Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee (AEUOC) Special Called meeting Transcript – 2/21/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/21/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/21/2023 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:01:41 AM] Hello everybody I'm Leslie pool I chair the Austin energy utility oversight. Committee and we are here today in a special called meeting Tuesday, February 21 2023 it is. 901 a. M and we are assembled at Austin city hall on west second street. Looks like I've got a nearly full dais. All are present, with the exception of council member. Ryan alter council member Natasha harper-madison and who is down at the end the mayor pro tem mayor pro tem Ellis, I'm sure they will be joining us. Shortly. So I will call this meeting to order and wanted to first make a couple of comments . We have three speakers today on items six. We now have six speakers today on item six. I [9:02:43 AM] believe they're all on six is that correct? Item six, which is the winter storm Mara item. Oh, these are all public communications. Okay, that's great. So we will take our public communications speakers up first. And then. We will need to vote on two items the minutes from the last meeting and the dates for the rest of the year for these meetings. And I wanted to ask the general manager Jackie sergeant. Are there any time sensitive items on the agenda today? I'm thinking that we will go directly to the report on winter storm Mara after we take up the action items in here from speakers will that work? That's great. And any information that you have that has not yet been delivered to the dais. Could your staff be sure to do that to each of the of the members of the dais? Thank you so much. Alright, so then after we dispose of the [9:03:43 AM] votes. We will begin with item six, which is the briefing from Austin energy on winter storm, Mara. And in the interest of time. I know we were hoping to wrap up by about 10 15. So I proposed one round of questions at the end of the presentation. And if we have time, a second round mayor. What do you think about that timing? That's great . Thank you. And have a quick question. Yes council member qantas, are we do we have a time certain? Is there a reason why we are trying to get this is we're doing the we have the work session afterwards, so there's more work to be done today, but I did want to remind everybody and you may have seen the posting that I put up on the message board and this is the second ah kind of status and progress report from Austin energy that we had promised. We are also picking up from where we were. Unfortunately had end our conversation at the last work session because the Mikes dropped in, the boards and commissions room. Ah Austin energy has prepared about a 45 [9:04:43 AM] minute presentation will hold the questions during the presentation, you'll be able to ask a round of questions at the end. If there's time for a second round will take that up, but we will. We are planning a more robust public conversation with the cross departmental and multijurisdictional entities that were all involved in the winter storm. Ah response. Once we get the after action report, and I'll point you to the posting that I put up last night on the message first kind of lays it out in additional detail. Thank you for that clarification. I just didn't want the community to think an abbreviated conversation today meant anything other than we have a work session this afternoon, so given all the pending items before us, we're taking this as an opportunity to get the conversation started. But of course it will continue. That's exactly right. And thank you for that council member Puentes chair pool before you before you go again and just want to let you know that it's my intention to post my questions to the message forward in the interest of time and to [9:05:44 AM] make sure that we do I know that will get them answered eventually with the after action review, and I would just encourage my colleagues to remember they can do that as well. I appreciate that, vice chuck Kelly. I have put up last night with the posting on how the meeting would happen today. The questions that, I had hoped to ask last time. So they're up there, too. And if you want to add your questions to that thread, that would be great. So I should ask the mayor if he had anything to offer at this point. The only thing I would offer is that this is just an eight E committee and committee briefing . I know that some of us have other things that we're going to want to bring forward that arose out of this event. For example, at some point I'll be visiting with Mr Ortiz so that we can talk about I would like to see us, for example, with regard to communication and generalized response to emergencies. Look at [9:06:47 AM] and I'll post something on the message board about this, but look at, putting together a new communications plan that relates to all emergencies. I mean, we always it's true that that cities will always react to the last disaster. And in this case, there was an energy disaster. But it could be a flood or it could be something else. The next time I want us to focus on how we respond from a communications standpoint, put together a new communications plan and I would I'll ask that we do something where we have that plan to us and maybe the next 45 days. And then 15 or so days later, I would like to see the community. Have a mock disaster where we go through the communications process and actually seek out flaws and practice it in anticipation. The second thing would be with regard to shelters. You know, [9:07:49 AM] the next shelter may not be because it's the next need for shelters may not be because it's cold, but it may be because of flooding and people need a place to go, and we can't have a consistent theme where our shelters are open. So things like that this is about Austin energy, but I want to just call it to everybody's attention. If we have other things, and I will have other things. That I would like to put forward. Those are two examples. I'll post those on the message board so that we don't interfere with the a E aspect of this, but we are on top of the things that we should have learned from this last event. And then the only other thing I would mention is that I don't recognize the man sitting next to me and but we ought to introduce him. Yes indeed. Our interim city manager Jesus Carson, Mr. Garza, welcome. This is a heck of a meeting for you to jump in on well, I'm looking forward to it. And and after the speakers, I have just a few introductory comments to make [9:08:50 AM] about the report that general manager sergeant is gonna be making thank you so much. We'll take our public communications. First three minutes. We have six people. We will lead off with Craig. Naser Mr. Naser, are you here? There you are. After him as Paul Robbins, Mr Robbins, would you like to come up to the front row? So you're ready to go and after Mr Robbins, Marian Sanchez. There's another seat at the front there. Sanchez, you could come up as well. Good morning, Mr Naser. Thanks for being here. You have three minutes of our staff could start the timer. Thank you. My name is Craig Naser. I'm the conservation share of the state chapter of the Sierra club. And I'm here to first of all tell you I like our socialist electricity number one and I think when you look at it over the long run, I think cost energy has been great for the city and we just need to make it better. You know what I mean? Because and the reason we need to make it better has to do with [9:09:51 AM] climate change. And there are a lot of near in problems to solve. But there are also some distant problems to solve but that we need to start now a good friend of mine on Sierra club. Has sent you a paper is names brute. Bruce Melton is called the climate emergency response and he tells you why this paper was written and so wonky scientific paper, and we sent it to some council members before, but some of the new people hadn't got it. And essentially what this paper says is, although climate change, you know the average tempers going up. These things are not Arab arithmetic sequences, their geometric sequences and I was the temperature goes up. The potential highs and lows are going up even higher than those I really think the basis for winter's storm. Mara was climate change. I've lived here since 1987. I've never seen an ice storm that bad we can go into [9:10:54 AM] what happened, you know, but there's not enough time to do that. But one of the things is getting in contact with people and I want to I just happen to have this. You notice this this year, a club on it. This is a solar cell. That's Sierra club think, bought it from a German company and made it available cheap to their members a couple years ago during winter storm Yuri when I had no power for six days this thing charged my cellphone if people can't get any energy, it's going to be very hard to communicate with them in today's just the way our society is there's a lot of things on the edges we could do to make communication easier. I imagine. I mean the educations system of Austin energy communicating with people. If you have bought a bunch of these at cost and offered a deal to people, it could come with a whole bunch of information about what people need to do to stay in contact. I mean, that's just [9:11:56 AM] one of many ideas and other idea is to have distributed a battery back up throughout the city that's coming down the tubes. The other thing is to move faster on community solar, which I know us energy's moving on. But to move faster. There's a hole and then the one last thing to say to make sure you know this is I completely agree with council member pool on this we can have good, strong trees, and we can have our lines trim properly. There's no problem with that. We just got to think ahead and do it now. Thank you very much. Thanks Mr Naser. Mr. Robbins you are next after Mr Robbins will be Marian Sanchez and then Susana Almanza counsel . I am Paul Robinson, environmental activist and consumer advocate. Austin energy has been lambasted by critics still haunted by the post traumatic stress of winter storm Yuri two years ago, it's customers are bitterly angry at [9:12:56 AM] what they view as mishandling of the recent blackout. But if you think confidence in city government cannot go any lower, adjust your expectations. Beginning March 1st Austin energy begins levying it's new right increase. The rate increase will adversely affect the majority of residential customers, and the increase will be higher than Austin energy has estimated. In December, the utility admitted to a 13% increase in residential reits, however, since a number of customers live outside the city that you represent this left out. And estimate for Wright increases within city women. It's found the rate increase closer to 18% but I have analyzed how the rate increase will affect specific city council districts and have found [9:13:59 AM] that it punishes specific ones. Would you please show the slide? District three south southeast Austin's poorest zone will experience a rate increase of 23% 89% higher than Austin's wealthiest zone district. 10 in northwest district seven. North north central is almost as severely affected 83% higher than district 10. This is followed by districts nine in central downtown districts. Four northeast. And district five shall shall south central. Ah only Austin's two wealthiest districts, 10 and 88, being southwest Austin have below average, well below average rate increases. How will the public respond in March? Many people do not read the news closely or understand issues of a Wright [9:15:00 AM] case, but they do read their bills. I will it will not serve much purpose for city officials to lecture Austin ratepayers about shared sacrifice and taking one for the team after winter storms. Yuri and Mara a bill increase already imposed in November. Most of them figure they already have. Counsel I seriously ask you to amend the residential Wright structure to something approaching equity. I believe you have the power to do this without triggering a new rape case. Good morning. Thank you, Mr Robbins. Marion Sanchez is up next after her, she son Almanza and Valerie Menard. Ms. Menard. If you'd like to come toward the front with Ms Amanda. That'd be great. Miss Sanchez. Welcome you have three minutes. Good morning. My name is Mariana [9:16:02 AM] Sanchez and I'm the project coordinator for podiatrist dollar equity campaign. In light of the reason extreme weather events we faced, but they would like to call for the city's help in facilitating a discussion with U T in regard to the 22 acres of land located at 27 oh 61 topless drive. Here we first see the potential of a community solar site, one of the promote primarily low income working class people of color communities could benefit the most from neighborhoods such as these are hit the hardest and affected most disproportionately by the ongoing climate crisis. They deserve reliable and equitable alternative energy solutions. Thank you. Thanks so much, Ms Sanchez, missile monza. You are next. And after you is miss Maynard and our last speaker after this man, lard will be a Pedro Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez if you could come toward the front as well, thank you. Good morning. Congratulations America, Kirk Watson and all the new city council members Velasquez and so forth. It's good to be here with you all today. I'm Suzanne Almanza with poor there and actually living them on topless [9:17:02 AM] community. And the almost 100% of them on tapas community went down during the ice storm. During that I stormy my son Bandel up to walk to the man topless recreation center, which is just you know about 400 ft from our house, only to find that the recreation center was closed. So we could not keep warm. We could not power up our phones and we could not power up our laptops. And as you know, man, topless has a 33% poverty rate. Huh. And this should not be happening. Especially now we have a resilient resilient officer and we're talking about resilient hubs. This is a shame . Two years later after the whole talk about resilience, you know, the city is not very resilient and here are recreation centers, which are supposed to be the warm inside or closed during the most critical time of our lives. And so I asked that you install generators are even solar panels . You heard Mariana Sanchez talked about putting up a solar [9:18:04 AM] hub in my topless. Also do we need a workforce development on solar? Here's an opportunity for the city of Austin to work with the university of Texas and put their name a topless community to make that realization come forward. We know that there's justice 40 funding. We should be jumping on that justice for the funding to make sure that the most vulnerable people are protected during this time that people who do not have backup generators who cannot happen to their special made cars with wheels or trucks or cannot afford to go to a private hotel to keep warm. It is the responsibility of the city council to make sure that its residents are protected. And so we ask that you move forward. I definitely agree with that communications plan, Mr Watson Watson because communication is very much lacking in during these climate crisis. People don't know where to go. Who to talk to? All of these things [9:19:05 AM] that come into realization, and we've already experienced this doing covid that even though it all the information was on internet, we have a digital divide, and we have people that don't know how to navigate the internet, so we have to really come up with the communication strategy where we can make sure that everybody is informed and that everyone is protected. Thank you. Thanks miss almond. Ms. Menard. Your next. Good morning, everyone and again. I wanted to echo congratulations to the new council and she mayor . Welcome back. I'm here. I'm not gonna I'm just gonna, support what's been said. I'm not going to say that I had a really hard time. I'm one of those people that I have resources. I am alone, but it's still I was able to find a way. But I'm not so much worried for me. I'm really worried about folks that were out there. Unlike me that couldn't go someplace to again. Charge our phones, Alexis Sanchez said. Get warm. I wasn't even aware and if [9:20:05 AM] in my neighborhood I live in district one, if there was a warming center that but but our our neighbors are very good. We do communicate with each other through our cellphones. But again. What if you can't charge ? That's where I was at where I couldn't charge my phone or my computer, so I had to find a place and I was lucky I could. But for folks who can't I love that solar idea. I love that solar charger. I think that would be a great investment. Also, but I also want to put this forward. You're a new council now and not all of you, but many of you let's look at rolling back that utility increase. I think at this point understanding that Austin energy has some work to do. To better serve this community to start to introducing a utility increase now is really insult injury. So if you would consider that would be much appreciated. Thank you. Thanks Ms Menard. And our last speaker today is Pedro Hernandez. Mr Hernandez, you have three minutes and welcome. Good morning. My name is Pedro [9:21:08 AM] Hernandez. And I am with border. I am a organizer and fair fairs, campaign coordinator. And I am here just today to speak on the power outage. It was not good for me. And the company that I have at my house. All our food went bad. And we're on a budget. Luckily, I did have some power power power banks to charge my stuff, but all the food went bad, and that alone, you know is a big dent in you know, in my income. I was upset because. Finding out that the warming centers were closed all the recreation centers. I was. I worked with the homeless community and I was telling them all to go to the recreation center. And I'm sure they were probably upset with me finding out that it was closed because I thought it was open. So that [9:22:08 AM] that needs to be changed. The generators. We've already said set that out, with another organization, but, yeah, that needs to be changed that those warming centers need to be open. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll move now to our action items. We have to action items up for vote. One is approval of minutes approved the minutes of the November 29 2022 meeting of the Austin energy utility oversight committee. Do I have do I have a motion council member, Kelly makes the emotion and the mayor, pro tem, seconds any opposition to that being adopted those minutes are adopted. The second item is action on a revision to the 2023 Austin energy utility oversight committee meeting schedule we had set you all may remember. We had set the meetings for the week between council meetings for the Tuesday between work sessions and decided it was [9:23:09 AM] better use of our precious time to put that meeting on a work session day. So we have adjusted throughout the year to put the meetings of a E oversight on to work session. And a any discussion about that. I will take a motion to approve. And our vice chair council member, Kelly makes that motion and the mayor pro tem seconds any opposition to adopting this item. I see that as consensus. These this item is adopted and we have our schedule for the next year. Okay now we will move directly to the item on winter storm Mara and city manager Garza. Would you please lead us off? Yes. My staff said I needed shout out and the last time I said that word we were we were dais was rushed by the citizens will try to be gentle. I'm a little out of practice so I [9:24:09 AM] would ask the mayor and council to just be a little gentle, but let me begin. Council member pool, mayor, members of council. I want to just make a few introductory remarks about about this presentation that you're about to receive. This information that you you will get is intended for information. And it's a lot of data and a lot of detail, but it's in no way intended to be an excuse, where we may not have lived up to our standards as a city of Austin. You know, in a crisis organization in a crisis, an organization needs to be adaptable. Empathetic prepared, resilient, transparent and trustworthy. Well as an organization. We made an effort to have fidelity to all of those principles. It is clear that from our from the public response that we may have fallen short on some of those items. Because of the purpose of this presentation is to be clear and informative. We would ask that you give us feedback so that future presentations can be more clear and more informative to the members of the mayor and members of council. One of the [9:25:10 AM] essential functions in local government of the mayor and council is to provide oversight to the administrative staff. That oversight is absolutely critical because it it opens. It gives us an idea of where our blind spots maybe. Where we may have a political 10 year to certain things that they the community is sensitive to and your input and your insights are absolutely essential to make us a better organization. Finally let me end. When, at the end of this presentation, you will have general manager sergeants team talk about what they intend to do. In an after action after action report with a specific elements of what's included but we intend to do is that administrative staff is to pull all of those elements and Austin energy plus other departments, plus the oc, so the council has an entire report with all the elements of what we need to do in a crisis and an emergency with the with recommendations of how we might do better. So with that brief introduction. Let me turn it over to general manager Sargent. Thank you, city manager [9:26:11 AM] . Good morning, madam chair, vice chair committee members. I'm Jackie sergeant Austin energy's general manager. Note that since we are skipping our normal briefings, if any council member would like information, we're happy to set up and meet with you one on one to review and answer any questions that you might have. My team and I are here to provide a detailed briefing on Austin energy's response to the recent devastating natural disaster, a historic ice storm that left hurricane level destruction in its wake. Specifically for us in energies customers. The storm caused long duration outages. We will review how Austin energy stood up the largest restoration operation in our 127 year history. At its peak, the storm caused nearly 174,000 customers to lose power at one time, that's about 32% of our customer base. The outages were spread across our entire service territory of 437 square miles in Travis and Williamson county's [9:27:11 AM] while this event was historic these type of extreme weather events, which caused long duration outages are becoming more common. Climate change is here. If we're going to address the challenges of extreme weather, causing long duration outages head on we need increased support in coordination of our entire city structure to be more resilient. Austin energy was not alone in the restoration and recovery efforts for this storm. Many other city departments, the county and community organizations mobilized, however , as the mayor and council members have pointed out and increased and higher level of coordination is needed. The city activated the emergency operations center on January 30th and went to level two on January 31st, which included Austin energy lays on to be present. Additionally Austin energy has its own incident command center and incident command structure, which was formally mobilized on January. 31st at eight pm however, winter [9:28:13 AM] weather situational awareness calls began a full day before on January 30th as we received weather updates and discuss preparation activities, we know that there are many questions about the response effort, and we know waiting months for an after action report will not provide the answers that our community is a demanding of us right now. So I'd like to highlight a few areas where we're already taking steps to improve future emergency operations particular for long duration outages. First E trs or estimated time of restoration. When the power goes out, customers want to know when will it be restored and the normal course of business are crews hit the ground immediately, they're able to assess the problem, and from there, they'll adjust any estimated time of restoration. They'll restore the power and that usually takes place within a couple of hours. Of course, depending on the cause. In this case, we had almost 1800 active outages throughout our service territory, each outage with its [9:29:14 AM] own unique circumstance. The sheer volume made normal on the ground assessments impossible and simultaneously restoring power at each location. Often times during the storm crews would find outages within outages or crews would work for several hours to restore circuit only to have another section of that same circuit go out. Thus requiring them to start all over on restoring that circuit. I have directed staff to examine how we communicate system wide restoration estimate during long duration outages. This includes looking at pier utilities that endure hurricanes and ice storms to see what they do to estimate system wide restoration. Timelines. Second communications . We know how our utility communicates during a crisis is just as important as how the incident is managed. Operationally there are many kinds of different kinds of communications. Some we did well and others we need to work on. We provided interviews, shared social media alert messages and [9:30:15 AM] issued news releases before, during and after the storm. We issued our first press release before the storm on Monday, January 30th. And on Wednesday, the first day of the storm related outages. My team provided nearly two dozen radio TV and print interviews beginning with the early morning news shows. We were also very active on social media. Well, not all customers are on social media. It's the fastest way to get information out and the news media almost immediately shares the information that we post we stood up a dedicated restoration web page that was promoted in our communications pieces, plus alert messages on our outage map and on our website homepage. Customers who signed up for outage alert received automated text notifying them immediately of outages. In addition to the automated text, I acknowledge that we should have started directly texting and emailing customers sooner with what limited information we had at that time. It's clear the public [9:31:16 AM] wants and needs information to make decisions, even if it's not a definitive estimated time of restoration. Next time we'll send out those communications more quickly. Further we are working with homeland security and emergency management and the city's communications and public information office to review and make adjustments to our coordinated communications practices. Another area for improvement of our communications tools is our outage map, as you will hear later in the presentation from our vice president of technology and data, we have already begun making changes to the outage map. Third bearing power lines. Many have asked why all of our distribution system isn't underground. Only some of it we've always responded that bearing our distribution lines would be prohibitively expensive and very disruptive. We as utility know this intuitively, but the community may not, and we don't have a feasibility study that illustrates the extent of what this would take. So I have directed staff to [9:32:17 AM] include a third party study to analyze what it would take to bury all of our overhead distribution lines, including cost impacts to customers and our fiscal year 24 budget proposal. Fourth tree trimming and vegetation management. We welcome the audit of our vegetation, management policies and procedures to see how we can enhance them. Here most of the time. We're in prolonged drought and branches get dry and brittle, put thousands of pounds of ice on them, and they simply crack break off or completely fall over. We appreciate the support of council back in 2019 to increase our clearance distances and with the audit findings were open to additional opportunities to enhance our vegetation management program. Fifth. Austin energy energy, manage our emergency management full time staff before winter storm Mara. We have been discussing expanding our internal full time energy emergency management team. This historic ice storm highlights the need for this and the need [9:33:17 AM] to move more quickly. We're adding two full time positions to our emergency management team, one of which is a new senior level management position. Last week. I approved this job title request, and it is currently with hrd pending approval. Well we have many employees who become part of our incident command structure during an emergency. We're adding more dedicated leadership in this area. This will help us better plan prepare and train staff throughout the utility to respond to extreme weather. Cybersecurity sabotage, natural disasters or any cause of future long duration outages. And six learning what other utilities do. I have already reached out to our peer large public power council utilities in Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida as well as the Long Island power authority . I've connected my team and directed them to schedule site visits to learn how they prepare for and manage hurricane restoration and coordinate their [9:34:17 AM] efforts with their respective city operations. We know each natural disaster is different with unique circumstances. Causes. Ah damages. Challenges to overcome and with winter storm Mara. We have already begun the process of internal review that will culminate in an after action report. As I've outlined today, we are not waiting for that report to be completed to take action and we will continue to do so throughout the process. With me today are several members of my executive team who will provide an overview in the following area areas operations. Interim chief operating officer Stewart Riley, tree trimming and vegetation management vice president of field operations. Elton Richards are outage map. Vice president president of technology and data Greg flay. Mutual aid and the after action report will be covered by our vice president of sister electric system, engineering and technical services. Lisa martin. And with that I we'll turn it [9:35:19 AM] over to, Stuart Riley. Thanks, jack. Good morning chair vice chair committee members. I'm Stuart Riley. As Jackie mentioned, I will walk through an overall look at our operations and timeline of the event. And before they before I do that. I just want to make sure we start with a common understanding of just how different this event is from winter storm, Yuri. Lots of people have said that this they can't believe that this happened again. And while the frustration that they experienced is definitely a repeat event of a long duration power outage, I think it's important for us as we're having this conversation to really understand the difference between an market directed event that caused outages. Versus a storm event with hurricane level damage. So as we look back at this event, and as we look forward and our responses, it's important for us to have that distinction while keeping in mind what our [9:36:21 AM] customers experience at the same time. So winter storm Yuri was an orca grid emergency winter storm Ara was an ice storm with hurricane level damage. And February 2021. That was a market loadshedding event. And what that means is market directed utilities in Texas to cut off enough customers to keep the market grid from a complete collapse that would have taken weeks or longer to get back up. And during that event, Austin energy generating resources performed well, but that did not lessen our obligation to cut off customers during that event in order to protect the ercot grid. And, in this event there well in your E. There was some storm damage before the event before the load shed event started mostly in the western part of our city. All those outages were restored prior to that load shade event, and then during the load shed, there was some additional outages that came through that we could not discover until after or cat allowed us to start restoring customers. But the scale of that [9:37:21 AM] of that storm damage was nothing close to what we experience here. In that event, it was more around 35,000 customers at that time. Conversely, winter storm Mara here in 2023 was completely a localized ice storm event. As we all know, the ice decimated trees took out our infrastructure and restoration work on this event, even with hundreds of additional outside crews took a great deal of time due to the massive scale of damage. Again as as we understand the difference between these events. I'm pointing that out because for us to have this conversation and look forward, we need to understand that operationally. This was very different for us as a utility and operationally what we'll need to do going forward is so different, but I'm not trying to invalidate any customers frustrations of what they experienced in the incredible amount of hardship that customers experience as well. So I mentioned that this event had the impact of a hurricane to us more more like a hurricane that nobody knew was [9:38:22 AM] coming. We had weather situational awareness calls. We were ready for icing, but nothing close to what we experience here. We monitored the forecast. We called in additional 80 crews and tree trimmers. Set them up in hotels to be ready to respond quickly. For us for storm restoration, making sure we have additional crews and on call crews is nothing new. But we went beyond that here by making sure that our crews could be ready and available in a moment's notice by having them set up in hotels, getting food supplies for them and just being ready in case the worst happened and, of course. The worst did happen instead of a quarter of an inch to half an inch, mostly north and west of Austin in the hill country. What we experienced was over 7/10 of an inch in central Austin. On Tuesday. January 31st. I was on a call with the Texas energy reliability council in the Texas department of emergency management on that call, there was some of our industry partners. They reported that [9:39:23 AM] they had had some outages that they had experienced so far. But at that time Austin energy had zero outages and zero customers impacted. Still that day with zero outages. We stood up our incident command and just just to be ready. Unfortunately, as Jackie mentioned as climate changes here, we're getting used to hearing about unprecedented weather, and I think we're a little bit numb to it. But you know, I just want to recount a story that one of our safety personnel told me is that when he went to a customer's home because of a downed wire, that customer said they lived in that home for 65 years in that same home, and this is the worst storm they'd ever seen. And the evidence after it was all accounted for, I think proves that customers right and I think going forward we can't rely on the forecast that's based on history and based on more predictable times, so as we prepare for emergencies, I think a big lesson for us to learn from this is that that the forecast can be really different [9:40:24 AM] than what actually materializes. This is just a slide of a screenshot, of outages in Texas . Late afternoon, early evening , February 2nd. There's nothing special about this time frame. It's just happens to be when I took a screenshot. But this just shows where the ice impacts were , you can see Travis county kind of at the bottom left of this swath that goes up to Tyler. And where in that 30% range, and there were other counties between between here and Tyler that were greatly impacted. But Austin was really the only urban center or densely populated area and as you can see from the previous slide, the icing here was heavier. And as I understand it, the trees that we have in Austin, largely live oaks where those that were most impacted by this event. So I'll take us through the timeline of events here. I mentioned storm prep. Activating incident command, [9:41:26 AM] calling in additional crews getting them set up in hotels, getting meals set up all before a single outage had occurred on February. First at around three am outages from ice storm started coming in. At the 30. Minutes later at four. A.M, R general manager directed us to request mutual aid. You can see here. The blue line of outages increases rapidly during that time, and by seven A.M. We already had over 100 had nearly 100,000 outages and we initiated making contact with our peer utilities about mutual aid. Lisa martin will get into mutual aid a little bit more in depth later. But as you can see, also has Jackie mentioned, this this blue line of outages at any one point, the maximum number of customers out was almost 100 and 74,000 customers or 32% of our customers being out at any given time. And what I have here is a timeline that's broken down into three basic phases of storm restoration. During this initial [9:42:27 AM] phase, I'll talk about here. Quickly is, the phase in which we saw freezing rain. Additional ice accumulation, hazardous conditions that made restoration challenging and dangerous. This challenging weather and the repeated outages even made a full damage assessment at that time, very difficult. Here you can see roads that were impassable for our crews are crews literally had to get out of their cars and cut some of these trees into manageable sized pieces to be able to get to where they needed to go. In addition, in some areas of our service territory, the terrain isn't flat and getting our heavy vehicles up and down hills during the ice is dangerous and risky. And on this next slide. I have a short video of one of our members of our field operations team just to talk about some other challenges that they experienced. This is an extremely difficult job in [9:43:28 AM] normal situations. So then when we get into emergency storm situations that risk factor is multiplied by 1000. And at any moment, anything we do is putting my life and the god of the left me and the guy to the right of me at risk, and we just want to make sure that we can get back home to our families. So safety is the utmost important thing. This is way different. Yuri was mostly snow and we were able to handle Yuri. With just our crews and our personnel. The issue with this one is all of the ice. And the ice build up on the trees that have been affected by the drought that we've been having recently has just been breaking all of the limbs so it's just been a lot more challenging with all the weight and all the down wires, not just so much snow accumulation, also along with the tree damage, just also accessing those areas to even get back in there to make those clearances to get it back on has been has been the most challenging part so far. You know, we're we're we're riding [9:44:28 AM] out our line we're going through. We're clearing it out. We're getting it fixed. We're leaving the site and then we get a call 40. Minutes later, another limb has broken and tore down everything that we just fixed. So then we're having to go back and redo everything that we just did. So that's that's been extremely challenging. You know we're doing the best we can . We're working as hard as we can just please be patient with us. And we're doing our best to get everybody back on and houses warm and everybody. As Matt mentioned in the video, repeated outages posed a significant challenge for restoration progress. This slide shows in four hour increments, the number of outages and the number of restorations outages are shown in blue and restorations are shown in Orange. February, 2nd was a particularly tough day for us, as our restorations were largely all canceled out by additional [9:45:30 AM] outages coming in. During the course of the event, there were 373,000 restorations that took place. Some of those are repeated outages. Some of those are new outages that came in at different times during the course of the event. In the initial phase, we were focused on large circuit lockouts and critical services customers. When I talk about circuit lockouts, every electrical system is made up of circuits. These circuits are our main lines. They serve around 2000 customers per circuit, and each has a breaker like a large version of what you have in your home as a circuit breaker, which which provides protection function to keep additional damage from taking place to that system. And so on, are circuits when an animal or an object comes into contact with equipment on our circuit, the circuit breaker will open to shut that down and prevent additional damage from occurring . If that object, or that fault clears itself quickly, the circuit breaker will close back up. And I mentioned that because [9:46:33 AM] in an ice in a storm restoration , typically clearing the circuit lockouts restores 90 to 95% of your customers. And phase one of this timeline. That's what we're focused on. But this event turned out to be completely different. That brings us to phase two of the restoration. After the mainline circuits were brought back up that led to the laterals of the main lines as we worked our way down to the most granular damage. As I mentioned at work session a couple of weeks ago. We've never experienced anything as complicated and laborious as this, with so much manual work required up and down our system, circuit after circuit with tree damage, broken poles, broken cross arms down conductor all over our system that couldn't be circuits that couldn't be restored until all the problems were fixed. So here in phase two. We were still working on some of our critical services customers and then, working our way to the smaller outages, starting with large largest to get the most customers back up as quickly as possible. And then [9:47:34 AM] all other factors being equal, starting with the oldest outage and then working our way to the newest. As Matt mentioned in the video this this proved to be laborious in areas where, access is difficult. Here. You can see one of the cruise. That was, putting a poll back in after some tree damage, and this was in a very hard to access area and we have a lot of our equipment and poles and backyards and other rocky terrain that are inaccessible by bucket truck. And then this picture shows the location of, of an outage where Jackie and Elton provided a press conference. This one was called in as a leaning poll. But when the crews got there, it was actually broken at the base of the pole. And so what? What was initially thought to be a two hour job required additional crews. And an all day job as you can see here, therefore bucket trucks on that site, and that's an all day job. And I want to [9:48:35 AM] point out that this outage was actually because of a tree falling into the communications lines not falling into the power lines. So once we got through some of those issues that brings us to phase three of our our restoration. When we transition to reconnect, we started customer individual customer reconnects on February 9th. Since that time we've been expediting customer reconnects with the help of dst for customers to get electricians get inspected and green tagged in order for us to safely reconnect their equipment to Austin energy system. And here you can see on the left customers home with a downed Weatherhead and a service panel ripped off the side of their home and on the right, a broken and bent Weatherhead on another customer's property. And we are communicating with all customers that we are aware of who have this situation. Our customer care team has been making contact with those customers just to help them know about what resources are out there and available for those customers. Make sure they have a licensed [9:49:35 AM] electrician so that the work is done safely and so that they can get re energized as quickly as possible. And some of those I believe are still trickling in today. I think we were expecting maybe some more this morning, but I haven't seen that list and that brings us up to where we are today. And I will continue this and pass it over to Elton Richards to speak about tree trimming and vegetation management. Hey morning team, Elton Richards, vice president of electric systems field operations, and I'm going to be talking about the vegetation management and customer tree trimming. So I'll start with the storm itself. On the vegetation management. We've got about 40 crews that are contracted through Davey Wright Nashville that we use on site. We knew this was going to be an ice storms. We had already reached out them since we had a contract with them to get additional resources on Tuesday. So we had our 40 crews. By Wednesday, we had over 600 vegetation employees on on system, so [9:50:36 AM] that's how we responded. Since we knew there would be a lot of trees involved in this. I said it before, but it bears repeating. This wasn't a vegetation management issue. This is ice storm issue truly was two pictures. You've got up here representing these large trees. No amount about chasing management would have prevented this. The other thing I'd like to point out on. This is those wires that that's laying on. It's not our wires, that is the communication wires. And communication to do not do vegetation management have been down on sixth street or anywhere else like that. You can see them running through them. They're here to our system so solid that it will break up whole with the weight of a tree, and that was reflected on the airport that you saw under Stewart's presentation. And also, as you can see here, this was damaged. So the north way we normally work during storm of vegetation management crews is we have our own internal inspectors that are responsible for them. These are trained arborist. We will send them out to an area that we know [9:51:37 AM] is damaged, as Stewart stated normally, when we pick a circuit up, we pick up 90% of the customers. What happened is were identified. Vegetation down, inspector goes out takes an outage of the tree can be trimmed, safely, they clean it up. Turn it back over to crew repairs to damage and it's done. The problem with us is we were finding circuits and even the taps and laterals that had 4 to 5 different sections of damage with the vegetation. So it was. It was never seen this level of devastation. So what we did was at end of day two. We flexed instead of doing the inspectors we actually since we had the additional crews, we started sending them out with the crews himself. That way. The cruises. They identified the damage. You didn't have to wait for vegetation crew to come out. They could actually trim it and then keep on going, so I think it was a good flex on it to make the best use to resources that we had. I'll get into what are normal customer tree trimming is about the numbers. We've got 2400 miles, and that's primary [9:52:38 AM] overhead. In addition to that you've got about 14 miles of secondary. And then you've got about another 1200 miles of streetlight. So that's the total that we do, but this is the primary we do hundreds of miles each year, usually on a circuit that would clean up its about 21,000 customers, depending on which circuit it is. Our standards for clearances right now is on fast growing at 15 ft. Slow growing 10 ft. And that is from center line of the electrical facility. So if it's a three page with three wires is to center wire, and if it's a single phase, and it's just that single phase some of the factors that we have to take in on it is we do trim based upon the species and tammany year and this is due to restrictions on the oak will and the bird habitat on the bird habitat that that's a no go. There's nothing we can do on that on oak will as a state and we do have trained Arbors. Oakwood can be trimmed in the oak we will season as long as the owner gives the permission. And for a couple of the council members. I [9:53:39 AM] appreciate the homeowners meetings that we've had because talking to the homeowners have allowed us to continue to oak will, even during the season and what they do is they have to sterilize equipment. And then they coat the cut as they move from tree to tree to prevent the disease from spreading. So when we do a circuit we started substation will go all the way down the circuit that we once we do it. We're done and we're clear from it. We also respond during the year. Two line views is they have damage in their customer has a tree that comes down or something like that. We still respond to that off, Susan. And as I stated, the three companies that we use are to Ashland Davey in the right. One thing I will say is even during oak Wilton bird habitat. If we're on a circuit that has a portion of that in there, we still trim but we trim around those areas. But the problem is if we had to demobilize and re mobilized to go back in so adds time and adds cost so this just shows some of the time frames that we have on the bird habitat and the oak will so how do we prioritize on the vegetation management and customer tree [9:54:40 AM] trimming? Well, one of the things that we know here in Texas, especially on the western side is the wildfire risk, obviously, from California. We know that that's a high risk for that. Definitely something we look at. We worked with Austin fire department to identify those high risk areas, and then we've worked well, so with the council members in those areas to try to get there and get those cleaned up so that's the one the other one that we can trade on its underperformance circuits. So which circuits have the most outages for customers, because it comes down to reliability, so we tried to look at the circuit total that has the most outages, but we also have some circuits, which has a highly dense area of vegetation with customer tree that we need to trim, so the whole circuit might not need it. But that section does so we also look at that. Then we also based upon the last time that vegetation vegetation cycle was done on that circuit itself. So this is an example of prior to 2019, and this is tico seven. Which was a high risk area that we went out based upon the customer or customer's complaints on it, and [9:55:42 AM] it's also a wild power area and you can see after 2021. I didn't know there was a fence down there until we saw the vegetation trimmed out of there, so that's the difference. Vegetation management could do inside of an area. So for 2022 we trimmed 21 circuits fully. The 62 is how many circuits since we implemented the standard at 15 10 back in 2019 or trimmed to that standard. Keep in mind. We were still doing vegetation management trimming. It just wasn't that standard. And with the budget and that cut cycle we just couldn't stay up with it. But there was still vegetation management going on. We did 149 miles last year of trimming and that was about 40 to 45 crews, depending the budget allows us first half 60. But is I presented to the council before in this this committee before the labor shortages within the area is one of the things that's driving that now we'll tell you one of the things I've got my bed fish management, manager [9:56:42 AM] doing is we're looking at the funds we have not spent. Doing another contract with six other vegetation companies other than the three that we're using to take can't provide them to utilize those funds to bring in that additional 20, which is the bullet on 2023. That way, we can continue to get in front of the cycle that we've got listed. So for 2023, we've got 44 circuits plan which is 218, miles, the indigenous 40 to 45 or contracting, non indigenous that we have now and then the additional 20 that we're going to bring in so I know a lot of stuff came down about the notification process and how does it work in customer can refuse? Well, a customer can refuse, but we're still going to cut it. But the problem is, it's a long cycle to go through this the tree forest that was put together created this notification process, which is labors for my team, but it works . So we sent out letters to the homeowners association to the homeowners. We plan each section so we actually have an arborist [9:57:43 AM] walked the section down and as you're walking down, he's hanging door cards and then that twenties, making annotations on what the trim is for the crews to come in later. Let's say that Elton gets door card, he says. I don't want you trim my tree. Elton calls up Austin energy 311 or the site and the arborist will actually come out to talk to potentially could take you out in the yard. Use a laser pointer and say, hey, these are limbs that we're going to cut. We're not going to hack your tree up this. This is what we're gonna do. Welcome thinks about it. And he says, well, I still don't want it cut, so I call up and say, do not cut my tree. At that time we send a certified letter saying we have the right to cut the vegetation out. It's your customer tree. We have the right to maintain it. We will be doing the trim. So it does go through the process, but that could take six months on that cycle to get through that. That's why we kind of walked down a year ahead of time on the planning and then execute year later so we can go through the process. I will tell you, the people that complain about it about 40. The ones that actually make it come out. About 20% last [9:58:45 AM] year. I think I was at four letters out, saying we were going to cut it. So the I think the communication that we've had over the last year has been very successful on a lot of these home owners and homeowners associations. And with that, I'll turn it over to the vice president. Technology and data. Greg Blake. Thank you. Good morning, madam chair, vice chair and committee members. I'm Greg flee vice president, technology and data at Austin energy. I'm here to present on the technology and data aspects of the adage, map and related technologies. Customers come to the average map seeking answers to two questions. Does my utility know that my power is off? And when will my power be restored? And this is the purpose of the outage map. The two main systems involved the edge map or Australian slide. The first is the kubra storm center outage map system, and the second is our Schneider electric. Advanced distribution management system, or a D. M S, which is used for distribution, [9:59:46 AM] grid monitoring and control. Cooper applications cloud based and it's updated every 10 minutes for the file containing all confirmed and unconfirmed outages. Known to the vms system, cooper is in effect at the display system. For the data in a D. M S. The information is viewable by customers on a desktop or laptop would browser or as well via a mobile browser. A few additional insights that help to understand how the map functions for larger outages. Cooper has logic in place to place the icon close to the middle of that area. We do not show outages at an individual house level on the map for security reasons. Customers may be part of a nested outage when a larger issue is fixed, but a different issue closer to the home. Still causes an outage for that home. While the estimated time of restoration or et are normally appears for an outage during blue sky days. E T. R S are suspended during storm mode. So they do not appear on the map. In the past, we represented [10:00:47 AM] the actual area covered by large outages as polygons, but we have removed these based on customer feedback. We hide the legend by default, as obscures other features such as the navigation buttons and the ability to toggle between English and Spanish. Lastly during the following the 2021 winter storm , we made several improvements as a result of customer feedback. It was captured the after action report. Staff has completed all identified actions. Yourself reporting can happen via several channels. First channel is a call to our utility call center or the 311, which is supplemented by our automated response system and our call overflow system. Allergies reported in this way are entered directly into our a T M S system and show up in our system as an unconfirmed outage. Customers can also report their added via cooper's allergy reporting in status system, which is linked to the adage map. Or via text to cooper's [10:01:48 AM] notify system. In either case, the customer addresses obtained be a call to our customer care and billing system where C C N B and the adage is then logged in a D. M S is unconfirmed outage. Lastly customers can report analogy the button on the 311 mobile app. Which then redirects them to the cooper adage reporting and status system. A customer can contain can obtain the status for their specific address by entering their account number of phone number as well as their zip code on the website or by texting stat. The mobile phone cooper again that leverages the C. C. N B system to find the address. And then queries the adm S system to get the latest outage information for that address. The information is then presented to the customer. The first issue with the cooper platform is that there's an internal thread count limit that we hit that inhibited the effective execution of data gathering and data presentation processes. We are working with kubra. On a solution to this issue. The second issue we had was a time out window for calls [10:02:48 AM] to C, C and B and a D. M S being too short at 4.5 seconds. The vendor is providing a fix for this and the next maintenance release of the software at the end of March. Fixed will extend the time out to 30 seconds. The majority of the failed calls. We're taking 5 to 10 seconds. And our worst case with hundreds of phone numbers associated to a single address. Takes less than 30 seconds, so it's upstate update should address our problem. The third issue associated with the eligible porting concerns the inbound quota parameter, which allows only a certain number of customers to send allergy information to us at one time. We roughly tripled the size of the inbound quarter parameter, which should be adequate to handle the next surge. Lastly I'd like to close by noting that cooper is the leading provider of outage, map and notification software and used by all the utilities that you see on the slide, including the Texas utilities, CPS encore E. P and Austin energy. It is not a perfect piece of software as I've explained, but it is the [10:03:48 AM] best available commercial product. With that I will turn the presentation over to Lisa martin to cover mutual aid. Good morning chair, vice chair and committee members. My name is Lisa martin. And I'm, the vice president of electric system, engineering and technical services and Austin energy's emergency management function falls under my workgroup. Mutual aid is a very important aspect of emergency storm response, and that's my focus for you today. Mutual aid is exactly what it sounds like it's utilities and companies helping each other in times of need. And mutual aid provides the process and the structure for coordinating the resources and the equipment needed across multiple entities . It's intentionally flexible and scalable. And for decades, us energy has provided support to fellow utilities. Most recently we sent cruise to Florida following hurricane Ian . And several years ago we sent crews and personnel to Puerto Rico under several different waves to support the ongoing [10:04:49 AM] restoration efforts after hurricane Maria but we also keep our crews closer to home as well . And after 2021 hurricane Nicholas, we sent crews to Houston and then in 2020 after hurricane Hanna, we sent cruise down to the Rio grande valley. However it's important to note that Austin energy does not often find itself in need of mutual aid support. But that was certainly not the case with winter storm morrow. So there are several different types of mutual aid. I talked about utilities helping each other. We often established those through pre established frameworks and contracts that are set up through industry groups and Austin energy as a member of many public power industry groups that allow us to take part in the mutual aid framework. We had support from new braunfels utilities, centerpoint energy in Houston and CPS energy in San Antonio. There are also independent companies that have qualified personnel and equipment who are able to respond to storms [10:05:50 AM] directly. One benefit of these types of companies is that they don't have a home utility or an electric system to go take care of themselves so they can respond quickly, although sometimes they have a fair fairly far distances to travel when they're going from one storm to another. So they can stick around through the end of restoration and you'll see that that happened here as well. The contract through companies that I'm speaking about that we worked with include renegade Burt electric mp technologies and tempest energy, which brings in a lot of different companies through subcontracting. In total , we welcomed 445 additional distribution personnel to support the restoration efforts and augment the Austin energy efforts and existing contracts. And then, but safety is a major priority top priority for us, and you can't just send mutual aid crews out into the system to an unfamiliar system without an Austin energy support personnel . We refer to that person as a bird dog. And that person is the [10:06:52 AM] single point of contact in constant communication with us in energies, dispatch and control center and also overseeing the crews in the field. And then one major consideration that we had to take into into account is that when you bring on this many amount of mutual aid crews, you have to have space for the daily briefings to stage their heavy equipment and to take care of your other logistical needs, and at some point we maxed out our existing service centers. And so we had to stand up a temporary additional service center to allow for this much mutual aid on our system. And so we secured that in working with text dot who provided a facility for mutual aid staging grounds. And I want to leave you with this timeline of mutual aid. The important takeaway is that we requested mutual aid right away and we had crews supporting our system on the first day before the storm was even over. Some entities had to finish working up, restoration on their own home utilities before they could join us, and then we continue to bring on crews. You're seeing several waves during the first [10:07:54 AM] phase of restoration. And then when the weather came on February, 7th, some of the utility crews had to go back home to take care of their own systems, and we increased our contract capacity personnel to augment and replace those who had to leave. And then the crews stayed until our final day of storm restoration for all the customers who were able to safely receive power. So we are in great appreciation and have a lot of gratitude to the men and women who supported Austin energy during winter storm Mara restoration working 16 hour days , these additional personnel put in an additional 43,000 hours. In addition to what Austin energy crews provided, and they did so with zero reportable incidents. Which is a testament to Austin, energy, safety, culture and the safety culture of the company, where these customers were these employees come from, it really speaks to the collaboration between Austin energy field crews, our dispatch [10:08:54 AM] center and our safety team, and we're very grateful that they were all able to go home to their families and to their home utilities and companies without any injury. And we certainly learned a lot from receiving this much mutual aid. And so we're going to take those lessons learned and incorporate them into regular practice through our after action activities. And so, speaking of which I wanted to spend a few moments talking about our after action process. So we have an in house team called corporate quality services, and they're dedicated to fostering a culture of continuous improvement and enhancing organizational effectiveness, their experts and things like value stream mapping , root cause analysis and quality frameworks, and they worked throughout the utility with business units to develop tools and processes to improve the quality of our work for the community of Austin and the customers of Austin energy. And I know that members of this committee are very interested in the outcome of our after action work, and that's wonderful, but I want to emphasize that even if [10:09:55 AM] not a single person outside of Austin energy wanted to review the results of our experts. We would be doing it anyway, because we are a learning organization focused on continuous improvement through a thorough process based on data driven efforts. So the after action review that I'm speaking about will focus on Austin energy's response to winter storm Ara storm restoration. The intent will be threefold to understand Austin energy's actions as they relate to the winter storm event. To identify the factors that contributed to any process breakdowns and to identify effective strategies for responding to similar incidents in the future, and so whilst in energy will be doing its own after action report. We will also be collaborating and coordinating with the city on the overall after action review there as well. Synergy is best poised to review the technical and operational aspects of its activities and to implement and continuous improvement efforts, and this is typical procedure following any incident command [10:10:56 AM] activation. We know that we will at least begin with these seven key focus areas that you see on the screen, but I anticipate that additional response areas in a work groups will be included as the process takes place. So there's a five step approach to our after action review. We're going to plan discover analyze, improve and report during that effort. We're going to identify what went well and what didn't go well will address critical questions and identify root causes of major findings will also pull out the 2021 winter storm after action report and implementation efforts and compare and contrast that to the winter storm are a events. We're currently in the discovery phase of this activity and when we get to stage four, which is improved, will create an implementation plan that will be based on the results of our findings. And then following the publication of the report will follow that implementation plan to completion. But as you heard from general manager sergeant [10:11:57 AM] and many of my colleagues here today, we don't have to wait until the report comes out to take action and there are many things that we've already done and will continue to do. The purpose of this effort is really to provide the thorough process for us to determine what to start with a stop and what to continue doing as we see more efforts or activities such as, storm response events. With long duration outages. And so chair pool. Thank you. For giving us the time that concludes our presentation. Alternate back to you. That's great. Thanks so much. I want to thank Austin energy stuff are really thorough review for us. This was a good update. We have time now for a round of questions and colleagues, I'd like to, suggestions were doing well time wise for the one round. I propose we go to about 10 30 for questions today. Any additional questions? Of course, that the diocese may have can be sent directly to general manager sergeant and posted to the message board. And I would like [10:12:58 AM] to say a as we complete our work today in the oversight committee , mayor and city manager and colleagues I'd like to propose that we had a follow up briefing. To the April 11 work sessions so we can review the roles other departments played during the winter storm. And if that date doesn't work, we can do a special called meeting around that time as well. Thank you so much. We'll start with the round with council member Alison alter. Thank you before I start with my questions. I just want to say there's no way that we can ask sufficient questions in 15 minutes. That's like less than one minute per council member, so I don't think that's realistic schedule for us this morning. I understand you're trying to keep us on time, but our community is really adding demanding. Transparency our staff prepared mom for this. This is an important opportunity for us to ask questions. We had editorial and the statesman this [10:13:59 AM] weekend. That really underscored the importance of that transparency. Our staff started today by highlighting the importance of our oversight. Function so, I will just sort of say that I suspect we're going to need way more than beyond. 10 30. I really appreciate that concern and I certainly share it. If this were the only thing we were doing today, then we may be able to spend more time but as you know, we have a pretty full, portfolio of work and again. This will not be the only time that we will be presenting questions. I had asked the Austin energy staff to be able to respond to questions that may be asked here today. They may not be able to answer all of the questions which, why I'm suggesting that additional questions we put up to the message board. This will be a continued long conversation, and I think we should go ahead and jump in now, because so that we don't spend more time just talking about and I will ask my questions. Make my make comment, [10:15:01 AM] so one of the things that we have talked a lot about as we move through our disaster. After action reports and are planning is not to plan for the last disaster. And so I would implore you to consider wildfire and the aftermath for other utilities in those wildfire situations as one that could be very real. For Austin. You know, maybe adding California site. Speaking with pg and E in their preparations and what they do in the aftermath of wildfire, I think would be really important for us , to consider. I want to understand for the after action report to what extent will any outside independent consultants be involved in that process? So right now, our plan is to handle it internally with us within Austin energy, but it's with work group that is independent [10:16:03 AM] of the emergency management function, so they serve as a third party. Okay thank you. City manager. This is something that I'm gonna want to, I think with you on whether there's value of having some sort of independent look at Austin energy, whether it's for this particular incident or something else there. Austin energy maybe working great, but I think that there was a lot of benefit to the recent evaluation that we got from Austin water. We're still waiting on the implementation for that. But I do think that we need, to seriously consider that want to obviously let some of this after action process move forward, but I think that's something that we will need to talk about. In due time. Just two quick comments one is, when we were talking about the briefing yesterday, I asked general manager sergeant to think about. Peer review if you will of the utility, and so she said, she put that on her list. The only thing I want to correct on the record, this is [10:17:06 AM] this shouldn't be. You know, we're very fond of departments taking responsibility for their specific assignments, but this is about apart whole issue. And this actor after action review will be a whole not just apart, and I know that the emergency operations center does employ consultants to help us through that kind of review, but we'll be happy to visit with you and get further clarification. Thank you and the other thing that I want to go back to as we've been here before. When we discuss Yuri. We had an ice storm right before air cots outage in my district. I had 40% of the power out at one point in time. Okay everything that played out this past storm played out in my district that weekend. We talked at nauseum about the challenges with the outage map. The same problems happened and we were told but they were going to be fixed and so we really need to understand. How we are either [10:18:09 AM] fixing the map or changing how are communicating to our public how the map is used in a storm situation? People were combining the map with the text that they were getting and saying this is a system that should function together and it didn't function together. They got no notifications through that system about when their power was going to be back on, even though they assumed because this is 2023 that they would get that . Feedback and it didn't happen and so something you know, you have to put your shoes in the person who has no power and figure out what it is that they need. When they don't have power. They can't go there, not on social media. They're not watching TV. What where is it that they're getting their information and the key places through those texts? From you. And even if you're saying this is a big storm, and it's going to take awhile, they need to know that so they can plan. So one of the things that I'm going to be looking at very carefully [10:19:09 AM] is that outage map? Again but I know that I asked all of these questions before and was told it was fixed and so I'm going to really need to see that that movement. I have a lot more questions, which I posted to the message board and I hope that I will, get answers to those. Thank you. Thank you. Council member alter council member Fuentes. Did you have any questions? Would you like to go next? And after you? I'll take them. The vice chair, Kelly. Thank you. Thank you. Chair. I just want to echo what Catherine Walter just shared about the timing. When I asked earlier about how much time do we have on this particular topic? I didn't realize only have 15 minutes. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with the amount of time that we have to fully engage Austin energy. A lot of people in the community have been asking us. How are we holding Austin energy accountable. I have to share like this is part of the accountability as having these public forums. These dialogues, conversation about what happened . What can we do differently and how can we improve our response [10:20:09 AM] people have asked. About personnel changes and also energy and I want to say publicly we cannot make direct personnel changes that Austin energy our authority as counsel lies with the city manager. We voted last week made a change with our city manager. And so today's conversation is about how do we have a transparent open process about the issues were over 100,000 families in our city were without power for days. And the total lack of communication as part of that, so my questions will be focused on communications director sergeant, you know, I want to first start with you and ask you if you can share with us. You know, since you, where our leader of Austin energy during the last winter storm and then during this power outage, what are some lessons that we learned from the winter storm? Yuri and what can we be doing differently? In other words? Can you illustrate where we failed [10:21:10 AM] with our communications and actions that were taken during this crisis to improve our response? As well as your thoughts and what can we do? Moving forward? Thank you, council member. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, one of the areas that we are already starting and looking at is communications. And as as we know that how we communicate with our customers during these events is just as important as the work that we're doing to restore service and so one area that we have identified is using our ability to send text messaging and emails. That we should begin that earlier and even if we don't have information about the exact time of restoration, but acknowledgement and what the certain what the situation is at the at that time that we can relate to them, so obviously being able to start those communications much earlier, and [10:22:11 AM] as we work with our peer utilities, we're going to glean information about how they do that so that we can do it better. Thank you, director. I guess just to dig down a little bit deeper, who at Austin energy is deciding the communication because I know you mentioned that there within Austin energy . You also have your own communications command operation. So during the winter storm who exactly is making the decisions on sending a text message or sending and a newsletter email update to the customer who's in charge of that? We have our director of communications, and her and her team work on that in coal in concert with our incident, commander, and, so we're getting information through the report out that we have from all of our section chiefs. They're gathering that information. And then we're working together and then we coordinate. Communications with the cities, communications and public information office. And of course through if the E O. C is [10:23:12 AM] activated through the E O. C as well. So it sounds. So my hearing this correctly. Austin energy you see there is a communications director who is drafting the communications at your direction. I imagine that your direction they have information. They don't have to wait for my direction to, draft communications. They're working on that simultaneously. So awesome energy is leading the communications and then you coordinate with our public information office and with our emergency management division. With communications with regard to what we are controlling in the situation. Okay so that includes from preparing the communities if we know there's a winter storm advisory, you know, severe winter storm advisory. Is it Austin energy's responsibility to then ensure that that information is getting out to the community, or is that an emergency management responsibility? Well from a [10:24:12 AM] Jackie. Let me answer that. Thank you. This communication that failure that took place here just a few weeks ago. That's a city responsibility. That's the organization's responsibility. And there is no difference between Austin energy and the city of Austin. We are the city of Boston. There's I mean, there's no distinction. There's not a like you know, the austerity does its own stuff. And then we do our own stuff. The I O this click. Clearly there was a lack of connecting those dots. And making sure that we were appropriately communicating to the right people at the right time. In an expeditious manner. And that is part of what we're gonna have to do is part of the after action review to make sure that we're not two separate entities trying to figure this out. It's going to be one entity. We're gonna have the part that the parts going to understand the whole the whole is gonna understand the part and that's the only way you could work in an emergency situation and do it effectively. Well, thank you for that city manager and I agree with you, I guess. You highlight are you underscore? The challenge that I have as a policy maker is that I [10:25:14 AM] , as a city council member cannot communicate to my community who exactly is in charge of communications. And if we say it's the city of Austin, then I want to make sure to say okay, this person at the city of Boston is the one who's making those calls in the industry when you have a disaster. There is a unified command. And there is one central communication point. That's the only way and that would be at the emergency operations center. And so, so that's part of what our after action review needs to determine. Because in the end, I think when you buy for Kate or fragment how you organized what it can do is lead to missteps. And council member. What we want to do is be responsive to you so you can be responsive to your constituents. We want to hear from you where we maybe are missing the boat where we can get back to them and provide them the information they need, and that's what we're going to have to go through as part of the work that Lisa says she's going to do. I know what that's [10:26:15 AM] something that is going to do, and so we can be able to connect those dots and give you something. That's a complete report and so that we can do better. Thank you. Cinnamon drew. I guess my question to you today is then is the point of this conversation here to surface. The questions that we've been hearing for our community, and then the more detailed answers will come during a after action. Briefing the questions you're asking absolutely appropriate that we need to hear that. And so that we can put that into our mental model or the kind of our thought process. So we addressed not just your questions, but be complete so that when you get the report when you get the information from us not only addresses your questions, but also gives you some level of security that we're going to handle something differently next time, so I think these questions are absolutely critical. Well thank you. And then you know as something that I'd like to see that after action briefing is that more? The multi agency departmental participation. I have many questions for emergency management division for our [10:27:16 AM] resilience officer division. And, of course, our communications division. Thank you. And that is, in fact what? What we will be doing for sure. I think we all share that desire. I want to check with my vice chair. Kelly said that you didn't have any questions for today. But you have changed your mind. I just wanted to say first of all, thank you very much Austin energy for being here in terms city manager for being here as well. I did post my questions. There's a lot. There's about 20 of them, so I apologize in advance. But I do want to recognize that while we have limited time today colleagues we do have methods to address the accountability and transparency online through the message board, and so, I think that's a great place to go, and there are already great questions from other colleagues there as well. So thank you. Thank you so much. Council member Calais mayor pro tem Ellis. Thank you. I know we're getting close on time here, so I appreciate us trying to work through this expeditiously. Some of the thoughts that I've had were all also already asked by [10:28:17 AM] some of my colleagues. So I'll switch to the topic of burying lines. I know that the conversation around doing that, in mass across the entire service area is something that's likely going to be coming with a high price tag. I'm more curious about new neighborhoods or private residences that may look at doing construction on their own. What's the likelihood that we could move toward incentivizing? Or, you know, dictating that people need to be creating this infrastructure and more Brazilian way moving forward. Can you address that topic a little bit? I will just mention that that would be up to the developer but typically what we see in any new subdivision developments. They are all under grounding as those new developments come online. It's typically the central areas of the already developed neighborhoods that would be over ground, but I'm not aware of new developments coming that are not under grounding. So people are [10:29:18 AM] just already doing it because it seems like for aesthetics, mostly. Well it also keeps the energy on when you don't have trees bumping into the line so much. I appreciate that, and I'm still curious about the conversation. It was actually a council member of L. A talked about the you know, citywide or service area wide. Bearing of lines, and I'm still curious about that. But I think there are folks out there that want to be proactive with what power they have right now to help. Help keep their own family safe and warm in the in these icy times as well, so I'll leave it there. But I'm also going to be going to the message board because some of these conversations that others are having or things that I'm also very interested in. Thank you. Mayor. Pro tem. Mayor Watson wasn't going to add, but but I want to follow up on that. We ought to be in contact. And as you look at whoever you're hiring, too look at putting lines underground. We ought to be in contact with the city of Boston transportation at P cap metro text dot the C T rm. A all [10:30:20 AM] of those that are getting ready to take off on all these big infrastructure projects, and we're getting ready to do because disruption, of course, makes a big difference. Cost is a big difference. But as we start all these, the corridor projects project connect you name it if there's an opportunity there to do what we would otherwise think would be a good thing at the same time, and that is very lines when you're making those infrastructure changes. We ought to at least look at that now. In some instances, you're not gonna get bang for your buck. But that's part of what we ought to be looking at is how we create the matrix that will allow us to establish that sort of value. And I'll stop that. Thank you, Mary, council member of Allah. I just reiterate the mayor's comments. Especially I know that the conversation right now, especially with regard to project connect you know, as long as we're gonna cut up the street to do all kinds of things I know we've talked about watershed improvements. We've [10:31:20 AM] talked about waterline improvements, you know, potentially bearing electric lines. It's expensive. It's a huge headache. But again once you open up the street, you might as well do what you need to do. And then you know, capital up so we don't have to tear up the work that we just did. So I just really completely agree with the mayor's comments. Could you just restate to my understanding was that there you're going to essentially get kind of a cost estimate or a plan what it would take for bearing the electric clients? Yes what we're going to do is including our fiscal year 24 budget. Dollars so that we can get a firm to come in and provide a study and analysis of what it would take to do that. And then also, what would the cost impacts to customers be for doing that? Again it's excellent to hear that and I can tell you right now that in conversations with, you know, folks in in my neighborhood in my district. We would be happy to be the Guinea pigs for a pilot project for [10:32:21 AM] Barry glide so. Just in general , there's I think a strong sense that that people do want to see action towards hardening the grid. Thank you very much. Thanks council member of L a. And I would add on that general manager sergeant. When you're talking to the folks who are going to be pulling the information together for us for them to look at the timelines for the various, street disruptions from both project connect and the text stop projects and of course, what our street and bridge folks do here at the city of Austin so they can just kind of overlay during, when the streets already dug up. Council member, Ryan alter. Thank you and a little foreshadowing for y'all talking about this exact issue with regard to the bearing when we're already tearing up the streets are offices working on an item similar to that that that's a component of it, so I hope to be able to work with you and bring that forward is as we go forward . I just have a couple of questions related to the shelter. Aspect and issues. One [10:33:23 AM] is, I know there was at least one shelter that lost power and didn't have the ability to have back up and so they had had to find a different location for those individuals and I, just as we're looking at things want to both understand why there was not you know, 2nd and 3rd backup available, maybe not on site, but if we're having to me if we're having to move people, it would be a lot easier to have a generator or two ready to go as back up to bring to that site. Given that that is a much easier thing to do. I know there are other challenges going on at the time. But as we think about our resilience and sheltering people what type of additional backups we can bring to locations that that lose power whatnot. Let me let me try to address that if you will, but the issue of backup power for emergency shelters. There's something that [10:34:24 AM] we fell short on we just didn't have the prop. We didn't have the proper safeguards in place the either back up or kind of to make sure that we didn't have failure. I think that is going to be part of our report that I know E O. C is working on that will be married with the report that Jackie and her team are doing ah! It I would agree with you. Council member. It doesn't make much sense to have a shelter, something designated as a shelter. And then not have the proper backup so that if in the event the power went out, you would be able to continue to monitor that is a warming center. Of course, we'd listen to Susan Almanza, where she said that I would believe, she said them on top of this center was completely closed. That was a communication issue or what should have been open. But we need to be thoughtful. And, and thorough so that when next time when we do have an event like this, we're able to be kind of a fail safe mode. Yeah and the other thing and I'm not sure if it's this is your purview or emergency management. But I'm [10:35:25 AM] sure we'll all be covered. One question that was frequently brought to our office was where where do we go? Where are the warming centers where are and the information we were given was well, contact part or contact another. You know the libraries to find out what libraries are open or what parks facilities are open. I think we need to have similar to our outage map a map where it shows these are the locations that are open here. They're ours. This is when where you can go and show up because having to call and find out what libraries are open or what parks facilities are open. That's just that's a needless step that people shouldn't have to take, so I know that's not necessarily your issue. But as we talk about this thank you, councilor member alter council member of Alaska's did you have anything you wanted to? Okay and council member qadri. Thank you. Great you know, person foremost, I want to thank you all for your work during the storm, especially the [10:36:26 AM] line workers and I think have seen that video. I believe his name was Matt the sacrifices that they made in the responsibility they had not only did the community but also making sure that they were able to come back home to their families. So I just want to thank you on that, two questions. The first question the gentleman had gotten up. And talked about he had a charger for updates. So you can see through social media. A lot of folks don't use social media. A lot of folks used the radio, so there is the have a way to incorporate radio broadcast to be included in updates provided to the community during a crisis if they don't have Twitter, and I don't know, Facebook and whatnot. We do, and we actually had our team. Did interviews with, multiple radio stations and news channels. And also print materials. Early on that morning of the when the storm [10:37:29 AM] outages started to occur, that was already going on. In that day. We had almost two dozen of those communications and did the radio broadcast, I guess continued during the entirety of the of the storm. The interviews as we were requested for interviews, we participate. We, provided that in from a resource and provided that information, but was there a continuous broadcast throughout the storm that I'm not aware of? And then my other question? And this has been highlighted quite a bit. Could you walk? You know, through the process for a person to request tree trimming services. Near power line, you know? Is it free? What is the estimated time for a for a service request to be completed ? You know, a lot of folks you know, re realized during, you know, the aftermath of the storm didn't I didn't know what to do and what was going on. You know, we've actually got an outstanding vegetation management link on the often energy website that directs the [10:38:30 AM] customers actor what to do on the calling and the vegetation management customer tree trimming is a service provided to the customer of Austin energy from Austin injury. See how they get on there. There's a there's a link that they can either either email or call and report that the vegetation is closed. The inspector will go out. Identify find out if it is encroaching upon it. Well, what we'll do is we'll check and see when the next room cycle is that trump cycles coming up with next 69 months and what is notify the customer that they're into Q for it if it is affecting their line immediately, then that's an immediate notification and the vegetation crew will come out and clean it up. Cool thank you . Council member. Velasquez. Do you have a question? Thank you, madam chair, minus management question so much as a statement . I just want to make sure that we are when we are incorporating , our communication that we are making sure that we're addressing the digital divide and also how we are reaching out to our most vulnerable communities are Spanish speakers [10:39:31 AM] . Our senior citizens when I was a kid, the holy power plant used to blow up pretty often and we had a radio designated to us to let us know that we can tune into that. To check on that. I don't know if that's something I'm not saying. We offer everybody a radio, but most people have access to a radio now, so figuring out a way that we can have maybe emergency messaging on on radio and both in Spanish and in English. Thank you. Thank you. I've put my questions on the message boards so I won't take the time here to recite them. City manager Garza. Did you have anything else you wanted to say to and then I'll give the mayor an opportunity to close this out. No, I think the questions we received today or we're gonna be very helpful as we frame the issues that will be evaluated in terms of how we can do better. I only and, so I just want to say that we'll continue to look forward to the discussion with council and have you provide us additional input or insights. That will be helpful so that next time should. Hopefully it doesn't happen again anytime soon, but when it happens again. We're [10:40:33 AM] better prepared for what needs to get done. So thank you. Council member alter thank you. I wanted to ask about funding and how much the recovery is going to cost. I don't know if you have any estimates at this time, and I don't know if it would be you or the city manager who could speak to what we can expect in terms of financial assistance. From the state and federal disaster declarations that when the when there was a disaster declaration, our finance department immediately went into mode of capturing all the costs that we've expended not just at the electric utility, but all the different departments that participated. In fact, Austin resource recovery continues to do the some of the heavy lifting right now because of the Turkey in tremendous tree damage that's been done. We're tabulating all that and what we intend to do is at the proper time. Submit that to the agencies that review that for some reimbursement through the mayor's office, it still would be helpful for us to get a view into what will be [10:41:34 AM] reimbursable and what won't be reimbursable. You know, folks are asking, you know whether we can push off the rate hike increases in in March, and it's a little bit hard to respond. I'm not I'm not advocating that, but I mean, it's hard to respond to that when we don't have a sense of the costs that are involved here. You know that. That we're weighing a lot of different things. If we were to consider that. I think that's because you make it sound like it's something that we ought to be able to do like that, and one of the things that we've had to do is reach out to other entities as you might imagine. Blue bottle electric co op analysis, electrical whole lot of different entities have to get the information in and then it has to be above a certain number so that that's all. If your request is be sure we're doing all of that. My response is we are doing all of that. And as soon as we have those numbers, of course, we're going to be reactive to that. But as [10:42:36 AM] of just a few days ago, we had not exceeded the amount and so we were contacting others may then be opportunities for our community. My the next part of my question was it seems like we could be providing a little bit more information to the community about whether there are resources to say get their fridge contents paid for or if their businesses lost. You're right. That's a different question than what you were asking. So I mean, I'm just there. There's both you know what? What are we on the hook for? And how do we understand that? But then there's also this question of can we provide better information to the community for those folks? For him and not refrigerator loss is a big deal or they lost days of their business. What kind of resources and that may also help getting up to that threshold, if that needs to be part of that it otherwise qualifies to your point. That's why I started the way I started earlier today. And I'll just say it. And of course, everybody's in agreement. I know [10:43:37 AM] I've got unanimity at least up here. The communications. Was horrendous. The general manager will tell when she was answering one of the questions of counselor Fuentes about all the different people that are involved. Sadly we were on the telephone at. I think I got the phone call from the then city manager at about 10 till 10 to add the general manager so that we could talk about an announcement that was going to come out. And while we were on the telephone at about 10 03 the press release went out. While we were actually trying to talk about the press release, because the right hand had no clue what the left hand was doing, so the point being the after communication is also a very important part, and that's why I've said that what I would like to see us do is in the next 45 days. Every new communications [10:44:38 AM] plan in place, and then within another 15 to 25 days actually do a mock disaster. So that we are doing the kinds of things council member alter that you're calling for because we're way I don't know how other cities do it, but oh, my goodness. I hope we're not leading the pack. So thank you. Thank you, mayor. Alright I think we will seeing no additional questions. We will adjourn this meeting at 10 45 am and remember, we will have the after action report coming our way, and we'll have time to review and assess it and ask questions and then we will have a discussion publicly with additional questions. It will be multi departmental across departmental all of this city as a whole having this conversation with the dais. Mayor I think we're done with the oversight committee would suggest unless [10:45:38 AM] there's objection is that we recess until 11 o'clock so that everybody can get a cup of coffee or whatever else they might want to do. We will convene immediately at 11 o'clock so that you will know my plan would be that we after we call the work session to order the first thing we will do is have the briefing, which is the presentation of the project assessment report for the 200 east Riverside pud. Then we will take up the pre selected agenda items in this order of 34 44 61. There is no executive session today. We will have an executive session on Thursday. But there's not one today so once those are completed and what I would ask is because we are getting to this at 11 o'clock, but I want to add ask is that so? We can stay somewhat on time. We have the briefing, we give time for the briefing and any questions that might be there. But then let's in our heads have say no [10:46:41 AM] more than 30 minutes per agenda item so that we don't eat up too much of the rest of the day. Yes, council member. Thank you for the recognition. I just wanna let you know that we have a special guest from district six here today. I will be presenting a proclamation on our break outside. They've actually brought the barbecue pit with samples. And they'll have peach tea, pork belly, smoked scallop potatoes and helping you saw for us to try. So if you all would like to join me out there during our recess, I'll be out there in just a couple of minutes, but we will be back by 11. Thank you all. A move. We adjourn.