Yes. The first item is the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion? Madam Chair
and I support? Thank you.
Thank you. It's been moved and properly supported. All in favor. Signify by saying, aye,
Aye.
Any opposed, the motion is approved. The next item we have is the approval of the August 7 2024, meeting minutes. Is there a motion?
Yes, Madam Chairman, I move we approve the minutes as presented. Board.
Chair, thank you. Commissioner Coleman, it's been moved and properly supported. All in favor. Signify by saying, aye.
Aye.
Any opposed, the motion is approved. Next we have public participation. Will we have someone there to make an announcement for us?
Yes, good afternoon, Madam Chair. This is Brian Peckinpah, Public Affairs, Director for DWSD, and I'll make the the Zoom meeting public comment. Instructions to make a comment. Oh, sorry to make a comment. Please raise your hand by using the raise hand icon on your desktop or mobile device. If you are calling into the meeting by phone, press star nine to raise your hand after your name is called, it will give you permission to unmute. In order to begin speaking, you will have to unmute yourself. To do so, press the unmute button, which is the microphone icon. If you're online on a computer or iPad or star six, if you are calling in as a reminder, you will have a limit of three minutes to make your comment. There will be a timer indicating your remaining time. If you're online and make a comment, we kindly request you fill out the comment card link that's located in the chat. By filling out that card, we will have your contact information to follow up appropriately. If you are unable to click the link, please let us know, and the phone number will be provided to provided to you to call to provide the needed information, you will only be called upon once, once. The chair closes public comment for this committee. There will be no other comments from the public, and all attendees will remain muted for the duration of the meeting. Thank you for your attention and Madam Chair, I'll just look at the raise hands here. We have to raise hands. Madam Chair, the first person is gray LEP Lee, I hope I'm pronouncing that name correctly. Gray Lepley,
thank you.
Can you hear me? Yes, we
can hear you, Miss Lepley, you can proceed. Okay,
I didn't mean to raise Yeah,
yeah, let me step in here, please. Yes. Gray is from pfmc. Has a presentation letters. That's not a public comment.
Okay, thank you, yeah. Okay, so our first public commentator is Bela Walker. Beulah Walker,
thank you, Miss Walker. Hi, how are you? Hi, good afternoon. Can I be heard? We can hear you very clearly.
I just wanted to say hello, and I'm joining and I'm watching. It's not many days that I'm available in the daytime, but we're on night shift in my world, in the construction industry. So I just want to know, I just want our honorable body to let them know that I'm here watching. Thank you.
Thank you, Miss Walker. Do we have other
Madam Chair? The next person is Miko Williams,
thank you. Thank you. Mr. Pack and Paul, Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams, can you hear us?
Yes, can you hear me?
We can hear you now.
Thank you. Okay, great, great, great. My name is Damico Williams. I'm the Chief Executive Director of hydrate Detroit. Thank you, Commissioners for allowing me to speak. I have some questions specific of this Finance Committee, and hopefully, if we can get the answers of how much money this year has the water shutoffs generated in revenue for DWSD, how many people commercially have paid their water bills in full since the announcement as of August 2023 that water shutoffs will be conducted. How many of those have paid and also, how many persons, residential customers, have zeroed out their water bills since getting on the payment assistance program such as lifeline or the 10 3050 easy pay program, raising these questions. Are so important. Because, you know, when we hear Mr. RAMAN tell us that the DWSD revenues are low, water collections are low, it kind of wonder the money has collected. We don't ever hear anything about that. How many monies have been collected, but also have went into settling the bad debt expense. The bad debt expense is mostly by commercial residential customers don't have the same protections for deferments and arrangements, meaning that you know, they not going to pay as frequent as commercials would. So it's just, you know, a question to know where we are, so that we can stop this epidemic and get back to good news again, get back to capital improvement. And I mean, people are trying to pay their bills. No one's refusing, absolutely not, and I'm very happy that the easy pay program has finally come into fruition. That should have happened in 2014 and we wouldn't be in this situation. There has to be something else that is boggling down this department, and it's not from water bill payments. So that's my comments as of right now, all of this will be in writing at a later date to ask certain questions, hopefully we can get the answers to and I thank you so much for allowing me to speak. Have a great day.
Thank you very much,
Madam Chair. There are no other hands raised,
okay, thank you. We will now close public participation, and we'll move now into communications. And the first item we have is six, a 2024, dash, 169, receipt, of correspondence, is there a motion
I move that we receive and file the listed correspondence? Board
been moved and properly supported questions or comments, hearing none all in favor. Signify by saying, aye, Aye. Any opposed, that motion has been approved. The next item is Item b, 2024, 183, receipt of correspondence. Is there a motion?
Madam Chair, I move that we receive correction to item number 2020, 24 I move that we receive correspondence
support. Been
moved and properly supported. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing? None. All in favor. Signify by saying, aye,
Aye.
Any opposed that motion is approved, commissioners.
I do want to pause for a second. I want my question Welsh to speak on Item 2024, 183, just for a bit.
Thank you, Miss Welch,
good afternoon. My apologies. I put my camera on just to notify that the receiver correspondence for 24 dash 183, is an item collection correction letter explaining a previous submitted contract that was approved by the Finance Committee and the consent agenda for an amendment that was done to an incorrect contract. The contract provided an older model of our metering technology equipment, and so the corrected contract has been added to September's agenda for approval, but I wanted to put memorandum out there so that you all are aware of the incorrect document that came before you, so that we can later have a motion to rescind it, and then the approval of the corrected one.
Thank you. Are there any questions on Ms Welch's comments? If we all had
some prior notification of this correction that we'll see in September with a motion to rescind the prior action. Any other questions or comments? Okay, hearing none all in favor of the motion. Signify by saying, aye, aye. Aye,
any opposed that motion is approved. Thank you. Item Seven is unfinished business. We have none. But in item eight we do have some new business. Items 2024, dash 186 is the first one, and. And that is the june 30. Year to date, cash and investment Treasury review, yeah, I know that Mr. Mr. Raman is probably the sponsor here. Yeah.
Good afternoon commissioners, Good afternoon, Madam Chair. We have today the year end. June 30, 2024, year to date, cash and investment review from a treasury standpoint. Making this presentation will be gray lapley. She's the senior director at PFM asset management who does our investment management for government, so she's here to make that presentation, and I'll introduce you to gray
here. She Oh, Hi, Jessica, hi
everybody else. Nice to see you all. Hope you're all doing well. I'm going to share my screen, if that's okay, so you can see my presentation. Thank you. Me make sure I can do that. I
uh, let me know if you can see that.
Yes, I can see it. Okay, fantastic.
So a few things I know. Last time that you all met, you met with Brian Quinn. He has since retired, and I have taken over his position. So I am now really the liaison between govmic and PFM asset management and the overall Detroit water and sewerage department and all of Michigan, actually all of our Michigan clients. So we have a long, storied history with all of you, and I wanted to give you a brief update on the market first, then I'm going to get into what we've been doing in the portfolios, and then finally, talk about what are the next steps. If at any point anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I cannot see if anyone's raising a hand, so feel free to just interrupt if that's if that's helpful. So in terms of the current economic environment, what I have here is, as of June 30, if you've been paying attention to the news at all, you will notice that there has been a lot more going on more recently than June 30, there's a lot changed in the past few months here. So when we put this together, and when these numbers are put together, essentially what we were expecting was we that we were going to see one, maybe two rate cuts from the fed by the end of the year, that has since changed pretty precipitously, and I'll get into that in a moment. One of the reasons behind that expectation as of June was that we continue to see strong inflation numbers, meaning stronger than expected and stronger than than wanted, above that 2% target that the Fed has. We continue to see strong employment numbers, strong in a good way, in this, in this sense, in that we continue to see unemployment be pretty low and resilient consumer spending, so people continuing to spend, despite the fact that to a certain extent, some of their savings have mostly been drawn down as a result of the fiscal stimulus measures we saw during covid So as a result, during this quarter alone, what we saw from March to June was that Treasury yields actually rose across the board, and I'll show you that in a moment. But the yield curve continues to be inverted, and it's still that way today. But again, I'm going to bring this a little bit closer to home as we continue on here. So here is the yield curve. Gives you a sense over the quarter from March to June, what happened. So the dotted line is March 31 numbers, and you can see that June numbers were slightly higher, and that's because there was an expectation that we wouldn't see as many rate cuts the yield curve prices in any expected rate cuts or rate changes that the Fed might make, or that generally are expected to happen as we move forward. And so what we've seen over the past few months, since June, is a pretty sharp change in that in this picture of the yield curve. So we're still in an inverted yield curve, meaning that the front end of the curve is higher than the the longer end of the curve, when we're talking about investments specifically for DWSD, we are looking really at that zero to about three year mark, and that's really on the front left of this page here. So the reason we continue to see rates really high on the front end is because the Fed has set the overnight rate at 525, to 550, as a result of all of the really high inflation that we saw after covid, they've raised rates from zero or near zero, to 525, or 550, expectation now is that we're actually probably going to see, instead of that one that we are anticipating as of June, we may see as many as four rate cuts by the end of the year. Now if you pay attention to this, you'll know that there's only three fed meetings by the end of the year. So how are we going to do four rate cuts with only three fed meetings? That would mean that at some point during those three fed meetings, the market is expecting that we will see more than a 25 basis point move down, meaning more than a quarter of a percentage cut down from. Where we are currently. So if I were to show you what the actual rate environment looks like today, what you would see is the two year is really closer to 385, or so. The five year is closer to 365, so a pretty significant change. As I mentioned, we're really at the lowest levels that we've been for quite some time. Historically, however, we're still in a very attractive space, because, if you recall, during covid, and then for the entirety of the 2010s really, we were in a zero interest rate environment, and so there was not very much benefit to investing any further out the curve. Or, you know, there wasn't a ton of extra yield to be gotten from the different types of sectors that are permitted by the wsds investment policy. I'll explain how this all ties into what we're doing currently in a few minutes, but I wanted to talk about inflation really briefly. What we have here is June 2024 is inflation numbers coming down to 3% this is the consumer price index, so CPI, the one that you probably hear the most about in the news. The most recent reading actually came in at 2.9% so slightly below this and it continues to abate. So we've gone pretty significantly down from the 9.1% that we saw in June of 2022 now to below 3% the Fed has said that even though their target is 2% inflation, that they're not going to wait until we get to that 2% before they start to move rates. And so that's part of the reason that the market is expecting we're going to see a rate cut coming up shortly. On the unemployment front if you can see this, this is a page that shows the unemployment rate on the left hand side, which had gotten as low as 3.4% not too long ago. Now it's up to 4.3% many market participants looked at this and said, This is a big problem, and rates fell pretty significantly as a result of this reading that came in. You know, at the beginning of August, we're going to get the most recent jobs report this Friday. So this is the most recent data. We just don't have information until two days from now, when we will get an updated jobs report. So 4.3% historically, again, for context, is not bad when you think about what full employment used to be defined as, it was really 5% or below. And so 4.3% while it has increased from the 3.4% at the lowest point that we saw recently, is still not a bad number. When we look on the right hand side, we have what's called the labor force participation rate. This is the amount of people that are either looking for work and or currently working in the job force. So they're people that are actually looking for work or working. That means that they're participating in the labor market in general, here in the US. And that has actually continued to rise to a certain extent. So part of the reason we saw this rise in the unemployment rate on the left is because the labor force participation rate also rose. It's actually above the CBO forecast potential. That is a potential based on what expectations are going on with demographic shifts, people retiring, etc. So the expectation, especially with baby boomers retiring and leaving the labor force, is that that's going to continue to go down pretty significantly. But again, we're above that level right now in terms of the labor force participation rate. We have not gotten back to pre covid levels, as you can see, but we are still in a pretty good place with that. One of the reasons it's really important to look at these two metrics, inflation and unemployment, is because that's the Fed's dual mandate, is to focus on both of those inflation in terms of price stability. They don't want inflation to be too high, of course. They don't want it to be too low as well. They want it to be really again, in that 2% sweet spot unemployment. On the other hand, they want full employment. So they don't want the economy to be in a situation where we're going into a recession or the labor market is cooling too much, and we're getting to a place now, as Fed Chair Jay Powell has recently said that they really want to focus more on the unemployment picture and not allow that to get out of control in any sort of way. Again, there are some warning signs, but from a historical perspective, these numbers are not terrible. So if we get into the actual portfolio review I talked about where we're investing on your behalf, again, in that zero to three year space, and I'll give you a kind of brief overview of the investment allocations across the board with the different institutions that that you invest with. You can see them on the left hand side, but they're also shown on the right hand side in that table there. So across the board, US Bank, JP Morgan, first independence bank and Comerica have significant balances. But then government, which is the A. Gip, local government investment pool, managed by PFM asset management, has about 164,000 160 $4 million worth invested in it. Some of that is in the LG IP. So that's an overnight, kind of like a money market fund. It's an overnight LG IP, so you can get money in and out immediately, or very quickly, and is very liquid and triple A M rated, as you can see on the right hand side. But some of its also in securities, and we're going to talk about that in a moment. And that shows some of the progress that we've made over the past year in terms of the investment program for DWSD. So again, the majority are held in overnight bank deposits or the local government investment pool. So very, very liquid, high yielding right now, for the most part, because of the fact that we are in this interest rate environment where the front end of the curve is so high and at 525 to 550 range, and current investment yields across the board are up to as much as 553 depending on where they've been invested.
If we move into fund allocations, you can see the different types of security, excuse me, different types of portfolios that are that make up that amount that we saw on the previous page. Construction funds make up a very large portion. They're both in orange and kind of a darker orange brown color. So water construction fund at 63 million. Sewer construction fund, it's 45 million or so. Then we have in the i and e funds as well, sewer and water, those are in red and blue respectively, O and M funds, water attainage and a few other funds as well. So just to give you some background on the construction funds, one of the reasons that those continue to be so high, those balances continue to be so high, and Mr. Care can give a little bit more color on this, if he wants to chime in as well, is because of the fact that there have been other sources that have been used to fund some of these projects recently, and so the bonds have the bond funds have been outstanding and are continuing to be there as a way to continue to fund those projects as we move into the future, monthly interest earnings on the right hand side, you can see the different where those different funds have come from, obviously, quite a bit of fund earnings on a regular basis, and that's because of the fact that we continue to see balances be reasonably high, as well as interest rates being extremely high. This is a very different picture than what you saw last year and the year before in terms of those interest earnings, because interest rates continue to be in that 5% range on the front end of the curve, the GOV mix, the big spike you see in April and May is really just a result of balances at that point being higher than they had been previously, but they have since come down. So last thing for this section that I wanted to focus on is the sewer i and e, and this is a part of the program that we've really developed to a different extent than some of the other funds, the iones, both sewer Ione and water Ione, we were able to put together with istaker and Nicole's help, a good cash flow analysis to determine how much money could actually be invested out a little bit further than those Overnight funds, than just sticking it in govmic, which is, again, that overnight liquidity vehicle. And so what we were able to do was really develop a program that is in that one to three or zero to three year area of the curve. So when you look down at the duration distribution in the bottom right, you can see there is quite a bit in overnight funds still, but we do have funds going out to about three years across the board. Sector allocation is quite diverse. I know there's 63% in treasuries, and so you may say, Well, that's not a ton of diversification. But when you look at the other sectors right now, for instance, agency mortgage backed securities, that's something that we're going to continue to focus on as we move forward and have better sense of the inflows and outflows in this account. Supernationals, those are securities such as the World Bank, so think of things like that or Inter American Development Bank. Those types of securities are similar to federal agencies such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac have AAA ratings as well. So they're very highly rated and very liquid. Commercial paper in yellow is short term corporate debt. So instead of a five year Microsoft note, for instance, Microsoft may issue short term debts to meet some short term needs that they have. So Commercial paper is in that zero to nine month space, and that is permitted by the policy, as are all of the rest of these types of securities that are shown here. The average yield at cost is about 502, which is very high, and that's reflective of when we were able to purchase these securities. The average yield at market, however, is 499, so very much in line. And that's because security rates continue to be high at the time when we've put this together since then, what you're going to see is that the average yield cost has remained high because it's basically when we've purchased all these different securities over time. But the yield at market is really where could we reconstitute this portfolio if we were to do that today? And because rates have fallen, this will have gone down as well. What that means is that difference between the yield at cost and the yield at market really gives you a sense of if there are unrealized losses or unrealized gains in the portfolio with a yield at cost higher than the yield at market, that means there's unrealized gains in the portfolio that if we were to liquidate securities, you would have gains as a result of those. Any questions so far before I get to the last section, which is really kind of the progress and showing you what where we came from and where we are now?
Okay, hearing that I'm going to continue on. So portfolio update, I wanted to take a little quick journey back in time when Brian last presented to you last year, he talked about our cash flow model, which really gives us a sense of where we can put money to work that's potentially more liquid than needs to be if there's excess liquidity, there's a sense that you could potentially take some of that money, invest about longer, and add a reasonable yields if there are good yields at that time, to have more consistent interest rate earnings and things of that nature. So this is a cash flow model, kind of an explanation of how our cash flow model works. We did this work with Nicole and with istaker, and again, we're able to determine that there are core balances in some of these funds. Again, this is just for your edification, so feel free to look through this, but this gives you a sense of where we would be investing those types of funds. So the investment strategy recommendations as of last year were to look at that consistent core, carve that out and see if we could invest further out on the yield curve, because we expected rates to fall with rates falling on the front end of the curve. Anything that's in liquidity is likely to come down. So those interest rate earnings are likely to come down if you can invest further out the curve in that one to three, zero to three space and lock in some of those rates. Today, you're going to be in a better place as rates start to fall on the front end of the curve that also gets into the extension of duration. Same situation there, right, going further out, instead of being all liquid and having all of your eggs in one basket, diversification, when you have everything in bank deposits and the LG IP, again, there's not a ton of diversification happening, whereas now that we're investing further out in other portfolio types, other sectors, we have more diversification at our fingertips. We have the commercial paper I talked about before, federal agencies, super nationals and treasuries, that we can invest in. And then finally, active management, we at pfmam are not set it and forget it type Investment Advisors. We go through and determine, is there relative value at any one point in time that we can take some amount from the commercial paper holdings and put it into agency mortgage backed securities, or take some from supernationals and put it into agencies. Instead, we do that calculus on a regular basis, and are making those changes, fine tuning the portfolio as we go forward. So where are we today? This gives you a sense as to what we the steps that were taken and where we are now. We went through an investment program review. We did that cash flow analysis at the beginning of the year, as I talked about, we reviewed the investment policy to make sure that everything is in compliance with pa 20, public act 20, and GFOA best practices. And then we looked at Portfolio segmentation, really being able to put some money longer term and keep some money liquid. We did put that strategy into place in the sewer i and e and the water i and e, and we implemented that. And now we're in the state of continual review of strategy. One of the things that's been happening recently is that there's been a divergence between when money has been coming in for state aid versus when money needs to go out, and so we have had to do some sales in the portfolio in order to make those those payments possible. That's worked out very well. We've had a lot of communication between istaker Nicole myself and the portfolio manager to make those funds available. But as we get further into this program, we expect that that's going to be better fine tuned so we don't have to necessarily sell securities on a regular basis to make those funds available. So that's what a that's what I have prepared. I have, of course, some fun disclosure pages for you all to look at and read. But if no one has any. Questions, I'm happy to be done. But if you do have any questions, happy to discuss as well.
Madam Chair. Madam Chair, yes.
Commissioner, yes, a couple
of questions, if I can, I believe, have we given you full discretion to make changes between the categories that you've described to us, or is there some kind of internal review before you do that?
You mean on these different types of portfolios that we have here? Yes, we have Yes. So we don't have full discretion to invest all of these, we only have full discretion to invest when it's appropriate, the water iony And the sewer. I any at this point, any other changes if we were to invest the construction funds which there, there might be some benefit to doing that at this point, because of where interest rates are going, those types of things would need to be a discussion between all of us. Now, that being said, we continue to have these discussions on a regular basis. So this is not something where I'm going to go out and or the portfolio manager is just going to go out and do something if we expect that there's going to be funds that are needed. Or Vista Kerr and Nicole tell us that funds are going to be needed in short order, we're making those funds available. We're not, you know, just doing whatever we want. If that makes sense? Yeah,
it does. And in terms of management fees, is there a schedule of fees? And do the fees vary with the size of the assets under management? Yep, that's
exactly what it is. I do not have that at my fingertips right now, but we can provide that for you. There is a contract in place, and, yes, it's a tiered fee schedule in that more funds coming in mean a lower fee for for you all, what that also is, it's an assets under management type fee. So it's a, it's a percentage of those assets under management. It is not a per trade commission type fee, so that it's, that's how it's set up.
Okay, thank you. I have no no other questions, sure. Madam
Chair, yes. Commissioner, just curious, on the sector, on the water construction bond. Are we allowed to even invest that money, since it is coming out of a bond?
Yes, actually. So it's interesting. Now, there's different ways of looking at this, but essentially what you are beholden to for investment of construction funds is whatever is in the the bond official statement. So the official statement will have an entire section that says these proceeds can be invested in ABCD that's typically in line with public deck 20, and what's currently available to be invested, just generally with all of your funds I have seen in the past, not with Detroit water and sewerage department, but with other clients that their bond indentures, their bond official statements are a little bit more narrow in focus, because they want those funds, obviously, to be very safe, not that they don't want their other funds to be safe. But in terms of the water construction fund, the sewer construction fund, those are able to invest in here, I'll show you all of the different sectors that are shown on the right hand side at the top there.
Okay, all right. Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Thanks for the question. Any other questions, commissioners, I have,
I have, I have a comment. Madam Chair,
thank you. Yeah.
One of the strategies that we're thinking about using is you saw on the previous slide that there was $63 million in water construction bond dollars, we have a inquiry into our bond Council, as well as the Great Lakes Water Authority, bond, bond Council, daikama, as to whether or not we can shift some of those resources over into our lead service line program, which is running short of money. Our first option always is to go to the state and ask them, Is there any by infrastructure law, ARPA, ARPA dollars, any other funding available that we could have access to, but rather than lose our contractors, because we're just going faster than we anticipated, we'd be able to do to go Plan B, if you will, it would be to come back to the board and ask to move approximately $30 million of those funds over into the land service line program so we can keep the contractors working throughout the winter or until we can receive additional dollars from state funding. So I'm just throwing it out there that that's what we're thinking about doing. We certainly come back to the board. We certainly are going to get the sign off of both our bond council as well as Glee was bond Council, because we, as you know, we bond through Cleveland, so they'd have to approve this, and I've already had some preliminary conversations with them, and we'd also talk it over with PFM. But those are, that's what we're thinking, and it should come up in the next next 30 days, if, in fact, we need to do that. So just keeping you up to date.
Yeah, thanks. Director Brown, I just want to clarify. Would that be like a a temporary transfer, the lead service replacement, or would that be more permanent? Just what? What are you thinking?
I think it would be more permanent. It's all going to depend on whether or not you know, a lot of the money that the state has access to for lead service lines has been given to other utilities, and it has a deadline, and it has to be spent by a certain date, if the state can't spend that money, they're going to encumber it and then go to the cities, which is the city of Detroit, that that has the capacity to spend it within the deadlines, so that they don't have to give it back. So we fully anticipate that at some point they're going to come to us and say, we need you to take this additional money, and this is just a matter of timing. We don't want our contractors to run out of money, because they would leave and go to other cities, especially when you look at the fact that we're only paying $9,300 per line to have it removed. The city of Chicago is paying more than $20,000 per line. So if we run out of money, certainly contractors will look for cities that are paying a higher rate and to keep their workers working. We're not going to let that happen. We would ask to shift bond funds. And as has been indicated earlier in the presentation, I'm not going to say we're having we're having a problem spending bond dollars, but this is a great position to be in where we're getting all of this additional money from, from the federal government, from the Biden and Harris administration, as well as from the Whitmer administration, and we want to spend that first before spending the bond dollars. But in this case, we spent more than $90 million of or we would have spent more than $90 million on that service replacement that we got from the state of Michigan. And we're simply saying, if you have another 100 million, we could use that right now. But if it takes time for you to get it to us, we're going to, in the interim, use bond funding.
Thank you, Director Brown, Thanks for that update. While we were talking about bond funds, I did have another question related to the investments, and that was, do we ever have as a result of any funds that represent bond funds, any arbitrage concerns when investing? Great
question. So we as because these funds are invested in government, which is that LG IP I was telling you about earlier, which pfmam is the investment advisor for our arbitrage rebate services are free as a result of that. So they are included in that government, that government investment. So what we do is we provide updates to arbitrage rebate, compliance needs, any sort of liabilities, all of that paperwork, any of that is all included in those services. So that comes out on a regular basis, and that is sent over to the department.
So if I may add, Madam Chair, I have a conversation with our bond council regarding this arbitrage issue, where, obviously we are earning little bit more than what we are paying to our bond holders. So it raises the question of arbitrage, but his position is because of the circumstances over the last couple of years that federal government is providing so much funding through ARPA dollars, infrastructure dollars, that we got limited resources so but they also have a deadline by which we have to spend the money. So he believes that IRS will be understanding of that fact that we are unable to spend the bond dollars because our our focus has shifted to towards this infrastructure dollars, ARPA dollars that we need to spend by a certain day. And his initial thought is our IRS would be lenient in terms of any arbitrage issue that might come up. They might actually give an extension of time or something.
Thank you both for those. Um additional comments. Um any other questions or comments? If not, thank you, and we'll continue on down our agenda.
Thank you, gray,
thank you.
You will move now to Item 2024, 177, and that's the external auditor review. And I'll turn it over to istaker, to
Yes, ma'am chair. This is our external audit review. This is again, that time of the year when the financial statement audit for fiscal year 2024, is beginning. We have Timothy Andrew from plant Moran. He's a partner in the public accounting and consulting firm plant Moran, the audit is the initial stage of getting started, or some field work has been completed. And Tim is going to give us a little overview of where we stand in terms of starting the audit and in the process involved. Tim,
okay, Mr. Kerr, thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Appreciate you allowing me to speak to you for a few minutes on the financial statement audit for the year end of June, 30, 2024 and really, more or less, this is just to give you a heads up that we are in the planning phase of the audit. As part of the audit process, we are required to have certain communications with you as the governing body, and in this case, we do that the form of a letter that I can see is up on screen now. It should be included in your agenda packet today. So I won't go through all of the details of this, but I will use it as a guide. So just to maybe update you on where we're at now, so we have had our planning meetings with with Issachar and the team. We were able to back last month do some of the interim testing. And so I think we're in a pretty good spot now when we officially start the year on fieldwork later this month, on page two of the letter, we do disclose what the auditing standards call significant risks of misstatement. And I point this out just to let you know that this does not mean that we anticipate issues or we have known issues as part of the planning process, we have to look at your financial statements and identify where a misstatement could occur. And so we generally look at things such as revenue that are just large volume of transactions, large dollar amounts, anything that's that involves a significant estimate, such as pension costs, such as the general claims liability, and then we communicate those to you that these are areas that we'll be paying special attention to. And then we have our our audit approach as it relates to these items. And then really rounding out the letter is just soliciting feedback from you, and again, we start, we officially start the audit later this month. It typically will go into December, so it's a multiple month effort. So if you ever have any questions, any concerns, my contact information is at the bottom of the letter, and we're always happy to answer your call and you know, maybe tailor our approach to make sure that we answer those questions or concerns. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have today.
Thank you, Tim, I do have one question, is there any area of particular focus that's little bit different than what you had last year.
So as part of the process, and really this is, as we get into it, and we start receiving materials, we do have to have what we call unpredictable procedures. And so yes, there are, there will be things that, that we will be doing a bit different. We don't have those identified quite yet, but I would think in the coming weeks, as we start, as the information and materials come in, and we, you know, finalize the planning, we'll have to identify at least one that, you know, surprise procedure, unpredictable procedure.
Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay, well, I think Madam Chair,
it's an observation and a comment, and I'm sure this is already on plant Moran's radar, as it is on everybody's radar these days, we would appreciate in your review, you review any potential weaknesses with regard to what happened with the Detroit riverfront Conservancy. What kind of safeguards do we have in place, and are they adequate to make sure what happened there simply cannot happen here.
I think, Tim, you acknowledge that. I think,
yeah, yeah, acknowledge and as part of the audit we do look at, especially so, one of the things I did not mention is there are, there are a couple new auditing standards in place, and one of those is related to having auditors take a deeper dive and obtaining a deeper understanding on internal controls. And so we'll have new new questions, new new questionnaires that that Mr. Kerr and Halloween were helping us with. And so we'll look at the manual processes, the controls, just to make sure that we're comfortable that those controls are in place.
All right, thank you. Thank you.
Are there any other questions? Hearing none. We'll move on to Item 2024. Dash, 170 and commissioners, what's your pleasure?
Madam Chair once, I'd like to thank Tim,
oh sure,
for giving the update to the committee. Also, this is a our junior And Madam Chair commissioners. We will not have a financial review for the month of June because it's in the process of being audited. So in this meeting, we have no financial review, monthly financial review. We will continue in the future, but this year, in this month, there is none. Just wanted to let you know,
thank you, Mr. Kerr I hadn't looked further down in the agenda to see if there was one, but thank you for alerting us that there will not be a June review, correct? Not
at this time. Yeah.
Thank you. Okay, commissioners will move to item C, 2024, 170
Madam Chair Commissioner Coleman, I'd like to recommend to the Board of Water commissioners for the city of Detroit water and sewer department authorized directors to approve DWSD contract number 6005838, with mission forward of Dearborn, before parts, repairs and maintenance service for a total contract amount not to exceed $1 million and a term of five years. This also authorized directors to take such other actions as may be needed to accomplish the intent of this vote support.
Thank you. It's been moved and supported. Miss Welch,
good afternoon again. This contract will support dwsds fleet division in an effort to continue to provide quality vehicle services to our customers, both internally and externally, this vendor will provide service work warranty work and parts for DWSD vehicles when the demand for repairs exceed business internal service level agreements. It will also aid in reducing vehicle downtime. And so bids were published by the procurement division for 30 days. We did receive three responsive bids, and mission Ford of Dearborn was the lowest bidder. So at this time, procurement is recommending to the Finance Committee for approval and movements of full board.
Thank you. Are there questions or comments here? Hearing none all in favor. Signify by saying, aye,
Aye.
Any opposed that motion is approved. We'll move on to item D, 2024, 171, commissioners.
Madam Chair, yes, wait, I have it here I move that the Finance Committee recommend to the Board of Water commissioners the approval of DWSD contract number 6006566, with Etna Supply Company and contract number 6006565, with fergan waterworks for the purchase of as needed, gate box parts for various sizes, for a total combined contract not to exceed 288,100 188,000 $177 for a term of one year, and authorize the director to take any other appropriate action.
Report
and moved and properly supported. Miss Welch,
hi, these are two warehouse replenishment contracts that provide gate. At gate box parts. These parts are used as access points to gate valves when the field crews are out doing repair work, it enables them to be able to turn water on and off to complete the repair jobs. Procurement published bids for advertisement for 22 days. We did receive three bids, and Aetna and Ferguson were the apparent lowest equalized bidders, so we awarded to both. Are recommending to award to both based on the lowest line item. Edna is a Detroit based business, and procurement at this time is recommending to the Finance Committee for full approval and movements award.
Thank you. Are there questions or comments? Hearing none all in favor of the motion. Signify by saying, aye, aye, Aye. Any opposed, that motion is approved, and we'll move on to Item e, 2024, 172, commissioners,
Madam Chair,
Mister Coleman,
I'd like to make a recommendation to the Board of Water commissioners for the city of Detroit water and sewer department to authorize directors to approve DWSD contract number 6006577, with AECOM Great Lakes incorporated for professional engineering services to support the Capital Improvement Planning Program, Project CS, tac, 1987, for total contract amount not to exceed $11,000,564.00 at a term of three years. This also authorizes directors to take such other actions as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote support.
Thank you. It's improved and supported. Miss Welch, yes, this
contract supports our engineering group by providing consultant services for dwsds Capital Improvement Planning program in which Capital Work is developed and prioritized by neighborhoods and according with risk and Criticality models to identify those areas for construction projects. This contract is to continue supporting the programming approach for for us to be able to renew and rehabilitate DW SDS assets for water and sewer infrastructure. Proposals were published on MIT and advertised for 41 days. We did receive two proposals which were evaluated, Aecon was ranked the highest. They are also a Detroit based business, and at this time, procurement is recommended to the Finance Committee for full approval and movement support.
Thank you. Are there questions comments? Madam
Chair,
yes. Commissioner,
okay. No, you know I'm reading it. I've answered my own questions. Thank you. Okay,
thank you. Any other questions or comments? Hearing? None, all in favor of the motion. Signify by saying, aye, Aye. Any opposed, the motion is approved, and we'll move on to Item 2024, 173, that's IMF,
Yes, Madam Chairman, I move that the committee forward to the Board of Water commissioners the approval of DWSD contract Number 600657, with core and Main and contract number 6006572, with fergson waterworks for an as needed, purchase of repair clamps of various sizes for a combined total contract not to exceed 283,050 cent, $99.50 and A term of one year and authorize the director to make take any appropriate actions.
Thank you for support. It's been moved and properly supported. Miss Welch,
this is another warehouse replenishment contract being awarded to the two lowest equalized bidders. This contract will provide repair clamps, which are used doing broken water main bakery water main break repair work throughout the city of Detroit. These contracts provide stock for one year used by field crews to prevent work stoppages for emergency spot buys during our peak water break, water main break seasons. We did publish B is for advertisement for 22 days, we did receive two bids in which both vendors are being recommended awarded contracts based on the lowest price items that were submitted. So at this time, procurement is recommending to the Finance Committee for approval and movement to full board.
Thank you. Is there? Are there questions? Comments? Hearing none. All in favor. Signify by saying, aye, Aye. Any opposed motion is approved. We'll move on to g20 24 174 commissioners.
Madam Chair. I'll take that one. I do have a question, not on the last one, but just in general, the term was used equalized credit credit, because could that be explained to me? Please? Equalized credits
is when we have a vendor that submits a bid, and they are a registered Detroit certified business, and so they get a credit, incentivized for bid, and it doesn't take away from their bid, but when they come in lower because of that equalization credit, we just mentioned it in a board letter, so that you're aware of it. So if they were a Detroit based business, then they would have been the lowest equalized, like somebody could have beat them out if they did not have that Detroit certification.
And what is that credit percentage, it
depends. And so it ranges anywhere from 2% up to 8% so it's if they're Detroit based, if they're Detroit headquarter, if they're Detroit resident, joint venture, mentor venture, small business and small minority business. There's a price range that's in the procurement policy. And so based on what certifications they have, they have the option to stack those credits and get those incentives.
Excellent. Thank you very much for that explanation. You're right. Thank you. Glad to hear that, Madam Chair,
yes,
I'd like to make a recommendation from the Finance Committee to the Board of Water commissioners for the city of Detroit water and sewer department authorized directors to approve DWSD contract number 6006578, with Edward C Levy, Detroit group, doing business as Edward C levy company for an aggregate slag for total contract not to exceed amount of 121,070 $732 at a term of two years, authorized directors to take such other actions as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
Thank you support,
yes.
Thank you, Miss Welch,
this is another warehouse replenishment item contract that is before the Finance Committee today. It does support our field crews when they are out in the field doing various repair work. Aggregate slag is kind of like a gravel type, you know, rock, raw component that they use to sustain and support our assets and piping when they're out doing work. We did publish for bids for 22 days. We did receive 3b. Is in Edward levy company was the lowest bidder, and so at this time, procurement is recommending it to the Finance Committee for full board, and I mean to the Finance Committee for approval and movement to full board.
Are there questions?
I have a credit a question. Madam Chair,
yes,
I'm just curious. On these warehouse items. How do we envy inventory the products? Are they? I'm sure they're probably spread out at different locations. How do we have
two warehouse locations, which is on the west side and our main office, which is at CSF. And so we have actually three, three warehouses, automotive warehouse that maintains all of our automotive parts, and then a central warehouse and a West yard warehouse. And so most items are stocked on the shelf, but when you have this bulk raw material, it is where it is stored on our premises. And then the business units, when they have their jobs, they come to the window and they wreck out like it's called a stock checkout request, and then they use front end loaders with scales on them to retrieve the raw bulk material for their jobs.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions? Hearing? None all in favor of the motion. Signify by saying, aye,
Aye.
Any opposed, the motion is approved, and we'll move on to Item H. 2024, 175,
Madam Chair, I move that the Finance Committee forward to the Board of Water commissioners for approval amendment number two for DWS contract number 6003012, fk 86002757, I think FKA is formally known as With Itron Inc, for the water safe source warranty replacement program, open way Reba AMI implementation by adding $522,500 in funding for a total amended contract, amount not to exceed $18,762,500 no changes to the scope of work or terms and conditions of this contract are being made, and that we authorize the director to take all appropriate actions to implement this motion support.
Thank you. It's been moved and properly supported. Ms Welch. Much? Yes, this
is the corrected contract for the received correspondence that was mentioned earlier. And so initially, the contract that was presented before you for the amendment of the $522,500 was applied to a contract that was for the previous metering equipment. So the contract that's before you now is the amendment to place that funding on the correct contract so that we can extend the contract value to a lot for the additional parts. This amendment will cover the additional metering equipment that will be kept in stock, so that as they go out and continue to implement the iron program, it provides them with the latest technology that we are now utilizing for them to continue to order parts and stock them and replace them as needed. And so the original contract was approved by the Board in 2022 which was the first amendment that created that added an additional funding for the change in communication platform when a technology change, and we used a new, newer layer version to help with meter reading and calculating accurate Village. This will be the second amendment to add funds for additional components to continue to support that project. And so procurement is recommending to the Finance Committee today to move to full board for full
Thank you. Are there questions or comments? Commissioners, I
do want to just advise you all that it is 202. We have to open up the capital improvement program and operations committee.
Okay? We will recess now to call the chair. I
time now is 202, I'd like to call the capital improvement program and Operations Committee to order please, roll call. Please.
Chairperson Coleman,
present
Commissioner Davis. Commissioner present, Mr. Chair. We have a quorum. Thank
you. At this time, I would like to yield the floor back to the Finance Committee, please.
Thank you. We were had just heard from Miss Welch on, 2024, 175,
are there questions or comments? Hearing none. All in favor. Signify by saying Aye, Aye. Any opposed that motion is approved. Madam Chair, yes.
Good evening. Nakia grant, I'm sorry. Good afternoon. Nakia branch Pinson, Deputy General Counsel, earlier in the memo that was received and filed by this board, there was a request to resend the motion that was approved by this committee and board at the July meeting. Now would be a good time to make that motion if they desire the board, because now there is a motion that's been approved to do the same action on a different contract. So you would need to rescind the earlier action that was done in the July meeting. And for reference, the item number is 2000 2024 dash 126,
okay, thank you, Miss branch. So is there a motion to rescind item 2024, dash
126, so move Madam Chair.
Uh, support. It's
been moved and supported. Are there any other questions or comments? Hearing? None. All in favor. Signify by saying Aye, Aye. Any opposed. That motion is approved. Thank you very much. Okay, our planning calendar, we had the two items completed for this month, which were the external audit presentations and the cash and investment Treasury review. So we're on track. Are there any other matters to come before the committee? Okay, our next meeting then is October, the second 2024 Is there a motion to adjourn? Support,
yep,
okay, we are adjourned. Thank you both very much.
Thank you. All right, I'd like to resume the capital improvement and program operations committee meeting at this time. Can we have a motion to approve the agenda as presented? Please,
Mr. Chairman, I
move approval. It has been moved support and seconded All in favor. Signify, signify by saying, aye, aye. Any abstentions hearing, none. This motion passes. Item number four, approval of the minutes as presented. Can we have a motion? Please move approval. It has been reported and it has been seconded All in favor. Signify by saying, aye, aye, aye. Any abstentions Hearing none this motion passes. Item number five, public participation. Do we have anyone
going once, going twice. Okay, we have none now. Mr. Chair, yes. Mr. Chair, Brian Pike, Public Affairs Director, we do have two hands raised. Okay,
the first hand is Mr. Miko Williams.
Mr. Williams, how are you? Hi, good
afternoon, Commissioner Coleman, I'm doing well. How are you, sir,
I'm doing great. Always great to hear from you. Mr. Williams, good
and shout out to all the commissioners, staff and everyone that's in attendance. Uh. D'Amico Williams, Chief Executive Director of hydrate Detroit, I want to address some of the recent concerns regarding water main breaks. Can anybody explain the procedure of what happens when a water break occurs? There's low water pressure, residents are calling and also what is the process to service those affected customers from the water main break? You know, I've gotten calls for water deliveries and hydrate, Detroit doesn't deliver water to people affected by water main breaks. Those are people that have been shut off and been shut off for a long time. Um, I've gotten calls for people, you know, to bring water over to these people. And I said, Well, you know that we don't have any water. We don't even deliver water anymore due to covid. So I tell them, they can come to my office or however, and they can pick up some water, but we don't carry much water. And these citizens are concerned, because they just want to know when their water is going to, you know, return back to normal. Are there any notices before work starts that? Hey, this notice is to let you know, even by door hanger, that work will be done in the area from this date to that date, and please be prepared and advised, because some people have said they have not gotten any notice, and they get upset. Another concern is water main breaks that were happening over the past two weeks. This was on the last week of August. Everyone's either gone on a vacation, or there's limited staff persons, where a client of mine had to go to the ombudsman, Bruce Simpson, in order to get help with the low water pressure in his community, because he couldn't find anyone from DWSD or get his response from improved Detroit, I told him to call into this meeting to report his concern. But I just need this commit, these commission, you commissioners, to understand that you know, we need to know the full process of what happens when work is done in the area. How are residents informed? Will the Detroit water department pass out water to those affected persons? I mean, it has to be some form of a protocol here so that everybody would know. And if that could be told to me or to the public, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking my comment.
Thank you. Any other comments, Mr. Chair, the
next person is Norell Hemphill,
until
Hemphill, okay, good
afternoon attorney. Noelle Hemphill, Good afternoon chair, and excuse me, committee, I just have a quick question, is there a way that public comment can come at the end of the meeting for public engagement? I know it's a little bit difficult to ask questions or engage with the materials that is being presented with public comment being in the beginning of the meeting. For example, in the finance committee meeting, there were several pieces that the public may have had questions on, and thank you for that rich presentation in the finance committee, but it's a little bit easier for us to engage if. Public comment is after presentations, or just not at the beginning of the meeting. So again, is there any way we can change that format to provide more of an opportunity for public input and engagement? Thank you.
I think Ms hamphi, a great question. Thank you for asking that, but the public comment is just that. It's just a comment. And if you notice, we don't use the answer the question. There's no question and answer session. We just don't do it like that. So it is, it is strictly for a comment. If you notice, when they're when you say something, and normally I wouldn't do this, but to answer your question, that's why we do it when we do it, but if you do have comments or questions, what I'd recommend is you send us an email.
Any other questions or comments,
Mr. Chair, and the last person is Cecily McClellan,
good afternoon.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. Just recently, it was published that the 95 million of the well 43 million of 95 million for in federal dollars could be used for repairs, and of that, 9 million was allocated for lateral sewer line repairs. Director Brown had indicated approximately 40% of the sewer lines in the city of Detroit are disconnected, largely due to just the age of our system. Are there? Is there a potential that more than 99 million can be allocated for this process, 40, 40% and we're talking at least what, over 250 accounts. That's, that's a good 100,000 accounts, uh, 9 million is not going to go a long way, although it is, you know, helpful. I'd like to know whether or not there is a potential to reallocate additional dollars toward those, uh, lateral lines. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Anyone else?
Mr. Chair, there are no more. Hands raised. Okay,
thank you. With that said, We'll now move on to communications. I see we have none line item number seven is unfinished business. I see we have none. Line Number eight is new business review of engineering and planning programs. You
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Can everybody? Can everybody hear me? Yes,
we can.
This is the My name is Chief Investigator, Danny Allen, and this is the September 2024, security and integrity division update. Next slide, please. Just a brief statement on who we are and some of the things that we do. We have two components. Our first is uniform security, and they provide general protection for our buildings and employees, and they are strategically staged throughout our properties, primarily CSF and the main office building. They receive continual and enhanced training to meet state standards that includes a biannual firearms program, response to active shooter, CPR and first aid. We also provide training for other DWSD employees. We work in conjunction with HR when doing this that is active shooter and situational awareness and other training is may come up and be necessary. Next slide please. Our second component is the revenue protection unit. The individuals that compose this group are experienced public law enforcement, detectives and investigators all retired with long careers and resumes, and the primary thing they are charged with is protecting DWSD financial assets. We work closely with all divisions of DWSD to. Accomplish this goal, primarily billing collections, meter operations and it we identify problem accounts, and we have three major sources of revenue. Amongst them are unbilled and under billed. Water usage, vacant homes, which represents probably the the significant portion of our revenue and incorrect water usage. Now, the two unbilled and incorrect usage primarily are aimed at commercial establishments. We work very hard to make sure that the commercial establishments in this city are paying what they should next slide please, in addition to the revenue component, and we perform site investigations to verify any losses of revenue, and They we take actions to correct and identify the problems, primarily through billing. We also assist DWSD legal with investigative needs. They will send us out to conduct a canvas, recover video footage and interview witnesses, amongst other things. Um, we also respond to locations where any of our employees are present prevent breaches of peace at work sites when we are requesting that that goes for any entity that may be experiencing threats from difficult customers, if necessary, we will coordinate with DPD for a response. Next slide, please. Our current revenue statistics continue to be robust. Year to date, we have $207,000 back build, and this is fiscal year to date. I might add future build when we identify the account and get it back online. That's where that number comes from. $626 million and water loss revenue. Now an explanation of that, that was a task that Mr. Smalley gave us early on, to be watching vacant homes for water that's being basically pumped into those homes through burst pipes that nobody is ever going to pay for. And so once we inspect those homes, we determine that they are indeed vacant and that the infrastructure inside those homes has failed. We put a ticket in and leader ops comes out and shuts the water off directly. So far, we have responded to approximately 700,000 or not seven we've responded to approximately 700 of those vacant homes that concludes our presentation. Are there any questions?
Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Thank you, Commissioner,
why not in 10? Are there any other matters to be brought before the body? Okay, hearing on our next meeting is scheduled for October 2. 2020,
Commissioner, common, we, we do have one more presentation item. 2024, 184,
we Okay, I'm sorry.
Good afternoon Mr. Chair, good afternoon, commissioners. I'll make it quick, since I thought we were going to wrap up. Thank you all for passing the prior CS, 1987 in the finance committee. I'm a no go sign. Chief Strategy and process improvement officer, I'm going to give us a quick update from our last time we did this last year. So you so some of the benchmarks that we are working towards on our capital program reduce asset failures and water loss, reduce operational costs and increasing while we increase capital expenditures, we're working heavily towards meeting the goal. Of setting 8000 lead service lines replaced per year, and we're well on our way with that this current year. We're also through Infrastructure Committee meetings working to this minimize the disruption to neighborhoods with coordination with underground other underground utilities and DPW. I This is our overall CIP process has not changed much since the last presentation. There's an ongoing refinement in the one to first three areas of planning, condition assessment and design, and that updates the confidence in terms of what we're selecting as assets for replacement. This is an overview of where we have done a lot of water sewer condition assessments as well as storm water projects over the last six years,
with over $90 million in grants for the lead service line replacement program. There's been a major focus for resource allocation in addressing this item at DWSD, we've built an internal GIS team that updates models this for a for areas that we give to contractors or assign those contractors, and we're averaging a rough 80% hit rate. So 80% of what we've asked contractors to hydro, excavate and find are maintaining a high level of that 80% for the lead service so, and I think as of 2018 to now, we've replaced over 10,000 lead service lines. Another focus over the years has been the coordination and design of large projects that reduce the amount of wet weather into the local sewer system. Those flows are either being removed or reducing peak flow within the system. These efforts are ongoing and intended to commence in the short term, all of the previous slides, in addition with many other items, are criteria that we use in updating the DWC risk and Criticality model. This has been a very good indicator on asset failure, and gives us confidence on the selected for replacements are correct. As DWSD increased in its spending Since 2019 there is a trend line of reduced water main breaks. The exception is fiscal year 23 where we had an abnormal amount of breaks due to some pump station trips. We worked with our regional partner to work through those issues, and started realizing normalize the water main breaks back this year.
This is an overview of the construction throughout the city. Since 2017 we have over here's a list of just most of the contracts on the water and sewer. But we have over $79 million worth of active sewer contracts, with 20 million of those being wrapped up this calendar year. On the water side, we have over $132 million worth of active water construction works, with 60 million of that being wrapped up predominantly this year. One of our biggest goals are from this program, is reducing the likelihood of failure, mitigating against consequence of failure and building of you know, allowing a return of best on investment for this building the neighborhood resiliency. There any questions? Let me
Deputy Director Smalley, we're going to have the stormwater update next month. Mr. Chair,
all right. Excellent. Next item, are there any other matters to be discussed about before this body Seeing none? I'd like to call for a motion to adjourn. Please move Mr. Chair. All right, it's been moved second. Please. I. I'll second it. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
All right, we have five minutes till we open up the Customer Service Committee meeting.
Thank you. Applause.
Mary, how
are you? Well, hello there, Mr. Director, I'm fine. Now
that's all. They're back.
I appreciate all the assistance I received.
We all we all need. We all
apologize to my appearance. So
you got to keep up with these phones. You can't let them Go. Dead on You. You
Oh, My goodness. I
yeah, good afternoon. I'd like to call to order the customer service. Committee meeting, yeah, at 230 Mr. Secretary, would you please call the roll?
Not a problem? Chairperson, Blackman, present, Commissioner Garcia i.
Commissioner Garcia may be on mute.
Commissioner forte, present, Madam Chair. We do have a quorum. Just to note, Commissioner Garcia is here as here in the zone. Okay,
let's hope she can hear us and then she can respond. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Carol, entertain a motion. I move approval, moved by Commissioner forte, seconded by Commissioner Blackmon. All those in favor, please indicate by the sign of Aye. Aye Opposed nay. Motion carries. The next item is the approval of minutes of August 7, 2024 Is there a motion?
Madam Chair, I approve
offer a Motion moved by Commissioner forte, seconded by Commissioner Blackmon. Hearing no objections. All those in favor of approving the minutes of the seventh please indicate by the sign of Aye. Aye. Aye Motion carried. Are there any A's Motion carried? The next item on the agenda is public participation. Is there anyone who has indicated a willing and a desire to speak before this committee?
Madam Chair, Brian Peckinpah, Public Affairs Director, we do have two individuals who raise their hands. The first one,
please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.
Oh, that's okay. Madam Chair,
would you please read the public comment statement?
Oh yes. I mean, you
didn't respond to this one. Make sure you were there. Yes, I'm here. Don Thank you.
Commissioner Garcia, go ahead.
Yes, Madam Chair, to make a comment, please raise your hand by using the raise hand icon on your desktop or mobile device. If you are calling into the meeting by a phone, press star nine to raise your hand after your name is called, it will give you permission to unmute. In order to begin speaking, you will have to unmute yourself to do so, press the unmute button, which is the microphone icon. If you're online on a laptop computer or a tablet or star six, if you are calling in as a reminder, you will have a limit of three minutes to make your comment. There will be a timer indicating your remaining time. If you're online and make a comment, would quite kindly request you fill out the commentar link that's located in the chat. By filling out the card, we will have your contact information to follow up appropriately. If you are unable to click the link, please let us know, and a phone number will be provided for you to call to provide the needed information. You will only be called upon once, once. The Chair closes public comment for this committee, there will be no further comments from the public, and all attendees will remain muted for the duration of the meeting. Thank you for your attention and Madam Chair, the first person is Jacob Graham.
Welcome, Mr. Graham, please proceed with your comment.
Hello. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak Madam Chair and members of the Customer Service Committee. My name is Jacob Graham, and I live on Townsend Street. I am calling into inquire about the hard restoration, hard surface restoration in my alley after the work done to rebuild the square basin drain at the entrance to the alley. The I called in last month and was hoping to get an update on when the hard surface might be restored. The I haven't. Nobody's contacted me in the meantime, and there was, there was a question last month, maybe, and I wasn't able to respond about whether or not it was DWSD that disturbed the hard surface, tore out all the cement. And I just would like to confirm that I do, I do have that that work being performed on camera, on video and photos of the DWSD employees removing that hard surface. So if there was a question of, of if it was them that removed all of the cement, i i can help provide confirmation on that, and so I'd appreciate an update on when that's going to be repaired, so that, because it's right in front of people's driveways that they used to park, and so it's very difficult for them to use, use the alley now, because the. Uh, the the hard surfaces removed, and it's dirt and and mostly mud. Thank Thank you very much.
Thank you. Mr. Graham,
Madam Chair,
yes. Mr. Director,
yeah. If he could put his address in the chat, we could probably get a response before the end of the meeting, or at least get within before the end of the day. A lot of times, what's happening is we make the repair to the to the storm drain, but the alley, it needs to be completely redone and repaired, and that's a DPW issue, but we will find out who's responsible for it, and I'll take responsibility for whatever department it is that we make sure that it gets done.
Thank you very much. Mr. Brown,
I just need his address in the chat. Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Graham, please make sure you put your address in the chat. Okay, thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address the committee?
Madam Chair, we do have Mr. Graham's address, so we'll make sure to follow up. Okay, very good. The next person is Cecily McClellan.
Miss Good afternoon. Cecily McFarland, representing we the people of Detroit. As we are aware, over 25,000 Detroit lifeline residents will have to recertify as of October 1 their program will expire. It's my understanding that they'll be notified via the bill as a customer. DWSD, I know I received my bill approximately the middle of the month, meaning that most of these residents, or many of them that are on those schedules, will not get notification until the middle of the month. 25,000 persons having to recertify by October the first, and as of October The first is there should be some of the mechanism of notifying them, besides just the billing insert, I think it's also crucially important that the customer service representatives also know that there is a recertification process on the way right now as well, so they can be alerted and make the customers aware of the process. Excuse me, the process to recertify. But I think that this is crucially important, particularly with the number of residents and the limited time frame that's available to do this recertification, most residents do not know that they'll have to do that. Thank you very much. Thank
you, Miss McClellan. Is that? Yes? Yeah. Director Brown, I just want to,
I just want to make one point that the recertification is not a DWSD requirement. It is not a Wayne Metro requirement. It is a state of Michigan requirement. Now we're going to move heaven and earth to help the state get people recertified with any and all that we need to do to get that done. But I, I just, I just want everybody to understand that this is not our requirement. It's not a Wayne Metro requirement. It's a state of Michigan requirement, and they're struggling. They're struggling because they have to get everybody required, recertified all over the state, so we're going to do everything that we can possibly do to help our customers get recertified through the state's process. But it's not something that is totally within dwsds control. I just want, I just want to make that clear. Thank you.
So Mr. Brown, since it is not totally within our control and it must happen, what? What are we doing to make sure that customers are not adversely affected? Yeah,
Matt, can you? Can you answer that question please?
Yes, I sure can. So, Madam Chair, we have already sent out individual letters to every single person that is currently on and enrolled in the Lifeline program. And then in approximately one week from now, we will send out a second letter to every single enrolled lifeline customer to remind them once again that they need to recertify. It's also in all of the paperwork that they receive when they first initially enroll into Lifeline has and it's on our website as well that lists the policy that says every October 1 you need to recertify onto the program. So we've done it. In at least three different places to notify the customers. We got feedback from several in the community that if we did it too early, people would forget, and if we do it too late, so I feel like we've gotten into a situation where we can't win to win, but we are doing all that we can to communicate to our customers as long as they apply on, or as soon as they do apply on or after October 1, they will be protected from shut off until Wayne Metro has an opportunity to fully enroll them into the program. So we will ensure that they're protected while that process is happening. And this is nothing new to our community. Whether you're on the Michigan Energy Assistance Program, better known as meep, whether you're on the Lockheed program, the low income heating energy assistance program offered by the federal government through the Michigan or the through the Department of Health and Human Services, October 1 is the grant period that all of those types of programs renew on. So this will be nothing new, and should not be anything new to the public.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, but what is new is the software that's being used by the state in order to get people recertified. So So yeah, that that is new, and could be somewhat confusing, and we're going to try to help our customers get through that process as as best we can.
Yeah, absolutely. Director Brown, it's called empower, and that is the system that the state now requires all grantees to use. So in the past, agencies like Wayne, Metro Community Action Agency use their own internal program, which gave them access to all of the data because they were enrolling into those programs through their own system, and now the state of Michigan is requiring that all enrollees use the Empower system, which which has some limitations and a learning curve as well, not only to the public that is applying, but also to the agencies that have to use and rely on that information. So yeah, it is a little bit new. I will also say that we, we had a recertification program earlier for some some of our actually 7000 of our Lifeline customers in in April, we sent out letters and made phone calls and contacted 7000 dw, or lifeline enrollees, and we had less than 800 that actually applied. So we had what I don't know, math wise, this what 10% right actually came back. So we do our best to communicate.
Well, I appreciate the explanation. I don't know what more we can do to help in this process, since it is not our requirement, but we are doing everything we can to make cuts your customers are adequately served. So thank you for the explanation. I appreciate that, and I hope that answers ms McClellan's question as well.
Yeah. And Madam Chair, sorry. One more. Just one more comment for I know that Cecily and Norell and Gwendolyn all have, have had numerous comments today and last or the last board meeting as well. We actually reached out to them. DWSD did, and we're actually having a meeting tomorrow with we the people of Detroit as well as Wayne Metro, and so we're going to have a, I'll call it a team meeting, to further answer and clarify any existing questions that are there.
I really appreciate hearing that. I think that's going to go a long way to help us have a better understanding all the way around. Thank you so much. Okay,
madam chair, and just to clarify on the billing, just so everyone knows the lifeline and role customers are billed in the very last day of the month, so we provide inserts regarding recertification to those customers only. We don't want to confuse our other 200,000 or so customers by providing information about lifeline recertify so we only provide it to the Enrolled households.
It only that makes sense. Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Madam Chair,
is there? Are there any other comments?
No. Is the next person? Okay.
Miss Hampel, how are you and welcome.
Miss Hampel, are you there?
Yes, good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Thank you so much for raising the the community we. That we're having tomorrow, we look forward to engaging with both DWSD and Wayne Metro, as Ms McClellan mentioned, we are critically concerned with those 25,000 people being re enrolled, especially with you say, sharing those statistics about what happened in May, where less than 10% of those people re enrolled. So we already have been sharing this information out in the community. Thank you for emailing over that Bill insert. We have shared that widely, and continue to share that widely, and hope that we can get community members ready for the recertification process. I did have a question about the bill in search, can you provide what information is being is being required of residents? We know that, of course, it's going to be something to verify that they are who they say they are, such as driver's license social security numbers and other things like that. But if you can briefly provide just a quick list so that residents are able to gather that information early enough to be ready for that October 1 start date. And also, I would like to know what is the process for sharing out communications. We did send a letter. Does that letter get shared into the committee meetings here and then at the larger Board of Water commissioners meeting, or does that letter just go directly to the Board of Water commissioners meeting? That letter was again voicing our concerns about the lifeline recertification process, and also will there be commercials or other advertising efforts to get residents ready for the recertification process. As it is, we are less than a month away. So as the days get closer, as October 1 gets closer, we are more and more concerned and just unready for this as it seems like. The idea that you've shared is that we all are the system is new, the process is new, and not enough information about it is is being shared. So in closing, I look forward to our community meeting tomorrow to learn more information and to be able to engage in longer form dialog. So thank you again for that, and have a wonderful rest of your meeting.
Thank you Miss Hemphill, and we're looking forward to hearing good things about your meeting as well. Is there anyone else who has requested to to be heard before this committee?
Madam Chair, we have Miko Williams,
okay, Mister Williams, welcome.
Hi Commissioner Blackman, how are you?
I'm good, and you very good. And
shout out to all the commissioners. Um Damico Williams, Chief Executive Director hydrate Detroit. What I just heard recently is, you know, you want to all pass the blame game on the state, but we know the state is not capable of handling but this is your responsibility, because these are your customers. You know, we were told back in May or June, one of these months, that you all were going to work with Wayne Metro, and you were going to try to have them recertify everyone in a timely fashion. Whatever happened to that? We even asked you how many people were recertified through the process over the to give you all enough time before October 1 you where's the commercials I saw the bill insert. The bill insert is right there on the DWSD legistar. Very nice. It has a QR code, very cool. It has more information. That's good. But where's the commercials? Where's the radio commercials that should be running every 30 minutes, like a political ad? What is going on? I mean, these, we don't want people to fall off the system, but because they don't know, because there's no door hangers. I thought we were told they were going to be door hangers and door knocking and phone calls. I reached out to Brian Peckinpah in regards to the easy pay, and I'm glad we talked about, you know, there will be phone and email outreach. How did Detroit want to be a part of that? Because we have emails and we have phone information as well to get to our clients to make sure they know about any changes within the recertification or how to get on easy pay. But I'm just kind of getting frustrated because the lack of concern and the the quick steadfastness and consistency. Me of making sure all of our customers, 25,000 of those are straight, and they don't have to worry about being in trouble or anything like that, or being in danger of losing their benefits. I mean, there has to be a urgent C that has to take place right now. We are at September 4. 2024 what could you do in the next 20 to 25 days in order to make sure that everyone knows that they are to recertify? I mean, um, this is not criticism. It's just actually, you know, responding to what you all say. And what can we do to help you all? You need to start accepting help from the outside. We don't we can get to certain communities you can't get to. We can talk to certain people that you can't talk to. We have not restored trust, dignity and integrity within this department, within our customers that lost in 2014 when water shut up. And I wanted to see this happen, but I'm getting disappointed, trying not to be angry. I will be solutionary, to work with you all, to partner, to figure out, how can we get all of our people informed? Thank you so much. Yes,
mister director,
Mister Williams, is invited to tomorrow's meeting, and we're inviting him now if he wants to bring any recommendations and help that his organization may have in order to get this problem out. But let's let's be clear, we're in the middle of an election cycle. All air time for all commercials on radio and television have been bought up. We we see them at nauseam on every station in every radio program that we're listening to at a very high cost. We can't compete with that and and neither should we even try this. We know who these customers are. We know their addresses. We know their names. We have the ability to directly go to the people that need to recertify. We don't need to send send out a message to 650,000 people that are not in this program. We need to directly interface with the people that need to recertify and will what we welcome all the help that we can get in order to help our customers get recertified. So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Brown, I would just have to also say the department certainly is not exhibiting a lack of concern for this process of for these customers. So thank you for clarifying and inviting Mr. Williams to the meeting. I'm sure that will be beneficial for all concerned. Are there any additional comments?
Madam Chair, Mr. Williams was the last commenter.
Thank you very much, and we will now close public participation and move on to communication. Yes. Madam
Chair, through the Chair, I'm not a member of the committee. I just wanted to comment also on Mr. Williams testimony. We are. We have an interest in getting all of those people recertified, because we want them to be part of the program. We also have a much more narrow interest in if they're not part of the program, we will never be reimbursed for the services we give them. So we have both. We are motivated both by wanting to be responsible utility. We are also motivated by wanting to get as much revenue in the house as we can. That's all.
Thank you for that input. Mr. Chair, absolutely, and I'm sure, I'm sure everyone listening knows that that is our motivation and our concern, and that we are willing to work with anyone and everyone to make sure that all of our customers receive all the benefits they just they deserve. Thank you. The next item then is communications, and under a we have receipt of correspondence. 2024, dash, 168, what is the will of the committee? Is there a motion?
So moved Madam Chair. So move,
moved by Commissioner Garcia, seconded by Commissioner forte, I believe. Yes. Thank you. Any discussion hearing? None. All those in favor, please signify by the sign of Aye. Aye Opposed, nay. Motion carried. We're now under unfinished business. Mr. J made Jacob brands restoration, we heard. Did we hear from Mr. Graham earlier today? And I think the director already really commented on that, is there anything else to share?
No, Madam Chair, not at this time.
Thank you. Mr. Phillips,
I think the unfinished business was there, and I know that Mr. Smalley and his team did a full and. Investigation on Mr. Graham's comments that he provided at the last meeting, and we will, as Director Brown stated, I don't think Director Brown was aware, but we will have a answer in response to Mr. Graham in the coming days.
Thank you very much. Moving on, then to new business our customer service metrics. Mr. Phillips,
thank you, Madam Chair. I'm actually going to turn it over to Miss Crowell, who will kick us off with our metrics.
Thank you,
good afternoon,
commissioners. How are you this afternoon wonderful. How
about yourself?
I'm doing great um. Kimberly Crowell, customer service manager, I will be delivering the august 2024 metrics for you guys this afternoon. Thank you. Next Next slide. Matt,
I'm sorry, yes, ma'am, during the month
of catching up, Kim,
thank you. During the month of August, we managed a total of 63,000 well, let's just say close to 63,300 total customer touch points, and this total includes calls and email inquiries. Our daily contact volume for the month average out to be over 2800 contacts per day. This is a significant increase compared to the forecast, 1400 contacts that we currently have in place today. In total for the month of August, we reached, or we had over 151,500 contacts, which includes our customer service calls, email inquiries and our self service interactions through our online portal. Our current daily contact volume is 106 106% over forecast per day. Now this indicates a higher demand for our services than initially anticipated. So out of the calls that we received, 22% of our calls were answered within a two minute time frame. And in order for us to achieve our goal of having 70% of our calls answered within a two minute time frame, we estimate that we will need around 110 full time employees dedicated only to answer our calls. Next slide, before
you leave that slide, are there any questions or comments regarding it?
I really, I know that you're concerned, as are we that we did not we had lower percentage of calls answered within the two minutes. But in terms of that, in the number of calls that you received, I guess I we have nothing to do but to commend you for the work that is being done by our customer service representative. Of course, we know the customer may, in some instances, may see it differently, and we do try to get in touch with them just as you know, answer their calls and their concerns as quickly as possible. So please proceed.
Thank you. So on our emergency line, the average speed of answer is eight minutes and 12 seconds, and we're currently meeting the service level. We have a service level of 29% for this line and for a non emergency line, the average speed of answer is 25 minutes. We're achieving a 4% service level for this particular line. At this time, our customer satisfaction score stands at 74% this reflects our ongoing efforts to meet our customer needs and expectations effectively. We have achieved a first call resolution rate of 63% this metric alone, it indicates that a significant portion of our customer issues are being resolved during the first contact and it's also worth noting that our customer satisfaction score has exceeded our goal for 11 consecutive months, and this right here alone demonstrates our consistent performance and reliability in our service delivery by our customer service specialist. So I will take your sentiments that you relayed back to our Customer Service Specialist, which I did in our last all staff meeting. They were very appreciative of the response from the Board of Water commissioners.
So before you leave that, go back. So are there any questions from commissioners on this line? Committee members? I should say so. Let me just ask about the 25 minutes, the 4% on the non emergency line. Do we did we see receive many adverse comments from our customers about that? I see our Customer Service Satisfaction percentage, but that is that is certainly exceeding the amount of time that you want. Have on any of our customer service response lines. So what are, what are we trying to do there?
Well, what we're trying to do currently is we're trying to, you know, we know that we need to address our speed of answer on both our emergency and our non emergency lines to better meet our service level targets. So one thing that we need to do is add additional staff to our lines in order to answer, you know, in order to meet our target. In addition to that, we're also explaining to our customers. You know, we are apologizing to our customers as it relates to our long wait times. I do want to make note that our easy pay, this our longest wait time, which is the 25 minute, this strongly, has a lot to do with our easy pay that went live on in what was it the end of I think it was the end of July, if I'm not mistaken. So we do have a lot of customers that are reaching out to become enrolled in our easy pay and that's what we're finding, that most of our calls that are coming in is customers wanting to get enrolled in the easy pay program.
Okay, very good. Thank you for that. Update on that, and you may proceed.
Thank you. Next slide. So this slide here, this shows pretty much a six month data of all of the costs that we received, our average speed of answer, and it just shows our average hold time, our average wait time, our average talk time, everything in a six month, in a six month study. So this is all of the data for the last six months.
Okay, any questions, commissioners, comments. I think this clearly demonstrates what you're trying to do to make sure that this this is that we're on top of this as quickly as we can.
Thank you. So this will conclude my part of the customer service presentation. I'm going to hand it back over to Matthew Phillips, thank you, Mr. Crowell, thank you,
Mr. Phillips, thank
you, Madam Chair. I'm going to be discussing the key results from the Lifeline program, affordability program. So we currently have nearly 26,000 residents that are receiving the lifeline benefit of 1843 or $56 a month, I am very happy to report. And within the first month of going live with the easy pay $10 down program, 36 month payment plan, we have 4379 individuals on the program or enrolled in easy pay. That's an average of 875 per week that we're enrolling so when I compare that to other cities that have done similar type of programs, we're well ahead of the average weekly enrollment rate. So we're really happy with that number. The 10, 3050, payment plan, obviously is going down. It was 4000 last month. It's 2100 this month. Obviously, people are asking to be removed from that program to get on the easy Pay Plan, which is what we expected to have happen. And then finding eligibility for Lifeline is 4902 and as reported at the last board meeting, we have, we have paused enrollment into the Lifeline program, waiting for that recertification period on october 1. If we enrolled somebody today, they wouldn't even receive the benefit, because it would be removed from the state program effective October september 30, so we're just but they are protected from service interruption at this time. So we are still protecting them from shut off, knowing that on October 1, Wayne Metro Community Action Agency will process their application beginning on October 1, when the new program starts. So we currently have 330, 7000 individuals that are protected from shut off at this time. Any questions before I move to the next slide,
any questions, commissioners or comments, commendations, please proceed.
All right, this next slide, there's been a lot of comments, public comment that's come in about what is this program, cost, what's happening? And so I wanted to address it in this slide. In the past, I have just provided with the total number of gap payments. That's the part that that the program lifeline covers, and the amount of arrears that is forgiven from the program. I it's just been a combined number, but I wanted to separate it out and demonstrate it seems to be that the public comment is questioning dw, SDS commitment to our residents, and I want to make it perfectly clear, and that's the number in red that I'll get to in a second, of what our commitment is to our residents, but the difference between the $18 payment. Percent and the actual water bill on a monthly basis. Over the span of the program, which in August, had its two year birthday, since the launch of lifeline, there's been nearly $19 million in payments that have been supplemented with the Lifeline program against the water, sewage and drainage Bill arrears that have been forgiven have been over $43 million for a total combined assistance on lifeline to our residents of nearly $62 million over the last two years. I think that that is a absolute, remarkable number, and shows dwsds unwavering commitment to the community and to our residents that we are here to serve. Now let's look at the funds that have been received from either the Great Lakes Water Authority rep program, the some of the state programs like luau and the water affordability grant, as well as the low income household water affordability grant, or liwap, that came from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. DWSD has received nearly $23 million in state, local and federal funding, to go against the nearly $62 million of assistance that we provided, that leaves what I would call a gap or a difference. I think I used the word to our CFO yesterday. That's the amount that DWSD, I think, in layman's terms, we have eaten of nearly $40 million so if anybody is ever questioning DWSD and this board's commitment to our community, I would say it lies right here on this slide.
Totally agree. Any questions or comments, commissioners, thank you. Mr. Phillips,
all right, so we've had nearly 40,000 people that applied for lifeline to almost 26,000 that are receiving the benefit. The 85% of all of the customers that are enrolled in lifeline are at the $18 month payment. So that is a very high number, and it just shows that the vast majority of our customers need it and qualify for the $18 a month payment and are receiving that benefit, which is great, the average gap payment on a monthly basis. The difference between that $18 a month payment and the actual water sewage and drainage bill is $50 $49.96 a month. And the average arrearage forgiveness, and that's, you know, wipe clean, when someone initially enrolls into lifeline, is approaching $1,600 a month on average for all three tiers. And then just looking at household size, nearly 91% of, 91% of all of our customers that are enrolled into the Lifeline program fall under the zero to four household size. Thank you very much about lifeline.
Just commendations for everything we're doing. Thank you.
Thank you
any Yes, my I'm sorry I'm missing what you just said. Okay, going into the planning calendar. Is there no questions on what's been presented already? We're moving into the planning calendar and promise pay.
Oh, just a comment. Oh, please, Commissioner forte, yeah. I just wanted to thank Matthew and his team for that analysis. I think it's important to do that, Stop, look, see, see what the benefit has been to the customers, and did what investment on behalf of DWSD. And I thought that was very clearly presented. Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner, absolutely okay, Mr. Phillips, thank
you, Madam Chair. So I just wanted to provide a brief overview of promise pay. We didn't have quite enough time in the formal session a couple weeks ago, so I just wanted to talk again about promise pay and the easy pay integration. Promise pay is a third party vendor that we've hired that the board approved at the last session to move forward. And I just wanted to show some of the benefits to the public and to our residents and our customers, as well as to DWSD and so promise pay, like I said, as a third party vendor, they're they're going to handle as soon as they get on board. We're looking at about a 60 to 90 day transition period to bring them on board and get them trained and transition easy pay over to promise pay, but. Um, promise pay, the vendor will actually handle the easy pay calls going forward and the enrollment of that which will free up our staff to concentrate on our day to day, um, DWSD, proper calls. Um, enrolled customers and easy pay will actually receive their bill through and from promise pay, which will, I think, make things a little bit clearer so the customer will actually see two different bills and and I think it's really important to kind of show what that benefit is going to be. So I'm just going to move over it's going to be the flexibility. So first of all, by having two different bills, let's just say that the DWS bill, DW SD bill, on a monthly basis, which averages about $85 a month, might have a due date of, let's just say, the first of the month. And easy pay. And with using promise pay, they'll be able to pick their due date. So if they want, they won't owe all the entire bill together of, on average, $130 a month, they'll be able to pay their DWSD bill of $85 let's say, on the first and then they can choose two weeks later, maybe when their next paycheck comes, to have that bill due on the 15th of the month. So they'll have a little bit more flexibility, actually a lot more flexibility, on how they can pay and keep up with their water bill, which I think is great promise. Will also has a lot of technology that they've already mastered in several other large cities throughout the United States, where they send reminders about their payments via phone, email, text, any way that really the customer wants it. They have websites. They make it super easy. They congratulate the customer when they make a payment, confetti falls down from the screen and rewards them, which is been shown through human interaction. That's a real positive reinforcement. And so and they also offer different methods of payment. So they can use, you know, Cash App, Apple, pay, Venmo. They can use prepaid debit cards. There's a multitude of ways. They can pay via their phone. They can pay via text messaging. So there's a little bit more flexibility there as well for our customers. So that's some of the benefits that they'll receive. They'll also, as you just heard from Kim, they'll also likely receive the benefit when they want to talk to someone about easy pay. They'll be able to get into the call center quicker, because it'll be handled by a different call center outside of DWSD. It'll be handled by promise pay. And by the way, if anybody's asking their, all of their their customer service reps are based in the US, and they all work,
so yes, I know. Just
answer that upfront. So thank
you very much. Yep, and
so let's look at the benefits to DWSD. I think I probably already covered them. But again, the outreach, they're going to not only reach out about the current DWSD bill, but also about the easy pay payment. So they're going to reach out to the customers. They'll be able to manage them, and all that type of communication that goes back and forth between the bills, which will be nice and it'll provide relief to the customer assistance center, service center, because we won't be taking those calls. And as you can see, I think, if you remember from this the last slide that Kim presented, which was the six month outlook, in the last six months, we've increased by over 10,000 calls on a monthly basis. And when you look at that, our average call volume is estimated to only be less than 30,000 calls a month. And right now, we're averaging 65,000 calls a month, so with a 10,000 call increase in the last, really the last 90 days. So Does that have an
impact. Mr. Phillips, Does that have an impact on the customer service morale?
Absolutely it does. Yes, it's certain. It certainly does. And as you can, as you can probably guess, that when you're when your call volume doubles, your workload doubles, and that means our customer service reps are taking twice as many calls as what they did six months ago. They you know, the breaks in between calls the lag, what we call the lag time isn't quite there. I will say that Kim and her leadership team does a remarkable job of of keeping our staff updated of what's going on, positive reinforcement and encouragement of of just acknowledging the fact that, yes, we understand that call volume is going up. We know that it's happening. Our biggest thing is our customer service reps are they get upset because they see the wait times go up. They see that customers are waiting on average 25 minutes, and they don't want that to happen. So I think if there's anything that's there. It's that part that they don't like. But we Kim, I'm on every call that she does with the team, and Kim and her team, her staff, does a great job of providing, you know, positive reinforcement, thanking them for the job that they're doing. And like Kim said, you know, the commendations. That the board makes that this, this, this body makes during these public comments. Unfortunately, our team of 80 people don't get to hear that because they're working right now. They're taking phone calls, so they don't get to sit on this call and hear you. But we take that back to the team and let them know, and that goes a long way. It's not only just Kim and the leadership team here at DWSD saying saying it, but to know that the board is providing commendation goes a long way, and so we ensure that they understand that. So we think thank you.
Thank you again. I think the commendations are well earned, so we want them to know how much we appreciate their efforts. But thank you.
Yep, commissioners, 316 we do have to open up. Okay, resources, I
will, Madam
Chair, that that does conclude my presentation, so I don't know, quickly end it and we can go into the next one.
Are we allowed to do? Take the time to, I think we're finished with our agenda. Are we not? We are so the chair will entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved, properly moved, and I support that we adjourn this meeting. And thank you all so very much. Meeting stands adjourned.
All right, thank you. We will now call the human resources and Organizational Development Committee, Madam, I'm sorry, Mr. Secretary, could we have a roll call? Please?
Not a problem. Chairperson Davis, present, Commissioner Blackman,
MS, Commissioner Blackman, you're on mute.
Commissioner Garcia,
present,
right. Can you hear me?
I'm present. Can you hear me now. Okay, thank you.
Yes, I can hear you both. Mr. Chair, we have a quorum.
Thank you. Okay, all right. Thank
you very much. Is there a motion to approve the agenda for today?
So move second
Motion's been made and properly seconded All in favor of the motion signified by the sign of Aye. Aye, all opposed, and that motion is carried. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of August 7?
Move approval, Mr. Chair, support.
Motion has been made and properly supported. All in favor of that motion signified by the sign of I please. And that motion is also carried, We'll now open up public participation. I presume that that's Mr. Peckinpah, or someone from your staff.
Yes, good afternoon, Mr. Chair. This is Brian Peckinpah, Public Affairs Director. Would you like me to read the instructions or just go right to the commenters? We have one person with their hand raised.
Go ahead and read it. Just
okay. Well, do sir, to make a comment, please raise your hand by using the raise hand icon on your desktop or mobile device. If you are calling into the meeting by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If your name is called, it will give you permission to unmute. In order to begin speaking, you will have to unmute yourself. To do so, press the unmute button, which is the microphone icon, if you're online on a laptop, tablet or a computer or star six, if you are calling in from a mobile phone or other phone, as a reminder, you will have a limit of three minutes to make your comment. There will be a timer indicating your remaining time. If you're online and make a comment, we kindly request you fill out the comment card link that's located in the chat. By filling out the card, we will have your contact information to follow up appropriately. If you are unable to click the link, please let us know, and a phone number will be provided to you. You will only be called upon once once. The chair closes public comment for this committee. There will be no other comments from the public, and all attendees will remain muted for the duration of the meeting. Thank you for your attention and Mr. Chair, the first person with a hand raised is Mr. Michael Williams.
All right, thank you. Mr. Peckinpah, Mr. Williams,
uh. Yes. Hello, Commissioner. How are you today?
I'm fine. How are you, sir?
Very good, very good. Mr. Davis, and shout out to all the commissioners once again. Damico Williams, Chief Executive Director of high street Detroit, just want to respond to comments that were made in the. Last meeting. First of all, I have conferred with my vice chief director, Beulah Walker, and I will be in attendance if possible. Can I please have the information sent to my email or text message that will be cool water for Detroit, the water the number for detroit@gmail.com is my email address, and we just want to be a partner. We just want to be supportive. And I want to thank we, the people of Detroit, for all the work that they do, because their advocacy is amazing. I've seen it myself, personally and the people that they connect to. Again, we connect to communities that you may not be able to reach you. Want to be a partner. We want to be supportive and inclusive within this situation that we're faced with. And I want to thank Matthew Phillips. You know, he works very hard. This is a very great thing to have easy pay with the promise pay to have Venmo cash, app, Apple Pay, which we know people are doing tap to pay. We know people that are, you know, becoming technically savvy. But we also want to look out for our senior citizen customers. We also want to look out for those who are not computer savvy, and make sure that we reach all of our 250,000 customers and such with information they can spread. You know, I still believe in the poverty I understand that the political season has captivated is ticking up everything. But, you know, we can be creative. However, we need to do it. You know, I'm saying by social media, ads targeting, yes, you can do a phone call and email outreach again. Hydrate Detroit would love to be a partner in the thing. It will be very effective. You know, door knocking is super effective as well. You do it just like these political campaigns do it right target the areas where they have the most highest shut off numbers. And also, I wanted to ask that, I forgot to ask, what is the shut off numbers right now as we speak? You know, we get these numbers in the Detroit newspaper. We never get them here and where they could be possibly coming from, if it's not payment, or if it's, you know, customers that just don't want service anymore. I mean that communication really counts. Um, following up. I only got 30 minutes left in HR. I'm still not seeing bill. It's in commercials of wanting to be a water worker. I like the commercials on Facebook, but I like them to be transferred so that you could get outreach for people and thank thank you all for doing the partnerships and such. But you know, we have young men that are desperately in need of a job, and you can help them, and you can hire them and put them to work. That's all I have to say. Thank you so much for taking my comment. Have a great, wonderful day.
You're very welcome, and thank you for your comment. Mr. Peckinpah, do you have any other hands up, Mister
Chair, no, we don't. No more comments, sir.
Alright. Thank you. We'll now close public participation. We do not have any communications, nor do we have any unfinished business. That brings us to Human Resources metrics, and I'll call up on our HR director, Miss,
do afternoon commissioners,
good afternoon.
I'll now share my screen. You.
You okay. Can everyone see? Okay? Currently, DWSD has 662 employees. And here's our first slide, our demographics. Your screen's not showing, looking at our residents and hiring again currently six I'm sorry. Director
Thornhill, I'm sorry. We're not seeing a slide. Okay, hold on.
I was sorry. I'm having a little hard time hearing you. I'm sorry.
Commissioner Garcia, we were director Thornhill was making her HR presentation.
I'm sorry.
We're just waiting on a slide for the presentation. That's all just okay.
Thank you. Okay, let's try this again.
We got it now. Oh, shoot,
okay, hold on, I'm sorry.
Can you see it? Now? There you go. Yep,
we got it and I have a mouth. Option on my end, so please give me one second, because I don't have it on My screen. One second. Please. You
What about now?
Yes, we see yes, we see it. You
see me changing. We're good.
Yes, ma'am, okay,
sorry about that. Don't know what happened.
Patricia, yes. Sorry, it's Matt. We see a very we see like two different slides at the same time. You might want to go up to the upper left hand corner under Display Settings and maybe change to presentation mode. It'll help. It gets rid of all your comments.
Morning in progress. I Hello,
Imani. We can hear you if you
hit the display settings right above, I
don't know if you can't see on your screen, it can come up right quick and help out. Please have
them come up, because we did test this earlier. Everyone. So our apologies. It worked earlier. Please. Thank you. No, I'm gonna keep trying until they come up.
Share my screen.
Are you in your office?
I am the door. No one's
coming.
Patricia, would you like Tamara to share her screen? She might be able to pull your presentation up right away.
Okay, let me send it because I've made a minor change. Let me send it to her, please, and I know what's wrong, but we'll fix it afterwards. Thank you, Tamara, you
let me know when you get it. Tamara, please.
Got it, opening it now.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Applause.
Are you ready?
Just
All right, thank you, Tamara. I thank you. So in front of you, you see our employee demographics by ethnicity. This is a chart that we share every month, and as you can see we have 662 employees. This is the highest number we've had in the past five years, and this is a net increase of 14 six since last month. Are there any questions?
Okay,
next we have our breakdown by residents. Again, this has been a net change of plus 14 six since last month. Are there any questions? We did not have any retirements. However, in the past month. Month.
Next slide please.
Currently our retirement eligible employees hovers around 18% generally, this number is between 18 and 22% but as we hire more employees, this number decreases slightly. So that's why we're at 18% currently. Next slide, we have two slides that will cover our current open requisitions. We have a total of 18 open requisitions. That equates to 25 open positions. This is eight less than last month. So we have been filling our positions. This is slide number one and slide number two. Are there any questions?
Director Thornhill, can you click back to the previous slide? Slide number one? Please. Just one second. So the growth that we had the 14 of the new hires they were in, was it, what department were they in? Or generally, maybe not to the exact person, but I assume they're in field services or Yes.
So from the number that was filled, we had two from it, one from stormwater, several different divisions. We filled positions, but also it's a net amount Commissioner. So even though we filled 20 positions, we had six people leave. So that's why it was plus 14. Okay, that's how we arrived at that number.
Uh, how many were in Field Services?
14.
Okay. All right, very good. All right. I asked that question because it's, you know, it's you know, there's been some discussion from time to time about Detroiters needing jobs, and we're doing well on that. It seems to me, 14 of those were Detroiters if I if I heard you correctly. All right, yes. All right. Thank you very much. Please continue. You're welcome. Thanks.
And the next slide, just slide two of the open requisitions, and we can move ahead to our recruitment efforts. So this is how we're able to have candidates on deck when it's time to hire. As you know and you've seen in previous months, we conduct various amounts of job fairs from month to month, some repeat monthly and some are new opportunities for us. We do work very closely with Detroit at work. However, when there are open positions, we will hold an interview and hiring fair on the spot and work with our Henry Ford Health partner to make sure people receive their physicals for that day, and we'll know if they're hired. So if you take a look at August 7, we interviewed 19 individuals and hired 16. And being this nimble with conducting recruiting fairs from month to month allows us to fill positions rather quickly. This is something we hadn't done in the past couple of years, and we just implemented last year. Are there any questions? Next slide please. Something new that we did last month is that we held an employee resource fair. This was our Employee Services Division here within human resources, and we held this employee resource fair at our CSF, or central services facility, in attendance on that Tuesday of August 27 we have the City of Detroit's deferred compensation team. That's the 450 7b deferred compensation team, and they conducted a presentation, and they also had two of their participants, investors of that deferred compensation plan, in attendance to answer questions with employees. We also had diversified credit union that talked with employees about being financially fit and also colonial life insurance. I'm sorry. Commissioner Blackman,
sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue what you were saying. Just
very quickly on the next day, we did have athletic come out as well.
Athletic. Okay? A
explain to me, I'm refresh my memory on what the 450, 7b deferred compensation plan is,
okay, so what's another way to invest your money for retirement? So annuity, it's the it's just a different plan. And you can select what provider that you have to help you invest.
Okay, thank you. Give you, give you consultation on how to invest or what
you can pay for that, in addition as well. Yes, you can, okay, alright,
thank you. You're welcome.
And what was really nice is that we were able to have our new higher class of fsts attend, and in that case, we had 17 in that particular class, so we had a few others come in, and they were able to partake and take advantage. So that was really nice for them as well. I was in attendance. It was very nice. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions. Anyone? Thank you. Next slide, please. So for our planning calendar for the month of September, we're going to talk about our s licenses under our training and development division within human resources. So can we go to the next slide? And we've spoken about this, I think maybe about 16 months ago. So you've seen these slides before, but I'll just do a quick reiteration. Water supplies must be under the supervision of a certified drinking water operator, per the Safe Water Drinking act. A drinking water operator is a person that holds an s1 license. That's a particular class license, and the Class S distribution systems are s1 through s5 so s2 s3 so forth and so on. As bullet three indicates next slide, the class level requirement of an s license depends upon the size of the population the distribution system is supplying DWSD. The City of Detroit requires an s1 license holder, as you can see here with the five bullets, the city of Detroit does have a population greater than 20,000 so any questions so far, next please. DWSD provides in house training to prepare for the s license testing, and that training is twice a week for eight weeks previously, Deputy Director Smalley was conducting the training. And now we have a training, HR person, a new employee, Mr. Kendrick Jackson, who assists us with this. We also have a vendor come in and assist employees and preparing for the math portion of the test. In order to maintain your s1, license or 2345, license, you have to complete continuing education credits or CECs on an annual basis. And what we've done is we've linked those classes, and we've made them available through dwsds intranet. Are there any questions? Thank you. Next slide, please. So since the last time we discussed this with you, we've had 14 people, 14 people receive new levels within the s license, and their names are on the screen, hopefully next month, we'll be able to bring them in for you to meet. So congratulations to these 14 employees, and let's take a look at DW SDS total list of 58 employees, and I will send these names out to you as they weren't in the original packet. We have five employees with, excuse me, four employees with s1 licenses, three with s2 11 with s3 and a total of 27 with s4 and lastly, our new group, we have three with s5 are there Any questions? Commissioners?
Just commendations.
Thank you. And that concludes. My Report. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you Miss Thornhill. Just okay. All right, when that slide goes down, I'll be able to see the rest of our agenda, right? And All right. Thank you again. The storm here. Are there any other matters?
Thank you,
hearing none. Our next meeting is October, 2 of. And just before we adjourn, just a note of personal privilege here about our customer service department. My neighbor had an interaction with a customer service rep, and he was totally impressed. He couldn't stop talking about how helpful this woman was. I've been texting him throughout our meeting today, trying to get this person's name because I wanted to mention it publicly. He hasn't answered me yet, but I promise I'll have it at our next meeting, but I didn't want to let today go by without recognizing our customer service department. And next meeting I'll have her name so that is my personal point of personal privilege, and the chair entertain a motion to adjourn, Mr.
Chair, before we do that, thank you very much for sharing that with us. It's always great to hear. And I will move adjournment.
Thank you,
Commissioner. We will make sure that we share that. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right. Motion's been made and properly supported, and we stand adjourned.
Bye, everybody. Bye, thank you.
And then, but he's going to come here, baby, pull that then he's going to pick him up list of your medications that I left.
Alrighty, we have three minutes until we open up the legal and Government Affairs Committee. Okay? I
Chairman, how's it good to see you?
Thank you. I was about to say the same thing, Mary, how are you I'm
doing great. How are you doing?
How am I doing? I'm doing incredibly well. I had my knee replaced two weeks ago yesterday. And you know, the first week was pretty awful, but having category one narcotics is always and I ditched those last week. I'm now okay. I'm now just using extra strength Tylenol and good we went on a we had a milestone this morning with the physical therapist. I can get rid of the Walker. I'm using a cane.
All right. Progress. Yeah,
that is progress so, but thank you for asking. Things are going well
good. Okay, she can't
laugh. Yeah, yes, I'm here. How are you
doing? Fine. Doing fine. You
You're back from a very exciting activity.
Yes, a lot going on. Yes, for sure,
okay,
oh, I'm I'm curious what Jonathan does for excitement.
Oh, well, you know about this last one, I think
under commissioners, the meeting is still being recorded.
Are we open? But we're being recorded. Thank you very much.
When we weren't being recorded, we're doing the sound check. I think I managed to both curse and blaspheme in the same sentence, So I'm glad we weren't recording.
Oh boy. Okay. I
Mr. Chair,
okay, yep, about to start the meeting. Yep. Is 345 okay, okay, let me blow this up. The Detroit Board of Water commissioners, legal and Government Affairs Committee meeting will now come to order. Would you please call the roll?
present. I'm not sure we're supposed to say the city, but it's present, Detroit.
Okay, thank you. Next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda. A motion is in order to approve the agenda.
So move Mr. Chair. It's been moved support.
It's been moved and supported all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed. This item stands approved. Next item on the agenda is approval of the meeting minutes from August 7, 2024 motion is in order to approve the meeting minutes with any necessary corrections.
Move approval. Mr. Chair was waiting for my fellow Commissioner. Is this
support? Support. It's been
moved and supported to approve the meeting minutes all those in favor signify by saying, aye. Aye. Those opposed. This action stands approved. Next item on the agenda is public participation, and who will be reading the participation instructions of the public comment instructions.
Mr. Chair, that's me. Brian Peckinpah, Public Affairs Director. I'll read the instructions to make a comment. Please raise your hand by using the raise hand icon on your desktop or mobile device. If you're calling into the meeting by phone, press star nine to raise your hand after your name is called, it will give you permission to unmute. In order to begin speaking, you will have to unmute yourself. To do so, press the unmute button, which is the star, excuse me, which is the microphone icon, if you're online, or star six if you are calling in as a reminder, you will have a limit of three minutes to make your comment, there will be a timer indicating your remaining time. If you're online and make a comment, we kindly request you fill out the comment card link that's located in the chat. By filling out this card, we will have your contact information to follow up appropriately. You will only be called upon once, once the chair closes public comment for this committee, there will be no other comments from the public, and all attendees will remain muted for the duration of the meeting. Thank you for your attention. The first person who's going to provide public comment is Mr. Miko Williams. Excuse me, Mr. Mika Williams,
Mr. Williams, hi, commissioners. Hello, Commissioner Kinloch, I want to thank you once again for supporting the sharewater drive for hydrate Detroit. Your participation was very, very appreciated as well as commissioners. First of all, I want to say that I want to give shout outs to the customer service team of DWSD. You all are doing a great job. Matthew Phillips, Kim Crowell, the staff and leadership as well as our workers, who do an excellent job being on these phones and corresponding with our consumers. Thank you so much for everything you all do. I was standing behind Denise page hood, our chief, just former Chief Justice and in the CBS, and I asked, I wanted to ask her. I did ask her, to a certain extent. I said, um, Madam Justice, have there been any movement or recommendation, or have you, uh, rendered a ruling on the Detroit water shut off trial that happened two, three years ago, and she didn't give me an answer. She didn't allude to any answer. And I told her how important this was, because we need to know you set president over with this city and its responsibility in such regards to shutting off water, we are still waiting on a decision. And, you know, she expressed a little thing to me, and I let her go, um, because I let her go because I didn't want to hold her too much because we were waiting in the pharmacy line. And it made me angry all over again. You know, I was sitting in that courtroom. I was sitting behind DWSD, and I was literally shocked and dismayed that all the threats and possible scenarios that we would be sued by outside interests, those from Oakland County and any racist entity that don't want to give black citizens of the city of Detroit water. And that made me angry all over again, that this lawsuit came from our own residents. It came from our own activists. It didn't come from outside. And we needed to really have a ruling on, you know, what practices can be done and such. But you know, the overall thought of it is, we need to get this right, y'all, we need to really consider we don't want to end up in lawsuits and challenges. And there's no one out there that could present any lawsuit or challenges that we're giving special favors or such. We are trying to help our customers that are the most low income but also have no no way to pay. And I'm sure other water departments will offer this same opportunity. I'm very sure of it that you know, if it wasn't looked at as a bad thing of helping poor people and helping low income people, and we wouldn't be in the situation as we are. It. Just makes me feel like all of our efforts here, we could keep trying the best we know how. Thank you for inviting me to that meeting tomorrow. It's very important that we all work together to prevent things like this from happening, but I really want you to consider that, because there's people getting ready to launch lawsuits over the drainage fees, and they and the flooding and they all been denied. You know they could be reappealed. Thank you for taking my comment.
Thank you,
Mr. Chair. Yes,
I just wanted to react to Mr. Williams comment about seeing the judge in the they're not supposed to talk about cases outside the courtroom. She would be violating, uh, her ethics if she did so, so don't. Don't take it so hard.
Okay, thank you. Okay, so, um, is there, are there any additional hands raised? Or Have you received any communications, or any messages in chat? Mr. Chair, there
are no more hands raised, and there's no messages or emails from the public regarding this committee. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. Public comment is closed. Next item on the agenda is communications. Under communications, we're under item A, 2024, dash, 182, recipient, correspondence motion is in order to receive and file recipient, receipt of correspondent.
Move approval, Mr. Chair,
the support. Support
been moved and supported to receive and file the litigation report all those in favor signify by saying, aye. Aye. Those opposed. This item stands approved. Action stands approved. Next item on the agenda is Item b6, b2, 024, dash, 181, receipt of correspondence the DWSD foyer Report for the month of August, a motion is in order to receive and file the DWSD for your report for the month of August, motion is in order here. It's been moved. Is there support?
There is support. Thank you. It's been moved and
supported to receive the receive and file the DWC for your report for the month of August. All those in favor signify by saying, aye. Aye. Those opposed. This item stands approved to receive and file. Next item on the agenda is Item seven. Unfinished business. There is none, and we will now go to the next item eight A, with new business, will go to item I'm sorry, Item eight A, which is legislative update. And we have a few legislative updates, update reports, Miss Potts beach. Are these oral reports, or are these reports that are written? Are did you want to get a summary, or overall of these various updates?
We have a PowerPoint for the committee. Good afternoon everyone. It's nice to see you, and I'll explain what these, these other attachments are during the PowerPoint. Oh, okay, thank
you. I didn't know it was powered by so let's begin.
So, Tamara, if you could bring up the corrected one that I sent you this morning, that'd be great. Is that it? Tamara, yes, it is. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this is a legislative update on water affordability legislation, and I'm going to talk about, hold on back one. Going to talk about state and federal go backwards, please. Okay, I'm going to talk about state and federal legislation. So first we'll talk about what's going at the state level. Next slide. So there's been a coalition of stakeholders we've been working together about 18 months now, just from water providers, water advocates, the state government professors, we've had them all working together, so we've come up with a package of legislation that will be the first in the nation for a statewide water affordability program. And we know for a fact, based on our affiliations with National Water associations that all eyes are on Michigan to see if this package passes, it will serve as a template across the country for other states to try to enact legislation that codifies water affordability, just to avoid any kind of. Legal challenges, things like that. It will just set a precedence across the nation. Next slide, so our water affordability package serves two purposes. It's from a public health perspective, if you have access to water and avoid shut off, that's that helps public health next it reduces rate increases because of bad debt. If we have a bill that the customer can pay, which the gap payment is covered by some sort of sustainable fund, then the water providers can focus their revenues on operational infrastructure needs. Next slide. So there's four key bills pending right now in the legislate state legislature, and I won't read all this, but the first one is the bill that establishes the water affordability program. Here's the rules. It's patterned much after our Lifeline program. The rules here should look very familiar to everyone so and if another utility. But what this does is it mandates every water utility must participate in a water affordability program. If you don't have one of your own, that's acceptable, then you join the statewide program. Next slide. The next slide is the bill that establishes the sustainable funding for the program. This is a $2 per month meter on any metered account or flat rate account. And if you have an approved plan that already has some sort of funding source, you can deduct the cost of your funding source from that $2 a month fee. For example, if your water provider collects money through rap. And say that portions to 20 cents per customer is contributing towards rap, then you can take that 20 cents off the $2 and it will be $1.80 per month. Also another big change in the legislation is the state is segregated into four, what's called Business Service Centers, and the money from each service center will stay in that region. So, um, households in Grand Rapids, their funds stay on the west side, pot of money, and do not come to the east side to contribute towards, for example, Detroiters water bills. And this was in response to requests from some of the legislators who who felt they could support the program if it was a regional aspect to it. So that is something new. Next slide. So uh. Next is the shutoff protection bill. It just sets forth a lot of steps that need to be followed before you can interrupt service for nonpayment. It protects critical care customers, regardless of income, from ever having their service shut off. Also the fourth bill establishes a water affordability task force at the state level who will evaluate the legislation, how the funding works, how the program works, and see if there's any changes that need to be made. Next slide, so there's been five topics of interest statewide when we've been advocating for passage of these bills seniors. There was, there was a lot of talk about seniors not being able to afford a $2 fee on their bill. The $2 fee is rolled into your program if you cannot afford the extra $2 that puts you over your income level, then you belong in the program, and you will have that reduced bill that's no more than two or 3% of household income. So attached in your package is the flyer explaining how seniors are affected by this legislation. Next is rural customers. A lot of discussion whether people in rural communities need water affordability legislation. And the answer is yes. There's been a substantial amount of data collected that shows the need is absolutely across the state. So we have a one page flyer about rural customers, which is attached to your board package. Next is infrastructure. The collection rate makes a difference in what types of infrastructure improvements can be made. So we have a flyer about that pre existing program. Programs can have a reduction on that $2 fee. There's a separate flyer for that as well in your board package. And then we're working on a public health flyer that explains the public health aspects of water affordability. The Michigan Nurses Association public health officials are all endorsing this legislation, and we will have quotes from them for this one pager next page. So what's the timeline? How we When will these bills be passed? They're all in committee right now. We hope to move them out of committee prior to the November 5 election and get a vote on the floor. It's very unlikely that would happen any sooner than the presidential election. So we're looking at the lame duck session, and we're going to push hard for passage prior to the end of the year. So there's a lot of factors with holidays, the hunting season, recess, things like that. So it's, it'll, it'll move fast after the election, we have this QR code and actually a website with anything and everything you'd want to know about this legislation, and we use that website when we're educating constituents across the state. So I'll pause here regarding the state legislation to see if there's any questions. Okay,
I'd like to ask, are there any questions? Are any questions? Ms, paschwitz, can you continue?
Okay, next is the federal level. What's going on? We are working on parallel pathways. Next slide. So at the federal level, there was liwap Next slide. So let's review lihwap for a second. From June 21 to September of 23 the lihwap program was in effect at the federal level, and 1.6 million households took advantage of those lihwap funds and the Department of Health and Human Services has done studies nationwide. They know that the need is still there. The lihwap funding is gone. So what's next? Next page. So water affordability legislation, reenacting lihwap is very complicated right now, Director Brown and I have been very busy at the federal level, working with water suppliers across the country to advocate on there's, there's three pathways where we could get Some replenish funds for a national program. The first avenue is President Biden proposed a budget for 25 that apportioned 500 million for Liwa. But really it goes to lie heap the elect the electric utility, the the heat and energy sectors. They just want to add money to that program, and the language in the President's budget says states may use this additional 500 million for water assistance. The program would be administered by the DHHS, but energy sectors and us in the water sector, we do not want a combined program. We do not want to combine the funds, because we'll just be fighting amongst ourselves for the funds. And an additional 500 million is not enough for the need nationwide for water. So we need to have the language, if this go Avenue goes through at Mo, you know, at a minimum, we need to change this. May to must that they must use the extra 500 million for water affordability programs. So truthfully, both sectors are lobbying Congress against this proposal from the President. Next slide, the Second Avenue is Senator Padilla introduced a totally new, refreshed lihwap program. It would be an actual act in and of itself that establishes lihwap, and it would be a permanent nationwide assistance program administered by the EPA, not DHHS. So there's a lot of discussion amongst the utilities and the advocates whether it should go with EPA or stick with the DHHS. A lot of discussion about that. Republicans lean towards DHHS. They've already got the administrative mechanisms in place. They think it's easy to just add on the water. Others think EPA is better because EPA regulates water on a daily basis, and they will understand how water suppliers work more effectively. So this bill be on the floor in September, Director Brown and I will be. At the Congressional Black Caucus convention next week, and director Brown is a speaker on a panel with other water providers. Senator Padilla will be there as well, talking about liveop, making sure that we're all on the same page as to making sure that this year does not go by without Liwa being funded and established. Okay? Next is the third and last Avenue. Next slide, yeah. Senator Padilla as a backup, also introduced an amendment to the National Defense authorized Authorization Act for 2025 a totally separate appropriation for national defense. He proposed an amendment that extends the covid area liwap and adds money to that to keep it going. That Avenue has been supported by the US Conference of Mayors. I do not know the likelihood of this little add on to the Defense Authorization Act actually sticking, but again, we've got things coming from three different angles, and we have to, you know, we're hoping that one of these will go through and pass this year, so that we have the funding, as you saw from Matt Phillips presentation about the short of funds for just for our lifeline, you can see that state and federal legislation is needed for water affordability funding to keep it going next page. So stay tuned. We'll keep you advised as to what happens in November and December, and hopefully we have a fantastic report for you in January that funding for water affordability is is permanent and here to stay.
That's great. That's great. Great, great to hear. So let me ask you, so previously at the state level, there was a lot of opposition, particularly from Macomb County and some some other communities, which prevented some of their legislators from basically supporting the bill, bill package. Let me ask you, has there been any movement or change and the legislative support in in Lansing,
I would say that the the position of Candace Miller has not changed, and that, and we respect that, but, but the data has has really shed a lot of light on The need in Macomb County. They they've been out of rap dollars for months. There's a waiting list in Macomb County to get on rap. They've exhausted all their funds. Data shows the need in Macomb County is great, especially the southern end of Macomb County, great amount of need. There were several communities in Macomb County that did not pass resolutions in opposition. They either stayed neutral or have expressed support, but not have, have not passed a resolution. So we've gained some ground just through educating where the need is that it's real. By adding the language to the legislation that allows for a deduction for existing funding sources for local water affordability programs, by adding language that keeps the money regional things of that nature. So we have made some headway with some legislators, and you know, you never know till the votes are counted. But I think we've, we've made a lot of progress. The numbers, the numbers don't lie. The need is everywhere in Michigan. This is not a Detroit issue. This is a statewide issue.
That's why, that's why it's little interesting that you this need is, is needed, you know, across the state. And it's interesting that folks would agree to limiting the the pot of money by going regional, limiting the pot of money available for their own communities by going regional. So my, my question to you is that, so you know, what if they run out of money, I mean or do, projected that this is not possible with this funding, with this funding mechanism for those for those regions, for those communities, that's
a great question. So at the end of each year, the the department will evaluate which which reasons, ran out of money, which had money left over, and they will adjust the funding factor in those regions. And it may go up to, say, $2.25 in region one, because they ran out of money. It may go down to $1.70 Five in region three because they had money left over. So that's built into the legislation that it's, you know, it's a scale. It could be no more than $3 but it would never jump by $1 all at once. It's gonna be like, it's gonna be like, lie heap or meep in Michigan, it fluctuates year to year, up or down, 15 cents here and there. So that same concept, all we did was borrow language from MEAP or lie heap and put it into this legislation, which made it palatable to many more legislators,
because they were familiar with it,
right? And it's, it's tried and true. This has been going on for a decade or more.
Any questions,
just a comment, Mr. Chairman, and it's reflecting both you and Miss, posh pieces observations, whether it's the Macomb County public works commissioner or others, this is not a Detroit program, but this is a program that has an income qualification that is directed to low income people. And there are low income people all over the state, and it's no different than access to Medicaid or any of the other programs that are that are means tested. And I think people do a disservice by, you know, invoking the bad old days of everything that happens is in Detroit is terrible for everybody else, because that's just simply not true,
right? That's all.
I agree. That's absolutely a great point. Um, so I thank you. I we look you and and director Brown and your team. Have you know, really, in my opinion, started this whole movement as far as drag moving, DPS, DTM, DPS, DWSD, in that direction of reaching out and working with broader coalitions. And we have to definitely give thanks to you and and your leadership, as well as our border activist here in Detroit, you know, they've been singing, raising alarm for a long, long time, and have really been working side by side with you all and getting to where we are now. So I'm really looking forward to us getting across the finish line, because I do feel, based on conversations I've been having with people that we've made some major headways, so I'm so hats off to everybody involved.
It's been an absolute privilege to work with such a wide variety of stakeholders, hear their points of view, and everyone's been very respectful. And you know, just when you hear all sides of the coin and just stay calm, we were able to come up, come up with this consensus, litigation, legislation, it's, it really can serve as a template for the country. And whenever we're in DC, or talking to people in DC. They're, they are very interested in how Lifeline is working and how this legislation is doing. So it's been a lot of hard work. I've I've just really enjoyed it and and hopefully, like you said, get across the finish line by the end of the year.
Yes, yes. Well, thank you. Does that conclude your report as it relates to the legislative update? It
does. And I know, I, you know, jam packed your agenda with all the different flyers and perfect but, you know, print them, use them, send everybody in their brother that you know and and get the word out. Because these, oh, thank you, honey. These are just to the point. The highlights we just want to keep stressing the regional nature of the money that the need is across the state and public sector consultants has just been rock stars in gathering the data. So we're it's really been great. So these, these one pagers, are meant to be easy on the eyes and informative, and we encourage you to use them. And these are being distributed to people in the House and the Senate, to their offices, their staffers across the state.
Well, Brian. Brian is Brian. Brian helped me send put, I guess he sent me a newsletter. I mean, not some, I mean, sent me some information that I sent out a newsletter and got a lot of responses from. So I intend on definitely utilizing this packet of information as well. Yeah.
You all know what's anything misinformation is, is the death knell of good public policy. So these are meant to just just the facts.
Okay, and a lot of people haven't
realized that. We've changed. The legislation has changed a lot from where it was a year ago. We've we've heard other people's voices and made appropriate changes to the legislation. Okay, so that that's it.
Thank you. And so we will now go to the next item on the agenda, the planning legislative update. So we just received one, and we're looking forward to continuing to see receive the next one, and the next item on the agenda will go to is other matters. I know of none the next meeting. Okay, I don't see the next meeting date on here. Can someone noted? Note it for me? What is it?
October, 2 person.
Okay. Second will be our next meeting, and we will now go to the next item, which is adjournment. A motion is in order to adjourn.
I so move the move and
support it. All those in favor signify by saying, aye, aye, the meeting stands adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you Miss Potts beach and you know everyone,
