6.1. ERMUSR STAFF UPDATES 11-15-2011

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At the last commission meeting I was asked to bring back some more information on the increase in the maintenance category and the maintenance of vehicles. The category, in total, is higher by $88,343 From the prior year. There are nineteen accounts that make up this category and the accounts making up the majority of the increase are Maintenance of Structures, Maintenance of Underground Distribution, Maintenance of Street Lighting, Maintenance of Meters, and Transportation Expense. For the first four categories, the increase is project driven and the labor and materials for these projects is the biggest part of the increase. For Maintenance of Structures, we are very fortunate to have our staff Maintenance Person knowledgeable and talented enough to be able to address building needs that the prior staff member could not. Some of these projects are electrical lighting, air conditioning and heat pump unit repairs, and flooring maintenance, which results in a different recording of the time spent by staff. However, this is not an increase in total cost to the company. There was also some structural maintenance done by two employees. There is an intentional shift in focus from prior years on the Maintenance of Underground Distribution and Maintenance of Street Lighting. As our system was built out during the previous boom years, there was not the need for the same maintenance. There was new construction and the focus was on building the infrastructure to support it, with the labor involved capitalized. We are now recognizing and performing the needed maintenance on the system components as they wear some and mature. Most of the street light maintenance is maintaining the fixtures from the lights that were originally put in by the developers. There is also cost that comes from accidents when there is no insurance to bill and collect from when a street light is hit. For Maintenance of Meters, we have been working hard for a number of years to change out our old meters to electronic meters with ERTS so that we can more easily read the meters. When we brought the meter reading back in house, the push to finish the change outs really ramped up. We were really dedicated to getting out there and getting this project done, and that means the manpower related to the project is recognized here. There are several reasons why there has been a large increase in Transportation Expense. With the purchase of the bore rig, we had some additional costs for parts and supplies that we have not had in other years. We redid a trailer used to carry the wire around to get additional years out of it instead of purchasing new, so this was additional expense. In March, April, and May we had some vehicles in to be fixed, more than we usually do, and this was related to various items: brakes, ball joints, batteries, mufflers, and modules. There is an increased cost in the fuel this year compared to last year. This year we purchased some new radios for the trucks to be on the same frequency as the city and the county. We have some installation costs related to the laptop computer mounts in the vehicles that we did not have in other years. We had increased labor costs in the spring to get the new equipment set up and we did this instead of having it come from the factory that way, which would have been more expensive to purchase. There is no one large expense that stands out as a definite item that increased the category. It's a lot of smaller things that are falling under maintenance and adding up this year compared to last year.