East Orange Water Commission

CITY OF EAST ORANGE, NEW JERSEY EAST ORANGE WATER COMMISSION 99 South Grove Street East Orange, NJ 07018 TED R. GREEN, Mayor REGULAR MEETING May 16, 2023 MINUTES Minutes of a Regular Meeting of the Board of Water Commissioners held in the Conference Room of the East Orange Water Commission, 99 South Grove Street, East Orange, New Jersey on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. I. CALL TO ORDER – 5:08 p.m. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Commissioners Alison Rolling Shantel Harrison Sherkera Lucas Emmanuel O. Awe Lauren Shears Staff Joseph J. Tomashosky, Finance Consultant John Liu, Executive Director Thomas J. Matich, Operations Manager Counsel Denis Murphy, Esq. (Weiner Law) Public NONE The meeting was called to order, Commissioner Rolling determined that there was a quorum and convened the Regular Meeting. Commissioner Rolling read the Rate Statement. II. STATUS OF RESOLUTIONS The Mayor has returned Resolutions #48 through #60. All resolutions are in full force and effect. III. ADOPTION/CORRECTION OF MINUTES 7A: The Minutes of the April 18, 2023, Regular Meeting was approved on a motion made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Shears and carried on the call for the Board to vote. IV. EOBWC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT AND COMMITTEE REPORTS Joe advised that Board that in terms of collections, we had our smallest collection month but it follows the smallest billing month. The month previous to that, we had a very large collection month and it had an extended period of time. In terms of our year-to-date collection rate, it's fallen to 92.2% from 102.1% last month. If you collect more than you bill, you reduce your accounts receivable. One of the things that we looked at, as a management team, is that since COVID our receivables have increased by $1.4 million dollars. Before we had the three-month winter turn off restriction, we had reduced that to much less. But since then, we continue to grow our receivables and we had a $1.5 million dollar increase in the 52 days plus category from the beginning of COVID. We increased our accounts receivable by $731,000 in April from March. The month before we had decreased it by $707,000. If we look at normal operating conditions at the same billing rates as pre-COVID, we still have room to go. The good news about that is that we don't have any immediate need of that cash and that this is a timing issue. We are going to be able to collect that money overtime, especially if we can use the lien function which we believe we are eligible for. John is going to play a role in that with the City. On collections, we're currently $360,000 short against budget for the first four months of the year. But remember, two and a half of those months were “no shutoffs allowed.” When you see your confidential forecast, you will see that we have higher collections as we're now turn off and lien capable. Both of those things are tools that have worked well for us over the years. I anticipate and I'm forecasting that they will aid in making up the $360,000 shortfall that we have through April in cash collections. A discussion was then held in regards to the tools that the Board can utilize to collect outstanding fees from customers. Tom Matich stated that in line with what we were just talking about, based on the graph in the back, we've engaged upwards of 130 curb boxes just to ensure that they are accessible and ready when the time comes for the turnoffs. The team is diligent with doing in-house repairs but we're also ensuring that when the turnoffs come, we are able to access those curb boxes to initiate the turn offs. Although we do have residential turn offs, the commercial ones as we've been discussing are still troublesome. We're still getting sporadic reports of hydrants that were not addressed and we're taking care of those as they come. The 100 hydrants that we replaced at the tail end of last year have improved the firefighting quality throughout the City. The director will address the capital projects taking place at WORPS. The one thing I did want to mention that's not listed here, is that we're doing an internal assessment investigation of the sanitary pipeline running down Tremont towards Grand. We're doing the assessment to find out if the volume that we have present in our system, in our city, is overtaxing the capability of the pipeline or if it's a surge from too much volume in the combined sewer system of Newark that it ties into during rainfall events. We're getting a lot of reports of backups coming back into the house in that area. What we believe it to be is although our pipeline volume can still be maintained during those rain events because ours is a segregated system, Newark’s system is combined and because of the rain events, it overtaxes their pipeline. It then doesn't allow the flow from our pipeline to enter. Once we have this investigation assessment done, the director and I will speak to Newark and see what we can do. We want to provide all the information up front and have everything together. We've had a little less than half a dozen complaints of backups during rain events and we just want to make sure that our system’s integrity is still intact. We don't believe there is an infiltration, we believe it to be a back surge from tying into the Newark pipeline. We'll let you know how that goes. Meter change assets are still taking place internally. There is an error in the chart, it shows a monthly total for water main breaks as two (2). I apologize, I didn't delete that its zero (0). We did our own this month. If you notice on the operating bill, there's nothing in there for our emergency contractor. The one (1) reflected for sewer main breaks has not hit our invoicing yet, so this was a good month for internal work. Director Liu advised the Board that they have had several complaints about the flooding in the last two weeks due to heavy rain. We have a separate storm and sanitary system, but we are discharging into Newark and Newark is sending it to the Passaic Valley Sewage Commission for treatment. So, when we pay them a wheeling fee, we actually pay their wheeling fee. It looks like when there is heavy rain, they're restricted by the EPA for the combined sewer outflow. What happens is with their combined sewer and sanitary, storm water goes together they are surcharged and allowed to overflow the additional sewage to the river. The EPA now has a lot more restrictions on their combined sewer outflow. That might be the reason they are not overflowing that much because their system is being surcharged and causing water to back up into our system. We are trying to investigate that. If that's the case, then it's a whole issue about dealing with Newark, dealing with the EPA and dealing with DEP. We want to make sure we do our homework first before we raise the question. So, we will let you know after we do some investigation. Woodland Avenue is pretty much complete. The only thing left is the change order to put the gate up so the people coming from the Park Avenue side would not have access to the property over there. That's almost complete. A discussion was then held with regards to removing hay and cleaning the area. The Lead service line is almost complete. We're dealing with the NJIB to get the funding. We have the RFP on PFAS coming back at the end of this month. Once we have that RRP, I will present it to the board. The Water Rate study is already complete. We finished reviewing and it will be sent out for the RFP for the race study. The Meter Reading Tower, because of supply chain issues, we anticipate will be back on probably next month. That will have the complete so we'll be able to start doing leak detection as soon as we can. The rest of this stuff is all pretty much ongoing. The Wyoming Reservoir we’ve reviewed the specs and anticipate it to go out to bid in June and receiving responses in July. Then we can start construction in October or November. D3 the design is complete and it's ready to go out to bid. Canoe Brook, everything required by the DDP is all complete. There is an issue with the Search Tower, remember we have H2M doing the study of the Surge Tower. The study is complete and we have an issue because during that heavy rain the last two weeks, we had a power outage which caused the pump to stop and caused a surge. Obviously, the surge tower is designed for that but because there was heavy rain that weekend and compounded with the surge tower releasing water caused a lot of water in the whole area. Now we are working with H2M to come up with a design to alleviate a lot of those issues with the level indicator for surge tower. We  are still working on the design. Once they complete the design, I'll let the board know how we should proceed. Phase 1 Well Rehab has already started, we are working with UHL and the well developer and then we're going to develop all these wells. Four wells altogether. Tom mentioned our Conversion Project which is ongoing. It should be finished within a couple of months. The Emergency Generator, we already have the switch gear in and then we are going to work with the existing transformer until the new transformer comes in. The new transformer is going to have a year to year and a half delay. V. PRESENTATION NONE VI. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Lawsuits – update in Executive Session VII. NEW BUSINESS/COMMUNICATIONS Customer Shutoff Notices High Water Bill (Leak) VIII. APPROVAL OF RESOLUTIONS The following resolutions 13A through 13J were presented to the Board for approval. A motion to omnibus and approve Resolutions 13A through 13J was made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Lucas and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to vote. 13A: Resolution ratifying the April 2023 recurring monthly bills paid in the amount of $72,327.65 13B: Resolution authorizing the approval and payments of Operating Bills in the amount of $173,549.11 13C: Resolution ratifying the payment of April 2023 Payrolls in the total amount of $372,473.27 13D: Resolution authorizing the payment of Capital invoices for the month of April 2023 in the amount of $70,877.73 13E: Resolution authorizing the June 2023 Temporary Budget in the amount of $1,990,151.00 13F: Resolution authorizing revenue reimbursements for overpayments in the amount of $5,942.16  13G: Resolution authorizing and approving an agreement with Homeserve USA Corp. for the administration of the water and sewer line warranty program to customers of the East Orange Water Commission 13H: Resolution authorizing and setting forth the annual compensation of the members of the Board of Water Commissioners of the City of East Orange 13I: Resolution ratifying and authorizing the execution of an agreement between the State of New Jersey and the EOBWC relating to the North Munn Avenue, Bridge over Route 280 project 13J: Resolution authorizing personnel appointment from Part-Time to Full-Time position of Principal engineer Aide IX. PUBLIC COMMENT None X. EXECUTIVE SESSION 14A: Resolution for Closed Session Resolution 14A was approved on a motion made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Lucas, and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to vote. ------------------ The Board went into Executive Session to discuss the following at approximately 6:02. pm: 1. Personnel Committee 2. Contracts and Litigation Matters The Board came out of Executive Session at approximately 9:08 p.m. ------------------- There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at approximately 9:08 pm. THESE MINUTES ARE OF NECESSITY CONDENSED AND ABRIGED AND DO NOT PURPORT TO CONTAIN THE FULL CONTENTS OF THE MATTERS DISCUSSED. SONYA BUTLER TRANSCRIBER