Board Members present: Dorothy Anderson, Peter Bartel, Patrick Lanning, and Sandra Bishop. Commissioner Susie Smith was excused.

Others present: Randy Berggren and Krista Hince of the EWEB staff; Chris Cardwell, Cardwell Consulting; members of the public and Joe Sams, City of Eugene Minutes Recorder.

PREVIOUS BOARD INPUT

Purpose of Goals

1. Clarify Board priorities and expectations

2. Align Board and General Manager on measurable goals; have a common understanding

3. Provide a basis for the public to understand Board actions

Principles of Goal Setting

1. Fair

2. Constructive and not demeaning

3. Understandable and predictable

4. Practical and realizable

5. A balance of policy and specifics

6. Energize Board, General Manager, and Staff

7. Based on the good of the utility and not on personal agendas

8. Based on accountability in the community

Characteristics of Goals

1. Measurable

2. Clear results

3. Clear path to work toward

4. Timely

5. Established time frame

GENERAL MANAGER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

This item was postponed to a future Board Governance meeting.

BOARD GOVERNANCE REVIEW

Chris Cardwell, Cardwell Consulting, provided a review of past Board Governance meetings and Board input on goal strategies. The review included:

Performance Goals

1. Financial

2. Operational

3. Strategic/Innovation

4. Board

5. Intergovernmental

Development Goals

There was general word smithing of the specific goals listed under the listed categories.

General Manager Randy Berggren stressed the need to prioritize goals so he would have a better sense of Board expectations. He noted that the more the goals the less progress on all.

Vice President Bartel noted that time specific goals needed to fit into basic operating principles.

Mr. Cardwell commented that it was important to be able to keep basic goals in mind at all times.

Mr. Berggren provided a summary presentation of the Executive Management Team Review. He said he was developing a quantifiable way to report on operations to the Board. He suggested that there be a connection between Board expectations of the General Manager and his expectations of department heads.

Mr. Berggren cautioned the Board about spending too much time and money on measuring data that had no tangible impact to the customer. He suggested naming a few critical topics of importance to the customer and linking them to over all goals. He suggested:

1. Product Quality

Mr. Berggren said that product quality would concentrate on keeping electric service on, delivering quality water to the customer, and steam service reliability.

2. Cost

Mr. Berggren said that cost would center on how well the utility performed its budget management. He cited the existing policies around debt service management, cash reserves, and rate competitiveness as examples.

3. Service Responsiveness

Mr. Berggren said that service responsiveness would center around billing accuracy, conservation performance, timeliness of customer commitments, and power quality.

4. Organizational Effectiveness

Mr. Berggren said that this would measure the overall performance of the utility.

In response to a concern raised by Vice President Bartel over the Banner Billing System, Mr. Berggren said that Banner was one of the best billing systems available on the market.

Getting back to goals, Mr. Berggren noted that goals could be defensive or proactive in nature. He stressed the importance of the Board members realizing that a public utility was a dynamic thing that had to respond to changing situations. He cited the previous year as an example saying that there had been a clear set of goals of which random circumstances had forced continual change. He raised concern that a defensive set of goals would not engender the kind of action that he wanted the utility to take.

Mr. Cardwell stressed the importance of examining what the Board wanted its goals to accomplish.

Mr. Berggren said that his experience with the current Board had reflected his desire to take proactive action and be able to respond to dynamic situations but stressed his desire to see that mind set worked into the goal language.

President Anderson stressed the importance of an organized broad approach that did not list too many goals.

Mr. Cardwell cautioned the Board that goals should not be so dynamic that they changed under any situation. He cited the drought and power crisis of the last year of a good example of circumstances that should change yearly goals but noted that there were a lot of things that happened in day-to-day life that would not necessitate a change in goals.

Vice President Bartel suggested that a part of Board Governance should be to evaluate how the General Manager handled a crisis to the utility. He said that there should be goal language that set up some expectations of how staff would perform in a crisis.

Mr. Cardwell suggested adding a "Strategic" goal category.

Commissioner Bishop raised concern over changing goals to fit a situation. She suggested that goals needed to be broad enough to be above specific situations. She suggested that goals should be something to refer to while dealing with specific situations. She commented that there would be no way to measure performance if goals were constantly changing.

Mr. Berggren raised concern over not changing goals when they were no longer realistic or pertinent to the situation that the utility was in.

GOAL STATEMENTS

Commissioner Lanning stressed that a goal was something that was measurable and achievable.

Product Quality

Mr. Berggren stressed that product quality and standards needed to meet established standards. He noted that product quality for the telecommunications program, (MetroNet), would be centered on the same availability standards as the electric and steam utilities. He said that the standards for the reliability of electric, the quality of the water, the reliability of steam would be listed and that would be the target to work toward for the year. He noted that this would essentially be maintaining current standards.

Commissioner Lanning commented that similar goals should be discussed with the Executive Management Team.

Mr. Cardwell stressed the importance of making a distinction between businesses as usual versus overall goals.

Commissioner Bishop said that consumer affordability needed to be a factor in any goals discussion. Mr. Berggren noted that affordability issues would be handled under Cost and Organizational Effectiveness Goals.

Commissioner Lanning raised concern over building goals that would compromise the utility's ability to handle the changing complexities of a dynamic market.

Commissioner Bishop called for goal language that would allow for measuring customer satisfaction.

The meeting adjourned at 9:30 p.m.

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Assistant Secretary President