City Council — February 17, 2026

Mayor Pro Tem Dirk Starbuck.

Present.

Mayor James Mosby.

dealing with mess and get messy dealing with mess. And yet you choose to dwell with us and you love us so much and I'm very grateful for that love. You love us so much Lord you give us a city where we get to have rain and recharge our aquifers. And we have city employees, Lord, that do great things. And so we're very thankful for everyone here. We ask the Lord that you would give the greatest of your wisdom to your people.

I pray, Lord that everyone that will have to stand at this lectern to give a brief, that your spirit will be upon them and they would speak with such excellence they may go back home and say, I wonder was that really me? Lord we know that you're with us and we're grateful for that. In your name we pray,

amen. I

pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible

No presentations as I take it, right? Go right down to the City Manager's Report.

Thank you Mayor. I'm excited to share that Parks and Rec is hosting two great coming up events, workshops for kids. Speak with confidence. It will be Sunday February 22nd. You'll be held at the Dick Dewey Center from 2-4. Spots are available for use between ages 8 through 17. The workshop will be led by a special guest, Miss California Junior Teen Genova Walker. This is a great opportunity for kids to learn how to introduce themselves with confidence and they can use it in school, jobs, bunch of things. It's $15 registration and I encourage kids to get involved and do that.

The library has some fantastic programs that they have coming up next week. The Soil Explorers Program, this class encourages children between ages 8 and 12 to learn more about gardening and include information from master gardeners. The workshop is always popular and registration opens tomorrow, February 18th. The program will be held Wednesday, February 25th from 2 to 3 30.

Just wanted to remind everybody that we are still looking for people to be approved lenders for the first-time homebuyer program. There will be five slots, and those applications are due by Friday, February 20th. I want to take a moment and let everybody know that the Vandenberg Space Force Base is hosting its first event in a speaker series titled Mission Update.

This is a community presentation. It's scheduled for this Friday, February 20th from 4 to 6 at the Dick Dewey Center. Presenters will be from the base and we'll discuss Vandenberg's mission, natural defense operations, and ongoing research. And I encourage people to go and listen to that. With the upcoming storms, I think it's good that everybody takes a chance to register with ReadySBC.

They send out alerts via text, phone calls and emails and courtesies for residents with weather reports, warning evacuations and more. And you can also use the Genesis mapping system to look at what's going on at your address. They also have sandbags at Station 51 on G Street if you need those. I want to take a moment and give an update on the AI-assisted dispatch software, Hyper.

We launched that last week, and I wanted to highlight a few statistics for the first week. They assisted 591 calls for a total cumulative duration of 17 hours and 12 minutes. The average duration of each call was 1 minute and 44 seconds. And I think they have some charts on the next page there. Some of the things that they did, including animal incidences, general inquiries, petty theft, noise disturbance. Really happy for the dispatch and the police department for getting that out. And I see that's really going to work well. So look forward to saving dispatch time.

And that's all I have.

Thank you. Unfortunately, fortunately I had an opportunity to call PD and vandalism on my properties and went through the AI dispatch and I was impressed with it. It did a very solid job and actually apologized for my pain which I thought was, you know, AI knowing emotions was pretty interesting but A question for you. What I've noticed here in the last couple days, and I know the river's kind of consolidating that but there's been a lot of open air in your face drug use in town. Is there something we can do to address this? Do we need more ordinances? What do we need to do on this?

I know when the weather gets rough a lot of them come out and they're not hidings but I'll let the chief talk if he wants to add anything.

You know with the call volume that the officers have, they try to pay attention to that as much as they possibly can. But when they're going to a higher priority call, they don't always catch them all the time but they were out today working on some of those problems and dealing with them. So as we get the opportunities, and hopefully with the three that we have in the academy right now, we'll start seeing numbers go up on patrol and specialty positions like homeless liaison and marijuana compliance officer who They were very, very good at that because they weren't controlled by the radio. The problem that we have in dealing with some of these things that you're seeing is the officers are being dispatched to calls and can't break from those unless it's life-threatening because it's a higher priority.

When we have a team out there that's not controlled by the radio then they can go pick those different things and deal with them and make a big change. So we're getting there. We just gotta get our staffing all the way through.

Well, so one of the complications I have is the Catch-22. Like the old Lobote's restaurant there, they're hitting that one pretty hard and I think I went out without even looking very hard. I counted 19 out there that were either passed out under the influence or using right then and there. And again without these buildings filling up we're short revenue. I know when we need assistance we call Highway Patrol do we need to... Is there some task force that we can reach out to for a day or two to help us with this, or?

The type of task force you're thinking about typically deals with the higher level narcotics problem like more on the dealing side not the using side. But once again I think the public will see a huge change in these kind of problems once we can get that next few officers back out on the streets and allow us to be able to do some of things were doing maybe a year ago.

I know just in my viewing, just about anybody who's using is also dealing. I know it's a smaller level but in watching what's going on and people reaching out to me, you know look at McDonalds and stuff they're just...I was at the US Bank and then at the drive-thru It closed yesterday, but I gave the city manager a picture. The guy's got his propane bottle there and he's aluminum foiled out and he's cooking up a fat load of fentanyl.

What I'd love for anybody that sees that going on is to immediately call the dispatch and let us know so that we can send a unit right away while it's happening. Unfortunately sometimes it gets slowed down if you communicate in the manner which you did. So if you just pick up the phone and call 911 saying somebody's over here using We might be able to get there a little bit faster and be able to deal with it. And on top of that, they create a call for that. So it's not about do I see it or don't I? It's being assigned now and they're able to deal with it.

All right. I expect a bunch of phone calls coming soon. That's fine. I know I've done them in the past. Unfortunately, the time somebody gets there, well, they're either calling 911 for the ambulance They've moved on and such, so I did make a call here the other night and waited an hour-and-a-half.

We're a busy department.

Give you heads up on that. Maybe we can reach out and get some help with the sheriff or something, I don't know but it's pretty rampant right now. The 99 cent store, talking to the veterinarian there, many days they're afraid to go outside of what's going

on. We've actually addressed that with the squads They're going to be talking about that at the briefings, that specific location to make sure that they're dealing with it.

May have somebody looking at that building so we don't want to scare them away. All right thank you any other questions

for the City Manager? Council Member Ball. I just wanted to follow up on that Chief maybe you can help me just understand this in context a little bit obviously this is an issue it's facing our city but resources are always limited from my understanding roughly how many calls for service are you is the department getting a day on average?

Oh I don't know I mean We average about 38,000 calls a year. To remember the people that are handling that there's 24 officers assigned to patrol and they work a supervisor, a corporal and maybe three to four officers so that's why when you think there's 10 officers out there working we're never staffed like that. So two domestic calls. Those four officers are already tied up, and then now the supervisors are rolling out and handling whatever else comes in on a priority level.

So that includes if there's a car accident, you have to respond to that. Correct. So on a good day the City of Lompoc has a supervisor and how many officers that can respond to any type of

call? Three to four plus a supervisor and then if it's a major we have the detectives in the detective bureau but they won't typically roll out on a traffic collision unless it's

Responding to that, I think it's important for us to understand what our limited resources are. Not to make excuses. We only have four officers the whole time. If there's 12 people using drugs across town, we're already hamstrung there. Not to mention responding to higher priority domestic violence assaults and so forth. So again if we want to do something about it, we either need to get some help from the outside or maybe staff up?

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Let's move on to public comment on consent calendar. We got a lot of stuff on consent calendar tonight. We've got approval and ratification of expenditures for payroll of $2.1 million. Voucher for 470,000. Another voucher for 1.4 million. We're adopting ordinance number 1742-26 amending section 21250 of the Lompoc Munico to establish new acting city manager designation procedures Number three is introduction to Ordinance 174326, amending Section 13605017.628.010 Chapter 916 of the Lompoc Municipal Code regarding admin fines, graffiti control and property nuisance.

Number four is approval of change order request purchase order with WSP USA Incorporated Landfill Gas Compliance and Air Toxic Hotspots Act. Number five, introduction of ordinance number 174426, reducing the city manager's purchasing authority. Anybody for consent calendar? Any council members wish to pull an item?

motion. Councilor, well you've got a question. Well I was gonna have some questions about three but we'll talk about that later. I guess I just had a general question about number five from staff. Why are we reducing your purchasing authority from 220 to 100? What's that about? That was part of the budget process. Is that a good thing? Does that reduce staff effort? Is that more work for us as a council or...

Yeah, just more stuff will be coming to you guys to look at and approve between 100 and 220. Awesome,

thank you.

Okay motion, anybody got a motion to approve the amendment of consent or what do you want? What we got? You guys fighting? What's your motion Council Member

Vega? I'll make the motion to accept everything but item number three. Okay, a motion to remain your

items by Vega seconded by Bridge. Let's go vote. That passes 5-0. Staff presentation announcements electric division capital improvement plan I think that's why everybody is here in the audience for that one, right?

Good evening. This is Mike Luther, Utility Director. I want to introduce John McMurray. He's with our consultant working on our utility electric utility model and he has a Put together a presentation of projections for capital improvement projects that will be needed based on their data they've developed.

Good evening Mayor, City Council, members of the city staff and residents here in Lompoc. My name is John McMurray and I work with Qalis. We're a consulting engineering firm. We've been hired by the City of Lompoc to perform a study for four major tasks one of those that I'm talking about tonight. As the forecast to look out into the future with a biennial plan, which is a two year plan of five year plan in the long range plan 20 years into Subdivisions, new commercial buildings, complexes. Everything that's on the horizon that we're aware of working with the estimator Dave Campo and your team here in your city staff so we've built the model and we looked into the future and this presentation is going to present What we found and where we believe, you know the forecast is.

We've done this with utilities around the United States and I'd like to share that presentation so I'd like to begin with that please next slide So again, my name is John McMurray and I work with CLOS. I have a staff of two engineers, electrical engineers, highly skilled engineers who are doing work around the U.S. and North America up in Canada too. And we're going to be talking about the assumptions, the forecasted growth The system loading assessment is when we analyzed your grid, what we found. And then the substation which is also known as the receiving station. We did an asset assessment and brought in other team members to do a physical inspection of The assets inside the substation. And I want to pause here just for a second. QALYS has over 2,000 employees.

When we see a need to look at different things, we'll bring in those individuals with the expertise and they'll come in from different parts of the country. We have most of our people looking at everything here locally on the substation level are from California or Nevada. We also looked at limitations and considerations, and then we make recommendations. So next slide please.

Okay so we were retained like I said for a two year plan, a five year plan outlook on system conditions. Load growth projections and we're looking at potential improvements that need to occur based on the load growth and looking at it systematically. So we look at each of the circuits and we look at the system as a whole in the substation loading too. I'm on paragraph 2 and the key thing, one of the key things that's happening in addition to new loads are the changes with the California Air Resources Board.

And I've spoken with a CARB representative back in May or June of last year about the impacts for the utilities and they are real. I'm going to cover them in slides coming up and they're going to be increasing electrical load on the grid here. We're going to talk about the plan on what you need to do and take care, be able to take care of the grid. But also there's going to be an increase in revenues coming, a stream of revenues associated with that too.

The last paragraph is the model development I spoke about, low growth analysis. It's an annual system load modeling. We create a model, it's on top of your GIS system and it's an electrical model that simulates what the future looks like out. And it's very good for two years, five years is still pretty good, 20 years it's more of drawing with what I call like a crayon. It's a conceptual plan out in 20 years.

The recommendation is to make sure that we alleviate all overloads every year going forward, and then replace any kind of substation assets that are deteriorating. And I'm going to show you some pictures on that. The bottom diagram is just showing you the process. This is used at utilities around the U.S. and North America. Next slide please. So California is unique. Other states are following, we've been talking with utilities in Colorado and New Jersey and other utilities, large utilities are following California but you are the most progressive in trying to take care of the greenhouse gases so the CARB, California Air Resource Board has these mandates by 2030 All new home appliances will be electric. So that's the conversion of water heaters and also your central heating, so moving away from gas natural gas propane to electric In other states, in Florida I know that most everything is electric.

There are some spots that don't have it but other states have been moving in that direction also. But the second item there, the vehicles nobody is as progressive as you are by 2030 68% of all new passenger vehicle sales must be zero emission That's not used vehicles, that's new vehicles. And by 2035 that's gonna be 100% of all brand-new vehicles must be ZEV, zero emission vehicles.

And by 2045 the goal is to reach carbon neutrality. All homes, all vehicles will be fully electric. That is going to increase the grid's demand on the grid Also, there's some changes here to split dwelling units. City approval is not required anymore so that's the bottom line item and that's going to increase load to what level depends on the adoption rate.

Next slide please Okay, so we took a snapshot of what does it look like right now? And this is actually just a few months back. And on the far, on this table on the far left side are your transformers in the substation. You have three transformers. They're loaded at about 30%, plus or minus a little bit which is very nice. Most utilities, big utilities like PG&E they're running their transformers at 50, 55%. 45 to 55% probably.

Your transformers have capacity. So you're prepared for the future for several years there, but I'm gonna talk about On the right-hand side, we have the circuits. The circuits are also lightly loaded from our studies in the urban grids. The average utilization of the circuits usually big cities is running about 50%, 55% most utilities. You're in a good position right now.

However, change is coming. Due to the high feeder utilization from the CARB mandates looking out into future years anticipated growth and also the ability to be able to transfer a load among circuits to balance them out will become more challenging about five years from now. And that's where the circuits are going to be approaching about 60% loading. So, beyond 60%, is you start seeing issues with switching flexibility.

Next slide please. This is just a map of your system with the circuits colored on the right and the new loads that we're aware of in the next five years. And it's, we have it in megawatts per year so grand totals are down at the bottom This is just taking this from the city, the building group as well as the estimator and there are also some other inputs here.

It starts adding when you get to 2031, you sum up each of the bottom line megawatts. It starts increasing the load on the transformers in the substation as well as some of the circuits. Next slide please. So based on the new loads, the zero emission vehicles, ZEV, and the changes by the CARB, you know, the water heaters as well as central heating in the house.

We're seeing loads increasing down at the bottom on the table on the right. About four and a half megawatts are going to be coming in on the system. And what we did was looked at the vehicles, the replacement cycle of vehicles for the state of California and also inside the city of Lompoc. Your cycle replacement is lower. We looked at I believe it's Santa Barbara County. We're in Santa Barbara County right?

Yeah, so here in Santa Barbara County we looked at replacement of vehicles and zero emission vehicles adoption rates. You're slightly below the state and we looked at your zip codes here. So these are the numbers that are reflected in the city of Lompoc as close as we could match it. Based on the vehicles and then the water heaters. We said that there's a replacement cycle on water heaters, and then also the dwelling units we summed it all up You can see the dwelling units is not very much impact their Next slide please And so what we're seeing right now is the peak is around 22 megawatts. By 2031, about five years from now, we're going to be bumping up to about 44 plus megawatts.

I will tell you that this is not precise. This is a forecast. Could it be a little bit less than 44? Yes. Could it be a little bit more than 44? Yes, this is kind of like a middle-of-the-road projection. By 2031, the system peak increases to like I said 44.7 megawatts. There's 8.9 megawatts of known new loads. There's 13 megawatts plus of carb load projections and this is just saying based on replacement of equipment appliances in homes, vehicles and then also the new loads all combined together.

So what does that mean for the system? Next slide please. So if nothing was happening other than just new loads, you'd see the blue line. No CARB mandates, we would see something like the blue line. However, we know there are gonna be impacts to the city of Lompoc through the known EV, the known CARB mandates and the impacts from the EVs, ZEV, the appliances and such.

And so we're projecting the green line. Could it go higher? Yes, it can go. Could it go higher or lower? It can swing just a little bit up or down but that's our midline projection of what we're going to see. Okay next slide please. Okay so this is the slide you need to see as a governing body this is what we're wanting you to see right now. When you look out to about 2028 to 2032 in that range, you have to be able to see.

You're going to want to be able to make some decisions here and what we're saying is you want to plan for a new substation and the number one thing that you're gonna wanna do is number one is look to acquire the land for a substation And that would be around 2028. Do you have a, could you do it in 2027? Yes. Could you do it in 2029? You'd probably be okay if you do it in 2029 but you're gonna need to look for land for a substation and another utility where I worked we looked out 15 years and we purchased land 10 to 15 years in advance because there was rapid growth going on and the price of land was going up There may be not that is not the situation as much here, but it always is a good practice to at least have the land. Then you're not landlocked when you have to make a decision.

The land is the small cost of the overall future that you need to prepare for So number two is you're looking at preparing the land for the substation. You should be clearing, you should be preparing putting the earthwork and getting the structure ready to be able to build this substation. And then by number three, by 2032 thereabouts based on our projections, you're gonna need a new substation New substations take about five years from initial planning to energization, and we're painting the window that five-year window for you now.

I'm going to pause right here. Do you have any questions?

Is there a spot in the city where the substation would have to – is there a corridor or segment

I'm sorry, is there a corridor? No.

Should

the substation be in the north or the south? We have a general area that we're looking at central to the city would be better because your load is center and emanates out in branches. A larger load where some of the overloads will occur out in year 5, 6, 7 on the west side is seeing more growth coming. And I would say that center is best. There are parcels of land. We just did a scout around. We're not suggesting the land for you to buy, we think that's part of what you do as a city. I've done this in years past and coordinated with the utilities but this is something the city is very capable of doing and it's just sizing up the substation for a new second substation The other thing is in the event anything happened for your substation right now, you have no backup plan right now.

There's something big happened and you would be looking at an extended outage for the city. Can you bring in a substation from elsewhere? Can you bring in a portable substation transformer from somewhere? Yes, you can probably coordinate it in an emergency situation but that takes time so Having a substation out in the window of five years or so is a good idea anyway, is to have a backup plan. Have two substations for a city relying on one substation which I've seen in my past two substations fail catastrophic failure but also I'm used to looking at over 500 substations around the southeast and central US So anyway, we're just painting a picture. It's in the next five years or so and the number one thing is to purchase the land. It'a small cost and it gets your footprint there so you're ready to plan for the future.

And if the load comes sooner, you can accelerate the plan. If the load takes longer, you can delay the plan a little bit but getting the property is very important right now. Any questions?

So I appreciate the presentation and obviously we need to be as prepared as we can. But again, this is an estimation on what load may be in the future. Something I'm curious about because you were praising the city for having a low percentage use of its transformers in maybe comparison to PG&E. Assuming that PG&E is facing the same mandates in Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills, Mesa Oaks, some of those areas. I was curious if they already have more load what are they doing to prepare for their future? Because that might add a little context to our timing and how soon we need to prepare.

Yeah, so utilities are increasing. They're upgrading their power lines, getting ready for the load. The city of Palo Alto has done a study on their grid and they've gone out and they've put a plan in place. And I don't have the number in front of me how many millions of dollars that I don't recall if it's tens of millions of dollars what the number is, but they're going to be upgrading their grid. They're going to be upgrading our substations. Palo Alto is out ahead of a lot of the municipal utilities.

They're investing in their grid heavily right now. I don't see the City of Lompoc as a Palo Alto. They have a very high per capita income, and they have to be accelerating their plan. Lompoc has some more time. Lompc is fortunately in a very good position with your transformers With your power lines, you've got time. All we're saying is from the forecast is you need to start putting things in place to be prepared but you've got time. That's the good news and if it was a year or two from now I'd be concerned. I'm not concerned. We have recommendations that as long as you're implementing these things very gradually over time you should be in very good shape.

Appreciate that thank you.

Yeah and I suspect, I don't know what PG&E's transformers are loaded at but I suspect they're loading them up quite a bit more because I know other utilities, large utilities their transformers, their grids much more loaded than yours. And I'm talking about another utility with six million meters and another utility that's across eight states. I think they're 11 million meters. They load their transformers in their conductors way above what you are right now So you're in a good position right now, but you can't rest on your laurels is what we're saying. We have to plan for the future.

Next slide please. So I want to call your attention to some of your equipment inside your substation You have many assets inside your substation that are deteriorated and they need to be replaced. You can see that these are VTCTs, the lids are rusted. If water creeps into the VTCTs you can have acetylene buildup. You can have some things, chemical buildup I should say, that can cause a fault which you could see failure and it would take out part of your substation This is coming from our manager, Doug Rustano. Flew in here and took pictures of different parts of your substation so we've identified the pieces of equipment that need to be maintained, replaced and we're just on the cusp of putting together the cost of each of these items when to replace it in priority order and how much the cost would be.

So we don't do the work. All we do is tell you what We see in industry where the best practices and what do you need to do to maintain your equipment? And Your staff's very willing it's just there's certain aspects that we're going to recommend And then they'll either do it themselves some of they can do themselves or you'll go hire somebody to help with the work Next slide, please.

These are other pieces of equipment that are damaged through the years inside the substation. The one on the left is small. It's just a replacement of a rusted box. The second one to the left has already been corrected. They just resealed. There's moisture creeping into a switch. They resealed and that's done. The two on the right looks like either lightning or high voltage surge damaged figure eight I believe it is, yeah?

I'm going to talk a little bit about what's going on in your substation. You've got your central most important location of assets is your receiving station, also known as a substation. You need to make sure it's not a $40,000 car. It's a four or five million dollar investment facilities and it does need to be maintained and your staff is very willing like I said so just calling these to your attention next slide please We assessed major equipment for capacity. I've shared that you're in good condition now, and condition of substation assessments. We've looked through the substation for the major pieces of equipment.

We did not go through and take off any termination elbows, points, connectors, go into cabinets. We didn't open up and dig into cabinets, take outages This was a cursory review at a high level, relatively inexpensive just to go in and give you an idea of what you need to do with your major pieces of equipment. We evaluated life cycles for replacement of aged assets.

Your major assets, number one, number two and number three are your transformers. They are in near excellent shape. That's a great thing. Those are probably $1 million to $1.5 million each. Thank you very much. And there's some other pieces of equipment around the transformers that we're going to work with staff and show them what to do, and we've been talking with substation Scott Brady and others.

I'm on bullet number four. The key thing about the equipment is each piece of equipment has a rating that when it's brand new, that's the rating. And we're assuming everything operates like brand new. We have not derated cable conductors due to corrosion, salt air corrosion, the ampacity of your cable, your wire, it drops. We have not derated it based on Thank you very much.

The bottom bullet, we did also look at fuse overloads. Those are the fuses that protect the lines that go into the neighborhoods and we did identify a few of them that become overloaded in outer years. We did not coordinate, we did not look downstream at how's the coordination for the fuses. We did not perform a coordination study. We just looked at loading and the impact of those overloads to be able to replace the fuses. Those are small cost items.

Next slide please. Okay, so this is the recommendations. I'm summarizing here. So track and compare actual annual loading to forecasted loading. I'd say even more important than that right now is to purchase the land for the substation number one and then watch the loading each year. And as CARB mandates start in impacts from the CARB mandate start to occur and load creeps up You will be able to gauge when you need to pull the trigger on certain items. For maintenance also, you'll need to be doing some of that and we'll prepare line item costs for that.

Number two, perform the gas, dissolve gas analysis on the substation transformers and load tap changers annually. That was just done last month. And that's why I know your transformers are in good shape. Your load tap changers need maintenance. I'll talk with staff about that. That's a very low cost item compared to your transformers. Number three, perform a fuse coordination study to evaluate the coordination and this is between upstream devices, distribution transformers, downstream fuses and such.

We just want to make sure that everything coordinates so if a fuse downstream blows If there's a fault downstream, the fuse closest to the fault blows instead of impacting a larger number of customers upstream. Number four is this year replace the CTs, VTs and we're working with your staff and I understand that NCPA is going to handle that and you have some funds with them so they will handle that through We're doing a cursory review of your SCADA system. That's your supervisory control and automation of your distribution grid, and there are options that we'll be laying out whether to upgrade or go Upgrade is your least expensive option. Again, we'll lay out the options and talk with staff and make recommendations there.

Number five, 2027 replace the 2000 amp 115 kV circuit breakers with main cabinets. We've got some costs there. This will be in a table. And also number six, replace the 12 KVPTs in 2027 and number seven in 2028 replaced the 1200 amp circuit switchers. We've got some costs there. 2028, prepare a prioritized small conductor replacement program to get ready for the loads that are coming. You don't have to execute it right away but we want to prepare it and where we see the worst loading We give it to you soon and then you watch the loads. You have the model now, and your team here at the City of Lompoc can take over the reins of watching the model. We can back off and provide less support than we've been providing.

We can help you as much as you want or as little as you need us to. Number nine, 2028 prepare a plan to replace cable elbows to increase ratings along major feeder routes. Those are the major circuits on the major streets and bring them up to 600 amp standard which is the standard among the feeder. That's what your feeders are rated for at the substation should be all the way out.

I think that is about it. Yeah, that's it. If you can go back one slide, yeah. So that is the presentation of giving you some information to be able to think about and I'll take questions right now.

First let me thank you for this report. A lot of this probably should have been done before you raised the electric rates, which is a study because I know they raised the rates anticipating $70 million worth of projects but they didn't identify the project so better late than never. I appreciate that.

Yes, I do want to say one thing. $70 million is not all at once and I'm not aware of $70 million. I think that's probably taking Palo Alto what they have and what they're looking at. And I forgot their number. It's tens of millions it might be over a hundred million dollars but they said that and then I think the city prorated off of that so but that's not all at once. That may be spread among 15 or 20 years and there are certain things need to happen sooner than later

It's nice to have this study before they raise the rates, but also the point of fact is that in what they did move forward with it didn't have a significant increase Thank you. What they do right now on average

Probably very gradually You know what we're seeing is you know two three years from now Small increases for the people that you know the new subdivisions if they have an electric vehicle They plug in yeah, they're gonna see their bill increase because they have an electric vehicle. They convert They don't have to go to the gas station anymore so that kind of swaps over and

Gas water heater

versus

electric water

heaters big difference. Yeah, that is gonna make a difference It's a short duration. That's not running all day is a short duration but it will make a difference

I Believe a 40 gallon electric water heater family of four is about 305 25 kilowatt hours a month is just saying which is about kind of what our average is right now per household so there are significant increases but Which at that time we could see some of these rules and regulations when people start feeling the pain. And they realize they're getting a $600 a month electric bill, which other areas with air conditioners feel those pains already in the summertime. We here don't, most of the homes don't have AC units, which is again one of the reasons why we have the ability. We anticipated for more than we didn't need but it's a good thing.

But there's one in your future list, Home Depot's co-gen plant. I don't know what they used in power before but are they going to be restricted on their gas co-gen that they have there? I mean it could be as significant on that side of town. They use a lot of power with lighting and such.

Yes, so I think some of the load that we call distributed energy resources, DER. Some of the DER in the city of Lompoc is allowed to push their generation back on the grid. Small solar on houses but new solar is not allowed to push their load back on the grid. They can serve their own house but not go push it back. So you're still going to see an increase of load It's going to be a lot of work. Because the new you'll have that portion of

It depends on if they are going to provide their own generation. I think Home Depot

has their own generator,

They got a big roof, I guess they could cover it with solar.

Some solar there are other technologies to be able to convert too.

Another question prior to this how was this study done? Prior to using Qualys what did we do? How did we study what we needed repair replace capital projects? Have you obviously used an outside consultant does anybody know?

I'll tell you what I've heard on some of it. So some of it, they would take amp readings on the lines that hang amp meters on the lines and look at the loads on the lines as they saw loads increasing, they would replace an upgrade in advance of it getting too high. They know what the load is at the substation. I say they, we, the city because we're working with you The city knows what your feeders are running at.

So knowing what the loads are on each of the circuits is as you're seeing increases in loads, they would plan for upgrades and the conversion. So this system was being served by four KV, 4,160 volts. It got converted to 25,000 volts. I'm sorry 12,000 volts with 12,000 volts you have a lot more capacity on the power lines so that postpones the need to upgrade the conductors.

What I was