CITY COUNCIL AGENDA PACKET - Laserfiche WebLink

Page 2 of 6 Phase 1 – High-Level Assessment of City’s Water System Program: This phase includes utilizing the Effective Utility Management guidance document to evaluate the City’s existing water system program practices and make recommendations for improvements. Phase 2 – Develop Work Plan: The portion of this phase completed to date includes a work plan to identify and prioritize capital improvement needs. This analysis forms the basis of the water enterprise 10-year CIP. The other portion of this phase deals with internal work planning and scheduling that spans a minimum of six years so that it covers the time period of the initial WSMP through the first comprehensive WSMP update. Phase 3 – Document the WSMP: The City will develop the initial WSMP in accordance with the work planning from Phase 2. The WSMP will be organized by program elements identified below. Tasks to be included in the final WSMP include, but are not limited to: • Water enterprise goals, key performance indicators, and policies to guide the management of the water system • Review/summarize existing planning efforts (e.g., urban water management plans, risk and resiliency assessments, water distribution capacity evaluations, etc.), identify planning gaps, and perform high-priority planning tasks (e.g., establish a 10-year CIP, perform a regulatory review, etc.) • Review/summarize existing operation and maintenance practices, identify deficiencies, and perform high-priority tasks (e.g., establish a standard operating procedure program and competency-based training program) • Recommend a prioritized list of actions, programs, and CIP projects to be implemented to improve the management of the water system. Phase 1 involved a benchmarking exercise comparing the City’s water utility management and operations to that of an effective water utility as determined by standards established by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and adopted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The assessment looked at ten attributes, and of these, the City staff ranked its most important but lowest achieving areas to be financial viability and infrastructure strategy and performance. This led to completing a portion of Phase 2 as follows: the development of the rate study, which the City Council recently concluded by adopting a 2-year rate increase implementation starting January 1, 2024, followed by the development of a water enterprise 10-year CIP. This water enterprise CIP development is the focus of this report. Condition Assessments Teams of engineers, operators, and technicians performed multiple days of on-the-ground, appraisal-level equipment and facility assessments of the City’s water assets. These activities were conducted to establish baseline conditions and identify capital needs. Needs were categorized within the areas of water supply, distribution capacity, above-ground facilities, below-ground pipelines, and SCADA/Power. Each category is populated with projects, which then get prioritized considering the risk score and the discretionary versus non-discretionary nature of the projects. Page 235 of 270