CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG UTILITY DEPARTMENT
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
MINUTES OF MEETING
October 16, 2014
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utility Department Advisory Committee met Thursday, October 16,
2014, 2:30 pm at 4222 Westmont Drive, Charlotte, North Carolina.
Members Present: Jim Duke, Jim Merrifield, Ron Charbonneau, Pride Patton, Ralph
Members Absent:
Messera, Frank McMahan
Staff Present: Barry Gullet
Kim Eagle
Regina Cousar
Chad Howell
Jennifer Frost
Chuck Bliss
Director
Deputy Director
Continuous Improvement Officer
Business Manager
Assistant to the Director
Engineering Division Manager
Safety Minute
Brake Failure
Minutes
A motion was made by Frank McMahan, and seconded by Jim Merrifield, to approve the
September 2014 minutes. Motion was unanimously approved.
Water Management Group (WMG)
CMUD along with several other municipalities have deeds to property along the Catawba River that go back to the early 1900’s and that in some cases, appear to convey rights to access and withdraw water from the River. Around 2003 – 2004, Duke Energy proposed to start assessing a water withdrawal fee which for CMUD would have been about $2-4M. When the proposal was initiated, CMUD along with other municipalities were opposed based on a number of factors including the previously mentioned deeds. It appeared a little dispute was upcoming between
Duke and the public water suppliers in the basin. Duke told the water suppliers the money from the withdrawal fees was not intended for shareholders, but would be reinvested into the river system. After much debate and tweaking, a proposal was made by CMUD and the other municipal utilities to form an organization that would include Duke that would jointly decide and administer regional projects that needed to be done to protect and sustain the Catawba River as source for water supply and power generation while protecting the environmental and ecological aspects as well. In 2007, the Catawba-Wateree Water Management Group (CWWMG) was incorporated as a 501(c)3 organization. The bylaws of the organization are that the member organizations appoint a primary and secondary representative. The City of Charlotte has designated Barry Gullet and Kim Eagle as primary and secondary representatives. The
CWWMG meets every other month.

Private System Purchases
Private water systems are generally owned and operated by investor owned utilities for profit.
They exist where development may have occurred prior to availability of publicly owned water and sewer systems. The private systems are regulated as Public Systems by the NCDENR and in most cases are also regulated by the N.C. Utilities Commission relative to their business dealings and rate setting. They typically serve single family subdivisions. A private water system typically consists of the following:

Water Supply Source usually consisting of a community well

Water Distribution system

Typically no fire hydrants or fire protection

Wastewater Collection System

Wastewater Treatment Plant, usually a relatively small “package plant”
Two large owners of private water systems are Carolina Water Services/Utilities Inc., and Aqua
North Carolina.
CMUD sometimes needs to acquire private systems to comply with annexation requirements, resolve drinking water quality issues, protect the environment, or to improve customer service levels. CMUD has purchased over 50 private systems over the past 20 years with the largest acquisition including about 6500 customers and the smallest about 7 customers.
Council Workshop Presentation Dry Run
Advisory Committee participated in a dry run of CMUD’s upcoming presentation to City
Council. The draft presentation shown to the group is about CMUD’s capital investment and financial planning. As Kim Eagle explained, the main messages of the presentation are that
•
Utility success is tied to long-term planning and execution of the plan
• Community Investment Plan decisions made now impact future water & sewer rates
•
Utility operating and capital costs are increasing faster than general inflation
•
Robust water/sewer system is critical to community viability, economic growth, and quality of life
As Kim moved through the slides explaining the types of capital projects that CMUD constructs, the Advisory group provided feedback about formatting, wording, and slide order. Conversation was expanded around the area of the presentation that described the Capacity Assurance Program
(CAP). Several members of the Advisory group mentioned that it was important to convey the meaning behind the CAP map. There was some debate from the Advisory group about whether to include the information. After some discussion, CMUD staff agreed to rework those slides to emphasize that idea that without capital investments, CMUD cannot permit additional development in certain areas.

Kim and Chad moved to the financial planning portion of the presentation. Advisory group spent time discussing several graphs showing that, nationally, most utilities plan for smaller, more frequent rate increases otherwise, the utilities have larger, less frequent rate increases or they do not cover all the same revenue requirement components. Advisory provided quite a bit of feedback to staff about formatting these slides so that the concept conveyed in the data is easier to understand.
The Advisory group requested information about the time and location of the presentation to
Council so that they may attend.
Budget & Finance Update
This month we continue the positive trend in Revenue Collections with Water and Sewer
Volumetric Revenues exceeding projections and Capacity and Connection Fees also exceeding projections. Overall our revenues are $13.8M over projections including all other revenues including one-time revenues.
Additionally, we continue to project cost savings based on our expenditure projections; however, some of these apparent savings may be the result of reporting or business process changes implemented with Munis and the decrease in invoices processed in July and August. Note that
September expenditures exceeded our three year average based primarily on the large volume of aged invoices staff processed.
Water Meter Upgrade Projection
There were six responses to the water meter service optimization. These responses are composed of six different teams of providers. CMUD will use the same support vendor Utiliworks to make the responses equivalent and then go to the evaluation process. The intent is to purchase meters and update our process approach to services. CMUD is planning to have a centralized operation center. CMUD finished putting a contract into place for Utiliworks to help ensure that the responses are equivalent.
The ENVISION Charlotte Project-CMUD is also playing a supporting role there as well. CMUD is getting ready to dive into a fixed network as a small pilot in the central business area uptown.
Everything will be donated by ITRON, Verizon, Siemens and Duke Energy. CMUD will be providing field resources in helping ENVISION Charlotte, and will head up the operation and maintenance of transmitters only. CMUD regular billing will not be impacted. You may see a press release soon.
Meeting Adjourned
3:50
TGN