Music Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ All right, we'll go ahead and call the Environmental Quality Committee to order. We'll recognize Council Member Kaye for purposes of a quorum. So we do have a quorum at this point. First item on our agenda is a committee summary from our February 18th meeting. Do I have any motions or corrections or additions to the summary? Second. Motion by Council Member Clark. second by Council Member Scotchfield to accept it. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. Next up on our agenda is an update on our stormwater projects, and we have Mr. Greg Lubeck. Welcome, Greg. Thank you, sir, for being here and getting this presentation together. Go for it. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me this morning. I'm here to talk to you today about the status of the stormwater capital improvement project program that we are working on. There's a little bit of background on the next one. Thank you. The stormwater group and water quality, we work on these three major groups of things. The major capital priority projects for flood mitigation and stormwater improvement. Stormwater infrastructure rehab, which is where we go out and fix things that have broken. and we have the incentive grants program grant management and design construction oversight those are the three main focuses of our work as you can see at the bottom of this slide since this work is being done under the consent decree there's our standard language most of this work is in appendix k2 the first item you see is revising the severity score system, which we did a couple of years ago and presented to this committee. The other goal was to spend $30 million on the priority stormwater projects over 10 years. As of December 31st of 2013, we had $7.77 million spent or encumbered on those projects. We also continue to reevaluate the projects on the list for viability. If the project is still viable, we commission a preliminary engineering report to outline the problem, its causes, design assumptions, and alternatives for mitigation. If it's determined not to be viable, we remove it from the priority list according to the procedure that was established when the original list was created. and just on that point last year we did remove four projects from the list as we went through and re-canvassed areas the questionnaires and comments from the residents came back that whatever issue prompted the project to be on the list has been resolved through some some means somewhere and those projects were claim on sarin and rock bridge glendover east and barksdale uh recently completed uh major construction projects uh anniston-wickland phase one which was the area up around bryant station high school uh the cardinal lane box culvert the roland avenue stream stabilization on with tune drive we reconstructed about 120 feet of storm sewer that was failing, and the bottom two there are incentive grant projects, which were major stream rehabilitation projects. That actually turned out fairly nice. Our ongoing projects are Anniston-Wickland Phase 3, which is along Spring Station Drive, the Green Acres Hollow Creek Project, which is now the Sanitary Sewer, and Creek Bank Stabilization Project, the Idle Hour Storm Sewer System Improvements. Near future projects are the Walhampton Drive, Rogers Road, and the rest of the Cardinal Laramie project. So Greg, if I could stop you there. So the total of these projects is where we get the current encumbered amount? Well, and some things prior to these also. Okay. Thank you. Next few slides are just some photographs of these recently completed projects. This is where we went out at the end of Wickland Drive in the basin and planted some trees and shrubs. This is the basin up behind Bryan Station High School. This is Cardinal Lane where we rebuilt the box culvert down between the two houses. There's more of Cardinal Lane. The bottom picture is where the two systems tie together up by the street. there's the end of Stratford Drive which for a long time had a homemade type inlet grade in the back of it and it never drained quite right we rebuilt this curb inlet and connected it over to the large culvert this is the completed Roland Avenue stream bank stabilization project right out off Eastland Parkway. Go back to that one for a second. That one? No, the next one. Okay. I got a pointer on the bottom of this thing, I think. This little red line, maybe. Yeah. Yep. You might show them and talk to them a little bit about that wall there. I think the pointer's... Well, there's a pointer here. Over on the right-hand side of the picture, you see that stone wall, and there's another on the left. Before this project, I should have put a before picture, and that bank was pretty much straight up and down in bare earth. And we hired a contractor and had these, they look like stone, but they're not really stone, walls put in to just give that bank a neat looking appearance, plus reestablish the overflow banks down by the creek. There are some pictures during construction. If you look behind the two guys in the hard hatch, you can kind of see what the banks looked like before we did the project. And there are some more after pictures just after it rained one day, so it appears to be working as intended. This is the little rehab project we did out on Withhune Way. again we had to replace the pipe that ran down between these two houses after 25 years some trees had pushed it apart and just basically made it fall apart and we have the idle hour project this is some of the new pipe going up one of the streets out there new curb inlets and then the last picture i think is anniston wickland phase three this is coming up spring station circle from bryan station road which was sometime in december when we took that picture now now for the part i guess we really want to talk about is where the dollars show up as you can see this page is our active and ongoing construction projects, which are the Anniston and Eidelauer projects, which are $1.475 million. The ongoing design projects we've got are Rogers Road, Walhampton, and a study of the Wilson-Downing tributary. Rogers Road, we're at 60% design. We are negotiating easements with property owners. I'm going to turn it. We're down to one, two, two to get. on that one. Walhampton, we have acquired the two properties on Walhampton. Demolition ought to be starting this week. Design for the rest of the project is 60% complete, and we're negotiating easements for the rest of the project. The Wilson-Downing tributary, that's a study because the project on the priority list was never clearly defined, and I couldn't find anybody still around that knew what it was. So we just kind of took a step back and hired Integrated to basically restudy the stream and see what kind of issues are out there that we need to possibly create a project for. And as you can see, the Rogers Road is 3.1. Walhampton is 770,000. So that's 3.87 million. Wilson Downing I don't have a dollar figure for since I'm not sure of what exactly the project may or may not be. And we have projects that are in what we call the preliminary engineering report phase, which I described as after we've determined a project is viable, we will hire a consultant to go out and study the issue, find out what the causes are, come up with some design assumptions, and then present some alternatives for solving the problem. And as you can see there, we've got the Fort Sumter area project. The PER is complete on that, $1.67 million. Tucson Laramie, it's nearly complete. We sent some final comments back to GRW, looking at a million dollars there. Elam Park, Venice Park, same thing. We've sent some final comments back, about a half million dollars there. and Queensway, GRW just got started a few weeks ago because of all the winter weather and the $2 million you see there was what was put on the original priority list. I'm not sure of what that project is going to be, but that number may change. So as you can see, you get down to the bottom, there's $5.199 million worth of work there. so to summarize all those numbers that just went flying by the obligation was 30 million dollars as of december 31st 2013 we had 7.77 million spent we've got another 3.87 million under-designed, nearly ready for construction, and 5.2 million that we've got the PERs either complete or nearly complete. So as you can see, even as we get out to the end, there's still $13.1 million worth of projects that we do need to do. So we keep working down the priority list. What we do is we'll take a group of 10 or 15, we'll have consultant mail out questionnaires to the areas to see if the problem that generated the project originally still exists. And then we'll do some updated technical and cost analysis. At this time, all of the old stormwater bonds have been spent, and everything we do now is either out of cash or the KIA loans we have. And then the third bullet, $11.64 million of the 30, 39 percent has been spent or is available in 18.36 of the remaining costs still need to be have a source of funding identified and that is it hopefully i didn't go through that too quickly for you okay absolutely yes sir uh just just a i'm sorry a little bit of history there is that But, you know, we have the supplemental environmental projects that requires us to spend $30 million. That's a 10-year period. So the clock runs from January 3, 2011 to January 3, 2021. So when we look at those percentages, you know, we kind of view that here in 2014. We're about where we need to be. So we're not behind. You know, but each passing year is always somewhat tenuous as far as continuing to move forward. The second thing I wanted to make sure that was clear that now as I look through that presentation again, the $30 million has to come from projects that are in the priority list, priority flooding projects list. So Roland, as an example, is not and never was on the priority list. It was more of a maintenance issue. Cardinal Laramie is the same thing. So there are expenditures that come out of the stormwater fund that are maintenance issues that aren't counting towards that $30 million goal. And I want to make sure that that's clear to everyone is that we can't stop doing maintenance and other emergency stuff just to try to get to the $30 million. Okay, we have some council members signed up for questions. First up is Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Greg, I just had a comment and a question, and I thank you for this presentation. So this is my eighth year as a council member at large, and the Walhampton project was identified when I was the 4th District council member because it's in the 4th District. And so I'm delighted to see it has finally moved forward. It was greatly needed. So my question is back on page 7, the final bullet. These projects that were determined to not be viable, you said, for some reason. And one of the ones you mentioned was Glendover East, which I'm very familiar with. It's in the 4th District. And I know that it was a problematic project anyway because of the closeness of the houses and some of those kind of things. But how was it determined that it went off the list, that it's not a priority? In 2012, we actually re-canvassed the neighborhood. Okay. And based on the responses that we got back from the residents out there, something got built somewhere in the last 25 years that seemed to have solved some of the problem out in that area. And there were a couple of people with groundwater issues, but nobody that responded came back and said, no, we, you know. So they were resurveyed. We flood every time the sky clouds up. Okay. Because they were surveyed in the beginning back several years ago, and I'm glad to hear that. I mean, we've had two gigantic, not gigantic, but large things happen. I don't know if either one would have had an influence. I know the Crestwood, the multiple detention basins at Crestwood Christian Church, and then the Glendover West project, which probably wouldn't have. I don't know if it would have impacted us at all. No, that was, you know, the Arboretum, the ridge runs out, and the west was on that side. We were looking mostly over towards the Crestwood. Okay. and and like i said you know there is a procedure that was set up when the list was first established what we do is we send a letter to the residents we send a memo to the council member and say okay we're not seeing a project here okay give us we'll give you 30 days to tell us if we missed something other than that and we did follow that and okay i'm good with that i just wondered how and you You said they'd been resurveyed, which is very good. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Next up, we have Councilman Relain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first question I have is how do you get on a priority list to have storm drainage repaired? And I guess there's two types. There's underground and there's surface drainage because I don't think I've ever heard that discussed. And if somebody in our Fayette County had a concern about storm drainage, how do they report that to you? And do you have somebody come out and look at it? How do you approach that? They can report it through LexCol, and they'll usually find us. And we'll talk to that person, and we'll go out and take a look around. And if we kind of get a sense that there is something going on, if we hear from several people in an area, we have this written questionnaire that we'll kind of blanket an area with. And we ask questions about, you know, does your house flood? What part floods? How does the water get in? Is it, you know, coming through a door or window? Is it coming up through the floor? And, you know, we'll give people, you know, plenty of time to respond back to us. And we look at those and we see what the residents are saying as to what the issue is. And if it looks like there are people who are experiencing surface water flooding, and then we run through our scoring process with them and see where they end up on the list. Okay. Another question I had was do you use the same engineers that are working on sanitary stewards for this, and is the bidding for the design work the same as for the sanitary stewards, and is the same group of engineers, and is that also apply to the construction where we get competitive bidding on that also for the construction of the storm drainage improvements? The design work is under one of the indefinite services contracts that we have. There are six of them. And, yes, some of the firms on the stormwater list are in the sanitary list. So, yes, we do use some of the same people. There are people on their list that aren't on ours, and there are people on ours that aren't on theirs. And then construction is a normal construction project bidding process where we go through purchasing, advertise open bids, and it's presented to the council for approval after we receive bids and make the recommendation. Okay. The other question I had is that we need to invest about $30 million. Some of it that we're investing now is not eligible to count towards the EPA consent agreement we entered into. My concern there is do we have adequate cash flow from the storm sewer fund to be able to pay that out of cash? Or will we have to borrow more money to complete the project? And what impact would it have on our bonding capacity? That's a really good question. I think that still remains to be seen, and I think that's something that we're going to be working on through the course of the next 12 months. Over the past 12 months, we've spent a painstaking amount of time on the cash flow model for the sanitary program in order to try to project out when and if there were going to be a projection on rates. We were going to finish that and then transition into Fund 4051. So stay tuned on that. I expect that I'll probably have something for you in January or February of next year. right now, you know, for the staff that we have and the funding that we were able to get from KIA, we're okay. It was really that second to last slide, the ones that are coming next, the $5 million in change that are in the preliminary engineering report stage, yeah, there is a lot of question about whether or not that we can cash flow that or find additional low interest funding from KIA or other sources. Okay. The last thing I have is just a general comment. Just coincidentally, yesterday I was driving out of Richmond Road near the water company in that general area there, and there's surface drainage that runs on the south side of Richmond Road going towards the reservoir, and I noticed there was a lot of debris, trees floating there. There were two issues. It looked like it needed some attention for storm drainage, But secondly, it looked bad, and since that's one of the highest traffic count roads we have in the city, I wondered if you could just make a note of that, or maybe it doesn't qualify for the fund or whatever, but at least take a look at it. We'll take a look at it. Separate, another component of Fund 4051 is that there is a litter component, is that where we issue a contract, a kind of uniprice contract, competitively bid, to where people can go out and remove limbs and large debris in public waterways, because you know in the past they haven't gotten done. So any of those suggestions that any of the council members have to where there's maybe an excessive litter problem or woody debris that has all washed down to a point, let us know that, and we'll see if we can't get our contractor mobilized to deal with it. All right. Well, thank you very much. That's all I've got, and I think I just ran out of time anyway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Councilman Henson. Thank you, Chair. Greg, are there other stormwater projects that are not on this list? I was thinking about the trafting because I know it was put on hold for a reason. It was deferred. It wasn't taken off the list, so it's still there. As a matter of fact, if I've got it right, it's probably getting to the point where we're going to be revisiting it next round or two. So it's still there. Are there other projects that are in that same status as far as, you know, they're on hold? But I just noticed it's not on the list, so I was just curious. Well, anything we haven't done has been on the list. We haven't added anything in several years. I can't explain why. Either we found them all or nobody's calling. But, you know, we just work through it 10 or 15 at a time to see if the project still needs to happen, if there's still a reason to do it. And, you know, Trafton's still there and whatever else is, I think we're down to Queensway. So whatever's below Queensway on that list is still there as far as I'm concerned, and we'll go through this same process. I'll keep tag-teaming now here because of how we got here. Sometimes I'm the one that got us here, I guess, more so than Greg. Part of this preliminary engineering report process is to try to put an updated cost figure for projects that have been on the list forever. What we found when I inherited the program, we were borrowing money and then trying to do projects that either cost a whole lot more than what we thought they were or didn't even come close to it. And so we were having a problem executing borrowed money. And so we wanted to change that model. But Trafton is a classic example is where we didn't have enough money to do it as we thought we would. I think when we get into the next round, we know how much Trafton is going to cost us or we have a pretty good idea. It's a matter of when we determine how we're going to fund the remaining obligation, the remaining $18 million, what projects do we want to do as we do that $18 million. And I expect we will be back in front of the council to do that. We can do 18 $1 million projects, or we can do one $18 million project. It really doesn't matter to me as long as we're able to check that box and do $30 million. And so it's the pleasure of the council to determine how we arrive at the finish line for that. Trafton, I think, is an excellent example of being able to get there. Thank you. Thank you, Greg, for the presentation. I just, you know, I know that there's problems with that project that need to be addressed, but I was just, I don't want it to be forgotten, And I was just curious if possibly there's other projects as well that are up in the air as to how we could just make sure they stay on the list. Thank you. We will. I don't see anyone else signed up to speak. I do have a few questions. One, can we get the priority list, a copy of it? Yes. And then is that online as well currently? I don't know if it's online or not. For assistance to go online and check underneath. I will get it to you. I update it every January with what we've done, so I'll say that. Yeah, but I think it would be a good idea, too, if citizens can go look it up and see where their neighborhood may be on our priority list. I know there are several on there. And we already covered next projects. I know Councilman Lane touched on funding going forward. I know there's a fund balance in our water quality. And, Charlie, you may answer this maybe. I know Rusty and Bill are back there as well. The $6.1 million fund balance in our stormwater or water quality management fee fund, What is that earmarked for? Why are we building a large fund balance? Is that for future projects or is that? I'll let Bill or Rusty weigh in if they want to. I mean, from my viewpoint right now is one is we needed to figure out our cash flow in order to be able to have a better projection. And two, I guess I've always been schooled on the fact that if you have to borrow money, you better have money in the bank. And so having an unencumbered reserve, for lack of a better term, will help us if we get into a bonding situation and get a more favorable rate. Okay. And when we bond, I know Councilman Lane touched on where it count against our other debt service, and these would obviously be revenue bonds and not GO bonds. Is that correct? That's what our plan would be if we were to borrow from ourselves. That was always the projection, that this would be a revenue bond. Okay. And then also from that account as well, it generates about $13 million, our fee currently. Is that the average we're collecting? I know we're going to get to monthly financials. I just want to – because the question that we get asked a lot as council members is, we enacted this fee three years ago. What's it doing? Is it going into projects? Is it going into people? Is it going into just operations? What is it actually doing for the community? And I know you're in the middle of an audit on this fund or getting ready to, But I think that question is being asked more and more, especially this year. Let me break down your question. I came up to talk about the revenue, and then you talked about the use of the funds. So let me start there. It's budgeted to about $12 million, $11.5 million to $12 million a year, about $1 million a month. The original rate was set with the idea that it would create a small fund balance each year and that we would build that fund balance up in time so that there might be some small bonding capacity. Usually you have to have 1.5%, a 1.5 coverage ratio for your debt service. So if you need a debt service of $3 million, you need at least $4.5 million in fund balance sitting there at all times. So it was always designed to create a small fund balance to build up to that bonding capacity. The use of the fund, I would defer to Charlie on the expenses. I know that we have reviewed those to see if they were appropriate. We had our outside auditor gave a report that said that their review on a limited basis, it was a limited basis review. It was not an audit. I have to use the right terms. but they saw that the only report they said was that the money to be set aside for neighborhood grants, we had actually set aside what we spent or what we budgeted but not the full amount, so we made that adjustment. That was the only suggestion that they had under their review. Okay. on the expenditure end of things you know obviously you've seen a snapshot of what we're doing project wise we've been in front of the council before with the water quality management fee grants with what we're doing in that area i think that's a great idea that we come back and give a more in-depth snapshot of where that money goes to maybe after the links is over with we'll be identifying particular areas that the council thinks that we need to emphasize. Because, I mean, that was always the thing. People wanted us to be transparent with where the stormwater fee was going to. It is largely still people because, you know, we had to do inspections. We have to do all these things that EPA requires us to do. The projects are obviously the more visible part of it. And so we talk a lot about that, but not so much about the inspection enforcement stuff. But I'd really love to come back and try to break that down in a way that's meaningful for whoever's watching. And maybe after we get done with the links, it's a good time to do that. Yeah, I think it's a fair question, especially I know when we passed this, people thought automatically all that's going to go into these capital projects on this stormwater priority list. And that's not the case. The other issue that is on the horizon, I know Council Member Farmer will perk up here, is the leaf collection. I know we had discussed that leaf collection could possibly come out of this fund eventually long term. or street cleaning, given the fact, the impact that both those have on stormwater and our water quality system. So, you know, that's where when we start analyzing the expenses of personnel and operating, can we add anything else to this fund that we need to take care of in the city? Yeah, I guess, you know, what I'm going to suggest, and we'll talk about probably in the links and will in the future, is recalibrating ourselves from what we thought in 2009 and 2010. You know, we've learned a lot since then. We've gotten better at certain things and been able to lower some of our costs. Leaf collection is a good example. Originally, we were headed down a path of where we believed that master planning for stormwater was going to be a great idea. But in light of all the projects we're doing in both the storm and sanitary side, I've rethought that. And in this year's proposed budget, I had proposed reducing some of that professional services money for master planning and instead devoting it to leaf collection. Because I have learned that, you're right, leaves in the storm drain are a big problem for us. Absolutely. I think that there's always that opportunity to review what caused us to make a decision on how we were going to allocate funds and then check that to find out whether or not it really gave us what we intended to. I think this is a good point for that. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Greg, for the presentation as well. Vice President Gordon. Thank you. Just one more thing. since we got on to the revenue and the expenditures. It's not really a question, Charlie, but you and I have talked about it. So I will look forward to seeing it when we see our budget numbers and the recap on the audit. I'm remembering that I was quite surprised at the amount of money that went for indirect cost from the Water Quality Fund to other parts in government. And so I'm also looking forward to seeing that breakdown of where that indirect cost is being put back into other parts of government. I mean, I know indirectly it's calculated to be used to support water quality efforts, but I hope that we will look at it in detail this year. Just a comment. Thank you. Anyone else on this issue? All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you both for updating this. I guess you're up next, Mr. Martin, on number three. Take it away. Everyone should have the multicolored 11 by 17 projects list. Usually what I try to do is I just try to highlight the highlights, I guess. You know, it's broken into three categories as far as activities that we've completed in the last six months, ones that are underway, and then ones that are in the queue for the next six months. So I'm going to pick out a few numbers, particularly focusing in the area of what's underway. Number 17, Blue Sky Pump Station Construction. And then further down, there will be one that I think that is the Blue Sky Force Main, or we may have them all lumped together. Anyway, the update on Blue Sky. Council Member Lane, you've probably seen the pipes strung out there on Athens-Boonesboro Road and piles of gravel. They're making great progress with installing the pipeline. I met with the construction folks about a month ago at the treatment plant itself. They were getting ready to start digging the hole for the pump station. So I think that we're very much on schedule with being able to complete the Blue Sky Project and be able to close the plant by December 31st of this year, as we're required to do. We still owe the council an agreement with the Wilson, oh, I'm sorry, with JFG Enterprises, the operators of the privately owned treatment plant behind Wendy's. We have exchanged multiple versions with them, and one most recently in the last 30 days. Ed Gardner with the law department is working with me on that and with their representatives and attorneys, but we still owe that to council. We have not forgotten that we need to bring that agreement back. Number 21 is the expansion area gravity line. Essentially, this is the pipeline that extends up from Winchester Road across Manowar outside I-75. This is a key one because it gets rid of three pump stations that we have out in that area, and particularly the one that's right there on Greenbrier's golf course that's an ongoing problem for us. Nobody, well, I take that back. I'll be the second happiest person to see that leave. my pump station supervisor will probably be the most happiest person to see that one disappear, but that one's scheduled to be complete mid-summer. Number 22, the CMOM, that's the Capacity Management Operation and Maintenance Program. I'm only going to highlight that is because we'll be coming to the council with a change order here in the coming weeks for that. We have 15, no, 52 deliverables that are due in August of this year to EPA. The contract expires June 31st, and we can't really risk being in the in-between time of contract situation. So what we're asking to do is to extend their contract period until that deadline is past us, which I believe is August 17th. but stay tuned on that one is that we just need a little minor extension to help us navigate an unfortunate deadline that seems to fall right in a bad spot. The Town Branch wet weather storage tank number 30. We're continuing to work through that one. We're very near being able to award a construction for that. 33, idle hour trunk sewer. That one's related to the Senior Citizen Center. also continuing to make progress to be able to stay to break ground on that in summer of this year. The last one I'm going to highlight is number 41, the SCADA project that stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. That is all about how we operate and control the treatment plants and the pump stations remotely. This allows us to have one person working at each plant every night and on weekends. Obviously, you see the price tag of that, $16 million. It's a huge, huge investment. But I'm very happy to say that that project is winding down finally, and I think it's going to be a project that helps us into the future. I know we had a change order here last week that the council approved for motor control centers. you know anything that involves electronics is expensive and it's this one's been expensive in a four-year project that I'm glad to see in the in the rearview mirror as well Mr. Chair with that I will stop talking and answer whatever questions that anyone may have customers please sign up if there's any questions on on this flow chart I have to complement the chart as well Charlie it's a Good chart to have. Maybe we can duplicate this in some other areas of our government. I'll pass that along. I like this project list. It's easy to understand and easy to read, so it gives us a good snapshot. Councilman Relain is up first. Just a quick question. In a previous report that you made to Council, you indicated that the scope of the project had gotten bigger than maybe we originally estimated, and also the time to complete the project may take longer. Do you see that, meaning that rather than spending somewhere between around $600 million over the initial 12-year term we talked about, that it would be greater than $600 million and maybe go 13 or 14 or 15 years? Is that what you're saying? Well, what Council Member Lane is asking about, obviously, is the remedial measures projects. What we have responded to EPA is that the current consent decree described schedule is too compressed, we believe, in order for LFUCG to execute it. The RMP team, myself, are working on a modified schedule. Whether to say that's going to give us more time or not, you know, obviously we're looking at that. It's still subject to EPA's endorsement and ultimately the district court's approval of that. But that's where we're headed. From a cost standpoint, I believe we're headed in the opposite direction. Everything that we're working on to this point in time shows that we're actually projecting below what the estimated costs were. We continue to work on that. The town branch, the storage tank, if I remember correctly, I'm taking numbers off the top of my head, was originally projected at $111 million. dollars. We've got it down below 80 now, and we're continuing to look at value engineering opportunities to get that dollar value lower. So I think I can stand here and say with confidence right now is that we're on the better side of 600 million from our projections. Schedule, like I said, the schedule part is the thing that really worries me because we just don't have that track record of being able to bang out seven, eight, nine projects a year, year after year after year. It's a contractor capacity. It's the working with our citizens to be able to prepare them for things that are getting ready to happen. The vice mayor noted one of the photos we had in Greg's presentation where the pipeline's going right between people's houses. You know, we obviously don't just show up and start doing that. It's a lot of work associated with this. But the short answer is schedule-wise, looking for a little bit more leeway. Cost-wise, I think we're in good shape right now. Okay. Just one quick follow-up on that. I believe you also mentioned that in some cases you didn't have enough bidders or you needed more bidders. How does that go on? Are you doing better in that area, or is the market still tight for that type of work? Well, in our biweekly meeting with the mayor, I just came from that before I came to this room here, and we talked a lot about that. Right now, we have pre-qualified engineering firms doing the design work for us. The next move is to have pre-qualified contractors doing work for us as well. And so now it's on Vernon and I's list to sit down with. We have quarterly meetings with our colleagues in Louisville and in northern Kentucky because they're a little ahead of us in some of these things, so we try to learn lessons from them. But I would expect that we're going to pre-qualify contractors, which will help us as far as the pool of talent at which that we can draw from. As it stands right now, I'm still a little bit concerned because it seems like we have a lot of the same contractors working for us. and there's some risk in schedule because they're getting a lot of work, which is great, but we need to be on time because that endangers the subsequent parts of the schedule. Okay. Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate it. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Charlie. This is terrific, and you've been doing this for a number of years. I don't know how long you've had these lists for us. Julie is the one who does this. Julie Mantram. I think she's in the back of the room. Thank you, Julie. Because this is a great visual. It gives us the money, who's doing the project, what its status is, and when we think it'll be completed. And I know I've mentioned this before, and I know that the two divisions I'm going to mention don't have a director right now. However, I think that specifically parks and traffic engineering would be wonderful divisions for us to see a list of their projects. They have ongoing projects all the time. I'll wait for that until we can get our new directors. I'm looking at CAO Hamilton. But if our government, government-wide, would have these kind of plans available, then everybody would know where the projects are and how much we're paying, and I think it could help us be even more efficient. So thank you for being the role model for this, and we'll look forward to it in other parts of government. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, thank you for this. This is a complete, thorough document. And just specific to these, when you're going to bid on these, are you getting enough and different kinds of bidders back? I mean, are you pleased with those who show up? I'm not displeased with anyone. You know, is that in the past that, you know, we have not historically had this number of projects coming out consistently. Right. So you may not necessarily see the market, you know, reacting the way that it should. The mayor, you know, like I said, he educated me today a lot about, you know, how this sector of the construction business operates and stuff. And so being cognizant of that sort of thing, you know, obviously works to our favor in that we tailor our approach accordingly. Like I said, the way our contracts are written right now is that if we incur a financial penalty because of missing a deadline, an EPA fines us for it, we have the ability to recover that because it's in the contract. What is more of a concern to me is that if Vernon's team has to spend additional time managing a late contract, that means they're late out of the gate on the next project and it has that snowball cumulative effect. And so that's what we've got to really work on making sure that we manage appropriately. It's still early in the game. Like I said, so far, so good. I'm pleased to report that, you know, free contracting, I know when we were concerned about extending that award, well, they're off the golf course now. We still have restoration to do, but they're off the golf course now. They're doing a fine job. Man, we beat that one around, didn't we? We did, yeah. And so, you know, so far so good. It's just, you know, it's always with anything. The devil's in the details. And when you look at the magnitude of it and you try to look back at your history and have a comparable magnitude and you don't have one, I mean, I guess that's what you guys have got me here is to worry about it. I do. I appreciate that. Thank you for the width of that response. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, this may be an unusual and maybe impossible request. Some of us, not all of us, there are a few of us that are not running for re-election. Lucky dogs. I remember when I was running the first time, one of the issues came up constantly about the increase in sewer fees, as you might imagine. So it was pretty easy to say, to quote, 13 years, $600 million. I want it to be possible to get some bullet points to kind of where we are now and what the future looks like so we can be updated in citizens' language about what we can say that would be informative to our constituents as we knock on doors, because I know it's going to come up. It's bound to. So I just wonder if that may be unreasonable. No, I don't think that it's unreasonable at all, Council Member Clark. I will tell you this, though, is that I can give you bullet points that would help you through the fall of this year, but my prediction is we're going to have some extensive discussions about sewer rates probably sometime after the first of the year. I mean, I'm waiting to see whether or not our current cash flow model plays out. We've got some really big projects, Town Branch, wet weather storage in general, getting ready to bid. They're going to tell us a lot about where we are moving forward with the sustainability of our current rate structure being able to handle the additional onslaught of capital projects that are right around the corner. So I think I can give you some bullet points stuff that's right now, But the takeaway, the biggest bullet point of all is that come calendar year 2015, I think we're going to have to have an extensive public discussion about sanitary sewer rates. And I think that's important, too, because I think we ought to be as honest as we possibly can with our citizens. and in my discussions with them two years ago, in a sense it was kind of a warning. You might as well understand we've got to pay for this, and you and I are going to be paying for this. Just be aware. So I don't think there's any reason why we can't put that part in the discussion as well. So I'd appreciate it, whatever you can do to help. Thank you much. Thank you, Chair. Anyone else on the committee have any questions? Charlie, I do on one project. It seems like it's going on forever, but maybe forever is just a few months. Number 20, the 2A pump station. Are we still manually pumping waste from Costco and taking it to Town Branch? And who is paying for that at this point? We were not manually pumping it and taking it. What they were doing is they had temporary pumps set up, and they were bypassing the pump station and pumping it into the pump station's discharge line. Essentially, they were working around it. I do not know whether we are still doing that or not. I had rattled their cage about that I expect to recover those costs for each day that they are late beyond a certain point. We haven't had that discussion yet. I have to apologize that in my interim assignment, I haven't watched that one as closely as I had in the past. I know that nothing's broken out there yet. But I've gone on record with Rick Day that we needed to be able to deal with this when we finally closed this contract out, because I feel like we've incurred a cost that we shouldn't have incurred. Can you give us an update on, not today, of course, later on, on when this will be completed, when our estimated time frame is because it was supposed to be done, I guess, back in October. Late November was the time frame. They had some weather issues, so they do, I think, have some justifiable claim for a time extension, but I will get you the information and let you know where we are with it. They are so close. The last time I was out there, I mean, they're right on the cusp of things. Like I said, they may have turned the pump station on. I just don't know it yet. Well, I know there's a lot of work going on even next door out there with the new power station from KU, So there's a lot of activity, but sooner the better on this one. Thank you. That's it on this item on our agenda, unless anyone else has any other questions. Next up is the monthly financials. Mr. Mayor, you want to walk us through those? I know we've already covered one of those, the water quality, but I know Customer Clark alluded to our sewer cash flow. You want to kind of give us an update? Thank you, Chair. There's a common theme with the sanitary sewer landfill and water quality. The revenues are meeting our exceeding budget right now, and expenses are under, which puts us at a year-to-date March 31st favorable position in each one of the funds. The one caveat I would put forward is that we may have to come back to council in fourth quarter and ask for additional bad debt expense to hit these three counts. They're all part of the LexServe Unified Bill, and projections say that we will exceed our bad debt expense by the end of the year. The total expenses, there's plenty of capacity there, but that one line item, we will probably exceed that by June 30 and we'll have to come for a budget amendment. With that said, I could go to anything specific that anyone would. I'll just open up the questions if anyone has anything specifically on any of the funds. I did on the landfill operating fund, it's shown a negative cash flow year to date. Is this a timing of collection, or is it spending down some of the fund balance on purpose? It was budgeted to do that, but it's a positive net difference at March 31st, but the amended budget was to spend more than we took in. I don't remember. I think it had to do with post-closure, but I can double-check and make sure for you. I believe that's right. I just want to double-check on that one. And then our Lexar bills. Yes, sir. Will you give us an update in the near month or weeks, or how do you prefer to give us an update on the collection of these three individual funds? Well, I was hoping to have a presentation ready by this point. We've run into some delays in implementing some of the final processes and actually have a consultant coming into town, and we're meeting tomorrow to try to get an updated business process. So next month, the month after, do you have regularly? We do. Then I could try to be ready for either next month or the month after. Okay. Very good. All right. Anyone else? All right. I see no other questions on this item. Any items referred to committee need to be removed or adjusted or heard in the next meeting? Any requests on that at all? Councilman Clark. I think we've had the tree canopy survey, but I would ask the committee, do we need to leave that on? I would think we could remove it and then bring it back for an update next year. I think we could. I would so move. So that's a motion. Do I have a second? Motion and a second to remove the tree canopy from the items referred to committee lists. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. We'll take that one off. Anything else on this list? All right. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.