 I'd like to call the order of this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Colleen, will you call the roll? President Hill. Present. Vice President Ackman is absent. Director Fouls. Here. Director Mayhut. Here. And Director Smalley. Here. Yes, Director Smalley is ill with saving and is participating remotely. And Director Smalley, do you have anyone over the age of 18 in the room with you? No. No. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any changes to the agenda? None from staff. Anyone else any changes to the agenda? Seeing none. We'll move on. Oral communications. This portion of the agenda is reserved for all communication by the public. And any subject that lies within the jurisdiction of the district and is not on the agenda. Any person may address the Board of Directors at this time. Normally presentations must not exceed three minutes in length. And individuals may only speak once. Please state your name and town, city of residence for the record at the beginning of the statement. And please understand that the Brown Act limits what the Board can do regarding issues not on the agenda. No action or discussion may occur on issues outside of those already listed on today's agenda. Any director may request that a matter raised during oral communication be placed on a future agenda. And I'm going to pause us just for one minute here to point out that Director Ackman has arrived. Sorry, I'm late. Mr. Holloway. I'm Bruce Holloway. I want to thank your IT staff for solving the problem with the late Senate packet last meeting. This is a serious problem that continued to happen until you showed me. I guess I wanted to talk about it here. I don't know if this has been talked about in public before. I was a little bit hung up by this word stamp envelope on here. I don't know who typed the stamp envelope. If it had come up in a committee meeting and I've been there, I would have said, skip the envelope, skip the stamps because you can save thousands of dollars and most people aren't getting used to them and some people don't need them. But I guess when people are dealing with a bureaucracy like this, it's hard to tell if it's responsible for anything. I can't tell if this was created by Miller-Maxfield and they invented the word stamp envelope. I don't know where this came from, but it's a mystery to me. The next thing about the notice, I've talked to a few people about it and there's nothing on here about the multi-residential water rates. It's got single family residential and it's got several other categories like commercial, industrial, and so on, but none of them are multi-residential. So I had a question for the district that I emailed last week. I emailed two different people and I haven't gotten any answers. So often we come here and we ask questions and we're told, put your question in writing. Well, I put my question in writing and I get the same answer that I get in person, which is not... I guess another thing I want to bring up is the $19 million. It sounds like it's a done deal, but when I said that the finance committee meeting a few weeks ago that it was a done deal, I saw Director Maynard shaking her head at me like this the whole time. I think by the time you put something in a public notice to email to thousands of people, there ought to be a basis for it. So I don't know where the $19 million comes from. I don't know if that's approved already. I don't know what it's for. I think the public deserves a little bit more information about that. Another thing on here it says, including salmon habitat improvements. So to the best of my knowledge, there are no salmon in the San Lorenzo River watershed. Anyway, and they have not been there for 15 years. They were extirpated by 2009. I know there are salmon in Laguna Creek, which Santa Cruz Water Department is responsible for, so they can truly say that they're doing things to improve salmon habitat. But I don't think there are any in the San Lorenzo River watershed. And I remember discussing this with Betsy Herber when she was the environmental analyst here more than 10 years ago. So I think if that word had been sewn on it, then I would understand, oh, you're talking about steelhead trout. They still exist, but salmon don't. So I feel kind of like I'm being treated like a child when I'm being sold on this, because it's going to improve things for salmon when they really don't exist. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll have to look into those questions you have. Can I have my three minutes? You're up. I'm the John Patrick O'Reilly residing in San Lorenzo LA for about 23 years. And I've never really paid attention to my water building until now for the fact that I felt it's very fair. Even with the CCU imposition of $15 surcharge, I thought it was very democratic. But now, with this little pamphlet handed out and playing with the numbers, I see it isn't very democratic. It isn't very equal spread of the charges coming on. First of all, for the people using the two units of water, which three years ago when we were in the drought, that was a very wise decision, use minimal water. But now, if you're using two units of water, I see for the upcoming year, it will be a 19% increase in charges for using two units of water. Just going up to the 10 units of water, I see a 8% increase. Because I'm using less water, I am paying more. That isn't democratic. And then, with the wording of the pamphlet, oh, in the upcoming year, the water charges will just be a few dollars. Bullshit, pardon from that word. But a few dollars doesn't equal out. So I'm going to go back to that. I'm going to go back to that. When you start breaking down what will be paying for water. And coming back to the water rate schedule. I am part of the 374 people on one inch water. And I'm getting kicked up 33% charge next year for water. Now, the killer is, luckily, the receptionist at San Lorenzo Water District pointed out to me, oh, what's kind of strange? I am only on a five-eats pipe, but I'm multi-residential. I have a small studio that I'm trying to keep the rent extremely fair. And I don't want to force an increase in rent, because I am erroneously charged for a one-inch pipe when I have a five-inch pipe going into my house. I don't use more water. Bingo, that's it. Thank you. And we'll take note of your comments. Yeah, let me see if there's anyone online that has comments. I don't see any hands up. Okay. Moving on. Unfinished business. Pico Canyon emergency evacuation route project. Thank you, President. So Garrett, we're just going to present that. Garrett has a microphone right in front of him. Thank you. So the district has worked with the County of Santa Cruz to reach an agreement for an easement that'll benefit the community of Long Pico for a emergency evacuation route if something should happen to Long Pico Road. We brought this before the Engineering Environmental Committee meeting, and it was brought to our attention that the district has a ban on the use of glyphosate. And so we've added the prohibition of using that on the with the easement and a remedy if it is discovered. We got a small payment to the district. And it's a benefit for the people of Long Pico. So with that, I'd like to take any questions you have. So, Bob, Dr. Fultz. A couple of comments. And I think that's really great that you went back and worked on. I brought up the glyphosate issue. And the reason I did is that the county has been attempting to use glyphosate down in the easement that they have and felt that they got from the water district. And I wanted to make sure that at least going forward, they understood that as a district policy, we don't want that. I'm also very glad to see the indemnification that's a really important piece. I was curious, how did we come up with $2,100? Did we get an appraisal done or something? Or did we just sort of decide? There was not an appraisal done. Okay. Well, I mean, I understand you have to have consideration, but I was just curious, you know, why that number versus any other. Anyway, I think this is great. And I don't know if people, I heard that actually half of the road into Long Pico was blocked. I think this morning. So this can't be any more timely for us to get this done. Right, right. Any comments? Nope. I think it's a very reasonable cost and, you know, an important thing to do. We have similar kinds of, you know, emergency access issues in the neighborhood that I live in and Ben Lomond up on the mountain. So I think this is great. Okay. I would comment that for those people who are not aware, but there is only one road in and out of Long Pico. And it's a narrow two lane road and it's easily blocked by trees, mudslides, what have you. And so this is really essential. Bill. Yeah. Okay. Can we get a motion to approve this? Yeah. Mark. Yes. As the county reviewed and approved this draft. They have. Okay. Great. Thank you. All my questions. And do we have any comments from the public? Seeing none online. Gentlemen. Thank you. I heard the director and said that it was a reasonable cost. But the cost is to the county. Yes. Yes. The county is paying us for the easement rights. So it really doesn't cost us anything. So whatever time it took to draft. Okay. So we've had all the board members have spoken. I have no public comments from. Online and. I have one more question. Yes. In the motion here, the recommended motion says authorize the interim general manager. Excuse me to execute non substantive modifications. The agreement is necessary. Is that. Is that sort of future proofing that is going forward or does it mean with this agreement right now? It doesn't mean it's a minor change. I think it's a minor change. I'm not going to pass it early. The intent is. I'll take that one. I put that language in there. That's. It's typical. If there was a minor change, for instance, Anything can happen. Somebody's title changes as a signatory or we want to. Extend the agreement or anything like that. Without it coming back to the board. I don't think it's a minor change. I don't think it's a minor change. I don't think it's a minor change. Basically. Yeah. I mean, non substantive. So, you know, that would be. Understand. I get it. I just want to make sure that answering the question. Non substantive would be something that's discussed with. Legal advice. So. Legal says, yeah, that's non substantive. I could sign for it. Otherwise we bring it down. I got that. Great. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Do we have a motion here? I will. Read the motion. I move that the board directs the interim general manager to execute the long people emergency access easement agreement. The county of Santa Cruz. To authorizes the interim general manager to execute non substantive modifications to the agreement as necessary. Second. We have a second. Okay. How long will you take? President Hill. Yes. Okay. Vice president. Yes. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director may have. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. No business. We have no new business on the agenda. And that takes us to the consent agenda. Which contains items which are considered to be routine in the city. We have a new agenda. We have a new agenda that has been deemed adopted by unanimous consent. If no director states an objection. Any item on the consent agenda will be moved to the regular agenda upon request from an individual director. Are there any requests to move items? Director falls. Yes. So I wanted to better understand this particular. Change order number nine. and you can assign to you. Do I understand correctly that there is pipe on top of the ground as part of this construction project on Altevia? Because I know that there was pipe on Altevia before the fire that was burned. Is there a remaining pipe on top of the ground now? So, Jared, you wanna take that? Oh yeah, you're my pleasure. So there's not pipe above ground with the new insulation. The cross-country portion of the mainline is below grade, but it's not in the road. It's across a undeveloped track. And we have an easement for that. Correct. Perfect. Great, just wanted to make sure there wasn't above ground. That's great. Obvious reasons. And at least 18 inches of cover, right? Yeah, three feet of cover. Perfect, thank you very much. You're welcome. I will move that the board authorized the interim general manager to approve contract change orders six and nine for payment to Anderson Pacific Engineering Construction, Inc. for the Altevia pipeline replacement in the sum of $34,915, increasing the not to exceed contract amount from $2,535,064, $2,569,979. Can we come back? I'll second that. Yeah, we can go back. Okay. So I'll second it. Any discussion for the discussion? No. Holly? Public. President Hale? Well, I'm sorry. We do need to officially ask the public. I'm sorry, what? We do need to officially ask the public. Yes. Do we have any comments from the public? Seeing none, now we can proceed to a vote. President Hale? Yes. Vice President Ackman? Yes. Director Falls? Yes. Director Mayhai? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay, back to the agenda here. Next item on the agenda is district reports. General Manager's Special Report. Thank you, President. So I just wanted to give an update on the outreach efforts. We had a public outreach efforts for the rate study. So we had a community meeting, January 20th at Highlands Park from 10 to noon on Saturday. I thought that we did our best to keep it as an informal, structured it informally so that there wouldn't be a central meeting, but rather it would be constructed more like a workshop so that people could ask their questions to staff one-on-one or however in groups. And so we had maybe 12 different poster boards that around the room and different staff members were strategically stationed so to be able to take comments and questions about maybe those topics on the poster boards or whatever people brought in. We also had a table to where someone had a laptop set up that could actually calculate the rates or someone who was a potential customer that had a rate bill go up, they could calculate exactly based on their last 12 months of usage. So overall, I thought we had a really good turnout, particularly because it was a rainy day. We had maybe 115 people there, we think. It looks like there was a lot of engagement based on activity in the room. And also I think there were clearly people that had concerns and raised those with different staff members, including myself. And I think overall that went well, the discussions. I don't think we assuaged all concerns, but at least we felt that we could address them and answer questions. And I also wanted to just make a shout out to all the staff that helped. Holly, thank you, Jamie. Excuse me, currently Garrett, James, and also Heather, our contract of finance manager drew all the way down from, I don't know, past Sacramento. So she came in to do it. So good deal all around. So, and since Carly's been leading the whole outreach effort, if she wants to add anything. Yeah, I think Brian, you've covered a good amount of it. We did have about 115 people show up to the event, which I think is pretty successful, especially with the weather conditions. Outside of that, we did have three comment cards submitted to us. Otherwise, I would say it was pretty successful. Okay. Communication, excuse me, yes, we did have a comment. Yeah, I think I would characterize it sort of maybe two camps of people. There were people that were expecting a real meeting where there could be questions in public, answers in public, back and forth, et cetera. And as I was going in, actually somebody was very upset heading out, again, small sample, obviously, but I think the messaging around this, I think confused some people as to what kind of meeting it was going to be. I think people may not have understood it was gonna be more of a workshop and not a real meeting where everybody could be heard in public. Now, I understand that it was deliberately set up as the workshop kind of thing, but I did go back and look at the messaging around it. I could see on a couple of the messages that people might have gotten confused that way. I think it's something for us to consider for the future. I do think it was very positive to have that kind of meeting which we'd have not done in the past around rating increases. I wouldn't actually advocate for more of them, but I do think we need to be very consistent in how we communicate the kind of meeting that people could expect to have. Colleen? May I just add that I had the opposite said to me that they really appreciated being able to ask questions one-on-one about their specifics, that they had questions about rather than being in a big room and having to listen to everyone else, it was, they liked the informality of the meeting. So I did hear both sides, but I heard more of that. Both are valid. Jeremy? Thanks. So first of all, I just wanted to thank staff for putting this together because I know there was a lot of like, oh, you know, is this the right method? Is this the right path to take? So I really appreciate the time and energy that it took to put it together. And I think that 115 people is a really great turnout. So congratulations for that effort. I think it's understandable that there's always people who are in different camps. Some people like engaging like this and listening to all of the conversation. And some people don't. They're just like, I don't get it. I wanna ask some questions. So, you know, you've got to have both. And I'm just wondering, I did see online the reporter for the press banner, Christina Weiss was confused about whether this was the public hearing on the 20th or whether it was a outreach meeting. She didn't acknowledge that she didn't read the flyer very carefully. And so she assumed that it was the actual public hearing. And it did say on the flyer that this was a public meeting, but anyhow. So I wonder when people had that confusion expressed to staff during the January 20th meeting. Did you clarify that they could still come on February 15th to the public hearing and, you know, have their view heard and participate in that conversation as well? Yes, that was definitely made clear that this is the informal meeting and there is a formal public hearing and this is a community meeting. And the intention is to be able to educate and mix and match and mingle and get questions answered. Thanks. Thank you. That's awesome. One more board, two more board people then. We'll get to you. No, I don't have any comments. Mark, do you have any comments? No comments. Mr. Hollad. I did not attend the meeting, but if I had attended it and I asked what are the multi-residential rates would what I've gotten any more of an answer than I did ask 10 minutes ago. The notice does not refer to multi-residential at all. It refers to single family residential and it refers to commercial and industrial and so on. Is there an answer? No, there are the multi-residential rates. Can I answer him? Go ahead and answer him. Right, we'll have an answer on that. It's just the commercial rates and it's there as a footnote. No. I don't see the footnote. It's in the other doc. If it's not there, it's in other documents that have been presented to the board, but I am answering. We didn't address the questions to me but I'm just answering you now that the commercial includes the multi-family residential. Okay, I do not see any hands up from the public. There is one now. Pardon? There is a hand up now. There is, I don't see it where. Oh, there we is, yes. Cynthia. Yes, I did attend the meeting and I was very impressed by the staff's efforts and I saw director Foltz there as well. And so I appreciate the time everyone took to attend the meeting. And I felt that the people I listened to were very engaged. They engaged with staff, but also with other ratepayers trying to understand the possibilities and how the new structure would affect them. What my question is, will those concerns be addressed in any way or is the public hearing just to approve or not approve the rate increase? Is there a chance to have any effect on the rate structure? And other than the rate structure, the concerns I had were that I heard were with how to use the Lyra program and how the penalties and discount affect people at the lowest tier. Also, I was impressed that some directors from other or employees of other water districts attended that meeting because they are going to face rate increase processes themselves and they wanted to learn from what SLB Water District is doing. And I think that's very healthy that we learn from other districts. Thank you. Okay, I would like to make one comment and that is that seem to have a need to upscale our game when it comes to accuracy on some of the communications. Part of this was we didn't see those fires until the last minute ourselves. So we really need to make sure that we're all, you know, that multiple people have run through them and have had a chance to edit, make sure everything is clear. It's clear that some people have not run them and did not feel it was clear. So I think that's something thinking ahead the next time we have this sort of activity, we need to build in a little more review time or things like that so that we can avoid any miscommunications. I'll just second that. I think that some of the questions that we've had, if those of us that had been on the budget and finance committee had seen that before it was sent out, which I did not see it before it was sent out, we might have been able to forestall some of the questions and some of the questions that I had actually at the meeting. I just would add that Bob was there the whole time and Jeff went for the first hour and then I went for the second hour so that we didn't have more than two board members in the room or any potentials for product issues. So I realized that we're operating under a staff crunch. It was a hard time, but, and I guess what I would say is I know I put a fair amount of effort into doing a close edit of the final report for the rate study for that exact reason, for the executive summary, trying to rewrite some of it was a little bit cryptic even to me and I've been involved in the process the whole time in hopes that we can make this fully intelligible to your sort of educated layman types. Director Walts, well, it would have been good to have the final report available at the start of the 45 day period. I find that the fact that that wasn't available to be an egregious breach of community trust, there's no excuse for that. In addition, it's not like the rate increase was a surprise, there was ample time to plan out at least the framework, if not the specifics around how the communication was to be done, but for some reason we decided to wait until the last minute, which is what we do typically. So yes, I agree that it's a good thing to consider going forward, but we did the same thing in 2017, not this board, but the previous board. Yeah, and so it's like, well, okay, it's just standard operating procedure, let's wait till the last minute and so we don't catch things like that. So if I was a community, I would not be happy with the fact that the final rate report, there's a lot of things not to be happy about in that, which we'll get to on the 15th, but the fact that that final rate report is now at December 20, whatever it was, is just absolutely not acceptable. I do feel obliged to point out that we had a lot of changes happening in the staff at that time, that there was a changeover in the general manager and that Kendra resigned and she was the lead person on the rate study. And so that's why I added my comment that I appreciated that it was a difficult time. And so Bob, I think you're being a little bit overly dramatic given that we all know that that whole interval of November, December, and that frankly, I think that Carly and Brian were putting in yeoman work, trying to catch up and make up for the fact that we were kind of behind the eight ball on this. I could not imagine it was the worst time to be doing this when you have the general manager retiring and the finance director leaving, so. This is not about staff. This is about the board. I advocated very strongly that the board delay that process specifically for that reason, that we not send out the notices in the middle of the holiday season and to do it in a gotta get it done quickly fashion. This board decided that it was gonna go ahead and proceed, come hill or high water. We didn't have to do that. We could have very easily delayed it until that report was completed. We, the board chose that. That's on us, not on staff. Staff did what they were asked to do by the board. I think it was very unfair for the board to ask them to do that in that fashion, in that timeframe. And it didn't serve our community either by not having that report available. Okay. Moving on in communications, we have a letter to the board from Ms. Wensel. And I don't know that we have any action to take on that at the moment. Other than to acknowledge we have received it and refer to staff for the response if they have not already. And I believe at that point, we have completed everything on the agenda. Mr. Holloway. I just have to say that there's not an item to comment on right now. This isn't a two-way conversations or anything on the agenda. We're done with the agenda. We're adjourning the meeting now. You've had your opportunity to comment on things that have already happened. Thanks. I have the microphone. I was going to kill talking about the written communication from Mr. Wensel. And I forgot what my comment was going to be because I've been interrupting that. I have the microphone. The letter was addressed to the board. So I don't think it's appropriate for the president of the board to say, let's have staff decide to respond, whether or not to respond. If someone addresses a letter to the board, they deserve a response from the board or not. But I don't think passing that off holds water for me. So I'll hand it over. The board will respond. But it is standard practice to ask the staff to provide details and to provide information that needs to be added to make the response. Thank you. We are done with the live air motion to adjourn. I need to mention just a minute. We are adjourned. So I have seven, seven oh eight, is our adjournment time. Thank you.