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 BOARD MEETING June 18, 2024 MINUTES Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Board of Water Commissioners held at 99 South Grove Street, East Orange, New Jersey on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. I. CALL TO ORDER - 5:08 p.m. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Commissioners Alison Rolling Shantel Harrison Sherkera Lucas Emmanuel O. Awe Lauren Shears – approx. 5:38 pm Staff John Liu, Executive Director Joseph J. Tomashosky –Finance Bianca Smith, Business Manager Counsel Denis Murphy, Esq. (Weiner Law) Council Members NONE 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 Sunshine Law for the record. Commissioner Rolling read the Rate Statement. II. STATUS OF RESOLUTIONS The Mayor has returned Resolutions #58 through #72. All resolutions are in full force and effect. III. ADOPTION/CORRECTION OF MINUTES 7A: The Minutes of the May 21, 2024, Regular Board Meeting were approved on a motion made by Commissioner Harrison seconded by Commissioner Lucas and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to vote. IV. PRESENTATION Rate Study Presentation – NW Financial Group, LLC & Remington & Vernick Engineers Dennis J. Enright, Principal | NW Financial Stephanie Cuthbert, Principal/ Director of Water & Wastewater Division | Remington & Vernick V. STAFF REPORTS DIRECTOR LIU THANKED THE BOARD AND ADVISED THAT WAS HIS LAST BOARD MEETING. FINANCE – Joe advised the Board that they reduced receivables by $100,000 for the second month in a row. The collection rate for the month was 105.3%. On a year-to-date basis they are continuing to head up to the 100% rate. There were no unusual or unplanned expenses in May. Next month they will be sending money to the City for some large expenses such as medical which is somewhere in the $600,000 range and also ½ of the pension which is around $200,000. We issued $15.916 million of the approximate $20 million that we will be financing on our last $23.1 million dollar capital program that included the lead service line project, hypochlorite system, the new generator, etc. CUSTOMER SERVICE – Bianca advised the Board that for customer service, in order for us not to have customers who have just moved into the city or just buy a home, we've created a welcome package for them to outline, all the services we offer, how they'll be billed, things of that nature. I gave a copy to Madam President to look through and see if you guys wanted to add anything to that. We are continuing to offer our payment agreements; we’ve extended them out to 12 months. Due to COVID, there were so many overdue bills that we want to give them time to pay them off. Also, for customers that have been paying regularly, give them a little bit of an extension. We've continued our shut off processes and procedures. We have been collecting quite a bit from those as well. We are having people come in, do their down payments and they have been keeping up with the agreements and their arrangements. We are in talks with two centers for our call monitoring system. We finally got that back on the ground. The Budget has passed so they have everything done over there on that side. We have two meetings this week on Thursday for that. As for our asset management system, we're going to have Mark’s team try that in a field to make sure that it’s working properly before we fully implement it. DIRECTOR’S REPORT - Director Liu advised the Board of the following: That the Mains Division has completed the Hydro Flush Program and is currently doing some leak detection. Every 2 years they are going to do a leak detection for the water conservation report. Sewer Division is actually doing pretty good. Remember every time we have a major sewer break, it costs about $750,000 now we are doing the cleaning and the rehab of the sewer of the large sewer. The first one we are going to do is on Arlington Street. We already cleaned and inspected it. It looks good there is no collapse. We are going to put the liner inside the sewer pipe. So with that we can actually preserve the sewer pipe. This is great preventive maintenance on our sewer side. Lead Service Line Replacement Project – the consultant is trying to get a meeting with I-Bank to finalize Phase 2 and go out to bid. PFAS - Everybody heard the presentation last meeting. We have already started detailed designing. We're working with the consultant on the detailed design of the PFAS. Water and Sewer rate study - At next month’s meeting, we're going to have them come in to do a presentation. I'm going to have all the information to you before the meeting so you will have the information regarding the new rates. WQAA - Bianca is working on that asset management part of the WQAA. I&I Study - We ordered the I-tracker, it will be her soon and then we are going to train our personnel to do the install. Wyoming Reservoir/Well Rehab – The RFP is going out for the engineer to design it. We are waiting for the generator to be completed. It is partially complete, we hooked up the old transformer. So, it is fully automatic, but we are waiting for the new transformer which will give us 100% reliability. D3 - D3 we got the permit from the state to drill the well, but we are still waiting for the wetland permit. Then we are going to start the rehab work. D4 - UHL is working on the design. Surge Tower Rehab / SCADA System - H2M is working on the Surge Tower. We are going to install 3 new surge relief valves that will resolve all the surge issues. SCADA system is ongoing. VI. COMMUNICATIONS NONE VII. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Legal Matters to be discussed in Executive Session. VIII. NEW BUSINESS NONE IX. APPROVAL OF RESOLUTIONS The following resolutions 13A through 13G were presented to the Board for approval. A Motion to omnibus Resolutions 13A through 13G was approved by Commissioner Harrison, seconded by Commissioner Lucas, and carried unanimously on the call for the Board to vote. 13A: Resolution ratifying the May 2024 recurring monthly bills in the amount of $586,140.23 13B: Resolution authorizing the approval and payment of Operating Bills in the amount of $1,746,080.58 13C: Resolution ratifying the May 2024 Payrolls in the amount of $405,770.30 13D: Resolution authorizing the payment of Capital Invoices in the amount of $277,584.58 13E: Resolution authorizing the July 2024 Temporary Budget in the amount of $2,119,933.42 13F: Resolution authorizing reimbursements in the total amount of $876.58 13G: Resolution authorizing a Personnel Action X. PUBLIC COMMENT NONE XI. EXECUTIVE SESSION 15A: Resolution for Closed Session Resolution 15A 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 5:33 pm: 1. Personnel Committee 2. Contracts and Litigation Matters The Board came out of Executive Session at approximately 7:49 pm. ------------------- There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 7:50 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