Austin Water Oversight Committee (AWOC) meeting Transcript – 5/9/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/9/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/9/2024 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. [1:35:23 PM] good afternoon, everybody. I'm Leslie pool, chair of the Austin water oversight committee. Today is Thursday, may 9th, 2024. The time is 1:35 P.M. I'll convene this meeting and we are here in city hall. We have a quorum of our four member committee with us today. The two altars and me. The mayor is not able to join us today. Welcome, everyone. We'll kick off with our public communication. We have three folks signed up. Is Gus Pena here? I did not see him. All right, Mr. Gutierrez, Adrian Gutierrez, you are next. You will have three minutes, sir. You can come to the podium right here, and that microphone should be on. And then when Mr. Gutierrez is done, James hill o'brien. Mr. Gutierrez, welcome. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today, I'm here primarily to speak to business interests. I am a [1:36:24 PM] business interests. I am a longtime Austin resident, 1993 I moved here, I own a house in district seven. I worked in district three. This is a work related issue, though, and I related to property on in district three at 900 Ed Bluestein, reason I'm coming to you guys is because we've, we had a water leak, situation going all the way back to, June of 2022 and, and, leaked over 5 million gallons of water. It was a big deal. It was an underwater. Underwater leak. And we took us some time to find it. We worked on it, got it fixed, and much to my surprise, once we got it fixed, I was told by the utility company, go ahead and submit, work. The work order and stuff that we got it fixed and stuff, and we'd get some kind of build mitigation. That turned out to be not the case with the commercial accounts. So that's when we discovered that commercial accounts don't qualify for this kind of build mitigation, we were prompted then by, Laura Schneider, who was a through through Pio actually, council member Pio got us in contact with Laura Snyder [1:37:25 PM] us in contact with Laura Snyder and put us through the process of having hearings and stuff that we discovered through the hearing process that it's a council. It's a council decision. And although they understood what our circumstances were, that there was a decision made by this council at some point years prior that no longer allowed commercial accounts, any kind of build mitigation. When it came to this, residents are allowed, of course, I've had it done at my own house and stuff, but a bill like this one, $32,000. We ended up in a payment payment plan system and we're almost paid up with that at this point. But my main issue in coming up here before you guys is because also to discuss the difficulties and bring up the difficulties in terms of access, just to the council members. Over the past two years, I've had, limited degrees of success in terms of reaching out to council members, having been a resident of Austin for 30 years, I don't think I've ever had this much difficulty in terms of reaching council members. I've had conversations with, council member alter's office, of course. Sara. Velasquez office, even contact [1:38:25 PM] Velasquez office, even contact with mayor's office, as well as city manager. But there's various other council members that have just not given us the time of day. And it's disappointing, but really, why I'm here is to bring up this issue, bring it to y'all's attention, and hopefully there can be some kind of consideration in terms of addressing some of these issues with the commercial accounts versus, residential accounts in terms of remediation of the bill, I don't know if that's anywhere on y'all's radar or something to consider, but I mean, I'm here to ask for that and see if there's anything we can do as well as highlight the difficulties. And I will continue as I have over the past two years, trying to get trying to get to these meetings in person meetings and or phone calls, even from various council members, so that's really my statement. I know I have three minutes and stuff. I don't have much more to add, but these are my main issues, and I'd like to hopefully get you guys to consider reconsider your position on the commercial accounts. >> Thank you, Mr. Gutierrez. >> Thank you, Mr. O'brien. >> You are next. You have three [1:39:26 PM] >> You are next. You have three minutes. >> Greetings, guys. I appreciate your service, I am here to, I believe, address water oversight . I'm not exactly sure. What all falls underneath consideration here? But I guess, like, I feel pretty nervous about this because this is a pretty complex topic, and, three minutes really is not suffice to address, so txdot is, has proposed an expansion of I-35, and one of those aspects is critical to the project is to, control stormwater of nearly 300 acres, to be diverted into the Colorado river, and all the discussions [1:40:28 PM] river, and all the discussions I've had with, staff city of Austin staff, with various, individuals at federal and state levels to navigate this situation, it seems to be that there is, not a lot of pushback or levers or mechanisms for creating an accountability and particular ecological justice, so one of the biggest issues is with regard to dissolved oxygen level. One of the strategies that is often stated, here is, with stormwater is daylighting, a 22 foot diameter tunnel going beneath Cesar Chavez down to the Colorado river, does not offer a lot of opportunity for oxygen to enter into that water, I'm sure everyone here is aware of the condition of town lake and the [1:41:29 PM] condition of town lake and the Colorado river, and the continued degradation of that ecosystem, whether it's the algae, lack of other flora and fauna. And so I know there's some permits in particular, what's called nationwide permit seven, which is the us army corps of engineers, which is about engineering an outfall into the Colorado river, as far as I presented to environmental commission and watershed protection, there's not a lot of, clarity on what txdot plans to do. There, in terms of mitigating, true environmental damage that will occur if this project moves forward as it has been drafted, and I recognize and will acknowledge the complexities of a project of this scale and the financial backing seems to all push to it needs to occur now. And, and I really don't think that that is, [1:42:35 PM] really don't think that that is, the solution, as it's being drafted now and I know it's been two decades plus of attempting to navigate this, this issue, so I'd really like some, some more consideration on what that outfall looks like and how we can. Thank you. >> Mr. O'brian. Your time is up. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here, colleagues. Our next item is approval of minutes, do I have a motion from council member Ryan alter to approve, second from councilmember Allison alter. Any changes or corrections hearing? None, and no objection. The minutes are approved for February eight, 2024. Regular meeting of the Austin water oversight committee. We'll move now to our briefings and invite our director up to make her report on innovations, events and awards and upcoming recommendations for council action. Director roalson, welcome. Good to see you today. >> Good afternoon, council members. Mayor pro tem, thank you for being here today, I'd like to provide you some updates on activities at Austin water, [1:43:37 PM] on activities at Austin water, beyond the specific items we'll be discussing on the agenda today, last week, city council adopted the updated water conservation and drought contingency plans. As we discussed then, our communities commitment to water conservation is foundational to everything we do in near and long term, water resources planning. Our work with the water forward task force over the next several months will months will include in-depth discussions on how to continue to make meaningful investments in conservation and water efficiency. The rain last week did give us a little bump in storage in the Lakes, putting us at about the same level we were going into last summer, that's good news. But at 48% full, we remain in a very serious drought. Also, last week we posted the 2023 water quality report to our web page, and notifications are going out now to all of our customers, including mayor and council. The water quality report includes [1:44:37 PM] water quality report includes our consumer confidence report, which is required by EPA to be issued annually. That goes far beyond what's required to provide our customers comprehensive information about the quality of our drinking water, including details on how we consistently meet or surpass regulatory requirements. In industry news, there are new EPA regulations related to a group of synthetic chemicals collectively known as pfas. Pfas are often referred to as forever chemicals and have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s. Under a rule called ucmr five, which stands for unregulated contaminant monitoring rule five. EPA requires drinking water providers like Austin water to sample for 29 specific pfas chemicals. EPA will use those results to determine future regulations around pfas. Last month, they finalized regulations for six of these compounds and public water systems must must complete initial monitoring by 2027. And [1:45:37 PM] initial monitoring by 2027. And if these six pfas are found at levels exceeding the regulatory limits, implement solutions to reduce pfas by 2029. Austin is fortunate to draw our water from the highland Lakes, which has had many decades long environmental protections in place, including a ban prohibiting the discharge of pollutants. And so we conducted our first round of quarterly sampling last October and treated tap water from all three water treatment plants was non-detect for the six pfas compounds included in the new regulations. We did have one pfas compound was detected at a low level about a few drops in 20 olympic size swimming pools. To give you an idea of the scale, and that's not, that's not one of the compounds proposed for regulation at this time. And it is one that is commonly found. We've conducted a second quarterly round of water samples and are awaiting test results and verification, and will continue to test [1:46:37 PM] and will continue to test quarterly and report those outcomes to you and to the public, the combined results from four quarters will determine whether we need to implement treatment for pfas. In addition to rules for pfas in drinking water, EPA has designated two widely used pfas compounds pfoa and pfos, as hazardous substances under the comprehensive environmental response, compensation and liability act, also known as superfund. We are tracking what this may mean for wastewater treatment plants and biosolids. EPA has made it clear that they will focus enforcement on manufacturers and users of pfas chemicals and not passive receivers such as water utilities. So more to come on that, last month, Austin water staff attended the Texas water conference, which is the largest regional water and wastewater conference in the country. It's actually more difficult to get an abstract selected for Texas water than for the national conferences. This year's [1:47:38 PM] conferences. This year's conference was held in fort Worth and once again broke records for attendance. Staff from across Austin water, including field personnel, technical staff and executives, attended. We had ten technical presentations and seven different tracks. We hosted a booth in the exhibit hall for the first time. We won first place for type two biosolids in the biosolids beauty contest. Operations staff competed in the operations challenge for the first time in many years. This competition includes events and process control laboratory safety, maintenance, and collections. The Austin water basin bandits placed fourth overall in Texas, qualifying them for the national operations challenge in, New Orleans this October. Trinity o'neil, one of our laboratory services supervisors, was selected by the operations challenge competitors as the Riley B crocker dedicated volunteer. This year, her second in a row. Heather Cooke, Austin water's chief administrative [1:48:40 PM] water's chief administrative officer, received the Arthur Sydney bedell award, which is a very prestigious award acknowledging acknowledging her extraordinary personal service to the water environment association of Texas, we also continue to develop our expertise across the organization in emergency preparedness and planning. Last week, our emergency management team hosted a tabletop exercise that looked at what might happen if we had a communications failure in a scada system. It included mobilizing an incident management team in our department operations center, and several teams in multiple locations out in the field. Our expertise in this area is recognized by our peers across the country. As a recent example , EPA region six is hosting a workshop on emergency drinking water supplies. They reached out to assistant director Ana Brian Borja to provide a case study on our water distribution plan to provide bottled water and bulk water to our community during emergencies. Finally, as you know, we are completing a cost [1:49:41 PM] know, we are completing a cost of service study that will that will result in recommendations for updated rates to be adopted by council as part of our 2025 budget. Over the next six weeks or so, we will be conducting community engagement events and outreach. This outreach includes an open house in every council district and will be supported by Austin water's residential rate advocate. The goal is to gather customer feedback on our goals for balancing affordable Katy with system resiliency, keeping pace with the growing population, and optimizing the water and wastewater systems. A press release with all the details is planned for next week, and so we have a packed agenda for you today. And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you so much. Any questions? Yes, councilmember Allison alter, thank you. >> If we could, get the dates, if you have them for the meetings in our district, we can do that. That would be great. Yeah, and then I will save my questions on, vacancies until we [1:50:41 PM] questions on, vacancies until we have that. >> We have that data in our presentation. >> Great. Thank you. >> I saw the presentation. >> All right, we can move on to the next item, which is walnut creek wastewater treatment plant upgrades and expansion. And it looks like it's Charles solaro am I saying your name? Right? That is correct. >> Charles solaro, system director of engineering services. Welcome. With Austin water and I'm pleased to be here. Thank you, we Austin water is putting forth, six Arca's request for city council actions for the walnut creek wastewater treatment plant, with one being a generational, rca for the expansion of the plant itself to 100 million gallons per day, walnut creek is one of our two regional wastewater treatment plants that treats a little bit more than half of the city, kind of more for the northern part. [1:51:43 PM] of more for the northern part. And then we have the south Austin regional retreats to the south. Next slide, tonight, since the rca is kind of looking at the future, I thought maybe we take a look at, not tonight, but this afternoon, look at kind of the plant, history, the renewal projects that we've completed since the original construction of the plant in the future, improvements in the future, improvements are slated to be constructed by two different contracts, one for the expansion and enhancements, and the other one for the primary clarifiers and flow equalization basins. Next slide. I'll review the project history, the plant actually began in 1977 with the capacity of 18 million gallons per day. And then in 1987, we expanded the plant to 40 million gallons per day. And then two years later, we actually expanded it again to 60 million gallons per day. In 1990, in 2005, about 15 years later, we [1:52:44 PM] 2005, about 15 years later, we increased the capacity of the plant to 75 million gallons per day, which is the capacity as it is today. With the completion of a project called headworks number two. The headworks is the where the influent wastewater comes into the plant in our first step in our wastewater treatment process, as water as a flow increased to the wastewater treatment plant in 2019, we commissioned an operational optimization facility plan to look at the future of walnut creek wastewater treatment plant and to, analyze future alternative treatment enhancements, as well as find out where, where the facilities would go for the 100 mgd expansion, as well as future expansions in the future. As the plant got about 30 years old, Austrian water began some% strategic rehabilitation and renewal projects to continue the reliability of the plant, as well as enhance the treatment [1:53:45 PM] well as enhance the treatment shown are about ten projects that we've done over the last ten years. They're not it's not an exclusive list, but one of the majority of the plant, projects that we've done for renewal in particular in the last ten years, we've actually done about $100 million worth of projects at the plant, I try to represent those in the green boxes as you can see, we basically have touched almost every single part of the process. Treatment of the plant. Next slide, which brings us today to the current projects that we are moving forward with, there are four projects. The primary and phoebe stands for flow equalization basin clarifier is the headworks number one and influent lift station projects continue our strategic renewal and rehab additions of the plant. And the last one there, the fourth one is the expansion of the plant itself, up to 100, 100 million gallons per day, which will also include nutrient removal for both the expansion as well as the existing plant. I mentioned that we wanted to go ahead and [1:54:49 PM] that we wanted to go ahead and do two different construction contracts. Those construction contracts are going to be done. What we're calling construction manager at risk, Seema, the normal, I guess the what we normally do is a design bid build for Austin water, which is kind of shown on the left there, or my left or right. And that's where, in the collaborative delivery on the, on the Seymour project. On the, on on the other side of the screen, the main difference I wanted to point out for there is that on the design bid build, the engineer goes all the way through 100% plans, and then we bid out the project competitive. Lee and the Seymour construction manager at risk. We actually hire the contractor, usually after the engineer finishes the pr and before 30% design is complete, and then the collaborative part starts where the owner, engineer and contractor work together to complete the final plans to 100% and then bid out the project. Next slide. The first project that we did is Seymour is the primary clarifier and flow [1:55:52 PM] primary clarifier and flow equalization basins, we chose this, Seymour method, the contractor zamesnik contractors due to the constructability challenges that we faced with this, on the lower your lower left, there where you can see the clarifiers below, like some beams. Well, that is it's true. It's below ground. It's like being underneath the bridge. Those beams look like a highway. Beams that you would look at. The complexity is that the access to those are skylights. Skylights are five feet, four inches wide and about ten feet eight inches long. And the clarifier is about 120ft long, and you can see the pictures there in the middle on the far right, you can see where I've kind of noted the clarifiers with the little red squares. I've tried to actually depict those graphically and dimensionally. And so we're trying to get a lot of equipment out through those little, those little red dots, you know, someone kind of tended to as you were remodeling your house and [1:56:55 PM] were remodeling your house and you could take everything out and rebuild it and put it back in through your chimney. So that's kind of what we're doing here. So the constructability challenges were were immense in this for this particular project. Hence we chose the Seymour method, during the collaboration phase, as we were completing up through right now, the 60% design, the development findings found several things, one, the constructability challenges that I've just described, one of the one of the effects of that was the project duration increased from 2 to 5 years, we learned that, for wet weather, for when it rains. And we do have an extra flow coming through the wastewater, to the plant. We needed a wet weather bypass to bypass the basins, it's, as I mentioned, it's kind of it's buried and it has a roof on it. And the ventilation is very, is makes it a confined space. So we wanted to be able to complete the work in a, in an unconfined space designation, meaning that we could go down [1:57:56 PM] meaning that we could go down there normally and we wouldn't have to worry about, getting air and all that good stuff for the, for the workers. So we have temporary and permanent ventilation, so that was a rising cost, the materials themselves have risen significantly, even through this whole process. Once we selected the Seymour contractor and we had some additional structural crack repair that we need to do for the basins, just to prepare the basins to maintain their life. And through that, those are some of the key drivers of, of some increasing costs for that project. The other thing that we did do that we did add to the scope of the project. We added three, three particular components. We added a meter vault. I know that probably doesn't mean anything, but between the primary clarifier basin and project, the headworks project and the expansion, they all come. They all end up being in one box for a minute. As the water comes through. I need to direct it to different places. So we're going to build a box now. So it's there for the rest [1:58:58 PM] now. So it's there for the rest of the expansion. So we just kind of moving the construction forward would be an expansion we're going to do with this project instead. The two other ones are minor ones. Some slide Gates that we need, need to do for the headworks to direct the flow. And to coordinate the odor control facilities. We needed to do some demolition on that part. Looks like so the two acres that will be coming to city council, the first one is an amendment to an engineering contract that is just to amend the contract to allow to go to construction phase services. And then the second one for mjc contractors is to amend their existing construction contract with additional authorization. Next slide. The second Seymour project is for consideration is for the plan expansion, we chose the Seymour project on this to have be able to have one contractor handle multiple construction packages. And over there on the right side, you can see the packages that we envisioned right now, the contractor may have a have a [1:59:58 PM] contractor may have a have a different view, but right now, those are the ones that we see. The headworks number one renewal and the influent lift station continue our strategic rehabilitation of the project. The expansion project include the new 25 mgd. We need to bring a line that goes into the plant. We need to increase that as well as the line that leaves the plant that goes to the Colorado river. We need to increase that. We have some treatment conversions. We have to on the existing treatment train. Now we have to convert that for nutrient removal. And we'll change the disinfection to uv. And we need to provide some additional protections of the plant. As I mentioned we have some wet weather flows that we have the temporary bypass for. We'll have a wet weather facility treatment facility there as well as we'll have a flood wall that goes around the whole plant for the new atlas 14 floodplain, the other just things we wanted to Seymour contractor for is that, as you can imagine, we're going to be taking basins on and offline. So we needed to coordinations with the operations staff to how that would work, as well as the tie [2:00:59 PM] would work, as well as the tie ins as we go from the try to go from the new and the old plants for all the different tie ins that we have to do, we have for rca's, for the city council to for review. The first three are all of their engineering contracts. We're removing from design phase, and we're adding construction phase services to their contract. And the fourth one, the last one there is the actual selection of the nwa contractors for the Seymour expansion, for the expansion of the plant. So, I am pleased that we did go to the water and wastewater commission last night. It did pass unanimously. And with that, I'll take any questions. >> Thank you so much, questions, is this the same contractor that we were discussing several months ago? No, no. Okay who is so who is the original contractor, with, the original. When we went out to, I'm assuming you're referencing that [2:02:01 PM] assuming you're referencing that this is we went out to solicitation. This is the first time the city council has seen this rca. They did see it at Warren wastewater commission meeting. The first time we went out was with Mccarthy construction. >> Okay. I do think it came to us. I think it was postponed, but. But we haven't adopted it. Okay. And then the 900, I mean, 900 million is a lot of money. >> It is significant. Yes it's what it cost us, it is, it's when we break it down, it's not quite, you know, it's the, the 25 million gallons per day is about 340 million right now. I also have to convert the whole existing plant. That's another about $250 million. The wall, another $40 million, the outfall, another $40 million. Right. The wet weather facility to protect the Rainey is another $78 million. So when you start breaking it down, the actual true expansion we're doing is only about a third of it, right? The 25 new 25 mgd. But all the [2:03:02 PM] The 25 new 25 mgd. But all the other stuff that we got to do, it's just just keeps adding up. >> And how are we paying for that, we've had, the we've had the walnut creek in the spending plan for significant amount of time, we have coordinated with Austin water finance, Joseph Gonzalez, and we have shown them what we needed to lay out, we even have the, the str expansion where we think it's going to go in the spending plan now. So even for Austin water finance, they see it out there in the future. What they need to make a hold of. So we've have known it's coming for a while and we've have pre-positioned ourselves for them. >> What does that mean for ratepayers? >> I would have to see if Joseph Gonzalez can help me with that question. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. >> Joseph Gonzalez, assistant director of financial services with Austin water. And as Charles mentioned, you know, we've been planning this project for many years. In fact, when I first came to Austin water in 2015, one of my first [2:04:03 PM] 2015, one of my first assignments was to start to model the rate impact of the walnut creek expansion project, you know, from, from a ratepayer perspective, we do expect, you know, in our forecast, we forecasted approximately 30, you know, of rate increases through the forecast period, primarily over the next four years with the significant part of that being related to financing the walnut creek expansion. Does that answer your question? >> So a 30% rate increase over four years, that's our current forecast, yes. >> Okay, and that is happening starting when? >> Well, as as shay mentioned in her opening comments, we are currently undertaking a cost of service study, part of that process involves, you know, public involvement committee, [2:05:04 PM] public involvement committee, which includes representatives from, you know, business, community, environmental community, our multifamily community, and our large volume customers, and we're seeking input from them regarding, you know, what those rate increases might look like, you know, in terms of our forecast, we forecasted, you know, two rate increases for fiscal year, 25 of about 9.5. And then for fy 26 of a little over 9% and then starting to taper down. But one of the things that we are asking our public involvement committee , and as we start to do our community outreach is, you know, how does the public feel about that? How do our customers feel about that? And, you know, when they prefer a more levelized rate increases, which, which might require a bigger total cumulative rate increase because the earlier a rate increase goes into effect? The more it buys down future rate increases. But [2:06:07 PM] down future rate increases. But but those are the questions that we're asking our public involvement committee. And those are the questions that we will be asking, out at our district town hall meetings and in our focus groups. >> Thank you, director, did you want to comment? >> The only thing I wanted to add to Joseph's explanation was that the rate increases that we're projecting are to support our total cip, which over the next five years is anticipated to be $2.3 billion. So walnut creek is a part of that, but it is not the sole driver of our overall cip. And the rate increases required to support it. >> Thank you. And when was the we haven't had a water I don't remember a water or many water rate increases since I've been on council. When have we. >> No that's right. So we have not had we had a, a modest, about three and change rate increase last year, prior to that, the last rate action we had was in 2018, and that was [2:07:07 PM] had was in 2018, and that was actually a rate decrease. >> Right. That's what I was remembering. >> That's right. So we haven't had a rate increases. Certainly not at this level in a long, long time. >> Okay. >> Thank you for the clarification. >> Great. Thanks. Got a couple questions for you all, first, what happens if we don't move forward with the project? >> So the as the plan increases, we do need to require to expand the plant. And that's tied to tc state regulations. Once you go past 75% of capacity, start planning. And when you get to 90, you're supposed to start building, so if we don't expand, we will exceed the 75 million gallons per day and we'll be out of compliance. Also, the new discharge permit requires, once we go over 75 million gallons per day to have enhanced treatment, nutrient removal and our existing plan, if we don't do it, would not be able to do that. So we would have two, two areas of consequences. >> Okay. And neither of those are really tenable. Right? I mean, we have we have to make these changes. >> Yes. [2:08:08 PM] >> Yes. >> Okay, are there grants available like from the feds or from the state? Any grants or assistance that Austin water and the city would pursue? >> Yes. We are pursuing all avenues. We are pursuing the wifia loan, which is a grant program for the floodwall. We've actually were able to get that project into the Texas water development board. State floodplain. So it is a project in there. We're trying to move forward with that. With the planning. We'll see neither one of those. We've been selected and we've also done yet. Excuse me. So but we also and as well as we've done some traditional state revolving fund loans, they have now capped those loans to like 20 million, $20 million or something. They've half captain before now. So they're not as, helpful as they have been in the past. >> Understood. And the wifi alone. Is that something we were talking about at the last council meeting? We wanted to make sure we had that drought in the conservation plan submitted so that we would continue to be eligible to apply for the wifi. Yes. [2:09:08 PM] Yes. >> So the water conservation plan is a requirement for Texas water development board to, to approve any of their funding sources. >> For us. Wifia is actually an EPA loan. So I'm not sure that it applies to that. But we're we are getting ready to submit our letter of interest for wifia. And we've been talking to them for a long time about this project. And so we're we're very optimistic about our ability to partner with EPA on, on this project. And several of the projects that Charles pointed out of our rehab projects that we've done over the last several years have been over the last ten or so years, have been, funded in part with low interest loans from the Texas water development board. So we have leveraged a lot of grant and, well, low interest loan programs for our work across Austin water, including at walnut creek wastewater plant, great, and then I guess my last question is just kind of a larger scope. Is Austin unique in this way or is this happening in other large [2:10:09 PM] this happening in other large metropolitan areas around the state with the older infrastructure needing to be? I mean, some of the work that has to be done is based on the way it was constructed in the first place, which was probably, you know, state of the art at the time. Right? Maybe that's not how things would happen if it was a Greenfield to begin today. But this is what we've got and we have to respond. >> That's right. Particularly on the primary clarifiers being underground and having covers, that's that's not that's not how we would do it today, but we looked at all the options for, you know, could we, could we take the roof off, could, you know, or were there other ways to address these constructability issues? And, and that is a big reason why we wanted to have a construction manager at risk during design so we could evaluate all of that more effectively. And so we feel that we have come to the, the, the best possible solution here. But yes, your to your original question about other utilities. Certainly, there are a lot of [2:11:13 PM] Certainly, there are a lot of wastewater plants that were built in the 70s that are, that are grappling with expansion and rehabilitation needs, just like we are, and as, as these plants, get larger and as tc continues to evaluate receiving water quality, then a lot of plants are implementing nutrient removal just as we are. >> Great. >> Well, and maybe the legislature will recognize the burdens that. The municipalities are having to bear and, and be able to fund some additional grant programs and support at the state level. That would be some work for the next legislative session. Great. Any other questions here? I, I will just say in closing, I appreciate y'all not trying to sugarcoat the cost. I mean, I think it would be more difficult if you were pretending it was something other than what it is. We need to acknowledge that these are big projects and they are complicated, and that usually translates into costly. [2:12:13 PM] usually translates into costly. And I also and because we're all very careful on how we're spending our revenues, I know that we will watch this really carefully and make sure that any and every opportunity to get some additional assistance from other levels of government will dig into those and do the best we can to qualify. And score those. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. >> Chair. Yes >> I just wanted to ask that maybe when this goes to council either if in a memo or or in some way if we can make sure that our colleagues aware that they can watch this presentation or that this presentation is made available or described, I don't know whether it's better to describe it in a memo or to refer them to this, but, but there's a lot of technical stuff. And I think that the transparency on what we're trying to accomplish here would benefit everyone on council as we take a vote on such a large item, which may not have been on [2:13:15 PM] item, which may not have been on people's radar if they're not on this committee. >> Yeah. And if anybody wants a one on one with with you all, I would highly recommend that to we are reaching out to a number of council offices to make sure they're aware of this project and to offer, you know, to answer any questions that they may have. >> And I that's a great idea to provide the link to this meeting as well for their reference. Thank you. >> Thank you. The landscape rebate program is the next item. Yes >> And we have, two of our division managers will come water conservation division manager Kevin Clukey and public information office division manager Amy Petrie will be presenting on this welcome to you both. >> Good afternoon, council members. My name is Kevin Klee, water conservation division manager, and we're here. >> Excuse excuse me. With you today to talk about the water wise landscape rebate program and our recent efforts to, to raise awareness of this program [2:14:17 PM] raise awareness of this program with our customers. First of all, the water wise landscape rebate program is one of a number of programs that we have to help Austin water customers with their landscape water use, the water wise landscape program helps residents convert their landscape from turf to beds. And that's really what it focuses on, native and adaptive plants and beds can use half as much water as turf does in that same area. So it's important as we go forward to really maximize our efficiency in our landscapes, for all customers, current rebates offer $1 per square foot. A year ago, a little more than a year ago, this was, $0.30. So we've since raised that amount. And to increase interest in this program and it has raised in interest in this program. But I think a lot of [2:15:19 PM] program. But I think a lot of what we've been doing recently has also been contributing a lot to increased awareness. Back in March, there was a resolution passed by the council, directing the city manager and Austin water to. Raise awareness of the program through a number of different methods. First of all, providing additional educational materials for customers. About the benefits of this, creating designated space on the city's website using multilingual and multimedia advertisements as well as providing additional communication methods beyond the traditional advertising mediums. And that's what we're here to talk to you about. In terms of educational materials, I'll start off and then I'll turn it over to Amy. We certainly have our traditional educational materials in terms of guides for our programs. And then all the [2:16:21 PM] our programs. And then all the always popular grow green guide that you'll often see around nurseries. That people carry around, these continue to be very popular and very useful to raise awareness of the benefits of water wise landscapes to our customers. And now I'll turn it over to Amy to go forward, and I'll hop in. >> I'm Amy Petrie, I'm the division manager over the public information office at Austin water, and so to get to the educational campaign that we were asked to, to do as part of this resolution and part of that called for community outreach and sharing these educational materials with the community. And so, over the course of the last week of March and through the month of April, we've been participating in a number of community events that have been staffed by water conservation staff who can answer community questions about the various rebates that they have available for them, as well as this, water wise rebate. This is not the end of the campaign. It didn't end [2:17:23 PM] of the campaign. It didn't end in April. It's going to go well into may and June. We have more events coming. This is a busy season for community events and so we are out there sharing our information in English and Spanish. We've also, April was, Asian pacific, heritage celebration month. There were a number of different community events with those communities. And so we've we've also our community engagement specialist, has been attending those and answering questions with those groups. And we're reaching diverse community members through our outreach efforts. So let's see. Here's the clicker okay. And so the second thing that was asked for in this resolution was for us to look at our website resources and make sure that we have dedicated and easy to understand information available on our website. And so we really took the approach of looking at it from a we need to make it very functional and easy to find, and we may need to make it very easy to understand and apply for these rebates. So we what you're seeing a picture of [2:18:26 PM] what you're seeing a picture of is what we put on our our landing page. Anyone who's coming to our website for any reason would see this water wise landscapes at the very top banner that takes them directly to the information about that rebate program, as well as all of our conservation rebates. So you know, if you're just coming to our website, you see it, but all of our educational materials and advertising campaigns and all of the other things that we've been pushing out to the community over the months of April and into may and June, are taking people directly to the rebate page. One less click is one less click. All of the stuff just gets them there faster and gets them to the information that they're looking for. And so to that point, all of our ads are taking people directly to our our rebate page. We have the application link at the top. There's no scrolling. We've got more graphics and more information about all of the various rebates that include landscape irrigation. Pool covers all the things that we offer and the application has been has been, developed in a [2:19:27 PM] been has been, developed in a way that people can apply from their phone. We know that a lot of people are coming to our web pages from their mobile phone. We wanted all of this to be mobile friendly, so we've tried to create resources that are informative, but also functional and easy to get to what they need to do. The last thing I would say is we did create a dedicated faq page specifically about water wise and that program, and it has a lot of common commonly asked questions about how you replace turf, how you adjust your irrigation systems, all the things that people need to know about how to do what they need to do to implement this program, the third thing that was asked for was, advertising campaigns. And so we leveraged our, our, our, our advertising contracts with our vendors. We, we, we have ongoing print, digital and radio spot ads that are part of our regular, advertising, activities for month to month. Everything [2:20:29 PM] for month to month. Everything was focused on water wise as well as, again, all of our rebates because there's a lot of ways that people can conserve water. We really tried to highlight water wise in these. You're looking at a two page ad that we put in community impact. We've translated things to Spanish. The ads didn't end in April. There will be more coming in may. We'll be placing a lot more Spanish ads in may and June and beyond. All of our digital ads that are placed with our vendors take people directly to that rebates page. So they're going again, right to where they need to go to find information to apply. And so those are some of our digital ads that we placed. And then finally, the resolution called for additional communication, I'm going to flip to the social examples in a minute. But on this page we, we did some paid content and community impact. We did a feature article with one of our water conservation staff who talked about this program and tried to, you know, provide some good information. So that's the [2:21:30 PM] good information. So that's the screenshot that you see is from our community impact content. We've hosted three lunch and learn sessions led by our water conservation staff. We've had about 40 people sign up for each of those lunch and learn sessions, where they can learn everything about water wise or rain scapes, or how to program their irrigation programmers. So lots of good information out there to help our community and then this week we released a media release. Kevin just came in from doing an interview with KVUE about that. So we're going to get some media coverage about all of this, but clicking ahead to our our social media, again, we did post in English and in Spanish about this. These haven't ended. They're continuing to run. We'll we will be promoting this information, you know, through the spring months. And then we'll also pick up again in the fall when planning season begins again. So, you know, this is this is not the end of the campaign. So to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what we were able to achieve, basically April through June, we've got 20 events that we've either attended or planned [2:22:32 PM] we've either attended or planned to attend. That number may go up. We get requests all the time to come to community events. We will continue to put this information out there, coming up in June, we will be partnering with Austin energy at the utility bill payment centers. We do seasonal campaigns, each year we do winter preparedness and the winter, and we do conservation in the spring. And summer. So, we'll be back out there in June. Those are heavily attended. We expect to get good attendance this year as well. The second bullet I want to call your attention to, because this is a good metric for us, we looked at our web page visits over the last month to see if they had increase. That would indicate that people are getting the message and going to check it out. It did increase, we got about 1300 unique web page visits, between April 1st and April 25th, one thing that we're seeing out of those analytics is that though each of those visits is interacting with the page, about 12 times. So they're [2:23:32 PM] about 12 times. So they're they're scrolling, they're clicking on things. They're going to links. They're looking at different information. They're opening up the application. This is one way that we try to figure out are they engaged with what we've put there. If they go there and then they immediately leave, they're probably not that engaged. So we think that there's a high level of engagement with this campaign. So that makes us feel great. We are projecting that we'll have about 4 million ad impressions from our ad campaigns that we've run. The social posts that we've done, you know, between April 1st and April 25th reached over 12,000 people on our social platforms. And again, those links are driving people directly to that web page. So you know, again, we're kind of seeing that it was pushing people there. And I'm going to hand it back over to Kevin to take us to the end. >> All right. And just on that last bullet point I wanted to note, we received six completed applications in April, since that, the resolution. But that really does represent all the interest that we've got, while [2:24:34 PM] interest that we've got, while we are trying to streamline the applications, they do require some thought, to submit those in terms of what type of plants, how much area. So, people do have to think about this, but we've received a lot of interest conversations, email, phone with staff, wondering how to do this, what to do and what have you. So in a lot of them are referencing the efforts that we've made in the past. >> And just to tag on to, to that is, you know, based on that level of engagement that we're seeing on our web page. That may not always result in a rebate application, but our hope is that people are getting that information and learning about how to conserve water with their landscape, and so, you know, my hope is that if they're reading all of this information, that that they're going out and, and conserving, in a better way than maybe they did before they visited our web page. >> With that, we're available [2:25:36 PM] >> With that, we're available for any questions. >> That's great. I know the first time I saw the water wise, that was one of my favorite, little books that's out there. Do you have any extras? Yeah, I don't have one from this year, I used to save them. Yeah. You know, at any rate, it doesn't matter, but it seems like it was years and years and years ago. Remind me, when did the water wise program begin? >> Was it? >> Well, this water wise program actually began back in 2010, it changed the name in 2011 to water wise landscape. >> Greengrove. So I guess the green grow guy, that's what I'm talking about. Okay sorry about that. >> Yeah, I have to admit, I cannot remember when green as long as I've been in Austin. That's been out there. Been there. >> I'm thinking the 90s. But, that's really dating me. It might even be older than that. We should check. Kevin, do you know? Yeah. This should be a trivia question. [2:26:37 PM] trivia question. >> Yeah. >> We're going to have a trivia trivia exam. Okay I'm really grateful for this work, and I agree that even if people don't go for the rebates, they're getting really useful information on how what plants to put in their yard and how to put them in their yard to make sure they don't die. Because that's probably the hardest thing emotionally when you're putting that bed in there and then the it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't take and you're like, why hasn't it taken? And so we offer some really good tips for how to make sure that we're successful gardeners. Any questions? Yes, council member Ryan alter. >> Thank you all. Very much for this presentation. The work you all are doing it. I I actually saw that full page ad in community impact. I thought, hey, I know why they're doing this, one suggestion or question. You know, I think in [2:27:38 PM] question. You know, I think in talking with some people, there is a hurdle in their mind of, you know, I would love to convert my lawn, but I'm not a landscape architect. I have no clue. Even with the guide of you know, this is a nice flower or this I, you know, I'm unable to visualize or I don't really know what goes well together and how. And so I don't know if there's any way kind of like we have with the Austin energy. You know, partners that if you're going to go do something, there's a list of, of contractors that you can go reach out to if there is a way, either for us to, have have individuals who and it'd be great if they do it at, you know, a discount. But like here's someone who can help you think about or put together a rough mockup of what that might look like just to help or kind of the other step of like a very low tech but kind of tool where [2:28:39 PM] low tech but kind of tool where you can kind of draw out your lawn and drop in some, some plants and just kind of get a general idea of what it is that I'm, you know, converting to just I think that the planning element scares a lot of people, and so I know so I'm one of those people who can't visualize it in my mind. I have I'm fortunate my wife can. So she does all the great drawing when we're planting. But, that's just a food for thought. As y'all are looking forward. And the other kind of question you know, before you go any further, I just want to I'll jump in and say, I think the master gardeners is exactly the. >> And that's the group of volunteers that would be really good to connect to, just kind of amplify their existence, because we wouldn't necessarily recommend particular vendors. You know, we would recommend all vendors, but the master gardeners program is a really good one, just to have existed. Yeah yeah. Okay. [2:29:39 PM] Yeah yeah. Okay. >> Sorry. No, no, please. I'm glad you did. That's that's great, the other is, I know in the future, there are plans within waterfall. Heard about new building, new construction. What kind of turf, if at all. They can put in. And just kind of thinking about the effort we're putting in to this versus you know, how we balance maybe we incentivize new build to not put turf in at all. Kind of similar to here, you know, this incentive is a conversion. But if someone is never doing it from day one, that's an easier to, sell. And, you know, from the developer side, they're always looking for ways to offset costs. And so if there's a way to, to consider that, it seems like it could be successful. So but I'm excited to see where this goes, hopefully going to be a [2:30:40 PM] hopefully going to be a participant myself. We're we're considering just how how big we want to go. But, I appreciate y'all's y'all's efforts. Great >> Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. And, let's see my at water update. And I love this this picture here, Randy. She's adorable. Austin smart metering system. >> Good afternoon. Mayor pro tem and council members Randy Jenkins, assistant director of customer experience at Austin water and as you mentioned, I'm here to provide an update on my atx water. Austin smart metering system. And yes, we love our campaign advertisement here. The team has done a great job pulling that together. Okay, so to get us launched in in oriented with where we are to date, to discuss citywide implementation. So I've [2:31:41 PM] implementation. So I've mentioned this in previous report outs, but just to make sure that what we launch from the same page, we have, all of our data collection units installed and operational. So 100% of those are out in the field deployed and these are the units that are picking up the meter reads, throughout, the, the community. And then we have installed exchange 210, 558,000m of the 250,000 meter population in that Austin water provides. So we are just under 85% complete, with our implementation thus far. One of the resounding success and wins, I think, to this project has been our qa, our quality assurance and meter to build process. So you know, what we know is that quality quality control is an integral part of to any project success. And so each meter is tested by the manufacturer per our contractual , obligations on their part for [2:32:41 PM] , obligations on their part for us to make sure that they are accurate before they're delivered to us. But we additionally, perform additional tests on a representative sample of those meters as each palette of meters are delivered, we go through to validate the registered readings are accurate and once they are deployed to the field, then each meter and a go undergoes a ten step certification process after installation. So just because that meter is installed in the field, we are still watching the back end to make sure that it is meeting all of our specs and required butts. And so, while there's ten steps, the, the biggest and, and I would say most direct to making sure that that meter is operating successfully is that we require, meter readers to go out and collect a manual read from that army meter for two consecutive months, and that meter read must match our automated our advanced metering meter read to make sure [2:33:42 PM] metering meter read to make sure that we are confident that it is registering accurately. And so we do not flip it to bill off of that army. Read and tell that time. And so launching into our overall communications and customer interactions and system benefits from the mit water program, so I've reported out on this and this number can continues to grow for us. So since launching, and deploying our first meter in September of 2020, Austin water has sent over 4.5 million portal communications to date. You know, we have communicated out on drought, water conservation, education, water quality report, which you heard about earlier this afternoon, certainly emergency and planned shut outs, potential water pressure changes, customer surveys and many more topics. We have felt the full benefits of this, direct interaction with our customers. And so part of our, customer portal recruitment, we [2:34:42 PM] customer portal recruitment, we have a weekly install where we know we're, you know, our contractor is going to be in a certain area. And so we hit send on on portal recruitment, sent emails to our customer base. And what we are continuing to see is above industry average. And I mean a communications average, not necessarily a water utility, but above a communications industry average, of email open rates. We are getting about 70% of those emails are opened, so we know we're reaching our customers. We know they're interested in our in our my atx water project. And so that that just sets us off on the right foot. And one of the most recent communications that we've been providing is with our downtown customers. That is the area that we are installing heavily in right now. And we know that there's a lot of businesses and multifamily units. And so making sure that we are providing notice and ample opportunities for them to schedule, install appointments with us. So we have [2:35:43 PM] appointments with us. So we have a team where we are working with our contractor to make sure that we're scheduling those appointments at a time that's convenient for those customers and business owners, and then some upcoming communications on the horizon are our water quality report again, that was mentioned earlier. So that is being pushed out, certainly water conservation and always encouraging our customers to customize their home water profile in the mit water portal. And that way they can set up their own budgets, both monetary budgets as well as water profile budgets and some upcoming planned messaging around our, rates. And I mentioned our customer interactions in the portal. And so this is kind of a highlight of some of the data points there. So we have sent 123,000, nearly 123 really almost 24,000 bill forecast notifications, and so on. The right there, there's a screenshot of what that [2:36:43 PM] screenshot of what that forecasted, bill forecast notification looks like. And so you'll see the forecasted use the billing tier that that places you in the fixed tier charge, and then the price per thousand gallons that that is applicable to that forecasted use. And so what that does is put the customer on notice that they're on on track to potentially move to another tier, which could result in a higher than average bill for them and allows them the opportunity to affect their water usage in their home. And so what we've seen as a result of that notification is in the past 12 months, nearly 40% of our customers billed at a lower volume and a lower tier than than their forecast was on target for. And then that also resulted in an estimated 32 million gallons of water savings, which, you know, that's a water savings for us, a water savings for our community, and certainly a water savings in in the amount of bill, impacts for our customer base, like wise, we continue to send continuous [2:37:45 PM] continue to send continuous usage alerts, which is in effect a leak alerts. So nearly 160,000 of those, and then, you know, I've mentioned this in prior report outs, but, you know, we're nearly at 20,000 customer conversations since 2021, the main topics are identifying leaks, and then the customers response to those alerts, like what do they need to do? And so they're they're really engaged. And we're happy to that. They're paying attention to their usage. And then they're also asking questions about how to interpret their consumption data, which again, this is just an education moment and a learning tool in that regard. But I think what I'd like to highlight with our customer conversations is with the shared city of Austin utility billing setup, while it provides for a lot of streamlined efficiencies, one one way is that Austin water doesn't always have the first opportunity to jump in with our customer from the get go when they have questions about water and wastewater and their potential bill. And so this [2:38:45 PM] potential bill. And so this allows us that opportunity. And, we are just ecstatic about being able to communicate directly with our customers in a way that we never have before. And so with all of these notifications, you know, we continue to watch very closely, both Austin water and our city of Austin utilities and any upticks in complaints and any upticks in backlogs of open billing cases or high bills. And we are not experiencing that. And so for allowing number, this is one this is my favorite slide in the deck, since installing our first army meter, the customer portal has estimated through our customer alert system that to date, we have saved 720 million gallons of water. And so what that looks like for our community is, you know, extending our water supply. And what that looks for our customer is a better management of their bill and of their property. They [2:39:47 PM] bill and of their property. They are finding out about leaks and issues. And maybe it's not a leak. Maybe they left a hose bib on in the backyard. But either which way their their finding out about that in a timely manner and not in a bill that comes three weeks later. And so this is a shameless plug here, a few slides of just help us help you and save water too. So this might be an easy way, for you and your offices to talk with your constituents about how to sign up for the portal. This is something we do day in and day out, but really, the portal is accessible in three easy steps. Step one locate your account number, and where you do that is on your bill. Or you can also call our city of Austin utilities customer care line and get your account number. Step two, enter your zip code into this website, which is our water smart portal website. And then you begin using your your profile and you start saving. So it's really simple, it's easy and it's accessible to the [2:40:48 PM] and it's accessible to the general public. And I'll conclude on this. This is I always like to give a customer testimonial, and this is, just last week we received this email, and this is from one of our customers. But he is also, a master plumber. And stated, as a master plumber, I didn't know what to think about the new electronic meters. Y'all alerted me this morning that I had a leak at my house. I went out and sure enough, my irrigation box is full of water that usually could have gone on for months. Y'all have a real winner with that system, so it's doing what we intended it to do, and we're extremely pleased and are so happy that our customers are having that experience. And with that, I'll open it up for any questions that you might have. >> Thank you so much, Randy. What is the timeline for getting the last few, homes connected? >> Absolutely. >> So we will complete our deployment by the end of this calendar year. So December 2024. >> Great. And when did you start? [2:41:49 PM] start? >> We started our first meter went in the ground September of 2020 okay. >> And that was a pilot in a certain part. Yeah. >> We started with a pilot. We you know, kind of did, you know, a small neighborhood and then expanded out from there and kind of tested and proved up the system. >> Great questions. Yes. Council member Ryan alter is there any opportunity to kind of link two things here we were just talking about with water wise to allow people through this to say, here's how much you are paying, but hey, here's a reminder or, or learn about this great program and here's how much we think you could save because you're going to use less water. >> You know, are we are we able to have those two things integrated or talk to each other? >> Absolutely. We absolutely we are. And I would say, you know, the customer experience team members alongside of water conservation Ann, we are tightly connected and are always communicating and finding ways. I know one of the elements of, future updates to some of our water forward and other plans that we'll be bringing forward [2:42:51 PM] that we'll be bringing forward later this fall will hopefully incorporate more elements of utilizing might water in a more robust way, but certainly even today, you know, we're using some of the data to kind of do some outreach to say, you know, it looks like your irrigation system might be running outside of your hours. Would you like a irrigation audit will come out and see you and visit with you and help you with your setting. So we are doing some of that and kind of piloting it. But, you know, as, as we get the rest of the community and our last, what, 35,000m in the ground will be in a better place to be able to make sure that we're doing that for all of our customers. >> Great. Thank you. You're welcome. >> Thank you so much. And I think we have you have a question too. Okay, Allison, I just have a quick comment. >> I just finally got mine and wonderful. >> Great. So staff recruitment and retention updates is our last item for today . [2:44:00 PM] . And this is Israel Custodio. Mr. Custodio, welcome with with our director. >> Thank you, again Shea roalson , director of Austin water. I'm going to kick us off today talking about recruiting and retention. Just by taking us back a little bit to the external review that was completed by the UT center for water and the environment, in January of 2023. And there were a lot of elements of the external review that were focused on recruiting and retention, and, and corporate culture. And so we have been working on those, as you know, we reported out in every awoc meeting about how we were doing on the recommendation of the external review. And when we completed our final report out to you at the last meeting, we, recommended and committed to presenting on our recruitment and retention efforts on a regular basis. So this is our [2:45:02 PM] regular basis. So this is our first, presentation of this kind . And so we have put together what we hope will be a really informative presentation for you on our efforts, and we welcome your feedback on how to make this this regular update, meaningful for you in the future. So I'm going to turn it over to Israel Custodio, who is our acting assistant director for employee and leadership development at Austin water. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Israel Custodio and I'm the acting assistant director of employee leadership and development. I've been with Austin water for seven years. All, in a previous role as the division manager of the risk management division, but I've only been in this position now for three months. I do want to tell you a little bit about the eld team. The eld team is consisted of three divisions. The hr division, the talent development division, and the risk management division, one thing that's unique about the eld program area is that we are [2:46:03 PM] eld program area is that we are the only program area that's dedicated to the employee. We basically take care of the employee from the time that they onboard, hopefully until the time to they retire and everything in between. We keep them safe. We develop their skills as leaders. We talk to them about their benefits. We're there for their needs. Essentially, eld is we are the people, people at Austin water and it's important to have a group like eld because complex organizations thrive five based on their people, not equipment, not systems. It's people that make complex organizations go. And Austin water definitely is a complex organization. We have professionals from differing disciplines all pulling together to provide the citizens of Austin with world class service. So my presentation today is kind of broken up into two parts. The first part, we'll talk about recruitment and retention. And [2:47:04 PM] recruitment and retention. And then the second part, as Shea addressed, will address some of the external review recommendations. So let's go ahead and get into it. So here's the historical vacancy percentages. When we talk about recruitment and retention, the vacancy rate is kind of an industry standard that allows us to kind of compare apples to apples. Vacancy rate can change and often does from day to day as people come and leave and I will tell you a couple of things, is that they and vacancy rates also spike twice out of two times out of the year. The first time that they spike is at the beginning of the fiscal year, when you receive your new ftes, you receive all those at once. So your vacancy rate will spike at that point in time. And then at the beginning of the calendar year, traditionally, when city employees retire, you may also get a spike in your vacancy rate at that point in time, the vacancy rate is a fantastic metric, but it's important to keep in mind that it only gives you a very high level snapshot of that [2:48:05 PM] level snapshot of that particular time. I also wanted to take an opportunity to kind of point out, as you see this big spike there, going from 22 October 22nd to, September, area of 23, that's the great resignation in action. I know there's been a lot of talk about the great resignation and what it means and what, you know, is it real? Is it not real? It's definitely real. We have we experienced more of it. Latter, later in, in the period. But it's definitely a real thing. And you can see that since that early part of fiscal year 2023, we've been working on kind of bringing that vacancy rate down. So a couple of things, when we talk about vacancy rate, there are some things that can artificially inflate it. One of those things is not filling your positions in a timely fashion, but you can see by this graph here that we have we fill more than half of our vacancies within the first three months. [2:49:08 PM] within the first three months. Like many other departments, we do have some positions that are a little bit tougher to fill than others. But you can also see that we do not have any positions that are older than two years, which is the standard for the city. Now, as I mentioned before, vacancy rate gives you a high level picture. I know this is kind of a busy graph, so I'm just going to talk you through it, if we could just disregard the yellow graph right now and just kind of focus on the blue and the gray and what this is kind of showing you is that we filled, for example, in 2021, 218 positions. And then but we had 120 positions, 120 people separate. Right. And so what this is illustrating is that while it's often said, hey, you have a high vacancy rate, you need to hire a bunch of people. And that's true. You do, but you can hire a lot of people . But if you're kind of losing a [2:50:08 PM] . But if you're kind of losing a lot of people at once, that's going to also play a factor. And another thing to kind of remember is that with the positions filled, is that a third of our positions are filled by internal candidates. And while that is fantastic for the organization, and we want that right, because you're getting a person who is familiar with your with your culture, familiar with your organization, it's great for retention in the sense that there's promotional opportunities within the organization. It doesn't fix your vacancy rate because basically your vacancy moves from one position to another position. And so the yellow here is the vacancies at the end of the year for each prospective year. And so that's why as you see that even though there's more positions filled than positions separated, it, it doesn't necessarily catch it up. Right. So it's not as simple as saying, do we have a hiring problem or do we have a retention issue. It's you kind of have to do both, so speaking [2:51:09 PM] of have to do both, so speaking of separations, here's a very interesting breakdown of why. Why are folks leaving Austin water or for what reason, and you see here at the end cap the total number of separations. And then you see the sources, again, getting into the great resignation Ann type talk, you see that fiscal year 2020 was the last year that the majority of the reasons why that the retirements were the main reason why folks left or separated from Austin water. You see that in 2021 through 2023 that it's just, resin nations and transfers to other departments that actually have overshadowed the whole resignation issue. So pretty, pretty interesting to kind of just see that breakdown. And so thus far, we've talked about kind of the organization in general. We're tracking at a about around 10% to nine, vacancy rate. There but we do recognize that we do have some [2:52:12 PM] recognize that we do have some key operational areas that have a vacancy rate that's higher than 10. I picked these and these are all operationally focused areas of the organization with a vacancy rate higher than 10, it ulrik is on there because it's Ulrich essentially, even though it's at nine, but it's broken down by the first three are three of the water treatment plants, then you have Hornsby bend and remote facilities, which are on the wastewater side. But you see that there's also a decent portion of our distribution system that have some higher vacancy rates. And then then we have our ink and electrical services folks that also have had some very high vacancy rates, this next slide is very similar to slide six, where it kind of shows you that, for example, at Orrick we've hired, this fiscal year, 11 folks lost two. But we still need to fill, we still have currently about four vacancies there. And you [2:53:12 PM] four vacancies there. And you can see that in some areas we hire up a lot of people. I would say that on the ink and electrical side, it's very, very difficult to find some of those those candidates. But we still continue to reach out to them. And our are working on that. All right. So what are we doing about it. Right. Like so it's challenging to hire some of these folks. We've tried to address this through some of our compensation initiatives. I will gladly admit that, written Ann is not just in retention. Recruitment is not just about money, but money is a big factor that plays into it. We've tried to, you'll see a lot of 20, 23 and 2024 at the end of some of these initiatives. We've addressed these through our market studies. We had a market study back in 2022. We've had some updates from the city at some of the city titles, in 2024, recently in the engineering and our it side. And then the citywide one was updated recently as well. We've [2:54:12 PM] updated recently as well. We've implemented some stipends. We have a safety incentive pay, which basically just takes our folks who are front facing in the field and gives them a small stipend. We have a licensure stipend that was revamped. Basically, if you have a licensure, above and beyond what you are, what's required of your current position, we compensate folks for that. We have a new hire recruitment bonus, which is $3,000. Basically, it's a $100 for six months, $100. I mean, excuse me, $500 at the first six months, $500 at the year, and then a thousand and a thousand at the successive anniversaries. And then we had our retention pay that was across the board. That will be ending at the end of this fiscal year, back in 2023, specifically to the electricians, we redid their pay grade, we adjusted their pay grade adjustments. We did a rezoning exercise recently that affected 86 people, basically those were folks who had not received any kind of raise or or [2:55:14 PM] received any kind of raise or or anything of that nature if they met the requirements of the next zone. We went ahead and rezoned them into the next zone. Of course, we've had living wage increases, have a lot of acting pay because we have a lot of people like myself who are stepping up into greater responsibilities and bilingual pay. And again, I'll just again, I just want to hammer home that, you know, money is not the only factor, but it is a big factor. And so, as I get into the external review recommendations, we'll go over some of the culture things that we, that we also have going on. So, recommendation 2 to 2.22 was basically about leadership development, specifically in the water treatment plants, I'm happy to report that our talent development team had seven sessions with the folks over at water treatment. We've gone over things like conflict resolution, our values, excellence and [2:56:16 PM] our values, excellence and leadership, emotional intelligence, and building trust with those with those groups. These sessions were were multi-day. They very thorough, and we've also incorporated a lot of this, this training into our leadership essential skills program, which is our internal, management academy, essentially, that we have we piloted the program a couple of years ago with 19 participants. Last year, we had 49 and we have 29 participants that actually graduate next week. And so we will have 97 graduates, to date, next week. And so this is an addition to the citywide training that the city offers. So this is operationalized and we're happy to call that complete. And, so recommendation 2.25 was was focused on culture. And I'm happy to report we've had, a lot of activity in this area. 12 culture listening sessions with over 200 [2:57:18 PM] sessions with over 200 employees, four divisional specific environmental scans, over 100 hours of interviews, seven all hands meetings, 21 hours. The disc workshops, 17 individual training sessions, over 80 hours of training delivered. And we also reinforce this at our leadership summits where we spoke about trust. And we also reinforced the culture work at our leadership essential , skills program. So they're they're getting it from all sides with regard to that, partnership and outreach was the focus of 2.28. And we have some really interesting things going on here, things that I'm very excited about. So one of the keys that will help us going forward is that we need to develop some alternative pipelines, we need to find talent where talent is and bring them to us and not just rely on the traditional methods and this work here is going to be [2:58:19 PM] work here is going to be important to that. We're in talks with Austin ISD and premier high school, we're going to use this Seth program, the science, engineering, technology and health program from, Texas, Iowa, which, which what this program does is targeted for high school kids. It allows them to be able to take to receive their D license while in high school. And when they turn 18, they would get certified to be able to have that water license at that point in time. And so there's a lot of interest from premier, specifically and aid to be able to do that, especially for kids who are not looking for college educations after finishing high school. And we're happy to be working with them. We also very recently did a, career fair over at prairie view A&M, a hbcu. And like I said, we have to be able to go out and find talent where it's at and bring it to us. So 2.33 is near and dear to my heart [2:59:21 PM] is near and dear to my heart because I helped develop this program. And it's about water treatment, training specific and it's actually about the technical onboarding program. So what we've done here is that we hired three plant trainers from each of our water treatment plants. And what we've done is that we have taken our, knowledge management knowledge transfer blocks. These are think of those as plant specific best practices that we do for knowledge transfer. Right so they're the standard that you want for those plants. And we developed hands on skills assessment and training based on those blocks. And so what we have now been operating this program for about a year, we've had over 700 hours of one on one training. We know it takes about six weeks to, average to complete a training block. There are a total of ten, training blocks on the operation side. We've had 26 participants. All of them had less than two years [3:00:22 PM] of them had less than two years experience. We've had 100, block passing rate thus far. And we've had four graduates because they don't all start at the same time , and I think to the retention point, interestingly enough, all of the 26 participants are still with us, which I think is a great, great news. This is basically kind of modeled on the military, ojt system. 70% of learning, actually workplace learning takes place, hands on in the workplace. And so this kind of builds off of that concept. And I think that it's given us a, a vehicle for, not only producing a better water operator, but a duplicate, able and repeatable type system that can be implemented in other areas of the organization. So section, recommendation 2.3, dash 11 dealt with safety. Also near and dear to my heart. And I can tell you that we have a very robust safety system in Austin. Water we have voc which gives us good situational awareness, not [3:01:23 PM] good situational awareness, not just on safety issues but on anything operational or any emerging threats. We have the safety talks, which is that's an example of what we put out. So we put out a safety talk every, the beginning of every week. And provide that to all supervisors where they can share this information with their workforce. We have safety training available. We actually have a safety training dedicated team in our risk management division, that's them. And the you know, that's them back in the background there, teaching confined space and, showing people how to don their, their gear, we go over what the repercussions are of not following the rules. We talked safety and new employee orientation. We have safety presentations in the leadership and essential skills program. We have collision advisory board and injury review board, which they review every injury and every collision that we have at the utility. It's peer led by other Austin water folks. It's [3:02:24 PM] other Austin water folks. It's not just safety driven. And honestly, every time that we do site visit, whether we show up as an executive team, myself personally or Shea, we always talk about safety. And so I think that we're very, very clear on what the mission is as far as safety is. And with that, I'll open it up for questions. Great. >> Thank you for that really robust, presentation. Thank you. Councilmember Allison alter. >> Thank you, first, I just want to say I really appreciate the transparent and the clarity in this report, and congratulations for getting the numbers down below 10. I think at one point we were above 30. So that is a big a big change, so I want to acknowledge that, also appreciate the follow up on the recommendations. And I do hope that you will circle back with UT and let them know as well, because perhaps this can be, you know, useful for folks that they're talking to, you know, elsewhere, in the country, as you roll, roll these pieces out, [3:03:24 PM] you roll, roll these pieces out, there are, as you noted, several vacancy rates that are still sort of very high and hopefully, we will be addressing those, are there any policy tc barriers that we as council members need to know that are preventing you from filling those positions? >> I would say no policy barriers. I think the, we're we're really effective at the, at the recruitment side of it in terms of we have one of the fastest times to fill for the large departments, we work very well with, with hrd on, you know, all of the policies and procedures related to hiring, we , we, you know, obviously we're constantly looking at compensation. A year ago, we had a really significant backlog of compensation actions, and that's mostly been resolved, and so at this point, we are, you know, [3:04:24 PM] this point, we are, you know, just working through the normal process, as it relates to compensation actions and, and recruiting strategies and to your point about the areas where we have higher vacancy rates, we're looking at those individually because they all have different drivers, for why it's difficult to recruit or retain staff. And sometimes, as Israel said, sometimes that's compensation. Sometimes it's finding the people with the skill sets and attracting them to the city. And so we're we're trying to develop different strategies that are, team specific. >> Thank you, and then. I'll come back to me if you get some questions, I'll remember it. >> I think you're it. >> I'm it. Okay. I guess, you know, I just want to make sure that we're really focused in on [3:05:25 PM] that we're really focused in on these. You know, when we did have the vacancies at Ulrich and we had the emergency or was right after the emergency, you know that, you know, it's hard to expect the folks who are in those positions to perform at the highest level when they're doing multiple jobs, and I think that's a stressor, you know, elsewhere elsewhere in the system as well, you know, that that we need to be concerned about. Oh, I don't remember what it was. The retention pay that you mentioned is expiring. What is the plan in the next budget for, addressing that because that's going to cause some angst, I imagine. >> I imagine so we, the we have done an analysis to look at, for all of the compensation actions that Israel reviewed, a lot of our staff have benefited from [3:06:25 PM] our staff have benefited from those from those actions, there are some that have only had the across the board increases in the last two years. And so we're really looking at, those staff who are in areas that have high vacancy rates. And so we will be , you know, in conjunction with the other, kind of recruiting work that we're doing evaluating the pay specifically for those titles in the hard to fill areas. >> Okay. So it's not going to be a need for us to across the board, think about how we're going to continue the retention pay in its current form moving forward. Many of those people pay has been addressed through these other other mechanisms. And then there's a smaller group that we're looking to meet their needs, who would have only had their retention pay in the annual increases? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. >> All right. >> I think that's it. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. [3:07:26 PM] >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> And so colleagues, that brings us to our item number seven, which is future items. Identify items to discuss at future meetings. Anybody have anything right now okay. Great. Let us know if you want something added to an agenda for future agenda. And I think, director Olsen, that that's it for us today. And our thanks and appreciation to the staff for really good information today. And we will see you at our next meeting. We are adjourned at 3:07 P.M.