​The meeting took place in the small conference room due to HVAC construction. All trustees were in attendance in person or via phone or video conferencing.
Board of Trustees meeting: FY 23 officers were unanimously re-elected and consent agenda passed unanimously.
Investment Committee meeting: Investments are getting higher interest rates 2.06% for T Bills. Off setting that is greatly increased costs for chemicals and electricity. Stock market being up means the pension fund is significantly better which impacts the budget positively. The PPRT (Personal Property Replacement Taxes) revenue is also up significantly and is used for capitol projects.
Finance: The State of Illinois has many past due GPSD  bills. Still working with utility billing software which would need to interact with IL American Water usage data. GPSD is using Cyber security software.
Operations: There were no violations, no backups. They received a Peak Performance Award for the second year. GPSD is ahead of regulations regarding phosphorus using biological removal – 80% reduction. One of two “screw pumps” went out and they are dealing with it as an internal maintenance project. (They also have a backup pump.)  Of note nearby but downstream is the high Kickapoo Creek phosphorus level which is due to farm fields and residential septic systems. Also contributing can be stream erosion.  There is a Bradley student summer study going on.
Construction & Planning: new residential connections are up this year.  Approved $60,699 change order to a sewer lining project which needed bypass pumping and included unexpected pipe failures.
GPSD will participate in an Illinois watershed study group.
Ameren may want an old landfill site that GPSD owns for a community solar project. However there was discussion about the degraded panels at the end of panel life including heavy metals.
The Audit will be reviewed at the July meeting. 
​Cheryl Budzinski, Observer

​All Trustees attended either in person or virtually. The Investment Committee Meeting report- the $5-6million dollars will be laddered for needed times, but rates are still very low.
 
The Board of Trustees Meeting had one guest whose volunteer work for the St Vincent de Paul society at a local church led her to ask that the GPSD bills also be sent to renters. Currently only the owners receive the bill from GPSD. But utilities may be the renters’ responsibility. When a notice finally does come to the renter it is a notice of approaching water shutoff and may be hundreds of dollars overdue. GPSD is aware of this and is looking into solutions, but extremely low-income households may not have a computer or internet access for electronic bills. Staff pointed out that GPSD has a link on their website to Low Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP) which is a  partial one-time solution.
·         The public hearing on the 2022-23 Budget will be on Tuesday April 18. Afterwards the trustees will vote on the budget. Fuel and chemical expenses are much higher now which is reflected in the budget.
·          Two employees were promoted from within to new positions and two interns are budgeted.
·       GPSD has applied for a FEMA BRIC grant to cover 70% of their Levee Improvements Project. The project involves changing the height and slope of the levee which surrounds the GPSD plant, relocation of the maintenance garage, Kickapoo Interceptor Control Structure, and Effluent Channel Control Structure.  This project is needed to meet the FEMA requirement for a 100-year flood event. Flooding has increased and on one occasion when the river reached 29 feet, employees had to take a boat to get to the plant.
·         There were no overflows in February in the GPSD system. There was one combined sewer discharge on February 16 with .73inches of rain in the city owned combined water/sewer system.
·         There were no sanitary sewer backups in February within the District-owned sanitary sewer collection system.
·         A six-year generator maintenance agreement was approved to maximize the service life of their emergency standby generators.
·         Trustees thanked staff for participation in an ongoing national sewage tracking project described in  a Saturday March 12 Peoria Journal Star article: Sewage might track down next COVID-19 outbreak (by Leslie Renken)  https://peoriajournalstar-il.newsmemory.com?selDate=20220312&goTo=A01&artid=3    
Cheryl Budzinski, Observer

​GPSD Trustees participated in person and online. That option was open to the public also. Staff and Trustees were welcoming to have an Observer.
Their website was very helpful finding the location, time, date, how to participate online or in person. Also from their website https://www.gpsd.org/

• their FY ’22 Strategy: Safety & Employees, Environmental Protection, and Community & Customer Expectations. 
• their long-range strategy: “Our three main focus areas are: (1) a cleaner river (including consent decree implementation), (2) collection system rehabilitation, and (3) treatment plant rehabilitation.” 

Trustee President Robert Gates presided at the 9:30am meeting. Executive Director Brian Johnson led his staff to explain the monthly reports and issues including:

• Financials
  • the pension assets (IMRF) yielded 16.2% return so the 2022 employer rate will be decreased
  • discussed their investments and reserve ($23million in savings but an outage of a turbine or other equipment can cost more than that.)
  • costs have increased significantly with chemicals increasing 15% and utilities increasing 26%
  • insurance costs have increased from $36, 875 to $44,672 – GPSD insures all its properties since an unexpected flood or other cost would be significant
  • doing an automation study to help plan for failure replacements of equipment especially their diesel turbines which must operate even in event of power outages.
• Mr Johnson presented the proposed Budget Strategy which considers an aging plant and anticipated growth in North Peoria. He will work with each Trustee to answer questions, etc. Some highlights:
  • customer rates from GPSD @$300/year are well below national average which is @$586/year, however they will be looking at an 80cent/month increase in their budget for 2022-23.  And, they don’t have the City of Peoria’s rate yet.
  • “Consent Decree” term is used referring to the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) determination. Almost half of their “Capitol Projects” are Consent Decree projects
  • fiscal year starts in May
  • Public Hearing on the 2023 Budget is scheduled for April 19, 2022 at 9:30am
• Other agenda items:
  • Approved a new ordinance for grease collections since the previous company doing this stopped operating last year. It takes additional effort for GPSD to deal with this (mostly restaurant) waste stream and GPSD kept the previous operator’s fees in place until they complete a cost study underway.
  • Discussed “authorized Water Shutoffs on Delinquent Accounts” at length including Low Income pledges from PCCEO, landlord/tenant issues, huge bills due to landlords not repairing plumbing
  • Only one sewer backup last month and staff has worked with that owner

Cheryl, Observer