Approved Minutes — original pdf

Approved Minutes

REGULAR CALLED MEETING May 15, 2024 Electric Board APPROVED MINUTES The Electric Board convened in a Regular Called Board Meeting on May 15, 2024, at the Permitting Development Center at 10:05 am. Board Members in Attendance: Victoria Shope, David Johnson, Delwin Goss, Gabe Flores, Michael Grant, David Deshaine and Ben Brenneman. Members Not in Attendance: Christian Spies and Joel Cochran. Staff in Attendance: Rick Arzola (DSD), Maria Jaramillo (DSD) James Epperson (DSD), Marty Starrett (DSD), Moses Rodriguez (ACD), Hyatt Dunn (DSD) and Aaron Finney (DSD) PUBLIC CITIZEN COMMUNICATION: No one registered to speak. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1. The minutes were approved for the March 20, 2024, regular called meeting on board member Grant motion, board member Johnson second the motion. Motion passed on a 7-0 vote. DISCUSSION 2. Electrical Ordinance 80.8 Suspension of Registration- No Discussion took place on this item. 3. Austin Energy-Technical Advisory Panel- Austin Energy requested to postpone this discussion to possibly August to attain more information to present to the board. 4. Austin Code-Number of Stop Work orders that are being issued to the community-. Development Services and Austin Code representative Moses Rodriguez reported that there were 955 electrical violations last year, unfortunately he was unable to provide the specific types of electrical violations reported, additionally there were 355 violations on work without permits and 6 stop work orders reported. 5. Commercial Plan Review update- Commercial Electrical plan reviewer James Epperson indicated that commercial plan reviewers are up in reviewing plans to 18% in the first quarter of this year. However, the month of May is trending downwards. Currently, Development Services is now in a hiring freeze till the next fiscal year of October which includes vacant positions that need to be filled in plan review. All said, commercial plan review is one day behind in reviewing plans except for building trade reviewers, who are on time. As for staffing, one reviewer is on medical leave and one reviewer is being shared with the special event permitting team. 6. Service Center update on applications turnaround time and staffing. Maria Jaramillo, Building and trade contractors services manager, provided that her staff is now named Building and Trade Contractor services (BTCS) which will now hopefully be focused on stand alone trade and building permits in place of all other requests it receives that does not pertain to Building and trade contractor services. There are two current ways to submit your request to the BTCS, one is through the webform and AB+C portal. The webform is roughly 3 business days behind and 2 business days behind using the AB+C portal. For the month of April, staff received 2372 requests through the webform and 2184 requests through the AB+C portal. As for appointments, in person and virtual, 229 were scheduled in the month of April, 1816 chats, and 1109 phone calls were returned. Avg. responses for webform submitted online is 17 hours with a resolution time of 33 hours. As for staffing just hired a second supervisor. Which will split into a residential and commercial team. 3 vacancies still exist but cannot be hired due to the hiring freeze has been lifted. 7. Commercial and Residential Inspection Update- Commercial Electrical Supervisor Hyatt Dunn updated the board two of his vacant positions have now been filled. One is out in the field performing inspections and the other is in training and will be out in a few weeks. This will give commercial electrical inspections 6 individuals out in the field. Since February, commercial electrical inspections have been averaging 2400 processes a month, maintaining a day behind schedule. We don’t believe that these processes include the residential electrical ETJ inspections in which the residential team has greatly assisted with. Residential Supervisor Aaron Finney did confirm that they are assisting with electrical ETJ with still maintaining a 96% on time. A couple of vacancies are still left unfilled however due to the hiring freeze, those will not be filled anytime soon. 8. Discussion and Action- Nominations of Chair and Vice Chair- Board member Goss made a motion to nominate Gabe Flores as Chair of the Electrical Boad, Board member Grant second the motion, motion passed 7-0. Board member also nominated David Johnson as Vice chair of the electrical board, board member Grant also seconded the motion, motion passed 7-0. 9. Discussion and Action on June 19th Electrical Board. The electrical board erroneously approved the 2024 Electrical Board schedule back in October 2023 and failed to recognize June 19th as the third Wednesday of the month, which is the approved meeting date of the electrical board. Therefore, the electrical took action to cancel the month of June and July meetings as a few of the board members will not be available for July. The board acted as board member Grant made a motion to cancel June and July meeting dates and return in August. Board member Goss seconded the motion. Motion passed 7- 0. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS 1. Discussion on Austin Energy Technical Advisory Panel and its functions and responsibilities. 2. Discussion on Electrical ordinance 80.38-Suspension of Registration. 3. Discussion on Commercial Plan Review update on number of its submittals, on time ratio and 4. Discussion on Building and Trade contractor services update. 5. Discussion on Residential and Commercial inspection updates on vacancies and inspections. staffing. ADJOURN: Board member Goss made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Board member Brenneman seconded the motion. Motion passed 7-0. Minutes were approved at the August 21, 2024, meeting on board member Johnson motion, board member Spies second the motion. Motion passed 10-1. Board member Joel Cochren was absent.