Here we are in our example form 1040 populated with LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along, but it's a great tool to run example problems with. You can also get access to the form 1040 related forms and schedules at the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov, starting point, same as usual, single filer, Mr. Anderson, no dependence. We've got the 100,000 W2 income, the standard deduction at the 12,950, getting us to the 87,050. If I pull that on over to our tax formula worksheet, 100,000 income, 12,950, 87,050 taxable income. We've got the tax calculated by the software page two at the 14774, the 15,000 of the withholdings that we're going to say gets us to the 2226. So there it is here, 226, we're mainly focused on the first half. First half hour we separate, then the income side, the income statement or taxable income calculated on page one. And we're now considering the unemployment compensation. So usually if there's unemployment compensation, you'll get the form for it. And it's a pretty straightforward type of thing because you'll have a 1099G typically, and that usually indicates that we have income. The most complicated thing oftentimes from a tax preparation standpoint for the unemployment compensation is discussing it with the client because they're often going to say, hey, I thought I thought that that they didn't include unemployment compensation. And it's like, well, yeah, that's because last year they did funny stuff, the whole COVID thing, and they tried to remove the unemployment compensation. But it was only a temporary thing, like a lot of the temporary stuff. And now it's back, so now they're including it again. They might say, well, why does that make sense? Because the government is giving me money and then the government wants the money back. You'll have your money back in 30 days. And it's like, well, yeah, that's because the state government is giving the money for the unemployment compensation or the local government. But on the federal side of things, they see that as in essence, you know, compensation, compensation for last night's unfortunate. And whatnot for the income tax purposes or whatever. And that's just kind of like the rule. Well, what about the fact that I didn't and I didn't have any withholdings on the unemployment compensation? It's like, well, that might work out good. That might work out bad, because if you lost your job in the middle of the year, your withholdings up until that point were probably over withheld, which means that might be enough to cover your unemployment compensation. However, if you got a significant amount of unemployment compensation and very little withholdings, then yes, that could result in a bad tax consequence. OK, that said, if I just jump to the 1099 g and we just say this is going to be the state unemployment, unemployment. I probably spelled it wrong, whatever.  This is going to be then right here, unemployment compensation. So let's say we got 10,000 there, boom. And then if I go back on over, that's going to pull on over into our reform. So we're on the schedule one and there's the 10,000 line number seven. That then is going to be totaling up down below at the 10,000, pulling back into the form 1040, 1040, still have the W2 income at the 100,000. And then I'm saying that there's unemployment compensation. Now, you would think that maybe the income wouldn't be quite so high if they had unemployment compensation from the W2 income. But just an example problem here. So that brings us up to 110,000. And then we've got the standard deduction and so on. If you want to put that into our form over here, we can say that's going to be a schedule one income item. And so I've got alimony here. So I'm going to add some lines and say I'm just going to say unemployment.


Hello, this is Buona from Buona.TV and I want to talk about some more Dota Auto Chess, Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics, Auto Chess, all these different Auto Chess games put together a series of tutorial videos. If you haven't already, check out my basics video. If you haven't played Auto Chess, I highly recommend you try that one first. Check out that video. It'll get you started and get you in the basics so you won't be completely lost. Today in this video, we're going to talk about items and passives and loot rounds in Auto Chess. Very, very important thing to make your characters stronger. So the first topic is loot rounds. This is how you get your items and passives. In an Auto Chess match, the first few rounds are called loot rounds and they enable you to kill AI units or what we call creep in Dota to obtain items. These items are broken out by tiers, tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. As you can imagine, the tier 3 items are the best. Now there's two types of items. There is an equipable item that you can put on each character, on each hero, and there are passive items which are global. Please note that passive items are in Dota Underlords only. Dota Auto Chess and probably Teamfight Tactics will have equipable items only. Be sure to read the tooltips for each item as to what they do because some of them may have negative effects. The best example I can think of that catches new people is the Mask of Madness. This item gives you some good properties, but it silences your hero. So if your hero needs to cast a spell, they won't be able to, so they'll be crippled, but they'll have the benefits of the Mask of Madness, but they won't be able to cast any spells. So you need to look at the tooltips, read them carefully, and see if they fit the hero that you want to put them on. Also, passives may have a race prerequisite. So for example, you may get a passive that deals with Demon Hunter and Demon Units. If you're not running any Demon Hunter or Demon Units, then this passive may be useless to you. You may also get a passive for inventors or the mech class. If you don't have any mech class, don't get that passive. It's a very simple concept, but it's something that's very important when you're choosing items during your loot rounds. So this is something that comes with time. It's not something you're going to learn very quickly. As you get more familiar with the different types of units, what their abilities are, whether they're assassins, whether they're mages, whether they're melee units, you can marry different things, different items to these units. You may not want to put a bash item or a stunned bash item on a range unit, for example. You may want to put that on somebody on the front line so they can do a lot of damage. Play around with items and passives. This is something that's very fluid and you can get very creative with, but you can also make some really big mistakes if you're not careful. So pay attention to the loot rounds because every fifth round is a loot round and you can look forward to loot to put on your characters. The UI in Dota Underlords gives you a great indicator on whether your loot is not equipped. Once you get an item from a loot round, it just puts it in your inventory. You have to equip items on each hero unless it is a passive item. So if you see the right side flashing with a number next to it, whether your loot is, that means that that loot is not equipped or not on the board and you need to make change. You need to actually equip that item by dragging and dropping it from your inventory over to the character on the board. Different auto chest games have different mechanics. For example, Dota Auto Chest allows you to move the item into the inventory of each hero because you can have more than one item in that case. But in Dota Underlords, you're limited to one item per character. A little bit different changes, but the item in passives overall works the same. Again, I haven't seen Team Fight Tactics yet. We haven't seen how they're going to do items in passives, but I imagine it's going to be something very similar. This is one from 1.TV. Items in passives and loot rounds in Dota Auto Chest, Dota Underlords, and Team Fight Tactics. I keep going through all the titles, but there's so many cropping up and they're going to have similarities and some differences. But trying to keep this video as general as possible to let you know that items in passives during the loot rounds that you get are very important and you need to make sure that they match the characters that you put them on. Take care everybody. Have a great day.


Britain's foreign secretary David Cameron, on his first trip abroad in his new role, visited Odessa's Warstrick and Grainport on November 16, a regular target of Russian airstrikes. The Ukrainian navy has had immense success in beating back the Russian navy and taking far greater control of this vital maritime corridor, Cameron said while visiting Ukrainian navy vessels with his counterpart Dmitry Koleba Ukraine has sought to carve out a shipping corridor for its seaborne exports after Russia in July withdrew from a UN brokered deal that had allowed some food exports to flow despite the war. Insurance broker Marsh, Lloyds of London insurers and Ukrainian state banks launched a facility to cut the cost of claims for damage to ships and crew transporting grain through the Black Sea Corridor. The Russian Navy has had immense success in beating back the Russian navy and taking far greater control of this vital maritime corridor and it's something to recognise the bravery and the brilliance of the Ukrainian Navy assisted in many ways by others. Odessa is going to be vital for Ukraine's economic recovery and I'm proud of the fact that we're announcing today the launch of an insurance facility to help ships to leave this port to go through the new maritime lane and to make sure that Ukraine can benefit from those exports and can grow its economy as its forecast to do this year. Have there been no attacks since then?


you don't need me to tell you about what we've been through in 2020. I'm here to talk about 2021 and what that might look like for all of us. Well, the first thing to remember is the pandemic actually will end. At some time in the future, epidemiologists will no longer be regulars on news programs. Public spaces will no longer be marked with circles every six feet, and March will be a month of madness once again. What will be left and what will we face on the other side of COVID? What role will technology play in higher education's recovery? Will the pandemic prove to be higher education's extinction event? Will our ecosystem emerge stronger and fitter for the future? Might both be true. These are the questions the 2020-21 EDUCAUSE IT issues panel has explored in anticipation of 2021. Throughout the pandemic, we've all learned a different way to plan. We've learned the futility of making long-term plans to mitigate a disease that's still poorly understood and complex. We've also learned about how useful scenarios can be when we have to plan in the face of enormous uncertainty. Scenarios help us anticipate alternative futures that we can plan for, so we're prepared not only for what we might hope or dread, but also for what actually happens. This year EDUCAUSE took a different approach to the IT issues project. You won't find a top 10 IT issues list for 2021. Our planning horizons are so short now, so we thought a single list of top IT issues was too constraining. And instead, we took our cues from you, and we used a scenario approach to consider three different potential ways institutions might emerge from the pandemic. This year, we offer three top IT issues lists instead of one, and we examine the top five issues within each of three scenarios. Now to do that, we made three assumptions. Our first assumption is that the pandemic will begin to resolve sometime in 2021. That means that one or more effective vaccines will become available and distributed. And in fact, we're seeing signs that make that look pretty likely. Our second assumption, that our scenarios need to be high level views of possible recovery visions. The three scenarios we chose are very general, and they're based on how an institution's culture, vision, and business model might influence its approach to recovery. The scenarios we chose were number one, restore. We'll be focused on figuring out what to do to get back to where we were before the pandemic. Number two, evolve. We'll be focused on adapting to the new normal. And number three, transform. We will be focused on redefining our institution and on taking an active role in creating the innovative future of higher education. Our third and last assumption is that a single scenario is probably not going to fit too many institutions. One of the scenarios might fit financial health, and maybe you'll need another one that will be right for education and academic work. So we needed to give our survey respondents a lot of flexibility in picking the issues. So here's what we did. First our IT issues panel prioritized 19 potential top IT issues for 2021. Now that's the same as every year, when they pick about 15 to 20 issues for members to vote on. What was different about this year was that the panelists created three versions of each issue, one for each scenario. And then our survey asked IT leaders to first pick their preferred scenario based version of each of the 19 potential issues, and then prioritize the 19 issue versions they had picked. We used the survey results to identify the top five IT issues for each of the three scenarios. And here they are. As you scan this table, look at all the overlap between the restore and evolve issues. They have four issues in common. And of course, details under each common issue are very different. And when we walk through each issue, you'll be able to see those differences more clearly. And now look at the issues in transform. They really stand on their own, don't they? And collectively, they cover a strategic approach to using technology to transform the institution. What will be left? And what will we face on the other side of COVID? And what role will technology play in higher education's recovery? Put yourself for the next few minutes in the post-pandemic future and reflect with the IT issues panel on what it might bring. Now, we don't have a ton of time today. And I think it'll get a little tedious if I try to walk through all 15 issues. The restore issues are focused on getting back to where we were before the pandemic. Well, you were around then at the beginning of 2020, so you know what that looks like. So we'll just breeze through them today by listening to some remarks from our panelists. And then we'll move on to the other scenarios. You can always read the IT issues article for the details about restore. The restore theme is a story of institutional survival. The biggest focus in restore was on the institution's pre-pandemic financial health. Now, look at the issues under restore. Two finance-related issues, cost management and financial health. And in fact, you'll soon see that even the information security issue is qualified by the need to be budget conscious. The institutions at greatest financial risk may also be those whose students are struggling the most. Institutions choosing the restore version of issues were also focused on helping their students gain access to institutional resources and learning anywhere, anytime. We can't just do everything that we've been doing a little less. We need to figure out what are the things that we can still go 100% on. And what are the things where maybe if they aren't done at all anymore, the impact will be reached. I think we run the risk of becoming altogether mediocre if we kind of do everything in a partial way. You should all be learning online and that's, this is going to be what it's like even for the most traditional places. I think the world has changed for everyone. Everyone is on Zoom, is getting used to using that. So recognizing that, but I think so it's really, as you said, Jay, getting back to concentrating on our strengths in that context. Getting back to where we were means that the reliance on IT has been made very visible, right? But it also has shown its shortcomings. Now we know that we need to be prepared for the next pandemic or other interruptions in ways that we maybe not had contemplated before. Our disaster recovery before was not necessarily a pandemic. We were sort of assuming it online was sort of a self-selecting population of people who had the ability to access and wanted to do that. And what we're realizing is that in terms of the sorts of audiences that could be served with that, being able to be better at serving people remotely and doing that even in a place where it's not necessary because of a pandemic can still create opportunities for people who don't have the time flexibility, who don't have the transportation capabilities to be able to come onto campus on a regular basis. So I think the longer the pandemic goes on, the more pervasive what I was calling these permanent changes will be. So it's already causing some institutions to kind of rethink their value proposition, their business model. The longer this goes on, the more it's going to happen. I work at a university that has a hospital and a lot of things where the whole premise was being there physically that you can't get a doctor degree remotely. Let's look at the evolve scenario now and spend a little more time with those issues. The set of evolve issues describe a student-centric institution that is managing its primary risks. These are institutions that will choose to incorporate the impact and lessons of the pandemic into their culture and vision. Three of the top five of all issues emphasize the student experience. This type of institution is adapting to students' needs instead of expecting students to adapt to the institution. Three pillars of student experience are represented, attaining academic and career goals, equity and access, and best practices in technology-enabled teaching and learning. The two remaining of all issues focus on managing two pervasive institutional risks, information security and financial health. Information security concerns subsided a bit in the early weeks of the pandemic, but they began to intensify in the latter months of 2020. This is a risk that can't be overcome or neglected. Institution student success focus has evolved during the pandemic. There's more emphasis on how important digital infrastructure is. Students are using technology more and in more ways now, and advisors ramped up use of online video advising, chat and other technology solutions to reach students when face-to-face contact wasn't possible. All that is producing new and more data about students, and that offers new opportunities to understand students' progress and give them feedback and support. But just remember that using more data about students will increase privacy challenges too. In 2021, many students will be in worse condition to continue their education, let alone thrive. Those who are worse stopped before the pandemic will have suffered the most. Even though institutions will have fewer resources, students will need them more than ever before. In many ways, the pandemic has just accelerated the change that was already underway. All of the challenges and also the heavy reliance on technology. Some institutions were already planning a strong move to online advising and student services, and now they're embracing it much faster than planned. A prolonged pandemic will just continue the accelerated pace of change. So when I think of the new normal, what I really think it is opportunities to empower students and to create more accountability, especially for the adult learner. So I think it's a great opportunity to create some transparency for these students. So they have access to their own data, they have access to their progress within the program. Perhaps they have access to compare themselves to other students, so they know how they're tracking against students and can kind of self reflect and self adjust. Institutional leaders have evolved from treating student success as a student responsibility to treating it as an institutional responsibility. A similar shift is now happening with equitable access to education. Rather than assuming that students have access, leaders are recognizing that it's the institution's job to provide that access. The pandemic has shown just how deep the digital divide is and how many people are on the wrong side of it. Equitable access to education means equitable access to a baseline level of technology and connectivity. This may be a time when many stakeholders across our ecosystem partner to address those needs. A prolonged pandemic will motivate institutions to instill more permanent solutions. Students' digital equity needs will need to be understood and accommodated based on their circumstances and their educational goals. Students in degree programs that require laboratory access or other learning environments that aren't possible to stimulate digitally will need different accommodations. I mean we have this crisis. What can we do because of this crisis that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to do. And I think that some of those partnerships are now going to be possible because everyone's been, it's become clear to everybody just how severe these problems are and how much we need to bring people together and make sure that there is a much greater level of equity. The pandemic has forced faculty, instructional technologists, librarians and others to interrogate every aspect of teaching and learning to identify what matters most. They'll be ready to help build the 2020 plus era of higher education. Institutions need to reconceive learning experiences to leverage the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of digital and physical and blend them to maximize learning. This change won't happen on its own though. Faculty will need continued help transitioning their courses to meet their students' expectations. And learning environments will need to adapt too. The pandemic fostered new and deeper collaborations among instructional technologists, digital pedagogy experts, librarians, faculty and others. They'll help the institution evolve and adapt to the new normals. Accommodations to the pandemic may simply begin to feel like business as usual but with much more severely constrained resources. Academic leaders will carefully analyze which courses and academic programs will reward the effort to move online, which weren't the risks and overhead of remaining face-to-face and which can no longer be continued at all. We're entering the interactive era of education, interactive and on-demand era of education. So in the 2020 plus era our students are expecting an on-demand interactive multimedia experience. We need to transform our courses to meet the needs of the current students using the technologies and methodologies that they're used to using. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Faculty and staff will expect to be able to continue to work from home and other off-campus locations. To evolve to the new normal, institutions should consider adding infrastructure and services to support secure collaboration and learning tools and to keep track of all the places data may be stored transmitted or used. Many institutions still lack a full-time dedicated information security lead and this really should change. An information security officer provides more than just additional staffing. They also bring the expertise and focus needed to develop and implement a security strategy, one that's risk-based and proactive. And if the pandemic is not resolved in 2020, information security will need to support off-campus uses of data in a much more comprehensive and permanent way. Building upon the strengths and weaknesses that we have observed while rapidly responding to the pandemic in 2020, we will have ways to ensure that our operations continue to be secure by employing new techniques. Leaders will need a lot of financial creativity to meet the demand for technology in 2021. IT leaders at some institutions are already collaborating and that might be with alumni relations or on specific research initiatives to fund the development and delivery of new services and capabilities. Grants support from technology solution providers and other companies and partnerships with local communities and employers are all potential sources of funds and income. Of course, everybody will be competing at the same time for the same partnership and funding opportunities. The competition will be even more intense now. The opportunities may be there but in limited supply. And whenever we're partnering with advancement or research looking for new revenue streams, IT has a lot of assets and knowledge which are leverageable not only inside the institution but externally as well. If the pandemic continues through 2021, institutions and students' financial problems will deepen maybe beyond recovery. On a hopeful note though, community colleges and other local institutions that have a long track record of involvement and support of their local city or region might find themselves stepping up to play an active role in advocating and raising funds for their survival. And now onto the transform scenario. Some institutions plan to use the pandemic to launch or accelerate an institutional transformation agenda. The world around them has changed and so must they. Institutions focused on these issues are starting with culture. Technology issues are heavily represented in the transform theme but always in the context of technology's role and relationship with institutional priorities and ambitions. Students and their importance to the institution appear as an enrollment and recruitment issue in the transform scenario. As one panelist said, this issue is at the heart of what defines an institution and its ability to deliver on its mission. Institutions taking a transformative approach to enrollment and recruitment plan to make advanced uses of technologies and analytics to recruit students and to help them succeed. The transform scenario of course has a financial issue, cost management. Institutions with transformational ambitions plan to make cost management a core objective of digital transformation. COVID is an accelerator. It jolted institutional leaders out of their ideation and slow marginal innovations into rapid and ongoing transformation. Resistance was futile or quickly overcome because the lives in the future of institutions was at stake. The COVID culture has been a culture of transformation, future thinking and agility. It's primed institutions to continue in that mode although hopefully much less frantically. Institutions don't do the hard work of innovation people do. Transformation, agility and future thinking will be up to people and those people will begin 2021 exhausted and strung out by 2020. That's not the greatest mindset to take on transformative change. If the pandemic continues, institutional leaders will have no choice but to accelerate transformations they've got underway because economic pressures will become even more intense and students will need more help than ever before to enroll, stay enrolled and successfully complete their degrees. Institutions may restructure their credential offerings in collaboration with accreditation organizations to provide more flexible, lower cost credential opportunities. In a lot of ways COVID was an accelerator. It made us do things that we just weren't getting around to essentially. I also think that post COVID that change won't stop. I think there are other things in our society that are occurring that will continue to keep the momentum on change in higher education regardless of the presence of a vaccine in the end of COVID. The pandemic put colleges and universities on the path of digital transformation, a path that for many was unthinkable at the beginning of 2020. One of the biggest and perhaps most lasting changes from the pandemic has been to elevate the role of IT as a strategic partner and in many cases a strategy driver. IT leaders need to retain that role in 2021 and beyond to help institutions transform teaching, learning, research, administration and their business models. That kind of changes what's needed for higher education to remain a public good and also survive. But the pace won't slow in 2021 and leaders will have many decisions to make and make quickly. Leaders will have to set forth a strong vision and rationale for transformation and make sure they have strong change management in place. And if the pandemic is not resolved in 2021, the technology process and policy choices and changes made in 2020 that were provisional and stopgap, they'll need to be adapted and improved for long-term use if that doesn't already happen in the latter parts of 2020. It really is like having robust utilities but not just dependable utilities but ones that can innovate and transform how we do teaching, learning and research at scale. My elevator pitch is IT shouldn't just be at the table in cases we should be leading the discussion. We should be leading the transformation of and pulling along faculty and students and researchers and how they do their work. Enterprise architecture can be limited to architecting technology solutions but as an IT organization's enterprise architecture practice matures, CIOs will use it to align IT with strategic business outcomes and make the IT spend more effective for the institution. This is the level of enterprise architecture that institutional leaders focused on transformational change will aspire to. Institutions whose enterprise architectures depended on campus-based access had to develop architectures that enabled people to do work from anywhere. A work from anywhere organization provides a new opportunity for diversity and inclusion in the faculty, staff and student populations. That is new and that will last. As the pandemic continues, if it continues into 2021, reliance on IT capabilities and staff will continue. Institutions should try to avoid directly cutting IT budgets to afford additional investments to support remote or hybrid operations. IT budget managers will need to shift IT spending to areas that need it most and away from services and initiatives that can be retired or paused. We then need to get more cost effective and efficient. We need to be able to create strategies and develop the technologies and architectures that make us even more efficient. Enrollment and recruitment practices and strategies are in a lot of flux now. A lot of what's happened over the last 10 to 15 years had kind of a kitchen sink approach. Most institutions have used new technologies in all kinds of ways, including analytics, tools and techniques, targeted social media, and a richer online experience for applicants who can't get to campus. At this particular moment, sophisticated and evolved recruitment strategies supported by technology couldn't be more important. And institutions that have gone the kitchen sink route, well they need to hone in on where to invest and focus. Students and more often their families are looking for metrics that point to the probability of their student's long-term personal success from attending a particular institution. Most institutions haven't yet figured out how best to seamlessly demonstrate success after college as part of the recruitment strategy beyond pointing to some charts and tables. If the pandemic continues, institutions will need to break through the campus visit barrier to successful recruiting. They'll have to get creative about using technology to replicate the intimacy and magic of a campus visit. Direct translation will probably be less successful than a reimagining of the social and emotional recruitment journey that capitalizes on digital strengths. Online-only institutions already know how to do this and it'll be time for all institutions to master it. Institutions embracing digital transformation to guide cost management are working to increase agility and reduce redundancy. They're hoping to reduce the time it takes to change solutions and introduce services from years to months or even sometimes weeks. Effective techniques include reducing customizations, selecting one solution that's good enough for most instead of several that are ideal for it and standardizing on one set of solutions to provide a seamless streamlined user experience as well as a more maintainable architecture. The pandemic has helped institutional leaders recognize the ways in which technology can directly benefit their work. They're more aware now of the ongoing investments and effective digital infrastructure needs. Leadership commitment to digital transformation is essential because it's not a one and done. Digital transformation is a series of initiatives and higher education is still very early in its journey. And if the pandemic has not resolved in 2021, IT leaders have been provisioning students, faculty, and staff for remote learning and work. There's no clear funding source or strategy, especially for institutions that haven't prioritized among in-person hybrid and fully online models. This is just not sustainable at current or inevitably reduced funding levels. You know, we've got six modes right now of teaching, which is not anything we've ever had before. We have six modes of teaching and the instructor can pick any one of those six. And so that means that maybe our traditional classrooms aren't necessarily, don't need to be as equipped as they used to be in the past. And so we can actually reduce some cost and shift some costs by saying, okay, we're going to have fewer of the traditional kinds of classrooms and shift those funding so that we can keep some of those new modes of teaching because some of those new modes of teaching are actually the way the students do want to learn. And now as we close, I have a few thoughts to help you prepare for 2021 and how the EDUCAUSE IT issues might help. Binary thinking is the fallacy that any question has one of only two possible answers. If the pandemic has taught us anything in 2020, it's the perils of binary thinking. The pandemic presented a risk that needed nuanced management. Not every location was a hotspot. Few institutions were either completely shut down or 100% open and operating normally. Regardless of the decisions made at the institutional level, individual students, faculty and staff had to make their own individual decisions about where to learn or teach or work based on their own personal set of risks and circumstances. The pandemic has demonstrated the usefulness of online learning, not as the alternative to classroom learning, but as a modality to infuse into pedagogy. The high flex option is popular these days, because it gives both instructors and students a lot of flexibility about when to learn and how to learn class by class instead of course by course or program by program. High flex will certainly be succeeded by something even richer and better. XR technologies and artificial intelligence are just two examples of maturing innovations that will provide options that make today's digital learning and teaching options seem as primitive as overhead projectors or chalkboards. Binary thinking suggests that the application of technology to teaching and learning is good or bad, effective or ineffective. Well that kind of mindset ignores reality and it leads to poor choices. Work location also needs to become a non-binary issue. Staff want a kind of high flex working environment. Managers and HR leaders need to consider how to structure such working conditions in ways that increase both staff engagement and productivity and maybe even reduce expenses. Don't forget our third assumption. Very few institutions will see themselves within a single scenario. Our scenarios describe archetypal approaches to pandemic recovery. You'll most probably find your institution is across two or maybe even all three of the scenarios. So consider the issues that best describe the approach you think your institution might most likely take to shape its post-pandemic future and then ask how the future might turn out differently if your institution took one of the other approaches. Using correlational analysis we found patterns in how respondents chose issues within and across scenarios. For example, people who rated the restore version of cost management particularly highly or lowly for their institution were also significantly more likely to rate the evolved version of equitable access to education highly or lowly. Now as we close I want to mention two themes that came up again and again in the panel's conversations. The first is diversity, equity and inclusion. Two issues hint at it, affordability and digital equity in the restore scenario and equitable access to education in the evolve scenario. But the panelists also felt that the diversity, equity and inclusion as an issue or DEI is so important that it transcends all the themes. Ensuring equity of access and outcomes for higher education, having a workforce that's diverse in many many ways and that can reflect the diversity of our students and faculty and citizens and foster inclusion so no one feels marginalized or maltreated. We need to keep these basic human rights in mind and indeed as we lead and manage technology professionals and as we work with and support students, staff, faculty and the community that we work and live in. And the second theme is burnout. We all feel it and there's no sign that things will slow or ease up. Let's listen to our final panelist perspective on that from Dave Seidel. A lot of institutions are going to be fighting an existential struggle before they fight a making things better struggle. I'm seeing it already across our state. I think at the same time the marathon question is a big one. I've been telling my staff for three months that we need to treat this like a marathon but we keep sprinting because we keep running in things that we need to sprint for. Nothing that happened during 2020 was particularly novel or surprising. It's been a year when many trends and risks accelerated. COVID has vaulted us several years ahead in digital transformation, the adoption of online learning, the need to replace business models, public scrutiny of the costs and value of higher education and agility in decision making. Racial injustice, our current political polarization and the unfair and uneven impact of the pandemic on people of different ethnicities and means have forced a broader and deeper awareness of the many inequities in our world, particularly in the United States. None of these facts is new or we're hidden. Our current crises shine a harsh light on our challenges but that brings an opportunity for our organizations to align with a new clarity of purpose and sense of urgency. 2021 will require the higher education industry and its leaders to answer the difficult questions and start moving forward to emerge from this pandemic by restoring, evolving and transforming. Thank you very very much for coming to this talk and now I think there are a bunch of questions in the chat and in the Q&A. Jamie, what questions do people have? Yes Susan we have a lot of great questions coming at you. Our first one is do we want to get back to where we were from a tech view? Well I think we want to get back to where we were from a tech funding view. You know certainly a lot of institutions have seen their technology budgets cut and you know the panelists when they talked about the restore scenario they acknowledged that of course there is no going back and yet from a financial perspective certainly the institution will want to go back. Another thing that they talked about related to the restore scenario was regarding information security and several panelists mentioned the fact that information security threats seem to subside quite a bit in the initial weeks of the pandemic. They have certainly intensified and so there's a real need to protect those and I think perhaps getting back to the information security protection status acknowledging the fact that so much that our borders don't end at our campus anymore. And so how do we really restore good information security among all our locations? Next question? Yes, so we had two different views in the Q&A around current and future IT staffing levels. Susan we recently ran a quick poll on IT leadership. Do you have any results handy that you would like to share with the audience? Sure I do. First of all you know I think I just said the median budget change since the pandemic has started this year at institutions was a 10% decrease in IT budgets. That's more at some institutions and some institutions have had no decreases at all no changes at all and unlucky I think 3% have had IT budget increases and of course we know that the biggest source of costs in budgets tends to be staff but what we've seen so far in the way that IT leaders and institutions have tried to accommodate the need to spend less is that they have tried to accommodate cost cuts that have tried to preserve staffing levels so doing things like freezing compensation, travel bans, professional development decreases and sorry compensation level and then a delaying planned work and then hiring freezes as well. Those have been the strategies all really trying to preserve the head count in IT because we all know that technology has been so critically important to being able to accommodate the pandemic. What's next? So we have a popular question if the assumption about the pandemic being resolved in 21 ends up not being realized do you think the scenarios will be dramatically different? Well I think that they will be dramatically more intense so just as the pandemic has accelerated a lot of trends that already existed I think that those trends will continue to move more quickly if the pandemic is not resolved so I think that we're going to see that the institutions that are really struggling financially those struggles will deepen and become much much more severe. The other thing is that I think that the need to move transformatively with technology will increase and these are not just my opinions these are the opinions of the IT issues panelists when we interview them and then another common theme if the pandemic is not resolved was that the need to support students who are at greatest financial risk who have the worst broadband insecurity issues that those needs will deepen and institutions ability to support them will probably lessen because we will all be in greater financial difficulties. Next question. Could you our audience would like you to speak more to the issue of burnout and how we might overcome it? That's a great great question you know and it's one that that we deal with here as EDUCAUSE staff as well and from my conversations with people and from what I have read certainly Dave Seidel's advice if you're a manager really do encourage your staff to treat this as a marathon which means you can't run at full speed all the time or else you really will get burned out recognizing that we are all burned out by our family circumstances if we're having to homeschool children and you know financial difficulties and even life has just become incredibly bland for all of us I think and so I think the key word is to embrace the power of vulnerability to accept our own vulnerability to accept the vulnerability of all of those around us not to judge not to get frustrated as easily as we might and as leaders to recognize and also to display our own vulnerability and certainly vulnerability as an important leadership quality is becoming more and more important. Jamie how about having another question? Yeah that's a great segue into this next question seems like institutions that try to follow all three paths restore and then one restores and other evolves will be in trouble are we seeing institutional leaders making this a leadership moment? I think this has to be a leadership moment and yet you can mix and match across scenarios if you do them in a coordinated way across the institution so certainly as I said restore is so much about restoring the financial security in the financial position before the pandemic and when you look at transformation and you think you think about the ways in which transformation might move across various scenarios the the evolved scenario is really about evolving the student experience to where it's it is today back rather than back to where it was before so we know with digital transformation that transformation is is not something that you you can do and say we're going to transform this entire institution everything at once you really need to pick and identify what is your what what is your transformational priority and what transformational journey will you go on initially so the transformational journeys have to start with culture which is why institutional culture was the number one issue and then you really need to think about what's your first transformation play in some cases it might be an evolved play it might be around simplifying and and optimizing your uses of technology so that you don't have so many different options for people in so many different solutions you might focus your transformation journey on the student's experience which was so prominent in the evolved scenario and so I think as long as as long as leadership is really coordinating and aligning you can mix and match across the scenarios and that is indeed what we're seeing. Any other questions Jamie? Yeah um has COVID inspired more collaboration between institutions or are we turning inward uh collaboration is not the most uh is not on this cost management list? Well actually it is uh the the cost management issue number five under transform is really focused on I'm sorry I'm sorry um the issue number five under revolved is really focused on uh on transform excuse me issue number five under revolve is really focused on partnerships and collaborations and using those as ways to get more funding to the institution collaborating across institutions as well and in fact it seemed as if our panelists talked more about collaboration and partnership this year as they thought about the issues as they addressed them then then I've ever seen them talk about in in the 10 years I've been doing this project so we decided that we were going to create a separate additional article in addition to the top 10 IT issues article about partnership and collaboration and about the panelists advice across all of the scenarios and you'll be able to read that article as well as the full article on the IT issues on Monday when we release all of our issues and and all the resources and that will be uh from mid early to to to mid to late morning depending on what time zone you are and and that's all in the US time zones anything else? Yes um we have there are lots of discussions and chat social media about individual and institutional ability to transform you to share exhaustion themes that an enabler of our ability to come out the other side is dependent on our ability to achieve balance do you have thoughts on strategies on how to achieve? I think I I think that it's actually easier to achieve balance if you do have have have have vulnerability as a value and if you do acknowledge that we are all human you know I it looks like I'm in a studio right now but I'm sitting here in my family room and my little puppy is on the couch next to me so uh you know I'm uh I'm here uh you know with with all of my all all of the madness of my life surrounding me and I know all of you are too so that's part of it but another big part of it is that again this really is a real leadership moment and so I think institutions that have leadership that can focus and inspire and inspire in ways that don't seem blue sky and absolutely insane like how are we ever going to do that but inspire in the kind of ways that enable all of us to not only see the future that we're creating but also see and understand our roles in it and to say yes I can play that role I think that that's going to be very very important to avoiding burnout so on the one hand inspire and inspire in a way that you can really see the role that you can play and accept it and on the other hand don't ask too much of people and acknowledge that we're all struggling right now so that that's my advice well Susan I think that that's uh wonderful advice and also a great way to end this uh very informative and awesome session so thank you Susan and thank you all for joining us and please don't forget to stop by the virtual exhibit hall


What is up guys and welcome back to the Johnny Q daily vlog. Thank you so much for watching. In today's video, you guessed it, more spin art. So let's get into it. Also, you guys are incredible. 10,000 subscribers was my goal by 2021. And guess what? We're like at 10,300 right now. So you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for supporting this channel. My journey as a YouTuber, TikToker, social media influencer, I guess you could say that. Again, you guys are truly amazing. Thank you for watching and it's gonna be a good show today. So hope you guys like it. This first piece, we've got 11 by 14. Gonna get some random colors up in this piece. So let's get it for retro and colorful and bright. Let's call for this next one back by popular demand, 11 by 14 with a lot of pinks, some white and black. Let's get it. Okay, up next we have another classic Johnny Q spin art piece and that's all blue. It's pretty much ocean themed. So let's get it. That looks so good. Guys, here's another very popular Johnny Q art piece, Galaxy. So let's get it. 11 by 14. We're doing yellow, magenta, blue and red. Let's get it. That's it for today's video guys. I hope you liked this video. I hope you enjoyed all the different pieces being made. I love making these things for you guys to watch. If you have any ideas on what I should make next, please comment down below. And if you want any kind of custom piece or have any questions about what I do, my email and everything you need to know is in the description below. So please make sure to look at that. And as always guys, thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you next time on the Johnny Q Daily Vlog. Peace.


Cassava peels are byproducts of cassava processing, recognised as a potential feed resource but wasted, constituting a major environmental nuisance within and around processing centres due to drying constraints. Traditionally, drying is done on bare floor over a period of two to three days in the dry season to get a marketable product. Peels dried in this manner are not marketed at their potential prices due to quality concerns relating to contamination by aflatoxins as well as poor storability due to improper drying. As a result, farmers and the feed industry do not have access to processed peels of desired quality in sufficient quantities. In 2015, CGIAR scientists, working in its research programmes on roots, tubers and bananas, humid tropics and livestock and fish, developed an innovative processing method that reduces drying time to six to eight hours, yielding high quality products that could be used to feed ruminants and monogastrics. There is every indication that processed peels of high quality are in great demand from the feed industry. As such, this provides an opportunity to mitigate feed scarcity while cassava peel processors who adopt the innovation are able to generate additional incomes. There is thus a potential to convert millions of tonnes of an environmental problem into a valuable resource for food production and in doing so also create a new industry that offers new income and employment to participants in cassava processing, 80% of whom are women. This video explains how to achieve the best results from this innovation. Cassava peels used for processing should be free from contamination, stumps, large woody tubers, soil and other foreign materials must be removed from peels before grating to protect the rasper from damage. Fresh cassava peels should always be used as stored peels begin to ferment and become soggy and slippery, which makes them difficult to grate. Once sorted, the peels are grated to reduce the particle size to facilitate dewatering and drying. Peels are harder to grate than tubers, so they have to be grated three times to achieve the desired size. Grated peels must then be packed in plastic woven bags in small quantities of 8-12kg. The bags are then folded halfway and neatly stacked one above the other in a metal frame for pressing. A desirable stacking height leaves sufficient room for inserting a hydraulic jack. Thin planks, which ensure the uniform distribution of pressure, are used to separate the stacked bags and the hydraulic jack. Application of pressure through the jack results in rapid water loss. Dewatering results in water loss of almost 50% by weight of the starting material. Press bags are then allowed to stand overnight to ferment. The result is an intermediate product, the cassava peel cake with a 38-42% moisture content. That cassava peel cake can be fed as is to cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. It can be stored for 7 days without spoiling and thus can be transported and marketed over long distances within that period. To produce dried mash, intermediate cassava peel cake is loosened by grating to improve the granularity of the material and improve its flow through a sieve. Grating separates the loosened cake into a fine fraction, lower in fibre higher in energy content, from a coarse fraction, higher in fibre, lower in energy content, resulting in fine and coarse mash. Process mash is then dried for 6-8 hours by spreading on commonly available surfaces, for example concrete slabs and plastic or metal sheeting. In rainy days, the sieved material can be toasted in a metal pan. Once dried or toasted, the material should be between 10-12% moisture and can be bagged and stored for a period of 4-6 months without any spoilage. Flash drying is also an option in the industrial case. It is important to remember that all machines and processing areas must be kept clean. Dry conditions are imperative to prevent fungal contamination and ensure quality. Three major high-quality cassava peel products are created by this process. Wet cassava cake for cattle, sheep, goat and pig feed that has a shelf life of one week. Dried fine mash which is suitable for poultry, pigs and fish. Dried coarse mash also for cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The dried high-quality cassava peel mash products have a long shelf life of between 4 and 6 months. Processors can choose an appropriate drying option depending on weather conditions and the facilities available to them.


Greetings friends! This is Survival Doc. Today I'm going to do a product review for the Stronghold Haywire Clamper, which is a product that I believe all preppers will be interested in. It comes in two versions, so that actually the clamper is the same. This is the regular clamper. It comes with a small amount of wire. Here is the Survival Pack, and I recommend the Survival Pack because with the Survival Pack it costs a little bit more, but you get a whole lot more wire, and you get three different gauges of wire. And this is a little sample of how it's used, but I'll get into that in a minute. And here it is, very sturdy tool. Looks like it's indestructible tool. And I like the Survival Pack for one reason because of this really nice rubberized case, which will keep water out of it. And I got two. I'm going to put one in my toolbox, and the other I'm going to put in my vehicle. This might not be a tool that you want to put in your bug out bag because you're limited with weight and space in your bug out bag, but it's certainly a tool that all preppers will want to have on hand, and you'll see why in just a minute. You certainly want one in your vehicle to use out in the field. Alright, how many of us have one of these? Alright, a hammer with a broken handle or an axe with a broken handle, and you know this tape I put on there. You know this tape isn't going to work. But with the Haywire Clamper, you can fix this. What you do to get the proper length is you measure it's about a one inch diameter. Look in the instructions, and this is the first time I've ever used this product. We'll see how easy it is to use for a new person. Look in here say for a one inch diameter. You use for double strength, which means wrapping it around twice. You use 21 and a half inches. Since it's the first time I've used this, I'm going to just use the single strength, which is 14 and a half inches. So what I'll do is take my measure stick. I'm going to use this. This one right here I believe. 14 inches of wire. You do need a wire cutter for this, of course. Now what you do is you bend this to form a loop.  When you put the longer end first it's just easier to put it in that way. In these two holes right here put the longer end first, then the other end. Put the little notch on the loop like so. Tighten it down. See a position at where my crack is. Then tighten it down. Bend it over to lock it in place. Cut your wire, and voila. The clamp of course is very good at repairing hoses. You know this, if you've ever used one of these type of hose repair kits, you know they don't work very well. The clamper actually will hold a lot better due to a timer strength. I'm not going to repair this on the camera. You can use this single wound. You can also use it for extra strength. You can use it double wound. But you're limited as far as the uses of this thing. You're limited only by your imagination. This is something that you can use repair ax handles. You can use it to bind wood together, bind poles together to repair things. When you repair things they're repaired good. If you've ever used duct tape you know that duct tape is only a temporary repair. Duct tape dries out and rots very quickly and doesn't hold. This is a permanent repair. It's a lot stronger than duct tape, a lot better than duct tape, and it has a whole lot more applications than duct tape. I think it is a tool that you will want. It's a survival doc thumbs up. The stronghold haywire clamper. Here's the website for the haywire clamper. The stronghold haywire clamper. There it is. Okay, we'll click on buy online. As you can see there are two versions here. There's the regular haywire clamper tool which sells for just under $25. There's the haywire clamper survival pack which sells for just under $45. Same tool but with the survival pack you get this very nice case and a lot of wire to use of different gauges, three different gauges in there. And then you can also order bulk wire on the website. But of course you can get the wire anywhere.


Hi, Dina. Can you hear me? Hi, Kimberly. Hi, Glen. Is it us so far? I'm in Arizona. I tried to log in an hour early. We're on the date with it. Arizona doesn't do daylight savings over here. Oh, right. Just a reminder, we are broadcasting to the public at this time. Good afternoon, everyone. I believe we do have everyone on the line. All right, well, then let's go ahead and get started. And I apologize, I am sick today. So if you don't, if I sound awful, or if I miss something, I just want to apologize ahead of time. But let's go ahead and get this meeting started at 101. Secretary Manus, if you could do a roll call. Thank you, board member Wright. Here. Board member Walsh. Board member Walsh. You're on mute, board member. Here, thank you. Thank you. And chair, what? Here. That's a record show of all members of the Board of Public Utilities Budget Reuse Subcommittee are present. Thank you. And just a reminder for committee members to mute their phones and microphones when they're not speaking. So we'll first open it up for public comments on item two, which is public comments on non-agenda items. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus, do we have any live or email or voicemail public comments? We do not have any public comments for this item. Great, thank you very much. So now we will move on to item 3.1. Director Burke, if you could introduce the item. Thank you, chair Watson, members of the subcommittee. Our only item is item 3.1, which is our miscellaneous fee update. And Kimberly Zanino, our deputy director of administration will be making the presentation. Okay, good afternoon, chair Watson, members of the committee. Today we are going to discuss updates to the miscellaneous fee schedule. So what is a miscellaneous fee? Miscellaneous fees are charges to our customers for services that are not city-wide, but specific- Deputy director, apologies for the interruption. Are you going to share your screen? Oh, I'm sorry, hang on. Yes, I am. Is that showing properly? All right, sorry about that. Okay, so once again, we're going to talk about miscellaneous fees as director Burke said, and we'll start with an explanation of what miscellaneous fees are. They are fees to our customers that are for services that are not city-wide services, but services that are specific to either a customer or a property. We developed these fees so that we are not spreading the cost of the services to the entire rate payer base, and we bring updates periodically to the BPU. The last update was approved in March of 2019. The typical calculation for a miscellaneous fee is based on staff time, vehicle cost, and materials, but there are some other methodologies used, and today we will actually be discussing a fee that was developed in another way using other factors. So with this round of updates, we have several new fees that we have that have been developed. As you may be aware, we have a couple of different payment plans available for demand fees. We have a downtown area payment plan, and we have residential payment plans. These are provided to our customers to give them the ability to pay their demand fees over five years. The residential payment plan was developed for existing properties that had health hazards and are required to connect to our water and or wastewater systems, and the downtown area plans were developed as the city began to implement measures to increase density in the downtown corridor. Both plans require payment of interest on the principal amounts of the actual payment plan or the demand fees, I should say. When the update to the guide to water and wastewater policy came to the BPU this last March, there was approval with that policy for a fee to process these plans. And now that we are updating the miscellaneous fees, that fee has been developed. And that's what you see here for the $320. The next fee is a manual water meter reading fee. And it is for the few properties in the city that are not on our automated meter reading system. We only have 12 accounts left in the entire city that do not have meters that are automatically read. And while we don't have an official opt-out program for AMI, we have allowed these customers to retain their manually read water meters upon their request. In order for them to have their meters read manually, however, we are proposing a fee based on a meter technician having to specifically drive to a property to read the meter for monthly billing. And that's the $25 fee that you see here. The next fee that we are proposing is a credit card charge back fee. We have some customers that put stop payments or they report fraud to their credit card companies after paying their water bill. And when they do this, the bank charges us $25. So we are proposing the fee to recover that cost. We are also proposing a new fee when a customer is disconnected for water waste. The disconnection happens after the customer has been notified multiple times and warned that they are not complying with our water waste ordinance. We already do have a disconnection fee, but it's for non-payment. And that fee is specifically related to that work and also has some constraints based on legislation. So we developed a separate fee specifically for water waste disconnection. And that's the $50 fee you see there. And then finally, the last new fees being proposed are the water demand offset application fee. You will likely remember that the water demand offset policy came before the full board for a recommendation in March of 2022. And it was followed by city council approval later that month. When the policy was brought before you and city council, staff did report out that there would be a fee developed for processing the applications. There are two possibilities from the offset policy. The developer can pay the demand offset fee approved with the policy, or they can develop their own program. If they pay the offset fee, they will pay the smaller application shown here, the $160. But if they choose to develop a program, there will be an evaluation of the proposed programs water savings, which will take significantly more staff time. And there is a much higher fee for that that you see here also $970. I'll let you take a look at these for a minute before I go forward. So in addition to the new proposed fees, we are also asking for your consideration of the modification to the high strength waste tipping fees. Staff hired a consultant to review and evaluate the program. And with that study, they developed a fee each schedule. In that fee schedule, there are two new categories and other categories that have proposed updates to them. They also with staff input develop the schedule to be implemented over a three year period. On this slide, it's busy, got a lot of information for you, but I'm really just providing it so that you have and can see some of the information that the report identifies as the various components that they use to evaluate the fee schedule that they set up. The consultants considered the effect of the increase on the waste haulers. As a little background, the fees were intentionally kept reasonable in the past to increase program participation. And it's possible to do this because the waste that these haulers provide increases our ability to generate power. So there is a benefit to the regional system as well. In addition, it provides a local option that decreases the distance trucks, large trucks have to travel to dispose of the waste, which helps with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These factors were included in the development of the fees and is also the reason for the three year implementation. Current capacity was evaluated, expansion of the program and market and regulatory conditions were also considered. This chart is showing you that new fee schedule, which also identifies two new fees in the schedule. The new fees are not new waste streams to the plant, but it was just determined during the study that they should be in their own category instead of being charged where they currently are. They are the medium and the low strength categories on here and they have the asterisks next to them. The chart identifies for you the current fee and the three year implementation. Since the waste hauler fee is based on volume, we thought you would like to see how it will affect customers. So we also provided sample billings here for various categories. These are monthly billings. So I'll just give you a chance to take a look at those before I go forward as well. This is just to make you aware that when we bring the resolution with the fee schedule to the full BPU, it will include all existing fees. It'll include anything that already exists, the modified fees that we're proposing and any new fees that we're proposing. And they're all just consolidated into one document in that resolution that we bring forward so that it's easier for staff to have all fees put together all in one spot. And that the only ones that you're really recommending are the fees that we were discussing today. And then next, this is our tentative schedule. Because this is a public hearing, we need to notice it in the newspaper. There was actually a publication that went out today. So we noticed today in the newspaper, there will be a second notification that goes out on November 12th. And then the public hearing would be held on November 17th. The fees take 60 days after adoption to go into effect. And so the effective date of those fees would be January 15th of 2023. So it is recommended by Santa Rosa Water that the BPU Budget Review Subcommittee recommend revisions to the Santa Rosa Water Miscellaneous Fees and Charges Schedule as proposed to the Board of Public Utilities for a public hearing. And with that, I will take any questions that you may have. Great, thank you very much for the presentation. I already see that we do have a Board Member Walsh. You have a question. So I'll let you start. Thanks very much. It's a question and a comment and maybe even a request. We didn't see these fees or the calculations prior to today's presentation. And there's a lot of information all at once. Also, we're going to evidently bring this as part of a comprehensive presentation of comprehensive fee schedule. My recommendation is that we look at that work in the detail and have a different meeting because I'm concerned the public didn't see a notice that we're going to have which fees might be raised and to what extent. And so to be inclusive and transparent, I think we should see more information. That would include the calculation of the cost, the consultant's report that recommended the change in fees. And yeah, that's my comment is that we're not prepared because I didn't know which fees were going to be raised by how much or why. So prior to the meeting, I wasn't prepared to look at these fees. I literally couldn't. So the public, I'll probably direct that to Director Burke. Do you want me to send the information or? Well, if we had, I'm sorry. So when we do, so with the public notice, what we do is we send the public notice, we put that in the newspaper. We're notifying customers who would have the meter reading fee.  Those letters were sent out today. We're sending information to the developers and the contractors in the city so that they would have information about the water demand offset policy application fee. And then what we do is in those notifications, we tell them that if they want to see the detail behind all of it, that they can contact me directly or I think one of the letters has them contacting water billing. And then when the entire staff report comes to the Board of Public Utilities, all of those fee calculations are listed also in a chart. As the subcommittee, I'd like to see that before it goes for a recommendation or we call the question for recommendation. So I don't have enough information from which to make a recommendation. Like that information available to us in the public before we do so. Thank you, Board Member Wright. Yeah, thank you. Two questions and I kind of agree a little bit with Mark because I didn't totally understand all the fees and what came in behind it. Although they all don't seem significant. But one point, one question I have is on the $25 credit card charge. Do we have that many people that actually sort of default on their credit card like that? I can see if there was only a very few, it's kind of an aggravation. These poor people are attacked and now their city's charging them $25. Actually, these are people who actually make a call to their credit card company and report it as fraud. Or they actually call the credit card company and they ask for a stop payment on the payment that's going to the city. And it happens pretty regularly. Oh, okay. So they're saying that the city charges fraud. Oh, okay. I thought that their credit card got hacked and they showed it. That just seems like too painful for me.  What was the unit on those? I saw there was 64,000. Is that, that can't be six. Was that $64,000? Yeah, let me bring up that one again. And I can also bring up the other slide. Let me get back to it. Hang on, just give me a minute. I believe the examples are monthly gallons that are brought to the plant. And so we're showing you the calculation of the fee. Right, they're 1,000 gallons. They're 1,000. I just wanted, that wasn't per customer. It was per month, amount of gallons deposited. Yeah. I guess I just, oh, that fee's $1,000. Right, so it's 1,000 gallons. Yeah, but, okay. Yeah, so it's the next slide that was... So what is that the next slide? What is, here we go. So this is... These are monthly. This is the monthly of all that. So one customer didn't do 64,000 gallons of one septic probably. It's probably 60 customers or something. Right, it's the total number of gallons that they dispose of at the plant. Yeah, per month average. Correct. Okay, I got it now. I just didn't understand that. And then I was going to go back to this slide to provide for you what the dollars were and where the dollars came from for the different fees that we're proposing. So as you can see for the payment plan processing, it takes about four hours for one of our CE techs in labor in order to process a payment plan. And so when they do that, we use a fully billable rate for that. And that's where the $320 comes from. For that meter reading fee, that is the labor for the meter technician to drive out to the property plus some costs for the vehicle use as well. And then the credit card charge back fee is just the charges that the bank is charging to us. So that's where the $25 comes from. For the waste or water waste, sorry, disconnection fee, the $50, that is also a fully burdened labor rate for the meter technician to go out to the property and turn off the meter, as well as some vehicle costs added into that. And then for the water demand offset, the calculation is just a CE tech, two hours of their fully burdened rate in labor. And then for the proposed program where we have to evaluate whether or not their program or how much their program would save and have in water savings, that is a, we feel a big evaluation that would have to be done by the Water Use Efficiency Coordinator. And so it would be about 10 hours worth of time. So that's where the calculations come from for all of the different fees that were proposed, except for the waste hauler ones, which were done in a report and they used the strength of the waste that was being discharged into, and then those other factors that I spoke of before to determine what it would be per 1,000 gallons. Okay, so you've given us 90% of the calculation and a little bit in a report somewhere. So I got that. And yeah, I was fine with the cost associated with all the other labor and driving out to protect the meter, just that $25 slap on the face of the customer, but I didn't realize exactly what it was. So I'm done, thank you. Thank you. Yes, that credit card charge was a little confusing for me as well. I thought it was if someone was over their credit card bill and so forth and it would be a charge to those people who are probably already low income. So I was concerned about that. So I do think that that could use some clarification when we bring this to the full board. The other one, if you could give an example of the waste, I should have taken a picture of the slide, the wastewater, not the demand offset fee. I understand that. And the calculation rolled into the evaluation of a project seems actually probably low compared to all the work that probably have to happen on that. But the one above that, if you could give kind of a scenario of what that would look like, I was a little confused about that fee. I think it's on slide four, the wastewater disconnection fee. Or water waste, sorry, water waste disconnection fee. So when we get to, we send letters, contact the customer, there's a long lengthy process that goes on when we find that there is water waste going on. And the final step would be, if they do not comply with the water waste ordinance, that they would be disconnected. And so that is the fee for the meter technician to go out to the property and turn off the water. They also get a door tag. They've had letters, phone calls. They've had multiple notifications that they need to correct whatever the situation is that is the wasting of the water. Okay, thank you. That clarifies it. Board Member Walsh, did you have an additional question? Yes, just to make sure that I understand some of them. So the payment plan fee of 300 bucks, who does that normally apply to? That applies to anybody who enters into a payment plan. So that would be those customers that on the residential side, if they have a health hazard on site and they are connecting to our water or our wastewater or both systems, we give them the opportunity to do a payment plan with us and pay off those demand fees over five years. That's been in place. I'm going to say I could look it up for you, but many, many years. When I was back in engineering many years ago, and we were providing those payment plans. Most of the time it is for customers because they have the health hazard on site and they can't afford to pay the entire demand fee. And so we let them pay it over five years. And then the other one is for the downtown area. There are payment plans available for the downtown area as well. And why are they, why is it just the downtown area? That was the direction of city council. They were looking for ways to encourage development in the downtown corridor. And so they came to us, or actually it was planning an economic development came to us and asked if we would consider working through a payment plan with them. And so that has been approved through the city council. And what would we want to recommend that we do that for other areas as well? Yeah, the plans are, yeah. Payment plans are incredibly difficult for us. They're incredibly difficult for us to collect on. These are for new development only. So it's new development, anyone that's a new connection to our system. And it is really important that we, you know, as we require all new development needs to pay for their connection to our system. So we do have them for hardship cases, but a lot of times we're having to go after them in collections, it's not something that we would recommend. They're very difficult for us to administer, very costly for us. And so we are finally bringing forth the recommendation to at least get some of the processing costs back, but this is not nearly what it actually costs us to continue to basically check on those on an annual basis and get the fees collected. And a lot of times we wind up actually have to go after them either on collections or go after the property. So it's not something we recommend doing at all from a technical perspective, but council was interested in hardship cases and also revitalizing downtown. So we did have that as an offer, but it's not something we recommend. Okay, and it's four folks that need either need a new connection because we want downtown growth or they need a new collection due to health. And then we want to accommodate, right? So then we do that and then they can pay. So it's for demand fee payment plans. And then it's for the downtown area or if there's a health issue and we connect to help somebody out in the short term to help mutually resolve the problem. I just wanna make sure I understand that one. Only for demand fees, that is correct. So it's only in new connections to the system. And only for these two circumstances. Correct. Or to make downtown grow faster. And then we don't wanna let the areas not downtown have that same benefit, is that true? And so that's true. And so the collection on this payment fee, it's because it's really hard to track these receivables and they're relatively high magnitude low volume. So you have to stop to do this one type of receivable, right? And you might have to do that many times. So 300 seems reasonable. I have seen the calculation. And then so that answers that on the payment plan. On the meter reading fee, just an idea if somebody has some issue with not wanting automated readings. I love because it's efficient. And then now we have some people are more inefficient. Is there a way they could pay ahead and their meters get read less than 12 times a year? Cause it seems like we're gonna be charging them 250 and 50 we're gonna charge them 300 a year to get their meter read each month. Is there a different way to do that? Our system requires that we have a read for them every single month. Otherwise it can't bill. We don't have any other way to build that monthly. We'd have to change the entire billing system in order to do that. The other reason why we like to be out there and get a read off the meter is because that's how we make sure that there aren't any issues on site. Especially if you're talking about during drought. One of the things we love the most about the automated system is that people don't go 30 days without us catching that there is maybe some sort of issue on site. And so it's very important for us to be keeping track of that water use and making sure that everything seems to be the way it should be on site. Gotcha. And that's great. So it's more than just reading the meter. Literally you have a set of eyes that are interested in all of our goals seeing that. And I love the AMI. So just save me some bucks already. The disconnect fee, that makes total sense. And then the demand offset fee, just another idea. I think similar result is if on the $160 fee that seems fine, that's cheap. We have to evaluate something. Will this really work or not? And then how are we gonna process? We received the fee in advance or not? Is the fee on or off, right? Do they get it back on the fees where the developer is gonna do their own offset? Is there a chance, just by chance, could we lower that if they save more than the required amount? I think, I mean, it's a good question. We can look to bring it back. This is the time that we're anticipating on average to review these projects. And so it really is about making sure we're recovering costs for the time we spend. So that's what we're looking to do. We wanna make sure that these things that are very specific to individual customers are not covered by the entire rate base, which is what is done now in certain cases. And so we always said we would come back with the application fee. I suppose we could look to see how many hours these are taking. We really don't know because no one's proposed any yet. They've all been willing to pay the fee, which is what I suspect will occur. But we're estimating that it'll take us about 10 hours to review because if they're proposing something, it's gonna be a pretty complicated project. So we could always come back and revise those estimates once we have had a few and look to, you know, one thing, Kimberly, I'm thinking and I'm thinking out loud, could we make this basically a $97 per hour fee with an estimated hours and then actually charge them the true value? We could do that. So that might address your concern. Better board member Walsh, I'm not sure, but. Actually, I didn't like the idea as soon as your answer started because I realized, yes, you need to collect costs to do these water savings programs or they don't happen and we don't save water. I mean, yeah, I'll take that back. So they want to save more. Cool, we're really happy with that. No, I get it, I totally get it. So you can wind up doing 20, 30 hours with the work, get no reimbursement, and then how do you get the resources to do, you know, to keep saving the water? So no, I appreciate that. And, you know, I don't want to pick bits on that. I just think that I just thought that was an idea, but it's not how the program works, is you need to get economic resources in there to keep the water savings programs alive. So no, I like your answer. And I also know that Mr. Close did a lot of research prior to bringing the water demand offset policy to both the board and city council and checking in with other agencies that have that option, it's a very uncommon option to take. But the city council wanted that still to be added back into the offset policy so that they did have that option if they chose it. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's likely if somebody's going to do their own like that, they are going to have a relatively large project and the magnitude of the fee in relation to the financial magnitude of the project shouldn't be that big. And they'd have to implement it and then watch it and then make sure that it's working. And that's probably more than, you know, developers would be interested in taking on. Yes, okay. Thanks. Just a question, approximately how many households are refusing meter reading of like automated? I'm just curious. We have 12. Okay. There are 12 meters in the entire city that do not have an automated reading device on them. Got it, okay, well, it's just interesting. I didn't think that that was an issue, but I guess there are some people that didn't want them. So, well, I just wanted to ask, you know, the group, I know, Board Member Walsh, you were concerned about not seeing the calculations ahead of time and the fees ahead of time. Do you feel comfortable moving this forward? I know that we would see it at the full BPU as well and I'm sure the presentation will have documentation behind it. And when we see it at the BPO. Well, I appreciate the question. And I have a suggestion maybe we can make this work. I read slow and sometimes I process slowly. I couldn't see the whole slides because we didn't get the slide deck or anything else, right? So I've got the small iPhone and I'm trying to go like this and stay on the screen at the same time. So, I apologize if you've got a close up of my face. Maybe if there's a chance and I'll ask if we could let people know, see these slide decks, what type of fee and then some of the background like the reference consultant's report. I think the cost per hour completely reasonable, right? And then if we see that maybe the consultant's report and then see the slide deck and then what's going to be proposed, post that online so the public could take a look at it in case they're interested in this because when we say misrelations in these fees, they didn't know necessarily that it's going to be 25 bucks with a credit card or 50 bucks, whatever that was, right? So I literally didn't know what it's going to be looking at and I didn't get something to look at. But I think the process or the thinking on the fees is right. I think the justification on the fees is right. What if we were to have a meeting prior to the next BPU, half hour meeting, maybe even, and go through this and then with the anticipation that we're going to recommend it to the BPU? Just another crack at it because I didn't really get to look at anything the way that normally would look at a fee. So I'm not sure we're recommending it today but I'm completely, I would anticipate being able to recommend it if we could have one more meeting before the next BPU. All right, board member Wright, any thoughts here? I'm actually comfortable with, after we've had this discussion with what was presented today and I would move to push it along. And maybe there's some in between, maybe we can send Mark or board member Walsh's all the reports and things and or send to all of us and have, and if he sends the chime up, we'll have another meeting or all, it's Zoom, we can all do another meeting if we need to or whatever we need to do, but I'm satisfied with the whole thing. But actually, I think the fees are almost kind of low on some of these cases knowing how long it actually takes to do things. And especially if you're depending on submittals from consultants to consultants, it's very difficult to get things done and you spend hours and hours and hours and hours. So I'm not worried about overcharging our customers based on these fees, based on my experience. Okay, one comment that the public gets us to get any of this. And they wouldn't know what fees that we're gonna recommend. And so if our process normally is, the public gets a chance to look at our meet to see that we've got a meeting coming up that might affect whether they pay or don't pay, they should get a chance to see what actually is in question. And the public did not get that shot. So if it matters, the public has input at a subcommittee meeting because sometimes the subcommittee the ball rolls into a regular meeting. And then the regular group thinks, okay, so the subcommittee got a full crack at it. Maybe they would get some public did too. So if we were gonna vote on such a recommendation, I think we should comment that the public didn't get a chance to see which fees we're talking about. That's the bigger concern. Whether we're right or not, we can make a mistake and just later, but it's the process. What do we get to look at? What the public get to look at? And then where do we go from there? Cause we didn't get to hear from them. So Chair Watts, if I might, so we are more than happy to schedule a second budget subcommittee meeting. If the board is that, if that's the direction of the subcommittee, we did put notice out to the public through, so the miscellaneous fees are very totally understand what board member Walsh is comments and concerns. It's also a different level of materials that are put out for miscellaneous fees versus our rate study, right? It's not an actual true study from that perspective. We did have some recommendations from the study that was done of our high strength waste. And so we can definitely share that report. That report really is more about the program as a whole and has just a very small amount that's recommending some changes to the miscellaneous fees. So you're gonna get a relatively big report for a small amount that's focused on the fees. We tried to take that part out of the report so and share that in the presentation today. But we are more than happy to put that information out. There is a public notice that is going out in the paper. I believe it's being published today and then we'll again be published next week as required for changing miscellaneous fees. So we do require to have two public notices in the newspaper, which we are doing. And then as was mentioned by deputy director Zanino, if anyone's interested or has questions, they get in touch with her and she can provide them with the background and the calculations. But basically we show them what the existing fees are and then the proposed new fees, that's it. There's no details like the rate studies that we typically do. And if they want more details, that's why we have them contact deputy director Zanino and she can walk them through all of those. So if you would like, we would probably would ask that we could pull the board to find another time this week that we could reschedule. We do need 24 hours. We actually need probably we would need about, I would say 48 hours. Just because we need to prep the agenda, we need to post it. And it requires us to post at 24 hours in advance for a special meeting. And otherwise we can look to do something later, but that would probably push back our November 17th BPU meeting and we'd have to republish the public notice on the paper, which we're happy to do as well. But just wanted to give you a couple of options that we have if the board would like, or if the subcommittee would like to meet again today or meet again on this item. Sorry. Maybe one other option that's actually easier. I apologize, just thought of it. What if we didn't have a recommendation? So we discussed it and decided to bring it to the full BPU, right? So we could have a bigger conversation. So that's another option is that we just, with neutrality, just bring it and then we'll have a chance to look at it and then we all know what we discussed today. And people knew we were gonna talk about miscellaneous fees in general. So we just left it at that and didn't have a recommendation, just discuss, right? The recommendation is that we discussed it fees because that's what it says, right? Didn't say approve a schedule or anything, right? And then just- That is another option, correct. Yes. Let's talk about there. A lot of times it's exactly the same presentation anyway. So board member Walsh, that's actually what I was going to recommend that we move forward that way. And we have this item will be presented to the BPU. We'll have the slide deck ready for the public to see at that meeting, as well as I think that deputy directors, and you know, mentioned that there was already targeted outreach to those like developers or the ones that are not on the meters and those things they are already seeing those in targeted outreach. So I would feel comfortable moving it that way. And we will not have to have another meeting with all of our staff time, reiterating the same information and we can just move it to the BPU that way if that is acceptable. Yes, I think that'd be great. So we keep the communications clean with the ratepayers and we keep the purpose live and we keep the positive, right? So we just say, we recommend a full discussion at the BPU with all the materials, right? Yes, I think that sounds great. And I think we're being transparent with the public as well. So, but with that, I still would like to open it up for public comment on item 3.1. So if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus, do we have any live email or voicemail public comments on this item? We have no public comments on this item. All right. So I think that we are going to move this item forward without a recommendation at this time and we will see this at the full board meeting. I'm not sure if there's a specific action that needs to be taken for this or if we need to raise the motion and it gets shot down. I'm not sure if we can just kind of table this to the full BPU meeting if that's allowed. We won't take, that's fine not to have a recommendation at this point. I'll circle back. We may want to reconvene the subcommittee and postpone the schedule so that we can actually have a recommendation from the subcommittee. So I'll be, let me check in with the chair and also with our city attorney's office. Madam chair. Yes. So the action item on the agenda is the staff will present recommendations. It didn't say that the subcommittee will make a recommendation to the full BPU. Because we do not have our city attorney on the meeting I don't want to state exactly what is allowed. I'm much more familiar with, you know Robert's rule of order and I know we could just table this item but there's also different elements that are needed for this type of public meeting. So I don't want to miss speak but I think that we can, you know move to table this item at the full BPU meeting and then director Burke can come back and find if that is sufficient. If not, we will all get online real quickly to make a formal vote. Yeah, I understand. I just want to point out that there is no, we didn't say what staff would recommend. Staff would recommend no increased fees, lower fees recommend that we recommend to somebody else. There's no real defined action item. All right. Well, I think we've discussed everything that we need to discuss at the moment. So with that we can adjourn the meeting. Thank you and board members look out for further communication on this item.