Utility Customer Advisory Group Minutes for the Meeting on Wednesday, April 12, 2017 Utilities Center Conference Room 218

Transcription

1 Utility Customer Advisory Group Minutes for the Meeting on Wednesday, April 12, 2017 Utilities Center Conference Room 218 Utility Customer Advisory Group (UCAG) Members Present: Eugene Suttmiller, Chair Shirley Clark, Vice-Chair William Daly, Commissioner Frank D. Gomez, Commissioner Robert Snyder, Commissioner City Staff Present: Marcy Driggers, Senior Assistant City Attorney Jorge A. Garcia, Utilities Director Diana Montoya, Interim Rate and Economic Analysis Manager Jose Provencio, Business Services Administrator Domonique Rodriguez, Rate Analyst Senior Carolynn Rouse, Office Assistant Senior Alma Ruiz, Office Manager Senior Adrienne Widmer, Water Administrator Other: William Little, Public Citizen Suzanne Michaels, Public Outreach Consultant Chair Suttmiller called the regular meeting to order at approximately 3:00 p.m. Little: Little: It s 3:00 in the afternoon. Good afternoon and welcome to the April meeting of the UCAG. We have a guest, the Chair of the Utilities Board. I m here as a silent citizen. Okay, a silent citizen. I was just going to ask if you wanted to make a presentation or speak to the Board at all. No, I m good. Okay, thank you. That takes care of that. 1. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Let me do my things I am required to do here. Conflict of interest, the Chairperson shall ask if any member on the Committee or any member of the City staff has any known conflict of interest with any item on the Agenda. S. Clark: No. Negative.

2 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 2 of 15 No. I m taking that as a negative from everyone. We may proceed. There were none. 2. ACCEPTANCE OF AGENDA Next we ask for acceptance of the Agenda. Do I have a motion? Clark: So moved. Second. Motion made and Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The Agenda was Accepted Unanimously ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES I need a motion for acceptance of the Minutes of the Meeting on February 10, Does anyone have any comments or recommended changes to the Minutes? Clark: Clark: I move that we approve them as done. I don t see any need for changes. Second. We have a motion and a second. Everybody in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The Minutes were Approved Unanimously PUBLIC PARTICIPATION Do we have any public participation? I do not believe we have any public participation. Even after that wonderful article, nobody wants to talk to us. We re working on that, though.

3 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 3 of 15 There was none. 5. DISCUSSION OF CUSTOMER OUTREACH AND PUBLIC EVENTS DRAFT PRESENTATION Next item is item five, Discussion of Customer Outreach and Public Events Draft Presentation by William Daly. Mr. Daly, if you are ready? Thank you. Basically, what spurred me to do this is a couple things. One, when we finally get the revenue requirement in and everything happens really quick, I thought it would be a good idea to have some stuff already in the can that we just have to update and put changes on. Then, if we did formal outreach to groups or whatever we use it for, it would be a lot easier than starting from scratch. I submitted a bunch of PowerPoint slides to the Staff, and they, of course, improved on it, which I do appreciate very much. In a couple of points, I left out words, and they changed a few words here and there. I don t know if you would like me to go over every slide, but basically, it gives us a really good start, I think, towards a formal presentation that we could bring to groups. There s open space in there to throw in the actual, once we get the revenue requirement and other stuff from the City, we can amend this and maybe put a couple of pictures in; whatever the Committee thinks would be good. In addition to this, there s some other work that could be done today for outreach. I can see us doing a one-page blurb in PageMaker or something like that, that we could use as handouts that would have our web page address and address, stuff like that, a very brief overview of what was proposed by the Utilities Department, and maybe briefly our thoughts on what was proposed. The other thing that has to be accomplished is, I think this slide program works pretty good for formal groups and things like that, but we also occasionally have the opportunity to do very brief programs. A couple of months ago, I live in District One and Councillor Gandara was doing a district meeting, and I asked if I could come in for a few minutes to talk about who we are and that we actually exist at this point in time. This thing wouldn t have worked for that, but it would be good to have a one- or two-page thing that we could use, maybe for very informal things, maybe a booth at a meeting or at the Farmers Market on a Saturday. Something like that, where they could just take one page and have our data on it. Like I said, the other thing to begin to start to think about is what groups would we want to offer this formal presentation to? If you have ideas on that, I d like to hear them, so we can get as much done in advance so we re not chasing around trying to get it all done once we get the data loaded. At that point, we ll be busy analyzing the data, at least some of the people will be busy analyzing the data, and coming up with our responses to what was proposed. I think we re going to be busy doing that, so the more stuff for outreach we can get done in advance, it probably helps us at that point in time. Anyway, I d appreciate any comments back. If you want me to go through every slide, I will, but my thought

4 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 4 of 15 was just to hand out copies and I can them to you as well. I don t know if they were ed. Ruiz: They were. Robert Snyder entered the meeting at approximately 3:06 p.m. Clark: Clark: They were ed. Okay, so you can look at them at home. Again, my thanks to the Utilities Department for helping me improve the initial product. That s where we are with that. One thing that we probably will want to think about is, if we do formal presentations, I don t know if it would be possible to borrow for a short time a projector and a laptop, so we can have it loaded on it. We probably wouldn t need a screen. You can always use the wall. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Daly, we will set you up for presentations with whatever you need. Thank you, Dr. Garcia. I know you re wonderful at setting me up. He ll make you look good. I know he will, he already has. It takes a lot of work to make me look good. That was my underlying reason. On the first RAC (Ratepayers Advisory Committee) I served on, which was Water, we had a terrible time because one of the members made some claims that were alternative facts as you call them today in Washington. There were some errors, the press picked up the errors, and we had to chase that down for a while. My goal is to try to formalize, standardize stuff to the extent I can, so people can still put editorial comments in with the parts that they may want to give; and to make it so easy that everybody will volunteer to do a few of these things. I think that s it. You bring up a good point there. There s what I think about it, and what we should be putting out as a presentation from the organization, the UCAG itself. I may think it s a whole bag of hooey, but I shouldn t be out there saying any of this as Chairman of the Committee, and I don t, of course. Yes, sir? Mr. Chairman, along those lines, you know, and we ve said it early on, that Suzanne, who is here today, will be available to you to convey the UCAG s message, whatever the message is; or try to convey certain portions of the progress of the work. Whatever you need, she can craft something that you direct that gets out.

5 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 5 of 15 Michaels: Michaels: Michaels: Ruiz: Ruiz: Michaels: I appreciate that. That brings up the second part. I see this as a two-step process, and we re in the first step here, which is letting everybody know that we re here, who we are, what we re supposed to do, and what we can or cannot do. That s the first part of the message. We can t do the second part until we get a lot more data on what we re doing, when we actually begin the process. Other than the education for the process and the data for the process, we re sort of here putting things together. As we put things together, the major thing in my mind is to get out that we re here, and what are your concerns? Then, we can answer. One of the things, Ms. Michaels, is the Sun-News has a column about once a week that lists everything that s happening in the City. Yes. Can we make sure we get our meeting dates in there? A lot of people read that. I m not really sure if they are putting meetings or if they are putting events. I seem to remember that they did. Okay. If there s a way to do it, then absolutely we will. It s like these people are meeting, those people are meeting, and if you can get it in, great. If you can t, then we need to look at who else will put it out on the airwaves or whatever. Were you going to say something, ma am? Yes, Chairman and Committee. All of your meetings are included in the City Manager s newsletter that goes out, and it s a week before. That has visibility, it s on our website. I m aware of those, but I just want to get it so that if there s a church bulletin or anything that we can get it into, I d like to get it into that. You would have to give us some direction as to where... Sure. I m not sure how to go about doing it. I know I read everything that comes into my hands, so if I get a church bulletin, I read it. If it s in there, I know there s a meeting. It keeps me straight on getting here to these meetings, actually. Yes, ma am? I certainly can find out who is handling putting that together. I m sure they get a bazillion items. Let me see if I can find out and I ll pass it on to Alma, and then she and Carrie can get the information out to you all and we ll move forward. I personally am willing to go talk to anyone, anywhere, at almost any time. Two o clock in the morning is iffy, but if it s really important and a lot of people are going to hear it, I ll drag myself out to do it. Right now, to me, the critical thing

6 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 6 of 15 we do is to get out the message that we re here, what we re going to do, how you contact us, and I know we ve got it in a lot of places. I m not trying to say we don t, but the more places we get, because you get a whole lot of people who read these things. You ve got a whole heck of a lot more people who don t, and how do we reach those people, because they re the ones that are really affected by the recommendations that will be made by this Committee, and the recommendations that will be made by the Utilities. We should be making sure we get as many of those people in it. To me, if you raise my water rates by a couple bucks a month, I might gripe and moan about it for a couple of days, and then forget about it. There s people out there where it starts making a difference between what gets on the table. We need to listen to those people, and we need to make sure they have a chance to be listened to. That s my take on it. Yes, ma am? Ruiz: If I could? When we know more about public meetings, that will be a great opportunity for us to put ads in the paper, in the utility bills, things like that to where we would be able to reach our customer base. That s great, yes. I m going to be talking to some people about doing Lions meetings and those kind of things. I can do that, but again, if I go to Lions meetings and talk to people, it s valuable. Don t get me wrong, but I m talking to the same people that are reading the newspapers and are aware of what s going on, and are politically involved. My concern is how do we get to the people that aren t, and in a lot of ways, are much more affected by what happens. S. Clark: The flyers for the utility bills are a really good idea. I just want people to be thinking about it, and I m willing to talk to anybody at any time; come in and talk to anybody that wants to do it, phone meet, or whatever happens. Right now, we re sort of in a hiatus until we get to the point where we start gathering data and start meeting to make decisions on things. It s a good time to start beating the bushes, and Mr. Daly has done an excellent job, you [Utilities Staff] in getting the site set up, and Ms. Michaels in getting us in the paper. Unfortunately, they took a picture when I wasn t here, so I m not a movie star or a paper star. I ve been in the papers enough, on post office walls, things like that. Mr. Chairman, one thought in mind. Since the newspaper seems to be getting smaller and smaller all the time, my suggestion would be, What do we do for every client? What do we do for every meter owner? What do we do for every person that uses our utilities? A little insert, maybe a little rubber stamp that says, We do have a UCAG Committee to liaison between you and the Board, and what have you. It would be a money-saver. I believe that is the way to reach everybody that does not read the paper. How many times, have I been told, we don t know about this election coming up because we don t get the

7 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 7 of 15 paper? That s a thought, and I think it s a good one. Every client receives a statement, let s put a little insert in there. We do have this group now that s there. That s good, and Alma has mentioned that. We can do that, once we have dates and things to talk about. That will be critical. My concern is, if you live in a trailer court, you re not getting a bill. Your trailer court owner is, and he or she is charging you. You don t get it, all you know is all of a sudden, you re paying more next month. There are organizations that reach these people. I used to belong to a bunch of them, and we can get to them. We need to figure out how to do that, I think. Again, that can t be done at the meetings here so much as I m willing to talk with anybody about anything. Mr. Daly, I m sorry? I ll run on if you give me a chance. Basically, I ve started a list of public service agencies in town that we might want to offer programs to. I ve also stopped by, and I ve had great support from, the senior programs. They d love us to come to every one of the senior centers. The museums, my wife volunteers at the Railroad Museum, and they ve got a nice little room on the first floor. They would love to have us come in and schedule a meeting there. I m worried not so much that we won t find opportunities, I m worried we ll have too many opportunities to address them. That may be, but if that happens, I would be totally astonished if it did. I m hoping it happens. Then, we d start saying, You ve asked for this, this person has asked for this on the same night at approximately the same time, can you guys get together? We can work that one out, or we turn around and say, We re getting so many, we can only do them on certain nights. We have lives. Again, until we get there, we need to be out looking everywhere. I think we can easily bring it together. The standard ones are fairly easy. I could end up in the next three months talking to every Lions Club in the City without much of a problem, but those again are the people that are reached by the regular channels anyway. I want to get to the people who don t, and hear what they have to say, and hear what their worries are. My experience in doing that kind of thing is not only will I hear a lot about rates, but I ll hear a lot about other water issues. If nothing else, you write them down and Dr. Garcia is probably more than willing to field them out to his staff to answer. It s a way to do business in my mind. I do not want to commit you people to anything, I will commit myself. I guess one of the ways I ve seen it done, one of the ways I ve done it in a previous existence, was we had a central place that you could call, and then we assigned people as they were available. Just a central number, and if you want somebody to come out and explain this to you and a group, and we prefer groups over five. Doing it on a person-to-person basis is harder than five, ten, or whatever. We will schedule it, and then you say, We ve got people, you can call me, send a text message or , and say, Hey, we ve got a group

8 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 8 of 15 that would like somebody to come out and explain this to them on such and such date and time. One of us picks it up and if we can t, you can go back and say, None of our people are available at that time, but somebody is available at this time. That would be my comeback if I can t do it on a Saturday because my grandchildren are coming to visit me, and that s priority, but I m available at that same time next week, that kind of thing. We can really, without overburdening ourselves, and if anybody disagrees with this feel free. S. Clark: I totally agree with it. You have an excellent thought there. With the high technology and connections via Facebook, texting, phone calls; I agree with you, it s essential. Like I said, we can just field them as they come. I ve got no problem taking an hour or hour and one-half out. I d like to see, and I ll work with Utilities to come up with a one or two-page that we can put on cards. Cover these important points to cover when you re covering this, things not to say. We do not make the decisions; make sure that s clear. I like my house and don t want it burned down. Come up with a two-, three-, maybe four-card thing where you can go through with a really small group fairly quickly, and get the main points across. We ve got a beautiful PowerPoint presentation right now, one that can be updated as things change. That s for larger groups, and for larger organizations, and those need to be set up and coordinated with the Department to make sure the coordinator is putting us as available and everything can be done. Does anyone have a problem with this? This is just general discussion, I m not asking for a vote on anything. S. Clark: Totally agree. It s an excellent thought. It s an excellent discussion. One point. If it s a good-sized group, maybe 40-50, it would be good if two of us could go. One person doing the chatting and flipping the slides, and another person taking down notes and thoughts of the attendees, if it s a good-sized meeting. That would be whoever is fielding phone calls says, How many people? and if they ve got 25-50, you want somebody there because you re going to be getting a lot of questions. A lot of times, it s easier in those kinds of groups where you have that venue is to break the group into two smaller groups. After you make the presentation, you say, Okay, now let s hold the discussion. This side of the wall goes over here, he goes there, I go over here, and we walk our way through it. The idea is that we communicate what we re doing, how we re doing it, and how they can influence the process, and that they re welcome to drop into these meetings at any time. We would prefer they don t do demonstrations; we re hearing you without demonstrations out in the parking

9 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 9 of 15 lot. Anyway, that kind of thing, we work those, but I really consider it a failure if we don t have the maximum amount of public participation. Snyder: I agree with that, absolutely. It s their chance to have a say in major decisions that will be affecting their lives in the next four years. I ll stop pontificating. What s next? Request for Proposal Rate Reviews? S. Clark: I have a comment on the slide show. The slide on, Why not just include utility costs in municipal taxes? doesn t make sense to me. What page are you on? S. Clark: Third page. Fourth page. S. Clark: Page three. My understanding is that state law says it has to be a selfsustaining enterprise. It s historically been kept separate, but I m not sure that there s a law that requires it, especially for small communities that have to be separate. I don t know, but it just makes sense because it s revenue that s dedicated for a specific purpose and not a normal tax general fund revenue. It makes sense to do it this way. S. Clark: Small communities have to budget as an enterprise fund also. It has to be a self-sustaining fund. This just seems a little bit more convoluted than basically, they passed a law and said we have to do it. I can make some changes, it would be just a slight change. Just it to me. S. Clark: Okay. Driggers: The main reason is because that procedure is mandated by City Ordinance. Am I correct on that, Ms. Driggers? I m sorry, I was showing Dr. Garcia. The main reason we do it is because it s mandated by City Ordinance. S. Clark: It s a state law. Correct, it s state law.

10 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 10 of 15 That would be probably one of the answers I can go in with. S. Clark: I m just making myself a note so I ll know what I need to do. The utilities, although it may be done that way in smaller critical entities, the utilities in a city the size of Las Cruces are much more convoluted and complex. S. Clark: Yes, they are. I ve worked for three different cities in this state, and two of them were very small. One was 3,000 [population], one was 10,000. Then, I moved here. Driggers: You get here and all of a sudden you re looking at a utility that s got a larger budget, several times over, than cities that are also doing it. It s just that the City Council has determined that this is the best way to handle it, so that s why we re doing it is an answer. Dr. Garcia may know better, but historically, for some reason, the Council established that Utilities was an enterprise fund, meaning it is self-sustaining. It has to pay to operate its system with the revenue that it drives, whereas in smaller towns it s what revenue... S. Clark: It s the same way. Driggers: It is? S. Clark: It s the same way. I was the Finance Director in Los Lunas. Driggers: That s not by State Statute. S. Clark: It s not? Because we did that same thing in Los Lunas, and there was only 3,000 people when I was there. It s a lot bigger now. Driggers: The General Fund didn t subsidize the rates? S. Clark: No. It was set up as an enterprise fund. I think a lot of that comes from Department of Finance Administration and Budgeting, that may be where it comes from. The state is basically operated as an enterprise fund. S. Clark: That s the way it was explained to me when I first started doing governmental accounting. I don t think universally it s done that way, and that there s a law that says it has to be. I know, at least in New Hampshire, where I m most familiar with, there are a lot of small towns that don t charge water rates. They just take that as a

11 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 11 of 15 cost of public service and they put it on their taxation list, basically. Places that don t have commercial zones or where everybody is mostly residential, or maybe it s around a lake or something, a small district, they don t segregate things like a big city would have to. S. Clark: I ll do some research into that. Yes, just send me the changes. I ll be happy to make them. Like I said, my take is that it s the law. S. Clark: I think it is, too, but I ll do some research on it and let you know. Driggers: Michaels: Snyder: Ruiz: Snyder: There are cases that say the rates have to be fair and reasonable, but that doesn t say whether the rates have to pay for the fair and reasonable rates. Ms. Michaels, do you have anything? I don t. I m taking in what you re saying, and trying to figure out if there are other methods of outreach that we can pursue. I was going to bring up, are we monitoring how many hits we get on our website? The City may have a way to track that. When we first created our website, there was talk about tracking, but I d have to follow up with IT (Information Technology) to see if that is available. All right. Anybody else have any comments or anything else about this portion? I just want to comment that when we did this the first time with the water RAC, one thing that I found very impressive was that we talked to hundreds of people about the rates, because they hadn t been increased in a long period. I don t remember what the number was, but it was a good-sized increase. We couldn t find a single person that lived in the City that felt that the service was anything less than outstanding. I don t think we re going to find any again this time. It s just a compliment to what you folks do that everybody loves the service. Not everybody liked the price, but that s how life is. This is not Flint, that s all I m saying, and I ll let it go at that. We don t have any lead pipes, so that s good. We ll go on to the next one, Request for Proposal Rate Review Consultant by Domonique Rodriguez. Thank you for coming this afternoon, ma am.

12 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 12 of 15 Good afternoon. My name is Domonique Rodriguez. I m a Rate Analyst for Utilities. LCU (Las Cruces Utilities) staff is currently working on the revenue requirements spreadsheet. We just received the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report), which was approved by City Council, so now we have our test year which is Fiscal Year 2016 to start off with. The LCU Board will approve the Fiscal Year 2018 budget tomorrow. Approve or deny. Approve or deny. That will give us some of our known and measurable changes that we will want to include in the test year as adjustments. The RFP will go to the SAC (Selection Advisory Committee) on April 25 th for evaluation, and we are pushing to have the rate review consultant or consultants, awarded at the LCU Board Meeting in May. Then, we will disburse the revenue requirement spreadsheet to the Board, to the UCAG, and to the rate review consultant all at the same time. Do you have any questions? My understanding is that we received two responses. Do we know who those two firms are, or is that something We are not allowed to discuss until the Evaluation Committee does. Do you think you d be prepared to come back to the Committee here to UCAG, on June 8 th to discuss who will receive, give us an update on where we re at? Yes, of course. I can let you know, to make sure we go to Utilities Board for approval of the contract. You re going to them on April 26 th, right? No, we go to the SAC Committee on April 25 th, which would be the evaluation criteria of the RFP. Oh, we go to LCU in May. When in May? The second Thursday. I m not sure exactly what date that is. Okay, since we re the second Wednesday, you would be able to come to us in June then, right? I can let you know the day before. Mr. Chairman, yes, we ll brief you as to what the SAC recommendation was on the consultants, and on the next day we ll meet with the Board. As soon as the Board approves, we can issue a Notice to Proceed and then bring the consultant here.

13 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 13 of 15 Okay. If we can bring the consultant in June, then we re on our way. If you can put that on the Agenda for May, I would much appreciate it. Thank you. I m sorry, ma am. No, that works, if you have any questions? Mr. Chairman, I believe that the two members for the selection are already scheduled for the 25 th? S. Clark: No, I m going to be gone, so I would like to have somebody else on the Board. That s not good, for us. S. Clark: I m going to be in an airplane on the 25 th. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, to appoint someone else. We need to two of you. S. Clark: We need to have someone else. I can do it, if you wish. I ll be around. Does anyone else have a burning desire to do it? [Daly] You re already on it. Do either of you two gentlemen [Gomez, Snyder] have a burning desire to do it? S. Clark: Unfortunately, I have a scheduled trip to Florida that I ve had scheduled for three months. You can put me on call. What time, and what is the date? S. Clark: The 25 th, Tuesday. I ll just go ahead and do it, then. S. Clark: It s two weeks. Two weeks from now? S. Clark: Two weeks from yesterday. You will go, and we need somebody else? S. Clark: No, Bill s already on it. We have two slots.

14 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 14 of 15 S. Clark: The problem is that I m going to be out of town. That would be good if you [Chair Suttmiller] could go, because then you could fill in. I ll do that. Just send me an , because I ll forget about this by the time I walk out the door. It ll be on your calendar, sir. 6. OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST: There were none. 7. COMMITTEE MEMBER DISCUSSION: Do we have any Committee member discussion? S. Clark: That s the only thing I had for it. Does anyone have anything they want to bring up to the Board right now? Anybody in the audience? Ma am, you re finished? Yes. I m sorry. No, that s okay. I just wanted to make sure you guys didn t have any more questions. Mr. Daly had a question? I have one question. The deadline for comments on the 40-Year Water Plan, did you get some comments on that, or have you reviewed them yet? It s only somewhat related to what we do. Yes and no. It s related to some extent, but we got some comments at the public meeting, and I think three comments. One is yours. We will prepare responses that will be attached to the Board packet, and then the Board will decide whether they want to submit the plan, or whether they want to incorporate further changes. Okay. That s going to happen at the May meeting, because we didn t have time to formulate all the responses. One was more elaborate, and we can still get it approved tomorrow.

15 Utilities Customer Advisory Group Page 15 of 15 Ruiz: Just to add to Dr. Garcia s, the comment phase is closed. It closed on Monday. S. Clark: Thank you. Snyder: Our May meeting will be on the 10 th, I believe? Yes. S. Clark: Yes. Does anybody have any problems or know at this time whether they ll be gone or not? S. Clark: I ll be gone the next week, but not that week. I m in good shape on that one. I can make it that week. We can go ahead and schedule that meeting, and anyone that has any items they want to add to the Agenda for the May meeting, be sure to let Alma know way ahead of time. As much ahead of time as you possibly can. Three days before the meeting, make sure you can do it the next month. Is there anything else we need to discuss? Thank you for coming to the meeting, everyone. I appreciate it and am looking forward to seeing you all in May if not sooner. S. Clark: See you next month. 8. ADJOURNMENT: Meeting was adjourned at approximately 3:37 p.m. Eugene Suttmiller, Chairman Utility Customer Advisory Group Date