 Well, I have 530, so let's go ahead and get started. I'd like to convene this meeting of the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for December 1st, 2022. Can you call the role please, Holly? President Mayhood. Here. President Ackerman. I'm here. If I have a minute, I might shut down my computer and try to restart to get my video to work, but I'll be here without video either way. Okay. Director Falls. Here. Director Hill. There. Director Smalley. Here. Okay. Are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Staff has none. Okay. I would just like to talk about, because we've got four different items on the agenda for the closed session, and we're going to reverse the order of. Depending on how we're doing in terms of time for closed session, we may need to reconvene after the meeting and my intention would be to break before see if that is necessary. Okay. So this is the time for all communications regarding items that are in the closed session. And I don't see any attendees out there. Is that correct, Holly? Better. You're muted. Yeah, you're muted. I can't see any. So I think. With that, we can adjourn to close session. So then I would like to. Reconvene the open session. Can we have a roll call, Holly? President Nathan. Here. Vice President Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Okay. There were no actions taken in closed session. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda for tonight? There are no changes to the agenda, Chair. Okay. This is the time for oral communications from members of the public. And let's see, we do have a few attendees out there. Would anybody like to address the board on any items within the purview of the district, but they're not on the agenda tonight. I don't see any hands up. So with that, we'll go to. The president's report. And which there is none. And then to unfinished business, which is our. Ever beloved remote meeting authorization under AB 361. So we need somebody to move that. Resolution. Chair, just a reminder to take public comment, even though that may not be likely. Okay. All right. Well, I was going, well, we could take it. Okay. Are there any comments on this? From the public. How about from the board? Okay. Can I have a motion then? I'll motion that we approve the resolution to continue the remote meeting authorizations under. AB 361. I'll second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. We'll have it. Thank you. Chair. Any other debates or commissions? Okay. Past unanimously. I'm to, uh, new business. And the first is, um, a Santa Margarita ground water sustainability plan. And I'll, uh, We have some visitors tonight that are going to give us a, a presentation item. Um, And, uh, So I'll let, uh, Rick go ahead and introduce this topic. This item is the Department of Water Resources Sustainable Groundwater Management Implementation, round two grant solicitation for projects. It's a resolution and a representative authorization. We, our recommendation is for the board read the memo and adopt the attached resolution that will allow the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency to apply for grant funding for district projects to present this item tonight to the board. We have Tim Carson and Rob Swartz from the Regional Water Management Foundation. And with that, I will turn that over to Tim and Rob. Let me just, because the board may not realize the Regional Water Foundation is the group that sort of handles and administers the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency. Tim is the person, Hancho of all of that and it also involves Mid-County. Yeah, Bob, is there an issue? I just had a clarification. Are these grants for district projects or for Santa Margarita projects? That's why we've asked Tim and Rob to come, they are, as you'll see if you read at the end of the resolution. And I asked Rob and Tim to come and sort of provide some context for this. I mean, it's been dealt with extensively at Santa Margarita but I wanted them to come and talk about it. And our job here is basically to listen to that. And what we're essentially doing is giving a letter of support to the activities of Santa Margarita and agreeing to those projects that would be paid for by the state that are those projects that our staff has advanced for our district. I'm a little confused about how all that works. Maybe we can cover it up in this resolution. That's why Tim and Robert did this to speak to us. But I just wanted you to know that Tim, and he sort of is the one that handles the administration of the meetings. And so he's taken over from Perret Parman in some of those aspects of Santa Margarita. And then Rob recently joined as the planner and has had a very large role in helping write the grant and his experience at the state level in terms of knowing how to get grants through and how you structure them to take advantage of the things that the state wants to hear. I think it's been really important, at least as I've understood it as been described by our staff. So I'll go ahead and turn it over to you guys now. Okay, good evening, number one. Thank you very much for the introductions and for the opportunity to present tonight. As mentioned, my name's Tim Carson and the program director at the Regional Water Management Foundation. And as chair may have indicated, the Regional Water Management Foundation is providing planning and administrative support to the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency. We have had a similar role for the Santa Cruz Mid County Groundwater Agency since 2016, but it's only recently as of July 1st that we have assumed that role on behalf of Santa Margarita. And so that is through a joint contract between both of those agencies and the County of Santa Cruz. And so in the time that we have been supporting Santa Margarita, a main focus of activity over the last several months is to, has been to look at this grant opportunity. And so to work with staff at the district, work with Rick and Carly as well as staff from the other agencies that are participating in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency and try to evaluate and put together a suite of projects and management actions that we think will be competitive for this implementation funding opportunity. So what we're gonna do this evening is I'm gonna start and give an overview of the grant opportunity and what the state is looking for in terms of the scoring criteria. And then I'm gonna hand it over to my colleague Rob, who's gonna go into more detail in terms of what the process, the date has entailed and what the status of the application is in terms of the current activities and the makeup of the components and the amounts. And just by way of additional background information, so we did present a similar presentation, although in greater detail to the Santa Margarita Board at its October meeting. However, we've advanced since then. And so what we're bringing back tonight is some additional detail on what those components look like and some additional detail on the dollar amounts associated with each of those. So feel free to stop us along the way and ask questions. But like I said, I'll start and then I'll hand it over to Rob. So I'm gonna share my screen here. Okay, I hope we were saying that all right. Great, okay, so some of the basics. This grant opportunity is through the Department of Water Resources, Sustainable Groundwater Management, Implementation Grant Program. This is round two. Round one was limited to critically overdrafted basins. So Santa Margarita was not eligible for that round. There is approximately $200 million available and there's quite a range on the potential ask anywhere from $1 million up to $20 million is the maximum award. However, with only $200 million available and potentially 90 basins eligible, that has really factored into what we think is going to be a competitive ask within that overall, what we expect to be very competitive funding amount. One of the big benefits of this round is that there is no local cost share required. So often under the recent state grants, particularly under Proposition One through that bond, it was a 50-50 match. And unlike that, there is no local cost share that is required. The activity period goes back to the release of this solicitation. So as of October 4th, eligible activities may be reimbursed if the agency, if the GSA is successful in the award and it will cover activities through April 30th of 2026. And so that has been another consideration as we've evaluated the projects and management actions within the Groundwater Sustainability Plan in terms of, okay, what is feasible to do within that eligibility timeline. So I mentioned the solicitation itself opened on October 4th and it closes in a couple of weeks. So it's a, has been a relatively busy time period since then trying to pull the proposal together. We have known that this was coming. And so all of the agencies that are participating as part of Santa Margarita had been evaluating earlier in the year, sort of putting together, pulling from the projects and management actions identified in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan what they thought may be good fits for this funding opportunity. But really we needed to see the specific criteria within the Department of Water Resources proposal solicitation package and their scoring criteria to do that detailed evaluation of what seemed like it was gonna be the best fit for this funding round. It's a rather lengthy process. So the application will go in, in December, the state is anticipated to make their draft awards in May, post the final awards next summer and it will be sometime a year from now or so before the actual grant is executed. That said, once the agency has the green light in terms of the final award, that eligibility period of October 4th, any activities conducted since then ultimately can be eligible for reimbursement. So that's what the overall funding availability looks like and the timeline looks like. Next, I wanted to talk a little bit about the scoring criteria and application itself. So there are 28 points total that we are working towards. The way the state divides them up, you can see the maximum points possible shown in that right hand scoring column there. In terms of a project description, they're really looking at how well have you supported the activities or components? Components is the phrase we're gonna use because that's the terminology that the state is using. The entire application itself is going in as a single project in their terminology. The project can consist of discrete components. Each of the components will be scored against the criteria that I'm about to go through. So on that first one, they use the term project, but in actuality, we're looking at, okay, it has the agency provided an adequate description in terms of the work that's gonna be provided. Have we discussed why it was selected? Who it's benefiting? Things like measurable objectives and minimal thresholds. These are things that are elements of the groundwater sustainability plan itself. It would like, there needs to be, in order to be eligible, the activities must be a part of the groundwater sustainability plan itself. And so the state is very much looking for that linkage to what has been approved already within that groundwater sustainability plan. In terms of the project benefits, they're looking at how well, how strong is the explanation of the quantitative benefits that are being stated? How will those be evaluated and how will they be quantified? So the sort of supporting level of detail, the better job that is done, the more fully those are addressed, then the more likely that score will be a four and it drops down accordingly from there. Map is fairly straightforward. As a map been provided of the region and the work that's gonna be done, the project specifically. And then we shift into these ones that are folded and italicized here. And these are the points that we think are gonna be more challenging for Santa Margarita to achieve. And that first one is looking at the benefits to underrepresented communities. And so what that means in this context, underrepresented communities refers to economically disadvantaged communities or severely economically disadvantaged communities. Those are based upon the census data and the median household income. The state provides a mapping tool to help assist and identifying those within the region. And I'll highlight that in a moment. And then some other potential categories. So are there any tribes or tribal lands in the basin? There are not in this case. Or are there any other environmental health metrics that can be identified through another statewide screening tool, something called the cow and viral screen? And so at this point, and I'll get into the details on the map in just a minute to give you an idea of what things are looking at right now. But that's part of what we have been assessing in order to fully score four points in that category. It must be benefiting either a tribe or a severely disadvantaged community. We don't have those in the Santa Margarita Basin. So we know we're not gonna achieve full points on that score, but we do meet some of the other criteria. And so we're aiming at partial points there. One of the overall bigger picture items that we are keeping an eye on is we know that we're competing statewide against the other high and might and medium priority basins. Some of those basins are in areas of the state that are gonna have the potential to score the maximum points in some of these categories. And so it becomes very important for us to be strategic and trying to maximize the points in those categories, particularly the ones I mentioned earlier, the description, the benefits, some of the ones that we'll talk about further down the list scope of work, of really trying to achieve the full points in those categories in order to be competitive. The next one looks at benefits to small systems and domestic wells. And I'm gonna blow up this map again in a second just so we can take a look at sort of what that looks like within the outline of the Santa Margarita Basin. And then the next one looks at human right to water. And so back in 2012, California passed the human right to water policy. This states that it is a human right for all human beings to have access to safe, affordable and accessible water for drinking, for cooking, for sanitation purposes. And so what has become standard within many of the state's grants is to look at are the projects that are receiving state grant funding, helping the state to achieve this objective. And so again, Rob, we'll talk a bit more about sort of how we've looked at projects in part to try to address some of those issues. Again, with an eye towards really trying to maximize the score and knowing this is gonna be a competitive funding round. The next one gets at the scope of work itself. So how well have we supported and detailed the tasks that are gonna be done under each of these proposed components? And then just a couple of points for the budget and schedule themselves. Mainly, are they reasonably supported? Are they aligning with the way the rest of the proposal is presented in terms of the scope of work and schedule? And so with that, I'm gonna blow this up and relocate this map a little bit just to give you a sense of what we're talking about when, for example, on that disadvantaged community tool. So it may be a little bit difficult to see here, but on this map, it in this brown hashed area calls out what qualifies, and this is at the census block group level as an economically disadvantaged area. We're looking at the sort of larger triangle, is the overall boundary of the Santa Margarita groundwater basin. There is this area through here that qualifies as an economically disadvantaged community. Within that, we do have the dots here are represented the location of private residential wells. And so not a huge area, but it is present. We also, the map indicates where small water systems are located as well. So as some of the projects and management actions within the groundwater sustainability plan are being evaluated, we're definitely taken into consideration, okay, how do those fit within the context of the state scoring criteria on this grant? How is the work that's being proposed going to provide benefits to those communities? So that is sort of what the overall funding availability, timeline and scoring portion of it looks like. And at this point, I'm gonna hand it over to Rob and he can talk more in more detail about some of the considerations that the district and the other agencies have taken into account in putting the application together. And it also gives me an opportunity to introduce Rob. I appreciate, Chairman Hewitt gave a bit of an introduction as well, but Rob is a relatively new addition to our team. So when we expanded from supporting Mid County to Santa Margarita as well, we had heard from the agencies about the need to bring on a senior planner. We previously had somebody in this capacity when we were working to develop the GSP in the Mid County, but with the work that is now anticipated as we're shifting into the implementation phase in both of the GSAs and the grant funding opportunities that we knew were going to become available, it was very clear that it was to the benefit of the agencies to bring on somebody in a full-time capacity is essentially 50-50 split between the two GSAs to help move those planning efforts along. And so as mentioned, Rob brings a lot of experience from his prior work with the Regional Water Authority and the Sacramento Groundwater Authority working on groundwater management and planning, working on Integrated Regional Water Management Planning and brings a technical background both as a professional geologist and certified hydrogeologist. And so it's been great to have Rob working as part of the team working with the district staff and with the other staff to really help us strategize on this learning opportunity. And so with that, let me switch the slide and I will hand it over to Rob. Great, thank you, Tim. I'll try to be brief. I know that you all have a long evening. I do appreciate your time. Happy to come back at any point in the future to talk about any of these topics in much more detail. Love to talk about groundwater management in particular. But tonight I wanna talk about some of the considerations that we had when we developed the application. First of all, Tim's already mentioned to you, we expect a lot of competition for funding. There are over 90 eligible basins at the state workshop. There were over 160 participants. I'm aware specifically of a basin in Southern California that's looking at doing a purified wastewater project similar to Soquel Creek. They've already announced their intention to apply for $15 million. So there are some large projects that are gonna be coming through in some pretty high priority basins. And as Tim mentioned, a lot of these basins have very large disadvantaged communities. So when you look at the scoring criteria, it's very important to think about those factors. Next was actually feedback from DWR. So fortunately, after we had the Santa Margarita board meeting, we were able to arrange a meeting with the DWR representative from the grant program. And we sort of shop around some of the ideas that we had and got some feedback from them. And I think it was generally well received. The next is really kind of focusing on projects that we could implement at a basin-wide bubble because as Tim showed you, even with these individual domestic wells or some of these small water systems, they're all sort of just smattered around the basin. And if you focus on a project that's gonna have a very limited benefit to a small area, you may not be able to even attempt to classify this as benefiting a disadvantaged community, the limited one that we have, domestic well owners or small water systems. So our approach is to benefit the basin as a whole so that we're basically all boats float. So that's another approach that we took as we identified the project components. Another consideration was offsetting existing cost commitments. So the GSP that was adopted just about a year ago now identified specific things that had to happen. They're required by the law annual reporting, monitoring, items like that. So we did build in some costs into the grant to try to offset some of the commitments that you all have already made. And finally, we really wanted to focus on moving implementation of projects and management actions that were identified in the plan forward. And I think that's been a discussion that some of you have heard. One of the projects, so let me give you some examples. So when it comes to projects and groundwater management, to me it's sort of a no greater. You need to focus on recharge, right? This groundwater basin is a reservoir system and really the key is successful management of that is finding opportunities when you have wet periods or available surface water or other supplies and getting them into the groundwater basin. So they're available for us during these dry periods just like we're experiencing today. So there are a lot of different forms of recharge but I want to talk just quickly about four that are specifically mentioned in the groundwater sustainability plan. And the first and it's always my favorite is in lieu conjunct abuse. So it's basically a fancy term for managing your groundwater and surface water to better align with the conditions. So when it's dry, you're going to preferentially use groundwater. When it's wet, you're going to preferentially use surface water and SLB, pardon me if you don't refer to yourself as SLB, it just sort of flows out from me but your district is no stranger to this. You practice conjunct abuse today, when you can, you get surface water in areas and let some of the wells rest. You are looking at expanding those through the local moment. There are two phases that are identified in the groundwater sustainability plan. And to me, it's really my favorite method of achieving recharge. It's simply, it's very efficient and it's one of the most cost effective ways of achieving it as well. Another way that is described in the plan and was even evaluated to a degree is injecting purified wastewater. So again, you all likely heard about the pure water so can also that's taking treated wastewater and really doing advanced treatment on it from there. You're doing micro filtration, you're doing reverse osmosis and then you're doing ultraviolet light treatment on it. So this is very purified water that's being taken and it can be ejected into the aquifer system. We're fortunate in this area that the mid-county basin is going to be ahead of us. They're already constructing projects right now and constructing wells. So some of the pilot testing that would really need to occur will be happening over the next couple of years. I will say that this is a sandstone aquifer system. It has its challenges. A lot of injection is much more common in alluvial aquifer systems. It's much more straightforward. It's largely untested. There are not a lot of really good examples of doing this in sandstone aquifer systems. But it is believed that it is at least part of the solution for managing the basin as a whole. Another way is injecting potable water and this would be taking water that's just been treated to drinking water standards, moved through a distribution system and ejected through a well. And in the future, it could be taken back from that same well that's called an aquifer storage and recovery well or ASR well that many of you have probably heard of before. Another method is stormwater recharge and that's essentially being done in Scott's Valley to a degree there have been what they call low impact development projects. So this is kind of a passive way of recharging. A lot of times what you do is conditioned development. So if an area is gonna get developed and that area traditionally was maybe allowing recharge to occur from rain falling on the ground and you're now paving it over, one of the mitigation measures is to basically offset that loss of recharge. And basically you capture that water and you allow it to percolate into the aquifer system traditionally through something that we call a dry well. These are fairly shallow wells that allow some water just to come in from the surface and just eventually make its way into the system. These are pretty small volumes of water though much lower than any of the other methods that we see. But these are the four methods that were described in the groundwater sustainability plan and different agencies are looking at implementing these at different degrees. So I wanna set the state with that so that we can talk of then about the next slide Tim. So basically I'll just cut to the chase and talk about the scope that we have put into the plan. So the state requires that you have grant administration as your first task or first component of a project. And that would be managing the grant itself all the reporting requirements over the three plus years that we would if successful what we manage in the grant we've budgeted $200,000 for that. I don't really think that requires a lot of discussion. The next item is component two is evaluate, prioritize and refine GSP projects. And so that is really looking at the recharge opportunities that I just talked about. So individual agencies have different things that they were looking to do. And in the plan, one of the implementation items is actually over the next five years to advance looking at these projects advance the level of knowledge about them. So some of them require some additional design work some additional cost estimating maybe environmental to make sure that they're gonna be feasible. But ultimately we wanna look and say around the whole basin, what could we employ as a recharge method and where, right? So we know Scott's Valley is interested in looking at doing some of the advanced wastewater treatment, a recharge. We know that Santa Rosa Valley is very interested in expanding the in lieu conjunctive use. So we know that there are different things at different parts of the system. And again, even if you could do entirely in lieu conjunctive use because it's a very complex geography it'd be very challenging to get surface water all the way out to the furthest ends of the basin furthest away, right? So you're always gonna have to look at different means. And what this would do is ultimately advance the project knowledge and it would create what we call bundles. It would essentially look at what are some of the options that we could be putting into a system and sort of optimizing those. So if you're gonna do, I'll use Scott's Valley as an example they're interested in both ASR of potable water but they're also interested in injecting highly treated wastewater. Well, if you do one maybe you're gonna be taking up some of your system capacity to do the other, right? So you have limitations like that or maybe one of them is very expensive or more cost effective and maybe you would rather start doing one today because it's more feasible to start it now and through time you would ultimately change that. So what we're looking to do is evaluate all these projects together as a whole through modeling and sort of optimize some solutions. And again, it's not going to come up with a single solution. It's going to come up with a series of solutions all of which that we believe would be feasible to implement at some point in the future. It will still be up to the individual agencies to decide whether or not they're gonna construct them how do we get funded and such but this would really advance as I said sort of the state of knowledge of our projects and also come up with opportunities for us to start thinking about how do we start developing and funding on the ground projects that are gonna help the basin out. So as part of that, San Lorenz Valley has identified that they would like to do some more feasibility and cost estimating for the Loch Lomond expansion to junk abuse and some funding for the focus of the SBIR that you currently have underway. And again, as Tim mentioned, regardless of the fact that it's gonna take eight plus months for us to find out the fate of this grant those costs would be eligible after October 4th. So we could potentially get reimbursement from that. And I want to answer Director Fultz's question right now. Senator Margarita GSA would be the applicant for the state funding. You would be a partner ultimately in that if we were successful. And so basically these funds would be managed and reimbursed back out to the district on your behalf through the GSA award. So you're not the direct applicant. You would be considered a project partner. So we have $350,000 budgeted for that activity. We would also then hire a consultant and we work with KJ to help us, Kennedy Janks excuse me to help us come up with sort of a scope and what would we think it would take to facilitate all of these discussions to happen. So it would be all of the agencies would be participating, talking about your projects at what level you might want to implement them and when and so that we could develop these the what we call bundles, put them into the model and analyze them as a group. And so that would be this primary activity. And then what we again believe the end product then would be a suite of feasible projects. And as I said, sort of the where would they occur? Right? So again, in some cases, Scott's Valley may have a stormwater recharge project that's going to occur in some portion of the basin because the geology is more favorable to occur in that particular part of the basin. So we're budgeting $1.3 million for component two. The next is component three. And again, as I, sorry, back to component two, the focus is let's do it base and wide so that we can try to get as many points as we can on those very challenging criteria for us. Then component three, again, the approaches base and wide taking things like they've already been committed for and budgeted for surface water monitoring, annual reporting. We have a monitoring well in here that's been budgeted. And I want to address that briefly in the ground water sustainability plan, we identified the need for nine monitoring wells. The GSA received a Proposition 68 grant award which was intended to construct those. And ultimately, partially due to time and inflation, the funding through that program could not fund all of those, it funded eight. And so that left less last deepest monitoring well which is quite expensive because of going into the baton of formation. So we included that in this. And then we had other things like looking at what are potential long-term funding options? We know it's expensive to comply with Sigma. So what are the types of fees that other bases are using and how are they collecting those? So there's an opportunity. And then finally in the ground water sustainability plan, an extraction metering program for non-diminimus. And that's again, non-diminimus is a fancy way for saying any potential groundwater user using more than two acre feet of water. So if you use more than two acre feet of water, you're considering non-diminimus extraction. For example, Mid County is really, they're looking at doing a metering program now. They did receive grant funding from round one. And they're only looking at implementing meters on those users that are using greater than five acre feet per year. They're not even gonna focus in on that two to five acre foot range. So again, these activities were budgeted. And so we're calling us about $850,000. And finally, the last component that we actually did talk to DWR about and it was interesting because the representative has some familiarity with this type of issue. And that's these bulk water stations. And so when you have some of these domestic water users, particularly in the foothills or in the foothills in the area that I'm currently in, but in the hills around you, they can be highly susceptible to going dry. And so there are no ready alternatives for them. And so SLB has been proposing these two potable water stations. And so we budgeted working with your staff $205,000 and that includes the cost of the station and the engineering and environmental work that would go into that. We, in addition to that, budgeted about $40,000 to identify domestic wells that are near systems. And so that we could also conduct outreach as part of that overall program. So we're budgeting about $245,000. So today, and these numbers could change very slightly. The grant is due in just over two weeks from tomorrow, about $2.6 million. And that's the overview of that. Happy to take any questions that you may have. Okay. Maybe I'll go ahead and start, I think me and Jamie and Mark have probably seen a lot of this before in one way or another, but so why don't I start with Jeff this time and see if he has any questions, and then I'll go to Bob. Jeff, you're muted. I'm not sure I have any questions at this point. We can cycle back. You don't have to. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Do you have any questions? I do. You know, it might be helpful if you'd leave, if you'd continue sharing your screen and leave that last table up. Exactly. Yes. Thank you, Gail. Gail knows where I was going. So I guess my first question is 2.6 million. So, you know, a little over what, 1%? Is this an all or nothing thing? That is, you either get all 2.6 or you get zero. No. So the state, and this is somewhat unique, and this is a phenomenon they started recently, is they do reserve the right to not fund the entirety of the program. And so they do require that we self-evaluate our priorities. And so they are currently listed in the way that we would consider them to be. I will say, first of all, component one is not an option. You have to have that as you're being your sort of top priority. They're going to give you the funding for that regardless. So we've listed these in the order. They could come back and say, you know, it's great, but we're not going to fund component four. So we'll give you 2.3 million dollars and such. So they will not, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Just to make sure I understand then. So the acceptance or rejection would be on a component basis, not on a project inside the component basis. Correct, correct. That is our understanding. That had been the answer that they have given. They will not go through and pick out. And again, in a sense, it was part of the strategy on how we grouped the components together, but they did fit themes, right? Component two is clearly identified in the GSP to do this process at some point in time. Component three, these were all things that are identified as things that need to get done that aren't necessarily projects and management actions. And again, then component four was one that came up recently with this idea of these portable building, water filling stations. They're not in and of themselves groundwater sustainability planning, but they're a really good thing to do, for example, right, because when you passed Sigma, you have 20 years to come into compliance in the basin. That's the thing that people have to remember. There's a long, long-term game to reach sustainability, but we're in the fourth year coming into a drought. So this is a really good mitigation, right, to deal with right now. So that's why that's in there. So it was not identified in the groundwater sustainability plan, but it's being included here in this package. Well, maybe the rains we've had in the last, you know, a few weeks continue for the next couple of three months. That would be really great. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why I wanna dig into a little bit more into item number two under component two. All the other items on here seem pretty clear about what it is that's being covered, but I'm not clear what you mean by criteria development, bundle development, refinement, outreach, engagement. That's all very nebulous and at least at this level. And since I wasn't in the Santa Margarita meeting and I was actually hoping for that specific information to come here, I'd like to learn a little bit more about what is involved in there, because if any of that money is intended for continuing to flog the notion of injection wells in our area, I'm not really in favor of that at all. I do disagree with you on where our focus needs to be, which I think is solely on conjunctive use, continued conservation efficiencies, that sort of thing. But the notion of getting into any kind of injection wells, given our size, given the geological challenges, given the relative wealth of the communities, that's not something I'm interested in, San Lorenzo Valley Water District participating in. If Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz wanna do it, more power to them. So what is involved in that? Right, so again, what that would have basically entailed and again, absolutely, nobody's gonna tell you what to do. This is not intended to say, hey, it looks like the economics favor you guys putting an injection well. No, the reason injection wells are in there is because it is something that Scotts Valley is interested in evaluating. So the criteria would be, for example, will the results help us meet management objectives and minimum thresholds that are in the sustainability plan? So there are different solutions in different parts of the basin that will help us get there. So, and again, all of this is really to be developed. So it has not been established, but cost would be a criteria, timing would be a criteria. Rob, can I just jump in here? I think I maybe can help answer Bob's question a little bit more specifically. And that, because I think he wants to know a little bit more of the Bratz tax. And I think it might also help Jeff because he hasn't been going to Santa Margarita is that the discussions for injection wells have been entirely on the part of Scotts Valley and the city of Santa Cruz. And the idea would be that the city of Santa Cruz has thought about doing it in areas in the Scotts Valley part of the basin, okay? And potentially using some old Scotts Valley wells that have been abandoned for one reason or another or areas that are around it. And similarly, Scotts Valley has been thinking about that. And they don't have the advantage that we do of being able to use both surface and groundwater. So there's nothing in that that commits us as a district to getting involved in any kind of injection projects. And for the exact reason that, well, two reasons. One, our part of the basin is in better shape than Scotts Valley's part of the basin in terms of groundwater levels. Two, we have the benefit of being able to exercise conjunctives better. And so we may, I think we're all hopeful that when you combine that with conservation, we don't need it. But the, so we're not committing to doing any of that. And- But what we are committing here, it seems like then is we're gonna spend close to a million dollars on the evaluation to enable Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz to evaluate injection wells as part of this overall process. And we get 350,000 to look at block one. Is that kind of the way it breaks down? Because again, everything on here is very specific except for bullets, the second and third line items in your component too. And I'm trying to just model this in my mind. I think that is, at a 30,000 foot level, it's a fair assessment. I think if you build out a little bit deeper, what you would find is that the information that will come out of some of line two and three under component two will be, for example, modeling of what happens when you do certain things in the basin injection. So it'll be looking at exploring this whole problem of will it work putting water into the long pico? And is it safe to do that? So there are benefits that we acquire in terms of knowledge and modeling of the whole basin. There'll be, notice modeling to assess bundles. Another thing that will, I think, might be potentially helpful to us and correct me if I'm wrong, Rob, but one of the things that will probably be modeled is that Santa Cruz, excuse me, Scots Valley will be trying to figure out some of these more passive ways of recharging from surface waters. There might be potential things that we could think about doing over in some of our areas around Santa Margarita where we could do the same kinds of things where we have highly permeable things, especially where it overlies the long pico. So there will be benefits in the modeling. So it's not that we're just getting the 350K, that there will be benefits from that other million dollars that will accrue to us, but at a high level, you're right that it mostly goes to Santa Cruz. I just know that Scots Valley and city of Santa Cruz are hot for injection wells. And so if there's any kind of focus on this, it's gonna, most of the money is gonna go into that area, but it would be very interesting if they could generously include Olympia and some of the other areas in terms of stormwater seepage, basically getting back into the aquifers. I mean, at a high level, our contribution historically has been around 30%, I think, in terms of operating expenses. So we get somewhere around close to 30% of the money here for component two that directly goes to us, okay, sounds good. And maybe the rest of it will be done through some of the secondary effects we get off having better modeling, which I do agree, both at an engineering and science level would be interesting to have. The notion of San Lorenz Valley Water District's ratepayers popping up for injection wells in any way, shape, or form doesn't excite me in any way. So I'm gonna be focused really on the lock moment because I think that is where ultimately the entire basin can get the biggest bang for the buck by shuffling the surface water around because in fact, we can move surface water all the way from the tip, the north tip of Santa Margarita, all the way down to Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz with the new ramp that Scotts Valley got to construct and interconnect with them will even be able to ship it both ways, either way. So in fact, that highway, and we just got them putting in the Quail Hollow line, which gives us a super highway all the way down to Scotts Valley. So that water can't actually move. And to me, that is the fastest, least expensive, least intrusive, and most environmentally desirable way to deal with our groundwater issues today. Yes, I wanna emphasize that middle component, that includes the in-loop conjunct-adduce program. In my understanding, I'm six weeks into the job, so I'm still learning a lot, but my understanding is that you're proposing to do inter-district conjunct-adduce working with Scotts Valley potentially and moving across that line, right? Across the river? Yeah, or they'll get the water from Santa Cruz. I mean, once they have two interconnects, they can negotiate the deal they want. Absolutely, and so I do believe that that analysis is really, to me, if I didn't, I stay in it. I'm the biggest fan of in-loop conjunct-adduce. I always think that that's where you start, right? So I do believe that this analysis could reveal that that's the first thing we wanna do and that we want to maximize the use of that before you start looking at other alternatives. So this is not intended to just be the pet projects for any new individual agency. This is intended to look at a reasonable suite of alternatives. And so there are limits to conjunct-adduce at times, though, right? The only limitation that always concerns me, and again, the area that I'm working in, is there tends to be a mismatch between the availability of surface water and demand, right? So when it's really wet in the winter, if you don't have an existing demand to offset, then you can't achieve in-loop conjunct-adduce. So you do look at other means, direct means of recharging. So- I mean, Rob, unfortunately, since all of Scott's Valley is on wells, including our portion of it, immediately, if you wanna serve that entire area for four to six months on surface water, I don't know, that seems like a pretty big impact on the groundwater levels over a very short period of time. And I'm not a scientist at your level or Gale's level, but I do know numbers a little bit, and that seems to me to be really an efficient way to go. Look, I get your point about that, but I think there's a plan here that could be executed with conjunct-adduce across multiple agencies running that for five to seven years to see what the groundwater levels actually look like before even starting down injection well-pads and spending money on that. That to me is the biggest bang for the buck immediately, and the infrastructure is already in place to do that. All we gotta do is get, I mean, and if the city of Santa Cruz hadn't decided they wanted to throw a monkey wrench into our process, we would be well on the way to having that done, but politics being what it is. So yeah, this to me, the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency maybe ought to be looking at how do we address the concerns that the city of Santa Cruz put in that's requiring us to do way more work on getting our water rights redone in order to be able to advance that faster. To me, that's a really good use of money. And I don't think that's on the list. Can you clarify that, Rob, or maybe Carly, whether the targeted environmental impact EIR there is, is that with regard to putting in a pipeline and to Locke-Lomond and upgrading the Kirby plant or is that with regard to the are being forced by Santa Cruz take on a much more elaborate environmental impact statement to get our conjunctives use water rights petitions. So which one of those is that referring to? We haven't started the actual water rights petition portion. We've really only focused on the environmental with the ISM and D that we initially went through and that's where we received the comments from the city of Santa Cruz. So I believe Bob, is that what you're referring to? Yes, well, I think what Gail's referring to is you've got focus EIR on here. I took that to mean focus EIR for Locke-Lomond, not for our water rights in general. Right, this is more focused on it's the greater conjunctive use which also can includes the Locke-Lomond component. Okay, but $350,000, I'm sorry, go ahead. That's $350,000 compared to what we're gonna be spending on that EIR and the delays in actually getting groundwater sustainability done because Santa Cruz got in the way here is that I don't believe he's gonna cover the entire amount and certainly won't cover it if we're also looking at Locke-Lomond evaluation. To me, our priorities in this funding aren't really where we get the immediate biggest bang for the buck, clearing out all the regulatory and politics stuff as quickly as possible. I'm inclined to agree with you, Bob, but go ahead, Mark, how about you? Yes, I'm pleased to see that Locke-Lomond feasibility is listed here. I have to agree with Bob on the second item under component two for the criteria development, bundle development. I don't think that that could be written in a more obscure manner to just, and I have peripherally been following Santa Margarita meetings as the alternate, and that doesn't mean anything to me. The modeling in item three, yes, I can understand what that is, but a good job of hiding whatever is truly in there for that $577,000. And I hope that that aspect doesn't negatively detract from evaluation of what I consider to be a fairly concrete and substantial item, the Locke-Lomond conjunctive use. I can put my hands and my brain around that part of it that it doesn't negatively detract from reviewers' aspects of the overall component two, since what I heard you say, Rob, is that the stake can award on a component-by-component basis. So that's all that I wanted to comment on that. Thanks. I'll come back to you, Bob, but I want to go to Jamie first, okay? You can come to me, but I'm just gonna say that I actually really agree with Bob on this one. Thank you, Bob. Are you okay? Yeah, it's kind of a faint. I thought you made an excellent point, and I tend to think that we do need to focus on projects that we think are most realistic and will actually improve life for our customers. And I have a real concern about the fact that we're just spending half a million, quarter, you know, 20% of this money in a way that I don't see any actual outcome. So thanks, Bob. Jeff? So this is my first real exposure to Santa Margarita large-scale planning and projects, but I just have an overall feeling that there's an awful lot of money in here for things that have very vague outputs that a lot of paperwork as opposed to shovel work, I guess is what I'm gonna say. I know you have to plan things, but this looks like a huge planning exercise to me. And I'd like to see a little more specific outputs built into the project. So, and I do think Bob is on the right track. I'll come back. Rob or Tim, do you want to respond to that before those comments, before I go back to Bob? I would agree that it is a huge planning exercise. I'm coming into this and the Groundwater Sustainability Plan had that listed as an item to do this planning exercise. So I'm facilitating the will of the group as I came here. And again, I do believe that the intended outcome is to come up with an impartial look at the things that need to be done to reach sustainability. And I do believe that the in-loop conjunctive use program will shine essentially as a critical component of those solutions, so. I wish you'd said that very specifically up front. I mean, I guess I would add to Rob's comments by saying, yeah, this is directly coming out of the multi-year Groundwater Sustainability Plan development. There is a specific action in there that talks about advancing the understanding of the projects and management actions within the plan. And so the steps preliminary to this before either Rob and I were on board was for the staff and for the Santa Margarita board to identify within the projects and management actions identified within the plan these different tiers of projects in there. And there was a fairly detailed matrix that identified on a sort of project by project in some cases projects more conceptual where things were at. And so was there a gap, for example, in that a preliminary feasibility study could address for water availability analysis, quite a lot of assessment type activities that is very much you are correct in identifying that. There's a lot of additional technical planning that needs to happen before the shovel ready implementation portion of it occurs. And so that's the framework that we stepped into and that's sort of the direction that was presented in terms of us working within that framework and then trying to identify within that what we think is the most competitive suite of projects given the criteria we've looked at. I think the other the last thing I might add is that it is different in that the model that the overall structure that Santa Margarita dealing with is the basin as a whole. So it's not individual agency. Well, each of the individual agencies has their respective priorities and what may work best within their individual jurisdiction. Overall, the intent of the groundwater sustainability plan is to look at the basin and to achieve sustainability in the basin. And so that's that is that's cooked into the signal framework as well. I guess I'll just say, you know, you know my comments from at Santa Margarita meetings and I've from early on have said I wanted to see more doing and less consultants. So I think I'm actually it's very odd because I have not discussed this with the rest of the board. So when I hear Bob, you know, saying these things that are essentially echoing a lot of the things that I've felt, I kind of feel like, okay, I was on the right track and I wasn't successful. But at least I was I was trying. I think I'm a little disappointed tonight that I was hoping that having you here, you know, at the last Santa Margarita meeting, the reason I was so unhappy was that we were provided with a list that had almost no numbers associated with it. But we finally have some numbers, but I think it would have really helped. For example, on the $577,000 and 451. I mean, you obviously must have a breakdown of what that means if you know, and it would have helped if we had seen that, you know, if you take to get a number that's that precise 451 numbers, you've got to have a breakdown and we're not seeing it now. And it might have been a little bit more helpful for the board if they could have seen what that was about. Having said all of that, I think basically the important thing for us to do tonight is that we passed this resolution because it is a way for us to get the $350,000 to move forward on our Lakloman conjunctive use. And the other thing it does, which maybe didn't come through clearly enough, is that as Rob and Tim pointed out, it's very expensive to run Santa Margarita. And this grant will go a long way towards paying those annual administrative and monitoring things. For example, under component three, you know, the surface monitoring, we have to do that. The state mandates it. The annual reporting is an important one. This explore long-term GSP funding options is another really important one because we have to find some way that we distribute the costs of running Santa Margarita across the whole basin. And all the people that use water and especially those that use groundwater across the basin. So it's not just the 350. It's also these other components here, or our share of those, which would be over 30% that is being paid for here. So whatever the satisfactions I might be expressing, I think I still am strongly in favor of us signing this resolution in support of the Santa Margarita submitting this proposal because it's going to help us out financially. Bob. Just a few final thoughts. I'm certainly willing to be pleasantly surprised if the analysis comes back even handed. I've been doing this a long time and I just know when agencies are hot for something, that's where the funding tends to go. So please do surprise me and that would be a really good thing. What you talked about was one of the reasons I was so critical of the GSP and its existing form because I felt that by opening the GSP up to a lot of options that I thought were neither economically nor environmentally feasible for our area and certainly not for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, we were in fact deluding our focus away from where we can get immediate and substantial benefit with very, very low cost. But the politics being what they are, we got the GSP that we got and here we are. The third thing I would say is that if I'm a state agency looking at this and a state agency that's going to want to start weaning themselves off funding operating expenses, I'm going to drop component three very quickly because I'm going to say, hey, look, we're really shifting here to implementation stuff and you're going to be on your own for funding operating expenses for the groundwater agency going forward. The grants we got early on were sort of the drug you get to get you hooked on it and then eventually you get weaned off of that. If I had been putting this together, I would have put the component three things on component two along with the SLV, Lachlomand and EIR and put the criteria as component three given that you're mixing both implementation and operating, you have a higher possibility given that I think our overall possibility here is probably lower than others of actually getting that. But be that as it may, here we are. I continue to be really concerned about the fact that the politics of the situation, the politics of the city of Santa Cruz are getting in the way of actually delivering meaningful immediate groundwater benefits to our community and our groundwater basin in a way that under current situation we're just getting delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed. The fish aren't helped, the groundwater isn't helped, the people aren't helped and it's really time to get off of this and get focused on implementation. Lachlomand is great, I'm glad it's on there, but even if we get information back, it is years away from being implementable whereas the conjunctive use can be implemented very quickly if Santa Cruz didn't do what they did. This is a, from my point of view, none of this is beneficial for the community, but I want the 350,000 at least and so we'll grin and bear it while we continue to play games here with consultants that don't deliver meaningful results for our community. This is why people get frustrated. Here, here, Bob. Would anybody like to make a motion? I'd like to make a motion. Do we need to go to the community? Well, so let's have a motion on the table and I'll go out to the community for comments. I'd like to make a motion that our board support the application to the California Department of Water Resources for the grant funding. Any items is laid out in front of us on this table for the 2.625 million dollars. Mayor Mayhood, may I suggest a modification to the motion? Yeah, because it is a resolution that we're adopting. Go ahead. Right. So I'd like to suggest director Smolley, if it's acceptable to you to restate the motion as being to adopt the resolution that's in the board packet for this item. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have the effect that you described. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second it. I do have a question. About the, about the resolution. Okay. Go ahead. I'm, I'm most comfortable with resolutions regarding funding like this that they actually include the specifics around what the resolution is. Is it possible that the, because the wording right now basically doesn't commit the, anybody to anything other than we're signing off on some grant that all we've really seen is this presentation and one page of funding. So what assurances do we have that those components are actually the ones that are going to be submitted. And that aren't going to be changed between now and the 16. Sorry, I have to ask, but sometimes things change. Yeah. Yeah. Robert Tim, you want to respond to that? I mean, I guess my response would be, we've been working quite closely with district staff throughout the process. And so they're. Helping to shape what you are seeing in front of you. And so I think that we have been responsive along the way to incorporate in their comments. And so I don't anticipate a sort of. I don't think that we end up in the next couple of weeks, dramatically revising it. You know, I think. There's the potential that amounts shift slightly, but I think we're bringing you the. Substitutively. What we intend to submit at this point. I mean, it's not in our interest director. I don't think that we're going to be able to. To. To. To not work cooperatively with staff or to disregard. We're getting from Rick or Harley. That's not the intent at all. And so. I don't know, Rob, you can add to it. If you think there's any potential that these amounts. Mark, go ahead. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I don't need, or personally, I don't need Rob to comment on it. I did want to follow on what Bob was asking. I'm not concerned about. San Lorenzo Valley water district staff. Altering or changing what's in here. Given the other member participants. In Santa Margarita agency. Are any of those. Participants going to change what's in here. Well, they no longer like that one on the Loch Lomond. So let's just take that out. Yeah. Got it. I understand. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I think you picked a good example in Loch Lomond in that that has been clearly communicated as a priority. Both at the staff and at the board level. So. That aspect of component two is, is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it can confidently say it's not changing. I think the budget estimates on some of the respective sub tasks that were laid out here. That's where. That's where I would like Rob to comment. Actually, I mean, Rob, do you see a scenario in which these. Sub amounts here under whether it's component two or component three. And then we'll go back and forth with multiple technical consultants in addition to agency staff and trying to refine these numbers and to get budget estimates both from staff as well as consultants. Do you see a scenario where those are significantly changing on any of those. Not significant. You know, I'll give you an example this week. Under the, the de minimis metering. I don't see any big picture changes here at all. They're occurring. Jeff. Why don't we incorporate the chart. In the motion. With the caveat that. No number in that chart. She'll change more than 10%. Between now. I understand the sentiment that goes into that, but I don't think we want to do that because this is supposed to be a go in as a letter of support that Santa Margarita will include in the application. And I think that that would create. Just an image that don't want to do for the purposes of the proposal. I think we can fight among ourselves. But I think that when it comes to how we present ourselves to the state, we, we don't want to, we don't want to do that. And I, I guess. Frankly, at this stage, I'm not worried about what. You and Bob are talking about. I, I, I don't really, see this changing that much, you know, maybe at the margins. I think the fact that they've put number two. You know, that they put Loch Lomond right there at the top. As, as Rob was saying, everything's listed in order of priority. And that, that hasn't changed. Or if anything, it's moved up, I think over, you know, the last year that I've seen this. So I, you know, I, even though I, you know, I've grumbled at various times that I, I feel like the process is far too dominated by Santa Cruz. I, I, I have faith that it's not going to. Morph after we pass this. Thank you, Gail. I think it's a good trust building exercise. Let's, let's see what happens. Yeah. Go ahead. Comment on that. This resolution is. Effectively while you're being supportive and we very much appreciated the requirement of the resolution is to basically authorize. This application. To include projects that are on your behalf. Right. So again, that's real. You're really saying, yes, you may, you may apply for some funding for us for the Loch Lomond project for the Bolton project. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Any other questions? Yes, we have a lot of questions. We have a lot of questions. We have a lot of questions about the Loch Lomond project or the boat water stations. And and such. Okay. Let, let me go out to our attendees. And then I'll come back if the board has any more comments. Are there any questions from the attendees? Cynthia. I just want to say, I agree with all of the comments and the discussion. your discussion and understand our interest. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. Any other comments from the attendees? Okay, if not, let me go back to the board if there are any further comments. We have a motion on the table. Any more comments on that motion? If not, Holly, would you go ahead and take a roll call vote, please? President Mayford? Aye. Vice President Ackerman? Yes. Director Falls? Yes. Director Hill? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. The motion passes unanimously. I want to thank Tim and Rob for coming and I have to I do want to say something in their defense and that what they they have only been involved in this for a while and I think what they've been bombarded by tonight is a certain frustration that that we in the district and certainly me being engaged with Santa Margarita for the last year of our sense that that that we're that we're the little mosquito and Santa Cruz is you know the gorilla in the room and we we've been multiple times been sort of victimized by that and so I don't want you to take it personally and you know and I feel a little bad that the two of you got beat up on tonight because frankly you don't deserve it. You're coming in at the end of the game and but it is what it is. Okay, so I appreciate you coming tonight and talking to us. So thank you. Yeah, appreciate the opportunity and hopefully we'll have a successful grant at the end. Yes. Right. Everybody. Okay. Thank you. Next item of business is a long service line agreement. Yes, Chair. Thank you. I'll ask the district engineer present this item to the board. Josh. Thank you, Rick. This is a fairly straightforward long service line agreement for a parcel just off Teal Drive outside Boulder Creek. We have no plans to extend our mains in that area. So the only way we can serve this parcel is through a long line. The owner of the parcel has acquired the requisite easement for the service line. And that's, if that's really all I have to say about it. So I'll take questions. Are there any questions from the board regarding this? Pretty straightforward. Mark. Um, yes, I'll ask one of Bob's questions. Is this the current up to date service agreement? Since we've heard that for other long line service agreements in the past. This is indeed the format used most recently. Okay, good. Um, is a one inch meter more expensive to install or to purchase than the five eighths meters? A one inch meter does cost more than a five eighths meter. The difference is incremental. The installation net. And are we being compensated for that? Or is that part of the the service fee connection fees that they're paying? It is max. Yeah. As Rick noted, it's $50. But oh, okay. Minimal. Um, we've seen easement maps in the past with these long line service agreements. Um, should there have been one with this one? This one, we don't have a map. We have a legal description. And I don't see that it was actually included in the packet. I can provide it. Um, I I wouldn't be able to read through it anyhow and understand all of it. I don't need it. I just want to make sure that we are complete with that. If that's what it takes to file this that is required. And yes, it is complete. Okay. All right. Thank you. Address is my questions. Mark almost asked all of them. So just really quickly on the easement legal description, which which I do read that sort of the best practice moving forward probably should be including maps though. It does help people I think more easily identify what the legal description languages because most people can't read legal description languages. The question I had though was on why the one inch. Um, you mentioned it was for fire flow. But you know, my understanding is that typically we handle fire sprinkler. I'm assuming that's for fire sprinkler that we that we handle that differently. Um, or is this sort of the new policy that we have going forward that if someone does have sprinklers, we install a one inch in lieu of a five eighths, but only charging for the five eighths price. That is indeed our policy. It has been for some months now. We started late last year. Has that been normalized? We have not formalized it. It has been our process. Could we formalize that? I think that would be important to include in and also include in the rate schedule information that the customers might might encounter. I think that would be very helpful to do. We can do that. Yeah. And by the way, I do think it's a great thing that to do that that way. So I have no objection to it. I just think it needs to be formalized so that customers know what they're what they're getting into, especially given that fire sprinklers are becoming regrettably from a cost point of view more important. Are there any questions among the attendees seeing none? Would anybody like to make a motion? Sure, I'll make a motion that we approve the long line service agreement as put in front of us for here. Let me again. This is another resolution. So I'm just going to do it for you. Thank you. I move that we adopt the resolution in the packet that approves the agreement regarding water service for Michael Smith in Boulder Creek. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Stems. Make it clear what the vote was so it can be recorded on the rest. Yes, I will. It was five in favor. Unanimous. Next item. Leak adjustment notice of appeal. Yes, thank you, chair. Yes, on on November 4, 2022, the board received an email from Barbara Morehouse, McMaster's appealing the district's finding that a requested second leak adjustment was denied as it did not conform to district policy. Our policy is if you incur a larger leak within the five year period, you may submit another leak adjustment request to receive the difference between the current and prior leak adjustment amounts. The second leak was not greater than the first leak. The second leak went through a two month period. And then the first leak went through a two month period, which made the the amount larger. And then the second leak was only through a one month billing period. Seeing as that this leak, the second leak will not meet district policy. The leak a second leak adjustment was denied. The first leak was in April of 2022. And it was for two consecutive months of 25 and 32 units totaling 57 units. For the second leak adjustment, we only use the one month of 36 meters for the meter reading period. So it's recommended to do the fact that the second leak adjustment did not comply with policy that the board deny their request for appeal. I do believe Ms. Morehouse is present tonight, and most likely wishes to address the board. And if we will be more and happy, the finance manager will be more and happier myself to answer any other questions on how the leak was calculated. Okay. If it's okay with the board, should I have I would have recognized Barbara? Go ahead, Barbara. I think I'm in am I not? Yes, you are. Okay. Thank you. The reason that I am appealing this decision is I don't own this home. I'm a renter. So I'm not financially responsible for the upkeep of the waterline in the yard that busted in April, or the water heater that busted in August. So I'm a little I'd say upset that I'm expected to excuse me to pay for this. When this isn't the home that I I mean, if I own this home, no problem, not even a blurb out of me, but I don't own this home. Gina, thanks for recognizing me, Chair Mayhood. I before the board delves into the discussion of the appeal, I just wanted to make two quick comments on the legal front. The first being that I wouldn't encourage the board to think of an appeal as a process of determining whether staff applied the district's policies correctly to the particular situation. And secondly, the district, as you know, has transitioned to making the account the owner, the account folder and all purposes. And therefore, the legal relationship is really between the district and the the owner, which makes it unfortunately, you know, legally a little bit tenuous to get involved in issues that affect the relationship between the landlord and the tenant. And that that's all I will say, unless there are questions about those points. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that, Gina. I'll recognize Jamie first. Jamie, go ahead. Oh, I said, I think Bob had his hand up first. No, I don't know his problem. He's never raised his hand first. I spread it around. No problem. Just check. So I, you know, I guess I was, I don't really have a specific question about this circumstance. It sounds like we, we, you know, did all of the things that are within our policy to do. I guess, Gina kind of spoke to my concern, which was that, well, I am, you know, incredibly sympathetic to how frustrating it must be to have these water bills related to, you know, equipment failures in your rental home that you don't own. That is a conversation between you and your landlord in terms of whose responsibility falls to what for those costs. So I appreciate that this is a big bill, but I'm not sure that the water district policy can accommodate your concerns necessarily because that, as Gina said, puts us between you and your landlord and creates precedent for all of the other renters who are water district residents. So that's kind of where my thinking is at on this right now, that I, I am in the unfortunate place between my, I'm going to have to reject the request. Tom? You're muted, Bob. You're still muted. I unmuted myself, and then someone muted me again. Maybe that's, you know, CTV. Sorry about that. I had a clear for question question. Whose name is actually on the bill? Is that something I can answer? Sure. Okay. The bill comes as Sally Real, care of Barbara McMasters. Okay. So why is it, why is so the reason I asked that is I, I distinctly remember though, you know, it's been a couple of years. So maybe my memory is faulty, but as part of the process by which we stopped doing turn offs, one of the, one of the side effects of that due to the legal aspects that Gina, I think very capably analyzed was that we were no longer able to do tenant billing. And so when I, when I first heard about this, I was like, well, I mean, Barbara, you sound like you're the tenant. So I'm not sure why you would be getting the bill or have the legal responsibility for paying the bill. If in fact, our policy does not allow for tenant billing any longer, or did we, when I moved off the budget committee, did we subsequently come up with a way to do tenant billing that still allowed us to comply with whatever A, B something, I forget what the number was, that really forced this really long, complex and expensive process for turn offs that it was just simpler not to do them anymore and less expensive. Gina, it sounds like you might have some insights moves. Go ahead, Gina. If I may, the district does not do tenant billing. However, some owners have been directing bill their customers via the care of line. But nevertheless, the owner is the account holder and the customer. And unfortunately, you know, I wouldn't recommend the district alter, you know, that legal relationship by recognizing the care of is sort of the customer or the responsible party for the bill. Okay, so I wanted to make I wanted to make that clear then. So the owner of the property really is the is the responsible party for the bill. And it sounds like if there's any issue here between on how this bill gets paid, the issue is between Barbara, you and your landlord, it's not between you and San Lorenzo and I watered it. Right. And so you're not legally the my understanding based on this conversation here is you're not legally responsible for that bill at this point. From the district's point of view, maybe it may be an agreement that you have with your landlord. That's separate. But from a district point of view, the bill goes to the owner of the property, not to the tenant. Okay, then so then if then if you guys are billing for the water, then wouldn't the water bill need to go to her. I think that that would explain Barbara. Barbara, I think that that was explained that the that the fact that it's delivered to you is just a courtesy that perhaps your, you know, your landowner agreement between the tenants and the landowner, right? The rental agreement decision that she wants the bill to go to the tenant. I'm assuming it probably is in their rental contract, though I would have no idea of whether that's true or not. Right. And so yeah, we don't want to we don't want to get involved in that level. Well, my point is my point is from a standing point of view, the appeal couldn't even be issued by Barbara anyway, because she's not the person we recognize as the responsible party. The responsible party has to be the one to do the appeal. So quick question. Barbara, when you were asked earlier, what name was on the bill? You gave another person's name and then care of you. Who is that other person? Sally Reel. No, but I mean, who is she in this relationship? She would be my my landlord. And she's the legal customer. Right? Yeah, right there. I think, though, that Barbara did bring the initial link to us. I'm assuming it was Barbara, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you brought us the initial leak request leak adjustment request, which we granted. And and therefore you brought us the second one. So I understand why you believe that this is the path forward for appeal, but I tend to agree with what my fellow directors are saying and and our lawyer in terms of what the appropriate relationship here is. And so, you know, I'm just I don't know how we can go forward. Well, let me say that if we grant if she brought the appeal the first time, my question would be why did we go through the process with her the first time given she's not the the the responsible party that the district recognizes? Again, going back to our policy, we don't do tenant billing anymore. Therefore, tenants aren't involved shouldn't be involved in the appeals process even. Answer that. And we're reviewing that process right now. This is the first time the situation has come up. So the staff, the finance manager myself and district legal counsel have been reviewing this internally and and will be, you know, trying to make sure that we do not in the future deal with tenants as they are not the legal responsible for the account. I so I think all of this discussion and you know, everything I agree with what everybody said here and that this, you know, any kind of appeal should be brought by the owner. But actually, the thing that's in front of us is that, irregardless of whether it was the owner or the lender or what, even if it had been by the owner, the second time it would be turned down because it doesn't meet the criteria of the department of the district's policy about the second week has to be bigger. But it's not. And so to me that that is, you know, well, I agree with all this other discussion and that we need to clean this up. And I'm glad to hear that from Rick that we are cleaning this up. I think to me the reason to turn down this appeal is on the grounds that I believe Rick is district manager turned it down, which is the second leak was smaller than the first leak. And so that even if the owner came back, it would not be granted. Bob? Is it possible to set up a 12 month payment plan for this portion or just this bill doesn't affect any of the other bills? And is that something the owner could come in and request? Is that possible or and I and I'll refer to the finance manager. I do believe we do have believe the law requires us to make payment arrangements and so forth. I'll let either Gina or Kendra speak to that. Yes, Bob, that is correct. We do offer payment arrangements per the leak adjustment policy. It just states that let's see the full repayment shall occur within 12 months from determination. So any any balance left over from after the credit was applied for the leak should be repaid within 12 months. Thank you. And again, that would have to be the owner to come in and apply for that. So wait, now I'm a little confused. Did I just ruin the credit that I got in April? No, we're not going to. We will not do anything about that. We that that you're you're fine there. It was just that I think as we discussed this, we recognize that that was kind of a mistake that that we should have been dealing with the landlord. But we're not we're not going to change that. But I think what I would like to move now is that we turn down this appeal because it does the staff applied the district policy correctly. The second leak was smaller than the first leak. And so it doesn't meet the policy for granting more of an adjustment. Do we need a vote on that? Chair Mayhood, if I if I may make two procedural suggestions. One is to make that a motion for a vote and secondly to go out to any other members of the public. Well, I meant it to be a motion and to be seconded. And then if we had a motion, I would go out to the rest of the public. Do I have a second? I will second that. Thank you. Are there any other comments from the attendees? Okay. Holly, would you take a roll call about please? President Mayhood. Hi. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. The motion passes unanimously. Okay. And good luck. Thank you. Thank you for coming, Barbara. Sorry. Last item of your business is discrimination, harassment and retaliation prevention policy. Gina, were you going to take that? It's pretty much sure. I can take that. This one should be straightforward. There have not been any legal changes necessitating updates to the policy. So the policy in front of you has not changed from prior years. The board, the board policy manual does require an annual review, which is why it is nonetheless coming to the board for a look in December, even though we're not recommending changes to the policy. I have made sure that the resolution or this readoption indicates that the policy will continue in effect, regardless of whether the board readopts it each year in December, just to make sure that there's no lapse. And that's really the only, I guess, tweak of interest that may be of interest to the board. Are there any comments or questions about this among the board? What do you know? How about among our attendees? Okay. Would anybody like to make a motion to adopt the resolution? I'll move the recommendation for the resolution to adopt the district's discrimination harassment retaliation prevention policy for 2023 and subsequent years. Thank you. I'll second that. Okay. Holly. President Mayhead. Hi. President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes unanimously. That brings us to the consent agenda. Is there anything anybody would like to take off of the consent agenda? Board members, how about from members that are at the audience, our attendees? No. All right. Then the consent agenda is adopted. Next, we have district reports and I know that Rick does have a district manager report tonight. Yes. Thank you, chair. Last night we held a Belton Heights tank replacement outreach meeting at the Felton library. It was well attended by the residents of Belton Heights in person. Plus we had a few people attending my zoom. We presented a alternative choice or alternative choice to the location that we have been talking about placing the tank on John Erickson's property. The alternative choice was basically south of that tank, just on the other side of the dirt access road on still on John Erickson's property. The appeal of this was it this tank site, the tank would be blocked visually by a large row of redwood trees. The resident voice port for this project relocating to the south site on John's property. However, it was clear from the residents that the support was based on the district's ability to work with John Erickson to obtain a property either easement or purchase to build the tank. You know, I believe that we are close to getting 100 percent support from the neighbors in Belton Heights. If we can work with John Erickson on this alternative site, the south site. Our next step will be to the president of the Road Association and myself to reach out to John Erickson, showing the support of the neighborhood and start. Hopefully we can work with John back on track to negotiate a location to place the tank. But I think it was a good meeting. And by the time we were done, we did have, I think just about everybody in the room and on Zoom in support of the project, as long as we could work with John. And I do want to thank Josh and Carly and our IT guys Scott for also coming to the meeting. And I thought that Carly and Josh did a really good job explaining things. You could when they would explain things, you could just sort of see the emotional temperature in the room dropping, you know, and so I think that they and Rick did a great job of extract extracting agreement from the two major protagonists and, you know, getting them to say it publicly. So I thought it was it was a tough meeting in some ways. But in the end, it was it was successful. OK, just one last comment on that, you know, director Folch, you've been a big supporter of this. The Fulton Library has a wonderful meeting room we were successful with getting a hybrid meeting and the folks to were very pleasurable to work with down at the Fulton Library. That's really that's really great to hear, Rick, and I'm glad you're able to do a hybrid meeting. That is the that is the future. We had some issues, but no, I know. First time is tough. First time is tough. Yeah, but it's the future. Yes. OK. Are there any questions or comments about department status reports or committee reports? For members of the board. Mark. Yes. Couple on the Engineering Department report on page 52, where we address Brackenbrae and Forest Springs. Have we received any invoices from Sanders for their part of the work on this? And if so, have those invoices been appropriately submitted to DWR or reimbursement so that we could start that reimbursement process? We have not actually received invoices from them yet. Oh, OK. OK. So they're what? Ten. Ten months out and doing work and. OK. No. OK, on page 53 of the Engineering Department report of the G.I.S. system updates. You mentioned more time sensitive projects that the G.I.S. person is involved in. I'm just curious briefly. What are those more important projects? So minor clarification are G.I.S. guy is Weston. He is a G.I.S. and CAD specialist. I have had use for him on several projects, which were of shorter duration, where we would have. Another agency or a rate payer asking for some specific piece of information and I would pull him out of the field for a day or two to create the necessary exhibits utilizing either G.I.S. or CAD. Good. Somebody that can multitask and perform different functions for us. That's great. He has been a godsend. Good. And I see that the Quail Hollow project is complete. It is. It is. It is just shy of complete. All of the work is done. We have scheduled the final paving walk with the county. Once the county has locked the site and agreed that it is complete, then I will be willing to say that it is complete. OK. All right. And I have one brief question on the environmental department report. It references on page 55 an application for the big base and water company as part of the state revolving fund. What's that? So that's the state revolving fund money that we're pursuing to bring on Big Basin water company into the district as part of our consolidation. Right now we're just looking at a planning effort. So we're hoping to approach the state as for the money to go after the planning and the design and engineering. Susan Robinson, our grant contractor and myself are working on that right now. It's a pretty large application package. There's environmental. There's engineering. There's financial. There's quite a few pieces to it. So we're hoping to have that and bring it to the board in the future or very near future. Probably by I would say mid January we'll be ready to bring that to the board. OK. Thank you. That's a 3.5 million. I do believe. Thank you. Bob. And on that grant application you're putting in inflation adjusted numbers, right? Right. I believe that's what Sandus has provided us as well. Double whatever it is on the inflation assumption. I only had one quick question and that is will the operations report on water sources show us using any surface water in November? Not from Lion Plant. But from Kirby. Yes. Do we expect we'll be using surface water from lion shortly? We're going to evaluate that on Monday after these next after this weekend storms. Great. Thank you. Any questions? Go ahead, Jeff. Good question for wreck. Where do we stand on the peer review for the CZU fire rebuild? I do believe we do have a draft peer review in and it will be going to the December. I'm pretty sure it's going to go to the December engineering committee to be reviewed and then to the board at the following meeting after engineering. We're very close to getting it to all of you. Thank you. Mark, if you want to answer anything or add to that. District staff between Rick and Josh asked me to do a preliminary review on the very draft report. That the engineering firm provided to us. I did that. Had some significant formatting changes on how they were presenting it to us so that it could go in front of the engineering committee at our next meeting. Thank you. I'm also a member of the engineering committee as well. I don't recall that I saw that. So I'm curious to we sort of give different information to different folks? No. We reached out to Mark as the chair to the engineering committee to see how he wanted to proceed if he wanted to bring that on the next agenda. And that's the reason we just went to Mark. There was no reason to bypass you but we went to Mark as chair. Well, it sounds like it was a little more than do we want to put it on the next agenda? You know, when I was chair of committees, I don't recall getting that kind of review capability on items, Rick. I think we as a board when it comes time to review board policy may need to review this a little bit closer. I have no problem with board members providing input in that way, but I think it needs to be even handed across the agenda. I do contact chairs of all committees in work on setting agendas in that and I don't routinely reach out to the actual committee members. But that's something Bob obviously would do. Agenda setting is fine, Rick. But this was not just a hey, do you want it on the next agenda like we used to have conversations about. This was actually an in-depth detailed review of material. But this is something that the board needs to address. Again, not a problem if we want to bring board members in to do that level of work. But I have expertise in finance and while I'm not in the finance committee any longer, when I was chairing that, I was not part of those kind of conversations. Your points taken Bob. I forgot now if I went out to members of the public to see if they had any comments or questions on department status reports or committee reports. I'll just do it once more because I can't remember. No, I don't see any. That brings us to the written communications. There was a number of letters to the board regarding Lake Montego. I guess I would just simply say that following on from the statement that Jenny Gomez made at the oral communications Rich and I reached out and made an appointment with J.M. Brown who is the assistant to Bruce McPherson and we met with him and basically made the point that this was Lake Longpico being on county property was, it was their responsibility to deal with it and that we were quite willing to work with the county to potentially provide an electrical drop in a place to put some kind of shelter for a pump if the county would hold us harmless on this and basically that where it has gone, J.M. said he would look into it and he would get back to Jenny Gomez. The other thing I would simply say is that Jenny Gomez has not asked to agendize this topic I offered at the meeting and she has not contacted me to do that. Yeah. She has removed her grant application for the aeration system and just to clarify when we met with J.M. Brown we talked about the district may be willing to work with them on placing something on district property that wasn't interested in assuming into the operational costs and I'm probably going to get Gina here. I was just going to say that J.M. had made a discussion on this since it's just agendized as information light up and not as an item of board discussion. Yeah. That's what I was trying to do but Bob if you have a quick comment it's okay. Yeah my comment was it seems like it's worthy of being agendized so but if she's withdrawn the grant application and it's moved then perhaps we don't need to agendize it but if it does come back I do think it needs to be agendized. Well if she had made the request we would have done it but we've had no request from her or any other people to agendize. Well I could make the request that it be agendized but if the grant application has been withdrawn there's no reason to move forward because the project won't happen anymore. Okay. All right. No informational material so that basically brings us to the end of open session and so Gina how do you want to handle whether we need to come back to open session. I think what I want to simply say is that although we will reconvene in closed session there will be no decisions that will be needed there will be no actions taken so that there's no need to come back and report actions in open session. Yeah I agree. There's no likelihood of actions being taken so we can represent that there won't be any report out here on the record and I can provide the time of adjournment when we adjourn from the closed session I can provide that to Ahali for the minutes. Okay. How about if we take a 10-minute break because this has been kind of a long session and take a 10-minute break so we'll come back at 8.40 to start closed session but Ahali's got a question. CTV do they need to hang around for the as long as you're ready? That was our point. Our point was they don't need to hang around neither do you Ahali. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure Brian understood that. Thank you. Okay. That's what we were trying to accomplish is that you guys were off the hook. All right. So everybody come back for the closed session at 8.40. Thank you. Thank you.