Board Members present: Ron Farmer, Sandra Bishop, Dorothy Anderson, and Mel Menegat. President Patrick Lanning was excused.

Others present: Randy Berggren, Debra Smith, Roseanna McArthur, Terry Bequette, Dick Helgeson, Jim Wiley, Jim Origliosso, Dick Varner, Krista Hince, and Ruth Atcherson, City of Eugene Minutes Recorder.

GOVERNANCE

• General Manager Goals Status
• Agenda Management Forms
• Rules of Conduct Agreement
• Education Information

Vice President Farmer called the Work Session of the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) to order.

General Manager Randy Berggren called the Governance meetings a work in process. He noted that he had not changed the agenda prior to meeting with Board President Lanning. He stressed that he was implementing some of the rules that had been requested, and that Board oversight of the agenda was one of them.

Mr. Berggren highlighted the 2003 GM Goals - Status Report, as outlined in the memorandum to the Board dated August 15. He stated that he was continuing to follow the Operation Performance Metrics (OPM), but noted that there were indications that some of the OPMs might need to be changed or modified. He said that he wanted to identify in the second quarter, through review, where the utility lay within the context of the original goal and begin to formulate a different and more meaningful metric. He suggested that, as the Board and staff watched the trends unfold, it would become more clear what metrics would work to accurately measure performance.

Mr. Berggren said that, outside of a few negative trends, the utility was doing well according to the OPMs. He noted, in particular, that the utility was able to completely retire the remaining outstanding short-term commercial debt. He commented that, assuming a forecast of normal precipitation in the fall, the projections suggest that the utility could hold its financial position and potentially build additional reserves.

Commissioner Bishop called the status report a "good piece of work." She felt that the lost telephone calls warranted careful scrutiny. She felt that the report should not sugar-coat lost calls by renaming the category 'call availability.'

Mr. Berggren responded that the exodus of University of Oregon students for the summer coincided with a sharp increase in lost telephone calls.

Debra Smith, Telecommunications Project Manager, commented that the phrase 'lost calls' implied that the calls were forever lost. She said, as a point of fact, that call availability related to the ability to take calls as they come in. She stressed that the majority of callers who do not get connected the first time try again.

Commissioner Bishop opined that customer relations personnel were pressured into being too efficient by being held responsible for a level of service that was sometimes difficult to provide given the volume of calls and the amount of staff people available to respond to them. She suggested that this impacted customer service as staff was more concerned with volume than customer satisfaction. She reiterated her interest in monitoring this OPM.

Mr. Berggren said that he was looking into doing organization flexibility work to determine if it would be possible to provide customer service representatives more freedom in policy interpretation.

Vice President Farmer felt that it made sense to keep the OPMs as they are for the remainder of the year, but should there be no noticeable change in the outcomes, it could be an indicator that the metric needed to change or some rethinking of strategy should occur. Noting the metrics utilized by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), he asked staff if the Board could be provided with guidelines and target levels that they had suggested. Mr. Berggren replied that he would do so.

Regarding water system reliability, Vice President Farmer stated that he did not want, at a Board level, to discuss why a metric was not achieved. He said he would rather look ahead at potential future impacts to service, in the case in question a road project that had increased turbidity, and plan to mitigate them in advance.

Vice President Farmer shared that, while he recognized that there had been some improvement in call availability, he had been disappointed overall, especially given that the Board had approved the hiring of five new people. Mr. Berggren noted that although the five individuals had been hired, others had moved to other areas in the department, thus creating the need to fill in those positions as well. He said it has been tough keeping the customer services representatives positions full.

Vice President Farmer called the increase in lost work days alarming. He recommended taking a proactive stance to address this. Mr. Berggren responded that repetitive motion disorders and carpal tunnel syndrome accounted for some of the increase. He noted that this was an industry-wide problem. He stated that EWEB had begun a policy of performing physical assessments on new employees in the mid-1990s to uncover preexisting conditions.

Commissioner Menegat expressed concern that the increase in lost work days was, in part, due to the reduction in staff as staff members were now asked to do more. He thought that the utility may have created a situation that exacerbated work-related syndromes.

Mr. Berggren said that the bill remittance process had been outsourced partly to reduce the number of repetitive motion injury claims to the utility.

Vice President Farmer noted the backgrounder on financial performance that had been in the Board packets. He reiterated his belief that there was no greater responsibility on the part of the Board than its fiduciary responsibility to the stakeholders. He asserted that financial reports should be part of Board meetings.

Regarding the Deposit Policy, Mr. Berggren assured Vice President Farmer that the response had not been very negative to the changes.

Continuing, Mr. Berggren noted that the APPA (American Public Power Association) had scheduled a fall education institute in Seattle, Washington, that included Governance sessions. He encouraged Board members to attend.

Mr. Berggren asked the Board if Commissioners wanted to codify the rules of conduct that had been compiled during the Board retreat held in July. There was general agreement to include them in the Consent Calendar for the next Board meeting.

Vice President Farmer remarked that it was not how the rules were voted upon that mattered so much as how the Board adhered to the rules that had been agreed upon.

Mr. Berggren directed the Board to look over the format for the Board Agenda Report, as proposed by staff in response to the Board's request. He went over the four items that were listed noting that, per the Board's intentions, the agenda items were to be introduced by individual Commissioners, but that a majority vote would be needed to place an item on the agenda.

Continuing, Mr. Berggren called attention to the abbreviated schedule, developed by staff at the Board's direction. In response to Vice President Farmer, Mr. Berggren affirmed that the Board would be addressing Governance again in November or December of this year.

Vice President Farmer closed the work session at 7:29 p.m.

_____________ ______________________________________

Assistant Secretary President