 it looks like we have everybody. Jennifer, is there any staff people we need to wait for? No, we're all good on the staff side. All right. Well, it's after 130. So we will get started. I'll call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please. Yes, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Board Member Baden Ford. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Walsh. Board Member Walsh. Here. Thank you very much. I'm here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. A reminder to please mute your phones or your microphones when you're not speaking. Put away your cell phones and your personal computers and try and keep your video on as much as possible. Any statements of extension by Board Members? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Arnone, we'll move to our first item, which is Item 3.1, Study Session. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Our Study Session today is on our fiscal year 2021-22, regional, local, wastewater and water, O&M and capital budgets, and Deputy Director of Administration, Director Burke. All right. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin and members of the Board. As Director Burke said, I am going to be going through the fiscal year 2021-22, proposed budget for operations and maintenance, CIP, and the regional preliminary review. Next slide, please. Favorite young man who's probably 40 now. Next slide, please. First, we'll start with an overview of what we'll be looking at today. We will go over staff assumptions, the preliminary operations budgets, the preliminary regional operations budget, and partner contributions, the preliminary CIP review of all funds, and then the budget schedule. Next slide, please. First of all, due to the dry conditions and the possibility of requesting or requiring restrictions in water use this year, we are projecting a decrease in water use by 10%. This reduces both revenue and expenditures, but more on the revenue side. So you will see that in some of the following slides. Wastewater is less volatile because of the sewer caps that are set for customers. And so while we are already seeing a reduction this year, we don't expect it to be nearly as significant as on the water side. Demand fees are expected to increase, and all other revenues are expected to remain stable. And the budget is currently being proposed with the assumption that the new proposed rate structure will be implemented. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. As you can see, there are some changes, some increases and some decreases in the various funds, but overall we are just relatively flat through the entire funds, all funds put together. Next slide, please. Each year we provide you with some of the line items with any significant changes. So as you can see here, salaries and benefits, you are seeing some shifts from the benefit or excuse me, the salaries typically are decreasing due to having newer employees come on. So they started a lower tier. What also happens though, typically when we have a newer workforce is that they have possibly more family members to cover. And so we see the benefits side go up, but we see the salary side decrease. Water billing continues to reduce as AMI is fully implemented, and some of those positions are removed through attrition. You will see that utilities, vehicle expenses, and insurance are all increasing, all of those being outside of the control of our budget managers. Next slide, please. This is a detailed look at the various categories of the operations and maintenance budget on the water side. There are not a lot of significant changes except for the vehicle expenses and the insurance being up, as I mentioned previously, utilities are up, and that is due on the water side to some additional pumping and the installation of some climate control at our wells. You will also see here though that on the internal and external overhead, there is an increase there. However, I want to point out that that increase comes in the water funds and the wastewater funds. You'll also see an increase, but then you will see a decrease in the sub-regional side. And this simply has to do with the fact that we are redistributing some of that overhead between the three funds, that there is not actually an increase overall. Next slide, please. This is the same slide showing the same detail on the wastewater side. You can see all changes here are basically the same on the wastewater side that they are on the water side. Next slide, please. We like to show you every year the budgets for each of the funds in a graphic view, and so this is just a pie chart showing you where the expenditures will be going by category. This is the water funds. And then next slide, please, is the wastewater funds. Next slide, please. We are showing you here again that we are expecting the volume to reduce by 10% of what we will purchase this year for water based on the dry year and the possibility of restrictions. Also showing you here, which you have seen previously, that Sonoma waters increase for the wholesale rate is 3.47%, or going from $966 to $1,000 in acre foot. Next slide, please. This shows you revenue to expenditures on the water side. As I mentioned, we are expecting to sell a little less water, so you will see that our revenues are slightly lower than our expenditures. We do have plenty of fund balance to cover this if needed, but we also expect that we will have some carryover left this year from higher water sales than we had expected to have. So we don't have any concerns that we won't be able to cover that increased expenditure. Next slide, please. And for the wastewater side, we are pretty much exactly on track. Next slide. That was for the water and the wastewater funds, and so now I will be going through the regional contribution allocations and the expenditures on that side. Next slide, please. Budget drivers, we always like to point out that the treatment plant is a 24-hour operation, and it is a 24-hour operation. That many of the things that drive our budget in the treatment plant are based on permit requirements and regulations that we have there. We also have the geysers agreement and the required deliveries there, and then that the plant is 52 years old, so we are seeing some things degrading, needing to be replaced, and some of that we will be discussing in the next slide. Next slide, please. As you will like to remember, we secured a bond for the UV replacement. We did this at the end of last year. While we incurred additional debt, we are seeing an increase in debt of $2 million. This is definitely lower than we had estimated. We had estimated that we would see a $3 million increase in debt service, but because the bond was extended to $2 million, we are seeing an increase in debt services. We are seeing an increase in debt services, but because the bond was extremely successful, we had very good rates because of the current situation and the current bond market, and we also had a refunding that occurred that also saved us some debt services as well. While we are seeing an increase, it's not what we expected, so that's very good news. On the professional services line item, you are going to see an increase. The agreement that we have with LizTech, LizTech is the agreement that we put into place so that we can decommission the biosolids facility. While we are seeing an increase right now in the ONM budget, this agreement does end up saving us money over the life of the agreement of about $8.7 million, and it will definitely be saving us money in capital costs as that facility was beginning to degrade and was going to need millions of dollars in repairs. Also, you will see an increase on the ONM projects on that line item that is increasing due to a couple of factors. The combination of the aging UV system and the new compliance issues are requiring us to do more maintenance on that system this year. We can't meet our regulatory requirements without the additional maintenance, so you are going to see an increase there that will be corrected however over the next couple of years after we actually do the replacement of the UV system. And then the other factor is the CHP engines and generators, and they are due for a 24,000-hour service, and we cannot suggest delaying either of these types of maintenance, and so you will see that increase in the ONM projects line. Next slide, please. Overall, all department-wide we are remaining flat. As I previously mentioned, though, you will see the regional ONM up slightly, which is about 1.6%, increasing due to those ONM projects and the professional services increasing. Debt service will be increasing based on that UV bond that we secured or the bond for the UV system that we secured by about 9%. Next slide, please. Here is that same detailed look at the regional operations. As mentioned a couple of times now already, the operations and maintenance projects are up, and so is the professional services, but you will see, as I had mentioned previously, that overhead is decreasing in this fund. Next slide, please. This is just the graphic picture of the regional fund. This also includes the miscellaneous revenues that are reduced from the operations and maintenance portion of the budget before it is allocated to the partners, as well as a slight increase for the ONM reserve. We are by policy, we keep a 15% reserve for operations and maintenance, and because of that slight increase in operations and maintenance, there's also a slight increase in the reserve. Next slide, please. This slide represents the total amount of operations and maintenance and CIP expenditures to be allocated to the partners. Debt service is not included on this slide. This shows you up in the top right corner, the total operations and maintenance budget that is proposed, and then also the increase of that $31,000 to bring the operations and maintenance reserve to 15%. On the bottom right, you will see the total of those, and then we subtract from that the miscellaneous revenues directly into the subregional fund. These are revenues that are collected for services that we provide to Windsor, recycled water revenue, tipping and dumping fees, and other various miscellaneous fees collected for service in the subregional system. Next slide, please. This slide represents the complete allocation to all of the partners. ONM, which includes the reduction in those miscellaneous revenues, is distributed based on actual flows that come into the plant by each partner from a previous year. The CIP cash funding at $8 million is allocated to each of the partners based on the subregional agreement, and then debt service is based on the repayment schedules for each of the various debts that were incurred, and at the time they were incurred. Santa Rosa's allocation I will point out here is fully covered by wastewater rates, demand fees, and other miscellaneous fees collected in the wastewater fund. Next slide, please. And now we will move into the capital improvement program budget. Next slide. This just gives you a picture of all of the assets that we maintain in our very large system. Next slide, please. And then funding. So CIP funding this year is $18,790,000 for water, $12,730 or $30,000 sorry, for wastewater and $8 million for regional. Next slide, please. You will have received the funding sheets for CIP. They were attached to the agenda and posted. There are three separate sheets for you to review. There is a water sheet, a wastewater CIP and a water sheet for regional CIP. This slide just gives you an overview on the sections of that form and providing you basically some detail on how to read that form. You will see in the first section it is showing you the budget that has been applied to the project, any expenditures, any encumbrances that it has. In the next section of the sheets you will see what the five-year CIP plan is specifically for each of those projects. And then I will also remind you that year one is the only year that gets approved through the budget process this year. We provide you with a five-year plan but year one is what will be approved by City Council. And with that I am now going to pass you over to Andrew Allen who is going to take you through the local water and wastewater CIP. And then Tanya Mokvitz who will take you through highlights of the regional CIP for this year. Good afternoon. Happy to be here to go over the highlights of the CIP. In front of you the slide shows the water CIP for year one. You can see how each of the how the money is being distributed in various types of projects water mains, reservoirs, etc. And so it's always a good picture. I love the pie charts. Next slide please. Similarly how the sewer fund is, sewer CIP is being distributed. Trunks is our biggest portion followed by sewer mains and services and we have a sliver there for master plans studies and miscellaneous projects. It's just a sliver this year because we had sufficient funds in all those projects but typically it's a little larger than that. But this year it's a very small portion. Next slide please. So here's an overview of the CIP projects that are being funded. Those in dots on the map in blue are projects that are having continuing funding. So they were partially funded and are needed additional funding to get them into through design and into construction. We are in reality we are only funding two new projects. Those are associated with those two red dots and you can see they're distributed fairly far around town all the different projects. The new projects as shown on the right is one of PID 188 which is a neighborhood sewer and water project and then the other new project PID 2115 is a rehabilitation of the sewer trunk. We certainly are continuing projects a lot of sewer trunk projects, realignments and predominantly lining and we certainly are continuing with neighborhood projects along with reservoirs pump station upgrades. So we are that's where the remainder of those this year's funds are going along with those two new projects. Next slide please. So I indicated there were two projects with initial funding this year. The first one PID 188 is in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood. It's going to be the start of moving into that neighborhood. Sherwood Drive is kind of a backbone that needs to go in first and certainly we are replacing 6 inch and 8 inch AC and concrete pipe with 8 inch PVC and then also 4 inch and 6 inch AC and cast iron water mains with 8 inch PVC. So going in with our new materials putting in the backbone of this neighborhood and there will be future projects in this neighborhood as well. Next slide please. The other new project is Robla's Lining Phase 2. We don't show it on there but a little south and then headed west is Robla's Lining Phase 1 which is in design and should be moving into construction soon. So now we are starting on the next phase. This is an additional 2700 linear feet of 45 inch sewer trunk which we will be lining and as I said before Phase 1 was PID 2114 and currently moving forward. I'm going to show you two additional projects. Next slide please. Kind of highlighting a couple of the projects that are getting continuing funding. One is an additional neighborhood project East Haven, Foothill Drive Sewer and Water Improvements Phase 6. So we've been moving through this neighborhood over the last several years. Similar to the other neighborhood projects, this one we're replacing 6 inch VCP sewer main with 8 inch PVC replacing 4 inch, 6 inch and 8 inch AC and cast iron water mains with new 8 inch PVC. Next slide please. And the last project I'll highlight here today is the LEET well rehabilitation. There's an existing emergency well that we've had out of service because of the casing has a separation in it. So we are starting that project with vigor and the idea is to get additional supply for emergency groundwater. We had to turn that system off once we had that separation because of too much sand entering the well and into the pumps. So we're going to evaluate the condition of the existing well and pump house and then based upon that evaluation rehabilitate or replace the well and pump house based on the condition assessment. Next slide please. I'll turn the presentation over to our water reuse engineer Tanya Mokvits. Good afternoon chair Galvan and members of the board. Thank you very much for your attention. I will go over the next few slides before turning over back to Kimberly. Over the last year our asset management team has been working together with our regional operations staff and based on their input our master plan and risk of failure analysis we have identified CAP funding needs. So majority of our regional budget on year one would cash fund plant infrastructure improvement projects with 24% of funding which would go toward master planning and studies. And on a small portion would fund geysers infrastructure improvements project. Next slide please. I'm not going to go over every project on the CAP budget sheet I will just highlight most notable and urgent and critical project. So the first one that I would like to highlight is a project from our master plan which is emergency generator fuel tank replacement. This is a critical regional project that asset management has been actively working on. We funded engineering and design effort portion of the project last year and this year we are funding construction portion for a total amount of $1.5 million. So the project would replace the existing underground 15,000 gallon diesel tank that serves our two emergency generators with the above ground 20,000 gallon diesel tank. The existing tank exhibits signs of deformation and is undersized for increased generators demand due to higher frequencies of PSPS. As part of our efforts we will install a gasoline fuel station at the treatment plant. Next slide please. The next important project that I will go over is treatment plant electrical infrastructure replacement. This project is critical to the plant and also was identified in the master plan. It will evaluate the complete treatment plant electrical system. The project objective is to maintain and improve our electrical infrastructure reliability. As part of the evaluation process we will develop a structured maintenance program. We will develop a list of CAP projects with priorities costs and schedule while utilizing condition assessment to quantify the probability of failure along with the consequences of failure. We will also update our 2016 power master plan. Similar to emergency generator replacement project we funded engineering evaluation efforts portion last year. We will also develop a funding construction of critical electrical improvement project that need our attention in the near future. Next slide please. As Kimberly mentioned our treatment plant is aging so we have more project coming up that need our immediate attention. So the next project that I would like to bring your attention to is aeration basin that represents one of the projects that was recently identified as super critical and urgent. Our treatment plan stopped discovered the low pressure air duct that conveys processed air between the blower building and aeration basin is leaking. The existing pipe was installed in 1994 and it's about 1550. The blue dash line on the left picture shows approximate location of the underground pipe between the blower building and aeration basin. The pipe is in danger of collapsing due to poor structural integrity and heavy soil loads. Maintenance staff also noted that corrosion damage and air leakage are present in many of our above grade air valves where piping routes air to submerged users inside the aeration basins. The picture on the right shows an example of that corrosion. So this project will replace underground low pressure air duct. It will also evaluate and replace all aeration basins low pressure pipes, fittings and valves. Next slide please. And finally I will briefly go over maintenance building roof improvements project which is another urgent project that was identified recently. Our maintenance staff discovered leaks in the roof over the equipment in the maintenance building. Our CAP team is currently working with local contractor on the roof repair. We're expecting this project total cost to be under 300,000. The temporary repair will extend the roof life for at least another five years which will give us time to fund, design and construct permanent roof replacement for the maintenance building. Next slide please. So this concludes my portion of the presentation but before I turn it back over to Kimberly our team would be happy to address any questions or concerns that you might have. Thank you. Thank you. Any board member questions or comments? You'll have to speak up since I can't see anybody at the moment. Mr. Chair. Go right ahead board member Walsh. Thank you very much. But Director Burke I forgot we had a public assistance category in these projects and I apologize. I forgot what the meaning of that was. Thank you board member Walsh. I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to a public assistance category in the projects. Are you talking about our H2O program or are you talking about a specific project? It'll be on the CH it's on water departments category PA project total viewpoint. You're talking about our FEMA projects. Okay. If that's what that belongs to. It's project row 18 title so that means the FEMA. Yes. Those are projects related to the Tubbs Fire and we're working with FEMA to get those projects rebuilt. Thank you very much. I appreciate one more question on that if you don't mind. On the fire recovery is some of the fire recovery money coming in from the capital assets for the public utilities? I'm going to ask deputy director she can talk to you directly about where we are in terms of the FEMA process and the projects and the amount of funds that we have requested to date and what is still outstanding. We don't have to get in a great job following as far as the net asset lost and the replacement cost. How are we dealing with that from a policy level? For the FEMA projects that are listed there we have several large projects the largest of which was the water contamination project which has been completed and has been submitted to FEMA for reimbursement at just about $8 million. We also have a couple of lift stations that are in the process of moving towards construction when those are complete we will be submitting those for reimbursement to FEMA. In addition to those projects that are directly related to recovery we also have a couple of projects that are in the works that are being provided grant funding for which comes from the federal government which is for us to become more resilient for future disasters that may occur. In addition to those projects that are in the works most of the recovery project should be completed within this next construction cycle. The only one that probably will hang on for a while will be the meter replacement project and that is only because we can't finish completing the reset of meters until the rebuild is completed by the actual citizens who live in those areas. I think I understand what you were asking. We fully funded those projects and any reimbursement that we get from FEMA we would use to reinvest in our CIP program. Thank you. As far as the settlement was there any demand portion of that for utilities and if so some of those funds allocated to utility. In terms of the PG&E settlement the City Council is still working through that process to determine exactly where all those funds will go. I know Assistant City Manager Nutt is working more closely on that and if you would like to add anything on that that would be great. Thank you Director Burke. At this point in time as Director Burke mentioned there is a specific direction from Council on delegation of funds. They did go through a fairly extensive process looking at eligible projects where the largest benefit would be for the investment of those funds. They spent quite a bit of time back in December and early January with study sessions associated with fire aspects, fire recovery and resiliency components and projects. They've heard quite a bit of feedback from the community. They did make some initial investment statements during their goal setting but there is still remaining funds that they have yet to designate and delegate. So could those be redirected toward the water enterprise? That's certainly a possibility. It has not been in any of the conversations I've heard Council mention but it doesn't mean that it's not feasible. Right. I can understand why it wouldn't necessarily be popular because people see utilities going now, you know, water in, water out. Part of the question is is part of the PG&E was part of the demand and part of the reason for the payment due to the destruction of public utilities? Yes, part of it was. We know about what portion. I'm just curious because I want to know if there's a policy issue people should know. Hey, if 10% is related to utilities but we're making a policy call not to spend on utilities, we should not spend on utilities. I think we have to get back to you with more specifics on that. All of the costs that, you know, additional costs that weren't reimbursed or potentially reimbursable by FEMA were gathered together for the city. There were some costs from the water department and that was part of what went into the initial claim and information and I think it was greater than actually what, you know, there was a lot of settlement discussions on what actually came out back from PG&E for the city but I'd have to get back to you on more specifics. I don't have that available at this time. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much for entertaining the question. That's all, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the board? If not, we'll move forward then. Who's next? Next slide. Back to me. Thank you. And so we are just showing you the schedule for the budget that we'll be moving forward. I will let you know that we have met with our regional partners three times already. Last time was this morning with them bringing a recommendation forward for their proposed allocations. The BPU budget subcommittee we met with on March 8th and March 22nd. On the first today we are here with you doing the study session and then we will be back with you to request a recommendation to City Council. City Council will then be meeting to look at the regional preliminary budget as we need to notify our partners at the beginning of May of what their allocations will be. And so the City Council looks at this early in the budget season. And then May 11th and 12th will be the City Council budget study sessions. And then they will consider adoption of the budget on June 22nd. Next slide please. That concludes the presentation. I am here or any of the other presenters are here or Director Burke to answer any questions that you may have regarding the presentation and the proposed budget. Just that is before you. Great. Thank you very much Deputy Directors. And you know that was a very thorough presentation. I know the budget subcommittee has done a lot of work and I want to thank them for their work. I am sure that they will be able to answer any questions or comments at this point. Okay. Then at this point we will take public comments regarding item 3.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha do we have anyone? We have no public comments on this item. All right. Well thank you all to the staff for the presentation. To the committee. Thank you. I will now move to item 4.1 which is approval of the minutes. We will take public comments on those minutes from March 18th. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha? We have no public comments. All right. Thank you. Thank you, we'll move now to our staff briefings. 5.1 on the regional water reuse operations overview. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. And this is the continuation of our staff briefings to provide a highlight of what each of our divisions do. And so this is the regional water reuse division or regional water operations division and deputy director of regional water reuse operations Emma Walton will be making the presentation. Thank you, director Burke. Just give a minute for the presentation to load. All right, there we go. So good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I truly appreciate the opportunity to share a bit about our operation with you today. Next slide please. Regional operations is made up of over 70 highly skilled employees who are responsible for operating and maintaining the Laguna wastewater treatment plant as well as the distribution and beneficial reuse of recycled water and biosolids that get produced through the treatment of wastewater. We are made up of five teams. Each team is dedicated to a specific heart of the whole operation. We have wastewater treatment, mechanical services, water reclamation, geysers operations and biosolids reuse. In today's presentation, I'm just gonna talk a little bit about each of these teams and what they do. Next slide please. So we'll start with wastewater treatment. Wastewater treatment is the group that operate the Laguna treatment plant. We have a team of 24 operators that are on the job day in and day out, night and day, seven days a week to treat the constant flow of wastewater that comes to the plant. Our plant produces on average about 7 billion gallons per year and all of the water that comes to the plant gets treated to the same high standard of disinfected tertiary. This basically means that we are able to reuse our water for a very broad range of purposes. Next slide please. While on average we produce about 7 billion gallons a year, our flows do fluctuate substantially depending on the rainfall we receive as you have heard from me a number of times this year already. In high rainfall years, we have produced as much as 8.7 billion gallons of water in one year, which is enough water to fill Spring Lake two times. So it's quite a lot of water that we receive here at the plant and it's quite a lot of work that our operators undertake. Next slide please. We are very proud of what we do here and we love to show others what we do. Unfortunately COVID has put a bit of a damper on how we're able to share, but we've used as an opportunity to revamp our tour program and we're really looking forward to a time when we can bring people back on site to really show them what we do and experience the treatment plant. In the meantime, we have been developing a virtual tour for our community and we will be ready to share that in the very near future and once it's final, we'll be very excited to share it with the board as well. Next slide please. So next I'm gonna talk a little bit about our mechanical services section. Our mechanical services section is actually our largest team here at the treatment plant, but sometimes it does get overlooked because this is the team that basically prevents bad things from happening. So we don't always get to hear about the amazing things that they do. They're made up of a very talented team of electrical, instrumentation, mechanical and maintenance and warehouse staff and they are responsible for fixing or replacing things that break, sometimes rebuilding, manufacturing parts that are difficult or too expensive or just impossible to get otherwise. This is kind of the core of the operation and ensures consistent and continual operation of all the equipment and the work that they do is absolutely incredible. Next slide please. So as you're likely aware, it takes a lot of specialized equipment to treat wastewater and this team, the mechanical services team maintains it all. Hundreds of rotating assets like pumps and motors and blowers and hundreds of circuit breakers and logic controllers. They complete thousands of corrective work orders per year. Photo here shows two of our mechanical services employees completing maintenance work on our waste gas burner, which is actually due for replacement the next year or so. But because of the skills that this team bring, we're able to keep equipment running well beyond what could be reasonably expected. And the work that this team does is just absolutely incredible. Next slide please. So our water reclamation team operates the storage and distribution system that provides recycled water to our urban and agricultural irrigation customers. This year will be particularly hard for this team given the limited amount of recycled water that we have available for our customers. But on average, we are able to provide about 1.7 billion gallons of recycled water to our ad customers. However, this year we are looking at substantially less than that. The system that they operate spans from Katadi nearly to the Santa Rosa airport. It's made up of about 26 miles of pipe, over 60 pump stations and irrigates over 5,000 acres of land. It's actually one of the largest recycled water distribution systems in the United States. This team is also responsible for managing permitted discharge to receiving waters when we have too much water. And this photo here shows two of our reclamation system operators being escorted by the fire department's quick water rescue team during the February 19 flood to access infrastructure for an emergency discharge. The original request was for a helicopter. However, they had to make do with a boat. Next slide, please. Our geysers operation team has obviously had a particularly rough year. It's typically comprised of about eight employees, but right now we're down about three employees, which is actually a very large hit for a small team. But our staff have really rallied around this team to provide additional support. And I'm just so impressed and thankful at the resiliency and dedication of this staff. They just do an amazing job. They provide 24 seven response to a system that operates 24 seven and delivers on average about 4.2 billion gallons of water to the geysers steam field each year. The geysers pipeline, as you know, provides the majority of our reuse capacity. It was a $225 million project that spans 41 miles, gains 3000 feet in elevation, and is just extremely important part of our operation. Next slide, please. So that brings us to our biosolids reuse team. This team used to be much larger, but with the closure of the compost facility is now made up of three employees. The work that they do is very important in managing the beneficial reuse of the 31,000 tons of biosolids that are produced at the plant each year. Our largest reuse occurs through land application on eight properties in South County and our three city owned farms here in North County. We recently entered into an agreement with Liz Tech to accept what was previously processed at our biosolids compost facility during wet weather when we can't land apply. The team also maintains a contract with an ability to dispose at the landfill as a backup. But the intent of the program really is to maximize the beneficial reuse of this nutrient rich product. Two days from now on April 3rd, we'll mark one year since we last operated our compost facility. After 24 years of operation and nearly 200,000 wet tons of biosolids composted, the last year has been a unique transition for this team, but they have a lot to be proud of and they're just a great team to work with. Next slide, please. And with that, I would just like to say thank you for your time today. And most importantly, thank you to this amazing team that just does great work. And I'm so proud to be a part of. Great, thank you very much, Deputy Director Walton. Board member questions or comments? Well, we know what great work goes on out of the treatment plant and you do have an outstanding staff and continued good work out there. Anyone else? No, okay. Thank you for your time today. I'm sorry? I was just saying thank you for your time today, but I forgot you have to ask for public comments. That's okay, no problem. So we'll now take public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Very good, thank you. We'll now move to item 5.2, which is water and recycled water supply update. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the board. Your second staff briefing, as was mentioned, is our update on our water supplies. I do just want to acknowledge that as everyone's aware, it's been very dry and this is continuing to take a lot of time and effort and we'll be continuing to update the board as we go through this continued dry year and move into the summer. Today's presentation will be conducted by Deputy Director of Water Resources, Peter Martin and Deputy Director of Regional Water Reuse Operations, Emma Walton. Good afternoon, Chair Galvan and members of the board. It's happy April 1st. It's the beginning of irrigation season, typically this time of year, so I'll just be excited about it. Next slide, please. So I just wanted to put up this kind of slide just to really quickly summarize where we're at as far as just the dry conditions this year. The Russian River watershed is currently experiencing its second driest calendar year on record and Ukiah rainfall is about three inches below the water year 1977, which was the driest year on record. And also reservoir capacities at this time are lower than they were during the last drought. Which began kind of around 2013, 2014 water year. That being said right now, we're continuing to urge customers to continue to use water wisely as we always do. We've been really putting the word out throughout the winter this year, just acknowledging that it's very dry. We're asking customers to fix leaks in homes and businesses and take advantage of our water use efficiency programs. And then also of course prepare the irrigation systems as we move out of the wet season. I do want to note that I just got the numbers about 15 minutes ago. There has been a nearly four fold increase in quality volume for our water use efficiency team in this past month. So obviously the public is starting to pay attention and become aware of the messaging and outreach that's been out there. Next slide please. So this is sort of our water year rainfall totals to date. We're continuing to trend very far below normal for this time of year based on 30 year averages, both in our watershed and here in Santa Rosa. Not much has changed there, continued to fall below sort of around the very low end of our spectrum of our record keeping. Next slide. So you may have seen the article in the press Democrat yesterday discussing the low storage levels and Sonoma water storage reservoirs even with active storage management measures related to the temperature change order that was issued in February. Lake Minasino is now at its lowest level ever for this time of year. These have been able to recover some storage as a result of the reduced flows from the temperature change order but it's still continuing to trend very low. Next slide. As of today, Lake Sonoma storage is about 154,000 acre feet and has remained relatively flat even with the most recent storms this last March. Releases for Lake Sonoma are consistent with their regular requirements under Water Board decision 1610 for their water rights. So just a reminder, the upper watershed is subject to the temporary change order, Drag Creek and the lower Russian River are continuing to operate under their regular conditions. Next slide. So just to switch gears a little bit as you're probably aware, we unfortunately had to cancel our regular earth event last year due to the county health order restrictions. This year we are offering an alternative drive-up event at the place to play park. And that we'll use that as an opportunity to inform the public about water use efficiency and environmental sustainability. We'll also have participation and contributions from the stormwater program, the recreation and parks department and the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership. Next slide. So staff are working to ensure that the event is safe for all the public and city staff, the event will be socially distanced, drive-through event and masks will be required. We'll also be launching virtual activities all week on the webpage for the event for those that can't attend in person. And we'll definitely be using the lessons learned from this event to inform our ability to launch other drive-up water use efficiency events later in the summer, possibly. Staff have kind of already been discussing the possibility of hosting events in other parts of town, including Roseland and East Santa Rosa. Next slide. So at the event, folks can pick up free Kids Eco Exploration Guide, which includes eco-friendly activities like coloring books and reusable items. They'll have a home survey kit for the WaterSmart toolkit that we've been sort of pushing out to customers upon their request, which includes a flow bag, toilet dye tabs and more. And then of course I mentioned earlier, we'll have participation from other city departments divisions and Sonoma Marin saving water partnership. There's gonna be more information, actually excuse me, this information is already online at www.srcity.org Earth Day. Next slide. So this event, as I mentioned, is already being advertised and will take place from 11 to two on Earth Day. Obviously more information can be found at the webpage below. That concludes my portion of this presentation. I'll hand it over to Deputy Director Walton with a recycle water update. Next slide, please. All right, I'm gonna give a brief update on our recycle water supply. Next slide, please. So our recycle water production, our March production did come in higher than what we produced last year. However, as you can see, this is the only month that we produced more than what we produced last year. And we are just desperately below average and have just very little production and very little water as we move into the irrigation season. Next slide, please. Our recycle water storage is on the upward trend. However, we are currently experiencing the minimum amount of recycle water in storage that we have ever experienced at this time. So again, just trending so incredibly below average. Next slide, please. As you're aware, we have established a recycle water ad hoc to address the question of how we are going to allocate recycle water for this irrigation season, given how little water we have through work on that committee. We have come with some recommendations and we'll be getting that information out to our customers as soon as possible. Just as a reminder, again, we have not provided any water for frost protection this year in order to free up as much for irrigation as possible. As I mentioned, allocations will be forthcoming. We have with the help of the ad hoc established a number and a process for how we're gonna be implementing allocations this year. We will continue to work and have been working with our regional partners. We accepted 20 million gallons from Sonoma Water to help provide more for our irrigators. We welcome any more that they may have available, but they are in a very similar circumstances. We are in just have very little water. Also as a reminder, Windsor is helping offset some of what we deliver to the geysers so that we can provide that water to our irrigators instead. We will continue to have ongoing communications with our customers and regular meetings with them and field communications and phone calls and emails and try to keep in contact anyway we can to make sure that people are getting information that they need to plan accordingly. And I think that's all I had. So next slide, please. But I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, both Deputy Director Martin and Deputy Director Walton. Board member questions or comments regarding our water and recycled water supply update. Board member Wright, unmute yourself, please. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin. Is there any discussion of having a temporary urgency change petition for Drive Creek? So there has not been anything at this time, but there will be a update at the WAC meeting on Monday on the water supply conditions from Sonoma Water. I'm expecting we'll hear more perhaps about their forecasting and plans for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Other board member questions or comments? All right. Unfortunately, it's a dismal report, but hopefully we can get some rain next week and maybe make a dent in things. But thanks for continuing to keep the board apprised of what's going on with our recycled water situation. We'll now take public comments on item 5.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aether. We have no public comments. Thank you. That'll take care of item 5.2. We have no consent items. We have no report items. Item eight is public comments on non-agenda items. So we'll now take public comments on item eight. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, dial star nine. Do we have anyone? We have no hands raises. Thank you. All right, we have no referrals. We have no written communications. We'll move to item number 11, which is subcommittee reports. And I believe that board member Watts, do you have a report from the budget subcommittee? Hi, yes, thank you. So you saw a lot about the presentation earlier today, but we met as a subcommittee on March 22nd. Staff presented the full proposed 2021-2022 budget similar to what you saw today. So we had operations and maintenance, capital improvement budgets for water and wastewater, as well as the regional fund operations and maintenance, capital improvement, debt service budgets, and how the budget is allocated to each of the sub-regional partners. As a subcommittee, we did unanimously recommend the budgets for all three funds and the partner allocation to the full board. So as I believe Chair Galvin mentioned earlier, we'll see this in front of the full BPU in a few weeks. And that's my report. If you have any questions. Thank you. Any questions for board member Watts or the budget subcommittee? As always, Yeoman's job, getting through with the budget and getting it to us in a form that we can digest and understand. So thank you. I'll give a brief report with regards to the recycled water ad hoc committee, as was mentioned by Deputy Director Walton. We've met twice in March to explore options and finalize the approach to how we're going to allot for 2021 to our ag users. As we continue to experience extremely dry conditions trending behind the single driest year on record, the amount of recycled water available to agricultural irrigators this year will be severely impacted. Staff is anticipating that they will only be able to provide about 600 million gallons of recycled water for ag use, which is about 40% of what we've typically done in average years. Based on staff's recommendation in the committee's direction, allocations will be evenly divided amongst our customers based upon a three-year average of historical use. We'll be using years 2017, 18 and 19 as the representative years. So staff will be sharing detailed information with the ag community as soon as possible and we'll continue to keep customers informed as we move through a very difficult irrigation system. And I'm assuming that the ag subcommittee or water ad hoc will be meeting again, probably in the next few weeks and we'll have more information to provide to the full board. So any board member questions or comments regarding either of these subcommittee reports? Okay, if not, we will take public comments on item number 11. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Do we have anything, or Secretary Aitha? We have no public comments. I'll take care of our subcommittee reports. Any board member reports? You know one. We'll move then to the director's report. Item number 13, Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I had a couple of things to update the board on. First, earlier this week, you should have received a copy of our Prop 218 notice regarding our proposed water and wastewater rates for the next four years. As the board may recall, we will present this rate recommendation to the city council at a public hearing on Tuesday, May 25th, 2021. In addition to the hard copy of the Prop 218 notice, we have also created a number of infographics as educational resources to try and make the proposed rate increase as simple to understand as possible included in these infographics is a water system map to really help our community understand the complexity of our water system as well as a breakdown of the average water customer bill. We are putting this information out through our social media channels. We also shared this information with the board. So you're welcome to put it out through your own social media channels, if you would like. And the notice as well as additional information about our proposed rates are available online at our dedicated website, which is srcity.org slash water rates 2021. The second item I wanted to update the board on is some of the activities that are occurring at our groundwater sustainability agency for the Santa Rosa Plain. So as the board may recall, we did a lot of work a number of years ago to set up a groundwater sustainability agency, groundwater sustainability agency or GSA for the Santa Rosa Plain. The city of Santa Rosa is a signatory to the JPA for the GSA. As a reminder, there's about 32,000 people and more than 11,000 acres of agriculture in the Santa Rosa Plain basin that are reliant on groundwater for drinking water purposes, as well as for irrigation purposes. In addition, the cities and towns in the Santa Rosa Plain have groundwater wells, including the city of Santa Rosa, as part of either their regular or emergency water supply portfolios. Last week, the GSA launched their new groundwater user information data exchange, which is a mouthful. And so as we all know, we like acronyms. We're calling it the guide program, GUIDE program. Mailers were sent to approximately 8,400 parcel owners within the Santa Rosa Plain basin that are believed to use groundwater as their primary source of either domestic or agricultural use. While the outreach is mostly to the rural areas of the basin, we do have several parcels located in Santa Rosa or in unincorporated pockets within or near Santa Rosa that have also received letters. The GUIDE program is an online interactive tool with user-friendly maps and survey entries that give well owners an opportunity to review and update the existing data sets that we have related to their groundwater wells. The data used in the GUIDE program is derived from the County of Sonoma's planning, land use, and well permitting information. The primary purpose of the program is to fill in any information gaps as well as an opportunity for groundwater users to clarify or correct any existing information regarding their groundwater wells and groundwater use. The information will also be used to help calculate a fee to fund the GSA's work, which will be needed to comply with state law through the implementation of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Board members may recall that we did adopt a fee through the GSA a number of years ago, and that as part of that process, the GSA agreed to, or the member agencies of the GSA agreed to fund their portion, and then the County agreed to cover the difference of that fee. Currently, none of the individual users are paying the groundwater fee, but that funding is set to end at the end of next fiscal year, and the GSA will be embarking upon a potential new fee setting process and or rate setting process. With relation to the GUIDE program, the information collected is confidential and private and will improve the information that we have on groundwater in our region, and will not be disclosed unless required by law. And we have a informational phone number that was provided as part of the information on the GUIDE program, and staff from the GSA member agencies, including Santa Rosa Water, have volunteered to respond to any voicemails, questions or emails from the public that may come from the recent mailing of the information on the GUIDE program. And so that is my report. Just thought you guys would be interested in the activities that are going on in the GSA. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you, Director Burke. Any board member questions or comments? Board member Wright. Is the fee still around for the individual people, like a resident in the plane, only $10 a month? Isn't that what we were talking about before? Yes, although it was more on the neighborhood of $10 a year. Oh, $10 a year, yeah. So that fee was adopted, and that is in place. But as I mentioned, the GSA decided that the member agencies would contribute their portion, which our portion of the number of groundwater wells that we have in our jurisdiction. So City of Santa Rosa, we provided the fee that we would pay. And then the county decided that they would cover the difference so that the individual well users would not be paying during this time. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Okay, we're now taking public comments on item 13. In which to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Very good. I think that concludes our meeting. So we'll be adjourned. I wish you all a happy Easter and let's pray for some rain next week. Let's not make April be a dry month. And we'll see you all on the 15th.