Public Works and Utilities Committee Mon, Jun 29, 2026 ยท Public Works and Utilities Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/970 == Executive Summary == The Public Works and Utilities Committee met to discuss the implementation of Voda AI water main risk and prioritization software. Taylor Jurgens from the Public Utilities Department presented the software, which uses machine learning to predict water main failures based on historical data, pipe characteristics, and environmental factors. The goal is to optimize capital investment by identifying high-risk pipes for replacement, thereby reducing water waste and business disruptions. The committee was enthusiastic about the software's potential to improve infrastructure planning and efficient use of taxpayer money. In other business, the committee unanimously approved both the agenda and the consent agenda. A point of clarification was made regarding Councilor Faulkner's use of her cell phone during meetings; Chair Chavez explained that Councilor Faulkner is legally blind and uses her phone to magnify meeting materials, underscoring her commitment despite accessibility challenges. No public comments were made during the meeting, and an action item was assigned for future meeting presentations to be uploaded in advance. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda unanimously. - Approved the consent agenda unanimously. == Motions & Votes == - Approval of the Agenda โ€” Passed unanimously - Approval of the Consent Agenda โ€” Passed unanimously - Adjournment of the meeting โ€” Passed == Public Comment == No public comment period == Topics == - Water Main Risk & Prioritization - Asset Management - Councilor Accessibility - Business Impact of Water Breaks - Future Water Security == Full Transcript == Madame Chair, Council Travis, we are live. Thank you. I call to order the Public Works and Utilities meeting. It is Monday, the 29th of June, and it is 5:01. Could I get a roll call, please? Yes, ma'am. Chair Chavez. Here. Councilor Barrett. Here. Councilor Bamante. Here. Councilor Falner. Here. Councilor Fagali. Here. You have a quorum. Thank you. Approval of the agenda. Any changes from staff? No changes from staff. Do I have a motion? Approve. Second. All right. Who was the motion? Motion. I'll be the second. Got it. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying, "Aye." Any opposed? See none. And the motion passes. Approval of the consent agenda. Was there anything removed? Nothing was removed. All right. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Second. Let's give that to Barrett. We have a motion from Bogner, a second from Councilor Barrett. Could we all those in favor signify by saying, "Aye." Any opposed? See none. Motion passes. Public comment. Do we have anyone in chambers that would like to address the committee today? See none. All right. Next is presentation. We have presentation of Voda AI Water Main Risk and Prioritization Software. Taylor Jurgens, Engineer, Public Utilities Department. If we could also get the presentation uploaded, and just for future meetings, we want everything uploaded prior to the meeting. Councilor Faulkner will require those items uploaded prior to when we meet. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Good evening, Madame Chair, members of the committee. For those I haven't met yet, I'm Taylor Jurgens. I'm an engineer with the Water Division, and tonight I'm going to present to you on our new Voda AI software for water main risk and prioritization. If at any point you can't hear me, just let me know and I'll adjust the mic. First, just a quick overview of what I'll cover. I'll start by giving you some background on what the Voda AI software is. Then we'll look at what the modeling process looked like for actually how we implemented this software. And then lastly, I'll just give you a quick software demo, kind of showing what the software does, what kind of tools it has that we can use. So, first off, Voda AI is a cloud software that uses a machine learning model that takes all of our historical water main break data in the system and takes in several other external factors in addition to that, runs it through this machine learning model and outputs a risk score or a likelihood of failure for all the mains in our system. And so it's using all these external factors and kind of comparing to all the water main breaks in our system and trying to find correlations and reasons why those particular mains broke when and where they did. So, basically out of this, we get this risk profile of all of the water mains in our system. So, we can rank them from highest risk to lowest risk of future failure. In addition to the risk, it also produces remaining useful life calculations for us so that we can see when the mains in our system are anticipated to reach the end of their useful life and come due for replacement. They've also got some tools for actually planning out projects. So, we have what we call a priority line replacement program within the division that focuses on replacing and renewing old water mains in the system. And so this is a powerful tool for actually planning out projects based on the data that the model outputs. And there, yeah, at the bottom, I already mentioned the priority line replacement program, but this becomes just one tool in our whole tool chest of deciding which mains we replace in any given year. So, what this modeling process looked like is there's kind of two sets of data that it takes in in its analysis. First, we give it all of our water main break history, which we have data going back over 10 years at this point. We give it our pipe data, which includes location, age, material, pressure in the pipe, things like that, our proximity to wells and pump stations. And it takes that into its model and then it goes out and sources additional third-party data looking at things like soil conditions, proximity to highways and roadways, proximity to railways, rain and topography, weather, and other things like proximity to critical infrastructure like hospitals or schools. And it runs it all through this machine learning model. And as I mentioned, it looks for these patterns and correlations as to why what factors are contributing to why certain mains are failing. And then it kind of extrapolates that across our whole water system. And so mains that failed in the past can help inform what we think is going to be the mains that fail next in the future so that we can get ahead of some of those worst condition mains and start planning replacements to try and cut down on the number of breaks we have in our system. And then the other piece of this software is that over time, as years go by, we continue to have more breaks. We can feed those breaks back into the model and it'll continue to get more and more accurate in the results that it's putting out. So, I actually have a link here software. Hopefully, I can just switch over to this. So, this is actually the dashboard of the software itself. You can kind of see our whole network of water mains and then the dots in there are all the various historical breaks we've got. Kind of the main, the main feature of this software is, let's say we wanted to go see, you know, what's our 1%, our worst pipes in the system. And this is something we'd look at when we're deciding each year what mains we're going to replace for the next year. This gives us a place to start. It's just a simple little dashboard and then you hit apply and it, it starts to highlight kind of the key mains and key areas should really focus on or where you're going to put your money to renew your water mains. Because the last thing we want to do is go replace mains that are in perfectly good shape. That's, we're wasting money. And so, hopefully, we can better target the mains that most need the repair or replacement. We'll just make our money go that much further. So, that's kind of the, the main core gist of the software is it helps us target those, those worst percentage points of pipe. Another cool feature of it is this project planner. Say you have, you know, a budget you're looking to spend in the next 12 months. It will actually go hunt out for most optimal projects for you, get the best return in terms of reducing your risk and likelihood of failure for the buck that you're investing. So, it gives you a place to start. You can then go in and, you know, zoom in on one of these projects and say, "Well, let's add this pipe to that project or actually can't take that one on this year. Let's remove that." It'll kind of shuffle things around from there. So, this we actually just implemented this last year, so we're about one year into having this software. So, we're started using it in our priority line replacement program, but we're still kind of learning the true power of it. Really, the last thing to see is just some of the data that it can spit out as well. Like these are the remaining useful life curves I mentioned, kind of projecting out the, the remaining age or remaining life of all the pipes in our system. And then there's just various other analytics within here as well that you can really dig in. And lastly, this is just a cool map. This is data we've extracted from Voda AI and plotted into GIS where and kind of build this whole heat map of the city ranked by likelihood of failure for all of our names. It's just another cool resource we can use when we're kind of planning projects, reviewing where we need to pay attention. Other than that, that's really all I had for you this evening. But I'm happy to answer any questions you all have. Thank you so much. I definitely have questions and comments, but I'll turn it over to committee first. Any questions, comments? All right. So, I looked at the website while you were presenting and it says, "Invest capital where risk is highest." And I really have this drive and I constantly emphasize the need for asset management and all of those things so that we're actually investing taxpayer money where it should be invested. I don't think we do that as effectively as a city as we can. And so I just want to highlight that this is a way that we can do that. It tells a story of a need in regards to investment in water lines and what needs to happen. I think that we need that across the city and we're slowly developing that. I want to emphasize that a lot of that work has come out of Jesse. Director Roach, you're just, you know, you're ahead of it in regards to asset management and evaluation. But this is amazing. This is really exciting. I don't think people realize what a big deal this is. It's really a big deal in regards to how we can be mindful about how we spend our money and we make sure that the city's taken care of. There is a huge emphasis on water right now. Well, always. There's always been an emphasis on water, access to water, making sure that we are going to be secure in water in the future. And I think that this is a way to help our community feel more at ease because it gives us insight ahead of time on where we should be putting our focus and our investment. So, this is really exciting. I just want to say that thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. And before I close, any other questions or comments? Yes. Thank you, Councant. Thank you, Chair. Just a quick comment that I'm really excited to see this because I know a number of constituents and businesses reached out after a recent water main break near Sonteo and Second Street where they kind of meet up. And, you know, we're not looking just at water waste here, which is very important, of course, but also lost revenue for a lot of these businesses, a huge inconvenience for our residents. So, this is really exciting to be able to have something that, that can help predict where these things can occur and and help us focus our resources. So, really excited to see this. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. And we will move forward with our next agenda item which is matters from staff. No matters from staff. Sheriff. Thank you. Director Roach. No matters from utility staff either. Thank you. Thank you. Matters from committee, matters from chair. I do have one matter. I have viewed social media recently and I don't want to put Councilor Faulkner on the spot, but I do have to address this. So, there have been a lot of commentary on Councilor Faulkner on her cell phone. And I hope Councilor Councilor Vagner doesn't mind this, but Councilor Vagner is legally blind for those in the community that do not know. She has showed up for her community despite the challenges that she faces due to her diagnosis around her sight. She shows up, she's incredibly active. I would say she's probably one of the most active counselors that you see on this dis. She utilizes her phone because she literally has to blow up the agenda to be able to read it and to follow it. And I want to emphasize despite the staff's commitment and improvement and giving her accessibility to the items that we freely have access to, it hasn't quite been achieved to the consistency that we would want in regards to meetings. She is not on her phone because she's not engaged. She's on her phone because she's wanting to be engaged and to follow the meetings. There have been cruel commentary for one of, I think, our public servants that does one of the most for our city. And I just want to address the fact that there is a true barrier that she has been fighting through and still serving quite a bit. I know she attends much more things than I can attend, and I only have the excuse of having two jobs and children, but she just shows up. And so it's been really disheartening to see some of the commentary out there in the public, just questioning her investment. If you would actually dig into some of the things she's done, you'd see she's accomplished quite a bit for District 3 and for our community. So, I just wanted that on the record for those that continue to have questions on social media about someone's tools and accessibility to their work. And the other item is that the next meeting is Monday, July 20th, 2026. And with that, we're adjourned. Thank you.