 All right. I would like to convene this meeting of August 4th of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Can we have a roll call? Molly. President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Ackman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Are there any additions or deletions of the close to the agenda? The staff has no answer. Okay. I don't, let's see. I don't think I see any, this is the time for oral communications, but I don't think I see any members of the public. So I guess there won't be any public comments. So we will now adjourn to the closed session. Is, okay. Counted four. So let's go ahead and reconvene this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Can we take a roll call? Vote please, Holly. President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Ackman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Okay. There were no actions taken in the closed session this evening. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? Rick, any additions or deletions? No. No additions or deletions. Okay. I apologize, I was reading the agenda. Here's that one clarification. There was the one clarification, Rick, on the, which one was it? The Santa Cruz County Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Yeah, the agenda item says that we will be also presenting on the conjunctive use item 10A, the budget authorization. And the budget authorization will not be presented tonight. Most likely it'll be brought back to the second meeting in August and be presented to the Board for review at that time. So. Takes one thing off of our plate tonight. Are there any oral communications from the public? These are on issues within the purview of the district, but not on the agenda tonight. April Cynthia or Mark, raise your hand if you have anything you'd like to address us with tonight. Otherwise, I will go on to the President's report and just report very briefly on the last meeting of the Santa Margarita groundwater situation happened late last month. Two things of note. The Santa Margarita Board accepted with surprising unanimity or response to the grand jury report that I think most of you would be very happy with and very much harmonizes with the views that we said in our own report. The other was that Carly presented for the district those projects that we would like to kind of take the lead on that would be our contribution to a grant proposal that we're planning to put together this winter for the first projects that are called the PMAs, the Project Management Actions for the Groundwater District which includes moving ahead a lot of things that have to do with the constructive use plan. And I just want to compliment Carly. She did a nice job presenting it and especially did a specially nice job in answering some of the questions afterwards. So let's go ahead and go on with unfinished business which means that we will turn to Carly. Great, thank you. So just as some background, the Conjunctive Use Plan was originally developed jointly with the County of Santa Cruz under a Wild Life Conservation Grant in 2017. During that grant period, we accomplished two studies including a Water Availability Assessment along with a Fisheries Resource Considerations Report along with the Conjunctive Use Plan itself and a CEQA analysis. That CEQA analysis was an initial study mitigated negative declaration or ISM&D. The ISM&D went to the public for review from July 28th through August 31st, 2021. During that time, significant public concerns were raised and the District and Legal Council recommended that we go through a more thorough CEQA analysis through the completion of an Environmental Impact Report or EIR. At the November, 2021, Board of Directors meeting, the Board approved moving ahead with the Environmental Consultant, RINCON Consultants, Inc., who had completed the ISM&D for the district to then update the project description for the focused EIR under the district manager's purchasing authority of $30,000. That drafted updated project description is shown as Exhibit A. And within that project description, there is bracketed information that needs additional review or further analysis. That information really cannot be updated until we have discussions or further discussions with the city of Santa Cruz regarding the district's Loch Lomond Allotment and their further technical analysis and modeling that's completed. Also included as part of this memo is a tentative schedule for moving ahead the Conjunctive Use Plan, EIR, and that's included as Exhibit B. If there is interest, all these documents can be found on the district's website including the Conjunctive Use Plan, the ISM&D, the Water Availability Assessment, and the Fisheries Resource Incinerations Report. I mean, it is recommended that the Board review this memo and approve the updated project description and the tentative schedule for the district's Conjunctive Use Plan Environmental Impact Report. District staff is prepared to answer questions from the Board and public. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'd like to kind of go around and get comments from everybody on the Board and let me start with the chair of our Environment Engineering and Environmental Group, Mark. Yes. The Engineering or the Environmental Committee, since that's what it was at the time in November or December of last year, review the draft IS, the draft environmental impact statement at that point. We provided comments to them. This revised project description addresses those comments, in particular, the removal of selling water to Scott's Valley and changing monitoring or water rights aspects at the big tree's gauges. So I appreciate that those have been done. I agree with what's in this project description now. So I don't have any further questions. Thank you, Mark. Bob, you're also on that committee. Yes, and did you want comments or questions or both? Both, okay. I mean, we can do multiple rounds here. So don't feel like you have to do every single question or comment, but let's kind of take high level ones first and then we can drill down. Okay, all right, fair enough. So at a high level, I just want to reiterate what I think I've said before at previous meetings, which is that I'm 100% in support of moving this district to a operational framework that allows us to take water from any source and deliver it to any destination within our district. We will not be able to achieve the operational efficiencies that we need to have until we get to that state, in my opinion. So anything that moves us down that path is a good thing. I did want to ask a question, though, Carly, about what you characterize as significant public comment. Who, I mean, to me, that makes it sound like there was a lot of public comment from a lot of different people. Who was it that commented on our ISM&D and presumably in negative fashion? Right, we did receive comments from many of the permitting agencies, such as CDFW and NIMPS, but the main one that we received that kind of seemed like it was posing itself for litigation was from the city of Santa Cruz. And that's, we have been working through some of their comments currently, along with our discussions around the Loch Lomond allotment, but it, one of the main ones did come from the city. Yeah, I mean, I... I was just going to support Bob's reaction. I had the same reaction when I saw significant public. To me, public means members of the public jumping down, and that is not what we have. Right, that is not public, that's insiders. And I remember when you gave your talk at Santa Margarita, I had the same reaction, which was I don't want people at Santa Margarita or anybody else to think that the public is opposed to this, because I think most of our public is actually in favor of it. Oh, yeah. So I think the public recognizes the immediate and unbelievable environmental benefits that could be had to the district, and in fact, to the greater community if we were able to implement this as fast as possible. The fact that we're not able to do that here by going through an EIR, I think has probably our public sort of wondering what happened. So I wanted to make sure we clarified that. This was not a broad-based public resistance to this at all. Okay. I think you could just fix that by just taking out public in the first part, just saying that there was significant comment during public. And without, if you don't really want to go on and blame and be explicit about those agencies that we think fomented most of the opposition. Gina. I just wanted to apologize for the phrase significant public concern. That's a little bit of legalese that essentially says, we received comments of significant enough concern to revisit some of the issues contained in the environmental analysis. And that's primarily because of the comments of the city of Santa. Yeah. I'm perfectly happy to identify who the agencies were to make sure it's clear that there was zero real public comment from it because the public supports this overwhelming. I mean, if it's not 90%, I'd be really surprised. Okay. Let me see if I had any other significant questions before I go back to some of the other ones. I think my only other sort of broad comment on this is that I think the project description didn't highlight enough the conjunctive use portion of this. And I think I understand why, which is there's not a lot of actual construction work that needs to take place. It's more a sort of bureaucratic release of the emergency designation to allowing us to do what is operationally and everybody's best interests, including the fish. But I think there needs to be a little bit more meat on that particular set of bones to even in the project description to make it really clear to the public what it is we're talking about doing here. And while I understand this is intended to be something for consultants and environmentalists and that sort of thing, I do think a significant strategic initiative like this needs to be clear enough to the public that it's understandable by a broad set of people. I do have other questions, but I'll come back to those. I will come back to you, Bob. Jamie. No problem. Gina had her hand up. And I just wanted to make sure that she had jumped in and said whatever it was that she needed to say. Yes, thank you. So, as far as I'm concerned, I think generally I support the goals of the conjunctive use plan as it's laid out here. And I think from my perspective on how we position what we are doing here to make sure that the public has the maximum understanding of the benefits, I think that attaching some kind of an executive summary or even maybe there's some value in doing a little bit of media when we relieve this to answer some questions practically, I'm not talking about the board, I'm talking about the staff, maybe just to, if we are concerned that the public may have questions about this that we wanna clarify issuing some kind of an executive summary or overview statement that just sort of identifies the purpose, the benefits that we see of the conjunctive use long-term and then sort of the timeline for going forward with the EIR process, that might be something that can come later but be of value to the public in terms of disseminating the document. I think that's a great idea because also it helps us if this ever comes to, we want the public to back us and be there to speak in support of it. Okay, Jeff. Okay, so further down we go, the more things I might have wanted to talk about have been covered, but all I think it's a very good plan and needs a little fine tuning here and there, needs a little bit more upfront explanation. And I do think I agree with Jamie entirely that we need to be prepared to do a thorough selling job on this and make sure that it's perfectly and completely clear to the public and to the other agencies that might be involved. But I'm a very strong supporter of this whole concept. Anne, is that, are you finished, Jeff? Yes. Yeah, I guess I just wanna echo what everybody else has said that I am in full support of what we did and I think that you were very smart to take Mark's suggestion of hiving off the Scots Valley part of it as just creating potential problems for us and really sticking to the essential part for us. And that the part that basically sets us on a course to really be pretty drought resilient, I think, in the long call. And so I'm feeling, if we can get this all done, I'm feeling actually, I know nobody likes to talk about this, but I'm actually feeling pretty optimistic about our district's ability to take care of its needs. And I think this is really a great thing. So I just have a few little nitpicky things that have to do with it. One was the one that Bob already brought up. Another one was, I thought it was important when we were talking about the amounts of water that were available to be used, that you made it clear that the amounts available, especially in the Felton system, were those above and beyond the ones that we are required to leave in the stream for the fish. Okay, so I think that we just wanna, and if you need to be boring, I mean, even repeat it several times, that all of these calculations are truly excess flows, that in the sense that they're excess over what we need to keep in the creeks to allow adult fish to migrate, to wash the small fish out into the ocean. And that we're doing that, plus we know that if we pump less, and I think you've already said it, but you can still build that up a little bit more about how the benefits are for the fisheries. And I think eventually we'll do more modeling with Santa Margarita and have a better handle on exactly what these are. But you say that we add a 0.5 CFS, which sounds really small, but in drought years in some of those creeks, and Bean Creek and Zianti Creek, the flows are so small that 0.5 may make the difference between, whether you're at the height that a salmon, you've gotta have a height that's about half salmon height for them to jump, and that that might make the difference. So that these are important. So I would be more boastful. Say all the good things that we're doing. Okay, maybe I'll go out to the public before we come for another round with the board, if the board doesn't mind. We're up to four whole panelists now. Are there any comments by members of the public at this point? Cynthia, please go ahead. Good evening. I'm not as familiar with what you're doing currently as I should be, but I do have a question about communicating with the public. I would like part of the plan to include how you tell the public when it's time to stop using water, and whether that depends, like would that be at the point when you're changing from the surface water in Fall Creek, for instance, to having to draw water out of the aquifer, or the fact that we have septic systems, are we actually putting water back into the system that then helps the river flow? What's the delay time between us using water and it coming out in the river and helping the fish? I think my problem is a little bit to see how the public is integrated into this plan for conjunctive use. I totally support the idea of pumping the water up to the North system and having it flow back down into the river and not pumping water out at the diversion in Felton if Santa Cruz can get its water lower down and let the fish survive in the upper reaches of the river in times of the year. But I just would like a little more clarification on what the public can do. Can I take a stab at that first? And then Rick will let you do it. When you asked how fast does the effluent go from your wastewater and septic tanks into the creeks, it's very much dependent on what your geology is. And so for example, if you're in Felton on the Lompico or on the granitic bedrock, it takes quite a while, years. If you're in the Santa Margarita formation over by Coelhollo, it could be pretty fast. Within a year, it will be hitting the Monterey formation, which is an aquaclute and it'll be in the Antique Creek or Bean Creek. So, but it kind of doesn't matter in terms of the time. The point is, is all of the water that goes into septic systems eventually benefits the groundwater system. I agree with you with the idea that we could maybe do a little bit more. So for example, I think that everybody would be really happy to know that this year, we only shifted over from surface water to pumping our wells and what, Rick, was it in June? That we did that? And even though this was a drought winter because we had that big storm in October. And so what that means is, and so I think that that would not be unreasonable, Rick, for us to like alert the public and say, okay, we're to the point now where we're having to shift over to our wells either because we don't have enough water in the creeks or we have to leave water in the creek for the fish and fall creek so that they can do their thing. And that this is the time you really have to worry about conserving. So is there any reason we couldn't do that? Well, we did just recently when we switched over to the well, the Olympia well field, we did do outreach on that because it's a sharp contrast of water. Yeah, you hear, Rick? Rick, you're kind of faint. Any better? And no, you can't hear me? Okay, but we did do that this year. We did put out social media and we did put out, I do believe, some other information when we switched over to the Olympia well field. Our customers can tell the change of water as soon as they receive it at the tap with the higher mineral content and the iron and manganese in the Olympia wells. We can do a better job of that. And as far as our customers time to not use water, our customers have some of the lowest water use rates in the state. And to ask our customers to conserve more might start impacting health and safety. And I get to a point that I'm not quite sure how much more our customers can reduce their use. We can do more information on what water sources are being. We could even update our website to mark down some type of bar chart or something and says where the water is coming from this month or something, I wouldn't want to change it daily. That's kind of difficult, but to update it more the times of year, maybe we can have a, sometimes a system map up and with some color coding. We can work on that as part of outreach where our water comes from. And the best thing to do is to utilize our surface water first without impacting fish and then utilizing a lock loman water because that will allow us not to use our well water and leave more water in the aquifer and leave more water in the streams. But it's a little complicated to get out and we'd have to do a little work to make sure folks could understand what they're looking at when they're reading it, not be too confusing. Does that answer your questions, Cynthia, a little bit? I hope so. Right now, let's move on to Jim Mosher. He's got his hand up. Okay, Jim. Can you hear me? Yes. I just want to support the board in their efforts here on the conjunctive use. I was dismayed about what the city of Santa Cruz did with their protest. Really appreciate Bob's comments. And in terms of conservation, it seems to me one way, one area that the board could help customers is in the area of garden irrigation. I would bet that where we could do more conservation is in that area. I know just personally that my wife and I are reviewing what we could do. Most of our water use is in our vegetable garden and flower garden. And we have, for example, pulled out our entire lawn. And so I think where we could still conserve is in that area. And it's been very educational for me to learn that there's certain types, certain times of the year where it's more important to do that in order to preserve the health of the aquifer and the watershed than others. So anyway, that's one area that I think more customer education would be helpful. Thank you. Okay, Rick. If I can just add to that, one of the things that we are doing and we've actually put in for additional grant funding to speed up this program is the meter change out to the Badger Ion Water meters that give our customers almost 24 hours later, their water use. And really, everybody who I spoke to who uses the Ion Water says it is the best tool that we've offered to help monitor water use, look for leaks and give people a good idea of the actual water they're using almost in real time. It's 24 hours behind. That's a great tool. And we're working, we put in for more grants for that underground. And we do have an active program of changing out those meters. Okay. Any other comments by members of the public? I don't see any. So let's go ahead and go back to members of the board. One thing that I've heard from several of the board members and I agree with is providing the overriding executive summary for what this document is about. And Carly, we didn't have section one that in the final document will proceed this project description. Am I correct in that? That's where this executive summary would then live. Is in that section one. Right. As part of the approved budget, it was really only updating the project description. Correct. That was part of the cap that we put on you and Rick in approving that under 30,000 was the project description by itself. Okay. Okay, then at some point, I think early fairly early on in the process, once we do go ahead with this environmental impact report, having that executive summary back to the board so that we can review it and reflect our opinions on does this convey not only to the regulators, but to the general public also what this document contains, what we think should be in it. Okay. That's my only comment. Thanks. Bob? Yeah, I mean, I agree that executive summary is needed, but I still think section two sort of missed the mark on the non-Lachloman projects. So I mean, I think the concept, I cuddled the metal on the concept and the policy, but I think there's still some work to be done in section two as well. I didn't want to mention a couple of things in response to earlier comments. One is while the notion of selling water to Scots Valley is part of normal operations is not part of this. I do want to make it clear to our neighbors in Scots Valley that in emergency times, if they need water for due to an emergency, we will clearly provide that as I would expect they would to us in reverse if we had an emergency that needed water. That has been done in the past and there will be no change to that as far as I can tell, correct, Rick? Yeah, I'm thinking that as a yes. Specifically on the water conservation, there may be some things that people can do for outdoor conservation, no question. Though if you live in the sandhills, it gets a little tougher when you're watering outdoors. But indoor water use, as Rick said, we're at 35 to 40 gallons per person per day indoor use. That is at least 20% below the ultimate state goal of 50 gallons. So I'm really, there's an asymptote you get here as you continue to push on conservation. We need to be very focused in what our messaging really is. And pushing folks on indoor conservation, I think we're reaching a point of vanishing returns. We're not gonna get a whole lot more out of it. It's also the time when we have the most water. Well, exactly. So go ahead, take another shower. Well, I mean, in price, of course, does a lot to deal with that too. Water is not a completely inelastic commodity. As we've learned. I mean, I think it would be instructive at some point, Rick, to take a look at how much water we were putting out on a per person basis back in the 80s and 90s. I can tell you, looking at my old bills when I was throwing things away, you know, I was using a heck of a lot more water than I am now, like probably three or four times as well. And I think that is something that would be very instructive for people to understand, to get some perspective historically, that our district has come down a significant amount. I mean, it's large amount in our water consumption on a per person basis. Okay, to the question. What is the nearest point of connection in Felton to the South System interconnect from Kirby? Is that down Graham Hill Road to Zianti Graham Hill Intersection? Saying the closest to Kirby to our South System. Yeah. That route would be Highway 9 to Glen Arbor, Glen Arbor to Quail Hollow, Quail Hollow to West Siany, or East Siany and West Siany and then over Graham Hill. Okay, so you wouldn't go down, you just wouldn't go down Graham Hill to Zianti? Not at this time. It's a very, the piping in there is unique and it would have to be completely replaced from the Felton Intersection down to Graham Hill. Right, but I mean, that is the nearest distance one. The shortest as the crow flies, yes. But that means you don't have piping to facilitate that. Right, I understand, I understand. But I mean, that is the shortest. Okay, just a little knit on the map. We're showing a bunch of existing intakes. I think we talked about this before. By existing, we mean those are pre-1914 water routes. But at least not all of them are currently in operation. In the North System, the only surface source in operation right now is Forman Creek. Right. Because it's PZU. Yeah, I did notice that and this may be something to look at in the executive summary, but we didn't talk in the section here about pre-1914, which gives us a little bit more flexibility than our water rights in Felton, for example. I think I just added that it's important not to just show Forman Creek because that's a PZU fire. So what we want are the ones that were active pre-August, 2020. Yes, is that supposed to be the logical ones to show on that map? I just don't want, I mean, I don't want anybody to think those are operational now. Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to the numbers and the tables as soon as you have them. I think that would be very instructive. And as Gail said before, some perspective on that relative to how much we could use over what is needed for fish is would be really important. On the interconnection with Locke-Lomond, why would we not want to tie it in at the closest and least expensive place there at San Lorenzo Way? There is no reason we don't. I mean, we do want to tie in at that location. Okay. Because that's still an open question, I guess. Well, it came up in the review of the ISMND and we just need to nail that down. And we have had conversation with the city, I think we're close to nailing that location down. Okay. There was some operational concerns the city had and I think those have been resolved. Oh, good. Well, I'm confident that our staff knows how to operate water system. And then we're going across nine, would we bore or would we trench? Mostly likely, that would be a count trans decision. At that location, they may require a bore due to the high level of traffic. Especially there. Okay. Great, thank you. That was it. Jamie, did you have any additional questions? No, I do not. Sorry, you got your mouth full. Go on to Jeff. Jeff, did you have any questions? Potter. Not at this time. Okay. Jamie, go ahead. I was saying no, I did not. But, you know, because my mouth was full, it was difficult to understand me. Well, then I see that Mark has his hand up. So let's go back to Mark. I was going to pass on this comment, but since Bob brought up figure two dash three with the labels on it, we labeled everything on that figure existing. And when I see that, I want to contrast. Okay, so what's not existing? Well, nothing. Everything there is existing. Are any of them labeled inactive? No, or any of them labeled as future? No, take out the word existing and then nobody is going to debate to Bob's point earlier. Clear Creek, Peaveyne, Sweetwater. Those are intakes. We're not attempting to say whether they're existing or not. Take the word existing off of that figure entirely is my suggestion. That's it. Any more comments from members of the board? If not, I think what we would like to do if you don't mind is just generally I get sort of from the sense of the conversation here that there's consensus of the board that there's a lot of support for the CUP project description as it's been constructed. We've had some minor comments on how it might be made a little bit more accessible to the public. And what I would like to do is to have the board agree that we want the staff to proceed full speed ahead on the plan as it is. And that if any members of the board have some minor suggestions for rewording or rewinding that they submit them to you and to Gina within the next two weeks, if that seems reasonable. And but otherwise, is that Gina, you have something you wanna say? I was just gonna make a plug for if possible kind of conceptual points as opposed to extensive redlining. And part of the reason for that is that there's me, there's Carly, there's me, there's a biologist and there's Rincon who kind of all have to go. It'll be difficult to reach agreement on extensive red lines from multiple parties with concurrence from all the different consultants, I think if you give us conceptual points that we can sort of figure out how to incorporate that will work. But not to say don't send us red lines if there's something that you think can be best communicated that way. But I'm just requesting not a lot of extensive red lines, please. Okay, so can I just have a, let's just have a voice vote on whether we wanna express that consensus on favor. So yes? Yes, yes. All opposed, anybody abstaining? Okay, so everybody's got their marching orders. So let's go ahead and go on to the first order of new business, which is the Santa Cruz County Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Great, thank you. I'll also be speaking on that item tonight. In April of 2022, the district applied for funding through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which is a FEMA Cal OES grant funding program. Originally, when we spoke with Cal OES, we were told that we were eligible to apply on our own. Unfortunately, after we had completed the sub applications, we're ready to submit those. We were then told that we were not eligible to be a sub applicant because we did not have a local hazard mitigation plan. And at that point, because we were so far along in the process, we ended up contacting the County of Santa Cruz who does have an approved local hazard mitigation plan. And the County did agree that they would be the sub applicant on these applications for the district. During that time, we discussed putting together a memorandum of understanding or MOU with the County that would commit the district to completing the work as outlined in those applications along with funding 25% of the eligible activity cost, which is the required match as part of the program. The three sub applications include fire hardening of three redwood tanks and four polyurethane tanks. The fire hardening here refers to complete replacement with steel, bolted steel tanks, along with hardening to HDPE lines in Lompico and then Bennett and Felton. And that would be varying those lines. And then the Cal OES staff that we worked with recommended that we complete our own local hazard mitigation plan. So in the future, we could apply for this funding on our own. So as exhibit A, we have the actual MOU attached. And then below that, we also have a better description of the projects that we did submit as part of the applications. And I believe Rick want to jump in and give a little more information on each of those projects. The projects that were selected were high priority projects on our capital improvement list and even a rise higher priority after CZU fire. And these are, when we say fire hardening, this isn't just brush removal, this is complete replacement. The echo tanks, the redwood type tanks that we would replace, that's in the North Boulder Creek system. The Highland tank is a redwood tank located in Boulder Creek. The Ralston, El Solos, Houth Resort and Echelor are polyethylene tanks that are obviously very susceptible to heat and fire. The Bennett line is an above ground line that's through a forested area. The Lumpiko line is the main line that was installed through an emergency grant when Lumpiko was a water district and they had a water supply shortage during a drought before we consolidated. The pipeline was installed above ground across country, HDPE, very susceptible to fire damage as we learned during CZU. These are all considered capital improvements. The 25% that the district share would be is 1.7 million. I think this would be over a three year period if we can get awarded the 7.1 million for the full projects, we will appropriate the 1.7 million for capital improvements. We'd be happy to take any questions on any of those individual projects. Amy. Can you remind me, the Bennett line, is that the one that sort of comes down Ben Lohman Mountain? It's off empire grade. It comes out of the Bennett spring, quite a ways up empire grade and runs across country and comes all the way down to the town of Felton to the curvy water treatment plant. Some of that was damaged in CZU, but only about 50%. So there's still additional piping that needs to be buried when we do the project and this money of awarded would cover those costs. Can you just, in the area that we would be looking at undergrounding it, if it's the area that I'm somewhat familiar with because it's kind of up behind my house, is it near Manson Creek? Is that what we're thinking? No, no, no, no. No, okay. Way up empire grade, up by the lime kilns. I'm not sure if you remember. Oh, okay. All of Crete State Park. Yeah. So considerably away from the Manson the district deeded that property over to State Parks. We no longer own that or use that water source from Manson. Oh, okay, great. I was just gonna ask about slide risk though, but it sounds like it's a lot lower than I was thinking it was. And so would not be a subject to potential slides if we were undergrounding it in that location. Yeah, the topography up on Bennett is a lot different than our other intakes, it is not as steep at all. Yeah. I happen to be on the Bennett line. And I live a half mile uphill from from a fountain. And a lot of it is over granitic terrain. And so there isn't the same amount of landslides much shall as Rick said, much shallower than the east side of and Lomond Mountain. Go ahead, Bob. Yes, thank you. So the first thing I wanna do is mention that I live across the street from the Highland tank which is why my water pressure is so fabulous. And I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any conflict of interest situation for me by voting on. Yeah, go ahead. This actually came up with things related to me on stuff too. So Gina, why don't you expand on that? Yeah, so without reciting all the kind of legal rules that apply here, I think the key principle at play is that there wouldn't be a conflict here because there wouldn't be any material effect on a director's financial interest. And that's because it's under the law. It's not considered material if the decision solely concerns repairs, replacement or maintenance of existing streets, water, et cetera, facilities. I think there's an additional concept here as well which is that if a director is receiving the same type of service as other members of the public and this type of an improvement wouldn't paint the nature type of service that the director is receiving and it doesn't constitute a disqualifying conflict. But really the key point is that if there is a financial interest, it's not material under legal rules that apply to conflicts of interest and therefore it doesn't disqualify you, Bob or any other director that may be served by one of the particular infrastructure elements that's on the list. Great, thank you. Jeff. Wait a sec, I had another question. I'll come back to you. Go ahead. Okay, real simple quick, short question here. In the document, it refers to the non-Redwood tanks as polyurethane tanks and you mentioned polyethylene tanks. I seriously doubt that they're polyurethane but make sure you got that right. And that was a typo in my end. Yes, yes. Okay. Large chemical difference between polyurethane and polyethylene. I'll come back to you, Bob. Yes, so as I was thinking about tanks here, Rick it occurred to me that one of our other major unfunded liabilities that we still need to find a financial solution for is maintenance of our steel tank. I believe that all of the steel tanks we have except perhaps for probation and the lion tanks that were damaged in the fire and which were re-coated as part of that repair are well out of their maintenance life for being re-coated. Are we able to apply for grant funding for that kind of activity? As part of this funding, the hazard mitigation grant they do have you do at least five years of maintenance in the cost that we put together as part of the application, so. Well, what does that exactly mean for maintenance of these? Because these are all gonna be replaced with steel tanks presumably the welded or bolded. What does that mean? Yeah, I wish Josh was on this call. He's been working on the maintenance and project and a lot more than I have for this funding. I mean, one thing that occurs to me is if we're setting aside money in a sinking fund of some kind for future maintenance that's certainly a reasonable thing to do. We have not done that as part of our financial planning up until now, but that is something to consider. But more importantly, it sounds like we are not able to apply for grant funding for maintenance on our steel tanks at this point out of this grant funds anyway. Is that correct? I believe that's correct. Because the goal of this program is to mitigate for hazards, right? So really maintenance wouldn't be mitigating for any hazard. Getting construction funds is pretty straightforward. Maintaining things gets a little bit trickier. And as we ramp up our steel tank infrastructure which based on what I've heard Rick say in the past can be unlimited life as long as you maintain it properly. Our maintenance requirements here, particularly given the age of some of our steel tanks really need to ramp up, but that'll be a topic for another conversation. I just wanted to make sure that we couldn't get some money for these as well. And then on the Long Pico line, just to clarify that because I think I was a little confused by it. We're talking about burying the supply line goes from Zianti into Long Pico. Is that correct, Rick? Do I understand that correct? Yeah, and that was put in before the consolidation. Right. And that is not part of the assessment district funds. This would be separate from that. That's correct. So it would actually be a tremendous benefit to the Long Pico community to in fact bury this pipe. That's correct. The only way water gets into the canyon. Yeah. It's a short distance, so it's a relatively inexpensive project, but it needs funding. And that's, we've been looking for funding ever since CZU. It's a high priority project. Right. And then the other pipe, which is to that intersection, that's part of our capital improvement plans that we actually have in place now, right? The Zianti road. That's correct. That's, I think that's out to bid or close to being out to bid. Should be out to bid, yeah. Okay. Great, I think that's it. Thank you. Mark, do you have a comment? Question? Question. I missed this earlier if it was said, is this nearly 1.8 million budgeted? Is it within the capital plan, Rick? It is not budgeted. There's some money budgeted for geotech and engineering on the Highland tank, I think 25,000, but that's about all that's actually in the current biannual budget. Okay. So then on a project by project basis, as assuming we get this grant, as these items come up, are you submitting those to the board then for review and approval? We would, yes. Most likely in the next budget year, hopefully we'll know if, when we put our next budget together, we'll know that we were accepted for these grants or not, and then we'll have to put them into the budget. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? That's Bob, and then I'll come back to Bob. Okay, go ahead, Bob. Yeah, on the finances part, there's a preview of coming attractions. You know, our operating margin this year is significantly lower than the, I think general target that we've been trying to achieve, primarily due to the reduction in revenue associated with water sales, because our community yet again reduced their water consumption, I think about 10 or 11%. If you look at the five year projections that were put together as part of the two year budget that we did, that operating margin goes down even further due to the rapid increase in operating expenses. So something's gonna have to give here one way or the other if we're going to achieve this, either we're gonna substitute these projects for others, we're gonna find operational expense flattening of the curve. Yeah, this needs to be looked at, not just in my opinion in a two year timeframe, but with these kinds of capital projects that are coming up, we need to be taking a much longer view for capital specifically around capital budgeting and making sure that we're not just putting together the kinds of capital budgets that were done 10 years ago where they just changed the year every time and it was basically the same plan. We need to get very serious about this. I really appreciate getting these grants. This is definitely a way to stop gap our capital improvement program, but it is only partial part of the answer. I will comment on what Bob just said, and that is that the budget and finance committee just recently had a discussion of the operating margin and actually Bob, for this year so far, our operating margin has been largely what it was. It's about 0.25. And the year where it was low was a CZU fire where it went down to about 0.17. So I just wanna make that be accurate. The other statement I would make is that the operating margin doesn't really take into account that a lot of this is based on the top kinds of expenditures we're talking about are capital expenditures, which don't figure into the operating expenses. And most of these capital expenditures are presumably gonna be funded by, in part, the balance of the $15 million loan that we had. So I don't dispute that we have to constantly keep our eye on the prize in terms of, as you say, bending the curve on operating expenses, but I think we just don't wanna, we don't wanna get too mixed up in talking about operating margin when we're talking about operating expenses and talking about planning for capital projects. If I may respond to that. Go ahead. The operating margin is the key number that allows the district to fund the capital expenses. To fund the loans that get taken out to do the capital expenses. Without a robust operating margin, you cannot do those things. And so the reason that you focus on operating expenses is because the lower those are, the more money you have for capital expenses. Given that we have somewhere between $15 and $25 million of unfunded capital expenses, a good portion of which is around tanks that have not been maintained. The operating margin is the number that we all need to be looking at from a financial point of view. I'm glad to hear that maybe we're only down. So when the rate increase was done in 2017, it was done in such a way to provide about $3 million of operating margin every year going forward. Now obviously with disasters that can't take place, but that $3 million was the target for each of the five years that was in the rate increase. So being below that means that we're on the wrong side of our ability to fund capital improvement project. I'd be happy to go into this in more detail on a future agenda item when we talk about this, but the operating margin is something that we absolutely need to be laser focused on. I'm aware of that, Bob, but I just wanna make sure that you have the number right but most people consider an operating margin of 0.25 to be pretty darn good. So I don't dispute that we have to keep an eye on it and it does impact our ability to get future funding through loans, but I don't wanna paint the pictures being more grim than it really is. Any other questions or comments? So we have the recommendation in front of us, kind of seems a little bit curious, but basically what we're... Oh, and I need to go out to the public, but I'll go out to the public after I say what we're basically deciding on today is that because this grant has already been submitted and it's been submitted with the County of Santa Cruz is basically the main person that's administrating it and we're a sub-grant. We have to basically say that Rick Rogers can sign for us and so that's what we're deciding on today is that the recommendation is that we authorize the district manager to sign on behalf of the district the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program memorandum of an understanding with the County of Santa Cruz. So I'll go ahead and move that. Is there a second? Second. Okay. All right, now I'm gonna go out to members of the public to get a discussion of this. Anybody wanna say anything about it? I don't see any hands up among our four intrepid members of the public. So we'll come back and Holly, can you take a roll call vote? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. We go to our next item of new business which is a discussion of political activity during the election season. And Gina, I believe you're going to lead this for us. Thank you, Chair Mayhood. I hope all the board members have had a chance to review the memo in the packet which sets forth the particular issues that we're gonna be talking about during this discussion. This of course is not a broad discussion of all governmental ethics principles which continue to apply through election seasons such as Brown Act and other things. But it's focused on some of the rules that particularly seem to get implicated during election seasons. We have been doing in recent years a presentation like this around the beginning of each election season with a view towards reminding board and staff members and the public of some of the particular election related government ethics issues that seem to come up during the election season. And I guess I do wanna point out that the memo that you have in front of you is based on some pretty important rules that are derived from the government code but it also reflects best practices that a lot of which come from detailed policies that other agencies have developed for elected officials and staff to comply with not just during election season but throughout the year. We don't have such a policy here in the district but what we do like I said is have this presentation at the beginning of the election season to make the board and staff aware of these best practices as we go forward. Some of these rules will be very, very familiar. I think all board members and probably even members of the public are familiar with the prohibition against misuse of public funds. This is a rule that I think it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone to know that for example, you can't use a rule with stamps to mail personal letters or campaign mailers or anything of that sort but the rule is a little more broad than that. It extends to prohibiting elected officials all public officials elected officials and staff members from using district resources for personal purposes and that includes campaign purposes and some of those things clearly have financial implications like using district office supplies or staff time for personal purposes but some are a little more subtle such as using email lists, bulletin boards, copiers, those kinds of things. Even things that don't have kind of a measurable financial cost to the district may fall within this rule to the extent they involve using district resources for personal or campaign purposes. The rule becomes even more subtle when you start talking about misuse of office this is really an extension of the same rule that prohibits the misuse of public funds but it's much more broad to matters that maybe construed as kind of an abuse of office or an abuse of power taking advantage of a government position for personal or campaign ends. I've personally seen elected officials run afoul of this one because not all elected officials realize for example they can't use for example a photo with a government employee in uniform as part of a campaign, mail or campaign promotional materials. This can include things like sending a personal email or a campaign email from a district email address that has the title that uses the district email address and has the title of a director or public official. It can include things like asking government employees to support a particular cause or campaign. It really extends to quite a few different things and I'm happy to answer questions about it if that would be helpful. But I think the bottom line principle to remember in terms of misuse of office is that there is kind of a division between what constitutes a district purpose and what constitutes a personal or a campaign purpose and things that come from things that district resources, district titles, photographs of individuals and uniform district logos shouldn't be used for campaign or personal purposes as opposed to district purposes. And Director Ackman, did you have a question? I did. I think I know the answers in this but I thought maybe you could answer for the purposes of public consumption. A member of the public held a campaign event for a local assembly person last weekend or the weekend before and as it turned out for members of this board were at various times at the event, I don't think any of us really interacted and we definitely did not talk about what a district business but I know that it came up beforehand and I sort of asked the question like is that gonna be a Brown Act issue? And I was told as long as there was no discussion of what our district business if we all happened to be guests at the same event it wasn't an issue but could you expand on that Gina? Sure, well, I think every time one of these issues come up it's important to be aware of two things and one is how the rule actually applies number one and two, how a situation may be perceived. And so the Brown Act does, as you know, it prohibits communications whether director and direct among a majority of a legislative body including the board and committees in any manner that develops a consensus among the majority on a matter of district business or anything within the jurisdiction of the district. And so this rule can be implicated in a lot of different ways and it certainly could be implicated if four directors went to a social event which is not strictly prohibited under the Brown Act but then had a series of communications over the beverage table or something about some issue coming up on the agenda or maybe a future agenda. So it is certainly not a Brown Act violation for four directors to be at an event like that at different times. And then the question becomes how do you manage the perception that somebody may think something nefarious is going on and a variety of suggestions around that and the most obvious of being it's almost never a good idea to have three or more directors kind of huddled together outside of a public meeting under any circumstances. But you can think of a million different scenarios or ways that the Brown Act could be implicated and I guess I just encourage everybody to keep in mind one, there's the technical rule and two, there's the perception. And so if you find yourself in a situation like that it's worth thinking about what can I do to make sure that nobody thinks that even though I'm over here talking about the weather that I am talking about what's on the agenda actually talking about what's on the agenda next week. And I just wanna say Gina that I really appreciated this memo, it made me think about some things in terms of how even though I'm not somebody who's running just the issues of misuse of office and how you speak about things at meetings is important for the next few months especially. And also the 60 day rule about mass mailings and things coming out from the district. And so we have to be very careful about for example any letters that I would write on behalf of the board that that's probably a period of time where we probably don't wanna do that because of there might be misperceptions. So anyway, I appreciate it. Bob. Yeah, I think on that topic of mailers if we don't have a policy in this I think there definitely should be that glossy mailers going out touting infrastructure projects or what have you even a few months before the election is not a really good idea. 2018 saw something like that. And it really, I think was not a good one. Excuse me, not 2018, 2014. If I could say a few more words before we wrap up I think mass mailing kind of got covered to the extent that it needs to but I didn't wanna say just a couple of things about item three on the second page and different functions and communication. I'm not gonna go through each one of the points that's in the memo because everyone I did wanna underscore just broadly that the items in number three are all about the fact that the campaign is something that happens. Loosely speaking, out there whereas district business happens in here. So at board meetings, midi meetings any kind of district function or event the purpose of these rules is just to say please don't use those venues to talk about anybody the fact there's an election that any particular director is up for election. Anybody's candidacy, there's obviously things that are gonna be talked about in district meetings that are also being talked about out in the campaign because they're important to the district but the key is not to focus here in the district meetings and events on the fact that those are like election or campaign issues or that anybody is running for office or as a candidate for office or what their views are as a candidate, et cetera. And if there's questions about that I'm happy to answer them. But that was the last thing that I wanted to say about the memo before we move on. Are there any questions or comments by members of the board? Yeah, Jeannie, you spoke about this applying to both board members and staff. But this isn't intended in any way to limit individuals' ability to participate in the political process as individuals. Yeah, absolutely not. It's about keeping that activity outside of the district offices, working hours, district meetings and events. So that's real clear. He's have a robust conversation in the community. Thank you. Okay, can I, I guess we should see if there's any members of the public that have a question along this line. Anybody wanna ask a question or make a comment? If not, then we can go on to the consent agenda. Would anybody like to pull anything off the consent agenda? All right, given there's no response, oh wait, do I need to ask members of the public or any members of the public wanna take something off the consent agenda? Don't see any. All right, then we move on to district reports. And right now we basically only have the one which is from the district manager. And I have no time to look at that. Okay. And so the final item that we'll talk about is the written communication where we got an email back from J.M. Brown, Bruce McPherson's assistant about the letter that the board sent. And so in addition to that, I've asked Rick to comment on further developments which I think are encouraging along this line. So go ahead, Rick. Yeah, the Supervisor McPherson's A.J. and Brown has made contact with the district in fact has come into the office and we spoke and the initial feasibility study did really not include the Bear Creek Estates, Samuels Valley Water District Bear Creek Estates facility. However, that they have now contacted public works and public works which are trying to work in the Bear Creek Estates facility. And it appears that is getting some traction with public works to be included. That's great to hear that. But until we see some types of reports where we have additional contact by the county the district is still aggressively seeking support from other agencies. We sent a letter out to LAFCO get their support and we'll be meeting with some key representatives of the Valley to try to get support and also scheduling meeting with the Bear Creek Estates homeowners to inform them of what we're doing and to get them to write Supervisor McPherson in support. I do know maybe Jamie would like to, she's had some discussion with some of our political leaders which has been very helpful and I've heard that that discussion has already returned to Supervisor McPherson. So there is a lot moving on that subject. Jamie, did you wanna add to that? Sure, I had a meeting with Senator Laird last week and I raised the Bear Creek Estates issue. He agreed that he would send a letter which I sent him, Chair Mayhood, the letter that you signed off on. And it sounds like instead of sending a letter he's decided to reach out directly which I think is even better because it's more timely. And then I think that there were also some folks who were doing some outreach to Assembly Member Stone's office to try and secure his support as well. So that's my update. I'm really glad to hear that there might be some movement in this area that this was something that needed to be addressed. And of course the fire really sidelined a lot of priority around it. So I'm glad this is coming back. It's really clear from the earlier report that the community cannot afford a replacement of existing or even close to existing type technology. So unless the county is gonna do something different they're kinda stuck and we're kinda stuck because of it. All right, and I know Carly on this subject, Carly has spoken with our grant writer and they believe that for consolidation such as small water systems they're also funding the state for consolidations of small wastewater into larger. So trying to address this from several fronts because we know it will not be a cheap capital project to bring that wastewater to Boulder Creek to get it up into CSA seven. Okay, any other comments by members of the board on that? Would any members of the public like to comment on that? Well, if not, I will without objection apologize for my barking dogs who are defending me from a doe and her fawn and adjourn the meeting. And they did a good job. Good night. Thank you. Thank you, Olivia. It's 747 and we are adjourned.