we are going to have overtime, >> right? Okay. I appreciate it, Councilman Paxton. >> Thank you. How much of your overtime would you say would be because of long um elongated projects that you're having to stay late for and how much would be for like you're describing those call outs where you have to now, you know, pull somebody off of a different shift to fill a role? >> It's very uh season dependent. Uh you know, and it varies between water and wastewater. It's it's it's kind of a a uh inverse relationship. We'll say when it rains, when we have a lot of rain, we have a lot of wastewater issues. And those wastewater issues manifest themselves after the rain. We'll have uh you know uh clogged lines. We'll have broken lines that show up as uh potholes in streets, things like that. So, individuals will have to go out and work those jobs. Um you know, during that time, water's the same way. when we start drying out, like right now, we're seeing an increase in the number of main breaks simply because our soils are starting to dry out. Um, we do have on call crews. We've actually added a second on call crew to make sure that we can address the number of calls that we're getting because we are in these water restrictions. We don't want to waste any water. So, um, those th those times vary again depending on a lot of factors. So, I' I'd hate to give you an answer right now, you know, just that's a set, but >> I was just thinking ballpark. I think for me, um, to kind of I see the argument here because you guys are an essential service. You can't just stop just because 5:00 hits. Um, you know, it's like any safety program. You've got non-traditional hours because the job has to get done. That kind of thing. Um, but to Councilman Hernandez's point, um, I would think if if we say we want to support CCW, we we recognize that your operations have grown, the need has grown. Um, we're interested in increased, you know, preventative maintenance like some of those images you showed where you could do some rest mitigation and treatment. We're interested in supporting that. then to add strength to your compliment, you know, scheduling to plan for how do we cover those shifts that are realistic needs, that kind of thing. I think that's where the question mark was because I think in a lot of operations, if you recognize your demand has increased, you increase your compliment and that that brings down some overtime. It's never going to eliminate it in essential service and you're certainly higher than most. But I but would you agree that there's some validity to that? there is some validity and and that's what I was um explaining earlier too that if we we could cut back um I use the example of the collections employees that we hired on um the last couple of years if we were to only have those doing the work that was there we could cut back that overtime. However, there's significant savings in still having those guys work and and work some overtime to take work off of our contracts. So, by not contracting with outside agency, we are actually saving money even though we're charging these guys are getting paid overtime on it. We still have 40 to 60% savings by having them do the work inhouse. So, it's it's it's one of those things from a manage uh management perspective. you're still trying to do what's best for your budget, you know, and get all the savings we can squeeze out of this. And sometimes it is by expending overtime, but not having contractors do that work. >> I agree. I've got a team that no matter which way I slice it, there's just some shifts where it's it's actually more costefficient to plan for a little overtime than to try to bring in an entirely separate shift or something like that. Yes, ma'am. But I think that that I think that's a viable question is if we invest in growing the the force to reduce some of that unplanned or or the the long term of that. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Beth. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> You ready for water? >> We're ready for water. >> Okay. Lot a lot of really good discussion. I I don't think any of us had thought we were going to have this much uh discussion in the effluent program. So, we're glad we've got Wes who has done a great job managing that for us. and glad he's here to help answer some of the good questions that we've had. So, so with that said, um let's go to the drinking water um the drinking water presentation. Okay. So, we'll go to the achievements slide. So, I would say uh one of the biggest accomplishments of our water team this year uh was developing and implementing a new water supply dashboard um that really incorporates all all the water resources that we have, not not just the water that we have from Lake Corpus Christie and Cho Canyon, but but the water from the eastern supplies. And so we put all that together uh in addition with some projected potential water that we would have from from other sources. For example, um the groundwater river, the groundwater wells that we're putting into the Noasis River. So the water supply dashboard, I think, is is a great tool for our community to understand our current and future water supply status. Um, I would also say a couple other things and I won't go down I won't read everything on this list, but we we did implement all of the needed improvements associated with the results from the 2024 condition assessment on the Merry Roads pipeline. Uh, that was that allowed us to increase the capacity of that pipeline. Um, these improvements on the MRP and the associated pumping systems that support the pipeline allowed us to fully leverage the full 70 actually 70 to 72 million gallons a day. Um, and you know that that's something that obviously has provided us huge benefits and and this is something that well into the future. I mean there's no plans. We're not we're not going back. We're only staying at the same rate if not uh improving that. And and one of the challenges that we've had is is you know the the pipeline is designed as as it is today for up to 79 million gallons a day. We know that 70 to 72 is not 79. And so there there's ultimately going to have to be some some additional work to try to figure out there's there's some head loss that's in the pipeline at certain locations. And so ultimately uh when when this drought subsides and we have the ability to go do some more u inspection of the pipeline, we can we can hopefully understand where where some of those restrictions are and and and address those because because really at the end of the day the pipeline and the pumping system combined are working in tandem is designed to produce 79 million gallons a day. Um, so, uh, a couple other things that we we think are really important this year that we've achieved is is, uh, some of the dredging that we've done at the Owen Stevens, uh, water treatment plant. Um, solids accumulate in in in these large basins. It it happens, you know, any water treatment plant's going to have solids that you have to remove. Uh, unfortunately, at at Owen Stevens, we don't have a dedicated um on-site uh, solids handling system. Uh many many facilities have what's called centrifuges or belt presses if you will and that basically takes the solids and removes it um uh on site uh right there and and what we do it's it's it's not quite as efficient. We put it in large ponds and then those those solids actually accumulate over time and then we have to go in and and and take them out and it it it can be expensive to do that. And I will say our capital improvement program does have a dedicated solids handling um um project uh but that's that's a couple years out. So so we were we were successful this year. We removed excuse me a lot of solids out of uh our presedmentation basin and then lagoons 5, six and seven. Um several other accomplishments that we want to talk about include some construction of key key water lines along the Noasis Bay Boulevard uh with substantial completion um of the um of that project at 13.2 million. So the $13.2 million is a dedicated water line that actually goes underneath the ship channel 24in water line. And then altogether in FY25, we've replaced approximately 47,500 ft of water lines across uh across the city. And I think that's a tremendous feat. I think it it shows the dedication that our leadership team here, council, has uh to replacing uh aging infrastructure uh pipeline. And so I think that's a that's something we should be proud of. Our proposed 26 budgeted expenditures and revenue for water is shown on this slide. On the left side of the slide, you can see the wheel that shows the proposed expenditures versus proposed revenue for FY26. The outside of the wheel shows uh a revenue of $177.9 million less fund balance of 5.5 million for a total of $183.4 million. The inside wheel shows the proposed expenditures, which is $183.4 million. Our revenue between FY25 and 26 increased by $ 8.3 million while our expenditures increased by $7.9 million as shown on the top right. Uh we'll disc discuss the breakdown of those expenditures on the next slide. Uh the position count in water is decreasing by one due to an internal transfer between water and wastewater. This slide here shows a comparison of our FY25 to 26 budgeted expenditures by major categories including personnel operating costs, capital, debt, and allocation and transfers. Uh the personnel budget increased as a result of repurposing some positions for the uh inner harbor uh management office and then the finance office uh that Camille Terrace leads as well as some merit and cola costs uh for existing staff. For operating costs, we have a relatively modest increase of 4.6% due to increase in electrical costs related to schedule 4 uh pumping and then additional contracted water that we have secured from LNR. And then as far as the debt goes, uh I'm going to have Camille mention that is there was some conversation a little earlier that Councilman Hernandez. So this is the reverse of what happened in wastewater debt decreased in 25 because that should have been assigned to wastewater and it's 58.8 in in fiscal year 26. >> So questions. >> Okay. All right. Our proposed increase in expenditures is 4 and a.5% which is um less than the water sewer consumer price index that is uh which was reported at 4.8% uh from June 24 to June 25. Okay. And as mentioned earlier our water CIP program uh is a coordinated effort between uh CCW and our engineering department led by Jeff uh Edmonds. You can see the various types of water projects included in our CIP program which includes uh raw water supply projects um raw water supply line projects uh treatment distribution and then um and then some other facility projects. We have a total of 53 projects that are in the pre-engineering design or construction phase. Of those 53 projects, 46 are on schedule and seven are delayed. Uh I'll have a slide here right after this that'll uh highlight the reasons for why seven projects are delayed. The bottom line is is that you can see on this table that 87% of the projects are on schedule and the associated budgeted budget with those projects reflects 92% of our projects by budget are on schedule. with regards to the delayed projects. So we have seven uh four of these seven projects are postponed due to additional design needs or or project phasing. One project was postponed because additional property needs uh need to be acquired. So there's some some um real estate acquisition that needs to happen in order to complete the design. Uh one project was postponed because of an additional uh subsurface utility exploration or sue work that was needed to complete the design. And then finally, uh, one project, the Wesley Seal boat ramp, was delayed as a result of the, uh, of the drought. A breakdown of our proposed water CIP program for 2026 by category is shown here on this slide. We're proposing to deliver approximately $390 million of water improvements projects for this next year. Much of our future does depend on new water supplies. And this budget has approximately $248 million of investments or about 64% of the CIP program in the raw water supply project category on the pie chart shown here. The other 36% of our CIP plan is devoted to water treatment and uh distribution of lines. So for our proposed 2026 water CIP uh program, you can see the proposed projects uh a total of 51 projects with one new project and three projects being moved from long range uh to the short range program. The long range projects that are planned to move to the short range do not start until FY28. This includes the Rand Morgan uh 16inch water man project, the citywide highway line uh crossing project, and then the up river uh road waterline replacement project. And then the new one uh the new project in FY26 CIP plan includes the Noasis River groundwater well uh program that's supported by the grant funding from the state of Texas. This slide shows our 2024 annual raw and treated build water usage by customer class. I know this gets a lot of attention. On the left side of um left side of the slide, you can see the total raw water consumption for the entire CCW water system which is all water including raw and uh treated water sales. The industrial use which includes both wholesale and retail industrial users accounts for 54% of all water consumed in our regional water system. Again, this is based on 24 2024 build usage. Uh it's interesting because I I was asked this question I think it was last week about what what the estimated industrial usage is and you know I think I said about 60%. So according to the numbers that we have for build usage from last year uh 54% for all raw all water and that again on the pie chart you can see on the left that's raw water and treated water. Um this this information it's I want to just mention it is posted uh on our website every month. We we've been doing that. Uh it's interesting there was a a customer who has been pretty vocal about that uh Ted Mandel. I always like to give him a shout out, but he he was a real big uh champion for making sure that we could get more information out there to the public. And so, um, that that's that's important because we want to make sure everybody knows who's using our water and where it's going. On the right side of the slide, you can see the treated water use by various uh customer classes. And these customer classes include wholesale treated industrial. So, that would be like San Patricia Municipal Water District. They deliver water to uh Gulf Coast Growth Ventures and Steel Dynamics. Uh that would obviously include residential. Then you would have commercial, which is the the orange bar or the orange pie. Um that would be like your Walmart or or a restaurant that you would like to go eat at. Then you would have large volume and large volume is is you know the large industrial complexes that use use our water. And then finally, our wholesale municipal accounts, which accounts for residential and commercial use outside of the city, and that would be um like South Texas Water Authority, Violet, Portertoanis, which is WCID number four. Um and uh and then San Pat who sells water to for municipal purposes, they sell water to to Rockport in Portland. Um so you can see on the right pie chart um which is comprised of residential uh or you can see that municipal use I should say municipal use which is comprised of residential and commercial users and then the wholesale municipal use makes up approximately 48% of our total treated treated treated uh demand and our large volume users and wholesale industrial users account for approximately 52% of our total treated water for FY20 24. And then this kind of goes back to u one of the graphs that we started putting on uh earlier this year. This was something that we do every month. Um obviously a lot of interest in this. Um and and the numbers are just what the numbers are. You know, the numbers are reported based on what a meter shows. Um and so we started, like I said, providing this information in January of this year. And our efforts are really to make sure that everyone is fully aware of of of where our water is being consumed. And with that said, I'm going to turn this over to Andy and uh he's going to take us through the uh cost of service study analysis and then the proposed water rates for FY uh six. >> Hello again. Uh Andy McCartney, principal with New. I'm going to turn over this part of the water presentation to Tia KS who who has served as the assistant project manager the last two years. Thank you mayor and council members. My name is Tia Kins from New Strategies and Solutions. Um to start off I wanted to review the way that the water structure is currently and all of these things will remain true with the proposed rates. The raw water charge is per thousand gallons and it does include 5 cents to contribute to the water supply development fee. Minimum charges are based on meter size. Large volume charge does include the first 10 million gallons and the volume charge is per thousand gallons. As part of our cost of service process, we do have a functionalization process. We take the functions of the water system and we assign them to each customer class. You can see the functions across the top here and which customer class they are assigned to such as raw water is assigned to all customer classes as all classes use raw water. So, these are indicated with the X's across the uh across the chart, and I won't read them all to you, but I will highlight that distribution here at the end applies to all of your retail customer classes, and it does exclude the network, wholesale, and raw water contract customers. This is a graph very similar to what we presented for wastewater. This is the result of the um of the cost of service process and the revenue required therein. And you can see here that we have been working on a multi-year implementation to align all customer classes with cost of service. And this year we have achieved almost a percent there. So we're happy to finally have narrowed that down as much as possible. Here in graphical form, you'll see the same results and you can see that each customer class is aligned very closely with their cost of service. Our proposed rates include two significant changes in the rate structure this year. The first is that the monthly minimum charges for inside city customers are higher because they include the $2 million of storm water legacy debt as part of the three-year phase in. As you heard Andy talk about earlier, last year we did not have any of the legacy storm water debt in the water rates. So this year they have been added in as part of the phase in plan. Additionally, the second change would be that the first rate block for residential, commercial, and irrigation customer classes are now charged for water. So this is the first 2,000 gallons and we'll show the rate for that that is being proposed on a subsequent slide. And as always, the proposed revenue meets all of the business needs, all of the operating cash reserves and debt service coverage requirements. This is the meter charges proposed for FY26. You can see here in the top row, the average residential customer has a 5/8 meter. And this charge would go from $15.83 to $17.25. And this does include the legacy storm water debt. This is the outside city retail and you'll see that the proposed charge for outside is lower than the inside. Again, the outside city customers per earlier conversation do not benefit from the storm water infrastructure. And then all of the other meter charges follow along that line. Up next is the um the volutric charges. The raw water charge is $118 per thousand gallons. If I can draw your attention to the first tier for residential, commercial, and irrigation. This is where we have included a charge for the first 2,000 gallons. And for residential and commercial, this would be 75 cents per thousand gallons. We do want to be mindful to mitigate impacts on those low users. So this charge was intentionally kept low. And then under the large volume user, that first fee there for the 10 million gallons, this is the take or pay amount for large users is an increase of 30%. Um proposed rates for um these are your contract customer components. The public agency wholesale raw water is a$133 proposed. The wholesale treated water is $180. Wholesale treated water network is 255. Non- rateayer wholesale raw water is proposed at $136. And under each of these you can see the customers to which they apply. I'm sorry I should have pointed that on the on the previous slide. So for this one that would be San Patricio, Selenise and Flint Hills. And we do want to draw attention to the composite customers. Corpus Christi Water does serve three composite raw water customers. They include Alice, Beville, and Matthysse. These rates are set by contract and they utilize adopted budget or actual audited costs. Every December, CCW and the finance department perform an update that will be implemented for billing in January. Beville, Alice, and Matthew have current rates at A$103. Beville's rates are based on the adopted budget while Alice and Matthew Matthysse are based on the uh audited actuals. For these next couple of slides, we wanted to present to you sample utility bills for all of the different customer classes. And so the first example is from residential. The average residential customer has a 5/8 inch meter. They use 6,000 gallons in water and they have a 5,000galon winter quarter average for their wastewater. And the total impact for your average residential customer would be $8.98. Up next is a typical restaurant for a commercial customer with an average usage of 20,000 gallons for both water and waste water and the impact would be $17.93. Irrigation has an average use of 15,000 gallons in water and the average impact to irrigation accounts would be 39%. [Applause] Large volume has an average usage of 90 million gallons and their average impact from rates would be 14%. And then finally, the wholesale treated customers have an average usage of 50 million gallons and they would see an average decrease of 3% in their bill. Thank you very much. Back to you, Drew. >> Thanks to you. >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. Okay, I that takes us through our presentation. So, we stand ready for >> Thank you. >> questions here. >> Yeah, the great presentation. Uh, let's see here. I think everyone's getting situated. Uh, Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for that very um insightful presentation. Um Joe, I have a question on page 42 where you showed that um chart. I know we kind of all went back and forth on it a little bit, but did we ever determine there was that really steep climb under the host wholesale raw and we were kind of like what changed? And I I I think we were going to go look and and try to determine what that jump was because almost every other class has gone down. >> Yeah, we'd have to we'd have to do some analysis on that. Councilwoman, I I um you know that that's one of those things we you know have to go back and look. We've got contracts um that you know that we we we honor and uh we certainly know that you know the folks that we sell water to that deliver water outside our jurisdiction they they they you know we we expect them to implement the same kind of drought contingent uh restrictions that we have. Um but there there are sometimes some limitations to that ability because we we just don't control what happens in Brockport or Portland for example, right? So, um, so it' probably take a little bit of, uh, some analysis to figure out exactly where where, uh, where that water is is, uh, is accounted for, but, uh, but that's something we can we can look at. >> I I'm just it's just interesting to me, um, a curious point because it it's it is a quite a difference from the previous years and where all the other categories have have worked really diligently to do reductions, this one did the inverse. So, >> right. and and that's why it's important you know we we do meet with our partners um that that serve uh you know sell water to their customers. So these would be our wholesale customers that we sell water to. These would be folks like South Texas Water Authority um you know um San Patricio um obviously uh you know we've got uh City of Alys, City of Matis, right? Th those are folks that that we sell water to off Lake Corpus Christi. Um, and so like I said, you know, it's it's one of those things where we we want to have a close working relationship with them. We we do have one. >> Um, and it's it's one of those things where we try to lead by example. Um, we we showcase the fact that we've got what we think is a pretty darn good drought contingency plan. We implement it. We try to do it as fairly as possible. We try to create opportunities for our community in times of some hardship where where people can and businesses can capitalize on something like what we've been talking about, you know, the effluent reclaimed water. Um, you know, that kind of innovation, those kinds of things help our community out. Um, and so we we talked to the folks that we sell water to and and and try to explain that to them and you obviously explain that we all are in this together. I think that's an important message. And so we're we're conserving. We need our partners that we sell water to uh to do the same. >> I think it and and and you're on track. Totally agree. I'm just curious if it was an unforeseen large project of course at you know, god forbid, but if there's um you know something along one of those systems where there's a compromise to the control of the water or I don't know, basically if you could put your finger on it, it makes sense. Cool. We know it's there. It's supposed to be there. That kind of thing. >> Yeah. I think I think your your your question Yes, ma'am. Your question is a good one. I don't really have like, you know, the smoking gun as to what exactly was the the co the cause of that, but you know, it may just be maybe a couple uh things that have happened, but the the the um the diagnostics and some of the work that needs that would be done. You know, we'll we'll we'll look into that uh that question for sure. >> Thank you. And I'm still uh that's all for right. Okay. >> Councilman Hernandez. >> Uh, yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um, >> what's your, uh, you have a reduction of one FTE in water. What is your current vacancy rate? >> 10. It's Yes. So, the vacancy rate on the water side is is is 10% as well. So, it's >> 10%. >> It's 10%. And >> so about 33 people. >> That's that sounds about right. 33. >> Okay. And is it a 24-hour operation? >> Yes. Absolutely. So, we're running uh we're running Owen Stevens is is 247. Uh we've got repair crews that uh and I can let maybe Wes talk a little bit about that, but our repair crews uh work staggered. Um and then they're they're available on call. Um, I think one of the things that we've spent some good time talking about is just the overtime component. You know, we do have we do have overtime and we do we do need it because, you know, unlike some of the the typical industries, right? Like you mentioned the fact that um, you know, a 5% number was the number that you said earlier about typically what overtime looks like. >> Okay. So, do you know what your overtime rate is for for water? >> I I I Wes, do you have that number? I >> or Camille. Okay. It's a million dollars a year out of the 18 million. >> Okay. So, it's actually nine 942,420. >> 958,420. Yes. >> Okay. So, you have which is 5%. >> Yes. >> So, you have 5% for 24-hour operation water and 10% >> Well, we have six wastewater treatment plants >> where I get one. I get you. >> Yeah. I'm just but I'm saying >> yeah, >> okay, we should we should strive for 5%. Is what I'm trying to say and that you know that's ultimately what I'm trying to get at. If you're at 5% I'm not going to beat you up, right? And it's not just you guys, okay? It's not just you guys. You can ask, you know, it's been it's been a consistent theme here every budget, you know, especially the fire department. Always beat them on up on it. But you you you get you get the sense, right? you got it's it's a management goal to get to 5%. >> I I I would just say absolutely and I think all of us here would agree with you that the extent we can limit uh overtime uh certainly helps us out. I I will say you know kind of back to the conversation about the industry and the business that we're in. It is a little bit different than some of the other industry that that has overtime. I mean, we have 3,500 miles of pipeline that are outside of a plant and 3,500 miles of pipeline that that we maintain every day. I if if something happens, we have to have a pretty rapid uh response. Um because I I like to say we're in the public health business as much of as anything. um if we can't provide safe drinking water to the community uh because there's a disruption in service, we we really need to have the ability to deploy people and have them on standby. And I I will say one of the things that that's pretty remarkable in in our industry is that um we expect people to be on standby and on call um from in a moment's notice. If something happens in the middle of the night, uh we expect people to respond uh appropriately because it is a public health situation. Uh if we can't get water to uh hospitals or to other important businesses that provide critical care services, um it's a it's a big deal. So we we think that overtime is is is something that, you know, we we want to manage it absolutely the way we the best way we can to minimize it. But we also recognize and I and I'm I'm not saying that anybody here is disagreeing with that. Um but it's important to have uh and we always will have uh overtime for the business that we run. >> Okay. Um just wanted to point out that for a management goal for sure your overtime, it's it's something that's a controllable that you have control over. >> Okay. Well, I I I would say sometimes there's there's >> we don't have a >> you can't control a telecommunications contractor boring in a in a in an easement and hitting our water line and causing an issue. >> I get I get it. >> Or or something on the Merry Roads pipeline. >> We don't have a a wintertorrm yuri every year either. >> Well, and and I would say that would be much more of a spectacular phenomenon like a wintertorm Yuri. There's there's pretty unspectacular phenomenons that happen like a telecom communications contractor that's just out there. They didn't do their one call correctly. There may even be a water line that might not be in the exact spot that that maybe some of us thought. All our water lines uh 3,500 miles of them. They're not always in the exact spot that you you you would think they would be. Um and and some of these lines have been installed 60 years ago. So there wasn't, you know, GPS wasn't something that was there 60 years ago. And so th those things happen. There's there's human errors that frankly aren't even our cause. Human errors on other people who are out in our rightway and easements that are, you know, doing infrastructure projects that they're not purposely hitting these lines. But I will say when they hit them, um, we charge them for every dollar that's associated with it. I know woman vaugh and I had a conversation a couple months ago where somebody hit a line and we're pretty pretty apt to make sure that all the expenditures associated with repairing it and the water loss gets gets recovered to the utility. >> Okay. Um I have some inconsistencies in the debt service expense from the line item budget uh to what's in the uh what you have here right and even in your presentation uh under the line item budget under debt service expense category the budgeted amount for is 71,500,000 or um >> is what excuse me could you repeat that >> the budget the under your line item budget Mhm. >> The total amount is 71,000 and it include and there's some like I said some inconsistencies be between what you have in the line item budget and what's in the budget book. >> 71,00071 million >> 71 million >> 71 >> 71,543,000 >> in water >> in water. >> I would have to see a line item but >> right so I want to make sure I'm not going to say that you know we're completely screwed up here. might be a an error specifically under transfer to debt uh utility system debt fund. Uh you have um you have an amount here that is in addition to what you have listed here on in the budget book. The budget book here says 35 thou 35,634,000. >> But then there's an additional one under the same uh budget line item. Um, and when I say line item, the account number of 58 uh, I'm sorry, 548550, that is 12.5 million. >> Which fund? >> Water fund >> under the water department >> because it should be the 35600 is correct. That should be under that one. >> I'm like I said, >> yeah, we we need to look >> it's got to be changed. >> Yeah. >> And then there's also some additional debt in here that is not listed in here either. >> So I want to I'll I'll get with you afterwards so we can look at it. So I want to make sure that we're looking at the right numbers. >> Absolutely. >> So it's not, you know, we're looking at the same thing. >> Got it. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Councilman. Councilman Roy, >> thank you uh for the presentation. The only thing I would like and the only question I have is that you know how sometimes we'll actually go out in the past and we'll compare I call it the big eight the other eight cities in in Texas. Um I would just like to see where now that we've got this established where we kind of stand with the other eight where we rank as far as what our uh large user commercial residential are. That's a it's always a good good thing to do is to benchmark how we compare to other utilities and we do that every year. So as part of the final report that we'll get from New on the sort of in the tail end of the report you'll see a chart and actually I have one right here. Um but what they'll do is is they'll compare how our our costs for water and wastewater compare to other large cities uh for for different uh usage amounts. So like like for example um for an 8,000galon monthly residential water user um where do we fall and and that'll be in there. I mean we we fine and we'll have that. >> I just at some point I'd love to see that. >> You bet >> cuz I think when we get a lot of questions having that information and saying well you know um explaining where we're at but saying you know when you compare us with these other this is where we sit. Right. Thank you. >> Yes sir. Okay. U Oh, Councilman Scott, >> sorry. Um, totally unprepared for this. Um, so tell me about the legacy debt. Again, this again, this is all new to me. >> Yeah. >> So, the legacy debt's tied to storm water, >> storm water infrastructure. So, primarily your street work. So, for, think about it, for every dollar you, this is rough. For every dollar you spend on street repairs, you have 50 cents on storm water work. >> And for um before 2021, storm water was in water. So all of those projects from 21 and back that we have debt on that stayed with water when the storm water uh operation shifted out. So what you're paying back is that debt issued prior in 2021 and prior. So you have about about $200 million remaining in debt and 25 years to pay it off. >> Got it. Okay. Okay. Um Hey, so Drew, tell me again. So I'm looking at page 42. You guys are having a quick conversation about how wholesale raw was up which was odd. And you're going to kind of look into that. >> We'll check into that. So, so let's just say for instance, this says San Patricio is that San Patricio Water Authority or is that >> San Patricia Municipal Water District? >> Yes, sir. >> So, if they buy raw from us, does do all of their customers have to follow the drought contingency plan? So, like South Texas Water Authority gets water from well water and then they buy water from us. No. >> No. So, South Texas Water Authority gets 100% of their water from us through Owen Stevens. >> And then they sell some to Kingsville, >> right? So, they sell Kingsville uses their own groundwater, but they supplement with some of our surface water. >> They sell to Driscoll, Bancet, and some of the smaller little towns. >> I guess I'm trying to figure out, you know, why my friends in Kingsville are watering their yards. And so if if South Texas Water Authority sells water to Kingsville, do they does Kingsville have to follow the draw contingency plan that we enact? I guess not. That's a third party. >> Yeah. I I man I I'm not 100% sure on that. >> Can somebody just somebody maybe that's a legal thing. >> I mean we know we we what we do is we meet and in Steve Oh, we got Steve. Okay. So yes sir, they uh pursuant to their contracts, our wholesale customers uh should follow our drought contingency plans, we work with all those customers uh to model them around ours. Now it goes back to some of the comments that was made earlier is about enforcement outside. With regards to Kingsville, that question uh Kingsville itself uses 50% groundwater and purchases the rest of it from South Texas Water Authority. So the play on how much water they can conserve or under their drought contingency plan is really on the onus of that wholesale uh provider to follow. So it it goes to two things. It goes to enforcement. A lot of communities outside the city of Corpus Christie don't have the resources to do that enforcement. A lot of the small communities. So you see that and then also they go through their whole uh uh debates on how to manage the water conservation and what they're doing with different activities. But we work with all of our customers to try to achieve the best conservation and modeling of our drought contingency plan that we have on. >> So all right so we sell it South Texas Water Authority. They sell it to Kingsville. Uh there's no there's no agreement provision. There's no provision in South Texas Water Authority agreement that says if they sell water to Kingsville, then they need to have on the shelf Kingsville's drought contingency plan. >> No, they do. They have to have a water contingency plan. And they do have a water contingency plan. Okay. >> And they they base that or model it based upon our >> drought contingency plan. >> The question is enforcement. >> Exactly. Uh, would that be potentially a reason why, and I'm picking on Kingsville, I don't know if other people do it, but could that be a potential reason why that bar chart on whatever we went up? >> It potentially, we're we're doing some research into seeing what the difference is in that particular 2024 year is. It could have be uh, you know, I'm speculating, so I don't want >> Okay, that's all right. Don't speculate it. You're going to get it. Try to give us an an >> We're going to look into it. Yes. >> Okay. Um, okay. Sorry, I'm running out of time now. Let me just look at my folded pages or keep my best notes. So, um, what's what's the revenue in 25 water revenue and 25 is projected to be the budget of 169? What are we going to end up selling? Do we know what I'm curious as to how much less water people are buying now than when we budgeted uh a year ago, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Because of all the drought contingency implementation. Well, I can tell you that um we we have seen a reduction in in usage and as a result of that and maybe we can have our rate modeler uh kind of provide a little more commentary on this, but part of the reason the wastewater rates have gone up a little bit is because folks are conserving uh water. They're using less water. >> Um and so we have the same fixed costs y >> to run a wastewater and a water system. Yep. And so if the same fixed costs are there and the revenue is is is is less then we have a higher per per volume cost as a result to uh maintain that level of service. >> And maybe it was here because I zoned out a little off and on but um my thought was would be that we budgeted $10 in revenue. We only got eight because of of u uh u the job contingency implementation. But we still need to raise 10. And so part of the rate increase is to make up for the the the decrease in revenue in 25. >> You're absolutely correct. That is a thing. So we saw um and it's basically what you saw on the graph. You saw all of the on that bar chart that had the thing. All of those classes went down. uh consumption for uh inside city limit uh went down by 1% uh commercial by 1% large volume inside city limit went down by 6% uh outside city limit residential went out went down by six outside city limit the commercial went down by eight outside large volume uh so this is your Flint Hills your valos went down by 10% and inside irrigation went down by 8% % >> and is are those numbers rep uh uh income represented on the one of these pages? >> Not on the pages. So, we basically had to adjust the rate to account for those >> volumes. I'm just curious. I'd love to know. We budgeted again. We budgeted $10, but we we were successful in using less water. So, we only brought in eight, which means we have a $2 shortfall, which we have to make up because it's equal. And so, part of our rate increase is due to the $2 shortfall. >> Yes. And that if you could if that's in here and I missed it, just show. >> No, it's not in here, but we can provide a a a what I read you out basically. >> I think the rateayers going to want to know that. I think that'll make sense to them. >> And it applies the same on the wastewater. >> I think that'll that'll take a little more explaining, but I think people just want to know and and I think they know it's going to cost $10. And if we use $2 less, it's still got to get $10. And so you're going to have to make up for it or you take it from a fund balance which I don't think we have. >> Um you're okay. I asked that and that's that. How much time do I have? One minute. Um I asked that. So tell me what is the you said that are year-over-year costs are going up 4.5%. Then you use something about a water wastewater CPI. Is that a is that a thing? Tell me what you were saying. >> Right. educate me. >> So, uh the consumer price index um >> it would be it would be um unfair to look at our operations and consider things like milk and bread, right? So, the CPI you can go into specific benchmarks. There's a whole list and one of the benchmarks that CPI is reported on is called the water and storage maintenance CPI, right? It's a specific benchmark. So we look at that one to compare our costs, you know, because it focuses more on our operations rather than the total inflation across the the country that looks at, as I said, milk, bread, computer equipment, all of those things that really do not affect the our maintenance and operations of the water and wastewater plants. So that one is a little bit higher because it's very specific to thing and costs have gone up. So you hear inflation in the last year less than 3% right but we're saying 4.8 the reason for it is because the inflation for our specific operation is higher than the overall national inflation >> but then you're going on to say that ours is less than the national >> so yes so we our operations are maintaining under the inflationary cost increases. >> Awesome fun to learn. Thank you, Mayor. >> Sir, Councilwoman Compos. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, so it looks like people are saving and commercial and industry are saving water. >> Yes, >> we're we're seeing we're seeing >> we're seeing some reduction some. >> Absolutely. And I I think one of the things that we're really wanting to do is we're we're wanting to make sure that it's not us saying that, it's the numbers on the meters that are saying it, >> right? So, >> and that's true. >> Okay. Uh, but yeah, that is a little um anomaly there that uh you know uh council member uh Kayn Paxton uh pointed out. So, that would be interesting to find out what happened there. >> Well, one of one of the things that's a little challenging on some of this is, you know, we're talking about wholesale customers that we sell water to. So, in order to really do the analysis, you you got to actually peel the onion back. Uh so you got to go to the wholesale customers and ask them to share with us exactly what and where their water is going. >> Yeah. >> And that that and that's something that just >> takes a little more conversation, a little more time to do it. >> Um we got a good relationship with them. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't want to share that with us. So >> that would be uh good to find out. Um so then is that why we don't touch on conservation anymore? I mean, we, you know, we worked on the drought contingency plan, but I don't think we ever went back to conservation. I mean, that we ever tackled that, >> did we? >> Yeah. Um, I'll let I'll let Estabbon talk a little bit about that as he leads the conservation effort. I I will say that I think we continue to work conservation. It may not seem like we are, but but we are absolutely working water conservation. We we're seeing it. People are using less water. Um, and so >> but I don't recall us uh actually uh adopting or actually working on the actual book. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but >> I got you. So, you're talking specifically about the the updated water conservation plan. So, that is something that >> we're we're in the process of of you know, we're going to have to do that. Uh we're we're due for that. >> Um and so that is a a a process that we will be going through. Um there's there's been a lot of uh act action items on the list here and so that is one that is coming up to to being done for sure. >> Is that something that um is uh relegated or regulated by um by anyone but >> right so TCQ is the agency that would be responsible for >> so it is something that we we are supposed to >> keep up with. >> Absolutely. >> And how far behind are we on the conservation plan? Did you want to >> now is Stephan it's coming up. >> Uh yes ma'am. Uh yes we are currently working on the water conservation plan. We're in development with it. I've assisted the help from uh plumber engineering to put together a uh a more userfriendly same information have good information in there but it's more uh uh digestible from uh the residential or commercial novice point of view so that we get the word out how to conserve and you can follow the plan. So we're working on that. The plan internally in my group is to present that to Drew and the and the leadership team and then discuss how we will bring it back to council. And yes, we will need council's approval on this item. So by the fall time, maybe the beginning of uh the 2020 uh six, we'll bring it to council. >> So how far how how far behind are we on that? >> We're about uh two to three years behind that we should have been. two to three years >> and we were always in communication with TCQ and they knew that we were in the process of updating the plan and so uh uh we continue to be in conversations with them and they know that we're working on it >> and how how many times can we extend the deadline? uh I don't know how many times because you've already there's not like a a limit as long as you're you're talking with them and you're communicating that you are implementing and you're getting that work done then you can then it's up to them but I can't give you like a there's not a like two to three just >> extensions so there's really so you can go five years 10 years without updating the conservation >> I I I would say it is a little bit of an extraordinary situation that there we're in as far as you governor has declared uh you know an an emergency situation. So yes, >> while a normal business practice would be >> excuse me absolutely to to make sure we have a comprehensive conservation plan, we do have one. it needs to be updated and I think given the fact that you know we we have been really uh working hard to try to bring on some additional water supplies uh given the fact that the governor's declared this county along with a number of other counties uh in a in a state of uh emergency if you will from a water supply standpoint um you know I I think there's some extraordinary situation here that we've got so I I would tell you >> I understand but you know I just don't want us to you know go so far off that you know we forget that we also have to update the conservation plan. So uh but um I really didn't have too much except that that uh you know I wanted to see you know where we were and and again just to I guess reiterate that you know we it looks like we're all doing our part which is we're conserving but at the same time that means that we still need to make up the money. I mean that, you know, we still have to um make sure that the staff that we hire the right staff and that, you know, that we're watching that the overtime and all that is being done. But, you know, it's a it's a delicate balance that we that we have to do, don't we? I mean, it's like if we can serve, yeah, we're conserving, but we still have this amount of money that we still have to pay even if people are conserving. Right. >> Right. >> So, uh anyway, all right. All right. Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Good job, >> Councilwoman. >> Okay. I think that is that's all the question and answer. Drew, thank you. Thank you all for for all the work you've done on this presentation. It was a great presentation. Very informative. Um and and as always, if any council members have any additional questions, we invite them to reach out to you. >> Absolutely. >> Um and and we can take care of that. Thank you all for being here. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> So, with that, uh this meeting is adjourned.