San Angelo City Council 10-4-22

[0:00:00] will be called to order and as usual we will start with our chaplain prayer and pledges and we're honored today to have chaplain Lorenzo hatch here to lead a Zimbo please bow your heads with me good and gracious God we give you thanks and praise for all your blessings especially for the blessing of freedom Lord we ask that you bless this council with wisdom to discern your will and the courage to do it may they always be guided by the light of your Holy Spirit protect our brave men and women who serve our community as firefighters and police officers and Lord we lift up in a special way all those who are impacted by the recent hurricane may all of those who who lost Lives who lost property may see you in those who respond to them and assist them and may all we do bless your holy name and I ask this in all things through your son our Lord Jesus Christ who lives and reigns forever and ever amen please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas one state okay we have two proclamations today and the first one is going to be Habitat for Humanity I'm sure there are people in

[0:02:02] the audience with habitat from Humanity so if you would please come forward on Monday October the 3rd 2022 Habitat for Humanity in San Angelo joined with Partners around the world in raising awareness educating and mobilizing individuals and communities to take action on the current Global housing crisis Habitat for Humanity of San Angelo joins our partners to rededicate ourselves to recognizing the basic right of everyone to adequate shelter a decent place to live can remove barriers to opportunity health and success for growing families now and for generations to come Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a Grassroots effort on a community Farm in southern Georgia the Christian Housing Organization has since become a leading Global non-profit working more than thirteen hundred communities throughout the U.S and in more than 70 countries families and individuals in need of a hand-up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home habitat homeowners help build their home alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage everyone can help families achieve the strength stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves locally Habitat for Humanity of San Angelo Galilee Community Development Corporation and the city of San Angelo stand together to help ensure we all provide affordable housing throughout our community Through shelter we Empower therefore I Brenda Gunter mayor of the city of San Angelo on behalf of the city council do hereby Proclaim Monday October the 3rd 2022 is World habitat day 2022 and affordable housing day and ask everyone to join

[0:04:05] together as a Global Network in communicating the message that every one of us deserves the opportunity for a better future uh thank you mayor Gunter and city councilman I appreciate this very much I'm keeping affordable housing is top of Mind especially for Bob Solis and Stephanie Hamby at Galilee um we um we live and breathe this it's important to remember the people who are working poor and that's who we serve we serve people who who can afford to purchase homes that we build but they couldn't afford a traditional loan so that's important San Angelo habitat has built 75 homes since we started in 1970 actually in 1996 here in San Angelo we are carrying 32 mortgages right now all of the others have already paid off their homes what a beautiful thing that is we are starting a new home in about two weeks for a family that has she has a single mom with five children we're so excited about this and I know that Stephanie builds a lot more houses than I do and Bob lives eats and breeds affordable housing every day so I just want to thank you all again thank thank you you and the city council for thinking about us and and problem in this Proclamation we really appreciate it [Applause] [Laughter] do we have individuals here for Red

[0:06:16] Ribbon Week come on a lot of individuals this is great substance use disorder is particularly damaging to one of our most valuable resources our children and our contributing factor in the three leading causes of death for teenagers accidents homicides and suicides it is imperative that visible unified preventative education efforts by community members be launched to eliminate the demand for drugs it is the goal of Red Ribbon Week and adac to involve families schools businesses churches law enforcement agencies and service organizations in all aspects of this campaign and establish an atmosphere that supports awareness education and ongoing initiatives to prevent illegal drug use the Red Ribbon Week campaign campaign theme promotes family and individual responsibilities for living healthy drug-free Lifestyles without illegal drugs or the illegal use of legal drugs the alcohol and drug abuse Council for the Concho Valley and Concho Valley cares has many activities planned during the Red Ribbon Week campaign and is asking the residents of San Angelo to observe Red Ribbon Week October 23 through the 31st of 2022. therefore I Brenda Gunter mayor of the city of San Angelo on behalf of the city council do hereby Proclaim October 23-31 2022 as Red Ribbon Week and call upon all residents parents governmental agencies public and private institutions businesses hospitals schools and colleges in the city of San Angelo to support and increase awareness and prevention efforts in our community hello good morning and thank you mayor

[0:08:26] Gunter and city council members for your support my name is Jennifer Flores and I am the Community Coalition Partnerships director at the alcohol and drug abuse Council for the Concho Valley Red Ribbon Week is celebrated October 23rd through 31st in the Concho Valley and it's the nation's oldest and largest drug prevention awareness program our prevention team acknowledges and celebrates this week each year with the Concha Valley by traveling to schools agencies and more to educate on the history and the importance of Red Ribbon Week Red Ribbon Week started after the death of DEA agent a special agent Enrique Camarena in 1985 and his community began wearing red ribbons to show their opposition to drugs so today we honor Enrique camarena's Legacy by celebrating Red Ribbon Week and pledging to live drug free and honoring the sacrifice he made but also all that have lost their lives in the fight against drugs I encourage you to help us raise awareness of living a drug-free Life by taking the opportunity to talk to your kids about Alcohol and Other Drugs thank you foreign [Laughter] foreign we will now open have public comment so

[0:10:42] issues or concerns not on the regular agenda may be raised by the public at this time citizens should speak from the podium address all comments to the Diaz Begin by stating their name and address or single member district number and limit their remarks to less than three minutes I'd like to start by just making a small statement concerning the events that happened early Sunday morning Sunday October 2nd the Marines life was taken here in San Angelo my deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of the Marine as well as everyone at Goodfellow Air Force Base this is still an ongoing investigation any future updates will come from the San Angelo Police Department I'd like to thank sapd for their quick response that led to the apprehension of the suspect Goodfellow is a huge part of this community we will continue to have strong support for our military community in San Angelo and I know that everyone here in the audience today will continue to offer prayers for the families and for all those people who serve at Goodfield Air Force Base we want to make sure that they believe they can leave the base and have a safe environment to go out and enjoy our community in so thank thank you and help us ensure that that happens are there any other individuals in the audience today who would like to offer public comment if so please come forward state your name and your SMD area thank you I'm Andre Essie Flay I reside in district one at 5014 Westway Drive San Angelo mayor and City Council Members I am here again before you to ask you to put Kimberly Henry and I as an agenda item on the next city council meeting we would like to present a proposal to you that addresses accessibility issues in San Angelo

[0:12:44] we both love St Angelo Kim has a business here belongs to the chamber and is active in many organizations and is also a member of the diversity and inclusion committee with the chamber I work in San Angelo live here and volunteer at many non-profits in town currently I'm the president of the San Angelo Association of non-profits and I serve on a few boards I too am a member of the diversity inclusion committee with the chamber along with many others have vested interest in this city we love this city when I see issues or opportunities I don't complain but I point out solutions to the problems we are not wanting to complain we want to help San Angelo be a great City where people all people will feel welcome live here have fun here and yes spend money here we personally have a unique perspective regarding our city in accessibility and that's why we want to help we have prepared an informal informative and dynamic proposal please put us on the agenda for the October 18th council meeting thank you very much are there any other individuals in the audience who would like to come forward and offer public comment at this point seeing none we will move on into our consent agenda may I yes may I ask that these ladies be put on our next agenda please I believe that it's National disability employment awareness month is it not and so that seems appropriate October I think the question is we can put it on

[0:14:48] the agenda but what is it we want to accomplish with it on the agenda I think we want to enable these two ladies to give their presentation in support of raising awareness for okay just so we know what to prepare the agenda for okay I have an honor thank you all right thank you Karen we are now in the consent agenda and I will start with Larry is there any item you'd like pulled oh man Karen no ma'am Lucy no ma'am I'm going to pull C and D Harry Tom oh man Tommy all right we will start with item C consider awarding fd-02-22 to Credit Systems could we could we take a vote on the consent agenda with the exception of c and d yeah you can we can yeah would I I would offer someone an opportunity and a second in any public comment on approving consented agenda with the exception of c and d with none we'll take a vote all in favor say aye aye motion passes 7-0 now we will move into consider awarding fd-02-22 to Credit Systems International Incorporated for collection purposes in the amount of 22 percent of the collection balance in authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents Patrick you are on good morning Patrick Brody fire chief Patrick Brody uh so about July we request the proposals for a third party collection agency to collect on our bad debt for our EMS billing we received five respondents we formed a committee of three personnel that independently scored each respondent and we had certain criteria in your background that we were specifically looking at for these respondents they were all scored and Credit Credit Systems Company Incorporated came out number correction

[0:16:51] Credit Systems International Incorporated was number one on the list and they brought a couple things to the table that I was specifically looking for interoperability with our some of our current systems such as our payment receiving method of Central Square and then also interoperability with our current billing company for a seamless transition for bad debt to be sent to them and immediately collected on bad debt how long I mean if you go back where does that bad debt start and what are we looking at in terms of total dollars okay so um our current billing company they only do billing so they're going to grab any of that low-hanging fruit that is from insurance companies Medicare Medicaid and then any private pays and they will actively collect on that uh bill for up to about 120 days after 120 days pretty much there's nothing else for them to bill so then it needs to go to a collection agency to grab that now we have we have some debt of course every month adds to that 120 day limit but we have all the way back since the Inception of when we went with emerging Connor billing company that I intend to send every bit of that bad debt to them um the longer a debt is out there the less likely it is to collect so anything over like 365 days the percentage goes to like one or two percent collection anything from 120 to about 180 days you get about a 10 collection it's real hard to forecast until the company comes in and and runs a diagnostic if you will of our demographic and can properly assess what that is going to look like for San Angelo now I did my own forecast traditionally within with medical billing it's about four percent collection rate sounds a little depressing but four percent of something is better than nothing in my opinion that's four percent of the collection the outstanding correct sales not four

[0:18:53] percent of total correct yes ma'am and and kind of forecasting I hate to throw a number out there because frankly I could be wrong um we're looking at potential increase in Revenue anywhere from sixty to a hundred thousand dollars per year so it'll be a significant impact to our budget so have we had a collection agency before or is this the first time we're using a collection agency first time we're actually using a specific collection agency for EMS billing our previous billing company did their own in-house billing when we moved to emergicon they no longer provided a they specialized in Billing not in collection so at that time we started investigating and moving forward for a collection agency thank you very much any other questions for Chief Brody to put this into a perspective everybody can understand what's the dollar amount that we're owed well there's a couple different currently we have about 1.6 million in bad debt that is this year's bad debt of course we have some foreign yes ma'am just 2022 is bad debt now as far as what we bill out every year and what we collect so we Bill Out close to 12 million and we've received just under 4 million a year yes now some of that is Indigent care and uncompensated care that you know that we receive back at the end of the year a lot of that incident ended in Indigent care does not get collected on because we receive that uncompensated care money and it cannot be collected on so the remaining that is not Indigent care it was a collection agency it's a pretty outstanding number oh it's well if you look industry-wide Health Care wide that runs about average with Health Care collections so we're industry standard yes ma'am still an amazing number Karen go ahead thank you and this collection agency will retain 22 percent

[0:20:55] of anything only of what they collect so whenever they only Bill us for what is collected they take their slice of the pie off before it comes to us any other questions for Patrick Chief Brody okay so with that let's do I have a motion to approve item C uh Lucy made the motion may have a second by Tommy any public comment on this item see none will take a vote all in favor of approving item C say aye aye motion passes seven zero we will move to item D consider approving an amendment to the 2021 annual action plan allocating home American Rescue plan ARP Grant funds and authorizing the city manager to execute all related documents Bob you're on uh yes ma'am this item basically documents um the approval process we had last month for the ARP funds uh includes um renovating a facility to host up to eight units for our homeless veterans and case management and then another program to help with homeless prevention and what are the total dollars um it's over a million dollars uh it is a the funds those are the RP funds that came in from almost a year ago 2021 will be um almost actually almost 650 000 goes to the renovation and the case management and another 400 000 comes to us the city to manage that Homeless prevention program any questions for Bob on this item thank you Tommy seconded by Harry any public comment see none we will take a vote all in favor say aye motion passes seven zero we will now move into our regular agenda one item one item only comments

[0:23:01] regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public when each item is discussed as outlined above applicants proponents and appellants are exempt from the time limit above and instead must limit their remarks to less than five minutes a is consider awarding a task order under ID IQ contract es-06-19 Engineering Services to freeza Nichols Incorporated in the amount of 1 million 92 570 for the initial service line inventory development as part of phase two of the lead and copper rural revision compliance program and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents and Andy you're on good morning mayor council Andy vasilio assistant director of water utilities so EPA has come down with the legend copper rule revision it was uh enacted in 2021 and as part of that it's putting more stringent regulations on lead and copper roles generally in Water Systems is from service lines it's a lot of older material used in service lines so when it started up we did a phase one an initial assessment back in the summer of 2021 we engaged freeze and Nichols to assist us with that this is a multi-year multi-million dollar project to um to to basically to be in compliance with this upcoming regulation so we wanted to get ahead of the game so by starting off a freeze nickels and what they did as part of phase one is look at our old records if you will and help develop a plan into the future so they've developed a five a five-phase project for us starting here with phase two to help us and guide us through the project and so with us today is Julie Huerta with Frieza Nichols and so she's going to walk through phase two as well as the long-term project that we have before us just to be clear this million dollars is for analysis and inventory taking it does nothing to remove ladder copper that is correct yes the million dollar

[0:25:05] contract just to evaluate as part of phase two that is correct now there will be some field investigations as part of it as Julie will be explaining but with the rule in 2024 you have to have not all the lead service lines replaced but you have to have enough documentation in a plan in place to implement that thank you Andy good morning mayor and Council Julie huerto with frisa Nichols this is a timeline just showing about lead use in the United States and I won't step through the whole thing I think the most important date I want to point out here is that 1988 was when lead was banned as a plumbing material for the U.S and so um and then in 2021 they announced these new revisions to letting copper regulation for public water systems and we have this important compliance state of 2024 that we're trying to prepare the city for um oh and one more thing is that there are required ongoing activities after 2024 because there are new actions required with this new rule so lead and copper are regulated together because these two contaminants have something in common they're they're they come from the plumbing materials in the water system they're not really in the aquifers they're not in the Lakes the sources from Plumbing materials um the health effects of lead are are listed here a lot of them have to do with early childhood development and copper also has health effects I'm sharing this with you because while these are together and they're the same rule the EPA reviewed the role for these revisions and has not touched the copper side and so everything I'm going to be

[0:27:06] talking about is changes to the regulation of lead so for a public water system lead regulation all comes down to how corrosive is your water and if you have lead and copper in your plumbing materials and this is all the way from the water plant into inside of homes they want to know the public exposure this honeycomb graphic that I've got here this describes the major changes in these rural revisions we are going to talk a lot about the service line material inventory because that's the biggest newest requirement and this is the requirement to inventory the lines that run from the mains into each building connection for your water system prior to these rural revisions it was not required to document what those materials were and to keep a comprehensive list of those but now it is required and this is a big undertaking for utilities like this that have over 35 000 connections as Andy mentioned we came up with a five phased approach to come into compliance with these regulations we did already complete the level one or the phase one which was this initial assessment and then I'm going to talk about what we're proposing as part of phase two which is really to get this initial inventory together um I there is a timeline we can come back to this if you have questions but really the important thing I want to highlight is that getting this initial inventory started early it will impact what it's going to look like the rest of the regulations sorry about what the rest of the Regulatory Compliance will look like they do depend on what you find in your material material inventory so we're going to find what the inventory is what is the deadline for removal so there is not necessarily going to be a removal process

[0:29:09] the requirement of the rule is that you know if you have led and where that lead is and then if your sample results show that lead is over the Action level the regulatory Health limit then the system initiates replacement activity and how what that looks like is you have to achieve a certain percentage of replacement until your results show that you're back below that that Health level I assume that with TCEQ we are constantly testing our water and sending samples to tcq so I would assume again that if we look at the latest reports that we have of water sampling sent to tcq we would already know where the lead percentage is yes mayor we do the city is currently on a reduced schedule so you sample every three years for monitoring for Lata in customers homes um the there is lead detection there there's been lead found in the city but not hitting the they assess it as a system level so if the 90th percentile is over the Action level then the system's required to do corrosion control treatment or lead service line replacement those are and so we have available what are actual lead content was in the last tcq sampling of San Angelo water we do I don't have those numbers with me today in this part of this presentation but we do um they're in every sampling event there's there are deled detections well of course the question mark is at what level and what level kicks in as a crisis level or you need to address it level so the Action level is 15 parts per billion the 90th percentile for San Angelo has always remained below that Action level even though our test results have indicated we don't have a lead issue we still have to spend the money

[0:31:11] to do an inventory of our lead pipes or lead yes that's correct even though we have shown statistically we don't have a problem correct so we need to spend a million dollars to prove that up yes the EPA is requiring that every public water system regardless of even if you were built entirely after the lead ban has to provide this inventory of service line material we love mandates unfunded mandates right I'm going to talk a bit about what we did in the phase one and then and then what we're proposing in the next phase during the initial assessment we looked at existing data and we for example the water quality data to see that there is some lead occurrence so we learned that lead sources do exist out there and that we also learned that coercivity may be a factor there were some slightly corrosive water parameters found and so one of the things we are going to recommend as part of the next phase is a further study to make sure that we understand the corrosivity of the water for the city the role requires that we review a certain set of about dozen different document types and this this table here shows we went through to see which of those were available how complete they were and the city looks pretty good actually compared to others I've seen they've got 75 percent of those records available which is good news because in this next phase we will use that documentation to build your inventory and reduce the amount of field verification that you would be doing over time also a part of this effort then we came together with a budget level estimates to come into compliance with the rest of this rule um you know the big takeaway from this was that it will be um multi-million projects spread out

[0:33:14] over several years and why would that be if we currently through tcq do not have a lead problem in our water and again that's documented by tcq and what we send to them so why is there anticipated all of these additional expenses it is mostly driven by the lead service line requirement there are other deliverables that they're requiring now you have to have a full-blown plan to replace sled service lines even if you've never historically had a problem with lead so that's one of the items the inventory is going to take a lot of effort um and you know once you've established everything that you can through records you're going to have several thousand that we've seen connections that need to be verified and customers we are required to the city will be required to send letters to customers saying the customers that we don't know their service line material we're not sure if your service line material in this required language that says it may be led here are the health effects of lead so um really the interest is to to over time over the next few years you know identify as many service line materials as we can I don't think that it's feasible to complete that by 2024 and so there will be continued action after that unquestionably we as the city council and we as a city do not want to have a lead issue with our water we want to make sure our Citizens Trust that the water we're delivering is not going to create current or future health crises yes ma'am that being said it's an unfunded mandate and we're going to be asked to do it right part part of phase one to that point is that we did look for funding

[0:35:16] opportunities there's um in the state revolving fund about 54 million coming down and then uh 220 million from the federal government also through the state that will be dedicated towards lead service line Replacements and it can be used towards building your inventory so one of the things that we have included in this next phase is support to help the city solicit for funding their grant opportunities is what you're saying there's grants and there's loans grants they're two different funding mechanisms for the rule I'm going to move into what we're proposing for the next phase um the biggest item is the inventory doing an initial inventory using the records that we have then the next set of of light lighter blue bulleted items have to do with we are recommending to Pilot some initial field work so once we put your inventory together we'll be able to see what areas of the city do we have not have information on and that were built prior to the lead ban and we are recommending to go to 400 sites just as an initial effort to be able to say we've checked in all these subdivisions and this is what we found and this will also help eventually to the next darker Blue Point put together bid documents for the city to use to be able to bid this Pro this work out over time so are you using a specific date that says if the home if that subdivision was built after I make this a 1989. then it would probably wouldn't be a problem but anything built before a certain date would be your focus that's actually it so the date you got really close since 1988 so we would need to verify I think anything that was in the ground before 1988 that we do not have records on

[0:37:19] so I just you know as a part of the field work that we're proposing at these 400 homes there will be some customer interaction you know talking to them about what this requirement is that we need to look on their side of the meter to verify what the line is on the private side I'm not sure if I said that before but the rule requires both the public and the private Sidelines be identified what the material is and if it contains lead um so yes Tom it's a line do we tested the hydrant do we test so you're saying the public in the private side of the line there's some people out there that don't have some very good Plumbing yes sir all right so do we test right after the meter prior to it gets into the house because there's some of that where the the tests out of those house hitting the responsibility city of what they have that is their issue so how do we differentiate that so this has always been a difficult point with the lead and copper rule um the custom so when we're talking about monitoring by the way I'm talking about actually looking at what the material of the line is I think what you're talking about is what the actual monitor taking a water sample and analyzing it for lead that currently what we do currently is all taken inside of customer homes it's required by the EPA and um and so it does capture interior Plumbing which we're going to go into people's homes and test their Plumbing we currently already do all of the current lead and copper sites that the city uses we drop what the way it works is we drop sample bottles off and the customers collect them from a tap that's used for consumption so we recommend the kitchen tap and then we have those samples analyzed and so to your point yes it does catch interior Plumbing the the focus of the rule the intent was they want to know what the public exposure is and if the water system can mitigate that by corrosion control that's one option

[0:39:23] and then lead service line replacement that does not include inside the homes you're correct so um but that that is a difficult point in the rule um and then the last two items that we're proposing I've mentioned already the one is the funding application support because of these funds that are coming available and then doing a desktop corrosivity study because we did find that one parameter in the water is slightly corrosive and we we saw that it was tracking with the higher lead detections historically and we would like to understand so the city really has a firm understanding of if there's corrosion problems say that again I'm confused oh we'd like to do a get a better understanding of the water corrosivity for the city there are several different parameters that you can look at and one of them was showing slightly corrosive and we would like to better understand that if our if our TCEQ water samples do not show that what are you referring to the lead and copper rule does require corrosivity testing but it's only required for the city when it brings on a new treatment process or a new source and it may I'm not I'm sorry I'm not very familiar with the utility may have been a few years since you've done a corrosion analysis and what we are proposing is to do a corrosion analysis now on more current water quality data that would um you know make sure that the city is well prepared especially with these new regulations in place for if there's any possible corrosion Andy did you want to say yeah if you don't mind uh mayor I'd like to clarify that so my understanding is the last cursivity study was a number of years ago I must say a decade or more and so actually staff Alice and I worked on this before she left we had discussed and we actually requested the desktop

[0:41:25] creativity study included in this because if you change we'll say what's leaving the water plant that can actually have a beneficial impact on the potential impacts of the lightning copper rule so rather than replacing more service lines we potentially could change things at the water plant you know and there's ways ways and methods of treatment to do that to actually help us in the long run so we haven't had studied at all in a long time and this could helpfully hopefully be a potential solution to help us down the road and so that's why we requested well so we obviously have talked about upgrading our water treatment facilities so knowing that we're going to to upgrade our water treatment facilities how does that tie into the plan to upgrade our water util our water treatment facilities that's a great question mayor obviously we do have plans to improve that's part of the Concho River water project but we don't have a defined timeline at this point and so this is a federal mandate by 2024 and so we have to have a plan in place because depending on when that water plant is upgraded and it's going to be a multi-year construction project we need to be up in front of this Rule and regulation before it hits us thank you for that clarification thank you Andy well actually Andy I might ask you to come back up this next slide is yours unless there are there any other questions are there other questions or comments from city council anybody no go ahead that concludes um yeah I understand mayor from your comments that sometimes it can be a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow we haven't had problems with the previous leading copper rule to date but they're putting more stringent regulations and the documentation the level of effort that we're needing to go into is a federal mandate um you know we have the capital funds to

[0:43:27] do so but those Capital funds can be used for different other allocations that we do need also but the intention of the rule and the change is for human health and as Julie mentioned primarily early Health development in children and so but in addition to the federal mandate it's a requirement for us to do to help our citizens so no we know there are many cities who have had problems with their water so we don't want to be one of those cities that makes the national news because we haven't addressed water quality so I don't think anyone on this Council wants to fight the issue you we want healthy we want our citizens to have water that won't impact their health negatively so there's no question about but I think any time we have a million dollar contract that will lead to many more millions of dollars expected to address a unfunded mandate we need to ask questions and make sure the citizens understand we want them to have the best quality water possible we do want that but we need to understand the process and ask questions about and not create an environment where people would be nervous that today today that they don't have good quality water so it's not about not having good quality water right now it's about making sure down the road that there's no issues because we don't have a water quality issue right now right um we meet the regulations yeah just want to make sure yeah no you're exactly right yes so there is not a lead and copper issue under the current regulation but we need to be prepared for the future regulation so thank you for clarifying that and then I do want to touch a little bit on the additional fee as part of this study is to look into grants and Loans I will let mayor and Council know that we water utility staff have been contacted by numerous

[0:45:30] entities Consultants to get ahead of lighting copper rule we initially selected freezing nickels early on for a small inventory study and and they've been really good to work with as part of phase one other main times were a different entity contacted me I sent the information out of them they were already on top of it and so this is a heavy hitting item Nationwide and those Consultants are are basically seen as an opportunity to help out and so we are doing our best as staff to stay ahead of it so thank you so do we need to take action on this item so with that yes I think there's a concern here of this non-funded uh aspect of it or who is going to be doing the grant request and is that going to be coming back to council with your success or failure and getting these funds so Frieza Nichols will help us with the application to Texas water development board and so as as we were talking before there's gonna be a five-phase approach so the next task order for phase three will be coming before Council and so at that point you'll be notified and if at any point you're looking for updates we can certainly provide them yes go ahead someone which Tom okay I don't know if you can go back to Julia's original slides where it showed the phases so we're just this million in 92 is just for phase two right that is correct so we still got funding for phase three four and five that's a good point yeah so we're going to complete phase two in the next six months uh 12 months approximately 12 months okay all right that that was my first one um and I didn't I thought this was going to be a five phase this million was for five phase and I was curious how we were going to do the payout if we had to pay it all up at front or is there certain

[0:47:32] benchmarks they hit but as it's a six 12 months I see we hit that now one thing I did want to ask is we're going to have to get 400 samples Julia I think if I heard Runner samples that is correct so I I hate to go out on a limb here but I say Council and City staffs and employees should volunteer those 400 samples you can come to my house if you want well I'm seriously I mean the question mark is it's going to be in the older neighborhoods okay so the question mark is where are our older neighborhoods would be would be suspect to this the new subdivisions and we're probably not going to have the issue so it's the older neighborhoods and there's several of us on Council who live in older neighborhoods so um it was a reference earlier in 1988 was the deadline or the cut off if you will for the city of San Angelo with the lead band and so it's it's a construction prior to 1988. I get you 400 samples in one District anyway let's say well and there is a public engagement component to this project as well obviously um and it had to be used part when we got samples from the existing customers that we collect samples from as well so it's part of the rule it's part of the regulation um and so we've engaged Brian and Laurel a lot they'll be helping us as well the first time they've heard of it my request on that is if you could engage City staff and employees to do this you've at least already got a a positive Channel knowing who these people are and it looks like you have a plan for that so I'm good so we asked his point are we asking for volunteers or are we sending a letter to a house they're going to open up their mail and go oh my gosh they're going to come into my home and test my water I think for right now we probably need to start phase two and get a good idea of where we need to have these samples taken you may have to you may have to take the samples from

[0:49:34] specific areas as mandated perhaps right correct so yeah um you know obviously when we get to that point if there's anybody I'd like to volunteer certainly let me know but I think at this point we need to um what freeze and nickels initiate it and find the locations so I think the back flow issue that we had from last year no no comment thank you thank you so um one of the things that will happen in this phase is developing the public Outreach materials so uh yes the goal is going to be to use your inventory to select where you need the most information and it's a great great idea to use City staff if they are in those areas but otherwise we will help develop their different utilities that do it different ways but materials so the city could maybe hang door hangers and people can opt in to be part of this study or part of the effort so remember many people don't open their front door because they come in through their garage so we know that as we have tried to redo some streets for example we put notices on front doors but people enter their homes from the garage door so they never saw the little thing it brings in the Integrity of the sample I know some guys you don't want to deliver a sample requests on a Friday at five all right it just ain't gonna be good well at one point of clarification so Mary you mentioned about going into people's homes so the sample bottles will be delivered and they will do sampling in a house for the for the web levels for the level line sampling we won't actually be going in their house it'll be done in in the yard if you will both on the city side and on the customer side of the meter so it won't be necessarily going it won't be going directly in your house and that's a point of clarification that probably needs to be said further Lost In The Weeds here but I don't know yeah well I think we need to clarify because you yes I mean this is a public

[0:51:37] television so I think it will raise a lot of concerns and questions from citizens and many citizens will say don't come into my house so and then there'll be people like Tom who say you're welcome to my home so there you go yeah yeah so yeah it will be in yard and we'll be coordinating with the communications effort and get volunteers and but we'll have to be strategic about how we do that as well so well I just want to repeat we are we as a council I'm sure want to make sure that we have the healthiest Community relative to the quality of water that we sell serve deliver we're gonna we're gonna spend the money even though we really may not want it reminds me of the old you know everybody wants to go to heaven nobody wants to die you know we want to make sure we got this right we're going to have to spend the money to make sure we got it right so and I'll reinforce on that Tommy I I agree you want to go to heaven absolutely mayor but um more along the lines of my thought process was along the idea of the funding you know we have that million dollars that we could be spending on infrastructure improvements but this is a federal mandate that we have to do so it like I said earlier it's a bitter pill to swallow but regulations do that and and there is good tension behind the regulations there's been a lot of lead instances in the news recently as well second by Karen any public comment on this item Anna bartage single member district one um just wondering people that have water treatment in their homes such as reverse osmosis will there be any how do you handle that

[0:53:49] so the rule requires that sampling be done where there's not treatment they want to see what the untreated water looks like at the Taps and so those homes would not be eligible to be on the monitoring list or they would have to wait a minute Andy just said they would be doing it outside the home not inside the home so how does that work okay you're saying no that's not true so I want to know what is the truth so inside the home or outside the home go ahead so the sampling of the water quality will be inside the home the sampling I was referenced to was the lead or or the service line sampling so that's where they would actually excavate and see what the service line is so if you will there's two different sampling going on one is the physical materials of the service line and one is of the water quality just to make sure because that was not clear before I don't think we realized there were two different samplings going on in one inside one outside because I think we just said it's all going to happen outside so now this and for phase two our sampling we're talking about is the service line inventory so I apologize for any miscommunications on that when you are in this every day determinology kind of intermingles and okay just so for clarification so not that first of all all of us are clear in terms of what's happening but then certainly the public needs to better understand so to uh clarify Julie's point there any in-house sampling of the water quality will have to be before a treatment process in the home so if they have some sort of filtration or some sort of home treatment that home would either be excluded or it have to be done before that treatment system I have a question yes Larry why not take the water from an outside hose bib because that's after the meter uh it is but that's as Julie mentioned earlier that's not directly the water people are drinking but we still had to have backflow Larry goes outside to get

[0:55:52] a drink if you don't have a Reverse Osmosis System then you're getting the same water that's coming out of that bib well there is potential contamination uh on host bibs as well when you take an outdoor sample a lot of these sampling processes need to be done in a very clean environment or the best environment you can't have you know one of the things that we've been talking about are households but what about the commercial businesses what are we doing in the business Community because all we've talked about are households but there are many businesses that obviously have employees who drink the water that comes into that building so schools and daycares are a heightened emphasis of the lead and copper rural revision so I don't recall that all the specific details of it but there is increased testing and Communications with daycares and schools as part of this because as we mentioned earlier lead leads to a potential early childhood development issues what about retirement homes what I mean again we I think we all were thinking household and now I think we've got to understand it's broader than household it's going to be businesses Community Schools daycares churches churches I mean it's everybody yes mayor too so the service line material inventory will be done at every single service connection and customers and I want to reiterate this point all customers unless we've we've shown that they are non-led service lines they're going to get letters and so if a business or school or church has material that may be led they're going to get these letters annually from the city that say that that make them aware of that that um and it'll either say you know either if we ever find lead but would of course say that but it would say it's unknown it could be lead we're doing and we're proposing that then you'd be able to say a plan or planning to go through and identify these in such and such way so yes Lucy so if

[0:58:00] when would you start going and collecting the samples and all that can you repeat the question at what point would you go and start taking the samples from the homes like water quality samples so the monitoring and the current rule will continue the way that it is which is every three years starting in 2025 really the beginning of the next calendar year after this rule is compliance State that's when the the new sampling if there are new sampling sites then that we will go into the new sampling sites what she's wanting to know today like if are you is it 30 days that you're going to be doing this it's not about after 2025 it's about 2022 and 2023 when are you coming into the household Shane you're on okay um in in this phase and what we're doing right now we will not be going into households okay this is this has nothing to do with us going in and taking water samples we've been taking water samples for decades now yeah and so and those those are already established spots those are established locations and those people know already know where we're going to send them water we're going to give them water bottles to go get a sample for us and so we are not physically going to go in and take a sample from anybody's house this is strictly we will be digging up the meter the water meter basically is what we're going to be doing we're going to be looking at the pipes on our side of the water meter and the pipes on the on the residential side of the meter so we can inventory what pipes what kind of pipes they are whether they're copper service lines whether they're galvanized service lines with lead packing in them things like that that's what we're looking for we will not everybody you know quit worrying we're going into the houses we're not going into the houses during this phase because now we're clarifying it again that's it so this is just strictly at the water meter for phase two and this is what we will be going through in phase two and so uh now again we we do we do the water sampling but those are

[1:00:04] already established we already have that in place we're and we're not going to be going into anybody's homes we're not going to be doing anything everybody will be getting a letter you know stating hey this is a possibility that your lines could have this if if a homeowner wants to take it upon themselves at any given point to go in and have their own lines checked by a licensed plumber or whatever they want to do or if they want to replace their Plumbing that will be up to the individual homeowner at that point but again that's a notification method that um again that is a requirement of this is that we notify everybody that you could have lived within your pipe system thank you Karen I think you wanted to make a comment or ask a question I do and it's belated so I apologize but uh we we understand that it's a federal mandate and it's going to happen my question regards whether or not multiple bids were solicited no offense to you but curious whether or not the city solicited multiple bids before dedicating this money to a project as part of the procurement process for Engineering Services we can't ask for bids we just asked we can only ask for qualifications okay and then we base we base our we base our decision on who we utilize based on our qualifications and then once we select who's who we choose to be the most qualified then we negotiate the price from there thank you for explaining that's a common question for negotiation on price and no well I'm I'm sure there is but at this point in time there's we start changing the parameters of our of our of our testing and what we're doing so thank you for that question Karen yeah if you don't mind uh during the phase two task order uh discussions there were changes to the scope and fee over the process so City staff was certainly engaged with region Nichols to establish the scope that we need and then the fee match that scope that's necessary to comply so we're assuming you guys are tough negotiators

[1:02:05] oh absolutely mayor I have one other question yes Larry please I believe the lady said that something about the test being done annually which seems to presuppose that there's going to be several testings on the same residence is that correct I drawing of water and analyzing it that is done at actually every three years triennially now when the end I'm sorry what was the question at the same time concerned about the residences are they going to be tests more than once yes so the way it works is you have to have a pool of sample locations and Sample at those same locations over time so those those customers that'll be a part of the the sampling program would be Revisited every time that we have a sample event further questions or comments okay I'm so in the weeds I forget do we have a motion on the floor in a second okay we do all right with that then I'm assuming we can take a vote so all in favor of approving this task order for one million 92 570 say aye aye none opposed motion passes we will now moved into our closed session executive session under the provision of government code Title Five open government ethics subtitle a open government chapter 551 open meetings sub chapter D exceptions to requirement that meetings be open under the following sections a section 551.071 consultation with attorney regarding Cosa DC we will come back following the closed session 4 a.m and this meeting will be called back to order following the closed session first item is to consider items discussed in executive session which there are no announcements at this point

[1:04:09] Item B is consideration of approving various board nominations the tax increment reinvestment Zone Ryan Newlin the mayor to first term ending July 2024 and may I have a motion for approval of Ryan Newland to tears second seconded any discussion on Ryan Newlin as a cheers board member seeing nine wheel take a vote all in favor say aye aye motion passes 7-0 discussion and Confirmation city council meeting dates in November December and January so the November dates are scheduled for November 1 and November 15th two December is typically scheduled for the second Tuesday in December 13th I'm sure most of you have looked at your calendar to see if that's okay and then January dates are scheduled for January 3rd and January 17th if there's no objections to that and if that's true may we have a motion for approval of these dates as presented thank you Larry second invite Harry could I just make a quick note and because of the proposed January dates and we'll probably only be able to get those agendas to you guys on Thursday instead of Tuesday and just the way that the holidays follow for the January 3rd meeting and staff will be out on the 26th which is the Monday prior and for Christmas break and then for the 17th um we'll be out I'm sorry for the 17th would be fine but probably for um the the January 3rd meeting that's probably going to go to you on Thursday the 29th instead of Wednesday I'm not sure I'll be a very big agenda for them so I don't think it'll be in the holidays so there's a motion and a second any public comment seeing none will take a vote on approving those dates all in favor say aye aye all right item D announcements in consideration of future agenda items

[1:06:12] are there any see none may have a motion for a German we adjourn we are moved seconded and voted affirmatively meeting is adjourned at 11 36 A.M

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=NryCpNhCZtM