Minutes; Public Works: January 2012

Public Works Committee Regular Meeting Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. DPW Shop, 535 South Madison Street, Evansville, WI MINUTES 1. Call meeting to order at 6:07p.m. 2. Roll call; Culbertson, Fuchs, Braunschweig, Wartenweiller, Sauer present. 3. Motion to approve the agenda as presented by Culbertson, seconded by Fuchs, passed unanimously. 4. Motion to approve the minutes from the December 27th, 2011 regular meeting by Culbertson, seconded by Fuchs, passed unanimously. 5. Citizen Appearances- None. 6. Construction Updates- None. 7. Site plan reviews- Preliminary site plan review is coming on the horizon for addition at Symdon Chevrolet. 8. Communications from the City Engineer- a. Discussion and possible motion in regards to final disbursements on the WWTF/Turbine project. This has been completed. The contractor has approved our final change orders and shortly the DNR will complete the project and release the final 5% of the grant monies to the city. b. Update (if necessary) on WWTF and turbine status. i. WWTF: One of the process requirements for warranty work is a breakdown of the statistical analysis results for the waste water facility. City engineer provided and explained the analysis. Data comes from September 2010 through December 2011. So the warranty on the biological processes basically comes down to the fact that the plant is more than exceeding its limits and also exceeding the ground water standards. Our operator is doing a good job and showing overall understanding at a good level. ii. Wind turbine: Committee received an updated summary of the energy production of the turbine. Our average wind speed from September 2010 and December 2011 (11 mph) is 2.1 mph less than the energy site assessment (12.1 mph) so we are a bit short of our contracted kw hours to WPPI. 2011 was approximately $1,100. Basically we are simply not getting the volume of wind we have in the past. Braunschweig asked how the numbers related between assessed wind and actual wind in communities like Fort Atkinson and Wausau. Wausau is behind more than us and there is no information from Fort Atkinson. Bottom line is that weather is cyclical and we should recoup that lost wind. Additionally the levels of work that are coming from the wind turbine are reaching our warranty levels. As far as the overall contract goes this is just one factor and we still have many good factors in our overall favor such as ownership of the green energy credits and the fact that the price we get for each kw hour is, at this time, more than double what we pay. Additionally Sauer looked into ways to get this energy production information out to the public. One option is that Northern Power Systems provides an online kiosk called the ‘public view’ (or page) that would show energy production to public for $4500 for a 5 year license. Another option would be to simply take the spreadsheets of energy production provided by the city engineer and put it on the city’s website. That option would only cost the city the nominal work hours it would take an employee to do that. There were 2 other options that wouldn’t have as nice a site as Northern’s, just the raw data, but would cost the city $3500 to $4500 with potential overhead costs. Benefit to those would be potential one-time cost and ownership of site with the Sulzer consulting proposal. 9. Communications from the Public Works Director- a. Monthly Department Update: Department is in snow mode. The new truck will be delivered to Symdon’s tomorrow and should be delivered to PW on Thursday. The PW building’s gas bill went from $1400/month down to $500/month since wood burner put in. Light bills have been cut in half since the solar light tubes have been installed. 10. New Business- None 11. Old Business- None 12. Parks and Recreation Report- Didn’t meet this month. 13. Motion to adjourn meeting at 6:53p.m by Culbertson, seconded by Fuchs, passed unanimously. Faithfully submitted by, Mason Braunschweig, Chair Public Works Committee