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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-SJC-2020-11-182020.11.18 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 1 SJC MEETING November 18, 2020 SJC Members Staff Cynthia Brock, Chair CJ Kilgore Supervisor Jason Leifer Scott Gibson Rich DePaolo Scott Reynolds Donna Fleming Guest Tee-Ann Hunter Ray Burger; Town of Dryden Bill Goodman Joe Slater; Town of Ithaca Dan Thaete; Town of Ithaca Absent David Warden Cynthia called the Zoom meeting to order at 1:01 p.m. Rich MOVED to accept the October 14th minutes with corrections. Seconded by Scott. Approved 7 - 0. Financial Report – Provided by Steve Thayer in writing. Cynthia informed the members that the City of Ithaca adopted the IAWWTF 2021 budget. Report Date 11/18/20 12/31/19 Final year end activity notes: Our Auditors are here performing the 12/31/19 IAWWTF Audit. They should be completed with their audit work by mid-December and we should have a report by the end of January 2021. A bit later than usual due to COVID. 10/31/20 Activity: Revenues: Revenues are generally slower to be collected, mainly due to the timing of revenues. On the Septage Service revenues, we have now collected $404,364. We are making gains every month and we expect to meet budget by year end. We have now received all of the owner’s quarterly payments for 2020. Thank you all for getting those payments in on a timely basis. Debt Service revenue will be invoiced to the owner’s at the end of November and should be collected by year end. Interest revenue is booked at the end of the year. Interest rates have been falling all year, so we will be under budget a bit in this area. We did sell some equipment in the last couple of months at auction. The auction proceeds have put us over our revenue budget for sale of equipment. Our total revenue collected to-date is $3,415,045. Just a bit under budget for now, but revenues should meet budget estimates by year end. Expenses: Total expenses for the ten months through October 2020 are at $3,955,000. With the exception of the accounts noted below, most expenses look to be on target with the budget at this point. Timing of expenses play a big part of the percentage used on a monthly basis. Expenses don’t always follow the calendar. Some expenses come in monthly, others come in as a lump sum. Note, that utility expense will be running higher for most of 2020 as we made all of our 2020.11.18 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 2 catch up payments for this year and last year from the meter error that was found toward the end of 2019. Currently, we are $49,000 over the utility budget going into the last two months of 2020. We should have some savings in other accounts to offset the overage here. We’ve talked previously about how insurance comes in as a lump sum early in the year and is estimated at budget time. We are currently working on our 2021 renewal. Equipment parts are running above budget as well, $56,000 over. We have had a number of equipment repairs needed this year, mostly a number of smaller part expenses make up the $161,000 expense so far. Again, we should be able to cover the overage here with other account savings. We did increase the 2021 budget in this area. Health insurance costs always run higher, 11 months posted to-date, until we book the employee contribution at year end. Please note, we will not be billed for December this year, as the Health Consortium is giving a one month premium holiday. This holiday will also mean employees won’t have a contribution expense in December. This was given, based on the Consortium’s strong financial performance to-date. Employee tuition was active this year with two employees taking advantage of the benefit. The result is a higher than normal expense. We recently received the 2020 pension liability and it should be right about at budget, maybe a bit lower than the $118,320 budget. We expect to make this payment in mid-December to take advantage of a 1% discount. The current deficit is just about $540,000. This deficit is currently higher, mainly due to the timing of certain revenues and expenses. We did budget for a $250,000 deficit in 2020. Capital Projects –.CAP 414J, CAP 422J and CAP 423J - On the capital activity, we had payments from four projects last month. Of the $1,245,369 in expenses, $1,201,576 was for construction, mostly for the Grit Removal project and the remaining $43,700 was for engineering services. The detail was included in your packet. 2021 Budget: The 2021 Budget was adopted by Common Council on November 4th. The Budget was not changed from our SJC discussions last month. The Final 2021 Budget document was included in your packet for your information. Operations and Engineering Report – CJ Kilgore and Scott Gibson 1. Plant Maintenance & Operations – a. Chemical Bulk Storage/Petroleum Bulk Storage Tank Bid – the increase in the bid amount was approved and the advertisement has gone out. The pre-bid meeting was held earlier this week - six representatives were in attendance. There should be a more competitive bid range for the December 8th bid opening. b. Boiler System Evaluation – MRB Group – nearing completion – a report is expected soon. c. Behind the Meter NYSEG Battery Project – awaiting final NYSEG approval – to go on line – probably within the next two weeks. d. Septage Receiving Rate increase – CJ will provide a draft of the new rates 2020.11.18 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 3 at the December meeting. He plans to increase the grease rate by $5.00 per 1,000 gallons (from $90.00 to $95.00). CJ is directing the septage haulers to the new dumping pad at the head of the plant – this allows for less cold water to be pumped into the digester. He plans to change the billing to a percentage of capacity. (80% full capacity). He believes the new truck billing will be stable compared to metered billing. Facilities Maintenance & Operations a. Grit Removal and Misc. Improvements – on time and progressing. b. Flow Monitoring – the project is continuing. All but two of the meters are installed. Chris Kianka (Lectre) is working on the cloud interface and is close to completion. 3. Staff Management – 4. Reporting – 5. Business, Long Term development – 6. Energy Production Statistics – provided by CJ. Meeting of Six Update - Bill spoke of the Village of Cayuga Heights proposal. The Kline Road bypass (put in 17 to 18 years ago) allows some sewage from the Village of Cayuga Heights (an area referred to as the old village) to be diverted from their plant down to the IAWWTF. He believes that the original intent was for I/I overflow purposes because the Cayuga Heights plant was having capacity issues (coming up against their limit). At some point (quite a while now) the valves were turned and all of the sewage from the old village portion has been coming to the IAWWTF. A part of the Town of Ithaca (northeastern section) sewage goes in to the Village of Cayuga Heights plant. The Village of Cayuga Heights will be losing sewage flow from Borg Warner (they will be recycling and treating their own water). They wish to close the valves at the Kline Road bypass to allow them to take in the old village area’s sewage. There will be meetings (prior to the February quarterly meeting) with the technical folks to discuss the flows and meetings with elected officials to discuss some of the financial aspects. They wish to keep this as a backup – as a bypass in case of high flows (high rain events, I/I). The fee for this ability needs to be determined. The gang of six was started in 2003 – with an inter-municipal agreement to manage the Cayuga Heights Plant and the IAWWTF cooperatively. (Required by the funding sources) Flow Metering (data gathering) was discussed as they continue to attack the I/I in our systems. They are focusing on flow increases during high rain events. Scott asked the size of the Cayuga Height Plant (2.1 million gallons per day - maximum) Joe Slater added that they are at 1.2 presently. IAWWTF is rated at 13.1 million gallons per day. The Lansing’s will be installing a pipe to come down East Shore Drive that will have the ability to go to the Cayuga Heights or to go to IAWWTF. 2020.11.18 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 4 Rich added that a portion of this pipe is in the ground. The Remington Intercept – the 2003 Intermunicipal Wastewater Agreement included the concept of “equivalent flows”. The concept was that Cayuga Heights WWTP would take on the flows from portions of the Town of Ithaca as well as the new developments and portions of the Village of Lansing. To make room for these flows, the old village sections of Cayuga Heights would be directed to the IAWWTF. Cynthia brought up charging a fee for “avoided cost” as well as I/I. The CHWWTP is avoiding having to pay to expand their WWTP to take on the new development, by diverting to IAWWTP. The waste that will be diverted to the IAWWTF will be from “old pipes” and have more I/I than new pipes. Cynthia would like an analysis of the catchment area so that a fee may be attributed/derived by using the age of the pipes. (The older the pipe – the higher the fee). Our annual fees are based on catchment areas and flows. Kline road is currently contributing to how we calculate the O&M fee. Eliminating this catchment will make the zone smaller so the O&M per-gallon fee for partners will be higher. Based on the special joint committee agreement designated capacities have been given to each partner based on ownership and approximate plant usage. Cayuga Heights is a client to the Town of Ithaca and will be part of their capacity allocation. The Town of Dryden has development and expansion plans but does not have much excess capacity – they will need to purchase capacity from one of the municipal partners. We have to work out how to come up with a fee and a way to buy/sell capacity. Rich brought up that we need to keep in mind that the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) may impose discharge limitations which could be based on historical discharge rather than design capacity. He discussed the average daily phosphorous limit of forty pounds per day. CJ does not see any capacity problems - we typically see 5 to 6.5 million gallons per day. He feels that our phosphorous concentration might be changed to .5 milligrams per liter but does not anticipate any problems. Our permit expired May 31st, 2020 – we are operating under our current permit. Sometime in the near future they will perform a full technical review and will possibly put in a new phosphorous limit. We are usually below .5 milligrams at the present time. Cynthia brought up that the Southern shelf of Cayuga Lake is considered impaired for Phosphorous and turbidity. Phosphorous is one of the nutrients that the DEC examines. We have received funding (in the past) to provide plant upgrades to reduce the amount of phosphorous we return to the lake. Scott Gibson added that the tertiary treatment is designed to treat down to .02 PPM parts per million). To Rich’s point – a lower load limit could significantly impact the operation of the plant. Cynthia put together a table which is in the packet – she took 3 year averages – the plan was to take a years worth of data and compare it to the potable water sold. The impact of COVID on water sales shows a 20% decline for the months of April to August, with May levels being near normal. COVID will likely continue to impact water sales - by being below average - as well as our O&M charges – by being above average - into next year. Cynthia included the Permitted Capacity and Excess Capacity Allocation table for everyone’s reference. The table shows the capacity allocated to the partners based on the formula outlined 2020.11.18 APPROVED SJC Minutes.doc 5 in the Intermunicipal Wastewater Agreement using the data provided in the monthly DEC reports. City Harbor Update - a draft effluent agreement was sent to the DEC for review and approval. Guthrie and City Harbor have reviewed the draft agreement. We have not yet received a proposed replacement easement agreement. We have not received a proposed side agreement with regards to the lease language Cynthia believes that both Guthrie and City Harbor have agreed to provide pollution liability insurance. Susan Brock will be sending to City Harbor revisions to the modified outfall easement agreement. City Water Main Easement - City of Ithaca staff has sent a draft easement for the City water main that will go through the wastewater treatment plant property and connect to City Harbor. Emergency Access Road - we are waiting to hear the City proposal. NYSEG – the environmental mitigation plan required by the DEC to install sheet piling is on hold for a year. They would like to do this in the winter months to minimize the impact on the trail traffic. Voting Items – Announcements / Other Business – Cynthia asked the members to think about nominating a chair at the December Meeting. Rich offered to step in as relief behind the scenes. Tee-Ann MOVED to Adjourn. Seconded by Donna. Approved 7 – 0. The meeting was adjourned @ 1:49 p.m. The Next Meeting will be December 9th, 2020, 1:00 pm.