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 August 15, 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, August 15, 2023. I. CALL TO ORDER – 5:07 p.m. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Commissioners Alison Rolling Shantel Harrison Emmanuel O. Awe – approx.5:25 Lauren Shears Sherkera Lucas Staff Joseph J. Tomashosky, Finance Consultant John Liu, Executive Director Thomas J. Matich, Operations Manager Nicole Jackson, Customer Service Bianca Smith, Business 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 #83 through #96. All resolutions are in full force and effect. III. ADOPTION/CORRECTION OF MINUTES 7A: The Minutes of the July 18, 2023, Regular Meeting was approved on a motion made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Lucas and carried on the call for the Board to vote. IV. EOBWC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT AND COMMITTEE REPORTS Joe advised that Board that the top project problem we have financially is our receivables which have grown extensively since pre-COVID. The Customer Service team prepared a number which was higher than he would have anticipated of $1,000,006 in liens. We had a good month relative to our billing. We had 142% collection rate which is the dollar amount of cash receipts to invoicing and that brought our receivables down by $873,000. I believe that we will be very close by the end of the year to where we were pre-COVID. It's been a long few years but with the liens in place, which were always in place prior to COVID, we should be working our way back down which will have positive effects on our fund balance. Right now, we don't have any expenses which are unusual and we're still forecasting to be within our budgeted expenses. As we know, there can be other surprises, last year we had a $915,000 repair at the end of December for a very deep sewer line that had broken, so you always run that risk in terms of forecasting expenditures. With our fund balance, we can handle anything that I can possibly fathom in terms of a normal type of repair and maintenance things that could occur. Financially, we remain in good shape and with the lien process we should be in better shape. We are about to undertake our very large estimate of $159 million of repairs which is more than approximately 6 times our annual revenue from customers. So, it's a very good look right now and I've reflected that in our confidential financials. A lengthy discussion was then held with regards to the lien sale and the lien sale process. Tom stated that everyone had the opportunity to meet with Bianca Smith during the interview process in Executive Session. He wanted to officially welcome her on board. She started on Monday as the newest member of the management team. She's spent the last few days just assessing and observing. She will have an opportunity later in the week to see the origin of our process up at the plant. He will be taking her up there to show her the well fields, the plant operations, treatment plant, down through the reservoir and back to the City so she can have a firm grasp of exactly what our process is here while she concentrates on the all the administrative support that she's going to provide them for the future. The Mains department with WQAA requirements coming online for this year, a good concentration is being spent on tagging all of the hydrants in order to meet with requirements. Some valve exercising and then also working into the next phase of our lead service line replacement of phase three. Phase two right now is sitting at the comptroller's office and the state for final review. Correspondence between the comptroller and us right now they’ve asked for some verbiage changes in our front-end specs, as well as, some changes to the tech specs. This is a new process based on the dollar amount of the project so every phase going forward or any project going forward right now that amasses over, I believe it was, $12 million needs to go through state Comptroller approval which is another process that may delay all of our projects. The fortunate part is the submission to the state for their review can be done simultaneously with a submission to State Comptroller for their review, as well, so as it stands right now, we're making some final changes to the verbiage. There's a meeting to be held tomorrow with our consulting engineers to ensure that we address all the comptroller's concerns and submission for final review. With that, last month, the director will get more into the PFA’S treatment and design and planning. They're working on that diligently. Now I want to go back to the next phase of lead service line replacement. We've identified the geographic area of the city that we want to address for the next phase. That will be submitted, as well as the tax map to our consulting engineer in order to break out all of the addresses that will be affected by this as we had discussed prior to the project even commencing. We had mentioned the concern about residents saying you know you're focusing on one area not another, so this phase two is taking place in the southeast, southwest portion of the city. We're moving to the north and then we'll fill out all the gaps for our phase four and five for the final. Director Mr. Liu welcomed Bianca Smith to the group. He stated that Tom mentioned the lead service line. The state controller is looking at the specs, so we are working on phase three now. We continue to work on the different phases because we need to complete this in eight years. We cannot wait for completed phases. We work on phase two, then work on phase three, so everything will be one after another for the next maybe two or three years. We want to put out all the contracts so that they will be coordinated with the Rate Study. The Rate Study RFP is coming out on August 31, 2023. We're going to have a consultant look at the Rate Study. The rate study will look into all our capital needs and all our operational needs to figure out exactly how much we need to adjust our rate in order to meet our obligations. Those are things we will be working on together. Those are things that we need to plan for. We did a presentation to the City, to try to help us get a grant. We also have the principal forgiveness from the NJIB. That money is going to help us reduce our rate increase. The PFA’S we are working on. Last meeting, you approved H2M who is working on the PFA’S design. We're working with the engineer to come up with a plan on how to alleviate all these emerging contaminants. The third one, the rate study, I mentioned is going to receive the proposal on the 31st. Tom touched on the automatic meter reading. We still have supply chain issues. Hopefully, when we get that, we can start the Leak Detection and use the smart meter. We also talked about the Meter Replacement. We already replaced almost fifty large meters. So, we are continually replacing large meters. Currently, we have our customer service doing the comparison with the new meters. Once we have new meters put it in, we let it run for 6 months. It will compare the increase on the consumption. This way, we would tell if the new meters actually give us more. Those things can be used for our future planning for the Rate Study. Once we replace all the old meters, we know we're going to gain about 10% of the revenue. Those things we can use as a sample for the rate study to come up with a proper rate for the future. Those are the things that we are working on trying to compare. The GIS, the new engineering aid is working on the GIS. We are buying tablets and the software. In the future, the distribution at the plant and the sewer supervisor will have a tablet on their hand when they go out and everything will be updated. Anytime we put a new hydrant, new valve, new sewer, we're going to GPS it. We're going to identify the location and then when we put it in, what size of the main? What size of the hydrant? All that stuff underground, we call the underground asset management. Everything underground that we can't see, the GIS will be able to identify. So even if there's a big snowstorm, we will still be able to find it. Even if people retire, we will still have the information on the GIS.  So next week we’re talking about doing a test shutdown at the Wyoming Reservoir. Once we can do the test shutdown, then we're going to go ahead and put out the project to repair the reservoir. The Surge Tower, H2M is working on the surge tower. Dickenson 6 is complete. We have all the wells coming back online and we have an additional 4 wells that are going to be redeveloped. This will increase our capacity. D3 is going to be redrilled and again that will increase our capacity. We are almost at the end of our allowable for new development. The EPA is controlling the water, if you don't have enough water, they won't allow the city to continue with new development. Because the more residents you have the more water you use. We do have the capacity but because the EPA has come up with a new formula, they decide how your firm capacity is calculated. With their calculation, we have to actually produce a lot more water than we actually use. V. PRESENTATION NONE VI. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Lawsuits – update in Executive Session VII. NEW BUSINESS/COMMUNICATIONS None VIII. APPROVAL OF RESOLUTIONS The following resolutions 13A through 13G were presented to the Board for approval. A motion to omnibus and approve Resolutions 13A through 13G was made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Shears and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to vote. 13A: Resolution ratifying the July 2023 recurring monthly bills paid in the amount of $15,435.22 13B: Resolution authorizing the approval and payments of Operating Bills in the amount of $277,289.98 A motion to correct Resolution 13B from $280,889.98 to $277,289.98 was made by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Shears and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to Vote. 13C: Resolution ratifying the payment of July 2023 Payrolls in the total amount of $367,024.21 13D: Resolution authorizing the payment of Capital invoices for the month of July 2023 in the amount of $194,044.39  13E: Resolution authorizing the 2023 Temporary Budget in the amount of $25,884,412.66 13F: Resolution authorizing a refund for overpayments in the total amount of $2,281.00 13G: Resolution authorizing the preparation and filing of an application for Financial Assistance to the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank (NJIB) for the Phase II Lead Service Line Replacement Program – Project No. 0705001-003 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 6:14 pm: 1. Personnel Committee 2. Contracts and Litigation Matters The Board came out of Executive Session at approximately 7:00 p.m. ------------------- There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at approximately 7:00 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