 back to my water views. Right, take a shower at the health club. Shooting at work, are we on now? We're already on live, okay. Hi everybody, sorry, I was a couple minutes late. Had a little difficult technical time this afternoon. But I see we have, looks like we have all of the board members on. Director Burke, is everyone on staff ready? Yes, we're all ready to go. Great, thank you. So I would like to call the Water Conservation Subcommittee to order at 202. And could Secretary Aitha do a roll call? Actually, Secretary Aitha is having technical difficulties becoming a host, so Deputy Director Martin is gonna take care of things today. I'll be watching them. Okay, great, thank you. So I'll be doing a roll call real quick. I guess we'll start with Board Member Walsh here. Board Member Grable. Here. And Board Member, excuse me, Chair Watts. Here. Thank you. And I would like to remind all the committee members to mute their phones and microphones when they are not speaking. And now it looks like we will take public comments on item two. So if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Chair Watts, I'm seeing no public comment at this time. Great, thank you so much. So it looks like we have some minutes to approve. So before accepting the minutes, I'd like to open it up for public comments of the minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Mr. Martin, do we have any public or live or prerecorded comments? At this time, I'm seeing no hands raised for public comment. Great, thank you. Now I'd like to move to item 4.1. Director Burke, will you introduce the item? Thank you, Chair Watts and members of the subcommittee. Our first item is our cash for grass rebate expansion and our water use efficiency coordinator, Claire Nordley will be making the presentation. Good afternoon, members of the board. I'm gonna share my screen. Okay, so this presentation is about our cash for grass program expansion. As you all know, we've had a cash for grass rebate program since 2007. This is our rebate program where we offer an incentive to customers to remove their high water use lawn and install low water use plants. When this program launched in 2007, we paid 50 cents per square foot of lawn removed for both single family residential customers as well as our dedicated irrigation meter customers. Then in 2014 and late August, we increased the rebate double debt basically to a dollar per square foot just for the drought. So that was 2014 to 2016. We dropped back down in 2016 to 2020, 50 cents again. And then just recently, as you all know, we increased it again in July of last year to 75 cents. And we did that specifically because the cost of water has increased from our wholesaler Sonoma water and has allowed us to increase our rebate but still be within that cost effectiveness measure. At this point, we are recommending though an increase to a dollar 50, which would be a doubling of what our current rebate is. And that's specifically to increase program participation. We are in a drought. We want people to conserve and remove low water use, remove lawn and install low water use plants. And this would mirror our 2014, 2016 increasing of the rebate. So as you can see here, this is, you don't need to know all of these figures, but basically you can see the general trend in 2013 through 2016, the rebate, sorry, the number of square feet removed increase significantly in both single family residential and commercial. And you can see that this also mirrored the increasing of the rebate. So this is when we went to that dollar per square foot in the drought. And really since the 2016 peak or 2015 peak, things have really decreased. And this is for a number of factors, I think along with sort of drought fatigue, people are thinking about drought and we're tired after that after 2016, but also decreased rebate amount and yet landscaping continues to be at a high dollar amount. We have seen some increases in program participation because we have increased the rebate to 75 cents per square foot this last year, but we would like to increase it to a dollar 50 just to further incentivize customers to remove lawn. This is a graph just to show our cost effectiveness. The cost of water from Sonoma water is a little over $1,000 per acre foot. And as you can see in these charts, these are our sort of general rebate programs that we offer to customers. The lines that are hash marked are where we're proposing the rebate be in a dollar 50 per square foot. So you can see that it doesn't meet the cost effectiveness threshold. It is above that, but again, these are extraordinary times. We are asking people to conserve and we wanna be able to offer our customers opportunities to save through modifying their landscape. So we feel that it is justified to increase the dollar to a dollar 50 per square foot removed to incentivize customers further. So as I mentioned, our current rebate is 75 cents per square foot. The increased or expanded program would be a dollar 50, which is a doubling of our current rebate. And this would apply to all customer classes, single family, residential, multifamily, dedicated irrigation meters, et cetera. A couple of additional drought related changes that we are making. And again, we want to help our customers help us reach our 20% water saving goal. And so we are allowing people who do not have a green lawn right now to participate as long as they have an irrigation pattern last summer. So last summer we weren't calling for a 20% reduction. So they should have still been irrigating at that time. And we want those people to participate even if they have heated our calls in the last few months and let their lawn go brown. We're also encouraging people to plant in the fall when it actually rains. And we are providing an associated program extension if needed. Right now it's not really needed because we do give them 120 days from the pre-approval. So if they got pre-approved today, their project wouldn't be due until October. So hopefully fingers crossed it's raining at that point and they wouldn't need an extension, but we would be able to offer an extension if for some reason they didn't want to plant right in October, it wasn't raining for example and we'd be happy to offer that extension. So again, we're just trying to do everything we can to incentivize customers to participate in our program and really achieve that long-term water savings goal that we have. So I'll escape from the presentation and stop my screen share and see if there are any questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. Are there any board member questions? Board member Walsh? Yes, thank you very much Chair Walsh. Claire, on the rebate program, I want to think it's a really great idea. Are there other rebates we may consider for instance a portal discount so if somebody signs up to the water savings portal and to measure the water use hourly or daily, may we consider that. And then also on the planting in the fall, is that like a discount program or is that just another water saving measure where please don't buy a five gallon nursery plant and plant it right now? How does that work? Yeah, good questions. We haven't done a water smart portal incentive program. It's an interesting idea and something that we can definitely look at internally. I did, I do understand that as of last week I think we had over 500 customers register so far for the portal. So we have had a great participation. Apologies for the background noise. And as far as planting in the fall, it's just something that we encourage our customers to do right now for our Cash for Grass rebate program because we want them to not plant right now. So it is all in the same program. So that is part of the Cash for Grass. So if you're taking out your grass, so please don't take out all this grass to get us a water savings and then spend even more water on your initial planting during a drought. Exactly. Because if you're thirsty, they're gonna be hot. Gotcha. Yes, exactly. Okay, cool. We encourage people to sheet mulch now so they would remove the lawn, but they wouldn't necessarily be planting anything until the fall when the rains hopefully help their new plants get established. Gotcha. I really appreciate that. And hopefully people are gonna catch on and look weird together. So we were in one of those neighborhoods where they had a lot of grass. Some people had wells, like gardeners and all this. And we were the ones doing the sheet mulching. They're called lasagna gardening. And we just looked really funky for a while. It looked like the Creedence Clearwater album sounds. But yeah, I'm really interested in, if there's any other programs that you wanted to pitch to help save the water, that would be cool. Great. And we do offer free yard signs. So if customers are interested, we can provide a yard sign that says drought is here, save water. And people can pick them up from our office. I'd also be happy to provide them to any of you. And they just go right in the yard and let people know your commitment to saving water. And I think that could help with, some of those brown lawns out there and really telling people why they're brown. Yeah, and I was just going to add, I just double checked and we're over 1,600 people have signed up for the, or 1,600 accounts have actually signed up for the portal already. And we're just putting the information out in the postcards. So we've had a really great response rate. And so I think we'd like to see that kind of play out and see where that goes. It's a great tool, it's free. And so we're continuing to provide information on that. And then board member Walsh, you will hear in our next item, we're going to be going over all the programs that we do have in some fashion. So we have, I think in some way, shape or form about 25 different rebates. So there's a lot available to our customers. But we're always open for additional suggestions. Thank you. Any other board member comments, questions? Board member Grable. Oh yeah, thank you for the presentation. I definitely support the the Cash for Grass program incentive hike. I do think it's a good idea. One question I had before I kind of asked my second question. Who are our biggest users right now in terms of, let's just say, commercial sector users? If we're talking about grass specifically, landscaping or irrigation, and they're not on urban water reuse, they're not on purple pipe. Who are our biggest users, do you know? I don't know the customer names specifically off the top of my head, but we can run reports that do say our highest water users. We do reach out specifically to high water users who use a certain amount of water in a specific amount of time. So for example, we just reached out about a few weeks ago for people who were irrigating 1,000 gallons in one hour. We thought that that seemed pretty high compared to normal or average water use in the city. And so did reach out to those customers specifically. And then we do have a list of top 100 water users in the city that we do contact, sort of on a regular basis to let them know, hey, you're over budget, or have you looked at some of our rebate programs? Generally, they're homeowners associations or Santa Rosa City Schools. They're people with large expanses of irrigation, but I don't have the specific names off the top of my head. Yeah, I was more interested by sector. Is there a bio-industrial sector or business sector type of business? Do we have an idea of who the biggest users are in terms of landscaping, besides the obvious golf course? I don't think we have something that's, I mean, we break them down by sector, but I wouldn't necessarily be able to say sector by sector who are the biggest water users. It's more, we have a list, and like I said, they're dedicated irrigation meters. So they're meant to be used just for irrigation. Generally, some of our top users are like, like I said, homeowners associations in the schools because they've got sports fields, big expanses of grass that they're irrigating on a regular basis. Okay, and then my next question is just, in terms of, I agree with the incentive structure, but in terms of spreading that incentive out to, there's two things that kind of concern me about the mechanism. One is that it obviously, you know, it obviously focuses on folks who are property owners who have, you know, have lawns that have had lawns up until this point that have been watering them, right? Not necessarily a subsidy that affects a lot of low income families who may be struggling right now. And I know we have other mechanisms for that, but there's just one element of it that concerns me and tying into that. If someone, you know, if someone does have a large lawn and or had a large lawn, sorry, and they've already done all this work, right? They just, they decided to do it anyhow. Is there any kind of a retroactive application? When this came out, I read some of the comments when the proposal came out for stuff like this and for the 20% mandatory reduction, there was a lot of controversy at least in people's comments and online debates about folks who had already taken these steps, folks who were already using far less water than their neighbors or whoever who are now being asked to do another 20% mandatory reduction. I know it's really difficult to capture, but it's just something that I think needs to be said is those who are already the best actors, I do think we do need to do a better job of giving recognition and some sort of incentives there when we can because they've already taken those steps voluntarily, they already have water smart, native plant landscaping maybe, and they've done it regardless of the subsidy. So it's just something that I know it's difficult to capture, but it certainly perplexes me in terms of how we're using mechanisms and who it benefits the most, you know, so. Yeah, thank you for the question. Like you said, we do have incentive programs or programs where low income or, you know, it's open to the entire city, all of our programs are, but we have ones that specifically are helpful for renters. So for example, our water smart checkup program, you know, we go into a customer's home, we evaluate their irrigation system, but also their indoor water use, you know, aerators, shower heads, et cetera. And obviously that's beneficial for anyone, you know, any income level and any customer. And we have seen a huge increase in the number of requests for those just, you know, calling for the drought. The other piece with the 20% water conservation rate, we certainly get customers, you know, we call them our supersavers and they're wonderful. They're the people who have saved in previous droughts and who have made those long-term commitments to water conservation. And those are the people that we're not asking necessarily for them to conserve an additional 20%. We want them to continue to, you know, save as much as they can, but there may be other people who are higher water users who could save that 20% or even more making up for the people who are already, you know, champions and water savers. We are starting to try to highlight those customers, those supersavers. Next month in August, we're gonna be starting a social media campaign to really highlight those supersavers because we want them to feel recognized and they are, you know, an extraordinary part of our customer base. Some people have saved huge amounts of water and we do wanna highlight them and celebrate them and hopefully inspire other people to become supersavers too. Yeah, do we use a, I know I saw it in the contest, but it's like a contest, right? Before you enter a drawing, you can win certain things if you're a supersaver, right? In that, do we capture gallons per day per person or just per household? You mean do we ask them what their gallons per person is? Yeah, are we capturing usage of gallons per day per person or just we had just overall per meter, we know kind of what their usage is? Do we have any kind of survey data in terms, because the other thing that concerns me is that, you know, if someone has a bigger household, obviously a lot of kids, whatever, you know, I'm definitely interested in them saving water, but compared to, you know, say two people in a large household with a lot of square footage of landscaping and irrigation, to me it's just, you know, or again, compared to a golf course, it's not even, it's a negligible amount for me when you're looking at those and where you're banged for the buck is. I also wanna make sure we're capturing the per person usage, not making, you know, a low income family household of eight, right? I don't wanna make them feel guilty for using more water than a household of two people, you know, with maybe it's, and when it really comes down to, if we're really looking at the economy as a scale, we obviously, like I said before, wanna focus on the biggest users and figure out, you know, a 20% reduction from some of our biggest users just eclipses, you know, any other residential household. So that's kind of where I'm going with it. So Board Member Grable, great questions. We do have persons per household in all of our accounts. We don't know who's low income versus not. That's just not some information that we have because we're just water accounts. So, you know, if folks, we let them know about the H2O program and if they wanna sign up, great, then we have that information, but there's no way for us to overlay, you know, low income, this accounts low income versus this isn't, but we do know persons per household and as we get into higher stages of our shortage plan, we do give a gallons per person per day. So right now, as Claire mentioned, we're not there yet. It is higher stages of our shortage plan. We are at stage three, which is appropriate right now because that is the 20% reduction that in water supply that we're getting from Sonoma water. So we're passing that on and asking our customers to do the same. There's still over, you know, we're at 127,000 acre feet in Lake Sonoma. So while it's not where we would like it to be, we still have a couple of years of water supply in Lake Sonoma. So as we get into higher stages of shortage, we would definitely be implementing our gallons per capita per day. We have information on the bill. So every month you can look at your bill and you can see how many gallons per person per day you're using. We also have information on our website and been putting it out there. So, you know, we've been kind of asked for what's well, what's a target, what's, you know, who's really saving. So it's, you know, it so depends on a lot of different factors. But if you're in that, you know, 50 gallons per person per day, that's great. People can be down in the 20 to 30 range. Again, it really depends on what they're doing if they're growing food at home, if they're not, there's just so many factors that play into water use. So we really look at these rebate programs and the shortage plans, when to make it as equitable and fair as possible, taking into account water conservation and demand hardening and pest actions that folks have taken. But also on the rebate program, what we're really trying to do is what's cost effective for us for just purchasing more water. And so that's really where we're looking for it and we're making it open to anyone. So some of those folks may have been folks that have taken advantage of our rebate program, you know, 10 years ago, which is great. And so we wanna keep having that available to anyone who's considering making that change and really trying to push them over to making that change. And that's really what we design our rebate programs for. Hopefully that helps a bit, but we definitely hear what you're saying on all those pieces. And definitely that is something we absolutely take into account. We're just not at that stage yet. And I'm hoping that we won't be, but if we need to be there, that's sort of the next stages of our shortage plan. No, that's helpful. It sounds like we're already capturing a lot of that and trying to take that into account. I just, you know, I like to really focus on the equity lens when you're talking about, you know, these sorts of voluntary and mandatory reductions who are the biggest users, where's our biggest bang for the buck, but also, you know, not making people feel guilty because they have a big household and they like to cook at home a lot because they can't afford to go out or because of the pandemic, you know, so just things that pop into my mind when we're talking about these programs. Thank you. Board member Walsh, do you have another question? Yes. And the ideas are kind of a follow-up on the member Grebel's question. I was interested in the data we're collecting. Obviously, as things change, you realize we need to do that and figure out what's going on. And I'm wondering if some of the things, one is on the low income savings and incentives. And this is just, I just want to throw that out there. I don't know if that's possible now. There's a care program on utilities. If there's a way to do a GIS overlay, like if the utilities, if we could get PG&E and San Rosa IT to say what addresses do we have and then do that overlay for us, just if it's feasible. I know you've got a great IT team with Eric McHenry and he's been doing wonderful things with GIS, I think a winning award. So that's just one idea. The other is on the shared meters, I think of a lot of low income users, actually there wouldn't be accounts. The account owner would be the rental units or what have you. But there may be some shared meters. And I just heard anecdotally from the rental that my daughter is in. He heard the water on and he didn't know who it was, right? Or how to get to the landlord or what unit and he couldn't go around and knock on all the doors. So he's got a great landlord to keep on top of things. But to incentivize the renters if they're in a shared situation, I don't know the cost to install meters and I don't know how many shared meters you have. I would just be interested in that. I just want to throw that out there as an idea after listening to Chris. And then the other one is on data. If there's a way to know if these addresses once they sign onto the portal, how much did people on the portal save compared to overall? So if we can disaggregate that data, so of all the people on the portal, here's their savings compared to the others. Sorry to go on, I missed the last meeting. But there's other things on the messaging on the 20% reduction. I think Santa Rosa water's done a great job clearing up the concern if people have already saved a lot and they think they have to save another 20% and they can't. They have some anxiety. And I think our answer is, well, you don't, you just have to save 20% over what our expectation or allotment is. If there's a way somehow to message to them and I'm not sure if the concern is, gee, if we said if you're already below then you don't have to save the 20. Now everybody relaxes and we save less, right? So there's some natural tension there. And I just wanna make sure that we're not failing to tell people, here's the real deal with the requirement just to reduce the anxiety, right? And so there's this natural tension between saying, you don't have to save more because you're already there. And then we leave some of the savings on the table. So I don't know how that all plays out, but there was confusion. If I'm already low user, do I have to save another 20? So that's just a lot of things that toss out there. But I think the one idea is, is there a way for us just to say portal users are saving this much? And then is there some way, if somebody's on a shared meter, they can start measuring what they use individually. It's an easy way to deal with that. So those are the two real questions. On shared meters, how do we incentivize them? And then what data can we get on reduction in use for those that use our portal? So a couple of things, all great comments. When we can definitely look into the portal. So it's brand new, so we'll have to get back to you on that. It's gonna take us some time to pull that together, but we can look at trying to get metrics out of that. It's great tool and we expect to be able to do that. It's probably gonna take us some time as folks are just signing up. We have a program for shared meters. And so it's called our server split incentive. We can talk about that. That's actually under the next item. So we can talk more about all the rebate programs that we do have, we do have that. And then I do appreciate the confusion and anxiety. And I will say, we are putting it out there that it's community wide and we're asking our folks. And quite honestly, it's getting everyone's attention, which is a good thing because we're getting a lot of folks that are emailing or calling in saying, I can't do anymore. And we're like, okay, great, so keep it up. Or actually, if we're looking at your use, you may be able to do a little bit more. So here's how we can help you. So we really do think the messaging that's been out there, we're putting it out there very clearly that it's 20% community wide, but the folks that are very concerned and they're calling us, it's right on our website. We're getting back to them, we're letting them know. But it's also a great touch point for us with those customers to talk to them. And I think that's really to our benefit and to drive that type of customer contact than to try and put something out that says, if you're already efficient, don't worry because we don't want people to be laxadaisical. And a number of people have said, I didn't think I could do anymore. And then they went on the portal and then they said, actually, I realized I can do something else. So I do think that from that perspective, we're definitely letting folks know, but we'd really encourage that we keep the messaging right now so that we're driving folks to us as a touch point to really help them. And then, if they're doing everything, then great, keep it up. Appreciate your sensitivity to that. And I think we're doing the right thing. So just wanted to point out there is a natural tension there. Thank you, Chair Watson. That's all I have. Great, thank you. So it looks like we are support of the recommendation. I don't think we need a formal motion and vote, but it looks like everyone has expressed their support for moving forward with this. So thank you. And I would like a long sign for my brown graph that will be torn out soon. So now we will take public comment on 4.1 If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Mr. Martin, do we have any live or voicemail public comment at this time? Chair Watson, I'm not seeing any comments, public comments at this time. Okay, great, thank you. So we will move to item 4.2, Director Burke, if you could introduce the item. Thank you, Chair Watson, members of the subcommittee. So item 4.2 is really going to be a deep dive into our drought update and Deputy Director of Water Resources, Peter Martin, will be making the presentation. And I believe Claire Nordley will also be doing the second half of the presentation. I'll unmute myself. So it looks like I'm sharing my screen now, correct? Peter, you're sharing your speaker view. So you might wanna change that display setting. Okay, thank you. Okay, are we up and running now? It's still your speaker view. If you go to display settings, can you change it up there? Hang on just a moment, sorry. I'm also happy to bring it up and advance your slides if you'd like. Claire, would you mind doing that? All right, thank you, Claire. Obviously, I used to running these meetings on Zoom, but we're always working through these Zoom technical difficulties together. So thank you very much, Chair Watson and members of the committee. Today we are gonna bring you a kind of comprehensive drought update and talk a lot about kind of how we got here today and how we're gonna respond to these drought conditions. And also, of course, look for any feedback that the subcommittee may have on our approach. So if you can advance to the next slide, Claire. So at this point, I imagine you all are very likely aware we are in the midst of kind of what likely could be the driest single year on record for the region. Water supplies and snow and water reservoirs continue to remain at their lowest levels in their recorded operational history. You know, as the summer goes on, we're hearing that curtailments of water rights are already occurring for water right diversions on the upper Russian river. And eventually a lower Russian river will also be seeking curtailments to for water rate holders. And that is mainly to preserve the critical releases from the reservoirs coming from Sonoma waters to reservoirs like Sonoma and Lake Minnesino. As part of this drought, Sonoma water sought to reduce those releases earlier in the year and the state water resource control board issued a temporary change order and that allowed Sonoma water to reduce the releases significantly from both Lake Minnesino and Lake Minnesino Sonoma. The change order also allowed them to reduce releases from Lake Sonoma and that will help them to preserve stores throughout their main year. But with that action sort of came a requirement for a cutback of deliveries to the contractors including Santa Rosa water. So I'll talk a little bit more about that on my next slide. So the contractors are subject to an agreed upon water shortage allocation methodology which is outlined in section 3.5 of the restructured agreement for water supply between Sonoma water and their contractors. That same section of the agreement also outlines that an alternative methodology can be unanimously approved by the contractors. This methodology that in 3.5 obviously is sort of a has a framework for developing the minimum needs of each of the contractors based on their historical deliveries and historical use and also sort of incorporate certain credits for investment in water conservation and the resulting demand hardening from that conservation long-term. And then additionally, it also evaluates local supplies that can be developed by the contractors. This methodology has not been revisited in several years. So just to remind everyone in the interest of being able to move swiftly the contractors proposed a alternative methodology which was approved in May. And that alternative methodology is a flat cutback across all the contractors to help Sonoma water meet their 20% reduction in deliveries over 2020 levels. And that is through from July through October of this year. Next slide. So kind of wanted to put up this slide and just let everyone know how we're doing. Obviously, as I mentioned in the previous slide, the requirements gonna kick in on July 1st. So in terms of total system demand, if you remember we started messaging to the public in May through a voluntary action by the city council requesting voluntary 20% reduction in water use. So we saw a 98%, excuse me, a 22% reduction in overall water use in the total system. And then in June, we saw about 10%. In terms of meeting our targets for Sonoma water deliveries, I've highlighted that in the orange section. We are at 92% in, so excuse me, 8% reduction and 15% reduction overall. This is obviously being bolstered by the fact that we have additional well water production in comparison to 2020. So that's helped to offset some of that additional demand that's not being met. But we're hopeful that as you know, the message is starting to get out and that we'll see increased conservation as we move throughout the summer, especially because those are peak delivery months. And so we're hopeful that starting this month, we'll see more than 20% cutback in supplies overall. Next slide. So I was hopeful that I could just kind of share sort of the strategy that we have proposed for the summer as far as our drought response and demand management planning this year. Sort of have, we have five tools in our toolkit here. Obviously our regional water use efficiency coordination efforts, the inaction of the water shortage contingency plan and response actions. I'll cover those two. And then Claire Norley will cover the remaining items that are more specific to our utility, which are operations planning and internal and external coordination, citywide customer outreach and planning. And then of course couldn't do much without the water use and efficiency program implementation that is being done by our incredible water use efficiency team. Next slide. I guess we'll, so I'll start off with the regional water use efficiency coordination that we're doing right now. Just kind of wanted to provide some highlights of the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership. We've continued to work very closely through the Sonoma Marin water saving partnership, excuse me, saving water partnership, not water saving partnership. I always get this foot flopped, I apologize. It was created in 2010. And the partnership has grown from an original eight members to 13 as recently as last month. So we're still seeing additional members joining. I believe this city of Healdsburg just recently joined. And these include various utilities from Sonoma Marin counties that have worked together in the Russian River watershed to provide regional solutions for water use efficiency. And this partnership is sort of yielding results. And working together obviously maximizes the cost effectiveness of various water use efficiency programs in our region. The partnership has successfully leveraged various grants and water use efficiency programs that can be applied on a regional level rather than the individual utilities going on their own. And you can see in this graphic here in the top right, sort of the regional gross gallons per capita per day for all these various utilities is well below the state average for most of these agencies. So it's very promising, I guess. And overall, we can point out here based on this graphic that all the utilities basically exceeded their 2020 mandated targets for gallons per capita per day in terms of gross use. That was a mandate of 20% by 2020. And then I just wanna point out some of the highlights in the bottom right corner there. The agency also coordinates the qualified water efficient landscaper program. Many of our staff at Santa Rosa Water have gone through that program. They certified 55 professionals last year. Excuse me, this is our numbers from the fiscal year I should point out. So 2019, 2020. And then also deliver garden sense consultations on behalf of all of these agencies as well. And so it really spreads around the effort. As you can see, there's a substantial amount of money being expended by all these agencies together and collectively as the partnership. Next slide. So, again, this Sonoma Wren Save and Water Partnership provides quite a bit of additional kind of outreach to the entire region through various region-wide programs and their implementation. We've been working together since basically at the end of last year on early coordinated and consistent messaging. The drought is here, save water tagline was something that was created together. So all the different utilities are utilizing that same message and artwork, as you can see. We have quite a bit of overlapping sort of digital radio and social media. And then we just talked a little bit earlier about the saving water challenge that's occurring in July. Obviously, I'm asking people to pledge save water and then providing some incentives or prizes in return. We're also working on some trusted messenger videos that will be broadcast region-wide, finding folks that can kind of carry that message and are not just the utilities themselves but folks that can encourage people to save water this summer. And then of course you're very familiar with our coordinated regional events, the drop drop by events will be continuing to host those over the next few months. And then thankfully too, the partnership also redirects traffic to Santa Rosa water and other partners resources. Some folks may wanna know about programs but they may not know directly how to navigate to our web pages or resources. That partnership also provides that pathway for folks to find those resources as well. Next slide. So just moving on, I just wanna talk a little bit about kind of the water shortage plan and contingency plan and the response actions. As you're aware on June 29th, the city council passed a resolution declaring a drought emergency and adopting states-regated the city's water shortage contingency plan. Furthermore, the directed staff to implement the water conservation program as defined in stage three, which ultimately will help us to realize a mandatory 20% reduction in water use, community-wide. And then of course authorized utilization of water enterprise catastrophic reserve funds if necessary due to reduced water sales. Next slide. Just advanced slide going to tick here. So the city's water shortage contingency plan has eight stages as you can see above and based on our allocations for remainder of the summer, the city council enacted a stage three of our water shortage contingency plan consistent with a 20% reduction needed. And so as we kind of talked a little bit earlier, we've been messaging the public, there is a little bit of confusion but it does sort of include a community-wide target that will be achieved with sort of various demand reduction activities collectively as community. And it doesn't place targets on individual customers or households use but the city is really just asking our customers to comply with several prohibitions and restrictions and just really strictly adhere to various water saving behaviors in their home or business to achieve this 20% savings target. Next slide. This is a list of the prohibitions restrictions. As you can see on the right, a bill insert will be going out with all these restrictions. It may have gone out already but of course there is strict limitations on timing for irrigation in the evening to reduce evaporative losses, shut off nozzles for hoses are required. We're not allowing any washing of hard surfaces and less required for public health and safety. We're asking that restaurants only serve water upon request and then hotels and lodging need to message their guests about laundering of linens only upon request and then no pressure washing with pot of water with some limited exceptions. Next slide. So how are we gonna enforce these prohibitions? We've been doing quite a bit of immediate outreach to customers. A letter to all customers actually just went out and so some of those are starting to hit people's mailboxes right now. That letter outlines the importance of saving water right now and then also the prohibitions and restrictions that are enforced right now. As you can see, we've been instituting our water waste patrols we've been going out and tagging people's homes with the noobs tag who may have irrigation runoff. We're gonna rely upon our water waste reporting forms. So we have people out in their neighborhoods, they can just quickly fill out a form online and report any water waste they may be seeing. And then of course we've kind of talked a little bit about the automatic metering infrastructure but we can utilize that to see customers usage immediately and be able to follow up with the customer and notify them that they may have some issues of when they're not complying or water waste in their home as well. And then there are variances of course for certain health safety and construction activities that may need to occur during the drought. Next slide. This point I'm gonna hand it over to Claire Nordley and she's gonna cover kind of the remaining pieces of the work that her team is doing right now. Yeah, thank you, Deputy Director Martin. Let's see. Okay, there we go. So we have done quite a bit of internal coordination within the city to make sure that our own operations are as efficient as possible. We've done quite a bit of bi-weekly talking points that are sent out to staff to make sure that everyone from, you know people who are answering the phones to field crews are really educated on sort of what the latest is about the drought, what stage of drought we're in, you know, what prohibitions there are currently. We also are improving our tracking in that we're looking at our advanced metering infrastructure, AMI data and confirming, you know what the irrigation patterns are of customers. We're looking at, you know, specifically reaching out to people who are using more than average water users to help them save and offer our programs. We're also looking, we also have received or are going to be receiving weekly water data from Sonoma water so that we can ensure that, you know if we're getting close to the end of the month that we are really on track for that 20% water conservation target. We're also doing quite a bit of coordination with different departments interdepartmentally. We're working with our parks and rec department, for example, to ensure that our own park sites are adhering to the irrigation prohibitions and are efficient. We're working with our facilities and maintenance staff as well. We've put bathroom clings, their mirror clings or window clings in each one of our city office bathrooms on the mirror that say drought is here, save water to just remind people while they're washing their hands, you know turn off the water, et cetera. We also have car magnets that we've put on many of our city vehicles to remind people that drought is here, save water so that as we're driving around and interacting with the public we've got a concerted message that's going out sort of across all departments. We've also been working quite a bit with planning and economic development to make sure that we're reaching out to people that are current on the business tax license and ensure that we're reaching out to businesses to let them know about specific restrictions or prohibitions that may be affecting them. They can talk a little bit more about that right now. So as Deputy Director Martin said we are working in a regional effort with Sonoma Water and the other contractors to make sure that we're putting out messaging regionally across our entire Sonoma County area. So as was mentioned previously right now we have a July water saving challenge that's happening. That's at savingwaterpartnership.org slash challenge where customers can pledge to save specific pieces of water saving, you know, information or behavioral changes at their property and be entered into win prizes. And we do, we are collecting that data so internally we will know, you know who in our service area participated and we've also asked them if they're interested in participating in any of our rebate programs so that we can reach out to them after they've submitted their form proactively and get them signed up for any rebates that they may be, that may be appropriate for them. We're also working with business development associations and tourism associations. So we've met with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, San Rosa Metro Chamber, Visit Santa Rosa, Railroad Square Association, really again just making sure that we're reaching out to the business community and making sure that they're aware of our requests for conservation and to ensure that they are in compliance with our prohibitions and restrictions. So for example, for hotel and lodging establishments we're sending a letter to all of them letting them know that they are required to put table tents on each one of their, well for restaurants, each one of their tables letting people know that water can be served upon request and then for hotels and lodging that linens can be reused if customers want. And so they are required to have messaging in each one of their hotel rooms and bathrooms. We're also reaching out to vacation rentals. So short-term, you know, Airbnb's et cetera to ensure that they are also posting messaging which is required. We're also coordinating with Sonoma Clean Power and Sonoma County Water Agency, the County Energy and Sustainability Department to offer a workshop for example. We're coordinating with them and making sure that we have their materials so that during our next drought drop by event in August we can hand out some of their materials. So we're really just having a synergistic approach and making sure that we can do some dual marketing and we can help each other out. We're also working with landscape contractors through our use of people who are experiencing continuous usage that we noted through our AMI system and making sure that those landscape contractors are aware that they have to turn off their irrigation during the day and then as well as offering them our rebate programs. So now I'll be talking about our citywide and customer outreach planning. So we've been doing extensive outreach really since last year actually but things have definitely sort of ramped up in this busy time during the summer months which is always our busy time but especially busy now with the drought. We've sent out two direct mailers so letters to every single customer in our service area. One in May when the city council enacted a conservation request for 15% and then again just recently I just got mine yesterday actually in my mail. That specifies 20% conservation request mandatory, community wide and those have been extremely effective. We found that during our drought drop by event in I think that was in earlier June a lot of people actually showed up to the event with the letter in hand specifically that noted this is the drought drop by information. So clearly people read the letter and had the letter so that was great to see that people were really connecting with that. We've also been doing bill inserts since last year. We advertise different things such as our rebate programs or workshops that we're offering or like deputy director Martin showed on the screenshot an actual bill insert of our specific prohibitions and restrictions right now. We're also doing quite a few BPU and city council updates as I'm sure you all note workshops. We have a full suite of workshops that we're hosting this year and I will talk about those in a little bit more detail in another slide. We're also doing weekly social media posts. We have digital and print ads that are running right now. We are doing radio spots on both English and Spanish radio. We also do outreach to specific customer classes. So we have been able to really dial in and sort through our different customer classes to ensure that we're reaching out to people who specifically need that information. So we were able to, for example, partner with our stormwater and creeks division to send out letters to power washers. They normally reach out to power washing companies specifically because of the stormwater impacts from disposal of that power washing but we were able to use that list to reach out to power washers and let them know that they need to apply for a variance. So again, it's just that interdepartmental work that we've been doing. We also have a lot of opportunities for banners as the city owns many properties throughout the city. So we've been able to put banners and signage up at prominent locations. And I've got some pictures on the next slide of some of those great spots to highlight. We've also been obviously working with the public directly to offer them any of our rebate programs, our water smart checkups. And then a later slide, I'll show the huge increase that we've gotten in call volumes, et cetera. We also have our water waste report forms online and really our most important page is the srcity.org slash save water webpage. That's where we have many frequently asked questions on there that we've been getting as a water use efficiency team on a regular basis. We just add questions onto there as we find that they're coming up. We also have all of the prohibitions listed on there. We have more information about our water supply and that's where our water waste report form lives. So we really encourage people to go to that website. We do update it at least a few times a week because things are changing and we're getting so much information and requests for customers. And then we do have another drought drop by planned, excuse me, for later in August and I'll be covering that in the next slide. So here's some great pictures of us with some of our advertising. You can see we've got the car magnet on the top left hand side. We've got a yard sign on the right. The city buses have ads on them. And then as I was mentioning many of our city facilities, we've been able to put banners or hard signs up. We're also working with a lot of our prominent business customers. So to add in banners or signs in somewhere in their landscape so that we can get the message out and it's not just on city property. So our Water Use Efficiency Program implementation has significantly increased, which is great. Our customers are very responsive to our call for conservation and are really excited to participate. So we have many different ways in which we reach out to customers. You know, obviously we provide our customer service. We have technical resources, obviously our sort of bread and butter, our rebates and incentive programs, outreach and education. We provide irrigation tips and recommendations, which is especially important right now in the summertime when a lot of our water use is outdoors. And then of course we provide our water smart checkups. So sort of our drought stats, we have a team of nine people that are working right now. So we have six full-time equivalents and then three cheerful interns from Sonoma State who are super helpful. We are receiving about 200 calls per week. So it's definitely an increase in volume. We're returning calls as fast as we can and we are very grateful that we have an administrative assistant who is helping us return those calls because we'd be buried without her. So thank you. We also are doing our water waste patrols as Deputy Director Martin showed a picture of, we've got people going out multiple times a week in the early morning hours from 4.30 a.m. to 6.30 a.m. To just drive around the city and we have routes that they specifically do and look for water waste. This yields quite a few water waste reports and we do follow up with those customers and you just provide the education that overspray and broken irrigation heads, et cetera are not permitted. We are managing about 400 reports of water waste annually and this is not only from those water waste patrols as I mentioned earlier but also from our excellent investment in advanced metering infrastructure. Through our AMI system, we are able to see customers who have continuous water usage which usually indicates they have a leak. We follow up with those customers directly and that's really yielded a great relationship with a lot of our customers especially our commercial customers are very appreciative. Some of them don't know that they have continuous water usage. They just think their water use is normal and then we show them the graph that shows 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they're using whatever however many gallons and they're stunned and they're very grateful that we're following up with them and providing that information. We also on average provide about 2000 devices a year. So this is shower heads, faucet aerators, toilet dye tabs, hose nozzles, et cetera. So those are flying off the shelves right now like hotcakes. We have people coming in to, we have two different locations where they can pick up devices and we have that listed on our website and we probably get between five to 10 people a week right now coming in to pick up devices, which is great. And then on a regular basis, we interact face to face with customers or pre-approved people for rebates about 600 times annually and that number is definitely increasing as we're moving into the summer. So some of our ongoing drought activities and work products, as I mentioned, we are interacting with the business community as much as we can to really make sure that they understand the prohibitions and restrictions and that we're also providing free information to them and that they can use to educate customers. So as I mentioned, we have water gladly served cards that we offer to our restaurant community and they're welcome to put those on their tables to alert people to that specific restriction. They're also welcome to develop and print and use their own marketing, but we do have them for free if they'd like them. It's English on one side and Spanish on the other. We also have the linen cards, as you can see in the picture on the top. Again, hotels can print and use their own if they wanna have specific branding. We also have editable copies available on our website. So if people wanna add their own logo, they're welcome to do that. And again, that's English and Spanish. We're also working to make sure that we're trying to get the message out into community newsletters. Again, working with like the Cineros Metro Chamber, they just put something recently in their newsletter about the drought and that was content that we provided. We're also actively seeking and always interested in community presentations. I recently just did a community presentation for Homeowners Association in Oakmont and there were about a hundred people invited and I think we had about 50 people attend that presentation, which was virtual and I was able to just explain about our water supply and what programs we can offer to people. So always happy to do those kind of community presentations to folks. We also are getting out and about in the public much more now as COVID is sort of lessening. So we have some drought drop by events. These have been hugely popular. You can see from the picture on the top right-hand side of that. I think that's actually me in the picture. That's funny. So we basically handed to people a bucket full of supplies, shower head, hose nozzle, faucet aerator, dye tabs and a bucket that they can put under the sink and capture water and then one of the yard signs. So we had about 1,500 people drive through in June. In August, we're hoping for about the same. We actually have two different locations that we're gonna do in August to hopefully sort of divide up the traffic and be able to process people through much more quickly. That there are locations at Coddingtown Mall and then at Naga Sawa Park on Fuff Fountain Grove. So excited for that event and hope we get a lot of people coming through. And then we're gonna do a fourth event in October, beginning of October, October 9th. Again, it'll be a similar event where people can drive through, receive these materials and people were so excited and really grateful that we were doing these events. So we're excited to offer them and glad we can get out those water saving devices to customers. Also mentioned that we have the water saving challenge that's happening right now. We've got some great prizes for people to win. We're gonna be giving away a free irrigation controller, car wash coupons, a rain barrel, a clothes washer. Got really big prizes. So hope people go on and pledge to save water in the month of July. Then in August, we are working with a series of different commercial businesses and organizations who are trusted messengers in our community. So for example, we worked with the Santa Rosa Junior College and Amy's Kitchen, as well as a landscaper to put together a video that talks about water saving tips that people might be interested in. And it's really just a way for our community to have a peer to peer conversation instead of us as the water utility providing that information. So it's really trusted messengers in the community communicating water saving tips to the public. We hope that those will be released in August. We've also have a robust workshop series that's been going on since the beginning of the year. We've got some in March. We had a presentation in March in May. We had a couple of presentations in July. One is coming up tomorrow, actually. And the one in July on the July 6th was completely in Spanish. And then the one on the 13th is in English but the exact same material. And we've had about 120 people sign up and register for that workshop. So it's been really exciting. And then we've got two more, one in September and then November. So all of that, we've been really busy and it's really exciting to see our customers commit to water conservation and be really excited to engage with us and adapt to our programs. So thank you to Santa Rosa Water Customers. And we're always looking for feedback and ways to improve. And we think about this every day and our mind is really in it. So sometimes we can miss something. So if you have ideas and feedback, we're always open to new ideas. And I'll just be taking notes over here. So I'll pause now and see if anyone has questions or feedback. Thank you so much for your thorough report on this. Are there any board member questions or comments? Board member Walsh. Yes, thank you very much. It was just such a great presentation. And the feedback, there was some water waste. A friend of mine said, what do I do? And I said, there's a form there. And I went ahead and filled out what the problem was. My friend didn't want to approach the neighbor. I guess they didn't indicate they're open to conversations about stuff like that. And the water use went down and all of a sudden they're a great neighbor again. But when one neighbor sees somebody else wasting water, they somehow think, well, that's a bad neighbor, a bad person, whatever. And it just turned out they're completely oblivious and a problem solved. So that form worked really well. And then just the other thing is I do appreciate seeing the save water signs. And I wondered if there was a way if you had super savers of people that are using very low water on a per person basis, if maybe there's a sticker, you can put on the sign that says they're a super saver. And that's all I have. Great, thank you. Sorry, sorry, Claire's over. Talk over you, okay. Are there any other board member questions or comments? All right, well, I think you guys have been doing so much work and I know that you're in this every day. I do think from the community's perspective as things open and you're able to get out to more places where community is at, as opposed to the community being proactively coming to events like the drought drive up and those things. Although those are wildly successful, but obviously we're missing a good portion of the community that might not know about those or are unavailable at those times and so forth. So as we can safely, of course, go to meet the community where they're at, that's the only other thing that I would say from an equity lens to think about once staff is comfortable and safe to do so, of course. Other than that, I don't think we have any board member questions or comments, but we will open it up for public comment on item 4.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Mr. Martin, do we have any live email or voicemail public comments? Not seeing any comments at this time, thank you. Okay, well, thank you very much for the thorough meeting today and also publicly congratulations to board member Grable on welcoming his baby boy and sorry to put you on the spot, but he's adorable. So congratulations and I'm impressed that you're here today. So with that, it looks like we can adjourn the meeting at 310. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Bonak. Thanks, Senator Rose-Water and congratulations, Chris.