6.1d ERMUSR 10-08-2019 Elk River
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO: FROM:
ERMU Commission Mike Tietz—Technical Services Superintendent
MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
October 8, 2019 6.1d
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• In September, the locating department had a total of 467 locate tickets consisting of six
emergency tickets, 13 cancellations, 408 normal tickets and 40 updated tickets.This is a
3.3% increase in volume of tickets from the previous month.
• On September 17, two crews, each consisting of an office and a field staff member
changed out meters within Areas 7 & 8, completing the change out of 106 meters in one
day. This completes the 2015 Service Territory Transfer agreement a year ahead of
schedule. The metering department would like to express their gratitude to the office
staff for their assistance during the past few transfers. They have been instrumental in
recording data accurately in the field that is utilized by Customer Information Systems.
This has also allowed the field staff to stay focused on their task and work safely,
without distractions. Field staff also disconnected all the load management radios
within these areas and has been working on transitioning nine of these customers from
a Connexus single metering rate. By adding an additional meter package, we will be able
to transition these customers to our existing programs. This work should be completed
next week.
• On September 26, staff ran Engines 1, 3 & 4 without any issues. We have a vendor that
is planning to diagnose and repair Engine 2 in mid-November. We will also have them
take a look at Engine 3 at that time. It has been producing excessive smoke during
multiple startups.
• Mapping department continues to update points and attributes for all of our systems
assets within the ESRI ArcView GIS system. Power Systems Engineering (PSE) has started
on our ESRI upgrade along with the disaster recovery backup server build for GIS. PSE is
working directly with city IT staff on this.
• Structural Buildings has the building materials onsite for the West Substation Equipment
Storage Garage. The grading and pad site were completed around the middle of
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September.The scheduled start of construction has been pushed back to October 7 due
to weather conditions. The anticipated completion date is October 31, which is still on
schedule.
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