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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-SJC-2022-08-102022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 1 SJC MEETING August 10, 2022 SJC Members Staff Cynthia Brock, Chair Steve Thayer Bill Goodman Scott Gibson Rich DePaolo Ethan Bodnaruk Ray Burger; Town of Dryden (alternate) Matt Sledjeski Supervisor: Jason Leifer Ken Scherrieble Jeffrey Barken Scott Reynolds Guest Joe Slater: Town of Ithaca Absent Dan Thaete: Town of Ithaca Rob Rosen Chris Kianka; Lectre Development David Warden Bill Goodman Cynthia began the meeting at 1:00 p.m. Quorum was established at 1:26. There were no additions or deletions to the agenda. Rich MOVED to Approve the June 8th minutes. Seconded by Scott. Approved 5:0. Financial Report – Steve Thayer July 2022 Financial Activity Revenues – We have collected $285,000.00 septage service to date. Early in the year the revenue for septage receiving is lower but it catches up during the year. The City and Town of Dryden have paid their quarterly payments. Still waiting on the 3rd quarter payments which should be coming in anytime. Working on debt revenue invoice. Going out in the next couple of weeks. We have collected $2,369,000.00 to date. Revenue looks fine at this point in the year. Expenses – to date are just over $3,023,000.00. We are keeping close tabs on inflation and supply chain issues and the effect on wastewater operations. We have paid just under $44,000.00 to Camden to date – contractual service 435. The current contract with Camden Group will take us through June 2023 for on site management of the facility. The funds for 435 will be offset by salary and benefits of unused/unfilled positions. We are continuing our search for a new chief operator. The compensation study including a market analysis is underway. The insurance account is “mostly a lump sum paid in January”, currently under budget to date in that account. 2022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 2 Equipment parts continues to show high expenses, $194,000.00 to date attributed to blower repairs/AC repairs and chiller repairs and related electrical work. We will have to offset the overage from other accounts that are under budget as we move throughout the year. Health insurance, $281,000.00 in 9060 reflects eight months of payments. Debt is paid as due and is nearly $1,150,000.00 to date. We have a deficit of $654,000.00 which is in line at this time. With the town’s quarterly payment, deficit will be just under $300,000.00. Capital Projects: there were no expenses this period. 2023 Budget – A budget discussion should be held at the October meeting. Just received DPW submittal for wastewater activity. Working on putting that budget together this month. END OF STEVE’S REPORT. Cynthia asked if the nationwide chlorine shortage is impacting the plant. Steve replied that chlorine is being shipping to priority places and water treatment plants are one of them. Ken replied that we are a DHS priority and we have to be supplied first. We are getting what we need but the price of chlorine has doubled so our budget may be impacted. Cynthia then asked if we should consider stop chlorinating in the winter or keep doing it because that’s the process. Ken checked the permit - we are required to keep chlorinating. Scott Gibson added that the permit is under review for the reissue and the draft still included chlorinating all year long. Cynthia asked how the results of the compensation study will affect staffing. Does it require renegotiations of labor contracts to make salaries competitive? What is the process after the study? Steve replied that we will have to see what steps will have to be taken when receive the results. It will take some time as the unions will have to be involved. Cynthia asked what flexibility the plant had outside of the City for compensation– is there anyone looking into quicker ways to implement the results rather than waiting for the renegotiation of various contracts. Steve replied that we will take a look at the whole picture including the wastewater treatment plant and the salary structure to see where they can make changes if need be. The union contracts complicate matters - it’s not as simple as changing the numbers. It would take some time if you need to negotiate changes. He stressed that the chief position is under the executive contract. Results should be coming fairly soon and after looking at that, we may be able to make the necessary adjustments. Salary adjustments are generally a negotiated process. Cynthia feels it is important to have stability and longevity with a permanent employee as Chief Operator. It’s not ideal to have a continuous Camden Group arrangement. 2022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 3 Cynthia asked about the Mayor’s budget directive. Steve replied the budget guidelines were for a 2% and a 4% increase. He will send out solid budget numbers prior to the next meeting if they are available. Steve has more work to do with the fringes and the consumption figures. Scott Gibson added there are some operational needs but they are not too much of a concern. Ken is putting together an operation and preventative maintenance schedule. He would like a CMMS system – a computerized daily maintenance program. Operations and Engineering Report – Ken Scherrieble 1. Plant Maintenance & Operations – a. Aeration System – Turblex Blower Replacement Authorization – The installation of the blowers is progressing. Hopefully installed by next week. There was a software problem that the tech was unaware of. b. Gas Skid Chiller – Gas skid chiller is being fine tuned by JCI. c. Micro Turbines – Have been turned on. They are getting gas sent to them and generating electricity. Two are running right now, one turbine is still locked out, waiting for Capstone to tell us why and one on standby. Don’t have enough gas to run three right now so beefing up gas production to get the third going. d. Boiler – boiler replacement estimate has been received. Waiting on acceptance of proposal. It will be about Thanksgiving for installation around ten weeks. Scott added Gordian is responsible for managing and financing the design build project. The contract is through the Town of Greece. Danforth is the mechanical contractor. It was decided by council to put an emergency order together so we don’t have to go to bid for this project. Susan Brock advised to get emergency resolutions in place to get the boilers replaced. The City and the Town of Ithaca have passed their resolutions so far and Dryden should be this week. If we put the order in for the boiler today, we have a wait time of ten weeks. It will give us time to get the boiler running by winter. If we delay any further, it could be January before we see a boiler. Asking for $650,000.00. Disposal and purchase will run around $352,000.00 for the City portion - asking for the project to be divided into two separate projects. Cynthia- wait 30 days before having final approval before moving forward. Is there an acceptable practice to create a contract while we wait? Scott: the resolution process hasn’t been approved yet by the three municipalities. Technically, the City can just order it with the city share of $340,000.00 - we need a boiler. 2022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 4 Scott Reynolds: what’s the risk of waiting? Comfortable moving ahead with splitting it. What is the legal risk? Can we be sued for the process not being followed, does the plant have to shut down operations? Dan: We are in a waiting period of thirty days after resolution is approved before being final. What can happen - the people of the Town of Ithaca can get a petition together and squash the resolution. Asked Scott Gibson if the City’s portion is approved. Scott Gibson: the City ratified the portion July 6th. Ken: The digester needs to be heated. If we lose the boiler, our key boiler to keep the bugs warm, we lose BTU’s for keeping the bugs warm to produce gas to run the digester. Losing all gas production, increasing overall operating expenses. Cynthia - The risk of permissive referendum is very low and the benefit to the plant is very high. Hearing the need to move forward. Letting Susan know and the attorneys need to speak to each other. Ken: goals of plant, staff development. CMMS rundown. Repair vs Replacement cost of equipment. Scott Reynolds: is some of this going to be frustrating for the staff? Ken responded: it’s all baby steps right now so starting with a spreadsheet. The staff is doing well with their response and they are now comfortable coming to Ken about issues and are getting involved in developing the SOP for the issue. The staff is being more empowered. Rich: Has any research been done on if any of the costs are covered under warranty or if we are past that time frame? Scott Gibson: CJ looked into it and there wasn’t any leg to stand for a warranty and most of those warranties expire after 5 years. Could contact Johnson Controls as a parallel route to possibly get some type of funding maybe reduced for a possible project with them in the future. Cynthia asked for an outline and the price tag of the CMMS program, as part of the 2023 budget, for the plant. Ken replied for a plant this size is generally around 30K, to implement and they will come out and physically put the assets into the system. Taking photos and map the rooms, create 3d models, get all of the data and work with the intergrader to tap into the system. $15,000.00/year to maintain and keep it up to date. Named Opworks. Dan to Ken: Do we anticipate needing more censors and more stuff from LECTRE to tie this all into bearings and things that might not even be hooked up yet? Ken: It is possible, hasn’t done a full inventory yet. Just key areas want to hit but it is possible. Going to look at it. Cynthia asked about any new plant projects Ken wanted to share. Ken responded, the long term issue being sludge drying and disposal. There all kinds of new laws coming out and a new one from the DEC coming out soon according to phone call with DEC. In the next 24 months, need to do some research on how to get rid of sludge because it’s going to get more expensive and the regulations of what you can get rid of are going to get tighter. Going to have to start looking at pyro and other avenues that we may be forced into just based on what the laws are going to. 2022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 5 Cynthia said it might be good to reinitiate the conversation with Cornell and other about pyro program. Our location would not be good but if there was a centralized location in the county, this might be a better use of how we might see the future of our biosolids. 2. Facilities Maintenance & Operations - a. Flow Monitoring I/I – fit 011-Varna, Dryden, Cornell- didn’t turn out to be as reliable as we’d like. Moved back to pump station to monitor flow run times. Not a quality flow rate. E. State sensor has a faulty cable will be replaced. Taughannock site has a very low flow, subject to silting, using a low flow average is the best effort to monitor that one. b. Thurston is up and running on new vault across the street. Readings are accurate. East Shore, Lake St, TOI, Hanshaw Rd online calibrated and feeding data. Also reflects Stewart Park station. c. Flow spiking d. Floral Ave, waiting activation of cell unit. Hoping to have that online Monday. Just added last week. e. When are we going be fully online? Taughannock is offline and Floral is coming online by the end of next week. Joe Slater asked about Floral and Hanshaw. Chris stated that Hanshaw was omitted from last month because it wasn’t fully online yet but it’s calibrated in flowing the data out. Joe: Is there a rain gauge being used? Chris: the best accuracy and coverage was to use those available from Cornell, the weather data sites and the airport. They give a broader footprint than what we can gather. Scott Reynolds: When are all the stations going to be fully online and things settled out? How are we turning into our I/I to-do list? Chris responded fully online-Taughannock is the only one really off line and Floral is coming online within the week. The pumping station at that TOI on the list is being upgraded and replaced. Whenever that mag meter gets installed, that is being added, that is something out of our control at this point. The aggregate total of what we got available to us that is useful data with the addition of Floral by the end of next week is pretty much it. The I/I portion is a third party issue. Pushing data upstream goes to Scott and other departments because he is only collecting data. Joe: Where is the MRB I/I study at? Scott Gibson: October marks the years’ worth of data they wanted to get so they have been pushing it off until then. Cynthia asked why there would be periods of time with no data recorded on any flow monitoring stations? Chris responded that there were a few times that we had cellular outages and the data dropped but the data in backside has been collected and re-correlated for the record sets. If there something below zero, it’s below zero, it not a flow that can be recorded. That is the normal drop out. From the data that was restored, there is no loss of significant data. It’s not monitored all the time if it goes to zero, only when it loses connection. The cell data connection every 5-10 minutes and if there is a disconnect, it will tell them after 15 minutes. 2022-08-10 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 6 Cynthia: How long is the data stored on the sim card? Cynthia is concerned about the inability to double check the data, having incomplete information and to not have access to the raw data because of instances like this, she is very much interested in the 5 minute interval data, but if you don’t get the 5 minute data, you don’t realize that segments of time are missing and therefore it not based on complete information. It would be good to make sure it continues to be accessible. Chris: You will continue to have access to the raw data. Will get the information about the data card for Cynthia. Dan Thaete: Who owns these meters? Scott Gibson: Never got to the bottom of that. Dan: Getting billed for the maintenance of TOI’s two meters through Chris. Does the plant have a maintenance agreement with him for the other meters so is the town paying for some of the maintenance if it’s going through the plant? Should the maintenance of their two meters be part of the plant instead being billed to TOI? Chris: Scott isn’t it the location as far as maintenance? Chris unaware of who owns them. Scott: there should be a blurb in the interceptor covering that. Dan: in the long term would like to settle who owns what and who maintains what? Dan asked Chris: Does the software alarm or can it be shown somehow on these graphs where the data drops out so it’s clear? Chris: they are adding that as an external flag for that exact reason, right now it's just internal. Dan: Does the current setup allow for a high flow alarm? Chris: yes, we haven’t set any bc we don’t know what you all consider high flow. 3. Staff Management – Ken Scherrieble - Camden Group is currently providing 4 A Operator coverage. retirements. 4. Reporting – 5. Business, Long Term development – 6. Energy Production Statistics – provided by Ken. INI monitoring of stations. Chris Kianka PDF full report summarizing the topics. Discussion Items – facilities and staff production. Cynthia: haven’t made any progress on plant to plant agreement. Still some things to finalize. Hoping to have something by the next meeting. Long Term Planning – Ken: sludge drying and disposal Announcements / Other Business – possibly meeting at city hall or town hall. Cynthia offered options for in person meeting places if the Emergency Declaration is lifted. Parking is a concern. If able to meet virtually, will continue to do so. Once the declaration is reversed, meetings will be in person again. Scott Reynolds Moved to Adjourn. Seconded by Jeff. Approved 5:0 The meeting was adjourned at 2:43 p.m. The Next Meeting will be September 14th, 2022, 1:00 pm.