 So good morning, everyone, and welcome to our special water advisory committee meeting on Monday, April 6th. And thanks for everyone being so helpful. I know this is not the way we normally handle this, but we're going to do our best. I really appreciate all the work that Jennifer and Drew put into getting us this far. I hope everyone is safe. And with that, I have a couple of housekeeping things, just to remind everyone that they need to mute their phones when they're not speaking. And also anybody that has music on hold, please don't put us on hold or we'll hear your music. And I'd also like to remind you that the meeting is being streamed live and WAC and contact members can follow the presentation that was emailed to them or they can follow the presentation on the web address listed in the agenda. Please note on the web address, remember to mute the volume on your computer and unmute their phone to speak. That way we won't get all that feedback. So with those housekeeping items, I think I will move into a roll call. City of Tottie, myself, I am here. City of Petaluma, Dave King. Here. City of Brunner Park, Jake McKenzie. Okay. City of Santa Rosa, Victoria Fleming. Morning. Thank you. City of Sonoma, Logan Harvey. Logan was here. Well, we have Logan. North Marin Water District, Jack Baker. Here. County of Windsor, Sam Salmon. Here. Valley of the Moon Water District, John Foreman. Here. Okay. And with that, I will let Drew do the tack roll call. I'm going to get, sorry, City of Sonoma is here. Thank you, Logan. Okay. Thank you, Matt. Yeah. Jack Gibson from municipal. What a municipal. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Drew McIntyre. I'll go ahead and go through the roll call for the tack members. City of Tottie. Craig Hutt. Yes. President. City of Petaluma. Kent Carruthers. President. City of Brunner Park. Mary Grace Pawson. President. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke. I'm here. City of Sonoma, Colleen Ferguson. I am here with North Carolina Water District, Town of Windsor, Sandy Potter. Yes. I'm here. Valley of the Moon Water District, Alan Gardner. Present. Okay. And then we also, we also just want to, for the meeting minutes, want to reflect that we have Mike Vaughn with Marin Municipal. And we also have Grant Davis and Jack, and we already got Jack Gibson. Easter, was there anyone else? We have Kimberly Zizino and Lynn Rizzelli. Thank you so much for that. Drew, I believe that you have the public comments that were emailed to you. That is correct, Madam Chair. I was monitoring both email comments and any voicemail messages and did not receive any comments either by email or voicemail. Then the record will show that we got no public comment. Thank you so much for that. And then we will move to a recap of the February 3rd WAC-TAC meeting minutes. Has everyone had a chance to read the minutes? Yeah. I'm assuming that is the affirmative. Were there any public comments received for the minutes? Madam Chair, this is Drew McIntyre. There were no public comments received. So there was no public comment on that. And we will, I will ask for a motion and in order for this to be able to be recorded properly, if the person making the motion would state their name so Easter can catch it. And the same with the person making a second. I'd appreciate that. So do I have a motion? Jack Gibson makes a motion. Okay, I heard Jack made a motion. Do I have a second? Just for clarity here, the motions and the seconds should be just made by the actual WAC members. So Jack, you're not a voting member of the WAC. So if you can, if we can just get the motions and the seconds and the vote by the voting members of the WAC, that would be best. Mr. McKenzie and so we still have our second yes okay we have a motion in a second and we'll do a roll call vote then city of Katari yes city of Paloma yes city of Brunner Park aye city of Santa Rosa yes city of Sonoma abstain North Marin Water District yes town of Windsor still there Sam all right valley of the moon yes I'm sorry yes town of Windsor yes oh thank you Sam okay so Easter did you get that did we hear from Valley of the moon yeah yes thank you no you haven't but Valley of the moon yes city of Katari Paloma Brunner Park Santa Rosa North Marin Water District town of Windsor and Valley of the moon all yes and city of Sonoma abstain so with that we can move on to presentation I believe that Lynn Revelli some of you have seen this presentation some of you it's first time for you but with that thank you so much for being here to give us this presentation Lynn and I will let you and Easter work your magic okay hi this is Lynn Revelli with Sonoma Water Easter I'm going to stay on that cover slide for a minute and then I'll let you know when to switch slides this is the proposed budget and rates for the water transmission system before the period of time beginning July 1st as we began developing this budget back in October there was certainly no whisper of a coronavirus pandemic we even met with the budget subcommittee in in January and into February and there was still not a sense that there was going to be this coronavirus pandemic and yet we worked our way through this budget I want to thank the budget subcommittee the tech budget subcommittee for their review and input on this budget Kimberley Zunino Jennifer Burke Chris Tetlock Sandy Potter Craig Scott Julie blue and Mike Vaughn your input was very valuable and we incorporated your comments wherever we could accommodate them so now here we are and this is the first virtual presentation of the water transmission system budget and rates that I'm aware of and I want to go ahead and start by talking about what we have included in this budget go ahead Easter to the next slide please Lynn this is Drew if you can as you go through these slides just in case somebody's following their hard copy and not looking on the the computer could you just indicate what page number you're on as well sure so we're now on page two the heading is hazard mitigation projects and what we wanted to present here is that back in June of 2019 which seems like the eons ago the Sonoma County civil grand jury prepared a report with recommendations regarding Sonoma Waters readiness for seismic hazard mitigation and what in response to that they recommended that we present some options for we present some for hold on a second getting a call can you still hear me okay so we presented we presented some options for expediting hazard mitigation funding for seismic projects going forward and what we wanted to present to you here is the very large hasn't the large hazard mitigation projects that have been completed in the past on the left-hand side of that slide and on the right-hand slide is what is included in the fiscal year 2021 budget and of those projects listed on the right-hand side under in progress three will be going to construction next fiscal year and one will be well into the design phase that you like booster pump station will be well into the design next fiscal year the last item listed on that on that slide is the local hazard mitigation program design and this is one of the recommendations that we made to accelerate funding for hazard mitigation projects we will initiate the plenary design of a number of hazard mitigation projects on the aqueduct capital funds and in the regular other capital projects that are common to all the water contractors we budgeted 225,000 in 2021 which will be added to the 600,000 that we have accumulated over time to actually do this plenary design work and that will help accelerate some of these hazard mitigation projects that are very critical to the reliability of the water transmission system and the budget the total budget for these hazard mitigation projects for next fiscal year is 10.2 for a million dollars next slide please titled other capital projects at the top is the Sonoma Booster Pump Station upgrade project which will reach substantial completion in the winter of 2021 this is on the Sonoma aqueduct so the Sonoma aqueduct customers are paying for this it is a water reliability project it is a very critical project especially in lieu of the fires to provide some reliability pumping and electrical reliability to the water contractors on the Sonoma aqueduct it also has a seismic component to it there's the Mirabelle Dam Ladder replacement project the ladder is at its useful life but it is a very important piece of infrastructure because it creates a backwater when it is inflated creates a backwater behind it which allows water to infiltrate through the gravels and sands into our collector wells so that we can provide a clean safe reliable source of water to our water contractors and we have the Warm Springs Dam Hydro-Turban Retrofit project that will be awarded in 2021 as well that will increase the efficiency of the Hydro-Turban which will save money on power and it is also a important piece of infrastructure as well and it has a payback period of seven years so it is very cost effective project so the budget for these additional projects that will occur in 2021 is 2.2 million dollars so the total capital budget including the hazard mitigation project is 12.6 million dollars next slide please slide is slide number four and it is titled operations and maintenance and it lists the various projects that will be occurring the major operations and maintenance projects include cathodic protection maintenance I'm not seeing that the YouTube is caught up yet there we go cathodic protection maintenance projects on all of the aqueducts this is a very critical maintenance program and it's very labor intensive and it's critical to maintaining the integrity of the aqueducts it would be much more expensive to replace aqueducts than to actually do the cathodic protection maintenance that's required over time to protect those pipelines we have the forestville tank recode project we are recoding the two forestville tanks and that will be substantially complete next the beginning of next fiscal year and then we have the tank maintenance program that we talked about last year and we'll be continuing for the next nine years is a 38 million dollar tank maintenance program and 3.8 million is program for next fiscal year it includes overall tank maintenance and recoding of the tanks in the tank farms that we have the 18 tanks that we maintain for storage purposes and then we have a number of cities that are ongoing that include water Sonoma water labor as well as contract consultant services there's the regional water supply resiliency study where we are developing a decision support tool that will help us evaluate and prioritize water supply resiliency projects throughout the region and provide more resiliency within our entire region we have this water system risk and resiliency assessment study that is ongoing it is an EPA mandated program we are evaluating the risks and threats associated with the water transmission system that work is currently being done but there are tasks that are required also in fiscal year 2021 we will take the results from this risk and vulnerability assessment and we will roll them forward into updating our emergency response plan and that is an important and mandated project then we have the watershed and riverbank filtration water quality studies that we began just before the 2017 fires and as an ongoing since we have added some additional sites for quality testing to ensure that we maintain as the kingtade fires so that we maintain and ensure that our water quality remains high and that we can continue to provide a clean reliable source of water to our water contractors so the only budget is twenty nine point six million dollars for fiscal year 2021 next slide please this slide is slide number five and it is titled dry creek habitat enhancement and what we want to mention here is that phase four or or mile four of the dry creek habitat enhancement project will be at ninety percent design this fiscal year and we anticipate that the core will be constructing this project in the summer of 2021 we will be pre-funding our share of that construction which is thirty five percent in 2021 and the core has the good news is that the core has committed to obligating their share of construction of miles four five and six it's twenty eight million dollars that represents the course sixty five percent share of the dry creek habitat enhancement for miles four five and six that is twenty eight million dollars that the water contractors will not have to front or pay and so that is extremely good news and as a result of the many efforts of a grant and our team staff and our board in keeping the core up to speed on on what is needed and making sure the core commits to their responsibilities on this project so the budget for the dry creek habitat enhancement other biological opinion compliance projects including estuary adaptation at history management and the fish flow EIR where supply planning water conservation the budget is eleven point eight nine million next slide please this is slide number six excuse me it's titled expenditures compared to fiscal year nineteen twenty and what we are showing here is the comparison of the budget for twenty twenty one versus the budget for nineteen twenty and the total budget for twenty twenty one is shown as fifty nine million the total for fiscal year nineteen twenty is fifty one point seven six million that's a seven point two six million dollar change operations and maintenance is increasing for catholic protection tank maintenance and the studies that I mentioned on the previous slide capital projects is increasing because of the hazard mitigation projects that we will be implementing that are very critical to the system biological opinion clients and water supply and water conservation are increasing because of the dry creek habitat enhancement construction and that service is increasing as a result of the twenty nineteen revenue bonds that we issued so as a result we have fifty nine million in budget we also have fourteen point four four million in grants used to fund balance and bond proceeds offsetting that fifty nine million that's a significant amount that brings down the total budget significant amount the rate increase would be substantially more if it were not for that fourteen point four four million next slide please so this is a great slide number seven and it's titled rate setting calculation it's an example the calculation itself is actually more complicated but this is to show you for the restructure agreement for water supply that this is a fully volumetric rate on on this slide at the very bottom we show the deliveries in acre feet the bottom left shows forty four thousand seven ninety five acre feet that is the three year annual average acre feet on the right hand bottom is forty three thousand seven hundred seven acre feet that is the last twelve months of water deliveries restructure agreement requires that we take the lower of the two which is the forty three thousand seven hundred and seven thousand acre feet that becomes the denominator in the equation so when you take the revenue requirements or expenditures of forty two point two six million dollars and divide it by the acre feet you get your rate for the Santa Rosa Petaluma aqueduct of nine hundred and sixty seven dollars per acre foot and this is very significant because as deliveries decrease if expenditure missing your rate is going to increase significantly and so far we've had a very dry year and with the coronavirus it is uncertain how the rest of the year will turn out we will see but that it's a very very strong example of how the deliveries really impact the rate next slide please so the next slide is slide eight the top says proposed rates for fiscal year twenty twenty one the deliveries are forty three thousand seven hundred and seven acre feet and the rate is based on that delivery amount for all three aqueducts the rate on the Santa Rosa Petaluma aqueduct is nine hundred sixty six dollars and ninety five cents that represents a five point three percent rate increase over fiscal year nineteen twenty the rate on the snow aqueduct is one thousand one hundred seven point two one dollars per acre foot and that represents a rate increase of five point five seven percent there is a discretionary charge that is two-thirds of the way down the page there on the slide and it's called the capital charge that the prime contractors provide input on it's to build fund balance for future projects it also acts as a rate stabilization tool and also to help with the grand juries request that we look at expediting funding for future hazard mitigation projects this rate will go towards that or help towards that and the Santa Rosa Petaluma aqueducts are set at twenty seven dollars Sonoma aqueduct is set at thirty two dollars as we decrease the rate during our negotiations with the tax budget sub committees Sonoma aqueduct asked that the additional decrease be rolled into their capital charge because they have some significant seismic hazard mitigation projects coming forward and because their deliveries are lower than the other aqueducts they need this additional capital charge to help on those hazard mitigation projects and soften the rate going forward and so the Sonoma aqueduct does pay a higher debt service charge primarily because of the Eldridge Madrone pipeline and that is why the Sonoma aqueduct rate is higher than the Santa Rosa and Petaluma aqueducts next slide please so this is slide nine and at the top it says fiscal year twenty twenty one budgeted expenditures and this is where the money is spent it is fifty percent is spent on operations and maintenance twenty two percent on capital projects twenty percent on biological opinion compliance water supply planning and water conservation and that service makes up eight percent of the expenditures and have fourteen point four million in grants bond proceeds and use of fund balance and so this is this is a pie chart that shows that the the large majority of the expenditures are for operations and maintenance next slide please this is slide ten and at the top it says twenty twenty wholesale water rates per acre foot and this is a slide that compares our our rates to other wholesale water rates in the greater Bay Area and our rates are still lower than the other water contractors in the Bay Area at nine hundred sixty seven dollars per acre foot even the Sonoma aqueduct at one thousand one hundred dollars per acre foot is still lower than the other aqueducts other water contractors in the Bay Area so we are accomplishing not only operations maintenance projects and constructing phase four of the biological opinion as well as several hazard mitigation projects and keeping our rate below other wholesale water contractors in the greater Bay Area we always footnote that it's not an apples to apples comparison with the other Bay Area water contractors because they may have larger systems and more complicated systems and treatments treatment methodologies we are fortunate to have natural filtration of our water and be able to provide clean safe drinking water to our water contractors next slide please this is slide eleven and it at the top it says next steps and as you may know the budget and rates were recommended by the technical advisory committee on March 2nd and we received we did not we were not able to present to all of the water contractors before the coronavirus pandemic was was proclaimed we were able to present to the Valley and the Water District and the City of Katadi but we did hear back from the other water districts and board the councils and who indicated that they were recommending this budget to the water advisory member so the water advisory committee vote is today and it will be we will take this budget and rates to our boards normal waters board on April 21st for our board adoption of this budget and rate and with that the questions you might have and you can stay on this slide Easter okay so much Lynn I'm going to go through city by city and ask if there's any questions just to keep this quarterly city of Katadi I have no questions at this time thank you for giving us the presentation we just not getting under the wire city of Padluma no questions thank you thank you city of runner park no questions just a statement with I was authorized to vote in favor of this budget recommendation at our virtual city council meeting which was our second council meeting of March that's good news runner park's name should have been on they recommended by thank you for that is that all Jake oh yeah no questions ever that thanks for all the hard work as always city of Santa Rosa questions hi thank you so much for the presentation I'm curious given that you know we did not get a chance to review this as a council and that situation has really changed significantly since this is presented to the tax what if anything would have been changed given the current circumstances there have been no changes to this budget since it was presented to the tack and we are so this this presentation is the same the budget and rates are the same as they were presented and given the existing circumstances we believe we need to move forward with this budget and and rate for fiscal year 2021 we know that we will be and are continuing to implement the capital projects our water transmission system of is being operated and maintained it is a it is a essential service and we are continuing to move forward with the construction projects and the team that isn't operating and maintaining the water transmission system is working on the studies we are teleworking and we intend to keep moving forward with all of these initiatives into 2021 there is a lot of uncertainty moving forward but we don't anticipate at this point in time any changes grant I don't know if you want to say anything in reference to that no I think it's a great question that Mr. Goodman's asking I think that the fact that my friend lemon oh sorry I snare Fleming my apologies our team meets daily and in particular we were looking at down the way our ability to carry out the perceived construction projects and so just about all of them that we had planned are underway and either out for bid or in the planning stages the one the one that we are sitting on at the moment and I believe have made the decision to proceed is the phase three third mile of Dry Creek that requires a lot of right-of-way and things to click into place but I'm pretty sure it's on track and we'll be able to get that underway this summer with any with any luck and that would be the one that might have changed the equation somewhat but Lynn answered it very well okay so where I'm going with this is that each of us are sitting on councils where we're looking at significant budgetary roll backs and wondering what the water agency is looking at rolling back given the changes a month ago when you presented this budget things weren't how they are a month ago none of us could have easily predicted that we'd be looking at major haircut so I'm looking for you guys to be adaptable in light of the changing circumstances and not just roll back to well this is how things were and so this is what we'd like to do we'd all like to do that so we all need to participate in this painful process and none of us is immune well I can assure you that we are not immune either we are participating in fact right now director rabbit is over at the EOC and is dealing with this on a day to day basis being part of the special district that's also tied to the county we will in fact and have every reason to believe that we will be having to go through much like everyone else I can only harken back to the last time that we had something similar to this which would have been during the recession and we implemented fairly aggressive policies to get ahead of that and looked at a multi-year effort to make it through that and work with the contractors very directly to do it and so I would anticipate we'll be doing something very similar in the not too distant future I'm just curious as to how I can justify this rate increase at this time to my constituents given that nothing has changed in the proposed budget budget given the outbreak the pandemic and the corresponding economic toll that's taking on our community well you don't have to answer well I well I think I think part of it is that water is an essential service and it is critically important that we maintain essential water service operations and maintenance and construction if we do not proceed with this budget and cut this budget then we will not be in a position where we can actually provide security and reliability that we would need to now it's possible that and we don't know but it is possible that for next fiscal year's budget if there have been changes and there have been instances where we were not able to proceed with some of these projects that could be reflected in the rate next year but we simply don't know that at this point in time but we feel that this is critically important because it is an essential service that we provide to our customers and to cut this at this particular time is is something that is because it is so essential is something that we have not discussed doing at this particular time and I greatly appreciate the work that was done to get the budget here and the service that you provide for us I'm have to unfortunately I answer not to you guys I answer to the constituents and at this time it seems really tone desk to have a water rate increase that and so I don't think I can support it but I it's not for the great work that you guys do it's more on the the being aligned every day people are going to Madam chair Jake yes Jake a question relating to this past conversation in the month of March what patterns if any have we seen in reduction of basically consumption of Sonoma waters supply have we seen any changes as a result of shelter in place Lynn this is Pam do you want me to answer that sure that would be great we have not seen any change Jake looking at last year if you just look at the daily information it looks like it's a little bit different but overall it really hasn't changed and that would be my point and the reason I asked the question is and it goes back to water as an essential a truly essential part of what we have to do as cities the protection of public safety and the protection of public health and so I was authorized to vote in favor of this budget by our city council and I believe that you can tell that while we have all been sheltering in place the need for water you know continues to be an essential service a little cost of water per gallon is is extremely low in comparison to other commodities at point oh oh two cents per gallon so it is an extremely low-cost commodity but an essential one that anything else thank you very much then I'll move to city of Sonoma any questions how how big of a percentage increase is this is this increase so what are we going from and to you may have covered this just a recap it's it's it's on the Santa Rosa and Petaluma aqueduct is a 5.3 percent increase and on the Sonoma aqueduct is a 5.57 percent increase so all right per gallon cost what are we going from and then what are we going to I don't have that but I could work on calculating that I'd have to do a conversion to figure that out okay yeah it would be nice to know so I can kind of have an understanding of what citizens will see in their water bill as far as how much more it's going to go up for our average family of two or average family of four but I usually say to Susan I know that when we do our water we usually look at you know like a five-year period and we have built into our rates a certain percentage going up every year so for us this fits within the range so it's already calculated in our five-year plan this doesn't deviate from that yeah I agree and frankly I think it is important that we continue to improve and upgrade our water system and continue to protect our water system if you don't invest in infrastructure you can start to see it the grade and water is probably you know number one or number two in terms of important infrastructure that we've got in the county so all right it'd be nice to see how much it would cost the family of four but it's how you pass through your costs to your customers and I'm not I'm not sure how that that works and I think the contractors handle that some currently but it's a different if we calculate what the price is per gallon that still not may not be what the price is to your customers because you have to look at how you pass that rate through okay are you done Logan yes okay North Moran Water District questions no this is Jack Baker of North Moran no particular questions right now we do appreciate the good work of Lynn and her colleagues on this thing I know it's pretty tricky and we've had input obviously through Drew McIntyre and that Julie blue on the financial part but we do appreciate the work and no questions at this time thank you so much town of Windsor Sam you have any questions no questions just that we did look at the cost to our customers and it was in terms of other things it was fairly negligible you know because the vast our vast costs are in our delivery in town thank you for that Valley of the Moon Water District any questions no questions okay Grant and Lynn I have just a little follow-up along the lines of funding have we how firm do we think we're at with the federal funding given everything is there any inklings that that could change we'll have to watch that we'll have to watch that closely but the work that we did in prior years led up to funds being obligated which is the necessary threshold for fortunately to advance the completion of the three miles so that's probably the lion's share of the largest area that we've got to be watching for on that and ending that project so that was about a 28 million dollar load the other area of course would be federal projects dealing with the two dams or operation and maintenance budgets are always underfunded and the need to battle for those so I expect it could mean that we have to go and do our best to point out the necessary upgrades and maintenance requirements on both Warm Springs and Coyote Valley Dam thank you for that okay if there are no other questions this is your last opportunity for questions this is Lynn one more time so the change in the rate is 48 dollars and sixty-five cents per acre foot and when you convert that to gallons it's point zero zero zero one cents cheaper the price thank you for that win so Drew do we have any public comments on this item we do not madam chair you're not okay so with that I think that we are at a point that we can look to approve this budget if that is the wish of everyone so anyone I would move the item madam chair thank you so much Jake do I have a second I'll second Jack Baker Northburn okay we have a motion in the second I'll do a roll call vote then City of Katari yes City of Petaluma yes City of Brony Park I City of Santa Rosa no the of Sonoma yes North Marin Water District yes I don't have Windsor yes Valley of the Moon Water District yes okay so then I show that City of Katari Petaluma Rohnert Park Sonoma Northman Water District Windsor and Valley of the Moon are yes and City of Santa Rosa no okay Easter yes thank you okay so with that we can move on to items for our next meeting which is supposed to be May 4th are there any items that people would like to see on that I think they're madam chair I think there should be an update on any impact any impacts on water consumption just the question that I raised earlier on just so that we continue to be apprised of any possible impact of shelter in place thank you for that anything else madam chair this is a grant I think it's probably worth also reporting while we've got everybody assembled here virtually that last week the water contractors and water agency you may recall have been meeting regularly at least once a week to report out on the Katari corrosion control the repair work that had happened successfully I'm really proud of everybody working together on that and getting that job completed and as a result many of us I know North Marin Santa Rosa and us have committed to a series of weekly calls to stay abreast of what might be changing to coordinate best management practices and to ensure that we're communicating frequently to learn from each other and be ahead of this as much as possible so I just wanted the WAC members to be aware of the tack has been moving in that direction and we're already learning things from each other and making sure we've got mutual aid and other assistance available when needed thank you for that jolly good yeah so I would again like to thank Jennifer and Easter and Drew for helping get us through this thank Lynn for the presentation thank all of you for being so patient with this I hope everyone stays safe and stays home and I send lots of prayers out to anybody that's not feeling well and wish for a speedy recovery and I'd like to thank Snowmawater and all the water contractors for keeping our fresh clean water coming and so with that I believe we can be adjourned thank you madam chair well ready well done thank you very much