 Okay I have 530 so let's convene this September 2nd 2021 meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Border District. Can we have a roll call please Allie? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Are there any additions or deletions to the closed session? Staff has none. So this is the time where we have oral communications from any members of the public and let's see I see is Detlef Adam a member of the public or is that something for us? He is a member of the public tonight but he's also an employee of the district. Okay so this is the time for oral communications regarding items that are being addressed in the closed session. Is there anybody that would like to speak to that? If not then we will adjourn to close session. Thank you. So Detlef I wanted to let you know that we are the meetings the open session meeting starts at 6.30 rather than 5.30. Just to let you know. Okay so I have 6.30 so I would like to convene the September 2nd meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District and we have no actions were taken in the closed session and nothing to report. We will convene our open session with roll call by Holly. President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Okay are there any additions and deletions to the agenda? No staff has no additions to the agenda. Okay. This is the time for oral communications from members of the public on items under the purview of the district but not on tonight's agenda. Do we have any members of the public that would like to make a comment at this time? Let's see. I don't see any so with that we will go ahead and go on to directors reports. Are there any reports from directors? Seeing none. Hearing none. We'll go to our first item of old business which is I'll turn it over to Rick to discuss that. Rick you're muted. Yes thank you Chair Mayhood. We have item 11a the Pacific Gas and Electric Response and the District's Environmental Program Manager Carly Blanchard will report on this item. Thank you Rick. So since 2020 the Board of Directors have written two formal letters to PG&E regarding its community wildfire safety program. After the program rolled out in 2018 the district was concerned with vegetation removal and progress hardening PG&E's infrastructure particularly on district lands. A response was received for the initial letter from PG&E in June of 2020 but did not adequately address concerns. In 2021 a request for a follow-up letter was made to address the outstanding concerns in PG&E's response to the 2020 CZU lightning complex fires. The final letter was sent in April and a response was received on August 13. The letter discusses PG&E's wildfire safety efforts, wood management policy and system hardening in Santa Cruz County. The letter addresses concerns raised by the district however does not offer immediate or direct solutions. Staff is requesting board direction on next steps concerning resolution of district concerns with PG&E's vegetation clearing and outdated infrastructure. Options include a follow-up letter to PG&E's Regional Vice President Teresa Alvarado contacting the California Coastal Commission and County or awaiting the longer term solutions as suggested in PG&E's letter. Okay. Are there any comments from members of the Board? I guess we'll start with Jamie if you wanted to say anything about this. You know, I read through the staff report and the letters and I guess I am not quite sure what to say and I would be interested to hear from staff and if they have any solutions to this because I know this problem of, you know, the leaving behind the wood that's been brought down, you know, so many people in the valley are dealing with that and so I just don't know what the solutions are frankly, but I'm open to hearing any suggestions anyone may have. Anybody else would like to comment on this? Bob, did you want to say anything? I think Mark had his hand up first. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going alphabetically, but go ahead. Mark, if you want to. Okay. Carly, you made three suggestions for three potential paths forward on this. I have questions on two of those. What do you think a follow-up letter to the California Coastal Commission and the county would attempt to convey or express in an effort to try to help move this along? So both of those agencies have been really involved with PG&E stop and assist when they were doing the heavy vegetation clearing. So they're well aware of issues. So maybe just making us known that we are also having those issues. We can be included in their procedures that they're trying to pursue with PG&E. You know, I haven't been heavily involved with what they've been pursuing with PG&E, but maybe that's something staff can be involved with and we can see if that would get us anywhere further with what we were looking for. In an effort to, if you hear anything different, let us know also we are interested in this issue. Right. Okay. And then one of your, the third suggestion was just essentially stay silent and wait for PG&E's longer term solutions. And if we don't do anything at this point in your mind, do we lose any leverage if we do that? I mean, sure. I think we would lose some leverage in the sense that we're not continuously pinging them and trying to ask for them to, you know, pay attention to our properties. You know, I think a lot of people are pursuing these same questions with PG&E. So, you know, falling back maybe in the line of who they're going to address first could occur if we just kind of stop, you know, following up at all. I think we are the fly trying to get the elephant to do something in this case. And I think that there are dozens of similar flies or insects of maybe various sizes. I don't know that any of us are going to get PG&E to pay attention given the size that they are. So, and I use some of my past experience. I offered PG&E a $50,000 bonus on a project while they were in bankruptcy and they flat out turned me down for that because they're not in a position to accept anything like that. So, I have very little hope that we could move PG&E's needle on this. They're going to go through the process that they feel is appropriate for them on this. So, okay. Thank you. I have to say that I totally agree with your assessment of this, Mark, and I, you know, I think we can hope and that they'll make some movement on this. And, you know, if they don't, we can try to do more. But at this point, I think sending more letters is not really a very good use of our time. Open to other people's take on this as well, obviously. Lois, did you want to weigh in or Bob? I don't really have anything to say being a fly and the elephant could smack me with its ears. Tell me. I have nothing to say. I do have a couple of questions. And, you know, when you ask a direct question of somebody and you get kind of a non-answer, I'm currently, I'm kind of curious, should we interpret their letter as saying that no, they did not harden the infrastructure that they reinstalled across our watershed property? Is that a fair interpret of the letter? Yeah, if you read between the lines. Yeah, I mean, that's disappointing given the size of it and the fact that's a major, you know, artery for them in and out. But yeah, sure, they were probably more interested in getting power back on maybe then. Right. And maybe they didn't have the equipment. I, you know, my other business supply chains are just all screwed up right now. It's really bad. The other question I had, though, you know, they keep referring to a regulation or a law or something. And, you know, when folks do that, you know, my first reaction is, okay, you know, it's probably right. They have lots. They probably have more attorneys than we have customers. But does anybody really know what that specific law or regulation is? No, I don't know. Because I've been in situations where people quote something and they sound great, but you read the actual regulation that's maybe not exactly what they're interpreting it as. Do we know what that is? We don't know. I tried to go through their website and tried to find the policy they're referring to. I believe it's their own internal policy. But I couldn't really find anything except for one of the things that they're referring to. I think they're referring to the FAQ on their website page. I mean, I think it might, well, I mean, and this again isn't worth spending a lot of time on. But I'm really, if you can't find something, I'm really skeptical. There's actually legal backing behind it unless somebody says there is. You know, and maybe, and maybe that's just a question for the group that you referred to that is trying to work with PG&E. I mean, I'm not sure if I'm going to verify that PG&E is on solid legal ground saying that. But beyond that, I don't know that I spend a lot of time on it. It's more just trying to figure out is PG&E really being straight with us here or not. I'd like to think they are, but the other part of the answer wasn't really very good. I could have just said no. Sorry. We were busy or something, but yeah. Yeah. So the first we got this time, the letter actually responded to us specifically. It was, you know, it responded to our questions and it was personalized in that sense. Whereas the first one was kind of generic. So. Yes. Did you want to weigh in now after hearing what other people said? Yeah, I mean, so basically this sort of confirms what I was sort of feeling, but I wasn't sure if I maybe was, you know, there was something that I wasn't seeing was an option there, but I agree. Like we're, you know, the NAT flying into the hurricane here. What are we going to get out of them that everybody else isn't also trying to get out of them at this point? Mark, you had your hand up next. Go ahead. So after hearing from everybody else. And in particular, what Carly said. If there's a minimal effort that you can put in Carly into staying in touch with the coastal commission and the county in an attempt to be part of that group since we're all in this local area. And just to stay in touch with them to see if they were hearing anything different or if they're doing anything different. So I would support that. But on a minimal basis. Writing another letter back to PG&E. You're not going to get a good result. Maybe three Nats together might have a little more effect. So I agree that Mark is suggesting that we should do that, but not bother crafting another letter. Spending staff time. Yeah, it's just not good. It's not worth it. Bob, did you have anything else you want to add? Well, actually, I fed everything through Mark. So he said what I was going to say. Okay. Let's go out to members of the public. On this, we have five people. Anybody else? Anybody in the public want to make a comment on this? Please raise your hand. I don't know if people on the phone can raise their hand. So let's go ahead and make it possible for the person that's the phone number. To speak if he or she would like to. Is there so, is there somebody out there from. I don't, there we go. Okay. All right. So whoever's on the phone on 831. I don't think they want to. I guess they don't want to. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure. So hearing no public comment on this. Well, I think we made. It clear what we thought. Should go. And it sounds like the staff is. I think, you know, Rick and Carly are probably on board on this too. So that that's, that's good. We're all together on this. All right. So let's go on to. New business with the first item being the panorama fiscal year 2021-22 contract. Rick. Yes. And our environmental programs manager will present this item to the board as well. Thank you, Rick. And so as many of us are aware, the district began its work with panorama environmental Inc. In early 2020 to create a fire management plan. And since the district's initial contract, panorama has been a valuable resource and post fire recovery grant funding, fire reduction planning and environmental permitting and training. The fire management plan was approved by the board of directors in May of 2021 and staff seeks further support to implement management projects as outlined in the plan. Recently, panorama has assisted the district in securing funding to complete priority projects as outlined in the fire management plan. To partnership with the resource conservation and environmental management plan. To partnership with the resource conservation district of Santa Cruz County. And the California coastal conservancy. Resulting in approximately $650,000 in grant funding with no cost share. Attached to the day is panoramas fiscal year 2021-22 contract scopes and fee sheet. Just as a note, task five forest management plan has an approved grant that will cover all costs upon reimbursement from Cal fire. And task six permitting environmental review and agency outreach for implementation projects has an approved grant that will cover costs upon reimbursement. Staff recommends the board of directors approve the district to enter into a contract with panorama environmental ink to continue post fire response, fire planning, grant writing and oversight of fuel reduction, reapport station implementation. Staff is prepared to answer any questions. I'd like to add in that this is new to the board that we did just receive another, what's in this memo, another $400,000 in fuel reduction. That is, we have confirmation that we have been granted. So that's just happened recently. To bring that total up to the 650,000 in grants for fuel reduction. That's been a great, great success. That is excellent news. Indeed. Mark, did you read the report? Mark, did you want to start with any comment on this? And share on the engineering committee? Excuse me on the environmental committee. Sure. I have no questions, but two comments on this. So the, if I'm understanding these grants correctly, the net fiscal impact is that 42,000 minus those two tasks that we're going to be able to do. So we're going to be able to do that. And then we're going to be able to do that. And the second thing is that 42,000 minus those two tasks. Costs. For a total then of. 29,000 and change. Am I correct in that, Carly? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Second. The sub consultant of panorama. Basin research. They've done work for me on one of my construction projects. I was happy to see them cited for the cultural resources. They're, they're knowledgeable about their subject matter, but they were also practical in helping me deal on a cost effective basis. Or how to respond to agencies and do things in, you know, to stay in compliance. So. I was happy to see them there. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. You're also on that committee. Did you want to. Make any comments or questions? Well, I had a couple of questions and a couple of comments. Carly. Is this in the budget for this next year? Yes, we budgeted $50,000 for this type of work. Do you expect that they'll come back for additional money? Potentially. I mean, if we pursue more fire related grants or we're providing that support or we need, you know, they, we've been working pretty closely with the registered professional forester that they work with. So they subcontract him out to us whenever we need that type of work. So if we need more of that, that could potentially come back as a change order. But it'll be dependent on how much we want to work with them. I guess it's the question. Okay. So far. Would we spend with them last year? 50 K 60 K. I believe it, I believe it became more than what we had originally budgeted, which was the $60,000. I'm not sure off the top of my head how much we ended up, we did do a couple of different augments. And that year. My point is though that, you know, the ROI and this is pretty good so far relative to the grants. The grant, did the grant writer that we engaged assist in any way with these two grants or was this solely panorama? This was solely panorama. We had started work with Susan after we'd submitted both of these applications for these grants. Okay. So we could in fact have two streams of grants potentially coming in one from panorama, one from the grant writer. Okay. Yeah, because we're not going to let our stuff burn. It doesn't really matter what's around it. We're not going to let it burn. The last thing is I'm hopeful once we get this major project done, we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do the mediation done of clearing around our infrastructure. That the ongoing maintenance of it on an annual or semi-annual, whatever basis. We'll be much less costly. And that it can be done by local people. Very much want to start seeing. Money that we're spending on construction. And this kind of maintenance. We're going to local folks if we're going to contract out. We're going to be able to do otherwise, but we, I understand why. Thank you. Jamie or Lois, did you have anything you'd like to ask or add? I just wanted to check in about whether we are doing any kind of, you know, media release or letting people know about these fuel reduction grants as they come through. I know that we were waiting because we wanted to get the letter of confirmation. So we're going to be able to do that. And that brings comfort to the community. To hear that we're being funded to do these activities. You know, people are very worried about their, their own homes. And so they, they like to see that there's work being done in our community to help protect it. And I can quickly respond to that. We are planning our September newsletter and that's going to be one of the featured items. And then we'll also be doing a lot of social media outreach on that as well. And then we'll also be doing a lot of social media outreach on that as well. And then we'll also direct the district manager to enter into a contract with panorama environmental to continue fire response, fire planning, grant writing, and oversight of fuel reduction reforestation implementation for fiscal year. 2122. Would anybody like to move that? I will do so. I'll second that. Before we vote on that, I would like to ask the public. If they would like to comment. On that. So if any of our attendees would like to. Comment or ask a question, please do so now. Seeing none and hearing none. I'll come back to the board then. If there's any final questions or comments. Before we take a vote. We did go for budget last year. It was brought up with panorama. But that was mostly due to. Their reaction changed. Their scope of work during the fire and after the fire. So. You know, otherwise they would have been within budget. Okay. Holly, I think you can go ahead and make a real call. No. President Mayhood. Vice president Henry. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. I think we can go ahead and make a real call. I think we can go ahead and make a real call. President Mayhood. Yes. Let me make a quick call. Director falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. The motion passes unanimously. With that, we'll go on to the next item of new business, which is the rate assistance program changes. Director Rogers. Or I'll definitely move us ahead and ask the acting. Finance manager, Thank you. Welcome Kendra. There you go. Did you unmute? You need to unmute yourself Kendra. There you go. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay, there we go. So it was discussed at the August 18 budget and finance committee about updating some of the verbiage to the rate assistance of the budget. So we updated the eligibility requirements in section 5.C and the continued eligibility requirements in section 7.2. And it's basically stating that if an account is 90 days past due that they would not be eligible for the RAP program or to continue eligibility if they are 90 days past due they will be removed from the program. And then it was also discussed to update the monthly discount from $10 per month to $15 per month but maintain the $25,000 budgeted cap. So it is recommended that the board of directors review and approve the revised rate assistance policy. Okay. I'd like to ask Lois to comment first since she's the chair of budget finance. Thank you. Am I unmuted? Yes you are. I am. Okay. First off I wanted to talk a little bit about property tax that is what funds the RAP, the rate assistance program. In 1978 Prop 13 was passed. Part of Prop 13 gave property tax monies to special districts. There is a little catch on this though. You had to be a special district when Prop 13 passed. If the size of the district was increased after 1978, only the original boundaries would receive property tax. SLVWD was a special district in 1978 but it covered a much smaller area than it does today. Basically Boulder Creek, Brookdale, and Ben Lohman. There are two types of special districts. An enterprise district which is what SLVWD is because we charge a fee. A non-enterprise district are primarily funded by property tax. And a fire district is a good example of a non-enterprise district. Usually enterprise districts are getting about 9% of their income from property tax. Non-enterprise districts get primarily most of their money from property tax. Now I'm not sure SLVWD is getting 9% of their income from property tax because the district is so much bigger now. And I have to admit that I didn't try to even figure it out. We do get a lot of property tax. One Longpico water district was a special district in 1978. So when we merged with SLVWD, they did get a little more money but it's not much. It's only 500 homes in Longpico. But like Moniana Woods or Felton, there isn't any property tax. And I can hear people saying, wait a minute, I see on my... What happened here? Did I go away? No, you're fine. Go ahead. Okay. Something changed. They'll say, oh, hey, I see where I'm sending money to SLV on my property tax. But that is like say Felton agreed to pay X amount of dollars to SLV and some other mutuals also or Longpico pays money. But the property tax, you don't see how much property tax is going to go to SLV. Because the property tax is like 1% of the value of your home and sometimes it's 2%. But the county decides where the money goes. And so you don't really... There's nothing breaking that down on your bill. And I'm telling you about this because as we talk about raising the monthly credit given to low income people in our rate assistance program, there are some things I want to mention to people about how we can continue to do this program. So, okay. One of the things we talked about in our August meeting was to raise the rate. It's from $10 to $15. And as was said, there's a $25,000 budget. And in July and August we only had 61 people signed up. And we have nine more people wanting to be enrolled in this program. So if they finally get signed up by... Before the billing goes out this month, then we'll have 70 people enrolled. And the cost of the district for those three months would be $1,920 if indeed July makes... Has 70 people. If the board would approve raising the monthly rate to $15 tonight starting in October, we would not go over the 25%. Let's say some magic happened. And by October, we have 100 people enrolled. But I don't believe in magic. I can't talk. But for kicks, I'm going to just say we're going to have 100 people enrolled for the next nine months. And that would be $180 a year for people who get 15 dollars a month. But if we have these 100 people enrolled for nine months at $15 a month, that's only $13,500. So with the first three months, we would be at $15,420. But in case magic happens and we get a whole lot more people than 100 or we get the 100, we have like a $9,000 wiggle room. Actually it's more than 9,000. But it's not 10,000. So let's say in the 22... Oh, okay. I want to say the next budget, the 21, 22 budget, if we raise the amount to $30,000 that we're going to give to... That's in the budget. That would mean only 166 people could get $15 a month. But if we... So I should have said the 22, 23. I'm sorry. But if we have 208 people enrolled, which is the maximum right now, we would have to raise the amount to $37,440. Now some of the members and public and whatever brought up that they thought it ought to be $20 a month. So 166 people getting $20 or $240 a year would mean a budget of $39,840. Or if we keep the 208 number that are getting $240, that doubles the budget we're in right now. It doubles it to $50,000. And I talked to you about property tax because property tax does not double. It doesn't. And yeah, we have a lot of money in property tax. We have over $800,000. But the amount of increase that is in the budget for 22, 23 is $25,709. So if we kept gave people $20 a month and we kept it at 208, we are spending twice as much as what is the additional amount that's coming that year. So I think we need to start thinking about if we want to have more people in our program and we want to keep raising the price. I mean granted, we do have a lot of money in property tax. But can we keep increasing and increasing and virtually wiping out any growth in that program from year to year? Or can we find some other way to help these people? Or another way to fund the money? We cannot give district or ratepayers money away. That's why we're using property tax. So that's all I have to say. And I hope you have some good ideas out there. Thank you. Since I'm on the committee with Lois, let me just follow on to her comments. The reason she gave us that short course on property tax is that, which is something that I didn't appreciate till she explained to me is that we can't fund things like the wrap through property tax. So that's why we have to look at other sources. But I would like to go back to the sort of rationale that the budget and finance committee had in arriving at this, basically two things that we're asking for the board to do is, one is just to simply bring the program into being consistent with now how we're collecting bills and everything else. So I think that's a, you know, it's pretty just administrative. The second was raising it to $15. And the reason we did that is that we noticed that at $10 that we were really grossly under subscribed. We know from PG&E that there's a lot more people that apply to their care program. Then are applying to our RAP. And basically we're using PG&E's care program. And so the thought was, is that maybe, you know, at $10 a month, it's just simply not quite people's worth their time to do it. So the thought was, is that we would raise it slightly. Some people, one person from the public attended the meeting and suggested more, but I think one of the things that we're asking for is that I kind of wanted to see what would happen if we raised it to $15, if that brought the numbers up and we, you know, I wouldn't want to have a situation where we double it. And then suddenly we couldn't accommodate all the people that wanted it in the $25,000 that we've budgeted already. So I think that this is a, you know, it's kind of an intermediate step. It'll help the people that are already, it might incentivize a few more people to enroll. We can, as Lois says, if we want to make this bigger in the future, we'll have to think about whether, you know, we want to do that. But that's not really in front of us right now. What's in front of us right now is really a pretty simple thing, which is just these administrative changes to the rules and bumping up the amount of money that we're making. And I think that that's, and bumping up the amount that we pay people that are enrolled from $10 to $15 a month staying within this $25,000 that we've budgeted so far. So it doesn't have, you know, it's budget neutral. If suddenly we got a whole bunch of people applying, we would just, Kendra, we would just go first come, first serve, right? And so we're not going to go over that. So I just wanted to kind of, so I hope that the board will just see this as a fairly simple thing to do that might help out some of our lower income ratepayers. Ah. Yes. I had a couple of questions just to make sure that I'm with you guys because I do appreciate Lois' tutorial on the property taxes. I think it's important for people to understand that. Are we, are we talking about capping the program at 208 people regardless of money, or are we talking about capping it at $25,000? We are capping it by the budgeted amount, which is $25,000. Okay. My recollection is that the reason we selected the $25,000 is because I believe that's our cellular lease revenue. The property tax revenue is typically used to cover debt service. Or at least that's what it has historically been used for. And in the P&L. And so, you know, any money that you would take out of property taxes means you're taking it out of applying it to our capital obligations being at debt service or infrastructure or what have you. Without replacing it somewhere else, which, you know, may be raising rates to be able to cover that. So that's one comment. Second comment is on the property taxes. We are in the middle of a fairly significant demographic shift. And where properties that were assessed under Prop 13, a couple hundred thousand, 300,000 they were, you know, purchased 20, 30 years ago. People are starting to turn those houses over for one reason or another. And the current prices are up in the much higher. 600, 700, 800,000. Even I've been starting to see million-dollar houses in places I never would have dreamed that we would get to that point. So the property tax revenue over the next 10 to 15 years is going to change significantly at the county level. Whether we get any of it or not, I guess, is still, you know, to be determined, one would hope so. I think, Lois, you're about right. I think we're somewhere around 7, 8, 9% of our total revenue is property taxes. It's about 800,000 on revenue of what, 11 million, 12 millions, something like that. So I think you're in the ballpark. My solution, of course, for making things affordable for people is very different than what is being discussed here. If we apply the last eight years of rate increases and take that trend forward eight years, we're looking at $200 a month bills for four units by 2030. I think at any scale, the only people that are going to be able to afford that are not the people that live here today by and large. And that would be a real shame. I hate to see ourselves put in a position where we're forcing people out because of our inability to control operating expenses. One quick comment on the policy. There's a small typo. I just wanted to make sure we got it's on the second highlight. 90 days. Don't want people to think we're going to cut them off at nine days, which I know isn't the intent. So I appreciate you bringing it to the to the board. I think at the end of the day, though, the solutions are not at our scale. The solution is at the scale of the state. And, you know, if we have $78 billion that is being talked about or whatever the number is, it sure seems to me that the state legislators ought to step up, do the right thing and start funding. Is it AB 401 or I forget the number, but there is a bill that has been passed. They've just never funded it through appropriations. And that's a real and from my point of view, a real shame. That's where the solution is going to come from. We're too small to deal with this at the scale that ultimately needs to be done if we're not going to do anything about the operating expenses. Jamie or Mark, did you want to say anything? So I was just going to say that I'm, you know, I'm not troubled by by the proposal because we're we're still staying within, you know, the framework that was previously approved for the Lyra program. So, you know, I think that it's, it's reasonable to increase it. You know, $15 is a more meaningful sum of money for people. And so I support it. I'd like to go out to members of the public if they have any comments. Excuse me. I just wanted to mention one thing. I wanted to let you know that if a caller wants to raise their hand, they can do so by using their phone and pressing star nine. So if anyone wants to use, call in and raise their hand just star nine and your hand will go up. Thank you. Holly, were you able to confirm if there was an issue with the link on the agenda tonight? Because I did get a text from someone that said that the link online may not be accurate. Yes, I've had some problems with it. And if you just try one of the other links, there's other ways to do it instead of just using that link. I don't know what happened. There must have been a typo in it or something. I generally just copy and paste, but for some reason it's not working. And we do have attendees that have made it on. So it's not completely ruined. It's still, there is an option of getting on. But if the link is correct, there's just some kind of a break in it so that when you click on it, it, it doesn't populate the URL correctly, but if you copy and paste it, it works. So it does work. It's just a little more awkward than usual. Thanks for that. Gina. So do any of our members of the public. Would they like to make a comment on this? Okay. Hearing. Thank you. Thank you. None. Then we'll go back. The, the staff has recommended that the board of directors. Approve the revised rate assistance policy. Would anybody like to make a motion on that? Sure. I'm not sure the, the hand raising functions working. We haven't had any comment. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Thank you. Thank you. Letting us know that, you know, you're alive out there. Go ahead. I'll raise my hand since, you know, it's working and also I'm total support of this. It sounds wonderful. To bring, you know, more money to people that need it. So thank you so much for working on this and, and thank you for vice president Henry's explanation on the, you know, taxes. So thank you guys. Okay. Thank you, Elena, for letting us know that we're going to push that forward. I'll make a motion for you. Thank you very much. And I'll, I'll make a motion for you. Thank you. And, and I'll, I'll make a motion for you. For you're getting through. All right. Good. So anyway, I, we have this recommendation from the staff that we were. That we approve the revised rate assistant policy. Would any member of the board like to make a motion regarding that? Or is that including the $15. Yes. And I'll I'll second that. Thank you. Holly would you take a roll call vote please. Director Mayhood. Excuse me President Mayhood. Yes I. Vice President Henry. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Smolley. Yes. Motion passes unanimously. With that we move to the next item of new business which is the whether to open employee memorandums of understanding or negotiation. I'll turn to district manager Rogers. Rick you are muted. Yes thank you chair Mayhood and district council and Nichols will present this item to the board. Okay thank you. This is for those who've been on the board for the last couple or the last few years. This won't be a new item. This memo will look a lot like memos that you've seen before. The reason that this particular issue is coming before you in in September is that in 2019 the district's two memorandums of understanding with its employee groups came to the end of their term. So and maybe I should take a step back. The district has agreements with its employees that establish a lot of the terms and conditions of employment. They're set forth in memorandums of understanding. There's one with the management supervisory and confidential employee unit and there's another one with the classified employees union. They're similar but there are some differences between the two. One of the similarities between the two MOUs with the two different employee groups is that they have the same expiration and renegotiation terms. So both of the MOUs with both of the employee groups expired in 2019 but they provide that they automatically renew from year to year if they're not open for renegotiation during a particular window that occurs in September of each year. So during this window we're now in which is essentially September 2nd to October 2nd. The parties to the MOU including the respective employee group and on the one on the one hand and the district on the other hand can decide whether to give notice to open the MOUs for for renegotiation or whether to allow them to simply renew based on the same terms and conditions for another year. So because they expired in 2019 the district now has for a few years about this time of year looked at the MOUs and considered whether or not to open them and also asked the employee groups what they intend to do so that's in an effort to try to coordinate the process. So we're in the window again the district the board of the needs to make a decision on the half of the district whether to open the MOUs for for negotiation one or both of the MOUs for negotiation that decision is not before the board tonight the decision that is before the board tonight is whether to appoint representatives who would handle negotiations if the MOUs are opened and if the board appoints representatives then the then the board can meet in closed session with those representatives to talk about the district's position and among other things whether or not to to open the MOUs for negotiation. So that's what we're asking for tonight is for the board to appoint representatives including the district manager and myself and then then we would meet with the board in a closed session presumably at the next board meeting or I guess it could be a special meeting to talk about the MOU renegotiation process and what the district's position is. Okay Rick did you have anything you wanted to add to that? No I think council summed it up I think we are recommending that the board appoint district council and the district manager or negotiators representing the district. Okay let's go ahead and see if there are any questions or comments from members of the board. We'll start with Mark. Now that I have the understanding of who the negotiators are that we would be appointing no they don't have any further questions. Okay that was simple. Thank you. Yes. Okay Jamie how about you? No I don't have any questions right now. Okay Bob. Yeah so I understand what you're saying is that just because you appoint negotiators doesn't mean you open negotiations but isn't that kind of sort of a signal to everybody involved that that's definitely a possibility. I agree with that statement yes. I may not be understanding this we've approved the budget that has already built into it compensation assumptions and we had some promotions this past year. I'm trying to figure out what the you know where where where that recommendation is coming because I believe last year there was no recommendation to do that right? That's correct. Okay thank you. Lois could you have anything you wanted to add? I might be muted Lois. Yes you're muted. Lois you're muted. Trouble. Trouble. I think it would be a good idea to have the district manager and district council be the people who deal with this. I think it's kind of up to the employees if they want to open negotiations if I'm wrong Rick tell me. Well it's up to either up to either side am I correct Jenna? It's up to the district if we wish to open up and discuss or the employees can can vote to open and discuss. Yeah that's right either or both sides could open the MOU and either way it becomes open for negotiations from that point. Let me just partly address Bob's point is you know we really haven't for the last two years opened this up and I think it's fair to say that it might be you know a good exercise for the board given especially that we have three really new members to be able to look at this carefully and discuss it. I think there's a lot of value there but also beyond the question of what you were asking concerning you know that we've already approved a budget the some of the things that you know could change might have nothing to do with compensation they might be for example as we've seen with COVID the workforce has been transformed we have people working from home we have hybrid solutions there's a lot of other things go into the agreements that we have with both our unionized and our other groups so one could imagine some of those things being discussed or codified as as well so I think that that's that's what we're you know that's that's just an example of the sort of thing that might come up that has nothing to do with with salaries. Okay but I mean aren't those the kind of things that get worked out between managers and the staff anyway I mean are we looking here to lock certain things into place I don't I'm not sure I'm following. Given that a lot of ours you know that to a certain extent those are but when you have you know a lot of our staff are the classified employees union those aren't simply things that she sort of negotiated in that that way in an informal manner so. Is any of that covered in the agreement today in terms of working arrangements remote working? That's the point is that the work that the world has changed and that it's time that we discuss these kinds of things or have the ability to discuss them. Is there no ability to address any of that today I mean this pandemic is not going to be stopped I mean we're going to be living with this coronavirus for many many years and and what what things may look like even two or three years from now it could be very different from today. You know so so the notion of locking things into place I I'm not sure that I I understand that you know that everybody of good faith could be working on those items. To interrupt this isn't the meeting to kind of have that discussion. This is the meeting to select negotiators and there's times to have that discussion. No disrespect to you know I understand your point Rick and I didn't want to dive too deeply into it but there has to be some reasons for doing this and certainly in the manner of of you know communicating to our public why we're doing well we haven't even decided Bob so I think you're really jumping the gun and you're once again going to hypotheticals that are really far beyond what we're even talking about tonight. Once again I'm trying to understand the rationale that's okay. Yes I think I'm following along with some of what Bob is asking. Rick what's the downside if we don't at this meeting tonight appoint negotiators? Well we have a we have timelines to follow both the the classified and the management team have guidelines and timelines and we have the same and it's better to start this process sooner than later. You know you don't want to wait till the last minute to appoint. We haven't got all indications we have some indications that potentially employees may want to open you know we're not sure on that you know and and and we do want to review certain aspects of the agreement and not saying we're looking at compensation but as Gail pointed out the the agreement is silent on such things as working is working from home and it's caused issues during the pandemic and by not having a policy or in writing it causes issues you know and then you know either the manager or employees try to solve that issue and it's much better to have this settled as part of the MOU. Okay thank you. Does anybody else want to weigh in before I go back to Bob? No okay Bob. I appreciate that perspective Rick thank you for going through that. I guess my question here is if I'm if I'm understanding properly is that we could in fact decide to not appoint negotiators until later and see if the employees really do want to open things up because I'm assuming one of their reps are here today um but that wouldn't happen and the deadline is in uh council's memo that we have to make a decision the board does my current but but that wouldn't but that wouldn't give us enough time to have discussions at least at a regularly scheduled meeting about whether or not we want to open negotiations or not so I guess the other question I would have is if we do appoint negotiators and we go into a closed session typically our closed session are an hour is that going to be enough time to cover this at the next meeting or do you anticipate that we're going to have a special meeting or two before we get to a final decision? I would anticipate that we could come to a final decision rather quickly um obviously it depends on what other business is on the closed session agenda but at this stage of the game I think we could come to a decision on moving forward relatively quickly and then we should have um word in writing from the two representative groups and have a better understanding I'm actually surprised yes we did have enough time I'm actually surprised we could reach a decision that quickly if that's the case though if we can do that then I don't know why there's a rush to do it tonight we could wait until the next meeting the employee groups may wish to decide or we could even wait a little bit longer if it's not going to take very long to do it all and we could have a very quick special meeting to to cover that later in the month and I'm you know whatever the board's pleasure is and direction to staff you know we'll move forward with Jamie um I I don't agree with having unnecessary special meetings I you know I I view that as an additional cost to staff and staff time that we have to pay for every time we hold these um special meetings so you know if it's something that would you know speed the process it's not going to have a real big material impact and allows you to you know have a little more time to prepare I I'm I would not want to put us in a position where this would have to be done by special meeting at a later date you're muted I would like to motion that we appoint the district manager and district council to be the negotiators on this I will second that before we come back to discuss this more among the board I'd like to go out and see if there's any comments in the public are there any comments in the public seeing none hearing none I'll come back to the board to see if there's any more questions about the motion that's on the table Bob one quick question uh once negotiations are opened um there's no limit to either the topics or the time frame in which negotiations are taken correct any once they're open everything's on the table I do believe that's partially correct once open everything is on the table but I do believe there are time time restraints and limits moving forward am I correct uh Gina yeah once it's open there's no limitation on which terms or conditions are potentially negotiable um there are yeah there is a deadline to give notice that that is what it is um but in terms of completing negotiations there's no deadline that's right yeah so I mean it it could go on months or it could go on two weeks depending on how much gets put on the table okay great thank you okay if if uh there's no other comment I'd just like to sort of formalize the motion if you don't mind Lois go ahead um that we have a motion to appoint the district manager and district council as the district's designated representatives regarding negotiation of the district MOUs with the district's classified employees union and the management supervisory and confidential employee unit perfect courtesy of Gina of course I didn't do that um so uh holly would you take a uh roll call vote please president Mayhood aye vice president Henry aye director Ackman yes director false director Smallie yes motion passes unanimously next we come to the consent agenda which contains items that are considered to be routine in nature um are there any things that should be pulled from the um consent agenda uh yes I'd like to excuse me uh pull the minutes from July 15th I have several suggestions okay that that's fine should we vote on uh Gina do we need to vote on the remainder of the consent issues or there's no need to vote on the items that haven't been pulled all right the only issue is the need to discuss and vote on the one that was pulled okay good Bob go ahead and state your objections well no as what did you say objections or suggestions suggestions comments whatever okay the first one is on item number 10 the third paragraph there are there's one typo I think on the on the next the last line um to undermine what the majority decided should not be done I think it is supposed to be should be done that sentence I'd like to add um because this is a very expansive uh paragraph it covered everything but two sentence or phrases that Lois had so after that word done I'd like to add even though it doesn't say it in our board policy manual the last sentence should be you are selling your usual stuff while you are doing it and that is to provide a more fair and contextual uh set of comments about what was said there during the uh during her director's report I would not uh at all agree with the first thing you said because that's not what Lois said I went back and listened to the recording today Gail and that's exactly what she said oh sorry uh you mean the not striking the word not no that's okay but what I'm saying is did she say that the majority decided should be done even though it's not in the board manual yes and if you wish to pull this for another meeting so that you and I could review the tape so we don't have to do it here in real time I'd be happy to do that well I just if you know if that's if that I think Holly can um determine whether that's exactly what she said I didn't know I'm I'm reporting exactly I agree I was summarizing but but but basically this paragraph summarized virtually everything that director Henry said except for the two things that I am adding would like to add it covered everything else it was not a summary and I'm just going to state here for clarification that if there's going to be a change to the minutes the board would need to vote on it to approve it minutes are approved we understand that right um so Bob do you want to I didn't quite catch what you wanted to do so maybe and I'm not sure if everybody else did but would you like to restate it again before I go to Jamie yes what I would like to do is make sure that this paragraph provides the entire context of what director Henry was saying so the first edition is in the next the last sentence after the word done and it would add in the words even though it doesn't say it in our policy manual and then the last sentence should be you are selling your usual stuff while you were doing it both of these things were said during that particular set of comments Amy um I'm just I guess uh wanting to understand your thinking about because I think the paragraph summarizes you know the context of what Lois was saying so so what you're asking for is absolute specificity in this one particular paragraph and what I'd like to understand is why what is it that you think is not contextualized by not including those specific details I I think what I'm suggesting there sort of speaks for itself Jamie that in fact while she was going through this she said that it doesn't say it in our board policy manual that is an enormous um lack of context relative to the overall comments that were being put in there in the record and the same thing with the last sentence that is an enormous amount of context around um what she said during that time and I think given that all of the other things that were said were put in there virtually verbatim not exactly but virtually verbatim I think it's only fair to make sure that the items that were not put in are included to provide the full context well I guess what I would say about this Bob is I disagree with you that there this is not the place to have direct quotes about what director Henry said and that's the second thing that you offered was exactly that and there is nowhere in these documents where we do direct quotes because these are supposed to be summary uh summary minutes and if somebody cares about the details they can go back as you have and look at the tapes I will say that that the rest of the paragraph like I said is not a summary a summary might have been director Henry commented on B. Fultz's KSCO appearance or something like that it would not have said everything else so either we go to summary or we bring the given the expanded nature of this particular comment we bring it out to the full context and then I think it would also be worthwhile given that this appeared to be something that um I again I don't want to put myself in director Henry's shoes but it appeared to be something that she was very disturbed about but it might be worthwhile having an agenda item to cover this sort of thing to make sure that everybody is on the same page of understanding of what directors can or can't do within the context okay now you're bringing up something totally different if you want to do that if you want to do that Bob you send a message to Rick asking him to agendize this issue and he will do that we are right now talking about whether we want to make a modification of uh the minutes so Bob has suggested a change to the minutes do we need a second for that or do we just vote on whether to adopt his change I have other changes for the for these well I think we should do those first sure we're involved in motion on a second chairman okay so bob do you want to move that yes I'd like to move to add those additional phrases into the expanded paragraph and those phrases would be after the word done even though it doesn't say it in our board policy manual and the last sentence you are selling your usual stuff while you were doing it is there a second the motion that pardon me I was going to make a suggestion that you know maybe this particular topic we could revisit um next but you know they sorry either either make a make a second or let's just let's just deal with this right really okay I got it offered Bob you know if he wants to agendize this there's a way to do it all right is there a second the motion dies for a lack of second is there another change you would like to make Bob yes it's on page four numbers you'd see it is 11c default commented that he questioned how we manage bidders um I'd like to change that to um defaults commented that maybe bidders need additional insight into our bid submission expectations and that is a summary because I went on for a longer period of time would you like to repeat that Bob yes defaults commented that maybe the bidders need additional insight into our bid submission expectations and is would you like to move that yes please I'll second that one and chair may hood I recommend getting public comment at some point oh my gosh all right would anybody from like to comment on this Alina Alina go ahead hi uh Alina laying both the creek I guess I'm still just not understanding why we have to go through minutes and meetings with the public that it's I mean the video is out there and I'm just having a really hard time um with this every like several meetings that we have to like change what was supposed to just be a summary that's thank you any other comments that one I think it's just easiest to do them one at a time because so um I second that uh holly would you like to should we do a vote on that we do a voice vote we do a vote let's do a voice vote on that all in favor say I I'm all opposed no because I don't remember what was said and I'm not going to vote on something I don't remember and I understand so that's of no no vote okay so the it passes um on a split vote could I just confirm that the district secretary got the vote for the minutes yes I believe so everyone but Lois said yes I think okay thank you the next one yes the next one is indeed under the system wide waterline leak detection program it says b-fold said he would like to see this done every year b-fold said that he would I would like to change that to b-fold said he would like to see this done at least every other year if not every year that's a motion that's a motion anybody like to second that I'll second it um anybody want to comment on that in the public of the voice vote on that all in favor hi hi all opposed no no so the the change does not pass I'm sorry I did mark vote yes he did it was a no okay okay great that was it thank you thank you um next we go to um the district reports are there any questions or comments on district reports um I'd like to start off um myself um just uh maybe asking rick or or carly um we've we've heard a lot of things in the news about sort of money starting to shake loose from the federal and the state government so I kind of like to hear um we already heard some good news tonight about the additional um fire related stuff um so could you tell us what um you know what other activities are going on and you know we have um hired the grant writer and what what she's engaged in yes and I do believe carly's prepared to give you a quick summary of our activities great thank you so much yeah so we are working with robinson who is our our grant writer at this point and she's provided a pretty detailed evaluation of all the grants and potential loans that the district has qualified for and right now we are pursuing three grants um two of them in october and then in november so these are kind of uh quick paced pursuits but uh the first one is for the bureau of reclamation water smart program um this there's two different grant funding opportunities under this water smart uh program which is the drought resiliency which is up to five hundred thousand dollars with a cost share of fifty percent or more um in the the first project we want to pursue is redwood tank replacements and so we actually had a call with the bureau of reclamation today and those projects you um are are eligible so that's really great news so susan's going to start writing up those applications and working with staff to get those put together um and then we're also going to look into pursuing um under the water smart program another grant opportunity with their water and energy efficiency grant program and that's up to two hundred two million dollars um with a cost share of fifty percent and that's something that we would potentially pursue with the city of santa cruz and that would be for am i meter replacements um so the city's going through a similar program right now and that would be something that would make us more competitive if we could have something that looks more regional than just our own district so that could be a really huge project and um some money in for infrastructure and then we're also pursuing through the department of water resources a small community grant draft drought relief program which would be connecting to two smaller community water systems there's no cost share for this program and there's no limit on the request of funding so right now i believe we're requesting a little over four million dollars to incorporate two smaller systems and those two smaller systems would be there would be a brockon bray water and forest springs both have indicated a strong want to consolidate with the district and we've been working very closely trying to obtain uh this would be a hundred percent grant funding for interconnections about uh let's see about eight thousand lineal feet of pipe to connect two systems and replacing a considerable amount of pipe in our system to upgrade to be able to handle additional capacity okay uh bob go ahead would that cover any improvements necessary and in those two systems inside of their system it would to bring our water up to their to their storage tanks that's correct but but none of the laterals inside their system none of the laterals and both of those systems are have been very active since the cpu fire on repairs of their system they're engaged to one of the systems with fema and the other system are are engaged on with engineering firms and so forth to replace their laterals and systems and fire hydrants i have not brought this to the board yet for approval you know the one thing about this grant when these things come out you know it's it's a big hurry up there will be a resolution needed to apply for this grant down the road and there will be a board authorizations and resolutions moving forward with the consolidation of those two um mutuals so a little ahead with putting in for that grant but what i was told is sooner we get in the better eligibility we have i think there's 200 million in the state of california in this bucket and uh it is definitely geared towards small water system consolidation mark yes um applaud the efforts that you're doing uh to get these grants um i did want to segue to one other aspect in the environmental report that carly won't mention uh unless i bring it up she brought it up at the environmental committee meeting earlier this week um pgini is approached the district uh for a riparian mitigation uh project that they would be funding uh because they would get uh some credits for other work that they're doing on another one of their projects we're looking to work with them on that and carly is negotiating with them to remove uh up to five acres of uh french broom as part of the what they would need to do for us in order for us to be able to work with them on that and i just wanted to applaud her efforts at negotiating this um good job carly we're very excited about this program we hope moves ahead she has done a phenomenal job working with pgini so the district council it's a kind of a unique uh agreement moving ahead yes make them an offer they can't refuse that's great any other comments are there any other questions among uh the uh members of the public about um district reports seeing them hearing that i'll come back to members of the board five uh yes just a few um first for josh um josh what are the target dates to break ground for the lion pipeline and the quail hollow pipeline is still up in the air we're still in we're still in development on the lion pipeline so we really don't have a target date yet on quail hollow our target date well we are closing our construction bidding on the 30th of this month so assuming that materials are available and the contract can be settled after being awarded target date would be mid to late october to break ground on quail hollow okay great good news thank you um right folks we got pushed back on the lion pipeline due to the cz u fire damage uh probably about another thousand feet of pipe that would be part of that so we had to add as placement to this project so now we're reserving and and doing um it was cross country pipeline that will now be brought into the right away so we had to add to that project and it slowed it project down a little bit is that related to a potential new access up there as well no that's separate okay another question pop yeah well i think this actually might require an offline discussion with uh kendra um the budget numbers that were shown in her report didn't match the ones in the budget that we passed the total operating expenses anyway for this year and and and the estimated so um rick is that something i can follow up separately with kendra sure i just ccb please with yes absolutely and then um i noticed that we are still holding in a holding pattern on our um accounts payable with our with our customers that are late things are not moving too bad in in any direction so that's at least stability it's not getting a whole lot worse so i'm glad to see that um it'd be nice if some of that could start coming down but at least we're not getting a lot worse so appreciate your guys' efforts on on keeping that keeping it that way and carly did we not apply for state funds for reimbursement for delinquent accounts we started beginning to look into it kendra and i filled out the initial application and we haven't heard back just yet so we're moving in that direction as well yeah hopefully we'll we'll do that and then one question for um james um we look like we're still sending a fair amount of fall creek water into the north system is that correct um an update on the on your director of operations operations uh he's down at dominican with his wife and their new baby son that was this morning about congratulations that is huge news yeah uh so but anyhow um we are taking some water we dialed back now because uh uh fall creek service water is diminished off but we are taking some water from fall creek into the north system but it has been dialed back the beginning of this month considerably okay yeah because as of july it was still showing 16 million gallons which is a million over june so we were back now okay starting uh the first of this month just keeping compliance with our bypass uh requirements at the fall creek diversion when you say first of the month you mean first of september yes first of this month we just dialed it back okay got it okay great i think that was it thank you any more questions from any members of the board or from the public if not um if i think we are ready to adjourn hearing no objections one last comment um an update on our staff member who was struck by a vehicle is back to work oh good started back um monday and then doing you know doing as well as can be considered back to full uh full duty uh at her job so we really welcome her back and it's great to see her that's great okay all right thank you all good night alice