 Now it says it's recording. Okay. I was able to get it set up on a different computer. So we're fine. Thank you. That makes me feel more secure. Okay. This is the time for oral communications from members of the public. On topics that are not on tonight's agenda, but are within the purview of the district. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody like to address. The board, it looks like Alina has her hand up. So let's allow her to speak. Alina Lang. There we go. Yep. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. I just wanted to bring up my concerns about the full creed. Fish ladder to the board. A year and a half ago on the environmental committee, we had a discussion about the plan. We had a lot of discussions about the plan. And I just asked about the passage of the passage and the message I received at that time, or at least the way that I understood it. Yes, that was the plan. When I touched based again on it, when that topic came up at a recent committee, meaning I learned that was actually not the case at all. And I'm being told that it's too late to do anything. And I still disagree that it's too late to do anything because my understanding from if I'm understanding the drawings correctly, I'm not an engineer, such a manner that great sharp 90 degree angle that the lamp rays lose suction on. And I also just want to highlight why it's so important that we have biologists contributing on these types of things. Because if they had input on this type of project, we could have ended up with a more inclusive fish ladder that wouldn't have cost the district any money and would have been more beneficial to our public and the community and the fisheries around. So that's all I had to say. Thank you. OK. Rick, did you have a quick response to that? I don't believe there is a quick response. We have discussed this internally, and we have discussed with our design engineers. Carly, do you have a quick response? Carly has been communicating on this issue. Yeah, I think, Rick, like you said, there's not necessarily a quick response. I think we are planning to touch more on this, and Lena, at our next engineering and environmental committee meeting, we're going to discuss the Fall Creek Fish Ladder Project. And we'll probably go into this quite a bit more. I do have some updates for you as well, so maybe we can touch base separately. OK, I just have a really simple question. When they've done the surveys, have they found lamprey in Fall Creek? Yes. That's interesting. So they actually just did some of the fish relocation at the start of the project. And they did find lamprey in the ladder. So, Lena, that's something that we can talk about. But yeah, so they are present. And they are able to get over the ladder at its current configuration, because we are seeing them above it. But yeah. That's good. OK. OK. Thank you. Jamie, did you have a quick question? Yeah, quickly. I just wanted to know when the fish ladder might be coming back to the board for an update just so that the rest of us who are not on the environmental and engineering committee can hear more about what the answer is, or perhaps maybe there's going to be a written update or response to this. But I'm curious to know what the longer answer is when it's available. OK, I was planning to give just a very short on the fish ladder itself in the manager's report tonight, but not on that particular subject. But yes, we will get back to you on that. OK. So maybe in a subsequent district manager's report, we can hear about that. But he's not prepared to do it tonight. So let's move on. Thank you, Alina. There is no president's report, so we will move on to unfinished business, which is the remote meeting authorization under AB 381. And so can I get a motion? Excuse me. There's somebody right outside my window with a blower. I will move the recommendation to, I'm sorry, I'm just pulling it up right now. The resolution. I'm sorry, I will move the resolution to proclaim an ongoing state of local emergency and authorize remote meetings for another 30 days during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'll second. Second. OK, Holly, would you take a vote, please? There may be a hood could we get. There may not be any public comment, but I just need to make sure. Is there any public comment on this motion? I don't see any, but I do see Bob Fultz has his hand up, so. Just a quick question. Do we have any sense of how much longer this will be allowed? Gina, did you want to address that? I don't have a sense. I believe the law allows it potentially to continue through the end of 2023. I don't have any other update except to say that it could change at any time that the governor could withdraw the proclamation of statewide state of emergency, which would undermine the findings for the resolution. And we wouldn't be able to continue to do this. OK. Any other discussion of the resolution? Then if not, and I don't see any hands up in the public, so go ahead, Holly, would you take a roll call vote, please? President Mayhood. Hi. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. OK, it passes. So we go to our first item of new business, which is the cross country pipeline construction peer review proposal. Sure, Mayhood. The district engineer, Josh Wolf, will present this item. And the environmental planner and myself may chime in. Josh. Thanks, Rick. Good evening, everyone. This item is a request that the board authorize a peer review of the previously accepted cross country pipeline constructability study that was completed by Freire and Loretta in the engineering committee and in individual discussions within the district. We have determined that peer review of that report, of that study, is necessary prior to engaging in any kind of project of that scope. This is that peer review. We have approached specifically John Kasunich, who with the aid of Mark Fox and Tim Best, are, well, they're the best around when it comes to geotechnical and geological work within the San Lorenzo Valley and specifically on Ben Lohman Mountain. John Kasunich, for example, was the geotech on the original construction of the cross country pipelines. So there's nobody out there better suited to review the constructability report, the study, and to provide a professional opinion on the report. I will carefully take questions. Rick, did you want to add anything, or should we go? Part of the request tonight is the board to also waive formal bidding procedures. Staff did go out and seek a Harold Kasunich consulting firm out because we wanted these three individuals to perform this peer review, as these are the experts in the field in Santa Cruz County for the Ben Lohman Mountain. So we did not perform the normal formal bidding. So we're asking the board also, as part of tonight, to approve the waiver of formal bidding procedures and to award. OK. Jamie, would you like to start with any questions? Well, actually, it sounds like there has been some conversation about this at the Environmental and Engineering Committee. And there was a reference to one-on-one conversation. So I'd really like to hear more about what those conversations were before I comment. So perhaps Mark or Bob can share what the discussion was about level. Mark, did you want to comment on that, or? Certainly. The Engineering and Environmental Committee did discuss the aspects of a peer review and concurred that, yes, we should do that. However, we did not review this proposal from HKA at the committee level. So this is the first time that Bob is seeing it also. And at the same time, it was the rest of the board. So with that, did I address your question, Jamie? You did. Sorry, there was a person coming into the room behind me and asking me questions that I was trying to wave off. But yes, you did. So I was feeling like this was new to me that we were seeking this peer review. And I didn't know if it had been an ongoing discussion at the committee level. So I guess I appreciate the extra caution of seeking a peer review to confirm the project proposal and estimates that we were given. And I'm just wondering how this dovetails with our other discussions around the public outreach communications and engaging with the community on this issue that we've talked about. Jamie, as part of the peer review, there will be two presentations on the peer review. One will be at the Engineering Committee from Heroku Student Associates. And then the second will be a presentation to the full board at a board meeting, public meeting. So there will be two presentations to honor findings of the peer review. And I think we also talked about moving ahead to the peer review when the full board reviewed the constructability study as what would be our next steps. And so we are moving. We're trying to move relatively quickly so we can hopefully get the peer review done and then move straight into the environmental process, whether we do an environmental peer review, depending on what peer review of construction looks like. So we can start the EIR process. Once the board determines the project. Could I just, Chair Mayhut, ask a follow-up question? Go ahead. So I understand that this is part of the process that we identified as a board, but I guess I was feeling like I wanted to make sure I understood the phasing of this process because I was also under the impression that we were going to be pretty quickly moving towards having those more public dialogues about what the project entails. And so in terms of the timeline for this, are we expecting that we'll go through this peer review process into the fall? And then after that, we'll be looking at having some public meetings around discussions about the process, or is that going to be further into the environmental process? And I just assumed that it was going to be more quickly that we would get to that phase of the discussion. Did the short answer answer your question would be yes. As soon as the peer review was completed, we would move ahead into a more public process. I think Mark wants to comment. Go ahead, Mark. Yes, to address that public review aspects, we currently have what I feel are fairly well-defined cost estimate for the alternative number 3B, which is bury HDPE pipe in the ground. In discussions with REC and other staff, we're contemplating more along the lines of what Josh has outlined in the memo and identified as a middle ground option, which is a very narrow bench, still some bury pipe where we can in other places covering pipe. But what we don't have are any kind of cost ranges for that middle ground option. Right now, the only cost that we have to be able to put out in front of the public is this $60 million number or slightly less than that based on what we have from our fair and the rest. So this is part of what the peer review is seeking is for us to be able to have a more defined, not only scope, but also cost so we can discuss sort of two ends of the spectrum with the public on. Rick, did I capture? Yes, thank you. I think you did because right now too, what we had to roll out to the public would be the 62 or $60 million project, which is it is a considerable large project. And hopefully that project can be scaled back. And when we roll it out, we don't have this sticker shock on price and we don't have this environmental issues when we roll it out. So we still don't have the final project defined. And I think after the peer review, I think the board will be able to be comfortable on selecting and working with staff and the engineering committee on selecting a project to move ahead. And then we roll out, hopefully we have our new outreach team on contract and we roll out a series of meetings, workshops with the general public and the board to educate what we're doing moving forward. Jeff, did you have a follow-up? So before Mark spoke, I was going to address basically the same issue that this one, so looking at the hybrid part-barried and part-on-the-surface, which I think is an excellent idea. Jeff, you're cutting out a little bit. I'll play it also. Well, I'm sorry, I also think this is valuable. You might want to shut off your video for a second so that maybe if you've got a bandwidth that you at least we can hear you. See if I can do that here. Yeah, we're not hearing anything. There's not video, okay. Is this any better? Ralph keep talking and we'll find out. Okay, so in addition to agreeing with Mark on that, I think that whatever price we come up with is going to be some degree of sticker shock. And if we have a second set of eyes look at this and say, yes indeed, the first numbers were not that far off or they say, well, the first numbers were too high and we think this is a much more realistic price, we're much better off going to the public with two opinions to give us a range of costs there than we are to go with one very high price cost that's absolutely going to give a sticker shock. It gave all of us sticker shocks. So I would expect it would give everyone else that sort of thing. I guess I would just like to follow up and say that when I read the memo that Josh wrote along with this, it strikes me that this is not a request for peer review of the previous study in the sense that it strikes me that the decision has largely been made. We haven't maybe voted on it, but there's a lot of consensus about our concerns about the environmental aspects of 18 foot bench. There's the cost, there's the concerns about Rick worries about torrential rain, I worry about triggering landslides. So I guess what I want to make sure is that we're not spending $60,000 and what we're really looking for here is not a peer review of what the previous people did, but basically a careful assessment of the alternative that sounds like everybody's kind of coming toward and so if somebody could address that for me why we're calling it peer review is this because this is what FEMA expects or because it sounds like not only have we made our mind but sounds like so have these consultants. So it doesn't strike me as a peer review of a previous study. I'll start, then I'll ask Josh to kick in. I think we are, I believe we are asking for peer review of the F and L constructability report but I think those consultants as looking and they were, this was the first time they looked at the constructability of this project. They looked at it way back when we first went out for the RFP on constructability they were reviewing it but they're looking at that project and they're trying to come back with a I think a scale back project as part of their peer review. We won't know what they're going to propose until we see the report. And I, from working with those folks and from them working in the Benlyman Mountain I think that they're looking for a more, a lesser footprint than the 14 foot or the 12 foot pipe bench or the amount of trees. I think they're looking for something as the pipe was done originally but also following what F and L put out of either bearing or covering the pipeline. So I think we need to give Kusunich a chance to do the peer review but I think they're definitely going to have some thoughts on how to move this project forward. And I'll ask Josh because he actually met with the group. All right, so we're actually looking for or requesting here what I think of as peer review plus we're looking for a traditional peer review in that we would like to have an additional set of professional eyes look at F and L's methodologies F and L's sources and F and L's conclusions. That said, we are quite happy and we as staff are happy with the F and L study but we feel like there's on a project of scope there's a need to review that. So this is the peer review portion. The remainder of the middle ground option as I described it came organically out of the conversations that I had with specifically Mark Fox and John Kusunich when we were discussing the peer review and the project and the idea of this kind of middle ground option which is very similar to some things that staff had been batting around initially but didn't seem particularly feasible came up. And some of the things that had caused staff to consider this to be less feasible are things that the inclusion of Tim Best can address based on his specialization in trails in Wildwood. So kind of to recap all that we want the peer review and we want a very traditional review of another professionals work. But in addition, we have asked the subject matter experts is there anything that maybe F and L didn't see? And that's where this middle ground option discussion came from. Okay, let's see, we haven't heard from Bob yet. So go ahead, Bob. Thanks, a number of points. Jamie, just to be clear I hadn't had any one-on-one conversations or group conversations about this topic outside of what Mark talked about either. I had the same reaction that Gail had, which is and maybe just to take it one step further did we go back to F and L and ask them to examine this as an option by doing another extension on their existing contract and then when that was completed to have a peer review of the entire thing. What was that considered as a possibility? I guess I'd like to give F and L the opportunity to look at it unless we think that there's no way they would consider that but the only thing they think is that we should be building 14 foot wide benches on the mountain which I'm absolutely not happy about. Any reaction on that? Did we ask them? Yes, I would cheerfully react to that. No, we did not ask them to expand their report to include an option similar to this. However, in the early discussions with F and L while they were developing options this idea had come up and F and L had discarded it and I believe that it had largely been discarded based on the idea that if we're going to be up there cutting trails anyway let's use bigger equipment, more efficient equipment. Yes, that's going to require a wider bench but it's going to be faster and safer to do it that way. All right, so basically we think they rejected it. I mean, the reason just to let everybody know to recap Mark and I went on a tour with James and Josh and I believe he walked about half the divine trail and it's real clear there's a bench there already that's about five to six feet wide that was cut in before and that bench had slid out in some areas but for the most part it was still there. And I know my reaction was when I saw that is why don't we just use that bench or something similar to it? So if F and L doesn't want to look at that then okay, I guess we can maybe do something different. I had a couple other questions but I wanted to let Jeff and Jamie get in and then we can come back on those. We're not specific on this. Okay, Jamie. I just wanted to sort of in terms of how we think about this discussion as we go forward in public my one concern is I'm all for continuing to investigate what may be a preferred option. And I agree, Chair Mayhood, it sounds like there's reasons for us to consider this but my view of that public outreach process that we had talked about was that we would not have a predetermined outcome in mind that we would bring it to the public and sort of identify here or all of the options that we have looked at and the reasons that we may prefer this one but we wanna have a public dialogue before we make a final determination. So I guess I wanna be cautious about sounding like we are all making a decision about the preferred alternative at the outset of this process, if it is our goal to have this public outreach process around what the final selection is. Jeff. Yes, I think thinking of public outreach and public meetings and people discussing this that haven't seen it before. I cannot imagine that we would not have someone in the audience say, well, why not just bury part of it where it needs to be buried and not bury any other parts? And that's kind of what this middle ground proposal is. And so I think at the very least we need to be we'll need to be prepared to address that when we do a public outreach. So to me, this makes perfect sense to add this into this project, especially considering what we've heard about how interested the previous consultants weren't in pursuing this. So I know we're gonna get asked. Chair, may I correct a couple of misapprehensions that seem to occur? Yes, you may. Go ahead, Josh. So initially the option 3B, the number 12 and number 14 in terms of feet of width has come up several times. Option 3B does not call for a bench of that width. It calls for a bench of approximately eight feet in width with intermittent widening for staging purposes to 12 to 14 feet. Not a huge difference, but I'm an engineer. The numbers matter. And then this middle ground option does not propose to put pipe unburied on the mountain. It hasn't proposed anything yet. It's still to be evaluated, but the discussion involved portions of the pipe being trenched into a narrower bench and other portions being laid on the bench and then covered. The idea being that with HDB pipe, either you cover it all or you don't cover any because once it starts melting, it's emitting VOCs and then we have to replace it all anyway. So thank you for indulging. Okay, Mark. Yes, I have a number of questions on the memo and the proposal from HKA that I'd like to go through first. On page 10 of the agenda, which is Josh's memo, the statement at the bottom of the page, HKA will include a review of option one from the report. And option one or alternative one in the report is replacement of the pipe in kind, but with the same width of bench that Farron Loretta was proposing for option 3B, that wide bench, eight in most areas, 12 to 14 in others. What do we get from HKA reviewing that option one since from the discussions that I believe we've had from what I've heard from Rick and Josh is that doesn't get us anywhere because it's not enough of a reduction in costs. So why have HKA spend further time on that specifically the review of that option one aspects? Josh, would you like to answer the question? Certainly the purpose of having HKA review alternative one or option one from the original study is to look at the assumption that, largely to look at the assumption that FNL made that the wider bench was required in order to put the pipe down. If it is possible to do so using a narrower bench, which in the past it was, we don't know currently based on modern OSHA requirements and safety standards that that can be done again, but that needs to be looked at. And that is one of the assumptions of one of the methodologies that would be reviewed. Okay. On page 11 of your memo, Josh, or page 11 of the agenda, your second page of your memo, you lay out a number of bullets, five or six in general that spells out the middle ground option was explored. But these were, this was based on discussions with Cassinich and Fox, but I don't see this level of detail, not only in, not in their proposal, but neither in the email exchange between you and them. Am I correct in that? Or correct that this level of detail is not included in any of the documentation. And the reason for that is that John Cassinich went on vacation shortly after we started discussing this. So I wasn't able to get clarification from him in writing or clarification of the conversation that we had had. Okay. I would ask then if the board elects to go ahead with this, I would like at a minimum a one-page letter from HKA documenting specifically these bullets and what your understanding of the conversation was, something signed from them so that it's committing to them or to us making their commitment in writing. Yes, we agree with this. Yes, this is what we're doing. And since we now have the time on that, not simply the email exchange, but just get, doesn't need not revise their proposal, that's simply a letter amending the proposal saying, yes, and we're gonna do the following things. I believe we can arrange that without difficulty. Okay. Okay. Just a second, looks like Gina is wants to leap in here. I was just gonna suggest that the proposed agreement that's in the packet hasn't been signed. So this could easily be added to the scope of work of the agreement. Okay. Okay. So can I just clarify what Gina is suggesting? Because when it comes to make a motion, I just wanna make sure that what we would be saying them. So that we would be moving that we directly district manager, blah, blah, blah, but also to include a one page addendum specifying the work they would do on this middle ground option. Yeah. Well, I think that the motion that I would propose, if that's what the board wants to do, would be to authorize the district manager to enter into a contract in an amount, not to exceed 57,875 with the scope of services to include peer review of the middle ground option as set forth in the board memo. It's not peer review there, Gina. That's the problem is it's, this is their ab initio work on this. And I think that's what Mark and I, I totally agree with Mark that when I read this memo and compared it to the paperwork that's there is none of that is specified. And to me, it's the most important thing that they would be doing. Okay. So it's not the peer review. It's actually specifying. Yes. I think we need to go back to what Josh had, I believe, has more than adequately described in writing in his memo and get them to essentially parrot that back to us for the middle ground option bullets that he's describing and what they're gonna do for that assessment. I don't know how to simply put that in words in this motion. Well, I think if the rest of the board agrees that this is something we wanna do, then we'll work on that. Maybe Gina can work on it while we finish our discussion. Okay. Another thing we need to do on this motion too is I noticed that there's nothing, or at least I didn't see anything about authorizing a single source. Yeah. It'd be nice to have Gina, if you could concoct the wording that you would like us to do for that. Yeah, we don't need any specific finding or for determination regarding the sole sorts procurement under the district's new procurement policy. The district simply needs to document the reasons for the sole sort of procurement in the file and the purchase order. Okay, so I misunderstood. I thought that we were supposed to, that we had to authorize the district manager to do this and you're saying we don't have to. We don't, the district's prior purchasing rules did require that, but it's no longer required. All right, okay. Bob, did you wanna just comment on this before I go back to Mark or did you have other questions? I have other, that's what I was just gonna say. Let's finish up with Mark and then we'll come back to you, okay? Yeah. Okay, I have one last question. On page 14 of the agenda, HKA is asking or is saying that they're gonna do a rough evaluation of the project cost estimates, but they request the detailed cost breakdown from Alpine Summit. Are we able to get that from Ferrer and Loretta Josh? I believe so. It's our bloody work project, I mean, come on. We own the final report. There's, it could be argued whether or not we own essentially their notes. I don't see an issue. But if HKA doesn't have that detailed cost estimate then they can't do this rough evaluation of the project cost estimates. Personally, I don't think they need to. I don't care whether the number is 60 million or whether it's 56.5 or 64.3, it doesn't, it's way high. Bring us back something on this middle ground option of a cost that tells me it's a fifth of that or a fourth of that. And then I have something else to evaluate. So I'll leave it at that. If we can get the detailed cost fine, if we don't get the detailed cost, I'm fine with telling HKA, take that out of your costs, don't do that portion and give us a deduct for it. Well, or a middle ground on that would be that just go ahead and do a more superficial assessment of it that doesn't involve digging into the details. Cause I'm totally with you, whether it's 55 or 65 is not the issue. What we're looking for is whether there's an alternative that costs 25 or 35, right? So, okay. Okay, that's all of my questions. Thank you. Go ahead, Bob. Regretfully, I don't think we're gonna get down there and with inflation raging and going to rage for a while, by the time we get around the building, as we're looking at 25 to 50% above whatever they come back with now. And I think we just need to kind of accept that, hopefully they can get it down to maybe 30 or 40 or something like that. But it's still gonna be at that number by the time we get there. I did have a number of questions, one of them following up on what Mark said, just to make sure that we're clear on work product. I've talked about this before. It's really important that everything that they do is our work product. So, if what we're doing here is distinguishing between the final report being our work product and the numbers behind that or the spreadsheets behind it or the analysis behind it not being our work product, I'm not happy with that, either. I think it's all our work. This is work for hire. Now, if there's some proprietary information or a method or a tool or whatever they're using, that would be a different thing, but that should be called out. At least that's typically the way I do it with work for hire or contracts that I use in software. We own everything, source code, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the underlying numbers we're talking about. I had a couple of questions on the contract. Do we have any sense of how much is sort of peer review and how much is investigating this new ground out of the 57,000 more or less? Is it about half and half? If I were to have to put numbers on it, I would think it would be more along the lines of 60, 40, 60% peer review, 40%, middle ground option, possibly as much as 65, 35. Did HKA bid on the original report that I hear that they did? They were part of the team led by Sandus, which bid on the original constructability setting. Okay, and we did not choose them. Use or cost, I'm assuming. Correct. So the cost of F and L plus this cost, but we're probably still, okay. Yeah, let's see. The next one here, this is sort of finance and contract related stuff. I'm trying to figure out is this saying not to exceed number to accomplish all of the tasks or is this a best estimate to accomplish all the tasks? And it could be more, but if it is more, they'll tell us before we and ask for our approval. It wasn't clear which way it was. It is a not to exceed without prior written authorizations. But does that mean that they will accomplish 100% of the tasks for the not to exceed? That is the expectation. Okay, but not a guarantee. Have you ever gotten a guarantee out of me? That is, this is not an FFL, firm fixed price, excuse me, FFT, firm fixed price. Correct. Not to exceed, okay. So if you get 90%, we want them to finish, but we're going over and then we'll have to pay them more. Correct. Okay. I already talked about the work product belonging to us. Oh, on the insurance, just FYI, a lot of insurance norms nowadays are two million for the general liability coverage, especially with inflation happening, just FYI. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Let's see if there's any comments by members of the public and then we'll come back and see if there's any more comments by the board. April, go ahead. There we go. Hi, I'm April. I'm a member of the Friends of San Lorenzo Valley Water and I also was interested in item E on their memo saying that they needed the detailed breakdown. And I might be wrong because I don't go to every single meeting, but what I recall from their presentation, them saying something like they didn't have a detailed cost breakdown in terms of being able to say what each particular mile, say, of pipeline would cost, that they just had kind of some rough numbers. So I'm not sure we're gonna get the detailed breakdown that HKA wants. That's what I had to say about that. But thank you for considering alternatives. I think that's important. Okay. Thank you. Did anybody wanna respond to April, Rick or Josh? We'll see what we can get from FNL and do our best at getting prices. But if we can't get them, it won't be the end of the world. Like Mark said, we'll move that forward. Okay. How about any other comments by members of the board on this or questions? If not, is anybody ready to make a motion? Go ahead. I was gonna say, go ahead, Bob. Okay. I can do that. Gina, did you... Looks like Gina may be willing to bail us all out. Well, no, I actually have some language that I wrote down. Let me throw it out and see what we think. I make a motion that the board authorize a district manager to enter into a contract with Arrow, Kucinich and Associates to provide a peer review of the report and amount not to exceed $57,875 with a scope of services to include evaluation of the middle ground option in the district engineer memo. I'd like that. I will second that. Okay. I'll second that. Okay. Gina, did you have anything that you wanted to add or modify on that? No, thank you. I was going to try to suggest a simple approach and Bob did it beautifully. Okay, great. All right. Any further discussion now that we have a motion in front of us? Seeing none, how about members of the public? Nope. Okay. Holly, would you like to take a roll call vote? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. Next we have the investment policy and treasurer designation. I'm going to turn these over to district council. Okay. Thank you, Rick. And I will keep this one brief. I regret doing this while the director of finances on leave, but it's a fairly ministerial issue that arises from state law and the district's investment policy that was overhauled last year. So what you have in front of you is a resolution that essentially re-adopts the district's investment policy, which like I said, it got a thorough staff and legal review just a year ago and was updated by the board. I quickly checked the applicable codes to make sure there haven't been any changes since we did this. There haven't been and therefore I don't see, on my end, a legal need to really revisit the policy again. But the law that pertains to investments being made by an agency such as the district does require that the, well, it requires that if the board of directors wants to appoint a treasurer to invest and reinvest funds of the district that that delegation of authority is supposed to be made each year. And based on a resolution last year in the board policy manual, this comes up in, it's supposed to come up in June. And so that's why it's on the agenda tonight. So the only requested action by the board is to adopt the attached, is to, by motion adopt the resolution that's presented in your board packet. And like I said, that resolution effectuates a reappointment of the district's lead financial officer, i.e. the director of finance and business services as the district's treasurer and essentially ratifies and readops the existing investment policy. So as a chair of budget and finance, I'll just say this is largely a housekeeping thing. And so I don't really have any questions, but Jeff here on that committee, did you want to make any comments? I agree with you. This is housekeeping for legal purposes and I don't see an issue with it. Okay. Mark. Yes. On page 59 of the agenda, we see the section performance standards. And I'm interpreting that to be, we're supposed to look at how we did last year as compared to some indices. District manager, how did we do last year? Since you're the one that's called out in that. Rick, you're muted. That's a good question. I don't have that answer for you tonight. Mark, but I will get it for you all. I'll have that answer for you at the next. Okay. And in addition to that, what are the approximate dollar values of the funds that we have invested in these amounts? And then which investment funds are we invested in? I don't believe it. I'll have the three questions I had. Yeah, I will get back to you with those exact. Okay. I think our money is basically all we've invested in with the County of Santa Cruz. I don't believe that we have treasury bills and so forth, but I will get back to you this. At one time, the district did have several investments in Morgan Stanley. I won't go back to the gory details of the past, but I will get you an update. Okay. All right. Thank you. Bob? I will just say that in the past, when we weren't investing through the County, it was a complete question. And so the changes that were made in the investment policy and position that the board took, I really claimed a lot of that up. And as long as we remain invested in the County, we don't have a lot of risk. It's basically the excess money from the loans, that haven't been expended yet. So maximum of 30 million, more or less, plus the reserve, but we've probably spent some of that down. So wanting to thank you. Okay, thanks Bob. And just to confirm Gina, no changes at all from last year. I didn't see any red line. So it's- That's correct. There are no changes. Perfect. We did, I think, a really great overhaul on it. And I'm supportive. I would just add to what Bob said, that the fact that we have it invested with the County investment pool sort of answers your question, Mark, about the yields. We're not trying to time the market or anything. It's very low, but it's safe. And so in the past, we maybe had to ask the district manager when we were doing other kinds of investments, whether the yields were great or not. But this is kind of, it is what it is. Or the losses were great, as in that case maybe. Jamie? I was just going to suggest, and I don't know how, sounds like we may not have a huge investment portfolio, but I was going to say that, I've been in organizations where we had some kind of a representative from the organization we were invested with. Come and just give us sort of a, overview of our positions. And if that was an option for us, I would love to add that to a future agenda, if, but it sounds like all of our investment is with the, through the County. So that's probably not an option. Well, the auditor controller may come out, they have in the past for other organizations and the bulk of our money. And it is for our district, it's substantial. Because all of our loan money was paid forwarded first and we're paying for projects out of that loan money. And that money is all in the County Santa Cruz. So we can check on that to see if, I think it's what they did at Griskell, I do believe is the auditor controller. And she is an elected official and she would probably be more than happy to come out. Jeff? We'll check. I was just going to say that I was in the committee meeting last year when we reviewed this. And it's my recollection that we had almost the bulk of the money in the Santa Cruz County pool, but I think we also had some in the local agency investment fund. I was, I don't recall any non-pooled investments. So that's going to guarantee us a fairly middle of the road rate of return, but a very good. Okay. Are there, let's see if there's any questions or comments from members of the public. And I don't see any hands raised there. Would anyone like to make a motion? Move it if Jeff's not. I'm not sure if Jeff is. I'll do it then. I move that we adopt the attached resolution regarding readoption of the San Lorenzo Valley water district investment policy and renew the delegation of investment and depository authority to the district's treasurer for fiscal year 2022-23. I'll second that. Okay. Any further comments, questions? If not, Holly, would you like to take a roll call vote? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fals. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smolley. Yes. Motion passes. Now we come to the personnel system policy. Gina, did you want to talk about this one? I saw Rick's hand up. Did you? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Rick. Yeah, as we sat there and talked, page 145 of your agenda has all of our accounts and how much we have and where. All right. So as we sat there, as I sat there in struggle, they couldn't went right through it. Okay. 145. Page 145 has a breakdown of our accounts. All right, I'll go look at that. Thank you, Rick. Just to let you all know. So then I guess I'll dive in to the personnel system policy. Thank you for bearing with me with an evening of legal housekeeping. This is another item that typically is subjected to an annual review with the last changes to the board policy manual. The board policy manual now calls for its review in June of each year. And therefore we have it before you tonight. The tract changes that you find in attachment A to the board memo are all changes that were made for legal reasons to essentially to make sure that the policy is complying with applicable law, particularly in the areas of conducting background checks, administering leave policies and the use of criminal history and making hiring decisions. These are all issues that were pointed out when Nassim and employment team who knows these issues better than I do took a look at the policy and suggested that it contain these issues. I have spoken a while ago to the district's HR specialist and with Rick and I don't have any reason to believe that the district is not in compliance with these laws. Now the purposes of the changes are simply to make sure that if anybody looks to this policy as a roadmap for making hiring decisions as they should be able to do that some of the guardrails are laid out clearly in the policy. There is a, you may have noticed that you were sent an email and there is on the website a revised clean version of the policy that's intended to be exhibit A to the resolution. We cleaned up some formatting problems that hadn't been taken care of in the version that's in the board packet, but there is a clean version on the website. And I did receive a couple of edits from one of the board members to that clean version that I would be happy to share with you before we get to the approval stage. But I don't wanna pre-judge that this is going to be readopted by the board. And so I'll save those comments for the end of the discussion. Okay. Are there any comments by members of the board on this? Jamie? I have a really minor one. Why do we call it the personal system policies? It just seemed like a strange title to me. It seems like a personal policy manual. Well, and I'm, let me say that I think that title is kind of inherited, but if, so I'm speculating a little bit to say why it's called that, but I think it's because the district operates pursuant to civil service rules. And so this is more than just a personnel policy. It's a policy that's sort of implementing a civil service program for the district. I'm agnostic to the term. I just was curious because it seemed unusual to me, but thanks, that's it. Bob? You're muted, Bob. My apologies. So I had a number of questions on this and following up on Jamie's. Is it required to use the term personnel? I mean, kind of from 80s or 90s. We refer to that as human resources for human capital or something. It just, it sounds, I mean, our employees are very important to the operation of the district. Personnel is kind of the whole term. I can't think of any reason why the term personnel is required. I think the policy could be called virtually anything as long as we update cross-references to it at a couple times and places. Great, thank you. Okay, so a number of questions that arose from this and some of them maybe we'll cover later, but I noticed in the resolution that it was very different from the one that was attached from, was it 1999 or 2000 in terms of defining certain positions? Are those defined anywhere? The, was it the competitive, competitive service? I like the fact that they were defined in the previous resolution. I wasn't sure I saw them in return. Could you point me to what you're looking at? Are you looking at ordinance 99 from 2000? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a section in here. I mean, there's a bunch of things in there that I think have already been subsumed into the personnel policy, but the listening of competitive service, it sort of goes through what that is. And I didn't see that in the new policy. Well, maybe I missed it. Well, and to clarify the personnel system policy doesn't supersede or replace anything in ordinance 99. Ordinance 99 is what makes the district subject to statewide competitive service selection requirements. Oh, so the current resolution doesn't sort of void that. That's right. There's kind of a hierarchy of authority here. It starts with state law and then there's ordinance 99 which makes the district subject to competitive service requirements for certain positions. Then there's the personnel system or personnel system policy that creates sort of the framework for how the district administers its personnel system. And then you have the MOUs that actually contain the negotiated for conditions of employment with the employees. Okay, so really all of those as a package are what we would put on the website in terms of explaining to the community what this is all about relative to how we manage our human resource. Correct, you would have to look at all of those things together to understand how employment works at the district. Just a couple of quick points on reemployment and reinstatement. I was just curious, do either of those then result in a continuation of continuous service? So in other words, I don't sort of have to start all over again. If you could bear with me for a moment, I believe all that is spelled out though, exactly where I don't recall off the top. Yeah, there's a definition of page 11. Well, it's something I can take offline with you then. Gina, I'll do that. Okay. And on the background check, in my world, we have a very comprehensive set of background checks that include credit, criminal education background, work history, and social media. Do we perform that same comprehensive or are we limited to criminal checks only? Nothing in the personnel system policy limits what types of checks the district can perform, except to require that if they're performed, they're done in accordance with the applicable laws. So nothing in here speaks to what the district either does or should. Or could do. Or could do. Great. All right, that's it, thank you. Okay, Mark. Since nobody else has asked it, I have to ask, I see a spelling error. I have to bring up on page 70, 80 of the agenda, section 6.5, line number eight in that section, Offeries. Yeah, we caught that one already. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Maybe if you look real close. Maybe at this time, Gina, did you wanna pipe up with the changes that one of the board members suggested? Sure, yes. Director Hill had sent an email requesting that we correct the spelling of Offeree in section 6.5 and also pointed out that in trying to get there right now trying to get there right now, in section 6.2, subsection three, the word form should be from. And for those typo corrections, we can make to the final version of the policy, presenting that the board adopts the attached resolution. Okay. Bob, you had your hand up for again or? That was just legacy, lowering it now. Okay. Okay, any other questions by members of the board? If not, we'll go out to those really hanging in there, two members of the public hanging, this is pretty dry stuff. So you are to be congratulated. Anybody want to comment on that? Seeing none. Okay. As I see it, it looks like that the board would move that the personnel system policy attached here too as exhibit A is hereby adopted and exhibit A shall take effect immediately, superseding and replacing all prior versions of the policy and shall remain in effect until superseded by further resolution of the board. And if I may make one clarification, it is just important that the motion be clear that you're adopting the resolution. Okay, sorry that we're adopting the resolution that does what I just said. I'll second that. Any comments or questions? Okay, Holly, go ahead and take a roll call vote please. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Passes unanimously. Next we come to the consent agenda. Would anybody like to pull any item off of the consent agenda? Hearing none. Let's see, do I let the public weigh in on this as well? I can never remember. Yes, chairman had according to the board policy manual to remember the public can pull an item. So the public want to pull anything off of the consent agenda. Raise your hand. Otherwise, without objection, it will be adopted. Next we come to the district manager report. And I hear from Rick that he has two brief announcements. Couple, a couple of quick items that just did. We're happy to report that the admin committee did their final review of the RFP for outreach at their admin committee meeting and staff will be publishing and moving that out to obtain proposals for outreach. We're looking forward to that. The Fall Creek fish ladder construction, we have started with fish relocation. So we're just getting started moving ahead for the Fall Creek fish ladder upgrades. And then the last minor, we just completed the 2022 mainline flushing program for this year. That was a district-wide and predominantly the Ben Lohlman, Kiko and Scott's Valley areas. Okay, Bob. I did have a question and my apologies if I missed this, but have we actually started digging in the ground for the quail hollow pipeline? Yes. All right. Next we come to department status reports. Are there any questions or comments on the department status reports? You don't see any from the board. How about from members of the public? None. Okay. And we did have one written communication which was a compliment by Amanda Jesus about treatment by staff that came out to our house. Help with the leak. We always like to hear good things. Anybody else wanna comment on this written communication? Bob? Not in the written communication, but can I rewind a little bit on the report? Sorry, I had one comment. I'm sorry, go ahead. No problem. It was my fault. I was looking for it. No, no, it's all right. On the finance report, I noticed that we are through now, I guess the end of April, we're 1.3 million in operating margin. And no, our forecast was we're gonna be around 3 million. So it's highly unlikely at this point we're going to make that 3 million. So I don't wanna know where we are with maybe just a budget committee question, but where are we with that? You know, the end of the year is coming up very soon. And we're gonna be way short of the number we need to sustain our capital improvement projects and not kick things down the road. Rick, did you wanna, Chris? We will bring that to the July Finance Committee. Kendra, I do believe we'll be back for that meeting. And that is what will be on that agenda. Because that's been an ongoing question and concern. And then that will come to the board after that. Sure. Thank you. That meeting's fairly early in July. So we're probably going to reschedule if it's the 5th of July, and we're going to reach out and find a good day that everybody makes a double check with Kendra. But still early. So early in the month. So bring it back to the board in July. Great. Thank you. Okay, any other department status reports, committee reports, anything else? All right, it was written communication. And if there's no comments on that, then I think we've, oh, Holly, yes. I was just going to call out the two members of the staff that were involved in that. So it was Mr. Davis and Mr. Beasley that went out and got that compliment from Sister Hayesus. Thank you for doing that. Definitely. Okay, well, then we're to that blessed moment without objection. Jamie, how are you jumping in it? I just wanted to say could send our congratulations to Kendra on her new baby. Yes. Yes. Great. You're doing great. Sounds like they're doing well. The fact that she should be back to meet with us in July, that's great. I know. Okay, so we are hereby adjourned. Good night all.