Massena Electric Department

Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 MASSENA ELECTRIC UTILITY BOARD MINUTES of Tuesday, October 24, 2023 Town of Massena Electric Department – 71 East Hatfield Street Present: James Shaw Andrew McMahon, Superintendent Richard Maginn Jeffrey Dobbins, Treasurer John Bogosian Matt Gray, Deputy Superintendent Rene Hart Debra Willer, Town Liaison Charles Raiti Patrick Facteau, Town Liaison Eric Gustafson, Attorney Chairman Shaw opened the meeting at 1:03 p.m. 1) APPROVAL OF MINUTES: RESOLUTION: The Massena Electric Utility Board hereby approves the minutes of the regular meeting of September 21, 2023 as presented. Moved by John Bogosian - Seconded by Rene Hart - All in Favor RESOLUTION: The Massena Electric Utility Board hereby approves the minutes of the special meeting of October 5, 2023 as presented. Moved by Charles Raiti - Seconded by Richard Maginn - All in Favor 2) OPERATIONS UPDATE: by Matt Gray, Deputy Superintendent A. Safety: MED has not had a lost time injury since June 8th, 2022. The number of consecutive days without a lost time accident now stands at 479 days. There were no reportable injuries in September. This brings the number of days without a reportable injury to 842 days. Safety Note – Lou Gabrielle with NEPPA was on site to present a lock-out/tag-out and confined space training to all line personnel. Also, our Technician department attended a two-day Schweitzer seminar in Philadelphia, PA. This provided our Technicians the opportunity to train on our relaying and metering devices with Schweitzer Application Engineers. B. Customer Impact Chart: MED experienced a second consecutive month of elevated Customer Impact Minutes with 50,656 Customer Impact Minutes recorded. The largest Customer impact in September was a failed station service transformer at Grasse River that caused 50,656 Customer Impact Minutes. With the large amount of CIM our 12-month average has increased to 31,490. An increase of almost 5,000 compared to last month. C. Reliability: MED Crews responded to a comparatively low number of calls with only six calls received in the month of September. Three of the six calls received involved a Customer impact with the largest CIM contributor being the previously mentioned issue at Grasse River Substation. The faulted station service transformer caused a Bus 2 fault and isolation that affected two  Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 thousand one hundred ninety-eight Customers for twenty-three minutes. The second CIM contributor was due to a broken cutout that affected one Customer for one hour forty-two minutes. The third CIM contributor occurred when a delivery truck contacted a service drop on Gladding Road. This issue caused a 30-minute outage for one Customer. MED crews also contended with a hit pole on Dennison Road, however no Customers were affected. The remainder of the calls in September were minor in nature and involved no Customer impact. D. Work Schedule: Crews have completed make-ready work associated with the fifteen pole attachment applications that were submitted by SLIC in the Village of Massena, and the Towns of Massena, Louisville and Norfolk. Also, Crews have addressed an issue with street lighting that has arisen over the previous months. Some of the LED street lights that we have installed in the past few years have begun to change to a purple shade of light. This issue has been discussed with the light supplier and they are replacing the malfunctioning units. This issue affects approximately 40 units that were purchased since we began our conversion to LED street lighting. 3) FINANCIAL REPORTS: by Jeff Dobbins, Treasurer A. Write-Offs: RESOLUTION: The Massena Electric Utility Board hereby authorizes the write-off of bad debt totaling $4,037.02 as audited by Mr. Rene Hart. Moved by Rene Hart - Seconded by Richard Maginn - All in Favor B. Power Comparison Graph: Power Costs $489,000, higher than previous years. NYPA Energy purchased was lower due to lower load share %. High Peak at the start of the monthly negatively impacted Hydro allocation. Supplemental Power costs were $117,000. 4,075 MWh of incremental energy purchased during September. Zone D Average Energy rate was $28.70/MWh. Transmission/ISO Exp totaled $172,160 for September. Unforced Capacity was $56,600. Other ISO related charges were over $50,000. Charges for Transmission (NYPA and Long Sault) totaled over $65,560. Impact to Customers – PPAC for September of 1.1¢ / kWh. MWh purchased, over 14,900, highest total for September. Remainder of the month was cooler so total MWh purchased was not as high as other summer months. Peak Demand for September was 32,500 kW, highest Peak for Sept., 1st time over 30,000 for September. One of the highest Summer Peaks for the Dept. Set during the warm stretch at the start of the month. C. Cash Flow: The Operating Fund decreased by $210,300. The Operating Fund at month end was $7.1 MM. September receipts were $938,700. Customers payments were less than projected for the month. Interest revenue remains higher. September expenditures totaled just under $1.15 MM, which was $199,200 less than budgeted. RESOLUTION: The Massena Electric Utility Board hereby approves the bills as audited by Mr. Rene Hart totaling $779,960.09 Moved by Rene Hart – Seconded by John Bogosian - All in Favor  Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 4) COMMITTEE REPORTS: by Andrew McMahon, Superintendent A. Personnel 1. Staff Update: Mr. McMahon reported there were no significant updates on staff. B. Finance & Economic Development 1. Energy Efficiency Programs: i. Commercial update: Treasurer Dobbins updated the board on the Massena Housing Authority’s lighting project. MHA has completed 87 rooms/apartments. Including office space, common areas, apartments and maintenance buildings, over 250 locations will be upgraded once the project is complete. They have requested over $12,000 for reimbursement to date, which is nearly half of the assistance approved by the board. Treasurer Dobbins noted he intends to show some pictures of the work completed at the November meeting. Treasurer Dobbins also reported additional commercial audits are scheduled. They include a business looking to make lighting upgrades and a second that is looking to upgrade a motor used at their facility. ii. Residential update: Mr. McMahon discussed some heat pump ideas that MED staff has been working on with Liberty Utilities (aka St. Lawrence Gas). We met with Mark Saltsman and Heather Tebbets of Liberty to discuss potentially mutually beneficial ideas for home heating that would leverage Federal grant money. Liberty has done some projects in New Hampshire where they are based and we reviewed other alternatives. We discussed Community Geothermal networks. But we focused on hybrid heat pumps that would utilize electric most of the year but in the coldest periods they would utilize gas to supplement the heating needs. This allows Liberty to stay in the home heating market. It is advantageous for MED and our ratepayers because if electrical load is growing in the coming years this type of hybrid unit would allow the growth without requiring MED to expand our system capacity. Liberty believes they will have support from the PSC to do a pilot project of 30-100 homes. Treasurer Dobbins indicated that there have been a few residential audits this fall. He is awaiting the reports from these audits. He also noted that there has been renewed interest by residential customers to install Heat Pumps. This was previously discussed by the Finance Committee and no decision was made on a specific program. Based on the new interest and the recent discussion with Liberty Utilities, Treasurer Dobbins plans to discuss this again with the Finance Committee. 2. 2024 Draft Budget: The proposed budget presented was the same as the budget discussed at the September meeting. Treasurer Dobbins indicated that there were no significant changes to the underlying factors that impact the budget, expected power costs and proposed capital projects. Superintendent McMahon noted that projects listed in the capital budget are those that Staff has identified as areas of need. Additional work is being done to more accurately determine the cost for these projects and that as more information is received he and Staff would discuss the projects in more detail with the board. RESOLUTION: The Massena Electric Utility Board approves the Proposed 2024 Budget as presented. Moved by John Bogosian – Seconded by Charles Raiti - All in Favor  Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 3. Website update: Treasurer Dobbins reported to the board that additional work had been done to update the website. This was started earlier this year and includes a change in the layout and content. Prior to going live with the new site, Treasurer Dobbins planned to send the board a link to the new site for their review. He asked that they provide any feedback to him by the following week so they could be incorporated into the new site. C. Engineering & Energy 1. Cybersecurity: Mr. McMahon discussed cyber security training that had occurred earlier in the day. A number of board members had participated in this training and it wasn’t as good as Mr. McMahon had hoped but it did give some insight into what a post cyber-attack environment would look like and how our insurer would help. Mr. McMahon had hoped for further elaboration on what services would be covered. 2. EAB extra work: MED Contractors continue to address infected ash trees. Throughout the summer growing season their main focus has been tree trimming, however if there was a problem ash tree in the areas they were trimming, the ash tree was addressed. Now that the growing season has ended, we will be able to shift our focus more towards ash tree removal. 3. NYSERDA Submittals: Mr. McMahon discussed the NYSERDA grants that are still in process. He explained the potential benefit of the water heater control project that we are working on with SUNY Canton. He explained that we presently control 900 water heaters that count for a peak of approximately 600 KW of load that can be shifted to non-peak hours. We believe there are over 4000 electric water heaters on the system already that we are not controlling. We had tried to utilize an EPRI water heater unit that worked reasonably well and could act based on numerous factors, but the price of the EPRI units was approximately $1700 versus a standard electric water heater that is $600. Our goal is to find a way to control the water heaters based on some critical factors used by the EPRI unit but at a more manageable price for our consumers. 4. Grant funding CAC/IIJA/IRA: Mr. McMahon advised the board that the NYSERDA projects are still taking shape. Further, the Federal grant money from IIJA and IRA is just starting to flow to the states including NY. Some money has gone out in a more direct manner but not for projects that MED could realistically manage or fit our needs. 5.Transformer purchase update: Transformers are still coming around April next year. 6.Vehicle purchase update: Vehicles are scheduled to arrive later this year. 7. Tree Power: Trees were purchased under NYPA’s tree power program with grant money from Alcoa. 5) LEGAL ISSUES: by Eric Gustafson, Attorney: Mr. Gustafson had no remarks for open session. 6) UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Mr. McMahon provided a written summary of the Cooperstown meeting. Mr. Shaw elaborated on the Cap and Invest portion of the meeting saying it creates a very dire vision for the future. 7) NEW BUSINESS: 8) ARTICLES OF INTEREST:  Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 9) SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: Next regular meeting scheduled for November 16, 2023 10) PUBLIC COMMENT: 11) EXECUTIVE SESSION: Motion to move into executive session at 2:05 p.m. Moved by Charles Raiti – Seconded by Rene Hart- All in Favor Motion to move out of executive session at 2:45 p.m. Moved by Richard Maginn – Seconded by John Bogosian -All in Favor Motion to adjourn at 2:45 p.m. Moved by John Bogosian – Seconded by Rene Hart- All in Favor  Approved by the MEUB 11/16/2023 MASSENA ELECTRIC DEPARTMENT 2024 Budget APPROVED 10/24/2023 2022 Actual 2023 Budget Projected 2023 2024 Budget % Change % Change 1 REVENUES from Budget Projected 2 RECEIPTS FROM CUSTOMERS $ 13,564,127 $ 14,959,200 $ 13,023,000 $ 15,853,200 3 REIMBURSED PROJECTS 114,293 45,000 260,000 45,000 4 RVRDA CONSULTING FEE 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 5 INTEREST INCOME 42,813 46,800 191,500 237,600 6 TOTAL REVENUES $ 13,751,233 $ 15,081,000 $ 13,504,500 -10.5% $ 16,165,800 19.7% 7 8 EXPENDITURES 9 SALARIES & WAGES $ 1,858,448 $ 1,939,600 $ 1,924,000 $ 2,002,000 10 HEALTH INSURANCE 478,036 520,800 484,900 515,000 11 FICA & NYS RETIREMENT 439,549 358,600 348,300 393,100 12 Salaries & Employee Benefits $ 2,776,034 $ 2,819,000 $ 2,757,200 -2.2% $ 2,910,100 5.5% 13 14 NYPA POWER $ 1,905,845 $ 1,949,800 $ 1,898,600 $ 1,940,000 15 INCREMENTAL POWER 3,749,201 4,165,700 2,325,500 4,428,300 16 ISO/TRANSMISSION 676,365 1,674,000 1,904,500 2,119,400 17 CES - Clean Energy Standard 933,884 940,600 726,400 777,700 18 Power & ISO $ 7,265,296 $ 8,730,100 $ 6,855,000 -21.5% $ 9,265,400 35.2% 19 20 CONTRACT SERVICES $ 117,656 $ 196,000 $ 199,000 $ 205,800 21 CONSULTING SERVICES 56,782 148,200 120,400 85,200 22 LEGAL SERVICES 167,320 215,000 210,600 220,100 23 FINANCIAL SERVICES 28,943 31,000 30,000 32,900 24 NYS SALES TAX 556,377 588,000 515,000 627,000 25 REAL ESTATE TAXES 605,274 617,200 614,600 627,900 26 POSTAGE 55,445 66,100 64,800 68,400 27 TELEPHONE 8,124 14,400 25,400 25,400 28 CONSUMER REFUNDS 71,363 52,800 60,000 52,800 29 INSURANCE 197,309 217,800 209,700 234,300 30 OTHER OPERATING EXP. 605,901 569,900 565,100 611,500 31 Paid to Suppliers & Vendors $ 2,470,495 $ 2,716,400 $ 2,614,600 -3.7% $ 2,791,300 6.8% 32 33 MATERIALS & SUPPLIES $ 529,237 $ 512,400 $ 640,500 $ 704,400 34 DEBT SERVICE: 35 PRINCIPAL 36 INTEREST 37 Contrib. Depr Fund/Capital Exp 78,128 425,000 310,000 965,000 38 CONTRIB. TO INS FUND - - - - 39 CONTRIB. to Post Retire. Hlth Ins Fund - - - - 40 ENERGY EFFICIENCY 1,747 216,500 215,900 206,900 41 Utility Investment & Other Activities $ 609,112 $ 1,153,900 $ 1,166,400 1.1% $ 1,876,300 60.9% 42 43 TOTAL EXPENDITURES $ 13,120,937 $ 15,419,400 $ 13,393,200 -13.1% $ 16,843,100 25.8% 44 45 CASH SURPLUS (DEF.) $ 630,296 $ (338,400) $ 111,300 $ (677,300) 46 47 Operating Fund Balance (12/31) $ 6,538,226 $ 6,199,826 $ 6,649,526 $ 5,860,926