December 20, 2006
A regular meeting of the Board of Water Commissioners was called to order at 6:30 PM by Chairperson Richard Fournier. Commissioners present were Robert Delisle, Paul Poulin and Lucien Langlois. Absent from the Board was ex-officio member Mayor Robert Danderson. Also present for this meeting was Superintendent Viens and Lynne C. Lessard.
There were no Public or Board comments at this time.
It was moved by Commissioner Langlois, seconded by Commissioner Poulin, with all in favor, to accept and place on file, the Minutes of November 15th, 2006.
Under the Berlin Water Works Monthly Status report dated December 15th, 2006, Superintendent Viens reviewed the following with the Board:
1. Roland handed out a copy of the Monthly Flows Graph and stated that we have continued to lower our monthly flows of water supplied into the distribution system.
2. The City of Berlin has signed an agreement with “Virtual Town Hall”, a firm that has set-up a new Berlin internet website. The City has asked BWW to participate. BWW will start adding links into the web. This has a lot of potential. As of yesterday, nothing was listed for BWW. To view the website type in the following on your computer: berlinnh.virtualtownhall.net
3. The Board reviewed an updated spreadsheet of the meter repair list for stopped meters which indicates that we are driving the numbers down. We are also in the process of doing replacement meters. The crew consists of two employees doing three meters each a day for a total of six replacements.
4. Superintendent Viens informed the Board that the number of Street Opening Permits which are for main line, service line & curb stops repairs, continues to decline.
5. BWW received Primex Insurance’s Member Contribution Summary for January 01, 2007 – January 1, 2008 for the Workers’ Compensation Program, shows that our modifier came down from 1.18 to 1.09.
6. BWW employees attended a safety meeting on lifting and some employees were re-certified as traffic flaggers.
It was moved by Commissioner Delisle, seconded by Commissioner Langlois, with all in favor, to accept the Berlin Water Works Monthly Status Report dated December 15th, 2006.
The Superintendent and Board briefly discussed the Cashier’s Report. It was noted that the second payment was made to the State of NH – DOT Green Street Project in the amount of $219,441.75 along with State Revolving Loan payments of SRLF #01, #03 & #04 totaling $285,298.35. Looking at the reserves for debt, we only have $266,471.28 to pay during the next five months. Superintendent Viens handed out a spread sheet for available cash. We tracked the amount of cash in our accounts for the last 4 years. Since then, we have actually paid those commitments without the mill and are above the line from last year. We are $100k
ahead of last year. Superintendent Viens handed the Board a copy of his “Hi-Lite” list for Calendar 2006. We accomplished a great deal this year. The first item is that a 5-year contract with Local Union #1444 was signed with significant improvements in the coverage system and the, forced account supervision has really helped. The 2nd Item, we lost the Mill water & assessment revenues of approximately $250k per year. The 3rd item is about the forced account activity, such as we maintained 2 crews, and that our temporary help is still on Board as of this date. Thru the forced account activity, BWW purchased a dump truck, which was paid in full, purchased cat & made 1st payment, with annual payments for the next 5 years. Purchases of a trailer, excavator hammer, water service trailer, surplus air compressor, backhoe hy-ram & compactor, electro-fusion machine, purchased a generator to
run the fusion machine. We charge these pieces of equipment out to forced account using our established rates and will eventually get ahead to generate cash flow. Item #4 with our out of pocket money, we purchased M&M’s building and paid back taxes on that property. Item #5 is for a purchase of a new Ford Pick-Up Truck. Item #6, crews installed 7200 lineal feet of water main and the second crew installed/replaced more than 50 service lines. This is a positive statement about our performance. To review more of the 2006 Hi-Lites, a copy has been attached to these Minutes. It was moved by Commissioner Poulin, seconded by Commissioner Delisle, with all in favor, to accept and place one file, the Cashier’s Report for the Month of November, 2006.
Under Old business:
a. T-Buck Contract – suit update: A mediation session was conducted by retired Judge Gray on December 13th. Resolution was not reached but some progress was made.
b. Jericho Lake/State RV part & Godfrey Raw Water Transmission Line-Status: No activity as of this date.
c. Loranger Easement Review – Status: No Change.
d. City request on meter issue – Status: The City has requested to install water meters on City well and other special water use customers to more accurately determine the sewer billing. Superintendent Viens & Commissioner Delisle met twice with the City Manager and City Public Works Director. After the first meeting, Superintendent Viens sat down to modify our rules to accomplish what they asked us to do and to keep us financially whole. The way the process will work, for a well or for a deduct application or for lawn sprinklers, the customer will submit an application form to the Berlin Public Works to start the process. The City Public Works Director would do all the processing. As soon as the application request is approved, BWW would estimate the project and charge same to the City. If the Board tentatively agrees, to the comments in our Rules and Regulations & information as provided by the Superintendent this will be submitted to the City Manager and Public Works
Director. It was moved by Commissioner Poulin, seconded by Commissioner Langlois, with all in favor, to accept the revised BWW Rules & Regulations “Draft – Proposed Changes for City Sewer – Well & Deduct metering for Sewer Billing.”
e. Federal Bureau of Prisons – Water Service Status: The FBOP has awarded a purchase order the Berlin Water Works to upgrade our Water-Cad model and perform a hydraulic study to determine the effects of the proposed prison water demands on the distribution system in the amount of $20,000k. Superintendent Viens stated that the software we have is adequate, however we did purchase a laptop computer.
f. Review Water Ordinance RE: Memo from City Manager – Status: City Councilors are not interested in proceeding with the Ordinance at this time.
g. BWW Contract Services (Fecteau & Arsenault) – John Arsenault has not done much work lately but will be assisting Charlie Fritz of Electrical Installations, Inc. to correct the issue of the use of the recycle flow which John found, but doesn’t know how to correct it. He needs Charlie Fritz for software modifications.. Corey Fecteau, during follow-up inspections of the Church Street Pump determined there are several issues with the installation. He will be working to disassemble the pump & Cross Machine will do the repairs.
h. Replacement pump for Church Street Pump station --- this job has been downsized and will be less costly. We will use Corey Fecteau to perform pump repairs.
i. Federal Surplus Purchases – Status: BWW has purchased a new compressor for $3,500.00 and will have Corey Fecteau perform service checks to get it into good working condition.
j. Other old business: A Contract between BWW and CLD Consulting Engineers, Inc. for Professional Services for Updating Current Berlin Water Works Hydraulic Model and Utilizing Model to Determine System Requirements to Accommodate Proposed Federal Prison was signed by the Commissioners. Tracy L. Wood, PE for CLD, will be here on Friday.
Under New Business:
a. Review Manning – Temporary Employees: We still have four temp employees and are maintaining three BWW employees on forced account work, such as hauling sand for next years construction season.
b. Disposal of Chemicals – Clean Harbors Proposal: Andre Caron, City of Berlin’s Housing Coordinator, put this deal thru the City to include BWW as part of the Laboratory chemical clean-up. Steve Lefebvre has gone to both treatment plants to identify laboratory chemicals no longer useful. The NH Technical College took some of chemicals for their teachings and the remaining will be for Clean Harbors. Within the next 2 wks this will be done.
c. NHCTC – Equipment Maintenance/Training Program – An arrangement has been made to have Corey Fecteau and students from the Tech to do repairs to the front end loader, the compressor and the 10 wheeler Ford dump truck.
d. Meter Repair List – Stopped Meters: 11 Units at Brookside are still unmetered. Brookside cannot afford any additional costs at this time to hire a plumber to install these meters. For Brookside, the meters are estimated. Our goal is to get everything metered. We maintain a list of “Stopped Meters”. When we do our quarterly readings, any meter not reporting a good water usage number goes on the list. This list varies from 40 to 120 unreadable meters. Some of these situations on going. We have one customer with no reads for about 15 years. Possibilities would be to
terminate water service if the customer remains unresponsive to our request or perhaps schedule one of our employees to work a weekend for installation.
e. Other: Hill St. Construction was hired to assist BWW to fix a rotted out wall at our garage next door. Chemical Bids were opened today. Harcross’s bid came in after 2:00 PM and was disqualified. Bid #1 – Sodium Hydroxide 25% (Caustic) was awarded to JCI Jones, Inc. @.83 cents per gallon. Bid #2 – Sodium Hypochlorite 15% (bleach) filtered; is also awarded to JCI Jones, Inc. @ .88 cents per gallon for the quantity of 2,000 – 2,999 gallons. For small loads of bleach, 1,000 – 1,999, Monson Companies is the Low Bidder. Superintendent Viens spoke to the Board about the latest technology in leak
detection. The “SoundSens” system needs a minimum of 2 correlator pods. They are programmable and will triangulate thru sonar, no more than 500 feet apart. It’s a lot more time saving & precise than the system we have today. When we are selecting the next street to dig, our criteria is how many customers are on running water, number of breaks in the past, old water mains; we are getting proposals for these. This would be a very powerful tool.
There was no other new business or communications at this time.
The Board agreed to hold their next regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 @ 6:30PM at their 55 Willow Street Conference Room.
There was no Public or Board Comments.
There being no further business to come before the Board at this time, it was moved by Commissioner Delisle, seconded by Commissioner Langlois, with all in favor, to adjourn this meeting.
The meeting did so adjourn at 7:40PM.
A True Record: ATTEST:_________________________
Robert Delisle, Clerk of the Board
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