LUCC Meeting Minutes
August 3rd, 2023
Welcome – President Rocky Stewart called the meeting to order and welcomed all attendees.
Self-Introductions – 14 people were present.
Meeting Minutes –Meeting minutes were approved at the opening of the meeting.
Treasurers Report – Naomi Shirtcliff: June and July budget summaries have been provided. Collected dues from NWN. A list of our members and 2023 dues summary has been provided. The dues summary includes each member’s “paid status”. There are a couple that we need updated contact information.
Publicity & Education– Jim Franklin: Haven’t had success with getting response from Jerrys or the Home Builders Association. Need new ideas to spend the event budget, approx. $1800.
Damage Report– Jason Williams: Reminder that dig tickets expire in 45 days. Wildish damaged the coating on a NWN HP line with an expired ticket. Riverbend damaged a shallow line. Homeowner damage with no locate, they said the City told them no ticket was needed.
The COE locator shared they had found ADA ramp work being done before locates were due. It was noted that concrete cuts don’t require a ticket, per the exception for concrete removal. Question: Does that include all hard surface cuts, or just concrete sidewalks? The concern for COE is their traffic loops are shallow in the roadway.
Web Page– Amy Abramson: No update
OUCC Standards Review –Rocky: We touched on the 45-day ticket expiration (reminder).
Old Business: NWN has been filing on repeat contractor issues. It has been noted that Lantz Electric does a lot of work for COE but doesn’t have a good record of calling in locates.
Rocky noted that USIC / Lumen has been filed on (per our last meetings vote), on behalf of LUCC. The biggest concern we are filing on is for No-show ticket response. Rocky reached out to other council presidents to share our plans for addressing the issues.
Rainbow water: called an emergency locate over a holiday weekend and couldn’t get Locating Inc to respond to mark for NWN. They were able to get ahold of the on-call locator, but he was based in Newport and finally arrived after repairs were completed.
New Business: A few different City’s / UCC Councils responded to Rocky with examples of their own experience with USIC & Lumen. Some have also sent letters highlighting their frustration.
Rocky will be setting up meetings with council members across the state. Rocky is asking all ticket submitters to document with photos any no-response issues from USIC, and file as individuals to the PUC.
Roman w/ Lumen shared that USIC is about 16-20 people short with 4000 tickets a day and on average about 4 days behind. Washington locators are coming don to help at times.
Program: ESRI / ARCGIS / Drone Solutions – Ryan Richardson, Solutions Engineer
Drone Solutions offers mapping of imagery to your assets in GIS. For example, manhole images are overlayed on a GIS point / asset. There are mobile friendly versions for filed workers. Drones are safer for inspections and the cameras are high quality. You can overlay images over time to see changes. The cameras can capture details such as a bolt rotation from one year to the next. There are tools to calculate volume of backfill material requirements and more.
Meeting Adjourned- 1 pm
