 Well, then we'll start our meeting. It's after six o'clock. So it's the time for the meeting. Call the meeting to order, roll call. I guess we'll just show that Rochelle is here and all the other directors are present. And we have one public hearing, which is a variance request. No, you meant Carla. Sorry, Carla. I'm here. You're here. Okay. I was going to say something. It's a long day. It is. So this evening we're bringing a variance request from the district's metering policy to you for some residents on Bentana court. We have Mr. Zahorsky and a couple of his neighbors who have one inch meters that were installed in 1986. I've included the original service installation order for Mr. Zahorsky's service as well as the water waiver that was signed at the time the service was installed. He did pay for the one inch meter, which was different from the five eighths inch monthly fixed service charge up until 2013. After 2013 when we did that rate study, those were standardized for single family residential customers. And this last rate study that we did, the rate consultant advised us to go back to charging all of our customers based on meter capacity. All of those one inch service charges did change under our last rate study that was done in 2019. And it resulted in a significant increase in the one inch monthly service charge. So Mr. Zahorsky has applied for a variance from the metering policy. His residence does sit at elevation above the meter and above the main that runs through the street. He was provided a one inch meter at the time it was installed to allow for reduced head loss and more pressure up at his residence. However, we've got a number of customers in the district that have a similar configuration who have put in booster pumps and black flow devices to meet that same capacity with a smaller meter. So staff's recommendation at this time is to go ahead and deny the request for variance because the service was installed back in 1986. A water waiver was signed at that time by the applicant acknowledging that that was a low water pressure situation. We have offered to provide him at no charge under the meter variance policy that we have in place a smaller five eighths inch meter on a trial basis. Mr. Zahorsky has not been interested in doing so as well as the option to install a booster pump and backflow device to improve his pressure and use a five eighths inch meter. So we're recommending that the variance be denied under those terms. Any directors have questions of staff? I do. So just clarification so with a five eighth inch meter and a booster pump that would be adequate pressure. It should be. And then and you said that there are a number of customers in our district that have that situation. The number of our customers in our district that have various meter sizes and have installed booster pumps because their home does not get the water pressure that they desire. Okay. Thank you. I don't know whether to have public comment first or questions. But if you have questions of staff could do that now. But otherwise we can certainly do it after. How many how many of the one inch meters require a booster pump. I don't know. We identified I believe it was 278 one inch meters at the time 258 one inch meters at the time we evaluated our meter variance policy. However we have no idea what the reason for the one inch meters are. So I don't I don't know how many of those one inch meters have booster pumps. I don't know if that's something that engineering could answer. Okay. So I wouldn't have that information available right now. So you don't know how unique. And you said this was a metering policy. It's a it's a policy for the cost for service. Based on the meter size so that that's a metering policy. Well the metering policy is that the district is required to provide a certain pressure at the at the meter location. We're not mandated to provide a certain pressure at the residents. And so this this meter that is installed at the Ventana court address does meet the terms of that policy. We are meeting the minimum pressure requirements at the meter. So the variance request is to continue to use a one inch meter but to pay a four or five eighth inch service charge rather than a one inch service charge. And we've got a lot of customers in the district who may or may not feel that they're getting full capacity off their meter for a variety of reasons. This just kind of opens up a can of worms. And the but there is a variance for fire. There is a variance for the fire service. We do have customers who were required to put in a one inch meter in order to meet private fire suppression requirements by the fire district. So they weren't really given a choice in the matter. They had to install the one inch meter. Then the fire district changed their configuration to a two inch service with a five eighth inch bypass meter. So those customers are being charged for five eighth inch water service plus a two inch fire service. It seemed appropriate in this instance to charge these one inch customers for five eighth inch water service and a one inch fire service. And so the cost for the meter is based on the capacity of the meter. Right. So in the logic for the fire is that there's not a fire all the time. Right. So that it wouldn't attack. We don't have to size our system to be able to just to provide that capacity all the time. It's just not all the time just in an unusual situation. Yeah. It seems reasonable to me. Anything else. All right. That's being the case. I'll open the public hearing and receive public testimony. Yeah. First of all, I want to state that this is not just about me. We have three different homes that are in the situation. We actually had a meeting a few nights ago with three of us got together. The other one of the neighbors is here. The other one unfortunately is on a red eye right now in New York City or he was going to be here today. In regards to this, this is a very unique situation. We are not the same as most of these others. I want to make that very clear. There are three other roads that come off of Mesa Drive that go up the hill that require that have these pressure drops in every single case. Soquel Water Creek District put a main line up and put the meter at the person's property line as it states that it should be. For some reason, I have no idea why ours are down on Mesa. And that's the crust of this whole problem. And so what happened is for some reason the meters were put down there unlike Lynette Drive or Sunset or View Point, all these private roads, you guys put the meter up and you put the meters right at the person's property line as it states you should. For some reason ours are not at our property lines. Ours are like 100 feet down the hill. Okay. And then what you did is you put it in a one inch meter to help supplement that. And it's been borderline just enough for us to get by. There's a lot of inaccuracies in this memo that presented. We didn't refuse 5-8. We talked to Ron about 5-8. We talked to Taj about it. They all agreed it won't work. Okay. If you want to put it in there and take it out, that's fine. We can show that it won't work. One of the things that we did and we've been working with Soquel Water Creek District for the past year trying to resolve this and waiting for documentations and working with them, one of the things that we did is we did run a test to see what our capacity is since we're supposedly charged by capacity. And you have to build your system, which we understand to meet the demands of capacity. And for a one inch meter you should get 50 gallons per minute. We're getting 12.7. Okay. 5-8 you should be getting 20. So we're not even getting the capacity of a 5-8 meter. Okay. We're only getting 2 thirds of the capacity of a 5-8 meter and 25% of that of a 50. Okay. And yet we're being charged for the capacity. So and it's all because again, because it was decided that long ago to put something down there. So, you know, we look at this and as a situation where we are a very unique situation. Okay. And you say, well, the one inch people with the fire suppression, they have to have it, you know, because the fire department said so. It doesn't matter. The fire department, the county permit department, you guys, anybody says that their needs are. The bottom line is that they had a decision to either build a house or not build a house. Do the remodel, not do the remodel. But they decided to do it and therefore they put a one inch in. Same as us. We had to do it. We had to put a one inch in to make ours function. Okay. And therefore it went ahead and, you know, we were able to do it. The only thing is we're not getting the capacity like they are. Now, I understand if we had a meter at our property line and we decided to build on our 5-8, 5-8 a lot way up on the hill and we said, hey, our pressure is low. You guys go too bad. You got to put a booster pump in. I get that. That makes total sense. But that's not the situation here and it's been like this for over three decades. Ignore that. And as I said, we really want to resolve this today. And I think we are a very special situation. And in this letter that was put together, they list off four different situations for this one inch meter that you guys came up with. And I understand that. You said, hey, we have to look at everyone and even though we've got 15,000 people or however many it is, we found 258 accounts. We need to address this. What are we going to do? And you took the time to go through this and you came up with four situations here and you installed it to meet fire suppression. That you have more than one unit going to it. That it could have been served by a 5-8 and you guys just threw in a one inch because it was available on the back of the truck. And then you have one here because they desire it. I understand that. You can have a huge property with eight kids and a nanny and two rental units and a huge yard and a golf course you put up there and everything else and you want that extra capacity. You desire it. Ours isn't desires. Ours has been done from day one due to need. Ours has, per your guys, put in being the one inch originally. It's a need. And how many other people are out there that have a need for it from three decades ago that can't even get the capacity of a 5-8 out of the one inch? How many of those people are out there? And I don't really think you're going to find anyone that's in that situation. You know, and you basically have homes now that I'm the only one in my home. You've got two people in the other home, one in the other home. We're using like two units of water. We've always been very conservative. You can look at our records. We've been there for over a decade. You can look at all of our things. We're being very conservative and we're paying $100 a month for two units of water. That's never been the case. Yes, it's been a dollar or two more a month or $3 more a month. And I actually did complain once when the meter jumped up to like $8 or $10 more a month. I called him and said, how come my meter's going up low? And she said, oh, don't worry about it. We're going to be changing it over. You'll be the same price as the 5-8. So your average monthly cost will actually go down soon. I said, okay, good. Well, then I can deal with it for a few more months. And I paid a little extra, you know, the $10 extra or what it was. But it was always a little minimum amount. So it's like, why make a big deal out of it? Now it's over $600 a year. And I'm using two units a month. I mean, this is insane. I was just pushing conservation, you know. So I really think that when I go through these cases, case by case basis of these things, you know, we are an additional thing that was simply overlooked. That's all we're saying is you guys overlooked our unique case. And because you overlooked our unique case, you can add another one there. You can legitimately add one there for us. And it is, and so it is a unique special case. The second one was it has to be in harmony with the general intent and purposes of the policy of the district. Your policy is to charge by capacity. We're not even getting the capacity of a 5-8. We're only getting 2 thirds the capacity of a 5-8. Okay. And then the last one is that it has to be a grant to a special privilege that has to be not inconsistent with those placed on other parcels. Well, if you have a one-inch meter for people with a fire that was told that, oh, yeah, well, you're going to have to have a one-inch meter here for your home to be able to be built or for your remodel to be able to be done. And they said, fine, and you're granting them a waiver and they're getting the full 50 gallons a minute every day to use as they wish for free. We're not even getting that. And we were before them. We were before fire suppression units. So, I mean, if you're giving this special circumstance to them, you certainly should be giving it to us. So, I don't understand. I mean, we meet all the three requirements that you guys are required to give us the variance. You made an attempt to do this. You just simply overlooked our special circumstance and we are unique. There are not going to be any other people coming forward that can say that my meter isn't at the property line and I don't even get the capacity of a 5-8 out of my one-inch. If you just listed that as another exception here, there wouldn't be anybody else coming forward. It's just our three homes. We are unique special circumstances. Can I ask you a question? Sure. You mentioned these other homes in the area that have private roads and there's a trunk running up them. Exactly. Would that satisfy you if we put one of those in? Yeah. If you want a water main up our road and then put the meter out our property line, that's fine. What would that cost them to do that sort of thing? I'm not sure what the cost is, but my understanding is where we've done that before and the previous examples that are listed, the developer pays for that, not the homeowners. So it's the developer, and then passes that cost on. But it's not the district that pays for that. Not the district. No, sir. Even when they were individual lots, like a Lynette court? Yep. Can I see some? Because I've never seen anything. And that's always been a question we had, is how come ours is unique? And everybody else, because these are all individual lots. These are weren't developments. Lynette court was all separate lots. Viewpoint was all separate lots. Sunset all separate lots. And these are all right off of Mesa Drive. And every single one of those, it went right up to it. And I've never seen any reason why ours didn't. Is there any documentation on that? I'm sure there is. Well, I know that I've been on the board for a long time and we've often gotten, in some cases, single family homes. And they had to put in their own main and paid for it. So it does happen. Because right now what we have is we have two inch lines that run up to our properties underneath the road, which is pretty good size capacity. And on my home in particular, when I had a shower running and I turned on another shower, I had to guess one of the showers would shut off. So that gives you an idea of where we are in pressure. It would squeal and shut off. So when I redid my remodel, I actually took the two inch line and continued that all the way up to my house. Once it got into the house, I paid for two inch copper pipe all the way up as high as I could get and then switched over to one inch for the rest and up into the house. And now I can run two showers at once. I mean, we are right at the borderline. As I said, and it's been like this for a long time. And we're not getting the capacity. The charging is for capacity that we can't get. Okay. Thank you. Next. Hi, I'll just reiterate. I also live on Ventana Court. I've been working with Jack and also your group of engineers. I just, we'll just reiterate, it is a unique situation. We aren't against going to the five A's. We understand that there is, even though we have been told initially that it won't work given our current flow, it will drop drastically low. I am sort of against putting in a pump because it's another environmental issue. You know, it's running more electricity. So it's adding noises, adding electricity. And right now we're in a situation where it works and it's kind of like, okay, we're going to take it away from you and now push this more environmentally friendly way of solving this problem. After 30 years. Thank you. Question for staff. Just so, you know, because we always have to look at what, you know, great, they're not using much water, but if someone else bought the homes and moved there and they were using a one inch meter still and they did put in a booster pump, what would the capacity then become? If they put in a booster pump, I'm assuming they could pull full capacity off of a meter. Yeah. Thank you. And so while Mr. Zahorsky and his neighbor feel that their situation is unique, when you look at the district's distribution system as a whole, it's not, we have a number of customers who have solved just this issue by putting in a booster pump. And the district did not run the mains up there. Those were developer installed at their expense, why they chose not to run a main up to these three parcels I don't know. But the district didn't do that. So I do want to confirm something that was stated earlier by Leslie that I know in my history here over 19 years there have been numerous occasions where developers pay to put in mains. And one was mentioned that even for a single family home and in this case that I'm going to mention on Linda Vista Avenue in La Selva Beach, the pressure is very low in that area. And at the applicant for one home, extended the mains several hundred feet and even put in a booster pump. That's correct. That's correct. Another point that we've been working very, for several months with these applicants and it's been cordial, more technical on my side. But what we've found is that the pressure loss in the smaller meters as compared to the one inch is really negligible. The difference is very negligible until you start flowing more than 10 to 15 gallons per minute. And even at 20, then it diverges. And so we've tried to ask our customers here in front of you what do they really think they're going to be using on a daily basis, gallons per minute. And of the other customers that have downsized, they may not be in a similar situation as these two or three, but they have not yet reported us any discontent. They're happy with the downsizing. So I would strongly encourage these folks to try a 5-8 and see if that works for them. I think there are a couple more months left on the trial period. And maybe it is that they're not using up to maybe 13. I think Mr. Zahorski, that's what he said, about 2 thirds of the 5-8 inch capacity, which is about 13 gallons a minute. I don't believe there'd be significant pressure loss in the 5-8 at that flow rate. Sorry, you had your time to talk to us and you've done that, and we don't get to grill whoever else's. I know you're not allowed to do that. You had your piece and now you have to listen. So I think back in the 80s when these homes were built, it was a cost-benefit analysis of, well, is it cheaper to put in a 1-inch meter? Because they paid the connection fee for a 1-inch meter. We didn't give them a discount back then. You actually paid at the time the additional cost for the bigger meter. And I presume that was much cheaper than extending a main up like the other roads, which could have been done and then a 5-8 inch put in for each home. Thomas, you should repress yourself on the graph that you shared with them. If the graph is wrong, it's wrong, but it does diverge it for 1-8. I mean for a 1-inch and a 5-8. Okay, and at 10 GPM, what's the pressure drop? The pressure drop between a 1-inch and 5. At 10 GPM, say, yeah. It's about a 3 PSI. These are technical issues that have been worked on. Full disclosure here. I've known Jack for over 20 years. I have never met actually the other neighbors. And I also full disclosure, well, first of all, staff has done a wonderful job of working on this issue. And I've acted as a, you know, to try and understand the problem I've talked with Ron, and I've also talked with Taj. And I think Leslie and I have talked as well. So I am not going to recuse myself because my thinking is not being affected by knowing. Knowing Jack for that amount of time. And have no financial interest or whatever. So I'm not legally required. I've been advised to recuse myself. That's correct. The only thing I would add, Director Jaffee, based on our conversation today, you also have in none of your prior conversations ever indicated that you would decide this one way or another. You have a complete open mind. Thank you. So we're still under the public comment section of this. So is anyone else? No, you've already talked. Is anyone else wish? You went way over three minutes. Okay. All right, fine. I think it was two minutes. Two minutes. Sure. Come on up. Sorry, there was just one other thing in the letter. And it's a technical one, but the district does have three quarter inch valves and it's meters. And our understanding is that those are at the same rate as the five eighths. They're charged not differently. And that was one of the questions in the letter as to why they're getting that benefit. Okay. And I can answer that if you'd like. The quarter inch meters are older meters and they have the same flow capacity as the newer five eighths inch meter. They're also being phased out as part of our meter replacement program. So we knew that was happening when we did the rate study and they said since you're moving those out, we'll just lump them in together. There weren't that many of them and their flow capacities are very similar to the newer five eighths inch meters. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? General Terry Maxwell, whose experience in monitoring government performance and trying to get it to improve in some cases succeeding includes working with Ralph Nader in my youthful idealism. I wish I could say I'm a customer of the Soquel Creek Water District and my goodness is it good. It's excellent. It's well managed. It's efficient. And it's planned ahead and all of that. I know the whole history. I've talked to residents who've been here 45 years. I know the sordid, sad history of Mr. Kreege's management. I know how millions of dollars have been misspent wasted that belong to your customers and rate payers. No, no, no. I'm speaking on every topic. The big picture. This isn't every topic. This is one particular topic. I'm offering my views. Don't interrupt me, please. Shorten my time. This is a public hearing about this particular issue. Isn't this public comment hearing? No. You can comment on this. This is not public comment. This is one item. When will public comment be available? Afterwards. Item four. Then I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt that. I wish you'd be more sympatico to the customer here and the rate payer. I really think you ought to accommodate him. You and your staff. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbrunner. I just want to point out to these gentlemen in the audience that this topic has been discussed and somewhat litigated by Mr. John Cole. And I urge all rate payers to contact Mr. John Cole and look into that case, because this is not the first time it's come before you. Thank you. Anyone else? One. Do I hear a motion to close the public hearing? I make the motion. Second. You have a motion to second? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. So bring it back to the board. So any questions or comments or anything about this? I have some, but... Yeah, go ahead. So I looked into the board packet. On page 33, it talks about variances. And in section 1.0, where it says general, variances may be granted to the ordinances and resolutions of the district. Such variances may be granted by the board of directors only when, because a special circumstance is applicable to the property in question, including but not limited to size, shape, topography, location, or surroundings. The strict application of the ordinance or resolution to prize such property of privileges enjoyed by other property in the district which are substantially similar. So to me, it specifically talks about topography. And this is a situation where the topography is causing the lower pressures. And substantially similar, they are not getting a high capacity of flow. So essentially what they're doing is they're paying for a capacity that they're not getting. Not a great analogy, but not a bad analogy would be if somebody was being charged for more water than they were getting because their meter wasn't working properly. We would all go, they shouldn't be charged for that because they're not getting what they're promised. And this is the same situation. They're not getting the capacity that we're charging them for. So there's no physical way unless they put in a booster pump. And Tom noted that that somebody in the future could put in a booster pump and then they would be getting the capacity. So I would certainly not grant a variance unless there were stipulations that they couldn't do such a thing, which would be hard to monitor, but it would be a stipulation. But the other thing that's come up in the packet is the an attachment, I believe it's number six. The waiver, the waiver for pressure, was that's page 36 and it underlined insufficient water pressure. But what isn't underlined is that that the releases the district from any claims of any kind whatsoever. I don't think there's a claim being hit, being issued here. But because of that, because of inconvenience or in our policy on page eight talks about inconvenience or damage. Damage from high water pressure inconvenience for low water pressure. I don't see that as being the same, being the case here at all. So I don't, I do see this as a unique situation and given that they're not able to get the flow, I don't think that we should be charging them for the flow. And I think it is and other people in the district ought to be open to this as well. And Leslie talks about it being opening up a can of worms. I don't think so. I think that it's a unique enough situation that I wouldn't open it up. And I'd actually think that you open up a can of worms by not treating customers fairly. And I think this is not a case where the customers are being treated fairly. Anyone else? I mean, I have that, my main issue is being fair not just to these folks, but to the other folks that have had to deal with similar situations. So that's why I'm always reluctant to go along with a special circumstance unless it truly is different than what a lot of people have already dealt with. From what I understand from staff is there are a lot of people that have been in a similar situation of put in booster pumps and dealt with it. And so I'm still having trouble with, you know, I understand what you're saying, Bruce, but I still want to be fair to the other people who have had to go along with, you know, the way the rules are. Well, Tom, so have there been inch meters with where people want to have greater capacity where they put in booster pumps? I don't think we can answer that. I don't know. They were trying to get up to 50 gallons per minute. We've had a number of people who have put in booster pumps because the flow, we've met the flow requirements at the meter, but the flow capacity at their house isn't sufficient. So they've put in a booster pump. Whether they're one-inch meters, customers or not, I don't know, but I know we have various sizes. We've got five-eight inch customers that have done that. We've got larger meters that have done that. They get a benefit from putting in the booster pump. Right. They may not be a benefit to these customers because they don't use the amount of water that the capacity allows. He's trying to say, I mean, maybe this will help with clarification, those people probably would have either had a larger meter instead of putting in a booster pump if they could get the larger meter at a lower cost. But because the rate study and whatnot is based on capacity at the meter, that's not allowable, by the way, we operate now. I do want to correct one thing that Leslie said that I want to take this opportunity, I think it's important, is that the five-eighths don't produce exactly the same amount as the three-quarter. I want to acknowledge that you brought that up, the old three-quarter. They're closer, the three-quarters closer to the five-eighths than probably the new three-quarters, but those are being phased out also, so I did want to honor you on that because I think you stated it two ways. They were the same and then approximately, so I want to make that clarification for the record. But to be clear, there are customers in the situation where they would like more flow. We provided at the meter, but because their house is a long ways away, they've either put in a booster pump or they're paying for a larger meter size. We definitely have customers in that situation. To me, it seems like right now since there's a question about whether a five-eighths centimeter, a current newer five-eighths centimeter might actually provide adequate flow based on our engineering manager's thoughts, it seems like a simple thing to try. You don't lose anything. I don't think by trying. You can't ask questions. I just close whatever the I'm going along with what somebody in engineering would know better than I, that it's worth a try to see if that would meet the flow needs. We might be back here in a couple months. But the five-eighths inch restricted, I mean, we do restrict I don't see a difference between a five-eighths inch restricted, charging less money for that because the capacity is lower and charging less for a one inch that can't provide the capacity is it different? Maybe I'm missing something. Because if somebody put in a booster pump they may not always live there. We have to look for the whole life of a property. Somebody come in and say, yahoo, I've got a one inch meter and I'm putting it in a booster pump. I have a booster pump on some property we have and it's not an uncommon thing for people to do that. We have to look at the overall water use. We would know though, Tom, because we've got AMI. We're going to be... No, no. Anyway, yeah. Well, I think if we look all over the district, we'd find all kinds of different flow of Alice. I mean, depending on what their elevation is, where their pump is, where their tank is, whether they're on or not on. So if we did what was suggested, I mean, we basically have to go around to every meter in the district and see how much flow each one has and have a separate price for that one meter and that's just getting ridiculous. That would be ridiculous. I agree with that. I'd like to mention one other thing. In addition to this separate pump or whatever, another thing to do, which I have experience with, I used to live up in the mountains on Montobello Road in Cupertino and we had our own private well because we were like 2,000 feet above the valley and because of the private well, you don't get a glass of water to drink. So they have this big tank with a spring in it and every time the tank gets low and the pressure gets low the well pump goes on, it goes fill fill fill fill and the pressure builds up and it shuts off and then you get your drink of water, it comes down a little bit and a little bit and so it means that the pump only turns on very irregularly, but you get full flow into the house from just that. So it's not electrical, it's just a tank with a spring in it basically. And you put it above the house in the backyard where the... You need pressure. Well you get it from the well pump and then the spring keeps it going until it needs to turn on again. So when the pressure goes down a ways then the well pump comes back on, fills it up, the pressure builds up and then you live off of that for a while and then indeed if you're... So it's nice because you don't have to run electricity lying down you can actually put it up by the residents and it means that you can do that so it might be cheaper and easier than what was been suggested by staff. So you know trying a 5 eighth inch could be a reasonable solution. Yeah. Or it might not. Right. But if somebody's using two units and they're paying a hundred dollars a month for that to me that's which is what it would be now it doesn't seem like that's fair. But it could be a 5 eighth inch meter with some other solution. Whether it does it without any kind of pump or tank or I mean I still feel like we need to be consistent with all of our customers. Well if there's no more discussion does anyone want to make a motion? I'm going to make a motion that we deny the variance. Second that. Request the board considered if you deny the variance without prejudice to reapplication because there was some discussion if the 5 eighths doesn't work about potentially reconsidering the issue in the future and your policy prohibits someone from reapplying for a year unless the board makes the motion to that effect. Sure. It's a fine with me. To add to the motion that they could reapply if other solutions don't work. Yes please. Okay. That's fine. We give them an option to try and find a solution. We have a motion and a second. When you do roll call, I guess not. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? I don't think there's a variance here. All right. Okay. So that's that item. So we move on to the consent agenda. Does the board have anything they want to pull from the consent? I'd like to pull production. Production, right. That's 3.4. Anything else? Anyone in the public wish to pull any items? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, I'd like to pull item 3.3 please. 3.3. Anything else? Seeing none. I'll move approval of the remaining consent agenda items. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. So we go to 3.3. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. Thank you for allowing me to pull this item off the consent agenda for better discussion. I would like explanation of the capital edge funds that is $17,500. That's your lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Can you please explain for me and your rate payers what that money bought? That's on page 53 and also on page 51 the $7,000 paid to black and beach for consulting for the city is what I read in there and that's I believe related to the water transfers but I would like to understand what the $7,000 bought and then also please explain the $137,270 expenditure to best best in Krieger. I am very well aware of that litigation but what exactly did that cover and provide for your right rate payers? Thank you. Can I answer the one about capital edge? So I question the whole idea of having somebody in Washington helping us keep track of the opportunities for funding. I mean that's the main reason so that we have an opportunity for funding of our projects that would save our rate payers money and turns out that we did get a $49,000,000 low interest loan from the Federal EPA through our efforts to go to Washington and talk to them several times and so to me the money was well spent that's all. Another thing to add to that is that the Bureau of Reclamation which we also lobbied in Washington DC has yet to respond to our request for some kind of a I think it's highly likely we'll get some loans there. Yeah, or grants Yeah. I think it's been more than worth it's what we spent. Yeah, I was against that too but it's proven to be to save money for our customers. I think we thought that the Federal loan is going to save us something like $11 million for our rate payers. Yeah, approximately $11 million due to the lower interest rate the savings in the $49 million low interest loan equate to about $11 million in grant or free money. It's way over what we spent. It's a good investment. Thousands of times. And then let me ask staff this consulting for city of SE water transfer it's not paying the city it should be for water transfer is that correct? Yeah we're cooperating We'll be invoicing the city for half of that invoice. That's what we've been sharing that It benefits us That's right It's part of the agreement we have with the city to do this transfer experiment and to split the costs for that. That's right. Production reports? Yeah, the next one is 3.4 I just Was there anything else? No. I just love these. Because to me it's a pulse of the district and it shows this one up you can see how our usage has decreased since after the drought it's hard to tell what all those colors are and it also shows that the decrease has been pretty much summertime mainly but it also has been in other months as well and then I saw in December the orange sticks out above the others and I then went to the graph on the page The weather index? Yeah, the index I guess that's you've got it there quicker than I do and that particular year it just was warm so a lot of explanations for how our customers are responding and how our water production responds to the weather but this one I the green on this is the production and the red the kind of the reddish color purplish red color is the weather index changes throughout the year and it changes from year to year a bit too but the green has been dropping and dropping and dropping and that is a testament to our customers who are conserving water Another important factor is if you look at page 80 this is the annual and this past year for the first time in a long time we've actually gone down since 2015 we've been going up, up, up, up, up so that was the rebound we've been talking about and this year for some of these of other effects it's gone down a little bit I think with December's production some of that lower in the periscin is because of our water transfers from one but if you go a little higher on this you can see just the same same image you can see back in 2005 through 2007 it was more than 50% more water usage than there is today I just love these figures I just like talking about them I think the other interesting thing for me to point out because it's all about when we had these water levels right around in here the some of the protective water levels were met but when it was in this range they started dropping again so it started going negative water level, protective water levels went positive, when use went down to here we've dropped them about several wells being not protected and then even around here in this low usage additional wells dropped below protective water levels so this was kind of the crux point in any case that's not enough to restore things no it's not, it's not, it started getting worse right in here another well dropped they respond to many years of rainfall, not just what I'm saying is even though water levels were low here protective water levels became worse right in this area one more well became we have to do more it's hard thing to explain because there's up and down there's a lot of factors but you can tease some out what you point out here is absolutely amazing because this red and green are tracking one for one this disparity is our customers reducing water outdoors plain and simple hot weather and not watering as much they've been reduced it during the winter time as well much more outdoors much more alright so if that's enough we'll move on so this is the time for oral and written communications so anyone can address President Daniels I apologize before we move on could we get a motion to approve the warrants at least cause 3.3 have been pulled I'll make the motion all in favor that's unanimous thank you thanks for watching out for us Josh we've earned your money for the night Colonel Terry Maxwell again again I wish I could just have nothing but praise for the SoCal Water District but I can't I can't for the 40 year history that I've read talk to customers that long I can't for my own observations I realize we've got an issue of water in California we've got a water in this district but you have permitted the Aptos Village to proceed you have permitted a 17 unit hotel to proceed without adequate offsets without adequate you have let Swenson get away with fraud in terms of his reductions at Cabrillo College the Steinbrenner has made that clear those are all instances of poor mismanagement by this board and some of its senior management I applaud the work I have observed of many of your employees they're competent they're conscientious and they really do take seriously producing and delivering water to your customers here I cannot say that about my observations of your senior management I can't say that sadly about my observations of your directors what I can say is you've also abused Miss Steinbrenner through your attorney Mr. Basso I watched judges in this Superior Court of this county and I've talked to people who practice law here for 35 years and they tell me yes we have some judges that are abysmal we have conflicts of interest we have accommodations to Mr. Basso because he helped him become judges in the case of Judge Gallagher he formally represented you guys for 19 or 23 years he had a horrible conflict of interest plus Mr. Basso had been his law partner I watched Judge Gallagher ignore the evidence Miss Steinbrenner presented as a concerned public citizen that you had not complied with the California Environmental Quality Act and related statutory and case law I watched the evidence presented by Mr. McGilvie and Mr. Jerry Paul and elsewhere that Miss Steinbrenner introduced you ignored, Judge Gallagher ignored the evidence he ignored the law and I'm not alone in saying I've seen it happen I watched Gallagher do it a second time I watched Judge Schmall do it a second time and he welcomed Mr. Basso in his courtroom and then he mistreats Miss Steinbrenner with trying to get a sanction on her your agent did that and as a result I presented a written public statement into your record clean up your act be ethical be considerate pure water soquel it should be properly called as many say the poop water soquel you have not considered the alternatives presented had you presented considered the alternatives presented by Mr. McGilvie and Jerry Paul your project couldn't go through and your $59 million grant is arguably theft from the federal taxpayers thank you good morning good evening I'd like to give your clerk here a copy one for each of you a copy of an email that I received last Friday well that was sent to me last Friday by Miss Olin I didn't receive it until today and then also just one copy that I would like I submitted in response to her email just late before coming here but I want to enter it into the record there's only one copy of my response to her communication for each of you the issue regarding this is that I have for over a year been obtaining a hard copy in advance of your board agenda packets so that I could read the material and research things that were of concern to me and I didn't have to ask unnecessary questions I was publicly criticized by Director LeHue when I didn't do that and was ordered to come prepared and to have read the agenda packets if I was going to participate that's what caused me to begin asking Miss Olin for a hard copy and it was provided free of charge today I was really disappointed to go to the office to get the agenda packet in advance and was told I could no longer have that I tried to talk with Mr. Duncan about it and he refused to come out this is a new policy and in reading the email if I want to get a hard copy I have to pay for it this is new policy it seems like it was never discussed publicly with your board it seems like censorship in keeping information away from people who have difficulty like myself reading vast amounts of material on a screen and I cannot afford to pay for this information you have one copy in the back but I can't take it with me I have to sit way in the back and I have difficulty hearing you from the back and thank you for putting the microphones on now I want to bring that to your attention I ask that you discuss it on an agenda item next time I also want to point out to you that on January 1st I received an email blast from Mr. Duncan and it included a lot of information and included in that was personal information of some people who had one person who had emailed Rosemary Menard about the water transfer issues that email was transferred or copied to Taj Dufort and Mr. Duncan included it in this email blast on New Year's Day that included Mr. Robert Lay's personal telephone number that's serious you need to think about this anyone else? thank you so much I'll be rather brief I've watched this monkey business going on for quite a while with your poop water soquel and it doesn't appear that you've paid any attention to the other alternatives I've never seen any record of what you've done of it and what you've done with it you've got a whole lot of money standing here you've spent a whole lot of money already you can get by without wasting the rest of it by taking a hard look at the other alternatives and I think you need to pay a lot more attention to Ms. Steinbunner thank you anyone else? seeing no one I do want to comment about written communications when you're done here so seeing no one else I'll close the public input any directors want to say anything? just I mean it's hard for me to hear somebody say we didn't look at alternatives I'm not sure where they were five years ago when we went through this whole process it was a long public process that's all I want to talk a bit more about that if you look at Chapter 7 of our EIR the very first page of it quotes from the statute that sets up the EIR process and it says that an alternative has to be something you have some control over and both of the alternatives that have been mentioned this is very Paul's as was mentioned he's talking about giving us water from the Loch Lomond that is owned and run by the city they have water rights to it we don't have any rights to it at all therefore it cannot be an alternative for us unless the city were to offer it and the city has never done that and as well the stuff that McGivry does has been mentioned he talks about how much water the city has available in their water rights but again the city won't give us any of that water I mean they've offered 300 acres feet a year for this exploration that we're doing together but otherwise they haven't offered us any additional water and so that's not water we can claim as an alternative because we have no control no access to it and so it's these are not alternatives they never have been they will be I don't know I know that some of these people have appeared before the city's water commission as well as the city council and I know that they also appeared during the wassack process and for some reason the city has never decided nor did wassack ever decided to even take up these as alternatives so the city doesn't consider them alternatives unless the city offers them to us they're not our alternatives so you can complain all you want those are not alternatives so the quiet quiet so we're gonna in the vein of written communication I'd like to share something back in October 15th I believe the board received a letter from some customers that attended an event where they were information was spread and they sent this e-mail here basically saying help explain our rates what about these other alternatives by Scott McGilvery can you explain those and so in the bottom of the letter it says that I offered to meet with them I attended that event and said I'd be glad to explain more about the data the information factual based they said no in the letter and then they ended up taking me up on it and you could go to this correspondence of this agenda item it's a situation I show this because here are some people who had serious questions and they wanted to know about different options they wanted to know about the rates and they did yeah go to 2009 yeah go to there is it in this one and so they did meet with myself water customer service person up front of does billing we sat down I think for at least an hour and went through the information we walked them through the community water plan the different options and they really listened and you can see I call them the champions here here's their e-mail back to us or to me the boards copied you know they're heroes in my mind because so quickly we're people making decisions without the correct information or hear something and run off with it these people didn't do that they took the time we took the time they listened we listen to them we listen to them and then we actually sent Roy site Roy Sykes went out there to follow up not just to listen but to act and so the the last e-mail up here basically says thank you for taking time Roy is helping us save even more water and these people have reduced their water significantly so they're just an example when communication can be properly done and people do take time I think this is can be the result so I just wanted to show that example where we're trying to go when people do have these type of questions about the water supply options and their rates we're trying to take time with them one on one to help them get their bill down thank you for doing that yeah so is there any other director I just have a question about agendas being available in paper copy so are those not available what's the difference between agenda and the board packet the board packet I mean so we can address that over here yeah the board packet we charge a per page fee just like we would for any other other public record it was one of the things that I spoke with about Ron when I when I kind of came on board what I'd say in my experience it's pretty standard to charge a fee for getting a copy of the packet just given all the copy and charges that the district's incurring to provide those and the other alternative ways to access the agenda without charge and so that would include your website as well as the complimentary copies that you provide at the meeting itself but we could if the board would like you can provide complimentary copies to members of the public of the entire agenda packet I mean there's not that many people that want the whole packet but if somebody is having trouble accessing it via computer I still think we ought to have it available I mean I don't know how you guys feel but I mean for the cost of paper somebody really wants to take the time to read it and they can't they're having trouble with whatever computer access then I don't think that's much of a cost for us to make that available I don't know minor yeah so why don't we bring that back yeah let's bring it back I'll make a request we bring that back so a certain number of copies whatever you know just because Ms. Steinbender might not be the only one okay okay so we move on to the management update 5.1 I'll kick that off for the administration customer service field I just wanted to point out the AMI projects moving along we're almost halfway done with the register upgrades metering upgrades and a little bit over halfway done with installing all of the infrastructure that's needed to pick up the reads and we're seeing some really pretty amazing and exciting results as I pointed out here in number 5 we did find one commercial property that was vacant and got a leak alert on that and got out there right away avoiding that water loss for the three weeks that we would have normally seen it go on for with our current metering system that saved about a quarter of an acre foot of water so in one case alone so it's really exciting we're working on our processes and continuing to refine how we respond to leaks and just tracking those and starting to build up kind of our database of water savings so very exciting I'll just add because I'm so excited about it that quarter acre foot at water savings is equal to about what a household would use in a full year just that one leak detection so thank you Shelly, you and your team two households for some households yeah two there's one thing in the report that I am worried about which is the statement with these fixed network this is B2 with these fixed network equipment installation staff is expecting to be able to read most of the news and that concerns me if we're not it's like saying we'll be able to deliver water to most of our customers and I don't like the most I want it to be all not a perfect technology meaning there may be days when a read doesn't come in and it might come in a couple days later and then those reads are averaged over that time period there could be cars parked over meters and that prevents a signal from coming in there's unexplained things that could happen but we're shooting for an overall performance of about 98% and that's what our contract guarantees that's pretty standard with AMI equipment we may have to put in some additional repeaters to help with the signal in some areas so we're continually working to make it better and to be able to pick up as much as we possibly can so we can't do anything about parked cars but if our network is insufficient it requires more repeaters because a couple of percent is like 300 customers not even going to get this that's too much we should strive for something better than that and I did I did like that you're talking with others about the software to get the information out to our customers when they do have an issue and also I think a lot of our customers if the software is sophisticated enough would use that to you know lower their water use yeah so I've talked with people if there was software that showed you know by minute they would get into that level of detail there's nothing else on this section let's go to engineering Mr. Taj hello again I'm going to cover both engineering for Christine Mead but so for our department we, I want to update you there's actually an ours as well as hers there's some news that came about after this was published for the Granite way well we had hoped that on Friday PG&E would do their part and for the second time they let us down that has been rescheduled for February and so it's kind of waiting for them to do their work and this is unfortunate and we voiced our discontent but that well our goal of getting it online is probably pushed by several weeks now for the surface water purchase with the city of Santa Cruz my report as well as Christine's indicated that you know it was opened on December 6 and on January 10 the city asked us to reduce the flow down to 250 gallons a minute based on trying to balance their production needs since then on Friday afternoon they called us and said they had to we had to shut it off completely due to a main break on their north coast line and they expect it to be out for at least two weeks well they anticipate that source it's one of their sources it's for the the majors line that is now not available and they expect that to be out of service for at least a year but they advised us that we needed to turn off the intertide for two weeks the fish migration has changed two weeks ago was because of migration flows and now spawning restrictions are in place so they're basically not taking water from the one north coast source which is LIDEL so that's the update for the surface water situation I had a question about that the percentages that were in the O&M report says the wells are like there was two different things I didn't quite understand the action required the district to turn off turn on for short periods during times of high demand producing approximately 7% of the water supply and then in the next bullet point the wells are now producing approximately 60% of the water supply can you explain what percentages what water supply the part that we're for the sub area sub area one one into two got it just wanted to make sure I was clear that's what you were talking about we are also for Christine's O&M report our crew is getting ready to do some warranty work on the Cornwell tank in the next month or so they've taken necessary action to get it ready to be drained so we'll be doing that and I don't have anything else unless you have questions we had any news about the ammonia investigation contracted we expect Corona environmental to be updating us in the next week yeah they're reviewing all of our past data and water quality so they're doing an alternatives assessment and we'll probably in next meeting or in February maybe the second meeting in February okay thank you for covering Christine yes special projects I'm here if you guys have any questions I think it's really awesome both you and Beck are involved in the water reuse association so good job on that and on so many things I personally just had a question about the public outreach committee meeting just wanted to see my flight doesn't get in that day till 11 so I sent off an email saying I could be there you could be there okay great I didn't hear that you'll substitute for you that's fine well it would only be if the meeting was later in the day I could go but not at 10.30 and let me just clarify Emma did we reschedule the public outreach meeting because I know we did another meeting that was the finance so this will be February 11 10.30 10.30 thank you finance report and I'm happy to answer any additional questions I might have as well we are sending W2's out we should be able to make a decision on a financial advisor hopefully by the end of the month here and then the finance and administrative services committee meeting has been moved one week in the future thank you you're welcome any resources I don't have anything to add unless there's any questions general manager you gotta be super stoked when your HR manager comes to you and goes have you seen the new release water resiliency planned by the state and the governor that was recently released Tracy had looked at it she goes it's amazing we're doing almost everything that they asked for in there and that should be shared I mean that's what you said at one of our meetings I was like okay let me let me look at it and so I did and when you read it I mean the heart of what they're putting forth is recommended actions for the state of California to deal with more extreme droughts and flooding rising temperatures and declining fish populations and aging infrastructure of course most of the central valley doesn't have to deal with seawater intrusion like we do but we are dealing with these other issues in addition to that so our plate is full and as I say we're in alignment with a lot of that they also are always on the hammering water conservation which we lead the effort I think in the state along with Santa Cruz on that and pounding the drum on diversifying water your water supply which we're doing with recycled water and they're recommending that for adaptation to climate change so it's nice to see what this agency is doing is basically the blueprint for what they're recommending where you can so I think we're in good shape there the mid county groundwater agency sustainability plan is being submitted as we talk each day it's being uploaded so thank you to all the directors who helped with that appreciate that and then I was really climate change if you look way back I'm a geologist and geologists by nature look fast on positioning so to speak you know formulate it's like taking the data taking the data and I would Dr. Jaffe would you agree with that I mean we're you know you gotta have data but you know I've been watching the climate change stuff for a long time now and I'm certainly a believer but I was struck at a Santa Cruz meeting where Dr. Jaffe got up and spoke and said it was one of the things that really scares him I think he used the word scare and it's why you're doing what you do well I would say I'm in the same boat now I mean when I opened the recent CalPERS thing they have focused their strategy investment strategy around climate change and so if that doesn't tell you some probably the largest investor I would probably say in the United States and their strategy is taking that to heart there was also an article published in the Sentinel and it was called a fever chart Earth had its hottest decade on record in 2010 and this is by the director of NASA the Goddard Institute of Space Studies pretty much a powerhouse and his quote is there at the bottom if you think you've heard the story before you haven't seen anything yet so again I think we're on the right track by trying to diversify and get a resilient drought proof supply and I feel good about that quick question have others ground on sustainability plans been submitted yet that you know I don't know we're I wouldn't say racing but very proud if we're the first to upload but more importantly we do it right we're going to make it and I think we took a lot of effort I know Dr. Daniels was part of it on a committee to make sure all the people and agencies that had concerns there were well thought out responses provided to them so otherwise we could have loaded that puppy up pretty quickly matter of fact we're helping inform DWR I think where some of their issues are because we are the first thing so Georgina and Cameron are saying hey look this doesn't make sense we're trying to upload so they're correcting their site so it's a little teamwork there might be the first thing speaking of climate change one of the things that scares me and I haven't reported that here before but there's a a science paper that talks about how analysis has changed there's this issue that's always part of this which is CO2 what is the change in temperature it's kind of a fixed number and of course just like sea level rise the more you analyze things you can find well it wasn't quite right the original assumptions about sea level rise assumed that glaciers were like blocks of ice that would just sit there and slowly melt and of course what we're finding is in addition to the melting they're slowing down the slope it's getting much faster and so that starts with anyway for the doubling like 10 years, 10-12 years ago the number was 3.4 degrees centigrade so if you double CO2 the increase of temperature would be 3.4 degrees I think it was 3.4 and then like 5 years ago the number had gone up to 4 point something degrees and it's now like 5.3 degrees so not even taking in the fact that CO2 is going up fast and faster but just the effect of it's doubling the understanding now is that the impact is going to be that much greater so it's which makes it even harder to achieve what they're looking for which is to stop that increase because the system itself is showing that it's increasing faster spooky stuff okay so I think we're done with that we have oral communication on management update thank you, Becky Steinbruner I am happy that that huge leak got caught early, good work I have some questions about the operations and engineering report I did note because I go by it every day that at the granite way well there's an antenna put up and I'm wondering if that what is the purpose of that antenna and when will that be operational I've never received any response from staff or the board regarding my communication and the aesthetics of the granite way well jail I'm going to call it a jail looks like a jail and the pictures that were put up you see what it looks like that is not what the people were told that would look like back in 2015 when the project plans changed and the well was put over there on the corner that was not at all what we were told I really would like something different there a lot of people would like something different there I understand you need the security but it's quite offensive aesthetically and at least I would like a response to my message to your board and staff regarding that I'm wondering when you might begin updating your urban water management plan which is due to be updated this year and I'm eagerly looking forward to that and I know that you will work hard and diligently on it I attended in Paso Robos on January 8th a Sigma workshop put on by the department of water resources and it was excellent I didn't see anybody there I knew from here but I really was glad to go and what I want you to know is that the laws have changed for water rights temporary water rights can now be applied for and this district meets all of the requirements under water law 1425 to do so and you were given that information in 2016 I believe from Best Best and Krieger a legal review of your water rights so I would like to request that you ask staff to investigate that what would be the possibility temporary water rights now have been expanded to five years worth of ability to take water and the fees have been reduced the process has been streamlined and the way that you calculate whether how much water there is has also been changed to be averaged out over a 30 year period so I ask you to look into this to help augment your water policy thank you anyone else actually I'd like to respond I'll go ahead go ahead so in terms of aesthetics there's probably everyone has a different idea what's beautiful but there's probably some similarities but I'd like to request that we do agendize at a future meeting just you know if there's any any eyesores with our facilities and we can discuss that at that point one more than that if there's any anything else that might I mean we want to be good neighbors absolutely beyond Granite Way well okay Colonel Maxwell I endorse Miss Steinbrenner's apt and erudite comments again and I agree you've failed to look at your temporary water options and five years would let you maybe delay and the unnecessary pure water soak hell project for another five years or 60 months at least I'm disappointed you haven't looked into the water alternatives she's made reference to I'm disappointed you haven't implemented best Krieger's memoranda apparently that you paid an arm and a leg of your ratepayers money for so please look into that otherwise your failure to do so and I'll just say we follow all that people who go to a meeting and think they learn something and that's great but this is what we do for a living we stay on top of that and of course there is the issue that if we were to apply for the water right the river is pretty much fully allocated we could apply for a water right on soak hell and we have talked about that that was a project back ten years ago or something or more and we could apply for that and that's a possibility but of course to do any application you need first to do an EIR the city is currently doing an EIR for their application and we'd probably get sued by somebody who doesn't like EIRs and that would cost us you know hundreds of thousands of dollars yet again so I'm not a fan of that so alright let's go on to 5.2 district council thanks I wanted to just give an update from our discussion at the last meeting where the board had asked that I kind of look into your ability to regulate slanderous and abusive comments during public comment and so the general rule is that just because a public comment is slanderous or abusive or incorrect or even profane does not mean that we can prohibit it there's actually been pretty substantial case law looking into this and what the case law has said is that a public commenter needs to be disruptive essentially for them to sort of cross the line and if they do cross that line we can ask the commenter to leave the room and in absolute worst cases we can actually require everyone to leave the room with the exception of media that's not participating in the disruption did want to note though that is just our ability to stop someone from speaking at the dais it does not mean that the person who is making slanderous comments isn't potentially liable to the person who's the victim of those comments to bring a slander claim in civil court and then beyond that of course just because we don't as staff or the board don't respond to a comment immediately it doesn't mean of course that we agree with the tenor or substance of the comment it's just really part of the brown axe process where we accept that the comments are made we potentially can respond but even if we don't respond it doesn't mean that we're agreeing with what's being said I'd be happy to answer any questions the board has any questions we talked about also whether or not it's if somebody is making comments on multiple items I want to encourage that it takes a lot of the time of the meeting so you mentioned there might be agencies that allow a certain amount of time for the first comment and then let your amounts correct and there's other agencies that will dedicate on specifically contentious items a certain amount of time that's split among those wishing to speak or more times on certain topics and others and if the board is interested in exploring those options we can certainly agendize a discussion for a future meeting I'd like to so we have a plan and one thing I've heard is that the county supervisors meetings has changed their parliamentary procedure in just that way they've I think decided that your consent agenda you can speak on the whole consent agenda once and you have your three minutes but you can't speak on each individual item so yes so that's another way to deal with these kind of things right and the city actually doesn't allow the public to pull consent agenda items they require that a council member do that so somebody communicates with a council member I don't know that we need to do that but those are possibilities okay alrighty any comment on the district council report seeing none we don't have any conditional or unconditional will serves that's 6.1 so we go to 6.2 which is a received 2019 year in review yeah so 2019 was a pretty darn good year for Soquel Creek Water District I'm just hoping maybe slide show well written article in the Times that also covered these same yeah and you know tell you the truth even though my name is pinned to that memo I took a lot from the article that Melanie and Becca wrote so credit where credits do and with being handed out to you it's just a little token of staff's appreciation it's a candle with salt in it so somehow we felt that was right you can burn away the salt maybe can you take the salt out of the candle take the salt out of the candle we're trying to take the salt out of the water but going to the first slide I'll start in 2018 don't criticize me for it please it really did propel us and launch us into 2019 and if you remember back in late December this was a title that came out and that first paragraph Shelly can you read that of this article I remember seeing that it really kind of set the stage you're making it smaller maybe I can read it do you want me to read it up there yeah if you can that'd be awesome there are public opinions so don't be quiet districts pursue the treated water nearly out of the ballpark yeah and they said that because of all the people coming I think there were like 30 or 40 people in the crowd that night speaking in favor of the project the thing that really struck me the next morning was the environmental project and I guess you could say I'm probably an environmentalist at heart and we hadn't thought about the project that way even though it's a recycle project this is all about pure water soquel and this was you know somebody else saying that and that's the way they branded it so it really kind of changed my thinking of that it made me realize that so anyway with that we had a nice launch into 2019 which what are we doing here this one shows on ctv so you see all of them oh okay so you want to pull this up can you you mind sitting here and helping with this I can stand you just run that that's a great launch but you can't do something like this and what we do without complete dedication up and down the line from customers to the board and we'll start with the board I don't think many people realize what y'all do up there so 19 board meetings 12 district committee meetings 6 mid county ground water agency meetings 6 sustainability plan some of those were long 10 Santa Cruz Lafco meetings zone 5 meetings 19 meetings to set the agenda one trip to Sacramento one trip to Washington DC both those yielding great dividends on investment 5 educational conferences countless community events so day in day out I mean look at that look at the days involved there so our appreciation for that however I think we need to go to the next slide that's where that's the guiding star you guys are the guiding star but it doesn't get done without a robust that's fully engaged and that's why in 2019 we were so stoked to receive one of the top workplace awards and in the Bay Area I mean this is kind of in my mind one of the the jewels that you go after because it talks to staff engagement which is really the key in our minds to high performing organizations so next slide please and so here are a couple pictures we're putting in a water line I assume up top there but we're not all work we're some play there are people in their October 31st uniforms on the lower left some participation on the right so we're not all work we do have fun next slide please and then here just more you know like I said staff engagement is the key and so why we do do work we try to make it fun you can see the slide on the left there and just smiles on people's faces outreach on the left with our customers outreach events on the right just staff working but also enjoying themselves and if we can get that combo right we'll do wonderful things next slide please so we had four new hires on your left we still Nick from Scots Valley I believe and thank you Perrette he's a wonderful addition Greg came to us from the private sector with quite the analytical background super stoked to get him Skyler he's a where are you from Cal Poly but also attended the Brinn school in Santa Barbara and then has some experience in construction and environmental projects he's a super asset and then we rounded out recently was just an amazing individual Eric he comes to us really wanting to enter the water industry and as a veteran serving on our behalf overseas so quite the new additions there and they're just fitting in wonderfully along with those hires though we had some people leave KC took off after mere 30 something years I believe John put in over 10 is that right Tracy give me the 35 okay it's hard to keep track I can't even count that high Bob 50 right and then we also have new additions there's Alyssa she's on maternity leave right now and that's a wonderful thing and then there's her newborn quite the precious child so it is about the people to make it get it done and this is what we're trying to get done you know it's about having a reliable safe sustainable water supply for now in the future and we don't have that right now and I know that's what some of the board members have been on the board for over 15 years approaching 20 trying to make that happen and and and we're doing that and with that in mind you know the community water plan as a plan by the community for the community and it really has four strong components water conservation is core so core we almost don't even talk about it because it's just part of us now this however stormwater recharge and that's a while it's a small component of our portfolio it may be help long long-term and the board committed to that and here is some work being done to help identify some sites where we might be able to take some stormwater and of course we all know it has multiple benefits of reducing some flooding and maybe some water quality resolutions and of course you heard about water transfers tonight while they're not going quite as well as we had hoped right now we do believe they'll have a position in our long-term long-term portfolio and here's some pictures of the valve and the piping that actually connects Soquel to Santa Cruz and we can send water each way so we're excited about that and our partnership with the city of Santa Cruz is just awesome and their jars below are water quality paramount I'll say it every time and this was jar testing of the mixing of the waters turned out to look okay at this state in the game which is great but we'll continue to do that and never let up on the gas pedal making sure we're providing only the highest quality water next one kind of the main driver in our portfolio resilience is pure water Soquel and we've made tremendous grounds on all front on that but I think this picture to me summed up the collaboration there are all kinds of people in here from state water boards city of Santa Cruz friends of the river customers state water board themselves members up there and this is upon the granting of the board approving the 50 million dollar grant for the pure water Soquel project that was years in the making my hat goes off to Melanie here she it couldn't have been done without her it took a team but she was the driver this is in addition to the 50 they also had to add a special addition to the memo to up for 36 million dollar low interest loan so $86 million approved by the state water board and one fell swoop to the to Soquel Creek water districts that's to our customers and it's not just the money is the belief and the support in the project and that we're going the right way they know our problem they understand our problem they say we're a smaller agency with a huge problem so that's our community water plan and the way we're going about it solving the water shortage issue and seawater intrusion customers are paramount and on the left you're seeing the on the right is a meter the older meters were replacing with the meters on the left this is the automated meter infrastructure we had about half of that done in 2019 it's exciting to see what's going to happen in 2020 on that front shelly but really that's a customer service device that's where people are going to be able to look at their phones and know I'm out of bounds or I'm approaching a certain tier that sort of thing so again we're stoked about that and in 2019 besides having rates approved through a long process that was a year or longer building up to it and then approved in early 2019 we got the financial awards again this is just one example build in the little quarter 2019 on the lower left but it's coming along with a couple other awards so our financial department you know they don't say a lot but they're back there and they're solid as a rock and we so appreciate that that we can count them on that in that way again we would be nothing if we didn't keep our infrastructure strong and so here's some pictures of just day in day out work being done you can see the long pipeline cut in the road there cruise all sorts of things going on in this picture so infrastructure will always be kind of really the backbone of what we have to keep going you know the state overall or the nation has a D plus in infrastructure which I think we're better in that but we need to be even better than we are agencies across the state and the United States are now realizing they're at that inflection point where they have to invest large sums of money to catch up we believe in transparency at its core we were the first in the county to receive this transparency award it was great to see the water department one of the fire departments just got their first one recently I think we've done this for three or four years Melanie and there's the California Special District Association Rep given the award to the board so we'll continue along those lines as we always have and I think you know it wouldn't be fair we wouldn't feel right without bringing Vi up in 2019 hopefully not the memory but the pain of all that will ease in 2020 and there she is in all her glory with that groundwater model that I fell in love with when I first came here after studying hydrology I was like why didn't they have that in graduate school I would have understood that better than the computer models we used there she is with the wheel of fortune up top and that gracious smile that she had there so last slide so you know it's been we've talked about the accomplishments and it's been a wonderful year this kind of stuff that we're doing here at Soquel Creek Water District just does not get done without the support and involvement of customers all our customers out there whether they agree or disagree at least are talking to us the partners whether it's the county the city of Santa Cruz public works in the county water departments around the mid county groundwater agency various community members who are on our standing committees that sort of thing who continue to value our groundwater resources and want to work with us to continue to provide this and then one more slide so while 2019 was good I'm really looking for 2020 I think it's going to be even better big things coming and I'm excited thank you and thanks again for all the not just the board staff but all the management team tireless hours I mean sometimes I'll leave late and you know I'll see lights on there was a while there where I don't think I was suspicious whether Leslie had a cot in there was staying overnight we're going to charge her rent if she was too many nights too many nights in a row all the team I could go down Taj his regular is to put in long days Melanie of course we know she's a powerhouse Christine Shelley I don't want to forget anybody but the whole team you've got an incredible management team that is not just educated and smart but they care they love what they're doing it's a great product so thanks to all of y'all any public comment on this agenda item seeing none 6.3 adopt resolutions for the seawater intrusion control fund so as Ron mentioned in his presentation the state water resources control board has awarded us a $36 million low interest loan through the seawater intrusion control fund and in order to get this underway we need to have a couple of funding authorized by the board one is the reimbursement resolution that sets out the terms of how we will submit our invoices for loan reimbursement and then the other one is the authorizing resolution giving the general manager or his designee the authority to work with the state board on funding issues thanks for putting these together any questions are these standard these are standard you'll probably these are standard for the SRF loans I don't know if that's one that we'll go after or not but it's a standard resolution and the interest rate is it's really low right? I believe it's 1.3 is that change with conditions not for the seawater intrusion control fund loan they locked in the interest rate at the time they awarded the funds in November yeah that's different from WIFIA WIFIA hasn't locked in our rate yet until we close fantastic any other questions well I'll make the motion we approve these two oh yeah public comment thank you and thank you director lehu for reminding him for public comment the duration of this loan I believe is 20 years if that could be clarified I would appreciate that and also this is a big debt for your rate payers how will how will this impact any future rate changes that I know you are looking at to possibly reduce your scheduled 9% per year rate increases for the next three years and again there is the legal cloud hanging over on this issue thank you I think these resolutions should probably be by roll call okay I move we adopt these two second roll call please director lehu yes vice president leader yes director jaffee yes and president daniels yes so that passes unanimously we go to item 6.4 consider approval of contract amendment for professional I made the motion for both of them yep consider approval of contract amendment for professional legal services related to pure water soquel program yes go ahead well I was just going to say that you know we had a legal challenge by a pro per noncustomer and that the judge ruled on january 17th file on november 15th the hearing of the merits of the trial court initiative 17 page order denying in full the petition to read a mandate from the pro per now attachment 1 shows that court ruling we feel it's a it ruled in favor of the district on all elements of the legal challenge brought against the district judge small wrote a 17 page point-by-point decision which denied the petitioner request on read a mandate on all accounts so note most significantly though what it did for us is it it upheld the validity of the district CIR and gave us even more comfort that we had done it the right way and on another upside it kind of brought us together it made us stronger so not only do we have a party judge who had experience in some hydrology studied under a phd hydrologist I think he said and he interned under environmental judge listen to the case considered it and then wrote this 17 page order and like I said we had more confidence even though we thought we had done it right now third party verification and has brought us together closer as a team on the downside it's costing our customers because the petitioner is appealing it and this alone to defend this appropriately to the benefit of our customers it's in the memo I forget the exact as much as 175,000 now that's to defend the the $440,000 to defend the EIR when the lawyer who has about I think 30 years of experience normally would cost $175,000 and if you look at that middle paragraph you can see why it costs more than normal it says here there was an enormous number of pleadings and other documents filed by the petitioner 11 hearings and they required extensive responses written responses and court appearances this included five ex parte applications multiple case management hearings and two judicial motions a motion to vacate a case order and it goes on I won't read them all but lawyer for BBK said this was probably the most unusual she had seen in her 30 years and that stated in the attachment to this so what that brings us to is the appeal and what we're asking for tonight is even though an appeal would normally cost I think they said around $75,000 to defend against because of the previous patterns demonstrated by the petitioner we're asking for the board to prove up to $175,000 to appropriately defend the ongoing proceedings for the public and the environment it may come in less than that it may come in more we'll see but this is what we're requesting tonight and for the to allocate and approve an allocation from the operating contingency reserve okay questions questions okay public comment please thank you I am the petitioner and now the appellant and I am taking proper action because I care and because I am not alone in the feelings that there are big problems with this project it is unnecessary it is expensive and the EIR was deficient I took it pro-per because I couldn't raise $100,000 to pay an attorney I've learned a lot but I have taken this action for public benefit I myself am not a customer but it is the same aquifer that serves my water company and it is the community that I love and care about that this water would affect it is the community that I care about that depends on this aquifer that this project would inject problematic water into there are many studies coming out regarding antibiotic resistant DNA being found in Orch County in the aquifers the reason I took so many actions was because the judge should have disqualified himself but would not I had to disqualify Judge Burdick that won and only seek a judge in this county not because I didn't like what he said which is what Miss Ouellette claimed it was because I had previous legal experience with him and I knew him that he could not act impartially with anything that I had to do it was the Aptos Village Project case that's why I had to disqualify him and that's why I wanted to get that case out of this county to Sacramento where there are four CEQA judges that could review it now your attorney from Best Best and Krieger classified it as a limited civil case you know better than that I didn't until finally in January Judge Volkman the presiding judge over the appellate division which by definition a limited civil case when it's appealed stays in this county and goes to the appellate division he finally said hey this isn't a limited case how come those judges didn't those experienced judges didn't see it before how come your attorney from Riverside classified it as a limited case it isn't by definition all CEQA cases are unlimited because they are complex so that is why it's being transferred and that's why I had to take so many actions because Judge Gallagher would not have recused himself even though he had done so voluntarily and thank you anyone else seeing no one bring it back to the board I will make both motions I'll second but I would like to make a comment just this DNA resistant bacteria I've done some research on it it's not for this level of purification it's for a much lower level of recycled water so I just wanted to correct that thank you for clarifying there is no way for even a virus to get through a reverse osmosis membrane it's a huge molecule and it has to be less than 150 molecular units it's fear mongering it is or just complete ignoring reality but once I heard that that claim I did do the research thank you because I think that's part of what we're here for to protect the of course that's why we've been so diligent about going to look at these and studying them if I may it's all waters I think that's what many people fell to understand I mean Orange County if anything that's scaring them right now are the PFAs that are an issue and that's in their groundwater that's nothing to do with recycle water recycle water is actually helping they just stated that so yeah it's all waters we need to remain diligent upon whether it's you know for our customers so remain in motion and second on this yes okay roll call please do we need to roll call this or no I guess we don't one favor no pose nobody okay that unanimous so we now we're going to go to a closed session with our legal counsel anyone wish to comment on this yes I do thank you Becky Steinbruner the appellant you don't have to turn your back on me chairman Daniels the reason I'm appealing is because I was barred from making many arguments during the hearing on the case on the merits because judge small denied my ability to amend my petition judge small denied my ability to get the case out of the county judge small denied my ability to get a continuance to try to get information that had been three times postponed from department of water resources regarding information I requested during with the public records act request that I needed for my argument in court and ultimately judge small denied the petition for writ of mandate during the hearing there were many arguments that I made but your counsel argued that I could not bring them up because I had not they were not in my petition I had not been allowed to correct or amend my petition by the judge's denial that very morning same morning so the reason I'm appealing is because I need to do that and I have many people in the community to move forward with this and most are very glad that it was finally recognized that it should go to 6th district 6th circuit court of appeals where I hope I will have a better chance of getting it before a judge familiar and experienced with environmental law none of the judges that have heard this case to date have that experience saying that you have helped out an environmental professor in graduate school 40 years ago when Sequa was just very nascent in my book make you an experienced Sequa judge and that is what judge small said and I'm not casting dispersions on the fairness of the judges what I am saying is that Sequa law and interpretation of it is very complex and to be fair to all parties it really commands that the material go before a judge who is familiar and seasoned especially with water law and that's what I'm seeking so I don't anticipate having to take many many actions there was only really one case time's up thank you anyone else see no one bring it back to the closed session which we'll start now