Memphis Meetings

Doug McGowen

Person

Speaking turns

• Memphis City Council Committee Meetings: March 3, 2026 4:04

  Thank you, Chairwoman. Um today we're presenting $67 million of expenditures that were recently approved by the board seeking your approval for those expenditures. Today I have 11 items to discuss. The first is a large request for $56 million over five years. This is for electric distribution and transmission construction maintenance. This is with Davis H. Elliot. This is for 17 additional electric overhead line crews uh comprising about 80ome people. These are all local crews that help us. As you know, um we have invested heavily in catching up on our deferred maintenance, catching up on replacing outdated infrastructure and doing our once in a generation um grid modernization effort. So, the Davis H. Elliott crews are helping us to catch up and do those things while our crews do the grid modernization. So, I know the question will be why not hire these folks? This is a temporary measure until we finish grid modernization, which is slated to be completed by 2030 or so. Um, and so the other benefit of having these folks here is when we have storm restoration, essentially we have double the workforce that we would normally have. Otherwise, we'd be calling them in from out of town. So, this continues the contract with them for the next five years. The next is a 15 ton digger Derek truck in the amount of $369,000. This is a normal replacement for us. We have about 17 of these in our inventory and we're replacing this one here according to our normal uh replacement plan that we have presented to you before in the past. This is consistent with what we had planned for in our budget this year. The next is class 8 cabin chassis trucks. We are buying 12 of them. We have about 200 of these in our inventory. And again, according to our plan for replacement uh through our mechanic shop, uh this is consistent with what we have budgeted for for this year. And this completes our purchase for the year, our planned purchase for these replacement trucks. The others will be disposed of through auction. This is a fast charge Tennessee network in the amount of $294,000. This is our portion of a grant that is being paid 80% through the state of Tennessee to install two DC fast charge stations. One will be in the Midtown area. If you know where Mr. Turley's development is there, the Union Station near UTSC and the other will be out in the area of Collierville. This will provide four chargers each one of these stations. Why those locations? They were determined by the state of Tennessee as a part of the charge across America network. uh to make sure there's chargers within a specific distance. So we had we were very constrained as to where we could put these and we're installing them here and trying to get them installed by uh this summer. So again 80% of the cost of this is borne by the state 20% by MGW. Uh the next is increased is a funding amount of $1.8 million uh to Mason's professional cleaning services. This is an extension uh through 2027. Uh this is the cleaning service. We have many facilities in MLGW. They clean all of them for us. This contract covers all of it, including the new property at Goodlook Farms Parkway that we purchased. Uh though they're only cleaning about onetenth of the to excuse me, about 115th of the total area out there. Excuse me, 15% of the total building, but we're adding some money so they can clean that for us. The next is independent claims adjuster service in the amount of $15,000. These are the claims adjusters who help us recover funding for MLGW in the case of property loss. And so about a million dollars a year is what this $15,000 yields for us. Yes. Next is continuing our medical coverage in the amount of $1 million for the next two years through Sigma Health and Life. It's a two-year extension to our current medical plan. This is the administrative cost for them to administer that for us. Um and the next is consistent with that. It's our dental insurance continuing that for another two years. Um, and the total requested amount of funding there is $5,700,000. MLGW pays only about 20% of the dental cost and our employees pay about the pay the rest and and retirees pay all of the 100% of the premium, but our staff and retirees are happy with the medical plan we have. So we're going to continue that for two years and then we'll be in the process as you know it's a complex process to move forward with an RFP for the next successful bidder for our healthcare. So you'll expect that in about two years time. Next is funding in the amount of $238,000 for out of town travel insurance. This covers about 80 of our MLGW vehicles who travel out of state to pick up parts or to go uh visit other areas. Why do we have out of town insurance? Because in the state of Tennessee, we're covered under tort liability. We're self-insured. Outside of the state of Tennessee, we do not have that same coverage. So, we need to have some policy coverage for when we're traveling out of state in case there's an accident. Next are two salary requests. First is 168,000 for the director of billing and payment services. As a result of our improvements in the delayed held billing, we have restructured our billing and payment services. We've hired we have interested in hiring a very wellqualified uh director of billing and payment services. Um and so that is the subject to your approval of

Mentions

• No mentions logged yet.

Roll Call

• No roll call entries logged yet.

Votes