 So let's call our board meeting to order. Roll call will show Dr. Tom, while Hugh is not here. He's out with his son, I think, canoeing. So I'm acting as the chair tonight. Everyone else is here. Do you have something to start with? I do. I just wanted to introduce you to Greg Wilson. He's our new water quality program coordinator. He started last week. Greg has a BS degree in environmental science and MS in hydrologic sciences. He spent the last 10 years as vice president of operations for a health and nutrition technology firm after working for Monterey County in their environmental health department. He also worked for a couple of water treatment companies and a water sampling company. He's excited to get back to his passion for public service and water and he originally hails from Nebraska but has made Aptos his home. You're welcome. You have any words to give us a wisdom tonight? Wisdom? After four days, I don't have much wisdom, but it's nice to meet you all and I look forward to filling in for Carla. I can tell she did hard work over the years just based on how great her notes were, so I hope to be able to slide. You're welcome. From all of us. Great. So the first item is the public hearing 2.1, board consideration of accepting public health goal report as final, the public hearing thereof. Yes, so the purpose of this item is for the board to accept the final draft of the triennial PHG report, the public health goal report and to hold the public hearing as required by law. The report's been before you two times before this year, a draft in June and then a revised draft in August. And this is the same version that you saw in August. The report identifies the six compounds in district's drinking water that are above the non-enforceable public health goal and I just wanna be clear that the district's water meets all state and federal drinking water standards. So if you have any other questions about the report. Any questions of her? I just have one, has there been any change in the, I know there's a couple of things that were in under review like a couple of standards on the Chrome six since I wanted to add any new information on that. Yeah, Chrome six is still being, is under development. There's no news about that except that it won't come out any time of this year, maybe next year. Anything else? Okay, so we'll open up the public hearing. Anyone wants to address us on this item? This is the time. Do keep it to this subject though. Of course, I do. Thank you. This is Becky Steinbruner, resident of rural Laftos. I have a letter to submit. I typed it, Mr. Basso. It isn't handwritten because I am not a customer of yours but I do live in the community that your water district services and I do rely upon safe, potable water as I'm out and about in public places as do members of my family and people in the community that I care very much about. I think that you're reporting about one, two, three, TCP is disingenuous. To state in the report that is not detected is not true. I mean it's true because you've turned the well off but to say it's not detected gives the illusion to the public that the problem went away. So I think that should be more thoroughly described and explained in your report. I also have knowledge that your revised draft version came back to you because the Department of Drinking Water pointed out to you that you were omitting information regarding hexavalent chromium and one, two, three TCP. And I am really quite disturbed by that. Why would you eliminate that kind of information regarding carcinogens? Here's what one of your ratepayers says. The entire reason they have to do this report is to inform their customers of the presence of these and other contaminants that exceed their public health goals, PHGs. And yet they tried to get away with excluding hexchromes on a technicality. I'm not sure what their reasoning was for excluding one, two, three TCP but fortunately the Department of Drinking Water was on top of it. So what are you doing here? So I have a letter here and I also want to have included with it. This was a question that I was bringing to your board in 2017 before the state adopted its current levels. And I only found out about it because I saw a letter you had submitted to the County Board of Supervisors stating that your water at the country club well exceeded or had very high levels. The level, official drinking water level had not yet been established but you knew what the rate coming was going to be and you knew that the rates in your country club well were two to three times higher than that and you continued to pump the water into those people's drinking water supply. And that bothered me a lot and I wrote you about it in April of 2017. I spoke to you at your April 18th meeting and it took two months to get a reply. And here's what you said, Director Daniels. If a well is unused for even 12 months then the state drink DWR declares that the well is abandoned and mandates that it be destroyed given how many millions of dollars we have invested in that one well and therefore how many millions we would need to spend to replace that well then we cannot risk its loss. What did you willingly decide to do to your customer's health? Next, please. Hi, my name is Chris Kirby and this is all so new to me but I'm so concerned. Last time I said four out of six women in my book club have had, or two out of the six have had cancer. I went and talked to them all last Tuesday, five out of six. I'm the only one that has not gotten cancer yet. That should scare you. I mean, those odds are bad. What is going on with our water? I'm really, really concerned. One of them's going through breast cancer right now, chemo. She asked the other gal who just finished it, do you have to flush the toilet twice when you're doing chemo? I'd never heard that. She says, yeah. She says, I actually pour some water down the toilet to get the radiation from her urine out of the toilet. That is going into the ocean. The ocean. Well, it won't be with this recycling plant. It's radiation, it's chemotherapy. I don't want to be drinking it. It shouldn't be going in the ocean. I mean, that frightens me. Did you guys know that when you're on chemo you have to flush the toilet twice? I'm guessing not. That's frightening to me. The recycling plant, I think is a horrible idea. I think it's way too much money. I'm just really, really concerned. I'm learning as we go. I'm going to take this home. I want to look at this stuff. It's very concerning. I bet none of you knew that. It's really scary. I don't want to be drinking it. Five out of six of my friends in book club have, two are dealing with cancer and out three have had it. Something's wrong with that and it's not. I mean, the water is about the only thing we all have in common. We don't all eat the same. We don't eat the same, cook the same. I don't know. It's frightening. Anyone else? Seeing none, I'm going to retain a motion to close the public hearing. I move to close the public hearing. Second. The motion is second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. So we now need to direct staff about any changes to this plan. Any suggestions? I just noticed some inconsistencies on the cost for treatment. There's a table that gives numbers that are different than in the text, in particular in the text on page. Let me get to it. Page 10 of 75. It gives numbers for treatment of eight and 14, eight to 14 per year. And then in the table, it's 12 to 23. So probably a different number of people. It's per service connection. Okay, under text Chrome. At Chrome 6. Okay. It gives the same range, 110,000 to 190,000. But in the table. Per service connection, yeah. Yeah, it's per cert when you do a per service connection. Right. I see. I can make that correction. Yeah, just I don't know which one is correct, but. I can look into it. Yeah. Make the changes appropriately. I will do that. Okay. Anything else? I'd like to give staff a chance if they want to comment on any of the public comment. Okay, well, in regard to trichloropropane, I think it does say in the text that it was detected. I'm not sure where that comment comes from. I went to the trichloropropane section and it did say it was detected. The trichloropropane was inadvertently left out of the first draft. It was a complete oversight. We apologize for that. And then Chrome 6, as we have never included that, as long as we have done these PhD reports because we have followed the AWQA guidance which says if there is no MCL set for that PhD, then you don't include it in the report. It's following the language and the statute. I had Mr. Basso look at that too and he agreed with AWQA's interpretation of that. But we just went ahead and added it in there because the DDW wanted it in there. So we went ahead and added it in there. And then I guess I do have a question. The non-detects are on average levels. Is that the standard way of reporting, report average levels as well as maximums? No, the non-detects, the detections are not based on, it's based on, excuse me, it's based on how we determine compliance at a particular well or treatment plant. So if it's based on an annual average, then we would compare the average to that public health goal. So each of these has a standard for how you compute them and that's what we do? Yeah, exactly. I mean the copper is the distribution system and that's the lead in copper monitoring at the taps for, and then we do that every three years. The hexchrome is actually required to be tested for every three years and the radiologicals every nine years and the trichloropropane also every three years. So I mean often we do more monitoring than that. So if we had done more monitoring than that we would have averaged that because that would be the compliance period the three year. So maybe what I'm confused about is there's some maximum levels reported in the table on page eight and then under average it says non-detect. So perhaps it should be a very low level that's below the detection limit. What that average means is the average of all of our wells together. So as you can see the radiologicals, radiologicals, two of them are just detected in one well but when you average that out all over 15 wells then the average is non-detect because it was only detected in one well. So that's what that average is. So it's something like a medium. And that, I mean that so that matches what we, how we report in the consumer confidence report that's how we're required to report that. So the units and the max and the average match how we report in the consumer confidence report for consistency. That's how you're required. And that's how the aqua guidance gives it. The state has no guidance on this report. So they give us nothing. So we use the aqua guidance and they recommend following the regulations for the consumer confidence report. So it matches so the public doesn't get confused. Anything else? Well I just wanted to comment on one of the comments about the drinking the radiological compounds and you know contaminants and things like that. You know the epidemiology of cancer is much more complicated than just a cluster of a reading group. And I'm really sorry about all those people in your group but there hasn't been anything associated with any of the drinking of the groundwater that is our main source of water. A couple of, if you'll look at this report carefully you'll notice that a couple of ways the main, one of the main ways to remove these contaminants or potential contaminants if they were to be a serious problem would be with a reverse osmosis filter which is a key component of the Pure Water Soquel project that I'm imagining that you've been treating the water with our Nodes which is a reverse osmosis process too. That was one of the tests. So it's really important not to get confused about what this report means. These are very small concentrations and they can be treated once the state decides that there is a risk to the people who drink this groundwater. But so far we have some of the best water in the entire county. In fact, I'd go even further. One of the properties of this board is that we've always wanted to make it even better than it was which was already below the MCO level. We did that for arsenic. We were well under the arsenic level and yet we spent money to put in a treatment plant to get it even lower. We did the same thing for Chrome 6 during our testing procedures. It was already below that for many of our wells and we put in a treatment thing to make it even lower. So we do do that. And it's interesting if you look at the quality of our water for various contaminants of emerging concern as they're called, CECs. All the things that are on the list that we compare with were in single digits or non-detect. And if you look at what, for example, the district down south that's been doing this for 40 years, everything was non-detect for them. And if you compare that to the water that some people want us to drink, which is the water out of the river that the city uses, many of those constituents were in double or triple digits. So if you want high quality water, you don't want to transfer their water here because you're definitely be making things worse since they're 10 to 100 times higher than what we see here. And since everything that the district down south uses, which is non-detect for everything, hundreds of times worse. So that's the truth of the situation. And any time we find a problem that we think is a real problem, we again put up the money to treat it to make it better. So I think it's good to be concerned, but I think it's also good to be factual. So anything else? Any motions to? It's a clue you need to make that change that you found. Yeah, with the changes, I'll make the motion. Okay, is that okay? All right, let's see, do we need a roll call on this? We need to see if we did all the motions. Roll call, yes. Director Lather, yes. Director Jaffe, yes. Director Christensen, yes. And Vice President Daniels. Yes, okay. So we now move on to the consent agenda. Anything here that board wants to pull? Anything the public wants to pull? So none. Well, I'll make a motion when you approve the consent agenda. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. I believe that's unanimous. Adjections? Okay. So we go on to oral and written communications. So this is the time for anyone in the audience to address this on any item, not on tonight's agenda. You have three minutes. Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, resident of rural Aptos. I want to, again, and maybe I'll save this part of my comment for when you're going to discuss ways for effective board meetings. I'm assuming that will include communication changes that have been made. So I'll move on to a letter from Mr. Scott McGilvray from Water for Santa Cruz County, who could not be here tonight, but he wrote a letter and he has some new information for you updated about plenty of water for surface water. And I will state again, as he did to your board last time he was here, this is the second or fourth year in a row that the city has not taken water from the river. They're taking it from Loch Lomond. They're taking it from the North Coast Streams. And to say that river water is dirty is, well, not as dirty as sewage water. This is Mr. McGilvray's letter I'd like to read to you. Dear Soquel Creek Water District Board, Water for Santa Cruz County continues to study Santa Cruz River and stream flows. At the meeting of September 3rd, I advised you that the Loch Lomond level was at 97%. This means that Santa Cruz has plenty of surplus water and could transfer it to Soquel Creek Water District if you asked and agreed to accept the water. And Director Jaffee, you said that you would ask. We have studied the matter further and have discovered that much of the water transferred to Soquel Creek Water District from Santa Cruz supplies under permit rides connected to the North Coast Streams pre-1914 water rides would be recovered during the natural storm cycle of a winter. For example, in 2018, Santa Cruz could have transferred to Soquel Creek Water District 504 million gallons of water. And it only would have reduced its surplus balances by 263 million gallons, respectfully submitted Scott McGilvray water for Santa Cruz. And he has included with this updated information taken from the city of Santa Cruz pumping and pumping records and also the river, I'm sorry, from the Loch Lomond reservoir levels. There's plenty of water. You just have to ask for it. And so to that end, Director Jaffee, I would like to ask if you have asked for it. Are you done with your comments? Yes, I am. I'm going to pass this around. There's a copy for each of you, one please included in the minutes of this meeting. Thank you. And some for staff. Did you ask Santa Cruz for water? If you sit down, I will answer. Thank you. So this is a good case of miscommunication. I think if you go back to the tape of the meeting, what I said, I remember this clearly, was that I would ask them about whether they have excess water. And that's what I will do. Whether I ask, first of all, I can't ask for the water myself. It's a board decision. And second of all, it's really up to Santa Cruz, not up to us at all, on what they do with the water that they have the rights to. So I will investigate whether or not Scott McGilvery's claims are true or not. He's sent me a document picture with four figures in it. And I will talk with water commissioners, which is who he said he had talked with, about what they think the facts are with the water. Anyone else for the public hearing? Sorry, communications. Right. Seeing none, I think we're done. I was gonna. I was gonna say something. Oh sure, go ahead, please. It's kind of, it's a part of that, what you commented on, Becky, the availability of water. And we're moving into a new climate situation again. Just in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, they reported that the lurid headline was the blob is back. But if anybody remembers five years past, there was a unusual blob of hot water, warmer water in the Pacific that was actually acting as a barrier than causing rain to not come to the Bay Area and our area also, South Bay. And so there's already fear that we are looking at a couple more years of drought. If that continues to stay there, if it does not dissipate, and I have that article in front of me too. But it is really worth considering that Santa Cruz may have water now, but they might not, the very next year, we need a continuous supply to be sustainable at this point. So I'm just adding that small correction and I'll give you the article if you'd like it to. Well, I was gonna bring up another factual thing as opposed to beliefs. The fact is that if the city wanted to give us water and we wanted it to take water, that doesn't mean it would happen. First of all, there's an agreement between the two sides. So this would have to go up the chain. So the director of watering in Santa Cruz would have to take it to the water commission the next time they meet and then it would have to go to the city council to be approved and of course, that's an irregular thing too. And finally, there was an EIR that was done, some kind of environmental study done and that would have to be redone because it was assuming that only a certain amount of water was gonna be taken out of those North Coast streams. And I know that even that amount, the fish and game folks, fish and wildlife folks took exception to it and they had to change it. So if you wanna up the amount, they might really want to change it, like stop it entirely. So it's speculative as to whether we could actually get any or not. Also, by doing that, by increasing the amount of water they give us, that gives credence to the North Coast people that have sued the city as I understand because they're selling the water to us a lot cheaper than they're requiring their customers to pay for the same amount of water. So it's not as trivial and easy as has been made to sound. It's an issue and if we could get it done in time for this coming winter, which is the last winter that we have to do this, that's uncertain. Okay, so let's move on to reports, management update. I'll just add that in the last week we've seen some improvement in our base station and repeater reception. It was around 91% and we had master meter and core and main out here last week and they made some improvements to the repeater and some programming of meters and it's up to about 94% and continuing to climb. So that's good on that project. Any other questions? We're gonna have to put in more of these base stations and repeaters and antennas and all that to get to 100 because I think. Yeah, what's planned is four base stations and six repeaters plus a photo cell, small photo cell repeater for the whole system to be able to pick up really the whole service area. And that gives some feeling that we're actually gonna get to 100 now? We hope to at least get to like 98. That's what our contract requires of them to consistently deliver that sort of reception. 100% is pretty challenging. You're always gonna have people parking over meters and blocking reception and that sort of thing. So. Okay. So when you say 94%, that means 94% of the readings. Are coming through daily. And so it's possible that a reading will come through one day for one location and not the next day because of what you just described. And then there's a way for our system to correct for that. We can go in and look at monitor the reception and yeah, I mean, if we're not picking up reads and we're needing that read for billing, then we pretty much have to go out and investigate why that's not coming in. I guess it could also mean some stations just are never read that way. So we'd have to always go out and they basically wouldn't have the luxury of a notification of leaks like everyone else's got. Although, you know, we were thinking one of our more mountainous routes that is reading to the base station, we were thinking that there were some issues with it being the geography of that, but that route is actually improved and a lot of it was due to just needing to reprogram some of those registers to the right frequency that that base station reads at, so yeah. That's good. Anything else? Okay, engineering please. Good evening. I just had four bullet points to discuss with you. The first one is the effort to begin notification for our customers about the purchase of Santa Cruz's water this winter. We are still waiting to hear back from the city on whether they think they will have water available starting November 1st. We also will begin sampling the system one month prior to the transfer purchase happening. Our Granite Way Well site is the infrastructure is underway. We still expect that well to be online in November. And then I think we reported last time about the main getting hit on Warf Road across the river creek here. And so the county's contractor is planning to relocate about 360 feet of our main, we believe next week if they have availability. And then also we're in the middle of reviewing qualifications for some consultants for the ammonia treatment at O'Neill Ranch Well. Any questions? I have one question. I know that for us to do this water transfer we cordoned off a certain subset of our district. And I think the metric was we wanted a big enough area that it would do 300 acre feet but not any bigger than that. So if we were to do this thing that's being proposed of getting more water from the city, would we have to redo that again and how long that might take and what kind of effort? We're proposing to open up the area served this winter and not have an isolated zone that stopped kind of on that side of the creek. So it would expand throughout most of sub area one. Okay, all right. But we will still have to run some of the wells in sub area two. And that's okay then for the monitoring to be able to, because I mean some areas will be mixed, some of it would be transfer water and some it would be well water. Yeah, there will be a mixing zone probably around Park Avenue area where the two zones somewhat balance each other out. But we do believe that the hydraulic grade line is a little higher in the fairway tank. And so that will hopefully keep most of the water back. Okay, thanks. We'll wait to see, I mentioned in the bullet point that Black and Veatch is currently summarizing all the water quality data and weather and also revising the monitoring plan. So we'll report back. Okay, thanks. I have a question. Yeah, please. For the forest fame it was not our forest fame. For the water line that got broken it wasn't properly marked, right? Are you using tracer wire in future like? Yeah, all new mains have tracer wire. Okay. This was a 1961 main that didn't have asbestos cement main. So when they replace it, can you put tracer wire in there? What, doesn't it have to connect to something? Well, we'll have two valve boxes on either end of the new main. So they'll be able to accurately locate the new main. Okay, thank you. When do you have operations and maintenance? I just wanted to report that we did have a main break yesterday on Huntington Drive near Aptos Junior High School. It's the second time in two months that that portion has broken in the fourth time in five and a half years. It's a six inch AC main. We lost about 100,000 gallons of water and we did, right now we have the repair area valved off so we are using Central Water District water right now until we get the bacterial logical results back tomorrow. We also were using them during the repair because the break was between the booster station and the tank and so we had to valve that off and so there was no way to get water up to the tank which dropped a lot during the break. So, any questions? Where does that line stand on our priority list for funding? It's, it's down the list. We have finance coming up in a bit. I don't think it's, I mean, it's my priority. I don't know if it's everyone else's priority. It's, it's on the list. Okay. Everything's on the list. Yes, everything's on the list, yes. I think the big thing going next is the rest of. So he'll drive. Yes. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Special projects. Hi, good evening. I just have two items that I'm gonna highlight in my report. The first one is the upcoming Water Harvest Festival on October 20th. That was an annual event that Vaidehi Campbell was in charge of and spearheaded and we are this year putting it on in her honor. Over the last two weeks we have received an outpouring of cards and flowers and just really heartwarming messages about what Vaidehi meant to them, their organization and to the community and many of these people that she worked with and were colleagues have graciously been kind enough to donate a lot to this event. So some of the things that Vaidehi was looking for, some sponsorships for. She wanted to have an event with lots of kids activities, lots of water education. Those are all gonna be put together with some of the other agencies that we're collaborating with. So we hope you guys will come. We're gonna be really doing a lot of outreach on that and that'll be on Sunday, October 20th at Blue Ball Park from 11 a.m. to I think two or three p.m. The other item I will just add is that our outreach staff is working with finance and customer service to do some website and informational enhancements related to water rates, how to access the bills online, water rates comparison and making more of the information accessible. That was a part of the FAQs when the board did their Prop 218 rate increase. We do see that there has been a lot more interest and a lot more questions related to I think the higher use in the summer. So we're gonna be collaborating on that and getting that information out there, recognizing we need to do a little bit better on some of that outreach to get that information out and clarify the misinformation. I think one thing to add to that last item is the fact that the rates have been put together assuming we would pay for this project completely through rates. And we're trying to get a considerable amount of grant funding, which would mean that we then be able to reduce the rates. And so it's a worst case thing and if we don't get that funding, we'll still proceed unfortunately and the rates will have to stay the same. So, but that's a good point is that it's planned when we get those grants as we hope so that the rates would then go back down after a while. Okay. So? Question, so what time is the water festival? Did you say? It starts at 11 a.m. and I think it goes until two or 3 p.m. They've gotten there early. I put 10. Yes, we need volunteers. I can do that. Okay, finance, please. We've temporarily taken the email bill reminder notification online. Tyler is doing some re-programming to it. What was happening is it was sending out a notification to all of our customers even when they had a zero balance, which was resulting in a lot of phone calls. So we've taken that offline temporarily. It's being re-programmed, but bill reminder notifications are still going out via mail and by phone. And of course our financial audit is coming up and our auditors will be on site the 16th through the 18th of October. So Ryan is working hard to get all of their audit documentation together. And then we're working on an RFP for financial advisory services that we hope to have done in October as well. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Any human resources items? Not tonight, no HR items. Okay, later tonight. General manager. Yes, I have a couple items. I'll start with, you know, there seems to be this thought or idea promoted in the community that we're not working hand in hand with the city of Santa Cruz and the water department. I mean, we're with their people every day. They're with ours. We have a contract to test, to pilot river water for treated affluent for a facility. Every day we're working with them. And some people may forget that the board has, and I think it's three letters to Santa Cruz, just acknowledging that we're always here and open for water. You know, if it meets our communities, our customer's values that were professed during the community water plan of high quality, appropriate costs and reliability, environmental sensitivity. So, just wanna make sure that's clear. Today I had a visit from, we had a visit from the California Special District Association, CSDA. They like what we're doing. They want us to participate in helping form a regional area, you know, a regional group with the special districts in this area. So we can help them and everybody can leverage each other's efforts. So we're starting the beginning of that and we'll then, whatever we can, that doesn't stretch us too far to help all the other districts and ourselves. So that was a nice visit. Last week I went on the community leadership visit and I have a couple slides. Maybe we can pull them up here. That's a diverse group of people from the community, environmental minded people, developers, county, city. And we went down, you can leave it there, that's fine. We went down to the Ventura-Oxnord area and we looked at, the first stop was a actual laser company and the focus of them, our infrared, I mean, was not about their product but about how they've, over the last 10 years, continued to be very competitive and what was their secret. And so they walked us through the facility and it was absolutely amazing. I mean, everybody came out jaw-dropping. The, you know, they have really embodied the, what is it, seven sigma or the continuous improvement, six sigma, continuous improvement idea, showing us on the walls, I mean, charts are where people walk and they've reduced their space down that people need to work by 30% to increase their productivity. I think they said like 10-fold, it was just amazing. This is to be able to compete out there but it's that concept of continually looking and having everybody identify problems, not just, you know, trying to gloss them over and I think it's what we tried to embody and it's one of the items, 6.2 tonight. But after that, we visited several things. We went to a homeless place that had veterans, people that were, you know, had mental challenges, people that were just homeless and they go in there and see all those people living together and they had a social worker on site. That was, that was eye-opening and very moving for me. It gave me a new appreciation of the challenges. But one of the other sites we went to was Oxnard, their facility, their water, the city of Oxnard and they have a water purification plant much as similar to Pure Water Soquel where they take it through microfiltration, reverse osmosis, UV, and oxidation. So here's a little write up of it and that's a picture of it from the outside. The next picture should take you inside and they're creating a seawater barrier with it. So this is looking down, the whole group got to go and they were, I think, impressed. There were a lot of great questions. That's the microfiltration. Now I'll say the size of this facility is like six and a half million gallons a day. So approximately four times what Pure Water Soquel. So you'll get a perspective in a second. However, you'll see a lot of empty space because they know this is a future water. They've sized it to accommodate four or five full growth of this so all the buildings have room to expand. So go to the next slide please. So there's your workhorse, your reverse osmosis that basically distills the water and take the next shot. So with looking down that hall, you can see the reverse osmosis in all the empty space for them to expand. But if you divide that by four or five, that would be the size of the reverse osmosis needed for Pure Water Soquel unless it was to be expanded. So in the next slide, this is also very telling. That's the UV. You're looking at it right there. That's enough to do about four or five times what Pure Water Soquel is currently envisioned to do in the EIR. And you can see the room for the expansion right there. They've got it ready to go. Very impressive facility. It's up and running. They were obviously very proud of it. I think that's the last slide. So yeah, another facility down there and then Ventura is on the road right next door to do the same thing. But they're taking water here, using it for multi-purposes and creating a groundwater replenishment barrier to prevent seawater intrusion, because they have that down in their area too. And to reduce surface water. And reduce surface water imports to surface water. They want to rely less on the streams, climate change, that sort of thing. So a lot of parallels to us. It really felt good to be with that diverse Santa Cruz community and they looked at it and they're like, oh, this is Pure Water Soquel. Just on a little bigger scale. And the answer is yes. So, very rewarding. Do they use that for agriculture? I don't think they're using it for ag right now, but my understanding is and what's written on is that they're using it for some industrial facilities, but also for seawater intrusion. And is the seawater intrusion coming from egg pumping? I'm not sure the cause of it, but there is a lot of agriculture down in that area for sure. Yeah. But they're one of the few coastal areas. I think it's Oxnard, that area right there of Ventura. Then that is along the coast. That's one of the basins, the 21 out of over 500 that's critically overdrafted. And then the next time you get a basin that has seawater intrusion is up near us. So it's Pajaro in us. So we're like the four seawater intrusion overdrafted, critically overdrafted basins. It sort of reminds me of the visit we made to San Diego and we saw their pilot plant, which was almost the size of our Pure Water Soquel. And that was just their pilot. So they'll run it for a few years and I don't know what they'll do with it, but the actual plant they were building was like tens of times bigger than what we were looking at. And then, I can leave it at that. Obviously we keep an eye out for how our customers are seeing what misinformation's out there, what information's correct. And so we're starting to put together, I think it was at the suggestion of Dr. Jaffe last week, just some more factual information. We continue to do that. I put a couple of slides together if the board would like to see them. I think they're over here. But it entails basically looking at what the misinformation is and then trying to prevent correct information so people can make their best informed decisions and not on misinformation or what do they call it, fake news these days. So I'll run through those real quick. So we're listening to our customers and then one thing that's nice, go ahead and pull up the next slide, that's all right, is that nobody disputes the seawater intrusion issue, the critically overdrafted base, and that's obvious. It's obvious from these maps, and this is what the kind of thing we've shown before, in the yellow showing down in Pajaro, three miles inland and down in Salinas, I mean down in Monterey area, all the way to Salinas, that yellow, and then the red, and you all know the story, so I don't, and you know, detected along our coast with Sky Tim, so, but it's always important to present the why, because the why matters, you know, if you don't take action, there's all kinds of repercussions and we should never lose sight of that, sometimes people do in the rush to say what they wanna say, and then the next slide is just remind people, there we are, there's the dot, the red dot, and we are one of those 21 out of our 500 basins that's critically overdrafted, and down south is the Ventura, Oxnard area, you can see them down a little further right along the coast, so very much, and we're at the top of the list there is Soquel Overdrafted Basin, next slide. So this is like, captures the essence of the comment we heard, we've seen out there, I heard there's plenty of surface water from the city of Santa Cruz, can't you do it right now? It's cheaper than pure water and better water quality, so this is great, we love it when we see these kind of comments and are able to interact and it gives us what people are thinking or at least asking the questions, so you know, we come up with, well, actually, you know, first, we don't want to just jump to solutions, we went through a process, a community-driven or values-based process backed by data, and you know, we know it's 14th month long plus and we added that, we were able to understand what was important to the community and develop a roadmap to that, and of course this shows that. And the next slide, just really, we've always encouraged people and we see it time and time again, people fall in love with this particular project, you know, I had a woman call me today asking, I just want a reservoir, we're here tonight, we just want river transfers, that'll do it, that's our favorite project, or we want de-seller, we want pure water, it's not the best way to go about approaching a project, Santa Cruz kind of did that in a sense when they went through their model, they as a community said, we want river water, we want to use river water and we're willing to pay 130% more than the second option, they just made that as a value within that group, even willing to pay more, didn't matter that if recycled water costs less, they put a premium on surface water and that's that community's values, our community values, really we're six, but I distilled it down to three and that's water quality, you don't, that's a, you've got to have that, you've got to have great water quality or it's off the table, whatever that option is, and then affordability was important, it wasn't that our people stopped the list, but they said, hey, keep it, we're not willing to go outside of certain range, certainly, and then reliability and sustainability, so that constant source that Director Christensen referred to that recycled water provides you, and environmental thing is one where our customer said, well, if you can produce better quality water, it's more affordable and you don't have to take for the rivers or streams, why wouldn't you do it, and so I think that sums up the essence of pure water, the way we see it, so the next slide is, again, cost and there's some cost things to show water transfers versus pure water, then the next one, so that's without grants, and as Dr. Daniel said, the project will move forward so it'll only be a loss to the customers if the grant money is not achieved and we're trying our best and hopefully everybody's behind that again because it only is to the detriment of the customers if we don't achieve that for whatever reason, so there it is, that cuts that in half so that 4,600 number would be greatly reduced, so next slide, so then it's always important to remember if you do nothing, what's gonna happen, so we'll get sea water intrusion, the board will definitely have to force their hand to go to rationing unless you wanna just get sea water intrusion, and in order to do that we'd have to cut back, and because our costs are fixed, this is what the price of water would go up, and you would use less, cost more if we do nothing, use less, cost significantly more, remember we were looking around $4,000 naked foot, this is $12,000, so constantly reminding people no action is not an option, and along those lines I remember when I was at the Santa Cruz, one of their workshops, I don't know, in June, they were talking about they have to have backup because if they go four or five years in critical no rain, they're basically without water, so that was an eye opener for me to hear their scientists say that, I didn't think it was that dire, but that's the impact, so we go on, and please, next slide, so we hear these things repeated that this was an editorial in the Sentinel by one of the advocates for river transfers, and I applaud them for wanting, trying to promote what they want, but this is what the professionals are saying, the people who've been doing water all their life, Santa Cruz, this is their editorial rebuttal, and the essence of it was there's not enough water to solve the city's problems of drought and R, sometimes I think people think, well you don't have to worry about the city's problems, well the city does, like I said, they go a few years, and then coming down, this is in the next quote, I respectfully, and this is Ms. Menard, and this is an editorial published in the paper that Mr. McGillivray stopped misrepresenting the information presented by the city, and nothing could be further from the truth what they so far has claimed, so again it's that, here's the information, come from the city of Santa Cruz, so if you're hearing information from other people, at least put this in your docket and consider how you wanna balance that, the source of the information and that sort of thing. Next slide. So after Ms. Menard, the water director, stated that they came out, the Water Commission published this report, and I think it's really telling, you've seen it before, but I think this really will help people, this is basically climate change models down the left side, historical down the catalog, and what's important here is the amount of water available under these different climate change, and I won't get into it too specifically, but if you look historically across, there's either zero or 30% long-term use, demand projections would be zero, if they keep at their current level, there'd be 30% available of that 1,500. If they upgrade the plants on the right side, that increases to 15 and 45, but let's just say it's an average of all those in the left-hand column, say the catalog model is the one that the MGA is using, if they did use that model, it would show no water available for us, but let's say it's an average of those going down that left-hand column, I did the math, it turns out that it's 12 and a half percent so of the water would be available if you just average those, so that's not very comforting, and I think that's important to share because this is data, this is the data, and then if you go to the right side, assuming they upgrade their plant, the average is 30%, but if you really look at their longer-term demand, it drops down to 18%. In the left-hand column, if you look at their long-term demand, it actually drops down to less than 4% availability, averaging, so not very encouraging for availability of water there, anywhere, we're talking in the percent, low percent tile, so that was one thing about the water, we're hearing, oh, there's plenty of water out there, and so while we continue to work with them, we will refine it, we have that, and of course if the water was there and it was better quality and less expensive and more environmentally sound and reliable, we would balance those out, we've seen that, you guys have submitted letters to the city about that, so the next slide moves away from that and we hear the rates are too high, of course they're interrelated to the cost of that, but I think it's important to remind people we went through this process, I think it was over a year, Leslie, the Water Rates Advisory Committee, where we had members of the public, I think it started out with 12 and fluctuated over time, but they looked at it from, what do they want out of rates, what are their guiding principles, is fairness and equity, legal defensibility, conservation minded, financial sustainability, and trying to just kind of keep it simple for everybody, the customer and us, next slide. So doing that, and then people say our rates are high, well here's a comparison chart, I think it's always important to put that in front of people, and this is for six units, so if you use less, the bills will change, and if you use more, but six is the average bill, so we thought it was the right one to change, I mean to choose for the analysis. You know, if you use a bunch of units and you have a high tier four, their bill will be higher over the long term, if you have a flat rate structure, some one agency up here, or a small one, just charges a flat fee regardless, so you could use zero water, and I think it's like $110 or something like that, or you could use all the unlimited water you want, and it would still be the fee. It doesn't include, it doesn't encourage conservation, but it covers their fixed charges, I guess, and their water charges. So there's a whole range, but we're right in the middle with Santa Cruz covering us on either side, outside the water, the city, they charge more, then the average bill would be more, and inside it'd be just about the same there. Okay, next slide. So relativity, here's where the rubber really kind of meets the road, this is an exciting slide. So we've heard from a couple of customers that their water bill, they feel it's too high, and what we're seeing with a lot of those customers, and I'll show you what this graph represents, on the left side is number of units. Remember, units of water, each one of those numbers, one, two, three, four, up on the left, each unit equals 748 gallons. Six units, where the green line is, that's about 4,500 gallons a month, and that is the tier one threshold. So houses using less than approximately 4,500 gallons a month are charged at the tier one rate, which is, I don't know, about six or seven bucks, something like that. And then if you go above that, you'll be charged about four times that. And the reason why that is, is because that is the level per household that is considered sustainable. So as a household, not as an individual, not as a group, but as per household, and what that equates out to, if you had three people per household using 50 gallons a day, it's roughly about that sixth level. Now what you see here, can I actually, that the yellow, the orange line that you see there just happens to be Melanie's usage, family of three, and sometimes four when one of them comes home from college, and you have guests, I know you have a lot of guests, but still they keep it below the threshold. And what's interesting about that line versus the blue line, and this is why it's so important to use this example, is that shows a pretty constant use. The blue line is somebody that's using only six units in the winter, and this is actual data. We didn't want to like smooth it because it's never that perfect. But it goes up in the summer months and then drops back down. When you go and look at this person, this person's written us, that's outdoor irrigation. That is a green lawn right there. And that's okay, we don't pass judgment on that. We just say if you're gonna use beyond your sustainability, the rate structure is done in such a way to say you'll have to pay that for it because it's not fair for everybody else living within the means. So that is the kernel, and I think of our, the basis of our rate structure. And we used to have a couple of tiered structures like Santa Cruz and we were challenged on it and we had it scaled back. So I think showing that and then helping people, we have a lot of tools to help people if they're so prone to taking their lawns out of that sort of thing or a high efficiency fixture. So the next slide, I'm not sure where we go here. So at tier one, you're paying a penny a gallon. If you wanna go up to tier two, you're gonna pay four cents a gallon. So there it is. There's your cost to go beyond the sustainable rate per gallon of water. Thank you, next slide. That's a nice visual. Also important to realize during the winter time, 81% of our people use under that sustainability rate. In the summertime, we're seeing that 57% of the people do use under six, 72 under eight. So there's some people irrigating outdoors apparently or they have more people come in at that time, but also what it shows you, there's just a few, there's a couple percent that we might be able to help and get back under the six, which is very exciting. Next slide. So bottom line is, it's all about listening, all about truly listening, deep listening and communicating back out. Otherwise we aren't doing our customers the justice in favor we should do. So we took to heart what you said last time. We're monitoring what's out there. We get letters, we get calls and we put this like basically a list and say what are the main points today? It may change in three weeks, but being adaptive and really trying to be responsive to customers is the key. Because without that education, it's hard to make an informed decision, especially with misinformation out there. So that's it on that. So we'll be packaging that. Thank you for bearing with that. If there's any feedback, if we missed something on that, then we're open, you can call us or tell us now. Looks pretty comprehensive to me. Okay. And I'm sure it'll be modified over time, but it's a start. It's what we done the last week or so. Thank you, Ron, for bringing that together. Yeah. Is there, so I always wonder whether or not the message gets out. So I assume this will be a website. Yeah, it'll probably take many forms. We are working toward a website that we can just say, hey, we hear those concerns. These are the major concerns of today. We don't know what we're going to title it yet. And then here's some information to help inform your opinion. What's that? And a handout. Yeah, we always, we're big on handouts. It's nice to give like a half card for people to take with the top board. If it is, what's done on the web, you'll track hits and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to know whether, you know, people are getting the message or not. Yeah. Yeah. And it's encouraging to see that at least everybody's working toward a solution. There's just some of it's more science-based in the decision-making and community values driven than others, but. Okay, we move on again to 5.2, district council, oral report. Actually, I didn't think I had anything to report, but Shelly advised me that she's been tracking the ADU bill and that it is currently on the governor's desk and would exempt all of the ADUs under 800 to where feet from any kind of fees, basically no new meters and no impact fees. Is that right, Shelly? That's correct. Thank you. That are attached or not attached? It doesn't matter, yeah. 800 square feet. Yeah. I was just thinking about that. I'm wondering what happened. Other than that, I'm not aware of anything that's come down the pike. I've been informed that I forgot to call for public comment on the management update, so this is the time. Thank you. Becky Steinbrunner, that was a lot of reports to sit through and was pretty difficult. Mr. Duncan, but I will try to be brief here. I had a question for engineering. When will the report from the Twin Lakes Church monitoring project be made public? It's been promised all summer long, and I note that there is work going on. In fact, I sent communication that workers are not to be working on the weekends. That's part of the Aptos Village Project conditions of use. I wanna know about the water transfers coming up this winter and the ammonia treatment in the O'Neill well. Last year, two weeks into the water transfers, the district turned on the O'Neill well, and that really kind of messed up the water transfer and amount of water that you could take. So I would really like to hear that that's not gonna happen again this year so that we can really do some improvements of the groundwater levels by taking water from Santa Cruz City. I thought it was interesting to hear that in the special projects report, the rates will pay for this project, and I wanna point out to you that you approved these or were certainly in the throes of discussing this rate increase structuring and in fact, at the November 4th, 2018 meeting, you approved the structuring without grants, and that was all before you approved the project. I just wanna point that out to you again, and I wanna point out to you also that that November 4th video was completely corrupted and the video for June 5th was put in there instead. Since I pointed it out in my opening brief, it's been corrected, and so now people can now watch that correct video on November 6th and see when the rates really were voted in. I have a hard time being cast as everything that comes out of other people's mouths who do not like or want pure water, so Cal is misinformation, and to categorically make those claims borders on the slander. I wanna point out to you again, and I will submit another copy to go with this point in the minutes, that Mr. McGilvray's figures are all from the city of Santa Cruz. They are all from the city of Santa Cruz. He's not making stuff up. He's looking at the figures. He's doing some critical thinking, and it's a different story than what you want people to believe. The issue of critically overdraft in this aquifer has yet to be substantiated with any scientific evidence. At the Mid County Groundwater Advisory Committee in May, Georgina King stood up and said there was no scientific basis for the state to make that. They went with it. And in your own urban water management plan, you admit that. Thank you. You've heard? Thank you. So I just wanna make a correction for the record. Regarding the rates, the rates were based on a supplemental supply costing out at that quantity. So I wanna correct that misinformation. Right. So if we had bought into the transfer scheme, that rate increase would have paid for the transfers. Any supply that would work. So it could have been D-cell, it could have been river transfers, pure water. Can I? Yeah. Thank you. That's enough. Okay, with our no conditional unconditional will serves, so we skip 6.1 and go right to 6.2. Direction regarding ways to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of board meetings. Yeah, we're really excited to bring this item tonight. Emma and I worked and then got feedback from the entire management team on this one. Especially after being at the Kaizen, the continuous improvement. Cause it just fit right into this. It's like, hey, at least we're doing it to some degree. Not to the level that these people were, mind you, but at least we're trying. So this is part of our process. I think we started back in, I don't know, a while back. And we've come to the board a couple of times just trying to improve on various things that we do. We're trying to come in with open eyes. And I hope Greg, our new hire, I hope that's one of the things we really ask of new people is you're gonna have fresh eyes, so help us, okay? Things we've just gotten used to. But specifically, when we've done some of these things, you've, that are listed in here and that we targeted last time you up the level of authorization for the general manager and all the managers and really up in the level for the other managers helps me the most, you know? Because they do the bulk of it. So that really is gonna save us some time overall. And we've done other things. And what we're bringing back tonight were our two things. One is related to review of the written correspondence. We had, the board had approved a modification and improvement a while back. And then, due to public comment, a person commenting one person, you asked us to bring it back and look at it again. So we'll talk about that. And then also the number of board meetings. That was the other thing. We said after the summer holiday where we each, where we go on one month, one board meeting per month, we reevaluate that. So let me start with the top part on the correspondence. So in our research, what we found is that correspondence is generally treated as a public record. So the receiving body gets it. It always goes to the board or city council. But most agencies just put it in their file. And then if it's requested upon through a public records request, they'll turn it over as required by law and the appropriate thing to do. So that's what it seemed like the majority of the agencies we looked at did. Some of them also put it online like what we're suggesting tonight. And so that's where we got the idea. What we had done previously was we would take a correspondence and generally they come out after the packet because they're related to an item, but that we can discuss that. And then the item, the correspondence would be too late for the board packet. So it'd be put in the minutes of the following meeting. So what we found, it came really hard for people to see any correlation between the meeting and the correspondence. And also during public records requests, it became more cumbersome to pull it up. On top of that, presentations like I presented tonight were being done the same way. So that presentation you saw tonight was not initially in the board packet. And it would be in the minutes of this meeting in the next packet, but now it'll be posted online equal to it so people can go see it. And I think that'll be a big advantage because we're always scrambling. We thought about what if people submit an item that's related to the memo beforehand? Well, you could include it, that's one option, but what we thought was a better approach is to, let's say like last week or back in June, we got like 20 or 30 letters in favor, 20-something letters in favor of us signing an agreement with the city of Santa Cruz regarding the treated fluent. We didn't include those in the packet, I don't think. I think we linked out to those, that's an example. But what we did do is mention in the packet, there were some correspondence, you can see it online. So I think that is a really good way to accomplish it all so we don't end up starting putting some in the packet, some linked or whatever, it's all gonna be linked, but I do think it's the right thing to do if we get correspondence beforehand regarding a memo and it's in time to incorporate into the memo, we note it, you know? Hey, there's some correspondence online or however we phrase it. So we think we've hit on something really good here. I'm actually excited about, I'm going to a meeting next week trying to promote it as a BMP of best management practice to special districts and stuff. So it just seems the most transparent and efficient way for customers and the public to see what's coming in. So that's that, and then going to board meeting frequency, you know, we've been hesitant to stray away from two even though when you look at the table, everybody pretty much does one, even Santa Cruz which is much bigger, only one that meets twice water district is San Lorenzo Valley and they just went to that. I think they're trying to come back and build trust back up in their organization and feel they need this to get them back to maybe some ground they lost, so applaud them for that. However, you look at Scotts Valley one a month, Santa Cruz Water Commission one a month, Monterey Peninsula Water District, Big Water Agency one a month in central. So, but it's not all about what your neighbors are doing, it's about what's needed for you, right? And so we thought, well, maybe one item is because we're kind of hesitant to suggest reducing down to one month that there's like five meetings in the year that don't make sense for us to meet. So maybe just institutionalize us, not me and those two in the summer, one during Aqua, they're listed up here. And those all fell on the first meeting of the month, so that was interesting. But then when we brought this in to our management team, what we heard was, we think we're in such a work mode now and we think we got the relationships, they're all positive and we have the three standing committees. That's another aspect we never had that dropping to one meeting a month will have benefits. Number one, people who wanna come to the meetings all the time or comment on any items, they'll be at one meeting. They don't have to waste more time, fuel, whatever it is to get there. And all those items will still be there. They'll just be more in one meeting. We've gone to the consent agenda, which has really facilitated that. Nobody pulled anything off consent tonight. So we feel like we're kind of on the right motion on that. The, it really is based out of need. I think staff is coming from a place where we don't think at this point we need to do two meetings a month. However, if the board did go that direction we'd always like to monitor that and if the board felt we needed to go back, that might, we certainly could do that or we can call a special meeting. The thing that gets me excited is I think by going to one meeting a month we can still keep our level of communication with the public, with the board and staff. And I think we're gonna produce, these numbers here are low that cost savings. I think we'll save anywhere from a 0.1 to 0.3 FTE, a full-time employee. And to find that kind of efficiency and cost savings without sacrificing any quality, I mean, that's my dream. That's a little nugget we found. And that's why I think we're leaning toward that option but it's a board decision and all are certainly maybe more comfortable with two meetings a month. I know Director Christensen, one time she stated that she may feel a little bit out of the loop if we went to one and that we certainly don't wanna cause that, we'd much rather do two, we're all here tonight. So anyway, the motions are there to direct us to, if you wanna have us make any changes to written or oral communication process and then about the meeting months. And I will go up, if you just jump to the front of the oral communications, go back up to the agenda. We're clear on that. So maybe make that bigger, I think it's hard for people to read. Yeah, so if we go hit on the, here it is, it talks about written correspondence and hit on the website right there. It's always dangerous to do this live, right? So we go down here and you can see right there, there's the meeting, there's the agenda, the board packet, correspondence is all right there. And go ahead and hit click on it. And so there it is. So we got a letter from Mr. Fox, which is great. We'll be really responding to him by the way. But there it is associated with this board packet. And then if you go back, if it was like that presentation, it would also be linked here. So I just wanted to show it live, how simple it is for the public to access it. How are those things grouped in there? Are they done by agenda item or date or the letters? Yes. Right now it's by date. First in, first top, last in, last out. For a small number of things, that's fine. But if we have a couple of high interest items, they'll be all mixed together and getting them. So I think putting them by agenda item would be good. And of course one of them would be just the public comment section too. So you think you can do that? Okay. Okay. Good suggestion. I think the other suggestion would be within those to group them by date. Because that way, for example, I could look at it on Friday and read all the ones that had already come in and then come back in on Monday and read the ones that came after that. So the idea is that somebody could comment on agenda item 6.2. Yes. And if they get it in by Wednesday, it would be at the site. As soon as we can post it up there, we post it up there. I mean, it's, you know. But it, and then it would, there would be a link or mention of it in the agenda. If it's related to a specific item, I think that's the right thing. And then that could link to it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that sounds good. And then presentations would be at a different place. Yeah, well, presentations are right there. You can, but again, if, you know, let's say we presented on that one, that month go down just a little bit, yeah, right there. That wouldn't normally be associated with that meeting. I mean, it would be, but it would be buried in the minutes published in the next packet. Yeah, so it kind of comes to two meetings. Yeah, and sometimes it's two meetings. It goes out. So I think that's more transparent. And then on the correspondence, are you thinking that let's say I read this a month from now and I go, I want to say something about that with, could I write a correspondence a month from now and or remember the public and have it be put in? I think we would do it with the concurrent agenda coming forth. We don't want to be trying to go back in time. I don't think we haven't thought that went out, but that's an interesting concept, you know. If it seems like the right thing to do, we could do it. I don't want to, you know. I don't want to overburden. Well, confuse people too. Let us think about that. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. So if something comes in three months later and they're talking about something three months previous, do we join it up? Let's give that some thought. You know, I hate to go too quick. I mean, one downside of that is you then wouldn't even know that it happened. If it got added to it, it would have been lying way down at the bottom. Back in time and nobody's looking at the new written correspondence. So that would have a downside to it. Yeah, but I mean, this is, you know, I think really a nice step forward from where we're at. I applaud Emma for doing a lot of the research on this. You know, the goal was, how can we make it better? You know, we saw these issues and through the research and, you know, and you know, mimicking other agencies that seem to be out on the forefront. Yeah, yeah. If there are no more questions, why don't we open this for the public? We'll comment on this item. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. Thank you for bringing this before the board and the staff and the public again for reconsideration. I do appreciate it. And I really have to wonder, you know, it seems like you get so little correspondence really that this much energy is being put forward to doing it, but I appreciate the care with which you're looking at public correspondence. I would like to ask that you do two things with correspondence. Put them in the file that you're currently doing, that people can go and just look at correspondence, but also embed correspondence within your minutes and related to pertinent items that the correspondence regards. The reason for that is, is, you know, General Manager Duncan said, well, if people want to see the correspondence, they can just file a Public Records Act request. Well, I've done that and I'll tell you that you have to pay a lot of money to get it if it's correspondence. If the correspondence is embedded in the minutes, you see it then, but if it's not, you have to pay at least $114 to see anything at all, and that's a deterrent to people looking for correspondence in your proceedings. I had to pay $3,000 to see the correspondence related to the Pure Water SoCal progress. I also want to say that it appears that it's missing some correspondence that I know Cherie Bobby submitted on this very issue. Cherie Bobby is on the County Water Advisory Commission, and she really had a lot of problems with this method of handling communication. I don't even see her letter here. So I want to again point out on December 18th when your board approved the Pure Water SoCal project, the 65 pieces of communication that you received did not even show up that night. They were not made public until the minutes were made available January 15th. So there seems to be an odd way of handling communication and I do not support holding special meetings because they are not recorded for the viewing public and memorialized by community television. The minutes are woefully small. They do not elaborate as they used to who the public speaker was. They do not elaborate at all the nature of their comment or anything. So it is incumbent upon the video to really provide for the public a sense of what has happened and has been discussed and special meetings are not recorded. So I do not support that at all. I would like to thank you for, thank you. Anyone else? Back to the board. May I make a comment? So a couple of things, some misinformation again. No, not misinformation, yeah, I agree. Yes, the fee that is charged when it is charged for public records request, something like that's in the minutes, that is something that we find it's required so that would not be charged. I think I would think that would be understood and known, but maybe not. It's required when it's required for IT or things we cannot do and we're charged a fee that that person who's requiring that effort is not getting a free ride, it's not subsidized by our other rate payers. So, and Cherie Bobby did send me a letter. I get a lot of letters. It was not to the board. I responded to Cherie on Wednesday and I said, certainly, if you have any questions, I basically pulled from this memo here because it was about the written communications. I said, give me a call if you have any questions about this. So anyway, but items that are addressed to the board, whether they come to an individual manager and say, please share with the board or they're addressed to the board, all that correspondence gets shared with you. Absolutely, 100%. Just one more point of clarity on the IT. It's when a public records request asks for specific items that may be in different pieces of correspondence or then we have no way of finding that without having somebody do a search for that particular item through all of those documents. That's when there's an IT charge. It's not, give me all the correspondence from this meeting. Because in fact, you could just go to that website and there's each with the meetings and there's everything having to do with it. And that'll be really helpful for people, I think. They're truly interested in that, okay. Okay, how are we doing? Well, thank you for, well, we have two things. One is the correspondence, the other is the meeting schedule. Thank you for spending time on this. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I tend to like seeing everything in one place but I've learned that I can hit links and get to it what I need. And I see the advantage of having these links. And I'd like our minutes to, where it's possible to include links as well to the correspondence if it's specific to a agenda item. And I would expect that the correspondence would identify the agenda item so that they can make that easy for us to do. Yeah, it's a process. It's definitely a process. And I think it's improving. So I'm happy with the directions they're doing. Anyone else? My big thing about the meetings is that, I mean, this is the first time we've ever had a meeting with an agenda with only 75 pages. And when it gets up over 200 pages because you have so many things in one meeting. And then there's let's say 10 people with their three minutes for 10 stuff. There's another two and a half hours that we're sitting here and that's where it just gets tedious. I mean, I'd love meetings that are an hour. After that, I start to get fidgety and I don't concentrate as well as I'd like. I think indeed that when things get that big, that should be the cutoff to schedule a second meeting to have those other overflow things taken up at that other meeting. Yeah, and the other thing is is that you can have meetings scheduled and not and cancel them. So if the first meeting you're able to take care of everything you need for the whole month and cancel the second. I think we're not actually really talking about that many meetings either at this point because we have tenancy to cancel the the Aqua meetings and that includes the May. So that's a May meeting also. So there's not that actually that many. Right, so you're exactly right. So when you look at, you know, and we go to Aqua in the first week of December, so that's usually very challenging to get a board packet together then February, I mean, January, it's just bad because it usually falls right on New Year's and nobody really wants to be here. And then there's a second meeting in March with the California Water Reuse, which is a very important meeting, a lot of technical information. So staff and board members like to attend that and then we're back into the summer schedule. So one, two, three, four, five are canceled. So yeah, even, yeah, there's some talking about seven, yeah. Well, she brought up that the Aqua meeting is in May. Another one in May then. There is another one in May. That's true. Showed her that one and it's six, so that's half of it. Right, right, right. And we didn't include that one this time. So I could go either way on this as much as I enjoy the meeting. I'm willing to sacrifice so that, you know, it is a toll on the staff. So one possibility is to do what Rachelle says, is to keep it on the schedule and then just cancel or we could go the other way and just, you know, not schedule it. I like things scheduled because I have everything in my calendar. Right. Well, one thing we could do, you know, even if we did have two meetings in a month is not have these reports, because I feel sorry for the staff who comes here and, you know, spends two minutes talking about something they've already written down. Could be a meeting, a light meeting. A very light meeting. Of just those items that overflow from the first meeting. And so it would be just, you know, those things. So a staff member would have to come if it's their item that's being discussed, but just to come and give these little reports, they wouldn't have to show up. And that would be... Or if something new, there may be times where it's time critical. Yeah, of course. Of course. In case you would have to have that second meeting. So if the general manager and the staff member thought that it was important to report on it, then yeah, they'd still come and do that. But, you know, make it so that, you know, we're not doing those every other week kind of a thing. Well, yeah, and I love that. I mean, the more efficiencies we can make that if we ever, you know, it makes any meeting shorter. So let me suggest something here. If we add in the other aqua meeting, so that would be six, would it be, you know, I'm a believer in baby steps. So would it make sense to, if the board agrees, say we're gonna cancel those meetings, can I get that on there? Because we'll most likely, we'll anyway, and we'll bring that back. And then keep it on the agenda. Because I do, you know, we are in the same boat, but we'll look at that when we go through, you know, really kind of work in reverse. When we do the second meeting of the month, we'll kind of have a feeling whether we need to do the first meeting of the month. Because that's the be the one we normally cancel. And we could take it from there. And if it feels comfortable after time, you know, we'll change it however, which way. Well, one of the issues that I have as a staff member for a board that only meets once a month is that it's really hard to expedite construction projects. Because you have two months rather than, let's say six weeks. And that two week period can make a big difference. And especially during the summer months, and of course we only have one meeting, but when you're coming up to them, you wanna put out to bid, you wanna give them enough time, then you wanna open bids and then approve it. And it just, it's really hard to make that happen. Although, you know, I agree. Although we see by the chart, just to play devil's advocate, there are a lot of agencies that do, you know? But I like your idea. Yeah, but how much work did they actually do for a place with a conscience? Yeah, I know it's ironic. I can't remember when I brought this up. It was when we were, I can't remember the exact time, but it was because I was the same concern as moving into a period where there could be, we need to review some, the board has to review things. I don't know. So I've been wishy-washy and it was my idea to do this. I'm sorry. You okay with giving the staff the prerogative to cancel? I think we should keep it on the board and have it canceled. Yeah, and it would always be done with the board president. I mean, I would be in consultation with the board president saying this is what it, these are the two items or the one item. We don't know if it's worth the time and vice president, whoever, you know, that configuration works, but Bob, yes. The only problem I have, not problem, but the issue would be notice. Sure, it has to be five days, right? Well, yeah, but how do you give it? I mean, you know, you put it on the website. Could be also, I guess in the agenda thing, saying it's canceled for that meeting. Well, I would hope probably sufficient. I would hope that at one meeting, we would have enough information to know whether we're liable to have that second meeting or not. Well, that's, but that means that, for example, October 8th, which is your next meeting, you'd have to decide tonight whether you're going to have that meeting or not. Yeah, and we keep a running, you know, we keep the items that's going on. I do think in a situation like that, especially if it's an item where there's a lot of people that wanna speak on an item that they might get disenchanted or disgruntled because their item's been pushed so that they have to come to two meetings instead of knowing when that item was. And I guess if you were going to try to extend a meeting or roll over to another date, is that triggered by a time? Like after X number of hours, you would say we're gonna stop? No, no, no, no, no, no. Never done that before. But it would be nice if you planned those high turn-around meetings to have less items on them. So we're not going to have four hours. Right, balance it out, right? And I'm sure you do that already to some degree. You can't anticipate everything, but because the public doesn't wanna be in a meeting for three, four hours, either. Well, I'll make a motion that we go ahead and make those cancellations for that we have been doing in the past, adding in the meetings and just to have those meetings, adding in the meetings where there's conferences that have been going to, and that we keep the two meetings a month in the other months on the schedule and then have the general manager determine whether or not we need the second meeting. I'll second that. Any discussion? I think we discussed it. Good, all right. It was good, thanks. All in favor? Aye. That was unanimous. All right, so we're moving now to. Get to approve the oral communication. You don't have to do anything on that unless you wanted to change. All right. So we're going to move to a closed session and so anyone who wants to comment on that? Thank you. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. I'm the appropriate litigant taking citizen duty for the public benefit. It's not just me. I don't want to make that clear. There are many people that support what I'm doing and are grateful. So I wanted to just bring to your attention that there is a new case decided. Stop the Millennium Hollywood versus City of Los Angeles that reinforces the necessity of EIRs being accurate, stable and finite and that the EIR must really, thoroughly describe a project. And I just want to point out that the Pure Water SoCal project was not thoroughly or accurately described. There were many things that were left unanalyzed. There was no anti-degradation report to accompany to back up any concerns for water quality degradation. And there are just many, many holes and I just want to let you know I'm not gonna give up. I know that Judge Small, former building co-worker, Mr. Basso is handling the case now. He will not even give me a court date to file a motion to amend an appeal or to file a motion for a change of venue. He won't even give me a court date. He finally did agree that maybe he would consider it on the same day that he's going to consider the hearing on the case of merits. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's impartial and I don't think he's qualified. He is not a secret judge. He's not even a civil court trial judge. And that's why I can't get a calendar date from the civil court clerk. Judge Small makes his own calendar because he's not part of the civil court. So this is not fair. This is not impartial, but I'm not going to give up. And if I have to, I will take it to the Sixth District Court of Appeals in San Jose where I have heard they have great respect for the law. They have great respect for Environmental Quality Act litigation and that's where I will do. I don't want to have to do that. It will cost you money. It will cost me a lot of time and money. It is, but I'm not giving up and I want to make that very clear. So I don't know what Mr. Basso will tell you. I did get a copy of the response to the statement of issues but the print was so small on the computer I couldn't read it. And I am looking forward to the reply brief that I am to receive in October. And I do hope to get a court date from Judge Small to get it out of this county. It won't get a fair trial in this county. Thank you. We are now in closed session.